ESCAPE THIS PODCAST Game Master’s Notes

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1

Escape your friends

Notes

This is Part 5 of a 10-part room series, so for best results, play through the first 4 rooms before tackling this one. That said, this one is probably one of the easiest to turn into a standalone room if that’s what you want. Thanks to Ryan McDougall, Jeff Payne, Donald Adamek, Jemma Lanyon, Leilahni Kay, and Bethany D, our Patreon donors whose names feature in this room! Whew, that’s a lot for one episode. You’re all super awesome.

Introduction

It is so late. Blake’s going to be so upset, you can’t help thinking. But you don’t know if that’s true. Your relationship isn’t what you thought it was, so who knows? You’re still sitting in the car in the parking lot outside LC Electronics. The kid working, Colin, has closed up and left for the night, but he watched your car very carefully as he went. You suppose you’re still being watched by someone right now. But you also have someone telling you they’re trying to help… who? One face immediately comes to mind. Ryan. He’s the most helpful person you know. You’ve been friends for years. In fact, he’s the officiant at your wedding tomorrow. And of course, he’s the Captain of your local police precinct. Nothing says ‘trust’ like Ryan. Of course, you can’t dance around the fact that if Blake is part of this big conspiracy to record every moment of your life, Ryan very well could be, too. But you have a good feeling about him. Someone out there is definitely helping you. That person exists. They might as well be Ryan. And what a stroke of luck – you happen to know that he switched shifts this weekend to fit in your wedding, so he’s on the red-eye schedule tonight. You start the car and drive to the police station. If anyone tries to stop you, or if you at any point get a bad feeling about Ryan, you can just say you came because you’ve lost your wallet. You step into the precinct and immediately feel claustrophobic. There are no good- sized windows in here, and everything is just so… crime-y. It looks – and you now realise you shouldn’t at all be surprised by this – exactly like a police station on a TV show. The door you’ve entered is in the middle of the south wall, and all the space to your left heading to the west corner is taken up by a holding cell for people who have just been arrested. And over to your right in the south-east corner is the enormous evidence locker, a bunch of storage shelves cordoned off by a floor-to-ceiling chain fence. See? Super crime-y. In fact, on the wall immediately to the right of the front door, you see a Most Wanted Criminals list pinned up. There’s a door in the north- east corner of the room that leads to an interrogation room, and beside it, you see a large corkboard with several photos and strands of red string pinned to it. In the north-west is Ryan’s desk – the Captain’s desk. Against the west wall is a flatbed

2 trolley covered in CPR training dummies. And scattered over the rest of the floor are the regular policemen’s work desks. “What are you doing here?” a voice comes from behind you. You jump. It’s Ryan! But he’s come from outside… well, maybe he was just in the bathroom or something. He looks exhausted. “What’s the matter?” he asks. “You look freaked.” You wanted to be subtle. Cautious. But you can’t help it: one look into his concerned, friendly eyes, and you spill everything. The escape room, the cameras, the cake, the secret room in the LC store… “You’re helping me, aren’t you?” you say. Ryan holds his arms open for a hug. “Of course.” You accept his embrace and feel immediately comforted. He gives you a reassuring squeeze. And then… a not-so-reassuring shove backwards, into the empty holding cell. “Sorry,” he says, locking the cell, and then the front door. “You’re clearly going through some severe cold feet about tomorrow. People are spying on you? I’m calling Blake. You need a good night’s sleep to get over this.” You yell your objection, but he raises a hand to silence you, and he actually looks kind of irritated. “Just shut up, alright? I can’t do this right now. I’m… I’m about to crack the biggest case of my career. Do you know what that means? It means I can finally knock one of the names off the MW list! Only a handful of Captains ever get to do that! So I cannot deal with your relationship drama right now.” He then slides his keys under the front door, trapping you both inside. Your heart falls into your stomach. He’s in on it. Somehow this one’s the biggest betrayal yet. He goes to sit at his desk, sighing to himself, getting back to work which you don’t even know is actually real. And you’re stuck… unless there are other keys lying around. Other police officers must have their own sets, right? There must be a way to find them without Ryan noticing.

