A speeding train, barreling down the tracks at a breakneck pace, with six hostages trapped inside. A hidden bomb, primed and ready to detonate. And only sixty minutes to divert the train's intended course and diffuse the explosive. The verdict? This escape room was gonna be a lot harder than Scott originally thought.
Scott exchanged glances with Virgil as they raised their handcuffed wrists in unison, anchoring the pair together as they stood in the mock train car.
"It's official, we're gonna die."
"Relax, Virg. At least we won't die handcuffed to Alan," Scott joked and the pair laughed at Kayo's expense. The Thunderbird S pilot studied the manacles with a groan.
"First order of business. Find a way out of these cuffs," she mused as the blonde captive at her side shook with excitement.
"Yeah! C'mon, Kayo, let's find the key!"
"Not so fast, Al," Gordon interjected and gave his partner, John, a hearty clap on the shoulder. "Check out the numbers written on the back of the seats. They've gotta mean something, right? Like—oh! There's a key code by the door over there! Let's punch in the numbers and see what happens!"
"That would be too easy. There has to be something else," the redhead said, pursing his lips in thought. Virgil was quick to add his opinion as he dragged Scott to the opposite side of the train car in his haste.
"Look! There's a deck of cards on the floor. It's gotta be important somehow!"
Scott observed the chaos as his siblings started talking all at once, struggling to piece together the seemingly random clues surrounding the compartment, and the lone door that stood between themselves and freedom. He stepped forward and garnered their attention.
"Hey, hey! Let's just take it one step at a time. Kayo's right, we need to get these cuffs off. After that, we can focus our efforts on finding the code for that door." The others nodded in agreement, relieved to have a semi-plan in place. Scott redirected his attention to the obvious props in the train car. A briefcase shoved under one of the seats. A framed picture on the wall with a padlock holding it in place…
"The picture!" Scott shouted. He studied the lock with his free hand. "It's a four combination lock. Let's start there."
The numbers on the seats were quickly discarded as options for the lock combination and it was Kayo who rummaged through the deck of cards with a spark of inspiration.
"The five of hearts is missing!" she declared. "And the two of clubs…the eight of spades…the nine of diamonds—"
"FIVE, TWO, EIGHT, NINE!" Alan cried as he crouched beside Kayo. "It's the combination!"
"On it," Virgil said, maneuvering around Scott to flip through the numbers. One pull of the padlock and it came free with a click. The group crowded around Scott and Virgil's shoulders as they swung the picture aside to reveal a hidden enclosure behind it.
It was a vertical maze, trapped behind a sheet of clear plastic, and bolted into the wall. A single key rested on a ledge at the top of the maze with a small opening at the very bottom to allow for the key's release.
Scott quelled his frustration with a sigh. Another puzzle? More questions than answers. Gordon asked the obvious.
"Is that the key to the handcuffs?"
"Could be. Only one way to find out," John said with a grin. "Spread out and look for a magnet."
The search was a quick one and the buzz of excitement among the pairs was contagious after Gordon raised a fist in triumph.
"I found it! I found it!" he cried as he peeled the small magnet from the storage rack above their heads. The aquanaut pressed the magnet against the plastic barrier and lifted the key from its resting place. "It's working!"
"Make it quick, Gords," Virgil said. The aquanaut maneuvered the key through the twists and turns of the maze and caught the object as it dropped from the opening below. He pressed the key to the offending handcuffs linking him to John and they fell from his slender wrist.
"Oh yeah! What did I tell you?" Gordon beamed as he pressed the key into John's hands. John fiddled with his handcuffs and quickly tossed them aside. He threw the key to Scott who caught it with ease.
"All right, Lockmaster. Let's see if you have any luck with this briefcase," John replied and steered Gordon toward the next object of interest. Scott and Virgil released their handcuffs with a satisfying click before passing the key of freedom to Alan and Kayo.
It was a start, but they were still no closer to altering the train's collision course with the overpopulated city ahead or finding and diffusing the active bomb. The eldest Tracy had to dispel the sense of panic. Right. One puzzle at a time. The briefcase—they had to get it open somehow.
Their Lockmaster, however, only gave the lid a futile tug.
"Sorry, guys. This one also takes a number combination. Two numbers, though, instead of four."
"That only makes it harder, not easier!" Alan pouted, earning a chortle from Kayo. The blonde made a grab for the deck of cards. "What if we missed something? C'mon, Kayo, let's take another look!"
