on the stone wall, as if it had been carved in flames, were two lines of verse.
“‘What a day for an auto-da-fé,’” Persey read.
“That’s from Candide!” Mackenzie squealed, showing a disturbing amount of levity considering the decapitated body oozing gore just a few feet from her. “I sing ‘Glitter and Be Gay’ at auditions all the time.”
Persey ignored her. “What’s an auto-da-fé?”
“An act of faith,” Riot said, his voice suddenly hoarse.
“During the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, that usually meant a public execution…” Shaun said. A tremor had crept into his monotone.
Persey didn’t like the sound of this. “Executed how?”
“By burning.”
As soon as he said the words, Persey felt the entire floor shake beneath her. This time, there was no mistaking the jolt. Was it an earthquake? Those didn’t happen much in Las Vegas. She crouched, lowering her center of gravity to keep her balance, and just as she was about to make a break for the wall and press herself against it, one of the floor sections dropped away.
“Holy shit!” Wes cried. He was nearest to the newly formed hole and scrambled away from it. Almost immediately, another section at the opposite side of the room also dislodged from the floor, opening a gaping wound in the ground. Then another. Another. Persey watched in horror as a dozen of the huge wooden slabs disappeared into the darkness below the room.
Except it wasn’t really darkness that swallowed the missing floorboards. The new gaps in the floor flooded the Cavethedral with an orangey-yellow light emanating from below. The peppered, hickory scent of a campfire wafted upward along with choking black smoke. There was a fire raging beneath their feet.
Persey leaned tentatively over the nearest hole, trying to get a look at what was down there. Heat seared her face as scorching air rushed upward, but in the split second before Persey had to pull away, she saw what appeared to be an industrial furnace with the top removed. The flames were fed by the wood from the floor that had already dropped away.
“Auto-da-fé,” Persey said, her voice hardly above a whisper. Death by burning. This can’t be happening.
“Nobody move!” Kevin cried. He was on his feet now, crouching to maintain his balance.
“Just stand by and wait to be dropped down there?” Wes said. “No thanks.” He was about to step toward the wall when the wooden platform beside him, the one he was nanoseconds away from shifting his weight onto, released and fell away.
“Or not,” Kevin said.
Persey, meanwhile, couldn’t move if she wanted to. She was petrified.
“How did they work?” Persey said, forcing her brain to function even if her body wouldn’t. “These auto-da-fé things?”
“They lit you on fire,” Mackenzie replied. She was scared, but not too scared for a dig. “What’s there to know?”
“Like, the process.” Smartass. “It might give us a clue as to what we’re supposed to do.”
“It was a public ritual,” Shaun said. His voice quivered, his eyes locked onto the empty hole in the ground beside him. Shaun-bot might have been terrified, but thankfully he could still access his memory banks. “The accused would be paraded through a public square, their crimes of heresy, usually confessed under torture, would be read out loud, and then the guilty would be executed.”
Shit. Well, they couldn’t parade around the room with half the floor gone, and the execution part was something Persey was hoping to avoid, so that left only one thing.
“Confession.”
“Good call,” Riot said. “But confess what?”
Persey wasn’t sure, but there was only one place to start. “I cheated on a test,” she said, her voice clear and strong. “The entry exam for a private school. It was my dad’s idea, to make sure I got in, but I went along with it.”
There was a pause while Persey’s confession hung in the air. She held her breath, hoping that was the worst thing she’d have to confess that day; then with a metallic creaking from whatever mechanical contraption controlled the floor slabs, the nearest wooden section slid toward her, stopping flush against the one she was balanced on.
Mackenzie stared at the fake stone as if it was possessed. “The. Fuck.”
“Step on it,” Shaun said. “See if it will hold your weight.”
Kevin snorted. “What if it plummets into the inferno?”
“Then we’ll know it doesn’t.”
Gee, thanks.
Kevin laughed. “You step on it.”
“If I was close enough to jump without the risk of falling, I would consider it.” His words were confident, but Shaun’s voice sounded strange, like his tongue wasn’t working correctly.