Zero Escape: Chambers of Nightmares

...

Nothing.

I'm floating in nothing.

This sensation...

Is familiar to me.

It's the moment just before I wake up. My dream has ended, and I'm about to open my eyes and start a new day.

But when did my last day end? The last thing I remember... That's right!

"What are you doing?"

"Dragon. Strange magical cave. What do you think I'm doing?"

I followed her into the cave, touched the ground, and... nothing. I don't remember anything after that.

Well, only one way to find out what's happening. Time to open my eyes.

I'm laying on my back on a bed. My bed? I don't remember there being a ceiling above my bed, though. Or that note. I grab it and read it.

"Do not try to remove your bracelet. Doing so will result in... DEATH?"

I look at my wrist. There is a bracelet there, similar to the one we used in the Spellvenger Hunt we did a while back. Instead of a radar on it, though, there's the number 5 on it. I instinctively reach for it, but remember the note in time. It's probably best if I just leave it there for now.

"Wait..." If I don't remember how I got here, what else did I forget? Why didn't I think of that earlier? Do I remember my name? Do I remember my family? Do I have a family?

I clutch my head and close my eyes. Think... think... Right! I do remember!

"I am Silverstream. I'm a Hippogriff from Mt. Aris. Or Seaquestria. Whichever you prefer. I have my parents and a brother who should still be there. I went to Princess Twilight Sparkle's School of Friendship as the representative of the Hippogriffs. We're about to have a big test, but I think the Princess will let me miss it over a death threat."

Right. That's out of the way. Now, where am I?

It's... a bedroom? It's not mine. This one has an armoire, shelves, a closet, a trash can, a desk, something on the desk with a timer on it, this bed I'm on, a chair- Wait. Go back a bit.

I take another look at the thing with the timer. It's made of metal and has plenty of wires on it. The timer on it is at fourteen and a half minutes and is counting down.

Did that note mention something about this? Time to take another look.

"Bracelet... death... The thing on the desk is a bomb. It will go off when the timer hits zero. If you do not escape before then, you won't be the only one to pay."

...

...

...

OH FUCK! I NEED TO GET OUT!

Door door door- THERE! I run over and yank on the handle!

And again.

And again.

...

I should have known it wouldn't be that easy. Time to look at the door. First thing I see; big number 5. Pretty obvious. Right next to the door is an odd device. It has a display, two lights, a lever, and an odd slit. Oh! It's a card reader! They used those at... where do they use those? No! Not the time! I need to find something to use with the card reader! Fast!

TIME TO SEARCH!

I immediately dart over to the shelves. They're almost empty, aside from a red briefcase and... Terramar? There's a photo of my brother sitting on top, for some reason. Are they taunting me? The briefcase has a combination lock and a keyhole. Won't be opening that up yet. It's a small keyhole, though. Where would I hide a small key?

The trash can? I look inside, but it's empty. Wait. I pull the bag out, and... Ah ha! They did what I do! They hid the key under the bag! And a note? What's this say?

"You see those you love from the front. Now's the time to stop that."

... What?

I look at the picture of Terramar. It shows him from the front. Are they saying to look at the back? Only one way to find out. I remove the back of the frame the picture is in. Oh? A key popped out. There's something on the back of the picture as well. A set of triangles and squares with numbers next to them. A decoder? Will this be for the combination lock? I don't have a code yet, though.

I look at the key that came out of the photo. It's bigger than the key from the trash can. Taking another look, the photo key is green, and the trash key is blue. I don't see a green or blue briefcase, though. The one I have is red. Hmm... Ah! The Armoire is green! I try the photo key on it... It opened!

There's a blue briefcase and a photo of... Mom. Huh. I look at the back. There are two red symbols, two blue symbols, and an arrow below them that's red below the red symbols and blue below the blue symbols. Is that important? I found pictures of mom and Terramar, but none of dad. And no sign of a red key. I should look around a bit more... Oh, that's a bunk bed? NO! BAD SILVER! NOT NOW!

