Edge Escape Room: Game Zero

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80513-585-2
Verlag: Nosy Crow Ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 208 Seiten

Reihe: Escape Room

A brand-new Escape Room adventure from bestselling author, Christopher Edge. Discover an epic new world packed with puzzles, action, danger and bravery - a virtual escape room where anything is possible and nothing is as it seems... 'A writer of genuine originality' - Guardian 'Perfect for puzzle-hungry beginner horror fans who require lashings of jeopardy' - The Times If you liked ESCAPE ROOM, then you'll love GAME ZERO. A twisty, puzzle-filled story, it's a gamer's delight! Eden's visit to The Escape sees her dropped into a world of puzzles and peril with no way out. She must find the keys, climb the levels and meet her fate. But what if she's not playing the game? Maybe the game is playing her... A thought-provoking story about the power that games give us to reimagine the world. 'Punchy and action-packed, with a killer twist' - The Bookseller Check out these other brilliant books from Christopher Edge: - Black Hole Cinema Club - Escape Room - Twelve Minutes to Midnight - The Jamie Drake Equation

Christopher Edge is an award-winning children's author whose books have been translated into more than twenty languages. His novel The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day won the STEAM Children's Book Prize and his last four novels were all nominated for the prestigious CILIP Carnegie Medal. Before becoming a writer, he worked as an English teacher, editor and publisher - any job that let him keep a book close to hand - and he now lives in Gloucestershire with his wife and family, close to his local library. Find out more about Christopher at christopheredge.co.uk and find him on Twitter @edgechristopher

Autoren/Hrsg.

Edge, Christopher

Leseproben

It looks like an overgrown back garden, bordered on three of its sides by crumbling stone walls that reach as high as the trees. The heart-shaped gates stand behind us, but the walls of this place are carpeted with moss and creeping plants, dark green spiky weeds growing out of the cracks between the stones. The same shrubbery sprouts all around us, but standing directly ahead are mossed-over steps leading up to a low stone platform.

A new melody plays as we step inside this walled garden, the swelling woodwind now accompanied by a single piano, the notes that it plays laden with a sense of mystery.

I follow Ted as he climbs the short flight of steps to stand on the edge of the platform. It looks about the same size as the sports hall at school, although this space has been built in the shape of a square. More weeds grow between the large bone-white tiles that mark out its area and these are laid in a five-by-five grid.

I stare at the strange markings that cover the surface of each slab of stone: swooping curves and jagged black lines, blank spaces and abstract shapes that make no sense at all. I spot a missing tile two squares ahead of me, and stepping over, I see the ground beneath is carpeted with moss and lichen.

“What is this?” Ted asks, pushing back the brim of his helmet as he scratches his temple. “Some kind of minigame?”

I shake my head, recognising the design of the grid from the online puzzles that Mum plays.

“It’s a sliding jigsaw,” I say, still studying the stone slabs as I try to figure out what it’s a jigsaw of. “We must need to rearrange the tiles to make the right picture.”

Ted frowns, pursing his lips in a doubtful expression.

“A picture of what?” he says, casting his gaze across the platform. “It doesn’t look like anything to me.”

“That’s because we need to work out how the tiles fit together,” I reply, trying to remember how Mum solves these puzzles. I close my eyes as I try to picture her in action, but my mind comes back blank.

I blink. It’s almost like my brain is as scrambled as this jigsaw – my memories of Mum and Dad are fading like the photograph in Marty McFly’s wallet in Back to the Future.

I feel anxiety rising in my throat, but in my ears all I can hear is a lilting melody, the sound weaving through the ruined garden. The music draws my gaze towards the grid of tiles – the pull of their mystery pushing all other thoughts out of my mind.

I look at the lines drawn on each square of the grid, trying to find something that I can recognise. Is that a leaf or a flower? Or maybe a mountain peak? And then my gaze lands on a tile in the topmost row.

My imagination starts to turn this pattern into a picture in my mind. I can see the thin line of a mouth set above a strong jawline. It almost looks like a muzzle – the snout of some animal’s broad nose joined to the line of its jaws.

“I think it’s a lion,” I tell Ted as I step across the platform, pointing towards the tile in the top row.

“This looks like its mouth. And maybe this is its ear,” I say, gesturing now to the tile on its left.

