The single best thing about his plan, perhaps the only good thing about it, is that it had to happen immediately. It gave them no time to consider just how bad the plan really was.
Chance and Wolfie burst from behind the desk, shoulders lowered and cocked like blitzing linebackers, and slammed into the flimsy door.
The element of surprise, Chance had decided, was their only advantage. They could not wait until Desmond finished his countdown.
The door simultaneously burst apart on its hinges and flew open into the hallway. The Plexiglas shattered, sending splinters into the air. The two shadows stumbled backward, lifting their arms protectively over their heads. Chance and Wolfie barreled through the doorway, juiced with enough adrenaline and purpose to make them forget they weren’t military commandos. Tahoe and Kate following closely behind in a second wave. What was left of the splintered door provided a thin blockage between them and the killers.
They careened out of the suite to the lobby, keeping low to the ground. They burst through a door at the end of a short hallway and emerged into a stairwell. They bounded down the stairs in giant hurdles. They reached a platform when they heard the pursuers slam through the door above them. Gunfire blasted, deafening booms in the enclosed concrete stairwell.
They fled down another flight of steps to an emergency exit. They exploded through it, immediately triggering an alarm. A klaxon wailed into the night air.
“This way!” Chance yelled.
He dashed across the parking lot, ducking behind the only car still in the lot. From here, he could just see the lights of traffic along Baltimore Avenue, maybe a quarter-mile away. There was safety there in the traffic lights. But it would mean a dangerous race across an open field.
“Run!” he ordered.
They scampered across the field, four across, in a dead sprint. They dared not look over their shoulders, for fear the gesture would slow them down. Gunfire blared again. Four shots pierced the night. POP-POP-POP-POP! Desmond and Scarface were not far behind them, but it was exceedingly difficult to run and fire at the same time. Bullets exploded into the grass field behind Chance’s feet.
They were just a few hundred feet from the well-lighted road, when another car screeched around the corner onto Campus Drive. Chance stepped into the roadway and waved frantically with both hands. Kate followed his lead, shouting, “Help! Help!”
The car — a black sedan — made no move to slow down. In fact, Chance heard the sudden revving of its engine. It was speeding up.
Yanking Kate by the arm, they leapt out of the path of the vehicle just as it careened past them. From the ground, Chance looked up and saw brake lights flash on the sedan. It was stopping. Turning around for another pass.
Chance scrambled to his feet, pulling Kate up with him. A trickle of blood streamed from a gash on her forehead. A gleaming glass building towered across the street. The façade was constructed of curved windows that ran the full length of the building. The undulating glass panels resembled ocean waves. The upper levels were unfinished. A yellow construction crane towered beside the building. At its base, several dumpsters were overfilled with discarded sheets of drywall and other detritus. A bright garbage chute rose from the dumpsters to the roof.
A low concrete wall fronted the building, with raised letters that spelled out: BRENDAN IRIBE CENTER FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE AND INNOVATION.
They sprinted toward the building, leaping over the wall. Behind them, they could hear the screech of tires and frantic shouts. They reached a glass door just as two students were exiting the building, headphones on. Wolfie grabbed the door just before it shut, and they rushed inside. The door locked with a metallic click behind them. Chance looked over his shoulder. Too late, he realized he should’ve grabbed a phone from one of those two students. But maybe other students were still inside.
Desmond and Scarface were sprinting toward them, joined by three other men who spilled from the black sedan. Chance shoved the others farther into the building, away from the windows.
The corridor was lined with floor-to-ceiling windows on one side and several doors on the other. Above each door was a light – red above the first three rooms, and green above the fourth, Room 101. With one final glance out the window — Desmond and Scarface were at the front doors — Chance and the others slipped inside the fourth room.
The room was dark, except for a thin line of light filtering in from beneath the door. They stepped into the blackness, lest their shadows betray their presence inside, and waited. They expected footsteps. But after two full minutes, none came.
