Page 109 of The Bonding Games: Part 2

I can hardly hear past my pounding heart, it’s rhythm overwhelming my senses.

“Faster!” Ezla barks, ten steps ahead of us as we sprint down one of the many long black halls of the maze. It’s identical to every other, and we’ve already met three dead ends. Ezla’s been doing exceptionally well as always, but this maze has already crashed my brain’s lights out with its complexity, and she can’t always get everything right first try. Not here.

“I—I can’t!” Alby pants out from the back of our group. “I’ve—never run—this—f-fast before!”

None of us have, and that’s the real issue here. This maze is absolutely humongous. Never-ending. We can all run for ages at a decent pace, but it feels as though we’ve crossed a hundred miles in the eight minutes we’ve been moving.

Arms and legs pumping as fast as humanly possible, I manage to get out with what little breath I have, “Just a—little further—Alby!” And I don’t know that for sure, but I have to believe it, because they all look to me, and we need this hope right now.

Ezla rounds the corner, and relief crashes into me from her so forcefully that I almost topple right over. My legs are hardly holding me up as it is.

Her voice comes a moment later to confirm what I already suspected: Hurry! The middle is here!

With a burst of energy, I force my aching legs to go faster. They’re in the kind of pain, the kind of strain, where they almost feel numb, and I’m sure they’re going to go the fuck to sleep after this for a long, long nap. And there will be an after this. I refuse to accept any other outcome.

After rounding the corner, I let out a breathless laugh to see a large rectangular space at the end of this hall, the middle of which contains a two-inch-thick platform large enough for about ten average-sized Players to stand on comfortably. It’s iridescent, like Avri pixels are in their original form, and it honestly looks like a slice of fucking heaven right now.

Alby cries out, and my neck snaps around when we’re halfway down the wide hall, seeing Tate, who’s second last in our group, the size of him making it harder to maintain a decent pace for a long time, turning and catching him before he can fall over.

Careful, my shy boy, Ezla hisses as we keep running, the weakness in my legs more obvious to me now after they’d faltered when I’d checked on Alby. None of you will be on the taalk when the countdown reaches all zeroes. Keep moving for me. Come to me.

Obeying her as always, all of us force ourselves to our limits.

“Thirty seconds remaining.”

“Fuck!” Cooper rasps beside me.

A step behind us, Tiger gasps out, “We can—make it!”

You will make it. There is no other option for you. You are mine, Ezla tells us firmly as she reaches the middle of the maze.

Yes, Ezzy!

Coming, HC.

We’re all coming to you, Love, I send out for all of us, and I’m more and more sure that that’s true as the platform gets bigger and bigger, clearer and clearer.

“Twenty seconds remaining.”

Ezla runs onto the platform of Avri and whirls around to face us. Come to me, my Bonds, she repeats as the Avri beneath her is taken over by inky-crimson for a moment before it returns to its default. You must only reach the platform; when we are on here, the Avri records us as successfully making it to the middle.

I meet open space a moment later, leaving the hall with my brothers behind me.

Forty feet, thirty-five, thirty, twenty-five . . . My surroundings pass by in a blur, and soon enough, my dark green energy is expanding like a splat of wet paint beneath my boot.

Doubling over, I can only suck in lungfuls of air, Cooper joining me in the same second with a wheezed curse.

“Oomph!” All the oxygen Tiger’s managed to get in exits him in one great big woosh of air as he lands flat on his front with an undignified thump after launching himself onto the platform. Oh, that’s good, he groans down the bond, uncaring about his painful landing.

A beat after that, Tate and Alby are there, more splotches of green expanding outwards from them before iridescence returns beneath our feet.

The platform starts to rise at once.

It’s smooth, but I still startle, and my hand whips out to my left instinctively to stabilise myself.

It latches onto Ezla’s slim wrist, and I tense all over, continuing to struggle for breath as I snap my head her way.

“Ten seconds remaining.”