Work Text:
One thing that Lisbon particularly loved about her boyfriend was the fact that he enjoyed living in the moment just for the fun of it.
Many of the guys she had dated previously were the serious, career-focused type like she was, and it was usually their jobs that had gotten in the way of making the relationship work. Two people with the same personality typically didn’t mesh well in a healthy dating relationship. Which is why Lisbon found herself pleasantly surprised when she had started dating Jane.
In no way would she call their personalities the same, or even close to it, but she supposed the whole ‘opposites attract’ theory worked well in their case. His penchant for mischief and jokes perfectly balanced out her workaholic tendencies, and they found themselves settling comfortably into a nice routine outside of work.
It was because he tended to live in the moment that she found herself where she was, standing outside a building that read ‘Enchambered: Sacramento Escape Rooms”.
“What is this?” she demanded of him as soon as she saw where they were.
“It’s an escape room, Lisbon, I’m sure you’ve heard of them.”
“Jane, I know what it is. Why are we here? You can’t do an escape room with just two people.”
As if on cue, two other cars pulled up next to Lisbon’s SUV, and Cho, Rigsby, and Van Pelt joined them in the lobby.
Jane looked at her pointedly. “That’s why I invited them. I thought it might be fun, and you can call it team building. Besides, I’ve been dying to try out one of these puzzle rooms for a long time.”
“You’re crazy,” she said, slipping her hand into his and squeezing it gently. “But that’s what I love about you.”
“Hey, guys!” Van Pelt called.
Lisbon waved them over. “Did you all know about this?”
Rigsby looked sheepish. “Yeah, we did. Jane told us not to tell you, he said it was a surprise.”
To their astonishment, Lisbon laughed. It was then that Van Pelt noticed that her boss and Jane looked like they were...holding hands?
She nudged Rigsby. "You owe me twenty bucks."
"What? Why?" he responded, a lot louder than he meant to, getting Lisbon's attention accidentally.
As quickly as she could, she let go of Jane's hand, her face turning a lovely shade of red.
But Van Pelt only grinned and raised an eyebrow, quickly pulling Lisbon aside. "How long have you two been, you know?" She whispered conspiratorially to Lisbon as soon as they were alone.
"Oh, hush."
"No, seriously! How long? We've had a bet going for months now!"
Lisbon smiled. "We've only officially been together for a few weeks, and somehow he practically lives in my apartment already."
At her words and the lovestruck look in her eyes, Grace couldn’t help but be over the moon happy for her boss. “Are you happy?”
“Of course. He’s really sweet when he’s not being a pain in the ass,” Lisbon admitted. “There’s not another person in the world I’d rather share my time with.”
“That’s good, I’m really happy for you, boss. You know, when I first joined the unit I thought you two were hooking up,” Van Pelt confessed.
“What? But that was ages ago, I didn’t even know I was in love with him,” Lisbon pointed out. “How could you possibly think we were together?”
“Come on, Lisbon, he looks at you like you’re the only one in the room. He always has. All those little smiles and touches and you didn’t notice?”
If Lisbon’s blush earlier wasn’t visible, by now it definitely was. She felt the flush creep it’s way up her neck at Grace’s words and wondered how it was possible that it was her job to be observant, and hadn’t seen the evidence of Jane’s feelings for her.
They were soon interrupted by Jane beckoning them back over to the group. Apparently, their appointed room was ready, and the challenge was about to begin. Truly, she didn’t understand why he insisted on doing an escape room, surely he could invent a better one than any company could come up with. Nevertheless, she went along with it, unsure of whether he wanted to do this to polish his skills or to challenge her and her team.
On their way to the staging area, Jane turned to them and explained it all.
“This is going to be fun,” he said, rubbing his hands together mischievously. “I’ve wanted to try out one of these rooms for a long time, see if my skills are on par with the puzzles they can come up with. That’s why I’ve requested the most difficult puzzle room for us to work on.”
Groans of protest could be heard from Rigsby, while Lisbon and Van Pelt looked excited. Cho, as usual, seemed indifferent.
“We are all working together, right?” Grace asked. “We won’t be in separate rooms, will we?”
“Nope!” Jane replied happily. “And if you can’t solve the puzzles and have to rely completely on me, well, let’s just say that the water cooler talk on Monday won’t favor the serious crimes unit. You are detectives after all, and I expect great things.”
