The Color Of The Sky

CHAPTER ONE

The walls are alive, I think as I press my fingers against the cold metal. I can feel my own pulse in my fingertips, pounding hard and fast, and my head aches from the constant hum. I don’t know where the sound comes from. Maybe the machinery itself or something more sinister. A low-pitched whining, endless. It doesn’t stop. Nothing stops. The maze is always shifting, collapsing, like a hunter stalking its prey. The walls rise and fall like the waves on a beach I never saw before, except they cut the arena up into little methodical pieces, except the ocean doesn’t make people scream as they’re crushed.
I ignore the noise, focusing on the chalk in my hand. I write 102 on the nearest wall. I know how to count. I know how to map. Who wouldn’t, if their father was the most esteemed cartographer in the region, maybe even in the world. Was.
Counting is how I survive. Every number I write is important. I think that if I can keep track of the walls—how many there are, where they are—I’ll be able to find a pattern in how they move. Which might ensure my survival.
I hear metal scraping behind me. I don’t flinch. Players don’t flinch, not by their fifth cycle. They’ve learned. Like I have. I shouldn’t be here, but I have to keep playing. There’s no other option. I could leave, but I have a brother at home to play for, and I don’t want to become a Grey. Better die than become a Grey. Better die than become—
Lance. He’s there, just behind me. I can feel his eyes. I’ve learned the rhythm and sound of his breathing by now. I don’t look. I don’t know what throws me off about him. Maybe the fact that his eyes are bright, piercing blue, even though I can’t see the mods in them. Maybe the fact that he reminds me of a forbidden book written in a dead language—one that I’d learn nothing from opening, but which is a secret from me even if I did. It makes me want to know about him. But he doesn’t let me.
At least he’s useful. For now.
I hear the faintest click. A trap’s just been triggered by someone above. We have seconds. I grab Lance’s arm, tugging him to the left. He stumbles at the sudden force of my grip, but I don’t stop. The walls start to fall around us. I drag us to a safe area—safe for now, because nothing’s moving, nothing’s flashing red in a way that hurts just behind my eyes.
Lance pulls free. His breath is sharp and loud in the narrow dark space we’ve been plunged into. “How did you—”
“No. Not now,” I snap. “Keep moving.” There isn’t a time for explanations. The truth is that even I don’t understand the patterns here. Some other part of me can sense things—it’s always been like that—and I go with my gut instinct. It’s kept me alive so far.
The wall in front of us rises, revealing bright, stabbing light beyond. I lunge, but stop short as it falls, crashing into the ground.
“Up ahead!” Lance calls from a few steps to my right, his voice cracking slightly with urgency. “There’s someone trapped—”
I don’t let myself feel. I’ve seen too many people trapped here. I don’t let myself feel because if I do I’ll do something brave and dumb and there’s no place for heroics here. There’s only a place for survival.
But a little bit of feeling sneaks into me anyway as a wall labeled 64 crashes behind us. I’ve never turned my back on somebody before. I didn’t turn my back on my brother, Thorn, even though I could have just left him with somebody else and made a real life for myself without him. I didn’t turn my back on my mother when she was dying. I didn’t turn my back on Lance.
“You stay,” I tell him. “I’ll get them.”
He reaches for me. I don’t even have time to think before I push through a narrowing gap, weaving my way through unfamiliar traps that will activate if I step wrong, my eyes fixed ahead of me.
The trapped player is a boy I’ve never seen, a Red. It’s only his first cycle, so he’s just twelve. Sandy hair and a boyish face and deep dark eyes wide with terror. He’s trapped beneath a slab of metal, gasping for air, his eyes wide with panic.
I grind my teeth, pull at the metal. Sweat slips down my temples. The wall keeps moving towards the ground, crushing, crushing. I breathe in hard, pull harder, my arms shaking under the strain. The wall slows just a little, but the boy’s still trapped, trying to pull himself out but unable to. Lance’s voice calling me from behind is distracting, and I can’t have that. I need him to help—why isn’t he here yet? He should know how to get across the traps.
“Avara! AVARA!”
