One Exit

Chapter 4

“Listen up everyone; we aren’t getting any closer to leaving this hellhole. Every day we will go in teams of six or seven to search every room thoroughly. We will look every room over from floor to ceiling a million times if we have to, but we have to find something. I don’t give a damn whether you like the idea or not because like it or not, we are in this together. In order to get out of this, this… whatever this is we need to work together and work our butts off.” Carlos said in full authority. The crowd of people all nodded in agreement. “Good, so the groups will be… Sawyer, Vincent, Mai, Sami, Tiana and… Tori” He announced.

“Wait so that means you, me, Flynn, Park, Alec, Becca and… Ryder!” Minho laughed, “Yea, I think we all know how that’s going to turn out.” He said continuing laughing. Ryder and Park both looked like they wanted to object but stopped when Carlos spoke again.

“Yes I know, and I done it for a reason. Park and Ryder have to learn to get along if we ever want to leave this dump. Moreover Ryder has to learn to get along and work peacefully with everyone.” He turned back round to address everyone once again. “I’m not saying that none of us should get angry or frustrated because we will. There will be times where all of us are angry, frustrated or upset even. There will be times when we will lash out at people for no reason and want to scream at everyone, and there will be times when we want to hide in a corner and just cry. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But we have to remember that no matter what happens we are family and we need to always have each other’s backs. Be there through hell and through heaven. You have to understand that we all want the same thing, we all want to get out; we all want to know how we got here; why we’re even here in the first place and most importantly, we all want our memories back. The only way we can accomplish any of that is by working together,” He paused and looked at Ryder. Then continued facing towards the crowd again. “Helping each other, loving and caring for each other. But not too much love, I don’t want to find out someone’s pregnant and then have little people running around all over the place.” He smiled, lightening the mood and the crowd laughed.

Minho coughed and muttered under his breath “Ryder, Park” The crowd started laughing hysterically as everyone had heard him. Park turned bright red and Ryder stumped out the room while shouting “Seriously!” He went into room 4 and looked around at the room. The room had the same usual grey walls as the rest of the rooms and concrete flooring. He stormed towards the end of the room pretending to do his work. After 5 long minutes the rest of the team filed into the room.

“Ryder you’re not in this room. Your team is in room 5” Vincent notified him. Ryder stood up and walked out of the room into the room on the left. He went to the closest wall and slumped down next to Flynn. Flynn looked at him and then back at the floor.

“Sup” He acknowledged Ryder casually, expecting a gruff response.

“I’m okay. What about you?” Ryder replied.

“Good good.” Flynn said shocked. “Wow, were you just nice to me? Sounds like you really were listening to Carlos after all.” Ryder chuckled lightly.

“Yeah, something like that. Although he is right.” He chuckled again then continued “You see I prefer to think of it like this. I realised I’m gonna be here pretty long and it will take a hell of a lot of time to think of so many smart, witty come backs. Cuz we all know they are. So I thought, I’ll need at least one friend to help me out when the good ol’ brain wears out a bit. So, what do you say?” This time it was Flynn’s turn to start chuckling, which gradually turned into a laugh as he realised that in actual fact Ryder is a really nice guy; when he wants to be at least. “I’m gonna go ahead and take that as a yes.” Ryder said laughing along with his newly made friend.

Carlos and Mino had been standing by the door listening and watching the two boys. They were silently chuckling at what Ryder had said. They looked at each other, smiled and nodded their heads. They then walked into the room with Carlos following behind Minho. Carlos stepped back into authoritive mode as he addressed everyone. “Okay everyone. I need you all to focus, keep looking around. Make sure you check and then re-check everything up to the last strand of hair. There has to be something we’re not seeing, something we’re missing out on, something big and I have a very strong feeling its right under our noses. I will be checking and managing both teams so get to it.” As the team got to work Carlos went to check on the other team.

The teams kept searching for hours to no avail. They couldn’t find anything; it was like whatever they were looking for just disappeared as soon as they started looking. They still didn’t give up hope though. They kept searching until Carlos signalled times up. The teams walked out of their designated room exhausted from their long day’s work. Somehow Carlos was still bright and optimistic about the whole situation but then again, that’s nothing new. Carlos has always managed to look at the good things in life and be on the positive side of it, even when it’s grey. That’s what makes him such a good leader.

Everyone ate in silence until Carlos walked in, “Okay listen up. I need four brave recruits to go in the room over time and come back out exactly five minutes before closing time!” He said looking at his watch. Ryder, Minho, Alec and Sami put their hands up and began making their way over to room two, the one room that had not been searched that day, as the others wished them good luck. Tiana had also put her hand up but Carlos had refused saying that she would simply slow them down and that it was too dangerous for her. Thankfully Tiana didn’t take it to heart and simply shrugged it off.

As the boys searched the room they found a massive spade and a very faint ‘X’ marking under it. Together the boys dug at the X until they heard a clank. Carlos came and said to them “Boys come on doors are about to close any minute now.” The boys ignored him and continued to dig as they were too fascinated to what the clank was. “Hey! Come on, get out!” Carlos shouted.

After shouting for them to get out for ages Sami finally looked and saw Carlos pointing to his watch and shouting. The boys dropped the spade disappointed and ran as fast as they could to the door. All of a sudden Sami slipped hurting his ankle. The rest of the boys picked him up and carried on running. “Go guys, you have to tell Carlos what we found. It’s okay I’ll only make you slower.” Sami cried, in pain. The boys continued to carry Sami and run towards the exit when Alec dropped Sami and ran to the now rumbling door. He stood in the gap between the door and wall, which was decreasing fast, and tried to hold it open. He kept pushing against it but the door was too big and too strong. There was only a few inches left between the door and wall. The boys sprinted as fast as they could but didn’t make it in time. Alec jumped out of the way into the other side and the boys all collapsed as the door slammed shut. Ryder, Sami and Minho were cut off from the light and sat there in pitch blackness knowing that they were doomed.