ZERO ESCAPE: Last hope. Ch4
Author's note: Consider this chapter as if it was a paralel history for the previous chapter... yadda yadda.
Also, this chapter is the one with the most different options so far, as the first option is already the different one, so it might be a bit longer that the last 2.
Plus, this chapter will repeat the kitchen puzzle from the last chapter, but things will turn out a tad different this time. Enjoy!
Edited with the help of a beta reader.
Summary of repeating events for this chapter:
Sigma wakes up in a cell. From MARS? Voice threatens to kill unless escape. Solves the puzzle and gets out.
Join 8 more people: big guy Omega, labcoat Delta, overly suspicious Phi, moto suit Iota, old mole lady Theta, kid Mu, bald businessman Beta and asocial Lambda.
Their kidnapper Zero speaks about the nonary game. One exit. Explosive bracelets. 9 hours.
Everything becomes blurry...
Then Delta glanced towards the dial on her bracelet. "Everyone! Look at your dial!"
I did as she said. The dial was on and showed several things. I stared at it and my vision became a bit blurry, like dozing of a bit. My headache worsened for a bit and I felt more like floating than ever.
I suddenly opened my eyes, just to see an image in my head. It was my bracelet and it had the Eta symbol. I blinked and my head felt about to split in half. I rubbed my eyelids until a little hand grabbed my shirt and pulled a bit. It was Mu. She smiled at me and I smiled back.
"Have you chosen already, Mr. Sigma?"
"Chosen what?"
"On your dial you have to select a door, see?" she showed me her dial. It showed a Greek symbol, Eta. I looked at the rest. All of them were looking at me, waiting. When had they decided to go along with this? Even the old lady had stopped complaining. Checking my bracelet dial, there were 2 symbols rotating, an eta and an epsilon. The dial had no buttons so I was about to rub it to check when another painful sensation made me close my eyes again. Another sight appeared in my head. It was Phi and she said something, "Actually, yeah, you can choose the symbol if u do it carefully."
I shook my head. What the hell was that? I glanced at Phi, but she was not close at all and looking in the opposite direction. Had she just spoken to me?
I looked back at the screen and checked the spinning symbols. For some reason, The Epsilon irritated me, as if I had seen it enough, so I carefully pressed the screen in the Eta, where it stopped. On top of it, I could see a timer 8:52:45 doing the general countdown.
Ok, I had chosen the symbol… and?
I looked around, "So… What about the symbol we chose?"
"Isn't it obvious?" replied the old lady, "It's the choice of the door. That!" she used the cane to point at the left door, "Represents a drawing of the god Hermes, I suppose you can notice the wings and the caduceus. And that other one is the god of strength, Heracles," she pointed to the other one.
"Don't be a smartass now, you had to touch the engravings to notice that," complained the shy Lambda, although he didn't dare to make eye contact with her while saying so, and he even jumped a bit when she stomped her cane on the ground. I could almost hear a snarl from her.
"Let me tell you, young man, that my eyesight is not what it used to be. If it wasn't for my sunglasses, I couldn't even open my eyes!"
"Why is that so?" I asked, but she just shook her head, not willing to say anything else.
"So the ones with Eta (H) will be going through the Heracles door and the ones with an Epsilon through the Hermes door," stated Beta, stern as always.
"Aw, big brother, you have the door wrong!" complaint Mu, after checking Beta's bracelet.
"I see. Then behave till we get together again. You know what you have to do."
"Of course!" she smiled, and without waiting, got close to the right door. The door opened and she entered. The door closed behind her.
"Hey! Wait for the rest! Don't go alone!" I shouted running after her, but before I could reach the door, Phi grabbed my arm.
I looked at her with surprise.
"Do you really have an Eta?" she asked
I rechecked the dial. Yeah. I showed it to her. She stared at it for a moment and blinked.
"Weird, it wasn't that before..." she looked confused.
"Huh? Before, when?" now I was the one confused.
She stared at me for a moment and then, she looked away and bite her thumb. She finally shook her head, "No, that didn't happen, right?"
I didn't get what she was talking about but she just let me go and turned around, "Just don't be reckless, ok?" she said in a low voice.
What? I was going to press the issue when Lambda passed next to me and opened the door. I gave a quick glance at Phi and, turning around, I followed Lambda.
I heard the door locking behind me. I looked at it for a couple minutes, but no one was following, so I supposed they would be going through the other door.
Lambda and Mu were looking around so I did the same. It was a restroom. There were benches, shower stalls and toilet stalls on both sides of the room and in front, another door. I opened it and peeked inside. It had machines and weights like a gym. I guess that fit the room's name. At the far end, there was another door, locked. I guessed it was the exit.
I checked that area first. There were 2 treadmills and a couple bicycles. The bench press was loaded with just a long bar, but no discs. Those were ordered on a rack with weights that went from ½ pounds to 20. On the bench, there was a folder with a paper on it. The paper had a diagram drawn. 4 cubes with numbers inside. On the other side of the paper, there was another drawing. There were 4 vertical lines That bifurcated and joined (or not) with their neighbor line until they reached the bottom of the page and on each ending, there was a number there were numbers too on top of the 4 lines and what looked like a handle before the first bifurcation of each 4 first lines. That sounded familiar, I've seen puzzles like those, you have to decide where to move the handle to let the quantity flow to one side or the other so the quantity at the end of the line was correct. For example, if u have one line the bifurcates and has at the top 20 and on each ending 10, u know u must leave the valve looking down so half of each quantity goes to each side. If it was 20 on the left and 0 on the right, you know the valve must look to the left. Easy. But when there are more lines that tangle with each other, it gets more complicated. This one was easy and at the same time not. Easy cause there was only 4 valves. Difficult cause half the numbers were gone, although there were spaces that suggested if a number had 2 digits or whatever. Well, with just a bit of time I was sure to solve it. What I didn't know is what for.
