Timeline: The next day

Rating: R, for excessive violence

Chapter 24

Sacrifice

"Love of two is one,
Here but now they're gone…
The door was open and the wind appeared,
The candles blew then disappeared,
The curtains flew then he appeared... saying don't be afraid,
Come on, baby... and she had no fear…

Come on Baby…don't fear the reaper."

-Blue Oyster Cult, Don't Fear the Reaper

"Have you given it any more thought?" Mark asked. He didn't have to specify. It was obvious to both of them what he was referring to. He knew she had given it thought. It was obvious every time he looked at her that she still struggled with indecision.

"Now's not the time, Mark," she said, grunting as she dragged the red head into the adjoining cage next to Noah. She accidentally smacked the poor girl's head into the cage as Amanda tried to pull her inside.

"Oops," she said sheepishly. Her eyes widened in surprise. She looked up at Mark and formed a little guilty smile. "That's gonna leave a bruise."

"I think, given the present situation, that's the least of her concerns," Mark said, looking around the trap with unease. He wanted to get both of them out of there as soon as possible. The trap had already malfunctioned once, and Mark was not a man to doubt the possibility of lightning striking the same place twice…particularly if John Kramer was involved.

"Relax. I'm sure John's worked out all the kinks," she said. She shackled the girl's ankle and yanked on it to ensure the chain was secure.

"Yeah," Mark replied skeptically, crossing his arms over his chest, mentally imploring her to hurry up.

"We're all good to go," she said. She looked up at Mark, still smiling. "I don't know why…but I have a good feeling about this."

"That makes one of us," he said. He shut the cage door behind them, and followed her into the room where they would watch the test unfold. He looked at the monitors and then at Amanda, who was practically beaming. Still so naive after all this time. It was endearing, but also heartbreaking to know she'd soon have to face bleak reality again.

Noah's eyes fluttered open, glimmering under the florescent bulbs that flickered on and off. The faint brightness illuminated only a small area of the cage. He attempted to stand and ended up stumbling into the wall. His eyes squinted as he tried to recognize his surroundings to no avail. His thoughts swarmed, jumbled and incoherent, a puzzle missing pieces; Memories that should have led him from the past to the present moment were missing. Although confused and scared, his attention quickly shifted when he noticed he was not alone.

The bodies of two women laid limp in separate cages, one wall of their cage connected to his on each side of him.

"Hello! Hello! Who's there?" he yelled. His fingers slipped into the holes of the gate and curled around the metal to support his body as he staggered towards one of them. The red head rolled over, the short hem of her dress riding up on her thighs to reveal a gratuitous amount of leg as she saw him for the first time.

"Caitlin?" he said. Her name came out of his mouth as a hesitant question. She furrowed her eyebrows and examined her surroundings.

"Noah…what's going on?" she said. She stood up and limped towards him, only to trip about halfway there. She looked down and noticed her left leg had been shacked to the other end of the cage.

"What the hell? Did you do this? I'm not amused," she snapped. She put her hands on her hips and glared at him.

"What? You think I did this?" he asked. "Unbelievable. Look, I have no idea where we are or how we got here…" He glanced around the cage for clues, an answer of some kind. He noticed the brunette in the other cage, and she drew his attention away from Caitlin.

"Hello? Are you okay?" he asked.

Noah felt an intense jolt of shock, like being on the receiving end of an electric eel's vengeful assault. The woman in the other cage was his wife.

"Noah…?" she asked, her voice filled with trepidation and innocence. She sat up and examined the dreary environment with wary eyes. She panned around the room, looking for an exit in wasted effort. She noticed her shackled leg and glanced up at Noah for an explanation.

"What's going on?" she whimpered. She curled up against the cage that fenced her in completely.

"I wish I knew. Oh Rachel, I can't tell you how much I wish I knew what the hell is going on…" He put his hand against the fence that separated them. He hung his head in shame, never before feeling so helpless. When he looked up again, he saw a tape recorder hanging from a string in the middle of his cage. In his panic, he'd completely overlooked the obvious. He glanced over at his wife, desperate to obtain reassurance he did not receive. His fingers hovered over the recorder as he gathered the courage to proceed.

