She’d (half) expected to find Kevin Lima on her flight from Los Angeles, since that was where she’d seen him last at the Hidden Library escape room, but though she clandestinely cast her eyes around the terminal before the plane boarded, she didn’t spot his scruffy blond hair or well-maintained feet. Whatever. She’d see him soon enough.
Persey dragged her ancient black carry-on with its broken zipper and lazy wheel up the aisle and onto the gangway while she checked her phone. She’d read the confirmation e-mail from Leah about fifty bajillion times in the last two weeks, but she carefully parsed through each word of it again, just in case she’d missed anything.
A car will pick you up at the airport. Look for the driver at arrivals near baggage claim. Accommodations and all meals will be provided during your stay.
The words were exactly as Persey remembered them—simple logistical information, lacking in specifics. Nothing about the competition itself.
Maybe that was part of it? Part of the game? Withholding information might just have been another way the escape room designers tried to throw everyone off-balance and instill a sense of confusion. In fact, the competition might have started the moment Persey agreed to participate, and every detail from Leah’s bare-bones e-mail to Persey’s flight number, departure time, and seat assignment might be valuable puzzle-solving elements for a later challenge.
Persey sighed, tucking her phone back into the hip pocket of her cargo pants. She had no idea what to expect, a situation that did not sit well with her, and she’d have to pay close attention to everything and everyone from now on if she was going to get that money.
The smell of Vegas hit Persey the moment she stepped into the terminal: a nose-wrinkling mix of stale air, body odor, and desperation. If the sparkling casino façades and red-hued desert plateaus hadn’t clued her in to her location, the familiar stench of McCarran Airport would have, and when mixed with the cacophony of sound and lights, Persey felt slightly dizzy as she turned toward baggage claim. Not to waste a square inch of gambling real estate, slot machines littered the terminal, greeting visitors with bells and beeps and swirling lights as they exited their aircraft.
Gambling seemed so sad to her. Mindless. Pathetic. Money was such a precious commodity—why would anyone throw it away? Las Vegas was all show and no tell, all surface with no substance, and it was a place where she’d never felt like she belonged. She felt like she should be exiting the terminal in a sequined halter dress and five-inch clear Lucite heels instead of the olive-green cargo pants, layered long- and short-sleeve tees, jean jacket, and Toms she’d chosen for her journey. She was like the anti-Vegas—always had been and always would be.
She shook her head, casting off dark memories of this place, that threatened to derail her, and focused on the crowd gathered at the bottom of her escalator. It was a mix of locals greeting family and friends, and livery drivers holding signs with the names of their passengers, and it took Persey approximately .2 seconds to find hers among them.
Because unlike all the other drivers in their near uniform boxy black suit jackets and matching neckties, the driver holding Persey’s name on a dry-erase board was dressed head to toe in an eye-numbing lime green.
He wore a bright green polo shirt, just like the Escape-Capades employees at the Hidden Library, paired with matching track pants and athletic sneakers. On his head, a lime-green baseball cap had the Escape-Capades logo emblazoned across it, and as if that wasn’t enough, the poor guy had a fanny pack strapped around his waist overflowing with flyers advertising the premier Las Vegas escape room experience. He was a walking billboard advertisement.
“Persephone?” he asked, stepping forward as she slipped off the escalator. Leah’s probable description of Persey—medium height, medium build, medium brown hair and eyes—could have matched two-thirds of the females in the terminal, and Persey realized with a start that this driver must have seen her before.
“Persey,” she said, once again beating back the fear that she’d made a terrible, horrible mistake. There was something familiar about this guy. Not just the lime-green getup…his face.
“You were taking pictures at the Hidden Library.” She didn’t mean it to sound like an accusation.
“I’m Greg,” he said, neither confirming nor denying her statement. His voice was flat, eyes dull and focused at a spot over her head. “If you could wait here? It’ll just be a minute.”
Wait?
Greg flipped his sign around and instead of Persey’s name, it now read NEELA CHATTERJEE.