There were other machines there but I noticed when checking on them, that the slot where the metal piece that secured the weights was empty in all of them. I wondered if it was important. On the wall, there was a poster with the human anatomy on it. It had letters written in different places, like A on the left arm or F in the ankle. I didn't give it much thought and went back to the shower area. Lambda was checking the toilet stalls while Mu was checking something on the floor. She seemed to be struggling to get something, but there was a metallic fence on the drain, halting her advance.
"What is it?" I asked her.
"There is something behind this. I can't reach it!" she explained, quite frustrated.
I looked at it, but the holes of the fence were too small for a hand to get through, even one small as Mu's. About a foot down I could see the shapes of something round, like shiny marbles.
"There is no way we can reach them with our hands…" I thought aloud, the holes seem just big enough for the marbles to pass… hum…
I left her to thought that up and I joined Lambda in the stalls, as he seemed to be struggling too.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing!" he screamed.
I gave a step back. Holy shit, what's with him? I hadn't noticed him much till now, but he really seemed a very nervous person. Maybe the pressure of being trapped was too much for him.
"Are you trying to open the toilet?" I tried to sound friendly, but he got defensive.
"Why? I can't?" He sounded defiant.
"Ooook, whatever you want…" I backed off towards Mu and her drain problems.
She was on the shower stalls trying to open them, but no water came from them.
"Weren't you trying to get the marbles?" I asked her, surprised how she had given up already.
"I am!" She assured me, "I only have to get water to fill the drain and the marbles should float to the surface. They are shiny, but I bet they are made of plastic."
"Good idea! But…"
"Yeah, there is no water…" she sounded defeated.
"And we can't get it from the toilets, Lambda has been trying to open them but…" I added.
"What's that?" she looked at the folder under my arm.
"I found it in the other room," I showed her and explained about the puzzle drawing.
"Oh! So maybe if you solve the puzzle we'll know of the combination of valves to make the water flow!" she said like it was obvious.
Damn, Why hadn't I thought of that already? I didn't notice before that the shower stalls were 4. I patted her head and put myself to it. It wasn't easy so it took me a while.
Just before I was done, she asked me, bored, "Are you done yet? If we can't get water that way, we can always kill that dead weight on the toilet and use his blood instead…"
Wait, what?
I looked at her with my brows touching the top of my forehead.
She started laughing, "Hahahahaaaaa, you should have seen your face…"
Creeeeeeeepy joke… damn kid.
I finished and got the combination of valves right. Then we proceeded to use it in the showers, that as soon as the last valve was on, water started flowing. Their individual drain was stuck, it seemed, as it soon started to overflow and reach the main drain. 5 minutes later, the small spheres were at hand.
"Heh, they are the size of eyeballs…" Mu mentioned.
Why would anyone compare anything to that? What's with this creepy kid?
Jeez….
Anyway, they were indeed made of plastic and could be opened. Inside they have some pieces of paper. 6 papers:
A=10
B=15
C=20
D=15
E=5
Run= 30 minutes
Right there, Mu stopped peeking over my shoulder and glanced at where Lambda was in a stall, "Hey you, why don't you go to the treadmill and start running, Just having to be 30 minutes more is more than enough."
I was impressed at her being so pushy.
"You stupid brat! Why should I do what you say?" Lambda replied with his voice almost trembling.
He had a point. But Mu just looked at the ceiling, as in deep thought, then shrugged and went inside the toilet stall, closing the door behind her. I could hear some noises. Then Lambda's voice.
"Ok, ok, I'll do it!"
He sounded terrified. And when he went out of the stall, he looked so pale that he seemed almost like a dead man. Mu went out after him, smiling innocently.
"What did you tell him?" I asked her astonished.
She looked at me confused, "Huh? Oh, just the truth. If he's doing nothing why is he even alive? I mean, he's gonna be useless? then go die, old man…"
I couldn't believe such words were coming from someone like her. But she didn't seem like she cared.
"So, what's next?" She asked me as if nothing had just happened.
I shook my head, "I have a little idea on what to do with the new numbers, but first, I want to check if the other side of the paper is useful."
"You mean the number referring to the toilet stalls?" she asked as if it was obvious.
It wasn't obvious, damn it!
"You already figured it out?" I asked surprised.
"Well, one side of the paper showed 4 things in that wall" she pointed to the wall where the shower stalls were "So it's easy to deduce that the other side of the paper refers to 4 things in front of the 4 mentioned on the other side," she pointed at the toilet stalls.
"It… makes sense…" I admitted.
I went towards the first toilet and checked the place. What the hell!
There is no toilet paper!
Ok, now seriously, there was nothing aside of the toilet and the string on top to flush. Since the toilet was unmovable, maybe it was the string the one I had to use. Maybe flushing the number of times specified in the squares of the paper?
I did so. 4 in the first one…. 6 in the second one… 2 in the third one… And the last one, 8!
Just when I finished, the toilet opened. I heard other noises from the other stalls. A quick peek confirmed it. Now they were all opened.
"Good job, Sigma!" she cheered for me.
I looked at the toilets, attached with cello tape on the inside of the opened sides, there was a metal prong. I immediately knew what was it for. I collected all of them and walked towards the next room over. The water had already stopped flowing on its own, so that what something we didn't need to worry anymore.
Lamda was running on the Treadmill. I checked the timer it had in the panel. It said 16:35. I guess we still have about 14 more minutes to finish the puzzle. Probably with time to spare. I checked the papers again.
A=10
B=15
C=20
D=15
E=5
Run= 30 minutes
And then at the poster on the wall. Yeah, the moment I had seen the ABCD letters in the paper, the poster came to my mind. They had to be connected.
In the poster the A was in the left arm, the B in the chest, the C in the upper leg, the D in the lower leg and the E in the back.