"Play the damn thing," Caitlin griped, her hands gripping the shackle as she tried to slip out of the chain. Noah shot her a dirty look. She shrugged her shoulders, the strap of her dress sliding down with the gesture.

Noah rolled his eyes, and with less hesitation than before, he grabbed the recorder. As a result, sparks flew from the shackles, generating a yelp of pain from both women.

His thumb pressed play.

"Hello, Noah…and welcome," the tape began, followed by a long hesitant pause that increased the already high tension in the room.

"No," Noah's wife whispered, the word lost in her breathless gasp. Rachel's wide eyes examined the shackle with more attention as it dawned on her that she had woken up in a Jigsaw trap. The recorder, the greeting, her surrounding environment...it just fit. She had read about an instance like this in the papers. It had always seemed so distant though, as all tragic events in the news seem to uninvolved third parties. Rachel closed her eyes as she tried to remember the details of the article she'd read. It had been a front page story...

Jigsaw Killer Strikes Again

The journalist's latest obsession was about the Jigsaw case, more specifically criticizing the incompetence of the police who still had not disclosed any real leads to the public. At the time, Rachel thought the writer had been too harsh on them; but now that she was in a game herself, she agreed wholeheartedly with the critic; they should have already caught that bastard by now.

She stared at her husband clutching the recorder, the device that contained the information that she knew could save them, or could potentially cause the death of any one of them in the room. The dual-nature of it faintly crossed his mind as she continued to ponder what they were there for in the first place.

"Your entire life, you have been selfish and apathetic to those around you, taking for granted what you should have cherished. Tonight you must decide what is important, and act upon what you conscience tells you. In order to save, you must offer a sacrifice. Look around, and the solution will present itself...but be wary of your time. Time is precious. Be careful not to take too long, or you may lose all you care for, forever."

"What the fuck does that mean?" Caitlin asked, still trying to squeeze her foot out of her constraints.

"I read an article about this guy before. He's called Jigsaw," Rachel said. "He tries to get people to appreciate their lives by putting them in dangerous situations."

"That's pretty fucking obvious," Caitlin snapped. She gave the chain one last yank, then shoved it away, realizing escape would not be so easy.

Look around, and the solution will present itself…

Noah did look. He looked at his lovely, innocent wife who didn't deserve to be imprisoned along with him for his sins, and he looked at the other woman, the one who had tempted him into that sin.

Time is precious.

"Noah! Look! Over there!" Caitlin exclaimed. She jumped up and pointed towards the edge of her cage that was adjoined to his, a small note connected onto the cage next to a clear plastic tube. The tube connected to a clear jar.

Noah rushed over to it and opened the note.

"Make the ultimate sacrifice for that which you cherish...a sacrifice of blood."

Taped on the inside of the note was a rusty scalpel. His eyes grew wide, the dark pupils and irises seeming to shrink as the white of his eyes expanded.

"What does it say?" Caitlin asked. He read it out loud, his words as shaky as his trembling hands.

"Noah," his wife called. He hurried over to her, and saw a tube on the other side as well, connected to the adjoining fence between him and Rachel. Suddenly another bolt of electricity shot into her, through her. It was a much higher voltage than before. Her entire body convulsed as another current raged through her body.

"Hurry up," she said. "Come on, baby, hurry up, we're on a time limit here!"

"'Baby?'" Rachel exclaimed, her eyes shifting between Noah and Caitlin with the suspicion of a detective in an interrogation room.

"Yeah," Caitlin said, her hands on her hips again, her head bobbing as she took on a defensive stance. "What the hell is it to you?"

Rachel held up her left hand and fingered her wedding ring. She lowered her other fingers to emphasize the golden ring that glimmered despite the poor lighting in the room. Caitlin looked baffled before her eyes darted from Rachel's hand to Noah's, and she saw a ring on his finger that matched hers. Caitlin made the connection. Her mouth gaped open in response.

The finger Rachel choose to lift up above the others shifted from her ring finger to her middle, and she aimed it clearly at Caitlin.

"Real mature," Caitlin spat. "So what the hell, Noah? When were you planning on telling me about this? I knew you were still married, but you stopped wearing the ring, or so I thought…"

"This isn't the time!" he snapped.

