9

Simon brushed past Sophie as soon as the door began to open. As soon as he stepped in the doorway he stopped in his tracks. Luke couldn’t see it, but Simon showed a genuine loss of words as he looked around his surroundings.

Sophie was the first to break the silence, "What is it...? I cannot see with you in the way."

"The hell am I looking at?" Simon asked to the air. He leaned back and set a hand on his side.

This time it was Sophie who was irritated at being ignored. She shoved him out of the way and her face took a similar look of confusion when she entered the room.

Luke filled in behind her and his curiosity was piqued when he saw that the room was small...probably could only fit a few more people before it would feel crowded. Tables filled the room in each of the four corners with a little stream flowing through the room, separating it into two halves. The stream looked to be fitted to the room almost naturally, almost acting a drainage path through the room. It looked very peculiar that it’d obstruct so much of the room. He couldn’t see where the source of the water was...it seemed to be coming from some other room. Aside from the weird water, the room almost looked like what Luke knew as a classroom. He couldn’t say what kind of class would be taught in a place like this, but the desks piqued memories inside his head and there was even a chalkboard at the far side of the room. Another face had a sort of painting in a frame of a padlock. A large safe sat in the eastern corner of the room with a piano at the western corner, and two desks sat at the southern far edge.

The group’s focus almost certainly turned to Aria. She didn’t know much more about their surroundings than they did, but they all knew that it must have had something to do with her. Why else would her name be on the door?

"H-Hey...that blackboard over there has something written on it," Aria said, thinking of the first thing that came to her mind.

Luke turned to fully focus on the board, and his eyes opened wide as he recognized the format of the passage instantly.

"You are Aria Fleur—the YELLOW. You are balance personified. Nobody shall feel persecuted under your sympathies. Your reliability is a great asset to those around you...but it is also your greatest weakness. Your worst nightmare is cloaked in GREEN. Wood grows from the Earth like a parasite, leeching off of your stability and building its own empire inside of you. Your sympathies shall send you off the mercy of the wood."

"What...is this?" Aria asked. "I’m yellow? Yellow what?"

"Hey, this looks like something I found in my notebook," Luke said as he reached for his pockets, but then remembered the notebook was nowhere to be found. “Ah...dang it."

"N-Notebook?" Levi asked. He shifted uneasily as his eyes darted around the room. “I think he’s a bit cuckoo,” he said under his breath as if he were whispering it to someone. No one else heard it, naturally, but it seemed to reassure him.

"Yeah, I woke up..." Luke said, picking at his brain. Did I have a notebook? It seemed...foggy. He was sure that he remembered something about the way this was phrased... "I remember a notebook. I don’t know where it went. It was before we woke up in the chairs...but after I was kidnapped.”

“You mean...sometime during the first round?” Aria asked.

Luke shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s likely. I don’t remember much about it, I don’t think I remember seeing any of you there so maybe it was just before the game began...anyway, sorry about my rambling. The notebook,” Luke tried to fix his stumbling. He became acutely aware of it and was suddenly aware of all of the eyes around him. He felt nervous and his core began to shake under the pressure. It wasn’t as bad a shake that Levi had, but he was still aware of how his body was in every second. “I found a passage that was just like this, although it wasn’t exactly the same. It’s where I learned my name. It said that I was a White Metal."

“I...I think that’s not t-true,” Levi said.

“I’m siding with Shivers,” Simon said.

Sophie turned back to him, “We have enough bad nicknames with that damn rabbit. Knock it off.” She turned back to Luke. “It doesn’t matter in the long run if you’re lying or not about it.”

"It is a bit peculiar, though. White metal...what do you think it means?" Aria asked.

"Is it supposed to mean anything? Yours is just as nonsensical." Sophie made a motion with her hands, “It doesn’t matter much if it’s a red sky or a yellow planet. It’s all the same mumbo jumbo that’s probably here to distract us.”

"I don’t care about all of our color signs or star symbols here," Simon said.

Sophie looked to him, “That’s what I just got done saying.”

“But now I am saying it. It means more.”

Sophie looked at Luke for a second longer than he was comfortable with before returning to the screen, "Yes, I do agree we should prioritize not what the message says, but what these indentations are here," she pointed down, just underneath there was different kinds of shapes beveled into the wall. They were...odd. Luke certainly didn’t recognize them.

"What...are those?" He asked.

Everyone ignored him, but Aria stepped forward to the screen. "These musical notes...what do you think they mean?"

