Level One

  It felt great to be in jeans and a T-shirt again. It hadn’t occurred before how much he had missed normal clothes. Though some of that may have been the fact that the Blue Teamers had done such an amazing job of washing and cleaning his T-shirt, which he might have previously considered a lost cause. Even the Levi’s felt cleaner and softer than they had before Blue Team got them. Cooper made a mental note that if he ever saw those assholes again, he would at least ask about their laundry routine.

  Once the meeting broke up, Cooper and Geek 2 returned to the Bunkhouse in silence. Only once they were through the door did Cooper turn to Geek 2 and say “well, you were right.”

  Cooper had been concerned that once it was all said and done Bird Girl might refuse to answer his questions. In the end, the opposite had happened. Once Four Eyes was cured, and she had a bowl of soup and a plate of honeycomb in front of her, Bird Girl’s lips loosened. She basically hit Cooper with her entire life story. The short version of that story - which was definitely not the version Cooper got - was that Bird Girl and the other Blue Teamers were from some little island somewhere with a volcano on it. Every year - or maybe it was every few years, Cooper wasn’t totally clear on that part - her people would select 7 girls and 7 boys to send into the volcano in order to keep it from erupting. Specifically, their job was to find the monster inside the volcano and keep it calm. And for years, that worked just fine. Apparently there was a time when the maze was absolutely filled with Blue Teamers, literally hundreds of them, all working around the clock to keep the Cowfucker asleep.

  Apparently this arrangement worked just fine for years, but then some pirates found their way into the volcanoes somehow - Ariadne didn’t say how - and they fucked everything. The Kayins hunted the Blue Teamers down like dogs until now there were only the six of them left. The remaining Blue Teamers, meanwhile, were now in desperate trouble. The Kayin presence had become so suffocating that it was no longer safe for them to go out and search for food, which meant they were slowly starving. When new Blue Teamers entered the maze, they were picked off by the Kayins immediately. The boys were then sacrificed to the Bull.

  Unfortunately, the Blue Team response to all this pressure had been to sit around arguing all day. The group was split 3 to 3 between kids who wanted to try new stuff and those who wanted to hew ever closer to tradition, and that meant they could do little but twiddle their thumbs while the wolf got ever closer to the door.

  The conversation with Ariadne had been super dire, but for Cooper’s purposes, the really important fact was that she and her people did not appear to have the key to the Bullpen, despite all their talk about throwing Cooper to the Bull. And that meant the only person who had the key was Cockface.

  “It’s not like I actually want to go in there,” Cooper said. “If there was another way, I’d take it. So you tell me. How the fuck do I get out of there without stealing that key?”

  Geek 2 had no argument for that, so the plan was on.

  * * *

  Cooper loitered in the hallway in front of the wicker barricade for like an hour the next morning, waiting for a shift change. Eventually he got tired of waiting. It was super dangerous anyway, since a patrol could come in at any moment and bump into him. Also, he was fairly confident the soldiers manning the barricade were super-bored and weren’t going to notice anything.

  The box of red dirt was getting fairly low on account of all the times Cooper had spilled the damn thing, but there was enough for Cooper to carefully spread a very thin layer across the far end of the hallway. If anyone had happened to look down, there was a chance they might notice it, but Cooper had a strong feeling that most of those assholes would just blunder right through obliviously. After putting the dirt layer, Cooper walked over into the next hallway, double checked his shoes to make sure he wasn’t making any tracks himself, then went back to the Bunkhouse.

  When he returned to the barricade hall the next morning, the tracks were still everywhere. As had happened with Cooper, they weren’t full footprints. Instead they were just little marks and smudges like the inkblot tests psychologists use to figure out if you’re a psycho. Interestingly, the space just in front of the barricade has been freshly mopped, as if someone had been trying to remove the marks. Unfortunately for them - but fortunately for Cooper - they hadn’t had much success.

  The main problem with following the marks is that they are literally everywhere. Like it’s not immediately obvious where Cooper should start. But he dutifully heads to the north and begins probing the rubble piles that make up the edge of the Kayin base. He finds absolutely nothing up there, but when he heads south to do the same thing, he finds exactly what he was looking for - a trail of red that approaches a bare wall and disappears.

  There was no visible signs of any catch or secret button on the wall, but by this point Cooper hadn’t been expecting any. He went ahead and ran his hands over the stones, looking for the keyhole, but that didn’t work either. If there was a door here, there was no way he was going to find it on his own.

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  Returning to the spot with Geek 2 was tricky because unlike Cooper, he had to be visible the whole time. Still, moving very carefully, hallway by hallway, Cooper managed to get them back to the site of the suspected doorway without running into anyone. The spot is a little harder to find because someone had managed to clean up the shoe marks. Lucky for Cooper, he has outsmarted them by leaving a charcoal mark.