Suddenly, the lights flickered on. Fluorescent lights set into the ceiling sputtered to life, one by one, until the entire room was brightly illuminated.
The room was the size of a small lecture hall, but devoid of tables or chairs. The walls were white, smooth and featureless. Other than the light fixtures and a single insulated pipe that ran from one side of the room to the other, the ceiling was bare. The room was built in the shape of a circle, as the lectures were to be delivered in the round. The floor sloped downward at a slight angle.
A man stood in the center of the room. He wore a hard hat and a bright orange vest over a button-down shirt and blue tie.
He turned at the sudden appearance of the four strangers. “Hey!” he yelled at the four teens. “You can’t be in here. This entire area is still under construction.”
Chance stepped forward. “Sorry, we didn’t know —”
“How did you get in here?” the man demanded. “All of these doors are supposed to be locked. Wasn’t there a red light outside the door?”
“No, it was green. The light was green.”
“Well, you all need to leave immediately. This concrete floor was just poured over a sub-basement, and we have not yet conducted all of the appropriate integrity tests. It’s not safe.”
Chance took another step forward, his arms held out to his side to convey he wasn’t a threat. “We need your help,” he pleaded. “There are men trying to kill us. They chased us in here, and we just need a way out of here. A safe way out of here.”
“Listen, son, I don’t know what kind of trouble you are all in, but I can assure you that this is not a safe place for you right now. So turn around and leave through that door, the same way you got in here. Right now.”
“Alright, alright,” said Tahoe. She backed to the door and pulled on the handle. It didn’t open. She tried it again with the same result. “It’s locked,” she said.
“Damn it,” the man in the hard hat said. “Look what you’ve done now. Now I have to call this in.” He reached for a walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. “Hey, Charles,” he said. “Charles, this is Alfred. Come in.” He released the TALK button and waited. A blast of static filled the room.
“This is Charles,” a voice said through the noise. “Go for Alfred.”
“Listen, Charles, I’m here in Room 101, and I was just about to start the load test on this new floor. But I’ve got four kids in here with me now, horsing around or something. Anyway, they managed to lock us in. I need a remote override on the door lock. Do you copy?”
Static crackled.
“Did you say … override?” Charles said.
“I need a remote override on the door lock in Room 101,” Alfred repeated. “Do you copy?”
Static.
“Charles, come in. Do you copy?”
The walkie-talkie went dead.
“Well, hell,” Alfred said. “You kids really did it now.”
Chance and the others walked toward the construction worker. “You have to listen to us. We just need —”
A loud crunch echoed in the empty room. Then another. It sounded like the snapping of a large tree trunk.
All five of them froze in place, eyes wide.
“What was that?” Wolfie asked.
“Do … not … move,” Alfred ordered.
There was another deafening snap, and a crack suddenly appeared in the floor. Like a lightning bolt, it
snaked from one side of the room to the other, right between them and the construction worker. And then, a beat later, half of the floor fractured into a spider web of cracks.
The construction worker looked up helplessly as the floor gave way.
Chunks of concrete and steel crumpled in a thunderous boom, plummeting into the sub-basement below. As the floor disintegrated, an underlying girder of steel beams was revealed. Two steel beams, each a foot wide, crossed the entire span of the room, connecting in the middle like a giant X.
An entire quadrant of the floor fell, disappearing into the darkness below. The sub-basement must be deep, because Chance could not see the bottom. Kate screamed, and the four of them locked hands.
Alfred looked at the floor, then up at them. “Get onto the beam!” he shouted. He took a tentative step on the disintegrating floor. But one step was enough. The floor beneath the construction worker suddenly shattered apart. Alfred plummeted in a rain of concrete and steel, his arms and legs flailing, his screams dying into the darkness.
Chance turned from the horrific sight, as Kate screamed uncontrollably. Without needing prompting, all four maneuvered out onto the steel beam. They all reached the support structure a split second before the rest of the floor collapsed, showering the sub-basement with debris in a cacophonous hailstorm.
