After a 2-1 vote, we return to the end of chapter 2 to take Tenmyouji through the infirmary.
"Tenmyouji, yellow door!" Phi figured that this was the best compromise: by making the choice no-one had argued for, no-one would be angry that she had taken someone else's side. As soon as she had finished saying it she was in rapid motion; she charged Tenmyouji and dragged him towards her chosen door. Sigma reacted admirably swiftly, and the three of them piled through into the holding area behind the yellow door.
With the choice made for them, the other six players fell into line. Alice hugged Clover then led Dio and Quark over to the Magenta door, while K, Clover and Luna headed in the opposite direction through the cyan door. The yellow door stayed open just long enough for Phi to confirm that everyone had made it inside their respective rooms; as it closed, Phi felt a profound sense of relief.
"Hmph. You could have warned me before you did that." Tenmyouji said. Phi didn't respond to that. She had done what needed to be done to save everyone's lives from their own thoughtlessness.
Sensors whirled around the room, scanning the three people trapped inside. They watched the sensors rise for an agonising amount of time until finally they were bathed in a pale yellow glow and the secondary door opened.
They were released into a sterile grey room, divided in the middle by a flimsy plastic divider. On the closer side was a row of neatly made beds. Phi headed to the other side of the divider to get a closer look at the boxy scanning device in the closer corner of the room; a bright label on it declared it to be an 'ADAM', though Phi had no clue what that was, and the complex instructions beneath the label did little to clarify matters. The ADAM was attached to a surgical bed which – surprisingly, given that the ADAM appeared to be an expensive state-of-the-art machine – was tattered and shoddily made, with an entire piece of fabric ripped straight out of the bedsheet.
"So this is the… infirmary?" Tenmyouji queried. Phi looked up and saw that he was standing next to a cabinet full of medicine jars, examining them intensely. "No aspirin… Damn: my headache could use some," he murmured.
"Looks like it," Phi replied. She looked past where Tenmyouji was standing to see…
"There's a door in the back!" Sigma had noticed it first and raced over to it. Phi could see the outline of the door around Sigma but couldn't see any details.
"Think it'll open?" she asked.
"No way," Tenmyouji replied immediately, "Just look at it." He pointed out a mechanism by the door; it read 'LOCK' in obstinate digital letters just above a keyhole. Sigma insisted on ramming the door anyway, to no avail. Old and frail as Sigma was, Phi suspected he'd have trouble trying to seek a way out of a wet paper bag.
"Looks like the cards we need for the AB rooms are in here." Phi said, "Let's have a look around, okay."
The first thing that came to Phi's attention was a grid of blocks embedded in the wall between the medicine cabinet and the exit door. It was rather disconcerting that there were three holes in the grid; whatever the grid was used for, it was incomplete.
"Either of you know what to make of this?" she asked.
Tenmyouji shrugged. "No idea," he replied, "If you don't mind, I need a rest." He slumped back onto the middle bed wearily. "You two can solve this. Get me up when you're done."
Sigma came over and rattled the frame. "There's some movement," he said, "but these two locks are holding it in place. We'll have to find keys for them." He pointed at the two lower corners, each of which had a keyhole.
"Let's search the room, then," Phi said.
A cursory search of the room found one of the keys on a rickety nurse's trolley, along with a deceptively sharp scalpel and a rather grimy basin that had presumably once been used for washing, though Phi was fairly sure it would dirty whatever it was used to clean. Sigma found a tiny golden disc, a notebook and a pen on the desk by the ADAM; though the notebook was completely blank Phi was grateful to have something to take notes with – Sigma might have an eidetic memory but she'd much rather trust her own notes than his brain. They reunited in front of the medicine cabinet.
"Not much here," Sigma said, "Maybe we have to do something with all these medicines."
"I'd rather not," Phi replied, "You mess about with unlabelled chemicals and sooner or later the whole room is on fire." She paused thoughtfully, "I suppose the solution could be to set off the fire alarm so it lets us out."
"Not very likely," Tenmyouji said from where he lay, "I think this Zero would be much happier to just watch us burn to death."
"Scratch that, then," Phi said, "Still, it's worth looking at what we can get from these shelves that doesn't end up with us on fire."
The cabinet had two drawers, both of which were locked. The second drawer had a combination lock, displaying three of the coloured symbols from the grid, but Phi had no clue how they were meant to guess the code. The medicine cabinet was also standing on top of another cupboard. Phi knelt down and opened up the left side to find a safe that was almost identical to the one in the elevator, down to the same three by three grid for entering the password. However, there was nothing else on that side, so Phi slid the doors across and found a blue memory card attached to a clipboard containing a laminated sheet of paper. Phi studied the instructions on the clipboard, which showed two chemicals, labelled 'A' and 'B' being mixed in a bowl and used to clean a t-shirt. Phi handed the memory card to Sigma.
