Escape Room

by Brian Ullmann

  “That makes all four of us,” Chance said. “No bugs.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Kate asked.

  Unable to provide an answer, they exited the restroom. Tahoe and Wolfie were waiting for them in the galley.

  “Nothing then?” Tahoe asked. He shook his head.

  Wolfie and Kate returned to their separate seats. Chance and Tahoe went back to row 22, to their two seats together.

  “That was still a good idea,” said Chance.

  “There’s still another option,” Tahoe said.

  “Yeah? And what’s that?”

  “You may not like it.”

  “At this point, I don’t much like any of this. So try me.”

  “I … know you were getting close with her, with Jenny,” Tahoe said slowly. “We could all see it. And I am so sorry about that. But right now, we need to consider every possibility.”

  “Ask your question.”

  “Do you think that Jenny could somehow be involved with those two men trying to kill us? The journal, maybe she’s the one that was bugged. Or maybe she knew Desmond—”

  “They killed her,” Chance said abruptly. “They shot her and they killed her, Tahoe. Right in front of us. Right in front of all of us. She wasn’t involved in this. She couldn’t have been involved in this. The notebook doesn’t make any sense to me, but there’s got to be another explanation.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please return your seats to their upright positions and fold up your tray tables. We are beginning our descent into JFK International Airport. We will be on the ground in approximately 10 minutes.”

  Tahoe had another question. “What are we going to do now?”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Once they were on the ground, they moved with the swell of passengers through the international arrivals terminal. Chance’s back was taut with tension, and judging by the pinched looks on the others, Tahoe, Wolfie and Kate were feeling anxious, too. Their ruse with the passports had surely been discovered by now. TSA agents watched them as they passed, their gazes thick with accusation. The hordes of travelers afforded some sense of anonymity, but Chance still felt conspicuous, like a giant flashing red arrow was floating over their heads. Here we are! Over here!

  Heads down, they allowed themselves to be carried along with the crowd to baggage claim. There they followed a parade of wheeled duffels and baggage carts out to the curb, to the taxi line, and into a yellow cab with a driver that smelled worse than they did.

  “Penn Station,” Chance told the driver.

  Pennsylvania Station is one of the busiest train stations in the world. Twenty-one tracks, seven tunnels, and over 600,000 passengers every day. The original station, modeled after the Gare d’Orsay in Paris, was made of marble and granite. It was demolished and rebuilt in 1963, into a far uglier structure, completely underground, a maze of platforms and levels, dank stairwells and crowded bagel shops.

  They made their way to the Amtrak concourse and purchased four tickets on the Northeast Regional to Virginia Beach, using Chance’s debit card. He was sure he was leaving a trail by using his debit card, but he didn’t have much choice. He promised himself not to use it again unless it was an emergency. He was probably bumping up against his overdraft limit anyway.

  Heads on swivels, searching for the familiar scar and scowl of their pursuers, they boarded the train and found four seats together, two on either side of a laminated table.

  Chance showed Jenny’s journal to Wolfie and Kate, but they couldn’t make sense of the notes, either. When Tahoe pointed out that Jenny had marked “No observation” next to what they believed to be Kate’s abbreviation, Kate just shrugged and gazed out the window at the passing trees. She stayed that way for the rest of the trip.

  They disembarked at the station for Baltimore-Washington International Airport, not even halfway to the end of the line in Virginia Beach.

  They made their way outside to the taxi line.

  “Three-fourteen East Newgate Lane,” Chance told the driver. “And I’m going to need to borrow your phone.”

  They pulled up to the featureless façade of the industrial park to find a Baltimore Police Department cruiser parked out front. The lights were off, and two uniformed officers leaned against the trunk. They appraised the approaching taxi with indifference.

  Chance had called them to report what had happened at the escape room. The officer who took the call asked how they had escaped, which Chance explained without delving into much detail. The desk sergeant could barely conceal his skepticism, but he couldn’t ignore a possible multiple-homicide. He had promised to dispatch a squad car to meet them at the scene.

  “Which one of you is Chance Matthews?” one of the police officers said. “I’m Officer Plainte, and this is Officer Martinez. We’re here about a possible homicide.”

  “Yes, sir,” Chance said. “Actually, we all witnessed it.”

  This got Plainte’s attention. “All four of you actually witnessed the homicides?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, then quickly corrected himself. “Well, not exactly. We didn’t actually witness the murders. But we saw the bodies, we saw the killers. They tried to kill us too.”

  Tahoe, Wolfie and Kate nodded in support.

  “In here?” Plainte gestured with his head toward the warehouse.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And when was this?”

  “Last Saturday,” Chance said.

  “And you only reported this today?” The hint of accusation was obvious in the officer’s voice.

  “I already told the sergeant all of this. We barely escaped from the killers, and we had no way to get in contact with anyone until today.”

  “Can we just go inside?” Tahoe said abruptly. “You’ll see for yourself that we are telling the truth.”

  Officer Plainte glanced at his partner.

  “Stay here,” Officer Martinez ordered.