  Geek 2 looks at the wall for a like a second. He presses a hidden button. Slowly and silently, the door swings open, allowing Cooper his first look into the Kayin base.

  * * *

  The Kayin base was dark. Much darker than the Bible Camper base. It also had a smell to it, a sort of metallic tang that reminded Cooper of Baton Rouge. The room just beyond the secret door was kind of like a bizarro version of the Bunkhouse. You could tell there had once been benches against the walls, but they apparently had been smashed and dragged out, leaving only their bases behind. The fountain in the corner had been bricked over and turned into a low concrete table that was now stacked with dozens of broken leather couch cushions. The room was now either a storage space or a trash dump - Cooper couldn’t quite tell which. There was another stone door standing open on the opposite wall, so Cooper made his way through it as quickly as he could.

  The hallway behind the storage room was just like any other in the maze if you ignored the broken pots and rubble piles and the incredibly, inky darkness. One end of the hallway was blocked, but the other one led through yet another open stone door into what appeared to be a much larger room. Blocking that door was something Cooper wasn’t expecting- a young woman down on her knees. She had dark, wavy hair and dark skin that made her look Middle Eastern. She was also extremely thin, even thinner than Bird Girl. She was also dirty, her hair matted, her dress basically a rag. She had a wooden bucket full of water and a dingy towel, which she was using to scrub away at a reddish-brown stain on the floor.

  Cooper couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the floor washer, but the more immediate problem was that she was blocking his way. He had to kind of step over her to get past and into the next room, though he was able to do it without alerting her.

  That next room was another barracks room, kind of like the one at the center of the Blue Team base, only much bigger. There was the same section full of iron hooks, also the same little kitchen area with a firepit and a fountain. The walls were covered in picture of men with swords and shields stabbing each other, all except the wall right next to where Cooper stood, where there was another maze symbol, only in red this time. But Cooper didn't notice any of that right away. The first thing Cooper he was the cage.

  It was made of wicker, just like the one in the Blue Team base, only much, much, much bigger. It had six sides and took up most of the floorspace of the room so that all the Kayins had to walk around the outside of it while they were going about their business. The gaps in the wicker were also larger on this cage, which meant that Cooper was able to see what was inside it. And what was inside the cage were women.

  There were about ten of them. They all looked like the washer woman: dark hair, light skin, painfully thin, dirty clothes and hair, clearly unhappy. They were gathered around a wash basin, washing clothes. While Cooper is watching, two soldiers open the cage and bark out a name. One of the girls immediately put down her washing and stood up, walking obediently over to the door of the cage. One of the soldiers takse her by the wrist and begins walking. Cooper followed them out of the cage room to the east.

  The door to the east takes Cooper to a long hallway in which the soldiers have their individual quarters. Every man has his own little cell that has been separated from all the others by drawing curtains across the hallway. These rooms are accessed via a much narrower hallway at the edge of the larger hall which is just wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Cooper follows the couple down this hallway for just a couple steps, but just then, Cockface appears coming the other way. He brushes past Cooper and nearly discovers him. Cooper turns, following Cockface.

  Cockface leads him back through the cage room, heading for the third door, the one Cooper hasn’t gone through yet. This door is guarded by two men. There is no room to slip through. But they step aside as Cockface approaches, and Cooper manages to draft Cockface just enough to get through undetected.

  The room beyond the guards was kind of like the supply closet in the Bible Camper base, only much, much bigger. There was a couch and a bed and a desk stacked with pieces of folded up paper, as well as a series of feathers which Cooper realized were probably pens. There was also a wicker cage against one wall with a brass lock on it. Cooper didn’t know what was inside the cage, but the area around it was incredibly dark. It was as if the darkness that pervaded the Kayin base was all coming out of that cage.

  While Cooper watches, Cockface hangs his pouch on a peg by the door. He then walks over and sits down at the table, looking at his papers. Then goes to the shrine. He opens it. Inside is a sort of Science Fair diorama of Kali, the original crazy naked chick. He closes his eyes, praying to Kali.

  Cooper turns his attention back to the lanyard. He slowly, carefully, pulls it open, removing the key and placing it in his bag. Meanwhile, Cockface gets up from the shrine with a start. He looks around the room, scowling. Like he’s looking for someone.

  Cooper gets paranoid. Did he make a noise? Does he smell bad? How does this dude know he is there? But the guy isn’t looking straight at him. He’s all over the place.

  Cooper decides to wait it out. But then Cockface goes to the shelf full of glassy stone and picks up a lens. Holding the lens up, he looks right at Cooper.

  * * * * *

  Name: Cooper of Vancouver

  Gender: Male

  Affiliation: None

  Age at Entry: 29

  Current Level: The Labyrinth (1)

  Jing: 10/10

  Qi: 14/14

  Shen: 0

  Status: Cursed (3)