999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors Part #22

Part 22: Torture room

They passed through the opened door and headed to the next room.

[Music: Who is Zero?]

The words had sprung unbidden to his lips, but it was clear why. Junpei shivered.

Lotus and Seven reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped short, terrified.

This room is really creepy...

I think we oughta get the hell out of here, now.

He jogged up the stairs on the opposite side of the room and shook the door on the wall next to the catwalk.

It didn't open, and he muttered to himself.

It's locked, isn't it?

Yup. Dunno why I thought this one'd be any different.

Junpei looked around the room again.

In the center of it was a chair. The back of it was covered with electrodes connected to a nest of wires.

Beneath it was a strange glass panel. Junpei wasn't sure what it was for, but it made him uncomfortable.

Whatever might have been beyond the glass, Junpei couldn't tell... It was too dark.

Junpei turned to look at the right side of the room. There was a table covered with a piece of cloth. Parts of the cloth were stained with something that looked suspiciously like blood.

On top of the table were a number of metal instruments. Junpei didn't know what they were for, and he had a feeling he didn't want to find out.

His mind began to imagine what could have taken place in that dark, cold room. The things he imagined were not pleasant.

Junpei shook his head in an attempt to clear it, and tried to focus on something else.

Anyway, we don't want to stay here any longer than we got to.

C'mon!

...I'm sure you'll forgive me if I don't make this short ~2 minutes scene its own micro update.

[Music: Senary Game]

This room... it kinda makes me wonder if Cradle were performing their own version of the Milgram Experiment. The chair in the middle with the wires seems like it would fit anyway.

Speaking of the wires, they're worth looking at. Y'know, just in case.

This looks like something from a prison movie.

They come all the way down from the ceiling. Just trying to look up that high's makin' my neck hurt.

There's not really much in the room, which begs the question of what we're meant to be doing here. I reckon these stairs will play a vital role in our daring escape!

What, you wanna go back, Junpei?

I wish solving this puzzle were that easy...

Though, it turns out they just make Seven think we want to leave so that was a waste of time. We can look up there, sort of, though.

(I don't think there's going to be a puzzle up there. At least, I hope not. We can't even reach them...)

The room is rather minimalistic, in a sense. We've already done a full loop of the whole room (...more or less; there's one area with nothing interesting in it for the time being), so let's take a look at that thing near the chair.

Maybe something'll happen if we turn them? Hah!

...Shoot. They're all rusted. I guess turning them doesn't really do anything.

Let's push some of them. (Down you go!)

As an odd little detail, whichever button here lights up is the one you click on.

So if I press it again... (Back you come!) I guess these buttons switch something on or off when you push them.

Well, we have no idea what that could be or if C alone did anything. It could be just the one button we need, it could be all 6 or it could be any combination between. There's no way of knowing right now, so let's mess with the red lever instead.

No idea. I mean, red looks more dangerous, but other than that...

(The bottom of this one looks like it's covered in rust. I don't think it'll move at all.)

Well, I guess I might as well try. Let's give it a shot... (Nope, no dice. This thing isn't going anywhere.)

Sure pal, you give it a shot. Let's see just how much more of a man you are...

Urg! Hrrrrgh!

Hey! You're going to break it!

*Pant* *Pant* Man, that thing ain't goin' anywhere...

(Well, if Seven can't move it, then we might as well give up on that lever.)

That lever, sure. There's still the yellow one!

...Which we're not going to deal with right now. We have some other stuff to do first.

Well, we can't open these manacles without a key.

Hm... There's some sorta weird symbol on 'em.

What kind of symbol?

Looks like we know what key we'll be getting later, huh?

Ah well, for the time being we can examine the glass on the floor from here.

Well, you can tell just by standing on it that the glass's pretty damn thick.

Don't you think it's a little strange that only this part is glass?

That chair looks pretty heavy all by itself... That glass could be dangerous.

(We'd be in some serious trouble if that glass broke... I probably shouldn't walk on it.)

I'm sure it's fine. I doubt there'd be glass here if it would shatter that easily. I'm sure even Seven could walk on it with no worries.

Speaking of worries, we can examine the cables from here too.

Maybe they're for adjusting the voltage, you know? If you power just one cable, then the voltage is low. You turn on more cables if you want more voltage.

If you pump electricity through all 10 cables, that'd probably be enough to electrocute someone.

(Let's try not to do that anymore, okay?)

...Junpei, you brought it up. Why do that if you don't want to think about it?

