Chapter 5: Zeroth Hour [24:00]

Mir POV

Some people say that when you are near to death, you start remembering things – important, life-changing things. In that case, what would I remember? Me. The person with no memories? What events would flash through my mind? What regrets would I feel? What emotions would twist and tear my heart?

Would I...feel anything at all?

***

The world is grainy. Black and white. Someone is moving close to me. A hand. Warmth. It presses against my cheek. It lights something in my stomach, the kind of warm sensation you get from downing wine too quickly. It makes my head heady and my vision blurry.

The world is grainy. Black and white.

It doesn’t last long.

All of sudden, the whiteness fades. The warmth seeps away.

The world is grainy. The world is black.

***

The world is black. Still that all-consuming black. That nightmarish black that makes me feel suspended, unable to tell if I am awake or asleep. It’s strange and it frightening with no sensation to distinguish up from down, floor from ceiling, life from death. A wretched sob fills the air and it takes me a moment to realize it was mine.

And suddenly, that one sound makes me aware of a thousand others. The scraping of stone beneath me, the creaking of wood from above, the trickle of water somewhere to my far right. I am not dead. Far from that. I am alive. And I must survive.

“H-hello?” I whispered, my voice rough from unused. I coughed and cleared it. “Is anyone there?”

“Is that Mir?” a voice came back. My heart leapt for joy.

“Yes! Yes! Bones, yes!”

“This is Thunder,” the voice was to my left. I heard the sound of footsteps scraping stone and a hesitant touch on my shoulder. My hand shot out and grabbed Thunder’s. “Found you,” he said in a triumphant voice. His hand crept down and intertwined with my fingers.

“I’m not letting you go,” he whispered, a reassuring voice in the midst of this maze. I could never put the feeling into words, but it was like the sun shining on your skin during a cold day, like a brief reprise from the all-invading chill that froze you to the bone. I tightened my grip, grateful for his presence and his strength.

“Is anyone else there?” he called out loudly. “Anyone?”

Silence...

Silence...

Silence- “Here!” came a voice. It was surprisingly close.

“Me too,” chimed another rougher one. It sounded like Lee Joon, the cold-faced and quick-to-anger man. I shivered, but whether it was from the cold or something else, I do not know.

“I’m here,” came a hoarse final voice. And that was it: all five of us. We were here.

I heard the shuffle of feet and the sounds of coughs as we floundered about, trying to find one another in the middle. There were stumbles and there were falls, but then we were together. In one heap on the floor – completely disorientated and at loss of who we even were other than our names and our tentative goals – we were together.

For a second we lay together, heavy breathing being the only thing that filled the air. Then a cough came from Lee Joon. “Gerroff me,” he said roughly and I felt a firm shoulder push me to one side. Then a back replaced it quickly. Lee Joon was leaning against my shoulder. A hot spot ran from that small contact, covered with leather and cotton. I in a breath.

“We’re all here,” Seungho whispered reverently, as if the silence was something difficult to break.

“We are,” G.O agreed. “And we have no idea where we are.”

“Well at least it’s small,” Thunder chirped suddenly. “Not too difficult to get lost,” he chuckled. An odd sound in the midst of despair.

“Huh?!” a noise of surprise came out from me. “Wait…you can see?!”

I felt rather than saw Thunder’s head spin towards me, the flecks of his long hair brushing my neck. “Well, not really see. It’s not like I’m standing in daylight, but my eyes are slowly getting used to the darkness. Aren’t yours?”

I blinked and squinted, trying to see better. “Nooooope….ah wait!” Blurry images appeared in the corner of the room. The walls.

“Yeah, I can see something now,” Seungho added.

Slowly the room became clearer. Thunder was right: it wasn’t that big, perhaps thirty feet either way and cobbled together out of smoothened stone. It was bare. It was empty. And it wasn’t because of us growing accustomed to the darkness. No. The walls seemed to be growing brighter, only slightly, but there seemed to be veins of light inlaid within the lines of where blocks of stone were piled in a tessellating manner. They were a soft blue color and slowly but surely, lit the room up.

Finally we could see each other and the room. But that wasn’t what grabbed out attention. It was the lack of-

 “Exits,” Seungho gasped. “There’s no exits.”

Crap.

“How do we get out,” I whispered, fear overriding everything. “There’s no exits…or anything…or…does the Ringmaster plan to trap us down here for all eternity? Till we starve and die? How is this a game? What if-“

SLAP!

My ears rang and pain exploded, sending starbursts through my vision. I staggered back, backing into the wall and feeling rough stone scrape skin. My hand flew out to balance my reeling self and the coolness of the wall brought me back to my senses.

“W-wha?!” I stuttered, still slightly stunned and disorientated. “What was that for?”

“You were panicking.” It was Lee Joon’s gruff voice. “And we cannot afford that. So I shut you up.”

I blinked. “W-well…” I was lost for words.

“It’s true,” Seungho stepped in. “We can’t panic. It’ll just make things worse,” he said in a level voice, but there was the slightest tremble at the end. “But Lee Joon,” I heard his voice turn away from me. “That was too harsh!” he reprimanded him.

All it earned him was a snort. “We’re not in kindergarten and he is no child.”

“Still-“ Seungho continued, his voice growing strained and cutting through my blur.

“Enough. I am not his mother. And neither are you. We are five strangers thrown together in an attempt to survive. And I will survive!” a gleam entered Lee Joon’s eyes. It shone across the dark room like a cat in a dark alley. The sight of it made me shiver ever so slightly. I my lips and felt electricity crackle through the tense air.

“Lee Joon!” Seungho growled.

