Timeline: Minutes after the last chapter, plus one flashback scene

Rating: Pg-13, for violence

Chapter 13

The Furnace

"Can't you smell that smell?

The smell of death surrounds you."

- Lynyrd Skynyrd, "That Smell"

"Do not attempt to use this key on the door to this room," Xavier read out loud.

Good thing we used small words…I'm surprised the blockhead can even read, Mark thought with a slight smile, one that didn't linger on his face for long. Amanda wasn't even out of the first room in John's twisted game and already he had to resist the urge tear John apart limb from limb, illness or not, for doing this to her, and for doing this to him, forcing him to watch her go through this ordeal and fret over her. He clinched his fist every time Jonas threw her against a wall, interrogated her like he knew who she was and what she was really doing there.

But he doesn't know. He has no right to lay a hand on her.

Men like Jonas disgusted him, men that thought they had the right to throw women around. He closed his eyes for a moment and remembered his academy training and his Jigsaw mentoring that taught him the ways to detach himself from his emotions in all situations, even in a crisis.

It wasn't working.

His eyes never left the monitor. He felt he'd offered up his soul to the devil in exchange for his anonymity, for what he was being forced to endure in exchange for his freedom felt like pure hell. He waited for the end of the game, or for the moment he couldn't bear to watch anymore, the moment he would intervene and perhaps throw away all he had worked so hard to achieve.

He watched as Amanda descended into the basement. Obi's test. The freaky one with the bald head and hard eyes, the one John hired to help him kidnap some of the other players beforehand. It had been a great convenience to Mark at the time, but now it was a great concern. Especially since the monitor in the basement had flickered out and was now only a black screen. Either John's careless faulty wiring was to blame, or a rat had chewed through one of the wires. Mark also suspected that maybe John had intentionally done this, just because he liked the thought of Mark squirming in nervous apprehension for a little while.

Seconds crawled into minutes while Mark's undivided attention remained on that door. Only after he felt certain enough time had elapsed for something to go wrong did he check the clock that was at the other end of the room.

He noticed that only five minutes had passed. Five minutes that seemed like eternity.

"...just remember Obi. Once you're in hell, only the devil can help you out."

"What the hell does that mean?" Jonas said.

"You have five seconds to tell us how to get out of here!" Xavier shouted, pulling the knife out of the fake corpse and pointing it towards Obi. Amanda remained on the staircase, as far back as possible, hidden in the shadows, completely forgotten, just the way she liked it. Unless they threatened Daniel, threatened ruining their game, she would let them stab each other to death if they chose to do so. Survival of the fittest, John would argue. Amanda's own mounting fear made her blindly agree.

"I don't know a way out," Obi said in a voice to calm it made Amanda shiver.

"Then you're a dead man," Xavier said. Interestingly enough, Xavier's death threats didn't have to same effect as Obi's eerie sense of calmness.

You're playing with fire Xavier, Amanda thought. You don't realize that you're about to get burned. Then, remembering Obi's arson record, she nearly smiled at the irony. If it wasn't for the adrenalin fear rushing through her, as potent and effective at distorting her thoughts and paralyzing her like some type of drug, she was positive she probably would have revealed her thoughts in her expression. Not that anyone would have noticed anyway. They were too busy tossing around insults and pulling out weapons.

Addison intervened in breaking them apart, reminding them that two of the antidotes they were seeking resided in that trap. Then more bickering ensured. Would they even want to stick themselves with an unknown substance? Who would receive the antidotes? Who should get them out of the furnace? Amanda wondered if they'd ever get out of this dark basement, or if everyone but her and Daniel would argue themselves to death, stalling until the poison coursing through them finally wore down their bodies till they were too weak to save themselves. It would be an ironic fate, something John would definitely appreciate. Perhaps that was his plan after all.

Laura collapsed, the strength weaning out of her fragile body as the poison took its effects. Amanda couldn't resist feeling a little pity. She walked down the stairs and knelt next to Laura, who looked paler than ever. Amanda put a hand on her shoulder, and in a whisper, asked if she was okay. Laura just looked at her with pathetic, tired eyes, the vitality in them fading with every passing moment.

"If you're going to threaten me with a knife, you may as well cut me a little. I guess I'm going in there to get those antidotes, but I get one," Obi said at last, after cutting his neck with the blade in a show of male egotism. Amanda cringed. She had no doubt that he would get whatever it was that he wanted. She just didn't know if he'd come out alive afterward.

One week ago...

"How does this trap work?" Amanda asked. "What does Obi have to do?"

John's eyes never left the blueprints. His calloused fingers traced the paper like someone idly caressing a lover's face.