Observable items

While trapped in holding cell: Bench: The bench is largely uninteresting, good only for sitting, lying, or maybe standing. You bend over to look at the underside, and see that the whole thing must be older than it looks. There’s one piece of metal under here that’s supposed to fasten the top to one of the legs, but instead it’s hanging loosely, looking like it could fall off at any second. You poke it, and yep, it falls to the floor with a clunk. It’s about as long as your hand, thin but blunt at the ends, and rather heavy. Captain McDougall/Captain’s desk: Ryan’s not making eye contact with you, but you can tell from his posture that he’s on alert. If you somehow manage to get out of 3 this cell, you can bet he’ll be on you in a second. But for now, he’s got his phone out and is tapping away at it. Probably texting Blake to come and pick you up. You can’t see much of Ryan’s desk from where you are. There’s a lot of paperwork on it. There is, immediately to the side of the desk, a tall, thin shelf that reaches just above his head. Probably meant to be for paperwork too, but right now, all that sits on it is a small bag. It isn’t transparent so you can’t see its contents, but it does look like it’s bulging at the seams. It looks full enough to be stretching the structural integrity of the bag. Holding cell: The cell is mostly empty, just a flat barred-off corner with a metal bench to sit on. There is one thing on the floor: a discarded jumper, which must’ve been left here by some previous incarceree. As you look around, you notice how cold it is. You look up and see there’s a vent for the air conditioner right above your head, blasting icy air at you. Jumper: You pick up the jumper and almost drop it again. Ow! Why is it pointy? You examine it closely and realise, wow, this thing must have been used in a serious burglary or something, because all through it are stuck little shards of glass. Some too small to see, some large enough that they could be pocket knives. As a result, much of the jumper is fraying, creating long, woollen threads at the edges. Vents: You stand up on the bench to get a better look at the vent. As you do, the air blasting at you stops. You frown, wondering if it just spontaneously turned off, when you realise you can still feel it. Sort of. It kind of feels like it’s sucking away from you rather than blowing on you. You think you can hear where the air’s going. You look around, following the sound… and you look over towards Ryan. The little bag on his shelf is rustling. There’s another vent opening right above that shelf, and it’s clearly got the air con going to it now. You think you get it. There are multiple vents throughout the office, and the air is on a cycle that moves it around from one place to another. You wait a few minutes, and sure enough, the air comes back and hits you again. Interesting system. It must be quite old and rickety, because you can hear something rattling around in there. Work desks: You can’t see much of what’s on the desks from here… except for one thing of interest. A ring of keys. Right on the nearest desk. You stretch out for it, but it’s out of reach by a couple of arms’ lengths. Even if you could get it, what would Ryan do if you just let yourself out?

After getting out of holding cell: Captain McDougall: Tentatively you step towards Ryan. He’s out cold – well, sleeping, anyway. He’s making little mouth-snores. You give him a quick, polite pat- down for any spare keys, and when you see a thin chain around his neck you think you’ve found something. But it’s just a medical alert necklace about his allergy to paracetamol and how it gives him a bad rash. Captain’s desk: You make sure not to get too close to the knock-out powder overflowing on the desk, and start poking around at the clean areas. Everything you find is very dry and police report-y, full of jargon that makes your eyes glaze over. There is one piece of paper that catches your eye, though: it’s still about crime stuff, but it’s written a lot more personally. [Show Captain’s memo.] 4

