TEAM BUILDING (OR: THE ESCAPE ROOM THAT DIDN'T SURVIVE)
(Team Khabib tries to get out of an escape room)
The brochure had said "60 minutes to escape — can your team do it?"
Khabib had read that and felt something stir in his chest. Something competitive. Something ancient.
"We go Saturday," he announced at the end of practice.
"Coach," Islam Makhachev said carefully, in the tone of a man who had recently purchased a horse, "I have—"
"How come he gets to order us around," Usman said, under his breath.
"Because, Usman," Khabib said, straightening, looking at a point in distance, "I am. The. EAGLE."
Islam closed his mouth. The horse would have to wait. There was no negotiations with Khabib. Especially when he reminded himself and everybody in a radius of a mile that he was, in deed, the Eagle.
The drive over was not peaceful.
Umar and Usman had been arguing since approximately seven-fifteen in the morning, when Usman had eaten the last of the bread and Umar had called him a traitor to the family name. By the time they pulled into the parking lot of Quest Zone: Mahachkala's Premier Escape Experience!, they had progressed through: the bread, who had more submissions in sparring, who their mother loved more, and whether Usman's new jacket made him look like a gas station attendant.
"It does a little," Abubakar offered helpfully from the back seat.
"Nobody asked you!" Usman objected.
Abubakar shrugged. He was only here because Khabib had confiscated his phone three days ago, yet again, for scrolling through reels during a technique session. He had been informed he would get it back after the escape room. He was therefore treating this entire exercise as a hostage negotiation and himself as the hostage.
Islam Mamedov got out of the van and stood in the parking lot with the expression of a man who had been awake since four a.m. for no reason and had opinions about it.
"How long is this," he said. It wasn't really a question.
Islam Mamedov looked at the sky. The sky offered nothing.
"One hour," he repeated, in a voice that suggested one hour was a prison sentence.
Kasum nodded slowly in the way that meant he absolutely saw his friend was suffering, because it was Saturday, and they all wanted to sleep. Kasum was, by nature, a man who found the best in situations. He had already read the entire Quest Zone website on his phone and was prepared to share seventeen interesting facts about escape room puzzle design with anyone who would listen.
Ikram was last out of the van. He had, in the parking lot, already located the fire exit on the side of the building, the gap between the fence panels near the dumpster, and the fact that the front door was slightly ajar. He filed this information away. He said nothing.
Khabib Nabiev stood next to Khabib — Coach Khabib — and waited. If Coach said they were doing an escape room, they were doing an escape room. This was simply how the universe worked. You did not argue with gravity. You did not argue with Khabib Nurmagomedov.
He had, however, quietly googled "escape room tips" on the drive over and then felt guilty about it, like he had cheated on an exam he hadn't been told about yet.
The room was called THE CURSED LABORATORY and the young woman at the desk, whose name tag said AMINA, explained the premise with the enthusiasm of someone who had explained it four hundred thousand times.
A scientist. A curse. Sixty minutes. Find the antidote. Standard.
"Any questions?" Amina asked.
"Yes," Kasum said. "The average solve rate for rooms of this difficulty tier is—"
Not dramatic-dark, not atmospheric-dark. Just. Dark. There were some red emergency lights in the corners and a few LED strips around the prop furniture, and that was it.
Islam Mamedov located a corner, sat down against the wall, and closed his eyes.
"What are you doing," Umar said.
"I'm thinking with my eyes closed. It's a technique."
"It's a technique, Umar."
Meanwhile, Usman had found a combination lock on a cabinet and was staring at it with the focused intensity he normally reserved for opponents who had longer reach. "Four digits," he said. "Could be a year. Could be a code somewhere in the room."
"There are clues on the desk," Ikram said, already reading them.
Everyone turned to look at Ikram.
Ikram looked back at them, paper in hand, expression neutral.
"Read them out," Khabib said.
Ikram read them out. They were, as escape room clues went, fairly standard: a series of symbols on the wall that corresponded to numbers, a UV flashlight hidden in the desk drawer, some kind of periodic table reference that Kasum immediately got very excited about.
"OKAY," Kasum said, "so if we cross-reference the atomic numbers with the symbols on the wall—"
"Just tell me the code," Usman said.
"I'm telling you the code, I'm explaining the code—"
Kasum sighed the sigh of a man whose gifts were not being appreciated. "Seven. Four. One. Nine."
Usman punched it in. The cabinet clicked open.
"Good," Khabib said. This was already going better than he thought. When they entered the room, he had a brief moment of doubt, but now it was clear - his team could face anything. "This is teamwork. Next."
Fifteen minutes in, they had solved two of the five puzzles. Progress, technically. However:
Islam Mamedov had fully fallen asleep in the corner, which meant they were operating at reduced capacity. Umar had discovered that if you shone the UV flashlight directly into your own eyes, it made a very interesting visual effect, and had done this three times. Abubakar had found what appeared to be a prop newspaper from the 1970s and was reading it with more attention than he had given any training session this month, having apparently decided that fictional Soviet-era news was more interesting than anything happening in the present. Islam Makhachev hid in a corner and was texting furiously.
Thirty-five minutes in, they hit the wall.
Well — also metaphorically. The fourth puzzle was a cipher, and the cipher required a key that was apparently hidden somewhere in the room, and they had looked everywhere logical: the desk, the cabinet, the bookshelves, under the table. Nothing.
"It must be in the room," Kasum said, frowning. "They can't give you an unsolvable puzzle, that would be a liability issue—"
"Maybe we missed something," Khabib Nabiev said quietly. He had been methodical, careful, working through each surface. If anything, he was the most competent person in the room, but this seemed rude to point out, so he didn't.