I quickly spotted the machines for biceps, quadriceps, calves and lats. The bench press was the one for chest so the discs will be the ones stating the weight. Yeah, I believed the numbers referred to the weight that should be adjusted. It was the only thing I could think about that made sense. I used the prongs for the weights on each machine and the discs on the bar.
Then everything was ready, except for Lambda, who still needed 5 more minutes to finish. So we waited.
The moment the timer read 30, there was a click coming from the door and we heard an electronic voice from the speakers.
Speaker: Herakles room unlocked.
"Yay!" Mu jumped from excitement while Lambda just fell to the floor exhausted. I was just eager to get out of there and get away from those 2.
We crossed the door and found a small room with 2 doors. One had the carving of a woman with a cereal plant in her hand. I supposed that was Demeter, goddess of nature. The one on the left was a man holding a hammer and a fire next to him. I could guess he was Hephaestus, god of craftsmanship.
I saw Mu checking her dial and pressing it and from a corner of my eye, I noticed lambda doing the same. I looked at my bracelets; a Delta and an Eta were spinning. The problem was, which one to choose.
Before I could do anything, Lambda grabbed the handle of the right door and entered without a word. I looked at Mu, who sticking her tongue out at me, entered the other room at the left.
I could choose which door to go through but I couldn't decide. Lambda looked unstable and unreliable enough to be needing some checking on him, but at the same time, Mu gave me a very bad feeling. I should be checking on her too. So, what would it be? Lambda or Mu?
Before my headache could get worse, I pressed the dial. It stopped at the Eta symbol. I guess I was to follow Mu, so I opened the left door.
I was in some sort of kitchen. I spotted Mu on the left next to a counter where a big jar made of glass was. She was holding it over her head and seeing her trembling arms, I sensed the danger. I run towards her in time to grab the jar in mid-fall against the counter.
"The hell are you doing, kid? Don't you see that's dangerous?"
I left the jar in its place again and glared at her, angrily. She pouted but didn't apologize.
Just then we both heard the door opening and looking back, I was surprised to see opening another door next to the one we had entered through.
Mu jumped, "Brother!" and ran towards him.
Indeed, Creepybeta had arrived, followed by Deltadoc.
I looked at them, "Where did you come from?"
Delta answered, "The Hermes room connects with 2 doors and this is one of them. The other 4 went through the Dionysus door. Did lambda go through another door as well?"
"Yep, the other idiot went through the Demeter door," Mu mocked him, until Beta patted her head not in a nice way.
"Manners…"
"Au… ok, ok. I'm sorry."
Seeing them acting that way, made it almost impossible any of them being Zero. Still, Mu creeped me out as much as her brother. For different reasons.
"We don't have time for this, let's start already," Beta stated, almost as if ordering us.
Frowning, I checked the dial of my Bracelet.
5:16.
Fuck, Creepybeta was right. We're running out of time!
Well, better if we started already.
Looking around I could see we were in a kitchen with a place for eating too. Behind me, there were just the 2 doors we used to enter so we couldn't get out through there. I looked to the opposite wall and as I thought…
Actually, no. There wasn't any other door there.
I wasn't the only one thinking that, everyone else was searching for another door, but there wasn't ANY other door.
"Crap, we're trapped here!" I left my frustrations to work.
"This wasn't how this should work…" Delta looked defeated when she mentioned that. Although her mood wasn't exactly what surprised me.
"What do you mean? How's this supposed to work? Better question, how do you know the way it's supposed to work? Why?"
She didn't look at me as I continued asking her. Instead, she was looking down.
"Is it possible that you are…"
But she didn't let me finish, "That's not true! I would never risk lives this way! I would have never helped in this kind of way to test…" Then she put her hands on her mouth.
I got closer to her, "Test what? What do you know?"
She looked really scared but I didn't care at the moment. However, I wouldn't be able to continue, as Beta stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.
"We can't lose time with this. All of that can wait until we're out."
"Out? And how do you exactly suggest we get out? There is no other door!" I told him, angrily.
"Just because we can't see the exit now, doesn't mean there is none," he calmly said.
RARGH!
Ok, he's right. Or I hope he is. But I don't feel like agreeing with this guy. He pisses me off for no reason. No wonder Omega had trouble with him.
I sighed. I looked at Delta, who couldn't look back at me, then at the siblings, who looked back at me stoically and I turned my back to all of them.
"Whatever, let's search for a way out," I suggested.
I looked around. The room was rectangular. On the wall on my back, there were only the 2 doors we have entered from. At my left, there was a fridge with 2 doors, a counter with a sink, some cupboards, and drawers. At my right was a furnace or oven and some more drawers. Further away and in front of me was a big round empty black table with 1 large bench surrounding it. The wall in front of me only had 2 posters pasted on it. There was something in between the posters and I was going to get closer when I glanced at Mu opening the fridge.
I looked over her shoulders. Inside the fridge, there were 7 small bottles of juice in them on 3 shelves. Mu took them out one by one so I could read the labels. First, there was grape juice with a purple color and with it in the upper self was a red liquid filled bottle of what it seemed tomato juice. The second self had a bottle of green apple juice and another one with orange juice. The lower one had a bottle of yellowish lemon juice, another one with dark blue liquid, whose label said blackberry and the last bottle had a light blue liquid in it. I couldn't guess what it contained in it, but it looked poisonous. A quick glance at the label let me know that it was… water? It seems, in this case, the plastic bottle was in itself, tinted blueish and the liquid inside had nothing to do with the color it showed.
"Hum… What to drink…" I got alarmed when I heard her say that.
"You shouldn't, maybe we'll need them to get out," I advised her.
She pouted and nodded. I decided to let her alone for the moment and looked next to the fridge. There was the glass jar I saved from the kid recklessness on the counter.
I should have told her off more about this. Broken glass was dangerous. She could have cut herself or… I dunno, cut someone with it… Hooooly shit, where did that came from? Heh, no matter how creepy the kid could seem, she wouldn't use a sharp object to hurt us.