CPR dummies: The dummies have creepy, open-mouthed stares and abs that are so defined that they’re practically body shaming real people. The texture of their skin is unnervingly realistic; you think they’re made of high quality latex or something similar. Door: No space goes to waste in a police precinct, not even the back of a door. It’s covered in hooks upon which hang yellow evidence markers. [Show door image.] When you try the doorknob, it’s firmly locked, needing a key to open. Evidence locker: As you get close to the chain door of the evidence locker, you become aware of the hairs on your arms standing up on end. There’s a faint hum in the air. And as you’re about to touch the door handle, you spot not only a number pad lock, but a big warning sign. [Show evidence locker image.] Interrogation room: The door to the interrogation room is clearly labelled. It also has a piece of paper taped to it with something like a motivational slogan on it: When you’re in too deep, only the start and finish matter. If that’s about interrogation, it sounds a bit ominous, but okay. You go to open the door, but find it’s locked with a 6-letter combination lock. Mirror: It’s big and shiny and looks like it’s made of extremely special, tough glass. Must be expensive. Most Wanted list: You take a look at the criminals on the Most Wanted list, reading the details of the five sickest villains at large the world has ever seen… and, well, it’s a little underwhelming. I mean, all crime is bad, but you thought the most wanted would be really scary-sounding stuff. There aren’t any serial killers on here. Maybe that’s good. Maybe that means all the serial killers have been found. [Show MW list image.] Red string boards: The first thing you realise is there isn’t just one board here; there are three, one in front of the other. And they’re all double-sided. And they are covered with pins and papers, all with words that are so disjointed it looks like a very confusing mind map. The red string is hanging loosely off to the side; whoever’s working on these crimes hasn’t figured out the connections yet. [Show Red String image.] Work desks: Sadly the desk you got the keys from is otherwise uninteresting. As are almost all the other desks. There is one, however, with a top drawer that is mysteriously locked, with a little letter keypad to unlock it. Looks like it can take anywhere from 1-10 letters. And on top of that desk, you find a diary. [Show diary.]

Actions

Captain McDougall – rubbing his skin with a small amount of mystery powder: You take one of the pens off his desk and use it to spoon the tiniest, tiniest amount of the powder out of the bag and onto his wrist. If this goes wrong, hey, maybe there’s an upside to your entire life being recorded for the world: whoever’s in charge won’t want their actors getting hurt. You use the pen to rub the powder into his skin, and after one minute, you see no signs of a rash. Phew.

5

CPR dummies – rubbing a dummy’s skin with a small amount of mystery powder: Making sure to avoid contact with your own skin, you carry the bag of powder over to the CPR dummies, pick your favourite one, and pour the tiniest bit of powder onto its chiselled chest. You use some object or another in your possession (the holding cell key, maybe?) to rub it in, and soon enough, an angry, bright red ring appears on the skin-coloured latex. Those fake pecs aren’t so enviable anymore. Evidence locker – unlocking it with code 4-1-2-5-6-14-12-9 as found on door: You plug in the numbers, and the humming comes to an abrupt end. The hairs on your arms settle. You dare to touch the handle, and zero volts shoot through you. Relieved, you step inside the cage to peruse the evidence. It’s a curious collection, so much so that you find yourself wondering if any of it is real, or if this is all part of the elaborate set design of your… whatever it is. Like, you see a burlap sack with a dollar sign on it, and a neatly folded stack of jet black burglars’ outfits next to it. It’s cartoonish. On the shelf below that you see a book titled Two-way Mirrors and Me: A Sergeant’s Reflections. You shake your head and move on… ah. Right on the top shelf, there’s something that looks real. It’s a bag of transparent plastic, which is full to the brim with a mysterious white powder. You don’t know what it is, but it looks nothing like the knock-out powder. Evidence locker – skimming book on two-way mirrors: You didn’t think there’d be a whole book’s worth of information about two-way mirrors, but somehow the Sergeant who wrote this book found a way. You skim the chapter titles and flip through pages for anything enlightening. Most of it is anecdotes that really don’t help you at this point in time, but there is one bit of helpful information: apparently two- way mirrors work when there is a significant light disparity between the two sides of the glass. If one side is quite dark and the other light, a person on the dark side will be able to see into the light side, whereas someone on the light side will see only their reflection. Holding cell – after lassoing keys, unlocking cell door while Captain McDougall is still alert: You start testing keys on the lock, and after a while you find that one of them fits! The only problem is, when you try to twist it open, it makes a rather pronounced metallic squeal. Ryan instantly stirs. “What are you doing in there?” he demands, putting on his police voice rather than his kind voice. You hastily stash the keys in your pocket. Right. He’s not just going to let you walk out of here. Better be careful so he doesn’t confiscate these off you. Holding cell – after lassoing keys, unlocking cell door after knocking out Captain McDougall: Ryan isn’t moving a muscle. Maybe you should check on him when you get the chance. But first… you go through the keys one by one until you find one that fits the lock. The holding cell door swings open loudly, and you’re free! You look immediately at the front door – but already you can tell that none of the keys in your set match the style of that door’s lock. Damn. This employee must have taken their most important keys home with them. Well, hopefully someone else in the precinct left theirs behind, because you definitely need it. Interrogation room – using the code BEAGLE on the lock: The lock flashes green and gives a welcoming beep, and the door opens! You enter the interrogation room. The first thing you notice is that it’s clinically bright, the walls lined with naked light bulbs. The next is that it’s extremely bland. There’s a big metal table with nothing