Musical notes? What had those been? Luke didn’t seem to know hide nor hare of what she was speaking about. There were four of the notes all together. They were all separated, and it irritated Luke that everyone else seemed to be on the same page without him, but he figured that pushing the subject wouldn’t get him any less confused. He backed off.

"It seemed that they might be a h-hint to what we need to do in this room, right? Lucky said that we need to find some sort of key in these stupid r-rooms."

"Hey, dude, you okay?" Aria looked back to Levi. "You’ve barely stopped shaking since we woke up."

"I...I’m really scared." He spat out.

It was a bit scary hearing it from him considering he seemed the oldest of the five of them. He must have been at least twice his own age. If he was admitting he was scared...it was kind of hard for Luke to not face that feeling head on.

"I never had to do any of this kind of thing before. I don’t have any kind of reason for being kidnapped for this kind of g-garbage!"

Luke could tell that Levi was near the tipping point with his situation. "Hey, hey, it’s easy to freak out in this place. None of us know why we were taken for this kind of messed up game. But we’re not going to make it out of here if we let ourselves go crazy. I think that might even be what he wants." Luke could barely believe the words that were leaving his mouth. He imagined the words of strength to come from someone with a bit more sense and experience like Sophie or maybe even Aria, but instead they were coming from him. He felt a short moment of pride before returning back from his thoughts. "We have to keep moving, and work together or else we’re all dead. This game’s about testing trust, right? Well, let’s beat this game by showing whoever is in charge that we could trust complete strangers."

"You want us to trust each other?" Simon asked. "I don’t want to know anything about any of you," Simon said, shrugging.

"How c-could we do that?" Levi asked.

"I don’t know anything about any of you either. I don’t know much about myself, remember? I want to believe that I don’t belong here, and it’s the same with all of you. I want to trust that each of you are good people deep down," he looked directly at Simon, "Mean or not, nobody deserves to be in this situation."

"N-No...you’re right." Levi said. "I d-don’t want to die here, but...you don’t either." He slowed to a stop and had begun breathing easier.

"Great." Simon said with an exaggerated tone. "Now that we’re all friends I suggest we return our focus to the task at hand. We’re not going to escape by giving speeches all day."

Sophie had begun to pace around the room. "We’ve got four notes that are here on this screen, so I’d assume that is a hint at what we’re supposed to be looking for." She turned to face Aria, "This room’s centered around you, apparently. Now, I’m not thinking you set it up, but I believe there is a reason that your name is on that screen and on the door outside."

Aria chewed the bottom of her lip and then exhaled sharply. "I like music." She shrugged her shoulders. "I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m a flautist."

"Flowtest?" Luke asked.

"I play the flute." Aria answered. "I don’t know what that had to do with any of this..."

"Except that might be exactly why it had something to do with why we’re here." Sophie hadn’t skipped a beat. "Nobody here could guess that you play the flute just by looking at you. That’s something that only someone who does know you would know."

"So...someone I know is why I’m here?"

"Think about it. This is only the first room we’ve entered. How many rooms were there outside?"

"Six." Simon nodded, understanding. "There’s a room here for each of us, including Ai. That means that whoever kidnapped us all didn’t grab us by random chance." He looked forlorn toward the ground, "They’re fucked up…who wouldn’t want ransom money…?"

"Not everyone has their eyes glued to their wallet," Sophie said. "But you are right on one thing. It’s highly likely that we all weren’t grabbed by random. There’s a reason each of us are here, and if the rooms with the rest of our names are similar to yours," she looked back to Aria, "Then we have to seriously consider that that reason may have to do with people we closely know."

"Yeah...I was thinking that too," Luke said, trying to be helpful, but he couldn’t keep his mind off of what that implied. Somewhere in this strange spherical building there was a room that was built specifically around him. He could only think back to the room that he had first woken up in.

"They might not know a lot about the each of us...like maybe just basic information like how Aria plays the flute, but they could know a whole lot more. We have to play with that assumption."

"So what...like a bunch of people that know us just happen to know each other and set us all up to play this stupid game?" Aria asked.

"T-They know everything...at least...they might," Levi had begun shaking slightly, but he swallows hard and looked back up toward Sophie, shaking his head. "That’s way too creepy to think about. Could we please change the subject? I don’t want to think about whoever could have done this right now...I...I think that those four notes might have to do with the four corners of this room! I mean...there’s four of them so..."

"That’s the most idiotic..." Simon had begun.

