The next room looked more ominous than all of them put together. It was big, so big that the ceiling was lost in shadow. Clearly painted squares lined the concrete floor in two columns. Crates were stacked so that you had to walk across those painted columns.
Yami no Yugi didn't like the sight of those columns.
Alice was supporting Narcissa, who still felt weak after her sick episode. Anthony was walking, but his steps were slow and plodding. Yami no Yugi just wanted to lay down and never get up again. But he could not, because he could feel these people depending on him. Anthony hadn't said a word since they left his game room. Narcissa had hiccuped more sobbed thanks, and Alice had continued to stare at him and shake her head. Yami no Yugi wondered bleakly how many more people there were, and how many more games.
He almost didn't notice the laptop set on a nearby crate until it flickered into life. Yami no Yugi tensed up.
An eerie looking puppet appeared on the screen, white faced with red cheeks and a ventriloquist dummy's mouth that opened and closed when it talked.
"Congratulations, mysterious young man," the voice said. "I never would have imagined you to get this far, much less bring so many people to safety. Your will to survive is incredibly strong."
"Go to hell," Yami no Yugi said.
The puppet – or rather, the man talking for the puppet – ignored this.
"There are a few more games to get through before you can leave. But rest assured that you have already met all of the players. There are no more people to rescue. Only these people to keep alive."
Yami no Yugi bristled. More games? This man was going to definitely regret ever starting this.
"Before I explain the rules, I am quite interested to know your name, young man," he said. "You were an unintentional part of the game. I am very surprised at you."
It was a wonder that Yami no Yugi's eyes didn't burn holes through the screen.
"My name?" he said. "You can call me Yugi. Yugi Mutou. The King of Games."
The puppet remained silent for a few moments.
"King of Games, hm...?" he said. "Interesting. We will see how good you are at this next game."
"What about your name?" Yami no Yugi said. "I do like to know the names of my opponents before I defeat them."
The man chuckled.
"Full of confidence, are we?" he said. "Well. I believe the media calls me the Jigsaw Killer. You can call me Jigsaw."
Yami no Yugi glared.
"Very well, Jigsaw," Yami no Yugi said. "Let be known that you made two mistakes today. Your first was to challenge me. And your last is to place innocent lives in danger."
Jigsaw laughed.
"Innocent? They waste the gift of life. They do not deserve it."
"All life is precious, and it is not for you to decide who deserves it," Yami no Yugi snapped. "Now explain the rules of the game."
"Of course," Jigsaw said. "You'll see the giant squares on the floor. They are weight sensitive."
Yami no Yugi stiffened.
"I won't tell you how much weight each one requires. You seem to be good at figuring out patterns," Jigsaw continued. "But place too much weight or not enough onto a square, and you will be given a lethal shock."
Yami no Yugi's hands clenched.
"Fine, Jigsaw, I'll accept your rules. But I want you to remember this."
The shadow magic tightened around him. He suppressed his Eye of Horus, so as not to scare his companions, but the effect was the same.
"This has just become a Shadow Game. And if you lose, you'll be the one to suffer."
Jigsaw chuckled again.
"Feisty. I like you."
"Funny. I don't like you."
And he stabbed the knife into the screen, effectively shutting it down.
He glanced back at the others. Narcissa looked like she was going to fall into little tiny pieces. Anthony was staring at Yami no Yugi with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and complete confusion. Only Alice looked at him with a sort of calmness. She half smiled.
"King of Games, huh?" she said. "Was that bullshitting, or do you actually believe that?"
Yami no Yugi folded his arms and tried to smile confidently.
"Officially speaking, yes, I am the King of Games. That was the title I got after winning a Duel Monsters tournament."
"Fucking card games?" Anthony said, shaking his head.
"I have never lost a game," Yami no Yugi said quietly. "And I will not start now."
He turned to face the board.
"So, weight sensitive, huh?" Alice said nervously.
"Right," Yami no Yugi said. "So some of them, we might need all four of us on the square. Some might only take one."
Rather like a mancala board. Each indent will only hold so many stones...and each stone has to jump through every square.
He turned back to the computer screen and pulled out the knife. He tossed it experimentally onto the first square. Nothing happened. Cautiously, he picked it up without touching the square, and tossed the knife into the next one.
A horrible crackle sounded across the warehouse, and lightning sparked around the blade.
"That one needs more weight," Yami no Yugi muttered.