6 on it, a chair on either side of that, neither of which have anything interesting about them, and a mirror that covers the entire south wall. Interrogation room – examining table and chairs: The chairs do exactly what you expect them to do. The table, on the other hand, strikes you as a bit off. Isn’t there supposed to be a bar thing to attach a perp’s handcuffs to? Or is that just on TV? It’s a very smooth table… you lay a hand on it, and to your surprise, you feel a slight drop. Like just the weight of your arm was enough to sink the top of the table downwards a fraction. Interrogation room – looking for light switch: Okay, so you want to turn off the lights. However, you don’t find a light switch inside the room. You look outside into the main part of the precinct, and nope, no switch there either. Well, that’s annoying. Maybe the forced brightness is to make the criminals feel more exposed and powerless. Interrogation room – using burglar outfits from evidence locker to cover up all light: You rush back out to the evidence locker and snatch up the burglar clothes. Hopefully you’re not irreparably tampering with vital clues here. You take them back into the interrogation room and start covering up the light bulbs. It works extremely well; these clothes were truly built for skulking around unseen in the darkness. Pretty soon the room is almost black. And that being the case, you realise you can now see quite clearly through what was previously a mirror. There’s another room back there. It’s not very big, and the door leading into it is clearly not from the main precinct area, but it’s got something very strange set up in it. Besides two chairs in the middle of the floor, there’s a strange rectangular screen attached to the back wall. It looks electronic – there are cables coming out of it and going down into the floor. But the screen is blank. Interrogation room – leaning anything on table while looking at two-way mirror scale: As you rest it on the table, you notice something change in the hidden room. That rectangular screen – it now has some numbers on it. [Give an appropriate weight measurement for whatever players have put on the table.] You lift the thing up off the table again, and the numbers vanish. You understand now. This is a weighing scale. Interrogation room – placing bag of mystery powder on table while looking at two-way mirror scale: You take the bag and place it on the table, then look through the glass at the digital scale reader. Rounding up to account for any powder that you may have accidentally or intentionally removed, it weighs 350 grams. Jumper – unspooling thread and creating a lasso to grab keys off work desk: You tug at the thickest, loosest thread and begin unravelling the lovingly woven jumper. Then, once you feel you have enough, you fashion what you’ve pulled out into a makeshift miniature lasso. It looks good, all things considered. As quietly as you can, you toss it out towards the work desk, hoping to catch the ring of keys. After a couple of tries – you have to throw a lot harder than you first thought – you succeed! The keys make a loud clink as they hit the floor, but you pull them quickly towards you. Mirror – attempting to peer through it without altering the lighting: You get right up close to the mirror, cup your hands around your eyes to block out some of the light, and peer deep into the glass. You’re willing it to show you something other 7 than your reflection… and it works! Sort of. Only a little bit. The ‘texture’ of the mirror seems to change in the tiny circle of darkness you’ve created around your eyes, and you can now see that there’s a room on the other side. Where the door to that room is, you have no idea. Not inside the main part of the precinct. You’re pretty sure there’s something worth seeing in there. But unfortunately, your method just isn’t effective enough for you to see more than a teeny, tiny sliver. You really need to be able to look at the whole mirror. Work desks – using code MOVIEZ to unlock drawer: Refer to conclusion! Vents – attempting to open up vent in holding cell: The vent is easy enough for you to reach when standing on the bench, but the grate covering it up doesn’t budge. Ah well. It’d be too small to squeeze into, anyway. That being said, your hand can quite easily slip through the bars of the grate, and you realise you can reach whatever’s rattling around inside. What you pull out is like a miniature pass-the parcel: pieces of wrinkled paper layered over each other, all wrapped around a single small object. You unwrap it. It’s another one of those plastic shapes. How did it get – you turn your attention to the pieces of paper. One of them has handwriting on it, the very same handwriting you found on the note in your car. Sorry, it says. You went to the wrong friend. But not to worry – use this. This? The plastic shape? Or… you look at the other pieces of paper involved in the wrapping. One of them looks like a discarded police form. It’s signed by Ryan, and it’s labelled NOTICE OF EVIDENCE WITHDRAWAL. Looks like Ryan took something out of the evidence locker. [Show vent paper.] Vents – putting shards of glass in vent so they’ll fly towards the Captain’s desk: This is quite a risk, but you know, you’re in a situation right now that requires some risk. If it goes badly, you’ll apologise later. But you grab a couple of the more sturdy pieces of glass out of the jumper and stand up on the bench. You wait for the air con to stop blowing on you and start redirecting towards Ryan’s desk. Then you slide the glass shards up into the vent. Woosh! They go flying out of your fingers. So fast you’re scared of the damage they might do. You hear them crash land over the other side of the room and Ryan gives a short cry of surprise. He hasn’t been hit – but the bag of powder on his desk has. It splits open and puffs up in a little cloud, right in Ryan’s face. He looks dumbfounded… and that’s the last look on his face before his eyes roll into the back of his head and he slumps down in his chair, totally unconscious.