"No, I bet you he’s right." Sophie affirmed. She looked from each of the four corners at the safe, piano, and two desks. "There’s no coincidence to anything here. If we had began labeling one as such, then we have no basis to label anything else except as coincidence. Remember what I said? Believe that everything here is put here for a reason. Whoever brought us here did it for a reason."

"Well, okay. Let’s just each check them out and get this over with." Aria said. "The more I’m in here the more I feel like somebody is watching me," Aria shivered as she made a conscious effort to step over the small stream. "Damn thing doesn’t belong in a room like this..."

Luke nodded curtly before turning around to the first of the four corners that caught his eye—the safe. He bent down to stare at it real close.

"Last thing you’d expect to find in a place like this, huh?" Luke asked as Aria bent down beside him. She seemed to be too focused on the safe to answer. Luke turned to look at the face of the dial, and he’s surprised to see that the dial had letters surrounding it instead of numbers. "A, B, C, D, E, F, G," he read aloud. "What the heck is that doing on a safe?"

"They’re the notes on a scale...this room is music themed, after all," Aria said. "The combination must be a number of notes..." she looked just behind her toward the piano, "...that we find from there."

"Hey, Levi!" Luke called.

He’s standing right in front of the piano with his fingers lightly tapping the keys.

"Levi!" Aria called out after him.

He turned with eyebrows raised. It seemed he was lost in his playing. "Oh...yes? I’m sorry. I was just confused by this thing...I don’t think the keys are in the correct order."

"What?" Aria asked, standing up.

"Here, listen to this." He had begun pressing keys down on the piano. The sounds that come from it as he moved down the piano are a mash of different sounds that don’t sound related at all.

"Okay, now play them from start to finish."

He did, and the same course of notes is played. "That’s what I was talking about. They don’t seem to be built to go in ascending order. It seems to be totally random."

"No, not random," Sophie said, looking up from the desk she was investigating. She looked over toward Aria. "Is there anything interesting that you notice?"

"I...think I could tell what notes are which? I don’t know how much help that’ll be..."

"You could?" Simon asked with a hint of interest.

"It’s called perfect pitch...and sounds a whole lot more interesting than what it is." This seemed to dash any interest that Simon had as he moved to lean against the wall, watching the others from a distance. Aria continues as she looked back toward the others, "I could pick out notes as I hear them and that’s about it." She shrugged, "Like I said, it isn’t too-"

"No, no. That’s good." Sophie nodded. "Maybe there’s a message in how the notes are arranged."

"What kind of message?" Luke asked.

"Really?" Simon asked, chuckling.

Luke looked up, finding that everyone else is giving him the same confused look. "What?"

"Notes on a piano go from A to G and repeat," Aria had begun. "But you don’t have to be a music major to know that."

"Dude, it’s common knowledge," Simon said.

"Yeah, even I knew that," Levi said.

Sophie is the only one who remained silent. When she finally speaks, her eyes don’t leave his face. "Amnesia..." she said, loud enough to be heard.

"Yeah...I think that’s why I forgot..." Luke began, feeling the words spill out of his mouth from the nerves.

Her face doesn’t change. "I...can't say one way or another. Generalized amnesia typically doesn’t affect learned facts like the notes of a musical scale—it’s located in a different part of the brain, but of course not every case of amnesia is the same so I guess I’ll just leave it at that for now," she turned then back to Aria and Levi.

"Think you could figure out what that message said?"

She nodded her head and then looked toward Levi, "You ready?"

Levi looked back to the piano and plays the first note, letting it hang. He waits a moment before looking back to Aria, "Well...?"

She looked confused right back at him. "I thought you were going to play them all? You don't have to go slow. That one was an F."

Levi moved his hand down the piano and the notes come out all rapid fire. Aria sighed and walked over to the piano, shoving him to the side. "Move aside, please." She took control of the piano, playing the notes one by one starting from the beginning. "F. A. C. E. F. A. E. F. D. G. F. A."

"Facefaefdgfa?" Luke felt his brow furrow as he tries to visualize the letters all together. "I...don't understand."

"It's probably for this," Sophie said, bending to get a better look at the safe. "Remember how the face of the safe listed letters from A to G?"

"Ah, Face!" Luke exclaims. "That must have something to do with it."

"I...think that might be coincidence." Aria said.

"Face is just one example of a word you could make with musical notation, nothing more than a coincidence," Sophie explained.

"Well, I mean it might, but it also might not. I mean, what if you took the letters and rolled them back?" Aria asked.