I can’t hold the wall anymore. I turn my head slightly, just enough to see an explosive hurtling towards me. I instinctively throw myself backwards. The wall, the boy I was trying to save, and eventually the entire universe explodes into debris white yellow white yellow I gasp for breath, someone grabs me under the arms, pulling me backwards.
I look up, dazed and still trying to get my breath back. “Lance?” I cough, then yank myself free of him and stand up. “What did you—”
“Nothing! I swear, I did nothing, it just—”
“Did something get activated?” I demand, my hands shaking a little bit. I fold them quickly behind my back, not letting him see.
“It must have. Motion sensors, maybe. I didn’t move.”
“You should have helped me.” My face is sticky from sweat. I wipe my forehead furiously. “If there’d been two of us, we could have saved the boy.”
“And then all of us would have been annihilated by the bomb. Count yourself lucky that I stayed back to yell at you to get out of the way.”
I shake my head as the dust settles around us. I know he’s right. I hate that he’s right, but I am lucky, he should have stayed, it was the right thing to do, even if it feels so wrong.
“Let’s go,” Lance urges. “Something else might have been activated when you pass.”
I nod, still numb, like I always get, even though I’ve lost count of how many horrible killings I’ve seen. I follow Lance blindly through the maze of metal walls, my feet dragging across the ground. He seems to know where he’s going.
We walk for I don’t know how long. I pause sometimes to number the walls. Frustratingly, I can’t see any kind of pattern in them yet. The Creators usually do give patterns, because the smart kids—the ones who figure them out—can demonstrate their skills, get recruited, break the cycle they’ve been trapped in and still earn money without worrying about dying every second of every day. So far, I haven’t gotten any kind of hint that somebody wants to recruit me. I try anyway. I always have to try.
“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “I smell something.”
Lance stops. I tilt my face upward, sniffing deeply. It smells like something edible, so I point us to the left, where it’s coming from.
We end up at a small space between the walls. At the center is a long table, also metal. There are steaming (metal) bowls of what resembles lumpy grey sludge. I don’t care. It’s food, and it smells good. And it’s all that’s been available during this simulation. We’ve been in this simulation for three weeks already, constantly running, never getting enough sleep. Even if we find one of the safe zones where the walls don’t move without a warning, they’re usually occupied by other players with a taste for fresh blood.
Oddly, the space is completely deserted. Usually, you have to fight hard to get anything to eat.
The logical part of my brain barely restrains me from chugging everything down in a few gulps. I haven’t eaten for almost two days. Neither has Lance. All we’ve had since yesterday are a few sips of water.
It's food. It’s food. My mouth waters. I lick my lips.
“Do you think it’s safe to touch?” I whisper to Lance as we cautiously move towards the table.
“Why not?”
“It just feels too easy,” I say. “That they’ll just put food out here and no one’s eaten it already.”
“Then we can be the first.”
“No,” I insist.
“Why are you always so like that?” he demands. “Like everything’s a trap? It’s just food.”
“Lance . . .”
Before I can stop him, he rushes forward and grabs one of the bowls, lifts it to his lips, and chokes it down in the way that only a desperately hungry person can.
I watch him, trying to close my mind to the gnawing hunger inside of me. Watching him eat is only making it worse. He finishes the first bowl off in seconds, pausing only to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand before he snatches up a second one.
I can’t hold back any longer. I push him out of the way and take a gulp of whatever’s in the bowls. It’s so hot that it burns my throat all the way down, slightly sweet. I don’t stop to wonder whether it might be poisoned or not as I eat.
When we’ve both had our fill, the table is half empty. I sigh deeply, feeling much better now that I’ve eaten enough for the first time since this cycle began.
“See?” he says, leaning back against the table, hands braced against the edge. “That wasn’t so bad.”
I just nod in agreement, because it wasn’t. He’s right. Again.
“Let’s get to a safe zone,” I suggest. “Maybe we’ll find a way to sleep.”

