“Thirty minutes.” The voice was feminine and almost sarcastic in its sweetness, a far cry from the monotone announcer in the Hidden Library, who counted down the minutes near the end of that challenge, and as with the narration in the introductory video, Persey wondered if this voice also belonged to Leah.
“Shaun, your countdown clock.” Arlo had turned around and was facing the door they’d come through, her chin raised toward the ceiling. Following her gaze, Persey found a digital clock face, which read twenty-nine minutes and forty-three seconds in blazing red numbers.
“Okay, then,” Wes said, and without a further word, he started to perv through the nearest cubicle.
Spurred into action, the rest of the contestants scurried away from the entrance, each taking a different part of the room in a form of self-segregation that seemed tacitly agreed upon. Mackenzie gave Kevin a wink before dashing off to the water cooler, pulling out the paper cups one by one and checking their surfaces. Kevin gave a sigh as he watched her, but Persey was pretty sure it was a what a hot mess she is kind of sigh as opposed to a what a hottie kind of sigh. Then he half-heartedly headed for the end of the cubicles, glancing over each wall as he passed.
Riot headed straight for the whiteboard while Shaun-bot 2.0 spun around, like a Terminator running a search-and-destroy program. After a few seconds, he turned toward the nearest potted plant and meticulously combed through its copious leaves. Arlo hesitated a moment, which seemed strangely uncharacteristic for someone who presented nothing but snark and confidence, then marched up to the whiteboard, stood squarely beside Riot, feet shoulder-width apart and hands planted on her hips.
“It’s a flowchart,” Riot explained. “For an elaborate Escape-Capades escape room build.”
Arlo shushed him. “You want to just share that with everyone?”
Wes cupped his hand to his mouth. “Works for me!”
“Leah said we’d have to work together.” Riot shrugged. “I’m just following directions.”
Rather than jumping right into action, Neela watched everyone else stake out a claim in the room before she moved, letting out another anxiety meep as she assessed her surroundings, verbalizing her thought process. “The whiteboard is too obvious, but the water cooler, yes, that’s a good idea. Seems innocuous, but innocuous places are usually where the best clues are found. The cubicles are interesting. Lots of drawers and decoration, plus the computers themselves. I’m editing my valuation: the cubicles are very interesting. Don’t you think?”
Persey had known her long enough to realize that an answer was not expected.
“One, two, three…” Neela counted under her breath. “Eight. Just like us.”
Persey tilted her head to the side. Now that was interesting. “Let’s check them out.”
“Together?”
“Why not?” Leah did say that they’d have to work together, and she liked Neela, whose mindless chatter calmed Persey’s nerves.
Neela’s not-very poker face reflected skepticism, then suspicion, and finally relief. “Sure!”
Wes was making his way down the right aisle, so Persey and Neela took the left one, sticking their heads inside the first cubicle. It was pretty standard: leather chair, desktop computer, file holders and stacked binders, plus a “Sights of Old Las Vegas” calendar pinned to the cubicle wall.
Neela read the label on a white binder leaning against the computer monitor. “Escape-Capades Employee Manual.” She snorted. “I guess it was easy to gather props for this one.”
Too easy.
“But why last year’s calendar?” Neela said, more serious than before. “Nothing on it but this one day circled. What’s the significance of—” She cut off mid-sentence, her eyes growing even wider behind the thick-framed lenses as she stared at the artistically rendered photo of the Stratosphere hotel and casino above the month of May.
“What?”
Neela swallowed. “May twenty-second of last year.”
“What about it?”
“The murder-suicide of Derrick and Melinda Browne. The founders of Escape-Capades.”
“Oh, right.”