"Rolled them back?" Sophie looked confused for the first time since entering the room. Actually...scratch that. She looked confused for the first time, period.

"Like...say you continued on counting after G. Say H was the next A, or I was the next B."

"Does it really matter what it means?" Simon butted in. "It's obvious that you put in the original jumble of letters into the safe there. Come on, we don't have time to sit here decoding messages like some twelve year old." He looked directly toward Luke. "Well, most of us."

"Well if you're so eager to open it go right on ahead. I want to solve this kiddie message of ours," Sophie barks, turning away from him to think. "H...I...J......A...B...C..."

"Psh. Do what you want. Gotta do everything around here, I guess." He lumbered over toward the safe with an obvious lack of effort.

Luke took it upon himself to check out the other half of the room, finding it almost bothersome that there were entire sections they haven't even looked into and Simon was here talking about finishing up. He wanted to leave as fast as possible...but he hated leaving stones unturned. Maybe that was a trap by whoever brought them there...the mastermind behind all of this, but if so it was a trap he couldn’t help but fall for. There was something inside him that had to know, even if it was relatively small like what that shimmering was he saw at the deep end of the stream. He merely glanced at it before walking over, bending down to reach his hand in the water. Each end of the stream seemed to dip deeper to well up water that flowed openly through an underwater vent in the wall. There must have been a steady flow coming in since the level of the water hadn't dropped any since they had entered the room. The source must be in some different room.

He picked what ended up being a purple vase out of the water and turned it in his hands. The lip of the vase flowers out from a skinny neck leading down to a more rotund base. He wouldn't be able to stick his hand inside if he tried. After emptying the water he saw the shine of something inside.

"Just like I told you," Simon called from the other edge of the room. "I knew it'd open with those letters."

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Luke turned to face the open safe and a confused Simon. He pulls out something small and black, holding it in the palm of his hand. "Of course...why would I expect anything fucking important to come out of a goddamn safe?!" He chucks the object against the wall and walked back toward the far end of the room shaking his head.

Levi grabbed the object from off of the floor, holding it up in front of his face, twisting and turning it. "Huh, I thought it looked like a whole note."

"A what?" Luke asked. He looked to the monitor and saw that one of the shapes on it looked just like the object he held in his hand. So...that was a whole note? He thought it looked more like a drawing of a finless fish.

"It looked like this is one of the keys that rabbit was talking about." Levi lowered his arm. He began to look around, not finding what he was looking for. "Now...where's the lock?"

"I don't know," Sophie interrupts. "But I do have a solution for what the password to the safe might mean."

"What is it?" Aria asked.

"So, I came up with this." She brings out a sheet of paper with some scribbles on it. "I used a small notebook I found in my jacket pocket to list out the possible combinations and found that these are all of the possible meanings. Here's the alphabet converted to musical notation."

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F

"And here's the only possibility I've found that made a full phrase. I've tossed out ones that are still gibberish. And I'm also assuming that FACE is the intention for the first four letters here. Assuming otherwise means we'd be here all day and few words make sense that have the same distance from each other."

F A C E F A E F D G F A

F A C E T H E T R U T H

"Face the truth?" Levi asked.

"Huh, now this is interesting," Simon stepped forward, a look other than mild disappointment covering his face for the first time since entering the room. "You all know what this means...right?" Nobody had an answer for him. "It means," he said with a careful tongue, making sure to get everyone's attention in his grasp, "...our little flautist is hiding something, and it is something big by the severity of hiding this message in a password."

"But you were the one who said that he didn't even care about the password in the first place!" Luke called out.

Simon smirked. He knew that what he was saying was true. "Yes, but truth be told I didn't think it'd be worth anything. I'm allowed to be wrong, aren't I?" He smirks a small shape and walked to the middle of the room before turning his gaze on Aria. "Now, what could somebody like you be hiding?"

Luke hadn't noticed it before, but Aria looked like she had been holding her breath. She stared him down as he did her, the two not speaking a word until Levi broke the silence. "Uh...excuse me, but...can't we talk about this at...any other time but now?"

"Y-yeah." Luke agreed. There was no point to wasting time here like this, he thought. "We still gotta find the rest of those notes."

"Ah ah ah," Simon waved his finger humming the tones a child would be scolded with. "No I think we get to do this now. I remember you specifically talking about how we should all trust each other, no?"

Luke flinched where he stood.

"And with this new information, I'm not sure I could trust the musician with anything more than a roll of toilet paper and even then I'd have to look twice while she wiped my ass. "

Aria was shaking now, but Luke could tell that it wasn't from the crude imagery Simon had provided. She looked terrified—frozen at the spot, and that had started to bother him. What could she have to hide?