The knife continued to spark. He hadn't thought about what he was going to do to move it. He shook his head. Leaving all inhibitions behind, he activated some of his shadow magic and shoved the knife off the board. If the others were surprised at seeing the knife move by itself, no one mentioned it. Perhaps they thought the electrocution made it jump.
"So?" Anthony said. "Got anything, Mr. King of Games?"
"Give me a minute."
He walked up and down the two columns. Two columns. Perhaps moving back and forth across the columns was the best idea. What colors were the squares?
Red, blue, white, purple, Yugi and Yami no Yugi chorused at the same time.
Number of people per square? Yugi suggested.
We only have four people.
Right. But maybe increasing?
Definitely.
The first square was red. Yami no Yugi stepped onto it. Alice screamed, Narcissa yelled stop – nothing happened.
"This is a one person square," Yami no Yugi explained. "The colors indicate how many people can be on a square at one time."
"So we have to move in a weird pattern?" Alice said.
"Right. There are three adjacent squares. Another red, a blue, and a white. Blue will take up to two. Three and it gives the shock. White takes three. Purple takes four. Red only one."
"But there has to be two at a time on the blue ones, right?" Narcissa said in a high pitched voice."And there has to be three on the three one, right?"
Yami no Yugi grimaced.
"Yes," he said. "I'm afraid so. We'll have to work together."
Anthony's fists clenched. But he didn't say anything. Yami no Yugi looked at him, curious. Anthony glared back.
"Dammit, don't look at me like that. I may not like any of you, but I want to live, dammit. I'll work with you guys. Can't get across with less than four."
That wasn't necessarily true, as there were far fewer purple squares than anything else. But Yami no Yugi chose not to say that.
He stepped onto the next red square.
"All right. You all have to do your best to listen to me," he said. "And I promise you, I will get you all out alive."
Nobody said anything. But he could feel their tension – and their trust.
"Narcissa, step onto the first red square."
Narcissa sobbed once, but she let go of Alice's hand and did so. Yami no Yugi reached out to take her hand.
"Okay, on the count of three, we step to this blue square, okay?" he said, indicating a square across from him and diagonal from her.
She nodded, her chin trembling.
"One, two, three."
She was almost a few beats off. But by a stroke of luck, they both stepped onto the square at the same time. No shock came. Narcissa gasped out another sob and buried her face in Yami no Yugi's shoulder.
"All right," Yami no Yugi said. "Anthony. Get to this second red square. And Alice, the first red square."
They did so.
"Anthony, you, me, and Narcissa are all going to step on this white square together. Alice, you'll move to the next red square. Then all together, we move to the purple square."
Slowly, each square was conquered. They were set up so perfectly. After the purple square, two blue squares. The group split off again, stepping onto the squares. Another purple. It got a little tricky when the next set was a red and a white. But they managed, sending three off at once and one to the next one at the same time. Yami no Yugi thought he saw electricity crackle more than once, but it was only a trick of the light.
Next square. Next square. Next square.
He could see the end.
"Yugi," Alice whispered.
Yami no Yugi didn't acknowledge her at first. They were timing their stepping off a purple square onto a pair of blue ones.
"Yugi," Alice insisted.
"What?" Yami no Yugi said, as they safely made it to another square.
"You're making me want to live again."
Yami no Yugi blinked. He was focused on the squares, planning the next move, but the question was surprising to him.
"...What?"
"I tried to kill myself, a few weeks back," she said. "I'm a pretty well-known model. I got it all, you could say. But I didn't think so. That's why Jigsaw took me. Because I was wasting a good life. That's what it said on the tape recorder."
Another pair of blue squares. A set of red ones came next. He and Alice split off, each one to their own square. Then they moved to another blue one together, and Anthony and Narcissa stepped onto the red ones.
"I'm glad you want to live again," Yami no Yugi said. "But I don't see how I did that."
"Because you're so damn idealistic."
There was a red square in front of them, and a white square to the side. Yami no Yugi stepped onto the red one as Alice, Anthony, and Narcissa all stepped onto the white one. Yami no Yugi stepped to another red one in front of him, and Alice split off from Anthony and Narcissa again to step to the red one he had just left, while Anthony and Narcissa moved to a blue one.
Yami no Yugi and Alice ended up on another blue one.
"You keep talking about how everybody's precious. All life is important. I don't get how you can believe that. But I wanna believe it."
Her voice got stronger and louder. Anthony and Narcissa were starting to listen too.
