As Duncan shuffles his way toward the pinprick of light, he encounters no obstacles on the ground. When he finally reaches it, he discovers that it's the dim light of a totally normal-looking illuminated light switch set to the off position.

---

Pebs awoke to darkness, which didn’t bother her until she heard a voice—an unknown voice—in the room. Snapping up, she looked around frantically, making out a very faint outline on one side of the room. Whoever or whatever it was, they were blocking some sort of faint light, and Pebs didn’t like this situation one bit. Her mind dug out her parents’ warnings: Cities are dangerous and full of crime. Going meant she could be robbed or kidnapped if not murdered, and kidnapped was exactly the situation that fit her here and now, unsure of how she got here and with only murky memories of the day before. And, unfortunately, whoever was blocking the light was not making a good case for themselves, going on about ‘getting him’ and ‘freaking him out.’

Blinking, Pebs realized that it’d be strange for a kidnapper to say he was ‘freaked out,’ but what did she know? She’d never been kidnapped. But, say she wasn’t kidnapped. Maybe she’d hit her head and this was just a dark room in a hospital or something of that sort. Weren’t there conditions that made people sensitive to light? Had she been diagnosed with one of those?

“H-hello? Is someone there?” Her voice was shaky as she felt at her head, almost afraid of what she’d find. But, thankfully, she seemed to be fine. The surface against her back was a wall, as far as she could feel, and the hard ‘pillow’ she thought she’d felt turned out to be her backpack. Some more blind pats revealed that she was, in fact, sitting on the floor, which aligned more with a kidnapping situation.

At this point, her heart was in her throat, and she curled her legs to her chest, reaching for her trusty army knife and thanking her lucky stars when her fingers wrapped around it. Now armed, she felt braver and more prepared to ask questions.

“W-where am I? Who are you?”

---

@Vertigo@Alamantus

The lights blare on for several blinding moments as the fluorescent tubes settle in to a quiet hum above. When Duncan and Pebs' eyes adjust, they see a square room, roughly 20x20 feet, painted a drab beige with a gray linoleum floor.

To the left of the light switch is a gray door that, judging by the hinges, appears to open inward and has a round knob. To the left of the door is one of the walls.

Along the wall opposite the door is a countertop that stretches the length of the wall with cabinets above and below, a total of 8 doors on each set of cabinets. A sink with a tall faucet is situated on the left side of the counter, but the rest of the countertop is empty and clean.

The only other things Pebs and Duncan notice in the room are a small, circular drain in the center of the floor and a larger-than-normal air vent about 2 feet above the door. The ceiling is also feels unusually high for a room like this.

---

Duncan? The name didn’t ring a bell, only serving to scare Pebs more with the boy’s tone coming across as lackadaisical. Why was he so relaxed? Why was this happening, and why to her? Where she’d been and what she was doing before waking up were blanks in her mind, unhelpful but for fueling her pounding heart. She remembered packing, heading to class, then... nothing.

When ‘Duncan’ continued, though, making movements in the darkness that Pebs struggled to make out, she felt a bit more reassured that he wasn’t the one behind it all. So it was a prank? By someone named ‘Justin?' The name was equally unfamiliar, which set off a new set of alarms in her head. Was Justin the one who kidnapped her, abducting her off the streets? By the way Duncan spoke about Justin, he sounded like a friend, so it seemed unlikely, but what did she know about Justin? If she believed what Duncan said, the situation seemed more like something out of a rom-com movie than real life.

This thought brought a blush to Pebs' face, and for the first time that day she was glad it was dark. Duncan’s next words though—‘Want some light?’—sent her shooting up, hands against the wall behind her to guide her to her feet as the light flashed into existence, momentarily blinding Pebs.

The room slowly blurred into existence, her eyes finally able to focus and take in her surroundings. Nondescript and bland, the room was unremarkable, complete with a counter, cabinets, and sink on one side and a door on the other. Underfoot was a drain, and overhead was a large vent—two things that seemed out of the ordinary in an otherwise commonplace room, but Pebs was distracted from focusing on these items by the other person in the room.

Duncan, as he’d introduced in the dark, was a boy over a head taller than Pebs, which both surprised and intimidated her. She’d met plenty of tall people in her life, but even amongst the tall, Duncan was tall. His varsity jacket placed him as an athlete of sorts, and Pebs’ mind immediately guessed basketball because, well, basketball. Or volleyball, or, well, nearly any other sport because height was almost always appreciated. Thankfully, he didn’t strike her as a kidnapper because if he was, Pebs probably wouldn’t win the fight.

“Duncan, right? I’m Pebble. Pebs,” she said, a nervous tremor in her voice. “And, um, I-I don't think I've met a Justin in town.”

She paused, looking around again, hoping something would register with her, would trigger some bit of memory, but nothing did. “A-Are you sure Justin would do this?”

---

^@Vertigo

As if providing a grim reply to Duncan's confident motion, the door handle does not turn. Despite any efforts to turn it or force it, the thing simply will not move!

@Vertigo @Typical

---

“Yep,” Pebs said, watching in trepidation as Duncan gave the knob a turn and tug, but when the tug turned into a yank, her heart dropped.

“Locked, huh.” She knew she shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up about the door being a free and available exit, but at the same time she couldn’t not hope for an easy out to the situation at hand. If the door was locked, there would be no denying the situation.

Pebs slumped back for a moment, then peeled herself from the wall and joined Duncan at the door.

“Hold on,” she said, pressing an ear to the door and listening intently. If she heard nothing of suspicion—that is, nothing that made it sound like there was something moving behind the door—she’d knock on it, then listen to the tone it created. If the sound was light and travelled, it meant the door wasn’t blocked. If the sound didn’t travel, there was probably something blocking the door, and quite a big something too.