Neela leaned forward eagerly as she took a deep breath. Girl really loved a long-winded explanation. “The Brownes did this promotion with massive prize money for anyone who could beat the unbeatable escape room but someone leaked the secret to the final challenge and somehow it ended up on the DaringDebunker website and I’m just going to assume that you have no idea what that is either, so I’m not going to wait for you to ask. It’s like the WikiLeaks of escape room, gaming, and RPG secrets where insiders and enthusiasts alike can post spoilers, secret codes, et cetera, et cetera, but Escape-Capades had never, ever had a leak in the history of their company because they were family-owned and everyone loved the Brownes, et cetera and so forth, but suddenly there’s this rumor that’s leaked and supposedly it’s a clue to the big final secret to solving the room and…and…”
Neela paused. Not to take a breath, but because she was suddenly flustered.
“You okay?’
“Yeah.” Her face scrunched up as she continued, but the words came more slowly now. As if she was choosing them carefully. “It wasn’t the solution per se, but a schematic of the final challenge. I mean, I’m sure the person who posted the solution didn’t actually realize what they were doing. Or—or what it might be used for. The anonymous owner of DaringDebunker just promoted the puzzle as like the ultimate challenge. A bragging-rights thing. So the one person who finally did figure out that the whole chamber was a Baguenaudier with a solution that corresponded to a specific binary code…” She paused, panting. “Well, I don’t think that person realized what it would do.”
That person. “What did it do?”
Neela shrugged. “Like two thousand people solved the Prison Break escape room on the first day. All over the world. They all tried to claim the prize money. But Escape-Capades didn’t have two hundred and fifty million dollars lying around and then…” She grimaced, glancing away from Persey. “And then, two days later, on May twenty-second, the bodies of Derrick and Melinda were found. Right here in this building.”
Persey’s eyes drifted to the calendar, where May 22 was circled in thick red ink. “What do you think that has to do with this challenge?”
“Not sure.” Neela scrunched up her face again. “Maybe we should search the desk.”
Persey pulled open a drawer and rummaged through the contents. “Stapler, Post-its, pens, ruler. Seems pretty normal for an office drone.”
As Persey worked her way down through the desk drawers, Neela flipped through folders neatly lodged in a desktop file organizer. “Accounts payable,” she said, perusing the contents. “Vendors, employee expense reports, monthly statements. If these are even remotely accurate, Escape-Capades was rolling in dough last year before…before the Prison Break fiasco.”
“Find anything intriguing?” Wes tried to sound casual as he asked the question, but his intonation was too high. He stood in the cubicle next to them, and though he pretended to be interested in something, Persey noticed that he stood very close to the wall, as if trying to catch a glimpse of whatever she and Neela were looking at.
“Not really,” Neela answered.
Shaun walked by, heading for the next potted plant. “Just that whoever works at this desk had the date of the Brownes’ suicide circled on a calendar.” Had he heard that from the opposite corner of the room? Maybe he really was an android.
“I’m sure that has nothing to do with us,” Wes said quickly, then exited the adjacent cubicle and went to join Mackenzie at the water cooler.
“Which of course,” Neela said, dropping her voice to little more than a whisper, “means that it does.”
Persey liked the way she thought.
The second drawer had more personal items from its supposed occupant. A movie stub for the latest Fast and Furious franchise offering. Scattered packets of fake sweetener in pastel paper packages of yellow, pink, and blue. A
singer-dancer audition notice for one of the casino floor shows. Several receipts, all from a bar called Shangri-La at the Lotus Hotel. A Halloween photo of two guys and two girls dressed up as members of the band Kiss, and on the back were written the names “Antonia, Jessica, Todd, and Brian.”
“Now this is interesting,” Neela said, a file folder spread open between her palms. “Credit card statements. Personal, not business. Five different cards, all maxed out. This person does not understand the usefulness and inherent pitfalls of extended credit.”
“Is there a name on the bills?”
Neela shook her head as she flipped back through the pages. “The top of each statement has been cut off.”
“Seems super sketch to me,” Kevin said as he whizzed by their cubicle. “Keep searching.”
“Like we need his permission,” Persey grumbled as she began to search the bottom drawer, wondering who the statements might belong to—Antonia, Jessica, Todd, or Brian—and how that information might be relevant to the challenge.
“Twenty minutes.”