And then, all was still.
The floor was completely gone. Only two girders crisscrossed the room in a giant steel X.
Chance balanced on the steel beam, his arms outstretched. He felt a death grip on his shirt. Kate held on to him, tears in her eyes. A step away, Tahoe and Wolfie were holding on to each other just as tightly.
“What the hecking heck,” yelled Tahoe.
“This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening,” muttered Kate.
Chance’s mind raced. Kate was right, none of this made sense. How could the floor just crumple like that? He had seen footage online about sinkholes swallowing entire houses. This was like that, but what were the odds of it happening to them, at this precise moment? I guess everyone says that when bad things happen, Chance thought. Nobody believes bad things will happen to them. Bad things are for other people.
But if the last week was any indication, Chance knew that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Everybody just breathe,” he said. “These beams are strong. They will hold. We just need to back out toward the door and try it again. Maybe the door opened automatically. Or maybe Charles heard the call and opened it remotely.”
Tahoe, who was the closest to the door, inched backward. Keeping a tight grasp on Wolfie with one hand, she reached out with the other to turn the door handle. It didn’t move.
“Still locked,” she said. Her voice cracked.
“Kate?” he said. “I wonder if you’ve still got a few tricks up your sleeve.”
Kate sniffled, struggling for composure. “I can try.”
Suddenly, a horrible groan filled the room. It sounded like a death rattle from a wounded whale. And then Chance realized what it really was: the warped rending of steel.
As they watched in terror, the far end of the steel beam wrenched away from the wall in a small detonation of concrete and mortar. The now-free end started to bend down toward the abyss. The metal moaned again as it sagged, an awful sound that sounded like the deep bellow of the grim reaper.
With a loud pop, the second beam shook free of its concrete moorings. For a fleeting second, the unsupported beams hung there, gently swaying. And then, behind them, the first beam burst from the concrete footing. Another explosion to their left, and the second beam started to wrench free.
“Jump!” Chance screamed. In a single stride, he leaped into the air, his fingers straining to reach a pipe that ran across the ceiling.
With a final groan, the steel framework buckled from its moorings and plunged into the darkened sub-basement. A rattling concussion of steel and concrete filled the room. Dust and debris spewed up from the ground below, obscuring the shadowy depths.
Chance’s fingertips clung precariously to the pipe. There was a weight on his leg, something heavy, but all of his attention was trained at strengthening his grip. With a surge, he managed to wrap his right wrist around the pipe, then shimmied until the pipe was in the crook of his elbow. Only then did he exhale and look down.
Kate clung to his leg, horror etched across her face. “Chance,” she cried. “Help!”
He reached for her, but felt his elbow slip. He adjusted himself and reached down again. “Grab hold of my arm,” he ordered. “I can’t pull you up, not on my own, but I can help. Climb up my leg. Come on, I’ve got you.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Wolfie and Tahoe. Both were dangling from the pipe, their faces contorted with fear. Tahoe was struggling with her grip, her small hands barely wide enough to grasp the insulated pipe.
Kate dug into Chance’s legs with her fingers, shooting stabbing pains through his calves. He grabbed her by the shoulder and heaved with whatever energy he had left. She wrapped her legs around his waist, then reached up for his shoulder. She pulled herself up until she could reach the pipe. She interlocked both hands around the tube, but kept her legs wrapped around Chance’s chest.
“I can’t hold on,” she whimpered.
“You can,” he replied. “You have to.”
Less than a foot away, Wolfie started to swing. With a final kick of his legs, he rocked his entire body until he could punch up with his feet. He slammed his boots into the ceiling, hoping to dislodge a ceiling tile, anything. But nothing budged. This ceiling was not made of flimsy ceiling tiles, but solid concrete. He let his legs drop. He winced as his full weight strained his grip.
The four of them dangled helplessly over the chasm.
