NEXUS TRIAL: The Rise of Liam Parker

The Bridge of Ten Thousand

The sensation of information pouring directly into Liam’s consciousness was unlike anything he had ever experienced before, and for a few disorienting seconds he thought he might pass out from the overwhelming flood of data. His vision swam with translucent displays showing statistics and numbers and words that he somehow understood despite never having seen anything like them before, and the wristband on his arm pulsed with a steady rhythm that seemed to sync with his heartbeat. When the initial rush finally subsided he found himself staring at a screen that only he could see, floating in the air in front of him with information about something called his player profile.

The profile showed his name and age along with a series of attributes that had numerical values assigned to them, things like strength and agility and intelligence and perception, all of which were ranked on a scale that apparently went up to one hundred. Liam’s numbers were painfully average across the board, mostly sitting in the range of eight to twelve, with his highest stat being intelligence at fifteen and his lowest being strength at seven. There was also a level indicator showing him as level one with zero experience points, and below that was a section for skills and abilities that was currently completely empty.

Around him other people were having similar reactions to putting on their wristbands, some gasping in shock while others stood perfectly still with glazed expressions as they absorbed whatever information the system was feeding them. The girl who had been standing next to him earlier had her wristband on now and was waving her hand through the air as if interacting with screens that Liam couldn’t see, and her expression had shifted from fear to fascination. The timer above the silver figure’s head hit zero and the remaining pedestals sank back into the floor, taking the unclaimed wristbands with them.

“Participants have been confirmed at nine thousand seven hundred and forty two individuals,” the figure announced while the people who hadn’t taken wristbands began fading from view like ghosts dispersing in morning light. “Non participants are being returned to their origin points and will have no memory of this encounter. Participants will now be transported to the first trial location. Prepare yourselves.”

Before Liam could process what was happening the entire room seemed to dissolve around him and his stomach lurched as if he had just dropped from a great height. The sensation lasted only a heartbeat and then suddenly he was standing somewhere completely different, surrounded by thousands of other people who all looked just as shocked and disoriented as he felt. The girl from before stumbled and nearly fell but caught herself, and she looked over at Liam with an expression that was equal parts terror and excitement.

They were standing on what appeared to be an enormous bridge that stretched as far as Liam could see in both directions, impossibly long and wide enough to accommodate the massive crowd that had materialized here. The bridge was constructed from the same metallic material as the warehouse interior had been, but here it was semi transparent and allowed views of what lay beneath them. Liam made the mistake of looking down and immediately wished he hadn’t because there was nothing below the bridge except an endless void of swirling darkness that made his head spin and his legs feel weak.

The sky above them was equally strange and alien, a purple and orange gradient that shifted and moved like a living thing, and there were no visible stars or sun or any other celestial bodies that might give him a sense of where or when they were. The temperature was comfortable despite the complete absence of any weather patterns, and the air tasted faintly metallic in a way that reminded Liam of the smell before a lightning storm. Everything about this place screamed wrong to his basic human instincts but the wristband on his arm pulsed reassuringly as if telling him that this was where he was supposed to be.

“What is this place?” the girl asked while spinning in a slow circle to take in their surroundings. “Where are we? This can’t be Earth anymore right?”

Liam shook his head because he had no answers to give her and was asking himself the same questions. Other people around them were having similar conversations or simply standing in shocked silence as they tried to comprehend what had happened to them. A man in his thirties nearby was frantically swiping at his wristband and shouting demands to be sent home, while a teenage boy not much older than Liam was laughing with a wild edge that suggested he was close to losing his grip on sanity.

The silver figure from before materialized in the air above the bridge hovering impossibly without any visible means of support, and its appearance cut through the rising panic like a knife through cloth. Everyone fell silent and turned their attention upward as the figure spread its arms in a gesture that might have been welcoming if it hadn’t been so clearly alien and inhuman. The glowing blue points of its eyes swept across the assembled crowd as if cataloging each individual person.

“Welcome to the Bridge of Trials,” the figure’s voice boomed out with enough volume to reach every corner of the massive structure. “This is your first test and it is a simple one. You must reach the other end of the bridge before it completes its collapse sequence. Those who succeed will advance to trial two. Those who fail will fall into the void and die permanently.”