Conclusion

You type in the letters MOVIEZ – obviously for Moviez with a Z, the local cinema. The drawer pops open! You grab this new keyring and dash for the door. You try one key… and another… and another… there! That one opens it. You sprint out as fast as you can, hoping desperately that you don’t run into Blake in the corridor. You’re going so fast you tread on and almost slip over Ryan’s keys that he slid under the door earlier. You grab the wall to steady yourself – and find yourself touching a piece of paper taped to the wall with your name on it in big letters. You pull it down and flip it over. It’s written in your mystery friend’s handwriting.

8

Sorry. I could have warned you not to go to Ryan, but I doubt you’d have believed me. I think you needed to come here. Don’t worry, though. I have a plan to get you out. Yes, out. You just have to go to the set location tomorrow and do what I say. You can barely contain your relief. You can be free. Actually free. You don’t even know what that will be like, but it must be better than looking over your shoulder at every turn to see if your best friend will betray you. The only bad part is that you have to wait until tomorrow. Why can’t you go to the location now? You read on, and the answer to that becomes quite clear.

GM’s explanation

In the little lockup, you only have a few things available to you. The vent is especially promising, but although you can easily reach it, it’s much too small for a human to fit inside. Plus, it’s barred. Every so often you hear something clattering around against those bars, and if you climb up and reach inside, you’ll find some scrunched- up pieces of paper. At least one is written by your mystery helper. The other is a form stating that your friend the Captain has checked something out of the evidence locker: a bag of ‘knockout powder’. It’s sitting right on the Captain’s desk… but it’s fully enclosed in its little plastic bag, though it is bulging at the edges. It wouldn’t take much to pierce it. The one item inside lockup with you is a discarded jumper, which must have been part of a break-in, because it’s got little shards of glass all stuck through it, causing it to unravel in various places. The unravelled thread would be great as a lasso so you can grab the keys off the nearby desk, but your friend is watching. You’ll need to use the knockout powder. If you pay attention to the air vent, you’ll notice that the aircon is on a cycle where it blasts the cold air to a different part of the room every couple of minutes. Anything inside the vents goes rushing in a new direction. Immediately after lockup, the aircon switches to the Captain’s area. If you stick a couple of small glass shards into the vent right before it switches, you’ll send them flying down to the Captain’s desk, piercing the knockout powder bag and putting your friend right to sleep. Now you can lasso the keys and get to freedom! I mean, you’re still stuck in the precinct, so let’s get out of here now. The front door key, you quickly find, is inside another desk, this one locked. The password, according to their diary, is where they suspect the perpetrator of a current crime is hiding out. They don’t know why they think the criminal is there; they just have a gut feeling. Maybe that’s because the clues are hidden all around the precinct – including in the evidence locker and the interrogation room. You’ll need to get inside both. The door to the evidence locker is mildly electrified, and needs a numeric password to open. The warning placard for it has a little science class picture of an electrical circuit. Hopefully when you look at the door, you’ll recognise that this circuit matches the hanging evidence markers. The positive/negative bits (I’m really going strong with the scientific language here) match up to the door hinges, and the light matches the doorknob. If you follow the circuit’s path – positive to negative – on the door, you’ll hit certain numbers: 4-1-2-5-6-14-12-9. Plug in those numbers in order to deactivate the electricity and open the evidence locker.

