four: apparently everybody loves a good mystery

Samantha takes control of the shovel and digs further into the rabbit hole.

     Inside the box were numerous keys. Matt poured them out, dismay drenching him in shock. He ran his semi steady hand over the pile to spread them out, and the metal and plastic collisions made jingling sounds. Some had tags while others had handwritten numbers on them. No two were alike though. Some had blue tags, red tags, no tags but stickers on them. Some were different shapes and colors while the others were neutral like the original 863 key.

     “Dude, there’s no way. I’m so done,” Tanner hugged the back of his neck with his hands and exited to room, only to quickly come back again.

     “There’s no way that was the code,” Conner’s arms hung just like his jaw.

     “But how would this connect to the other things? You know, other than that they are keys?” Samantha crouched to look at them.

     Matt looked up at his staff as if they were reading his mind. He had all the same questions, and then some. Chills fought off the layer of sweat that had settled down his spine. With a clenched jaw, he pushed together the mound of keys and returned them to the red box before closing it. He stood with it in his hands, as if it were a treasure, but he knew it had become a new burden to deal with.

     “I have a really bad feeling about this,” he looked up and saw the agreeance in the other’s eyes, “a bad feeling about where these lead to.”

     Over the course of a few months the keys shifted hands from one to another, with each person doing their own examination of them all. In their time away from typical daily tasks, they compiled information that wound up with everybody seeing the same thing. Nothing of relevance.

     Eventually they wound up in Samantha’s possession, where unbeknownst to the others, she created a detailed scrap book with front and back pictures of each key, and a brief detail of what everyone’s input about them was.

     Matt wanted to put it all behind him, even going so far as telling Samantha to not let any else get their hands on the red box of keys they had found. This arrived from the understanding that two key threads had caused such a distraction for himself, and the thought of there being thirty or more stones to unturn nearly made his brain implode.

     So they became a permanent fixture in her office, tucked into her appropriately sized desk’s drawer. And they remained their for months longer, until almost two fiscal quarters later. But Samantha was young and hungry for knowledge of any nature. She always was seeking answers, sometimes leaving teachers sighing in wonder as to if she would ever stop asking questions. She also had always wanted to be a blogger, and that was exactly what caused herself to fall back into looking for breadcrumbs.

     “Matt, you got a second?” Samantha leaned into his office with half her bottom lip bit into her teeth. She had clearly wanted to ask a question that required courage.

     “Yeah, what’s up?” Matt closed his laptop and set it on the coffee table in front of his couch. His desktop had been unused at the underkill desk for so long, Samantha wasn’t even sure if the computer would power on anymore. But that’s not what brought her to his office.

     “So, I don’t want you to get mad or anything,” she fiddled with her cuticles, using it as an excuse to avoid eye contact. “But I think I’ve got a lead on… those keys.” Her voice dropped low like it was a rumor.

     Matt rubbed his cleanly shaven head, a new look that matched with his thicker beard fairly well. “I thought I said we were done with this.” His tone iced over the room as he gave a stoic look up to her. Her hair was thrown into a ponytail that didn’t interfere at all with a pair of loop earrings.

     “I know, but I promise this is worth it.” She offered a smile.

     “Okay.” Matt stood, ready to see whatever Samantha had done against his wishes. “But seriously, you gotta stop going against my word.” Samantha shook off the warning and led him to her office.

     It was of similar size to Matt’s, only difference being instead of puzzles and fancy gadgets all around, Samantha had knickknacks that brightened up the room. He looked over the superhero figurines that rested on a bookshelf pressed up against the wall while she sat into her swivel chair and pulled up to her computer.

     “So, as you know I used to blog a lot,” Matt shook his head in agreeance. It was actually one of the few accolades that was present on her resume when applying to the studio. “Well I had stopped when I started spending more time with my boyfriend, because the time just didn’t happen.” Matt followed her darkling eyes as they ricocheted between him and the computer screen.

     “So, I decided to log back into it, and asked what everyone else thought about the keys.”

     “Like, people that follow you?” Matt asked, the idea of social media not being within his realm. That portion was taken care of by a different department in a different base.