She was going to have to share a ride to Escape-Capades? Persey hadn’t been prepared for that. She’d just assumed (hoped) she’d have the entire car ride from the airport to compose herself and get her head in the game—or whatever other sports cliché seemed appropriate—before the competition began. Now, once again, she was struck by how off-balance she felt with this new turn of events. Her challenges had already begun.
Greg was true to his word: it was only a few minutes before the driver, barely registering the amused looks as people streamed by, perked up. Persey followed his gaze to the escalator where a girl clad entirely in black descended. She wore her dark hair long and heavy, swept forward over each shoulder, which gave the impression that her small heart-shaped face was being eaten alive. Her hair flowed seamlessly into her clothes, all in the same hue—black long-sleeve Henley tee with a three-button collar over black jeans and black Converse, the white rubber siding the only other “color” in her outfit. Enormous square-rimmed black glasses stretched the width of her face, and even her backpack was black, slung over both shoulders like a hiker about to attack the Pacific Crest Trail, though her black eyeliner, plum lips, and mascara-clad lashes made her look like she was heading for a night out.
“Neela Chatterjee?” Greg asked as she stepped off the escalator.
Neela froze, causing the Tommy Bahama–wearing tourist behind her to stutter-step so he didn’t smash into her as the escalator deposited him on the ground floor. He shot her a dirty look as he shouldered by, but she didn’t notice. She just stared at Greg, her eyes slowly scanning him from head to toe before she answered. “It is I.”
“Awesome. Glad you’re here.” He sounded anything but. “I’ll take you guys to HQ now.”
Neela’s eyebrows shot up. “Guys?” She seemed as surprised (disappointed) as Persey had been to discover that she’d be sharing a ride, but as Neela tilted her head to the side, her heavy mane of hair shifting across her monochrome outfit, she looked more intrigued than annoyed by Greg’s announcement. “Do you mean ‘guys’ in the colloquial sense referring to all members of a gathered party regardless of gender, or are there one or more male members of our party whom I don’t see standing behind you?”
She spoke quickly, the words practically falling upon one another in the race to get out of her mouth, but her tone lacked even a trace of sarcasm, and her energy, despite her black on black on black exterior, was perky and buoyant.
“Um…” Greg faltered, dropping his sign. He was having difficulty understanding the question. “I’m Greg.” Or if he’d even been asked one.
“I’m Neela,” she said good-naturedly. “But since you already know that, I’ll assume the colloquialism was intended, and though I don’t love genderism, I understand your meaning exactly.”
Persey usually (always) disliked strangers. Or, more accurately, assumed that every single person she met disliked her, if not immediately, then eventually, and so it was just easier to get a jump on the mutual dislike-atude. Between that propensity and the natural distrust of a rival contestant, Persey should have instantly disliked Neela. But she didn’t. In fact, her reaction was the exact opposite. Which was a first.
“I’m Persey,” she said, smiling. “The other guy he’s taking to Escape-Capades.”
Neela’s heavy fringe of spidery black lashes quivered as her big, inquisitive eyes appraised Persey. The glass lenses were thick, distorting her pupils so they looked enormous, like some kin
d of Snapchat filter gone awry as she took in every detail of her new acquaintance. Just like Persey, Neela assumed the competition had already begun.
“Pleased to meet you,” Neela said, matching Persey’s smile with one of her own. It felt genuinely warm, and Persey fought against the (unfamiliar) sensation of friendliness bubbling up from within. Maybe in another time, at another place, she and Neela could have been friends?
But not here.
“THIS WAY.”
Lime-colored Greg turned abruptly and strode toward the exit, exhibiting all the joy of a prison guard escorting the new inmates to their cells. Not that Persey could blame him for his lack of enthusiasm. She’d be sullen, too, if her job were to pick people up from the airport looking like the Grinch who stole Christmas.
She followed him in silence, Neela falling into step beside her, not-so-silently.
