Labyrinth Read online

  Copyright © 2017 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Darby Creek

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

  Images in this book used with the permission of: © iStockphoto.com/Swillklitch (maze), © iStockphoto.com/Thoth_Adan (grunge background).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.5. Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Keats, Israel, author.

  Title: Labyrinth / by Israel Keats.

  Description: Minneapolis : Darby Creek, [2017] | Series: Level up | Summary: “Two gamers are placed in a virtual-reality video game, where they must solve puzzles and defeat robotic creatures as they work their way through a mechanical labyrinth. This wouldn’t be so hard if they could just learn to work together—and they’ll need to in order to win the game”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016039385 (print) | LCCN 2017006121 (ebook) | ISBN 9781512439878 (lb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781512453577 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781512448764 (eb pdf)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Computer games—Fiction. | Virtual reality—Fiction. | Labyrinths—Fiction. | Cooperativeness—Fiction. | Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K396 Lab 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.K396 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039385

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-42236-25785-1/20/2017

  9780778780601 ePub

  9780778780618 mobi

  9780778780625 ePub

  To Link and Zelda

  It is the year 2089. Virtual reality games are part of everyday life, and one company—L33T C0RP—is behind the most popular games. Though most people are familiar with L33T C0RP, few know much about what happens behind the scenes of the megacorporation.

  L33T C0RP has developed a new virtual reality game: Level Up. It contains more than one thousand unique virtual realities for gamers to play. But the company needs testers to smooth out glitches. Teenagers from around the country are chosen for this task and, suddenly, they find themselves in the middle of a video game. The company gives them a warning—win the game, or be trapped within it. Forever.

  Chapter 1

  The second the gamer entered the virtual reality, she forgot all of her problems. She didn’t think about homework or college applications. She didn’t stress about what extra-curricular activities she should be doing. She was in the world of the game, and nothing else mattered.

  She materialized in front of a silver, cube-shaped building with no windows. A single word in huge neon letters appeared above black doors in one corner: Labyrinth. The L33T C0RP logo was lit up in blue on the ground beneath her feet. A man stood there in sunglasses and a white suit. There was also a tall, skinny guy stretching out like a runner before a race.

  The man with the sunglasses nodded at her. “I’m the Game Runner—I’m here to debrief you. Our records show that you’ve both played L33T C0RP games before, but this is the first time for each of you in Labyrinth. We are very eager to see how you do. But first, why don’t you pick your gamertags?”

  “Fites4Fun,” the guy blurted out. “F-I-T-E-S-number 4-F-U-N.” He’d obviously already thought about it.

  The guy had tightly wound dreadlocks and deep brown eyes, but she had no idea if he looked like that real life. Her own virtual-reality avatar looked like she really did, which was average in every way. She was a little taller than most girls her age and had frizzy hair, but she easily melted into the background. The only difference was that in real life she would never be brave enough to wear a flame-red, skintight jumpsuit with orange and yellow racing stripes. She’d picked it without a thought from the avatar menu. Coincidentally, the guy had picked the same unisex jumpsuit, complete with stripes.

  “What do you want for your name?” The Game Runner turned to her. “It can be anything you want besides your real name. But it has to be ten characters or less.”

  “Fewer,” she said, thinking of a grammar rule she’d learned in English.

  “F-E-W . . .” he started.

  “No, not that. Never mind.” She wasn’t in school. She was here to stop thinking about school. “Call me SuprSolvr. No e in either word.”

  “Got it.” Her new name appeared in glowing letters on her jumpsuit.

  “You’ll also need these,” the Game Runner said, gesturing toward their arms, and a metallic band appeared on their wrists. It had a gray LED screen that flashed to life and flipped between three messages: a heart graphic with the number 100, a lightning bolt with the number 100, and some sort of countdown clock, currently displaying 6:00:00.0.

  “The heart is your health, the next one is your power, and the third is time remaining—you’re starting with six hours,” the Game Runner explained.

  “Power for what?”

  “Glad you asked.” The Game Runner snapped his fingers. Suddenly there was an object in SuprSolvr’s hand. It looked like the hilt of a sword. It was made of lightweight metal and perfectly formed for her hand, but there was no blade. Fites4Fun had one too. With a puzzled look on his face, he tossed it from hand to hand.

  “What is it?” SuprSolvr asked.

  “Push the button.”

  She hadn’t noticed the button on the hilt, right under her thumb. She pushed it and a light beam burst out in the shape of a broadsword.

  “Whoa!” The guy stopped and stared at the glowing blade, then found the button on his own hilt and fired it up. “This is cool.”

  She gave her beam sword a swing and then made a big circular slice.

  “Very cool,” she agreed, feeling a mixture of excitement and dread. What enemies would she have to use this on? Would they have swords too? She knew she would feel real pain. Not agonizing pain, she had been told, but enough to feel “fully immersed” in the game.