Seriously, what on earth I'm even thinking?
Unfortunately, my mind wasn't gonna help me forget and even made me though of Mu laughing psychotically with a big piece of glass stained with blood in her hand.
I shivered and shook my head. I didn't have the time for that crap!
Well, it might be part of the game, probably. I left it aside for the moment. Looking at the rest of the counter, I found inside the sink (the faucet didn't work) a dish that had a brownish color with a big spot in the middle. Odd decoration. Following the counter to the right, I could see the ending. Just before it, there was a circular marking with a message written on it in red ink.
A jar of Mars
"What the hell is a jar of Mars?" I asked to no one in particular. The rest came and checked it, but didn't know what to answer, so they went back to their own investigations. Delta was checking the oven and the fires while Beta was checking the table. Mu was trying to open the second door of the fridge, supposedly the freezer, but it was stuck. Or locked. You never know in this place.
I glanced at the glass jar. Could that be a jar of Mars? Well, we were supposedly in Mars so it really was a jar of Mars… I lifted the jar and put it carefully so the base was exactly in the circle. It had the same size, but nothing happened.
Of course, it wouldn't be that easy.
Below the circle mark was a drawer. I tried opening it, but it didn't move. The one beneath it didn't move either. The part of the counter next to the fridge also had a drawer underneath. It opened easily. Inside were another dish, a big pot, and a white paper. I though I could she something shining on it, but getting it close to my eyes only made it to smell. It smelled like milk. I left the three items on top of the counter, next to the Jar. The dish was yellowish with 2 darker rings on the outside. More odd designs. Not that I cared about that. I went further to check the table. It seemed that Beta had gotten bored of it and was checking the posters instead.
Before joining him, I looked at the table. Surprisingly, it wasn't as empty as I had thought at first. There was a dish already in the middle of it. It had yellow flames printed on its surface. The rest of the table didn't have anything in particular. It was black with some little shining dots here and there, like the outer space. If I got even closer, I could see a very faint grayish line. It was a circle. No, more. 2, 3… 8 concentric symbols surrounding the center of the table. Hum… what did that remind me of…?
I just shook my head and looked at the wall. There were 2 posters. Now that I was close, I could see better what was in between the posters. It was a hole. Narrower than a finger.
"What is that hole for?" I asked Beta
"How could I know?" he replied without even looking at it, or me.
I looked at the posters. One was really big and had the solar system drawn in it. The sun with its planets and their elliptic orbits around.
I blinked. It was so obvious. The sun was a flame circle. Like that dish. In the middle of space with orbits around!
"The other dishes!" I exclaimed and went back to the counter. The one with the big dot looked like Jupiter and the one with rings had to be Saturn. I checked the poster. Jupiter was in the 5th orbit and Saturn on the 6th. I looked at those orbits and saw in different places of each one a little dot. I put each dish on each dot. However…
"There are 6 more dishes left," Beta said.
I don't need you to tell me, baldy. I went back to the counter and looked again, but there were no more dishes. I went to the other side, where Delta was and told her about what I had found and she showed me what she had found. 2 more dishes. One was deep blue and the other was light blue with green spots. That one we supposed it to be the Earth and the first one to be Neptune, being the name of the god of water. I asked her if there were more, but she just shrugged.
"I didn't found anything else," she said, "What about you?"
"Nothing else except a pot and a piece of paper."
That seemed like it interested her a lot, "Something written on it?" she asked.
"Nothing. It was blank, but… it smelled."
She pondered for a bit. Then she went to the counter in front of her and checked the paper. She smelled it and smiled. Maybe she liked the smell.
Or maybe not.
"Did you know there are certain substances like milk and lemon juice, that are reactive to heat?"
I think I recall something like that from a novel. Oh! I knew what she talked about! "A hidden message?"
She nodded and put the paper on top of the electric vitroceramic hobs, and lighted them on. We stared at the paper for a couple minutes and after a while, its started to get darker, but only in certain areas. As if it was magic, a text started to appear and in less that 5 minutes it was complete.
"Zeus, due to his position, and Aphrodite, to his vanity, like to be on top. Ares will check on his wife looking up at her so Time won't be checked. Hermes will fly in the Sky over the Ocean," she read aloud.
"What in the world...?" I asked.
"It's a riddle," she explained, "Those are the Greek gods and for what I can see, it talks about positioning them higher or lower."
"Then, Zeus and Aphrodite on top, Ares below and Hermes up too?" I tried.
She shook her head, frowning "No… If Hermes was up too, it would have been mentioned with Zeus…"
My headache was coming back, so I decided to place the dishes we had in their place in the table. The Earth in the 3rd orbit and Neptune in the 8th. There were still 4 dishes left. Mars, Venus, Mercury and Uranus. Earth, Satun, Neptune and Jupiter were done. Oh, wait. Jupiter… what did it remind me of?
I had to left the thought to go due to my headache and I pressed my hands on my forehead. Looking forward, I could see the posters. Oh, I haven't looked at the other one. Is that a rainbow?
I got closer to it. It wasn't exactly a rainbow. It had a thick line with the 7 colors starting with red and finishing with violet.
"It's the frequency spectrum or color spectrum. It's used in Astronomy to notice movement in celestial objects," Beta said.
"So if they catch it with different colors over time, it has moved?" I asked.
"Exactly. If the color moves towards the red, its getting further away and closer if it goes towards violet."
"He, so when Mars goes further away due to its orbit, we see the red planet redder?" I joked.
He just nodded, but didn't laugh. Meh, not my fault if the guy lacks a sense of humor.
Aaaanyway, so color means distance somehow… red is the furthest… violet the closest… and… 7 colors… oh, like in the fridge… Wait, that can't be a coincidence…
I went back to the fridge, and after getting Mu out of the way, I took the bottles out and ordered it like colors starting with Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet. And… now what?
"You know, I think there is something odd in the riddle," Delta chose THAT very moment to distract me.