"WAKE UP," Umar said, kicking Islam Mamedov's shoe.
Islam Mamedov opened one eye. "Did you find it?"
"Then why are you waking me up."
"Because you should be helping!"
"I AM helping. I am resting so that when the solution becomes clear, I will have the energy to execute it." He closed his eye again. "You're welcome."
Umar made a sound that could not be transcribed.
Ikram, meanwhile, had been very quiet for approximately four minutes. He had read the clue sheet twice. He had looked at the walls. He had looked at the floor. He look at a wall again, and noticed a painting.
The woman on the painting was smiling and pointing at a wall. A nook, specifically. A nook that had a very small doorhandle, if you looked closely.
He walked very calmly to the nook, which was actually the hidden exit door, opened it approximately two centimeters, confirmed that the guys were not looking, and — in the time it takes to blink — was gone.
Nobody noticed for six more minutes.
"Where is Ikram," Khabib said.
"He was just—" Kasum started.
"He was here a minute ago," Umar said.
They all looked at the door. The door was closed. The door was definitely closed and had not been opened because there was a sensor light above it that would have flashed red.
Which meant either Ikram had found a way out that they hadn't, or Ikram had dissolved.
"He found the exit," Khabib Nabiev said.
"And he didn't tell us," said Usman. The brothers, for the first time all day, were in complete agreement. United in betrayal.
Abubakar put down his 1970s newspaper. "Smart," he said, with genuine admiration.
Usman also noticed the painting, and decided, somehow, that the key, or clue, or even the exit, was behind the painting. He moved the painting to look at the wall behind it, and then, for reasons unknown, put his hand through approximately thirty centimetres of plaster.
Everyone went very still.
Usman looked at his arm. His arm was in the wall.
"That," said Kasum slowly, "is not where the key is."
"I can feel the key," Usman said, sounding sure.
"Yes. Someone put it in the wall." He pulled his arm back out. In his hand was a big piece of plaster. It was not a key.
"Maybe this is not the key, but it is a clue. That wall is weak. Maybe that is on purpose. This could be the hidden exit," Khabib Nabiev offered.
Both Islams wanted to object to this ridiculous theory, but - one had a horse waiting, the other his bed. The looked at each other, grimly, and nodded.
"Yes, brother", Islam Makhachev confirmed, "Excellent thinking. This is the way out. I can see daylight. We just made the hole a bit bigger."
"Do you think they plaster it back everyday, ten times a day?!" Kasum objected. "This is obviously not -"
"Our brother Islam is UFC double champion. He knows." Islam Mamedov saw the way out and was not about to give up on it.
"I am not sure about this, too" Umar chimed in.
"No, this is the way forward", Khabib said, and it was decided, because he was the Eagle, after all.
They kicked the poor plaster and made a hole big enough to comfortably go through. One by one, they went through it.
On the other side was not the designated exit corridor.
On the other side was a storage closet, and then, through the storage closet, the building's maintenance hallway, and at the end of the maintenance hallway was a fire door.
They exited through the fire door.
They were standing in the parking lot.
Amina was not supposed to handle situations like this. The training had covered: participants who panicked, participants who cheated by filming, participants who proposed inside the rooms (twice), and once, memorably, a children's birthday party that had resulted in cake on the ceiling.
It had not covered this. A group of MMA fighters destroying a wall.
She stood in the parking lot with her supervisor. Then they looked at the group of very large men standing in the parking lot.
The supervisor instinctively stepped back.
"I want to say something," Khabib said. His voice was calm. It was always calm. It was the calm of a man who had choked out other men in front of millions of people and considered it a normal Tuesday.
"Of course," Amina said, because what else do you say.
"This room. It was not easy." He gestured back at the building. "That last part — the wall — this was not obvious. The clues did not lead there clearly." He paused. "But we found it. Because we are trained. We are athletes. We understand the body, the space, the structure. We have - discipline." Another pause. "You cannot expect everyone to do this."
"Women," Khabib said. "Children. Regular people. They come in here — they get scared, they get confused, they go the wrong direction. They are not strong enough to go through the wall. They need a clearer path." He nodded firmly. "You should make the exit more obvious. For the regular people. Out of respect."
Behind him, his men nodded in solemn agreement.
Islam Mamedov, eyes half-open, nodded.
Umar and Usman nodded, briefly united.
Abubakar nodded, because he had been told to nod.
Kasum was already composing, in his head, a very thorough TripAdvisor review.
Khabib Nabiev said nothing, because Coach had said what needed to be said, and that was enough.
Amina looked at her supervisor, and her supervisor, helplessly, looked back at her.
"You're absolutely right," Amina said carefully. "Because - most of our visitors, the, uhm, the women and children - they don't, ah, they don't exit through the wall. So. We'll — look into that."
"Good," Khabib said. He turned to his team. "Good job today. We escaped."
"Ikram escaped forty minutes ago, and he didn't find the wall exit. How is that possible," Umar said darkly.
"Ikram used his environment efficiently," Khabib said. "But he should have told us. I will investigate this closely. If he cheated somehow, there will be consequences." He took out his phone and typed a message.
Somewhere across the city, sitting in a café with a coffee and his feet up, Ikram's phone buzzed.
next time you tell us before you go
Ikram looked at the message.
Outside the Quest Zone, Khabib was already talking about doing the next level — the hard one, the one that was rated "Expert: Only 3% Complete This."
Islam Makhachev, who had spent the morning thinking about a horse, closed his eyes briefly.
"Saturday," Khabib confirmed.
Islam took a breath. The horse would have to wait again.
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