The Labyrinth

--Charlie's Perspective--

---March 4th, 2446---

While sleeping throughout the night, eight days had finally passed from the first point that I entered the room. Ever since those IQ Tests, I'm a lot more stable than I used to be.

For a moment there, I ended up cracking and my psyche felt like it was permanently damaged. It truly did feel like I had killed my friends and tortured myself into oblivion, not even a demon himself would enter. My mind had become a dark place, and I was barely able to claw my way out.

I kept a positive mind, and still do to this day, and rationalized that Genesis is not here. He didn't even show up eight days after all of my tests. The final question I had for myself... and I guess this Tower, is that Solstice and the others never ended up coming back. Their tests brought them somewhere else, and in this room only remained Shike, Boo, Chi-Chi, Asoh, Alex, Orion, and myself. Seven people in total.

Chi-Chi and Asoh were still off-limits in my mind. My prosthetic leg was at the fault of Chi-Chi, and Asoh was just annoying to me. I didn't talk to them for my entire time in this room, but they made plenty of attempts to talk to me.

A stone slab that acted as a hidden door finally shifted in the wall. I woke up to the slightest noise as it dropped and revealed a rising sun on the horizon... followed by large, stone walls, and a path leading left and right.

"Guys," I called out, waking up everybody left in the room with me.

"It's open already?" Shike asked, getting himself out of bed and looking out of the opening now in the wall.

"Don't go without anybody. Let's all stick as close as possible so we don't lose each other," I said to him, pushing my body up and helping Alex up.

I offered my hand to Boo, but she shook it off and stood up as well. I forgot that I wasn't the only one with a damaged mind, as Boo suffered quite the hit as well. She was close to being her old self once more, but when she first came in here, she seemed distant, as if somebody else was piloting her body.

"My head hurts... so, what's this about waiting for each other?" She asked, stretching her arms and legs like a cat in bed.

"The Tower can change really fast, and if we don't stick together, we might miss out on the opportunity to all stay together. This isn't about doing the challenges themselves, we just need to make it out of here," Orion said.

He grabbed a backpack in the room and started shoveling the food on the counter into it, stocking up for the day. We all agreed with his strategy and stood at the base of the opening in the wall.

"As many in as possible. Let's go," He said.

All seven of us poured out of the opening in the wall. Almost three seconds after Orion took the first steps onto the grassy plains, the door ended up shutting and implanted itself back into the floor, just as it did when Alex, Solstice, and the remainder of the people walked into the doorway lodged into the cliff underneath the dirt. More pattern recognition was what I was noticing.

"That's a big wall... we're not climbing over that," I said out loud, looking back and forth for any clues on the walls leading out from the doorway.

"What about under?" Boo immediately asked afterward, kicking the bottom of the gigantic steel wall.

"If it wasn't securely placed into the ground, we could push it over. Can you push it over?" Orion asked.

Boo took one look at Shike and nodded back at Orion.

"Oh? I'm intrigued, go ahead, push over the wall," Orion said, crossing his arms. Nobody told him about Boo's insane ability, so it's natural he would be cocky about this...

"Do you want me to give it a shot on my own, Shike?" Boo asked him, stretching her arms out. Shike nodded, standing by Orion with his arms crossed as well.

"You seem awfully confident. You think she can do it?" Orion asked Shike again. He smiled and nodded, pointing toward the wall.

"You can have my dinner tonight if that wall stays up," Shike said. Orion seemed skeptical after that, looking back and forth as Boo slowly paced herself back to the previous wall.

"Okay, I'm good," She mumbled.

In a fraction of a second, the light around us warped and a flash occurred. The sound barrier shattered right beside us and the wall shook as fast and intensely as possible. It vibrated, making a definitive noise as it snapped at the seams and launched itself toward the sky in the distance.

Whatever was giving us the illusion that the sun was just rising was pierced by the giant steel wall, and it began to fade right after.

Natural sunlight seeped in through the cracks of the steel wall that pierced what I assumed to be the outer wall of the Tower.

Boo stopped at the base of where the old wall used to be, cracking her knuckles, and looking back upon the dropped jaws of the people who didn't know what she was capable of.

"Holy shit girl! That speed... is that Elo's ability?" Orion asked her.

"Elo... I hadn't heard that name in a long time. Illya explained to me, that I inherited that ability from somebody else. I forgot his name was Elo... yeah, that's my ability," Boo said.

"It's good to see he's still flourishing then. Shall we continue forward?" Orion asked, holding the straps to the backpack over his shoulders.

"We better be able to find the solution to this puzzle by going out of bounds like this. Do you think this will affect our result?" Asoh asked. I ignored her and followed directly behind Orion instead of answering her.

"It might. You're forgetting that I have an ability as well, and we might be able to use it to get closer to the middle. I can probably shoot the kinetic energy I gain through the walls until we meet our goal, but we shouldn't be so obvious about our solutions... as if that wasn't obvious enough," Shike explained.

"Kinetic Energy... so, then you're Xian, aren't you?" Orion mumbled to himself as he kept his head forward.

I forgot about that man as well... he was one of the people who vouched for Sky on that iced-over lake...