Escape Room

by Brian Ullmann

  Metal on metal.

  A plan started to form.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  They came for Chance next. He dared not say anything to Kate, and she wisely stayed quiet and unmoving during the transition. The two female orderlies had quickly returned Kate’s bed to its spot along the wall and grabbed Chance’s gurney. They quietly punched in the four-digit code before exiting the room and wheeling him down a long corridor. One of the wheels wobbled, squeaking along the linoleum floor. They passed through another locked door, this one unlocked, and into a cool, well-lit room. He could see nothing through his face wrap, but he could hear the low hum of machinery.

  A male voice said, “How many more?”

  “This is the last one,” the one named Viola said. “The other tests are in the Delta Lab.”

  Remaining still, Chance felt one of the orderlies unfasten the restraint around his right ankle.

  “Hold on,” the man said. “You know the drill. I need to do that part.”

  “Thank goodness we have a big, strong guard to protect us from the unconscious boy,” Viola said sarcastically.

  Chance felt the guard release the restraints on his wrists.

  The two women lifted Chance from the gurney onto another hard, cool surface. One of them pulled the gauze wrap from his face. He risked a peek and saw he had been loaded onto the bed of a gleaming white machine. At the head of the machine was a large white tube, circling counterclockwise. He immediately recognized the mechanical resonance imager.

  Chance felt a shudder of movement. The bed slid inside the machine until his head was completely encircled by the rotating imager. He clenched his eyes shut, fighting back against the onrushing claustrophobia. Something knocked loudly.

  He opened his eyes, and lifted his head, ever so slightly. The two orderlies had retreated to the far end of the room. Just beyond, the guard had stationed himself beside the door. Chance could see the gun tucked into a holster at his waist.

  Chance breathed in deeply. Time to act.

  In a blur of movement, he reached under the loose gown until his fingers clasped around something cold and hard.

  And metal.

  His locket. The same circular glass locket his mother had given him so many years ago. He dared not look, but he knew that the swirl of paint inside the metal locket was still there. Swirls of orange and red and yellow. They weren’t just colors to Chance. They were more than the paint that went into a work of art. Those colors represented the undying link between Chance and his mother. She may have walked out of his life all those years ago, but she had never truly left.

  Chance inhaled deeply. With a quick movement, he swung the locket upwards and jabbed it into a seam in the imager rotating around his head.

  A mechanical resonance imager uses strong magnetic fields and radio waves to take detailed images of the inside of the body. The tube that now encircled Chance was filled with powerful magnets that helped align the body’s protons, which help distinguish between the types of tissue in the body.

  Inside the machine, any foreign metal — like a locket — becomes a magnet. The resulting magnetic force draws the two metal pieces together. And in a battle between one magnet that is a 12-ton MRI scanner, bolted to the floor, and one that is a small metal key, it is obvious which will win. Under suddenly immense forces, the key will torque and twist through anything to reach the attracting magnet.

  It would even tear through electronic machinery.

  It would be the distraction Chance needed.

  But after a few seconds, there was no spark. The imager spun on, seemingly oblivious to the metal contaminant.

  Something must be wrong, Chance thought.

  Suddenly, the entire machine jerked. The faint smell of burning filled the room, and a plume of smoke started to seep from the spinning imager. The smoke burned Chance’s nostrils.

  Stay calm, he told himself. Wait for your moment.

  “What the hell?” one of the orderlies shouted.

  “Shut it off,” commanded the other. “Get him out of there.”

  The smoke thickened, and the two women coughed as they approached. The spinning imager was shooting off sparks now, the knocking from within louder, as if something inside had broken loose. Chance felt himself yanked from the machine by his feet and tossed roughly to the ground. The bandage fell from his face. He saw his opportunity.

  As he hit the ground, he rolled and kicked out with his right leg, sweeping one of the women off balance. She crashed into the machine, hitting her head against its hard exterior. She wobbled, dazed, and Chance pounced. Scrambling to his feet, he up-kicked and struck the orderly flush in her jaw. She crumpled to the ground, a thin line of blood trickling from her ear.

  The second orderly spun toward him, but Chance anticipated the move. He circled around her, locking his left arm around her neck in a deep chokehold.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he breathed into her ear.

  Using her body as a shield, he moved through the smoke.

  The guard was waiting, his back pressed against the door and his gun aimed right at them.

  The imager spun faster, spitting off fingers of flame.

  “Don’t shoot!” the orderly cried.

  The guard looked panicked. The noise, the fire, the smoke. An escaping patient. He jerked the barrel of the gun toward Chance’s head, but Chance yanked the orderly’s body to the side, then back again, obscuring any clear shots. The guard nervously snapped his gun back and forth.

  “I don’t want anyone to get hurt here,” said Chance. “Just put down your gun.”

  “No chance,” the guard said. “I’m under strict orders.”

  “This machine is going to explode,” Chance warned. “We all need to get out of here before that happens, because if we’re in here when it goes, we’re all done for.”

  The machine belched, and flame shot out like a blowtorch.

  “What did you do?” the guard demanded.

  “It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that we get —”

  The machine exploded.

