The Trial [Pre-Cycle Game]

Upon pulling off the painting, Gary would find himself facing a strange mechanism depressed into the wall. It had four dials with what appeared to be numbers you could scroll down from 1-12 on each dial. The surface itself was smooth and brass colored and the numbers on each dial painted in an old fashioned way. Above the dial was the symbol of a weighing scale with a dish on it.

Meanwhile, Li merely rolled his eyes at Evie's remark and went through the corridor. He first appeared perplexed that someone was on the phone, but then reverted to his blank expression. He decided to wait until they were done talking.

"This all of you?" he asked Evie.

The girl on the other line sighed in relief at Magnolia's reassurance.

"I hope so. Do you need me to stay on the line? Or do you need to make another call. I tried a bunch of numbers but nothing worked so far."

Evie slightly perked up for some reason after noticing how Li reacted to what she said. She then decided to play with her hair and looked at how proactive Magnolia and Gary were acting in the hallway they were currently in. It sort of annoyed her, annoyed her so much that she wanted to help out one of them, but she simply couldn't decide on who to help, and this creepy hospital setting was not helping her one bit. Her thoughts quickly subsided when she moved her eyes back towards Li.

"Umm..." She looked at the phone that Magnolia was using to talk to Rena.

"Other then Rena, I think this is all of us. I don't know what happened to everyone who worked here though. Maybe they all just...Left for home?" Evie's eyes became fixated on Gary and she decided to check to see what he found. She walked over to him and called out to him from behind. "Umm, excuse me," Evie diffidently said from behind Gary. "Did you, find something just now?" She began to question him.

"Young man." But quickly corrected herself, realising that she didn't refer to Gary as such. She looked at the wall and the painting, noticing the mechanism. "Is that a code dial thing?" Evie slowly reached towards it before stopping, not wanting to mess with anything in this hospital. However, she turned back towards Magnolia. "Could you ask Rena if she knows the code for this wall?" Evie pointed towards the wall again. She hoped that Rena knew or else the four might be stuck in the hallway...Maybe forever!

Unless there was another door nearby that they can open.

"That might be the best option right now. I don't feel right about leaving you all alone in there." Her heart did go out to Rena. The rest of them had the luxury of waking up in beds and were able to walk around freely of the place, but Rena was stuck in a room all by herself.

Magnolia nodded in reply to Evie. "I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this, but there's an odd dial on the door to where we think you are. Is it possible that you know the code?"

Gary sighed. It seemed whoever put him here did so to waste his precious time solving puzzles and frolicking about, wasting time. Could there be a worse torture than forceful unproductiveness? Regardless, Gary noted that the weighing scales were most likely pertinent to finding the combination. He picked up the vase on the end table beside him and placed it on the weighing scales before searching his surroundings for any changes.

Somewhere in the back of Gary's mind, he pondered why he was here. Well, it was closer to "Who put him here". He remembered hearing the voice of a young girl who seemed to at least be clued in to his situation, even if she wasn't the mastermind behind it. A name seemed necessary, so he decided to title her "Rosaria" after the "Del Rosario Ward" they were apparently trapped in.

On the other side of the line, Rena hummed.

"Hmm...a code? The walls are pretty blank here," she said. "Wait a minute. I assumed this was graffiti, but now I'm not so sure. There's like a small math equation here. Errr...well I'd call it that, but these aren't really numbers. It's a bunch of letters and numbers together. But I'll tell you it anyways. There's a lot though, so, err, N-A-C-L + M-G-S-O-4 + H-2-O-2 + I-O. Does that make any sense to you?

Meanwhile, Li had been observing from behind, his arms crossed, and looking rather miffed. He seemed jittery to get out of his situation and found someone else. He slightly perked up when he heard a girl was on the other side of the phone, but upon hearing that the girl's name was Rena he reverted back into a frown.

With everyone looking at the small contraption embedded into the wall, Li stepped closer.

"If it's a code, it might be around here," he said. "Hospitals probably keep codes lying around for locked stuff. Granted, this is pretty out of the ordinary, but it's better than nothing."

He slowly headed over to the nurses' station where a bunch of folders were.

"Perhaps we'll get lucky and come across something with four digits," he said.