"Obi is an arsonist who'll have to come into direct contact with his malicious obsession if he wants to survive." Of course John highlighted the irony of Obi's trap instead of directly answering her question, but it didn't matter because she'd already become an amateur at reading his plans and blueprints. She saw exactly how it worked. Obi would have to crawl through the fire to twist the knob and save himself.

"But what if he only takes one of the antidotes and crawls out?" Amanda asked.

John swiveled his chair and looked her in the eyes.

"He won't. He'll take both of them."

"Yeah, he probably will. But what if he doesn't?"

"He will," John said, as though it would occur exactly like he said it would because he deemed it so. He appeared to her so omnipotent in that moment, before he broke into yet enough coughing fit, one of the worst ones she'd witnessed in awhile. She automatically fetched a glass of water for him, but he shunned it away. In doing so, he accidentally knocked it from her hands, causing it to shatter and send pieces of glass flying all across the floor. Amanda stood there immobilized for a moment. It happened every so often, he'd be so strong and powerful in one moment so that she'd forget for a little while that he was even sick, and then he'd crumble into a shell of his former glorious self, and she'd see the humane side of him, the weak side. It broke her heart every time.

When the coughing ceased, she noticed John's face was entirely red.

"You have to drink some water," Amanda said and went to get him another cup. When she came back, he accepted it this time.

"Thank you, Amanda," he said.

"I'm sorry about the glass," she said, tears in her eyes. She knelt down and began picking up the pieces with her bare hands.

"Amanda, it's okay. It was my fault."

"No, it's not okay!" she said. A tear drop fell on her left hand. They both noticed it was covered in blood from clinching a sharp piece of glass with too much pressure. Her tear drop slid into the blood. She swiped it on her jeans, smearing it into the fabric without concern.

"Amanda, I'm sick. You've known this since the beginning," John said.

"I know," she said. She looked up at him and held one of his hands with her hand that had not been drenched in blood.

"But it doesn't make it any easier," she explained. "It's hard to watch you...get worse."

His head tilted slightly, as though he was seeing her in a new way. Perhaps analyzing how he would remedy this problem, this emotion that Amanda felt for him that she should be trying to eliminate, the way Mark so easily did. Or perhaps trying to understand how she had so quickly become attached to him. But regardless of his thoughts, he didn't offer chastisement of any kind.

Instead, John placed his other hand on top of hers and stroked it softly.

"It will get easier with time, I promise."

Amanda gave him the best smile she could manage, but it was distorted by the sadness and pain she couldn't eradicate from her heart.

Amanda's memory was interrupted by Obi's screaming. She knew inside what was going to happen, just as she knew one of them was going to die in the room they woke up in. Yet it was so difficult to get accustomed to the sound of screaming, a sound that was so full of pain and futility. She turned her head away from the furnace, and eventually faced her entire body the other way, as if trying to forget he was in the room. In a way she was right, for soon Obi would be gone and only his burned corpse would be with them.

Then suddenly she couldn't block him from her mind by closing her eyes, because he got to her in another way. Her senses were consumed by the odor of burning flesh. She gagged on the scent, and then turned her head towards Obi. His hand pressed up against the glass. Survival mode kicked in for everyone else. No longer concerned with saving their fellow prisoner, they anxiously tried to break the glass to gain access to the antidotes.

The screaming grew in intensity as the glass window broke and Obi managed to get his head and one of his arms through, but despite how slender his body was, he couldn't crawl the rest of the way though the hole. Amanda looked at him, and then had look away again. It seemed either way was torture, and that grotesque smell of the burning human inside the furnace grew more and more potent every second. She felt her stomach toss and turn. She choked for a moment as she swallowed the lump that formed in her throat. Bodily fluids threatened to emerge from her if she continued to expose her senses to the disgusting smell of death much longer.

Then suddenly the screaming stopped. She looked at him again. His hand no longer stretched out for freedom, his head no longer straining upwards as he emitted screams of agony. He was gone. Only a useless dead shell remained, along with the lingering smell.

"I want the fucking needle!" Xavier yelled over and over again at the body, clinching Obi's head in his hands, the body that could no longer comply with his request even if Xavier did manage to convince him to follow his command. Obi could have saved one of them by offering them the antidote, but the cure had died with him. Maybe it was Obi's final act of selfishness, or maybe he'd lost it when panicking. Amanda preferred to think of the latter scenario, not that it mattered anymore.

Amanda grabbed a shovel that was sitting on a table and marched up the stairs before that scent could torture her anymore.

"He had a choice," she said, reminding herself more than anyone else in the room, who remained oblivious to her anyway. She opened the door, freeing herself of that awful odor, and simultaneously freeing Mark of his anxiety...for the moment.

Author's Note: Sorry for the lag in updates. I'm a college student, and college consumes all your free time. I have NOT lost my muse, I'm just really busy. I'll try to update more frequently from now on. Thank you to the people who are still reading. :D