Three women I barely knew were up first, shouting to each other, their voices high and excited but edged with fear. Everyone pretended bravado in the day hours, but at midnight, all of that was stripped away. The last challenge had changed us. It hadn’t been hard mentally—it had just been hard physically. The massive tank and the shock of cold water and pushing your lungs to their limit. And what had happened to Kara stained the challenges with an element of danger.
Footfalls echoed as the first team sprinted from the room.
For the second time, I was forced to wait my turn.
I told myself it was fair to have to wait. But the truth was, I didn’t want fair. All I wanted was to win.
Poppy left in the first team and Kara in the second.
My turn didn’t come until the number three was flashing on my wristband.
I was just with Ruth this time.
When I rushed with her out into the hall, the men who met us were Duncan, Harrington and a young Chinese guy named Hop. There were five of us in the team. Internally, I groaned at getting Duncan and Harrington on my team. Duncan wasn’t helpful at all. And Harrington only seemed to open his mouth to complain. I didn’t know Hop at all.
The mentors greeted us warmly in the garden, Brother Sage showing us to the third challenge room. “We hope the wait wasn’t too much to bear.”
“It was brutal,” Ruth told him. “There better not be any water this time, or else!”
“No water.” Brother Sage gave a thin chuckle. “You’ll find that it’s completely dry in there.”
We walked into another dark room. It had no smell or sound. No hum of a water filter, nothing mechanical. Just silence. All I could see was the red glow of the light bulb below the clock display. The door clicked shut behind us.
Then, one by one, each of the six walls was illuminated—each wall bare but for a single mirror. They were very old mirrors, gilt framed. But instead of clear glass, the surfaces were dark. The room held the usual hexagonal prism in its middle.
I inhaled a relieved breath. Nothing dangerous here.
What was the puzzle here? What did we have to do?
I rushed for the prism first, tapping and listening and trying to twist it.
Hop came to help me. But this box seemed to do nothing. It stood there silently, giving up none of its secrets.
I had to stop thinking of these things as boxes that could do a specific thing. They were there to act in sync with the rest of the room and with us, each one different. The box was uniform in colour, except for six lighter triangles on top, their points all facing outward. A six-pointed star with a hexagon in the middle. Five of the triangles had the letter I inscribed on them, while the sixth triangle had a zero.
“Well,” began Duncan. “It looks like they’ve given us some mirrors to figure out this time. Six of them. We’d better get started.”
Hop shot Duncan an odd sideways glance.
Ignoring Duncan, I glanced across at the mirrors. The glass was of a dark hue but not black. There was nothing remarkable about them.
Ruth muttered under her breath, breathing hard as she marched past me, staring into each mirror. “This is just too weird. And it’s creeping me out. I don’t like looking at myself. At home, I don’t even bother. Why do I need to? It’s not like I need to constantly check that I’m me.”
“Best to leave your emotions out of this, Ruth,” Duncan gently chided. “This is a puzzle. A question and an answer. It adheres to the laws of logic. Okay, everyone, getting back to business, can you spot any differences between the mirrors?”
Ruth turned around, scowling. “Go look yourself.”
Duncan straightened, looking confused. “It’s more efficient if I direct things.”
“For shit’s sake, go direct yourself to the nearest—” Ruth started.
“Watch your language,” said Harrington, hunching the shoulders of his tall frame as though bad words physically hurt him. “No one needs to cuss to express themselves.”
“Has everyone finished telling me off?” said Ruth. “Because you know, if anyone else wants to take a shot, go for it.”
Hop looked confused by the whole exchange. “I think we need to talk about the box.” He pointed to each of the six symbols. “We’ve got five of the letter I and one zero.” He looked back over his shoulder. “If the mirrors match the positions of the symbols, then the zero is pointing at that mirror straight across from it.”
“Finally, someone with a brain.” Ruth didn’t step across to the mirror though.