---

^{@Vertigo@Alamantus}

“Hold on,” she said, pressing an ear to the door and listening intently. If she heard nothing of suspicion—that is, nothing that made it sound like there was something moving behind the door—she’d knock on it, then listen to the tone it created. If the sound was light and travelled, it meant the door wasn’t blocked. If the sound didn’t travel, there was probably something blocking the door, and quite a big something too.

Thought 1, rolled 6

Pebs listens close, and in the silence of the room, she is able to hear... nothing. If there's anyone behind the door, they're either inhumanly quiet or not alive. The only thing she is able to hear the soft hum of the air conditioner from the vent above.

Knocking on the door reveals that it is one of those cheap, hollow doors made of thin plywood reinforced by a lattice of cardboard to make it feel solid. She once went down a rabbit hole while looking at online encyclopedias and ended up researching doors, and she's confident this is a hollow-core door. They're tough enough, but mainly only serve as ways to separate rooms in houses.

---

“I learned to do this back home, to figure out where rats might be nesting. Usually it’s walls, but I think it'd work on doors too,” Pebs explained. “To figure out whether there's something behind the door, I mean, and to see what kind of door it is.”

She listened intently as she rapped her knuckles against the door. The reply back was a hollow one, communicating the vast emptiness that lay behind the locked barrier, as well as the latticework inside the door itself. Cardboard, most likely—and most fortunately.

“No one out there, I don’t think, and this is a hollow-core door. Lots of plywood and cardboard, not so much substance. Meaning,” she said, turning to look at Duncan, “you could probably break this down.”

Duncan's kick is pretty well-aimed at a space near the latch and is overall pretty solid, but despite Duncan doing everything right per his previous experience kicking doors open, this door does not budge. He glances to the left and sees the door's hinges, realizing that this door opens inward—by kicking the door from this direction, he's fighting the door's solid frame rather than the much weaker latch itself!

Duncan prepares for another kick, but Pebs stops him, pointing toward the middle of the door, explaining the concept of the hollow center versus the solid frame. With this new information, Duncan adjusts his aim, rears back, and... (Duncan rolled 1 and 4)



His foot crashes into the door and out the other side where it gets a little bit stuck. It takes some time to get his foot out safely, but after a few minutes of bending the thin wood and breaking pieces out of the way, he is able to pull it back into the room.

Once his foot is back in the room, there's a hole just a little bit less than a foot tall and roughly half a foot thick just to the right of center, closer to the door knob than the middle of the door. Through the hole is nothing but darkness—not even the light from the room reveals anything beyond the door.

---

^@Alamantus
With a loud ‘bang,’ Duncan’s foot went through the door. It was his second attempt, after aiming his kick at the wrong part of the door the first time, but he’d figured it out after Pebs chimed in to explain the door’s intrinsic lack of substance as opposed to its solid supports, and lo and behold, his foot went through the door without much struggle.

However, a new problem soon presented itself when Duncan tried to retract his foot, and after a few tries, it was clear that he was stuck. Pebs acted as a support for him so he didn’t fall over as he tugged, and thankfully he was able to free himself after a few minutes, which was about when she was about done bearing his weight.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” she asked, glancing at his foot. It’d been her idea for him to break down the door, so if he got hurt doing it, it’d be partially her fault, and that didn’t sit right with her.

Looking around the room, Pebs focused on the cabinets and counters, walking over to them. She counted eight doors total, or four cabinets.

“There’s gotta be something in these, right?” she said, attempting to open each cabinet to see what was inside each of them.

Working methodically, opening the top cabinets first from left to right, Pebs finds that each cabinet contains one thing:

The first has a flathead screwdriver with a red handle;
the second, a small radio-controlled pickup truck that's about a foot long and half a foot wide;
third, a folded sheet of lined paper;
fourth, a tangle of wires coated in several different colors, the frayed metal sticking out the ends of each;
fifth, a bare speaker that looks like it was removed from something rather than bought new;
sixth, a D Battery;
seventh, needlenose pliers with orange handles and a wire stripper on the inside end;
and eighth, a C Battery.

---

^{@Alamantus@Vertigo}
In the cabinets were a strange collection of objects, which Pebs retrieved to place on the counter after each opened door. Slowly but steadily, she accrued a pile of miscellaneous items that seemed to fit together only because each one seemed to have no explanation as to why they were in the room in the first place. Surely, if they had been kidnapped, the kidnapper would be smart enough to clear the room of possible tools before locking their victims inside?

That aside, though, Pebs waa grateful for the new discoveries. Though some seemed less useful than others, like the tangle of wires compared to the two different-sized batteries, others seemed to have an immediate use, like the screwdriver.

“At least we got a screwdriver,” she said, selecting the screwdriver and folded paper from the pile and heading over to Duncan. Then, after handing him the screwdriver with a “You’d probably get more use out of this than me,” she opened up the lined paper for them both to see. Was it as blank and innocuous as it seemed?

she opened up the lined paper for them both to see. Was it as blank and innocuous as it seemed?

Unfolding the paper reveals a diagram written in, what, is that some kind of green marker?

In bright green marker is a crude drawing of an oval with several lines drawn through it, a line going down through the circle with a sort of hooked end with an arrow is drawn pointing down along its length. Further down the paper is another line with a circle at one end and kind of a jagged edge coming off the top side of the line? Another arrow points at the circle with the jagged line sticking out.

Duncan feels around and finds the door knob on the other side. It has a simple turn lock, and as he feels around some more, he feels that there is also a deadbolt underneath the knob. Both feel like totally normal locks, and he can actually feel them give way easily as he touches them.