Sigma was the first out of the infirmary after Alice, pausing only to allow the door time to automatically open before him, but Phi wasn't far behind. She broke into a ferocious sprint, only to be brought up short when she caught up with Sigma. He was standing frozen at the intersection between the exit to the infirmary and the corridor that connected all the upper floor rooms; both doorways were closed, blocking sight in both directions.

"Sigma! Which way did Alice go?!" Phi asked forcefully.

"Agh! I don't know which way she went," Sigma replied.

"You don't know?!" Phi groaned, "You were closest to her! You should have kept up."

As she said that, the rest of the players emerged from the infirmary, Dio at the head. "You lost her?!" Dio blurted out as he saw them standing there. The other players, seeing Phi and Sigma standing still, also slowed down; all their momentum had been squandered.

Phi took charge. "Let's split up and look. Quickly! She can't have gotten too far." Phi scratched her chin, trying to think of the best strategy should one of the players find Alice. "Look… if you find her, it's best not to shout or anything. Just… do your best not to provoke her. Understood?"

They did. Phi broke into a sprint, going left. If Alice had gone to the elevator, she could escape into the labyrinthine lower floor. They would need as many players as possible to catch her. It appeared that the other players agreed with Phi. Sigma disappeared off into the lounge, but Clover, Luna, K and Dio joined Phi in the elevator and they took it down together.

Clover was shaking. "Please… please… we've gotta find her. I don't know what I'd do… without her."

Luna took Clover's arm and held it tenderly. "It'll be okay, Clover. We'll find her. We're all working together on this, right?!"

Phi and K nodded. Dio shrugged.

"See?" Luna said, "We're all going to help you find her."

The elevator doors opened, and the players spilled out. Phi saw Luna go left through the green door and Clover head right towards the red door so she took the remaining option, darting straight forward through the blue door, letting her adrenaline carry her along. As she reached a corner in the corridor, a door automatically opened in front of her, revealing the shortcut between the elevator and the Floor B warehouse. Phi had been through there before, and it would probably be easier to find Alice if she had gone that way, given that she already knew the layout.

Phi charged down the shortcut and found herself in the warehouse as expected. Since she was coming the other way, she noticed one detail she'd missed earlier. On the wall to Phi's left was some blood-red graffiti, inscribed in the same style as the graffiti upstairs. It was much longer, and Phi didn't have time to read it.

Other than that, though, there was one key difference. Where Phi had entered before alongside many of the other players, now she entered alone.

Alice wasn't there.

Apart from the Chromatic Doors and the shortcut Phi had entered by, there were two other doors out of the warehouse, on the left beside the graffiti. Phi ran towards them. Only the route that led back to the treatment centre and B. garden opened, so Phi continued on down it.

As Phi sprinted down yet another winding corridor, she began to feel her breath catching in her throat. She had been running at her limit for so many minutes, looking for Alice. If Phi hadn't found her… that had to mean one of the others had found her. But Phi couldn't stop running.

As Phi rounded the corner and came upon the doors to the treatment centre and the B. gardens, she skidded to a halt. Phi had to make a choice of which room to search next. Then, her choice was made for her. A hoarse, anguished voice yelled from within the gardens.

Alice's voice.

Frantic, Phi burst into the B. garden. Once inside, Phi rapidly scanned the area, looking for Alice.

She couldn't have gotten far in here. The 'sky' above the garden was, in fact, a ceiling, with the thin gaps between them betraying the hexagonal panels that made it up; where the sky descended it became a solid wall, keeping them inside.

Phi ignored the details of the plants in front of her; they mattered only as places where Alice could be concealed. Phi's eyes followed the stream that flowed under and around the wooden walkway they were standing on until it drained into a pond in the far corner. No sign of Alice along it either.

As Phi took in all the details of the B. garden, she felt her skin crawl. Something was not quite right about this place. It was trying too hard to look like a natural, real garden; it was a room that couldn't be trusted. Phi's unease compounded with her fears for Alice until…

"Stay away from me!" Alice yelled. Phi turned to see Alice standing half-concealed in the shadow of a cliff made of stacked boulders. She seemed frozen, pulled in different directions by contradictory urges. The moment Alice's and Phi's eyes met, Alice raised her arm, brandishing the scalpel. "I… don't know what I'm going to do…" Alice trailed off.

