“On your mark, get set. Your hint is: it’s all an illusion. Go.” Weiss shoots a little gun into the air.

Leaping forward, I scramble up the ladder and clamber inside the narrow duct. Plunging into blackness, I feel the walls close in, my breath echoing in panicked puffs. Get a grip. Trust yourself. Exhaling conscious thought, I empty my mind and belly-crawl, feeling for a latch as I go. One full body length later, I find the false bottom and slide it open. Rolling onto my back, I drop my legs through the hole, hanging suspended by my arms while surveying the circular room with smooth, stainless steel walls below. I pull down the night-vision goggles I wear strapped around my head, illuminating a laser field.

There you go, Rayelle.

Silently lowering myself, I’m careful to avoid the crisscrossed beams. When my feet touch the floor, adrenaline floods my nose, and my sinuses clear. I step over the first beam and I’m off—bending, twisting, dodging—my body navigates the field seemingly of its own volition, controlling each steady beat of the dance. I don’t think. I’m in another place.

It’s the calmest I’ve felt in ages.

When I reach the metal wall on the other side of the room, I resist feeling for an exit. Sensing the walls may be armed with vibration technology that will sound an alarm, I drag my feet along the perimeter, disrupting as little air as possible while I hunt for a discrepancy in the metal. I quickly spot a seam, but I don’t see a trigger that will open the wall; there are no furnishings in the space, no latches on the floor, no fingerprints on the metal that indicate where to press.

It’s all an illusion.

The answer pops into my head.

Careful not to back into a laser beam, I hurl myself at the space to the right of the seam. I brace myself for impact, for the sirens that surely will sound, but nothing stops me. I slip through the fake wall and tumble to the other side. Tucking into a ball, I roll to a stop and jump to my feet. Before me is an ATM machine, a relic from when people used paper currency, secured with a Kaba Mas lock. I almost bust out laughing. When my dad starred in the movie Operation Infeasible, the prop master taught me how to dismantle—and put back together—a Kaba Mas lock while Dad was busy ignoring me.

Luck. Pure luck. But I’ll take it. I get to work dismantling the lock. As soon as I open the ATM, an exit sign illuminates to my right, and I duck through a narrow door beneath it that is equipped with a Kwikset lock so easy to pick it must be a joke. Emerging from the bunker, I’m blasted with cool forest air and applause from master thieves Allard, Abignail, and Robie.

“You’ve crossed the finish line, Elisha,” Robie says, clapping me on the back.