Game On

"Are you the one who locked the sound room? We just want to stop the music and go home."
Suspicious, Bob crosses his arms. "Anything else we should know while we're at it? Don't you want to admit it's an elaborate advertising campaign for god knows which new VR system?"

"Go for it! You're young. I couldn't get the lock off myself." Dirk certainly isn't the most... imposing of men, that's for sure. He trails off. "Huh... a VR arcade was on my list of investments... I might have to look into that a bit further..." but that's more him just spacing out.

"Come on. Let's go in there and stop all this madness," Rachel say, voice shaking. "I just want to go home..."

"Me too, Rachel. Me too! Ok let's go." Henrietta makes sure to stay behind Rachel and follows the girl in, pistol at the ready, wide-eyed and petrified.

Pushing open the door to the sound room reveals a 16-channel mixing board haphazardly connected to a few tapes decks and CD players. A bright yellow Walkman is connected to one of the channels, and the audio is peaking.

Bob cautiously enters the room and approaches the mixing board precautiously.
"Well, I guess it ends there?" he says hesitantly, pushing the stop button on the Walkman.

The second the music ceases, so does all the motion outside the booth (there is a window where you can see out into the rink.) All the skaters stop dead in their tracks, staring up at the disco ball in the center of the room. And they all begin to scream, blood erupting from their mouths. Until it sounds like they're all producing a Tone of their own.

... well. Stopping the Walkman certainly ended the Tone playing.
Though it's debatable if this is an improvement.

You suddenly remember part of the Specimen Log you picked up a while back.

"Oh shit. That didn't work too well." he says taking in the spectacle.


He snaps of of it, turns to his companions.
"OK... plan B. Do we have a plan B? Ruben says, getthefuckouttahere sounds like a good plan B?"

"Oh yeah, this is not really what I had in mind when I read feedback loop." say Bob with a sheepish smile.
"Never mind, I guess the show must go on." he adds while pressing the play button, restarting the music.

"Ruben, I'm all for getthefuckouttahere but the doors are locked. I assume the progenitor spoken of in the log would be the famed DJ?"

"Me too or we're gonna die in a dive skating rink."

Staring at the skaters and the change that comes over them, Henrietta's teeth feel like they will chatter with fear if she doesn't shift her already overloaded mind to something else.

"How do we break through that door though?"

"I dunno... we... we shoot 'em open! We ram 'em open, with... anything. Fire extinguishers... This joint's got to have fire extinguishers, right?" he says agitated, looking around.

The sound booth gives you a view outside to the rink. You're interrupted by the door of the laser maze across the way swinging open as a man storms out, swearing. He's a scrawny man, wearing a blood-spattered hoodie and black ripped jeans, and completely decked out in glow sticks and extremely cheap looking shutter shade sunglasses that it looks like he stole from the gift shop. Even from here you can see the crazed look in his eyes. He carries a boombox on one hand and appears to be heading for the sound booth. That would be the DJ.

He spots you all crowded into the booth from the outside, and immediately turns and flees back through the doors of the maze.

"There he is! We have to stop him!" Rachel cries. She waits to let some of her braver companions lead the way, however.

"Right! We need to get that boom box or wreck it or something!"

She too looks to the others to lead as her fear has incapacitated her, visions of twisted bloody limbs, slippery brain matter and cries of agony invade her senses.

"Let's ask Mr. Manager about this laser maze before rushing head first into a trap?" asks Bob, uncertain.
Putting words into action, he leaves the soundbooth for the corridor and asks Dirk if there is anything to know about the arcade and the hidden maze area.

"It's Alien Invasion themed." Dirk offers weakly. He draws a crude picture on a sheet of paper from his office.
There's a Briefing Room , the Vesting Room where we keep all the Laser Pistols and other equipment. I don't know if the vests will be of any help, but they're probably... a little better for taking a hit if he gets violent. And then there's the arena itself. I guess that would the best place for him to be hiding, just because it's the hardest place to navigate with all the mirrors..."

"Thanks, Mr. Manager."
Then, turning to the tired group that was still in the soundbooth, "Let's roll, but discreetly? The faster we do this, the faster we'll be home."

"Where we going again, Bob? Sorry, I, hell I'm a mess. I don't mind telling you I'm a little scared. I mean I've been studying crazy shit for years but I think a part of me never really believed in it."

When Bob mentions home, Henrietta says, "Amen to that!"

"We get in that damn maze, get that damn DJ, smash that damn boombox - that's what we do, people!"

He leads the way around the rink towards the maze entrance, stopping to collect the fire extinguisher he spotted on the wall.