Author's Note: Here we go with the results of Robin's first choice. Already, everyone's fates are set into motion... Now, the update as usual. As of today, 16 June 2017, I've written up to chapter 22. I should honestly start posting these a bit more frequently. Hope you enjoy it!

Nonary Game: Resonance

"I think I'll take Door [5]. Leo, is that cool?" Robin asked.

"Like I said, it doesn't really matter to me," Leo answered, though Robin thought he saw a hint of a smile at the fact that he would be going through the door that matched his bracelet. It was probably just a smirk, he thought.

"Great," Boxcars answered, not quite as enthused as his word choice implied. "So, team 5 is gonna be me, Delta, Leo, and Topaz." 6 plus 4 plus 5 plus 8 equals 23; 2 plus 3 equals 5.

"And team 4 is Lucky, Basilio, Marcus, Ian, and me," Cody followed. 7 plus 2 plus 3 plus 1 plus 9 equals 22; 2 plus 2 equals 4. "No offense." Robin didn't think there was any particular reasoning to Cody's choice, but he got the impression the man was a bit cautious, perhaps of Delta. Cody's face was relatively neutral when looking at team 5, but Robin could see a hint of discomfort at someone, and he refused to believe that it could have been directed at him. He did want to choose after me…

He must have been thinking on it too hard, since the next thing he noticed was Boxcars' hand on his shoulder. "Come on, no sense wasting any more time on goodbyes. Good luck, you guys."

Team 4 responded with a series of nods and half-hearted waves. "Stay safe," Ian replied, following his cohorts around the corner.

Robin stared at the [5] on the door, which stood taller than any of the people on his team. Its unclean edges and intense coloring really drove the point into his mind that it didn't belong. The RED also looked out of place, even as the four put their hands up to the scanner panel on its face. Four neutral beeps and four asterisks lit the air, and Leo wrapped a hand around the lever.

"Are you all ready?" he asked. Calm as they seemed, not a one was wearing any sort of smile. Indeed, Robin himself became immediately aware that within two minutes, they could all be poisoned.

"As ready as ever," Boxcars sighed. With no further prompting, Leo pulled the lever down. Two quick beeps, much like those Robin heard when unlocking his classroom, gave way to the creaking of Door [5] as it opened away from them.

"Let's move," Delta called, jogging right past the others. Nodding to themselves, they immediately followed.

Robin hung back slightly, counting to himself the seconds that had passed since the opening of the door. After nine of them, the door closed behind them, and another beeping started. They looked to their bracelets, then seeing their once-cyan digits had turned red. "The watch is beeping. The door shutting must have started the timer," Boxcars observed.

"We have 90 seconds. Come on!" Delta wasted zero time; Robin was surprised to already find him halfway down the remainder of the hall.

"It took nine seconds for the door to shut. Think that means we only have 81?" Robin mused.

"I don't plan to find out." Leo shook his head once, as if to drive the event of their failure farther from possibility.

"It's down here, at the corner!" Delta called back. He slapped the panel cleanly, then stepping well out of the way. Boxcars and Leo were not far behind him, and they also were quite forceful with their scanning. Robin was the last to reach the DEAD, not even bothering to remove his left hand before throwing down the lever.

The beeping dissipated, sending the hall into a relative silence. It was only then that Robin noticed the thumping of blood within his ears, keeping the aura of trepidation alive even past the immediate danger of death. The others stood by as well, offering themselves several seconds to cool back down before moving forward.

"We should check if any of the rooms we passed on the way here are open," Boxcars suggested. He and Leo took opposite sides of the hall and began to work their way back towards Door [5], checking every handle for motion. Likewise, Delta headed for a door in the same corner as the DEAD.

Alas, not a single one was unlocked. "It's just like those doors out there; we can't even turn the knob." Leo scratched at his pectoral then, reaching slightly into the hole in his hoodie where a sleeve might have once been. Delta gave him an indecipherable look before turning back to the DEAD.

"I guess we had better keep going down the hallway, then," he said, not even glancing toward the walls to check for doors. Indeed, there didn't seem to be any; the group must have been approaching a decently large room. Solid white braced them on either side as they neared a strange barrier.