Phi had to try to disarm Alice without provoking her. She took a small step forwards. "Alice…"

Alice interrupted, "I said: don't get any closer!" Once Phi had stopped, Alice continued, "I just need to get out of here. I can't take it anymore. This…" Alice swished the scalpel. "…is the quickest way."

"Alice…" Phi said cautiously. When it didn't trigger a reaction, Phi carried on emboldened, "It's not the only way. You're on six BP. That means you can…"

"Don't you think I know that?!" Alice snapped. She was trembling. "I keep thinking that to myself, trying to make myself believe there's another way out. But it won't stick! It's like something's controlling my thoughts, wiping away the ones it doesn't like. I don't know what to do. I don't! Know! What! To! Do!"

There was a brief pause.

Then Alice raised the scalpel above her head.

Phi started running forward, knowing that she was far too far away to intervene.

Alice grimaced; her fist containing the scalpel shook fretfully… and then she dropped the blade, harmlessly, to the floor.

Alice's other hand shot out to a control panel next to the rocky cliff. Quickly, almost instinctively, she tapped out a code on the buttons there. With a rushing gurgle, a jet of water spouted over the top of the boulders, turning the cliff into a rippling waterfall that drenched Alice's back. As the icy-cold water soaked into her, all the tension was washed away from Alice's face.

"That… feels better," Alice mumbled softly. She stumbled out of the waterfall and fell into an exhausted kneel. Finally, with a fading groan, Alice collapsed entirely. She was unconscious.

Phi finally reached Alice, too late to make a difference. Just to make sure, she kicked the scalpel further away from Alice's hand, then efficiently checked her vital signs. It looked like Alice was going to survive.

"Alice!" Sigma's hoarse yell came from behind Phi about five minutes later.

Phi hadn't been able to move Alice far by herself; she'd settled for getting Alice out of the spray of the waterfall and making her more comfortable. "Oh, there you are. Good," Phi said, keeping her tone neutral. She'd had some time to steady her nerves after the frantic chase, but she was still worried that some of her latent anxiety would show through. "I'm glad you showed up. I'll need your help to get her to the infirmary."

"Then she's, uh… alive?" Sigma asked.

Phi nodded. "Her breathing and pulse seem normal. She didn't manage to wound herself either: at least, no obvious wounds. She's just unconscious."

"What about the scalpel?" Sigma asked.

"I got it away from her," Phi replied. Then, since Sigma hadn't yet moved to help her carry Alice, she commanded, "Anyway, we need to get her back to the infirmary. Give me a hand here."

Phi lifted up Alice's head, while Sigma took the weight of Alice's legs. They had barely started towards the doors when they were interrupted. Drawn by their raised voices, Clover had arrived.

"Alice!" Clover shrieked. She bounded towards them, crossing the distance in less than a second. "Get off her!" she yelled into Phi's ear, deafening her. Clover muscled Phi aside, somehow so skilfully that Alice wasn't jolted at all. Then, Clover peered into Alice's vacant eyes. "What happened to her? What did you do to her?!"

"She's just unconscious," Sigma replied. Withering under Clover's sudden glare, he continued, "Don't ask me. Phi's the one who found her."

Clover's stare swept round to Phi. "You! How could you let her get like this?!"

Phi placed her hands on her hips and turned her head away. "Well, it's better than the alternative."

"How could you say that?! It's… It's… It's… Yeah, you're right…" Clover let out a deep sigh as she turned back to Alice and bowed her head so their cheeks lightly touched. "Alice… Alice… " Clover trailed off into an incoherent moan.

Looking at them, Phi was briefly reminded that Alice and Clover had been two of the players who'd been frozen in the treatment pods. She recalled her intention to interrogate Clover before her story could be contaminated by Alice or Tenmyouji. This was the perfect opportunity. Phi decided on the perfect way to phrase her question, and opened her mouth.

And then, she couldn't ask it.

Seeing Clover there, tearfully clutching Alice, Phi couldn't ask it.

"Come on," Phi said instead, "Let's get back. The others are probably getting worried about us."

Phi followed Sigma and Clover as they carried Alice back to the elevator. Soon after, they were back in the infirmary, where they were greeted with relief by the rest of the players.

"You found her!" Luna exclaimed. She gestured at the ADAM. "Please, bring her over here." Once Sigma had laid Alice out on the ADAM's bed, Luna took another injection gun full of Soporil Beta and injected Alice just as she had injected Quark. "Just in case…" Luna muttered.