"Not again…" she objected, but helped him nonetheless. The next few minutes passed between wild scrambling and disheartening silence, yet still the briefcase refused to yield, despite their numerous attempts at cracking the code. Scott recalled the rapid series of events that had transpired over the past few minutes. Handcuffed. Finding the combination. Opening the lock. Using the magnet. Getting the key. The key…
"Where'd you put the key to the handcuffs, Kayo?" he asked. Kayo, happy to have a distraction from Alan's obsession over the card deck, gestured across the room.
"On that seat over there. Why?" The pilot lunged forward and snatched the simple item. He rotated it between his hands with a sigh of relief before holding it aloft for the others to see.
"I knew this had to serve another purpose. Look what's engraved on the side—twenty three!" The train car erupted into cheers. Within seconds the briefcase's contents were emptied along the floor and passed from one Tracy to the other for observation.
An alphabet had been typed out on a translucent sheet of paper, but it didn't seem to be relevant to their progress. There was a box of crayons—also seemingly useless. Two quarters. Four gears of some kind. And an actual puzzle.
"Finally. Something we can work with!" Virgil exclaimed as he upended the puzzle pieces and started to put them together. He eventually relinquished control to Alan, who was nearly jumping up and down with excitement. "C'mon, Al. You're better at putting puzzles together than I am. Take a shot."
"YES!" The youngest blitzed through the manual puzzle in seconds, putting Virgil's earlier attempt to shame. He puffed out his chest proudly, glad to have been of use. "There are three words written across the pieces! Boston, Chicago, and Rochester."
Scott and Kayo shared equal groans.
"What's it gonna take to get a straight answer?" the security specialist complained with a slump of her shoulders. Scott was also at a loss. He turned to his younger brothers and eyed each of them in turn.
"Any ideas, guys?"
"I've got nothing, Scott," Virgil admitted. John intervened and jerked his head in the direction of the door.
"Hey, we still have to put in one more key code to get out of here. Let's just do what Gordon suggested earlier and type in some numbers and see what happens." Scott laughed at usually by-the-book John's proposal.
"No harm in trying. All right, John, give it a go," the eldest conceded. The key code was electronic with a digital keypad for entry. The windowless door remained locked, revealing nothing of the mysteries that lay beyond. In all honesty, Scott had been too busy pursuing other leads to pay the door and its corresponding key pad any mind. The space monitor, however, gave a cry of recognition as he neared the door.
"These buttons don't have numbers on them, but they ARE color coded. The crayons might be helpful."
"The box of crayons! Now you're talking. All we need are a few coloring books, then we're set," Gordon snickered as he dumped the crayons into the briefcase for easy viewing. "We've got every color of the rainbow. Not exactly evening the odds, Johnny. What am I even looking for?"
Scott refrained from running his hands through his hair. His brain hurt from the effort of thinking one move ahead, a task he found second-hand while on scene in the midst of an international crisis. Even Alan, their strongest source of morale, wilted slightly at their apparent dead end.
"Three city names and a bunch of crayons. Ughhh why couldn't this have been a zombie shooter?" he moaned. In response, the Thunderbird Two pilot took a seat next to the briefcase and shuffled through the crayons, as if willing himself to do something, anything—
Virgil's hands stilled for a brief moment, eyes flitting across the words hand written down the side of the crayons.
"Yellow is Denver, in case you wanted to know," Virgil mentioned. "And red is—hey, it's Rochester!"
"Virg, you're a genius!" Scott said and paused his restless pacing. Gordon pointed at the purple crayon with a whoop.
"Purple is Boston!"
"And orange is Chicago," Virgil added.
"Purple, orange and red," John muttered under his breath as he pressed the colored keys. The door unlocked with ease, granting the Tracys entry into—
"The engine room!" Alan said in awe. The large LED screen above the control panel gave the first person appearance of controlling the train, with the doomed city looming far too close for comfort. Scott, having recovered from his earlier moment of weakness, took command once more.
"Time to get this train off course. There's a manual override code listed, but the last six digits have been crossed out. That means…" Scott trailed off as the solution clicked into place. The entire Tracy clan exchanged giddy smiles at the sudden realization.