"Well, it's a riddle, what did you expect," I replied.
"I mean, why Time, Sky and Ocean and in capitals?" she pointed out.
"Maybe they represent something…?" I guessed.
"Well, we know what the other represent. Zeus and the others were Greek gods and…" But that, that she had just said rang a bell from earlier.
Zeus… and Jupiter. That was it! They are the same!
"Maybe those 3 represent gods too," she was still following her line of reasoning, "Ocean can be Poseidon, god of the sea."
"The blue sea that is also Neptune…" I thought aloud.
"Yes. The Sky should be Uranus and the Time is Cronus."
"Was Cronus known by another name?" I asked.
"Saturn by the Romans," she answered
Bingo. 7 gods that are 7 planets ordered in a position somewhere… I glanced at the open empty refrigerator… wait, it's not empty.
I got my hand inside and reached to the furthest place inside. There was a… dish! It was white so I didn't see it at first. I left it on the counter next to the pot.
So anyway… 2 posters, one with planets, the other showing distances. A table representing the solar system with the sun in the middle and the planets at difference DISTANCES… this starts making sense. Just a bit more…
So, distance from the sun. Mercury is the closest, so violet for him. Neptune the furthest, so violet for him, and the rest as they were situated. Now the only thing left was solving the riddle…
"Got it!" Delta exclaimed.
Now, that's some timing. I explained my reasoning and she explained hers.
Zeus (Jupiter) and Aphrodite (Venus) on top. Since Ares is looking up to Aphrodite and doesn't notice the time, Cronus. It means Ares (Mars) is in the middle and Cronus (Saturn) down. Then Hermes (Mercury) and the Sky (Uranus) are as up as they can be without topping Zeus. So they go in the middle and Oceanus (Neptune) down with Saturn.
If we change the names for the colors we have associated…
Upper self: Green and Indigo
Middle self: Blue, Violet, and Orange
Lower self: Yellow and Red
I rearranged the bottles and the moment I inserted the last one, we could hear a click in below the fridge.
"Oh! Maybe the freezer can be opened now!" Mu exclaimed.
I guess she had been fighting with the freezer for some time now and wanted it to open already.
"Do the honors then," I told her.
She opened it with no resistance. Inside there were 3 dishes (finally) and a dirty ice cube. It was about 5 inches across and long. The frozen water must have been dirty before cooling enough to solidify, as the inside couldn't be seen. I let it there, though, and took the dishes to the table. One was red so it was easy to guess it was Mars, 4th orbit. 3 dishes left, Mercury, Venus and Uranus. Not difficult. The gray one should be Mercury (good thing the poster had images of the planets a bit bigger so I could see how they looked.) I put Mercury in the 1st orbit. The white dish should be Venus, being the brightest of them all, so to the 2nd orbit. The one left was the only one left on the table, so it had to be Uranus by default. To the 7th orbit.
Just like with the fridge, a clicking sound was heard and I saw the sun dish being lifted from the table. Looking below it, it seemed that a part of the table had lifted it. Beta took the dish so I could check what had lifted. It was a small cylinder. It could be detached from the table and opened in the middle. Inside there was a plastic piece. It was like a smaller cylinder, about 1 inch thick and 3 inches in diameter. It had a hole on one of the sides, with a helical ridge inside the hole. That seems to mean it wasn't complete.
Which meant we needed another piece. But where to take it from? I went back to recheck the kitchen area. Things have gone well till then. It was a matter of time before we found the piece left.
And then we would get out of the room.
And THEN we would get some answers from Delta.
Then I had a very bad feeling and my stomach turned. I blinked and an image of Delta on the floor on a puddle of blood filled my vision. I blinked and almost screamed, to see the vision fade and Delta calmly heating the pot.
What the hell was…
Wait, what is Mu doing with... Oh, not again!
I took her from the arm, which was holding the jar, "Could you stop grabbing the damn jar until we've finished the puzzle, young lady?" I took the jar from her.
She didn't look annoyed at me this time, in fact, she looked kinda dizzy. She stayed with her arm in the same pose as if still grabbing the jar and slowly turned to look at me. I stared at her blinking slowly. Did she forget to take her nap or something?
Whatever, I'm not her nanny.
Still with the jar in my hand, I turned to see Delta busy with the pot, "What are you doing?"
"I thought there could be something hidden inside the ice, and I was right!" she claimed, taking something thin and long from the pot.
I was going to take it from her, but before that, I let the jar on the counter. I realized I had put it again in the circle with the mysterious message.
I cocked my head. A jar of Mars…
An image of the fridge filled my vision. It lasted a second, but it was enough. I dashed towards the fridge, opened it and took the blue bottle. I opened it and filled the jar, still in its place. After a couple second of filling the jar, a click was heard and I was able to open the now unlocked drawer under it.
There was a small thin object. Cylindrical, like the metallic part of a screwdriver, but cut in half along the length. Then I glanced at Delta holding something identical.
Next step was obvious, so I joined the 2 parts and together, with the piece I've found in the table. The long and thin part of it had the exact thickness of the hole in the poster wall. So there I went and inserted it. I only needed to turn it a bit clockwise for it to fit perfect.
The result was a button on the wall. It was asking to be pushed, so I did. An electronic voice announced the unlocking of the room.
Speaker: Hephaestus door unlocked.
And then the ground moved next to the wall. A square of about 4 feet wide opened to show stairs going down. So there was an exit after all, phew.
I smiled at Delta, who clapped her hands once, smiling. Beta wasn't smiling, though. He was looking behind Delta. I followed his gaze, just to see Mu breaking the jar.
I rolled eyes, "There you go kid, you happy now?"
But she just stared at the glass shards on the floor. Beta walked towards her and grabbed her arm, "Let's go!"
She seemed to awaken to those words and looked at Beta surprised, "Oh! Yes, Brother!"
Delta and I looked at the passing next to us and down the stairs, then at each other.
