Part 21

When the walls stopped moving, Jones was curled into a tight ball in one of the labyrinth's new corners.

It seemed the safest thing to do.

He had tried running back the way he had come, but when two of the massive blocks that he took for "walls" slammed together inches in front of him, he decided to stay put. But even that proved difficult when the floor started moving underneath him, sliding him along a transforming corridor where walls sprang up and spun away in multiple directions. This had gone on for several dizzying seconds until he found himself in a relatively stable alcove... a 'V' formed by two walls.

That's where he stayed, eyes closed and arms folded over his head while the world went crazy... craziER... around him.

After a while, the sounds began to fade. He could still hear things moving, but not close. Maybe it safe.... safER.

And when he opened his eyes, everything had changed.

The "alcove" was now an octagonal chamber with two narrow passages leading out of it at strange angles. The walls looked the same, although the stone pillars that formed them were all of different heights... none of them climbable.

Of the eye-thing he had killed, there was no sign.

Nor was there any sign of the biting pain that had run up his arm, OR of the symbol that had been blazing in his palm just before the walls had started moving. He was willing to write the last off as a hallucination... he'd imagined stranger things before. But the thing that had attacked him... THAT had been real.

Hadn't it?

And if it was real, then how had he destroyed it? He'd gotten mad, and normally when he got mad things got fuzzy... or went black altogether. But this time he remembered. He'd pointed to it, and it had exploded. The pain in his hand... in his brain...

And then the walls had started moving, almost as if... as if he'd CAUSED it to happen. Like he'd flipped a switch.

Or set off a trap.

Jones got to his feet and wandered the perimeter of the chamber.

He had to think. He had to figure out what was going on and he had to NOT get mad any more. Not the Rage. Not again. He scratched at the palm of his right hand... fingernail tracing the curves of the symbol that was not there... and decided that walking in a circle wasn't going to get him anywhere.

The first passageway was short and ended in another chamber. Jones could see it from where he stood, although he could only see a small section of one wall of the other "room".

The second, longer passageway was a long, straight line that went some distance before it dead-ended. Maybe it intersected with something else before then, but Jones couldn't tell from this end.

Jones took the first one.

Thirty feet later, he was in another room, smaller than the one he'd just left.... and much more interesting.

One section of one of the walls was recessed, forming another alcove. And in the center of that narrow space was a large metal door.