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  Nellie’s trigger finger tightened, and the drone went flying onto its back, legs kicking uselessly. Immediately the haze began to fade, revealing the far wall with its narrow exit door. Stun gun raised, Nellie waited, but no further apparitions appeared, no more drones rushed into the room. Was this all there was to this particular trap? Wiping the sweat from her mouth, she stared at the drone. With the shorting of its circuitry, its holographic shield had been shattered and now it was nothing but a twisted chrome-colored mess. This was obviously the trap that had been designed to target one of her personal weaknesses. Why would it involve only a single drone? Usually she had to fight off a horde, coming at her in waves.

  Slipping the stun gun back into her belt, Nellie tried to shake off the image of the woman’s pale face and the thick pulse of blood leaping from her throat. File it, she told herself angrily. Cabinet thirty-one, drawer four, folder twelve. Immediately the image of a filing cabinet appeared in her mind, the number thirty-one stamped on the top drawer. As she watched, the fourth drawer slid out, the twelfth folder opened, and the memory of the bleeding woman dropped into it. Then the drawer closed and the filing cabinet disappeared. With a sigh, Nellie straightened. It felt as if a skyscraper had been lifted from her back.

  “Four down, one to go,” she whispered and took off across the room, her mind already through the doorway and probing the next corridor. Upon entering it, she was confronted by a three-way fork and followed the thickest trail of vibrations down the middle passageway. As she ran, she could feel a deep, almost soundless throb in the floor that was almost concealed by the roar of helicopters and gunshots ahead. Deep-down sound was a drag on the mind, slowing the movement of arms and legs. Humming a high-pitched note to counteract it, Nellie veered around a curve and into the center of a battle-scene holograph. Lanced with the flash of laser guns and exploding grenades, the scene was packed with images of men shooting, stabbing and throttling each other. To her left she saw a man’s head blown from his neck; in front of her lay a woman missing both arms. Several children wandered through the chaos, crying for their mothers.

  Pivoting, Nellie surveyed the surrounding melee. How was she supposed to decipher which of the images were computer-generated holographs, and which were disguises worn by drones? That kid coming toward her now, calling “Mommy, Mommy” — was it mere image or a deadly drone? With a grunt, Nellie switched the beam on her gun to wide and swept the entire scene, grinning as the child in front of her mutated into a collapsing drone. No matter what they look like, she thought, they’re all out to get you.

  In one swift movement her beam finished off the pack, ending with the figure of a man crouched in a corner. But as she took the figure down, it raised its arm and threw something at her. Nellie ducked but the object hit her stun gun, knocking it from her hand. The gun landed with a loud cracking sound. Snatching it up, she pressed the trigger, but there was no response. The gun was dead and so was she, if any of these drones were still functional.

  Fortunately, none were. While she’d been recovering the gun, the holograph had faded, leaving the twisted bodies of eight collapsed drones. Standing with the useless gun in her hand, Nellie felt her knees wobble with relief. She’d passed the test, the last test. Maybe not with flying colors — setting a stun gun beam on wide meant an automatic loss of points — but even so, she was done. All she had to do now was work her way to the end of the pattern, and she was out of this place. From here on in, it was a free ride.

  On the far side of the room she picked up the vibratory trail of the runners who’d successfully completed every test — a ten-year-old girl and a slightly older boy. A small smile caught Nellie’s mouth and she took off along the corridor. This time there would be someone to goof off with in the exit lobby, two kids with whom she could swap gossip and rumors while they waited for the last participant. It was one of the rare moments of play in a runner’s life — the waiting period at the end of a maze while the remaining runners completed a pattern. Head down, running full out, Nellie sped past images of stars with human faces and astronauts suspended in space, connected to their ships by long twisting cords. As she approached the end of the maze, it was always the same. The images grew fainter and more distant, astronauts and aliens climbed into their spaceships and flew away, the faces in the stars went to sleep, and there was the repeated sound of doors shutting — as if the maze was gradually closing itself down.