On the nurse's station main counter jutting out from the rest of the alcove, there was a small metal carousel that one could spin. It was a long hectagon in shape and on each side were a bunch of papers slid into sections that had patient names next to room numbers. There was the telephone, which Magnolia was currently using, and a couple of metal clipboards with documents on them. In the back of the nurse's station was a bunch of cabinets with medications and apparatus. Below it was a working table with small baskets full of bottles and cups with pills in them, medical solutions, a mortar and pestle, and a kitchen weighing scale, the one that had a needle, which was odd considering most had moved to digital scales.

Evie waited for Magnolia's response to what Rena said regarding the code. Because of this, she couldn't follow Li to the nurse's station as she wanted to be near the picture and unlock it if Magnolia gives out the answer. "I'll join you if I don't get anything from Rena," Evie told Li before looking back at the picture. For a creepy hospital she sure did like the picture that was put here.

It kind of reminded her of the bakery, she sure missed it. She wondered if anyone at the bakery was worried about her or were missing her. She hoped that lady from earlier today didn't come back to the bakery to yell at everyone after she told her off. She didn't want her to force Evie's boss to fire her.

She loves the bakery...It helped her deal with some tough times.

Evie frowned, facing away from Magnolia & Gary.

Magnolia was quiet for a moment. Apparently processing what Rena said. "I don't think they're random numbers..." She muttered. She sighed. This situation required her to not use her ditzy persona, but rather the things she had learned from her previous career. "Everyone!" She said. "Rena told me there was a strange series of words and numbers. They are N-A-C-L + M-G-S-O-4 + H-2-O-2 + I-O."

She looked at the nurse's station and frowned. There wasn't really a lot to help her out here. Magnolia began thinking about the numbers. For some reason, they sounded familiar. "N-A-C-L... NaCl... Salt.." Her eyes widened. "Rena! Those aren't random! It's Chemistry!" She exclaimed. "Does this give you any other ideas?"

Having heard Magnolia yell out, Gary decides to abandon his post at the combination lock for a moment, making his way into the Nurse's Station. Giving no word of greeting to anyone present, he began sieving through the working table and cabinets in search of anything labelled with what Magnolia claimed the girl on the phone had seen. He knew that NaCl was salt and H2O2 was hydrogen peroxide, but chemistry had never really interested Gary to the point where he'd remember much of what he learned in class beyond the exams.

Gary took note of the kitchen scales in the room. It was clear to him now that it wasn't a specific item that was to be put on the pressure pad outside, but rather many things that would come to a combined weight.

"Sodium chloride?" Li said as he overhead the letters and numbers. "H202? IO? Those all sound like stuff they use in the hospital alright. Maybe we can find some around here and they'll give us a better clue."

Li would go towards the medicine cabinet, and just as expected, were several amber bottles with labels on them.

"Hey," he called out to Magnolia and Gary. He raised up one of the bottles with the words 0.45 NaCl on it. "Found them."

There were four bottles in total. One was the sodium chloride Li was holding. Another said Magnesium Sulfate Injection. The third bottle said Hydrogen Peroxide, and the last said Iodine Tincture.

The weights nearby the medications which Gary had inspected looked like an old fashioned scale with a reader. Oddly enough, the reader did not have numbers, but roman numerals that reached up to 12 like a clock. There would be four etches in between each number. However, it only had a minute hand. Gary would also note that the scale was embedded into the counter, something even odder. Even if they tried to pull it off, it wouldn't budge, and trying to use too much force might break it.

Meanwhile, Rena on the phone shuffled around. When she returned on the phone, she sighed.

"I see nothing else," she said. "This place is completely bare. In fact, it's a little claustrophobic."

Evie looked back at the code before looking back at the nurses station. It seemed that Li and Gary had found something there, and she wanted to check it out. I mean she at least had to do something in the group since so far the only thing she was doing was looking around and standing near the code system that needed four digits. Maybe she can help provide the group the answer to this puzzle.

Evie walked past Magnolia and walked into the nurses station. "Did you find anything?" She walked closer to Gary and Li, eyeing the scale and the four bottles that the two have found, which gave her an idea and she looked at the bottles. "Why don't we put the bottles on the scale. Maybe each of there weight is a part of the code were looking for?" Evie theorised the answer to the puzzle, she waited for Gary and Li's ideas and input.