Chapter 6. A temporary escape.
After the Tenacious left him, Bradley right away banged on the wall to John. He heard John’s footsteps, then John said, excitement in his voice, “Good, finally, so how did it go?”
“Same thing. He tried to get me to fly, but I told him that it wasn’t going to work and I wasn’t going to hurt myself trying,” Bradley responded.
“Very well,” John agreed. “Now what? Any plan how to get out of here without this stupid thing?”
“Not yet… Too bad we are not actually learning to fly airplanes. That’s what I thought yesterday when they said that we were going to learn to fly…”
John admitted that he was sure it would be some sort of aircraft, too. He added, “Anyhow, we need to get out of here. Let’s think of a plan. For example, when the Adventurous and the Tenacious show up again in the afternoon, we trick them to come all the way down the ladder to demonstrate more precisely how it’s done. Let’s tell them we’ll stay behind and mimic their movements exactly. Then we give them a hard shove to the ground, scramble up the ladder and close the hole in the ceiling.”
“What if they’re stronger than us?” Bradley asked, trying to foresee all the possible outcomes.
“It may be the case, but we have to try. Otherwise we are stuck here.”
“All right, sounds like a plan,” Bradley agreed, hearing the noise up above. “Here we go.”
Bradley jumped away from the wall so that the Tenacious would not know that he was talking to John. He decided he would try to hide any information he could from these guys from now on.
The Tenacious came down by means of flying, landed next to Bradley and asked, “Well, well, how are things going? Any progress flying yet?”
Since the Tenacious came down voluntarily and Bradley did not have to make anything up to convince him to do it, he decided to proceed with the escape right away. He said, “Yeah, definitely. Watch.”
He started to climb the ladder, but after the second step turned around, jumped on top of the Tenacious and started to fight. Before the Tenacious realized what was going on, he was lying on his back, and Bradley ran up the ladder and into the hole in the ceiling. When he jumped out, he saw a large room up there with windows and everything like in the normal world. At the same time John jumped out of the hole in the floor next to him. Bradley saw him right away and shouted, “Quickly, run, the Tenacious is following me!”
Bradley turned back to see how far the Tenacious was. He was sure that when he was jumping out of the room and closing the door in the ceiling, the Tenacious was getting up to his feet. He expected him to be right behind. To Bradley’s surprise, not only he did not see the Tenacious, but there were no holes in the floor. In a brief time that Bradley could dedicate to scrutinizing the surroundings, he did not see any mechanisms that could control those doors. All of a sudden the floor opened in the place where Bradley’s room was, and the Tenacious jumped out.
Bradley was about to pull John and start running, but realized that John was already ahead of him. He ran across the large room and was approaching an entrance to a corridor. Bradley followed his friend. Luckily, the corridor right away made several turns, so Bradley started to hope that they managed to get rid of their pursuit.
“Do you think we shook him off?” Bradley asked, slowing down.
“I hope so. Maybe, he decided to go back and check on the Adventurous. I knocked him down pretty hard,” John responded, breathing hard from running. “If the Tenacious goes back to help the Adventurous, we’ll have lots of time to get away.”
“Do you think they help each other?” Bradley asked, doubt in his voice. “In my opinion they are just blindly serving their Chief and do only what they must to fulfill their orders. They don’t look like ordinary kids to me at all. I was thinking about them last night before falling asleep, and I don’t like them.”
The boys tried to keep pace, not running anymore but walking fast. Their goal was to get as far away as they could and then start thinking about a way to find Megan and get out of this country altogether. After some time, however, Bradley became suspicious.
“John, I think we were here before,” he said, gazing left and right to make sure.
“You may think so because all these corridors look alike,” John objected. “I have another concern - where is the end of the building? I remember it being a building of a standard size when the Adventurous brought me here, but now we are walking, walking, and not getting to any exit! …By the way, was there anything strange about the way you got into this building in the first place?”
“Yes, of course,” Bradley replied. “We were all walking together, then all of a sudden you guys were left behind and I found myself in my room. But then right away I heard your voice.”
“Right away?!” John exclaimed, surprise in his voice. “After you disappeared, the Adventurous and I were walking for ages before we reached this house… Weird. I saw this building from the outside, and it was just an average size. And we are still walking. Something is wrong about this.”
“I’m telling you, we are passing the same corridor over and over again,” Bradley said, trying to sound as convincing as he could. “Use your logic.”
All of a sudden they heard a noise in the side corridor, and Megan ran out of it and crashed into them. All three fell down to the floor.
“Megan! Great!” Bradley shouted happily. He expected the least to find Megan just like that. Bradley was prepared to spend quite a bit of time looking for her. “We just got rid of the Tenacious and were about to start looking for you! …Have you also successfully knocked out the Suspicious? Not a girls’ style, but here you are.”
Bradley noticed that his sister was troubled. Getting away from the Suspicious had to be a hard thing for her. Or maybe, something else was going on? Megan gave a little bit of explanation, “I’m so glad to see you guys, I have a lot to tell you. But let’s get moving. The Suspicious is after me. I was so tired that I fell asleep and she found me. I’ll tell you all the details later.”