  The two officers approached the door without removing their pistols from their holsters. Chance didn’t think there was much of a threat inside the escape room, not anymore, but he didn’t appreciate their nonchalance, either. It didn’t seem that they were taking this very seriously.

  The officers opened the door and slipped inside. The door shut behind them.

  Several minutes passed. The first body they would find would be Carrie’s, just behind the reception desk. Down the left corridor, the officers would find Leo, the game master, his body askew on the plush carpet. At the end of the opposite corridor, inside the Pharaoh’s Room, they would discover the other four bodies. And they would see the blood everywhere. By now, the smell must be revolting.

  What was taking them so long?

  The door opened and Officer Martinez leaned out. He gestured for them to come inside. The police officer held the door open for them, and they stepped through.

  “No …” breathed Chance.

  The entire space was empty.

  The plush carpet was gone. The glass sconces were gone. The wallpaper had been stripped from the walls. The furniture, all of it, was gone. The entire reception area had been stripped down to nothing but a concrete floor and bare walls.

  They staggered through the bare space, open-mouthed. The officers watched them intently.

  The door to the Darwin Room was ajar. Chance looked inside. Empty. No bookshelf. No globe. No carpet. No desk. He re-emerged from the room at the same time that Tahoe emerged from the Pharaoh’s Room on the opposite side of the empty space. She slowly shook her head.

  There were no bodies. No blood. No smell.

  They were standing in an empty warehouse.

  Part Four

  Google Unveils BRIN:

  New ‘Hyper-Targeted’ Search Algorithm

  New Tool Delivers Personalized Search Results

  MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA., MARCH 18, 2019 – Google formally unveiled a new search algorithm today that promises to revolutionize the company’s popular search engine. Named for Google founder Sergey Brin, BR
IN is the first algorithm that considers all personal and professional metadata before delivering results. This means that search results are highly personal, unique to each user.

  “BRIN is the next generation in online searches,” said Google CEO Tyson Medford. “By mining publicly available information such as social media profiles and posts, previous searches across all platforms and online viewing habits, BRIN will deliver the most relevant and personal results for all of our 800 million annual users.”

  In a packed auditorium on its Silicon Valley campus, Google launched BRIN with a live demonstration of the power of the new tool.

  Cynthia Carvallo, a marketing manager in the Google’s education division, conducted a search for “President Sanchez news.” Using the current algorithm, Google delivered 216,000,000 results in 0.99 second. The results included stories from a wide variety of news sources including Fox News, CNN and Buzzfeed.

  Using BRIN, Google delivered 265 results in 0.88 second. This time, the results were highly personalized. Mining over 65 different sources entirely unique to Ms. Carvallo’s profile and history, BRIN delivered only left-leaning stories (based on Cynthia’s voting record), funny memes making fun of Sanchez (based on Cynthia’s history of Facebook likes and posts) and related stories criticizing Sanchez’s policies and comments.

  BRIN is the most efficient, most accurate search engine in the world. It will increase productivity and reduce “search fatigue” by delivering the information that users are actually searching for.

  “Criticisms that BRIN will restrict opposing views and alternative perspectives are unfounded,” said Medford. “BRIN is not an “echo chamber” tool, as some have claimed. What we are doing with BRIN is shrinking the overwhelming size of the internet, to make it more manageable for more people.”

  “BRIN is a project three years in the making,” added Medford. “We would like to thank the Lenore Foundation for their generous support and to every one of the 7,000 employees of Google who worked tirelessly on this project.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  For a fleeting moment, Chance wondered if all of this might just be a figment of an overactive imagination. He had had vivid dreams for much of his life. He once dreamed about the characters and plot for a short story. When he woke up the next morning, his nocturnal musings remained sharp enough that he spent the next two hours furiously scribbling notes before the dream could fade, as they always did. The story was good enough to get published in his school’s year-end anthology.

  He suddenly remembered the dream with his mother and the fire, how lucid he felt, how real and beautiful his mother looked. And although hers was a voice that Chance did not remember, it felt pitch-perfect.

  Chance felt his sanity slipping. Perhaps that was how the sound gave way to the unsound. Not in a landslide, but in a series of small dustings. Is this what his father had seen in him? The same delusions and mania that had once gripped his mother? Could his father be right about him?

  Chance felt a hand slip into his own. For a moment, he registered only its warmth and the gently reassuring grasp of five fingers interlocking with his. He looked up, his stupor broken, to see Kate beside him. She smiled and squeezed his hand.

  They stared at the empty space in disbelief, as if the carpet and the lights and the furniture and the bodies and the blood would suddenly materialize, to make everything make sense again.

  “I don’t understand,” said Tahoe. “We were here just a week ago. This whole space was an escape room, two escape rooms. We saw the bodies. We touched the bodies.”

  The two police officers looked at them skeptically.

  “You don’t believe us.”

  Officer Plainte said, “I can only believe what I see in front of me. And I see no evidence of any crime here.”

