Escape
Riddle Of The Ender

Chapter 6

RIDDLEOF THE ENDER

The door was stone and it had seemedto be powered by technology from the early 21st century, and thus unbreakableby Jayce's virtual lock-picking skills. It also had no visible locks thatArtemus could pick. They could have tried to replace the circuit in the walls butwith Kanith lost, no one had the knowledge to handle it. However there was noway this room is meant to be a death trap, which meant there had to be a wayout within the room.

Viper started searching around theentire room and they quickly found a few clues. A torch and an olden radio wasplaced on the desk for the team to examine. There were other locked cupboardsbut had no keys available. The radio had a wire but no power supply whichprompted the team to search for one.

"There's no way there's a powerdependent radio in the room with no power supply. Keep looking, guys."Ornelas commanded.

Jayce shifted the locked cupboardsaside and found a small tunnel that turned left. The tunnel was perfectlysquared and was cramped in size, comfortable enough for a small female andpacked for a male of an average build. Logically the team had Rissa crawl intoit, only to replace it leading to an end. However it wasn't dead end. There was acircuit board with single circular sockets for wires to be plugged in andlights at the side that were out.

The grief for Kanith had grownfurther, based on the wish he was here to solve it in seconds.

Rissa continued to examine thecircuit board while Ornelas was examining the radio. Jayce searched below eyelevel and managed to replace a power outlet out of the line of sight.

"That. Is that a power outlet?I'm not very good with old technology." he pointed. Artemus held the wireof the radio and plugged it in. It was a perfect fit.

"It seems so." Artemussmiled. Ornelas tried turning on the radio but to no avail. The outlet hadneither power nor a switch. Jayce theorized that the circuit board powers upthe room and thus needed it to be turned on. The rest agreed while Ling, whowas flipping through the beds, found a key hidden under the mattress. Shequickly passed it to the team and they were delighted at the first sign of hopein escaping the room.

"Wow, look who actually didsomething useful for once." Artemus remarked snidely.

"Hey, there's no need for thesenow. We gotta work together." Ornelas persuaded, while calming down Ling.There were a dozen locks in the room and so they had to try for every one ofthem until it fit into one.

A click sound caught the attentionof all the members in the room. They spun around. One of the cupboard drawerswas unlocked.

Jayce pulled the drawer open andinside of it were two wires and another key. He quickly grabbed the wires andcrawled into the tunnel, passing it into Rissa who was now covered in sweat anddust. She had speculated that it required 4 wires connected to 8 ports in thecorrect position to power it up. Meanwhile, Ornelas took the other key andmanaged to unlock one of the loose chests in the room.

The air was getting thinner by thesecond with 5 people in the room fighting for oxygen. It wasn't long beforethey realized that the room was air tight and they were running out of time.

The chest opened to reveal a fewpapers about codes like Binary, Morse, Caesar Cipher, etc. and a smaller boxinside of it. It had a pad lock with 4 turnable wheels with numbers 1 to 9 onit. Jayce had crawled back out of the tunnel to help examine the contents ofthe chest. Ornelas quickly tossed the papers aside and remarked it was for themilitary of the past to encode their messages before transmission.

Seeing as the pad lock had nokeyholes, it was out of Artemus' depth to pick. Ornelas decided to help Rissawith the circuit board to figure out the 8 correct ports while Jayce took acloser look around the small box and found a piece of paper stuck to it. It hada statement on it:

THEEND OF ONE WHO ENDED 0xA7D8C0 THAT ENDED THE ENDER

"Even if this place is secret,weird as hell the riddle is in English. Anyone has any weird conspiracyguesses?" Artemus joked.

In the tunnel, Rissa explained herdiscoveries to Ornelas.

"Each wire has two ends, whenboth ends connect to two correct ports, the corresponding light lights up. Whenall four lights light up, that's when the power is on." she explained.

"Well, we only have two wiresnow. We have to make use of these two to try and replace the 8 correct ports withtrial and error. Then when the others replace the other two wires we'll be able toturn it on faster." Ornelas said. Rissa agreed and they started working onit.

Artemus and Ling read the riddle andall three of them went into deep thought.

"First of all. 0xA7D8C0, that'scode for sure. What can it mean?" Ling thought to herself out loud.

