Live or Lose

7

Corl POV

In the time span of about a minute, we get teleported to our next challenge. I hadn't even noticed, but all the challenges so far have been life size versions of different sections on the game's board. That's why it looked so confusing.

I get up to see that I'm surrounded by walls and hallways. Some hallways have dead ends. Does that mean this is a maze? I look to the right side of me and see a headset and a watch laying on the floor. The only seemingly reasonable thing to do was put them on, so I did just that.

"Hello?" I ask once I put the headset on.

"Corl?" A familiar voice asks.

It's Denis.

"Yeah?" I ask back.

"Ok, I have a letter here to explain the rules. I already read it myself, so I'm just going to give you the main idea. So, I'm in a room that shows me the map of the maze and a monitor that shows me where you are. I have 1 minute to explain how to get out before it makes me unable to talk to you. Just so you know, there are 2 other people in the maze with you, and those people could either be Alex, Sub, Elijah, or Ethan. Whoever those 2 are each have someone explaining the rules and directions to them, like I'm doing to you. You have exactly 5 minutes to escape the maze and your time starts... now!" Denis finishes.

It was a lot to take in, especially considering that I just got here and now I'm being bombarded with paragraphs of information.

"Ok, go forward," Denis begins.

"Got it," I clarify as I begin to move forward.

I then reach a fork in the road where I have to choose a path.

"Uh," Denis says as stress and intensity builds up in his voice.

"Stay calm and focus," I try to calm him.

"Right..," he says.

"I go right?" I ask.

"Um, no! I meant that you were right about what you said. Go left," he clarifies.

I peek at the watch. 30 seconds left for him to explain.

"Denis, you have 30 seconds left," I try to say calmly, though I was now getting stressed.

"Crud! Uh, I'll just tell you the rest of the directions. You have to remember them, ok?" he declares.

"I'll try..," I answer.

I'm not very good at remembering directions.

"Take another left.. and then go forward. After that, go right-wait no left-" he begins.

I take mental notes. Left. Forward. Left? Yeah, left.

"Then go right..," he continues.

I should probably be following his directions right now instead of trying to remember them. Gosh, I'm so stupid.

"Wait, slow down!" I say as I try to remember the previous directions.

"We don't have much time! I'm just going to tell you the rest because I don't have time to go back! Once you do all of the previous ones, go left, left, forward, right, forward, left, left and the last one is a-" he gets cut off.

"Denis??" I shout.

I look at the watch. It's been a minute. The time to explain is up.