Chaos Theorem

Chapter 8: Last Stop

Our phones greeted us again as we hopped aboard the train, just as they had done when we'd gotten on the pirate ship. The train carriage was grey in colour, with a dirty tiled floor and scuffed walls. The windows were slightly scratched and the seats were slightly faded. This train couldn't have been used for a while, or at least that was what it seemed like from where we stood.
As we waited for the period of time for registration to end, Will asked us all timidly, "What do you think the game will be?"
Penny grinned and turned to him, "Imagine if we get to drive the train! That would be fun."
"Yeah, it would be." I agreed as I watched Penny glanced excitedly at the run-down aesthetics I'd seen before.
As I took a closer look around, I saw that there was a door at the end of the train carriage. This door was shut tight, and also locked with a padlock that was slightly scuffed as well. It was black, and adorned with a sigil which I couldn't quite see...
Wait, was that a red diamond?
"Just like the phones." I whispered to myself.
"What was that?" Nate asked as he walked by me.
"Nothing."
...And the other side of the carriage had no door, as this was one of the carriages at the ends. Nothing interesting was back there.
"Welcome, player Betty."
Everyone turned to the door of the carriage and saw a young woman walk in, with dark brown eyes, black curly hair and a naïve smile. She wore a simple white tank top and grey jeans. As she saw that registration was about to end, she shifted and looked at us all uncomfortably. She then smiled just as painfully, as if she was in great anguish or in the final stages of grief.
I smiled at her to let her know that she was welcome, but my face fell when I saw her injury. Down the side of Betty's right leg was a gash which was no longer bleeding but looked painful and seemed like it had a risk of getting infected.
I reached my hand out as if to grab something, and then pulled it back, "Oh my goodness, are you ok?"
"I- I'm fine. I'll get it checked out after this game ends." Betty nodded weakly and tiredly.
"By who?" Tricky asked, worried.
There was no answer, and so Betty's face fell rather than rose.
And as it did, the doors to the train carriage shut and the train started to move. The six of us looked up and around, interested and excited but apprehensive at the same time.
"Game." our phones announced, "Attribute: Brain. Objective: Get to the front of the train and brake it before twenty minutes end. There are five minutes available on each carriage. If you surpass the time period, all players left in the carriages will be eliminated. Points: 8."
Ok, then. Time to get to work.
Without a second thought, I started to run towards the lock I'd seen earlier, and lifted it up to get a closer look at it. I could see the diamond sigils on all of the sides, and the glinting red was definitely the same as the ones on the phones.
The shuffling behind me showed that everyone was putting in an effort to find something to unlock the door, maybe a key?
But that wasn't what I was worried about, so I yelled backwards, "Will, I need you over here!"
Will climbed out from behind one of the chairs and scurried on over to me hurriedly.
"Get your phone out." I instructed.
"I need to get back to-!" Will shook his head.
"Please, Will!"
Will got out his phone quickly after that, and held up his screen to show me. However, I grabbed the phone and flipped it, only to see that the colours were an exact match. The shape was an exact match. A Chaos Theorem design motif! But why a diamond? I knew that Elise also had the standard issue phone, which looked like this, but I didn't know anybody else with one so there was no way to fully prove that it was the same on every one...
"It's... the same symbol," Will thought, shocked, "What could it mean?"
"Dunno, sorry." I sighed.
"Of course it has a meaning!" Penny shouted, running over to us, "This proves further that people have designed this! Design motifs aren't randomly generated."
"Well, actually... never mind. I see your point." I nodded, not wanting to argue.
As Penny discussed with Will what else could be going on, I checked my phone to see how long we had left in this carriage before we got 'eliminated', which I didn't even want to know the meaning behind.
Just over two minutes left. Not great.
I turned to Nate, Tricky and Betty, "What have you found?"
"Dust." Nate replied helpfully. I rolled my eyes at him as he smirked at me.
I got down on my knees after that and started to look under the chairs for any sort of key that could be there. When I had search lots of chairs in a certain area, I checked the baggage area above as well, but there was still nothing to be found.
Time was running out.
I didn't know what to do.
