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“What are we going to do about the poster?” Damon’s voice breaks through the pharmacy’s tense silence.
Eva has been chewing the inside of her cheek for the past few minutes, attempting to solve the puzzle. Assuming that 1010 isn’t the too-easy answer, it might be a coordinate plane. These thoughts are dangerous, and she’s aware of that—or at least aware enough, meeting Damon’s eyes. Not dangerous enough to need to tell anyone, even Damon.
“What do you think we should do?” Eva asks casually, twisting part of her hair between her fingers.
This is the first time they’ve come back here, wandering around the school and somehow ending up here together, instead of Damon finding Eva in the basement like it normally happens. This time, they know what they’re looking at, the fact that it could have something to do with the code they need to get into the pharmacy’s vault.
“We’re taking care of it, right?” Damon tilts his head toward her, his eyes wandering away from the poster at last. “Have you tried solving it?”
“I thought you forgot about it,” Eva says dryly.
“We’ve had more important things happening. Like the blackmail,” Damon counters. “And anyway, we don’t even know what this means. It’s life and death, remember?”
“You’re trusting Tozu’s word now?” Eva asks, biting back the coordinate plane theory.
Damon sighs heavily. He has a way of looking at people like they’re stupid—he’s been reserving that for the others, not Eva. A deep seed of bitterness takes root inside her, but it doesn’t matter; he can look down on her all he wants, as long as he accepts who she is. A liar—that’s all she’ll ever be.
“All I’m saying is that we should be careful about who knows about it,” Damon says.
Eva regards that statement coolly. “That’s true,” she allows. “So you think we should do it together?”
Damon sighs. “I don’t see why not.”
It’s not like any of the others will be able to understand it. Damon was hopeless when he first looked at it, and clearly it’s already off his mind—he’s paying more attention to the group than the puzzle. Which means Eva could easily do it alone.
The idea twists itself into knots. Somehow, Eva meets Damon’s eyes, and makes a different decision.
In the first real trial, Wolfgang leads the charge because he’s still the group’s leader. Every point Eva makes, he shoots down; his distrust is loud and angry even as he insists that he wants to trust his classmates. It takes both Eva and Damon’s efforts to shut him down and force him to accept that one of their classmates did kill, that this heinous crime is everyone’s fault for trusting too much.
Wolfgang tries to pin the blame on Eva, which is predictable. The only good thing is that Eva has a solid alibi, with Damon at her side.
In the end, this is what sticks with Eva:
First, the way her alibi made it possible to prove her own innocence. It would be so easy to kill Wolfgang as long as she could make everyone think she has an alibi. How Eva would be able to rush to the body alongside everyone else, her heavy footsteps mimicking innocence, and she’d know she could escape. That’s all she wants—to escape.
Cassidy wanted to escape too. Even if the killing she did was a mistake, she still gets dragged away yelling, sweating, desperate to escape just like Eva. Just like that, the realization that they’re all going to die here falls on Eva.
This is the second thing to stick with her, the scent of death following the whole class wherever they go.
She trudges back to the main building with Damon by her side. She opens her mouth, briefly, wondering what to say. His eyes are glassy, and the footsteps ring out around them as everyone re-enters their dorms one after another, and Eva wonders why she didn’t take the opportunity to use that stupid code alone. Maybe things would be different.
Maybe she’d have found something worthwhile. Maybe not. They never did check.
“Damon,” she says, finally.
“Do you need something?” Damon asks, and the life in his expression returns as if it had never been gone.
“I just wanted to say—” she swallows, “—thank you. For defending me. I knew they were too naive, and look where it got them.” She laughs bitterly. This killing game is the most bitter thing in the world, and she can’t imagine where they got that still-persistent hope from. It’s not going to save them.
“Yeah,” Damon says, hands in his pockets, looking tired, weighed down. “I knew you were innocent, so no need to thank me. You’d do the same.”
But Damon wasn’t under suspicion. By the time the tide turned to him, they’d already made it clear that the two of them had been together when the murder occurred. In future trials, the same thing might happen again, but that time Eva will have to argue for Damon’s innocence instead of the other way around. She’ll have to see through the lies and unearth the truth.
And maybe, someday, that liar will be Damon.
“Tomorrow, we should go to the pharmacy,” Eva says, despite herself. “I think I know something about the code we found.”
Damon stares at her for a long moment. “That’s probably a good idea.” There’s a space where Eva can see the gears in Damon’s brain turning, turning over the trial and the murder that occurred, accident or not. They’re in a killing game. Things are different now. “We might be suspected if they find out we hid it.”
“We don’t have to tell anyone,” Eva says, unimaginably tired.
“We won’t. I was just thinking that they could always go back to trying to find the code themselves, now that something happened. Cassidy was… desperate. That’s all it was. And she’ll make everyone more desperate.”
Cassidy’s screams are still echoing around them in the empty hallway, and Tozu almost certainly stands unseen within the shadows, watching them. Neither of them want to die, even if it means hiding this one small thing; the curtain hasn’t closed on them yet.
Eva clamps down on the sudden anger inside of her. Damon doesn’t understand—he can’t understand. Eva’s talent is the only thing that could solve that stupid fucking puzzle, so it’s obviously made to be given to Eva. Either Eva gives whatever’s behind that door to everyone, or it’s hers alone. Tozu has given her a choice—a single choice, nothing more.
“The code isn’t the numbers on the poster,” Eva says. “I tried that already. That’s all I need to say for now.” And she turns to leave him, to walk down the hall to her dorm.
Damon follows, trudging slowly. “Got it.”
Eva sneaks one more glance at him as he enters Kai’s room. He looks tired, but… normal. The tear tracks have already dried off his face.
Entering Diana’s room, she looks away when Diana furiously scrubs at her face, as if that will erase the death that’s happened and the tears they all shed together, holding onto each other as the second of sixteen died. Even then, Damon and Eva had been separate from the group, and their own cries were drowned out.
Eva doesn’t cry that night, but Diana’s sobs keep her awake.
Eva thinks about killing. As the days go by it becomes more and more tempting. She crouches by a box of cords in the basement storerooms and holds them in her hands. They’re long and strangely thin, their white rubber feeling cold against her hands, cold like death. Every time Eva thinks about car batteries and water, she remembers the open eyes of that first corpse, and the chill descends on her, cursing her for thinking about it.
