5:00
Light. Bright and fluorescent, reveals four, cold, gray, cinder block walls and the white linoleum tiles of a small square room. In it there are no windows, one locked iron door, a chest of drawers, and a digital clock next to the top right corner of the door with red numbers counting down, 4:59, 4:58, 4:57, 4:56. In the center of the room stand two chairs, back to back. In these chairs sit two people, one boy and one girl, tied with worn and fraying nylon rope at the shoulders, legs and with their hands behind their backs. As the light in the center of the ceiling turns on, the two people slowly come to their senses after being knocked out. Immediately they struggle to turn around, and as they do, they recognize each other without a word.
First come the questions,
"Where are we?" asked the girl.
"How did we get here?" inquired the boy.
"Why are we here?"
"How do we get out?"
"What is that clock counting down to?"
Then, of course, come the supposed answers,
"Maybe we did some wrong to someone, and they put us here for punishment?" suggested the girl.
"Maybe there is something to help us get out of here in that cabinet?" proposed the boy.
"Certainly that clock is counting down to something horrible that is going to happen to us if we do not get out by the time that clock reaches 0:00..."
"Well then, let's stop talking and start working!"
Thus the two friends started working on untieing one another.
It took some time, but eventually the ropes were unbound and the two chairs were vacated.
4:00
Standing up, the two friends went to search the room for anything to aid their escape. While the girl went to check out the door and its lock systems, the boy rummaged through some of the drawers. In the second to the top of the six drawers, he found a syringe full of a very clear, lavender colored solution. Along with this, he found a note reading:
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This vial is full of a very rare, fast acting poison.
It is not the answer to your problems, and should
only be used if 100% necessary.
Good luck.
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After reading this, he glanced over at his friend, then quickly wrapped the glass syringe in a pair of old socks that accompanied the other clothes that filled the drawer, and pocketed the syringe and the note.
3:00
Finding no way to force the door open, the girl came over to help search the drawers. While the boy had started from the top and worked his way down, she started from the bottom and worked up. In the bottom most drawer, she found, within all of the chaos of old, ragged clothes, a pistol. Upon further investigation of this weapon, she found a single bullet in the chamber of the gun. Turning to her friend, she said. "Hey, I found this. What do you think it means?"
The boy paused in his search, waited momentarily, looking at the gun. Then, with an air of snarkiness said, "Why would I know? And don't point that thing at me! Geez!"
"Ok, sure. And calm down, it'll be okay. I'm sure we'll get out of here." said the girl as she lowered the barrel of the gun, now pointing it at the ground.
"Thank you. And I hope we'll get out too, but still, I'm...worried. I mean, look at the clock!" he said as he overdramatically gestured to the timer on the wall.
"We can't think about that. We have to get out. We have to!" then the girl slowly shook her head, having nothing else to say, placed the gun on top of the chest, and got back to searching the drawers. A few moments later, the boy followed suit.
2:00
Biting his lip, the boy discreetly took the pair of socks out of his pocket, and, careful not to let the girl see him, put them back in the drawer he was searching. Pulling them out of the drawer, as if for the first time, he said, "Hey, look what I found in these socks!" Then he extracted the syringe and followed up with, "It must be an antidote. We must have been given a poison that takes five minutes to kill us!"
The girl, looked worriedly at the liquid. "But there's only one syringe, and two of us."
The boy stood in mock thought for a moment, then offered this, " You take it. I want you to live, not me."
"Oh, no! I couldn't! You should have it!"
"No, I insist that you take it."
"Well, if you're really sure..."
"Yes."
"Well, then. Okay."
With this the girl rolled up her sleeve and allowed the boy to inject her with the full vial of the liquid.
"Thanks." she smiled, "Let's keep looking, maybe there's another antidote around here."
"Yeah... Maybe." he shifted his weight and looked anywhere but his friend.
1:00
"I hate to break it to you, but we're running out of ti-" started the girl before she was interrupted by her own coughing.
"Hey, are you okay?" inquired the boy.
"Yeah, it's just a little cou-" again she could not hold back her own hacking.
"Come on, let's hurry."
As the girl kept looking through the drawers for another vial, a few times she had to stop to cough in increasingly more violently and prolonged spurts. While she did this the boy was feeling all of the walls for any clues. During one of her longer coughing sessions, the girl turned around, facing the boy, just in time to see a small piece of paper fall out of his pocket. After she was finished coughing, she walked over to it, picked it up, and read it.
"HOW DARE YOU!" she screamed through her almost constant coughing across the room.
"Wha-" the boy started, but then he saw the piece of paper crumpled up by her feet and froze, a look of astonishment on his face.
"YOU POISONED ME!" with every sentence she uttered, her coughing in between got worse and worse.
"I--I don't know what you're talking about." he said as he backed away from her, trying to put some distance between him and his furious friend.
"You knew this was a poison and gave it to me to KILL me! Why would you do that?"
"Calm down! And- HEY!" the girl had picked up the loaded gun in her rage and had it pointed directly at the boy.
"Please, put the gun down, let's work through this..." he begged.
A single, lethal shot was fired and as the boy's limp body fell to the ground the girl spoke these words; "That's what you get, you filth, backstabbing liar." with this the girl started coughing harder and harder, and with every cough she lost more and more breath in between coughing spurts.
0:00
Light. Bright, natural and innocent, flooded the room. It poured in and laid witness to all of the contents of the small, square room;  a chest of drawers, a digital clock no longer counting down, two abandoned chairs, a gun with its last shot fired, an empty glass syringe, two unmoving people sprawled across the once white, but now stained red, linoleum and an open iron door, from which the wave of light had been released.