"No, this is the perfect time! This is what he wants, this Jigsaw guy. He wants you to make a choice. To appreciate what you truly cherish. That's what he gets off on, right? "

"No, you want me to make a choice," he said, glaring at the loudmouthed woman who had chosen a very inconvenient time to start grating him.

"Regardless, you know what you have to do."

"Yeah. I do," he said. Noah strolled over to the tube on Rachel's side. He took a deep inhale and placed the blade against his wrist. He debated a vertical or horizontal slash. A vertical cut would definitely draw blood, but it could make him woozy, too weak to fight back against his kidnapper if it led to that...yet a horizontal slash might not do the job effectively. The tip of the blade dipped into his flesh. The dark crimson liquid quickly appeared, a round drop settling itself on his skin in a small dome. He pressed deeper, tearing at his body with the self-destructing force of someone seething with self-hatred… and a part of his courage came from just that. A masochistic desire to find atonement.

He began to shriek from the pain as he glided the blade down his wrist, impulsively making the decision to slice vertically. His cries intensified into screams of agony. He held his wrist over the tube, making sure as much blood as possible entered and didn't drip on the ground, as wasted as his life had been, but the spew of his blood was uncontrollable, and some of it sprayed on the floor and outside of the tube. Noah's eyes squinted as he endured the pain, and both women watched in horror. Blood covered his wedding ring, concealing it completely, while the act itself sealed the last ruminants of love between them, between husband and wife, forging a kind of bond that could never be attained in the outside world. He was bleeding... to save her life.

Excruciating seconds slipped past as smoothly as the blood slipped from his veins once the flow really got going. The jar filled, overflowing from the top in his desperate need to save her. Rachel's shackle clicked. She looked down and saw that she was free. She leapt up and ran towards the barrier between them.

"Noah!" she exclaimed.

"Rachel," he sighed, leaning against the gate for support.

"NOAH!" Caitlin screeched, tugging against the shackle in futility. "Help me!"

"Don't!" Rachel said. "You're already bleeding so badly...you'll die if you don't stop!"

"You bitch!" Caitlin yelled. Then she took a deep breath and changed her tune like a punished child trying to sweet talk her way into getting back into Daddy's good graces.

"Don't do this to me. I'm not a perfect person, but I am a person. I'm a human being. Please, have mercy," she said, tears emerging. No longer an act; She was truly terrified. Her shackle vibrated against her ankle, knocking her down on the ground from the sudden impact of pulsing electricity coursing through her body.

The shocks were now far longer, more intense, and with shorter intervals between them. By the end, Caitlin's face was streaked with tears. Unable to stand, she got on all fours in the manner of a repentant sinner and looked up to Noah like he was a God judging her and deciding the fate of her eternal soul.

"P-please. Please, Noah," she choked. "Oh G-God, don't kill me! I'm a person! I'm a PERSON!"

Noah sighed, hanging his head in shame and misery, avoiding the sight of Caitlin as another brutal attack ravaged her body. Her screams escalated, interrupted only by her gasps for air. She stretched her arm out towards him, her face possessing an indescribable vulnerability about her...the look that made firemen rush into a flaming building for survivors, that made officers go up against criminals in hostage situations, that made lifeguards dive into oceans to save the desperate drowning.

At last finding pity for her, he began walking towards Caitlin. He collapsed once, causing Rachel to emit a worried gasp. He got back up and limped towards the other end of the cage, towards Caitlin's tube.

"Th-thank you. Thank you," she sighed, looking at the ground, bracing herself for the next electrocution that was due any second. She could only hope it would be the last before she was free. Noah reopened the already gaping wound, expanding the cut even further and deeper. Caitlin's screams accompanied his own as the shock she anticipated arrived at last. Noah looked up at the jar.

Roughly a fourth of the way there...

Rachel shielded her face with both hands, turning away from the horrific scene. Her chest heaved up and down with increasing speed as she hyperventilated from the overwhelming panic.

Halfway there...

More blood missed the tube than actually entered as Noah's coordination waned from wooziness. The crimson fluid pooled around his feet, obscuring the tube completely, making it resemble a human vein, the very vein that Noah himself sliced into.

Almost there...almost there...