It all feels so incredibly real.
Damon comes down to the basement sometimes. The two of them stand by the grey walls and tilt their heads together and half-heartedly plan on a way to survive while everyone hates them.
If there’s anyone Eva wants to live for, it’s Damon. If there’s anyone Eva is scared to kill when she breaks out into the real world, it’s him.
When Eva opens the metal door in the pharmacy, Damon is with her, and nobody else. They’d talked back and forth about what it means to trust someone else with this.
After the first real trial, Eva is too scarred by the way Wolfgang immediately suspected her, anger stuck in her throat. Damon had said clearly that he didn’t want the others to know either, but she knows that whatever they take from the vault will end up in Wolfgang’s hands eventually.
Eva isn’t stupid; she knows that Damon spends time with Wolfgang the same way he spends time with the rest of their classmates. Regardless of the reason, this is a subtle betrayal. Damon is softer than he looks—if there’s anything Eva knows, it’s that. The annoyance is just a veneer to protect himself, the same way Eva’s liar talent was.
Eva savors the click of the door in the pharmacy as it unlocks, resting her hand on cool metal. When she pulls open the door, there’s a loud bang and burst of colored smoke from within; Eva immediately jumps. Behind her, Damon yells in shock.
“Tada!” Tozu says, stepping out from the smoke within and doing—of all things—jazz hands. “Couldn’t help yourselves, hm? You knew to look for this—and of course, you found it. So smart.”
He leers forward toward them. Eva shies back, stepping backward and never talking her eyes off Tozu until she’s next to Damon again.
Damon is glaring at Tozu, face pale. “What are you doing in there?”
“It wouldn’t be fun without the theatrics,” Tozu sings, his single visible eye smiling. “But you see, this was supposed to just be for a solo player. I didn’t anticipate someone else getting involved.” He’s smiling at Eva. He knows just as well as she does that this was her problem to solve.
“You anticipated wrong,” Eva says, lifting her chin. She feels pathetic. Fear coils in her gut.
“Certainly,” Tozu says. “One has to be willing to admit their mistakes at a time like this. Never fear! I will give you a brand new prize, one that both of you can make use of. All you need to do is accept the traitor perk. Well? What will it be? Will you both be traitors together, or will you reject it?”
Traitor perk. The words echo around in Eva’s skull. Tozu wanted her to be his traitor, to infiltrate the group despite not having their trust in the first place.
“What happens if one of us rejects it and the other accepts?” Eva asks.
“Well that’s no good,” Tozu says, ever-cheerfully. “But that is why it’s the traitor perk, after all. Decide together—if you take it, I’ll allow you to leave this place together. Alive, if it isn’t already obvious—the deal is sweeter that way..”
They share an anxious glance. It’s the best chance they could ever have.
And Eva knows that if Damon weren’t here, she’d take it in a heartbeat. It would be easy, a chance to succeed, no matter how minuscule. Allowing it to be hers under scrutiny is the hard part—she already knows Damon wouldn’t want to be a traitor. He’s not like Eva; they might as well be different species.
Damon breaks eye contact with Eva first. “What’s the catch?” Damon asks Tozu.
Tozu’s gaze turns to him. “Now why would you ask that?”
“I said, what’s the catch?” Damon repeats.
“It wouldn’t be any fun if I told you what happens if you take the perk,” Tozu says. “But I promise it’s a good thing to have. Something you simply do not want to miss out on—and for that reason, I can’t tell you what it is until you choose to take it or not. Why, if one of you took it and the other didn’t, that would be a disaster for the game.”
Eva shifts her weight. Weighs her options. “Can it be used to kill?”
“If you’re thinking that it’s a boring old weapon, don’t.” Tozu lifts a hand, gesturing towards them. “There’s already plenty of weapons everywhere around you—if you really wanted to keep the killing game rolling, then you already have all you need.”
Eva knows he’s correct. She can defend herself, she can escape, she can use the boiler room’s layout to commit a crime nobody could trace back to her. It wouldn’t even be difficult.
But Damon is here, and if Eva confesses those feelings…
She waits for him to speak. His eyebrows are furrowed, considering this new information. If he chooses to take it, she’ll do everything she has to in order to protect the perk.
“Time’s up!” Tozu exclaims. “If you want to take it, take it now. Otherwise, it’ll be waiting here for whatever other smart student decides to unlock it. Consider what it’ll mean if they come here before you. Isn’t it exciting?”
Eva grinds her teeth. Nobody else can solve it. That’s impossible.
Damon lets out a scoff by her side. “I’m not taking it. Without knowing the risks, there’s no way we can be sure about it. It’s more than likely a trap for us, and if we fall for it we probably won’t actually escape.” He looks at her. Waiting patiently for her response.
And it’s tempting; the words are clear on her tongue, a desire to say that they should consider it, if only to keep it out of someone else’s hands. That if it means they can escape, anything is worth it.
But Damon is not like Eva. So she scuffs one foot on the floor and steps back. “Alright,” she says. “Clearly he left the math puzzle for me—so avoiding a trap made for me sounds like a good plan.”
“How disappointing,” Tozu says. His eye lingers on Eva knowingly.
The idea stays, curls itself into Eva’s chest and makes itself home. Even when Tozu is gone and Eva has followed Damon out of the pharmacy, her mind is still trapped between the shelves, nestled back into the math puzzle and wanting for treachery.
Eva’s room is disgusting despite its unlived in cleanliness. When she came here, there were mathematics sheets pinned to a corkboard, mocking her—she ripped them down as soon as she could, leaving red tacks scattered like stars, reminders that Tozu was mocking her. The rest of the room is black and white, the whole thing a monochrome world.
She’s been staying in Diana’s overly pink room, which is so full of life in comparison to this.
Still, though, she prefers her own room. She lies face down on the black covers and Damon sits near her, and it’s nothing like when Diana (falsely) attempts to be cheerful and friendly, or worse, tries to do Eva’s makeup. Eva prefers something like this—closing her eyes as Damon braids a small bit of her hair.
“You suck at this, by the way,” she says. She can’t see it, exactly, but she can feel the lopsided way he tugs.
“Shut up. I’ll take it out after.”
They’re just passing time. Eva can feel the next murder coming like a sixth sense—the way the second motive is dropped on them unceremoniously leaves no room for doubt. Everything from now on will be her and Damon; they’re each other’s alibis, the only ally the other has.
