Forever Fighting | ✔️ | [previously Espionage: double-cross]

Chapter 11

Alex was more vexed than worried at this point, mainly because she knew exactly what game she was playing, well, what game Julie had gotten her to play. Maybe not play, that's not quite the right word. Thrown her into without a care for her choices would be a more apt description of the scenario Alex found herself in and exactly how she felt about it. 

She stared into the darkness for a while, wondering if something was going to happen or if she would have to knock over the first domino. 

When she tired of standing still and waiting, she decided the latter might mean she got out of this extreme escape room faster.

Cautiously, a step forward was taken and as soon as the she moved, the room flashed to life.

Literally flashed.

Where once there was only darkness there was now a good-sized room with bright blue strobe lights stretching across the width. Instantly, Alex knew what she had to do.

Crossing a room with lasers? Seems a but juvenile. You can literally do the same thing when you go to a spy escape room.

She was about to cross the first line when she spotted something odd along the walls of her temporary prison. 

Careful not to touch any beams, she inched toward the odd holes that ran across the walls irregularly. She reached out and touched it before pulling back sharply as if it had burned her.

Because along the walls of this room were bullet holes and next to them were dark stains that looked black in the lighting.

It didn't take a genius to figure out what happens in this room.

This task just became a whole lot more serious. 

Not so juvenile any more.

She gulped and carefully took a step over the first beam of light. She stepped over it successfully without retaining any injuries and now, with more confidence moved to the next. 

She was about to duck under the third when a low rumble filled the air. Alex looked back to see the back wall start to move closer to where she was standing.

You know, just to make matters harder.

Alex knew that if she: touched a laser beam, she would be dead; if she was too slow, the wall would close in making the chances of going into a laser beam increase dramatically, meaning she would be dead. So in other words, chances of survival were low, very low. 

She carried on making her way through the maze of lights, taking extra care to avoid the death trap.

She was ducking, jumping, sliding, crawling, spinning around the obstacle course, filled with that rush of adrenaline and the knowledge of just how dangerous this was that filled her with an inexplicable thrill to continue, to never stop. 

She was loving it.

Just as she was mentally thanking Julie for the challenge, her life became more difficult.

The lasers started moving.

And if that wasn't enough, they decided they wanted to flash too. Now you didn't know where the laser was or where it was going to be.

It was almost as if Julie knew exactly how Alex was feeling and decided to turn up the heat.

Goddamnit Julie.

Her steady, casual pace began too slow and the wall behind her started too close in. She had managed to work out the pattern of every laser except one, the final obstacle between her and freedom.

The laser in front of her now was flashing in quick succession, moving backwards and forwards in no discernible patters.

So Alex did something she had never done and took a risk.

She jumped, flying over the beam, the tip of her shoe going through the pathway of the beam. Just before the footwear was about to collide with the light, it flashed, creating a clear pathway for touchdown. 

As Alex landed, she executed a perfect forwards roll, diving under the thin string meant to go unnoticed. Just as she stood up, the blue tinge of lights turned blood red, a bad omen if Alex ever knew it. 

No longer was she finished, on the other side of the room. As if by magic, the room had lengthened and two more lasers stood in her way, painstakingly close to one another. Whatever she did to get passed one meant she would just go straight into the other. She didn't have many options. Unless she could find a way to disable one without being shot soon, she would be squashed to the thickness of a pancake by the wall that was closing in ever faster.

Blood didn't make for appetising syrup.

Decidedly not wanting to become a pancake, Alex ripped off a piece of her t-shirt, balled it up and threw it at the light beam that was the furthest away. In the blink of an eye, the t-shirt was ripped to shreds by bullets, bullets that were nail-bitingly real and not tranquillisers for the sake of this test. 

The laser flickered off, meaning Alex had a shot at getting past the final beam. With a final push, she leapt over the beam and went straight into the wall, her quick reactions being the only thing that stopped her from smashing her face on the hard stone. 

As she peeled herself away from the wall, a bright light blinded her momentarily, red turning into a startling white in moments. After being stuck in the dark for so long, the light was alien to her sensitive eyes but once she had finally adjusted, she couldn't help but let out a small gasp. 

She was in a small white room, the walls projecting footage of her fight with Julie, her cracking the code, working through the labyrinth of lasers but even more astonishingly, videos from different parts of her childhood: her building her first robot at age seven, creating her own shelter and fire from scratch at age eight, even finishing her years curriculum at school early at age nine. 

She spun around, in complete awe. She couldn't feel passing through one of the walls as she walked backwards. It was like it was made purely of air. The white light changed to dark blue and she turned. 

Right in front of her was the ever-elusive, not know about, actually very modern, Auxilium.