Riddle School: The Retelling

Chapter Six (RT1)

A large sign on the building, labeling it as 'Zone 5.1' gave me a hint as for what kind of operation was happening.

As we landed, many openings rose up from the ground and lots of people with guns came rushing out. We were all so shocked, so we weren't really panicking at first. Judging by the large faculty, vague labeling, and mysterious agent-looking fellows in all black with sunglasses and guns, I could only assume we were heading to a high-security government facility. From a spaceship. With an alien in our midst. Going off of the many movies I've seen, this could only end well.

Smiley's frantic exclamation of "What are we going to do?!" shook me out of my stupor, but before anyone could even respond, the bay doors let out a loud sound as the agents tried to bust their way in. A red circle drew itself on our side of the door as they sliced an opening, kicked down the now useless pieces of metal, and came storming in, much to everyone's horror.

It all happened so fast. They pointed their guns at all of us but before we could even surrender, we were grabbed, handcuffed, and dragged out of the ship, through the sand, and into our doom. For some weird reason, Zack was stuffed in a cage I think? I couldn't see and then we were all being taken in different directions and then—

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Black. Darkness.

Bleariness. Heavy eyelids.

Struggling to regain sense of anything.

Was that... Light?

I was... Waking up?

Where...

Where was I—

I sat up quickly, everything coming to me all at once.

Oh god, we were... Then... And now...

I looked around. Oh no. Not again.

"Well." I said to myself, astonished. "I was hoping for a new beginning." Hopefully whatever deity was listening liked to laugh at my jokes. "I just didn't think it would look like this."

Well, get up, Phil. Time to get to work on escaping, like you always do.

I stood up from my paper-thin bedding and very uncomfortable pillow, to lay witness to the fact that I was trapped. Again. This time, I was in a sorta containment cell, with a metal door and a glass wall. The toilet and sink were in clear view of the outside (gross), a completely empty vent (no toilet paper or rubber band this time), and two weird posters. Outside of my cell, there was a T.V. screen (Does that say TELEVISION or TELEVIZION? I can't tell from how tiny the lettering is) with a keypad shown broadcasting the numbers 78255. I could only guess that those numbers were the not-so-secrets to my success.

Unfortunately, my tiny elementary schooler arms were too short to reach the dialpad. I had to look around for some kind of stick thing. The only place that was directly out of my view was in the toilet lid, so I checked there.

There were... things in there that I couldn't describe. Ravishingly decor, I went with. I pulled off the toilet flusher (kinda gross, but desperate times call for desperate measures) and inputted the code to the door. It was very hard, since I couldn't exactly see the numbers, but I made it work.