"This doesn't look like it belongs here," Robin said, casually. A grey wall crossed the width of the hall, capping off the accessible area. He knocked on it twice, producing a metallic sound. Robin noticed it didn't seem to be one solid unit, so he wondered if it was a strange sort of unopenable door. "We won't be moving this one, it seems."

"Then we'll have to head in there," Boxcars followed, directing his attention to the right side of the hall. Set back in a small alcove were two doors, spaced a few feet apart. On the walls to the outer side of each sat a sign, designating the rooms behind them. If the signs were to be believed, the left door lead to the women's locker room, while the right lead to the men's locker room. "Assuming they're unlocked, that is."

"What if they aren't?" Leo asked.

Boxcars shrugged. "Then we're fucked." Offering no further ideas, he walked over to the doors. "Can't say I'm crazy about the idea of heading into another women's locker room, so…" Continuing to be an enigma, he took hold of the knob to the men's locker room, paused for a second, and then opened it. "Now we're talkin'."

"We should at least check if they both work…" Robin smirked.

"Come on, dude; don't make it weird." Boxcars' words fell on deaf ears, as Robin had already approached the door and began to turn the knob. Much like the other door, it offered no resistance.

"Interesting," Robin commented.

"It's probably not a good idea to split up. Let's just all head into one and see what we can find." Leo sighed once. "It better not be any more damn number puzzles." Without waiting for any potential retort from Robin, the other three traipsed inside the men's locker room.

They bypassed a simple door, which was labeled "Storage," and headed to the next one, which had a large window beside it. "Must be the coach's office," Leo said, gripping the handle. "Oh, it's locked, though. Hopefully we don't need anything inside it." Robin was quite sure it wouldn't be that simple, but the group continued walking to the back of the room.

They passed through another single door, into a small corridor which housed a stairwell on the right side. "Ohp, it's gated shut. Guess we're not going up there," Boxcars remarked. On the other side of the area was a door leading into an equally small room, clearly the equivalent corridor for the women's locker room. However, instead of having a staircase of its own, it had another door, this one without a window. Leo pushed on the bar, but it refused to move.

"There, there's a card reader on the side," Delta said, pointing awkwardly past Leo's comparatively large frame. "You must be out of luck," he mumbled.

"We'd better search these locker rooms and see if we can find that key card," Boxcars stated.

"That means more puzzles, huh?" Robin asked.

"Damn it!" Leo called out, perhaps slightly histrionic.

"Anyway, I figure Topaz and I can take the men's, and you two can check the women's. Sound good?" Boxcars asked.

"Works for me," Robin replied. After an exchange of a few nods, he and Boxcars headed back into the first room they visited.

(Suggested listening: Senary Game)

"Anything grab your attention?" Robin mused.

"Well… there's a lot of lockers. I guess that's to be expected." Boxcars raised his eyebrows once, taking in the sight. "Most of them seem to be those small square ones that students use to store their gym clothes throughout the week, and they're stacked six high. There are a few rows of double-high ones, though, like you'd put all your stuff in if you had gym class." Robin hardly needed the detailed explanation, but if Boxcars thought it was worth saying, perhaps it could be useful to the investigation. He briefly wondered if Boxcars had to solve the same kind of puzzle to get out of his classroom, but he figured it didn't matter at this point.

"There are no dial locks, though," Robin followed, walking up to the nearest column. "They all have this nine-letter keypad." He randomly tapped a few of the letters on one of the locks. "Well, it takes four letters." After the fourth had been entered, the letters, on a small LCD screen above the keypad, flashed red before disappearing. "There's probably no use in trying out any random combinations, especially with this many lockers. Do you see a largest number?" He briefly noted that the locker he'd randomly chosen had a small metal plate printed with the number 252.

"I'm seeing some 300's over here, but that's hardly enough for an entire school full of people," Boxcars answered. "I'm bettin' we only have to open one or two, so maybe we should look around for more clues before getting back to them." He rounded a corner, presumably to enter another row of lockers. "Oh, look at this." His voice wasn't excited enough to tell Robin that he'd found a major clue, but it must have been a clue nonetheless, so the man jogged to catch up.

"It's just a cinch rucksack, huh," Robin observed. "I guess that's fitting for a locker room, but I can't imagine a student just left it here."