“Puzzles, Jane? Really?” Rigsby complained.
He looked offended. “Of course. There’s no better way to train your mind.”
“I can think of several,” Cho muttered under his breath.
“Come on, quit your whining. This could be fun,” Van Pelt said. “I bet even Jane will be stumped.”
“Now that’s a bet I’m willing to take,” Rigsby said.
“Be serious,” Lisbon chided. “If word gets out that we couldn’t get out of an escape room, they’ll be talking about it forever.”
Rigsby looked skeptical.
“I mean it,” Lisbon continued. “What kind of detectives would we be if we couldn’t get out of a simple escape room in under an hour? It’ll be all over every company function we have to go to, I’m talking Christmas parties and fundraising events, and-”
“We get it,” Jane said, effectively stopping her. “So let’s get started, shall we?”
An attendant ushered them into one of the rooms in the corner. Stepping inside was like traveling back in time, their clothes the only modern-looking thing in sight. The interior of the room was small for that many people, and it looked to be set up like an old western saloon. The walls and floor were paneled in a dark wood, and a bartop ran across the middle of the space. Built-in shelves occupied the far wall of the room, each one holding empty bottles of what was supposed to be alcohol.
Turning in a circle, Lisbon spied two desks, one on each of the remaining walls, that looked as if they held old mail and letters. Paper littered the bartop and desks, and she noticed that every drawer in both desks was padlocked tightly shut.
A computer screen above the door indicated that they would have a full hour to escape the room and solve all of the puzzles. Because it was the most difficult room, there would be no hints given to them at any time during their session. A countdown sounded, and they were off to begin their tasks.
“I guess we start here,” Lisbon suggested, picking up the piece of paper on top of the stack. “It looks like a letter.”
“It’s not a letter,” Jane said. “It’s just a reiteration of all the rules we already heard. You’re wasting your time by reading it.”
Quickly, she skimmed the piece of paper she was holding, taking in only every other sentence or so. Sure enough, Jane was right. It was just a distraction.
“Where do you propose we start?” Lisbon asked him, her hands on her hips in defiance.
“No need. I already figured out how to escape.”
Van Pelt’s jaw dropped.
“How?” Rigsby asked. “We’ve only been in here for two minutes!”
“Occam’s Razor,” Jane said simply. “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity. Ergo,” he made his way over to the door, turned the handle, and opened it. “Voila. I have escaped.”
Before anyone could say another word, he was out the door and walking down the hallway, whistling merrily. Momentarily, none of them could say anything, just look at each other as if he had lost his mind.
Had he really brought them here just to play tricks on them? Lisbon wondered.
“Is he serious?” Cho asked.
“I’m not sure,” Van Pelt admitted.
To no one’s surprise, it wasn’t long before one of the game attendants led Jane back to the room. He still had the smug look on his face, but his arrogant demeanor had been replaced with a slight tinge of embarrassment.
“Welcome back,” Lisbon said sarcastically. “That was a short trip.”
He grinned sheepishly. “I just learned that they can’t actually lock you in these rooms for legal reasons. Technically, I still escaped, but in the eyes of the puzzle makers, it’s cheating.”
Van Pelt stifled a giggle and Lisbon couldn’t help but rub the bridge of her nose in frustration. The last thing they needed was to get kicked out for cheating.
“Ready to try again, Jane? For real this time?” Lisbon asked.
“That was clever, what you did with the door,” Cho added.
“I’m all ears. Lisbon, whenever you want to begin,” he said, sitting down on one of the bar stools.
“Thanks.” She turned to the attendant and asked if he could reset their timer to make up for the time that Jane had lost them, and he agreed amiably. Lisbon thought that at least it would give the guy a good story to tell later.
When the door had swung shut again and a robotic sounding voice announced to them that their time was about to begin, Lisbon scanned the mess of papers on the desk. Most of them seemed to be mindless distractions from the real task at hand, except for one. Grabbing what looked like a drink list off one of the desks, she handed it to Cho.
“What do you make of this?”
“Looks like a drink list. It’s probably either what’s in stock or what’s available,” Cho decided.
“Hey boss, can I see that for a minute?” Van Pelt asked.