Delta shrugged and I did the same, muttering "Crazy kid…"
We went downstairs and as I was doing so, I checked the dial.
2:18.
Well, it could be worse I guess.
From up the stairs, we could see it was a huge storeroom of a couple dozen feet deep (or high, depending if the point of view was from inside). From the point the stairs ended, approximately in the middle of the room, and forward, the floor was different from the part that was behind the stairs. It had rails in a grid-like patterns. There were a lot of metal crates, about 50, and each was at least 2 feet wide and 5 feet tall. Some of them had more crates on top. The more crates were on top, the less there were. Like, from the 50 crates, about 30 have another crate on top and from those 30, about 17 had a second crate on top and so on. There was only one crate that had 5 crates on top of it and it almost reached the ceiling.
And about the ceiling, it had fluorescent lights on it, but there was a small place in it with a red light beating. It was exactly in the furthest place from the end of the stairs we had come from. I narrowed my eyes and I was able to check it from where I was. It was a card reader and next to it, the ceiling had a black square. Looking at the "hole" we had come from, I could assume that was the exit. However, there was no way of reaching it unless we could fly.
Hum, maybe with the crates? But even if we could move them, we would need a card to open the exit.
Also, since the stairs were transparent (or with enough holes to see through) I could see beneath and behind them, in the zone of the floor that was plain and without rails nor crates.
"Those tanks and machines… It has to be here… finally!" I heard Delta exclaim before running down the stairs.
I followed her to the plain floor area. She was acting… different than normal. As if she was… anxious, maybe?
In that area, there was a couple huge tanks that had a water symbol and some huge pipes going up to the ceiling. There was also a console and some cupboards.
I saw Delta checking place after place in a frenzy and I could hear her saying, "Not here… not this either… where on earth is it?"
"What are you looking for?" I inquired.
"The air system! It should be in the storeroom area!" she snapped at me.
I gave a step back, "Ok, hold on a second. How do you know it should be here?" I wasn't going to let her drive this train at her pace, "What is it? What do you know? Isn't it time you tell us?"
She seemed like she had just used all her energy. Her face was pale and her arms hung to her sides. Also, she didn't seem to have heard a single word i had said.
She shook her head, "I was wrong… If the settings are not correct and the layout is different, then maybe we are really on Mars… was I… really wrong?"
I groped her shoulder and shook it a bit to get her attention, "I have no idea of what are you talking about. Where did you think we were?"
She finally looked at me, "The testing site in Nevada…" her voice sounded defeated, "But I was too late… They probably mutated the virus already… Oh…" she lastly made a surprised face, but suddenly went back to her previous mood.
"Testing site? Virus?" I understood even less, but she seemed like wanting to explain a bit, so I shut up.
She took a deep breath, then started explaining, "I was employed for a large company that wanted to collaborate in space travel. There was a test site in Nevada that was a replica of a space station that will be on Mars. I was in charge of creating the… realism,so to speak. That's how I came up with Celerity, or also called, Virus C."
"I don't understand what a virus and a Mars mission could have in common," I thought aloud.
She answered, "The testing site. You see, Mars doesn't have the same gravity as the Earth, mainly due to it's less mass. It's about a third of its gravity; 2,6 less exactly. So, how could we recreate the same effect in the Earth? How could you make a place where the gravity is a third of what the planet obliges? The task was almost impossible. Then I thought of a, at first sight, good idea. If it's too much of a problem changing the gravity in a place for the people, let's change the perception of the people for the place."
"Can you do that?" I asked, impressed.
"Well, seems like the test was a success and the mission happened, cause here we are, huh?" She said sadly. "In any case. I developed a drug that acted like a virus. The effect would be altering the processing speed of the brain. If we could accelerate it enough, an object falling at normal speed, wouldn't it look like falling slower, as if there was lower gravity?"
It seemed reasonable to me, "Yes, but… Can the brain do that? Wouldn't that harm it?"
"Not if just used for a small period of time, just enough for any test that astronauts would need. After the time was up, they would be injected with the antiviral and done! However…"
I kept quiet. I had a feeling I knew where this was going.
"I was really proud of my research and what I had created, but still… The creating, testing, delivery… Everything was so quick that I thought there might be second effects or consequences we hadn't realized yet. So I run test after test until I found it."
"What did you find?"
"A way to turn Celerity into the most dreadful bioweapon the world had ever seen. Initially, it transferred itself by air, so the moment it would be turned into a weapon, it would infect anyone. Everyone. Anywhere and everywhere."
"Well, but who would change the virus? No one has anything to win by that," I reasoned.
She sighed, looking even more defeated than before, "There is a group of people, who provided most of the funds for the project. I doubt you've heard of them. They are called… Free the Soul."
That name… sounded really familiar.
"I believe they hacked into my research data diary and accessed the last entry, where I posted my latest discovery about Celerity and how it can be turned into a mass destruction weapon. Now they know how to mutate the virus. I came to the test facility to take Celerity out of their reach. I destroyed all traces of the virus and all files so the Celerity used in the facility should be the last trace of it. I entered the place and mixed with the people who were going to undergo the test for the mars mission, expecting to get to this place and the Virus. I knew the layout of the place so I knew where the air system would be. The plan was to recover it and destroy it, but… it's too late now."
"The moment you heard about forcing us to play this game, telling us we were to be punished… didn't all that crazy stuff make you think over your plan? What kind of test could this possibly be?"
She looked down, "I really thought this was part of the test, to introduce a stress factor and that you were all playing along, thinking you already thought this was the test mission, for the sake of the test, but… you really weren't faking your abduction, it seems."
I was going to reply with an energetic OF COURSE, but for some reason, it felt wrong. But why? I didn't choose to come here like her, right?
Oh, god, I have the feeling I DID exactly that, but it can't be… ugh, my head.
She looked at me, not very interested, she asked out of respect, not a real concern, "Are you all right?"