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• Wow hooked from the start. Maybe make it a bit longer?

  Comment by raob9 on May 21, 2025

  Liked by 0

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CHAPTER TWO

After some hunting and several narrow escapes, we do find a safe zone. It’s empty except for one girl, a Red on her seventh cycle, who seems happy enough to share. She stays in her corner, and Lance and I stay in ours. If she’s surprised to see a Red and a Blue so close to each other, she doesn’t show it.
We talk in low voices together like we sometimes do when things are calm enough to allow it.
“When you get out, what’re you gonna do?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say softly. “I only have two cycles after this one to get recruited. I’ll just take the first opportunity that comes to me.”
“You aren’t going to be come a Blue?” he asks.
“I might,” I say. “But . . . it’s harder, isn’t it? I mean, you tell me. Is it harder for you now that you’re a Blue?”
“A little bit, since your sponsors automatically get cut in half. But it’s also easier at the same time. No, not easier—that’s the wrong word for it. Less like I’ve accepted that I’ll become a Grey, more like I know I have to try.”
“Because this is your last cycle.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you stop?” I ask. “Why did you choose to become a Blue this round? You’re the same age as I am—you could’ve played longer as a Red.”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he fixes his gaze on the ground and lets out a breath.
I know he’ll talk when he’s ready. We’ve known each other for only three weeks, after all, since the first day of this cycle, this simulation, where he saved my life. Not heroically. Not romantically. He was just in the right place at the right time. Since then, we’ve slowly earned a fraction of each other’s trust. Even though I don’t want to admit it to myself, he’s expendable to me, which is why I let him eat first to see if the food poisoned him before I tried my own luck. I’d choose myself over him every time, and I know that he’d do the same about me, but we help each other, protect each other, when it doesn’t harm us.
“Did you get a sponsor this year yet?” I ask.
“Somebody sent me some toothpaste. You?”
“Not yet. But I’ll take the toothpaste if you have it on you.”
He pulls the small white tube out of one of the pockets on his uniform. I hold it for a while before I put it into my own pocket. It’s barely any extra weight, even though it’s useless, at least for now. I have no idea why someone would send toothpaste. At least they could send a bit of food, or a blunted knife, anything that could actually contribute to the player’s survival.
The thoughts drift through my mind like fragments of broken glass. Lance turns onto his side, curling up tight with his arm tucked under his head. He always rests like that—impatient, afraid. I’m the same way. I stay close to him.
The girl isn’t looking at us anymore. Her eyes are closed but she’s not asleep either. She’s listening.
“This floor,” Lance mumbles without opening his eyes. “It’s harder than the last one.”
I rest my head back against the wall. “It’s the same metal.”
“Yeah, well, this metal has something against my spine.”
I roll my eyes. The Red girl tilts her head slightly towards us. Her hair is short and cropped, her curled bangs clinging to her sweat-dampened forehead. She opens her eyes briefly to shoot me a suspicious glance before curling up tighter.
“How long do you think we have until the walls here shift again?” I ask in a low voice.
Lance lets out a small breath. “Hard to say. You’re the one who knows about the patterns.”
I don’t admit to him that I have no idea what the pattern here is. He’s supposed to believe that I’m unbreakable. That I’ve got it all figured out. So I don’t answer him. I twist around mark 103 on the wall behind me. The other walls have already been marked; we’ve been here before.
“I’ll stay up for a bit,” I say. “You rest. I’ll wake you in a few hours.”
He looks surprised. “You sure?”
“Don’t make me change my mind,” I say with the tiniest hint of a teasing note in my voice, but there’s no room for jokes here.
He gives me a grateful nod. I watch him close his eyes. His chest rises and falls steadily. He’s quiet when he sleeps. No murmuring, no tossing, just still. In the first few days, I used to wonder if it would just be better, easier, to slit his throat when I had the opportunity. Take one more person out. Advance through the cycle quicker. But even if I’d found something sharp, I’d never have been able to.
Also in those first few days, I never really slept. I didn’t trust him not to kill me instead. But every time I peeked at him through one half-closed eyelid, he was always sitting exactly where he’d been before, hands folded tight across his lap.
My gaze drifts to the corner where the Red is. She’s watching me. I meet her gaze, nod slightly. She doesn’t return the nod, but she doesn’t look away either. The threads are glowing faintly beneath her skin.
We sit there in the growing darkness and wait for Lance to fall completely asleep. She speaks first. “You trust a Blue?”
I blink. “I don’t trust anyone.”
“Then why are you with him?”
“Because he’s useful.”
“And when he’s not?”
I shrug. “Not at that point yet.”
She rolls over, turning her back to me. “You’re like the rest of them.”
“I’m nothing like the rest of them,” I murmur.
I can see her shoulders tense faintly beneath her uniform. She dyed her hair to match it almost exactly. Good for her. If you can afford the Player’s Look you should get it, I’ve been told. I can’t afford it. I send everything home to Thorn as soon as I get it. Even though I don’t keep more than I need to survive for myself, we barely get by.
“You got a name?” the girl eventually says.
“Avara.”
She pauses. “Sienna.”
Neither of us says more. Names are dangerous. Names are remembered. Memory is dangerous. The Creators notice it. They’ll find a way to use it.
