Our aspirations are hidden in books

Nick and Marley dug through the underground laboratory, looking for the key.

It wasn’t exactly hard to find.

“Well, you can call me an idiot,” Nick told Marley, “but if I had to guess, I’d say that the key is probably in there.”

He pointed to a big wall safe hidden behind a poster.

“Yeah, I think that makes logical sense,” Marley nodded. “Only problem is, it requires a six-digit combination.”

There was a key pad with numbers on the front of the safe.

“You didn’t happen to see any numbers anywhere, did you?” Nick questioned.

“What, in the garden? Gee…”

“Marley, come on,” Nick rolled his eyes.

She smirked. “Actually, yes, I did.”

Then the smirk left her face and she frowned. “Can you believe it? Dakota didn’t actually put any real plants here! They’re all props and fake plastic plants!”

Nick blinked.

“Well, actually, yes, I CAN believe that, since this is an escape room and everything,” he pointed out. “Of course she would do that. Escape rooms aren’t going to use real plants.”

Marley scowled and crossed her arms under her chest. “Well, maybe they should,” she muttered under her breath.

“Yeah, yeah. So you said something about numbers?” Nick pressed.

“Uh-huh, it was strange,” Marley nodded. “Most of the stuff? It was stuck in place. Since, you know, prop plants and the like. But some of it I could move. See?”

She led him over to the plant enclosure. Three objects were sitting on the ground in front of it. One was a potted plant that Nick had never seen before; the leaves were twisted and went in all directions, and he could see the hints of plastic roots beneath it. The next object was a large mushroom that looked like it came right out of a video game. It was white with a large red cap, and was about the size of Nick’s hand.

“So we’ve got a mushroom, and… what’s this?” Nick reached for the potted plant, but Marley slapped his hand away.

“It’s a mandrake,” she informed him. “Don’t pull it out.”

“You know it’s not real, right?” He reminded her.

Marley rolled her eyes. “No kidding? Still, don’t mess with it.”

“And what about this?” Nick pointed at the third item, a twisted and misshapen fruit that looked like a banana, but fatter and covered in bumpy spines.

Marley shrugged. “No clue. But leave it to Dakota to fill the lab with a bunch of phallic shapes. Zero subtlety at all.”

Fair enough.

Marley reached down and picked up the fruit. “I found this sitting on one of the bushes, and I found the mushroom under that mini tree. They were the only things I could move, along with the potted plant. And that’s not all.”

She turned the banana-object over, and revealed the backside to Nick.

“Are those… numbers?” Nick asked.

She nodded. “A 1 and a 7. 17.” They were faded, but they were impressed into the surface of the fruit. “And that’s not all. On the stem of the mushroom is 22, and on the bottom of the mandrake pot, 73 is stenciled.”

“Well, so we’ve got all the numbers then!” Nick pointed out. “That’s great, Marley! Way to go! We just need to figure out the right combination!”

Marley looked very proud of herself. But the smile on her face lasted for only a few seconds before she shook her head again.

“…One problem, though,” she said. “I don’t think Dakota would make it that easy.”

“Well, why don’t you try entering those numbers, and I’ll look around and see if we can find anything else,” Nick suggested.

Marley nodded. Sounded like a good plan.

While Nick went back to searching the cupboards and shelves, Marley approached the safe and began entering in the numbers. First, she tried the order Mushroom – Fruit – Mandrake.

No luck there.

Next, she tried Fruit – Mushroom – Mandrake.

Again, no luck.

“Ugh, this is going to take forever!” Marley groaned. “No way is Dakota expecting us to trial-and-error this shit!”

Marley might not have Dawn’s genius, but she was still a very fast learner thanks to her transformation, and in her past as a human she hadn’t been a slouch either. She knew that there were six possible combinations of these numbers, and she’d already tried two of them. So she just needed to go for the remaining four, and then-

“Bad news.”

Marley sighed and turned to Nick, seeing an apologetic look on his face.