"I wanna learn how you can think like that. About everyone else first. How you can see what to do, how to save everyone, cause you feel like you've got to. I wanna feel like that too."
Yami no Yugi smiled slightly.
"I'm glad," he said.
But then he frowned.
"But why bring this up now? Couldn't it wait until we're safe from certain death?"
Alice laughed, a bit huskily.
"Ya know, it's funny, but I haven't felt this happy in years," she said. "I haven't felt this good about myself ever. And I don't want to give Jigsaw any damn credit. Nah, if I was here without you, I wouldn't feel this good. I wouldn't have seen something so good."
"But why are you bringing this up now?" Yami no Yugi insisted?
Both pairs stepped from a purple square onto a pair of blue squares. Only one set of squares left til the end.
They were both white.
Yami no Yugi whipped to look up at Alice. She was grinning broadly, but there were tears in her eyes.
"Alice –"
"Goddamn you," she said, still smiling. "You make me wanna live – but you make me wanna be a hero, too."
She looked sharply at Anthony and Narcissa, and before Yami no Yugi could stop her, she had shoved him towards the white square. Anthony and Narcissa stepped quickly to the white square to balanced Yami no Yugi's weight, and then Anthony grabbed both him and Narcissa by the scruffs and pulled all three of them onto firm, safe ground.
Alice's scream ripped right through Yami no Yugi's skin, sharper than a thousand razor wires cutting through him. He whipped around, though it felt like slow motion. Electricity coursed through Alice's body, flinging her arms and legs into wild motions, her mouth open in a permanent O.
Then the scream stopped, the electricity petered out, and everything was silent.
Alice lay perfectly still on the gaudily colored ground. A dead body on a children's play mat.
The world seemed to stop.
"I swear to you, I will get you all out alive."
"No one is going to die."
"I have never lost a game."
"Dammit, you make me wanna be a hero."
Yami no Yugi started forward. Anthony grabbed him roughly by the shoulder, pulling him back so hard that he threw the boy to the ground.
"Are you crazy? You can't go over there. You'll get shocked. And then where will we be, without Mr. King of Games, huh?"
Narcissa sobbed on the ground, even harder than before.
Yami no Yugi's brain was completely empty. He could not comprehend the thin, scratched body that was Alice. Alice was dead.
Alice was dead.
Yami no Yugi had broken his promise.
Something started to bubble in his stomach.
Other me? Yugi asked tentatively.
Yami no Yugi's hands started to tremble. He could not close his mouth. He could not take his eyes away from Alice. Her eyes wide open, her mouth in an O. No hint of her last smile remained on her face. Just frozen pain and terror.
Frozen. Dead.
Gone.
Another scream echoed across the warehouse. It took a second before he realized that it was his own. But it was not one of pain, loss, even sadness.
It was one of pure, unadulterated rage.
"DAMN YOU JIGSAW! DAMN YOU! DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU'VE JUST DONE? YOU'VE ROBBED A PERSON OF THE GIFT OF LIFE! THAT VERY GIFT YOU CLAIM TO HOLD IN SUCH HIGH DAMN REGARD!"
With another wordless scream, he punched a crate. It didn't give way, and he thought one of his knuckles cracked, but he barely felt the pain.
His cry rang in the quiet, empty building for a long moment. When he looked up again, Anthony was staring at him with his mouth hanging open. It was like he couldn't believe he had just seen such a hurricane come out of Yami no Yugi. Narcissa howled, the sobs racking her body and making her collapse to her side.
Yami no Yugi straightened up. He refused to look at either of them.
Other me... Yugi whispered. His voice seemed thick with tears, too. Other me, please, let's focus on who's still alive. Alice-san gave herself up to save us all. We need to make sure these two get out alive. There are still more games –
"No," Yami no Yugi said. "There are no more games. There will be no more damn games."
And he stepped onto the white square. Anthony yelled, Narcissa screamed – the electricity crackled around Yami no Yugi.
But none of them touched him. He barely even spared them a glance. They could not penetrate his armor, this armor of anger and loss and sadness and hurt. He walked to Alice's side. Tears would not come. There was only a sickening, echoing emptiness.
He closed her eyes. Carefully, he gathered her up into his arms. Despite her being taller than him, he was surprised at how light she was.
He stepped off the board. Anthony was still staring. Narcissa had stopped crying to stare.
"We're leaving," Yami no Yugi said. "Now."