"That's not code. It's analternate number system called Hexadecimal. We need to convert it back into ourDecimal number system." Jayce analyzed while grabbing papers and a penthey found in one of the unlocked drawers. He started writing out numbers andexplaining the Hexadecimal system to them.

"Our number system is called Decimal,it ranges from 0 to 9. After 9 it resets into the next level, turning into 10.Hexadecimal runs all the way to 0 to 9 then from A to F, giving it 16 digitsbefore it resets to the next level. So the digits in front would be equal tohow many times it had reset and the last digit would be the remainder."Jayce explained while writing.

Artemus had slowly caught on whileLing was left utterly dumbfounded.

"An example. 45 in the Decimalsystem. Decimal system has 10 digits so how many times will it reset and whatremainder will it have left?" Jayce taught.

"Four times, it'll have aremainder of 5." Artemus answered.

"That's right, which is why weput the digit 4 in front and the digit 5 last. It's the same for Hexadecimal.It has 16 digits, how many times will it reset and what remainder will it haveleft?" Jayce asked, this time to Ling.

"Um... twice? I guess it'llhave a remainder of 13?" Ling muttered doubtfully.

"You bloody idiot. There's no13, it's D. Since after 9 it turns into A, B, C, then D." Artemus scolded.

Jayce chuckled in secret beforepraising Artemus.

"That's right, so 45 would be2D in Hexadecimal. Now, we don't have a calculator, so we have to manually workout what 0xA7D8C0 is in Decimal." Jayce left the calculation to them as hewent back to the riddle.

The end of one who ended. That wouldmean death, he thought to himself. The death of someone who ended a huge amountof lives then? Jayce scratched his head over the riddle while reading thesecond part of it.

"That ended the Ender. Suggeststhe person in question isn't just any murderer, but had ended large amounts oflive purposefully. Like a genocide?" he mumbled to himself. Names startedpopping into his mind as time flew by.

Viper started to gasp for air everynow and then as the oxygen was running dangerously low. Sweat was dripping fromevery member profusely as Artemus wrote away on the paper which was now stainedwith both ink and perspiration. Ornelas and Rissa squeezed together in thetunnel but did not mind the diaphoresis from each other as they depended on oneanother for their own survival.

"ELEVEN MILLION!" Artemusexclaimed while standing up. Jayce immediately kickstarted his brain.

"Someone who committed agenocide... killed eleven million people..." Jayce started slapping hisown head as he knew this was familiar but the name was not forming in his mind.Artemus started thinking but was unable to think of anyone as there weren't anywars, conflicts and genocides from almost two centuries.

"Technology here is old. It couldbe referring to someone from history. Really way back." once these wordscame out of Jayce's mouth, he immediately jumped up with the look of Eureka andsnatched the small box. He started turning the numbers on the lock excitedlywhile Artemus and Ling were confused.

"Adolf... bloody...Hitler!" Jayce said while turning the lock, seemingly with all hisstrength. The lock clicked open with the passcode 1945 and he flipped the coveropen.

The hope was reignited as itscontents revealed to contain two more wires. Artemus quickly passed the wiresto Ornelas and Rissa, who had figured out the eight correct ports. They quicklyplugged them in and Jayce flipped through the rest of the content. It hadcontained a world map before The Fever and a remote control. As they ponderedover it, the circuit board lit up and the entire room's power turned back on.

The stone door slid open loudly andthe radio clicked.

The circuit board and not onlyturned on the power supply to the radio but also opened the door. Their delightwas short-lived was they saw that the open door led to another locked room.Viper slowly strolled into it and examined around. The stone door was notpowered by the same technology as compared to the other doors and thus did notself-destruct upon passing.

The second room had an air vent inthe ceiling but was entirely out of reach. It had tables and chairs, much likethe first room but one thing was different - it had a massive, heavy safe thecorner of the room.

The exit of the room was locked tightand unbreakable.

"Whoever left this roompreviously locked it shut from outside. We're gonna have to replace another wayopen this door by force." Artemus said while examining the lock on theexit. He had run out of explosives from battling Beasts.

"Oh well. More puzzles tosolve." Ornelas remarked.

ENDOF CHAPTER 6