Ted crouches down next to the stone slab in front of him, his dark eyes now shining with a curious light. “And maybe this could be its other ear,” he muses.

My gaze flicks between the two tiles and I realise that they’re a perfect mirror image.

“Of course!” I exclaim, feeling excited now. “If this jigsaw shows an animal’s face, then it’s going to be symmetrical. All faces are! We just need to find the tiles that match and work out how they fit together.”

I walk back across the platform to join Ted where he’s crouching.

“We need to solve this puzzle one row at a time, starting at the top.” I gesture towards the stone slab in front of Ted. “If this is the animal’s left ear, then we need to move it there. And then find the tiles with lines that join the ears together.”

“I hate these games,” Ted groans. “I’ve not done a jigsaw since I was five years old.”

“The most important part of the puzzle is the empty space,” I tell him, squatting down on my haunches as I study the grid. “We need to use this to help us move the tile that we want into the place where we want it to go.” I rest my hands on the bottom edge of the slab in front of me. “So we need to get this moving.”

With all my strength, I push hard against the edge of the stone, but it doesn’t shift a single centimetre. I turn towards Ted who’s watching me with a bemused expression.

“Do you want to give me a hand?” I ask him.

Reluctantly, Ted places his hands next to mine on the bottom edge of the tile.

“This is supposed to be the most amazing game ever,” he mutters, “but you’ve got me doing a jigsaw.”

Ignoring him, I start to push again as Ted does the same, the two of us straining to shift the heavy slab of stone. There’s a grinding squeak and then with a sudden scraping rumble we slide the slab forward into the empty space.

Breathing hard, I pause for a second, surveying the tiles to work out our next move.

“I still don’t understand how we’re supposed to get this tile to the top row,” Ted says, glancing now at the empty square we’ve just made. “The blank space is back where we started from now.”

“We need to keep moving the gap,” I tell him, shuffling back to the front row on the platform. “We create a rotation, shifting the tiles – one at a time – to move this first tile into the position it needs to be. It’s all about breaking the puzzle down into portions and solving them one by one. Just follow what I’m doing.”

Kneeling down, I brace my hands against the slab of stone on the front row that’s now next to the empty gap. I can see only the sliver of a black line on the surface of this tile as Ted gets into position next to me.

“One, two, three,” I tell him. “Push!”

Ted’s knuckles whiten as he grips the edge of the slab and I watch as mine do the same as we strain against the stone. Gritting my teeth, I push with all my might and then, with a rasping rumble, the slab starts to move, the weeds growing at its edges torn away, as we slide the stone sideways into the empty space.

“That’s it,” I say, panting hard as I try to get my breath back. “Now we do it again.”

One by one, we keep moving the tiles. My back and shoulders soon start to ache from the effort, sweat pouring from my forehead as we slide each stone into a brand-new position. Sometimes it feels like we’re wasting our time, Ted grumbling as we chase the empty space across the platform, but I keep standing up to check the bigger picture and see a strange new image taking shape.

At times, Ted has to use his sword to lever the tiles apart – creating enough of a gap for us to even get a handhold – and from his grumbles I can tell he’d rather be using this in hand-to-hand combat.

With the top row completed, I now shift our focus to the left-hand column – the outline of the animal’s face starting to emerge as we slide each tile into position. I try to explain to Ted how we’re making the grid smaller all the time, solving the puzzle one row and column at a time, but he’s more bothered about the riddle that’s brought us here.

“The gift of a song from the heart of the forest,” he mutters, repeating the words to himself once again. “I still don’t know how solving a stupid jigsaw is going to help me find it.”

The melody that’s been playing since we entered the walled garden seems to hang suspended in the air, the soft notes of woodwind instruments and descending piano chords reminding me of another puzzle that we need to solve too.

“Maybe this is it,” I say, remembering how the woodsman told me through his tears about the song his son used to sing. “The music that’s playing now could be the song we’re looking for. We just need to find the singer.”

Ted shakes his head dismissively. “What you can hear is just mood music,” he says. “It’s all part of the game’s atmospherics, giving the player clues about what’s coming next.”

Wiping the sweat from my brow, I study the picture that we’re building on the platform. The face of the animal is already three quarters complete, but its main features – eyes, nose and mouth – still rest in a jumbled pattern of nine tiles in the bottom left corner.

“It looks like a dog,” I say, gesturing towards its pointed...