Lisbon handed it to her and stepped back to see what she came up with. Grace scanned the items and picked up several of the bottles from the shelves at the back of the room, arranging them carefully on the bartop.
This time, Rigsby wasn’t the only one who looked confused.
“What are you thinking, Grace?” Lisbon asked, watching the steadily increasing number of bottles piling up.
“I’m thinking that if we take the bottles from the shelves and put them in the order that they go in on the list, it might spell something out or give us some kind of clue,” she explained.
“Like one of the combinations to the locks?” Rigsby clarified.
“Yeah. Okay, this is all of them.”
Cho scanned the labels on the front of the bottles. “It doesn’t look like it says anything.”
“Check the bottom,” Lisbon suggested.
Van Pelt turned each of the bottles on their sides so that the undersides were visible. She was right, on the bottom of each bottle was painted a letter or number, and because she had arranged them in order, it spelled out ‘LOCK 1: 3938’.
Immediately, they went to different locks and started trying the passcode in each one.
Jane, who had been silent since his little trick with the door, decided to point out what they had gotten wrong. “If you’re looking for lock number one, might I suggest the one closest to the door?”
“Why does it have to be that one?” Lisbon asked him.
“Because it’s the only lock with a blue stripe near the bottom. It’s also the one that’s locking up the smallest drawer, which I can only think is the next clue.”
Grace grabbed the lock and put in the code, and to no one’s surprise, the lock popped open. She peeked into the drawer, looking for the next clue, and jumped back with a little shriek. A very realistic looking rubber snake sat coiled up in the drawer, as if ready to pounce. Lisbon tossed it on the desk unceremoniously.
“What the hell are we supposed to do with this?” she grumbled.
Rigsby examined the snake carefully before passing it to Jane. He only had to look at it for a couple of seconds before he knew exactly what they were supposed to do with it.
“Come on, Lisbon, this is an easy one. Clearly, you’re supposed to-”
“Alright!” Lisbon interjected. “You’re spoiling all the puzzles. We should have made you do a room by yourself. Rigsby, can I borrow your tie?”
He looked perplexed. “Sure, boss.”
Lisbon took the tie from Rigsby and tied it in a knot over Jane’s eyes. If Jane had known that he was going to be blindfolded for this challenge, he would have provided a more comfortable piece of clothing to use. As it was, it served its purpose because he couldn’t make heads or tails of anything with it on.
“There,” Lisbon continued. “If he can’t see, he can’t give away hints. You can’t see, can you?”
“Not in the least.”
“Good. I’d like to see you solve a puzzle room blindfolded,” Lisbon said smugly. She waved a hand in front of his face to make sure he couldn’t see it and turned her attention back to the rest of her colleagues.
Grace silently applauded Lisbon for shutting Jane up. Although Cho would never admit it, he was thankful too. Now he could help solve the puzzles without being overshadowed by Jane, as he so often was.
“I think I know what to do with the snake,” Rigsby said suddenly.
“You do?” Lisbon asked, surprised.
“Yeah. Look at the rings on its tail, they’re set up in four different groups. Five bands in the first, two in the second, four in the third, and six in the last. Maybe it’s another lock code?”
Lisbon ground as she eyed the rest of the locks in the room. They’d have to try every single one individually. Everyone got to work putting in the code until one of Cho’s locks opened with a click.
A slip of paper sat in the center of the box with the word ‘fade’ written on it in calligraphy.
“This one’s pretty obvious,” Cho remarked. “It’s just an alphabet code. F is the sixth letter of the alphabet, a is the first, d is the fourth, and e is the fifth. So our password is six, one, four, five.”
Once they found the lock belonging to that code, there were only two locks left. The only thing they had to go off of was another menu, but this time it didn’t turn up any important details. Lisbon had been trying to find any possible combination that could have gone in the lock, to no avail.
“I wish I had my bolt cutters,” she complained.
“You have bolt cutters?” Jane exclaimed. He had been sitting at the bar listening to them solve any of the other puzzles, no doubt trying to figure them out in his head. “Do they go with the hammer you keep in your desk?”
This caught Grace’s attention. “You keep a hammer in your desk?”
“She does,” Cho confirmed. “If you think that’s odd, you should see the toolkit she keeps in the SUV.”
