Moment in Time Part 3

Chapter 45

The Blame Game

Part 2

Rick's neck is stiff as he lifts his face from the schoolroom desk. As his still drowsy eyes struggle to focus, he gazes around the room. The top of a blackboard is bordered by the alphabet printed on cardboard. Brightly colored posters decorate the walls, and shelves are full of simple books and toys. "I'm back in kindergarten," he mumbles. "But where's Mrs. Finch?" An African-American man groggily raises his head at a desk beside Rick's. "You're not Mrs. Finch!"

The man looks back at Castle. "Who are you?" He surveys his surroundings. "Who are all you guys?"

"Where am I?" Castle asks, rubbing his shoulder.

The three other men in the room also massage sore spots.

"I don't know. Me and this other guy just woke up," A man behind Castle replies.

"My shoulder is killing me," the other guy adds.

"Does anyone have a phone?" the man beside Castle asks. "Mine's gone."

All the men shrug and shake their heads. "Whoever brought us here must have taken them," Castle assumes.

"What the hell is going on?" one of the other men demands. "How did we get here?"

"The last thing I remember," Castle shares, "is going to a rundown building. I was supposed to meet Stephen King, but I thought he might be pulling one of his dark little jokes on me."

"143 Nicholas Street?" The man beside Castle inquires.

"How did you know that?" Castle wonders.

"A lawyer called and asked me to meet him there. He said I inherited the building from my uncle who passed away a year ago."

"A guy called me too," another man chimes in, "except he said my cousin who died a few months ago left me the building."

"Oh my God!" the fourth man exclaims. "We were all lured here."

"But by whom?" Castle asks.

The man beside Castle goes to try to open the door. When he can't, he throws his weight against it, but it refuses to budge.

The fourth man feels his forearm. "I have a sticky substance on here. Does anyone else have one?"

The other men check but don't find anything.

Rick opens the blinds to reveal a fake window lit by fluorescent lights. "This isn't a real classroom. Someone just set it up to look like one. Maybe this is someone's sick idea of teaching us some kind of lesson." He rubs his shoulder again. "Um, the last thing I remember before waking up here was a sharp pain in my shoulder. I felt something like that before from an injection gun once when this strange government agency was – never mind. We all must have been hit with either injectors or trank darts."

"But why? What kind of lesson?" a man from the second-row demands. "Who would do that to us?"

Rick gazes upward and points. "My guess is whoever is behind that camera. Let's at least find out who each of us is. "My name is Rick."

"I'm Judah," the African-American offers.

"I'm Todd," sticky-arm puts in.

"And I'm Simon," the man still staring at the camera adds. "But oh man, there's a serial killer back there. I've seen stuff like this before on Dateline, and it never ends well."

"Will you shut the hell up?" Judah demands.

"What I'm trying to tell you is…." Simon continues.

"Shut up!" Judah yells.

Rick holds up his hands. "Guys, going after each other won't help. For all we know, the guy who set this up wants us to do just that. And if they wanted us to be dead, we would be already. Those shots we got could just as easily have killed us. So let's try and figure out what the purpose of all this is." Rick checks in the teacher's desk drawer and pulls out a note and a cylinder with rotating bands of letters on it. "This is a cryptex. I recognize it from the Da Vinci Code." He reads the note. "'Salvation lies within.' Maybe the way out is inside the cryptex. We just need the password."

Judah pulls off his sweater. "Screw that. We need to bust out of here now." He wraps his garment around his arm and uses it to break the glass in front of a fire ax. He pauses a moment as the weight of the ax feels wrong in his hands. Then, as he grabs the head, it slips off the handle. "F**k! The damn thing is rubber."

Rick stares for a moment at the phony tool. The bare top of the handle has strange ridges, but he has no idea what they might mean. A buzzing noise distracts him from his newest puzzle. "Whoa, is that a bee? How could it get in here?"

"I'm allergic, very allergic," Todd declares, swatting at the insect.

"Don't do that!" Castle warns. "You'll just antagonize it."

Todd backs away frantically. "I think it's attracted by the stuff on my arm. Oh no!" he screams, swatting again as the bee lands on his arm. "I can't breathe!"

Rick rushes over. "You're going into anaphylactic shock. Do you have epinephrine?"

"No! The crazy must have taken it with my phone."

Rick points to the cryptex. "Guys, there's a picture of a bee on here. Salvation! Todd's epinephrine must be inside. We have to solve the puzzle – now!" Rick points up at the alphabet. "There are bees over some of the letters. He rapidly writes them on the blackboard. "They're out of order. It's an anagram, a puzzle within a puzzle." Rick quickly begins to shuffle the letters. "A dire ploy."

"Hurry," Simon urges. "He's not looking so good."

"Play or die!" Castle exclaims, lining up the letters on the cryptex. It opens, revealing a syringe. "Got it!"

"Thank God, " Todd moans.

Rick plunges the needle into Todd's thigh, producing an immediate convulsion. Todd's mouth fills with foam.

"What did you do to him?" Judah accuses.

Rick's hand tightens around the injector. "Nothing, I just," the label peels off under his fingers, revealing another with a skull and crossbones. "Oh no! Poison. That must be what play or die meant. There has to be another layer to the puzzle." Rick peels off the second label. "There's another clue here. 'Time has run out. One will kill. Two will cure.' There must be bottles or something. Look around."

Judah grabs a box from a shelf and opens it. "There are three vials in here. If the first one kills, the one in the middle must be the cure."

"Wait," Rick cautions. "None of the clues so far has been that straight-forward. The note said, 'Time has run out.'" He checks the wall clock. "That's stopped, but the hands are at one and three. Maybe that means we have to combine bottles one and three." Rick pours the liquids together.

Simon looks on skeptically. "I don't know."

"We don't have any more time to talk about it." Rick swallows against his own fear and pours the mix down Todd's throat. Todd coughs and starts to come to.

Relief whooshes through Judah's lips. "Thank God!"

"Breathe, just breathe," Castle urges Todd.

Ryan and Esposito hustle Buckley into the box. "Why am I here?" Buckley protests. "I didn't do anything."

"You resented Emma Matthews for getting a promotion you thought you deserved." Esposito retorts.

"And you drive a white van. One was observed in the area when Emma Matthews was killed," Ryan adds.

"Look, I may not be shedding any tears over Emma's death, but I didn't kill her," Buckley protests.

"So, where were you and your van between nine and eleven last night?" Esposito presses.

"At O'Malley's Pub. And my van was parked out front. You can ask the bartender or any of at least a hundred other people who were there. Better yet, one of the customers wanted a selfie with a guy who works for the news. It would have been time-stamped, and she gave me her number. Sheila Manion. You can call her."

Looking up at Esposito, Ryan tosses his phone on his desk in disgust. "Sheila Manion backs up Buckley's alibi. She even forwarded me the picture. We've got nothing, Bro."

Esposito sinks onto the corner of Ryan's desk. "We better text Beckett the bad news."