Superhero CITY - The Test

Chapter Twenty

Michael had three minutes left on his timer, one hundred and seventy-eight heart stopping seconds before the automatic lock would disengage and the door in front of me would to open as the digital display above it would begin count down my own time. Like the 3 cadets who had entered before us, his account would reach absolute zero before mine began, regardless of whether or not he actually managed to complete whatever lay ahead of me with a little room to spare.

I would have no idea how well he did, and I allowed myself the lax in control to gnaw quietly on my bottom lip. "What if" kept playing in my mind. Like a broken record my thoughts would skip back to those two tiny words no matter where I tried to direct them.

What if I failed? What if Natalia, Allison or Chuckie failed? What if I did too good – or if my teammates did too good? What if teachers or school board decided to break us up because of our scores? Because of my scores.

And worst of all; What if my scores were somehow the clue that revealed who my family was?

My father – both of them really – were important Enough that our government was hiding as many family connections as possible. That's not even "classified" could cover the security level guarding everything. Aunt Cassie had said some time ago that so secret it wasn't even a conspiracy. If the information where to come out, it wouldn't just be our public images that would be assassinated, but our lives as well.

That was my greatest fear. the one that had kept me awake and sweating fruitfully at night since I was five years old. That one day the world would realize who the rest of my family was, and that we would all die because I had been to hide a secret.

But I couldn't exactly focus on my ridiculous fears right now, not when Michael's timer had reached zero and my name – Jason nightly, not the one I was born with – had begun to flash. I had twenty seconds before my earned countdown would start.

I took a deep breath as I heard the doors lock disengage, filling my lungs until I felt as if my chest was about to explode against my rapidly racing heart. The anticipation was overwhelming, so I closed my eyes as I grabbed the handle and slips through the portal to the other side, trying to prepare my mind for anything in a moment.

The sight that greeted me was... anti-climatic.

The room had still drastically changed, but not nearly as much as I had expected it to have. It still clearly looks like a gymnasium, it's too clearly looks like it belonged at school. I could see the scuff marks of sneakers on the ground.

But it was a little different.

The ceiling high wall padding had been stripped from all four sides of the large room so that bear, polished concrete Sean under the artificial lighting. The hardwood floor boards glimmered dimly under the thick layers of their varnish, the colorful lines that cross them intersected by darker pannels reaching directly upwards, perpendicular to the ground, and appearing to stand at more than twice my own height.

An endless set of walls, hiding a living puzzle from me that I had to complete.

A disembodied voice record of the many walls, bouncing around so much that I could barely understand the words reaching my ears.

"Jason Knightly, complete the maze." And then two dreadful heartbeats later, the iron bars that had caged me against the entrance appeared to dissolve into the air. I knew better but didn't have the time to stop and ponder it as the male tone spoke a single word that set me stumbling out in a rush; "begin."

I knew that the ceiling above me was only eighteen feet – had memorized the detailed blueprints of the entire school when I'd snuck a peek after my aunt Cassie had managed to get ahold of them and laid them out over her desk – but they didn't look it right at that moment. They seem to stretch away in tune up swallowed by a void of darkness that defied the laws of physics and the LED lighting that's ran along the walls at twelve feet in height. The lights also spread out across the top of the entire maze from what I could see, revealing the actual height of all the encompassing walls. The diodes were so bright that I couldn't even see my own shadow, and I wanted to shiver with discomfort – and more spineless emotions – as I looked above me.