Maya woke up to Quinn nudging her arm. As she slowly sat up Maya noticed that Quinn wasn't in her harness. She glanced around the room, and spotted it on the lowest shelf of the wardrobe. "Quinn, harness." She said pointing to it. Maya listened to the announcement as Quinn brought the harness ove and she buckled it on. She patted the dos side. "Well, girl, it sounds like this place is our new home for a while." She said as she carefully got up with Quinn helping keep her balanced. She first went over to look at the key pad for the door, but it only told her that she had to press open after entering numbers. Then, she went to the wardrobe, changed into her purple shirt dress and black leggings, and found a clue on the back wall.

15, 30, 95, 150 (division symbol) ?

Simon found himself tired after waking up. He groaned while rubbing his head repeatedly. A massive headache came and the voice on the speakers did not make it any better. The musician got out of the bed and searched the room. He found his clothes in the closet. Putting them on, he tried looking for clues in the room for a way out.

The young woman woke to the sound of the announcement and sat up quickly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The game! She was excited already to get started. Lucy swung her bare feet off the bed and onto the cold floor, taking note of her white nightgown. "Did I change into this?" she tried to remember, but the last thing she could think of was sitting on the couch in the waiting room.

She felt a quick surge of anger at the realization. She must have been drugged or something. She didn't remember consenting to that in the agreement she had signed. Of course, that agreement was long and she chided herself for not reading the fine print.

"...remember your code once you find it..." Lucy murmured and glanced around the room. She started with the wardrobe and found her jeans and her striped sweater and her camera. She changed quickly and inspected the wardrobe further, looking to see if anything had been written on the top or bottom of each shelf or on the sides, looking at each of the eight hangers in turn, even trying to move the wardrobe so that she could see behind it, only to find it had been bolted to the floor.

Nate slowly woke up. He was laying on his back staring up at a black painted ceiling. Also on the ceiling were a number of white dots. Where they supposed to be stars? Nate then saw several large, yellow five pointed stars pointed on the ceiling. He rolled to his side and jumped.

Across the room was a small desk with a pair of porcelain dolls. The creepy dolls stared at Nate. He had always hated that kind of doll. He rolled out of bed and looked at the desk. There were several combs, brushes, hair ribbons and bobby pins. Everything he would need to do the dolls' hair up if he wanted.

After looking around the rest of the room, Nate found his clothes and changed. This game was quickly becoming much more intense than he thought it would. he has never been drugged as part of an escape room game before. Made him wonder what else will happen.

He looked at the lock on his door. It was clear he would need to find some single digits that could be used as the combo.

Maya wandered around her room as she thought about the first clue. 'I don't think that I'm supposed to divide them by each other, so it's probably a number that they all divide by. Those are 1 and 5. The answer is probably 5.' She went over to the desk, and wrote a 5 on the first page of the notebook. She then went back to where she had seen some writing carved into the paint on the wall.

No one
is
ever
nice

'It's a letter scramble' she thought with a smile. There were too many letters to be one number, so she quickly figured out that the numbers were 9 and 7. She added these to the notebook.

Niles Wendale

Niles woke up slightly, then started going back to sleep. His head was pounding, his entire body felt groggy, and it was entirely too cold. Something kept him from going back to sleep however. Something was wrong. Was he supposed to get up at a certain time? Did he have something to do? The only thing he had had planned was that stupid escape room thing. Wait... hadn't he already done that? No. But he went to the building. He signed the thing and waited in the lobby room... where he got really tired. He snapped awake, embarrassed to have fallen asleep in the waiting room.

He was not in the waiting room.

Niles looked around, realizing he was in some kind of cell. Had someone called the cops on him? Then he remembered the theme of the escape room. Asylum. Wait, did they fucking DRUG me!? He thought. He looked down at the hospital gown he had on. "... oh, HELL no!" He got up and flung open the doors to the wardrobe. He pulled out his clothes and quickly put them on. "I did NOT sign up for THIS shit!" He grumbled angrily. He grabbed his backpack from inside the wardrobe, instantly noticing how light it was. He hastily opened it and found only his sketchpad and art supplies. "... They took my shit! All of my shit!!"

Just then, a PA system crackled into life. Niles listened angrily as he finished lacing and tying his boots. He looked around the small cell for anything remotely code like. He found nothing. He groaned as he flopped down onto the mattress. "This is gonna suuuuuuck..."