  Shards of white plastic sprayed outward. Flame and smoke spewed like a volcano. The blast knocked them all to the ground. Through the smoke, Chance could hear the guard’s gun skitter across the floor. He reached toward the sound, grasping blindly. His ears rang, his head threatening to implode.

  The guard grunted and lurched for the gun. Chance released the orderly, flinging her to the side, and charged for the gun. He grasped it a split second faster than the guard. The weapon felt alien in his hand.

  “I tried to warn you,” Chance said.

  “You won’t get out of here,” the guard said. “They won’t let you.”

  “We’ll see about that.” He quickly assessed the situation. His plan hadn’t gone smoothly; he had not intended to cause this much destruction. The guard was right; others would come. He didn’t need this one to follow.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” he said.

  “Sorry about what —”

  Chance pulled the trigger.

  A bullet sliced cleanly through the guard’s lower leg in a puff of blood. The guard screamed, clutching at his leg.

  “You’ll live,” Chance said. “But you won’t be able to chase.”

  Chance burst out of the smoking lab and down the corridor. The hallway was lined with doors, and he struggled to retrace his steps. He tried one, but it was just a storage closet filled with cleaning equipment. The doors all looked the same. Then he saw it, an identical door, only this one had an electronic keypad mounted beside it.

  This must be the one.

  The four-digit code.

  One of the orderlies had teased her colleague about her code. “It has something to do with my name,” she had said. Viola.

  Four digits. Viola.

  Think, Chance. Think.

  He tried the first combination that popped into his mind. 1-2-3-4. The default on almost all combination locks. Apparently, all of the or
derlies had distinct codes, probably to better track their individual movements. Someone had taken security seriously within this facility. Maybe one of the orderlies had never reset from the default. Chance hit ENTER. A red light flashed. Not it. That was stupid, Chance. Slow down.

  Four digits.

  Viola.

  It was not a common name. Chance could not even remember coming across anyone by that name, and yet the name was strangely familiar to him. Because he did know of one Viola, the figment of a 16th century imagination.

  Viola was the main character in Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night. Encouraged by a sixth-grade teacher, Chance went through a stage when he devoured all of the Bard’s plays. Some of the words went over his head — okay, more than most — but read aloud, Shakespeare’s plays danced. His teacher called Shakespeare a poet, but Chance thought he was more like a musician. The words and sentences were all about melody and tone and tempo.

  Chance’s father had endured the dinnertime recitals with barely concealed disdain, and he was thrilled when the stage finally passed.

  But Shakespeare stayed with Chance. In Twelfth Night, Viola is separated from her twin brother, Sebastian, after a shipwreck. Dressed as a man — Chance couldn’t remember why — Viola falls in love with a duke, who has fallen for a countess. The play follows their love triangle; hidden identities are uncovered, secrets revealed.

  Could the passcode have something to do with Shakespeare’s Viola?

  Twelfth Night, twelve, 1-2. But that was only two digits.

  No, that was wrong. With a start, Chance suddenly remembered the origin of the title. Twelfth Night referred to the Christian holy day of Epiphany, the date when the three wise men delivered their gifts to baby Jesus in Bethlehem. Twelve days after Christmas.

  Chance counted off the dates from December 25 on his fingers. January 6.

  Quickly, Chance punched in the sequence — 0-1-0-6 — and hit ENTER.

  A green light flashed, and the door clicked open.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  They looked dead.

  The three bodies were still lying there, motionless upon the steel gurneys, a hazy white gauze covering them like shrouds. Their faces were covered.

  For a sickening moment, Chance thought he was too late.

  One of the bodies moved.

  “It’s okay, it’s me,” Chance said. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Get these things off of me,” Kate seethed.

  Chance dashed to her side, and quickly unfastened the leather straps on her wrists. Kate sat up and started loosening the ones on her ankles as Chance hurried to the two remaining beds. He pulled the sheets from their bodies, and removed the face bandages. Relief flooded him. It was Tahoe and Wolfie. They roused slowly, adjusting to their sudden consciousness. Flashes of panic flared across their faces as they realized they were in a strange room, bound to a steel table.

  “What the hecking heck,” said Tahoe.

  He quickly freed them from their restraints. They swung down onto the smooth floor, their legs unsteady.

  “Is that a gun in your hand?” Wolfie asked sharply.

  Chance had nearly forgotten about it.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “We don’t have much time before they come again.”

  “We’re going to run in these hospital gowns?” said Wolfie. “Where are our clothes?

  He was right. They looked ridiculous, like escaped mental patients.

  There was a locker in the corner of the room. Inside, they found their clothes and quickly changed, too harried to care about each other’s nakedness. Chance tucked the gun into the waistband in the back of his pants.

  “Now let’s get out of here.”

  Chance punched in the code and pulled the door open slowly.

  “You know the code?” asked Kate.

  Chance grinned. “Gotta love Shakespeare.”

  They crept into the corridor.

  Chance glanced to the right, down toward the examination room where he had left the bleeding guard and two orderlies. He could just detect the faint smell of burning, but there didn’t seem to be any activity from that direction. The MRI had been ablaze when he left. If it hadn’t yet drawn others, it soon would.