Eva doesn’t even go to the basement as much anymore. She doesn’t think about stealing from Desmond’s room, nor does she let herself linger on the pitying looks Diana gives her every night.
With anyone else she’d be on her guard. With Damon, she knows how soft he is, so she closes her eyes and lets him tug her hair into lopsided braids, and then unbraid them. This is more affection than she’s ever gotten from anyone before. She’s already told him about how she became an Ultimate, about being the youngest on a mathlete team of older kids.
Damon still doesn’t get what she went through, but she can’t bring herself to care right now.
In the dining room, Eva rummages through the pantry for something to eat, and then leaves with empty hands. She hasn’t felt like eating what Tozu gives her since the day she opened the pharmacy’s vault door.
When she emerges, she sees she’s no longer alone; Wolfgang is standing by the other counter, back turned to her until the door closes, and then he looks back at her, purple eyes narrowing slightly.
There’s a knife in his hand and a pear split open on the counter. Eva’s stomach churns.
She moves to look through the small selection of fruits. Hopefully he’ll ignore her, just like she ignores him. He’s already made it more than clear enough that he doesn’t trust her—there’s no need to draw it out. They live in separate worlds—Wolfgang’s naivete caused everything to go wrong. Eva wishes she could gloat over his failure without painting a target on her own back.
Wolfgang clears his throat behind her. “Ms. Tsunaka,” he says evenly.
Damnit.
“Can you drop the fake formality?” Eva shoots a glare his way. “I’m not one of your clients.”
“Fake?” Wolfgang seems genuinely shocked—something shifts, a glimmer in his eye that wasn’t there before. Eva thinks about the blackmail that Tozu gave Damon, something they still don’t have any explanation for; beneath a sheep’s skin lies a wolfish mind.
“You don’t actually care about politeness,” she says. “I don’t think I have to explain that.”
Wolfgang is silent for a moment. They stare at each other, and then Wolfgang sighs. “It’s easier for me like this,” he says, as if that’s an explanation.
Eva has nothing to respond to that with. Whatever Wolfgang says will be useless to her anyway—he’s the one who should approach her if he has something to say that isn’t made of placid smiles and treating her like she’s unruly.
“Where’s Mr. Maitsu?” Wolfgang asks.
“Why do you want to know?”
Wolfgang adjusts his tie, shaking his head slightly. “I wasn’t looking for him. I just wondered, since the two of you are usually together…” He trails off meaningfully. Something dark is in his eyes, knowing of what he’s done to the two of them. Eva wonders how long it would take to pull regret out of Wolfgang’s mouth.
“Whatever,” she mumbles, grabbing a smooth, bright red apple and tossing it in her hand. “He’s with… Ulysses, I think.”
“Interesting,” Wolfgang says.
“It’s not interesting,” Eva stresses. “You want to study us as if we’re under a microscope, waiting to suspect me without caring that I’m a human being too.”
She wants to spit out how she watched how Wolfgang split her from the group, how he wants to keep accusing her at trials over and over until she finally snaps and kills him; he’s a real carnivore, no matter what he pretends to be.
And this, too: how Damon also likes Wolfgang, how she’s left utterly alone—when Damon decides to be elsewhere she’s an island among those who want to kill her. Damon knows how dangerous Wolfgang is, but still pretends to be all buddy-buddy. It’s the part of him she can’t stand, that sticks in her throat as an unspoken accusation.
Nobody treats Eva like a human. It’s high school all over again.
“Of course you’re a human being,” Wolfgang says, sliding the knife back into the knife block. Eva keeps her eyes on it the whole time. “I didn’t intend to treat you that way. I’m simply keeping an eye on my classmate—and I acknowledge my mistake in accusing you before.”
Eva glowers. “Sure.”
There are no more words to exchange. The two of them have nothing in common.
Eva watches Wolfgang leave with a plate of fruit. There’s an obvious shadow that hangs over the two of them, a cord connecting them. Eva doesn’t know when it’ll break; if she’s pushed too far, her hands will end up around Wolfgang’s neck. If he keeps leading the trials the way he does, Eva will be suspected every time.
She bites into the apple. It tastes sweet against her tongue.
The pharmacy code is simple; a coordinate plane ten by ten, word clues on the poster that tell her how to think about the puzzle, and a future cut down as soon as she decides to be a traitor. Damon is the only thing that stopped her.
She thinks of it now, tapping in the code again.
She thinks about how she could kill Damon so easily, and yet he still spends time with her. His trust is so pure that Eva just wants to consume it, to take advantage of it.
This feeling thrums under her skin the longer she waits to open the door. Heavy metal stands before her, and all she has to do is brace herself for the burst of colored fog again. This time she will be solid, not scared of what’s to come. She won’t be the victim this time.
Her nails dig into her palms. She nervously uncurls them, and pulls on the door.
There is no noise. The door slides open without fanfare, and Tozu doesn’t jump out from within to mock her. Her heart beats in her ears, her skin crawls. Something is wrong. The traitor perk should be here, and yet—
A sign, propped upright in the small space: TOO LATE! in bold black letters and a crudely drawn Tozu face below it. Black against white, an empty vault no better than a dead end.
Eva’s breath dies in her lungs.
Tozu stands in the hallway; Eva wasn’t brave enough to call him to the boiler room where she could be killed at any moment, so she stays in her comfort zone, this long dark hall where she and Damon always talk, kept spending time together.
Damon is not with her today. Of course.
“It means exactly what it says; you’re too late,” Tozu says. “Someone took the perk before you could, that’s all. Exactly what it says on the tin.”
A bead of sweat rolls down Eva’s neck. Fire is spreading through her body. Someone is a traitor. Someone has taken the perk. Is it Damon? Or did someone figure out the math puzzle other than him, working through the motions and somehow—somehow—find out that the numbers all had to be altered despite there being no indication of that anywhere other than—
“Wait,” she says. “That’s not—that’s not fair. It was mine.”
“How presumptuous!” Tozu exclaims, folding his arms behind himself. Eva can practically see the grin behind the mask. “If it was yours, you would have taken it.”
Eva looks away.
Damon is the reason. Damon is the only reason Eva faltered. She couldn’t push him into becoming a traitor—couldn’t have forced him to take it and see what she was really like. She’s a liar to the end. That’s all she is.