  “So we just made this whole thing up?” Wolfie chimed in. “The escape room was just a figment of our imagination, I suppose.”

  “Do you have evidence, anything at all, that would suggest there was something here?” asked Plainte.

  Chance thought a moment. “The invitation,” he said. “We all got identical gold invitations to come to the escape room.”

  “Do you have one of these invitations?” Plainte asked without much interest.

  “No,” Chance admitted. “They collected them when we checked in.”

  “I see,” the officer said.

  “What about the bodies?” Chance said. “A week ago, there were six dead people in here. Have there been any missing person reports? Surely somebody has filed something. Six people just don’t die without someone noticing.”

  “The desk sergeant already ran that based on your initial call,” Martinez said. “We have no missing persons matching any of the descriptions you provided. If you have anything specific, maybe we can narrow the search. A name?”

  “Just first names. Carrie, she was the receptionist. And Leo, he was the game master. I already gave the names to the sergeant.”

  “Leo,” Plainte repeated. “The game master.”

  Martinez stifled a smirk.

  When none of them had anything else to offer, Officer Plainte shot a quick head nod at his partner and said, “Okay, boys and girls, we’re going to wrap this up. You seem like earnest kids, so I’m not going to cite you for filing a false report.”

  “False report?” Tahoe spat. “This is such bullshit!”

  Chance cut her off before she could continue her verbal assault. “Thank you, officers,” he said. “Sorry for wasting your time.”

  Outside, they watched the police cruiser pull out of the lot. For a full minute, they stood there in the light drizzle, only the squawk of seagulls to break the silence.

  “Well, we’re really on our own now,” Tahoe said. “The police don’t believe us.”

  Wolfie said, “Can you really blame them? We sound like crazy people.”

  “But we’re not crazy,” Chance said. “We all saw what we saw. Desmond and Scarface have killed 12 people. You think they’re going to stop now? Tahoe is right. We’re on our own. But we’ve got to see this through now, on our own.”

  “Jesus, what do they want with us?” Kate cried. “What?”

  “I can only think of two options,” Chance said. “Either we’re just witnesses that they need to take care of, loose ends to be cut. Or they came to the escape room to kill one of us.”

  “What possible motive could they have for killing one of us?” Wolfie asked. “We haven’t done anything.”

  “We don’t know that,” Chance said quickly. “I don’t know that. Think about it, we barely know each other.”

  “Jesus, Chance,” said Tahoe quietly. “This is not the best time to start suspecting one another. Just because your girlfriend was spying on us doesn’t mean we’re all guilty of something.”

  “Tahoe,” said Kate.

  “What? It’s true. We all saw her notebook.”

  Chance said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have even brought it up. It’s just … I guess I don’t know what to believe. None of this makes any sense to me.”

  “It doesn’t make sense to any of us,” Kate assured him.

  “I just want to go home,” Wolfie said. “I’ve got to let Pops know that I’m okay.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” said Chance. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Why the heck not? He’s probably worried out of his mind.”

  “Because we shouldn’t get anyone else involved in this. If we go to our families now, we’re dragging our loved ones into something that we don’t even understand. We may be exposing them to danger. We may be making them targets too.”

  “Those two killers tracked us down in the fucking jungle,” said Wolfie. “You don’t think they’ve already figured out where our families live?”

  Chance considered this, the idea that their loved ones were already in jeopardy. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “We need to check on them. But first, we need to do a little investigative work on our own.”

 
; They circled around to the back of the warehouse. Here, they could see that the ground level was actually an entire floor below the escape room. It was a loading dock, with a half-dozen bays and a dock lift that ran the length of the building. The large bay doors were all shut and locked, but Kate found an unlocked window and shimmied through. A minute later, one of the garage doors rolled up, and Kate stood waiting for them on the other side.

  “I’m starting to think that you are a professional thief,” Wolfie said to her.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Too bad there’s nothing here to steal.”

  Kate gestured toward the interior. The warehouse beneath the escape room was deserted. A reinforced concrete floor stretched for a few hundred feet in a space the size of a football field. A large metal skeleton of platforms and scaffolding filled the warehouse, with mechanized pulleys and winches hanging beside a series of loading bays.

  “Where did we fall through?” Tahoe asked.

  Chance paced down the warehouse, counting. “This one,” he said. “Pretty sure, anyway.”

  They started searching the area, but the concrete floor was virtually spotless, as if it had been freshly scrubbed.

  “This place would be a dope place for my parkour skills,” Wolfie said, looking up at the scaffolding.

  “You know parkour?” Tahoe asked, not even bothering to hide her skepticism.

  “You wanna see?”

  “I think I’m going to have to.”

  Chance protested, “Guys, we’ve got important stuff to do. Stop messing around.”

  But Wolfie was already moving. He scampered up one of the metal support poles like a native climbing a palm tree. Reaching a narrow platform, he took a deep breath and started running.

  He dashed along the girder, jumped to grab an overhanging beam, and swung his body forward. He vaulted across a six-foot gap to an adjacent platform, landing on all fours.