They stood in two straight lines, forming a corridor of fire. It led from the holding hut to the largest half-buried structure on the north side of the gorge. Their sanctuary.
The one place outsiders had not entered in generations. Max walked down the corridor of flame and hostile eyes. His legs felt weak, but his stride stayed steady.
His face was unreadable. No one needed to know the poison had affected him at all. Dara stood at the entrance to the sanctuary.
She wore ceremonial dress now—a cloak of wolf pelts and a necklace of bear claws. Her face was marked with white clay.
Beside her stood Radmila. Her eyes searched Max’s face, waiting to see a broken man. When she found only calm, one muscle in her cheek twitched.
“You stand at the threshold of truth, outsider,” Dara said, her voice carrying over the silent settlement. “Your body is strong. Your mind is clever.”
“But here…” She struck the ground before the doorway with her staff. “Neither strength nor cleverness will help you. Here only spirit speaks.”
She turned toward the heavy carved doors. “Inside is the sacred cave of our ancestors. No light. No sound.”
“Only you and those who came before us. You will enter without clothing and without weapons. The doors will close behind you.”
“You will remain there until dawn. If your spirit is weak, the darkness will break you. If you are the one we await, you will come out clear-eyed.”
Classic sensory deprivation. Total isolation from external stimuli, layered on top of exhaustion, hunger, and residual hallucinogens. For an unprepared person, it was a direct route to panic, auditory hallucinations, visual distortions, and breakdown.
For Max, it was just another environment. “Take off your clothes,” Radmila ordered. There was open satisfaction in her voice.
Max pulled off the shirt and dropped the pants. The cold autumn air bit into his skin immediately. It was marked with old scars—bullet wounds, knife wounds, shrapnel.
The women in the crowd whispered. They stared at the map of a world they did not understand. He stood before them naked, but there was nothing vulnerable in his posture.
He stood as if he were wearing armor. Dara nodded once. The heavy doors opened with a long groan.
A stale, dead underground chill came out. Max stepped inside. The doors shut behind him with a thick, final sound.
The bar dropped into place. Around him was total darkness and complete silence. He stood barefoot on cold stone.
The air was still. No draft. No smell but old dust. Max closed his eyes. No difference. Opened them again. Still none.
The first rule of sensory deprivation: do not search for outside reference points. There are none. A brain deprived of input will start generating its own.
Soon there would be sounds. Images. The only way to stop it was to give the brain work so demanding it consumed every spare resource.
Max sat down on the floor. The stone burned with cold. He crossed his legs, straightened his back, and rested his hands on his knees.
He began with breathing control. In for four. Hold for four. Out for eight. His pulse slowed.
Then he started building something in his head. He assembled his rifle mentally, piece by piece.
Receiver. Bolt carrier. Return spring. He pictured every pin and spring. The weight of each part. The feel of the metal. The smell of gun oil.
When the rifle was complete, he took it apart in his mind and built it again. From scratch.
An hour passed. Maybe two. In total deprivation, time loses shape.
The darkness began to press on him. The remnants of the drug still in his bloodstream made the edges of perception unstable. Gray flashes and sparks appeared where there was nothing to see.
His brain wanted an image. Any image. Then a sound appeared in the silence.
A whisper. “Outsider,” it said.
Max did not move. He knew exactly what it was. The brain misreading blood flow in the ears as speech. A known effect.
“You will die here, like the others.” He kept assembling the rifle in his head.
Bolt. Gas piston. Trigger group. The cold kept working into his joints. Max used the same technique he had used in the ravine.
He shut down his awareness of temperature. Shifted to math. Prime numbers. Fibonacci sequence.
Then, somewhere at the edge of perception, a smell appeared. Not dust.
Tar. Radmila. Max opened his eyes slowly.
Right in front of him, in the dark, stood a figure. This was no hallucination. The shape was solid…