“What?” She asked sadly. “What’s the bad news?”

Nick held out his hands. In one hand, he held a small purple crystal. In the other, he was carrying a beaker filled with a clear blue liquid.

58 was etched into the crystal, and 35 was taped to the beaker.

“Okay, so… what, there are five different numbers now?” Marley groaned, rubbing her temples. “Okay, so if there are 6 possible combinations of 3 numbers, and now we have 5, that would… 120 different combinations!? Oh, no, fuck that! This is going to take us all night!”

Nick wasn’t up for that either.

“No, there’s no way that works,” he said. “And while Dakota might be a little sadistic sometimes, there’s no way she’d do something as unreasonable as expect us to figure out which correct combination there is from just this.”

Marley gave Nick an exasperated look.

“…Come on, she wouldn’t do that,” Nick repeated, though he didn’t sound as sure of himself as he would have liked.

Marley sighed rubbed her temples again. “Okay, well… it looks like that’s what she wants us to do. And you haven’t seen any combinations lying around or anything?”

Nick shook his head. “I don’t think it would be that simple. We probably need to figure it out ourselves, how the numbers go together.”

He glanced at the walkie-talkie hanging from Marley’s waist. “Unless…”

“Nope.” She raised her hand and cut off that line of thought before he could even start it. “We’re not asking for a hint. I just got used to thinking clearly again, I don’t need to be gassed with aphrodisiacs or anything like that.”

Marley cracked a smile. “We got this, Nick. We just have to use our brains!”

Nick nodded. He could support that idea. “Okay then,” he agreed. “Let’s see what we can find out!”

They put down the five objects they’d gathered, and went to go looking for more hints they could use to open the safe.

The first place Nick looked was the desk. It made the most sense; after all, where did you keep important stuff?

In your desk. Or, if you were Holly, in your closet.

Unfortunately, it was locked.

“Nope, can’t get into any of these drawers,” Nick said, tugging on one of them.

“Are they locked? Do we have to find another key?” Marley asked, walking over to him.

He shook his head. “No, there’s no give at all. I don’t think they’re locked, I think they’re just decorative. There’s no inside at all.”

“Ugh, well that’s lame,” Marley groaned. She looked at the table. “And what about these notes? Anything useful here?”

She picked up a piece of paper and looked at it, but the “notes” were just a bunch of squiggly lines next to a picture. Not helpful.

“The book isn’t much use, either,” Nick said, trying to pick up the tome. “It’s stuck to the table, and these pages aren’t real, either. It’s just open to- AH!”

“What? What is it?” Marley looked up from the notes to see what had caught Nick’s attention so suddenly.

“Look! It’s right here! The recipe!” Nick pointed to the only thing on the open page.

There were three pictures lined up in a row. A crystal, followed by a potted plant, followed by a tiny clear vial with something inside it.

“Lemme see…” Marley squinted. “It says that the recipe for creating a love potion is ground up passion crystal, the essence of mandrake, and something called ‘lust dust’ whatever that is. That’s your big solution here? A love potion?”

Nick shook his head. “There are three ingredients, right?” He pointed out. “And they’re all right next to each other! It’s just like the numbers on the safe!”

“Oh!” Marley’s eyes lit up. “That’s brilliant! Way to go, Nick! So we don’t need the mushroom, or the fruit, or the vial of liquid, we just need the numbers on the crystal and the mandrake!”

“We also need to find this ‘lust dust’ though,” Nick reminded her. “We don’t have any of that. So there’s a sixth object somewhere we need to find.”

“Well, according to this, it looks like red powder,” Marley said, taking a closer look. “Leave it to Dakota to include stuff like that…”

“She probably made the sixth ingredient the hardest one to find,” Nick said, opening one of the cupboards. “That seems like it would be her way of doing things. And it’s pretty standard as far as escape rooms go.”

“Well, we might as well use what we know,” Marley said, walking over to the keypad on the wall. “The crystal comes first, right?”