  Just ahead, Nellie saw the entrance to the exit lobby. Sure of herself, riding her own anticipation, she put on a burst of speed and headed toward the faintly lit doorway without first probing the area beyond it with her mind. As she did, her foot kicked a small stone on the floor, causing it to ricochet over the threshold into the lobby. Immediately a stun gun beam lit up the doorway from the other side. Two steps from the entrance, Nellie dove to the right and the beam clipped her shoulder harmlessly. Swearing under her breath, she pressed against the wall. What the fuck had that been for? She’d completed the five tests, passed all the ordeals. This was supposed to be down time, when a runner got a few minutes to relax. Had one of the drones gone derelict or was this a runner, tipped into blood lust? It happened sometimes — a runner pushed too far who turned against her own.

  Quick footsteps approached the entrance and a boy peered cautiously through the doorway, a raised stun gun in his hand. Nellie blinked once, her mouth coming soundlessly open. Then, without hesitation, she drew her knife and threw it. The boy had no time to react and the knife landed clean, piercing the jugular. Without a cry, he slumped to the ground.

  Slowly Nellie approached his body. The boy was dark haired, a little chubby. When she turned him over, his eyes stared blankly — as if she was nothing, merely the final obstacle he’d had to overcome and now he was beyond her, finally he was free. Nellie’s face twisted slightly. Then she stooped and removed the knife from the boy’s throat, ducking to avoid the thick spurt of blood. Wiping the blade on his shirt, she stepped over his body, pressed herself to the wall, and peered into the lobby.

  On the far side of the room she could see the sprawled body of the ten-year-old girl, half-hidden behind the exit ramp. A quick scan of the room’s vibrations pinpointed the exact location the boy had taken her down. He’d let her approach, grinning widely, confident at her success in surviving the five tests. Then at close range, he’d stun-gunned her and slit her throat. A low growl rumbled in Nellie’s throat. She hadn’t picked up any crazy vibes in the boy’s trail. There was usually some kind of warning in a runner gone wrong, something you could smell.

  As she stepped into the lobby, the far wall lit up with a dazzling floor-to-ceiling message. CONGRATULATIONS! it said. YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE FIVE TESTS, BUT ONE LAST ORDEAL REMAINS. TODAY THERE WILL BE ONLY ONE SURVIVOR OF THE MAZE. MAKE SURE IT’S YOU.

  The words pulsed for several brilliant seconds before fading into the gloom. Then, as Nellie stood frozen, her mind a gaping hole, the exit lobby’s walls lit up with the star signs of all nine castes: the Mount of Ascent, the Temple, the Scales of Judgement, the Weeping Tree, the Twin Moons, the Warrior, the Hammer, the Cat and the Skeleton — each a reminder that everything stood in its proper place, every caste had its niche in the universal order and nothing happened without the Goddess’s approval. Still, Nellie’s mind argued, since when had maze runners been set on each other? Sure, they were competitors, but runners ran against the clock, not the other participants. In some mazes they competed as teams. To require a runner to kill her own kind was unheard of, unthinkable.

  Dully she stared at the body behind the exit ramp. Anyone who disobeyed the maze was automatically locked inside it and tracked by drones until killed. Today’s run had left her with only a knife, and it would be useless against drones. Sure, she could use the boy’s stun gun, but its battery would run out sometime, and without food and water she could only last so long. She was already dehydrated from today’s run, her tongue thick and clammy in her mouth.

  Nellie shuddered, slow and long. The
re was no arguing with the stars. Turning, she walked to the entrance that led back into the maze. There she pulled the boy’s shirt up his chest and used it to staunch the flow of blood from his throat. Then she dragged him across the room and shoved him behind the exit ramp with the girl. Finally she removed the girl’s shirt and used it to clean as much of the boy’s blood from the entranceway as possible.

  Knife in hand, she took up position pressed to the wall just inside the entranceway and waited for the last runner.

  Two

  UP BY THE CEILING the security alarm gave off its constant faint beep, a sound Nellie had been told was supposed to soothe the nerves and induce a relaxed state in the listener. Fat chance, she thought, lying on her bed and glaring at it. Either she was a freak of nature or someone was lying, big time. The beeping drove her crazy, and it was everywhere — in the bedrooms, hallways, classrooms and gym, even the cans. When she’d first entered the Black Core Program four years ago, she’d been told she would adjust to the omnipresent beeping and learn to convert it into background static, like the noise of her own heartbeat. But the beeping wasn’t a gentle thumpthump coming from inside her body, it was a mean narrow sound driving itself continually into the back of her brain. Giving a low growl, Nellie aimed a piece of oolaga candy through the ceiling fan that spun just below the alarm and hit her target dead on. Two years back she’d made it into the Advanced Section of the Black Core Program as one of their best-ever entry-level cadets, and still no one would listen to her and install a soundless security system that let the mind just be.