But, fine. Let's head left from here to look at the one thing we skipped over before. No real reason.

This looks like it's supposed to split a pipe or something, you know? But this one just connects a pair of pipes. You could've done the same thing with more pipe. It doesn't really seem like they need it here... I wonder if there's a reason for it.

What are Earth is hitting that pipe supposed to accomplish?

I'm trying to fiind out if it's hollow.

What did you find out?

Well, I guess this has been a bust. The only remaining thing to do is look inside it. Should be easy enough, since there's nothing else here.

You aren't gonna be able to get that off. It's bolted on there pretty good. Maybe there's something around here we can use to get that thing off'a there.

Can you see anything in there? If you can't see anything, I don't really think we need to bother with trying to open it.

It's too dark to see anything...

There's something shiny in there?

Yeah. Well, maybe. We oughta check, though. It would be pretty bad if we missed something important. Maybe we can find something to take that cover off with.

Bah, I guess there's only one thing left for us to really try before we have to focus a little.

Let's just try the exit again!

If it was that easy, we wouldn't be having this tough of a time.

Well, it isn't, so why don't we have our tough time of it, and figure out a way to open the door?

So... we need to find some hint to getting out of here. The giant section of the floor made of glass might be a good place to start.

Well, I thought maybe if I got down here, I could see through the glass... It's not working, though.

You don't think it's just a large sheet of glass they put into an indentation?

You're not making sense, Junpei. What's your point?

Well, I'm not sure, but... Don't you think there's something under the glass?

Maybe the glass is one-way... Like they have in a police station, you know? Or maybe it's just covered with something that makes it opaque. (...Nah, doesn't matter how close I get, I still can't see anything.)

(Echoes when I knock on it though... I wonder if it's hollow?)

like that, kid.

C'mon, that's why I want to take a good look at it. Think about all the other rooms we've gone though. You never know where you might find a puzzle, you know? We gotta be suspicious of everything.

What? Why on Earth are you putting your ear on the floor? It's filthy.

That's everything we can do, so let's head back to that console and try that yellow lever now.

Of course they would. All they can do is turn something on or off. What's important is what they turn on or off.

Don't say the floor is going to suddenly open up...

(I can see some oil or something down there at the base of the lever. Yeah, feels like it's got some movement to it. I should be able to pull this one.)

All right, let's pull the lever.

...Huh, that's an odd green light.

What the hell?! What's going on!?

Will you calm down? It's just water going somewhere.

It sounds like it's underneath us. That means the floor... Oh!

Junpei, look!

This has the benefit of changing a few pieces of dialogue around the room now. If we just examine the floor itself...

There's a shark under there?!

You die on the chair, you get dumped into the water and he cleans up the mess. Convenient.

And of course, we can look at the shark too.

It's dead... Looks like the letters are "E", "D", "B", and "F". Whatever these are for has to be in this room somewhere.

The other place we can check out the water from is the view of the chair itself.

If it opens up, do you think the chair would drop into it?

Well, that could be dangerous. Water conducts electricity, you know.

H-Hey, don't talk about stuff like that...

(There's water moving around under the glass. Now that I can see through it, I'm even more scared about the glass breaking...)

Eh, there's nothing scary about this room. So let's go look at a table full of dangerous tools that could be used to torture people!

Let's see... We've got an adze and hammer... A pair of forceps... ...And these other things are too old and broken. I have no idea what they are. Hey... Doesn't this wrench look way too new to be here with all this other stuff?

Yes, it does... I didn't notice it before you mentioned it, but it's not rusty at all.

Huh, I wonder what that's about. Maybe we can find a use for it, then.

Considering where we found it, I have to wonder how it was used.

Knock it off. I don't wanna think about that.

You're unexpectedly sensitive.

C'mon, let's not talk about stuff that doesn't matter, okay? We need to find somewhere where we can use this thing.

...Christ, Lotus. Why are you laughing about how we had the misfortune to see the 9th Man blow up right in front of us and then accidentally stumbling across Snake's corpse? That's pretty awful.

On the plus side, I think we can get in that giant pipe now.

Didn't we find a wrench, Junpei? You think maybe you could take the bolts off with it?

Might help if I remember to equip it though, huh?

(The cover's bolted on there pretty good. Should be able to get those bolts off with this wrench we just found, though.)

Sweet! It's open!

Well, you can't see in, but I think there's enough room to stick your arm in.

(Okay, I admit, that scares me a little, but we need to see if there's anything useful in there.)