"No… my head…"
She remained silent, without motivation.
But pressing my temples, I tried asking her one last thing, "What would the mutated virus do to people? Would it kill them?"
"Yes… and no," she shook her head and sadly smiled, "The changed virus itself wouldn't harm you. With the opposite effect as Celerity, It would make your neural activity slow down. In the end, you lose your mind and it would eventually lead to suicide. You should have seen the tests on animals. Such a deadly virus…"
"Radical 6!" I exclaimed suddenly.
She blinked, "Huh? Radical what? What is that?" she arched a brow, intrigued.
I blinked, "I… don't know…"
I rubbed my temples. Why have I said that? The name just popped in my head. Goddamnit, it hurts like a bitch! My head is going to split open!
"Ugh… look. Right now we have to get out of here. You can search for the virus later," I told her while shaking my head, "Why don't you look around and search for a card? There is a card reader in the ceiling and we'll need one to open the exit."
She just nodded and started looking at the cupboards. I saw her opening a toolbox. Good, doing something will help her to regain her senses a bit. I looked back to the stairs, to look at Beta and Mu. He was on top of the stairs staring intently at the crates. Mu was some stairs higher, lying on her back. Was she sleeping?
I went towards him and before I could ask him, he spoke, "I got it figured out. Sigma, go down there and do what I tell you."
"What? Why?"
"Because one has to remain up here to show the way to the one moving the crates," he explained. Well, it didn't explain much, though, but he continued, "If we don't move them in a special order and way, they'll get stuck and so will we."
"All right, I'll do it." I was about to head back down when I remembered, "What about her?" I pointed at the girl lying behind him.
"She must be tired, let her be," he said, not seeming very concerned.
I shrugged and approached the crates. I kneeled and looked under them. They had wheels that made them able to move along the rails. I stood up again and tried moving them. Their wheels seemed like being well greased as they weren't difficult to move.
Beta guided me and I moved the crates, aligning them as he was telling me to until I had positioned all in some sort of stairs, although each step was huge. It wasn't a hard task, but it took time.
Beta joined me in looking at the crates in their final position. Then, Delta approached us with a card key. I felt relief. We were finally ready to go.
However, the conversation Delta and I had earlier was still on my head and moreover, the feeling that I had chosen to go to that place.
Of course, that would contradict what Zero told us all. And of being abducted. Only a crazy guy would come willingly to such a dangerous place.
Unless he was the guy creating the game.
That would make me Zero.
Pffft… HAH! Yeah, sure.
I shook my head in ironic amusement. Beta looked behind us towards the place where Mu was still lying on.
"Go ahead and open the door, we'll go in a moment," he told us.
I nodded and started climbing the crates, with Delta following. When we reached the top, we were really high and not with a good standing. Delta didn't dare to look down. Instead, she checked the card reader and, taking the card she had found, passed it throughout the slot. It made a big sound before we heard the following electronic voice.
Speaker: Ares room unlocked
"Yeah!" I exclaimed.
And a panel of the ceiling opened. I peeked outside. It was a hallway, then down again at Delta.
"This way!"
But she didn't move, "What about the others?"
"I don't see them there," I replied
She shook her head, "No, I mean Beta and Mu," she explained.
"Oh, they must be… eh?" I looked down but they weren't climbing the craters. Looking around the room I didn't spot them either, "That's odd… BETA! MU! Come up here, we're getting out!"
"Where are they?" asked Delta. As if I should know.
She didn't even dare to look down. She was probably scared of heights.
"Get out and wait for me there. I'll look for them. Maybe Mu went back to the kitchen," I told the young woman.
She frowned "Why would she do that?"
I shrugged. Not my fault she was a crazy kid.
I helped her get out and with great care, get down the crate's mountain. I looked everywhere in the room till I had no other choice but to believe they couldn't be there. I went up the stairs to check the kitchen. I didn't need to look much further.
The air had turned thicker. Was it due to lack of oxygen? I wouldn't rule it out, we were trapped in outer space. Whatever the reason, my breathing was something I had trouble with at that moment.
Might be the fact they weren't moving. Or the fact they were lying on the floor. Or the fact there was a puddle of a dark red fluid under them.
What the fuck…
I felt my knees weak and I let myself kneel next to them. Mu was the closest to me. I really didn't want to do it, but… I had to. With a trembling hand, I touched her neck.
Nothing.
But, what was I expecting?
Then, I suddenly saw a glass shard stabbing my chest and I jerked backward. With a troubled breath, I rubbed my chest, over my shirt, but there was no wound. Had I just imagined it? But it was so real…
Whatever the reason, I was snapped out of the initial shock. I didn't know how were they dead, but I wouldn't stay there to learn it the bad way.
I ran back towards the basement and then up the crates, looking behind me from time to time to see if someone followed me, but nobody did.
I joined Delta in the hallway. It was a long big room. The door of the basement was on the floor next to a wall with 2 doors, however, judging for the orientation of the doors and the room we had escaped from, those seemed like doors that other groups should have to pass to get there. In the opposite wall was another door, bigger than the others with a merman holding a trident.
Delta looked at me worried, "Where are the rest?" but then I noticed one of the doors opened, although only a crack, so it wasn't easily spotted.
I didn't want to speak about the other 2. So instead of answering, I asked her, "Did you open that door?"
But my elusive reply confirmed what she suspected, "They are dead, right?"
"How could you tell?" I confronted her.
"Because I could see beyond the opened door," she pointed towards the door slightly opened. I got next to it and opened it wide.
Three bodies covered in blood were lying on the floor. Lambda, Theta, and Omega. I clenched my teeth and looked away at the door, where Delta was waiting, "God! Why are they dead too?"
"You know why," she replied, with an icy stare, "They committed suicide, most surely," she added.
"Radical 6!" I exclaimed again.
"What did you say?" another voice joined us from outside the door.