She punched “58” into the pad.

“The mandrake was next,” Nick informed her.

Marley entered “73” next.

Only two digits left.

“So what now? We could try brute forcing it, and just enter every possible combination of those last two numbers,” she suggested. “That’s better than asking Dakota for a hint, anyway.”

“Let’s leave that for the last resort,” Nick suggested. “I mean, it’s not like we’re on a time crunch or anything like a regular escape room. Heck, we don’t even have to keep playing if we don’t want to. We could just stay here.”

“I don’t think you want to do that,” Dakota’s voice came over the walkie-talkie.

“Oh? And why not?” Marley asked into the device.

“Because the audience isn’t going to like it if you don’t play the game.”

Marley glanced at Nick, then back at the walkie-talkie. “…Yeah, that sounds like a ‘you’ problem if you ask me.”

“Well, I could very much make it a problem for both of you, too,” Dakota said. “The audience wants entertainment, Marley. Nick, you already know that, right? You know what they want to see. And while your ‘no hints ever’ approach is definitely adorable- and don’t get me wrong, I’m rooting for you guys over here- giving up and just not trying, well… that would be boring. And if there’s something a host hates, it’s when a season gets boring.”

Dakota let that threat hang in the air for a little bit, and then hung up.

Marley sighed and scratched her head. “Well… there you go. I guess we can’t just stall her out. She’ll probably gas us with aphrodisiacs if she thinks we’re not actually trying.”

“So much for that idea then,” Nick sighed. “Oh, well. Let’s put that aside for now, and focus on solving this puzzle then.”

It wasn’t like either of them had seriously wanted to give up, anyway. This was actually kind of fun, even if the threat of aphrodisiacs wasn’t.

Besides- Nick and Marley both had a fair bit of pride about them. They didn’t want to throw in the towel and ask Dakota for help even if they had the option.

They kept looking through the room. But all the cupboards were bare. There was nothing labeled “lust dust” or even any red powder at all. And certainly no more numbers to be found.

“There’s gotta be somewhere else,” Nick said. “Somewhere we haven’t checked yet. Did you search the plants again?”

“It’s not there,” Marley confirmed with a shake of her head. “No, this is definitely a good hiding place though. Dakota knew what she was doing. She probably put it in the last place we’d think to look, you know?”

“It could even be back the way we came,” Nick said, turning and looking back at the small doorway they’d crawled through. “You don’t think she’d hide it in that dark tunnel, do you?”

“Dakota? Uh… yeah, I think that’s totally something she would do,” Marley nodded. “You want to go check, or should I?”

Nick didn’t like the idea of fumbling around in the dark.

“You can check it if you want to, but I don’t think it’s back there,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I think it’s hidden here somewhere.”

“Well, we’ve checked everywhere,” Marley groaned. “You looked through the bookshelf, right? And you didn’t find anything?”

“Nope. No vials, no papers, nothing,” Nick sighed.

“What about the books? Did you check the books?” She asked.

Nick paused.

“…They’re just plastic, though,” he said. “They don’t even come out.”

Marley frowned, and glanced at the tall bookshelf. There must have been dozens and dozens of books crammed into the thing. “…All of them?”

The question hung in the air for a moment, and then the two of them raced over to the bookshelf and began trying their luck.

“Nothing,” Nick said, pulling on the spine of one of the books. “It’s stuck in here.”

“This one is too,” Marley confirmed, pulling on a spine. She tried two more. “So are these. Doesn’t seem like it’s here.”

They kept trying their luck. They pulled on book after book, trying to find one that wasn’t just glued to the shelf. But no matter how many books they tried, it seemed that the just couldn’t find the right one, if there even WAS one.

“Still nothing, no… wait!” Nick pointed to one of the books, slightly above their head. “Look at that one, doesn’t it look a little strange to you?”

Marley squinted up. “Yeah, you’re right! It does! Help me up onto the desk, I think I can reach it from there.”

