2 Cards Pulled
6 of Clubs: Someone starts shouting in the street that the VR software company is controlling people’s minds. He is dragged away into an alley by people in dark suits. No one else seems to notice. What do you do?
Queen of Spades: Friends convince you to forget the Game and relax for an evening. They take you to an Escape Room. The room turns deadly. How do you escape? Who doesn’t make it?
Today has been an eventful day indeed, so you might excuse if I ramble on a bit. My hands are still shaking from the events of the evening, and I know that I won’t be getting any sleep tonight.
Joanna is dead.
When we finished up our conversation last night, we made plans to have lunch together today. We met up at a café that we frequent and spent some time gossiping about the others at work. I do admit that I was distracted at times though. At the back of my mind was the constant knowledge that I was expected to keep an eye out for my number, so I was doing that without even thinking about it. Joanna called me out on it several times, but in the end she just sighed and gave up. I think she realized that she would not be able to make me forget about what happened last night. So, instead of trying to change the topic, she rolled her eyes with a good-natured smile and asked me to walk her through what I knew so far. I couldn’t tell her much, and by the end she was still of the opinion that I put too much weight in a random pop-up. I was starting to think that perhaps she was right, but the feeling didn’t last long.
As we stepped out of the café, a man on the other side of the road caught my eye. He was perhaps a year or two older than me, but he was in very poor shape. His eyes were wide and slightly crazed, and his hair was unkempt, like he hadn’t brushed it in weeks. He was looking across the street at us, and he was holding a big sign, obviously trying to get the attention of the people around him. The sign contained no words, only a crossed over dragonfly symbol, and I felt myself shiver with sudden cold. I was just about to point it out to Joanna when I saw the men that was approaching him. There were four of them, all in black suits, and they were approaching the man in a very deliberate formation. It took a moment for me to notice what they were doing, but when I did I almost screamed. They were controlling where he moved, herding him towards the mouth of an alley, and I could already see that they were going to succeed. The man had seen them, and from the look on his face he knew it as well. He made a final bid for help from the people around him, but no one seemed to hear him at all. At least, no one spared him a second glance. I glanced at Joanna, but she was busy typing on her phone. Was I the only person there who saw what was happening? Was it because of the game. I was frozen in place as the men in suits reached the now frantic protester, grabbed his arms and hauled him into the shadow of the alley. Everything happened very quickly, and not a sound came from the alley. But while I could taste the bile in my throat from having stood there doing nothing, I was at the same time happy to not have gotten involved. But I don’t think that I escaped notice completely. As they disappeared into the side alley, I could have sworn that one of the men in suits looked straight at me, meeting my eyes for a moment before vanishing.
I must have taken a step or two in their direction at that point, because suddenly Joanna was at my elbow, a hand on my arm to stop me. She was looking at me strangely, like she was trying to figure out what I was thinking, before shaking her head. She told me that I needed a night to unwind, and invited me to join her and a few others for the evening. They were planning on going to a new Escape Room that had opened in town, and then go out for drinks. She said that it would do me good to take my mind off everything else and just enjoy an evening out with friends. In the end I agreed. Now I wish that I hadn’t.
The Escape Room was set up in a small building just off the main road and seemed like it occupied the entire building. Joanna and I went there together to meet up with three other people from work; Dita, Hadley and Aleks. I was relived that it was people I knew, but in hindsight I wonder if it hadn’t been easier to deal with what happened next if they had been perfect strangers.
I had a bad feeling as soon as we entered the building, but I kept telling myself that I was just paranoid, and followed the others to the front desk. The woman behind it was smiling widely as she took our names and payment before directing us to enter a pair of big black doors. We all looked at each other with anticipation and entered the room in pairs, Dita and Hadley going first, and Joanna bringing up the rear. It seemed like a normal Escape Room at first, one that brings you through several rooms before you are done. By the time we had reached the third room I had relaxed and was laughing and having a good time with the others. But this room was different. We could all see it from the start. There was obvious clues, there weren’t even any furniture. Only strange mechanisms in the walls and a black door at the end. We all took a moment to look around, careful not to touch anything, but found nothing that told us what we needed to do to proceed. Not until Joanna got impatient and placed her hand on the door on the far end, the one we presumed to be the final exit. The moment her skin touched the door, a bright light flooded the room, blinding all five of us for a moment. And when the light faded and we could see again, we really wish we couldn’t. It seemed like the door had been wired with electricity, set to activate if someone touched it. As our vision came back, Joanna was lying in a crumpled heap by the door, and there was a note lying on the floor beside her.
Aleks was the first of us to break the paralysis that the sight brought with it, and he was the one to cautiously approach the doors. His movements made the rest of us move as well, and while Dita and Hadley rushed straight for Joanna, Aleks picked up the note on the floor and joined me a step away. There was something hard on his face as he read it through and handed it over to me. This is what the note said;
‘We congratulate you on getting this far, and hope that whatever sacrifices has been made is not too large. Below is the correct combination of levers to pull in order to exit this room. Good luck, and thank you for playing.’
There was no signature on the note, and there was something else that made my blood run cold. In the top left corner on the note, small enough to be easily missed, were numbers. 11920. My number. My hand shook as it tightened around the note and I turned my head towards the door to see how Joanna was doing. I found my two friends frantic and in tears as they looked up at us, telling us that she was not breathing. I could feel the panic that wanted to grab hold of me, but Aleks placed his hand on my shoulder, grounding me. He said that we needed to get the door open so that we could get Joanna to the hospital, and we needed to do it fast. That managed to break my panic, and we got to work pulling the levers indicated on the notes. When we were done I put the note in my pocket and walked up to the doors, stopping just before them. I looked over at Aleks for a moment before taking a deep breath and placing my hands against the door. There was a slight tickle from left over electricity against my palms, but other than that nothing happened. A light push was all that was needed to get the doors open. We wasted no time in getting Joanna up from the floor and into Hayden’s arms as we passed through into the reception area. The woman behind the counter was smiling at us, not even blinking at the listless body in our midst as she thanked us for playing and she hoped that we would be back. We ignored her as Aleks had his phone out to call an ambulance, and the others were hurrying outside to meet them when they arrived. I spared her a glance as I passed the desk, the numbers on the note fresh in my mind, and I saw something that I missed when we first arrived. Or maybe it hadn’t been there. But pinned to the woman’s blouse, was a golden dragonfly pin.
The ambulance arrived quickly, but it was still too late. Joanna was pronounced dead on arrival. The shock from the door had stopped her heart, and there was nothing they could do to restart it. We were all in shock, and they took us with them to the hospital for check-ups. I was the first one to leave, as soon as I was allowed to. I went straight home and started writing this, because I don’t want to forget anything that happened today. I know that I will have to face the aftermath of this at some point; Aleks have been trying to call me for the past hour. But I don’t want to talk to anyone at all tonight, I just want to be alone.
At the end of all this, I have learned two very important things. One; I am definitely playing the Game, whether I want to or not. And two; whoever is running this is not afraid of raising the stakes to lethal levels.
This is Kit, player number 11 9 20, signing off.