“You made the puzzle for me,” she rasps.
“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Either way, you had your chance. You didn’t seriously think you were the only one who could discover the truth, did you?”
Tozu’s mockery hits Eva square in the chest. Her fists shake by her side; all she wants is to get out of here, no matter the cost. Fighting Tozu wouldn’t do anything, she knows that, but she still wants to run at him, pull off his mask and expose his face. Her breath comes out ragged, shaking.
They both know Tozu laid this trap for Eva. It’s not fair.
“I’ll let you in on something,” Tozu continues, voice airy and light. “If you kill someone first, they won’t be able to use the perk to kill you. It can’t be too difficult for someone of your caliber—you did solve the poster before the one who gained the traitor perk, did you not?”
She did. She’s smarter than them. She knows it, but she also knows that she’s an easy target, someone they could pin the blame on. Someone else has found the perk, and without knowing what exactly the perk even is, Eva could very well fall into their trap.
“I—” Eva starts, then falters.
She’s going to die here.
“Well, if you have nothing more to say, then I’ll leave you to it.” Tozu spins in place, towards the end of the hall with the boiler room.
“I won’t let you do this to me!” Eva says, then grinds her teeth together, her only outlet for her rage. “Your traitor won’t kill me just because you want them to. I won’t die just because they stole this from me. I don’t need the perk. I don’t need anything from you!”
Tozu’s mask is emotionless, but his voice holds a note of elation. “Prove it to me.”
And then he’s gone, and Eva stands in the hallway shaking even as the boiler room door shuts. It’s the same as the metal vault door clicking back into place, another nail in the coffin that’s been created for her. She’s too late.
She leaves the basement. Damon meets back up with her near the dorms, his head tilting curiously toward the basement stairs. They don’t talk about where they’ve been, though Damon has a small smile as he reveals something he won at the gachapon machine.
“I’m tired,” Eva says. “I’m going back to Diana’s room.”
Damon lets her go. Eva can see in his eyes a wish for her to fall apart; it might just be her imagination, but it makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She bites down a bitter accusation.
Eva watches Diana from the corner. At her mirror, Diana uses a makeup wipe and wipes off the remains of foundation and eyeshadow. She looked like a completely different person, excluding her ever-bright pink hair.
“Did you really not use it on yourself before now?” she asks. Paranoia has dropped into her chest, but she keeps her voice cool and even.
“Well, sometimes,” Diana says slowly. “It was my job to use it on other people, and it was just easier like that. I don’t need to change my own appearance when I can use it for someone else instead.” She turns and smiles at Eva. “I could always try it on you again.”
“No thanks.”
“Okay,” Diana keeps smiling, saccharine. Eva might gag. “I know it’s uncomfortable to be here. But I just want to say, thank you for staying with me. It makes me feel safer.”
“What?” Eva sits up straighter. “You make no sense.”
Diana turns back the mirror. Her face is bare, and somehow she seems sad, tired, her makeup wipes covering the desk and her cheer not sticking correctly. “I’m telling the truth. After the first murder I—I couldn’t think. I was so unhelpful in the trial, but you kept calm. You inspire me, Eva. Even if you think you aren’t doing anything, you’re doing a lot.”
“You don’t need to say that. I’m here to keep both of us safe, sure, but it’s not…” She trails off, the words dead in her throat. Diana is smiling at her again.
“Thank you anyway—it’s good to be able to sleep without worrying. And I just wanted you to know that I’ll be better in the next trial,” Diana says. “But I really really hope there won’t be a next one at all.”
Eva might be sick. “Me too,” she says. The words feel empty. Both of them know there will be a next one.
Nothing has changed from the start. Wolfgang is still the type to rally them together despite how all of them know the way death is inevitable. They’re all still pretending, still allowing themselves to hope. Eva wants to join them—she wishes things were as easy as Wolfgang and Diana pretend they are. But they aren’t, and that’s final.
Eva stands up. Diana watches her go with that same kind of smile on her face, the vapid, meaningless words still lingering in the air around them.
The bathroom door closes Eva off from the world. On the counter she pushes aside the curling iron Diana has given her to keep her hair curled despite the game leaving no reason to do it other than to keep up appearances, pushes aside the skincare products piled in rows on the back counter, and Eva braces herself against the sink, staring herself in the mirror.
Her eyes look tired. She’s always tired.
She takes off her glasses, folding them neatly. She doesn’t know if Tozu would give her replacements, doesn’t know if he knows her prescription. Her blurred face in the mirror looks less tired in lower definition, more like a real person and less like a liar; she splashes her face with water, drowning the image of herself.
Something is stuck in her throat. She thinks she might sob, might start to mourn for herself before she’s even died.
Does Diana have the traitor perk? Is that why she’s so determined to be kind, in order to pull up some kind of alibi, to convince everyone to trust her? Oh, poor Diana can never murder anyone—oh, poor Diana, she keeps being kind to everyone, she follows Wolfgang like a lost puppy, she believes in keeping the peace.
The peace has already broken. The traitor will strike, and if it’s Diana, Eva will never forgive her.
Theoretically, the traitor will be smart. Eva scrambles for a plan with little information.
Damon notices; this is the worst part. He points out how chewed up her nails are, how she keeps tugging at her hair. Eva brushes him off, shaking her head and looking him in the eye and saying she’s just stressed because everything could go wrong. She’s not lying.
She wants to throw up. Every wrong move will cause her to be targeted. Sticking with Damon is the smartest move, since everyone knows they’ll be together—there won’t be much opportunity for killing her without being suspected even if Damon is the traitor.
(He’s the most likely suspect, her brain whispers. You told him the code. How could you tell him the code? He’s taking advantage of you.)
She keeps her anxieties locked down. The two of them spend time in the rooms that opened up since the first trial, and find nothing of note—certainly not another weird poster to solve. Eva thinks if she found one she’d rip it up as soon as she copied down the puzzle.
She stands there, one hand tugging on the curls by her face. Her anxiety is leaden, but she tries not to show it, to keep her mask on and Damon’s eyes off her.
There’s a sharp line of pain on her cheek, just beside her ear.
“Oh,” Eva says, when her chewed up, still half sharp nails come off of her face with bright blood staining the tips, soaking into her fingerprints. “Oh.”