  They started to run in the opposite direction, staying close to the wall. The hallway came to a T intersection. They paused there, unsure. Unmarked doors, some with keypads beside them, stretched in both directions.

  “You know where you’re going?” Tahoe asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Chance answered honestly.

  Tahoe and Wolfie glanced at each other with raised eyebrows. Kate broke the impasse. She charged down the corridor that branched off to the right.

  The others followed. They ran until the corridor dead-ended in a locked door, a digital keypad set off to the right. Unlike the other unmarked doors, this one had a sign over the keypad: CENTRAL.

  “How did you know to come this way?” Chance asked Kate.

  “Old burglar trick,” she said. She pointed to a knot of cables that ran along the edge of the hallway. “See the cables here, how there are more here than back where we came from? Architects always design power sources at the center of buildings. It’s easier to distribute the power that way. Cables multiply the closer you get to the power source.”

  “Wait, so we’re headed into the center of this building?” asked Tahoe. “I thought we wanted to get the hell out of here.”

  “No, Kate is right,” said Chance. “We need to end this. If we leave now, if we run, we’ll never know the truth about the Picasso Project. And we will never be free.”

  “Okay, then,” said Wolfie. “Let’s pull back the curtain. Chance, do your thing.”

  Chance quickly punched in the code. The light on the keypad flashed red.

  “Chance…” Kate’s voice was laced with concern.

  He inhaled deeply. And keyed in the passcode again, taking the time to press each button deliberately. He held his breath until the indicator light flashed green. Looking back at the others, he opened the door and they slipped inside.

  It was a control room of some kind. A giant full-screen monitor, at least 20 feet across, dominated the far wall. Hundreds of lines of multicolored computer code scrolled rapidly down the screen. In front of the large screen was a curved table. Three men at the table faced the screen, away from the intruders. Several smaller monitors sat off to the right, each filled with a different set of computer code.

  “Welcome to the Starship Enterprise,” whispered Wolfie.

  The room was roughly circular, and an inner ring of sorts had been created by a makeshift wall comprised of other equipment. Racks of computer servers, stacked nearly 10 feet tall, encircled the room in a half-moon, set off about five feet from the outer wall. Several fans had been placed in the resulting passageway, installed to keep the high-powered servers from overheating.

  They ducked into the narrow passage and inched forward, concealed behind the blinking, humming server racks. They paused another 20 feet on and peered through a gap in the racks.

  “All that computer code,” Wolfie said. “What does it mean?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Tahoe said. “I’m a painter. That looks like gibberish to me.”

  “You see that sequence in 432?” asked one of the men at the control panel.

  “Got it,” said the man next to him. His fingers danced across a keyboard. “There, isolated it. Commencing repair protocol now.”

  Kate glanced at Chance, who shrugged. A thick knot of cables crossed the passage under raised black floor covers. Chance followed the cord as it ran along the bottom corner of the exterior wall until it disappeared into the wall near another door.

  Whatever they were looking at on the large screen, the computer code, it was streaming from whatever lay in the beyond.

  They slipped quietly through the unlocked door.

  They emerged into a room the size of an airplane hangar. It was so vast that the far wall was too distant to see clearly
. It was almost the same size across its width, over a hundred yards.

  The cavernous space towered nearly 10 stories over their heads.

  “What the hell are those things?” asked Tahoe breathlessly.

  The chamber was filled with hundreds of steel pods. Each capsule was nearly 10 feet tall, five feet around, gunmetal gray in color and heavy-looking. A tapestry of wires connected the pods to a massive structure in the center of the room. Hundreds of lighted cords crisscrossed the space like a massive spider web.

  Blue lights blazed from the central tower.

  “Damn, it is cold in here,” said Wolfie, rubbing his arms vigorously.

  He was right. The temperature had dropped precipitously. It was barely above freezing.

  “Looks like some kind of power plant,” said Kate. “Those tanks could be batteries.”

  “Damn big batteries,” said Chance skeptically.

  Tahoe crept to the closest capsule. The number “28” was stenciled in thick white letters upon the exterior. She placed a hand upon the pod, drew it quickly. “Freezing,” she said.

  “Cold batteries last longer,” said Wolfie. “My Pops kept his batteries in the refrigerator for years.”

  “That’s an old wives’ tale,” countered Tahoe. “Batteries die faster in cold weather. That’s why cars don’t start in the winter.”

  “I know you are both artists and all, but it would help if you had just a little bit of street smarts,” said Kate. “Car batteries die in the winter because they are running more stuff. Heaters, headlights, windshield wipers. And oil gets thicker in the winter, which means the engine works harder to crank on, which means the starter needs more power.”

  “Guys, now is not the time,” Chance said.

  “So, my Pops was right, is what you’re saying,” Wolfie boasted.

  “No,” Kate said. “Next time, read the packaging. Batteries are supposed to be kept at room temperature.”

  “So if these things aren’t batteries,” Chance said, running a hand along its cold, smooth surface. “What are they?”