It was a new thing for Lucy Garland to wake up not knowing where she was. Since leaving school ten years ago she had struggled with alcohol and at one point drugs. Sure she'd managed to clean herself up a bit but these mornings were still far too frequent.

This time something was different, the room was pure white and she didn't have some blokes naked back facing her or a puddle of her vomit next to her face. As her vision cleared she began to have flashbacks to the night before. The  class reunion, the opportunity to see how much better her friends at school were doing than her. She really hadn't wanted to go but Shelley had convinced her it'd be fun. It wasn't so she drank - she drank a lot.

She became accustomed to the battery operated button lights that were stuck around the room. The room must have been five meters in all directions, a perfect cube. Every two meters sat her old class mates. To her right was Toby, then Leo, Tara, Evelyn, Robbie who had crashed the party the night before, Mitchell and lastly Shelley.

She sat herself up straight so her back was to the wall - she was the only one awake. She racked her brain to figure out the last thing she could remember and drew a blank. Then she noticed something strange, there was no door or windows. It was solid white walls all around.

She saw a piece of paper in the middle and crawled over:

This is the only time I'll do the work for you, consider it modelling.

This room is 125 meters cubed in volume. That's 5200 moles of air, roughly 1100 moles of oxygen. The average person will respire 23 moles an hour and there are eight of you.

What does all this mean? Per hour you will use up 184 moles if you don't panic so let's make it 200.

Surely your maths is strong enough to figure out how long you have until you run out of oxygen and suffocate.

Here's the big problem, you've been in here since 3am and I've left only one of you with a watch.

With that the hangover was gone, she scrambled over to Tara who was first in her line on sight and ripped up her sleeves to reveal no watch, she went left to Evelyn, then Robbie and finally found a 1990s Casio on his left wrist. She read the time as 7.30. Those she had shaken stirred to a chorus of groans.

"Lucy what are you doing and where are we?" Mitchell asked.

"Mitchell, what's 1100 divided by 200?"

"What?"

"What is 1100 divided by 200?"

"I don't fucking know..."

"5.5, why?" Tara had woken from the commotion.

Lucy counted on her fingers and stared at Tara, "we've got an hour!"

"Until what?" Mitchell asked.

"Until we suffocate, we need to find out way out."

She threw the paper at him and began pacing frantically. One by one the commotion made them stir.

"Lucy calm down," Tara said.

"Oh fuck off Tara, we're going to die."

"We will if you panic and use all the oxygen, there has to be a way out we just have to find it."

"How the hell do you propose we do that," Lucy answered, the vein in her temple becoming visible, "There's obviously not a way out. It's solid walls all around, no window, no door."

"Well we got in so there must be a way out obviously. We just have to find the weak point in the wall. Whoever has put us in here has done so for a reason, god knows what, but they must have given us a way out."

With a few soft thuds attention turned to Toby whose middle finger was tapping on the wall. As he slowly sidestepped along the wall moving people out of the way who instead of getting frantic had just withdrawn and curled up.

"Toby?" Lucy screamed.

"Shut up a second Lucy," With that Mitchell and Tara had cottoned on to what was happening and copied the behaviour.

"This isn't ti..."

"Shut up Lucy, we can't push the walls or open a door so there's a chance part of the room is plasterboard, we could punch and kick through plasterboard, we just need to find it."

The tapping become more and more frantic, all eight were thudding against brick. Then the room fell silent as Mitchell got a hollow thud. It was low, below the knee. The oxygen momentarily became safe as everyone held their breath.

"I got it," Robbie said swaggering towards Mitchell, "I'll break the wall."

He paused, there was clearly a part of him that the others would either take the job from him or perhaps put him on their shoulders and cheer him on. He stared at Mitchell's feet.

"Just there?" He asked.

Mitchell tapped the wall and slowly ran his knuckles up until he heard the solid thump of brickwork, "anywhere below there."

"Right put your hand there so I know to go below."

Mitchell agreed and flattened his hand out just below where the brickwork had made its distinctive sound. He looked up at Robbie as if he were holding a place kick. With that as a cue Robbie swung his right foot at the plasterboard. He went through, the wall gave way but with the impact all colour left Robbie's face and he fell to the ground.

"Oh shit," Mitchell muttered pointing at Robbie's shin.

The comment was soon followed by a screams that reverberated around the whitewashed walls. Robbie looked down and, as with the biggest scratches, he only felt it once he saw it. His eyes popped and his mouth quivered.

What the other boys in his year at school would have done to see the tears flood up in to Robbie's eyes like they began to now. To see such a bully demasculinated would have filled them with joy. The pain moistened his eye balls and then his cheeks yet that was not what made him scream. What made him scream was the first realisation that he was not in control of the situation.