Page 23 of The Authenticity Clause
“Our first pair,” Chad announced, reading from a clipboard with theatrical gravitas, “will be… Julian Thorne and Leo Hayes!”
The universe, Leo decided, was a cruel and deeply unfunny comedian. He could feel every eye in the room turn towards them. It was the corporate equivalent of being picked for the Hunger Games. He slowly turned to look at Julian, who was standing ramrod straight, his expression a perfect, unreadable mask of stoicism. But Leo could see a tiny muscle twitching in his jaw. Oh yes, he was just as thrilled as Leo was.
They were led, along with the other doomed pairs, down a dimly lit corridor to a door painted with hieroglyphics that looked suspiciously like they’d been done with a stencil from a craft store. Chad gave them a final, beaming smile. “You have sixty minutes to solve the Pharaoh’s riddles and escape his tomb before you’re sealed inside… forever! Good luck, teams!”
The heavy door creaked shut behind them, plunging them into near darkness. A low, ominous chanting began to play from a hidden speaker. The room was small, filled with fake stone walls, a large sarcophagus, and various Egyptian-themed props that looked like they’d been sourced from the clearance aisle of a party supply store.
“Well,” Leo said into the gloom, his voice echoing slightly. “This is… atmospheric.”
“It’s a fire hazard,” Julian stated, his voice a low, dry murmur beside him. His eyes were already scanning the room, methodically cataloging every detail.
The first ten minutes were a study in frustration. Julian immediately went to the sarcophagus, testing the lid, looking for patterns in the carvings, approaching it like a logic puzzle. Leo, meanwhile, was drawn to a series of seemingly random symbols painted on the wall.
“It’s a substitution cipher,” Julian declared, running his fingers over the sarcophagus. “The sequence is non-repeating. We need a key.”
“Hey, does this ibis look weird to you?” Leo asked, pointing at a painting on the far wall. “It’s facing the other way from all the other birds.”
“Hayes, focus,” Julian said, his tone clipped with impatience. “The birds are decorative. The lock is the objective.”
“Yeah, but it’s a weird bird,” Leo insisted. He pressed on the painting. A low click echoed through the room, and a small, hidden compartment sprang open next to it, revealing a dusty papyrus scroll. On the scroll was a key for a substitution cipher.
Julian fell silent. He turned slowly, his gaze moving from the scroll in Leo’s hand to the weird bird on the wall, and then back to Leo. He didn’t say anything, but Leo could feel the silent, grudging recalibration happening in his mind.
“Okay,” Julian said, his voice different. Sharper. “Okay. New strategy. I’ll handle the logic, you handle the weird birds.”
And just like that, something shifted. They weren’t a boss and his employee anymore. They were a team.
They found their rhythm with a speed that was almost unnerving. They moved through the tomb like a single entity with two brains. Julian would identify a lock, a sequence, a numerical puzzle, and begin deconstructing it with cold, hard logic. Leo, in the meantime, would be scanning the room for the anomalies, the out-of-place details, the piece of the story that didn’t fit.
“There are four canopic jars, but five pedestals,” Julian would mutter, analyzing a shelf.
“And the shadow from this torch points to a loose brick on the floor,” Leo would reply, already prying it up to reveal a hidden key.
Their dialogue was clipped, efficient, a rapid-fire exchange of information. “Lockbox. Four digits.” “The Pharaoh’s reign. From the inscription.” “What’s the date?” “I don’t know, I don’t read hieroglyphics!” “You don’t have to. The ankh symbol is slightly discolored. It’s a button.”
They moved in sync, a perfect fusion of left-brain and right-brain thinking. Julian’s focused intensity was the engine, and Leo’s chaotic creativity was the rudder, steering them through the absurd, artificial narrative of the tomb. In the middle of deciphering a riddle involving scales and feathers, Julian needed a specific detail from an inscription across the room. Without even looking up, he said, “Leo, the third symbol on the west wall.”
Leo, who was already looking at it, replied, “It’s a scarab.”
The moment was small, but it vibrated with a startling sense of intimacy. He had called him Leo. And he had trusted him toknow exactly what he was looking at, to be his eyes. The feeling of being so perfectly in sync with him, of being not just accepted butneededfor his weird, artistic brain, was more exhilarating than any creative breakthrough he’d had at the office.
They solved the final puzzle—a ridiculous laser-grid that they navigated by using the polished surface of a decorative shield to reflect the beams—and burst through the final door with a triumphant shove.
Chad was waiting for them, a stopwatch in his hand, his jaw on the floor. “Thirty-four minutes and twelve seconds,” he breathed, looking at them with a reverence usually reserved for astronauts. “That’s… that’s a new record. By, like, twenty minutes.”
The adrenaline was a bright, heady rush in Leo’s veins. He was breathing heavily, his face flushed, a wide, stupid grin plastered on his face. He looked at Julian, who was also breathing a little harder than usual, his perfect hair slightly disheveled. A rare, almost imperceptible smile was playing on his lips.
“We make a good team,” Leo said, the words tumbling out before he could stop them.
“Logically,” Julian replied, his gray eyes locking with Leo’s, “our skill sets are complementary.”
But the look in his eyes said so much more than that. The other teams eventually trickled out, defeated and bickering. They were declared the undisputed champions of the Synergy Summit. As they walked out of the stuffy building and into the cool air of the late afternoon, the artificiality of the event fell away. The sun was beginning to set, casting a warm, golden glow over Starling Grove. The rest of the team was a loud, laughing cluster heading toward the parking lot, but Leo and Julian instinctively hung back, creating a pocket of quiet around them.
“So,” Leo said, still buzzing from the win. “Guardian of Chaos and the King of Logic. Who knew?”
“The outcome was… unexpected,” Julian admitted, his voice a low murmur. He wasn’t looking at the rest of the team. He was looking at Leo. The analytical focus was gone, replaced by something softer, something far more dangerous.
The pace of the world seemed to slow down. The sound of the traffic on the street faded into a distant hum. The laughter of their colleagues became background noise. All Leo could focus on was the man standing in front of him, his face bathed in the golden light of the setting sun. He could see the faint lines around his eyes, the way the light caught the silver flecks in his gray irises.
