On the comfortable chair, the director finished his questions and waved his hand. The man started begging again – pushing against his restraints, voice choking and uneven with fear.
His pleas for mercy were ignored. The security guards held him down while a nurse took out a syringe and placed it on the patient’s arm. No matter how much he resisted or cried, everyone turned a deaf ear as the syringe was plunged into his flesh, something slowly being pushed into his body.
It didn’t take long, but watching the man slowly, slowly grow quiet and limp while everyone watched without a care was a special sort of horror.
One security guard just threw him over his shoulder. He talked to the director, who gestured to the side.
Despite there being several people that moved as a group, neither director nor nurses or guards were audible as they walked. Only a single flashlight shone the way forward as they approached the security room at the end of the hallway.
The last person that entered directly pulled the door shut, allowing none of the players to follow them inside.
River halted dead in his tracks, frowning unhappily at the closed door. He immediately tried to listen in, but the door was thick.
Even until the game reset, he couldn’t hear a single voice.
Back in the safe-room, everyone stumbled around a bit, queasy from the reset. River rubbed his eyes, quickly checking the time on the old grandfather-clock.
A quarter had passed.
That meant that there were 4 rounds this game, with 3 being left.
If he had to guess, just judging from the way the things they had witnessed, a major part of the game would be finding the third floor at all, then helping the patient out.
“Shit.” Deer muttered a curse, shaking his head in disorientation. The first reset you experienced was especially uncomfortable – like being teleported. For a moment, your brain couldn’t catch up with everything.
Before River had time to think about Deer, he felt two slender hands push his back. He was pushed all the way until out of the room, where he made a noise of complaint.
“Don’t give him any attention”, Aspen demanded, eyes narrowed. He was wary of the other guy, even more so after River had explained that he worked at a drug den. Aspen had noticed that River had lost weight, and while he hadn’t thought much about it, the combination of Deer’s and River’s behavior gave him a bad feeling in connection to that fact.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Where do you want us to go?” Amber had to keep her hands on the wall to keep upright, but she managed.
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“Amber, you saw where the patient came out from?”
“Yeah, it was the central room upstairs, the one directly opposite of the stairs. There’s no name on it but I saw some doctors entering. It got locked immediately though.”
“Alright. Thanks. We’re going down while everyone is eating lunch. Try to check out the facility room if you notice anything off. Aspen and I will try to enter the sleeping chambers. You two can follow down once you’re feeling better.”
River didn’t bother to make a fuss over Plaster, and Plaster clearly preferred that. He gave a weak thumbs-up and Rhythm stayed at his side, warily eyeing the safe-room that Deer hadn’t left yet.
Due to the setting, it wasn’t that easy to enter and leave a room. Both sides wasted half an eternity just waiting for someone else to enter and give them a short window of time where they could slip inside as well.
Aspen pulled a face at the sight of the sleeping chamber. It was really just a chamber filled with various simple beds, each area separated by a thin removable curtain.
“No privacy at all.”
“Why would you have a problem with that?”
“At least I don’t notice the cameras. I don’t feel watched unless someone passes by directly. But these guys here, they can’t ignore that there’s someone who hears and sees their every move.”
“Exactly.” River just passed him by. “So that’s the perfect setup to allow people to watch each other.”
“…Ah.”
Even if a doctor noticed something was odd, there was no way of checking. There were always others who would know exactly when you entered and left the room, or even if you took notes of something. Any behavior was under direct scrutiny of others.
Some shadows were dozing on the beds. Again, the amount of doctors didn’t quite match up with the requirement that this place should offer, considering there were only so many treatment rooms that could be used at the same time. River circled the room several times, putting a lot of attention on any sort of notebooks he saw people keeping.
“Found something useful?”
“Probably.” River squatted behind the curtain to take the notebook, hoping no shadow would react. He flipped through it.
It was half notes and half a diary.
The doctor was young and motivated, and started out with a lot of admiration for the director.
Apparently the director paid for most of the construction work by himself, without sponsors. He kept the costs for patients low and the wages rather high, ensured that everything was kept in order, and had a personal relationship with everyone.
He made his rounds daily to talk to the patients and figure out if they had any complaints. He’d ask the nurses and doctors if they were lacking equipment, and would talk to the security guards if they needed more help.
The doctor was motivated. He was happy to work here and determined to help the patients get better soon.
His cheerful notes at the start of the notebook soon shifted. He never lost the desire to help the patients, and he didn’t change his adoration for the director, but…
Many times, words were crossed out or whole pages ripped out of the book.
Insecurity was creeping into some notes, veiled, but still there. The doctor talked about nightmares – hearing single screams in the night, or the sound of wheels scraping over the ground and footsteps.
He attributed it to stress, also mentioning that he was looking forward to his nearing vacation.
It was just the nerves, he repeated over and over again.
But the three sounds together sounded a bit too unusual.
“Screams and footsteps I understand, but wheels? Where is he hearing wheels? Could it be that someone passes by in the hallway with a cart?”
“I don’t believe that that’s a nightmare. Actually…” River stopped himself. “…No. I’ll check it out later and tell you if I’m right.”
“You could tell me now, too.”
“I don’t want to give you wrong information. It could cloud your judgement on other things.”
“If you think so. But if it gave you an idea, this was definitely worth it.”
“I wish we found the way up to the third floor though. I’m not going to climb that bedsheet up.” If that was the option the Gamblers gave them for accessing the third floor, he’d rather not take it…
“Uhm, River?” A muffled voice came through the door. “We are done with the facility room. Nothing odd there, but Plaster and Rhythm managed to enter the security room. They stole an unnamed key that they found hidden in a drawer.”
“Very good. We’ll come out as soon as we can.”
So far, the only unnamed room was the one upstairs. They might just be lucky.
The reason why twelve hours were a suitable length for a single run became obvious when they kept track of just how much time was constantly wasted waiting for someone to open a door.
The first try, there was only enough time for Aspen to slip out, leaving River inside the room. Amber sensibly retreated a step backwards, closer to Plaster and Rhythm, away from Aspen who was unhappily staring at the closed door.
“How are you feeling?”, she asked Plaster in a low voice. Her gentle smile made the other guy relax.
“Better. I’m the type to easily get motion sick, so the reset wasn’t very nice…” If there was color, Plaster would have been noticeably pale. Like this, he was only a tad bit whiter. “Actually… Actually I was incredibly scared at the start of the night, but I feel much better now.”
Rhythm wrapped his arms around himself. “It helps doing something. Not just waiting for death.”
“I feel like River makes it easy to get swept up in his plans. It’s like… you can tell he’s having fun? It reminds me of the last escape room I visited. You know, there’s always someone who takes the lead and keeps all the info and hints together? Like that.” Amber turned her face towards the courtyard. “That’s probably why Aspen follows him too.”
She fell silent, and the other two didn’t attempt to continue the conversation about he-who-must-not-be-named.
thank you for the chapter!! ❤
He-who-must-not-be-named XD
Aspen reached this level already
Thanks for the chapter! ^^
Thank you for the chapter 😁❤️
Oh! I hadn’t seen the notification T-T. Thanks for this chapter! This Aspen protecting River is a treasure~♡