Then, she started scanning. After about a minute of waving the scanning attachment over Alice, Luna turned around and raised her voice.

"Please pay attention, everyone! You need to hear this. The ADAM has finished scanning Alice. Her results are identical to Quark's. She has also been infected with Radical-6."

There was a short, strained gasp from Clover. "Oh no… No! What's going to happen to her?!"

"Well, like I said before," Luna said, "there's only one way to cure Radical-6. The special anti-viral treatment, Axelavir."

Clover ran up to Alice's bed, only barely able to keep herself standing beside it. "No… No… Oh Alice… I don't want you to die! Please… You can't die! I don't want to be alone."

As Clover grieved, Phi had an idea. "What about the treatment pods? What would happen if we placed Alice and Quark in them?"

Luna sighed, placing her head in her hand. "I thought of that, too, so I went and took a closer look at them. Unfortunately…"

"They can't cure it," Sigma concluded.

Luna nodded. "Correct. They can suppress the symptoms for a while, but they can't kill the virus itself. The only way we can help Alice and Quark is if we can find some Axelavir."

Tenmyouji pointed a desperate finger at Luna. "But the pods will keep them from getting any worse, right? What are we waiting for?"

Tenmyouji quickly lifted Quark off the bed and marched towards the door. As he did so, Quark's coat flopped open and something fell out of the pocket and towards the floor: a vial of purple liquid. Sigma dived towards it; he caught it only an inch before it would have smashed.

"Is this…medicine?" Sigma muttered as he stood back up. He turned the vial over and read the label. "'Axelavir'…"

"You found it!" Luna exclaimed, "That's the one thing that can cure Radical-6!"

"Uh. Why did Quark have it?" Dio asked.

K gestured thoughtfully. "Perhaps he found it earlier? We explored the laboratory, on the other side of the red door. I happened to notice Quark putting something in his pocket, shortly after he opened the safe. I did not have the opportunity to ask about it, as he collapsed immediately afterwards. It didn't feel… appropriate… to go digging around in his pockets for it after that. To be honest, it slipped my mind. We were rather preoccupied with getting him to the infirmary as quickly as possible."

"Who cares about the details?" Tenmyouji snapped, "We have it!" Tenmyouji laid Quark back down on the bed. "Hurry up and give it to him, Luna!"

Clover charged between Tenmyouji and Luna. "Hey, hold on a minute! What about Alice?"

"Does it really matter if she goes first or not?" Tenmyouji said.

Luna spoke up. "Um… I'm sorry, but… I think it does. There's only enough here… for one person."

The moment the words had left Luna's mouth, Tenmyouji and Clover were glaring hatefully at each other. They looked ready to fight – perhaps even kill – to claim the single dose of Axelavir for their own.

Trying to defuse the tension, Phi rummaged through Quark's clothes, hoping to find a second dose that would resolve the dilemma. She didn't.

"Do you think there might be more back in the laboratory?" Sigma asked. Like Phi, he must have realised that the situation was poised on a razor-sharp edge.

Once again, the attempt to solve the problem failed. K quickly indicated that there had been no other vials in the laboratory. Having dispelled their hopes, K pointed at the vial of Axelavir in Sigma's hand and solemnly stated the problem they had. "So who do we give it to? Alice? Or Quark?"

Sigma roared, "What the hell is this? There's no way we're only going to save just the one of them!"

"Then what do you want us to do?" Phi asked.

"Do I have to spell it out? We're going to save them both!"

Phi sighed. "Just demanding it isn't going to make it happen. So, Sigma: how?"

And then, just as Phi had given up on getting a reply from Sigma, his eyes glazed over. He looked just like he had when he'd prophesised the antimatter bomb.

"The laboratory…" Sigma murmured. Then, life returned to Sigma's eyes and he started walking purposefully towards the exit door. "That's it! I've got it! The IG Replicator in the laboratory! It can copy antibodies! That means we can make more Axelavir!"

K scratched his chin curiously. "Hold on. There is a strange device in the laboratory that says 'IG Replicator' on it."

"We never could figure out what it did, though," Clover said.

K continued, "Exactly. My question is… how do you know about it, Sigma?"

Sigma stuttered. "I saw it. When I was in…" he trailed off.

