Gavril leaned in close to my ear, his voice just a whisper.
"She almost burned this place down before she realized it would take us with it."
I smiled with tears in my eyes. It was good to have confirmation that my stubborn tendencies were genetic.
For a split second I caught myself hoping my child was as strong willed as I was.
My eyes snapped up to Colt, who had a smile on his face at my thought and my stomach churned knowing that he'd heard it.
You didn't hear that.
I didn't hear a thing. He motioned an X over his heart with a grin.
"Okay, okay. Enough sappy moments. How the hell do we get through this thing and retrieve your stuff so we can get out of here?" I asked.
Suddenly, almost on cue the lights above us flashed red and a siren sounded. The siren was so loud that it was almost deafening, especially when it bounced off the concrete walls in such a small space.
I didn't know what was going to happen next, but I knew that not very many good things happened after lights flashed red and ominous sirens sounded.
Just as I expected shit started to hit the fan when the room slowly started to fill up with water. It showed up as a small puddle, barely noticeable in the middle of the room, but I quickly realized that it was magically growing, and at a rate so fast that it made me uneasy.
"Guys?" I asked, even though I knew everyone in the room could see it too. "How do we make it stop?"
I glanced around at their somber faces. Apparently I was the only one with an ounce of fear in the room. Everyone else was looking at it like it was simply an inconvenience. A small annoyance and not something that could potentially kill us all inside my mother's head and also in reality.
"The key is in here somewhere. We just have to find it and open the door." My mother turned to start inspecting the wall behind her, made of concrete bricks and painted white.
I watched her calmly begin to check every inch of it, and not soon after Gavril and Colt did too, choosing the walls closest to them.
With three out of the four walls already claimed that left me with the most ominous one of all, the one that held the thick metal door.
I didn't even know what I was searching for, but I knew that I didn't find it.
All I was met with was the smooth metal of the door and the coarse texture of the concrete. There wasn't a crack or ledge in sight. There wasn't even a door handle, just a single keyhole shape, but even that was simply drawn on the door as an outline.
We were having no luck, and the water was rising faster than I could think. By the time that I finished searching my wall the water was up to my waist, and my anxiety was through the roof.
"I've got nothing." Colt turned to face the group, the water sloshing with him as he did.
"Me either." My mother and Gavril said at once.
I turned around sulkily. There was no point in telling them that I had nothing, it was already obvious by the discouraged frown I held.
"How do we know that it's even in here?" I asked. "This is your mind. Can't you just make the water stop rising? Isn't it that easy?"
My mother shook her head. "If my brain had created this part of the mall then yes, but it didn't." She sighed.
I cocked my head to the side, trying to comprehend what she meant. "If you didn't, who did?"
"God."
The second the words left her lips the room began to quake, and the water started to gush in faster.
I didn't know what the hell was happening, but it was obvious that her words had made someone upset.
Someone powerful.
The lights flickered and the walls vibrated, the water so high now that it pulled my feet from the ground forcing me to tread water just to stay afloat.
Before I thought that I didn't know what was going on, but I was wrong. Now I didn't know what was going on. And that was the only thing that I knew.
"What the hell does that mean?" I shouted over the rumble of the concrete shaking, but my mother just shook her head.
Around us the water kept rising, and we floated closer and closer to the tall ceiling. The closer we got the more nervous I got.
"Everyone search the ceiling." I yelled as soon as we got close enough to brush our fingertips across it.
I let out a frustrated sigh when I was met with the same thing that I'd found earlier.
Nothing.
I wanted to know who the hell invented the escape room and why they were trying to kill us. My mother definitely couldn't have been serious when she said God.
It had to be a metaphor or something.
Maybe her brain was really fried from wasting away inside the mall of her mind all those years. Maybe she really was losing it.
Or maybe there are things about yourself that you don't truly understand.
Colt's smooth voice said in my head.
At least he was there with me. If I had to choose any way to die, death inside of an escape room in a mall inside my mother's mind would have been it. With Colt by my side.
And maybe a little more food in my belly.
And no supernatural baby to die with me.
The water rose higher and higher until the only room we had left was for our head, and even the air we breathed was dwindling.
"Mom." I looked at my mother tearfully.
There were so many things that I didn't get to do with her. So many moments missed. And if we were going to die, I wanted to at least share one of the things on my bucket list.
She swam over to me and wrapped her arm around my shoulder without saying a word.
"I'm pregnant."
I didn't know what I was expecting, or how I'd imagined her reacting quite frankly, but it wasn't with anger.
"You're what?" Her eyes seethed with anger and shifted to Colt. "With a vampire baby?"
"Woah, woah, woah, pump your breaks." I jumped quick to defend Colt, but the water rose over our heads engulfing us completely. The lights flickered again and I caught a glimpse of a shadow inside the bulb as it did.
The key!
I swam up to the bulb, my lungs screaming for air, and kicked at the bulb sending shards of broken glass through the water. I didn't care about them, though. All I cared about was the key that floated from it. I snatched it from the water and swam down toward the door. Just as I slid the key into the outline of the lock, which magically morphed into an actual keyhole, my watch vibrated.
We only had a few minutes left.
I turned to look at Colt through the water and I could tell that he was getting weaker and weaker by the minute.
Just when I thought I couldn't take the ache in my chest anymore and I was going to pass out and inhale water, there was a mystical golden light and the door disappeared. The water started to spill through the doorway in gallons, sucking us out into the darkness with it.
I felt a harsh wet ground beneath me as I coughed and gagged on the air. It felt foreign to my lungs now.
"What... the... hell?" I managed to spit the words out between my coughs as I glanced around.
We weren't in the mall anymore, we were in a tunnel that looked like it had been carved into a mountain of rock, much like the one that I'd found Draydon in.
Despite the huge amount of water that had flooded into the tunnel, it was completely dry.
Our clothes were too.
And mystically lit torches danced in the mysterious breeze that brushed across my skin ever so slightly. I turned to look back at the room, but it had disappeared. In its place was a solid wall of rock— a dead-end.