New Caleb crouched in the dirt and started drawing an outline with his right forefinger.

  Right-handed. He’s got this act down to the smallest detail.

  “This is broadly the complex’s layout…” New Caleb said.

  “The complex?” Caleb asked.

  Why are you asking so many questions? Every five goddamn seconds.

  Not knowing so much was making him nauseous. He was constantly on the back-foot. It was like he had just walked off a whirligig at the amusement park. He was dizzy, trying not to puke, squinting through the strobing rainbow lights.

  “Yeah, so we’re underground right now. The wooden chapel you saw from the woods…”

  The fucker’s in my memories.

  “… it’s hiding the basement beneath. That’s where we are now.”

  “Back in the dark…” Oliver was clearly as frustrated as Caleb.

  “Back up the stairs, it is.” Johnson said. “I don’t like it. From a tactical perspective. Leaves us too exposed.”

  “Aha!” New Caleb thrust his finger into the air. “There’s a goods lift. As long as we’ve got a man, or woman, on each side, we’ll be able to see what’s coming.”

  “Better.” Johnson stroked his mustache. “But reliant on the mechanism.”

  “It’s a rudimentary pulley system, yes.”

  So they can just snap the rope?” Kayleigh mimed falling into the abyss.

  “Just as easily as they can snap your neck, I guess. It’s kind of a defeatist attitude, but whatever.”

  Caleb chuckled. It was as if New Caleb was directly plugged into his consciousness. He said the kind of things that he thought with the kind of assertiveness he wished he had. Caleb Plus, almost.

  Behind them, metal jingled against metal. Caleb looked back to find that Dave started to root through the pile of the dead. He was amassing a helpful stockpile. Caleb spied 6 ink ribbons, among bundles of bandages and assorted keys and trinkets.

  “What have you found there, Dave?”

  “I thought we should make a habit of taking stuff from their pockets.”

  Caleb saw the ink ribbons and had a single thought.

  We haven’t saved in so long.

  He caught Kayleigh’s eye and could tell she was thinking the same thing. “Let’s all take one of these,” she said, disappearing one into her inventory. “Only Caleb’s saved at all. If we die, what then?”

  New Caleb shrugged. “Back to the beginning.” Caleb didn’t like the way he said it. Too flippant. But then again, how could he appreciate the sanctity of life when he’d been grown in the mud from some ungodly ooze?

  “There are a lot of wheels here.” Oliver muttered, poking his way through the scrapheap.

  “Like the one you found." Caleb said to Kayleigh. “Did you find a use for it?” Kayleigh shook her head.

  “When I root through my… I don’t know what you’d call it…”

  “Your inventory?”

  “I guess. Anyway, a sentence or two pops up. Let me see…”

  Kayleigh’s eyes rolled into the back of her head. The group let out a little gasp.

  I guess this is what accessing the menu looks like…

  With a blank expression of a blind seer, Kayleigh recited the item description: “A small wooden pendant depicting the wheel of rebirth. Among the clvt of Ravenswood, it symbolises the evolution of man. Could this be used to unlock your potential?”

  “Unlock your potential…” Caleb repeated. Johnson stroked his chin.

  “I’ve not seen a lock that would accept a carved wheel like that.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t unlock a door. Or a standard door, at least.”

  New Caleb pointed at his temple. “Expect puzzles.”

  Johnson nodded, his expression grave. “Mhmm…”

  Caleb crouched down to the pile and rooted through it. He found little bundles of herbs that the others had ignored and helped himself.

  When I get a moment to myself, he thought. I need to experiment with mixing these…

  He took a small silver chain, again marked with the wheel of rebirth.

  A battle cry echoed through the chamber. Caleb turned back to see a cloaked cvltist rampage into the room, his axe held high. The axe-tip gleamed - he took better care of it than the others. New Caleb stepped into the onslaught, crouched down and took the man out at the legs. He sprawled to the floor, the dull end of the axe-head knocking him for six.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Woah.” Kayleigh said. Caleb didn’t want to admit it, but it was a smooth move.

  “How did you move like that?” Oliver asked. “I can’t get my body to react to what my brain tells it. Not like that. That’s like… like how we were on our homeworld.”

  Kayleigh snorted. “Well, not you specifically, Oliver.”

  He scowled back.

  New Caleb shrugged. He started to speak, then stuttered on the first syllable. “I’m not flesh and blood, I guess.”

  For the first time, Caleb saw fallibility in his clone.

  New Caleb picked up the axe. “If any of you are squeamish,” he raised the axe high. “Look away now.” “He separated the head from the body in one fell swoop.

  “Hey Dave,” he picked the head up and threw it towards the robot. “Catch.”

  Dave caught the head and crushed it like a watermelon. “100 points.”

  Kayleigh had, against New Caleb’s advice, watched the beheading and subsequent squashing. Her face now a pallid green as she tried to suppress the urge to throw up. Caleb took her hand as she slowly sat down - half a controlled fall.

  New Caleb watched them all carefully.

  Is he concerned? Or just keeping tabs?

  “We should move.” New Caleb made his way towards the exit. “More will be here when he doesn’t come back. And besides, the High Priest will be eager to see the fruits of his labor.” He swung the blood-drenched axe over his shoulder. “Let’s not disappoint him.”

  Johnson, Dave and Oliver followed him while Caleb helped Kayleigh back to her feet. “Can you stand?”

  She tutted. “Of course I can stand. I’m not totally useless.” She retched as her eyes made contact with the bloody mulch spread across the floor. “Reminds me of the morning my cat died.”

