Aarav Kane stepped out of the dim hallway, his breathing steady again. Bruised, slightly limping, but alive. The Bureau wasn't giving him tests anymore—this was a gauntlet. A declaration.
The underground facility stretched before him like a maze constructed by someone who hated straight lines. Pipes hissed overhead, lights flickered in uneven rhythms, and the air smelled faintly of metal and ozone. He walked deeper until he reached something that looked very out of place in a covert intelligence building:
A massive steel door, easily ten feet tall, framed by cracked cement and reinforced hinges thicker than his arm.
But the unsettling part wasn't its size.
It was the twelve locks bolted into it—each different, each glowing faintly with blue biometric indicators.
Aarav raised an eyebrow.
"Wow. Someone definitely doesn't want me walking in. Or maybe they just don't want someone walking out."
A digital screen lit up on the wall beside the door.
"TEST 2: Cognitive and Tactical Reasoning."
Below it appeared a countdown: 30:00.
Aarav whistled. "So… solve twelve locks in thirty minutes. No pressure."
The locks weren't ordinary. Each had a unique design: some mechanical, others electronic, a few ridiculously antiquated like museum pieces—and one shaped like a riddle box carved with Sanskrit patterns.
He knelt and examined the first lock. A rotating dial combination. Easy—until he heard the faint ticking behind the metal panel.
Booby-trapped. Of course.
He listened carefully, fingertips on the cold steel, feeling the feedback in the tumblers.
"Alright, sweetheart," he whispered to the lock, "tell me your secrets."
A soft click. Then another.
Lock 1 disengaged.
He moved to the second—an electronic keypad. A shock grid hummed behind it.
Aarav smirked. "Electric shocks. Classic Bureau welcome package."
He scanned the keypad using the faint layer of dust on the surface. Four keys had lighter smudges: 1, 4, 7, 9. A typical security pattern. With his finger hovering, he traced shapes in the air.
"1-4-7-9 makes a diagonal… but Bureau trainers hate predictable patterns. So reverse diagonal?"
He pressed 9-7-4-1.
The keypad flashed green.
Lock 2 disengaged.
Time: 26:18 left.
Aarav moved faster. Lock 3 was a fingerprint scanner. Obviously rigged—he'd fail instantly. So instead, he unscrewed its outer casing with a makeshift tool from his pocket and crossed two wires inside.
Short spark. System override.
Lock 3 disengaged.
Lock 4 was trickier—a pressure-based mechanical puzzle with rotating plates engraved with symbols. The plates clicked unpredictably and one misalignment would reset all solved locks.
"Good try," he muttered, "but my childhood was literally filled with these."
He aligned the symbols based on weight distribution instead of pattern design.
Click. Lock 4 disengaged.
He kept going.
Lock 5: motion sensor bypass.
Lock 6: heat-sensitive keyhole—heated his pocket knife with a pipe until it matched.
Lock 7: old-school padlock—brute force twist.
Lock 8: retina scanner—he popped the lens plate and replaced it with its own reflection angle.
Lock 9: a magnetically sealed deadbolt—used the pipe from the last fight.
At 12:03 remaining, he reached Lock 10: the Sanskrit riddle box.
This one looked ancient, carved with precise artistry. It had no visible mechanism, just a poem etched at the top:
"Truth lies not in what you see,
But in the shadow behind what is hidden."
Aarav leaned back.
"Poetry. My natural enemy."
He tilted the box toward the dim overhead light, watching where shadows fell. The carvings cast intricate patterns. But only one line of shadow remained constant, no matter how he turned it.
He pressed that etched line.
The box unfolded silently like petals of a metallic flower.
Lock 10 disengaged.
Lock 11 was a biometric voice sample requirement.
Aarav exhaled.
"You guys seriously want me to do impressions now?"
He replayed Soren's recorded voice from earlier—the intercom message he'd heard. The hallway's acoustic bounce had given him a clean sample.
He played it back through a tiny speaker he'd unscrewed from the earlier keypad system.
The door accepted it.
Lock 11 disengaged.
Finally, Lock 12.
And this one wasn't a lock.
It was a camera.
A text box appeared on the screen:
"FINAL QUESTION: Are you ready to face the thing behind this door?"
Aarav stared at it.
No traps. No tricks. Just a question.
He smirked.
"I've been ready since the minute you dragged me into this place."
He pressed YES.
All twelve mechanisms whirred and unlocked in sequence. The heavy door groaned open, releasing a gust of cold air that smelled like dust, metal… and something darker.
Aarav tightened his jacket.
Behind the door, the room was pitch black.
Whatever waited in that darkness… wasn't a test anymore.