A JSE Fanfic
Part Six: The Time Limit
[This is part of a small ten-part series I wrote for Halloween 2019. There's a new villain in town, and Jackieboy is on his list. Even after what just happened, Jackie and the others have to continue, and this time, there's a limit within a limit.]
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They stopped only a few blocks away from the building, sitting on a street corner. Jackie made them stop, despite the fact that they all wanted to get farther away. He remembered the gamemaster’s warning about taking too long, and nerves started eating away at his stomach.
“Here, give me the laptop,” Jackie said. JJ handed him the box with the computer inside.
Chase watched as Jackie booted it up. “I…you know, I’m still not entirely sure what’s going on.” He sounded almost apologetic.
“We’re in Saw,” Jackie said, not taking his eyes away from the screen. “Some psycho decided to kidnap the group and threatened me with your deaths if I didn’t play his fucked-up game and solve his puzzles.”
Chase whistled. “Well, shit.”
“Yeah.” Jackie opened his email, finding another message from the same user as before. This one had a zip folder titled ‘Set 3′ attached. He quickly unzipped it, finding a few files inside: an image called 3.png, a folder called ‘3′, and a text file titled ‘open me first.’ Jackie did so, and inside was a single url. He opened the browser and copy-pasted the url into the search bar.
At first, the three of them found it hard to tell what they were looking at. The website was mostly black, with some white text, and a square that showed a dark video. Until they realized something was moving in the video. Jackie ran his hand through the box until he found the earbuds, plugging them into the laptop and putting them on. Suddenly, when he clicked the little sound icon on the video, he could hear the sound of rushing water and splashing, along with muffled cries and whimpers. His heart sank. “I’m gonna…” He turned up the brightness on the laptop.
Chase gasped. Jameson covered his mouth with his hand, eyes wide. Jackie leaned back. Marvin was in the video, bound and gagged. He was stuck inside a box with glass walls, small enough that he couldn’t straighten his legs. There was water slowly flowing into the box from a connected pipe. There was also a timer in the corner of the video, counting down: 55:12, 55:11, 55:10…
The time on the laptop’s clock read 3:03am.
“Is…is this live?” Chase asked.
“I think it is,” Jackie muttered.
“You can livestream shit like this?!” Chase shook his head. “Why haven’t the police—or whoever—why hasn’t someone stopped this?!”
“Well, firstly, because this video has probably only been active since tonight. And secondly, because you’d be surprised what goes up online.” Jackie leaned closer to the screen, looking around the website. “The Dark Web, you know? There are several sites that are like Twitch for sadists.” Unconsciously, he rubbed his left arm. “I don’t recognize this one, though.”
JJ snapped his fingers, drawing the other two’s attention. 'There is a timer in this video!' he signed in obvious distress. 'And it’s counting down. I don’t think we want to find out what will happen when it reaches zero.'
Jackie shoot his head. “You’re right. We need to hurry. My guess is that timer is how long it’ll take for that box to fill up with water, and then…” He shuddered, immediately closing the web page. “We have to find out where that is. And it’s going to be in the puzzles, just like before.”
He clicked on the 3.png image. It opened to a picture with a dark red background and black text reading: “SEEK THROUGH THE CATALOG, FIND WHAT’S BELOW.” The text was followed by that symbol of a skull inside a hollow circle, divided in four. Below the text were three black-and-white photographs with captions beneath them: a black wand with white ends labeled “Magic Wand,” a spread-out deck of cards labelled “Card Game,” and a white fluffy cat labeled “Norwegian Forest Cat.”
Jackie frowned. “Okay, I don’t know what this means other than some sort of instructions, so I’m just going to plug this image into the editing program and see if anything shows up when I play with sliders.”
'It sounds like we’re meant to find those images in some sort of catalog,' JJ figured. 'But what catalog?'
“I dunno. Maybe it’s in that other folder. You know, that came with this?” Chase wondered.
Jackie paused. “Maybe. I haven’t found anything in this image yet, so we can look what’s in there.” He went back into the files and opened the folder labeled 3.
What was inside were countless black-and-white photos, all with names written in numbers and a few letters. “What the…?” Jackie scrolled down…and down…and down…until he grabbed the scroll bar with his mouse and pulled it all the way to the bottom. “There must be hundreds of images in here!”
“Jesus,” Chase muttered. “Uh, I think this is the catalog.”
“How are we supposed to find three pictures out of all these?!” Jackie threw his hands in the air. “That could take hours! W-we don’t have that much time!” Jackie clasped his hand over his mouth, trying and failing to keep his eyes from watering. “It was rigged. This whole thing was rigged, we were never going to win it.” He blinked, and tears started falling down his face. He’d been scrambling, frantically trying to complete puzzles and reach the locations quickly, only for this? For two of his friends to die without him being able to do anything about it? What a sick game this was.