  Caleb and Kayleigh headed down the corridor. This was a place for the devoted, so it was much better kitted-out than the prison corridor Caleb stumbled down in the dark. Handsome silver torches, well-stocked with oil and commanding leaping flames lined the hallways. They illuminated deep wood carvings of men, of rituals, and of monsters.

  “It’s always tentacles,” Kayleigh remarked, spitting bile to the floor. “Sorry. Had to get rid of it.”

  “Don’t be. This place is gross as hell.”

  “Don’t lollygag, folks!” Johnson called out. Caleb had been sure to keep the group in sight while keeping enough distance to have a modicum of privacy with Kayleigh.

  “We’ve seen scarier tentacles in the trash at work.”

  Kayleigh laughed. He usually only heard it when he had just messed up a customer order. Even so, he was grateful to hear it.

  “True that,” she nodded. “Do you think we’re actually going to get back? When we were in the lab, I kinda thought we were going to stumble on a portal back home or something.”

  “God, I wish. And lemme tell you something,” he leant down to whisper in her ear, conspiratorially. “I fuckin’ hated that place.”

  She cackled like he’d just told a dirty joke. “Didn’t we all? But hey,” she punched him softly on the shoulder. “At least you had a plan to get out.” Kayleigh sighed, then fell silent.

  Only the soft thud of footsteps, and the clunk of Dave’s, echoed through the empty halls.

  Caleb broke the awkward silence. “What was your plan?”

  “No plan.” she kicked up sawdust. “That’s why I was stuck there. No family money. No family. Gotta pay the rent somehow. It’s easy to get trapped.”

  It was something Caleb heard in the news a lot, but he hadn’t ever considered it himself. He hadn’t much contemplated the world outside of his narrow back garden - with loving parents and a reasonable amount of financial support. Not much, mind, compared to some, but enough to get by. He still needed work for funbucks, but housing was never in question. And with the meagre amounts Squishburger were paying, if he needed to work there to actually live, god knows he would have been racking up the hours as well.

  “Well, if we ever get out of here, maybe you can come crash with me.”

  She laughed, mouth agape. “Are you asking me to move in with you?” Her tone was mocking but playful. “Jeez, Caleb. Take me out on a date first, at least. Do you have the crib picked out too?”

  “Aww shaddup,” he said, trying to play it off, while turning a deep shade of crimson.

  Silence settled on the group again.

  “Thanks,” Kayleigh broke it this time. “It feels good to laugh again. Although, thinking about it, it is very fuckin’ weird that it took being transported to a hellworld to get you out of that shell.”

  Caleb scratched his head. “Yeah, I appreciate that I probably could have loosened up a bit.” He did a one-man Mexican wave. “Look at me now. Loosey-goosey.”

  Kayleigh watched his dance moves in disbelief. “Yep, you sure are one heckuva goof. That is certified. You’re a card-carrying nerd.”

  They came to a dead-end. The group crowded around something Caleb and Kayleigh couldn’t see. They peered down at whatever it was like an exhibit in a petting zoo.

  “What’s the matter, guys?” Caleb filtered through the crowd to see what the fuss was about. “Why have we stopped?”

  “Your little copycat sent us the wrong way.” Johnson said.

  Dave gestured around the room. “Dead-end. And this accursed thing.”

  Caleb studied the altar in front of them. 5 black candles smoked with a spiced fragrance.

  They’re close.

  “Did you blow these out?” Caleb asked.

  Oliver shook his head. “They were like that when we got here.”

  New Caleb clucked his tongue. “Which means somebody got here before us. Set this up.”

  Kayleigh’s eyes widened as the fear set in. “It’s a trap?”

  Johnson put one hand up to silence her. “Now, we don’t know that. So let’s not get everyone riled up, y’hear?”

  Inside the circle made from the candles was a carved wooden labyrinth. It started from a small opening on the left side facing them and led to a tiny universe of endlessly winding and impenetrable pathways, leading to a small crimson circle emblazoned with the wheel of rebirth in.

  “I guess that’s where I can use my pendant?” Kayleigh said. She equipped it and held it over the labyrinth’s centre.

  “This is a miniature.” Caleb said. “Is it a map?” He thought. “Does anyone have a pencil, or some paper? Something to write with?”

  “We could break open one of these?” Oliver held up the ink ribbon. Caleb weighed up the pros and cons.

  “No, it’s too risky. It’s as good as an extra life. We need to keep it in case the worst happens.”

  Oliver shrugged, then returned it to his inventory. “We don’t even know when we’ll get a chance to use them again. I don’t see any Save Rooms around here, is all I’m saying.”

  “Wait, over here.” New Caleb ran his hands over the timber walls, which had been scorched black as a crude protective layer. Charcoal was waterproof, after all.

  The group huddled round to see a faint outline in the charcoal, exposing virgin wood, in the shape and size as Kayleigh’s wheel of rebirth.

  “Try it.” New Caleb said.

  Demanded…

  Kayleigh equipped the wheel of rebirth and held it up to the engraving. Like a magnet, it jumped into place. The wheel disappeared into the blackened wood, turning into it like a screw.

  Nothing else happened.

  Then, Kayleigh stepped back then walked to the wall on the left side of the miniature labyrinth.

  “C’mon guys,” she called.

  The men exchanged worried glances.

  “Kayleigh,” Caleb broke the news. “We don’t see anything.”

  “Huh? You guys don't see that entrance there? Look!”

  And with those words, Kayleigh walked right through the wall.