“So where did you fly in from?” Neela began, though she didn’t actually wait for an answer. “I was on flight four-twenty-two from Nashville, which was supposed to be three hours and thirty minutes of flight time, but ended up at three hours and forty-seven minutes due to a heavy headwind. Not that I’m one of those people who obsessively check to see how long their flight is but I am interested in the effects of weather on aircraft, so I was doing some calculations in my head based on that flight info they show you on the screen at your seat to see if I could pinpoint our exact time of arrival. I’m kind of a math person and I always love a good ‘one train leaves the station at four o’clock traveling at fifty miles per hour with a steady acceleration of one mile per hour per minute and another train leaves a station thirty-five miles away traveling half that speed with twice the acceleration, et cetera, et cetera’ kind of equation.” She paused for a quick breath. “I was three minutes off.”
“Wow.” Persey wasn’t sure if she was more impressed (terrified) by Neela’s math skills—those narrative problems always left Persey’s head spinning, her brain paralyzed—or if she was more awed by the fact that Neela got all those words out in one single exhalation.
“I know,” Neela said with a sad shake of her head. “I can’t believe I fudged it up that badly.”
If Neela had been a different sort of person, that comment would have rubbed Persey the wrong way: false modesty was one of her major pet peeves. But in casting a quick glance at her travel companion, she realized that Neela was being 100 percent genuine. Which Persey appreciated.
Neela had just opened her mouth to start another monologue when the words converted into a gasp. A monstrous lime-green Hummer was parked on the ground floor of the lot, straddling two spots, as fugly as it was unfunctional. Despite its size, the sport utility vehicle had almost no trunk space for their bags, and it was so high off the ground that Persey had to step up on a platform, balancing herself on Greg’s outstretched arm, in order to climb into the back seat behind Neela, doing so with about as much grace as a sumo wrestler trying out ballet.
“Interesting,” Neela said, latching the safety harness over her lap. The interior was decked out in soft black leather, muted by tinted windows, and though it wasn’t a limousine, the driver and passenger areas were separated by a glass panel for total privacy. “I didn’t realize Hummers came in this color. Was this customized in-house? Or was it a special order? Or is it—”
“No,” Greg said sullenly as he slid into the driver’s seat. It seemed his response was meant not so much to answer any specific one of Neela’s rapid-fire questions, but to end the conversation, as he punctuated it by yanking the privacy window closed.
Sorry, Neela mouthed, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling.
Traffic was slow going as they edged out of the airport and onto the I-15, the massive hulks of Vegas’s casinos flanking both sides of the freeway, each sporting their own thematic ambiance from the Old West to the Far East and everything in between. The older, less ritzy offerings stood more sparsely on the west side of the interstate while the gleaming gold-and-jewel-toned behemoths of “new” Vegas hugged the east side, packed in so densely it was sometimes impossible to tell where one casino ended and the next began.
Neela had pulled out her phone, which should have been a welcome sight to Persey, who wanted to avoid conversation in the world’s most awkward ride share, but something about Neela’s stream-of-consciousness style was oddly soothing, and as they crawled down the freeway, Persey realized that she would prefer being monologued to the oppressive silence that currently existed in the back of the Hummer.
That said, establishing lines of communication was not her forte. Half a dozen times she wanted to open her mouth and say, Where are you from? How did you get invited to the tournament? So black’s your favorite “color,” huh? Each time, she’d steal a glance at her ride-mate, who maintained a laser-sharp focus on her smartphone, and the words would dry up on her tongue.
The Hummer began to pick up steam once they made it through downtown Las Vegas. Casinos and shopping malls transitioned into tract housing developments and mini malls, from urban to suburban, and finally both fell away so suddenly it was as if they’d crossed an invisible barrier into no-man’s-land.
Which wasn’t too far off the mark. Before long, Persey caught sight of a bullet-shaped white object out of the corner of her eye, pacing the green Hummer. She turned and saw what appeared to be a remote-controlled jet plane landing on an air strip that ran parallel to the highway.