“No no no no, there has to be a way,” Chase took the laptop, using the mousepad to scroll through the photos, eyes scanning in rows. “Maybe they’re really early on, and this is meant to discourage us.”
“Chase, I don’t think that’s the case.” Jackie buried his hands in his folded arms. He was shaking.
“No, listen, there has to be a way.” Chase didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “This guy’s a sick fuck, but he also has another set of puzzles after this, he’s not gonna rig it so you fail before getting to that last set. There has to be a way to find—” He stopped, eyes suddenly widening. “We can use the find feature.”
Jackie looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “The what?”
“The find feature, the search bar, it’s built in to your files.” Chase circled the mouse around the search bar in the upper right corner of the window. “We just need to know what the images are called.”
“Well, uh…I think he gave us the image names. In the other picture, with the instructions.” Jackie gently took back the computer, switching to the other image. “See? Magic Wand, Card Game, and Norwegian Forest Cat.” Jackie typed the first phrase, Magic Wand, into the search bar. Nothing came up.
JJ tapped Jackie’s shoulder for attention. 'All the photo titles are in that same code from before,' he pointed out. 'Perhaps we simply need to encode the titles of the images we’re looking for?'
Jackie suddenly threw his arms around JJ. “Jameson Jackson, you’re a genius.” He let go, then turned to his other side and hugged Chase too. “And you also, Chase! I don’t know if I’d have thought of the search.”
“Aw, it’s nothing,” Chase muttered, smiling a bit.
'Really no problem at all,' JJ signed.
“Well, I would’ve been stuck for a while. And time is of the essence.” Jackie opened up the same online code converter from before. He typed in the first phrase again, and then copied the result—4d 61 67 69 63 20 57 61 6e 64—and pasted it into the file search bar. Immediately, the image they’d been looking for popped up. “Yes!” Jackie shouted, punching the air.
“Wait, something’s up.” Chase leaned over and opened the image. There was a strange bit at the bottom, taken up with a white and black boxy symbol. “That looks like…I dunno, part of a QR code.”
“How much do you want to bet the rest of the code is in the other two images?” Jackie muttered.
After encoding the other titles and finding the images, it was clear that the QR code was split up between the three images. Jackie plugged all three into the photo editor, and arranged them next to each other so the code was complete. He patted his suit. “Fuck, do either of you have your phone?”
Chase checked his pockets. “No. I last remember setting it down on my desk, but then I passed out and woke up in that…place.”
JJ waggled his mustache, and pulled out his phone with a grin.
“Jays, I love you so much,” Jackie laughed. “Oh, the old-fashioned man is the one with the smartphone, how ironic.”
JJ passed it to Jackie. 'It’s very helpful. I’m trying to make a habit of keeping it on my person.'
“That’s a good idea.” Jackie leaned back a bit as he tried to get the entire code in view of the camera. Then he snapped a picture, and a notification immediately popped up, saying the code had been understood and explaining what it would do. “This’ll take us to a website…” Jackie said, clicking on the notification to activate the code. The browser on the phone opened up,
Chase leaned over. “What’s that?”
“It’s a crossword puzzle.” Jackie groaned. He’d hoped the QR code would just give them the location to find Marvin, but no such luck. “Alright. Some of the squares are colored red, and at the bottom there’s this thing…” He scrolled down, and read out loud. “‘The address is 68′ and then a blank space. I bet we have to solve the crossword puzzle and then plug the letters from the red squares into this space to find the street address.”
'Then what are we waiting for?' JJ asked. 'What is the puzzle asking for?'
Jackie looked through the hints. “Looks like a bunch of trivia…oh! I know the answer to number one! It’s Undertale.” Jackie smiled a bit. That was Marvin’s favorite game…thinking of Marvin, the smile faded. “Okay. Let’s go.”
By the time they finished, the clock read 3:25am. Piecing together the letters from the red squares, they came up with the address of 68 Aspen St. “That’s on the other side of town!” Jackie cried, distressed. “Okay. Okay, I can probably run there quickly, you guys will have to catch—”
“We can drive,” Chase suggested.
JJ frowned. 'Chase, I know you can drive, but you don’t have your car.'
“There’s a car right there, in that parking lot.” Chase pointed diagonally across the street. There was indeed a single car in an empty lot. “Jackie, do you still know how to hotwire things?”
“Ah—I mean, yeah, but are we really about to steal a car?” Jackie asked tentatively.
'It’s either that or let Marvin die!' JJ signed furiously. 'We can return it after!'
Jackie jumped at JJ’s sudden motion, but then nodded. “Yeah, guess it’s the lesser of two evils, huh?” He shut the laptop. “Alright. We have to hurry. If my math’s correct, we only have about half an hour before that timer counts down. Let’s go.”