Page 13 of Only Rogue Actions
I dropped my gaze to the flagstones, and an almost imperceptible shimmer of motion caught my eye a few feet ahead.I stopped, crouched down, and took a better look.Tiny droplets of water had beaded up and were slowly dripping from a thin filament strung at ankle height across the flagstones.
A trip wire.Clever.I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if not for the water condensation.
I stood up, moved forward, and stepped over the trip wire.I gingerly put my feet down on the other side, then waited.If I were Jeffrey, I would have rigged this area too, and I half expected the flagstone to depress under my boots.
A second passed.Then three ...five ...ten ...
Nothing happened, and my breath escaped in a relieved rush.Apparently, Jeffrey wasn’t as clever, devious, and diabolical as I was.Despite my nerves, disappointment flickered through me.I might hate losing, but it was no fun winning when things were this easy.I wanted the satisfaction of conquering a true challenge, of being, well,the best.
I moved forward.Up ahead, a couple of flagstones were cracked, like something large and heavy had slammed into them.Strange.I skirted around the broken chunks of stone, and my elbow brushed up against the honeysuckle vines on the right side of the path.
Click.
Something activated inside the greenery.I stopped and glanced around, wondering what trap I had just tripped.
Up ahead, a figure appeared on the path, heading in this direction.I squinted through the dense clouds of fog, trying to make out who it was.
Kyrion?I called out telepathically.
No answer.The figure came closer, but instead of morphing into a recognizable person, it grew darker, as though it was congealing into a solid shadow.Oversize green eyes snapped open, casting out shockingly bright glows.The eyes loomed closer, and the surrounding white fog took on the same eerie green tinge.
A wide, strong body made of black polyplastic armor appeared and combined with the glowing eyes to give the figure a disjointed, insectoid shape.But this was no imaginary monster on a horror serial—it was a Black Scarab, one of the Techwave’s deadly automated troops.
My eyes widened, and my breath caught in my throat.I stood there, frozen in place, but then my mind kicked back into gear, and determination burned through my shock.I reached for the stormsword on my belt ...but my hand only sliced through empty air.Drat.I’d forgotten that Siya had confiscated our weapons.
My gaze dropped to the ground, and I crouched down and snatched up a fist-size chunk from one of the broken flagstones.I stood up and cocked my arm back.The stone wasn’t much of a weapon, and it wouldn’t even scratch the automated troop’s armor, but it was all I had to defend myself.Any second, the Scarab was going to spot me through the fog and sprint in this direction, its heavy feet clanking with every step ...
Wait.Black Scarabs weren’t exactly quiet, given their tall, hulking frames.Why wasn’t Ialreadyhearing its clanking footsteps?Suspicion filled me.
The Scarab kept coming, heading down the center of the path.At this point, the machine was so close its eyes encased me in their eerie green glow, but instead of running away, I held my position off to the side of the path.My fingers clenched even tighter around the broken stone, and I held my arm up and ready, just in case my suspicion was wrong.
The Scarab came closer still, and my gaze locked on the buglike facets in its eyes, which glittered like neon emeralds.I held my position and braced myself to fight ...
The Black Scarab walked right past me.It took a few more silent steps, and then its form dissolved into nothingness as it crossed the trip wire on the path behind me.
I stood there, my arm still cocked back and the chunk of stone still clenched in my fingers.A second passed.Then three ...five ...ten ...
Nothing happened.My hand plummeted to my side, and a low, shaky laugh escaped from my lips.The Black Scarab was just a hologram, just an illusion.
I laughed again.I’d been wrong before.Jeffreywasjust as clever, devious, and diabolical as I was.He’d activated the Black Scarab hologram to make me panic, whirl around, and run straight into the trip wire I’d already spotted and avoided, thus triggering the accompanying trap after all.
I glanced up at the camera hovering overhead and gave it a respectful nod.“Well played.”
The red lights glowed steadily, but the camera lens opened and closed, almost as if Jeffrey was acknowledging my compliment from his perch in the control room.
I wiped the clammy sweat off my forehead, then studied the path up ahead.No more Black Scarab holograms appeared, although even more fog cloaked the area than before, intensifying the damp chill in the air.
I started to drop the stone, but then I thought better of it.I might be trapped in the maze without any weapons, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t create myownweapons, just like when I rigged different blasters together to make one much more powerful device.A fist-size rock wasn’t all that powerful, but it was better than nothing.
I slid the broken stone into my pocket and headed even deeper into the maze.
CHAPTER SIX
VESPER
Aminutelater,thelast of the fog wisped away, and I came to another junction where the path split off in three directions.Once again, all the paths looked the same, so I closed my eyes and reached for the sticky cobweb of Kyrion in my mind.
He hadn’t whispered any telepathic thoughts to me, and he didn’t seem to have heard me call out earlier, but his presence was still firmly anchored in my mind.Instead of trying to use his telepathy, I focused on Kyrion himself, on his strength and vitality.My feet moved of their own accord, and I turned toward that warmth like a blue-moon peony turning its face toward the sun.