"THE NUMBERS ON THE SEATS!" There was a flurry of commotion as Kayo and Alan rushed back into the compartment and returned, breathless, reciting a string of numbers from memory. Scott entered the digits and pressed the large button on the control panel for effect. Silence. Then—
"Success. You have redirected the intended trajectory. Locking in new coordinates." The computerized voice was a true blessing to Scott's fluttering heart. The LED screen swapped its display for a separate set of tracks, leading away from the bomb's original destination, before going black. "Unexpected error. Computer system failure. Emergency stop engaged." An unassuming door in the engine room unlocked with a slight click. The group eyed the exit warily.
"Well, at least we stopped the runaway train," Alan quipped. Kayo stepped forward and placed her hand on the door's handle.
"And now we stop the bomb. Let's go, boys!" Kayo led the way out of the confines of the train and into a new set. The train station. Scott paused to take in the view of the beast they had yet to tackle.
They stood on a set of mock train tracks with a pay phone located in the corner and a light switch adorning the adjacent wall. Three pillars were covered in overlapping sets of posters. How many of these props were red herrings? Scott groused at the thought.
"Hey, Scott, check this out," John said over his shoulder as he wandered to the pay phone. Scott joined the redhead in three easy strides. His younger brother hefted the quarters in his hands, courtesy of the briefcase. "Something tells me that pay phone's not just for show."
"Nice work, John. I'd forgotten all about those quarters. Question is, what number do we call?"
"9-1-1, but I don't think they'd get here in time," Gordon joked from across the room. "Don't worry, I'm sure it's on one of these posters over here. Give me a hand, Kayo." The duo went to work scouring the pillars for a phone number while Alan leaned against the wall and accidentally hit the light switch with his elbow. The set went completely dark as the lights went out.
"Whoa, sorry guys. Let me just—"
"Hold on, Alan!" Gordon and Kayo cried in unison.
"Black light!" Scott realized, as nine symbols painted across various posters ignited with a splash of neon. After a minute or so of careful observation, Alan turned the lights back on and Scott sketched the symbols in a notepad for reference. He tapped the paper with the tip of his pen. Now they had more clues than they knew what to do with. The result was frustrating at best.
"All right, let's go over what clues we have so far that we haven't used yet," the Thunderbird One pilot suggested.
"The quarters," John said. "And a phone number to go with it."
"The symbols from the posters," Alan added.
"Four gears," the aquanaut chimed in.
"And the paper with the alphabet," Kayo remembered. Scott snapped his fingers.
"Exactly. The alphabet. The paper is see-through, right? Which means it probably goes on top of something, like a cypher." It was Virgil who fished out the translucent page from the briefcase and compared it against the posters, trying to find a match. He shook his head with a sigh.
"No good, Scott. It doesn't go to any of these." Scott rubbed a hand across his face.
"Sorry, I thought that maybe—"
"Wait! We'd kept that paper in the briefcase—maybe you can only see the cypher under black light, too. Alan, flip the lights!" John commanded. The blonde complied, rendering the set dark once more. And, to Scott's relief, John's words rang true. The black light revealed a symbol written under each letter of the alphabet, which had been invisible to them before.
"IT'S A MESSAGE! IT'S A MESSAGE!" Scott and Virgil exclaimed, hollering for joy. Scott flipped through the notepad and found the drawings he'd made of the symbols on the posters. With Virgil's help, he managed to find the nine corresponding letters. John, with his penchant for detail, was able to unscramble the letters within a matter of seconds. U-N-D-E-R-S-E-A-T. Kayo's jaw dropped in shock.
"TO THE TRAIN COMPARTMENT! GO! GO!" she demanded, sprinting for the engine room door.
"Thunderbirds are go!" Scott chuckled as the group followed the security specialist's lead and barreled their way into the first room of their imprisonment. The two youngest members crawled underneath the train car seats with gusto.
"Here we go! Two, four, two, six, eight, one, zero!" Alan said.
"THE PHONE NUMBER!" Scott didn't know who screamed it—maybe they all did—but their party stormed out of the train compartment and skidded to a stop next to the pay phone, chests heaving with adrenaline. John put the quarters into the slot and pressed the phone number.
"I'm getting a recording," John explained as he held the phone to his ear. Scott kept his notepad ready, and was glad when the move paid off. "It's from the train conductor—he said that when the train stopped unexpectedly, the bomber moved the explosive off the train…and into another room."
"ANOTHER ROOM?" Virgil said, but was instantly shushed by the redhead.
"Hold on, there's a code to get inside the door where the bomb is kept. A, Z, K, P, Q. And he said that blue is red and white is green…That's the end of it, guys. It just keeps repeating." John put the phone back on the hook.
