[ON HOLD]
Carmen relished everyone's misfortune; better yet, she was the author of it.
After a childhood filled with hardships, conning people as a faux tarot card reader was the easy way out, and Carmen takes it. Being the bootstrapper that she is...
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A cacophony of knocks replenished the theatre, the phantasm of an echo ringing in their ears. Irrespective of narrowing the correct logo down, neither member was prepared to scan every centimetre of the spikes.
Hence, the knocks that emanated resembled the footsteps of men and women, horses trotting on the battlefield and the ever-racing bullet in Carmen's chest.
As Carmen absorbed the truth, relief suffused her heart. The guilt she had been carrying like a heavy burden dissipated slowly, seeping into the walls around her. Emily had lived, she was completely fine. Carmen no longer played the role of a Grim Reaper's subjugate. She could unfetter Emily from the walls that confined her and free the singular bullet that lingered.
Carmen surveyed the only flaw in their plan; Adara. Her crouched position didn't allow for much coverage, posing the question of how they could verify the presence of the room. The plan was simple - to knock through every inch of the four walls until they felt something hollow on the other side. Once they did, they could find the right logo within the hollow space. And there was the issue; Adara simply couldn't. They couldn't put her at risk of the omnipresent camera.
Carmen was determined to find the secret room. Her intuition was always accurate, and she believed that the room could be accessed through the wall she was responsible for on the right side. Throughout her dream, she heard noises from the right side. She was almost certain.
Her dry knuckles began to hurt with the air conditioning possibly aggravating dead skin. Her wrist followed a strict pattern as all her knocks were short. She switched from one square inch to another, her ear floating closely with the ridges on the wall. Every time her ear felt the presence of a solid wall, her patience dwindled.
The mismatched beats on the wall continued and so did the silence.
Beyond Carmen's periphery, the blinking red light lingered on.
Amidst the misty clouds that formed in Carmen's mind, there was a strong sense of hope. Her heart pounded every time she knocked on the wall and although her patience was waning, her hope remained intact.
Her feet moved unconsciously. She was aware of her movement but only through her sub-conscience. The uniform movements, attributed to the pattern she had formed, had taken her further away from the visible door.
She knocked.
It felt desolate. She knocked once again, covering the area around what she found and they all resonated in silence. Emptiness. The hollowness of the wall lifted her spirits. She knocked again, hoping for Emily to respond from the other side.
Carmen looked at the others as they searched around helplessly. Adara no longer had to crouch, Carmen had narrowed it down to a small piece of the wall. All they had to do was rely on Rylen for him to find the button. Escape didn't seem far away anymore.