“Same voice from the video presentation,” Neela mused, still rifling through files. So Persey wasn’t the only one who noticed. “Empty parking lot, only one other employee here. Doesn’t it feel like Leah put this whole thing together herself?”
Doesn’t it? “You make it sounds so ominous.”
“Silly, I know,” Neela continued, “because even though it’s Sunday, there must be people working here somewhere, especially since the average Escape-Capades room requires at least three or four people to control and supervise, so it feels a little weird that so far the only people we’ve seen are Leah and—”
“What’s this?” Persey straightened up as she removed a leather case from the back of the bottom drawer. It was a medium-size zip pouch, like the kind Persey’s dad would have packed his toiletries in for a business trip, and it felt so out of place in the office drawer that it immediately drew her attention.
“Should we open it?” Neela asked, excitement growing in her voice.
Persey grinned in response and slowly pulled the zipper open.
“What did you find?” Mackenzie appeared from nowhere, hand outstretched toward the pouch like a teacher taking possession of classroom contraband. “Let me see.”
“You see with your eyes,” Arlo said from the whiteboard. Could everyone hear them? “Not with your hands.”
Persey turned her back on Mackenzie. “We’ve got this. Thanks.”
“But we’re supposed to work together,” Mackenzie whined. She wasn’t used to not getting her own way. “Leah said—”
“Someone is really into newspaper clippings,” Persey said, cutting her off as she carefully lifted a stack of crinkly paper from the pouch, clipped together at the center. “And…” This time she pulled out a tangled knot of four small metal hoops and held it up to Neela.
“Looks like a key chain,” Neela said. “Or an elaborate bracelet maybe.”
“Lame,” Mackenzie said, stomping off. “All yours.”
Neela shook her head as she fingered through the clippings. When she spoke again, she dropped her voice. “This one’s an article about the death of the Brownes.” The paper crinkled at her touch, rigidity setting into the material even though it was barely a year old. “Looks like it’s the first report, from the same day their bodies were discovered. ‘Derrick and Melinda Browne found dead in the Escape-Capades Headquarters building in northwestern Clark County Thursday, in what police are calling an apparent murder-suicide.’”
“And the rest?” Persey whispered quickly. She didn’t need a full rehashing of those events.
Neela, thankfully, took the hint and skimmed through the pack. “It’s basically everything the Review-Journal wrote about this case.” She thumbed through, then paused at the last page. “This one’s from three months later. The official investigation had finished. Mentions corporate espionage in the Prison Break scandal. I guess there was some evidence to suggest that they had been murdered, but the official verdict was murder-suicide.”
Official.
“And then all business inquiries should be directed to an L. Browne.”
Kevin’s head popped up over the wall from where he’d been searching the adjacent cubicle. “Must be a son or daughter who inherited.”
Persey sighed. “Don’t you ever knock?”
“I thought there was an open door—Hey! A puzzle ring!”
Neela pointed to the tangled key-chain-looking thing on the desk. “Is that what it is?”
“Hell yeah. My parents’ wedding rings are puzzles like this.” He snapped his fingers and pointed at the ring, which Persey dutifully handed to him. “Watch this.”
In Kevin’s nimble hands, what Neela had identified as a key chain or bracelet went from four separate metal rings—gleaming white gray like platinum—to an intricate knot of a ring. He turned and aligned the bands, threading the curved parts of the metal between each other until their loops and dips lay perfectly flat with each other. He held up the finished product after just a minute’s work—a man’s ring in the pattern of a Celtic knot.
“Holy cow babies!” Neela cried. “I should have known what that was.”
Kevin pushed the ring in Persey’s face. “Beautiful, right?”
She couldn’t deny it. “Yes.”
“Think it might fit me, too,” Kevin said. And before Persey could stop him, he’d slipped the ring onto the fourth finger of his left hand.
The instant the ring was in place, Persey heard a swooshing sound. Something had moved behind her.
She spun around to find an open door in the wall, where nothing had been before.
