Page 142 of Valkyrie Unknown

I flung a hand sideways, letting the vibrations humming against my brain guide me. I pressed my hand to an empty spot in the room, and met a wobbly surface instead of thin air. "Fuck you." I shoved and an invisible door gave under my touch.

I walked through.

Thirty-Nine

Zeke

I carvedanXin the door closest to me. The lessons of my past, the fresh memory of my mom, recoiled in horror at the sight of me defacing a space that wasn't mine. But I'd been trapped here without my permission and that wasn't cool.

Mark in place, I ran until my legs ached and my lungs burned. It didn't matter how hard I pushed, every other door was the one with myXon it. I collapsed with my back to a nearby wall, gasping for breath. I wasn't in a hallway that went on forever, I was in one that looped.

Somehow that was worse, because it meant there literally was no end. Now I knew the three doors were the same doors, one next to the marked door and the third across from them, it was easy to eliminate which I'd tried.

I turned the doorknob of one.Locked. The other two yielded the same result. Slamming my shoulder into one over and over...

And over. And over...

Didn't yield a result.

The attic was above my head, the cord hanging down. I yanked on the ladder stairs, and climbed up again. Memories surged back as strong as when I'd appeared here. My childhood. My mother explaining which boxes held my father's things. It all rang in my thoughts as if I'd lived it moments ago.

I ignored it all and strode to the window at the end of the room. What was wrong with the outside world? The sun hadn't moved, but it wouldn't have. I'd only been in here a few minutes.

There was no depth to what I saw, and the perspective didn't change as I got closer. I still saw housetops stretched out in front of me, despite looking down. I should see a tree beneath the attic window. Instead, this was like someone had stuck a photo--the most high-def photo ever--to the other side of the glass.

I tried to raise the window, and it wouldn't budge. Not even a hint of movement. Unlocking the latch didn't yield a different result. It was more impassable than the doors downstairs.

As I tried to search the boxes, I didn't have any more luck. Aside from the one in my memory, they were all empty.

"I don't know what you want me to do next," I muttered to the empty air.

The lighting in the room changed, because the image in the window shifted. My memories did as well, sliding away from childhood and toward more painful thoughts.

Fuck this. I climbed out of the attic, and found myself in the hallway again. This was such bullshit. "You'recheating," I shouted my frustration into the air.

A piece of paper fluttered from somewhere above my head, following a random and lazy path. I snatched it out of the air.

This isn't me, it's you. The words flowed in stark ink across torn parchment.

"Fuck you." My mind was already whirring though. If this was my doing, could I change my environment? There was nothing to do in the current one.

I need a door that opens. I visualized the hell out of the idea.

Nothing around me changed. Trying the current not-exits yielded the same results as before, as did climbing into the attic and checking the window.

What did I know how to do? Shoot things. I wouldn't fire on people unless I had to, but locks and doors were viable targets.

Except that I didn't have my gun. I had the pocket knife I'd used to carve on the door. A short while later, I proved it wasn't going to help me force any locks or pry anything open. If the marks I created held power, could I make one here?

Was there a rune forlet me the fuck out?

As the question passed through my mind, several images followed. A jumble of straight lines, and whispered words I didn't understand. The cascade flooded my thoughts.

And then it stopped.Perthro,the sound whispered in my ears, along with the image of a horizontal line with a wideVup top and the same, but upside down, on the bottom.Like a cup rolling dice.

Why would I think that?

It didn't matter. The runes hadn't been a mistake yet. I wasn't sure they did any good most of the time, but as far as I could tell, they never brought the bad. I was willing to take my chances with the unknown I knew. I scratched the mark into a different door than the one with theX. As I finished, a voice came from behind me, but it wasn't nearby. It was faint and distant, and impossible to make out the words.

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