Phi and Iota had just gotten outside from the other door and were walking towards us. Phi looked especially livid. Or troubled. Or… I don't really know what to read in her face.
"What did you just say?" she repeated.
"I…" I didn't know what to tell her.
But she wouldn't have any of that. She grabbed me by the collar. "What did you say, Sigma?"
I looked at her crazy expression and said it. "Radical 6…"
She let me go as if she suddenly understood and then her face underwent a "radical" transformation, to surprise, and then to horror.
"Oh no… I… remember…" she said.
"What?"
I looked at Iota, looking for an answer to such behavior and then I realized he had taken off his helmet. The guy (yeah, it was a guy) couldn't be much older than me and his face was distorted by horror.
Yeah, he had peeked at the room full of corpses. And yeah, when you haven't seen a corpse before in your life, seeing a huge room with 3 feels like it was full of them.
"What happened there? Who did that?" Iota asked.
"They were infected by a virus and killed themselves" Phi replied, she had gone back to her more composed form, but looked really sad and regretful, "We didn't stop it in time…"
How did she know? What had she just now remembered? What did she know? Why everyone knows something and I'm the only one that…
But my inner rant was disturbed by Iota, who was confronting Phi. It looked like she knowing something added to Iota's suspicious of who might be Zero. They began a discussion that heated up more and more until she decided to quit it and get away from him and he grabbed her by the wrist, demanding more answers. Just when I thought it was time to kick this guy's ass, Delta appeared behind him and hit him in the base of the head with his opened hand, in a chop way.
He fell like a sack of beans. I kneeled beside him and checked his pulse. He was alive. But the fucker was out cold.
Damn, Delta, for a doctor, you know how to defend your… what the hell? "Hey, what are you doing?" I demanded.
Delta had sneaked behind Phi, using the confusion of the argument and the surprise of her appearance to stop Iota, and was holding her from behind in a pose that looked painful for Phi. Phi was kneeling, with an arm stretched backward and up, in a very odd and painful pose while with another hand, Delta was pressing a screwdriver on her lumbar area. Phi was groaning and looked really in pain. Was it so painful to have your arm twisted like that?
"It doesn't look that painful, right?" Delta asked, reading my face and oddly calm, "This is how the Inquisition tortured, but they used both arms. However, I'm using my right hand for something worse."
Then she leaned on Phi, next to her ear, "Do you know the spot I'm pressing Phi? Is the central nerve of the base of your spine. I just need to press 3 more millimeters for making u beg to be killed so you'll stop feeling pain."
What the... why had she gone suddenly psycho on us? "Delta… why are you doing this? Let her go!"
She ignored my request, and smiled, "You see, Sigma. I can't let her go. In fact, none of you are going to go anywhere."
A shiver run down my spine.
She continued, "The virus has mutated and it's already killing. We might be already infected. So we can't go out. It's as easy as that. Please check your bracelet and the time left."
I did it.
0:09
9 minutes, how ironic.
She continued, "I know well you all want to escape, but I won't let the virus escape in any of us."
"You're not making any sense!" I objected, "You said we were on Mars and that the original virus was already used in the test so anything they might have done to it, happened long ago!"
She gave me an apologetic smile, "Sorry, I lied. I wanted to test you and see if you could be trusted. The layout of the place changed, that's all."
"Then we're…"
"Maybe. The layout changing is a possible reason, but I could be wrong. It doesn't matter. We all die here and this place will be purged. The virus will die without a living host to propagate it!"
"But it propagated through the air! You said that!" I complained. I wanted to gain some time to think and save Phi, but time was running short.
"It does, but after some time with no human to duplicate inside, it dies. It's thanks to its propagating speed that the virus can extend itself… and why is so deadly as well."
"You're wrong…" Phi managed to say
"Huh?" Delta seemed interested but didn't let her go
"Even if we die here, it's too late. You underestimated the virus. No matter what we do from now on, we already lost. The virus got out. The reactors will explode and humanity will face extinction… We failed."
"What?" both Delta and I looked at Phi and then, my brain was full of images and memories
I fall on the floor in agony as my head felt like it was being split open. Unknown to me, that distracted Delta enough to lose grip on Phi, who managed to get away. She pursued her, but I managed to focus enough to get up and tackle her. With my arms, in a bear hug, locked her arms to her sides.
Losing any hope she had left to correct what she considered her mistake, Delta became hysteric and started to make a fuss.
And then the hand with the screwdriver hit my left bracelet and an electronic sound came from it. She stopped moving and looked down at my bracelets holding her waist.
She seemed to have remembered the same I was remembering.
ZERO: your bracelets won't get off and will explode if you try getting out with them on or remove by force or damage
Oh, crap.
A white light made my word go black.
My body felt numb, was I dead? No, I could feel a surface under me, it was trembling, as if I was on a car, but it was way bigger than one. I couldn't move but I felt my body, except my arms, like the feeling u get when you sleep on top of them.
I couldn't open my eyes, but I could hear a voice, "Six of us are… dead. Counting myself, there are only three left."
She said something else. Couldn't focus well enough to hear it. Then there she was again, "…not just these 6, all of them… All six billion…"
My head hurt and I couldn't listen anymore. Then, a big sound, like someone hitting an iron wall or letting something fall on the floor.
Then the voice again, "Shit, why am I even reporting to them… they will die anyway. Shit… we failed… SHIT!"
Will they die? Who? Can't we save them? But she said, we… failed…
The virus escaped!
Yeah… now I remember.
Everything.
I'm sorry Phi.
I'm sorry Akane.
I'm sorry, young me. Seems like your destiny is still being me, armless and half blind.
Sigh… maybe we'll make it in the next jump.
Yeah, maybe, with another choice.
Maybe…
I left my mind drift back to the black word it had woken from and I started floating into the nothingness.
END (bad future)
Author's note: And so we reached the usual future that led to the events of VLR. Still not the last ending you'll be seeing here.