  She was certain it was another kind of test, some kind of mind-over-matter garbage. Scowling, Nellie dug another oolaga candy from the package on her stomach. She was supposed to be in Reconnaissance class, but she’d been working ahead of the other cadets and Col. Jolsen had told her she could take the afternoon off and spend it any way she liked. Except there was no one to spend it with. Her best friends, Lierin and Phillip, were stuck in Reconnaissance, reading 3-D maps, and everyone else was in some class or other. After wandering the halls for a bit, Nellie had punched her personal code into the candy machine in the girls’ dorm, selected a package of oolaga candy and retreated to the room she shared with Tana, one of Advanced’s oldest and highest-ranking cadets.

  And Tana never let Nellie forget it. Born into the Scales of Judgement caste, Tana had had everything going for her — blood-line, money, an assured career in law or finance. But, unfortunately for her, every caste had to contribute a yearly quota of offspring to the temples and Interior security. When she was six, Tana’s ID number had been drawn at the annual harvest lottery, and that had been the last she’d seen of her family and the privileges of the Scales caste. Still, she retained the attitude that went with it, stamped onto her mind as clearly as the caste tattoo on her wrist. And, over the two years they’d shared this room, Nellie had had to grudgingly admit that Tana had earned her reputation as one of Detta’s stellar cadets. Nothing snuck past her scrutiny, and she was always working on another exercise to hone her physical and mental abilities.

  Perhaps that was why they’d been placed together — Advanced’s program instructors had been hoping Tana’s logical step-by-step thinking would rub off on Nellie’s madcap leaps of intuition. Instead the two girls mutated into bickering harpies whenever they entered each other’s presence. Within a week of Nellie’s moving into the room, the beds had been shoved to opposite walls and a barricade of dressers and free-standing closets erected down the middle. In the odd fit of fury, Nellie was known to have stood on her bed and flung books, shoes, whatever she could get her hands on, at the girl on the other side of the barricade. The rest of the girls called them “Hate Mascots.”

  The program instructors’ plan appeared to have failed miserably. Or perhaps, Nellie thought suddenly, this had been their secret agenda all along, another hidden training program for two of their best cadets — constant war. She grimaced at the thought and aimed another oolaga candy at the security alarm. Bouncing off the fan, it ricocheted onto Tana’s side of the room. A corner grin tugged at Nellie’s mouth and she aimed again. This one hit the edge of a blade and rebounded toward her, hitting her knee.

  “Getting sloppy.” The words came from a floor-to-ceiling screen on the wall at the far end of the room. Without glancing up, Nellie shrugged. She recognized that nasal uptight voice — it belonged to Ms. Duikstra, Supreme Bitch of the Known Universe. Also known as the girls’ dorm mother, Ms. Duikstra was probably flicking through the bedroom surveillance system doing a virtual reality room check, too lazy to make the rounds by foot.

  “Sit up when I’m talking to you,” snapped the huge face suspended on the monitoring screen. “Show some respect for your commanding officer, or I’ll put a pejorative on your file.”

  Nellie straightened. Ms. Duikstra was no commanding officer but a pejorative was a pejorative, and she already had four. Five meant she would miss the next Street Games, and ten dictated a session with the Black Box. Rumors about the Black Box were legendary. Pejoratives could be removed from a cadet’s file for good behavior, but even so, she had no intention of letting them pile up.

  “Eyes on the screen,” continued Ms. Duikstra’s exasperated voice. “Hooligan manners must be left in the maze, Nellie Joanne Kinnan. Really, I just might have to donate a pejorative to your file.”

  With a low hiss, Nellie slitted her eyes at the screen. The pinched face hovering at the end of the room sucked in its lips and slitted its eyes back at her. “There is a summons for you,” the dorm mother snapped haughtily, her pale blue eyes boring into Nellie’s. “You’re required at Station Seven immediately.”