She wants to pretend this is calculated, when Damon looks at her and his eyes widen, but it’s not. Eva simply slipped, cut herself on her own nail, and now Damon looks legitimately worried. The blood beads and then drops, sticking a strand of hair to her face. Eva keeps staring at the blood on her finger, blank and off-kilter.
“Are you okay?” Damon asks.
“I’m fine,” Eva says, snapping back to attention. She wonders if he thinks of her as weak for injuring herself.
Stepping closer, Damon’s hand hesitates, hanging in the air between them. Eva lets out a breath. They’re all too sensitive about injuries now, too used to blood being a sign of something worse. Eva would point it out if it didn’t stick in her chest like a knife.
“Go ahead,” she says. “Check if you’re so worried.”
Damon moves her hair to the side, tucking a curl behind her ear. Eva stands against the smoothness of the motion, the way his nails lightly move against her skin. If he were to dig them into her, to kill her, she would regret trusting him with this; as it is, he’s too kind, too trusting, just as she predicted.
“It doesn’t look deep,” he says.
“Obviously.” She tilts her cheek toward him. “All it needs is a bandaid. You don’t need to be worried.”
Eva wipes her blood off with her thumb, pulling away from Damon. There’s something off between the two of them, an unease that comes with vulnerability. Damon watches her with unsettled green eyes, and Eva stares at her own blood.
Somehow, it feels like a bad omen.
“Wait here,” Damon says, moving away.
Eva’s breath catches. Her hand moves without meaning to, grabbing his arm in a vice grip. Don’t leave me, she almost says. You’re the only one I can trust, because you didn’t take the traitor perk. Did you take the traitor perk when I wasn’t looking? Are you going to leave me to die like the rest of them?
She swallows thickly. “I’ll come with you. Bandaids, right?”
Damon stares at her, and then coughs into his hand. “Right. You can come—I was going to look in the pharmacy.”
Eva follows after him, letting go of his arm, allowing him to pull away as much as he wants. Death sounds like echoing screams in all of their dreams and smells like blood, and she knows that the scent clings to her. She’s the easy target, the next to die, unless she kills first. Tozu’s words linger with her—she’s smart enough to do it.
But following Damon and covering her already slowing bleeding with her hand, she thinks she doesn’t want to die after another trial.
When the next body is discovered, Eva is with Damon in the dining room. Of course they’re together—it’s late enough that they could leave for Diana and Kai’s rooms, mirrored in their pink frivolity, but Eva can’t relax unless she’s with him, so she’s lingering.
And then the announcement comes, and her heart stops.
Wolfgang lies in the pharmacy, strangled—lying with his back to the wall and his pale face to the sky, eyes closed and almost peaceful, if not for the purple bruise circling his neck. Eva wanted him dead, of course she did—but the sight of him turns her body cold and chest hollow.
The thing that hurts the most, though, is that she didn’t kill him herself.
Like with the case before, everyone has to investigate. Without Wolfgang here to head their upcoming trial, the entire mood gets dark fast, a loss of someone important to them, cries streaming from so many people who loved him for saving them in that previous trial. Loss and failure hang high above Eva’s head.
Strangling him wasn’t very smart of the blackened. Eva would’ve killed him better, more clever—in a way that could never be tied back to her.
Investigating isn’t optional, though. Just like everyone else, Eva collects clues and tries to piece them together blindly. The pharmacy’s open cabinets, the medicine bottle smashed to the ground, and everything else they need to collect before the trial. Even so, Damon’s eyes are more focused than Eva’s, less tinted by envy.
“Hey,” Eva says, when she’s sure the others are away, she and Damon investigating near the dorms just in case, even though she’s certain they won’t find anything here. “Can we talk?”
Damon’s eyebrows raise. “Sure.”
The back of Eva’s neck prickles with anxiety, but she keeps her gaze cool. This is vital—if she doesn’t ask, she’s always going to wonder.
“Did you take the traitor perk?” Eva asks, keeping her voice low. Even if he did take it he wouldn’t tell her, but he’s not a liar like she is, so she’ll be able to see it in his face. He’s not that kind of liar. She knows he’s not.
Damon’s eyebrows drop into a frown. “No. Did you?”
“Obviously not. That’s why I’m asking.” The longer she hides that she tried, the darker her lies become. She’s just grateful she isn’t in Wolfgang’s place. She has to be grateful for each body found—somehow, she gets away with surviving as the most hated classmate another day.
The next one could be the last. Everything could fall apart in an instant; Eva tries not to linger on this.
When Damon visibly relaxes when she says she didn’t take it, Eva feels a horrible chill run down her spine; the knowledge that he wanted her to leave it behind is heavier with every second. It’s not even a lie; she didn’t take it. She didn’t have a choice.
The trial is exhausting, running late into the night.
It becomes clear quickly that Wolfgang was poisoned. Antidotes for certain types of poisoning were missing from the pharmacy, though they don’t know who got Wolfgang to take poison, or how. They go back and forth on whether the poisoning was the cause of death or the strangulation—why would someone strangle someone who was already dying?
Something shifts. Suspects are chosen, alibis are delivered. There’s still too many options; it’s a random shot in the dark who is the actual killer.
Eva feels the weight on her shoulders, the tensions striking through the air. Everyone is waiting for someone to bring up some new information, something that will let them know for sure that Wolfgang’s killer can actually be caught. If they don’t catch them—if this is a perfect crime—it’s all over.
A lapse of silence. Eva swallows. She tries to connect the points in her mind. “Let’s consider the evidence we found in the dorm building,” she says. “Damon and I found an antidote bottle in the kitchen.”
Damon shoots her a grateful glance. “The person who strangled Wolfgang couldn’t have poisoned him right before the body was found since the timing is so close together, and Eloise and Desmond were in the courtyard at the time and didn’t see anyone,” Damon says, a sudden burst of inspiration the same way he did in the first trial. “So we have to assume this other person poisoned Wolfgang and left the antidote bottle in the kitchen.”
“It could’ve been planted there before it happened,” Grace says, lip curling.
And on and on. Every step they take also takes them backward through the killer’s plans—if there’s two people, it’s strange. Everything points to the person who poisoned Wolfgang knowing what was going on in the pharmacy—but that isn’t possible.
The person who strangled Wolfgang, and the person who poisoned him; Eva knows they can’t be the same person, she just has to find a break in the killer’s mask to prove it. Either they were working together, or they both targeted Wolfgang separately, both going for the one person who could lead a trial to the end and rally the group together afterward.