"And the room is…where, exactly?"
"Why don't we try the door that says "Exit"?" Kayo suggested, hooking a thumb over her shoulder at the obvious prop. The brothers exchanged sheepish grins.
"Oh. Right. Makes sense. C'mon, to the bomb!" the Thunderbird Three pilot pilot cheered. He punched the alpha-code into the keypad and pushed the door ajar.
Nestled against the far wall was a locked box attached to a strange pulley system. Scott didn't dare glance at his watch. He wasn't sure how much time they had left to diffuse the bomb before their hour was up, but he knew it wasn't long, and the very thought made him sweat. No, he had to focus. One puzzle at a time.
The pulley system fed itself into a series of gears inserted into the concrete, with a handle used to turn the gears simultaneously. Four of them were missing.
"Good thing we have four gears already. Work fast, Scott," Kayo said as she passed him the pieces. With quick trial and error, he fastened the cogs into place and rotated the handle. A click. A beep. And the locked box was locked no longer. The Tracys pried the lid back. At long last. There it was. The bomb.
A handwritten note lay above the ticking beast with instructions on its deactivation.
"We have to disconnect the right wire from the mainframe," Virgil read out loud. Each wire was linked to the "mainframe" by its own USB port. "But there's at least ten wires here! And all of them are gray! How are we supposed to know which one to pull?"
"Look, each of the wires has a tag attached to it," Gordon mused. He flipped one of the tags over and groaned. "Better get those box of crayons back out! All of these are city names!"
"No, no, no! You can't be serious!" Scott scowled. They were almost there! So close…they couldn't fail, not when they finally had the bomb within their grasp. John gave Scott's shoulder a firm shake.
"Remember, the train conductor said that blue is red and white is green. So we only need to concentrate on finding the blue and white wires." Kayo and Alan sifted through the crayons from within the briefcase with trembling hands.
"Blue is Dallas."
"White is Miami!"
Gordon and Virgil located the correct wires and kept a firm grip so they wouldn't lose them among the sea of gray. They paused and looked to their team leader, Scott, for confirmation.
"Which one, Scott? The blue or white wire? Which one do we pull?" Virgil asked on behalf of the group. His brothers and sister went silent, waiting for his final decision.
The hesitation, doubt and frustration disappeared, as the eldest stepped into the familiar role as field commander. This was what Scott did best; making those split second decisions for the sake of the rescue. He knew the answer. And he knew they'd solved the final puzzle.
"Easy. The blue one." And Gordon pulled it free from the dock without question.
"Congratulations. You've just passed the Runaway Train Escape Room," their Game Master announced over the speakers. His voice, however, was quickly drowned out by the Tracy clan's collective cheers of victory. They came in for a team hug, their joy and elation boundless.
"How did you know, Scott?" Virgil asked. The eldest shrugged.
"Green means go and red means stop. So I figured if blue is supposed to be red, then it would stop the bomb's timer. Looks like I was right."
"I think this victory calls for some ice cream! Who's with me?" Alan said and received another round of cheers in response.
Scott couldn't be happier with the training session. What better way to reward his family for a job well done AND hone their problem-solving skills at the same time? The others, at least, were oblivious to their older brother's motive, save for John, who gave him a slight nudge as they made their way into the lobby.
"I know why you picked this as our family activity, Scott."
"Because we get ice cream out of the deal?" Scott joked. John rolled his eyes with a laugh.
"Maybe because you want to keep us on our toes. It was a good exercise—I know Alan and Gordon loved it. They're already talking about their next escape room." A pause, then— "You really are a great leader, Scott. Even if we had died in a horrible train station explosion."
"Which reminds me…I think they have a NASA themed escape room in the works. It's just a two-person challenge, from the sound of it. Might be right up your alley. You and Alan could blitz through those puzzles in seconds," Scott said, dodging John's earlier compliment.
"How about we do it together? You might surprise yourself," John replied. "After all, you ARE supposed to be Alan's backup for Thunderbird Five. You must know SOMETHING about the fundamentals of space."
"Ursa Major. Ursa Minor. The Big Dipper…that's about it." He earned a playful shove.
"Ursa Major is the Big Dipper. Huh. Maybe I should take Alan, after all."
Scott and John continued their banter as they ended the day with countless bowls of ice cream while lounging on the sunny beaches of Tracy Island. It was a good day—one of the best—and Scott fell asleep that night with a warm heart, ready for the next day's schedule of rescues with his family by his side.