"Seen anywhere to put this?" she asked.
Sigma looked at it closely, his artificial eye rotating as if zooming in to reveal more detail. "I think so," he said. He led Phi back over to the desk and pointed at a screen that had been mounted on the wall above it. Holding the memory card in his right hand, he touched the bottom right corner of the screen, tracing with his fingers a row of arrows that led around the side of the screen. Phi watched him adjust his hand's position as he felt for something, until at last the memory card slid in. The screen lit up, displaying text on a green background, and Phi was aghast.
"'A equals white powder'? You could have put that with the rest of the instructions! 'B equals water'? You could have just put 'water' in the damn picture! This is the stupidest way to write a set of instructions ever!"
"There, there," Sigma said hesitantly, "It'll be okay?"
Phi shoved him back. "No it is not okay! These stupid instructions… Zero is mocking us! Mocking me personally!"
"Well, he is now…"
"You like the instructions, you follow them. I'll go find something to wash."
Sigma grabbed the basin from the trolley and headed to the sink to fill it with water. Once her righteous anger had died down, Phi walked past him to the one area of the room she hadn't yet searched properly: the beds behind the divider. The first bed was unremarkable, with no items on it to use. But it was as she approached the second bed, the one Tenmyouji was lying on, that she noticed it.
"Hey, Tenmyouji," she called.
Tenmyouji looked up to see her advancing implacably, scalpel in hand, with an intentionally mischievous glint in her eye. "Huh, what… what are you doing?" He shuffled back, nervously.
Phi spun the blade casually in her hand so that the point angled down over Tenmyouji's head, held it steady for a couple of seconds, then stabbed down… into the bed beside him, ripping away the square of murkily coloured fabric that Tenmyouji had been sitting on. Tenmyouji was still shocked as he watched her examine the material closely. That served him right for not helping.
"Can you pass me that?" Phi asked nonchalantly, pointing at a thin shiny object on the next bed over.
Tenmyouji grunted angrily, but handed her the item she requested. It was a short golden metal stake; as Phi gripped it she felt a small jab in her fingers from a series of ridges running along one side. There was something about it that was eerily familiar, but Phi couldn't guess the context just by looking at it. However, there was nothing else visible by the beds and the dirty square of fabric from the bed was clearly what she had been looking for. She took it back over to Sigma, who was stirring up a furious froth of bubbles in the cleaning solution. The fabric went into the bowl, the solution hissing as it cleaned the submerged cloth.
It was as they were waiting for the fabric to clean that Phi had a moment of inspiration. She took the golden stake from her pocket.
"Hey, Sigma, do you still have that disc you found on the table."
Sigma handed her the disc. As Phi had expected, it was the exact same shade of gold as the stake. Phi examined the disc carefully and found a hole just large enough to put the stake into; as she did so it snapped into place as if held by a magnet. Together, they formed the second key for the grid of blocks by the door.
Once both keys were in place, the entire grid swung out to the right, revealing the back of the contraption. The three missing blocks – one red, one green and one blue – were in a layer below the main grid, and as Phi held the edges of the frame, the entire device tilted, rotating around the centre and causing the three blocks to slide.
"Looks like we have to get the blocks into these holes, which should drop them into the grid." Phi pointed them out. "See, they have red, blue and green rims."
Sigma groaned. "You'd better do it," he said, "You're much better at this sort of puzzle than I am."
"Anyone would be much better at this puzzle than you are, Sigma."
Though this blocks puzzle was much trickier than the one in the elevator, Phi eventually finished it, gracefully spinning the frame so that all three blocks dropped into their holes simultaneously. She swung the frame back into the recess in the wall where it clicked into place; now the front of each new block was visible in the grid.
All of them bore symbols identical to those already in the grid. No new instructions. No new clues.
"Yeah, I dunno what we're supposed to do here," Phi muttered.
"Don't think like that, Phi," Sigma said, "If we carry on with the rest of the puzzle, maybe we'll work out what to do with this grid. See, the cloth should be clean by now." Sigma lifted the square of cloth out of the cleaning basin; the fabric was pristine, revealing a five by five grid formed by blue stitches in the material. Most of the squares were blank, but two contained numbers, a '4' and a '5', while others had symbols reminiscent of those by the exit door.
Now that the dirt had been removed, Phi could see the edges of the fabric square with more definition. The pale colour of the fabric and the ragged edge reminded her of… "The ADAM!" Phi exclaimed.