Nick helped Marley up, and she leaned forward. She grabbed the spine of the book, and pulled hard.

Harder than she needed to.

“WHOA! Whoa!” Marley wailed, windmilling her arms as she lost her balance. She fell backwards, and landed on top of Nick.

“…Ow,” Nick groaned, his nose mashed into the gap between Marley’s shoulder blades.

“…Odd, given the setting, I would have thought I’d land on you boobs first,” Marley noted. “I guess not everything works like it does in a porno.”

“That would have been preferable, yes,” Nick said into her back.

Marley got off him and helped him to his feet. Luckily, neither of them had gotten injured. Probably the magic of Dream Alley at work.

“Well, here it is,” Marley said, showing Nick their prize. A sexy woman on the cover of the book was blowing a kiss.

“One Simple Trick to Winning His Heart!” Read the cover.

Nick and Marley stared at each other and sighed.

“Of course,” they said simultaneously, opening the book up. A hole had been cut into the center of the pages, revealing a vial of fine red powder.

The lust dust!

And on etched into the cork stopper was the number 04.

“Nice! We’ve got the code!” Marley chortled. She rushed over to the safe, and punched in the last two digits. The lock whirled, and the door swung open.

Unfortunately, the contents weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

“A flashlight… and a book? That’s it?” Nick groaned. “Seriously? No key?”

“Well, we can use the flashlight to get out of here, I suppose,” Marley said, taking it from the safe. “As for the book… hey, whoa! It’s the same one!”

It was another copy of book that had been hiding the lust dust.

“Maybe the key’s inside?” Nick wondered.

Marley flipped through it quickly, but didn’t see anything between the pages. She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so…”

“So that’s it then? We solved that puzzle for a book, and we can’t even move forward?” Nick frowned. That didn’t make sense. “No way, in an escape room, when you solve a puzzle, you get something that can help you move forward, every time.”

While he tried to figure out what Dakota was doing, the gears in Marley’s head started turning.

“Hey… what about… hmm. Maybe…” She tapped her chin thoughtfully and then looked back up at the bookshelf.

She had a new idea, one just zany enough to work.

“They gave us this book for a reason, right?” She said, waving the hardcover at Nick.

“Yeah,” Nick nodded. “They did. Why?”

Marley smirked. “Come on, help me back up onto the desk, I want to try something else!”

Nick was hesitant to do that, especially after what happened last time. “Okay, but only if you fall on me with your boobs this time,” he teased.

“Split the difference, I’ll land on you with my ass. Sound fair?” Marley teased him right back. The two exchanged grins Nick helped keep Marley stable as she leaned forward on the desk, trying to reach the bookshelf again, book in hand.

“I think they reason they gave us this book, was so that we could replace the previous one,” Marley explained her reasoning to Nick. “It’s the only thing that makes sense!”

“So it’s like a mystery or a horror movie, if you put the right book in the right place, a secret passage might open,” Nick said, echoing Marley’s thoughts. “It’s worth a try!”

Marley slid the book into place, and pushed it in deep. Deep enough that she heard a “click”.

The bookshelf started to shake and rumble.

“Whoa! Hold on!” Marley stumbled back. But she was expecting it this time, and didn’t fall. Nick kept a firm grip on her waist, and they both watched as the shelf started to spin around in the wall. It didn’t open a secret passage, but it did reveal something else.

The bookshelf turned around completely, revealing the back of the shelf. A single hook was screwed into the back, and a key dangled from it on a chain.

Marley and Nick glanced at each other, and shared a smile.

“Oh, yeah!” Marley crowed, jumping down from the desk. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”

Nick took the key, and turned to her. “Wanna bet this opens the door upstairs?” He asked rhetorically. They both knew it would.

Marley grinned, and nodded. The two of them headed out of the lab, key in hand, and retraced their steps back to the dark pit and the ladder leading up to the next room.