Single Steps

Alex awoke in darkness, sucking in huge lungfuls of air as if to make up for the air he'd missed, and then wheezed out a cough.

"Dusty, isn't it?" came Snake's voice from somewhere to his right. "Don't move around too much; you'll stir up more dirt."

"I said I was sorry!" Eagle's petulant voice sounded further away, to Alex's left.

"While you continued to struggle and kick up more dust." Fox seemed particularly peeved.

"What happened?" Alex asked, peering into the musky gloom. His hands were tied, raised painfully above his head in a gesture of surrender.

"From what we can tell," Snake murmured, "we were fed a sedative of some kind. Either that or icy's presence was so abhorrent we all fell unconscious."

Fox grunted his agreement. "We shouldn't have acquiesced to the waiter so easily," he moaned, as if he'd been repeating the phrase for some time.

"I told you so," muttered a pissed-off Wolf from somewhere far away from the rest of them. "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have had to pretend to swoon on the veranda back there."

"What?" spluttered Eagle. "How on Earth did you tell us so?"

"…I warned you."

"Yes," crooned Eagle, "but how did you warn us?"

"I'd like to know that, too," chimed in Snake. "As I remember, you were the first one to start eating. We just followed your lead."

"I never ate the food!" Wolf sounded indignant.

"Yes, you did," insisted Eagle.

"No, I pretended to eat."

There was a pause.

"Well, how were we meant to know?" enquired an exasperated Eagle.

A longer pause. Alex could almost hear Wolf shifting uncomfortably in the dust.

"Didn't you hear me say so?" he said eventually.

"When?"

"When I coughed," muttered Wolf, and, demonstrating, he gave little cough that, if Alex really strained his ears, sounded something like 'donkey'.

"What was that?" Fox laughed, then wheezed into a hacking cough which didn't sound like anything.

Wolf growled under his breath. "I said, don't eat!"

A snort came from Alex's left. "I thought you were choking when you coughed before."

"I'm a soldier, Fox, not a spy," Wolf pointed out.

The darkness fell silent once more. Alex coughed again to dislodge the dust that had accumulated around his face.

"Well, what are we going to do now?" Alex had already started to piece together a picture of how and where he was tied up. His hands were tied above his head to a rusty metal bar attached to wooden slats behind his back. Turning his head as much as he could, he noticed chinks of light seeping through cracks between the timbers.

Perhaps if he… Alex slowly manoeuvred himself into a low crouch, his knees on the floor and his feet braced flat against the wooden slats. Gently, so as not to create a disturbance that would alert icy to his escape, he leant forwards, attempting to keep his hands in line with his head. The metal bar creaked ominously against the wood.

"What are you doing?" asked Eagle's nervous voice.

Ignoring the question, he leant forwards some more, the muscles in his arms straining to keep his shoulders from being dislocated. This would be easier, he thought petulantly, if he was a girl. Top-heavy, at least. Maybe if he had an afro. Or a particularly large, heavy nose.

"Cub?" prompted a voice he recognised as Snake's.

"I'm – just – trying – to—"

With a gasp, he crashed to the ground, inadvertently taking a mouthful of dust and momentarily stunning himself with a blow to the back of his head with the metal pipe. Groaning quietly, he levered himself into an upright position, lowering his arms thankfully, though they were still attached to the metal bar. Doing his best to cough out the dust he'd inhaled, Alex leant backwards against the wooden slats. The chink of light had widened substantially and he waited for his eyes to adjust.

"…Cub?" Snake pressed him again. "Are you hurt?"

A weak laugh escaped him. "I'm fine. I'll help you guys once I catch my breath."

Blinking, he slowly made out four shadowy figures sitting in what he realised was sawdust. The closest to him was Snake. Alex swung himself erect and shuffled over to him with a tired grin. He peered at the knots securing Snake's hands before deciding that he really couldn't be bothered trying to undo them in the gloom. Feeling carefully along the wooden slats, he stepped back and turned sideways, narrowing his eyes at the target. Alex bounced slightly on the balls of his feet to wake himself up.

Snake stared at him uncertainly. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Alex smiled innocently, before swinging his right leg into a powerful kick. The wood splintered beneath his heel, and Snake's hands came free with a surprised grunt.

Snake shook the wood splinters from his hair. "Next time, warn me," he muttered, standing.

"Where's the fun in that?"

Together, they freed the rest of the unit.