All three of them jumped on their feet and started running the other way.
“We have to be careful, though, not to run into the Tenacious,” Bradley reminded the other two.
They took many different turns in the corridors, thinking that they were getting far away. Bradley had another swift idea to explain the unending corridors; maybe they were underground under the buildings. But he did not have a chance to share his thought with others, because they were running very fast for a long time and were getting short on breath. Bradley felt like if he did not stop running, he was going to die. But he saw the other two run and kept going. Finally, he decided to stop and noticed with relief that Megan and John were slowing down, too. No one was chasing them, so, in Bradley’s opinion, they were safe. He stopped and plopped to the ground along the corridor wall. Megan and John followed his example.
They were breathing hard for a long time, then slowly recovered. Bradley looked around and was convinced that they were in the same corridor all this time. If he were right, there was no point in all this running and any further attempts to get away unless they came up with a completely new strategy. It would also be good to just rest and exchange all the information they gathered. Bradley turned to Megan and asked, “You had something to tell us, Megan. What was it?”
“Did they make you fly?” Megan asked the boys.
“Yes, they did. What a joke!” John laughed and briefly told the story how he and Bradley got out of their rooms.
Bradley did not like John’s attitude. His friend was still not serious about what was going on. Bradley was about to reprimand him, but he noticed that Megan was about to speak. With very serious expression on her face, his sister said, “It’s not a joke. It actually works. But we shouldn’t do it, because as soon as we learn how to fly they’ll make us take the test, after which we won’t be able to get out of this country anymore.”
Bradley felt a chill come down his spine and looked
at John out of the corner of his eye. But John seemed not very worried still. “How do you know?” he asked blankly.
Megan told them her story. Bradley’s worst fears were confirmed when Megan was done talking. He was about to pronounce the summary of his thoughts on the matter, but John spoke first.
“You COULD ACTUALLY FLY?” he asked suspiciously, but Bradley could clearly hear excitement in his voice. “How did you do it?”
Megan responded, shrugging her shoulders, “I don’t know, but it worked. I just need to make sure now that the Suspicious doesn’t find out that I’ve succeeded in it.”
“Wow! If we were not in this narrow low corridor, I would ask you to demonstrate,” John exclaimed impatiently.
“Come on, John, be serious,” Bradley interrupted. “It’s a good thing that we have not been able to fly. The longer we can’t, the more time we have to get out of here! Don’t you see that the Unknowns are evil? If flying is possible, they are apparently using it as a bait to trap people in their world.”
“Of course, of course, I just find it very curious. Actually if it’s possible I think I’m going to try again when the Adventurous is not looking. This is something worth experiencing,” John replied, ignoring the seriousness of the situation.
Bradley did not say anything, even though he thought it was a bad idea. He could not be sure that the Unknowns did not have a mechanism to find out what one had been doing without having to watch that person. But Bradley recognized that John could not be reasoned with at that moment.
“Shall we go now?” asked John, getting to his feet.
Bradley reluctantly got up, too. If his theory about the maze were correct, it made no difference whatsoever to wait to be captured, sitting in one place or walking around. However, Megan escaped out of her room through the hole in the floor. What if they find one here? Then walking would be more useful.
“Why do you think that hole appeared in the floor in your room?” Bradley asked his sister.
But Megan didn’t know. From what he’d already heard, Bradley saw no reason for an accessible exit to exist in any of their rooms, and Megan having hers would be some kind of malfunction in the systems of the Unknowns. But if it happened once, it could happen again.
The kids walked and walked, and it started to become really boring. The corridor simply refused to go straight and was turning and turning again and again, left and right, and so forth, so it became totally impossible to know whether they were making any progress. If there were no way out of here, what was the purpose of all these corridors? Refusing to believe that there was no purpose, Bradley kept hoping to run into the end of the maze and possibly out of the building or find a hole in the floor that would transport them to another level. All of a sudden he ran into someone after making a turn and realized that they were all grabbed by their mentors.
The Adventurous and the Suspicious had to have joined the Tenacious because they were all there, as if waiting for the kids to show up. This was a confirmation to Bradley that they were walking in some kind of a loop all this time. So he was not totally taken aback by this outcome but sadly noticed an expression of surprise on the faces of Megan and John. They were returned to their rooms. Although John and Bradley tried fighting back on their way, the Adventurous and the Tenacious were more prepared this time, and so the boys’ attempts did not end up favorably. The Adventurous and the Tenacious opened the ceilings of their rooms and ordered them in.
“Keep practicing flying,” they told them, closing the ceilings behind them.
Bradley went to sleep right away. After a day with so many activities, running and walking, he was really tired. He realized that it was not as much physical exercise that he had to do, but emotional wear down that made him tired the most. Learning from Megan that they would get stuck if they flew, with Megan already flying and John wanting to do it, Bradley felt responsible for his sister and friend. Moreover, he would have to be extra careful to avoid falling into this trap himself. Nothing could be done today, however, so Bradley decided that if he slept well, then he would have more strength tomorrow.
[back to top]