Looking around, I realize I haven't checked the closet yet. Opening it up, there are shelves full of... nothing? That can't be right. I hop up on the shelves to see the upper ones. Ah ha! The red key and the picture of dad! I climb down and look at the bomb.

OH SHIT! WHERE DID THE TIME GO? I ONLY HAVE FOUR MINUTES!

I quickly check the back of dad's photo and see the same kind of code as the back of mom's photo, though the colors are reversed from mom's. I quickly use the decoder on Terramar's photo to figure out which numbers are which. I put the numbers from mom's photo into the lock for the blue briefcase, stick the blue key into the lock, and turn it. It failed. The red briefcase? No. What's going-

Oh. The colors are important. I quickly fold the pictures of my parents in half and connect the red numbers. Putting that number into the red briefcase, I turn the key. It opened! There are three cards inside, each with a different number: 5, 6, and 7. I quickly head to the reader, swipe the 5 card, and press the button. It buzzed at me. I'll try all three. Nope, another buzz.

I shoot back over to the photos and flip them over, putting the number into the blue briefcase. The key turns and opens the briefcase, giving me three more cards: 1, 2, and 3. Oh? There's also a note.

"Digital roots? To find the digital root of a number, you must add the digits of the number together until there's only one digit. For example, 2+4+5+7+8=26. 2+6=8. Thus, the digital root of 24578 is 8. To unlock the door to the room, you must figure out how to make the number on the door from the cards you have.

"Hint: The number 9 does not ever change the digital root. If you have 9 or two numbers that add up to a 9 in a number, you can ignore them. In the example above, it boils down to 9(2+7)+9(4+5)+8, and the digital root is 8."

Okay then. I look at the cards I have. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7. I have to make 5. The easiest way would be to make 14 (9+5). That would be the 5 card and two that add up to 9... 3+6! I take the three cards-

OH, FUCK I HAVE THIRTY SECONDS! I quickly swipe the three cards and press the button. As soon as it dings, I rip open the door and turn left- DEAD END! TURN AROUND FAST! I fly to the end, not even thinking. As soon as I open the door at the end of the hall-

*BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BANG!*

The nine booms were from explosions. The bang was my head hitting the wall the explosions propelled me into.

...

...

...

...

...

"I... am..."

It sounds so distant.

"I... can... talk?"

My head is ringing. I rub it by impulse.

"She's waking up!"

That voice. I open my eyes to see eight other students. Six about my age, two clearly younger. I recognize five of them right off the bat, but one of the other three is also familiar.

The blue griffon shoots towards me, grabbing me in a hug. "You're alive! You're alive!"

"What? I... What?"

A young pegasus was flittering her wings in the air. "Are you okay? You were out cold."

I continue rubbing my head. "I'm fine, but... what happened?"

The orange dragon shrugs. "You tell us."

The earth pony is rubbing one leg with the other. "We heard a string of explosions, ran over here, and found you unconscious on the floor."

"I..." I'm trying to remember, but... "Oh, yeah. I made it out of the room with less than thirty seconds left. I must've barely gotten away from the explosions."

The changeling shakes her head. "No, you got caught by them, you just got far enough away that it wasn't lethal."

"May I make a suggestion?" The young deer raises his hoof in the air. "Should we use code names?"

The yak smiles. "Code names sound like fun!"

The deer shies back. "No, I mean, we don't want our kidnapper to know who we are, right?"

The dragon nods. "We don't even know why we were kidnapped. They could have just picked a bunch of random students-"

"And happened upon seven from the same school?" The griffon has seated himself next to me. "I'm not buying that. It's way too much of a coincidence."

The changeling is tapping her chin. "Maybe they were going for non-pony creatures?"

The earth pony starts waving his hoof around. "Uh, hello? Two ponies in the group?"

Static suddenly fills the air. I look around, and it doesn't take me long to find the monitor in the room. The image became clear, showing a creature wearing a hood and a gas mask. "Hello, students." Their voice is heavily distorted, making impossible to recognize. "Welcome to my school."