"Now what?" Eagle questioned when they were all standing, somewhat bemused, in the centre of the room. There was, by now, enough light to just see what kind of room they were in.

A fine coating of red dust, out of place in the grey cleanliness of Singapore, covered everything and everyone like icing sugar gone wrong. Snake had to stoop beneath the low, cobwebbed ceiling, which creaked above them as icy moved about the house. On the other side of the room, a peeling green door stared solidly at the men. A long, solemn, fraying rope hung from the ceiling in front of the door.

Eagle walked to the door and tried the knob.

Locked.

What was more, a baritone voice intoned drily, "The door is locked."

They jumped, though Wolf tried to supress his own surprise and instead gave off a spastic jerk. "Eagle! This is no time to be joking!" he snapped.

Eagle stepped back and held his arms out to the side. "It wasn't me," he trilled, "my voice doesn't go that low!"

Fox snorted and tried to cover it up with a loud cough. "The only one of us who has a deep enough voice is Wolf."

As one, they turned towards the soldier in question, who growled at their betrayal. "I think it was icy, actually."

"Yes," murmured Snake, walking over to peer at the corner of the room, "I think it was." He held up a small black object, wired to the wall. "He's using speakers."

The group relaxed. There was always a logical explanation. Wolf nodded smugly.

Eagle scratched the back of his neck. "What now?"

Alex looked about the room. "Well, what else have we got besides a door, a rope and speakers?"

Next to Wolf was a padlocked metal cupboard that he tried to open, but as with the door, it refused to move. He shrugged sheepishly. "I thought maybe the padlock would break."

Again the voice came, this time informing them, "It will not budge. It is locked with a combination code."

"No shit," snorted Fox. He seemed to be snorting a lot. Alex briefly contemplated remarking that his codename should be Pig, not Fox, but decided against it. He was pretty sure escaping from this place would require most of his limbs intact.

Further exploration revealed a table in the middle of the room, several thick planks lined up like soldiers against a wall and a blurry painting on the opposite side. Though it was lighter than before, the gloom was still too thick to make out what the painting depicted, and when they peered too closely, the voice chided them, "Careful! You'll ruin your eyesight."

They were sitting in the dust, wondering what on earth they could possibly do to escape, when Eagle smacked his forehead.

"Eagle! You'll lose brain cells."

"Won't make much of a difference," Ben snorted. Again.

Eagle's brow furrowed and he crossed his arms. "I'll have you know I have so many quality brain cells that the loss of a few is negligible, Fox, and I was going to tell you a solution to this problem we are at this moment confronted with, but as you don't sound as if you really want to hear it…"

Wolf cuffed Eagle on the head, eliciting a pained sigh from Snake. "Eagle, he was joking. Now tell us."

The bookworm soldier uncrossed his arms and rubbed his head. "Fine. I was thinking Cub could climb out of the house. We could kick a wider hole where he freed Snake."

As one, the group looked over to aforementioned hole, which was currently about the size of Alex's fist. "That's… a good idea," murmured Fox. "Well done, Eagle."

Eagle sniffed and tilted his head up to look down his nose at them. "I dare do all that may become a man."

"Eagle, you don't know what you're saying."

Meanwhile, Alex had walked over to the hole, and was testing the weakness of the planks. Unfortunately, on either side of the hole, less than half a metre across, thick concrete pillars held the house above them. Horizontal metal struts above the hole further restricted its size. "We should be able to do it," Alex interrupted the quarrelling quartet, "but we can't break concrete or steel. ('You can only break wood and wind,'the voice confirmed.) So it'll be quite a tight squeeze…"

"What's that?" snorted Ben once more. "Have you grown fat?"

Alex turned his head and glared. "Well, if I don't fit because I'm fat, you definitely won't. Come on, Wolf, you're the strongest."

With Ben producing indignant squawks behind him, Wolf walked over, braced himself, and delivered a roundhouse kick to the planks on one side of the hole. Another kick to the other side widened the hole as much as possible. With Wolf standing back to watch, Alex carefully smoothed the sides of the hole as much as he could, breaking off chips of wood still attached.

Then, with bated breath, he put his head through the hole. But he could go no further. His shoulders were too wide to fit through the hole, even if he turned himself 90 degrees. With his head sticking out one end, and his bottom the other end, he decided to retract his head and face the others in a less foolish position.

"Well," he began, with thinly veiled sarcasm. "Why don't you try, Fox?"