K had hit the nail on the head. When had Sigma ever entered the laboratory? He'd searched the B. gardens during the previous round, then bumped into Phi the moment he'd finished. They'd returned to the upper floor together, going nowhere near the laboratory. There was a possibility – just a slight one – that Sigma had gone there during the search for Alice; even then, it didn't really make sense. Sigma had searched the upper floor first, and then been the second after Phi to arrive at B. gardens and find Alice there. The timing of it didn't work.

Also, when had Sigma ever been an expert on cutting edge biochemistry?

Those objections didn't matter, however. If Sigma was right, they now had an opportunity to cure both Alice and Quark. They had to take it.

"Let's go have a look, then," Phi commanded.

Luna stayed behind to keep an eye on Alice and Quark, while everyone else headed to the laboratory at a brisk pace. When they arrived, Sigma flourished at a symmetrical device in the centre of the room: it was the IG Replicator, just as Sigma had predicted. Sigma carefully placed the vial of Axelavir in one slot in the machine, checked the vial in the opposite slot, then turned back to the crowd of players.

"Ready? When I push this button, it should…"

"Skip it," Tenmyouji growled, "Just press the damn thing."

Groaning at the interruption, Sigma complied. The machine whirred furiously, even beginning to rattle the table it sat on, but it soon subsided. The IG Replicator had finished. Sigma took both vials out of the machine and compared them with some satisfaction. Both were equally full of purple liquid: Phi could only hope that it was still Axelavir.

"Alright!" Sigma cheered, "Let's get this thing back to the infirmary." Sigma transferred the vials so that both were in his right hand and made to slip them into his pocket.

Then, one of the vials slipped.

"Shit!" Sigma's left hand swung in a wild, desperate arc towards the floor, following the rapidly descending vial. He caught it by sheer luck, but was thrown off balance by the sudden jerking motion and tumbled to the floor.

"What the hell was that?!" Tenmyouji exclaimed, his eyes locked on the vial of Axelavir in Sigma's left hand.

"Sorry… my hand slipped," Sigma mumbled.

"You dropped one of them?!" Clover asked, trembling as the realisation of what had just happened hit her.

"Just one, though," Sigma futilely tried to excuse himself.

"What if you'd broken it, you idiot?" Tenmyouji snapped.

"C-Couldn't I have just made another copy?" Sigma stuttered under Tenmyouji's and Clover's blazing gaze, "Look, It didn't break. See? Can someone help me up already?"

Phi was the first to move to help him. She reached her hand down towards him. Then, in the last moment before their hands touched, she noticed something else under the table. "Oh. You've got to be kidding me."

"What the heck's going on down there?" Dio asked.

"Just come and take look," Phi replied. It was quicker than describing it. After all, all the players would recognise it instantly.

It was another antimatter bomb.

It had been inconspicuously attached to the bottom of the worksurface. This one was labelled '02'; other than that it was identical to the one in the crew quarters. It proved one thing. The bomb planter was still vigorously active.

"Was this here when you guys came through the first time?" Phi asked K and Clover.

"No, it was not," K stated instantly.

Clover piped up as well. "I didn't see anything, and I looked real hard."

Phi made the obvious deduction, assuming K and Clover were telling the truth. "Then, somebody must have set it up while we were looking for Alice."

"Who the hell would do that?" Dio asked incredulously.

"We were all running around looking for Alice," Sigma suggested, "It could have been any of us."

Tenmyouji shook his head fiercely. "No. Not any of us. I stayed in the infirmary. Quark was still out, so I was keeping an eye on him."

Dio snorted. "So we shouldn't consider you a suspect. Is that right?" he asked condescendingly.

"Yeah."

K said, "But, Tenmyouji, you have no proof you spent the entire time in the infirmary, do you? You could have quietly made your way to the laboratory, planted the bomb…"

"That's insane!" Tenmyouji roared.

"Perhaps. But it is a possibility: one we cannot afford to ignore."

Tenmyouji slammed the palms of his hands against K's armour, to no effect. "There's no way in hell I'd have left Quark all by himself to go plant a goddamn bomb!"

The brewing fight was distracted when Clover suddenly approached the part of the table that the bomb had been secured to. She bent down and snatched something up from the floor. When she presented it to the others, Phi saw that it was a purple memory card. "What do you make of this? It was right under the bomb, on the floor, under the table."