I pace back and forth, footsteps clicking softly across the hard ground, watching the glinting seams of light between the walls. Nothing moves. The warning lights have gone dark. The alarms are quiet. In fact, everything is quiet. There is not shouting. There are no screams.
For a second, I see myself back at home. I see Thorn smiling at me, his green eyes shining. What’d you bring, Autumn?
I don’t have an answer to him.
Players don’t cry.
Players don’t cry.
Players don’t—
A faint flicker of red light pulses from the ceiling, barely visible. The sensors are waking up. We don’t have long before this section of the maze starts shifting again.
I return to Lance, crouching next to him. “Hey,” I whisper. “Up.”
He stirs, groaning softly, but sits up without complaint. “What time is it?”
“Time to move.”
Sienna is awake now too and watching us. She stands up and brushes herself off. “I’ll go the other way,” she says, and without waiting for a reply, disappears into the dark corridor behind her.
I don’t try to stop her. Better this way. Better not travel in packs. Better not depend on each other. Everyone chooses their own fate here.
Lance straightens, cracking his neck, wincing. “Did you sleep at all?”
“No.”
“Should’ve woken me earlier.”
I narrow my eyes at him slightly. “Don’t worry about me.”
He looks at me for a second, lips parted slightly like he wants to stay more, but instead he starts walking.
We move quickly through the corridor. It narrows, widens, narrows. We pass a few walls I haven’t marked yet. I grab the chalk from my belt, scrawling down the numbers as we pass them. Recently, we’ve been exploring further, since resources are rapidly running out. Food is replenished regularly, from what I’ve noticed, but everything else—like fresh water, like places where no other players are still lurking around—is growing scarce, so we have to keep moving. Which is hard when we keep turning around so much. I have no idea if we’re going backwards or forward now, or what those directions even mean.
What’d you bring, Autumn? D’you bring me a book?
There are no books, Thorn.
They burned them.
“Hey,” Lance says, his voice softening. “You okay?”
“No,” I say. I slide the chalk back into its place. “But I’m not dead.”
He nods like he gets it. “That counts.”
We keep walking. Eventually, the corridor forks into three. I scan the first wall on the left side of each path, looking for clues. I’ve already marked all three of them. 83, 14, 26. No meaning I can see in those numbers.
One path is dark and narrow. I can’t see what’s beyond, but it looks like the perfect place for traps, or for other players waiting to trap.
The second pulses faintly blue. That usually means power, maybe something useful.
The third is very quiet. Things that are quiet are not good.
“What do you think?” I ask.
Lance squints down the paths. “Left. Less likely to run into tripwires.”
I hesitate, then go with my instincts. “Middle.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Really? The others look like they might be safer. No lights.”
“Blue means energy. Maybe a supply station?”
“Could also be a killing field. We don’t even need energy.”
I give him a hard look. “Anywhere could be a killing field, and I need to recharge my badge before it goes out and someone decides I’m a threat because I’m not acting like a normal Red.”
He sighs, then nods. “Your call.”
The light grows brighter as we walk down the middle corridor, pulsing low, like the walls have hearts which are beating. The air is a little warmer here. It was too cold in the safe zone, but something about the temperature change sets me on edge. Heat usually means movement. Movement usually means machines. Machines usually mean traps.
We step into a wide room. My breath catches slightly. I was right, at least, about the machines. There are dozens of them. Coil winding machines, screens, mod stations. It all hums to life as we enter, sensing our presence. The floor is too clean. The walls gleam too silver. They reflect our faces. I’m thinner and paler than I can remember being.
“Is this a maintenance hub?” I whisper.
“Maybe.”
There’s a small screen in the center of the room with the word INPUT glowing in red.
“I’m going to try it,” I say.
Lance nods. I approach slowly, pull my glove off, and press my palm against the screen.
Instantly, it shifts to green. A mechanical voice speaks from the walls in a harsh, metallic tone.
“Player identified. Avara. Veil. Cycle: 5. Color: Red.”
Lance takes a step back.
The screen flickers, then displays something new:
OFFER AVAILABLE: MOD UPGRADE
COST: NONE
ACCEPT? [Y/N]
I glance at Lance, then back at the screen. I don’t trust. He doesn’t seem to trust it either. Nothing in this place comes without consequences. If I say yes, it might hurt me. But if I say no, will it punish me?
“Do it,” Lance whispers. “You might need it.”
I hesitate, then press Y.
A compartment opens on the wall beside me. There’s a sleek syringe attached to a long, sharp needle. It’s full of something dark that shimmers. My heart pounds. I don’t want to touch it. I look around for a timer, something, but the screen just goes dark.
The voice speaks again:
“Contents: unknown. Effects: unknown. Side effects: unknown.”
The liquid inside the syringe looks like mercury mixed with mud. It moves sluggishly as I pick it up with shaking fingers. Lance sucks in a sharp breath but doesn’t say anything. I turn it over in my hands. It glows red when the strange light hits it just right.
“Do you think I should?” I murmur.
Lance presses his lips together tightly and gives the tiniest shake of his head before letting his breath out in a long sigh. “Think the Creators are trying to punish us?”
“I think the creators are always trying to punish us.”
“Then—”
“There’s no choice. Just the illusion of one.” Before I can think too much, I stab the needle into my upper arm and push down hard.