Yet it no longer mattered how close or how far he was. Caitlin's voice disappeared; her calls for help ceased.

"Noah! Noah, STOP! She's gone! She's dead…"

Noah craned his neck towards Caitlin's cell. Rachel was right. The red haired woman had collapsed in her prison; her limbs sprawled out at awkward, painful looking angles. Painful for the living, anyway. Her eyes rolled back in her head, mocking him for the last time.

Noah sighed and closed his eyes, shedding away fresh tears. The fence between Rachel and Noah squeaked as it unlocked. Rachel shoved it open and ran to embrace Noah, kissing him passionately, oblivious of her clothes mopping up his blood. He reciprocated, ignoring the pain and blood as well.

"I love you!" she cried, all thoughts of his infidelity absent from her mind. Somehow the betrayal didn't matter anymore. Perhaps she'd feel rage later, but for now, she only felt love and admiration. "I love you, Noah."

"I love you, too," Noah mumbled into her hair. "Let's get out of here…"

"How?" she asked, adjusting slightly so she could look into his eyes.

"I don't know," he said. He shook the walls of the cage. One of them unbolted upon intense rattling.

"Come on," he said. She followed behind him, providing support as his leaned on her.

"Everything will be different now, Rachel. I understand…I know what's important now," he said.

"I know. Let's just focus on getting out of here," she said. Rachel whimpered. She grabbed his sleeve and pointed towards the door. Written in blood, or something that looked remarkably like it, was the word "Sacrifice," that they had both come to associate with both love and death, and right beside it, another plastic tube leading to a jar that no doubt provided the way to their freedom. Rachel wrapped her arms around Noah's waist, shielding her eyes from the sight of it.

"It'll be okay, Rachel."

"No, it won't! I have to…I have to help you…" she said. Noah turned around and shook his head.

"No. It's not an option."

"Yes, it is!" she insisted, letting go of him and standing her ground. "You've already lost so much blood…Noah, you can't do this on your own."

He pulled the scalpel out of his back pocket. He had intended to use it as a weapon in case he came face-to-face with his abductor, but the coward didn't dare confront him. Why should he? He may not be able to compete with Noah's muscle mass, but he didn't need to when he had electric chains, massive cages, bloodthirsty jars with tubes anxiously awaiting him…awaiting his sacrifice…

"Noah, don't!" she shrieked, curling her hands into small, tight fists. He ripped into his wrist yet again, twisting the knife in circles to bring forth a steady flow. The gash had now expanded from the end of his palm to nearly his elbow.

Rachel clutched her stomach and shrieked, a nauseous sensation overwhelming her. She looked around the room, for anything that could help, some miraculous alternate exit, and for the first time, she noticed a camera. She glared at the blinking light.

"You motherfucker!" she yelled in revulsion, and then with the abrupt mood swing of a manic depressive, she cried out. "Why are you doing this to us? STOP! Please, STOP THIS! Have mercy!"

"He won't stop…not until…" Noah said, losing his words in his pain. She burst into a new fit of tears.

"N-Nooo!"

Noah's unsteady legs finally gave out.

"Rachel…I need your help after all."

She turned to Noah and attempted to grab the scalpel from him. He jerked it away, out of her reach.

"I need you to hold me up…"

"No!" she shouted, reaching for the scalpel again.

"Rachel. Please. I can't do this without you."

She shook her head, her lip pouting and trembling, her hands shaking with both rage and absolute horror. But the pleading in his voice made her oblige what could probably be his last request.

He scraped his wrist against the edge of the tube, attempting to draw even more blood out as Rachel struggled to lift him up high enough to reach the pipe. The scalpel made an awful screeching noise as it scraped against bone, like an artist carving into a sculpture. He shrieked, his head rolled back and he howled a scream so helplessly bloodcurdling, it gave Rachel no other choice. She stole the blade from the dying man, easy now that he could barely control the motor function of his hands.

"No, Rachel, no…don't…" he gasped, clutching his wrist, using his other hand like a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, if only so he didn't waste the precious blood that he needed to save his wife.

She placed the red and shiny scalpel on her wrists and watched as her own blood poured out of her body, merging with her husband's as it slid down the clear tube. Noah's clean hand grabbed her leg, clinching her ankle as he tried to pull her away. Even as he laid on the ground bleeding to death, he was still trying to save her from the same fate.

