51

51

Building A Team

“Well, at least the poison ivy is only on the ceiling and the walls,” Meike says.

Trinica side-eyes her. “Are you always this cheerful?”

Meike shrugs. “I decided a while ago that I can go one of two ways in life. Become angry and bitter, or deliberately choose to look at each day as an adventure. I chose the latter.” She winks at Trinica. “And this is certainly an adventure.”

Is that what we’d call this?

The light shifts around us, dimming even more, as if the dying sun is reminding us to hurry up.

“Let’s get this over with,” I say. We’ll be lucky to reach the bottom of the rockslide before dark.

Zai quickly adds a long bamboo rod to the back end so four of us can lift the pallet together as we navigate the rocks. We struggle down the rockslide with a lot of grunting and swearing and negotiating. It doesn’t help that Meike is so petite and Amir is all scraped up. Zai is wheezy, but at least he has the sandals to keep him from falling.

Working our way down a steeper boulder, I’m on the bottom end with Trinica, taking the weight, Meike and Zai above. “Hold on,” Trinica says, voice strained. Taking the bar onto her shoulder, she leans over to check underneath. “I can’t see.”

A light beside me suddenly comes on, and I glance around to find Amir holding up his cell phone with the flashlight on. “Thanks,” Trinica says. “It’s caught on a lip of rock.”

Together, we heave it a little higher, my muscles already shaking. Then we move with shuffling steps. With way more resting in between rounds of lifting, and changing out who is taking the weight, we finally hit the floor of the cavern. The small stream burbles happily beside us.

After a breather, like we all silently agree that we need to keep moving, we set the pallet back up to be dragged by two. Here, where the cave floor is rock instead of dirt, the pallet makes a terrible screech, which means we’re all glancing into the dark before and behind us, worried about the others finding us.

We cross the shallow stream that winds back and forth in our direct path for the third time. By now my feet are freezing from the cold water and squelching in my shoes. Just as I hit dry land, Trinica’s feet slip out from under her, and the pallet lists to the side.

“Watch it!” Meike cries out.

One of the cases goes sliding, and she tries to grab for it. Only she grabs it from an odd angle, and one side of the box comes undone. A bottle slides out and smashes on the rock, shooting shards of glass everywhere.

We all pause, and I’m still holding my corner up. “You okay?” I hear Zai ask. Not sure if he’s asking Meike or Trinica, though.

“You should see this,” Meike says, and Amir’s light swings her way.

I set my corner down to move around it. “Holy crap!” The words pop out of me as I catch sight of her. Meike is holding up her pants and showing us how the blisters there are healing. “The vodka splashed me,” she says.

No. Fucking. Way.

We glance at one another, then Zai pulls another bottle out of the opened box, screws the lid off, and splashes a little onto his hands. Immediately, he sighs. “It works.”

Tricky god, Dionysus.

The prize we’re carting to the finish line is also the cure to the poison. We’re going to have to choose pain over winning.

“We reserve this one bottle,” Zai says.

And we all nod, then pass it around, treating our various blisters. After an initial sting, the blisters become blessedly cool, turning from red to a less angry color. No more acid.

It takes most of the bottle just to do that much for all of us.

Whatever we do, we need to stay away from those damned vines. In here, that’s not hard. Hopefully they’re not everywhere in the second doline like they were in the first.

We get moving again with Amir in the lead, lighting our way. Trinica, who is none the worse for wear from her slip, goes back to dragging the pallet.

Several minutes pass before Amir asks, “Are you really a thief, Lyra?”

I hesitate. Only because, until now, we’ve mostly been saving our breath as we navigate the longest kilometer on the planet. I shrug and sidestep the question, not wanting to admit I might not have a skill the group would find useful and keep me around for. “Well…” I puff with effort. “My parents bartered me to the Order when I was three to work off our family debt.”

Amir stops to look over his shoulder at me. “I—” He coughs. “I thought a string of nannies followed by boarding schools was bad.”

“Amir,” Trinica whisper-hisses, and he looks at her, wide-eyed.

“What?” he asks.

I chuckle. “It’s okay. I made peace with it a long time ago.”

Mostly. Although lately I’ve started wondering what my parents would do if I showed up after winning, my curse removed. Would they finally love me? Accept me? Or at least give me a place to stay while I figure out a new life?

“Is that why you hum?” Amir asks next. “Is that part of your training?”