K turned away from Tenmyouji and moved in to get a closer look at the memory card. "Could it have been put there by the same person who set the bomb? There was nothing like it here when we examined the room."

"What do you think's on it?" Sigma asked, "Let's take a look. Can I see it for a minute?"

Clover hesitantly handed the memory card over to Sigma. "Yeah… I guess so."

Sigma examined the card's connectors, then swept his eyes around the laboratory. "Shoot," he muttered, "I thought we could try and plug it into something that reads memory cards, but I don't see anything like that here." For a scientific laboratory, the room had a suspicious lack of computer equipment.

"So what do we do?" Clover asked, reaching forward with her hand reflexively to reclaim the memory card.

"Dunno," Sigma replied, "If I knew, I'd be doing it."

Before they could come up with any other ideas, the players were interrupted. "Ten minutes remain until Ambidex Game polling closes. All players, please enter your votes. If no vote is recorded before the deadline has passed, any non-voting parties will automatically ally."

"Uh, guys, I think maybe we should get back to the top floor," Dio said, failing to mention that it had been him who had opened the Ambidex Room and started the timer.

"What shall we do about the, ah, bomb?" K asked.

Dio shrugged. "Not much to do but leave it here. Alice said it'd be dangerous to touch them, remember?"

Phi put some urgency into her tone of voice, then said, "Drop it. We can talk about the bombs later. Right now we need to take care of Alice and Quark."

Phi led the other players back up to the infirmary, where they presented the two full vials of Axelavir. With a relieved smile, Luna clinically injected the Axelavir into both Alice and Quark. The crisis was over; soon, they would both be cured.

It was just in time as well: another announcement coincided with the second injection, reminding them that they only had five minutes left to vote.

"Alright, everybody," Phi announced, "We can be relieved later. Right now we need to get to the AB Rooms, and fast." Phi took her own advice, advancing at a brisk pace to the warehouse without checking to see if the others followed her.

Most of them did, but when Phi arrived at the warehouse, she found that Tenmyouji had not. "Oh, he stayed back in the infirmary," Dio replied when asked.

"Why?" Phi asked sternly. This would cause problems for her. She would face only Dio in the upcoming AB Game, and would not have the opportunity to persuade Tenmyouji to take a risk by voting 'Ally'.

"Well, when we were all heading out, I noticed he wasn't doing anything. I asked him if he was coming with us, and he said he was gonna 'watch over Quark and Alice' or some rubbish like that." Seeing the expression on Phi's face, Dio continued, "Hey, Phi, nothing to worry about. I plan to choose 'Ally'. You know why? 'Cause you've only got one BP. I want to win, but I'm not that desperate." Phi wasn't quite convinced by that.

Luna tapped Phi on the shoulder and gazed deeply into Phi's eyes. "Tenmyouji only has one BP left as well. Since Dio's said he's going to pick 'Ally', Phi can't really pick anything else. If she does, Tenmyouji will… um…"

"Yeah, that's pretty much it," Dio stated, cutting through Luna's pause. His face took on an honest looking grin, and Phi strained her eyes trying to see if there was anything else behind it. She failed: if Dio was hiding something, he had concealed it far too well.

After that, there was no time for anything else. Without another word, Phi raced for the nearest AB Room, opened it up with her keycard, and dashed inside. Soon after, she activated the touchscreen at the centre and the door closed behind her. Phi was alone

Phi had a tough choice to make. She had only one BP remaining. The only way to ensure her own survival was to betray.

Tenmyouji also had only one BP remaining. If Phi betrayed, then Tenmyouji might die instead.

With only seconds to go, and with her heart pounding in her chest, Phi made the choice of which life to risk and which to preserve.

Choice:
A) Ally
B) Betray

This fanfic has branching storylines. To keep track of the various storylines, a link to the Flow Diagram is provided in my Author Profile.

I should probably explain some of what's going on with Alice here. This is one of three timelines in which she survives. It's also one of only two in which she survives without Sigma having to go through a plot lock to save her. I won't mention now what happens with Alice on the true route in Empty Virtue, but the fact is that the single timeline in which Alice isn't betrayed is also one where she survives without too much intervention is at least significant. I don't know how well this came across in the writing, but that was the idea: Alice was less afraid since she wasn't betrayed and was therefore able to not kill herself.