"Hey!" The griffon is snarling at the monitor. "Who are you?"

"I am Zero, the headmaster of this school. I've already given you all an example of what the lesson plan will be like, with puzzles, digital roots... and death traps."

The yak is growling. "Let us out!"

"If you wish to graduate, you have to play along with my game. Let's call it the Nonary Game. If you don't, you can simply rot away where you are now, with no one outside knowing of your fate."

The deer just backed up into me. I wrap my claws around him to comfort him. He's so young... The rest of us are looking around with confusion and worry.

"In order to graduate, you must pass through the final door before nine hours pass starting with the first chime of the bell. In order to reach the final door, you must pass through several numbered doors. Each of your rooms had information about digital roots. That will be vital to passing through the numbered doors, such as the two on the wall opposite this monitor."

I look at my bracelet. "That's what the numbers are for."

"The Recognition Device, or RED, will read your bracelets. If the digital root is correct, the door will open, and you can pass through. Otherwise, you will receive an error and have to try again. Once through the door, you will have to find the Deactivation Device, or DEAD, to turn off the timer on your bracelet. If you fail to do that, the bombs inside of you will go off, killing you."

Excuse me? Bomb? Do I have a bomb inside of me?

"What the hell?" The dragon sounds just as shocked and scared as I am. "You shoved bombs inside of us?"

"Solve the puzzles in the rooms to get through. Find the number 9 doors to find the way out. I'll be interested to see who graduates." Static is filling the screen again.

"Hey! Wait!" The griffon just ran past me and is headed to the monitor. "Damnit! OW!" Why did he kick the wall?

The colt is looking at the doors, biting his lip. "So we need to go through those doors to get out?"

The changeling is biting her hoof. "And they're full of death traps?"

The yak is scratching her head. "But how? Yak left cards in room."

The filly is hugging herself. "So did I. And all the rooms got blown up."

I'd wonder if they were all idiots, but I'm pretty sure they're just panicking. I hold up my left claw, the one with the bracelet on it. "That's what these are for. See how mine has a 5 on it? It's to open those doors."

"Oh. See." The... girl? I'm not sure what she is. Anyway, she looked at my bracelet, then at her's, and is now looking at the doors. "We add bracelet numbers for digital roots to open doors."

The griffon raised his eyebrow. I think he's confused by her word choice. "Uh, Equish, please."

The changeling sighed. "You remember the cards we used to escape the exploding rooms? Replace those with the bracelets, and we have a way to open the door. Though I'm a little shocked that Silver's the one to figure that out first."

The deer is suddenly shaking. "Hey! What about-"

"Didn't I make this clear?" The griffon's glare has turned to the deer. "We weren't grabbed at random. We were chosen for this specifically. They already know who we are."

"Then we should share our numbers and, uh..." The dragon looked from the deer to the other creature. "Introduce ourselves to the two we don't know."

I guess now is the best time to go over what I remember about the ones I do know, make sure I haven't forgotten anything about them.

"Then yak start! Yak is Number 1!" The Yak is named Yona. She's very physically strong but requires a good bit of help with her homework. From what I'm catching of her introduction, she's still all about how yaks are the best at everything.

"Even math?" The griffon verbally jabs at her.

"Quiet." Yeah, that hit a nerve. She was never good at math in particular, and now we know we're going to need math a good bit.

"Since we started with one, why don't we go in numerical order." The colt is looking at his bracelet. "So we'd go 2, then 3, then 4, and so on."

"Sounds good." The dragon is looking around. "So who's number 2?"

"Me."

Well, it looks like I'll be finding out what that creature is sooner than I thought. "Okay, who, and what, are you?"

"My name... Rain Kiss. My... race is kirin."