“Hey!” Lisbon protested. “I can hear you.”
“I know. Where do you keep these bolt cutters, anyway? And what other tools that can be used as weapons do you have handy? I need to know in order to protect myself,” Jane said.
“There’s a tire iron in the back of the SUV,” Grace remembered.
“Everyone has a tire iron,” Rigsby pointed out. “They’re useful. Also, I’ll vouch for the fact that the boss’ preparedness has come in handy more than once.”
“Thank you, Rigsby,” Lisbon said, laughing. “Someone agrees with me.”
“I never said I didn’t, I’m just looking out for myself here. Did you know that Lisbon keeps three guns between her person and her car?” Jane informed them.
Cho shrugged. “That’s not uncommon for a cop.”
“Not you too,” Jane groaned. “You all can join Lisbon in the ‘I love the NRA club’.”
“We’re cops, Jane. It’s literally in the job description to carry a gun,” Van Pelt said, slightly miffed.
“Nevermind that, we’ve wasted enough time and I still haven’t gotten this lock open,” Lisbon said, bringing their attention back to the challenge at hand.
“I could pick the lock,” Jane suggested innocently but was met by a chorus of disagreement from his teammates.
“No lock picking, no shortcuts,” Lisbon declared. “We’re gonna do it straight, no cheating. That means you.” She stared at Jane, who wasn’t even facing her.
“Got it, understood. By the way, did you check the year that the menu claims to be from?” Jane suggested.
Rigsby read it aloud. “1875.”
“There’s your answer!” Jane said triumphantly, as Lisbon popped the lock open. “What does the last clue say?”
“Uh, it’s just one word. Floor.”
“Does that mean anything?” Rigsby asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“We can’t legally pry up floorboards, can we?” Cho asked sensibly.
“If I can’t pick locks, you can’t take up the floors,” Jane called from his perch on the barstool.
Not that he could see, but Lisbon stuck her tongue out at him childishly. Sometimes, he really drove her crazy.
Van Pelt and Rigsby had started searching for any hidden catch or release that could open a door or safe, but they hadn’t found anything. Lisbon stepped back to look around the room with a more critical outlook, and although she would never admit it, she was trying to see it through Jane’s eyes. Nothing in particular jumped out at her, which is why she was so surprised when Van Pelt held up a sheet of paper that had been taped to the underside of the bar.
The only thing on it was a series of symbols and shapes, stars, boxes, and circles among other things. She slid it over to Cho with an unspoken question hanging in the air. Jane turned towards them, swinging his legs a bit in the process, and a hollow thud sounded through the room as his foot connected with a piece of trim on the bar.
Four pairs of eyes stared at one pair of blindfolded ones, seemingly oblivious to what he had just discovered. Cho lifted the plank off the other pieces that it sat on, and a small hidden box fell out, revealing an even tinier metal puzzle box. The same symbols on the piece of paper Van Pelt found were etched into the rings of the box, and when Lisbon lined them all up correctly, a powerful looking magnet slid out of the compartment.
“What is it? What is it?” Jane asked excitedly.
“It looks like a magnet,” Cho remarked. “I’ve seen these used before on hidden doors. The magnet triggers the catch in the door so you can open it without breaking the lock.”
“Is there even a hidden door here? There’s no way this is all the puzzle is, we’ve only been in here for half an hour,” Lisbon pointed out.
Just then, Rigsby surprised them all again by taking the magnet from Cho and running it along one of the panels on the far wall. It didn’t take long before a portion of the wall swung towards them, revealing a second room.
“Found the panel, did you?” Jane asked. “I saw it when we came in. Slight discoloration of the wood and disruption of the wood grain pattern.”
Lisbon punched his shoulder. “And this is exactly why you’re still blindfolded.”
“Well, are you going to check out the next room? Can I come with you?” Jane wheedled.
“Fine,” Lisbon conceded. “But you have to keep the blindfold on.”
The hidden door was only about half the height of the whole wall, so they had to get down and crawl through the passage. Lisbon took a moment to imprint forever in her mind the image of Rigsby crawling through the doorway.
“Looks like quite the poker game,” Cho commented upon seeing the second room.
“Poker? Can I see?” Jane asked, trying to take off the blindfold.