10

"Well? What is it?" Simon asked, beginning to pace toward her. Luke turned to look at Levi and Sophie, the two of them looked like they'd lost any objection they had when they noticed Aria's shaking. "Drunken bender leading to an affair with a famous politician?" Simon guessed. "...Or maybe you're secretly a massive hoarder..." He turned to stop on her, "or maybe you're the mastermind of this whole thing. Maybe the music shtick is just a cover so we think you're less dangerous than you really are."

Aria couldn't handle it anymore. She clenched her fist and screamed out at them. It was a deafening sort of sound that shocked everyone in the room. She took heavy breaths as she finished. No one spoke. A few more moments passed and she slumped her shoulders and began to shake some more. "I killed someone..." she said not louder than a whisper.

"What?!" Luke took an instinctive step back.

"Listen, okay, it's a long story. I..." her breath is uneven and she had begun to sweat. For the first time Luke could see the worry underneath her outer charm. She looked like she was breaking right before his eyes.

"Calm down." Sophie said, arms crossed. "Nobody will be able to understand you if you start to freak out. "

"Excuse me, but why are we trying to understand her?" Simon interjected. "She just admitted to killing someone!"

"I don't think she's the one behind all of us being here," Sophie says. "It wouldn’t make sense in the large scale of things and she'd have no reason to out herself. I'm not excusing murder, but I think I'd like to know the details. It could at the very least explain some things on why we’re here. We can't get those answers if you keep on her," Sophie had turned from her to him.

Simon groaned underneath his breath but ultimately he knew that she was right. He backed off and had begun tapping his foot as Aria took a deep breath.

"I don't know anything about why we're here...I promise," Aria said.

Sophie looked over toward her, "Start talking."

She lets out a whimpered sort of sound. "I didn't mean for it to happen...I didn't..." She looked directly at Luke and began to speak. "I was thirteen. I lived in a small town on the far edge of France. My mother and father were gone for long periods of time—they were both performers in my town's theater. It wasn't lucrative work, but they lived and loved what they did. Back in France there's this saying we have called coup de foudre. Literally, it means a strike of thunder, but we take it to mean love at first sight."

Luke cocked his head, as he was sure the others had at her idiom as well.

"Can we skip past this part?" Simon asked.

Aria looked a bit shocked at his outburst, but nodded curtly.

"It's relevant, I promise."

"Fine, go on," he made a motion with his hand.

"There was an older boy who strolled the streets often—Villiers was his name. He was a few years older than I was. His family was well off, certainly far more than I could ever even begin to explain. Other girls would always go after him hoping to eventually marry into a rich family. He knew better, so those kinds of relationships didn't last long. One particular day, the last time I saw him walking down the streets I snuck out of my home—I felt something calling me out. I couldn't explain to you now what it was except for coup de foudre. That was when I first met him. We talked and things got passed the awkward phase pretty quickly. The thing is though, his father never liked me. He thought I was just like the other girls, wanting to get rich quick."

"Ugh, okay, you know what? I don't care anymore. Do. Not. Care. Let's get out of here, I'm sorry I asked," Simon turned to look toward the back end of the room. "Hey, any of you going to move or what...?"

Sophie looked at him, "While I'd love to get out of here as quickly as possible, we aren't strictly on a time limit. Murder is a serious charge. If something had any relation to why we were brought here, then I'd like to hear it out...romance bullshit or not."

"Romance isn't wholly bullshit you know," Levi said, raising a finger.

"Not the topic at hand," Sophie looked back at him and then toward Simon. "Solve the room's puzzle if you want. I want to hear more about this...well, not this, specifically, but you know what I mean."

"Ugh," Simon grunts out before leaning up against the wall. "Easier to stab both my eardrums out."

"A-Anyway..." Aria interjects. "The rest of the story didn't go on much longer. I was actually invited by his father to have dinner in their home. I don't know what I was thinking, but I showed up. It didn’t seem weird at the time, but when I got there I realized that Villiers wasn’t home. His car wasn’t there, it was just his father."

"That's odd. Why would he invite you there alone?" Luke asked.

"I figured at the time that maybe it was some sort of peace offering. It didn't seem odd to me at the time...maybe I was just lost in a new relationship and that's what I was focused on. Maybe I wanted his father to like me, I don't know, but I went."

"Dun dun dun," Simon let out, turning his head to the side.