  Falling back onto her bed, Nellie groaned loudly, then said, “Col. Jolsen told me I had the afternoon off. It’s supposed to be a reward for working ahead of the rest of the class.”

  “Station Seven immediately,” said Ms. Duikstra with obvious satisfaction. “Or a double pejorative on your file.”

  With a low hum the screen went blank, and Nellie lay for several seconds, fighting the urge to snap upright and head for the door. She wasn’t really upset about the interruption. It had probably been scheduled all along, some kind of special assignment she was about to be given, and Col. Jolsen had let her out early so the rest of the class wouldn’t know about it. But if they wanted her so badly they were prepared to haul her out of class, they could wait a few minutes. Yawning, she got to her knees and turned to face the star chart that hung above the headboard of her bed. Designed as a large circle, the chart displayed the sky sign for each of the nine months, as well as the caste it represented. Almost all of the signs were constellations, except for those of the Master and Healer castes: the Red Planet for the Master caste, the Temple for the priesthood, the Scales of Judgement for the legal caste, the Weeping Tree for the scholars, the Twin Moons for the healers, the Warrior for the business caste, the Hammer for the masons, the Cat for those who lived by their wits, and the Skeleton for those whose wits had long been stretched beyond bearing and deserted them.

  To the right of the chart were recorded the stars of good and bad omen for each caste. Quickly Nellie ran her finger down the list for the month of Lulunar. Omens could change, depending upon the day of the year. It was presently the twenty-ninth day of Lulunar, halfway through the month. The sky sign was still the Twin Moons, and stars of good omen were the three tears of the Weeping Tree constellation. Stars of warning included the tip of the Warrior’s bow and the Blue Star in the Susurra constellation. With a sigh, Nellie lifted her left wrist and traced the small blue cat tattooed onto the inside. Her identity tattoo as well as the sky sign of her caste, it wouldn’t be showing up in the star charts for another two months. Life was a drag when you were a Cat and the legal, scholar and healer castes dominated the sky. But just wait until the month of Jarnus when the three lowest castes — the Hammer, Cat and Skeleton — ruled. Then Miss Scales-of-Justice Snotface Roommate would be talking out of the other side of her mouth.

  Cl
imbing off the bed, Nellie approached her dresser mirror. As usual, her reflection was dominated by the black bodysuit that was an Advanced cadet’s daily uniform. Above it hovered a pair of stark gray eyes, their odd slant emphasized by the tight ponytail skewered at the back of her head. Most cadets had a similar slant to their eyes, though not as pronounced as her own. For years she’d thought it had something to do with her roots in the Cat caste, the “criminal caste” as it was commonly known, but none of the other Cat cadets had eyes like hers. Slink Eyes, the Black Core cadets had called her when she’d first arrived. Snake Eyes. Well, she’d lived those labels well and truly down, and now she lived with more respectful nicknames.

  “Bang,” Nellie whispered, cocking one hand and shooting her reflection. “Bang bang, you’re dead.”

  With a grim smile, she turned from her mirror and headed toward an alcove that was located to the left of the bedroom doorway. There she knelt before a small blue-robed statue. Kissing its naked feet, she murmured, “Blessed be the Goddess, Mother of the Stars, Mother of us all.” Above her head the statue stood with both hands raised in their customary pleading gesture, its eyes gazing upward. Nellie stared longingly at the ceramic face. Oh, for the privilege of one moment directly in the Goddess’s blessed presence — the Goddess Ivana, who in Her first incarnation was said to have sometimes taken the form of a God. The priests had been eagerly predicting Her Second Coming for the past few years, declaring now as the time for the fulfilment of the old prophesies. Four years ago, when Nellie’s name had been pulled at the Cat caste draw, she’d been excited, thinking she’d been selected to train as a priestess in one of the temples. Girls who served in the temples were allowed contact with their families until the eve of their thirteenth birthday. A twitch crossed Nellie’s face as she watched the Goddess’s motionless face. Cadets selected for the Black Core Program immediately lost contact with their families, and over the years Nellie’s memories of her mother had fizzled to nothing. She couldn’t even remember the woman’s face.