I sat down on one of the chairs and breathed slowly, closing my eyes and clearing my head.
I lied my head back and thought deeply about the carriage. If I was a key, where would I be? I'd be hidden, that's what. And there weren't many hiding places in the carriage.
Was it over? We'd come so far, it couldn't be over now.
And when I opened my eyes, it was there.
The key was lodged in a vent built into the ceiling. It taunted me. But it also wanted me... and I wanted it. It beckoned, and I would wait no longer.
I leapt up on the chair I was stood on, and then jumped from it and grabbed the key. Like the lock, it was black and covered in red diamonds; one large one on each side. I spared no more time, shoving it in the lock smoothly.
I turned it and the door instantaneously burst open. I looked down and saw that the train carriages were connected by a rope, which was being slowly torn apart by a saw. All that would save us was if we jumped to the next carriage.
"Go, then!" Nate yelled at me as he appeared beside me.
I looked into his sweaty face, and then turned away and jumped across the gap. He jumped next, followed by Tricky, Will and then Penny. Betty was still searching for keys - she hadn't seen us!
"Betty! BETTY!" I screamed at her from the next carriage.
Betty looked up, suprised that we had already gone.
She leapt up.
But it was too late. The rope snapped and train carriage with Betty in it started to drift away. But nothing else was happening, and my heart rate slowed and I breathed a sigh of relief.
And then spikes rose from the ground, impaling the carriage and flipping it over.
"NO!" I called back, but the train door shut before I could to anything else.
The whole world started to deteriorate, all of my senses blurring together until all I was aware of was the closed door in front of me and the feeling that the train was speeding up.
Wait, why was the train speeding up?
"KAT, COME ON!" Penny yelled as everyone else searched for keys.
I shook my head. I couldn't linger in the past, I had to help the others.
"The key might not be where you expect it to be!" I reminded everyone as I scanned the areas around the door that had just closed. This was a brain round. Thinking inside of the box would do us no good.
"I FOUND IT!" Tricky yelled joyously.
I beamed at her as she climbed out from underneath a seat and removed some tape from the key. All of us gathered around her to see the key, and then we all rushed to the lock.
"Great, now we'll have extra time for the next carriage!" I smiled as I tried to peer over my friends' shoulders to see what they were looking at.
Because they weren't moving.
Why weren't they moving?
"There are two locks." Tricky gasped in disbelief, after they had all come to terms with what they were looking at.
Oh, great. At least we had lots of time, for now...
Tricky put the key in the lock anyways and turned it, although the lock didn't come undone. She sighed, and then she turned to us shaking her head. It was no use, we had to keep searching for the next key.
And we kept on searching for it right up until there was only one minute left.
We were all understandably starting to freak out by now, feeling like there was nothing we could do. That onsetting feeling of fear was returning like hitting the ground after falling.
Then I remembered - brain round. There had to be some sort of puzzle.
"Guys, keep looking. I'm gonna check the lock for clues." I stammered, that fearful quaver embedded in my voice.
Nobody asked me what clues I was on about, because they already knew that I had no idea anyway. The first thing I did when I saw the locks was check the sigils to make sure that they didn't have anything different about them to the previous one.
They were the same. There was nothing yet.
And so I went to lift up the padlock, hoping that there'd be something underneath. I felt it before I saw it, but I knew it was the key!
"Guys, I have it!" I bellowed back at them, not wanting anyone to end up like Betty did.
And this time when I opened the door and pushed it open, I stayed back to make sure that everyone got through. When I was satisfied that there were four people in the next carriage, I made the jump myself.
And as I jumped, the carriage flew out from behind me, and as I touched the ground, the door shut. I'd have to be more careful next time.
The train had sped up and so had our methods, acting fast to make sure that we could find the now three keys to unlock the next carriage. I saw them all searching frantically, and knew I should join them. Once I'd caught my breath, I-
"GAH!" I yelled.
I fell to the ground and turned around to see that my shirt had been caught in the door! No, this couldn't be happening! I pulled hard, but it didn't move an inch.
"Kat!" Nate gasped as he peeled himself away from his searching to come help me.