“No, you can’t! I made it clear that I wasn’t going to let you give us all the answers, so the blindfold stays on,” Lisbon commanded.
Quickly she took in the setup, it was a billiards table set with poker for five. The dealer would sit at the head of the rectangular table, and the four other hands were set with the cards facing up. Each seat had a few stacks of chips, and there was a good-sized pot going in the middle of the table.
“Hey,” Rigsby said, smiling. “Maybe we’ve got time for a quick game, eh?”
Grace quickly crawled back through the doorway to check how much time they had left. “There are about twenty-five minutes left on the clock,” she reported.
“That’s enough time for a game if we move quickly,” Rigsby said gleefully.
“No way.”
“Come on, boss, there are enough spots for all of us to play,” he pleaded.
“As much as I’d like to, this is probably set up this way for a reason,” Lisbon explained. “Maybe it’s got something to do with the number of chips?”
“The final key has to be somewhere in one of those lockboxes,” Grace said, pointing to a wall that was meant to look like a bank vault.
Hundreds of locked metal safes lined the wall neatly, each needing a key to get in.
“We can’t just try all of them, it’ll take way too long,” Cho said.
“There are three locked cabinets in here. Obviously, we need all of them to get to the last key,” Lisbon theorized. “But what does the poker game have to do with finding number codes?”
“It’s probably like you said, something to do with the number of chips,” Jane replied. “And I think I’ve figured out one of the other codes too.”
“How?”
“Well, it’s-”
“You know what, don’t tell me,” Lisbon corrected. “I don’t want to know.”
Jane shrugged. “Suit yourself. I was only going to say that I know how to get it, but I don’t know what it is. Someone insisted on blindfolding me and won’t let me take a peek at the room.”
Upon closer inspection, Lisbon noticed that there were four colors of chips set out, a sure sign that they were on the right track. They each chose one color from the pot to count.
“I’ve got 9 blue,” Cho reported.
“4 green,” Rigsby said.
“7 white,” Van Pelt added.
“And I have 2 red,” Lisbon finished. “So we have our numbers, but what order do they go in?”
“Maybe alphabetical,” Rigsby suggested.
“If we put the colors in alphabetical order, that gives us blue, green, red, then white,” Cho listed.
“Which then gives us 9427 as our code. Does that fit in any of the locks?” Lisbon asked.
After trial and error in all three cabinets, they had to come back to the drawing board.
“Maybe it’s not supposed to go in alphabetical order,” Van Pelt suggested. “Maybe there’s an easier way to do it.”
“But alphabetical order is the most obvious,” Rigsby mused. “What other ways of ordering are there?”
At this point, Jane looked as if he was about to jump out of his seat.
“Jane? Have something you’d like to share?” Lisbon asked teasingly.
“Sure,” he replied, trying to play it cool. “Start from the dealer’s seat and go clockwise, the same way you would if you were dealing cards. Whichever seat has the most of a certain color chips goes with that number. So if the first seat has the most red chips in its hand, then the two would come first.”
“You know, that actually makes a lot of sense,” Lisbon admitted.
After they had reorganized and reordered their numbers again, they were left with the code 2479, and it did open one of the locks. Inside the cabinet was yet another slip of paper, this one with a long string of letters and numbers. It read: 6b657920696e20313836.
Lisbon studied it carefully but couldn’t make sense of any of it.
“Just looks like a jumble of numbers to me,” Cho remarked.
“Let me see,” Grace said. Lisbon passed the sheet over to her, noticing the way her eyes widened in excitement. “I know what this is!”
“How?” Rigsby asked, dumbfounded. “It’s pure nonsense!”
“No, it’s not! This is a hexadecimal code!” Van Pelt cried gleefully.
Lisbon raised an eyebrow. “Hexa what? Van Pelt, you’re not making any sense.”
“Hexadecimal code. It’s one of the most basic programming languages, similar to binary code. The only difference is, instead of it being a base-ten coding key, it’s base sixteen. Your constants are zero through nine, followed by a through f. You can input fully worded commands to your program as number strings like this, and the program is set to interpret this as a sentence, but shorter.”
“That’s great, but how is this going to help us?” Lisbon wanted to know.
“My guess is that this is a sentence revealing which box the final key is in. We just have to translate it.”
“And how do we do that?” asked Rigsby.
