Chapter Two #2
A low hissing noise made Alice look down. A mist infused with glowing yellow energy the color of an exotic spice began to coalesce near the floor. With it came the first visual distortions. She heightened her senses a little to suppress the effects.
A faint memory stirred, a scrap from a nightmare. There was something familiar about the incense fragrance of the vapor.
“There’s a weird fog forming,” she said. “Some kind of hallucinogen, I think.” Unless I really am losing it, she added silently.
Owen glanced down. His boots were already partially immersed in the light mist. As she watched, they metamorphosed into dragon-like claws.
“That’s how the hotel delivers whatever escape experience the customer selects,” Owen said. “Looks like someone turned on the dream machine.”
Sebastian muttered again. Alice looked at him.
He was on the floor. The rising vapor threatened to transform him into a miniature dinosaur with sunglasses.
She had to generate a bit more talent to blink away the visual distortions.
He was partially sleeked out, but the sunglasses were still perched precariously on his head.
He did not seem concerned with the psi-infused fog even though he was rapidly being enveloped in it. He was probably immune, she thought. The vapor had been formulated to affect human senses, not those of dust bunnies.
A disembodied female voice, at once sultry and menacing, came from a concealed wall speaker.
“Welcome to the Reptile House of Horror escape game. You have one hour to figure out how to unlock the door of your suite. You must fight through the visions to discover the clues you need to escape. Remember, the panic button is on top of the table. You can rez it at any time if you become anxious and wish to stop the game early. Please be advised that there are no refunds in such cases. Your nightmare has begun. If you are unable to rescue yourself within an hour, the staff will open the door for you.”
Alice went to the table.
“There’s no panic button,” she said.
“Why am I not surprised?” Owen said.
“I certainly didn’t order an escape experience when I checked in. Did you?”
“I never got the opportunity.” Owen abandoned the effort to force the window panel aside and crossed to the bed. “When I tried to make a reservation online, I was informed that the hotel was booked for a convention.”
“But it’s practically empty up here on the second floor.”
“Same down on the first floor. As far as I can tell, you and the people trying to grab you are the only guests tonight.”
“I don’t mean to be critical, but maybe it was a bad idea to take out the front desk clerk,” she said. “We could have called for help.”
“I had no choice. He was working for the kidnappers.”
She remembered the pleasant, helpful man who had welcomed her and given her the room key. “He seemed so…so clerk-like. Although now that I think about it, Sebastian didn’t care for him.”
“The clerk was a professional gun for hire like the others,” Owen said. “You are obviously worth a great deal to someone. But we’ll worry about that later. Right now, we need to focus on getting out of here.”
He scooped up one of the pistols and fired two shots into the window. The glass shattered. “There’s not enough room for either of us to get through the opening, but at least we’ve got a little fresh air. That will buy us some time before the vapor overwhelms us.”
“Maybe we can use one of the lamps to break open the wall next to the door and get to the machinery that controls the panels,” she suggested. “If we get out of here, we can make a run for the stairs.”
“Good idea,” Owen said, “but those two on the floor have at least two pals who will be watching the exits. I spotted them on the way in.”
Frustrated, she swept out both hands. “In that case, why haven’t they come running to help their friends?”
“Because they don’t know what went wrong,” Owen said, his voice sharpening with impatience.
“The one thing they can be sure of is that you are no longer alone. Since the pair assigned to grab you never reappeared, they will also assume I’m armed.
They cranked up the escape experience in this room to subdue both of us. ”
“We need a plan,” Alice said. She looked at the collection of weapons on the bed. “We’ve got a lot of firepower. Our own flamers, the mag-rez pistols, and the knives those two creeps were carrying. We have a controlled point of entry—they will have to come through the doorway to get at us.”
“None of which will do us any good if the vapor overwhelms us, which it will eventually. We need to go off script.”
“Off script?”
“We’re in one, remember?”
“The escape experience?”
“Right.” Owen crossed to the doorway of the darkened bathroom, took out his phone, and rezzed the flashlight. “The immersive escape experience was programmed with a variety of scripts. There’s an emergency exit in each room designed to be used by management if the steel panels get stuck in place.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” she demanded.
“Later. The exit is in the bathroom.”
He started toward the darkened room.
“Wait.” She grabbed Sebastian, tucked him under one arm, and rushed toward the doorway of the bathroom. But she was too late. The beam of Owen’s flashlight was focused on the shower. “I forgot to tell you there’s a dead person in there.”
“Of course there’s a body in the shower. This night just keeps getting more interesting.”