TRAPPED

Chapter Sixteen: The Others pt. 4

Both Penny and June open their eyes and their gazes meet for a moment. Penny can feel blood starting to rush to her face.

"Crap, sorry. Did I hurt you?" June asks, abruptly getting off of Penny.

Penny lies there for a few more seconds before she gets up and shakes her head. Her heart is pounding rather quickly. What just happened?

"You guys okay?" Sam asks, now sitting up as well.

June looks back at him and nods. She stands up and holds her hand out for Penny.

"I-I'm fine," Penny says, getting up herself.

"Okay, so that obviously didn't work," Sam states.

"I think Penny should be the one to grab it. She's lighter than me," June suggests.

They both look at Penny.

"S-sure," she answers.

The stutter was coming out again. She clenches her fists and digs her nails into her palms, trying to make it go away. Sam and June get into position, as does Penny. She places her foot on their hands and uses their shoulders to lift herself up. She swiftly yanks the paper off of the ceiling and stumbles down before she loses balance and falls.

"Okay," Penny exhales.

She unfolds the paper to find a series of sentences in the form of a poem. She reads it out loud.

"A breeze dances,
Tall and Straight trees form,
Tangled fruits and leaves,
I am but the wind,
Cold and strong and free." She reads.

All three of them look at each other in confusion.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" June asks.

"Well, it's obviously a poem. Maybe it has a hidden message we're missing."

"What part of that 'poem' is in any way helpful to getting out of here?" June asks, crossing her arms.

"Something might be a metaphor," Sam says.

He grabs the paper from Penny and examines it.

"Maybe the amount of words in each line makes up the code," Penny suggests.

"But the code is 6 numbers. This is only 5 lines," Sam says.

"There could be a zero in there," June comments.

Sam shrugs.

"Worth a shot."

He walks over to the door and enters in the first attempt at the code.

"354550," he types into the keypad.

It's followed by two beeps and a flash of red light. That wasn't it.

"Maybe the zero is at the start," Penny says.

Sam goes back to entering the code.

"035455," he enters.

Again, two beeps and red flashing.

"Wrong again," He mutters.

All three of them get back to thinking. Sam repeatedly reads each line of the poem carefully, hoping to find some sort of metaphor, purposeful grammar error, or a hidden important word. June suddenly snatches the paper away from his grip. She holds it out in front of her as far away from her face as possible.

"Lewis doesn't seem like the type to be artsy and make the code have something to do with a metaphor. He's much more straightforward than that," June states.

"We need to look at it from a different perspective," She mutters, narrowing her eyes.

Penny peeks at the paper from over her shoulder and tries to do the same.