it even mattered since it was as dark with her lids down as with them up—and counted. One. Two. Three. Four. Five…
“Ten minutes.”
The lights inside the chamber flared to life with such ferocity that a searing pain ripped through Persey’s eyeballs, like a dagger driving straight to her brain. Seriously, again? Even with her lids closed, she let out a groan as her heavily dilated pupils screamed against the onslaught. She peeled one corner of her left eye open, exposing it to a piercing white-yellow glow, then snapped it shut again.
Another tactic to keep her unbalanced, the utter darkness and the blinding light in alternation. She had to do it like a Band-Aid. Rip it off in one swift pull. With a deep breath, Persey opened her eyes.
The wall in front of her appeared blurry at first, but as her eyes focused, and her pupils raced to resize themselves, the panel came into view. There was a number pad embedded in the wall, angled at forty-five degrees with an old LCD screen beside it. Pixelated white letters scrolled across the blue background, spelling out “Welcome to the Bank of Persephone” and above it were two stationary readouts in each corner of the screen: on the left, a countdown clock, starting at ten minutes, and on the right, a bar graph like the battery indicator on her phone, but labeled O2.
The Individual Challenge had begun.
Unfortunately, it was a stressful start. Persey groaned as she registered what the O2 bar graph must mean. She was about as good at chemistry as she was at math, so if this test involved some kind of reaction calculation, she was pretty much screwed. Puzzles and patterns? Those seemed to come naturally to Persey, but the academic stuff triggered her anxiety. She knew enough to identify the O2 as a measure of oxygen, but other than that, she had no idea. Was the required code the atomic number of oxygen? That seemed too easy….
Persey tried to picture the periodic table of elements with its distinctive rainbow-hued squares and U shape. She’d stared at that table for hours, trying to memorize the letters and numbers in each square before her chemistry final last year. Which she (barely) passed. Oxygen was one of the basic elements. Lighter. Near the top. What was that saying her chemistry teacher had drilled into them to help the class remember the order?
Henry Helps Little Betty Brown Crack Nuts On Friday Nights.
Her inner eight-year-old always snickered when she got to “crack nuts,” but the potentially dirty mnemonic had done its job. O for oxygen, which was eighth in line, so that meant an atomic weight of eight.
Persey’s hand hovered over the keypad. Eight seemed too easy. Too simple. This was the All-Stars for Chrissakes. The rest of the competitors wouldn’t need a stupid mnemonic device to remember what order the elements were in. They probably could recite every number in each of those little periodic squares as easily as Persey could say the alphabet. No, there had to be something else.
“Nine minutes.” The sickly-sweet female voice filled the room. As in Office Drones, there were speakers somewhere in her tiny prison, but Persey didn’t have time to search for them. Don’t let the clock get to zero. Part of Leah’s instructions. Persey had to figure this out in nine minutes or less.
Okay, the design had to be the first clue. It was an ATM machine, and the keypad was where you’d enter your PIN. Your four-digit PIN. Great! So she needed four numbers.
Next, her eyes drifted up to the O2 bar. What did that mean? Oxygen. But two atoms of oxygen. Right, so that would be twice the weight, or sixteen.
Still, Persey hesitated. She only had two digits. 0-0-1-6? That seemed stupid. But it wasn’t as if she had any other options. Besides, maybe typing in the wrong answer would give her a clue about the right one? It was worth a try.
Persey quickly typed in the digits.
A short buzzer blared through the speakers, indicating that Persey’s answer was incorrect. On the screen, the O2 bar shortened a notch.
What did that mean?
Think, Persey.
The words continued to scroll across the screen, catching Persey’s eye. The Bank of Persephone. That had to be a clue. The bank was her. The PIN to withdraw funds had to be related, in some way, to her. But how?
Persey’s face felt damp with perspiration. Was the temperature in the room rising?
Okay, ignore the temperature. The most logical four-digit code