"There's probably not a thing in this room that's not a part of the game's puzzle. Not a thing in this school, even." Boxcars pulled open the top of the bag and removed the items contained within it. "First thing we have is… just a notebook." He held it up briefly in his left hand, displaying it to Robin. The notebook was a simple spiral bound one, with a mechanical pencil stuck in the coil. "It's blank, though. I guess we could always use this to write stuff down if we need to. Maybe there's some math we need to do to get one of the codes." Unsure of what to do with the notebook while dealing with the other contents, he handed it to Robin. "You think you could take the reins on writing down anything important we might need?"

With a shrug and a nod, Robin agreed. "Seems simple enough. But that probably means there's a lot of information to remember. Or, to not remember, I guess."

Boxcars seemed unfazed by the statement and continued. "Next we have… a board thing. It's got drawings of the sun and all the planets on it, and a lot of buttons along the bottom." He flipped it over then, running a free finger over the screwed-on latch that held in the batteries. "Oh, I guess it's one of those learning things you get for kids who are into astronomy. I'm… really not sure what to call it."

"Does it work?"

Boxcars pushed a finger to the button in the bottom left corner, displaying a power symbol. "Guess so," he answered as it played a short, psychedelic tune.

"Welcome to your journey into our solar system. To begin, press on any planet to learn whatever you desire." The board's voice was a bit gravelly, most likely a recording that had been processed a bit too much to ensure the simple system could play it. Boxcars kept his finger hovering over the board, tapping down on it with a soft pap. "Saturn," the board read, playing another few notes. "Press any button to learn about Saturn."

"Alright, I don't know what all these buttons are," Boxcars said, but Robin figured that wasn't the kind of thing that would stop him. Indeed, he reached down and pressed one that was labeled with a ring of small dots.

"Saturn has one of the most complex arrangements of moons in the entire solar system. Currently, it has been confirmed to have at least 63 moons, including its most massive, Titan, which features hydrocarbon lakes and a nitrogen environment. Most of its moons are significantly smaller, circling the planet in eccentric, inclined orbits."

Boxcars' face had settled into a wide-eyed smirk, telling that the board had offered more information on the moons of Saturn than he'd cared to learn. "If all of the planets have that much information for each button, how are we supposed to know what's important?" Robin asked.

"We look for clues, I guess," Boxcars answered, powering off the board and slipping it back into the bag. "Ohp, I almost missed this…" He reached in and pulled out a small slip of paper, handing it to Robin. "Maybe you should write it down, in case there's a lot more where that came from."

"It says: "C: 90 mg," which is hardly enough information to do anything with," Robin smirked. However, he followed the suggestion and copied the characters perfectly. "Wait, now that I'm thinking about it, didn't we maybe see a little note on the desk?" He'd barely glanced at it when walking past initially, but he was then quite sure there was another slip in the coach's office.

"Ah, I don't remember it, but we might as well check." Boxcars lead the way back, tossing the rucksack over his shoulder. Robin couldn't help wondering why he hadn't just kept the notebook in there too, but perhaps he would have felt useless just standing around and watching Boxcars solve all of the puzzles. "There's a post-it note on the window here," he said, placing a hand on the glass and turning to Robin. "This one says: "A: 900 ug." I guess the "u" is a stand-in for a mu here."

"A mu? Like, the Greek letter?" Robin asked.

"Uh, yeah," Boxcars said. "The "mg" on that C slip must mean milligrams, and a "mu-g" means micrograms." Robin couldn't say he was familiar with the abbreviation, so when Boxcars turned back to the office, he copied down the information, "u" and all.

He took a hold of the handle, pushing down on it to see if it truly was locked. "Ah, no luck." He hadn't had his hopes up, but it was worth a shot. Thus, he followed Boxcars' lead, looking through the large window. "That's an interesting looking poster," he said, pointing to the only colorful infographic they could see.

"I like how it just says "BONES" on the top in all capital letters," Boxcars said, then offering a sound that was a mix of a chuckle and a "huh."

"Let's see what we might learn here…" Robin squinted, finding much of the text too small to comfortably read from across the room, even though it was a fairly short distance. "It looks like there's 27 bones in the hand… 62 in the leg… 206 in the entire body… But I don't think anything else is terribly important."

"Might as well write that down, I guess. It's the only other thing of interest in the office anyway." It seemed Boxcars would have to remind Robin every time there was new information to write it down; Robin wondered if it was his exhaustion that was keeping him from operating at peak performance.