     “Yeah, and so I put up a quick run down of what we found, and some pictures of the keys to see if, maybe someone could come up with a theory. I don’t know, it was a stupid thought, but some of these suggestions actually triggered me, and make some sense.”

     Samantha slid over, leaving Matt some room to join her in front of the computer screen. A page with some flashy wallpaper in the background filled the large monitor. Down the middle was a blog Samantha had created six days earlier. Matt did a quick read through the post, noting the immaculate accuracy.

     “Eighteen thousand comments?” Matt’s mouth dropped open. “isn’t that a lot?” He awaited her response.

     “Yeah, it’s actually gotten a much higher response than any of my other posts. Apparently everybody loves a good mystery.” She started to scroll down to the first batch of comments. “So I kind of forgot all about posting this in the first place, so I haven’t read all of them, but I did look at the most liked ones, and there’s some really clever people.

     “Okay so this one, ‘It seems that all of the keys are three digits long, like area codes. 863 belongs to Florida. Maybe try mapping out all of the other ones’.”

     “That gives me some creepy vibes,” Matt shook out. He kneeled down, already engulfed in the idea of finding an answer.

     “This one is what gave me chills to be honest. ‘From what I can tell about the building you’re in, there used to be lab there at some point. Found this out by doing a quick search of the address. It looks like about a year ago the license for that facility had expired. You can see redacted files available from the California DOH licensing website, or just contact CLIA for that info. But that got me thinking, maybe the keys are for different lab doors. Good luck!’”

     “That’s wild. But doesn’t really make sense.”

     “You don’t think?” she cocked her head and looked for his reasoning.

     “I mean, why would the keys be in the walls?”

     “That’s true. But can we agree that it’s interesting that they found out it was a lab, and not just that but one who’s license had expired?”

     “So you didn’t mention in any of the comments or in other posts that there used to be a lab in red base before us?”

     “No, what you see here is all I’ve put up.”

     Matt took over the mouse, scrolling back up to reexamine her detailed paragraphs. It mentioned the details of many keys and had pictures of some of them, but no detail about there being a lab.

     “Yeah, but it seems like it’s public knowledge, I just can’t see the connection.” Matt refused to trip down the path of threads again, trying his hardest not to let it overtake him. He relinquished the mouse to her and stood up straight.

     Samantha felt a smear of disappointment at Matt’s response. She felt as if he was downplaying the importance of the comment, but there was no use prying at it.

     “Look, I can’t stop you from doing things in your personal life, but when you’re here, please just stick to the job. Just, no more keys, okay?” Matt walked around the desk and accepted a nod from Samantha as an agreeance. He made his way to the door.

     “Wait!” her voice reached an octave higher than usual.

     Matt looked up and back down, knocking on the doorframe with frustration.

     “I swear to God, just humor me on this, and I won’t bother you on this anymore, okay?”

     The sound of that actually satisfied Matt. He retraced his steps back to Samantha with a dissatisfied look.

     “Just listen to this one comment. ‘Something interesting about those key tags that you may not have known is that people have been known to take that center paper piece out and split it in half. I suggest you go through each key one by one and see if any of them have anything hidden in them.’

     “That’s actually a really good point, and I don’t think any of us tried that.”

     “So what would that solve? Other than possibly giving us even more unanswered questions.” There was a space of thick air where Samantha kept quiet.

     Matt’s watch began to beep. He looked at it to see a reminder to drink water. “I gotta grab some water, lunch is in five.” He backed out from the colorful space.

     “Sorry, I thought it seemed like something,” Samantha tried not to lace her voice with sorrow.

     “Hey,” Matt stopped at the door and grabbed her attention. “Bring the keys with you.”

Author's Note

**Brief disclaimer** This is a re-imagining of a preexisting story that contains real persons. For the sake of receiving entertainment from a new source, the story being presented is NOT 100% cannon with what is seen in the collection of videos provided by the Matthias YouTube channel. This written story is rather an alternate universe and should be treated as fiction. Please view the complete disclaimer in the chapter selection of the book here:
https://www.writerscafe.org/writing/dominicrosales/2767991/