THE FINALE - 【 ZERO 】 ESCAPE

[vivariummods]

It's been ten days since the so-called "anniversary" on Day 90. Every single trace of a makeshift casino has been cleared out, leaving this suspiciously identical second warehouse empty (and the doors within that lobby locked), and Calhoun has mysteriously stopped dropping by as often as he should have. In the rare times he did drop by, he hemmed and hawed about what was happening and outright avoided answering any questions, shrieking that he's a busy mouse and he shouldn't be harassed by test subjects. Thus, for nine whole days, not a single particular event has occurred. No Calhoun Hours, Ambidex Games, or even a little announcement. It's not until the morning of the tenth day that something finally transpired. A loud siren goes off and the sound of a heavy door being slid open echoes from the second warehouse's lobby. Within seconds, however, both nuances cease and silence returns...

Comments

[detectiveofthewest]

Heiji looked thoughtful. "If your group really did cause that outage, I can think of two possibilities," he said.

"The first is that you were put in a coma or something similar for the duration of the time difference. The second is that you were awake, and your memories between then and now were wiped. I think Zero is capable of both. Do you mind tellin' me what happened, exactly? How'd ya manage to turn off the power to the warehouse?"

And most importantly, could they do it again?

[1st_response_is_anger]

What happened? *Although she would have liked to tell Heiji a story about that, what Maria really thought about was what almost happened them. She grows even more enraged if that's possible. She's got...a temper.* I'll tell you what happened! We all got caught in a trap with rising water and one of us had a key to escape. But that goddamn two-faced bitch Rio took that key and let us all drown...or would have drowned except we're all back here. *She grabbed Heiji's shoulder and shook it for emphasis.* You can't trust her at all. She fooled all of us to the very last second.

[detectiveofthewest]

Heiji wobbled a little back in forth as Maria shook his shoulder, mostly out of sheer surprise that she had suddenly grabbed him.

"Whoa, okay. We had a traitor in our group, too -- guy named Simon who thought he could get special favors by bein' a mole for Zero. But you can't trust anything he says."

[1st_response_is_anger]

Hunh. *Well...oddly that calms Maria down. Knowing that somehow other groups went through the same BS. She let Heiji go.* Sorry about that. It's just that the last thing I remember is being in that room full of water and Rio escaping. Still a little raw, I guess.

*She was not completely without manners, though. Just mostly.* What's your name? I'm Maria.

[detectiveofthewest]

"Heiji. Actually, what you went through sounds pretty par for the course. There's all kinds of traps in here. When I woke up, it was in a room set up to drown ya if you didn't solve a puzzle fast enough. But... whattaya mean about Rio escaping? You mean she got outta the warehouse?"

This was a new one on him -- as far as he knew, no one had ever gotten out.

[1st_response_is_anger]

She had a key and she was using it to escape a deathtrap that the rest of us were drowning in. If we got rescued though...she's probably still here too. *Maria cracked her knuckles.* If she is, she better be hiding because there's a few of us that'd like to make sure she understands what she put us through.

[detectiveofthewest]

Hmm. Well, there were several other people here, and he didn't yet know what Rio looked like. Either way, if she was here he doubted she'd be able to go incognito for long.

"This warehouse ain't that big, so if she is here, you'll know pretty soon." Maybe it'd be a good idea to be on the lookout for her. There were a few weapons around here, after all.

"I know ya probably got other stuff on your mind right now, but when you got a minute, we should put our heads together and exchange info. Since we've been in different areas of the warehouse, maybe we could find out somethin' that could give us an advantage."

[1st_response_is_anger]

"Well...I could do that now." It would certainly be a distraction from wanting to pulverize Rio.

"What do you want to know?"

[detectiveofthewest]

"Well... how'd ya wake up here? What happened? And what're the other rooms like? I guess that's as good a start as any."

He was curious about the goat...

[1st_response_is_anger]

"If you're talking about how we all originally started here, we all woke up together with broken bracelets on our wrists and we were all cut and bruised. There were weapons everywhere, so I don't know if we were fighting each other and then passed out and lost our memories? I don't really know."

[detectiveofthewest]

Heiji considered this for a moment. "Did you have a sense of whether the wounds were defensive or not? 'Cause that'd be a good way to tell if you were defending yourselves against someone else. Either way, it's not beyond Zero to have knocked you guys all out at once. And taken your memories while he was at it."

[1st_response_is_anger]

"They seemed to be both. We were bruised and a little bloody, so it was kind of hard to tell. No injuries that were so bad we weren't ambulatory. I don't know how he took the memories." She frowned and chewed on a lip. "Amnesia is a common side effect with a concussion but no one seemed to be suffering from that, as much as I could tell."

Apparently Maria has more than passing knowledge of things first aid. She did suspect she might be a doctor or at the very least, a paramedic.