Chapter 9

When Max awoke again, he found himself not in the small cage that he was used to, but in a featureless stone room bathed in the warm glow of one of the Academy's strange round lights in the ceiling. He looked around himself, finding that the room couldn't have been more than 20 feet square, the ceiling half as tall as the room was wide and long. He felt a sense of dread when he could not find a door in the room. In fact, as far as Max could tell, there was only one opening in the room. Above his head, far out of reach, was a small iron trapdoor in the ceiling, just beside the light in the center of the room.

As Max was debating what to do, he heard the trapdoor open with a squeal. He looked up, and could see in the room above his cell was the stranger, crouched at the opening and leering down at Max with its twisted mask.

"Why are you still here?" It said.

Max scrunched his eyebrows together. "What?"

"Do you not understand how bad this is going to get for you?"

"What's the supposed to mean?!"

"Do you think that this is a game? You've come back twelve times now. I've been holding back, hoping you would make the right choice. I guess I should've known better." It said, almost bitterly. "Just remember, you brought this on yourself."

Max saw it disappear from his sight. A few seconds later, two small, brown objects fell down into the cell, causing him to jump back in surprise. One of them bounced, and rolled away from him, but the other hit the ground and burst open. His eyes went wide, and he backed away from the objects until his back pressed against the smooth wall. The room was filled with an angry buzzing, burnt red wasps climbing out of the honeycomb of their nests and taking flight.

"Tomorrow when I double the number of nests." It said, Max barely hearing it as he watched the long-legged bugs with a rising terror. The trapdoor fell back into place with a loud thud, sealing Max in the room with the wasps.

Max stood frozen, afraid to so much as move. As a kid, he'd gotten into a devil nest without realizing what it was and got a bunch of particularly bad stings from wasps just like the ones that were slowly filling the room. He'd been in pain for weeks, and ever since, he'd felt abject fear at even a glimpse of one. One time, he had refused to go out in the barn for a week when he'd discovered the wasp nest in the hayloft. Only once his dad had knocked it down, and assured Max repeatedly the wasps were gone, did Max even dare to venture in. Now here he was, trapped with no way out, and the wasps were slowly spreading out from their abused nests.

Max had to duck as a wasp buzzed around his head. His mind became utterly consumed with the desire to escape, so he began frantically searching the walls for any sign of a door, splitting his attention between having to periodically dodge the angry wasps still circling the room, looking for anyone to hurt for damaging their nests, and finding any possible way out. It was quickly clear to him, though, that there was no door. The walls were too smooth, too perfect. There wasn't even the hint of a seam where a door could be, which meant that the only possible way out of the room was the trapdoor in the ceiling. That was no option, because the nests themselves sat directly under it, and the ceiling was several feet above his head. There was no way he was going to be able to get out that way.

Panic began to build in his gut. There was nowhere to run, and he didn't even have something he could use to try and kill the wasps without being stung. Then he remembered that he couldn't get hurt, and the thought calmed him a little. At least, until he felt spindly legs crawl along the back of his neck, and he shouted, ducking his shoulders and moving blindly away from the wasp, whirling around to frantically find it, and horrifyingly finding there were actually four flying around the area he had occupied a second ago. He looked around for a safer spot, but the walls were now crawling with wasps, and the nests in the center of the room were still humming with activity. The best he could do was keep moving around the room in a nearly blind panic, searching for the places which had the fewest wasps, fighting the instinct to swat at them whenever he felt one land on him. It seemed increasingly impossible to avoid them landing on his head, his tail, basically everywhere that wasn't covered by his clothing, and probably on his clothing where he couldn't feel it too.

He restlessly circled the room, trying in vain to keep track of where they all were, trying not to break down in distress. There was no sense of time to him, only the numerous wasps and their threatening buzzing that hummed above the rush of blood in his ears.

When Max blinked and found himself back in the training room, he shuddered with relief. His hands were shaking, reflecting his fluttering heart. He went rigid as he swore he felt a wasp crawling on his tail, but when he looked nothing was there. Putting his head in his hands, Max closed his eyes and tried to will himself to calm down. He looked over to Alva, who still had their eyes closed. He figured they were probably still under the effects of Focal, so he waited a few minutes, his heart slowing down and hands steadying themselves. A gasp, no more than a sharp intake of breath beside him made him turn back to Alva, finding them breathing harder than they should've been, staring stoically into space.

"You okay, Alva?"

Alva closed their eyes. "Yes, I'm fine."

Alva didn't seem fine to Max. They were tense, and not in a way that looked like mere muscle stiffness. "Are you sure?"

"I think I'd know if I'm fine." They said testily.

"Sorry." Max said, opting to sit in silence, waiting for Alva to get up and do their strange stretching routine. When they'd finished, he followed them out to the dining hall. During the meal, Alva offered no conversation, which was odd. Max could hardly recall a day in which they didn't talk constantly through a meal, and yet now they were stonily silent, eating joylessly.

Back in the house, Max wanted to go to bed, but given they were still mad at him, he thought it best to try and bridge whatever gap had just opened up between them. "Wanna beat me at a game of bridge?" Max said, giving Alva a half smile.

Alva paused for a moment, studying Max. Their face was neutral, but Max got the impression from the way they searched his eyes that they were looking for something. Max found himself looking down at the ground, avoiding the intense stare. "Hm." They said, looking away from him. "I would be happy to play a few hands."

The two of them sat down at the table and played. They were largely quiet, Max catching Alva watching him on several occasions. As before, he lost handily in the seven hands they played, Max allowing them to play more hands than normal, waiting for Alva to decide they'd had enough.

It was the end of the seventh hand, when Alva played the last of their cards and caused Max to throw down his hand in exasperation, when Alva spoke. "I think that's enough for the evening. I don't want you to hate this game so much you'll refuse to play with me in the future." They gave Max a faint smile. "You are getting better though."

Max didn't feel like he was getting better. "I guess."

"But you are. That was a clever play, dropping your aces like that. You must understand that I've been playing this game my whole life. You're doing very well for someone who's only been playing it for, what, two weeks now?"

"Yeah."

"I know you're ready to sleep, so I'll let you go to bed." Max started to help them gather the cards back up, but they shook their head. "I'll put these away, you head to bed. Goodnight."

Max nodded, rubbing an eye. "Thanks. 'Night."

Max left Alva to finish picking up the cards, Alva seeming to take their time with the task. They were only just getting the cards into a neat stack by the time Max closed his door, shutting himself into his room. He breathed a sigh of relief once he was in bed. He'd been ready to sleep hours ago, but at least staying up to play cards had seemingly helped improve Alva's mood, for whatever that was worth. He felt satisfied that losing a couple hours of sleep was worth mending what friendship he had with Alva.