Chapter 225 - No Room Can Hold Us Back

Scarlet ran her hands over the rubber mat surface of the elevator walls and listened to Edward's advice. Judging from the size of the keyhole, the key she was looking for should be rather small. In fact, it didn't have to be a key. Anything that was metal could be used to pick the lock.

Feeling the surface of the rubber mats, Scarlet felt something beneath them and grinned at the easy victory. However, she was slightly hesitant. What if this counted as prop destruction?

"Excuse me," she asked the staff hiding behind the walls. "Does this count as prop destruction if I peel back the wallpapers and mats to search?"

Nook answered her through the announcement system that it wasn't a violation so Scarlet peeled the rubber off without hesitation. Edward couldn't keep the grin off his face when she did a little noise of happiness at the find. Being the courteous person that she was, Scarlet gently replaced the mat and tried the key on the locked control panel.

"It won't fit," she frowned after trying it for the fifth time.

Edward was slightly surprised and walked over. He was close enough to be able to smell her shampoo and immediately hated it. This wasn't Scarlet's shampoo, her hair didn't usually smell like that. Once they returned home, he was going to make her take a good long bath. He didn't like the idea of Scarlet using her sister's overly sharp floral fragrance shampoo. If anything, he still preferred the scent of Scarlet's minty shampoo and milk body wash.

"It's not this key then," he told her. "Hold onto it, for now, we might come across another chance to use this at a later stage.

Scarlet agreed and the couple worked quickly to find other keys or tools within the small room. Edward retrieved the key he spotted earlier on one of the higher walls and passed it to Scarlet who returned with a negative. It wasn't that key either and after searching the walls twice, they stood before the control panel to think.

Scarlet glanced at the edges of the wall near the door and realised something odd about the wall near the doors and the wall edges not near doors.

"Edward, do you think they would hide it on the floor?"

The spy looked at his feet and stomped on the ground. Scarlet was right. He hadn't noticed it earlier because most of the floor was carpeted when they came in but the floor felt like it had a layer.

"It's worth a shot," he told her. "Search the sides for a way we can remove this."

Together, Edward and Scarlet felt around the flooring and Nook looked at the timer. It had only taken them five minutes to figure out the trick. He watched with slight indigestion when Edward found the right key hidden in between the flooring and the rubber wall after they pried the sides. Scarlet wasted no time and opened the control panel, leaving Nook no choice but to give out instructions to the staff to get into position for the second stage.

After the control panel door fell open, Scarlet and Edward were stopped by a second puzzle. This time, a staff member entered the room to explain the rules but Edward's hands were faster. After seeing the circuit board and diagram, he knew what jumper wires should be connected, which should be disconnected and which switches to flip.

Scarlet didn't have any time to look and the staff didn't have any time to explain before Edward told her to check it. Nook felt slightly anxious. That took less than a minute! However, he was still slightly hopeful. Even if Team B could progress quickly, Team A's bottleneck would still slow them down. Without Team A's 'eyes' for the rest of the game, Team B is most likely unable to escape the frequently patrolling guards.

Once the staff in the elevator confirmed that the puzzle was solved correctly, the door was unlocked for them to escape the elevator to the next stage. Scarlet went right up to the case file and read it while Edward searched the room for useful objects. They were in the 'secret office' and the staff explained that once they left, they couldn't come back unless they repeated the first stage of escaping the elevator. Edward pocketed a master key set and fiddled with the walkie talkie while Scarlet read the case file aloud. Nook quickly checked on the other couple seeing as Edward didn't hear a reply from the walkie talkie.

Jasper and Alex were also making quick progress. It wasn't hard for Jasper to get them out of the cell. In fact, Alex and he found all the pieces, they just had to put them together and get the keys. The map was retrieved and placed aside. While Nook wasn't watching them because of how quick Team B was, Alex found the piece of metal on the false window sill after retrieving the map and searched the place quickly with an expert eye. Once they collected everything they could, Jasper worked on getting the pole from outside his reach from their cell. The CEO didn't hesitate to use the blanket as a whip to retrieve that pole. Then, he fashioned a clumsy hook so that they could retrieve the keys hidden outside of their cell in a corner to the left with it.