Damon isn’t like Wolfgang. Eva isn’t like Wolfgang. They have nobody to trust them, but nobody to stop them from solving it.
The chaos of the trial keeps going. Eva feels washed away with it, trying to piece together clues and evidence. She hadn’t even realized how much she too relied on Wolfgang in that first trial, the way she had let him lead her to the end. It had been swallowed by anger, but despite his naivete, he was still—
Eva swallows that down. He would have killed her. He would have, eventually, sent her to die alongside the rest of the class.
Things circle around and land on Wenona, the only person who could leave the bottle in the dorms at that time.
“I suppose someone has to break this stalemate,” Wenona speaks. “I was a witness. The killer is Ulysses.”
The room erupts with questions. The chaos makes the room spin, and everyone wants to know why Wenona hid this, if she’s lying—what’s the point of hiding it for so long, after all this time? Ulysses’s face has drained of color, flipping through his notebook as if that will reveal some hidden answer.
“I won’t pretend I have some noble reason for hiding it,” Wenona says, her voice stable. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll have you know that my life was under threat. I couldn’t say that I was involved—and now that I’ve said it, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen now.”
“Wait—” Eva breaks through the chaos, fingers curling into fists by her side. “You were in the dorms at the time the murder happened. That’s what you said when we collected alibis. That’s why we know that you’re the one who was in the kitchen at the right time. And you’re saying we’ve been looking at this wrong the whole time?”
“I-I didn’t see Wenona crossing the courtyard,” Eloise adds.
Wenona’s gaze is piercing. She doesn’t back down, and it makes Eva’s skin crawl. “It’s true that I didn’t cross the courtyard,” she says. “But I was still a witness. That’s all.”
“Why was your life in danger?” Desmond asks.
Wenona fields questions one by one, none of them with clear answers. It’s twisted logic, tying itself together into a knot while Ulysses’s face becomes paler and paler, his words stumbling into his own questions.
“Why are you accusing me?” Ulysses asks.
“You killed Wolfgang,” Wenona says.
“I didn’t do that. I already said my alibi, but I’d be happy to restate it for—”
“Oh, yes,” Wenona interrupts. “You were in another room, alone, but you’re one of several people here who doesn’t have a solid alibi. You’re one of several people who was seen in the courtyard before the murder. You have no defence. I saw you leaving, Ulysses.”
The trial keeps spinning. The accusations bounce back to Wenona, for hiding that she saw Ulysses and for refusing to say why her life was in danger—Ulysses is desperate, grappling for any notion of her guilt. The trial points fingers both directions, and ultimately it’s Damon who cuts through it, confirming that Wenona was still in the dorms, pinning the poisoning on her at last.
Wenona had attempted to kill Wolfgang. The reality dawns on all of them at the same time.
“Wenona, why?” Diana’s hands clutch her own sides, her eyes bright with the beginnings of tears. Eva looks away, even as Diana continues speaking, her voice growing stronger. “You saw what happened to Cassidy. I didn’t want that to happen to anyone else, and you… you tried to kill Wolfgang, just to escape?”
Wenona lets out a breath through her nose. “Not just to escape. Since you already know this much, I suppose I should say it. I received something from Tozu.”
Eva follows Wenona’s gaze to Tozu, who stands above them as always, smiling with his lone visible eye. What a mockery of all of them, waiting to escape, that he would give something to Wenona. Eva feels the pit in her stomach deepen.
“I received something called the traitor perk,” Wenona continues. “And in exchange, I had to kill someone.”
Every horrible emotion Eva had been feeling plummets even further, sinking Eva through a hole in the ground. She drops down to the end of the world, clinging to her podium to keep her from falling to her knees, realizing that Wenona—Wenona, who is smart but not smart enough to solve the pharmacy’s code before Eva—stole it from her.
What is killing one person? Wolfgang would have died no matter who became a traitor.
The traitor perk includes the cameras. The traitor perk allowed Wenona to leave Wolfgang there, stumbling through the pharmacy searching for an antidote that has already been taken back to the kitchen, hidden in the shelves instead of Wenona’s room. It was all done to divert suspicion off of herself, watching Wolfgang from afar to make sure he actually died while she established an alibi for herself.
And then Ulysses had walked into the room.
Ulysses, at his own stand, breathes in shaky breaths. Was it merciful, for him to kill the slowly suffering Wolfgang and take his life into his own hands, tying something around his throat until Wolfgang’s death was certain, or was it cruel to Wenona? After all, Wenona had to kill someone, or else she’d be killed herself.
Eva doesn’t care about any of it. She just stands there, feeling faith in her classmates drain out of her like a gaping wound.
Both of them are the worst. Both of them killed Wolfgang, attempted to sacrifice each other and the whole class. Whatever Wenona felt watching someone she’d been rooming with for days steal her kill will never be known, locked behind her steely expression.
Ulysses cries. He stands at his podium with a kill on his hands.
“One thing,” Wenona says, head raised tall and proud. “I didn’t choose Wolfgang for any petty reason. It was purely tactical.”
Grace looks about ready to rip Wenona’s throat out. “You motherfucking—!” Grace’s expression stays angered, teeth bared, but she doesn’t attempt to commit murder herself, so her anger is worth nothing at all. “Let’s just vote for Ulysses. That’s what Tozu wants, isn’t it? Who fucking cares if Wenona dies too ‘cause she didn’t kill him in time?”
Wenona’s mask finally cracks. She grimaces, lips pressed tightly together. “I…”
But Grace spitting this truth into the trial room causes the rest of them to finally move. They can’t disagree—after all, they know the truth now. There’s nothing to be done.
Tozu makes it clear in his booming voice, that the one who did the deed will be the only one to fall. Wenona will stay alive solely because she started the murder, while Tozu is still leering over their shoulders and guiding their minds, forcing them to fall into disrepair as they realize a murderer who Tozu forced into it will stay alive, among them. And yet, they can only vote for one, not both.
There’s only one correct choice.
Ulysses doesn’t try to argue it. His eyes have terrible dark circles beneath them, staring out at the crowd. He just apologizes, and when he explains—when he talks about standing above a dying man and knowing his only way out of here was to kill him before he dies—he was dying either way, and nobody would see it happen, or so he thought. And when he brings up the motives, talking of all the things he’s lost by being in this game and all the things he’s afraid of, Eva understands.
