37. Circles (Patreon)

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Milo punches. His knuckles stop half an inch from the cell wall. He turns, rotates at the hips, and raises his left arm to block an imaginary attack coming towards his face. His hips rotate again, as he winds over the opponent’s arm to capture it before swinging back into a throw. He steps forward with a low kick—noting where the equations stop glowing—and continues forward to address the next attacker with a pair of palms to the torso.

His legs shake. His shoulder burns. The part of his mind always measuring tells him that he’s repeated this sequence from the Second Circle seventy-one times. At an average of eleven minutes twenty three seconds per sequence, that’s 13.47 hours. He’s rested in between, but it’s hard to settle—let alone sleep—under all this stone. He needs to keep moving. To stop is to panic. His body needs time to recover though. Soon. One more sequence, and then he’ll stop. He’ll lie down and hold his fear for as long as possible. And when he can’t hold anymore, he’ll start the next sequence.

The door opens. Milo turns to see the outline of a giant framed by light from the corridor—Sab. The necessary calculations link together, and Milo is suddenly running, condensing the equations in his body to duck under Sab’s arms. The map in his head unfolds. It’s woefully incomplete but the best he could do under the circumstances. Sprinting, Milo pelts down the corridor, turns left, and uses his long legs to take the stairs three at a time. Corridor after corridor, calculations point to the most efficient path for each turn. They do their best to conserve his momentum.

He surprises two people wearing masks and dives between them. The equations transform the leap into a roll, and he comes up running. Behind him, Sab knocks the two aside with a grunt.

Lights and doors flash by. Milo’s breath is as steady as he can make it, focusing all his attention on the synchronization of his body with the environment around it. He jumps and uses a wall to make the next turn. He gets ten feet before realizing there’s a door in the way. His hands reach for the handle, but it’s locked and inertia crashes him into the door. Sab comes around the corner, not slowing down. The giant drops his center and spreads his arms wide in a flying tackle. Milo is picked up and slammed into the door a second time. The door squeals in protest.

Dazed, Milo tries to slip free, but Sab’s grip is enormous. He pins Milo and knees him in the stomach. A big, meaty hand smashes into Milo’s face. The world goes sideways and sparkles. Sab hits him again for good measure, flickering Milo’s consciousness.

The equations are all in disarray as he’s dragged step-by-step from one corridor to the next, down one stairwell to another, until they reach a room too big and too well-lit to be his cell. Milo is picked up and strapped to a table. They bind his arms, his legs, and his head. The table swings upright for a dizzying view of his captors—Sab wearing a black mask and two others guarding a door. There’s another table occupied, and in between is a cart like you’d find in a hospital operating room. A collection of tools is being sterilized in a bowl of alcohol. A comfortable chair faces the two tables. The panic that Milo had been holding inside starts to slip free.

The occupant of the other table says, “It’s okay, Milo. You’ll be all right. I’ve seen it.”

He doesn’t understand the words at first. It takes time to piece them together, but the voice is familiar, and the equations coalesce to tell him that it’s Noor. She’s shaved her head, and there’s a line of stitches across her scalp. Dark circles, nearly black, are under her eyes.

The guarded door opens, and the Scholar walks through. Sitting in the chair, he says, “I was hoping to wait and make this a more pleasant experience, but time presses us all. We must move forward by as direct a means as possible.”