Not finding any clues on the wardrobe, Lucy next tried the desk. "Come on, you gotta be here somewhere," she said aloud as she opened both drawers and flipped through every page in the notebooks to see if something had been written there. Nothing. She inspected the chair and then the bed... even the white nightgown. Still nothing.

She was starting to get frustrated. "Come on, give me a hint," she looked up at the speaker in the ceiling as if it might respond. When it stayed stubbornly silent, she sat down on the chair and rested her chin on her hand, trying not to feel defeated. The whole point of this was to meet people and here she was, still stuck in her room. Were the others already out making friends and having fun together?

She sighed and turned on her camera to flip through the pictures of the friends she had left behind before moving to this city, allowing herself a few moments of distraction. "Oh!" she exclaimed as she saw the last photo.

Simon searched a few drawers before he found a crumpled up piece of paper. He pressed the paper against the surface of the desk and worked out the creases. Stretching the paper out, he realized a drawing of a rainbow was on the front side. The image looked drawn by a child or someone younger. Looking at the rainbow closely, he counted how many colors presented on the page.

Approaching the door, he noticed a keypad. Paint resided on all of the buttons. Glancing at the number pad and the rainbow drawing, Simon began making the connection. He pushed a random combination and learned the code consisted of five numbers— he learned this because the door falsely beeped after the fifth digit. Simon tapped on his chin and examined the paper.

The colors of the rainbow consisted of five colors: red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. Red remained as the biggest arch followed by the corresponding colors. Blue's arch was the smallest in the group. Simon theorized the numbers on the pad with the same paint matching the rainbow would lead to the passcode.

Simon found the numbers immediately. 1-Blue, 4-Yellow, 7-Red, 3-Orange, and 9-Green. The only problem that needed solving involved the order of the numbers. Simon glanced back at the rainbow drawing and assumed the order is fixated on biggest to smallest arch. The musician did not have any other ideas.

He pressed 7,3,4,9, and 1 in order as shown on the child's drawing. Waiting a few seconds, Simon heard a 'ding' and witnessed the door open a crack. Smiling, he walked out the room.

Not finding anything else, Nate decided that the desk had to hold the clue to opening the lock. In one of the drawers of the desk he found a crumpled up paper. It was hard to read the chicken scratching that somebody called writing. But it seemed to say:



He looked at the desk. There was a pair of dolls on the desk. "Ok.. 2 dolls." He counted the little combs, "4 combs". he looked and looked but could only find one pink ribbon. "1 ribbon." Looking up, he saw five stars painted on the ceiling. It had to be th five pointed starts and not just the white dots. "5 stars".

He went over to punch in 2 4 1 5 into the lock. he smiled when he heard the click and the door open.

He stepped out into the hall, a little disappointed with himself when he saw he wasn't the first one out.

Opening his eyes a sudden painful feeling hit him in the head. Hangovers never change. Opening his eyes and looking around he wondered where had his tipsy mind carried him when he was in a drunken state. White walls, white sheets and only a door. Looking down at his clothes...the same, but something was missing, his locket. It had a picture of him and his daughter. Those bastards dared take that away? Who were they anyway? Another wave of pain crashed through his head as he remembered...remembered going somewhere, signing something then falling flat on the floor, passed out.

*Sigh*

He had to get out of here. Getting up he went for the door only to see it was locked. Did he sign up to be a prisoner? Hitting the door a few times, it was sturdy. A console placed on the side containing numbers. Seeing that they also allowed him to open it from the inside they must have left a code somewhere. He searched for half an hour. Numbers were scribbled below the bed, there was a very complicated rubric's cube sitting on the floor which only worsened his headache just by looking at it and a note below his pillow.

"From the smallest to the biggest
everything obeys an order."

Smallest? Biggest? Order? Numbers? A damn rubic's cube?

Nothing. He had better chances going to sleep and waking later to see if they opened the door for him. Out of frustration he hit the wall. Only his hand suffered damage. Now red and throbbing in sync with his head he sat down on the edge of the bed. An idea hit him.

He started knocking all across the room in every wall until he got close to the door. Right there was an empty spot. Maybe a clue to get out of here? He knocked around some more until he had the general layout of the thin wall, he took a few steps back and charged for the target. He went right through the wall, crashing outside of the room. What the..

