How I Barely Escape

I licked my chapped lips, trying to process all this and come to a conclusion. Putting my jacket on and activating the laser gun, I looked around. "I believe you," I said. "And I've found the answer to my, apparently, silly question."

"What question?" She raised an eyebrow.

"The question about the manager." I told her, with my tone edging to the expression of 'duh'.

"Oh, that question. Forget about it, just focus on the game." She gripped her gun tightly and looked around carefully.

"So... Here's the plan: join me and help me win this game since you don't seem interested in that for yourself."

"Is that allowed, I mean, forming teams?"

"Yes, but most people haven't formed any. We'll be among the few who will." She said. "That is if you agree." She looked at me patiently.

"What will I get?" I asked, thinking hard about it. She was a stranger who could strangle me whenever she wanted with that strength of hers.

"You'll get protection."

"What will you get?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Victory." She shrugged. "See, it's a win-win for everybody."

"Fine," I told her. "But you'll have to tell me all about this game."

"Deal!" And she smiled. It turned out that she looked like a different person, a beautiful and happy person when she smiled.

I broke into a grin. "Let's play this game."

...

"Watch the back." She ordered, making way to the stairs leading to the ground floor. "Don't stop, keep coming." She pointed the gun to the front and kept walking since running could drain our strength too fast.

I nodded. "So... Every level contains a maze and we have to reach its center without getting killed to proceed to the next level." I repeated what she had told me.

"Yeah." She said and stopped abruptly.

"What happened? I asked, confused.

"There's someone on the landing of that floor I think." She told me, lowering her voice.

"Is anyone coming here?" I panicked.

"They won't come here. Once you reach the upper floor, you cannot go to the lower one." I relaxed, releasing the breath I was holding without realizing it. We waited for the landing to clear and then proceeded. The second maze was in front of us when she, my partner, turned towards me and offered her hand. I frowned, confused but shook it nonetheless.

"I've decided it's time for introduction since I realized that calling you Ms. Always Inquisitive was inconvenient." She explained, apparently after noting my confusion.

"But you never called me that." I pointed out.

"Yeah but I was about to, then I realized that you must have a name so when not ask it, since you're my partner now?"

"So very thoughtful," I muttered sarcastically. She raised an eyebrow.

"I'm Kat Coleman." She said, still gripping my hand from the handshake.

"Kat, short for...?"

"Kaitlyn." She told me curtly. She didn't want me to know her full name and hadn't expected that I would ask.

"Um, shouldn't it be Kate or Katie then?" I couldn't just control this urge to ask questions. After all, I had always been highly curious, even as a child.

"Kate and Katie don't suit my personality." I was surprised that she answered my question so calmly.

"Oh." It was the only response I could think of. She was right, she wasn't the Kate or Katie type. Her body and movements had a feline touch to them. Her agility could make any girl envious.

"It's your turn." She pointed out.

"Oh, yeah. I'm Jane Lewis."

"Old school, huh?"

I shrugged. "My mother's a Jane Austin fan." She nodded, understandingly. My name wasn't old school, three girls beside me had the same name (well, the first name) in my town. I think it was in trend right now but I wasn't going to tell her that.

She opened her mouth to say something but at the same moment, the firing started. She held my hand tightly, not letting it go even now, and started running towards the maze.

"Duck!" I screamed as a laser left a scorch mark on the wall, which would have been us if she hadn't listened to me. "We're gonna die!" I whined.

"Shut up!" She shot with her gun towards whoever was attacking us.

"There's no use firing there. Nobody's insight." I chose to ignore her rude reply and instead said something helpful.

"You can't see him but I can."

"That's impossible. And also, we're moving so the shot won't connect." It was better if she focused on running rather than firing.

"Stop reminding me of my physics teacher!" She pushed me down with her as a shot went just where our heads had been a moment ago.

"Okay." I squeaked. I kept my mouth shut after that. It was hard to speak when my head was a constant target. We were steadily closing the distance between us and the maze but still, it felt impossible to reach there before getting shot dead.

Kat swore. "How can they still get an aim at us?!"

"Maybe because they're standing and we're running. They won't find it hard—"

"Why are torturing me? Can't you, for once, just stay quiet?!" She yelled.

I opened my mouth to say that I can and I will but then closed it, wisely staying quiet.

We reached one of the entrances to the maze. "Now your works starts. Find us a way to the center." Kat told me once we got a little break from the firing. We'd decided that she would get us to the maze and I'd get us to its center since my way of navigation was quick and easy.

I uncapped my reliable sharpie and got to work, moving from one path to another with Kat following me closely, guarding my back.

"I feel like Henry the Navigator," I muttered and snickered at my joke. After a moment, I noticed that Kat was glaring at me. "What?"

"We're not playing Age of Empires here. You know that, right?" She was still glaring at me. God! Her eyes were scary. Even Chucky couldn't scare me as much as she could. "And why are you feeling like him anyway?"

"'Cause I'm navigating." I mean, duh! That was exactly my expression which further annoyed the human feline.

"Don't make me guilty of friendly fire." She warned.

I pouted. "I was just trying to lighten the mood."

"And you failed, miserably so keep quiet now." Well, she was right. I needed to focus or we'd get lost and with my luck, get in trouble with the attackers again.

After a while, I got bored of the silence and decided to risk asking a question.

"I was wondering something." I casually started the dialogue.

"What?"

"How come I didn't see you or even hear you back in the first maze? You must be on the same path as I because you reached the center too."

"There isn't just one right entrance that leads to the center. They're four or five."

"How do you know that?" I frowned. Had she tried all the entrances just to figure this out?

"If you're thinking I tried all the entrances to get this bit of information, then you're the densest person imaginable." She looked hard at me as if trying to read my mind.

"Of — of course, I didn't think that. That's stupid. Who'd do such a stupid thing?" I tried to laugh but it died in my throat. I could tell she had already made the impression of me as the dumbest person imaginable.

"Well, I saw a diagram of sorts in the manual. It had four right entrances but forty wrong ones. It was an example of the type Mazes that we're going to find here."

So the supreme manual was the source of this knowledge, as expected. I nodded my head and was about to ask her to impart more of the knowledge obtained from the said manual when she clamped a hand on my mouth.

Leaning in, she whispered in my ear, "Shh! I think someone's coming this way."