She blinked rapidly, as if not following him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“And what is up with that snark?” Nethissis replied, glowering at Raphael.
“Guys, gals… We need to cool our heels here,” I said, trying to smooth things over as best as I could. I could see where this conversation was going, and it was nowhere beneficial to us as friends, as a crew, or as the would-be saviors of our worlds. “There’s a pattern here. We just need to find it.”
Taeral glanced at me, clearly curious. “What pattern?”
“The tiles,” I replied, motioning around me. “Notice where we’re standing, and how the safe tiles are positioned. I’m in the middle on a safe one, right?”
“Right,” Riza said, looking down at her neutral spot.
“And my safe tile is surrounded by traps to my north, south, and east,” I said. “How is yours, for example?”
“Facing the door?” Riza asked, and I nodded. “South, east… and north.”
“Mine are different,” Varga interjected. “South, east, and west.”
“North, east, south,” Raphael said.
Soon enough, I was able to identify one small pattern from what I could see around the rest of our crew members. “Almost all safe tiles marked until now have a pressure plate to their right. I think we can follow this and sort of work our way across to the door. If we manage to spot another such recurrence, it might help speed this along even more.”
Taeral thought about it for a moment. “Right now, I know my safe plate has triggers to the right and the left. Not sure about what’s ahead.”
“Try stepping on it as slowly and as carefully as you can,” I advised him. “You might be able to sense if it dips.”
He put his foot forward and slowly pressed the tile in front of him. Nothing happened. He stepped on it, smiling. “Safe,” he said, and Eva marked it with chalk. The tiles we’d already triggered were neutral now, as well, though no chalk was required to mark them. They were lowered by a couple of millimeters, and we could all see them.
“Now, based on what you have around you, we know your south was a pressure plate. Chances are your right tile is definitely booby-trapped,” I said, occasionally re-counting the tiles he’d stepped on. “Try the tile to your left, now. Just like before, slowly and carefully.”
He did, and we could all see it shift downward, ever so slightly. “Stop!” I breathed. “Okay, that one is set up to do something. So… try the one ahead.”
Taeral followed my lead and discovered another safe plate. “I think we’re on to something! How are you doing this?” he asked me.
“It’s kind of difficult to explain the equations rumbling through my head right now,” I replied, wearing a faint smile. My brain was fired up, analyzing and identifying potential pathways across the floor. I’d been so bogged down by our situation and the repeated injuries that I’d forgotten to just breathe and focus on the only thing I knew how to do best.
If there was one thing the Soul Crusher couldn’t take away, it was my ability to calculate every single ounce of matter and possibilities around me. He might’ve stripped me of my healing ability, but there was no way he could mess with my brain.
Eva marked the tile safe and looked at me. “Where to next?”
Following the same logic, I went over the potential routes in my head, based on what we’d already identified. “Try diagonally to the right.”
Taeral moved carefully and pressed the tip of his boot against the tile I’d indicated. “It’s clear,” he said and stepped on it, as Eva applied another chalk mark in its corner.
I chuckled softly, pleased with my prediction ability. So far, so good, I thought. We still had a long way to go across the room, but, if the patterns stayed true to what I’d noted so far, we had a pretty good chance of making it out of here with minimum damage.
We caught up with Taeral, keeping to the safe tiles that had been marked along the way.
“Try diagonally to your left, next,” I said to him.
The air thickened as we prepared for another step. The freezing particles made my shoulders feel heavier than usual. Even my neck hurt, as if my head suddenly weighed too much. We were in a crazy race against the clock, in a place designed for tiptoeing carefully… the complete opposite of what we needed.
Taeral stepped on the diagonal, to his left.
Before he could pull his foot back, something still clicked. “Dammit,” he hissed, and ducked.
I almost didn’t see it coming. Dozens of thin filaments slashed across the room. I barely managed to drop to my knees in time. The ghost wires sliced through the air, moving at lightning speed from the glowing door to the other side. I heard the metallic swish above my head, followed by puffy blond hairs falling to the floor.
Touching the top of my pixie haircut, I realized that the filaments had cut through some of it. Breaking into a cold sweat, I looked at Raphael, whose expression was a gut-wrenching mixture of concern and relief.
“Not that I don’t like your hair short… I love it. But do you really think a haircut was due?” he asked, sarcastically.
“That was close,” Herakles muttered. “What else is in this room? Dragons? Shills? Volcanoes?”
It had taken every ounce of strength to duck, this time. I worried that the next time, one of us wouldn’t make it. The freezing particles continued to stick to us, making every movement increasingly hard.
“We can’t stop,” Eira said, repeating it like a mantra as she sat on a safe tile, knees up to her chest, arms wrapped around her calves. “We can’t stop…”
Lumi reached out to her from two tiles away. “Come on, kiddo. Snap out of it.”
Eira stared at her for a moment, shaking her head slowly. “I never thought I’d live through something like this. I never thought I’d experience this kind of fear.”
“What do you mean?” Taeral asked.
The poor girl was pale as a sheet of paper, shaking like a leaf. I’d thought I had it bad, but Eira was much, much worse.
“The fear that I’d be a survivor, that I’d watch my friends die in this place,” she whispered.
“Whoa, hold on, no one’s dying here yet,” I said, trying to sound more upbeat than it actually came out. “I mean, there’s the obvious risk and increased probability, yes, but Eira, it’s part of our job. We’re trained for this type of stuff.”
