Chapter 8 - done

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"Actually," All eyes were now on Viktor. "We already found it."

"Nyström, what on earth are you getting at?"

"Well, Zenderich," He mocked. "When we were looking for the waffle room, I managed to come across it on accident. Lucky us, huh?"

"Nice going, Vik!" Charlie fist pumped the air.

"Why, thank you, baby brother." He said as he ruffled Charlie's hair.

Dina cleared her throat. "As much as I'd hate to ruin your brotherly moment, I think we should head over to the laundry room."

"She's right. Time is of the essence." Lorenzo stated matter-of-factly.

"Okay, okay. Follow me, everyone!"

Viktor led the group to the laundry room, passing the door that he, Marc, Charlie, and Belella had entered. Marzy slowed her pace to a stop when she noticed that the door was slightly ajar. She approached the door cautiously, when a hand had placed itself onto her shoulder, causing her to jump.

"Hey, Zee."

She sighed in relief seeing it was only Roy.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just... I thought I saw something."

Roy chuckled. "This whole rescue mission thing must be messing with your head. Come on, now, everyone else is waiting for us."

She slowly nodded and let him take her to the rest of the group.

After he opened the door, Marzy's eyes widened a bit in surprise. She hadn't expected the laundry room to be bigger than the breakfast nook they were in half an hour ago. The room was painted in eggshell, but the walls themselves look old and ready to collapse. All the walls were bare except for the one in front of her that had two large windows, the windowsills holding plants, pitchers, and plungers. In between the windows was a cabinet and above it was a broken clock, its hour, minute, and second hand stuck on the numbers eleven, four, and ten. Against the wall were two long troughs full of empty buckets. Marzy looked to the left wall, seeing three tubs full of both dirty and clean shirts and behind it was a broken wringer. On the right were two tables, one with a large tarp covering it and the other with tons of tools and cleaning supplies.

"Wow...." Belella marvelled, inspecting anything and everything she could get her hands on.

"Someone's happy." Marc chuckled, making her blush in embarrassment. He then noticed how she toned it down a bit, masking her enthusiasm by keeping her head down. He felt partly responsible and wanted to say something, but was unable to bring himself forward. Marc shook his head rapidly in an attempt to rid himself of these thoughts.

"A bench wringer," Viktor said, breaking the awkward silence Marc had unintentionally caused to fill the room. "It's supposed to be here, isn't it? Where is it?"

"Vik, we just walked in here. We might have to look around for it." Charlie pointed out, receiving a groan in response.

With that, the group parted and began their search for the aforementioned object. The room was big, but because of all the tables, tubs, and cleaning supplies taking up most of the space, the eight assumed it'd be relatively easy to find it. After all, according to the drawing on the map, bench wringers were pretty big.

Marzy went into a slump. She and the others searched the entire room for... ten minutes? Twenty minutes? She looked at the clock to see how much time had passed only to see it remained on the numbers eleven, four, and ten. Oh, right, it's broken. She sighed in annoyance, leaning against the table next to her, when her hand brushed against a smooth surface.

Marzy looked down and saw she had placed her hand onto a card. Lucky me.

"Hey," She called, getting everyone's attention, and waved the card in the air. "Another clue!"

"Hey, hey! Nice going, Zee!" Viktor chirped.

"Don't call her that." Roy grumbled loud enough for only him and Viktor to hear. Upon seeing Viktor back down, he smiled. However, when he heard Marzy thank him, he glowered at the floor. His victory was short-lived.

Marzy looked at the card in hand and read the words "find me." Turning it over, she saw an image of a poorly drawn clock.

"Viktor, you're tall enough, think you can go and get the clock for me?"

"Sure thing!"

Viktor walked over to the troughs full of buckets and stepped onto on of them, heightening him just enough to pry the clock from the wall. He hopped off of the bucket and brought the clock over to Marzy.

"What's the clock for, Marzy?" Dina's eyes brightened with interest.

"I don't know, Dee. The card just said to find the clock."

Turning over the clock, she noticed that in place of where batteries would normally be, there was a small strip of paper. She pulled out the paper and read the words "fix me." On the other side of the paper was a cluster of numbers.

"'Fix me?'" What is it we need to fix and how do we do it?" Charlie looked at Marzy in hopes for an answer.

"The back of the paper just shows a bunch of numbers," Marzy flipped the clock to where the she could see its face. "But I don't know what they mean. That is, if they mean anything at all."

"Hold on," Lorenzo weaved his way through the group as he approached his sister. "Can I take a look?"

She nodded and handed the it over to him, staring intensely at the clock once he'd gotten a hold of it. He looked all over it to try and see anything that looked even remotely out of place. On the outside, he appeared calm, but on the inside, Lorenzo was screaming in frustration. His eyebrows furrowed as he, once again, stared at the clock's face.

"Hey, uh, Renzo. Are you good or-"

"THAT'S IT!"

His outburst caused Roy and the others to scream.

"Oh, sorry about that," He apologized, giving everyone an awkward smile. "But I just figured it out! You see how the clock's hands haven't moved at all since we got here. Well, I think we have to place the three hands on certain numbers."

"You might be onto something," Marc started. "Everyone! Look around the room for numbers. Search high and low. Leave no objects untouched."

The octet split up and searched the room once more. Some of them searched inside the tubs of clothes, but not without searching both the inside and outside of the clothes. Others searched under and on the tables. They even looked through each and every tool, cleaning product, and cleaning supplement that sat on the tables. A few of them had lifted the tarp off of the table hoping that it was hiding all three numbers so they could get the search over with. Unfortunately for them, they didn't find a single number. The group was beginning to lose hope when Dina's voice brought them out of their misery.

"I found one!"

The seven looked over and found Dina standing by the troughs, bucket in hand.

"It says nineteen!"

The group was ecstatic until they realized where Dina had found the number. She'd found it on a bucket. There were two troughs full of buckets. This was both good and bad news for them. It was good news because they'd found where the numbers were hidden, but bad news because they'd have to search through every single bucket.

"Good Lord, this'll take ages." Marc complained.

"Then the sooner we start looking, the better." Belella said.

They quickly began looking through the buckets, making to sure to look both inside and out. A few minutes had passed when Charlie yelled out the number he'd found: nine. Just one more number and they'd be done and could move on to the next task. However, as time went by, the number of buckets began to lessen. The eight of them started to worry.

Marzy searched through the buckets frantically but carefully. If we run out of buckets, then that means we'd have to look through the room again. Marzy groaned at the thought, just barely noticing the blur of color on the bucket she'd thrown behind her. She ran back to retrieve it, turning it all over to see whether there really was something on it or if she'd just been seeing things. She sighed sadly before seeing red writing on one of the bucket's handles. A smile formed on her face.

"Eleven!"

The others whipped around hearing her outburst.

"The last number is eleven!"

They all cheered.

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A/N: I haven't updated in about two days and that's because I decided to not post daily anymore

I'd rather leave at least a day or two between updates. It really makes it a lot easier on me and also makes it so the story doesn't end so soon.


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