The teenager giggled. “It’s probably a trick to scare us.” She started ahead.
“We should go out, Nary,” Pol said, his voice hoarse and low. “Something is wrong. We should”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Nary stomped her dimatough heel. “The guide said if we got lost we should just stay where we are and the rescuers would find us.”
“But that was if we got lost alone.” The girl stared at Nary wide-eyed. “I’m sure it’s different as a group. Come on. This is just supposed to make it more exciting. Why else would the guide leave?”
A couple of other people stepped forward.
I backed up against the wall. If this was a simulation, its creators had raided an abattoir for parts to make it smell right.
Then again, Mythos had a very good reputation. Perhaps it came from stage-setting like this. Maybe the girl was right.
I took a step forward. A scream sounded, high, insane, ending in a gurgle. Another, then another reverberated off the tunnel walls. The first one had been female, the last two male.
Pol grabbed his girlfriend and pulled her back, against the wall, away from the noise and the smell.
In the doorway on the right, something large and square-shouldered appeared. Two large horns crowned its bovine head.
I took a step back.
“Run,” someone screamed. “Oh, dammit, run.”
“No,” Pol yelled. “No. Be still, make no sound. Maybe it can’t see.”
They ignored him. His efforts at holding Nary failed. They ran in a group—stumbling and whimpering, missing the left corridor.
The creature lumbered after them, past us, moving fast, much too fast for its gait. Under the bubble lights, I saw it clearly: recurved horns, blood-stained as was the muzzle, wide green eyes—eyes more like a cat’s than like a bull’s.
Our screaming companions ran straight back, to huddle by the wall that blocked their path. Still within full view of us, they pushed against the wall and screamed and kicked in a writhing pile. In their panic, each prevented the other from getting through the doors on either side.
The Minotaur trotted towards them, head down, and charged bull fashion. It speared a balding man through the chest of his tie-dyed T-shirt. The man whimpered and fell like a deflated balloon. Blood gushed. His cry ended in a sort of gurgle.
The Minotaur charged the group again.
It all seemed to take place in slow motion and yet I knew it was very fast, taking no more than a few breaths. There was nothing I could do, no time to intervene.
My stomach churned. I didn’t want to think, to smell, to see, or to hear. But neither could I close my eyes. If I were to die I wanted to know it was going to happen. I wanted to know it was all over, even if only for a few seconds.
Sweat running down my back, I concentrated on standing still, on breathing quietly.
Pol, two steps to the right and in front of me, looked like a statue, only the slight rise of his broad chest betraying life.
The Minotaur lowered its head again. A sharp cry sounded and a dark red stain bloomed on Nary’s yellow dress.
Pol swallowed audibly and shifted his weight to the foot closer to his girlfriend.
The Minotaur lifted her, threw her. She landed in a heap close to us. Drops of her blood sprinkled my ankles.
I closed my eyes, biting my lips together as acid bile rose from my stomach.
Pol made a low, keening sound and the Minotaur turned an inquiring head. Pol bit his lips and, though his face glimmered white with shock and his eyes were wide and expressionless, he made no more sound.
I concentrated on remaining still, on not moving to either help or run away. I could do nothing, except, if I were lucky, save my own life.
I knew quite well, from my crèche days, that artifacts with the Minotaur’s cat-eyes were not good at perceiving shapes and outlines. But they could always pick out movement, no matter how dark the surroundings.
If I moved, he’d see me.
I’d bet that the Minotaur could also hear better than natural people. It would have to if it had been designed to hunt in these corridors, to follow people by sound, to seek them out by stealth.
Could its sense of smell also be improved? If it was, could it discern Pol’s and my smells amid the stench of the labyrinth?
Who was this beast? No, what was it? It couldn’t be the good, vegetarian, mentally slow Minotaur we’d been promised, could it?
Perhaps this was all an illusion, aided by great special effects. Perhaps. I opened one eye. The Minotaur, having made mince-meat of my companions, had squatted down to feasting. Its muzzle opened and closed. Blood dripped down its neck. Sharp carnivorous teeth gleamed, crunching their way through bones. I looked across at Pol.
He wasn’t there.
I looked down.
Pol had knelt on the ground.
He stretched his hand to his girlfriend’s corpse.
With infinite, cautious slowness, he got hold of the woman’s ridiculously thin stiletto high-heel and pulled the shoe loose.
Engrossed in his meal, the Minotaur paid no attention.
Pol straightened, clutching his prize. His feet worked against each other, stealthily getting rid of his own flopping sandals.
The Minotaur grunted its satisfaction as it crunched into the mass of mangled corpses.
Pol held the shoe with the heel sticking out like a fantastic dagger. Wearing only tiny shorts, he looked like a mythological hero, himself, as he leapt forward and, with the grace of an athlete, launched himself through the air at the Minotaur’s back.
Before Pol reached him, the beast turned.
Pol jumped sideways, fell awkwardly just in front of the beast, who bellowed, outraged. Its sharp teeth clamped onto Pol’s left arm. Pol screamed, but shoved the shoe’s heel into the Minotaur’s eye with his right hand, pushing hard, madly.
The Minotaur bayed. It shook the arm it had clamped onto.
Pol screamed higher, a high, insane screech, as the creature lifted him off his feet, and Pol’s body arched back in pain.
Sweat flowed down my back. It would kill Pol. And then I’d be left alone in a labyrinth with a rampaging beast. Sooner or later I’d scream, or sneeze. And be killed.
I bent to pick up the other one of the dead woman’s shoes.
As I stood up, the Minotaur’s strange cat eyes fixed on me, its gaze betraying only madness and hatred.
It opened its mouth to bellow, dropping Pol to the floor.
I jumped with artifact speed and strength, using it to compensate for the lack of a running start.
It stepped on Pol as it lowered his head and charged me.
The Minotaur’s horn, aimed at my chest, caught me in the thigh. Pain burst through my body like a succession of electrical shocks. Everything spun around me. I screamed.
The Minotaur lifted me, in preparation to throwing me.
But I had a moment. Long enough. I grabbed onto its ear with all my strength, as I lay half-across the Minotaur’s massive head, steadied between its horns, my leg impaled by the right horn. With my free hand, I pushed the heel of the shoe into the back of the creature’s neck.
It bellowed and grunted, and it tried to bite me, but it couldn’t because I lay astride its head.
It shook its head, crushing my bone. A red veil filmed my vision.
I knew I was going to die, yet something in me refused to give up. I’d survived the crèche and my harsh training as a courier.
Humans were born to coddling and family, but artifacts were ejected from their crèches like objects in an assembly line. No one had ever cared if I lived or died, and yet I’d lived. I’d survived years of being treated like a machine I wouldn’t—damn it—die now. I wouldn’t let another artifact, some bio-engineered beast destroy what not all the spite and indifference of natural borns had managed.