Parallax

Chapter 2-Training

A/N: I guess this slightly shorter chapter makes up for the really long one last time. Sorry about that.

Colene woke up in a room with light blue, totally bare walls. There was a harsh beeping noise, and she went to slap the alarm clock that  was on her left side. She sat up and looked around the room. There were two other girls waking up, Adri and Avia, she had learned after the meeting yesterday when she had been ushered into this room with them after a nice lunch. Avia gave the world a death glare, and Adri gazed around the room thoughtfully. It was a square room, each of our beds in a separate corner, and in the other corner was a table with a laptop. Colene didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but apparently Adri did.

"Look," she pointed to the computer, "There's something written on it."

"Okay, computer whiz," Avia yawned, saying to Cole, "That's your field of expertise, right?"

Cole sighed, then walked over to the computer. She read the message aloud, "Welcome, girls. This is an escape room. Everything you need to escape is in this room. When you have the final passcode, enter it into the keypad on the door. You will be given hints if we feel that you need them, you have one hour to escape. Good luck. Your time starts now," Colene jumped as the screen switched to show a clock counting down from 60 minutes.

"Alright, guys," Avia immediately woke up, "Let's go. Everybody, search everything. Colene, look through the files on the computer. Adri, you look through the dresser drawers, and I'll search everything else."

"Got it," Adri ran over to the dresser that was beside the computer and started looking through the drawers, "There's a safe in here with a keypad on it," she said, "Look for combinations of four numbers."

"Gotcha," Cole replied, "There's not much on this computer," She pulled up a file that had some dots and dashes on it, "What is this?" She asked.

Adri glanced at it, "Avia, can you read Morse code?"

"Kind of," Avia took a look, "First you crawl, and then you climb. X12Y10"

"What the heck?" Adri stared at it, "By the way, how much time do we have left?"

"45 minutes," Cole replied, "We've got to hurry. What does this mean?"

"The tiles on the floor and ceiling are all squares," Adri pointed out, "Maybe it has something to do with that?"

"It's a grid!" Avia yelled, "Coordinates! I need the coordinates!"

"Where do you start?" Cole asked, "Which corner of the room is the origin?"

"This one," Adri answered, "Because the coordinates were found here, I guess. That would make sense."

"I see," Cole checked the coordinates and read them aloud, "X12Y10."

Avia went to the spot, right in the center of the room. She said, "There's a loose tile, guys."

"Well open it!" Adri laughed.

Avia picked up two small flashlights and tried turning them on, "It won't work."

"Batteries?" Cole asked.

Avia checked inside the battery compartment, "Nope."

"So what can we do with two broken flashlights?" Cole asked.

"Maybe it's the other half of the Morse code message," Adri commented, first you crawl, then you climb. We crawled, now we climb."

"But the wall isn't a grid," Avia replied, confused, "Maybe it's talking about something else."

"The ceiling tiles are squares, too!" Cole pointed out, "Take off the tile right on top of that floor tile."

"Good eye, Colene," Avia picked up Adri and put her on her shoulders, and Adri got the tile down. On top was a small box of double a batteries. Avia put them in the flashlights, and we turned off the lights, then used the flashlights, "They're black lights," Avia shone it around the room, "Whoa! Look!"

There was invisible ink on the wall that read

Periodically, I am SUPrISed at how far you've gotten.

"What?" Avia gazed at it, confused.

"I honestly have no-" Cole was cut off by the sound of a loud beeping. It rang around the room, and they all covered their ears. It stopped when Jackson stepped through the door. He had on another suit and tie, his black hair neatly brushed, and his brown eyes sparkling.

"You three just got killed by Parallax," he laughed, "I really had hoped you would do better. It seems we have some work to do."

"What do you mean, 'killed by Parallax'?" Avia asked, "What does an escape room have to do with her?"

"Well," Jackson explained, "You don't expect to be able to just waltz into the room that holds Parallax, find the magic word, and disable her, do you? You're going to have to look for clues. And you won't have an unlimited amount of time, either. We can get the guards away from Parallax, but not for long. If they see you, they will kill you on the spot, no questions asked. Probably better that way, honestly, if they asked questions, they would probably hold you for information. Anyway, an escape room is as close as we can get to that experience. It's not perfect, though. We don't know what kind of clues you'll have, or how many. We also can't account for the massive adrenaline rush that will kick in. One thing we are certain about, though, is that Parallax's code is in that room. We know it."

"How do you know that?" Adri asked.

"Inside intelligence," he replied quickly, "For a few moments, we were able to hack Parallax's system, but then she shut us out. It seems that she made it harder to hack into as well. So, we burned that bridge. Anyway, the only piece of information we were able to get was that Parallax's disable code was in that room."

"So we'll just be doing escape rooms for training?" Avia questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"No," Jackson answered, "You each have specialized training areas, and some training you will do together. We can't rely on just one of you for everything, you know. If anything happened to one of you, the mission would fail."

"Alright," Colene nodded, "So, where can we get breakfast?"

"Right this way, ladies," he led us out the door.