"Rachel! Stop! Stop! STOP…" he broke into desperate sobs, grabbing her with both hands now, blood seeping into the cracks of the floor and smearing over her calves. Rachel watched the beaker fill higher.

"It's almost full, Noah…almost…" she panted. She collapsed onto Noah. Her tiny body felt like nearly nothing upon impact, mere packaging Styrofoam sprinkled around him. He wrapped his shirt around her arm, but he knew that she wasn't going to stop bleeding though; she needed to be in a hospital right away to even stand a chance…they both did.

"Noah," she whimpered, curling up against him, the blood surrounding them on all sides. They glanced at the jar. Their blurry vision made it impossible to detect how full the jar really was. How close were they to freedom? Was it even worth trying to stand up again? Not that either them possessed the strength…

"I'm so sorry, Noah." she cried.

"I…l-love you," he cried, his voice breaking under the strain of his own reemerging tears. "I'm sorry…it took too long for me to figure it out. I'm sorry…I waited too long…"

"I love…and forgive you," she said, smiling. He returned to gesture, albeit with a bittersweet reciprocation. She looked beautiful despite all of the terror around them, and perhaps made even more so by the sharp contrast. Noah didn't want to avert his eyes from her for a single one of his final moments. They laid beside each other on the floor while their bodies caught up to what their minds had already accepted. That this was their last goodbye, their final exchange of "I love you". His blood-spattered hand held onto hers, the matching gaping wounds on their wrists mirrored each other, a testament to their love and their willingness to sacrifice for one another. She nestled her head into the crevice of his neck, and they lived out their last remaining minutes as husband and wife, as connected and joined as two souls can be, while they waited calmly for death to come and claim them as his own.

Amanda and Mark's eyes both glossed with tears as they watched the game unfold from the safety and objectivity of the monitoring room. At some point during the test, Amanda's hand clasped Mark's, and like the two test subjects on the screen that desperately clung to each other in their last moments, neither of them could let go. Like eyewitnesses to a terrible accident, they were bonded together by the horror they had seen. Noah and Rachel's bodies remained completely immobile for several minutes, their chests no longer rising with the effort of breathing. They had passed together, peacefully, like a couple several decades older than them might be expected to do in their sleep.

"They just gave up," she whispered. Mark shifted his attention from the monitor to Amanda. Her let go of his hand as her arms crossed over her chest in a subconscious desire for protection, and her body trembled.

"They were dying, Amanda," he said. Lame, yet it was the best he could offer as he overcame his own sorrow that was burrowing deep inside of him. It was a pitiful sight. For a brief, blissful moment, he too had shared Amanda's sentiment and despite his better judgment, had hoped they might make it out alive.

"I know, but… I don't think that's why they stopped fighting. I think they stopped because they both knew the other one wasn't going to make it, and they didn't want to go on…well, they didn't want to go on without each other," she said at last. Tears streamed down her cheeks, her eyes clouded and moist, like a window misted from rain. Despite the vacant expression on Amanda's face, he knew exactly what she was feeling because he felt it as well. It was a need for connection.

"They waited too long…he waited too long, to show how much he loved her…" Mark said, thinking about much more than just Noah and Rachel now. "Amanda...let's not make that mistake."

"Mark," she said, her tone threatening. She saw desperation in his eyes, a pitiful look she hated to see on Mark's usually attractive features. She drew closer to him, contemplated the consequences of following her impulses, and then turned away completely as she stormed out of the room.

"I need to think," she explained, already halfway out the door.

"Take your time!" he snapped. He meant to sound sincere, but his emotions interfered, and he didn't come across that way. Not that it mattered. She had chosen a very inconvenient time to shut him out again.

No pressure, Amanda.

They both thought rather sarcastically. Mark knew before she even made the decision herself what she was going to do. He may not have been as good as John at anticipating the human mind, but he thought he was beginning to get inside Amanda's a little more. Understanding her was a long and difficult process, requiring much effort and compassion and regrettably, what it required above all else...patience.

But it was a process he hoped would be worth it in the end.

Someday...