DIAMOND | Stray Kids

1;5

"I think you have it almost entirely wrong. There are two fours, not two nines," Seungmin said, scribbling two fours on a piece of paper, "The eight is wrong too. It makes no sense."
"Why?" Chan asked, "There's eight of us awake right now."
"But this isn't about us," Seungmin answered, "It's about player nine, and there's only one player nine."
He noted down a one next to the two fours.
"But why the two fours?" Chan looked confused.
"You said it yourself, there's two reasons why four should be a digit," he replied, "The number of digits, and the number of attempts."
Chan's eyes widened, nodding and mouthing an "oh."
"The nine is correct, though," Seungmin continued, scribbling a nine at the end, "It's 4419."
Minho raised a brow.
"I'll try it," he said, strutting over to the keypad again.
He punched the numbers in.

Then the boys heard a click.

The door was unlocked.

"See, good things happen when you actually help out," Minho laughed.

- - -

Felix's eyes snapped open.

He saw nothing but white wall and a white ceiling, but he heard voices.

Voices he didn't recognise.

"See, good things happen when you actually help out."
"To be honest... I wasn't really expecting that to work. It was just a guess."
"But it was a good one."
"Wait, guys," Just how many of these guys were there?? "Is he awake?"

Were they talking about him?

Felix couldn't bring himself to move to find out.

He heard footsteps, and suddenly, someone was stood over him.

"Are you okay?"

- - -

"Are you okay?" Chan asked quietly.
The boy under him blinked, staring at him, before eventually opening his mouth to answer.
"Yeah," he mumbled, "I think so."
"Are you Australian?" Chan questioned, grinning widely when the boy nodded, "Me too! What's your name?"
"Felix. Felix Lee," the boy replied, "Where am I?"
"We don't know," Chan answered, "But we're all in exactly the same boat as you, we're trying to get out of here."
"Oh."
"We'll need your help though. Are you alright to get up?"
Felix nodded, sitting up slowly and looking over at the 7 other boys in the doorway.
"Who are you guys?"
"Call me Chan. Get up, and I'll introduce you to the others."

- - -

"So ACES is your only source of information right now?" Felix asked, frowning, "That sucks. How are we meant to know how we got here? Or why we're here?"
"We can't," Chan answered, "It's all gonna have to be guesswork."
"

However, I can make assumptions," Minho chipped in, "We were all playing DIAMOND, correct?"
The boys all nodded.
"Then it's safe to assume the creators of DIAMOND brought us here," he continued, "We can also assume that we were all playing on the same team, and that we were playing against a team of AIs."
Changbin rolled his eyes, "How do you know that? Are you one of them?"
"No," Minho laughed, "It's just logical. Either we were playing against AIs or the other team are somewhere else in this facility."
"But ACES said there were only nine of us," Woojin frowned.
"Exactly," Minho answered, "So we can rule out that possibility."
"How the fuck does that help us?" Jisung piped up.
"Because the creators of DIAMOND are the same that developed DEATHROW." Chan spoke quietly.
The eight other boys could do nothing but stare in silence.
"I was involved in the original beta test for DEATHROW, before they improved the puzzles to suit a wider audience," Chan explained, "The original puzzles they used were extremely difficult, even for me, and I make- or rather made- my living testing puzzle games."
"What exactly are you getting at here?" Jisung questioned, "A lot of developers accidentally make the game too difficult first time, no biggie."
Chan sighed.
"Because they changed the layout of the game too," He said, "The final released version is set in a run-down university science block, the original is set in a human psychology research lab, set out almost exactly like this one."
There was an audible gasp.
"So what you're saying," Felix said, wide-eyed, "This is real life DEATHROW?"
Chan solemnly nodded.

"What's DEATHROW?"

- - -

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