The night had passed in what seemed to be a second… Urien started dreaming, and his mind wandered off to a place in his mind which he had completely forgotten about. The dream went a little something like this…
“What? Is this the interview room?” – Urien had asked himself. He was surrounded by the room in which he had taken the interview in; only this time he was the only one there.
The door that leads out of the room could be seen very clearly, as behind it there was a strong, luminescent light shining. For some reason, Urien had remembered a part of his life which he wasn’t supposed to. They wiped his memories and hid them, but somehow, and not even Urien knows why, his dream had accessed a part of those memories. It was like remembering an old friend you had long forgotten about…
Behind the room, there was chatting, and he went ahead and sneaked up to it, trying to head what the unknown voices were talking about.
“Some of the letters are represented by the objects which we are surrounded by, but not all of them. Is it a backwards cipher of some sorts, is it even solvable?” – a female voice was saying.
“It has to be, all of this, it makes no sense!” – John was talking, and as Urien had realized it was his voice he got scared for a hot second.
“Is this my mind making things up...? No, this must be a memory! What cipher, the one in the letter? If I check their faces, will I see what John and The Interviewer looks like? Will I… Remember?”
Urien rushed over to the door but as he opened it a floating mask of some sorts was in front of him. It was one of the masks which was in the interview video, it was his mask! On the mask was written, on a sticky note: “The letters you so willingly gave out, now they can say whatever they want in your name!”
He tried to grab it, to interact with it, but all of this got him so excited (too excited some would say) and as soon as he tried to grab it, he had woken up in a nervous type of sweat.
“What… Did I just get the answers to the cipher through my dream? Was this a memory of mine, did that happen already? Or is it just mixing up the events of yesterday into one jumbled mess?”
“Snap out of it! You have some work to do, boy.” – John was standing in the corner waiting for Urien to wake up. Urien had no time to think, as his mission had started the moment he jumped from his bed in such a nervous series of events.
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“Fine, fine! Let me get dressed, at least!” – it was a positive atmosphere, Urien had thought to himself.
Soon enough John led Urien to a special room which hasn’t been mentioned yet – it was a part of the Main Room, behind a set of doors, and in it was a fair surprise.
On a whiteboard in front of them, the text “THE MYSTERY OF D.” stood, bold in marker, and beneath it, what looked like a dozen of different letters and drawings. It was an ongoing investigation.
“Look at this, Urien! All these papers and notes, drawings and cryptic texts, they all match this one handwriting! All from a person we only know as “D.” For the last couple of weeks, it’s been an ongoing theme and investigation inside of these walls. Someone is toying with us, with our work. And they wish to stay as anonymous as possible... That is why I beg of you, to try to solve at least this last note (you have already seen it). In one LOOP before, I have already given you this chance, but you had no luck. If it will help you in any sort of way, which I don’t know how it could, I’ll bring your previous attempt at the decipher back here. Maybe it will spark something inside of you…”
John went ahead to a cabinet which was close to them and from it he pulled out a document. It was the paper on which Urien had tried to decipher the cryptic texts already once before. In what LOOP and how long ago he did not know, but sure enough, Urien had recognized his handwriting.
John left him alone as he carried away a bunch of documents from the folder that same document was in, and it was up to Urien to try and solve at least a part of this mystery. Since the previous research document was stored inside of a folder labeled “#4402”, it was clear that all the files inside of the folder were to be associated with Urien.
Urien grabbed the folder from the table on which it stood, and sure enough, in it stood another paper. It was a clear copy of Urien’s handwriting.
“The dream… and the video, I remember writing this! Now it makes sense, this is how they keep you at bay here forever!”
“The letters you so willingly gave out, now they can say whatever they want in your name!” – now he understood it, all the things he had done in the interview, it had a purpose…
The reason no one was going to come looking for him or even help him escape… They have his handwriting, they can fake letters, they can do whatever they want with it! At home, his mother… She won’t come looking for him. He even gave them the location at which he lives at, so they can send as many fake letters as they want. This was when it clicked to him: he was going to stay here, in this building, working mindlessly and being tested on, forever.
In a hurdled rage he got the printed paper and almost tore it apart, but he held himself back. “Have they really thought of everything, damn this, damn it all, they made a fool proof torture house!” – this was what Urien was thinking throughout all of this…
And yet, he was working for them – helping them find this mysterious person among them.
“I am going to decipher this text, I will be the only one who knows the answers, and to them I will tell a fake tale. With this “D.” person, I am going to escape and come back to burn this place down. I have the perfect plan, the perfect way to fake my cooperation!”
From this moment on, Urien had started crafting his master escape plan, step by step. All it was going to take was getting John to like him… This realization, it was his turning point.
