Time was running out with a deadly speed. The phantom clock hands above the maze walls ticked with a sound no one heard, but everyone felt in their bones. Only half an hour had been allotted, and now only ten minutes remained. Sweat dripped from Mouse's forehead, trailed down his cheek, and vanished at his chin before falling onto the cold ground. He wasn't running like the others, wasn't screaming or panting madly. He first sat on the ground, placed his hand on the hard floor, and closed his single eye, as if trying to hear the maze itself breathe. He believed the earth granted balance even to thought, and that stillness was sometimes stronger than movement.
He suddenly opened his eye and stood up quickly. There was no time for long contemplation. Everything in this place was changing: the walls moved, passages closed and opened, and even the ceiling seemed to breathe. "The trick isn't just in the corridor; everything here is a trick," he muttered to himself. But he knew the real challenge was the final corridor; there, where the fifty automatons circled incessantly, like the deadly hands of a clock waiting for the moment to kill.
Mouse set off quietly, with measured steps: right, left, right, straight. He was lost at first, but gradually, he began to understand the maze's rhythm. "If the path changes, the correct path is the opposite of where I came from," he thought inwardly. It wasn't simple logic, but it was the only way out.
He returned to the center, then entered the opposite corridor. The atmosphere was suffocating, the grey walls lit up and dimmed with a faint red light every few seconds, as if warning of an imminent end. As he advanced, he glimpsed a moving shadow. He stopped. Another person was hiding at the end of the corridor, their body pressed against the wall as if fearing Death would snatch them.
Mouse approached with steady steps, and upon arriving, discovered that what he had seen wasn't the final corridor, but merely a reflective screen shaped like a door with automatons passing in front of it, placed by the game to fray the players' nerves.
Only five minutes remained. A faint whistle echoed through the place, heralding the final countdown. Then the maze exploded into chaos: players ran wildly, their screams filling the space, and automated gunfire pierced the air like an unending metallic rain. Corpses fell along the sides of the circular passages near the final line, their blood drawing random patterns on the stone floor.
Mouse kept advancing coolly, but three players followed behind him, their faces covered in fear and tension, their eyes filled with the terror of death. Mouse looked at them and said, "What are you doing? Why are you following me?" One of them said in a broken voice:
–"Why are we following you?… Because you seem calm… It seems like you know the way."
Mouse didn't respond, he just kept walking. But he had no time for emotional consideration. At the final corridor, the four stopped. Before them were the doors to salvation, but they were guarded by the automatons moving with a deadly mathematical precision. On the ground in the corridors to the left, dozens of corpses were scattered. Some had tried to run and were met with bullets, others hadn't even reached the midpoint of the corridor.
"One minute left," said one of the three players, his voice trembling. They were all on the verge of collapse, looking at Mouse as their last hope, their eyes wide as if they saw Death smiling at them. Mouse, however, seemed different: he looked at the corridor, then at the ground, then at the automatons moving in a calculated rhythm. His mind calculated, compared, measured.
He said in a low but firm voice:
–"I have a plan. We can cross."
One whispered in fear while hiding:
–"What? How?"
Mouse smiled a cold smile, then said:
–"It's a temporal gap… But we must be extremely fast. If any of you is off by even a second, we all die."
The three nodded despite their bodies shaking. They had no choice. As the final twenty seconds approached, they hid behind the corridor wall, watching the automatons' movement, waiting for Mouse's signal.
– "Three…" whispered Mouse.
–"Two…"
–"One…"
They all shot forward like arrows. The air filled with the whizzing of bullets, the ground shook under the impact of footsteps, screams pierced through the noise. Within seconds, bullets pierced the bodies of the three, and they fell to the ground one after another, their voices extinguishing with each thunderous impact. Blood splattered, and the smell of burnt metal mixed with the stench of death.
But Mouse… wasn't in the same place where they lay dead like rats. He had refused to be a rat from the start, despite his name, but he wouldn't die. He had exploited the temporal gap he spoke of, and it was achieved by obstructing the automatons' cycle by sacrificing the three players so that he could survive. That was the only possible way.
He reached the door, panting. His body was covered in sweat, his single eye gleaming fiercely. He opened the door and the lights welcomed him while the sound of gunfire bid him farewell. No one else remained.
He looked at his wristband, where his name appeared: "Mouse," and next to it a glowing red number: 51 points. He had won.
The Master's voice sounded from the loudspeaker, a cold tone devoid of any emotion:
–"No one has ever survived this game. You are the first to do it. You sacrificed three on your side."
Mouse stood silently, looking down. He showed no remorse or joy, only that stoic face that revealed nothing of what churned inside. He said nothing. He didn't raise his fist in victory, didn't smile, didn't scream. All he did was turn around quietly, then continue on his way to Room Number 11, his steps heavy yet steady, as if the entire future hung before him by unknown threads.