The casual delivery of that death sentence sent a wave of horror through the crowd and several people started screaming or crying. Liam felt his own heart rate spike with adrenaline as the implications sank in, and he looked around trying to gauge how long the bridge was and how much time they might have. The structure seemed to stretch for miles in both directions with no visible endpoint, and the idea of running that far before something collapsed beneath him seemed impossible.

For a split second, a thought stabbed through the panic. His mother was alone sitting somewhere with their bags at her feet, believing he was chasing a job lead while she worried about where they would sleep that night. Guilt hit him harder than fear. He shouldn’t have come. He should have stayed. Whatever this place was, it wasn’t worth leaving her behind like that.

“The collapse will begin in sixty seconds from the point furthest from the exit,” the figure continued while a countdown appeared in everyone’s vision courtesy of their wristbands. “It will progress at a steady rate that will require you to maintain an average running speed to stay ahead of it. Your wristbands will provide you with stamina enhancement to make this possible, but those who cannot keep pace will be left behind. The trial begins now.”

The figure vanished as suddenly as it had appeared and for a moment everyone just stood there in stunned silence trying to process what they had been told. Then someone at the back of the crowd screamed and Liam turned to see that the bridge had indeed started collapsing, the metallic material simply dissolving into nothing and revealing the void beneath. The collapse was moving toward them at a speed that looked manageable if they started running immediately, but would quickly become deadly if they hesitated.

Chaos erupted as nearly ten thousand people all tried to start running in the same direction at once, and Liam found himself caught in a crush of bodies that threatened to trample him. The girl grabbed his hand without asking and pulled him toward the edge of the crowd where there was slightly more room to move, and together they started running along the bridge away from the advancing collapse. Around them people were shoving and fighting and screaming, and Liam saw several individuals get knocked down and disappear beneath the stampede of feet.

His legs burned and his lungs screamed for air but the wristband sent pulses of energy through his body that kept him moving faster than he normally could have sustained. The enhancement was noticeable but not miraculous, giving him maybe thirty percent more endurance and speed than his baseline abilities, which meant he could keep up a decent pace for a while but would still tire eventually. The girl running beside him seemed to be in better shape physically and was having an easier time maintaining the speed, probably because her stats were higher than his pathetic numbers.

Behind them the collapse continued its relentless advance and Liam could hear the screams of people who hadn’t been fast enough to stay ahead of it. The sound of thousands of running feet on metal created a thunderous roar that echoed across the bridge, and the air was filled with the harsh breathing and panicked cries of people pushing their bodies beyond normal limits. Someone nearby stumbled and fell but Liam couldn’t stop to help them because stopping meant death, and that brutal calculus was something everyone here had to accept.

Time lost all meaning as they ran and ran and ran, minutes blending together into an endless nightmare of burning muscles and desperate gasps for air. The wristband’s enhancement kept Liam going long past the point where he would have collapsed under normal circumstances, but he could feel himself slowing down incrementally as his body approached its absolute limits. The girl was still beside him though she had released his hand at some point to make running easier, and her face was red with exertion and streaked with tears.

Around them the crowd had thinned considerably as people either pulled ahead or fell behind, and Liam realized with horror that the collapse was getting closer despite their best efforts. He pushed himself harder and felt something tear in his right calf muscle, and pain shot up his leg with enough intensity to make him cry out. The girl looked back at him with alarm but he waved her forward because he refused to be the reason she died here, and she hesitated for just a moment before nodding and increasing her pace.

Liam gritted his teeth against the pain and forced his injured leg to keep moving even though every step felt like someone was driving nails into his muscle. His vision was starting to narrow at the edges and he knew he was dangerously close to passing out from exhaustion and oxygen deprivation, but somewhere ahead he could finally see what looked like the end of the bridge. A massive archway had become visible in the distance glowing with the same blue light as the wristbands, and people were streaming through it and disappearing to whatever lay beyond.

The collapse was perhaps fifty meters behind him now and closing the gap steadily, and Liam calculated that he had maybe two minutes before it caught up to him completely.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​