Seriously, Junpei. Grow a pair, again, and just reach in there. What's the worst that could happen?

(All right, here we go. Arm into the hole... Hey, I think I can feel something...)

(It's small, cold, and hard... Doesn't feel like there's anything else in here.)

(All right, let's see what this thing is.)

Well, this was nice and easy to find. It's a refreshing change from the past few rooms at least.

We should be able to open the other door with this.

Yeah, but we gotta get outta this room before we can do that.

And we're probably gonna need the Sun key to do that.

But none of the doors in this room have keyholes. I bet we gotta use it on something that's not a door.

Hm, I wonder. We saw Sun symbols on the chair apparently. I guess that's a good place to check.

More specifically, the monitor over on the right hand side seems like it could be worth our time.

[This device will conduct the experiment. Once the experiment has been completed, the door will unlock. First, adjust the switches to match the blocks in the sample above.]

Huh. I dunno what this thing is, but we gotta figure out this puzzle.

It's right next to a torture chair. Whatever it is, I don't think it's good.

Anyway... We just adjust the switches to match the blocks up on top, right?

You adjust the switches shown at the 4 corners of the screen, then press the check button. Junpei, we don't know what this thing does. You can always come back to it later. There are...lots of other things you could do...

Actually, that's just it. I'm pretty sure we've exhausted all the possible alternatives at this point.

And holy shit, this looks fucking complicated as all hell.

screen. So I think you gotta figure out which buttons you have to press in order to get this screen to match the diagram.

Yeah, but it's hard to figure out what button does what...

When all of them are off, there aren't any blocks, right? Then you can see how many each switch adds.

Oh yeah... I get it...

It's good that Junpei gets it, I suppose. But I don't.

When you turn each switch on, the numbers of blocks goes up. Each switch adds a different number of blocks. But if you think about it, all you've gotta do is a couple addition problems. If you turn a single switch on, and count its blocks, and do that for every switch... It's super-easy.

Right, let's try that...

I think I see the answer.

Even if you don't get this one, though, it's easy to brute force since there's only four switches so you can just try all sorts of combinations til it matches. There's no penalty for being wrong, either.

[To complete the experiment, data must be collected from subject. Once preparation is finished, place subject in chair.]

Whoa, whoa, I thought we solved the puzzle already. What does it mean by "preparation?"

I don't know... I've got a bad feeling about this.

I think this means one of us has gotta sit in the chair.

Well, Seven's never going to fit in that thing. It's either you or me, Junpei. Collecting data... I wonder if it's going to run electricity through the subject...

There's a human head on the screen.

This really doesn't sound safe.

A-Anyway, we've still got to "prepare".

We can talk about this after we've figured out what it means by "preparation", all right?

Well, it wants us to prepare, so maybe we oughta ask it what we need to do.

If it's missing something then the easiest way to find out is to just try it to see what we're missing!

[Check connection and power source.]

External hardware? That must mean the chair... After all, there's all these cables running between them.

I don't see a power source for the chair, though. You think maybe it's controlled from somewhere else?

It looks like the only controls are in this room.

Judging from the lack of options, there's only one thing to try. And it involves that shark...

Or, at least the code written on the shark.

I guess the puzzle here was that the power had to be sent in a specific way.

That was easy enough, let's go back and see what we have to do for the next puzzle.

[The subject has not been properly placed. Unlock the restraining device and re-seat subject.]

Well, the restraining device has to be the chair.

Well then, I guess we just need to unlock the chair.

That's easy too, since we have the Sun key now!

This Sun key should fit into the keyhole on these manacles. (All right Sun key, in you go. Aaaaand... Yes!) Great, they're open. I don't think we're gonna need the Sun key again in here, though. Just seems unlikely. (All right, Sun key, you've done your job. Into my pocket with you!)

Now with that done, let's see if the machine wants us to do anything else or if we can just get on with it.

Well, like we thought, it's not going to work unless someone sits in it.

How ironic that this would be the situation in which this slim, beautiful body is useful.

Lotus... Are you sure? I can sit in it, and you can solve--

Junpei's right. If we screw it up...

Seven couldn't bring himself to finish the thought. His eyes fell to the floor. Junpei followed them.

I'll be fine. Even if I fall in, the shark is already dead.

But--!

No one likes an indecisive man, Junpei. I can still give you advice from the chair too, you know. I just don't want to stay in this room any longer than we have to... Go over to that screen and let's get this over with.

[Music: Silence]