9

Inside, you’ll find three things of importance: one, a book explaining how two-way mirrors work. More on that later. Two, some stereotypical black burglars’ clothes. More on those later, too. And three, a mystery substance that the wanted criminal has been trafficking. Elsewhere in the room you’ll have found a chart describing how to test for various substances, and for powders like this one, the big test is to see if it has a reaction when in contact with latex. What’s made with latex? The super realistic CPR dummies, of course! Check if you get a reaction… hm, well, this narrows it down, but not enough. It’s either paracetamol, washing soda, or arsenic powder. Well, arsenic powder will cause a rash (which the Captain’s evidence withdrawal form said), so you could put a small amount on your skin to test it. It won’t react, thankfully. Now you’re down to two possibilities – and as luck would have it, your friend the Captain is wearing their allergy bracelet that says paracetamol gives them a rash. So you can test the powder on them. Still no reaction! Which means you have washing powder. What a dastardly crime. We’ll use this fact later. Now we need a way into the interrogation room. Your friend the Captain also has a memo on his desk, which mentions this criminal they’re all searching for. They’re in too deep to quit, it says. Then it talks about various things related to the case, none of which seem overly important, although they do indicate who the criminal is, if you cross-reference information from the Most Wanted poster. But what you really want right now is something written on the door to the interrogation room itself – “When you’re in too deep, only the start and the finish matter.” This is telling you to only look at the first and last words on the diary page. “Her” and “dog”… you’ve been able to gain information from the diaries and work desks that this criminal used to have a beagle, which was rescued and adopted by an officer. “BEAGLE” is the password to the interrogation room. There’s not much of interest in here, just a table, two chairs, and a mirrored wall. Or should we say, a two-way mirrored wall. You can’t see through it, but there’s something on the other side. If you read the book you found in the evidence locker, you’ll learn that to see through a two-way mirror, you need to make your side darker than the other side. Annoyingly, the light switch to your side must be in the other room, which you can’t access, so you’ve just got bright light bulbs, not to mention light streaming from underneath the door. You’ll need to cover everything with very, very dark material to get this room dark enough. How about the burglars’ outfits from earlier? Cover everything up, and you’ll be able to see into the opposite room. All you see of interest is a big digital display, currently reading 000.000. It looks like a readout for a scale, but you can’t see the actual scale it’s connected to. That’s because the scale is the table in your room. Put something on the table, that display will give you its weight. You want to measure the washing powder (hopefully you didn’t scatter it around too much!) because as the Captain’s diary indicated, this will tell you its street value. Now, you have your criminal, your substance, your street value, and your currency (which is based on the currency of the reward on the Most Wanted list). These match the items on the Red String boards. Use the string to connect the correct items in order, and you’ll realise you’re spelling something out: MOVIEZ. Not MOVIES, because what kind of cinema is just called MOVIES? That’s the password to the desk, your way out, and who knows, maybe where you need to head next? 10