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CHAPTER THREE

I feel the sharp sting as it goes in. Then—nothing. I pull the needle out, wipe a drop of blood away, and toss the empty syringe aside. I wait for something to happen. Lights to flash, the world to change color, wings to sprout from my back.
“You good?” Lance’s voice sounds normal. That’s a good thing.
“Yeah,” I say, breathing shakily. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
He frowns. “Nothing happened?”
“No, I don’t think—” I stop talking. Something is forming in the air in front of me. “Lance—do you see that?”
“What?”
The voice in the wall cuts off whatever I was about to say:
“Upgrade: complete. Duration: temporary.”
I barely hear it. I can see a map. It’s a map of a portion of the maze. At least that’s what I think it is. It’s like I’m a bird flying over the maze. In the air, I can see the position of the walls. There are gold stars in some spaces, which I think mark safe zones of sources of food and fresh water. Some of the walls are glowing red, and as I watch, those are the ones which shift.
“I can see it—I can see everything—”
“What?” Lance waves a hand in front of me. It passes right through the illusion. “What can you see?”
“The maze,” I breathe out in disbelief.
His eyes widen. “Really?”
I nod quickly. “It’s temporary—it said it was temporary—but I can see the—it’s all here—it’s like—” I blink a few times just to make sure the illusion doesn’t disappear.
“Can you see where to find food?”
“Yeah, I can see that. And there’s something . . . green. In the corner.” I squint slightly at it. “It’s moving.”
“Green?”
“Like . . . green smoke?” I try to explain helplessly. “It’s spreading, though. Slowly.”
“Towards us?”
“I think so . . .”
“Then let’s go,” he says urgently. “It’s probably not a good thing, whatever it is.”
I jog after him away from the strange machines room, my gaze flitting constantly between the map and what’s really in front of us. The green smoke, as I’ve decided to call it for now, continues to spread, slowly, slowly, but still, it’s coming towards us.
The map moves as we do, revealing new sections, while hiding the old ones, so that it keeps our current location in the middle of what I can see. I lead the way, and Lance follows just a step or two behind me. Now that I know which walls are collapsing or about to collapse, it’s far easier to navigate the maze.
“Where are we going to?” I call over my shoulder.
“I don’t know—you pick!”
I glance at him. His eyes are even more blue than before. “Sure you didn’t get eye mods?”
“Not the time, Avara,” he pants. “And I swear, I didn’t. Everyone in my family’s got them.”
“You’ve never told me about your family.” None of the walls in this area are glowing red on the map, so we slow to a walk.
“I don’t like to talk about them much,” he replies simply.
“Do you have any siblings?” I press.
“Two older brothers—they both work. My parents. My crazy uncle lives with us too.”
“I thought your parents would be dead,” I say softly.
He gives me a sharp look. “Why’d you think that?”
“I don’t know. Just because . . . maybe because mine are,” I admit. “And a lot of the players are orphans.”
“Well,” he says, and puts his hands deep into the pockets of his uniform, “I’m not an orphan.”
“Then why did you apply for Selection? You could’ve stayed at home, right?”
“I didn’t want to stay.” His eyes are fixed on the ground. He bites his lower lip a little.




..... TO BE CONTINUED!!!
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