Shuffling issued from the named man's general direction. Then, sheepishly, a cough. "I think I'll, er, pass, for now. Anyway, I think the voice is a clue to something. I think this room has been designed as a, er, well, an escape-the-room room."

As if on cue, a loud fanfare trumpeted from the speakers. "Escaaape… the room!" the voice exclaimed enthusiastically. "But be careful, you only live once! Ha, ha, ha."

"I think you're right," Eagle muttered, biting his lip.

"Yes," Fox replied, redundantly. "Er, well, so, let's – let's inventory the room, shall we?"

Wolf snorted. "We already did that. Locked metal cupboard, table, painting, planks. No light."

"There's also a rope from the ceiling, and lots of sawdust," Snake interjected helpfully. "Perhaps there's a message on the floor, hidden by the sawdust." He began scooping handfuls of the stuff onto the table as the others watched, thinking to themselves that they should probably help, but unable to muster the motivation to do so.

Alex watched something white flutter from the table onto the floor. "What's that?"

"What's what?"

"That." He pointed, but the thing, whatever it had been, was covered by Snake's sawdusting. "Never mind."

Snake paused, puffing slightly.

"Listen, er, Snake," Fox spoke soothingly, pausing to cough every few words, "there's a lot of sawdust, and, well, I'm not entirely sure that there would be a message on the floor. And anyway, it's too dark to read. I think, what we should do first, is look for a light."

Wolf raised an eyebrow. "What light?"

Silence fell upon his question like a pack of wolves too hungry to growl. Alex cast his gaze around the room. It was pointless, because it was too dark for him to see anything much, but it made him feel a little more at ease. Sort of like when a person hem-hems loudly into an empty room, to reassure themselves that they still have a voice.

"I wonder what this does," Fox announced at last, and pulled the fraying rope from the ceiling before any of them could speak. For several seconds they goggled at each other, their eyes sluggishly adjusting to the light that had filled the room. "Well, now, that wasn't so hard!" Fox grinned.

"We could have died! None of us knew what that would do. You should have warned us!" Wolf barked his voice back, defusing Fox's smile. "We – you – never have I seen such blissful disregard for self-preservation – or, indeed, unit preservation!"

"He – icy – wouldn't have killed us," Fox tried to explain.

"You could have killed us!"

"No, you know what I mean. We're not allowed to die whilst we're in here."

"Allowed? Allowed? Fox, wake up! We're always allowed to die! In fact, it's usually encouraged!"

"You're being unrealistic, Wolf."

"I'm being unrealistic?" Wolf slammed the table. Sawdust whoofed into the air. "You're not taking our lives seriously."

Fox twitched. "I am! I'm just saying, this is a crazy situation. It's also one that's fully controlled. It's highly unlikely that icy would let us die!"

"Life and death isn't something that can be controlled! icy wants us to die."

"Wolf – calm down! We have to think logically to figure out how to play icy's game!"

"This isn't a game, Fox!"

"This is a game," the voice contradicted him.

"No, it's not!" Wolf roared, then caught himself. "I will not argue with a voice!"

"We're all voices," Snake butted in, somewhat philosophically. "Fox, I realise you're somewhat of an expert at escape games, but we'd really appreciate some discussion before you rush on ahead, if only to prevent giving us all aneurisms. Wolf, unless we fluff around inhaling all the sawdust, I don't think we'll die. Cautiousness is important, but it isn't something to get so worked up about. We need to work together to figure a way out of this and shouting at each other isn't going to help anyone, least of all us. Is that understood?"

"Yes, mum," Wolf scowled sarcastically. A Look from Snake made him fold his arms, though his expression turned more contrite.

Eagle cleared his throat. "Okay, ladies, now that's sorted out… I say we take a closer look at that painting."

Wordlessly they trooped over to the painting and gathered in a semicircle around it. Fox lifted it off the hook after receiving Wolf's slightly embarrassed nod of assent. "Now, I don't think anything about the painting itself is important, since the voice told us something about bad eyesight. However…" He flipped the painting over and began removing the backing. "Something's always in here."

Sure enough, when he pried the painting away from the frame, they found a small saw sticky-taped carefully to the back. "To cut off your legs if we get hungry," Eagle smirked, plucking it from Fox.

"You found a saw!" said the voice admiringly. "Be careful… it's sharp. Not like you. Ha, ha, ha."

They looked at each other.