"Everything was okay at first," she continued, ignoring him. "I walked in and he greeted me with a smile and a firm handshake. I remember though that his handshake was the first time I felt that something was off. The night only got worse from there...I still remember it so fresh in my mind. He invited me into the parlor room. There were so many photographs framed all around, but they weren’t of any people. These were photos I previously saw when I visited previously, so I knew then that they were all changed to have the frames emptied." She had begun to rub her arms briskly as she took a short breath. "He must have noticed how tense I was and offered me a drink—after I refused it he sat down and took this huge breath. Mind you, there wasn’t anything set out for dinner. That’s when he pulled out this gun."

Every eyebrow in the room raised, even Simon couldn't help but be interested.

"It was so quiet as if he had taken out a handkerchief to wipe his face or clean his glasses. There it was, a huge revolver that looked like one shot could blow through my whole body. I froze. What could I have done? I play the flute, and even if I had that it wouldn’t have helped in the slightest."

Luke imagined the horrible face of the man who would have aimed a gun at her and he couldn’t help but imagine the mounted gun that had threatened them in the previous room. It made him shudder.

"I...I feel like what happened next was all in slow motion. He pointed the gun toward a bust of himself that was resting on this like...podium on the far end of the room. He fired the gun once...just to prove it was loaded I guess. The bust exploded into bits and pieces and I screamed—louder than I intended. He looked at me without blinking and told me that if I screamed again he was going to shoot me. If I ran away he was going to shoot me. If I fought against him he was going to shoot me."

"And yet he didn’t," Sophie said. "At least, as far as I could see."

"No, no he did not." She breathes in and steadies herself. "I don’t know where everybody else was. He placed his hand on his leg and shook his head. I don’t know why you bitches can't just leave this family alone was what he said. He looked like he was convincing himself of something—maybe to shoot me? Maybe not? It was more than obvious at this point that Villiers’ father was off his rocker—like, serious impairment was going on or whatever. He was tweaking hard."

"How’d you kill him?" Simon asked.

"Wh-" Aria’s momentum is broken.

"You’re claiming self defense, that right? All right, we don’t need the full conversation to conversation. Crazy guy came at you with a gun, how’d you kill him?"

She bites her lip, if she hadn’t expected Simon to be interested once again she definitely didn’t expect him to follow the trail all the way down. "Knife through the chest. Obviously it didn’t happen right at that moment, we were far from the kitchen and there were no knives set up on the table like I said. He yanked me by my hair up to his huge bedroom and kept mentioning some group he thought I was hired by to weasel out his family’s money. can't remember what it was called. I was too scared. The knife was hidden underneath the pillow, I cut my hand on it as he threw me down." She holds up her hand to show a faded scar up the palm of her hand.

"I took it and stabbed him. I don’t want to know what else he wanted to do with me—he kept flipping between wanting to shoot me, wanting to rape me, and wanting to hear what I had to spill about that stupid group."

"Jesus Christ," Levi said, shaking his head. "I can't deal with the sight of blood, I can't imagine being in that situation."

"I learned something that day—how much blood the human body truly contains. I yanked the knife out of his chest and I sat there as it pooled over me. I think I lost it then—everything came rushing at me at once and I just sat there for what seemed like forever. It kept spilling out. I think he died on the spot because he made no move to fire the gun. I left Villiers’ home and never returned...didn’t reach out to him and I ran away from home. My life was pretty much over at that point."

"Why didn’t you call the police?" Luke asked.

She looked to him with a tear in her eye, "My life is complicated. I’ve already bared you enough of my soul for one lifetime, I believe. Besides, it led up to where we are now. The last thing I remember before all of this was that memory. Not too long after whoever grabbed us all must have found me—for whatever purpose that they have at the very least."

"God," Luke said. "That’s a lot."

"If we trust you," Simon said.

"Right, that’s always a question to ask," Aria said. "I guess if you want you could label me a murderer and not want to talk to me. If we could just do that while we get out of here. I won’t talk to any of you ever again and you won’t have to associate with a..." This was the point where it had become too much for her. She broke and everything inside her broke with it. She raised her arm to her eyes and looked away shaking her head, cursing underneath her breath. "Fuck. Fuck this. Fuck I just wanted to know a boy. A stupid boy whose crazy dad I killed and-"

"Okay, okay," Simon took in a deep breath. "Let’s keep moving. Okay? I hate seeing girls cry. I’ll lay off, okay?"