She hates him for it, though. She wants him to burn for trying to kill them all to escape.
Aren’t they worth anything at all? Didn’t Ulysses consider the gravity of what he was doing when he found Wolfgang, lying exposed and pale and bloody in the pharmacy? His hands are dirty, trying to sacrifice everyone for the sake of an escape the rest of them also want.
And yet, in the brief moments of Ulysses’s mounting fear as the vote closes and the inevitability of his execution draws closer, Wenona reaches out to him, going by his side instead of cutting away from the two murderers like everyone else is doing.
“I’m sorry,” Ulysses says to her, soft enough that Eva can barely hear it.
If there’s any other words spoken between them, it’s not something Eva has access to. Numbness spreads in the center of her chest, a seed of grief finally blossoming, all consuming. How Wenona could do anything but hate Ulysses, she doesn’t know—if she was Wenona, she’d be unable to move past losing her sole chance to escape.
And then, still beside Ulysses, Wenona’s eyes sweep over the rest of them.
“I give up the traitor perk,” Wenona states. From the inside of her jacket she pulls a device—it looks like a gaming device, a handheld that she keeps her fingers clenched tightly around. “I never should have tried—I don’t blame anyone for what you think of me now, but I will never—” she holds it up above her head, “—allow it to be used again.”
The device smashes against the ground. The screen shatters and the internals spill.
Eva feels part of herself crack alongside it. It was supposed to be hers—in another world, in another lifetime, it would be her at the stand holding the perk in her hand, her with the plan, and she—unlike Wenona—wouldn’t fail.
Too late. Eva’s hands stay curled by her sides.
The trial lingers, decaying in their mouths. Eva doesn’t know where this leaves them—meeting Damon’s eyes, drifting toward each other as they leave the Tree of Ignorance behind again, but with nothing to say. No plan for the future.
There is one thing: Eva doesn’t want to lie in Diana’s bed for another night, listening to muffled sobbing until a few brief hours before the morning announcement. The night is already ruined, so Eva doesn’t stop herself from wanting peace.
In front of the door labeled with Diana’s name, the two of them stop; “Can I ask you to do something?” Eva asks, voice flat.
Diana’s eyes are red-rimmed yet burning with something like determination. Eva’s stomach churns, but she meets them square-on, allowing Diana to stop and tilt her head towards her, to truly listen for once in her life. “What is it?”
“I want to talk to Damon tonight. You should spend the night with someone else. Maybe…” she cycles through names, matches dead roommate pairs in her head. “Grace.” Her lips twist into an odd frown—if Grace lets Diana into her room after Wolfgang’s death, it’ll be a miracle. “Or Kai, since I’ll be keeping Damon.”
Diana’s expression softens as she nods. There’s a sadness that lingers in her every move, her hope slowly draining out of her. It almost hurts to see.
They walk together to talk to Damon and Kai; the memory of the trial is stuck in her throat, and it doesn’t let go even as she enters Damon’s room with him. His room is clean; it almost looks unused. Eva sits down on the bed and adjusts her glasses. Damon sits beside her, not close enough to touch, and they stare at each other like they didn’t just watch Ulysses die, like this is another day where they spend time with each other for another alibi.
“What did you want to talk about?” Damon asks.
Eva looks off to the side. “Diana was going to cry all night again.”
Damon’s mouth presses into a thin line, but he doesn’t add anything onto that. “Kai is clingy after a trial,” he says instead. “I can’t really blame him—maybe being with Diana will do him some good. They can help each other.”
Eva lets out a breath. It’s not quite a laugh. “How do we know there won’t be another murder soon?”
“What do you mean?” Damon says.
“Tonight,” Eva says, twisting her hands in her lap and shoulders hunching. “We could have a murder at any time. Just because there isn’t a motive yet doesn’t mean we aren’t getting closer to another one—the traitor perk just proves that. Tozu will do anything to cause another murder. We just feel safe because someone already died today.”
“That’s not…” Damon trails off, but something in his expression shifts. He sighs, reluctant. “I think we’re all too exhausted, but you’re right. We could have a murder tonight, too.”
“We’re never going to be safe,” Eva says. “I should have been smarter about it.”
A calculating stare. “About what?”
“All of it.” Eva’s fingers curl and tense, holding the hem of her skirt. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. If we’d taken the perk, we could have gotten out together. We wouldn’t have to be alone. You trust me, right?” She looks up from her lap to meet his eyes, her body burning from the inside out, hoping that he trusts her enough for this.
“What is your problem?” Damon says. “We would’ve had the same ultimatum that Wenona got, and there’s no chance that it’s worth it.”
“What’s my problem? What’s your problem?” Eva sucks air through her teeth. She doesn’t know what to do with these feelings, always spiraling and going nowhere. She’s overflowing. “It’s too late now, but we could have escaped. We’d have been able to convince them that we have solid alibis, and I would have—I would have done it. Just because you didn’t want to be a traitor doesn’t mean you can keep me here.”
Damon shrinks away from her. His gaze flickers toward the door.
Eva feels a rush through her body. Damon is scared of her. He thinks she’s planning to kill him—as if she’d kill him instead of anyone else. Killing Diana would’ve been more satisfying than the idea of killing Damon right here; after all, Diana and Kai both know the two of them are alone.
So no, killing Damon would be a death sentence.
If she can just climb out of the hole that opened up beneath her during the trial, if she can just make Damon hate her instead of trusting a liar like her, then she'll be able to move again. Maybe she won't be stuck here forever, knowing that surviving is impossible. If she does nothing, she’s going to die.
Eva sniffs and looks away from him. “I’m not going to hurt anyone,” she says stiffly. “I just want to live. No matter what it takes, because the rest of them… they won’t even look at me. They’ll sacrifice me in an instant.”
Damon’s mouth opens, and then closes. He pauses, and then speaks. “That doesn’t mean we should have taken the perk. We would’ve died if we did.”
“I did try to take the perk,” Eva says, hiding her eyes behind her bangs. “I went back a few days later, but Wenona had already taken it by then, so it was useless. I wanted to make Wolfgang pay for what he did to me—all that time all he was doing with the group was making things worse for us—for me. You didn’t even notice after a while.”
