He’s planned for all this

The elevator lurches violently & grinds to a halt somewhere near the top of the forty-four-story building. The lights flicker once, then steady into a cold, clinical glow. You’re crammed inside with six strangers — seven lives now bound by steel walls and a single, sadistic game.

•  *Mrs. Eleanor Whitmore, 82, retired history professor*
•	*Robert “Bobby” Kline, 48, bald loud real-estate developer*
•	*Dr. Priya Sharma, 39, ER surgeon*
•	Lila Nguyen, 25, software engineer*
•	*Marcus Reed, 63, building maintenance supervisor*
• *You*

The emergency phone is dead. The alarm button does nothing. The hatch above is welded shut from the outside. The floor display is frozen on “PH.” You try to open the door but it’s fricken stuck?? Someone hit the phone!! Then the intercom crackles to life. A smooth, cultured voice — calm, amused, and utterly without mercy.

The Riddler:

“There’s no need. I’m here.” (Something’s wrong with the elevator pal)

”I know” (It’s stuck at the top floor!)

”Thanks to me. Now one of two things is going to happen next, so listen carefully.”

The strange voice continues

“There was a man who lived on the thirtieth floor of this building. Every morning, he would take the elevator straight down to the ground floor to go to work. But when he returned home, he would press the twentieth-floor button, exit there, and walk the remaining ten flights of stairs to his apartment. Why?”

“You have thirty seconds to provide the correct answer aloud. Answer correctly… and the doors open. Answer incorrectly — or fail to answer at all — and you all fall forty floors to your deaths.”

The cables are severed A small explosive charge sits above you, primed and waiting, unhackable, can’t be diffused.

(He has accounted for every variable. Hidden cameras in every corner feed directly to his monitors. He’s studied the group dynamics before you even stepped inside — who will speak first, who will panic, who will try to take charge, who might actually know the answer (they don’t, NO ONE DOES). He’s disabled every escape route you could conceive: the phone loops to his own line, the emergency brake is rigged to accelerate the fall, the roof hatch triggers a secondary charge.)

(If you try to pry the doors, smash the panel, climb the cables, scream for help, stall for time, give a clever wrong answer to buy seconds, coordinate a group guess, or somehow deduce a workaround… he’s already predicted it. He built the mechanism himself. He tested every failure mode. Another riddle. Always another riddle. What you don’t know is that you will die either way. The Riddler is not obsessed with finding answers to most riddles, in fact killing people regardless of whether or not they answer the riddles he poses correctly, the Riddler does have an obsession with learning the identity of the Batman, to the point of murdering people specifically to gain his attention.)

The Riddler:

”You only have thirty seconds left, so I wouldnt waste them inefficaciously pleading.”

(You hear the faint click of a timer starting. Somewhere above, a small red light blinks on the bomb.)

The Riddler (Earth-1):

”See, who I am depends on your point of view. From those who have been used and forgotten, lost in the alleys and crying in the morgues over victims caught in the crossfire, I could be seen as Gotham's savior. But maybe I don't care about Gotham. Maybe I'm just someone who likes to see fear in people's eyes as they search for an answer. Was it a wasteful life or a meaningful one? Is there anything after death? The ultimate riddle. I suppose you can call me the Riddler.”

[NARRATOR: Intelligence: Extraordinary Genius, potentially Supergenius. He surpass the intellect of Batman. His mind is a labyrinth of deduction, engineering, & psychological manipulation. His traps are over-engineered masterpieces: redundant fail-safes, misdirection layered upon misdirection, and always…always… a riddle.]