“Whoa,” she said, hardly even aware the syllable had come out of her mouth.
The word seemed to snap Neela to attention. “Cool, right? It’s a drone landing at the air force base. I’ve never seen one in person, but I researched this whole area before I got on the plane and saw that they run a lot of drone training missions from here. I also studied the demography, topography, and climatography of this region.” Neela snorted. “All the ‘aphies,’ really. That’s a joke.”
“I laughed on the inside,” Persey said, hoping as the words left her mouth that she didn’t sound too much like an asshole.
“You did? Oh, nice! Thank you.” Then Neela quickly typed something into her phone. “Sorry to be rude, but I have to write down what I just said. I, um, like to keep track of what I do that makes people laugh because I don’t always understand why they do it. I didn’t want you to think that I was ignoring your very kind overtures of camaraderie by escaping into my phone even though it is my safety mechanism when I’m not quite sure of social cues.”
Persey could only imagine Neela in high school, where snooty bitches would make fun of her mercilessly behind her back. Shit, to her face. Humans were brutal.
“You think it’ll come in handy?” Persey asked, hoping to steer the conversation away from anything personal. “I mean all your studies. Like for solving one of the puzzles?”
“Maybe,” Neela said with a shrug. “Who knows? My ex-girlfriend always told me I go overboard with stuff like this. Thinking of every possible outcome. I can’t not overprepare, you know? It would make me bonkers. I’m the kind of person who needs a concrete sense of all contingencies in order to weigh my decision-making efficiently. It helps me cut down on my anxiety.”
Persey understood completely. She could count on one hand the number of times in her life that she’d done something—from picking out clothes to asking her parents for, well, anything—without reasoning out (agonizing over) the possible outcomes first. She’d try to consider all aspects of the decision, all possibilities, before taking any kind of action, fearing not only the negative outcomes of her decisions, but the positives as well. Basically, anything that put her in the spotlight. Persey’s number one goal in life was not to be noticed at all.
Neela cocked her head to the side. “You said your name is Persey?”
“Yep.”
“For Persephone?”
Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it. “Yep.”
“I like it. I had a girlfriend named Penelope once, which I know isn’t exactly the same as Persephone, though they’re from sort of the sa
me source material and people were always telling her where her name came from as if she wouldn’t have known that information already from every stupid genealogy project she’d been forced to do in elementary school. I would get irritated when someone tried to mansplain her name because I hate it when people share their knowledge with total strangers to make themselves feel superior, but she always told me to ignore it.”
“I’m more Penelope there,” Persey said. “I let it go.” Do you?
“Yeah, I thought you might be. But that’s why you need friends to—” She stopped mid-sentence, her attention caught by something outside the heavily tinted windows. “Holy cow babies!”
Persey stared out the window, though at first she couldn’t tell what had elicited the closest thing to a swear word Neela had used since they’d met. Desert surrounded them: yellowish-brown dirt and scrub brush as far as she could see, flanked by imposing mountains on all sides, and she was just about to ask Neela if she was feeling okay when she spotted a neon-green building sticking out against the monotonous rocky landscape.
“Is that it?”
Neela sucked in a breath as if she were looking at the most beautiful sight in the world. “Yes,” she said reverentially.
It was the first time she replied to anything with a single word.
THE PARKING LOT IN FRONT OF THE ESCAPE-CAPADES HQ WAS mostly empty when Greg pulled the Hummer around to the main entrance. Neela had gone quiet again—her two modes apparently being word vomit and total silence—as Greg unloaded their bags and ushered them into the green monstrosity through a set of double doors. The lobby, thankfully, was not such an eyesore: shiny white surfaces were accented with chrome-and-leather furniture, with mere pops of the signature green hue in picture frames and potted plants. Without a word, Greg escorted them through the empty lobby into a separate room, and Persey felt as if she’d been transported to another time and place.
#NoEscape (Volume 3) (#MurderTrending) Page 3