Inside 863

Chapter 11 | 1/19/2021

Today marks the thousandth day of The Key Saga. It was pretty crazy to think that it's been one thousand days since the first key was found. The key that started it all and sent Matthias and his team down the rabbit hole. Or, in John Doe's words, the black hole called 863. I had a sinking feeling that something big would happen today. It had been over a week since the last big event. That was the day that the LAPD case started counting down, the day they found a hidden room under the stairs, and the day they read the chat logs from the Apple II.

I worked on edge until my phone buzzed. I half expected that it would buzz at some point. It was a text from Matt.

Get to Megadesk ASAP, it read. I hopped up from my seat. Just as I was about to walk out, Carey chirped coldly, "Where are you going?"

"Must you know everything, Joyce?" I sighed. The hostility between us had grown to the point where we had started calling each other by our last names.

"Hmph," she grunted, crossing her arms. "Always so secretive."

"Always so nosy," I retorted, then whipped around and marched out dramatically. I smirked. It felt good to jab at Carey. I was tired of playing nice. Carey had been giving me the coldshoulder since our first day and I was fed up with it. She didn't even have a real reason to hate me.

When I walked into Blue Base, I heard voices from inside Megadesk. Rounding the laced metal alcove (I'm not sure what to call it), I saw Matthias, Woods, and Sam. The camera was rolling so I stayed quiet and tried to put together what was happening by listening in. They were talking about how they got another email from John Doe. I couldn't see Matt's computer screen from where I was standing, so I had to pick out what the email said from the context of the trio's conversation.

"Why are there so many typos?" Sam asked, although no one really knew the answer.

"Feels like this is just a fan," Matt said, his voice clouded with doubt.

"It's from the same email, though," Sam pointed out. "John Doe was the one who told us to disconnect the LAPD case, so it seems like he's an actual cop."

"Yeah, and where'd that get us?" Matt snorted. He proceeded to sign an explosion with his hands.

"I mean, it didn't blow up," Woods corrected him as Sam copied Matt's hand motion.

"It melted out from the bottom of it just like how it ruined our floor," Matt said, annoyed. Matt and Sam continued to debate if John Doe was a fan or not.

"Alright. Let's just say for a second that John Doe isn't just some young fan trying to spook me because I get texts all the time from fans. The first email wasn't like this, but this one is. So, maybe John Doe wrote it really fast," Matt concluded.

"But then he had the time to put all those emojis?" Sam said, eyeing the computer screen skeptically. Matt stood from his theater seat and walked back over to the screen. He skimmed through the first part of the email, then read aloud, "I will leave the coordinates of the drop at the bottom of the email."

Drop? I thought. What kind of drop?

"So, the emojis are coordinates," Sam confirmed.

"We're supposed to go to folder folder mouse?" Matt laughed. Now I was extra confused. Folder folder mouse weren't the emojis I had in mind, but then again, what are proper coordinate emojis?

"Why would the coordinates be emojis?" Sam asked, voicing the question that was on my mind.

"So that at first glance someone might think, 'oh, it's just some emojis.' Throw someone off the trail, I don't know," Matt guessed. "Maybe it's some sort of pattern." He selected the train of random emojis and pasted it into google.