This was something surprising. Luke hadn’t expected any sort of humanity out of Simon. If he were to liken him to any animal it would of course have been a snake, always looking for prey...but Simon now almost seemed human. He wasn’t naive and going to believe that he was going to act kind to everyone here, Luke wasn’t a fool, but at least if they had the very minuscule amount of trust between them they might be able to actually survive.

11

"Hey Luke, do you think that vase you’re holding goes over here?" Levi’s voice was the first to break the awkward silence after Aria’s story. Sophie had been right that they didn’t seem to have any sort of time limit in this phase. It was so much to the point that he looked down as if his question was asked in French. He had entirely forgotten he was holding the vase.

"Oh...right, where now?" He held it up to Levi. He’d been standing next to a balance that had been resting on one of the desks in the far corner of the room. The balance sat heavy on one end as another vase—this one yellow with a green stripe running across it.

"Well, if there’s any spot for this thing I guess it’d be there," he said.

Levi nodded. Luke walked across the small stream of water and sets the vase down on the other side of the scale. The scale moved to balance himself, but it sides a little heavy with the new vase.

"Maybe you gotta empty the water?" Levi asked.

"No, I don’t think so. I already did...wait! I almost forgot!" He swiped the vase up from the scale and turned it upside down. A black rubber thing that almost looked like the letter "d" fell onto the ground and bounced once before rolling to a stop.

"Another note?"

"Weird shapes for them, huh?" Luke muttered. "I remembered seeing something inside when I emptied the water out, but the lip of the vase is too thin for me to reach in and grab it. Let’s try this now."

He placed the vase back on the scale and it settles back down to an even balance. There’s a sound that he could only place as a tumbler shifting in a lock, but as far as he knew the only door in the whole room had been the one they had come through, and that wasn’t locked in the slightest.

Levi bent down to grab the note which he called a quarter note, something that confused Luke terribly. If that finless fish was a whole note, how in the heavens was the letter “d” a quarter of that? It was like some joke that soared way above his head.

"Found out what the unlocking sound was," Simon cocked his head toward the framed painting on the wall, but there was something about the look on his face that unsettled him. It seemed like genuine confusion. Luke followed his gaze and noticed why Simon had focused his attention on it.

When they all entered the room the painting had shown a padlock that had been fully locked. Now...it had unlocked.

"Anyone else remember that painting being totally different?" Aria asked, her voice uneven.

"Yes, it was locked before. When did it switch?" Levi chimed in.

"It was when the vase balanced out the scale." Sophie said. "That’s not the only thing that’s changed, look at the screen."

The screen had begun to recede into the wall before finally disappearing for good, leaving two indentations left in the wall—ones exactly in the shape of the two notes they had collected.

"Well, this one should be obvious," Simon started.

"Yeah, just set them in there and we should be good to go," Luke said, turning to Aria. "Do you want to be the one to do it?"

This shocked her and everyone else around them as well.

"Wh...me?"

"Yeah, I mentioned before how I want to trust you all here." Luke took a deep breath. "We all have stuff we don’t want to talk about. I’m sure if I could remember I’d have secrets I wouldn’t want anybody else to know. I don’t believe you’re the reason we’re here Aria, nor do I believe any of the rest of you are either. We all have rooms here, right? That’s the assumption we’re running with? Then that means we’re all probably going to be running the risk of losing that trust this game so desperately taunts above our head."

"He makes a valid point," Sophie said.

"How?" Aria asked out of nowhere. "How could you trust someone like me? Someone who’s just done and told you they’ve killed someone?" She began stuttering at the end of breaking once more. Luke walked up to her and hands her the quarter note, nodding up to her.

"You’re the strangest kid I’ve ever met," Aria said, wiping away a tear and letting out the smallest of sounds. "Why the hell are you in a place like this?"

"Yeah yeah, the kid’s nice. Levi, give her the whole note already," Simon crosses his arms. Levi nodded and stepped forward holding out his hand.

"Guys..." She said. "I’m getting way too emotional for people I don’t even..." but she took it in her hand, breathing short and looking down, trying to hold it back. "Okay, done crying. Sorry for getting extremely heavy guys. Thank you. You’re all very kind. Even you, Simon."

He rolled his eyes as she stepped up and places the quarter note into the indentation. A light had begun to shine through the rubber and glow all sorts of different colors. Luke sat in amazement as it flowed from red to green to blue and then to a crazy spilling mix of everything at once. Aria moved to the side to set the whole note into the indentation next. It took some fiddling to get it to slide over the hole in the center, but it fit just enough. There was a clicking kind of sound as soon as it was fitted in, and what followed was the loudest, most bone chilling scream Luke had ever heard.

