Crossover Escape: Gotta be more than Lucky to survive

1.31 Silence is survival

Luca assumed that the thing had triggered the traps as it passed through. Thus its arrival was mixed blessings since they could take advantage of the traps having already been triggered to pass through. Luca would have quite liked to maintain that advantage the rest of the way but as they approached the arch to the next room he watched as the last trap in the corridor a crossways of spears slowly retracted and the step that was its trigger returned to being flush with the floor.

[Tails: Figured it couldn’t be that easy.] Tails huffed as Luca lumped over the tile and stopped at the door. He spotted the flicker on the first of the back butterflies and swore viciously. Ghost was too far back but if they dodged the damn thing would be in front which hampered their progress. Ghost seemed to reach the same conclusion and rather than jumping at the end he put on a further burst of speed and stamped solidly on the pressure stone. Luca reached out and yanked Ghost forward and lost his balance, so they fell backwards where Holly and tails grabbed them and yanked so they all tumbled into the room.

Once they passed the threshold a door started to slide down into the archway. At the same time the flicker appeared next to the second rear butterfly. Luca could only assume that the thing had trouble decelerating or changing direction otherwise with its speed it should have caught them. Luca had dismissed the idea of the traps hurting the thing as soon as he’d seen the corridors it had come through. If the traps before had not damaged it then the ones after would be useless.

Everyone lay panting for several minute in the room after the door shut and something slammed solidly into the other side. With a deep breath Luca climbed to his feet. He could run quite a distance but Olympic sprinter he was not. As Luca looked around the room he wanted to start swearing again for a different reason. He’d hoped not to encounter one of these rooms.

[Lucky: Silent coms only.] Luca typed out quickly before anyone else had the chance to get up and potentially speak. Luca looked from one patters of pictographs to another and wished the matter was as simple as a headache. They had studied what samples they’d had of the pictography before they’d left but had gotten no closer to understanding any part of it by the time they’d left.

The only thing Luca knew about the room was that when the academics team had entered the room one of the linguists speaking had triggered some sort of trap. Since they had been in the room for several moment and nothing had happened Luca felt satisfied that silence was a good choice for the time being.

[Rӓv: Well this sucks, I was hoping we wouldn’t encounter one of these rooms.]

[Tails: Weren’t we all.] Luca was relieved that everyone followed along. No one speaking but instead using the coms text function. As the team rose to their feet and looked around resigned expressions settled on everyone’s faces. Another bang sounded from the door they had based through, and Luca flinched as it seemed to rattle the room. He didn’t know what the bigger concern should be the potential that thing would break the door or that the noise from its attempt would trigger the room.

When the banging continued but the room remained inert Luca slowly released the breathed he’d been holding. He was attempting to encourage the thrill and adventure of being in this place but fighting an unknown entity that moved that fast without a solid plan to deal with its movement was not an adventure just a good way to get dead.

Seeing that the door seemed to be holding Luca turned his attention back to the pictography on the wall. Luca scanned each one and concluded that they were in fact all different. What interested Luca though was the three symbols on the door to the next corridor. Walking up to it Luca stared hard at the symbol on the far left. It was a silvery blue and Luca had glimpsed it in the video, but it hadn’t been clear. But now, right in front of it, Luca would have sworn in a court of law that it was a fingerprint.

Except on the basis that this place was really old what would an ancient civilisation no about fingerprints. Although that might be judgmental given the structure, he was standing in. if they could develop this sort of intricate structure. Fill it with complicated traps and puzzles. Then have it whether an unspecified but no doubt extensive period of time knowing fingerprints would be trivial by comparison.

Luca’s head wavered from side to side as considered the merits of touching. He didn’t want to risk skin to skin contact. Still it looked to much like a touch point for him to not attempt it to see if it did something helpful.

[Lucky: Rӓv your gloves work with touch screens, is there any way that something that works with skin contact won’t work with your gloves?]

[Rӓv: No.] Luca’s lips twitched at the sing word response. Even without voice Luca could hear the, obviously, overlaying the word just fine. With a n attitude of trying it to see since they didn’t really have a better option then wildly guessing or trying to break the door Luca stretched out a hand and placed one finger over the print.

For a second nothing happened a Luca thought they were back to trying to figure this out the hard way. Then a soft click sounded, and a sweet voice resounded around the room.

“Who am I?”

[Rӓv: Swedish?] Luca had almost reversed his opinion about the creation of the box being a more modern thing until Rӓv spoke. While translating voice was not difficult for the current technology it would still have multiple voices speaking in each of the languages. Not one voice that each person heard in a different language.

[Lucky: I heard English.]

[Ghost: Russian.]

[Holly: Japanese.]

[Tails: So we all heard ‘Who am I’ in our native tongues?] Luca looked at the collective nods and was glad that someone had thought to check that what everyone had heard all had the same meaning. The only thing that worried Luca was because they still had background music playing on the coms they might miss something if there were more audio cues. Luca looked next to each of the bits of writing on the walls and spotted the same shimmery fingerprint.

[Lucky: Rӓv stop the music, if we assume that what is on the door is the final question than the rest of these things must be clues. We don’t want to miss any nuances.] Since there was a system of some sort that allowed for translation into everyone’s native tongue Luca could guarantee that there would be nuances.

[Rӓv: Good point. We can ignore strange whispers for the time being.]

[Holly: so should everyone take a wall and we play the ah ‘clues’ one by one.] Luca quickly shook his head at that message. While Luca hadn’t suffered any side effects as yet, he didn’t want to risk more than one person being affected if possible.

[Lucky: I’ll  touch them one by one; you guys take notes and try to figure this out.] Holly nodded amiably but Luca got narrow eyed looks from the Ghost and Rӓv as they both realised why I had made that decision.

Luca smiled at them and then mouthed ‘commanders’ prerogative’. Luca was of the firm opinion that if it wasn’t a risk, he was prepared to take himself he had no right asking anyone else to take it. The disgusted look that Rӓv gave him made it perfectly clear how little she liked that prerogative. Still she didn’t argue at the moment no doubt Luca would hear about it later.

[Lucky: Ghost can you and Tails see if you can find a way to keep the rear door from opening for as long as possible?] as the banging on the door in question was still on going there was no need to explain why. Whatever delays Luca could heap on the thing behind them he wanted to lay out in triplicate if he could manage it.