Gwen Cooper, Rhys Williams and the Colchester-Prices go to try out an escape room. They've heard a lot about them. Especially this one. People keep going into the game and not coming out. But Torchwood will be fine. After all - partners can trust each other. Can't they?
Colchester, Rhys, Gwen/Ng and Colin enter an escape room, for a night out, and are promptly gassed. They find themselves in a series of locked rooms, where they figure out the combination out by tapping on the walls to each other. Ng and Colin find themselves in a simple room with a model pendulum and Colchester and Rhys find themselves in a room with swinging axe blades that are controlled by the upstairs pendulum, which Colin is playing with. After Ng figures out a puzzle, they hear the voice go on for a bit about enlightenment. They enter a room with transparent glass and the four can see and speak to each other again. After they solve a puzzle involving ladders, they are separated again and Rhys and Colchester discuss the changes in "Gwen's" personality. After a few mostly irrelevant puzzles, Colchester is told by the voice to kill Rhys and he shoves Rhys down a pit. Ng and Colin discover that the Escape Room is supposed to indoctrinate others into their religion. (Somehow.) The voice directs them towards the two levers on each side of the glass; to pull the gold lever is to save the people in their room at the expense of the others, whilst to pull the silver is to kill those in their room and save those in the other. Colchester emotionally pulls the silver lever, but it does nothing and Ng realizes that to get out they have to be willing to kill. Ng pulls the lever, but before lasers kill them, Rhys appears, having survived the fall and breaks the glass with Colchester's gun, letting them escape. Colchester now has suspicions about Ng not being Gwen, and they all return home - except Ng, who stays to lock the man who captured them in his own escape room and gas him.
Tropes:
- The Nameless: Although he's credited as "Escape", the operator of the escape room has no name in universe.
- Minimalist Cast: There's a far smaller cast than usual. Doubles as Bottle Episode, but considering the audio format, there are episodes with far smaller casts elsewhere in Big Finish's arsenal.
- Room Escape Game: The rare non-video game example.
- Shoot Your Mate: The entire audio is about the unnamed escape room operator turning the cast against each other, saying they must kill each other to proceed. This fails, but certain characters are more open to betrayal than others.
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Like You Would Really Do It: As if an audio continuation that probably doesn't have creator permission to kill major characters would kill off Rhys. - Kill the Ones You Love: It's Ng's willingness to do this that tips off Colchester that she might not actually be Gwen Cooper.
- Batman Gambit: Ng and Colchester try a similar gambit that if they make the escape operator think they killed their friends that they will escape. Ng takes it farther than she probably should.