As he scribbled down the numbers, he suggested, "Maybe it's locked so we don't waste any effort looking for stuff that isn't there." It hardly mattered, but Robin would have felt silly just standing there with Boxcars staring at him. "You suppose the storage room we passed is locked too?"

"It's worth a shot," Boxcars concurred. "Honestly, it was kind of stupid of us to bypass it when we got here. Did we really think our captor would let us walk through the whole school and just leave?"

"I'll agree, there's really no rational reason for us to expect to have to solve puzzles, except maybe that that was the first thing we did when we woke up here." Robin took hold of the storage door handle, pausing before turning it. "Honestly, there doesn't even seem to be a real reason for it. What do you think he's getting at, having us solve puzzles and maybe get killed?" Boxcars didn't seem to have an answer for him.

As Robin pulled open the storage room, he became sure that no future door would be passed without being checked again. "It's unlocked, alright," Boxcars said, a bit relieved.

"So it is," Robin replied. "But there's way too many cardboard boxes in here." The room wasn't particularly large, perhaps comparable to the coach's office, but the number of boxes around them was almost oppressive. He took a deep, slow breath then, stepping forward and pushing on them.

"Whoa," Boxcars warned as a few of them toppled. They must have been very light, considering Robin hadn't applied much force. "Well, guess those ones are all empty."

"They probably aren't all empty, though," Robin sighed. "Let's go ahead and feel around; maybe one's heavy or something." As tall as the stacks had been, they at least hadn't been entirely filling the storage room, instead mostly forming a wall near the door. Robin hated to leave them as such a mess, but he had few better ideas.

After several minutes of checking each of the boxes, they determined that almost all of them were empty. Their search, however, had not been in vain; on the back wall, a few symbols were painted in a dark red reminiscent of the numbered door. "There's a circle with a dot, an arrow pointing from it, and it's toward the female symbol. Underneath them, it says "MILLION" in all caps." Boxcars didn't offer any ideas on what it meant, so Robin figured he wasn't very familiar with astronomy.

"It's the symbols for the Sun and Venus, right?" he asked, so as to keep it casual. "I guess it's probably telling us to use that learning board for something."

"Oh, in that case we probably need the distance between them. Uh…" Boxcars fished the device out of the rucksack, turning it back on. "Which of these buttons do you suppose is distance?" he asked, tapping on Venus.

"Probably… this one," Robin answered, tapping a symbol with two circles and a line between them.

"Venus orbits closer to the Sun than Earth, at an average distance of 67 million miles."

"Finally, a short one," Boxcars sighed. "Might as well write that down."

And down in the notebook the number went, written beside the symbols representing the Sun and Venus. He heard the sound of Boxcars turning the board back off and offered a modest chuckle. "We're gonna keep needing that later, I bet, so you probably don't need to keep turning it off."

"And waste the battery? Who do you think I am?" Boxcars scoffed. "Wait, there's something on the floor there." He ducked in the corner then, grabbing a large white sheet of cardstock off the ground. "It's another one of those weird posters, like in the office," he said, inverting it.

"BLOOD," Robin read.

"Comforting, huh," Boxcars replied. "Eh… none of this looks all that important either…"

"Look, a few of these numbers are bigger." Robin pointed to one, then noticing they were written quite oddly.

"It says that there are 10 to the DDDD miles of blood vessels in the body," Boxcars read. "I don't think DDDD is some kind of weird math thing, is it?"

"I doubt it," Robin agreed. "There's two more big ones. That one says that blood cells make up a large portion of the... 3.7x10 to the EEEE cells in the body, and that there 8 main blood types."

"Well, at least one of those sentences makes sense," Boxcars said, offering a slight chuckle. He watched Robin quickly write the information on the first page of the notebook. "What do you think DDDD and EEEE are?"

"Strings of four letters, huh…" Robin mused. "Maybe they're locker codes."

"Too bad we don't know which lockers they go to," Boxcars sighed. "I think we've found pretty much everything in here. Let's head back to the lockers; maybe there's something in that restroom area."

"I… don't remember seeing a bathroom area…" Robin stuttered, bringing his hand to his face upon feeling a sudden flash of heat.