“Karate chop. They won’t know what hit them.” Richard insisted on stepping around me and walking in front. We continued walking along the passage.
“Damn,” said Richard, feeling his way around a structure in front of him. “There’s a ladder here.”
I moved beside Richard. The passageway ended in a wall. A simple wooden ladder led straight up.
The last thing I wanted to do was to climb up there. But if we were going to continue, this was the only way to go.
I ascended the ladder after Richard, breathing easier once I realised that it didn’t lead up into some claustrophobia-inducing attic but instead just led back down and into the passageway. “I know what this is,” I breathed, turning back to Richard. “This is the refectory door that we’re climbing across. Otherwise the tunnel would have ended.”
Richard nodded. “I think you’re right.”
We continued along, taking a sharp right turn, then up another ladder. The tunnel we headed into was high, and we couldn’t walk upright any longer. We had to crawl.
“Whoa, we’re going across the hall now,” said Richard from behind me. He appeared to test it with his hands before moving forward. “Seems solid enough.”
At the end of the overhead passage, a ladder led down, and the passage went left and right and straight ahead—up yet another ladder.
“This way.” Richard stepped up to the ladder.
I stalled. “I don’t understand this. This way should be heading out to the cloister and garden . . .”
“I’ll be damned. I remember seeing a bulkhead that stretches right across the garden. So this is what that’s for. A secret passage.” He climbed the ladder quickly.
I followed hesitantly.
The peepholes stretched along the floor now, the light seeping through them growing brighter.
Crawling forward, I stopped to squint through one of the bright pinholes. I caught the briefest scent of fresh air. The sun lit up the tops of the fruit trees. The challenge participants were there, not guessing that Richard and I were overhead and staring down at them.
“We can’t go any further,” I whispered. “If we do, we’ll be going across to the inner circle of rooms. Where the challenges are held.”
The silence that followed told me that the direction we were headed in wasn’t a problem for Richard.
“Richard,” I said uneasily, “please tell me this wasn’t the reason you wanted to do this in the first place?”
“Are you going to say that you don’t want to know what’s in the last three rooms?” came the reply.
“No.” My no didn’t sound as firm as I’d meant it.
“Look, it’s not like we’d actually go into the rooms and solve the challenges,” he added. “All we’d do is take a quick look.”
“But if we got found out, the mentors would probably throw us out of the program. Without any money at all.”
“That’s the gamble, Evie. Gamble big, win big. You’re a fellow gambler, and I know you understand that.”
“Okay, now I’m sure you wanted to do this to get into the inner circle.”
“Ding, ding, ding.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. He’d tricked me.
But still, I didn’t turn around and head back the way we’d come.
In the third challenge, my team had only just skidded onto the finish line at the last second. Seeing the new rooms might give me the slight advantage that would get my team over the line in the next challenges.
It’s wrong, Evie. You know it is.
But something clouded over my sense of fairness. I had a family to think of. I needed the money.
I didn’t speak as I followed Richard forward. At the other end of the bulkhead, we descended the ladder.
We were in the inner circle.
Almost immediately before us was a door, a lamp overhead dimly illuminating it.
“Don’t touch it!” I cried. “It could be alarmed.”
The door had a keypad and a strange square screen with a handprint marked on it.
Richard whistled between his teeth. “This thing scans your hand. Pretty high-level security for a pack of monks.”
“So what’s on the other side of that door?”
He shook his head. “I’d pay good money to know that. If I had any, that is.”
“We have to head back,” I said quietly, not sure if I was glad or not that a door had stopped us.
Reluctantly, Richard tore himself away. We climbed the ladder and returned the way we’d come.