The Mystery Eight

Chapter Two: Persistance

The muffled voice came through the recorder,

"Hello Daniel and Nissa, welcome to your first challenge. You have thirty minutes to attempt defusing the bomb that is locked inside the contraption that's in the center of the room. If you manage to open the device that is storing the bomb, you will be given a binder that will help aid you in defusing it. Better hurry, times already ticking."

The two looked up and the timer read 28:50.

Daniel sprung up quickly, "What the actual hell?!"

Nissa's heart sank only further, having her lose what little faith she had left. She curled up into a ball and sunk her face into her knees, beginning to sob.

"Nissa, I need your help if we're going to make it out of here alive!" He was a bit worked up and his nerves were getting to him.

Nissa just looked up at him and merely said, "There is no living. It's simply over." She went back to crying.

'Well, I guess I'm on my own for this one. If I want to survive I at least have to try.' He thought.

Daniel approached the strange machine looking thing in the room, it had a bunch of tubes, and buttons with numbers across them, numbered one through four. He inspected it trying to see where to even begin.

'Hm, it seems as if there are some missing pipes over on that side'.

He looked around then got down on his knees ignoring the fact he was getting covered in someone else's blood, and looked around. He noticed a small opening under the machine, and he spotted a few pipes under the machine, however it was too small of a gap for him to just reach his arms in.

'How the hell am I going to get them?'

He sat up and tried to think, his eyes scanned the room, but there was nothing that could help. He looked up at the clock and it read 22:34 causing his heart to beat faster.

'It's almost been ten minutes and I haven't made any progress!'

He panicked and started to move around a lot more quickly, after seeing nothing was available to him he decided to look at the buttons on the contraption. Nissa looked up and saw the man struggling, feeling bad for not helping.

'If Daniel ends up getting us out of here alive, I did nothing but sit here. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself and help him.'

She sat up and went over to where he was looking on the ground earlier, and got down on the floor, only furthering the amount of blood that she already had on her.

She saw the pipes, "So do we need these?"

"Yeah I believe so, I couldn't figure out how to get them, so I was thinking maybe these buttons would do something" He exclaimed, and continued to observe the numbers

Nissa got a bright idea, she took off her belt and started swinging it under the machine. She pulled it back and didn't grab anything. This didn't stop her though, she kept attempting and finally managed to get ahold of one.  As Nissa pulled it out, some blood splattered up into her face causing her to flinch, but she still pulled it out.

"Yes I finally fuckin did it." She jumped up with joy, sat it behind her and continued.

Daniel thought maybe just pushing the buttons would probably help start something, but noticed that 'one' wasn't lit up, unlike 'two, three and four.' His curiosity got the best of him, and he pressed them. Two, three, and four, the lights beneath them turned off, and were just like 'One'. He waited, but nothing happened at all, or at least to his knowledge.

He saw Nissa had gotten a pipe out already, so he picked it up and was trying to see where it would fit. The stickiness of the pole slightly bothered him, mainly because he knew it was blood. He looked around and tried inserting the piece in one of the 3 places where a pipe was missing and it didn't fit.

Not too long after she managed to pull another pipe out, and she felt the excitement within her, but she kept a serious face and continued.

'We might actually have a shot at escaping' she thought.

About two minutes went by and she had all of the pipes out from under, and tightened her sticky, red stained belt back on her waist. She looked up and the time read 18:46, she hurried herself.

"So what are these used for?" She lifted up the 3 other pipes she had gotten out and hastily made her way over to Daniel.

"I believe that we connect them to these areas." He pointed at the 3 open slots where the pipes went.

The part that made it hard was they all were shaped different, and bent a certain way. Nissa tried all 3 in one spot and one actually connected. She tried the other two and to their surprise, they both worked.

"Yay! We did it!" She excitedly squealed.

"No, not yet" Daniel said, letting out a heavy sigh and holding up the leftover pipe.

"We can probably find where it goes, we just have to look around the machine." Nissa let out, tryinf to reassure herself and Daniel

As their eyes scanned the machine, nothing really stuck out to them to where it would go. Daniel's next instinct was to try and feel the machine, and seeing if they could find where it would insert instead. Daniel came across a hole like thing, but it didn't connect to both sides of the pipe,

"This doesn't make any sense, this is the only thing I can find but it doesn't connect to each side?"

Nissa walked over and politely asked for the pole. She pushed it into the slot that Daniel spotted, and nothing happened. Their hearts sank and Nissa got frustrated,

"All of this hard work, and for nothing!" She threw the pole in a downwards motion, making it rotate down and they heard a crank, that had a 'click' sound follow. They both realized it was meant to be a crank, not a pipe. They pushed it back in the slot they found and rotated the crank.

After turning it all the way, Daniel noticed a slot opened one side, and in it contained a bomb, but no binder.

"What the actual fuck, whoever was talking through the recorder bullshitted us!" He shouted in frustration, throwing his hand up in the air.

Nissa walked around to the opposite side of Daniel and saw a binder in an open slot.

She raised it up in the air, "I have it! We still have hope!" Daniel and Nissa looked at each other relieved.

As she said this, she looked up at the clock and it read 11:23.Nissa and Daniel looked into each other's eyes as the fear crept up through their bodies, eliminating any relief they previously had. Their stomachs began to turn as the ball of anxiety rolled around in the pit of their stomachs.