“Eva—”
“Don’t pretend you know what it’s like,” Eva interrupts him. She doesn’t want to see what his expression is, doesn’t want to watch the trust drain from his face. She’s cutting out the only one she trusted, and suddenly it weighs on her, that she’s destroying everything she could’ve held onto. “They were never like that with you. Not the way they were with me.”
She breathes out sharply. Damon shifts beside her. She still doesn’t look.
“Let me say something,” Damon says. “Without shutting me down.”
Eva scowls, but says nothing.
“I don’t understand why you wanted the perk,” Damon says bluntly, knocking down the remaining trust that Damon could know what she’s feeling. “But the longer I’m here, the more I understand how people break, so—I can’t understand, but I can forgive you.”
“What?” Eva breathes.
“I mean it.” Damon hesitates, clearly thinking this through with trepidation. “I wanted to know what the perk was too. I wanted to know if it could help us escape, but it wouldn’t be worth it. Not to me. I should’ve known…”
Eva’s chest is tight. “Is that all you think? That you should’ve watched me closer so that you could stop me from trying to take it?”
“What? No.” Damon sighs sharply. “Even if you think they didn’t hate me, they didn’t exactly trust me either, so they wouldn’t have listened to me if I told them anything. They were just following Wolfgang’s lead—and they realized it was a mistake after the first murder.”
“And that’s why they were idiots,” Eva says; she knows the way they circled around each other, the way Wolfgang led the group and kept them all calm even when they realized that death was inevitable. But that never included Eva, not even once.
“Sure. But now Wolfgang is gone. It made me realize that not everyone felt like he did.” Damon sighs. “The two of us were the only ones who really understood where he went wrong, though. Nobody else saw Wolfgang’s death coming, because they thought he’d keep on leading the trials the same way. Wenona just took advantage of that.”
“And what about me?” Eva asks, tension bubbling inside her chest. “Are you saying I’m like Wenona?”
“I’m trying to say you and I are alike. We've been looking out for each other. Or, we were. I relied on you, and… I want to be able to keep doing that.” Damon sucks in a breath. “I don’t want you to kill anyone, and I wouldn’t have gone along with it if you’d tried when we had the chance to take the perk. But I still want to trust you. I don’t want to watch you kill and end up like Wenona and Ulysses.”
His words are sharp, not understanding their positions, even as they speak of trust. Eva wants to spit out an insult, but restrains herself, because this is Damon.
It always comes back to that; she’s been relying on him too, the only one she doesn’t think is on the verge of wrapping his hands around her neck if she gets too close. The only one who stood up for her.
“I really thought that whoever had the perk would kill me,” Eva confesses. “I thought I would be next. And it could’ve been you—I’ve been waiting for you to reveal yourself as the traitor.”
Damon stares at her, mouth open. Eva doesn’t know how to read his expression—it’s an insurmountable wall. “Don’t you care that if you had taken the perk, you would’ve had to kill too—and possibly get caught?” Damon asks.
“That’s not the point,” Eva says. “That threat sounds… meaningless. I would’ve done it anyway.”
“So you would’ve killed us all, just because of Wolfgang,” Damon says flatly, and his expression is twisting into a frown, something strong and disappointed. Eva wants to cover her eyes, or better yet to make him never look at her like that again.
“I would’ve died otherwise.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Damon fires back. “Everything you did—helping with the trials—was important. It mattered. You should be smarter than killing someone because of a grudge. And because you didn’t, because you chose not to take the perk, you’re alive right now. Right here.”
His hand is burning her when it touches her arm. A lump catches in her throat.
“You don’t need to comfort me,” Eva says, keeping her voice steady despite the tears threatening to start welling in her eyes. “You trusted a traitor. You meant nothing to me, Damon. Why would you even—” She cuts herself off.
“Because I don’t think you’re a bad person for solving the poster’s code, Eva.”
Eva’s head snaps up to stare at him. Her heart lurches in her chest. “That’s… That’s not fair. Why are you such a bleeding heart all of a sudden?”
Damon sighs. He stares at her for a second, and then moves closer instead of moving back.
Damon’s arms wrap around her shoulders. He pulls her to his shoulder and she leans against him, shifting so that she can wrap one of her arms around him too, knees still pulled close to her chest. Shoulders shaking, Eva presses her face into Damon’s blazer until her glasses dig uncomfortably into her face, and tries not to sob against him.
“I don’t know what to say anymore,” Damon says quietly. “But I want to believe you’re lying when you say I didn’t mean anything to you.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Eva mumbles. Just another reminder that nothing will be the same. They’re still in the killing game. The traitor perk is gone for good, and Eva is still here—not a traitor, just empty.
Now that she’s confessed, Damon too will suspect her every time a murder happens. In this game, it’s too dangerous to make it clear you would kill—even kill someone who’s already gone. It squeezes in her chest, but she knows she trusts Damon with this. Even if she can’t tell anyone else, Damon has to know before this all ends, before Eva gets killed, if only so that Eva can feel like a real person for one last moment.
Eva is raw, tears leaking out of her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. “I hated all of it. I hated everyone. I hate Wenona. I hate Tozu—he made that poster for me, but he gave it to Wenona. None of it is fair. I can’t—I won’t be able to escape. I’m going to die.”
Fear hangs heavy in the air. Damon tugs her shoulders a little closer. “Don’t you dare kill anyone.”
“I know,” Eva rasps, throat raw. She feels like screaming. She knows she shouldn’t have tried to take the perk, and yet it was her final defense, now lost forever. “I—I won’t. I don’t have a chance anymore.”
It’s all so hollow now, but she stays with Damon anyway. He doesn’t try to make her feel better with hope or promises to protect her—it would only make her more bitter. So she cries into his shoulder and stays pressed against him and desperately tries to imagine a future where she gets out of here without killing someone.
It still feels impossible. But Damon holds her steady, and she thinks she might have no choice but to either kill him or live alongside him forever.
The morning is fragile, tension about to burst. Eva avoids Damon’s gaze but nonetheless follows him out of his room for breakfast with the others after a night of lying beside him and listening to him breathe. Somehow in this cage, Eva has found someone to hold onto.
She doesn’t know if it’ll last. The traitor perk still stings at the back of her mind, envy wrapping itself tightly around her throat. And yet, she’s alive. It’s all she’s ever wanted, and it’s a cage that continues to trap her, day after day.
That’s all there is left to do right now: live.