THE DOOR OPENED ONTO A SLIM CORRIDOR, HARDLY WIDE enough for a single person to squeeze through sideways. It reminded Persey of an aisle in a cramped airplane, complete with dull red LED lighting strips embedded into the floor. Before the corridor disappeared into darkness, Persey saw a single name stenciled onto the black wall with stark white paint: “KEVIN.”
“Why just his name?” Wes asked as everyone gathered around the newly opened door. “He doesn’t deserve to win. He didn’t even discover that thing. Fuck, he doesn’t even deserve to be here! This competition is fucking rigged.”
“I don’t think this is the end of the game,” Arlo said. “I think it’s just the beginning. Look.” She pointed to the top of the flowchart, where a large box encompassed the words “Individual Challenge.” It came directly after a section entitled “Office Drones,” which must have been the room they were currently exploring.
“What else is on that board?” Shaun asked, although the question was merely perfunctory as he was already in motion toward the whiteboard to examine it for himself. “From the Individual Challenge it goes to Boyz Distrikt. That must be the big escape room.”
“I don’t think so,” Persey said, peering around his shoulder. “Look down there.” Below the first phase of the flowchart were several more boxes, each labeled with a name. “Collectibles. Cavethedral. Iron Maiden. Recess. High Tea. True North.”
“They must all be separate rooms,” Neela said. “One after another.”
“Eight rooms?” Mackenzie groaned.
“Nine,” Kevin said, “if you count this one.”
“This is going to take forever.”
Arlo rolled her eyes at Mackenzie. “You got somewhere else to be?”
“Unlike the rest of you, I happen to have a life.”
“I wonder what ‘Individual Challenge’ means,” Riot said, checking on the structural integrity of his Mohawk with his fingertips.
Arlo took command, turning to face everyone like a general addressing her troops. “How did this door open?”
“Sir!” Kevin saluted her, clicking the heels of his Vans together and squaring his shoulders. “I put on this puzzle ring, sir. Er, ma’am.”
“His parents had ones just like it, he said,” Neela added. “And we, I mean Persey and I, were thinking that with eight cubicles and eight
of us, it might mean that there is—”
“Spread out!” Arlo barked, interrupting Neela. “Each of these cubicles must have a puzzle that is personal to one of us. Solve it, and we open the door.”
“Or,” Wes countered, “everyone can just find their own shit.”
Arlo pointed to the clock, which continued its steady countdown. “We don’t really have time for that. We need to work together.”
“Why do you have such a hard-on for this collaboration shit?” Wes asked. He stepped (too) close to her. Close enough that it was either meant as a come-on or a threat. “Is it because you won’t have anyone to boss around if we’re all working on our own?”
“It’s because Leah told us to. Those are the rules.”
“Your rules. Not mine.”
Shaun laughed, a calculated approximation of a laugh, which of course made it creepy and unnerving, and it was so mechanical that Persey almost believed Kevin’s android joke. “Inability to follow the rules. In an escape room competition. That’s funny.”
Persey was pretty (definitely) sure it wasn’t.
“Is that what got you kicked out of Yale?” Kevin asked. “Rule breaking?”
“I dropped out. Big difference.”
Kevin folded his arms across his chest. “How much do you want to bet that old Wes here dropped out just seconds before they were about to boot his ass?”
Wes clenched his fists, his laid-back-stoner vibe abandoned. “You think I’d want to come back to this shithole town?”
Kevin grinned at him, obviously pleased with himself. “Touchy, touchy. Must’ve hit pretty close to the mark.”
“Fuck you,” Wes muttered. But despite his protests, Wes’s sunken shoulders and faltering eyes revealed the truth in Kevin’s theory.
“Okay, kids,” Kevin said, turning away from the defeated Wes. “My door is open, and I think we all know I’m not going to be of any use to you here, so…see ya!” With another salute, more casual this time, he stepped through the door into the darkness.
“Ten minutes.”
“Everybody report in,” Arlo ordered even though they’d barely had five seconds’ worth of search time. It was a good thing she ran a website for a living: dealing with breathing, emoting humans in the flesh clearly wasn’t her strong suit.
#NoEscape (Volume 3) (#MurderTrending) Page 7