He looked around, a long hallway. He looked back to his room, right behind the door which was supposedly the only way out, a thick wall stood there. Hell, even if he opened the door he wouldn't get out that way. Damn sons of bitches would put random ass fake clues just to waste his time. And it would've worked if he wasn't so wasted and if he wasn't suffering from such a painful headache he could barely stand to look at numbers.
Now, where to next...

Recognizing her riddle as a sudoku puzzle, Lucy sorted out the numbers, writing on the notebook paper as she went. "That's a 5. And a 1. 4. And..."

A loud crash came from somewhere outside her room, distracting her from the puzzle momentarily. "What in the world?" Maybe that was supposed to be motivation to hurry up!

She looked back down at the puzzle. "That was 4... and 7." She put the numbers in order.

4 5 7 1

Then stood and punched them into the keypad, rewarded immediately with a green light and a small beep. Lucy smiled. Maybe this would be fun after all! Camera in hand, she pulled the door open and stepped out into the hallway, looking up and down the length of it. Three men were there already, the one closest to her covered in drywall dust with a gaping hole beside him.

He looked so perfectly disheveled that she was tempted to take his picture, but he already looked pissed enough to spit nails. The photo op could wait until after introductions.

"Hi," she said, looking at each of the 3 men in the hallway. "I'm Lucy."

Maya carefully examined the rest of her room, but found nothing. No clues on the bed, desk, or in any of the notebooks. After searching, for what seemed like a long time, she sat down on the bed to think. She sat there watching Quinn walk around the room as she listened to the sounds of other people in the hall. A pound crash made her jump and the dog stop in it's tracks. Maya looked to the door then the dog, and noticed something on the device vest.

"Quinn, come here girl."

Quinn obeyed, and Maya took a closer look at the vest. Under the E was written G H I T.

"8. 5 9 7 8. I wonder if that's the right order." She got up and went to the door. When she entered the numbers in the order she found them, she got a red light. Maya tried a few other combinations before entering 7598. The door clicked open. The pair exited the room, and looked down the hall to see four others. Maya heard another girl introduce herself as she spotted a large hole next to one of the men. 'I guess that was the loud noise we heard.'

Nate counted noses. There were now 5 of them in the hallway. The two girls were cute. He was glad it wasn't going to be a game with all dudes.

"Hi, everybody. I'm Nate and I'm an alcoholic. Wait. Sorry, wrong meeting. I'm Nate."

Sorry for the lack of activity recently, but my laptop is finally dying, so I won't be able to post for awhile. Talk about bad timing.

He got up unsteadily:"wh..what? What are brats like you doing here? Don't you have school or something?"

Lucy felt her cheeks grow hot at the man's comment. At 20, she could easily have passed for 16 or 17. Someday you'll find it a blessing to look young, her mother assured her. Someday, maybe, but right now, it just felt like no one ever took her seriously.

"It's Saturday," she said coldly, then turned her attention to Nate instead, smiling at his joke. Her cheeks stayed a little flushed as she realized how good-looking he was. "Maybe that's next weekend's meeting?" she said, continuing his joke, "After having to solve these puzzles?"

Simon nodded and acknowledged the woman referring to him. He took notice of the other people. The people participating definitely looked like a diverse group of weirdness. By analyzing their movements and mannerisms, everyone differed in personality. "Hiiiii, Lucy," Simon responded.

He stretched out the greeting jokingly as if he was in an AA meeting. "Just call me Black," he stuffed his hands in his pocket. He did not really know what to make of the people. Simon chose not give out his real name for security purposes.

‘That wasn’t very nice.’ Maya thought looking at the man covered in drywall dust. She turned back to the others. "It's nice to meet all of you. I'm Maya, and this is Quinn." She said patting the black and white Great Dane next to her. “Just out of curiosity, are all of you here because of an email inviting you to try a new escape room?” She asked wondering how they all got there.

Lucy smiled when saw Maya and the huge dog. "He's a beauty," she said, nodding to the great dane. "Is he friendly?" she asked, immediately wanting to pet him, but refraining until Maya said it was okay, "...to strangers, I mean."

She nodded at the girl's question. "I got an email like that. I gotta say, the game started out a little more intense than I expected... waking up in a locked room like that. I think... they drugged me or something. At least...I don't remember going into that room on my own."