“How far down is it?” Wolfie grunted.
“Far enough,” Tahoe said.
“Somebody will come,” Chance said. “When that floor collapsed, it was loud. Very loud. Somebody heard. Help is coming.”
“Yeah, two guys with guns are going to storm through those doors any moment now,” said Wolfie. “They’ll be a big help, I’m sure.”
“I can’t hold on much longer,” said Kate. Beads of sweat dotted her face. “I’m not as strong as you.”
“You’re stronger,” Chance said. “You can hold on.”
“Do you think that dude is still alive down there?” Wolfie asked. “Alfred?”
“Alfred!” Tahoe shouted. “Alfred!”
There was no sound from bottom of the gaping, still-smoldering hole.
“Maybe Charles heard him,” said Wolfie.
Charles, thought Chance. Charles and Alfred.
Something about the two men sounded familiar. Their names. Chance searched his memory banks. Was it something from back in the escape room?
And then, in a flash of recognition, he suddenly remembered something his mother told him. From that day in the shed when she gave him the glass locket. He felt the locket against his chest.
You have to look beyond what’s in front of your eyes to see the truth.
His mind suddenly filled with a rush of images and names. The previous eight days roared through his head, fragments and pictures in fast-forward.
And then things started to slow. And suddenly Chance could see through the fog of mystery.
“Guys,” he said. “Look at me. I need to tell you something.” Then, thinking the better of it, he said, “No, I need to show you something. Kate, I need you to let go of me, just for a moment.”
“Chance, I can’t hold on!” she cried.
“Just for a moment,” he assured her. Their eyes met, and something in his gaze must’ve been enough to reassure her. In that moment, she trusted him completely. Kate unwrapped her legs, tentatively, until she was hanging only by the strength of her own arms.
“Watch this,” Chance said.
He let go of the pipe and plunged toward the dark void below.
THIRTY-FOUR
Chance fell.
> For a sickening instant, his body still in midair, he thought he had made a mistake. A miscalculation. Somewhere in his mental processes, something had misfired, the wrong decision made. A fatal judgment. The gaping hole seemed to reach up for him, ready to swallow him whole.
Then he hit solid ground.
The darkened hole was directly beneath his Doc Martens, and yet he had stopped falling. He seemed to be standing in mid-air, like Jesus walking on water. He took a tentative step across the invisible floor, then a second. A third step confirmed it — the floor was there. An impossible floor.
“Let go,” he said to the others. “You can all just let go.”
Kate looked down, tears streaming. “I’m scared, Chance.”
“Nothing is going to happen, Kate. Look, I’m standing.”
Kate let go with a muffled sob. She landed hard, off-balance. Her hand shot out to her side to stabilize herself. Her body froze, as if in disbelief. Her hand hit something solid when nothing solid was there. She slid her hand across the invisible floor and looked up at Chance with a puzzled expression.
Wolfie and Tahoe dropped to the floor. All four of them stepped experimentally across the floor; confused. It was as if they were walking on a glass floor.
“I don’t understand,” said Wolfie. “We watched this floor collapse. We all saw Alfred fall.”
“Did we?”
Tahoe looked strangely at Chance. “You seem to have this all figured out, Chance,” she said. “So spill.”
Before he could answer, something happened to the floor. It flickered.
Wide-eyed, they watched as the ground blinked to a solid gray color, then back to the steel beams and spider-webbed floor, then to something that looked like a grass field. It was as if there was a hidden projector, casting images upon the floor. They flashed by rapidly, and vanished just as quickly. When it was done, the only thing left was a bare concrete floor.
Then the walls started to flicker too.
Static patterns and images flashed onto the walls in a full 360 degrees. Wavy lines. Thousands of white and black dots. A wall of sheer rock. An underwater scene that temporarily made Chance feel like he was submerged in a vast ocean. A rainbow-colored test pattern. Then, everything winked out entirely.
Escape Room Page 18