“I can’t, not in my head at least. If you were doing it by hand, you’d have to separate out the bases and multiply by your base sixteen, raising the power for each code. But I really don’t think they’d set it up like that. Let’s keep going with what we have, and hopefully, we’ll get a decoder somewhere along the way,” Grace suggested.
“I hope so,” Rigsby mumbled. “I am so not a math person.”
“Okay, Jane, you can help now. How do you get to the next code?” Lisbon asked him.
“Simple. Count up the totals of the cards in the four hands, order it clockwise from the dealer, and bingo! You’ve got yourself the second code.”
Lisbon marveled for a moment at how it was possible that Jane was blindfolded and still able to figure out the clues faster than she could. She would blame it on his mentalist skills, but after that stunt he pulled earlier with the unlocked door, Lisbon was about convinced that he had lost his mind.
Once they rounded up all of the cards, their next code was 8536.
Rigsby input the code into the second lock and a tiny cast iron key came tumbling out of the little cabinet. By the looks of it, it would fit any of the lockboxes on the vault wall.
Lisbon looked distressed. “We don’t have time to try all of them!”
“Wait,” Rigsby said. “There’s something else in here.”
Folded into a square and pressed up against the back of the cabinet, they had almost missed it. It looked as if someone had scrawled drink orders on it. A scrap of paper read: whiskey, gin, beer, sarsaparilla.
“Do you think this has something to do with the bottles from the bar room?” Cho asked.
“Probably,” Lisbon agreed. “Van Pelt, would you go grab those bottles? We need whiskey, gin, beer, and sarsaparilla.”
She returned with the bottles and set them out on the billiards table. Coincidentally, they were the same ones that gave them the numbers for the first lock they had opened in the beginning.
“I’m assuming these go in the same clockwise order,” Lisbon said, reading out the code from the bottom of the bottles. “That gives us 3389.”
Cho put it into the lock and tugged. “Doesn’t work.”
“Maybe now is a good time to test out that alphabetical order theory of yours,” Jane supplied helpfully.
“That would mean beer, then gin, sarsaparilla, and whiskey would be last,” Rigsby said.
Cho read the new code out loud. “8393.”
Lisbon popped the lock open. Etched on the back of the door was a table of values with numbers and letters corresponding to them.
“Van Pelt? You may want to have a look at this,” she said.
“That’s the decoder! Okay, just give me a minute…”
In the time it took her to decode the hex string, Jane had convinced Lisbon to let him take off the blindfold since they were so close to the end of the puzzle. A newly freed Jane opened his eyes and blinked quickly against the dim light of the vault room.
“Got it!” Van pelt cried triumphantly. “Our message says ‘key in 186’.”
“Nice work,” Lisbon complimented as Cho turned the cast iron key in the lock of box 186.
The door swung open, revealing a bigger key, coincidentally the same size as the fake lock on the final door. They decided to let Jane do the honors of turning the key in the last lock, officially stopping the clock.
The same attendant from before met them in the hallway with their final time. “Congratulations,” he said. “You escaped in 43 minutes and 57 seconds. That’s a new record!”
Rigsby whooped as Lisbon smiled knowingly at Jane.
After a well-celebrated victory, they all left to enjoy the rest of the weekend off. Driving back to her apartment, Lisbon clasped Jane’s hand in hers across the dashboard.
“This was fun, Jane. I think everyone really enjoyed it.”
“I’m glad. But you’re the most important to me. Did you have a good time?”
“Yes, I did.” She smiled. “I love it when you convince me to live in the moment.”
He blushed a little. “That’s what I’m here for. Spontaneity is my middle name.”
“Patrick Spontaneity Jane. That has a nice ring to it,” Lisbon said, chuckling.
“It’s so nice I might just have to get it changed.”
“What is your middle name, anyway?” she asked.
“Daniel. What’s yours?”
“I’m not telling you,” she replied firmly.
“Please?”
“No.”
“I suppose I’m going to have to guess then,” he threatened.
“Go right ahead,” Lisbon said defiantly, face tilted upwards and chin jutted out.
And he did. For the rest of that weekend, whenever he got a chance, he would blurt out one of the possible names he had sifted through in his head. And, much to his dismay, none of them were correct. Or at least, if they were, she wouldn’t tell him.