  She turned off the blade and found a specially made pocket on her suit to store the weapon. Fites was still testing his blade, swinging and slicing. He accidentally brushed her shoulder.

  “Whoops. Sorry about that,” he said.

  “I’m fine.” She hadn’t felt a thing, but Fites’s fidgeting was making her nervous. It reminded her of the way she felt before her volleyball games—her teammates goofing around always made her uneasy.

  “The beam sword only works on enemies,” the Game Runner explained. “Now, about the game. It’s what’s called a platform game. Lots of running, jumping, fighting.”

  “Sounds awesome,” Fites said.

  “Is it all running and fighting?” SuprSolvr asked. At least she was in shape for it, thanks to volleyball. “I mean, that’s fine, but I like a . . . mental challenge.”

  “There are also puzzles,” the Game Runner continued, “so your skills are well-matched. The mission of the game is to find your way to the center of the labyrinth and beat the boss.”

  “No problem,” Fites said.

  “You can recharge your health and power at the checkpoints at the beginning of each level. But you can’t actually save the game; we disabled that for the beta test. If you fail to complete the game on time in your three tries, you lose. And remember—if you lose, you can’t leave the game.”

  “I’m in,” Fites
said quickly.

  “Me too,” Solvr added. Her pulse was racing and she felt almost dizzy. This was risky but exciting. That’s why she was doing it. She didn’t take enough risks.

  “Who’s going first?” she asked. She hoped it was her. If she had to wait for this guy to play, she’d psych herself out.

  “I want to go first!” he said.

  The Game Runner raised his eyebrows at them. “Oh, you’re playing together.”

  “An escort mission. That’s cool,” Fites said to himself.

  She scoffed at that. “You’re not escorting me, you’re tagging along.”

  “Says you!” Fites shouted. He took off running into the labyrinth.

  “You better catch up,” the Game Runner said, turning to Solvr with a smirk. “You’re officially on the clock.”

  Chapter 2

  “Hey!” Solvr yelled, sprinting into the entrance of the labyrinth. The first corridor was long and straight, running down what seemed to be one side of the massive structure. The walls were glowing blue, so tall she could barely see the top. Overhead was a high ceiling emitting white light. About a foot off the ground there was a row of dime-sized lights, flush with the wall, making a racing stripe.

  Everything in this labyrinth is glowing, she thought. Maybe the bright color scheme was a nod to the first generation of video games. This certainly looked like a retro game.

  She reached the end of the first corridor and took a hard turn to the left. She saw Fites in the distance, down another long corridor.

  “Wait!” she hollered.

  “We already get to fight!” he shouted back.

  “What?” She peered past him and saw a blackish-gray mass spilling across the blue floor. She met him at the end of the second corridor and found herself in a large rectangular room with no other doors.

  She now saw what the mass was: a horde of bugs. They looked like ticks but were closer to the size of halved oranges, with eight short, scuttling legs that made a deafening clicking noise. These were not ordinary giant bugs. They were robotic giant bugs, perfectly lifelike but made of metals and wires.

  The door behind her shut. They were trapped. Suddenly the room didn’t seem so big.

  One of the bugs reached her foot. She kicked it before turning on her blade to swipe at the bugs. As the light beam sliced through them, the ticks popped and vanished.

  “Way too easy!” Fites shouted, swiping left and right at the bugs with his beam sword. Solvr did the same. The two of them inched forward, wiping out every tick in their path, but the bugs kept coming. She missed one and it crawled up her leg, giving her a painful zap.

  Guess I am fully—ouch!—immersed, she thought.

  She leaped back and swatted at the tick with her free hand. It dropped. She jabbed at it with her beam sword and it vanished. When she looked up the wave of bugs was nearly wiped out, with Fites picking off the last few.

  “That was fun,” he said with a grin. “I love killing insects.”

  “Arachnids,” she couldn’t help but point out. “They have eight legs.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I hate ticks,” she explained. “I found one on my scalp once after a camping trip and it gave me nightmares. I never went camping after that.”

  “I’ve never been camping in the first place,” he admitted.

  “Smart,” she said. Then there was another burst of sound from one corner of the room. They both turned to see a new wave of giant ticks rushing toward them—and this time they were hopping. “Great. Here come more.”

  Chapter 3

  SuprSolvr swung her blade left and right, timing her slices to meet the creatures on their way up or on their way down, sometimes even taking out two or three at a time. She didn’t expect it to be this much fun. Maybe it was because she hated ticks, and this felt a little like getting revenge—even if it was silly to think of it that way. Plus she was good at it. Her volleyball practice came in handy again; it gave her quick reflexes.

  Fites was doing even better. She heard his yells and whoops as he whirled around and brandished his beam sword with elaborate moves.

  A tick landed on her shoulder, and as she tried to wipe it off she accidentally dropped her beam sword. The light of the blade disappeared as the ticks swarmed over it.

