CHAPTER ONE: Walter and Emily's Journey: Entrapment

[Seon]

"What else could it be, though? It all makes sense this way," Walter muttered. "Answering machine? That's... that's not much worse from nobody picking up. Or there being no ringtone at all..."

Walter groaned and sat on the bed next to Emily. "We are so dead. Even if this isn't my dying dream. I...I don't think.... whoever that locked us in here... he's....she's....it's...going to come back..."

[Kadael]

"We're not dead," Emily says, balling her hands into fists. "We'll get out somehow. I... maybe I'm not sure how, but we will."

Her eyes meet his for a second. Then she looks away, and traces a line in the bedspread with one finger.

"So... are you feeling any better?"

[Seon]

"Yes...I think I am," Walter muttered. "As much as a person who finds himself trapped inside a room by chains can feel, I guess."

[Kadael]

Emily shrugs, and pulls her knees up to her chest. The silence grates on her ears.

What now?

"Maybe we could break them with something heavy, or... or file holes in some of the links, if there's anything here..."

[Seon]

"Sure. I am getting tired of waiting anyways," Walter muttered. He walked around the room in order to look for anything that could be used to either break the windows or the chains.

[Laraqua]

There's a wooden chair standing at the writing desk that could be used to break the windows but there's nothing that could be used to snap through those solid metal chains.

Watch this if you want to see the room in motion. The only difference is there is a DVD player, a telephone, and a bar fridge (and the chains).

[Kadael]

Emily idly kicks at the air, her eyes following Walter as he moves. She could almost forget that he thinks she's a hallucination.

It must be the White Claudia, really. God, it lasts long.

[Seon]

"Quick, give me a hand, if you have one," Walter muttered. He took the wooden chair and began to hit the windows with it.

[Laraqua]

The window glass shakes vaguely in its frame but doesn't so much as crack, leaving Walter with sore, jarred upper arms.

[Kadael]

Emily jumps up and starts pacing, occasionally scuffing at the carpet with her shoes - she hasn't taken her shoes off all night...

"Housekeeping will try to come in, right? Or the management when you don't check out?"

With a slight whimper, she rushes to one of the windows and presses her palms to the glass. What's out there?

[Laraqua]

She can vaguely make out hedge rows beneath the window but not a whole lot else.

She can't even make out the lake that she knows should be out there somewhere.

She does notice a videogame has fallen down the back of the television cabinet and when she looks down at the player she sees it plays both DVDs and Videos.

[Seon]

"Die," Walter muttered as he dropped the chair and collapsed on the bed face first. "We are gonna die in here," he let out a sad little chuckle. "Nobody's going to come around to save us. In fact, I think I remember thinking of a storyline like this for my horror novel."

[Kadael]

Emily picks up the video game and looks at the cover.

When Walter flops onto the bed, she turns around and sits next to him. "We're not going to die," she says again, though with a loss of conviction.

She sighs. "Tell me about your novel."

[Laraqua]

The videogame is Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

[Seon]

"Basically a person gets trapped inside a haunted hotel room then burns the room down along with himself so that none would ever face the same hardship that he went through," Walter said matter-of-factly. "Not that it really matters anymore."

Beat.

"Hey, what's that videogame doing here?"

[Kadael]

A... burning hotel? Does that sound familiar...?

She passes the game to him. "I don't know. It fell on the floor."

[Laraqua]

Lakeview Hotel burned down over a decade ago before being rebuilt very recently.

The Fire Investigation Team thought it had something to do with an old radiator that was left near some very flammable curtains.

[Seon]

Walter opened the videogame box. "This doesn't make any sense. Does DVD player accept game discs now?"

[Laraqua]

The box contains an unmarked DVD-R.

[Kadael]

"I don't know." Emily leans over to get a closer look. "Try putting it in the player."

She gets up to grab the remote off the couch and turn the TV on.