"Well, now that we have a saw, can we saw those planks?" Eagle questioned no one in particular. When his only response was Snake's indifferent shrug, he bounded towards the planks and began sawing gleefully.

Snake's gaze drifted to follow him. "Eagle, I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to saw things when they're just on the ground."

His admonishment was blithely ignored, even when the voice repeated meaningfully, "You're not supposed to saw things when they're just on the ground."

For several minutes, the room was filled with Eagle's eager sawing, which sounded – Fox remarked, with a dry chuckle – a little like a really, really exhausted donkey. Eagle was just finishing his third plank when he let out a piercing yelp. Sucking in a huge lungful of dusty air, he shrieked, "A rat, a rat!" – before hurling his saw at the black thing which had appeared, hurling himself backwards into the sawdust and coughing uncontrollably.

"I can't believe you just killed a rat with a small saw!" Snake gaped, rushing over to the black thing, which, indeed, was not moving.

"I can't believe there was a rat inside a plank of wood," Fox remarked, sounding childishly delighted as he examined the wood.

"I can't believe no one's made a pun about an eagle being scared of rodents," Alex offered. He strolled to Eagle and whacked him firmly on the back to dislodge the sawdust in his lungs, dragged him to his feet and brushed him down.

"That joke's old," Wolf replied absently, peering over Snake's shoulder. "It's not a rat, Eagle."

Eagle cleared his throat. "It's not?" he got out before dissolving into coughs again.

"No," confirmed Wolf. "It's a box."

"It's not a box," Fox argued. "It's just a block. And – it's got four coloured stripes, like some sort of barcode. Blue, red, purple, yellow. Well done, Eagle."

"You went about it all wrong," the voice sulked. "You're not supposed to saw things when they're just on the ground. And anyway, the stripes are blue, red, violet, yellow."

Alex hauled Eagle over to the others. "Looks indigo to me," he commented, smirking.

"It's not indigo, it's violet," the voice insisted.

Snake's eyes flicked to Alex, then back to the box. "I don't know, looks pretty indigo to me."

"Yeah," Wolf agreed vaguely.

The voice let out a burst of white noise that could have approximated a sigh. "It's violet. Honestly."

"It's a bit dark to be violet, really," Eagle coughed wetly. "And too bluish."

"It's violet! Violet!"

"What does it matter?" Fox asked, his gaze resting steadily on the camera.

The voice made no reply, except to hiss, somewhat malevolently, "Vi-o-let…"

"Listen," Fox whispered to the group. "It's got to be some sort of code, that's why he's so upset about it."

"You don't say," Eagle drawled.

"I'd say," Fox continued, "it's got something to do with the rainbow. Usually they don't specify indigo or violet for any other reason."

Wolf nodded slowly. "Then it's easy. It's probably just a simple substitution. Red is one, and so on."

"Five one seven two," Alex interrupted. "Sounds good, but we don't know what it's for. Erm, also, we didn't see this when we didn't have the light, but, er, there's a wooden thing over there in the corner." He pointed.

It was indeed wooden, consisting of three wooden planks connected at right angles, converging into a single point. One of the planks was longer than the others, giving the impression of a builder who'd lost his measuring tape halfway through the process and hadn't thought to measure the third plank against the previous two.

Leaving the coloured block on the sawdust-covered table, they plodded over to examine the structure. For once, Fox looked befuddled. "Look, I have no idea what this is or what it's for."

"I'm not telling you what it is now," the voice taunted them, still petulant. "All I'm saying is that it's broken."

They looked at each other. "I don't know," Snake grinned, "looks alright to me."

"It is broken!" the voice shouted.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!"

"It's held together okay. I don't see any missing pieces. Really, I don't think it's broken."

"Well, it is!"

"Hmm, well, if by 'broken' you actually mean 'good-as-new'…"

"It's broken! Broken! Bro-ken!"

"As far as I can see, nothing's wrong with it."

"Argh!"

And with that, the door burst open, sending the sawdust into a small whirlwind. icy stood in the doorway, breathing heavily. "No!" he howled. "Don't say nothin's wrong!"

Alex and K-Unit froze, amused and pleased.

AN: Ever played an escape-the-room game before? Yeah... I'm terrible at them. Anyway, if any of you know Franz Kafka, there's a kafka-esque game called 'Kafkamesto'. I had to use a walkthrough :P But there's another game called 'Tork', which is easier... And why am I recommending games to you?