The Trapster Game

Chapter 18 (The Survival Arc)

Nikhil's POV:

I didn't notice for long, but seems like someone has been calling my name continuously. I open my eyes to see their faces above me while I lied on the ground. Their messy hair and red eyes restarted my brain to remember everything.

A sudden gasp and I get up in a flash looking around in the corridor. "Did we...again?", I ask.

They nodded but noone said anything, as if there was something bigger bothering them. "What's the matter?", I ask.

"Anushka...", the first word coming out of Irfan's mouth hit me in my head and I recalled every single detail. I looked around quickly only to find her nowhere.

"Where is she?", I ask.

"We don't know", they said, "none of us does".

"What the-"

"When we woke up, she wasn't here", Diya explained.

"Let's find her then, what if she is...", I suggested but Vivek said, "We did that, we looked everywhere. Instead I was the one who woke up first and started searching".

"It's probably the smoke, they had it all planned", I say. The police must have started searching for us, but here we were playing squid game of some sort.

"We need to find her-", a tone catches our attention and we look around, there were no speakers, so how?

We soon after realised it were not the speakers, "That room", Purvi pointed, "The sound is coming from that closed room".

We reached out slowly and Irfan put his hands on the handle and opened the door slightly and slowly opened it completely. The entire room was empty but at the centre was a desk which startled us all. Upon the desk were phones, our phones, all of them vibrating on calls.

"That's my phone", Sujata claimed and ran to it, "we're getting calls", she sounded joyed.

"It's an unknown number", Diya said.

I looked at mine and it showed the same. A hope was built in a second inside all of us, as our faces lightened up a little.

"Same", said Chandrakant.

"Just how the heck did the network return?", I wondered.

"I can't care less about the phone right now than the shitty network here", Diya responded.

"We need to hurry before the call is-", before she could complete the phone in Purvi's hands stopped vibrating and so did all of ours.

"No, No, No", Sujata repeated in a tensed voice, "I'm calling back"

'The number you're calling is out of network coverage area, please call again later... ', the plain voice of the lady kept repeating on the phone as she slammed it phone on the wooden desk.

"Wait, I'll try too", Shahadah said and tried to call back but it turned out the same before she groaned and tried again. Without declaring anything I tried the number myself and so probably did the others. The hope that was build up in last 1 minute died, soon after it became 10 minutes and then 30.

"Why did we all get calls at the same time?", Diya asked.

"Maybe it was the police", Purvi said.

"Then they should've called us again, right?", Chandrakant replied with a sad look seeming to still try the call.

The cold floor of the room was making me sick. I decided to get up and sit on the desk near Irfan. He kept one of his arms on my shoulder and took a slight look at my phone that I used to keep dialling the number again and again, then he looked at his and suddenly alerted, "Everyone!"