He tugged at me, a pained expression on his face as I winced and went nowhere. I shook my head once I'd regained my strength and put my hand on Nate's shoulder.
"I'll be fine, you have to keep on searching." I begged him.
"What? No! You'll be trapped here!" Nate spluttered.
I rolled my eyes at him, "It's a shirt, Nate, not my hair or my arm or something like that. I'm sure I can pull it out if I try hard enough."
I watched Will slot a key into the lock and then go back to searching. Nate saw this too, and sighed, looking me in the eye as if to tell me to hurry up. I nodded and smiled, hoping that I'd at least be slightly comforting to him. At least he knew I wasn't completely useless.
As Nate ran back to search for the key under some chairs, I turned onto my back and started to kick off of the door. And it actually loosened my shirt a little, but not a lot.
And then Tricky found the next key, and I realised that actually I was running out of time more than I thought I was.
With each push I edged out more, but not enough. That horrible sinking feeling returned again, like I wasn't going to make it. But I hadn't given up entirely, so I kept on pushing.
"Penny, keep searching." Nate commanded suddenly from behind me.
"Right." Penny understood, and I heard her bend down again to see if she could find anything.
Nate, Will and Tricky appeared around me soon after that, and the three of them all grabbed the piece of shirt stuck in the door and pulled as hard as they could. I also kicked off of the door more and harder, breaking out in a sweat as the shirt slid further and further away from the clutches of the door.
"I did it!" Penny beamed as the door at the other end of the carriage opened.
And simultaneously, the four of us went sliding along the floor. The only evidence that I'd been stuck in the door to begin with was a small piece of fabric poking out from inside the door. I sighed with relief and let my head roll back.
Tricky gave me her paw to help me up and I panted, "Thanks."
All three of them gave some variation of 'no problem' in response, and now happy and with extra time, we started to run into he next carriage after Penny, who waited there for us.
It was the front of the train.
And now we could see clearly that the train was about to very quickly go over a sharp turn over a bridge, a rushing river below providing the only pitiful blanketing if a carriage fell.
The puzzle in this room was different. There were six pressure plates around the room, and there was a glass box locked onto the brakes. It seemed that we needed to press all of the plates to unlock the box.
"Guys, what do we do? There aren't six of us." Penny panted, panicking as she turned back to face us all.
This puzzle was definitely created with Betty in mind, but Betty had already left us...
I looked quickly round at all of the others before landing on Nate, "Nate, you'll need to press two."
"What?! Why me?" Nate complained.
"You're the tallest," was all of the explanation I gave, "Now let's go, people!"
It took a minute for us to get Nate to stretch far enough to press all of the remaining pressure plates. They all went green, and the glass box opened up and banged against the side of the control stick.
And we would have celebrated then, with six minutes to spare, if we hadn't then seen the padlock beneath the box.
My heart dropped.
Was there a key in this carriage? There was no way!
"I don't understand. There's nowhere for a key to be hidden." I trembled, looking at the miserable stick in the center of the room.
"We just have to search anyway." Nate sighed.
And before any of us could say another word or do anything, Penny turned around and I watched as she jumped into the previous carriage. I flinched as she made the jump and ran to the edge in fear. Penny removed a key from one of the locks, and then turned back to bring it back to us.
That was so smart! We would never have thought of doing that.
And it would have gone perfectly if she didn't trip over, the key rolling into the next carriage. I turned to the others to see what they thought we should do, but it turned out that the other three had no idea what was going on. They were searching the room for a key.
There was a strangely long yet short moment where me and Penny locked eyes. I'd never really looked into them before; they were a colour of blue that resonated calm and understanding. And they looked caringly into my eyes as we both stayed where we were, silently.
And then she was taken from me.
The train carriage snapped off, and then went careening over the edge of the bridge, with Penny still inside of it.
"PENNY!" I screamed as the air got caught in my throat.
"HOLD ON!" a male voice yelled behind me, but I wasn't listening to who it was.
And then the carriage sent me flying backwards, and the sound of my head smacking against the floor was the last thing I was aware of before everything went to black.

To be continued...