Sigma and Tenmyouji looked at each other in confusion. "Who's Adam?" Sigma asked, "Is that what K's name is…"
"No! Just come and have a look at this," Phi interrupted. She led Sigma over to the ADAM and helped him lay the fabric over the hole where it had been ripped from the ADAM's operating bed, pointing out that the edges matched. As Phi pressed the fabric into place and smoothed it out, she felt ridges in the mattress exactly matching the grid. "There's something under the grid. The ADAM's some sort of scanning device; I think we can use it to find out what it is," she explained to Sigma.
"Let's get to it!" Sigma said. He turned on the screen and picked up the scanning attachment, waving it lazily over the sheet. However, just as he had finished scanning the first row, the screen flashed alarmingly, first displaying the letters 'QDLIF', then turning red and displaying the warning message 'Failed'.
"Seems like the ADAM responds every time you scan five squares, entering five letters," Phi said, "Question is, which five squares do we pick?"
"Isn't that obvious?" Tenmyouji had snuck up behind them, "There are only five squares on the fabric that have symbols. Two of the symbols are '4' and '5', so we'll have to scan them last."
"What about the other three?" Sigma asked.
"Does it matter? There's only six different orders you can scan three squares in. Just try them all." Tenmyouji explained.
"It's even better than that," Phi said, "Once we've scanned all five squares once, we'll know the letters. The correct answer will be an anagram. We already know Zero likes anagrams."
Sigma scanned the fabric again. To Phi's immense surprise he found the right order on the first attempt; the screen displayed the word 'CURED' before revealing the three-by-three safe password on a green background. Phi realised that the green background, just like in the elevator, meant that this password would let them escape. She guessed that the puzzle they'd missed led towards getting the other password – the blue password that would provide information – and, though she was curious, she figured they should at least see what the password – the one they already knew – provided before deliberating about how to find the other one.
"Well done!" Phi grinned at Sigma, who looked just as surprised as she did with his one-in-six chance success.
Sigma instantly memorised the password and before long the safe was open.
"There's a whole bunch of stuff in here," he said. He handed a blue sheet of paper to Phi. It looked like a map; Phi traced the outline of what looked like the warehouse with her finger and it seemed to match the actual walls of the warehouse, including six boxes that had to represent the AB rooms.
"It says 'Floor A'," Tenmyouji said, peering over her shoulder.
Then Sigma took a pair of cards out of the safe. They were shining silver with a logo of a sun and the words 'Ambidex Room' printed on them in bold white text.
"You should keep one of these," Phi said to Tenmyouji, motioning for Sigma to hand him a card. "Sigma and I are a pair so we'll probably only need one of them."
"So we can get into the AB rooms, but how are we supposed to get back to the warehouse? That's where the AB rooms are! Back the way we came, that door's still locked," Sigma said.
"I think the answer to that is in the safe," Phi answered, "See? Read that note." She pointed to the note that was now at the top of the pile of things in the safe.
Sigma picked it up and read it. "It looks like some more rules for the Nonary Game. It goes, 'Hare…'" Here Sigma chuckled slightly, though Phi didn't get what the joke was. "'… are a few more rules for you! Once you've opened a door, you can hop through it as much as you like… But! But but but, you have to escape before you can take advantage of this Free Rein Rule!" Sigma did an unnervingly good impression of Zero's voice.
"So it's saying that once we get out of here, we'll be back able to head back to the warehouse." Tenmyouji said.
There was another piece of paper under the supplementary rules sheet. It was made of much rougher paper than the others and looked like it had been torn from the front page of a newspaper.
'Radical-6 Infection Spreads, Cure Continues to Elude Authorities' the headline read.
"What the hell?!" Sigma gasped.
Phi was shocked as well. She had never heard of this 'Radical-6'. Was this newspaper a fake, placed by Zero to disturb the players? Or was it… real?
Though Tenmyouji's reaction was only a faint 'hmm', Phi could tell he was as paralysed by the shock as Sigma. All curiosity about the infirmary was banished by desperate need. She had to take control and get them back in motion.
"Right now we need to get out of here as fast as we can," she instructed. Sigma tried to speak, but Phi roared over him, "Just do what I tell you to do!"
Sigma shrunk away from her where he knelt, and Phi felt a twinge of unsettling guilt. Why had she yelled like that? She knew that such harsh commands rarely influenced anyone to her point of view. Was… was she afraid? As afraid as they were?
Eventually she settled her nerves and controlled her voice back down to a normal tone. "The last thing in the safe is probably the key."
Putting on a brave face, Sigma took the key and opened the door. They had found the way out, but they'd also found much more besides.
This fanfic has branching storylines. To keep track of the various storylines, a link to the Flow Diagram is provided in my Author Profile.