Kirin? I've heard of them, but only in passing. She honestly looks like the result of Professor Rarity designing a creature. She looks like a light blue pony, but she has dark blue scales on her forehead and back, a dark horn that more resembles a tree branch with ribbons wrapped around it, and her grey mane wraps around her neck. It also looks like the fleshy part of her tail is longer and the hair of it is just hanging off.

"Kirin?" The colt is scratching his head. "Never heard of one before."

The filly noticed something else. "What's wrong with your voice?"

"Kirin... took dive in spring of silence. I spoke two years... and never again."

The griffon's eyes narrow. "So how are you talking now?"

Rain Kiss shrugged. "Don't know. Shouldn't be able to."

The dragon sighs. "We can work on your speech patterns later."

Yona tilts her head. "What wrong with speech pattern?"

The filly's face just went deadpan. "Oh yeah. We've got Yona."

Rain suddenly had a big smile on her face. "More reason to fix my speech!"

"Hey!"

What is this? Everyone pick on Yona day?

The colt's cough catches my attention. "We should continue."

"Right! Who's number 3?" I look around.

The colt looks annoyed. "I'm 3. That's why I spoke up."

Oh. Oops. I cut him off.

Sandbar. The earth pony from Ponyville. He's... probably the most average among us. There's almost nothing notable about him. But he's still my friend. Even if he seems super high at times.

"I guess I'm next."

We look at the changeling. "So that means..."

"Yeah. I'm 4." Ocellus. A rather timid changeling who's been opening up more and more. She's definitely a lot more confident around her friends. As long as we don't put her on the spot. Thinking about it, she's also the most intelligent of us, so she's probably going to be invaluable right now.

I look around. "So who's next." ... Huh? Why are they staring at me? Hey, why did they start laughing? Did someone- "Oh. Oops."

"Silver." The griffon is barely keeping himself together. "You're 5. You showed us earlier."

I giggle and introduce myself to Rain Kiss and the deer, who both are giving me sympathetic smiles.

"Welp, I'm 6, so I'm next." Gallus the griffon. An abrasive guy, but very nice once you get to know him. He's also very unlucky since he lived most of his life without anyone to care about him. He's not very smart, but he's oddly amazing with math.

He's also very soft and has a nice butt.

"SILVER!"

"Huh?"

"YOU JUST SAID THAT OUT LOUD!"

... Oops. They're laughing at me again. Except for Gallus, who's just red in the face, the deer, who's giving me another sympathetic smile, and the dragon, who just put her face in her palm.

Sandbar's waving his hoof around. "Okay, okay. Who's next."

...

No one?

"Huh? Oh, sorry. I was just... processing that. I'm 7." Smolder the dragon. She's a very rough and tough girl, but she does have a soft side. She just doesn't like others seeing it. She's also our class clown and tends to make things a bit of a mess for some of the teachers. Professor Applejack and Professor Pinkie Pie tend to have very amusing reactions.

That only leaves the youngest two of the nine. The deer and the pegasus.

"Um... I'm number 8." The deer looks very nervous. As if he might fall apart if you look at him the wrong way. "My name is Bramble. I'm from the deer tribe that lives in the Everfree forest. We don't have schools. We learn what we need to from our elders."

Ocellus has that look again. The one she gets when she's running through her textbooks in her head. "Deer don't usually socialize with other creatures. Maybe there were plans to send you to the School of Friendship?"

"No. King Aspen would have let me know as soon as he knew." ... He's so precious!

"That leaves Cozy Glow." Hearing that makes me look at the filly.

"Yeah. It's pretty obvious, but I'm 9." Cozy Glow. The youngest of our classmates, but also the smartest at times. She tends to be very helpful, but... I can't help but feel as if something's... off about her. Like she did something that makes her untrustworthy. But I can't think of anything she did that-

"Miss Silver?" Huh? Why does she look worried? "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"It's your bracelet." Gallus is wrong, but I'm not about to correct him.

"What? Why would my-"

*DING*

There it is. The bell.

At this point, we have nine hours to escape from this place. If we can't, then this becomes our new life.

I don't want that to happen.

I have to escape.