After Jasper unlocked the door, he found that they were actually still rather trapped in the facility because the main cell block door was locked and can only be opened from the outside. On the other hand, everything within the facility including the room with CCTVs is free property.

"Darling, give me a hand!" Alex whined. While Jasper was looking around, Alex had already decided what she wanted to do. The lights in the control room were brighter so she wanted to move the comfy mattress over to read the map and journal in luxury but her boyfriend was too busy plotting a breakout. Why would he even try to break out if they were still cuffed together? They'd get caught in no time.

Jasper sighed and gave up. Alex would be Alex. Even in a jail breakout game, comfort was still the top of her priorities. He helped her move the mattress into the control room and rearranged some furniture so that it fits snugly while he worked. There were many controls that Jasper didn't know how to use so Alex told him to figure out how to use the walkie talkie instead. The model had some experience with this thanks to Claire and after fiddling a few buttons to find out how to switch cameras and pull out the screens, she looked over to her lover.

"Did you figure it out?"

"Yeah," Jasper nodded. "Hold onto this when you want to talk then release it to cut the transmission. According to the journal and the guide we need to navigate Scarlet and Edward through their mission and help them avoid patrol officers."

Alex pointed to a screen. "They're currently here. I'm not good at maps so I'm going to need you to help them out for me. Use the map to plan a route for them according to the cameras. I've arranged them for you. If you need to rearrange anything or switch them you can drag it to this side panel and switch them out. Don't touch anything else, it will exit this monitoring frame. Basically, you need to figure out a flow of which camera flow to which so we can have a better overview. There should be some sort of security camera location diagram normally to help with this but I guess this game isn't as realistic as I thought it would be."

Jasper didn't know what to say. He thought the game was complicated enough but Alex was asking for more? Why couldn't his girlfriend be satisfied with what they had? Sometimes, he didn't really understand her. She wanted an easy life but she never took the easy path.

All this happened while Scarlet and Edward were still finding the final key to escape the elevator. Nook hadn't been paying attention to them but the other staff did. While the escape theme of Team A's puzzle was easier, the figuring out of the control room setup was the real difficulty. Both teams had to work together to safely make their way around the game to complete the challenges within 90 minutes. Less than ten minutes had gone by but they'd already both cleared the first hurdle. Shouldn't they struggle a little more? To make matters worse, Alex looked completely at home in the control room reading the journal and guide leisurely while Jasper worked. For some reason, Nook thought that it was an oddly domestic sight as if he was watching someone else's private life.

What use were these rooms in the first place? It might have been better if he placed staff to give them an introduction briefing before letting them go. That might have stalled these two couples for longer compared to the puzzles. Edward finally got the walkie talkie working and when he sent the first message over, Alex was the one to answer.

"You guys managed to escape too? You're slower than us," the model grinned.

Scarlet took the walkie talkie from her boyfriend and replied, "It took a while because it was tricky but no room can hold us for long. What do you guys have on your end? We found everything we needed and read the case files. We have four suspects that we have to approach and talk to while avoiding the patrol guards. Which door should we take?"

Alex nodded while Jasper worked on finding the right arrangement. He was about sixty percent done.

"Jasper's still working on arranging the cameras to the map we found. We're going to be your eyes and guide you on where to go. Give us some time."

Edward took Scarlet's hand and spoke into the walkie talkie, leaning close enough that made Scarlet's heart skip. 

"Don't worry about where to go, give me a description of the map starting from the room that we are in. Tell me how many rooms after each door and which direction the doors are, I'll memorise the layout. You just need to tell us where the patrol officers are to avoid them."

Getting up from the mattress, Alex described the map to Edward while Jasper worked. From the control room, Nook couldn't understand what he was seeing and hearing. Yet, he had a feeling that this game would be over sooner than expected.