Turns out, the first trial was taxing as hell — Physically taxing, anyways. Workouts. Pushups, situps, crunches, squats, 50 laps around the entire perimeter of the Meadows and run-in-place — All of this lasted for only about 4 hours, but, to Austin, it felt like an eternity.
By the time Austin finished his first trial, he was ready to collapse — the Sun, which was a bit past overhead, burning the sweat out of him.
"Very good," Aaron encouraged Austin during the break between the first and second trial. Austin was eating an apple – 2 actually – a loaf of hardened bread and a flask of warm water he was wishing was cooler for his lunch. "As a scout, you will have to learn to pace your energy reserve and be at top performance at all times. Just cuz Annihilators are mostly active at night doesn't mean you won't encounter one during daytime, too — And there's the chance you'd run into Savagers, or worse, their leaders, the Bane Brothers.
"No, you must be able to push your body to the limits at will and to defend yourself when it becomes necessary," Aaron said, shaking his head in resolution. "We scouts use the buddy system. If you remember nothing else, remember this: Every travel in pairs when entering the Labyrinth. There's safety in numbers — survival is in numbers. Consider this your first lesson."
'Buddy system, huh?' Austin thought when he was instantly reminded that Aaron hasn't had a partner someone to pair up with to enter the Labyrinth since Jackson. When he asked Aaron about it, Aaron immediately got defensive. "I'm the overseer of the scouts. I don't need a partner. There's no one else in this place that knows the Labyrinth better than me. Drop this and focus on eating your food."
With a shrug, Austin decided to not think more on it. If the topic was too sensitive for Aaron, then so be it. Afterall, it wasn't necessarily Austin's business anyway.
As Austin finished his second apple, he couldn't help but wonder what the second trial would turn out to be.
The second trial was located to the southeast of the village tenting area, a few feet east of the Greylands, where a building Austin hadn't noticed the first day stood. Aaron called it the 'Flat Shack,' but, instead of wood or planks like sounded like it'd have, it was made out of concrete and was built into the ground where likely most of the space inside was located, as outside, it was more like a smooth top of a box than a story-sized building. Austin spotted a glass window squaring the bit of the wall not built into the ground; there was light coming from inside that Austin could make out, but it was still blurry for a window. A pair of steel metal trap doors that vaguely reminded Austin of submarine doors, resided at the top of the concrete roofing, only these doors were both rectangular and opened outwardly.
"Are you just gonna stand there lookin' lost or join me inside?" Aaron, who was standing the vaulted trap door, teased at Austin, before beckoning Austin to join him at the entrance.
As Austin went to join Aaron inside, he noticed there were stairs directly beneath the trap doors, leading into the inner darkness of the interior of the Flat Shack. And, as they descended down, Austin found his nerves beginning to bubble in anticipation. He wondered what this place had to do with the second trial. He was so lost in his thoughts that he nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard Aaron, who was ahead of him, spoke.
"You know, this place — the Flat Shack — is an exclusive place to enter," the boy said, but Austin could barely see his outline in the deep black, lightless dark, and his nerves only seemed to become more sensitive in anticipation, though Austin had no idea why he was so jumpy — Other than walking into a concrete, underground bunker with no lighting and only accompanied by basically a stranger he'd just met the day before, there was no reason why he'd suddenly become so jumpy.
Sensing his blockage from asking for an elaboration, Aaron continued talking. "Only Stryker, Reya and maybe the other Overseers are allowed down here, them and my scouts of course, and maybe, now, you, too — That is, if you can pass the Trials, of course."
After what felt like hours, but could only have been a couple of seconds, they reached the bottom step, where Aaron flipped a switch and a faint glow of a light illuminated the room from above where a single lightbulb hung, providing the shack with light.
The shack was two stories high inside, with 2 floors, each accessible via the only stairway that led in and out of the flat shack — it was also the one that the two of them had just walked down. The walls were concrete; the top floor was made of wooden planks that made creaking sounds when one walked on it, while the bottom floor was made of concrete cement. Along the first floor's walls were computer screens and display monitors and a few keyboards on top of tables. There were chairs and dressers and cabinet boxes lining the walls, where papers of what looked like roughly drawn blueprints of a giant maze were messily laid inside and strewn outside these dressers and cabinets, and all around them.
The bottom floor had a few metal crates that reminded Austin of the ones that were in his cell. With a start, he'd realised that they were very much by the same people — they had the same logo on their lids as the ones he'd seen in his cell. Only these had green and red strips on them with "Warning" on them.
"Are these—," Austin began.