The Cracks in the Labyrinth

Chapter 1 (Part 1)

His ammo was running low, but Adam pulled the trigger.

"Do you see it? Is it there?"

Without taking his eyes off the next bend in the labyrinth, Adam heard his client, Zhang Wei, speak through his VR headset's headphones. Pressing a button would manipulate this build of the game, and yet he preferred to experience it just like gamers would in a few months.

"Patience," Adam said in a low voice.

He pushed the joystick and walked forward. Of course, he wasn't moving, his character was, which made most people get motion sickness when playing VR. Not him, though. Adam took pride in this. While others succumbed to nausea, he remained steady on his feet.

He tightened his grip on the controllers. The tension in his muscles hurt his neck. From time to time, he had to remind himself that this labyrinth, that the auburn-rusted walls around him were virtual, that the somber echoes of his steps were mere sound effects.

The suffocating survival horror he was playing was good.

But I can make it into a masterpiece.

"So?" Zhang asked with a heavy Mandarin accent.

"A little more," Adam narrowed his eyes.

There, in the bowels of the shadowy labyrinth, he considered using his lighter to get a better look, even if it meant giving away his position. That's how you hook them, Adam thought. Sacrifices. The more limited your—Oh no! The silhouette of a towering creature took shape in the dark. Its body, encased in membranes and covered in a jelly-like substance (that made it bulletproof), crawled across the ceiling as it opened the thin spiracles above its thorny legs; hundreds of small eyes looked for its prey.

Adam pressed pause. "We have a problem."

Zhang mumbled something that needed no translation.

"You changed the final boss design, and now it doesn't align with the theme," Adam said. "Your ideas aren't married anymore."

"Like a divorce? I don't get it."

With economy of movement, Adam put the VR headset on the table next to his PC and rubbed his eyes. This had happened before. The biggest issue about being a script doctor in the video game industry was that many of his clients didn't want to 'get it,' they'd much rather shoot for mediocrity. Four months ago, a Spanish developer had assured him that the plot didn't matter because gamers only cared about two things: bread and circuses.

"What made The Last of Us special?"

"I'm sure you are about to tell me," Zhang sounded exasperated.

"The enemies are blind. Mutated by a virus, they only attack the protagonist if they hear him," Adam explained. "The interesting thing is that the main character must also use his hearing for hunting these things. They are reflections of each other. Although he's not infected, the hero is like the monsters. Get it?"

"No."

Adam groaned. "Gameplay and theme must go hand in hand, and your final boss is—"

"Bitcoin doesn't grow on trees!"

"Excuse me?" Adam felt angry.

"What? Don't you get it?"

"You pay me a fraction of what someone in China would make. Maybe that makes you think I'm cheap..." Adam's voice turned cold. "I'm not. Denial is a maze where every path leads to a dead-end."

"Adam—"

"Bristol, 1983."

After saying that, Adam hung up. It was a gamble. He realized it when the five wristwatches on his left forearm seemed to get tighter, threatening to cut into his skin. He took a deep breath and convinced himself that he had to make that power move to regain control.

"I'm close, B," he said, remembering his promise.

Any attempt to work on something else proved useless. Not knowing how Zhang would react was making him anxious. He minimized Skype. On his desktop wallpaper, he and his sister, Bianca, were smiling despite being on the floor of an ice-skating rink with their behinds wet.

A snapshot of a different lifetime.

How long ago did Evelia take that picture? That doubt stirred up his foul mood.

Adam stood up and walked through the small apartment, thirsting for a Red Bull in the dark. The roman blackout blinds kept all light out. When Darío, his little brother, or his grandmother visited him from Mérida, they would often joke about this, claiming it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night in there.

"This is not a home, it's a lab!" Bianca had complained once too. The white walls and the perennial cold from the air conditioner running all the time didn't help. The impeccable furniture was lacking: a mere computer desk, a sofa, a fishbowl, a closet, a barely slept-in bed, and a modest bookshelf that didn't reflect his extensive eBook collection.

Adam found pleasure in the symmetry of digital media. It's the best way to avoid piling up books of different sizes. In his Kindle, every cover was the same size, and there was no other color but black and white.

Absolute order.

Before entering the kitchen, he did over a dozen pull-ups in a bar he'd set up on the door frame. He didn't break a sweat. While pale and puffy-eyed, he was in better shape now than in his twenties.

The last time he met Santiago years ago, his friend asked him what had happened to that chubby, happy fellow he used to be back in college, to which Adam replied, "I grew tired of looking at him in the mirror, so I killed him."

There was some truth beneath that funny remark. Now, Adam's thick, jet black hair was cut to a buzz, his almond eyes hidden behind prescription glasses, and his round belly was now flat; he looked nothing like his former self.

Adam put the can on a coaster (he hated water rings on wood) and thought of doing a set of push-ups before getting back to work just to 'pump blood,' like Magdala, his old boxing coach used to say.

He didn't.

Instead, he sat again.

Sometimes he wondered how his friends were. Only for a moment. Then, that night's pain came back with the memories and crushed him like an avalanche, and the emptiness of having lost Evelia became impossible to bear. Ten years hadn't healed those wounds—quite the opposite. Time had deepened the rift between the few survivors of the Red Christmas.

Adam gazed into the computer screen until a notification dinged, startling him. Must be Zhang, he guessed, imagining what would happen next: his client would pay him for the extra work, and he'd take off a wristwatch and throw it in the trash. Only four more left on his forearm. Four more payments to have enough money to get his siblings out of the country.

Adam opened his inbox, leaned forward, and then froze, his eyes widening. His heart crawled up to his throat.

"Evi?" He whispered

He couldn't believe it. A few hours before the tenth anniversary of that terrible December night, Adam received an email from his disappeared girlfriend, who everyone had presumed dead for years.

To be continued...