  Solvr dropped to the floor and reached for it, feeling the prickle of little legs on her arm and the zaps of their electronic bites. She grabbed the hilt, leaped up, and shook a few bugs off her arm before turning on the blade and resuming the fight.

  “Um, Solvr?” Fites’s voice drifted over to her.

  “Yeah?”

  He patted under his sword-wielding arm with his free hand. She looked down and saw a tick dangling from her arm. She grabbed the bug by the body, twisted it the way she’d learned on her camping trip, and hurled it to the floor. She slashed at it with her beam sword and watched it vanish.

  She glanced at her wristband. Her health was now under 50%. That one tick had sucked over half her health. She’d also taken some damage reaching for her beam sword.

  And still the bugs kept coming, wave after wave. She barely had a chance to catch her breath.

  “I think they’re infinite!” she shouted.

  “I thought you said they were arachnids!” Fites shouted back. Solvr glanced around the room. There’s got to be a way to stop the bugs from coming. She’d played screen games where she pulled open a dam and flooded the enemy, or rang a bell that called them away. She saw a computer kiosk hidden in a nook that she hadn’t noticed before.

  “Cover me!” she yelled.

  She ran for the kiosk. It was about waist high, with an angled glass top so she could see a computer monitor and a flat gray keyboard with bright white letters. Ticks landed on her back and shoulders and zapped her through the suit. She wriggled and shrugged to shake them off, trying to focus. The monitor screen was dark. She tapped on the spacebar and woke up the computer.

  A two-line message appeared in gray letters on the white screen:

  1 ENTER PASSCODE TO DEBUG

  2 GET PASSCODE HINT

  She didn’t know the passcode, so she hit the “2” key.

  “I could use help!” Fites called to her. SuprSolvr glanced back and saw the ticks whirling around him. She leaped back into the fight, spinning her beam sword and taking out at least a dozen ticks. She slashed and hacked and stomped and the ticks let up, at least a little, for a moment.

  When she ran back to the kiosk there was a new message—the hint.

  EIGHT-LEGGED ENEMIES ALL AROUND SOUND OF CLOCK WINDING DOWN

  The cursor flashed, waiting for her answer. Fites hollered in the background. A tick jumped onto the keyboard. Solvr knocked it off and backed up the cursor, deleting the gibberish the tick had typed in. She realized the answer. There was one word that solved both halves of the riddle.

  “I’ve got like eight percent life!” Fites shouted. “My blade is almost out!”

  “One more second!” Ticks landed on her, but she tried to ignore them. She didn’t have time for a typo. She carefully typed:

  TICKS

  She hit “Enter” and wheeled around, prepared to continue the fight. But now the bugs were scurrying away, vanishing under the walls. Seconds later there were none left.

  She looked back over her shoulder at the monitor and saw a new message:

  DEBUGGING COMPLETE

  A door opened next to the kiosk, leading to another corridor. Across the room, the original door re-opened. Fites was on the ground, his drained weapon lying an inch from his open hand.

  “Are you all right?”

  You can’t be dead, she thought. Or you would have been brought back to the beginning already. She walked over and crouched to check his wristband. His health status was at 2%.

  “I’m fine,” he said, opening his eyes. “Just got stunned for a second.”

  “You’re not that fine,” she said as she helped him up. “Check your health status.”

  He did. “Oh. Gu
ess I should power up ASAP.” He looked around the now empty room. “So, how did you get rid of those bugs?”

  “I solved a riddle on the computer console. You answer it to debug.” She paused for effect, but he just stared at her. “Get it?”

  “Ugh. I hate puns,” he said. “So what was the riddle?”

  She told him. He shrugged, clearly not getting it.

  “Ticks,” she explained. “Ticks like a bug, ticks like in a clock.” She couldn’t help but smile. She did like puns.

  “Ah,” he said, shaking his head. “Thanks for figuring it out.”

  “No problem. Thanks for taking out the enemies while I did.”

  “It’s okay. I like fighting.”

  “That’s why the Game Runner said we need to work together. One to fend off enemies and one to solve the puzzle.”

  “Well, now I need to recharge my health.” He started walking down the new corridor. “Onward through the maze!”

  “You mean the labyrinth,” she said as she followed. The walls in this corridor were dimmer than before.

  “What’s the difference?” he asked.

  “There’s only one path in a labyrinth. It’s a long and winding path, but there’s just the one.”

  “So we can’t get lost?”

  “Nope. But we can still run out of time.” Solvr glanced at her wristband as they walked.

  Thirty minutes had passed. She couldn’t believe it had already been half an hour.

  Are we going too slowly? she wondered. When she looked up, she saw the floor had turned from solid blue to yellow with black diagonal lines that usually meant danger and high voltage.

  “Stop!” she cried, but she was too late. Fites stepped onto the yellow and vanished.

  Chapter 4

  Solvr ran back toward the entrance, trying not to look at the countdown clock on her wristband. She knew time was ticking away, but she didn’t want to move on without Fites. It was a two-player game.