“Enough!” G.O snarled. “We have enough to deal with. Can we not work together? Did we not agree that we have the same goal: to get out of here?!”

“That was before the Ringmaster told us about the wolf,” Lee Joon sharply interjected. His tone was coated in disapproval.

“And so what,” Thunder said plainly. His voice was flat, his tone blunt. “So what if one of us is the wolf. What can we do about that?”

I swung to face him. “What are you talking about Thunder?” I gaped. “Like the Ringmaster said, the wolf’s going to kill us all. Of course there would be distrust!”

“So what,” Thunder snapped back. “We don’t have to follow the Ringmaster’s script. We’re humans with our own purposes, humans who can make our own decisions, human who are not puppets!” he trailed off, huffing with exertion.

There was silence. Then, “continue,” G.O said quietly.

Thunder took a deep breath.  Regaining momentum and reason. “It’s simple. I know the Ringmaster said that the wolf will eventually regain some sort of memory that will make him want to kill the rest of us, but right now, right here there is just us. We are blank slates and we can make something that will override any reason to want to kill another.”

“And what is that?” Lee Joon sounded doubtful.

The edges of Thunder’s lips twitched into a half-smile. “We can make a pact.”

A collective choke echoed around the room.

“WHAT?!” Lee Joon yelled. “A pact?! What are we? Five-years olds with our secret brotherhood and forest camp?!”

“Hey…” Thunder sounded hurt. “When you put it that way, of course it sounds silly. But think about it? Can’t we learn to trust each other? To make each other worth more than any memory might be? And we can start by making a promise to each other. To get out of here and to not harm one another until we reach that point?”

At his words, I felt a sort of lightness enter my heart. Perhaps…just perhaps Thunder wasn’t spouting utter nonsense, but actual hope. I mean it was a feeble hope, but hope nonetheless.

This was a possibility I wanted to believe in.

“Impossible,” said Joon flatly.

I spluttered.

“That won’t work,” he continued. “What are we balancing? A five-minute ‘pact’” – he said the word scathingly – “over years of memories? It’s obvious what will win out. I won’t trust you guys from a five minute chat.”

“But think about it,” I stepped forwards. “We are not ruled by our past. It doesn’t form our future. We do. We can choose to create something of far greater importance, choose to build a wall that will weather whatever storm our pasts and memories may bring. It may be slow and tedious, brick by brick, grain by grain, but it will be progress. And it might just be the hope we need.”

Lee Joon had gone quiet, so I pressed my point further.

“Please,” I tried to put all the emotion from my heart into my voice. “Please can we not try? At least for now. It’s a start. Let’s get out of here. Please?”

He looked at me, his curt glare flashing like a search light. We held contact for barely seconds before he dropped them. Crap…did I offend him?

“Umm,” I started.

“Fine,” he said in a short voice. “Fine. But at the first sign of trouble, I’m leaving.”

A smile broaden on my face. “Chincha?”

“Yes,” he hissed. “Enough. Let’s start with solving how we get out of here and what these freaking barcodes on our hands are.”

“Barecodes?” I echoed, a little hurt by his shortness and confused by his sudden willingness to cooperate.

He snorted. “Yes barcodes. Look at your hands. You all have one as well.”

I glanced down. Indeed he was correct. On my hand were strange etchings, not dissimilar to that of a barcode. Seven stripes ran down the back of my hand. They glowed a soft blue, like that of the lighting on the wall, a strange and soothing cerulean. Beneath the stripes was a large number. #4, it read.  Above the stripes were numbers: 23:38.

“A countdown,” Seungho said the words in my mind. “24 hours he said. 24 hours to escape. This is how long we have left to escape within.”

“And below?” Thunder asked.

“Our player numbers,” the words came to my mouth un-beckoned. “Remember on our jail doors. Mine said ‘Welcome Mir, Player #4’.” I lifted my hand to show the others the number.

“Mine is 5,” Seungho lifted his own. There stood the numbers, stark bright in the darkness.

“I’m 1,” voiced Thunder, sounding a little shaken. G.O was #3 and Joon #2. What were these numbers? And why were in these games? What was the ringmaster’s goal and why us? So many questions swirled in my mind. I wanted to spit them all out, and get that pompous cloak-swinging idiot to answer them all, but the first thing I would do would be to-

“Stop,” said Lee Joon suddenly. I froze. So did everyone else. “Can you hear that?”

I strained my ears, pricking them to hear for what he was talking about.

Finally impatience got the better of me. “What are you-“

My mouth was frozen half-open. I closed it and listened again. Now that he mentioned it, I could hear a faint trickling, dripping sound. From inside the walls perhaps? No...but here? In this small enclosed room with no exits? !

Thunder twitched. "It sounds like-"

[CORRECT] boomed a voice, uncomfortably familiar and bone-chilling. [WATER IS THE TRIAL OF THIS ROOM.]

We couldn’t see the ringmaster, but his voice was unmistakable.

[WELCOME TO THE GAME OF REFLECTIONS.

YOUR GOAL IS SIMPLE: ESCAPE BEFORE THE ROOM FILLS COMPLETELY WITH WATER.

LIVE OR DIE. THIS IS YOUR CHOICE, YOUR SURVIVAL.

GOOD LUCK AND GOODBYE.]

And then he was gone as quickly as he came. I could feel by heart beating wildly, fear overriding everything else.

On my hand was a ticking clock. On the floor was seeping water, gleaming eerily in the light of the blue veins. In my ears was the sound of my pounding heart. And in my mind there was only one certainty – that death was on our heels and time was running out.

[TICK, TOCK, THE HOURGLASS HAS TURNED...

...TIME IS RUNNING OUT...

YOU BETTER HURRY]