It had not come from the room that they were in, but everyone froze to the core as it rang through their entire bodies. Someone was in a lot of pain...no, that couldn’t be it. That kind of scream couldn’t come from anyone still breathing. There was a silent fact that they all agreed upon as each person slowly looked from one another. Someone had died.

12

The silence strung each of them up like a taut bow of a violin, just waiting to snap on an unwitting musician. Aria looked most frail, as if something inside of her had snapped the second the whole note had been placed in the indentation. Her hand shook with a tenacity that could move mountains.

"I...I didn’t mean..." She sputtered out.

"Guys...what was that?" Levi asked, shaking himself.

"I think if we knew then you would know," Sophie said. "The best we could do is go find out. I think that we’re done with this room."

"What about the key?" Simon asked.

"Forget about the key! Someone is dying!" Luke snapped.

Simon shrugged, "No, they’re dead based on that scream.

Luke knew it, but something inside him kept pushing back. No! They could still be alive! We need to go NOW! ...but he knew better. At least, he hoped he had.

"I think that the scream is our key. At least, there’s nothing else here to investigate, so we’ve really nothing left to lose by going to check it out," Sophie cracked her knuckles and then placed her hands on her side.

"Nothing to lose? Sure we could lose our lives to whatever is out there," Simon added.

"Okay." Sophie said, leaning a little bit in.

Simon doubled back, his face like he’d just swallowed a lemon whole. "Okay...?"

"Yeah, sure. Let’s just sit here. That seems like a better idea."

The room was silent, watching the ensuing game between Sophie and Simon.

"I..." Simon started out.

"Oh, what? can’t think of anything to do here? Interesting."

"Sophie..." Luke had begun.

"No, no, no," She holds out her hand, "...I want to hear what his genius plan is if he’s gonna be the plan man here."

"Plan man?" Luke asked.

"...Let’s go outside and check it out," Simon said with great reluctance.

"Huh, that’s a good idea. Thank you for your contribution."

"Bitch..." Simon muttered under his breath."

"We’ve already met. No reason to tell me your name again," Sophie turned to head out of the room.

"...Plan man?" Luke repeated. However much she could grab a room’s attention and keep it under tight control, Sophie was poor at name calling. Very poor.

Simon looked at each of them with an offended look. "Oh, what? None of you are going to call her out on this bullshit?"

"What do you mean?" Levi asked.

"I give apathy and you all pounce like hungry fuckin’ pumas. She’s bitch prime and you follow her like sheep."

Aria is the first to answer him. She seemed to have regained some of her composure. "She’s doing it to get us out of here. You’ve been doing it to be as petulant as possible. I’m...I’m sorry for saying it, but it’s true. I do believe you’re a nice person, but we’re all going to die if we can’t act civil."

She looked like it visibly pained her to be so blunt with him. Luke understood that feeling. He didn’t know how Sophie could manage it, but he’s sure he’d find himself in total anguish for long after the situation.

Simon seemed to have no such anguish. He simply shook his head and walked along, passing them and following Sophie through the door with Aria’s name emblazoned on the front. Luke looked from Levi and then to Aria, shrugging his shoulders.

"Well, kudos to you for standing up." Levi said.

"I dunno, I felt kind of bad," Aria said. "Maybe I should apologize..."

Luke shook his head, "No, he seemed like he was getting it just a little bit," Luke said. "We have to trust that he has a heart in there somewhere."

Aria took in a deep breath, sighing loudly. "I know guys like him, they don’t get it that easily...that’s another story. Maybe...if we survive this it’s a story I could tell you both someday?"

Levi raised an eyebrow.

"I...I’m not proud of what I did. Not any of it. I’m not proud of where I am...but it felt...relieving getting it off my chest. It was easier telling people I don’t know. Granted...I wish it could have been under better circumstances. I know I can't be sure I have all of your trust, but I want you to know you have mine. You both have been very kind to someone you have absolutely every right not to. Once we make it out of here...maybe we could get to know each other better under better context?"

Luke nodded his head. "I like that idea. I think we could get the other two on board."

"Well, I’ll put it up to pending escape from deadly facility. Speaking of, let’s not get too far behind, right?" Levi said.

"Right," Luke nodded.

The three of them backtrack through the door and down the extended hallway. The lights from the room dimmed and then faded as the door shut forever behind them.