I shake my head. “Actually, they tried to train me not to do that. They teach us to work in silence. Noise, even soft noise, could give away my position.”

As if a mouse heard me, there’s another rustle off to our right. We all peer into the growing darkness. It’s difficult to see now that we’re this far down. When no monsters and no one from the other team appears, he keeps going, returning to his questions. “So do you do it when you’re scared or something?”

“No.” Hades is probably, wherever he is, watching this and yelling at me to stop telling them stuff right now. “I do it when I’m focused.”

But I should really try harder to control it. It is a tell, and that could get me in trouble in these Labors.

At a flicker of shadow, we all look up just as Zai lands to take a turn pulling the pallet. “As far as I can tell, no one is close,” he says. “Keep alert, though.”

The last bit makes all of us straighten a tad.

I study Zai surreptitiously, not wanting to seem like I’m mothering him. He’s wheezing a little. I beckon him closer. “How are you doing?”

He flicks a glance at the others and tugs his collar up, which tells me he doesn’t want them to know.

“I have my inhaler,” he whispers back. “And I brought an EpiPen for if things get really bad. Left zippered pocket on my pants.”

I nod, and he grabs the left cart pole, lean muscles straining as he takes Meike’s place.

It’s quiet for a while as we go, but eventually Meike breaks the silence. “So…it’s clear Dex wants to win this thing. I’m sure he has reasons. Are any of you hoping to win? Maybe you have family needing a blessing?”

We all pause, staring at her. Does she think we’re going to become friends?

She blinks right back at us. “I can go first, if it helps. I have a roommate I’ve lived with for years. My best friend. But we’re happy with what we have.” She shrugs. “So I have no interest in winning.”

“No other family?” I ask.

Her eyes get a faraway glaze, and I know she’s not seeing me anymore but memories. “My parents are gone, and I was an only child.” Her smile makes my heart ache just a little.

“I’m sorry,” Zai offers.

“Me too,” I say.

Trinica moves closer to squeeze Meike’s hand. “I’ve also lost my parents, and I’ve been divorced for ages. My ex and I are amicable. We were good co-parents, but our son is grown now, so I don’t see much of the ex anymore. But my son, Derek, is getting married.” She smiles to herself as she glances up at the dark, poison-ivy-covered ceiling. “I’d love to win.” Trinica’s smile widens to a grin. “I’d want to use my boon for the grandbabies.”

“What about you, Amir?” Trinica asks.

He goes back to hacking at underbrush, and we all take that cue to continue pushing forward. “My parents are both alive, but we’ve never been close.” Amir says this so matter-of-factly, if I hadn’t been looking right at him, I would have missed the droop to his shoulders. Nannies and boarding schools. He must’ve been—

“That sounds lonely,” Zai says, stealing the word right out of my head.

If anyone would understand being lonely among family, it’s him.

“I wouldn’t mind winning if it means a fresh start,” Amir says without addressing Zai. “I don’t think my family cares one way or the other.”

It’s suddenly sunk in even deeper that these champions the gods and goddesses have picked aren’t just fighters in the same ring. They are real.

Real people with hopes and dreams and loved ones…lives they’ve been stolen away from. We are—all of us—just trying to get home alive.

Well, maybe not Dex.

We must all reach the same thinking because we grow silent, other than the huffs and puffs of the people dragging the pallet and the tinks of glass on glass made by the bottles of vodka. A vaguely less dark circle ahead of us—the other doline—is getting closer. And I’m suddenly hopeful that we’ll make it out of here.

“My turn,” Amir says a minute later.

Almost like an omen, the second we set the pallet down to take a breath and swap out, darkness consumes the cave.

Night has fallen.

Something off to my right rustles.

“What was that?” Amir whispers.

“Just a small cave toad or a mouse or something,” I say. And I hope I’m right. In the distance, I see a small glow moving ahead of us. Diego?

He shines it around, but the only thing I can see is a single vine of poison ivy draped across a nearby rock.

I didn’t realize there were any parts of it this close to us.

Amir hands Trinica his phone and takes over from me. I’m taking a single step to move ahead of them when something snags at my foot and I lurch sideways. I try to stop myself, but the ground here is all loose rocks, and I tumble end over end away from the others.

Right into a patch of ivy that feels like it closes over me, clinging like spiderwebs.

Fiery pain immediately explodes all over my body.

And, somewhere ahead of us, someone starts screaming.