she could think of was her birthday—two-digit month, two-digit day. Feeling that this was too simple but unable to come up with an alternative, she typed in the numbers.
BZZZZZ.
Once again, the O2 bar shortened.
Damn it. Last four digits of her social security number?
BZZZZZ.
The O2 indicator was at the halfway point now, and Persey definitely felt as if the room was hotter. Her back and chest were damp as she peeled off her denim jacket, letting it drop to the floor beside her, and her breaths were getting shallower by the second. The air was heavy and hot, forcing her lungs to work overtime, and she felt dizzy. Like she wanted to lie down on the floor. Just for a minute (forever).
That’s when it hit her: the O2 bar? It indicated the oxygen level in the room. Every time she inputted the wrong answer, the game cut off some of her breathable air.
It had taken three missteps to get to the halfway point. What would happen when the bar dropped to zero?
Persey wasn’t sure she wanted to know. This was just a game, right? No one is supposed to get hurt.
She wasn’t going to think about that. The faux danger was just a distraction, something to prevent her from figuring out this puzzle. She needed to focus.
“Seven minutes.”
Seven? Where had eight gone? Crap, she was losing track of time already. There had to be a clue she was missing. Somehow. Her initial feeling that the competition began the moment she stepped off the plane came back to her, and as the beads of sweat on her forehead began to trickle down her face, she attempted to remember every detail from the moment she saw Greg at the bottom of the escalator until the lights came on in her closet-like ATM room. Had Greg said anything? Or Leah?
This is a test of your aptitude. Some of your strengths are tactile, others scholastic, but whatever your talent, I wish you good luck.
Leah’s last words before they all entered Office Drones. It had felt weird at the time, and the words “test,” “aptitude,” and “scholastic” jumped out at her. Were they the key to the solution?
Test. Aptitude. Scholastic.
Scholastic. Aptitude. Test.
Persey’s eyes grew wide. How could they even have that information? Was the key to getting out of that suffocation closet her freaking SAT score?
A new panic washed over her. Unlike the rest of the contestants, who probably had their super-high SAT scores proudly tattooed on their bodies somewhere, Persey had taken the test under duress—a devil’s bargain—and had hardly registered what her crappy score had been, she cared so little about it. Had she even broken four digits? Yes, she vaguely recalled that it was one thousand and something…. Her dad had repeated her score over and over, not out of pride but because he couldn’t believe how low it was.
What had he said? That a fourth grader could have managed that score just by filling out the name and address portions correctly.
Persey had wanted to tell him that he should sit through an SAT exam and see how well he did, but instead she’d just stared at the pattern on the marble countertop, the little gray smudges and squiggles arranging themselves into familiar shapes. An eagle in flight. Bunny slippers. A space shuttle.
Not the quartz, Persey. What was the score her dad kept repeating?
Numbers swirled before her eyes, mocking her, as her oxygen-deprived brain desperately tried to remember. She leaned against the wall to keep her body steady and upright—all she wanted to do was lie down and take a nap instead of being forced to recall unpleasant events from her past.
One thousand and…sixty? No, that wasn’t right. One thousand and eighty?
One thousand and eighty? Are you kidding me? Did you manage to misspell your name on the test?
There was only one way to find out.
With a trembling hand, Persey managed to type in 1-0-8-0 Enter.
Instead of the dreaded buzz, the ATM swung away from her into the next room.
PERSEY STARED AT THE NEON-PINK FLYER FOR A FULL TWO minutes, fluttering in the hot afternoon breeze of the West Valley quad. As she read the text for the fortieth time, the tingles of excitement at the tips of her fingers were tempered somewhat by the gurgling of anxiety deep in the pit of her stomach.
He’ll never let you.
Why her father cared what she did was a mystery. When he wasn’t obsessed with work, practically living at the office for large stretches of time