Timeline: About 15 minutes later

Rating: PG 13 for violence

Chapter 15

Unforeseen Complications

"I'm assuming this is going to play out the way you want it?" -Mark Hoffman

"I assume nothing. I anticipate the possibilities and let the game play out." -Jigsaw

The desire for survival drove Amanda onward despite the pain. Daniel provided her great comfort. His sweetness made her glad that a part of her task was to protect him, to ensure that this particular pawn remained unharmed. It allowed her the chance to actually feel for one of the victims and be comforted by the thought that he wouldn't be dead by the end of the game, so long as there weren't any more unforeseen complications in John's master plan.

Why didn't John see that coming? She asked herself that over and over.

Daniel assumed it was just her pain that caused her to sigh so wistfully. His right shoulder tensed up, sore from Amanda leaning on him for support. He grunted a little. She realized she was tiring out the poor kid who was too polite to say anything. Amanda stood up straight, alleviating the burden.

"Are you sure you're okay enough to stand?" he asked. She smiled and shook her head to indicate she was.

He rolled his shoulder and rubbed it for a moment.

"I think my shoulder fell asleep," he said, an awkward smile accompanying his statement.

"Sorry about that," she said, smiling again. Damn, his polite smiles were contagious.

"It's okay. Don't worry about it," he said. He looked over at Laura, who reminded Amanda of a sick child sleepwalking in an unconscious daze. She looked ready to fall over and give into her inevitable demise at any moment. Amanda realized that even if Laura found an antidote immediately, she'd probably succumb to the poison anyway. Laura was a dead woman walking in a futile effort for salvation.

How fair is that?

Don't think about it now. Don't think about it at all. Focus.

"I don't think she's going to make it out of here alive," Daniel said. He looked at Amanda with a nervous expression on his face.

"You know," he said, pausing for a moment and looking around suspiciously,"Everyone else is coughing up blood and getting sick, but weirdly enough, I feel fine. Totally fine. And you look fine too."

Damn, this kid is smart!

"Do you think maybe..."

Don't say it. Don't say it. Don't say it.

"We have some natural immunity to it? I mean, I read about something like that in my biology class. I don't really remember how it works though. Maybe I should have paid a little more attention. Or actually went to class," he laughed at the end, an anxious laugh with no humor. His hands twitched at his side. His mouth trembled at the end of every single sentence. His jittery motions made Amanda feel nervous too. She had encountered crack heads and meth addicts that possessed more calamity than him.

"Natural immunity? I don't really know much about it either. But maybe we shouldn't talk about it now," she said, her eyes gesturing over to the others.

She leaned in close and whispered in his ear so no one would overhear, not that they were paying any attention anyway.

"I'm sure the others wouldn't like hearing about that."

"Oh right," he said.

"But hey," she said, backing away and giving him some personal space, "It's a good theory. You're probably right," she said, tacking on a fake smile that didn't reach her eyes.

"Yeah," he said.

At this point, Xavier had already stormed off, claiming they were holding him back. How they were doing that, he didn't say. Amanda wondered if a part of his irrational behavior was caused by the poison that must be taking its toll on him by now or if he was just naturally devolving due to the stressful situation they were in.

Laura collapsed. She couldn't hold out much longer. Amanda knelt down to hold her.

"No. We can't stop," Addison said. Amanda looked at Laura's pale face. What had she done to deserve this? Amanda couldn't remember. As she looked at the dying girl, it was as though all of Laura's faults were forgiven, all of her sins absolved. Amanda kept reminding herself that the girl was here because she hadn't appreciated her life, and she'd done something horrible to prove her obvious neglect for it, but Laura's innocent, pleading eyes made it hard for Amanda to convince herself of that.

The poison gradually waned all vitality from Laura. Her last moments were drifting away.

"We've been here two hours. If what that tape says is true, than in one hour the front door will open," Addison said.

One hour. Laura didn't have one hour. Laura didn't even have many minutes left.

"We're not going to make it that long!" Amanda said. Truthfully, Amanda would be fine in one hour, but the weak girl in her arms certainly would not.

"That's a real winning attitude!" Addison said.

"She knows what she's talking about," Daniel said, coming to Amanda's defense.

"X marks the spot," Laura whispered.

"What?" Amanda said.

"X marks the spot...for the answer," she said, using what little energy she possessed to point towards the cracked photo frame on the wall.

Addison looked at the frame and yanked it off the wall. She turned it around and looked at the photograph of Eric Matthews and his son.

"What are you doing with him?" Addison asked Daniel.

Daniel grabbed the photograph from her. Addison read the back of it."Father and Son"

"He's your father?" she asked in disbelief and undisclosed hatred.

"Yeah. You know him?"

Now all the pieces will come together, Amanda could hear John say. She wanted to tell him to shut up. Listening to Daniel's scared voice was much harder to deal with than Amanda thought it would be. He was a rebellious teen and a petty thug when she kidnapped him, and now he was just a scared little kid, as proven by his trembling voice.

"Yeah. He's the guy who put me away, who set me up," Addison snapped.

Amanda looked at Daniel and tried to feign surprise, but it came out as desperation instead.

"Tell me that's not your father," she said.

"I..." he began, but his words were interrupted by Laura's violent seizure. Her entire body began to tremor as the poison began its final attacks on her. Her immune system had simply given up entirely. Amanda tried to hold Laura's head still to keep it from banging against the wall as the convulsion shook her entire body. Laura vomited all over the hands that tried to protect her. Amanda looked away, whispering comforting words.

"Shhh, shhh, shhh" she said, as if anything she could say would make any difference.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. Amanda held her head entirely still, firming her grip. One moment Laura was shaking violently back and forth, and then suddenly she laid there limp, unmoving, drool and vomit seeping from her gaping mouth and falling onto Amanda's lap.

What just happened? Had her grip on Laura's head caused her to snap her neck while she was seizing, or had her body just finally given out? Either way, it didn't seem to matter now. She was dead. There was a dead girl in her lap. An innocent dead girl.

She's not innocent! Amanda's internal voice protested. John would be furious if he heard her even suggest otherwise.

"I can't trust any of you. You're on your own," Addison said. She shook her head and turned away, walking into the dark unknown. It was obvious what Addison thought. Daniel looked at Amanda, still needing to cling to someone, no matter who that person was.

"Now we know what we have in common," Amanda said.

"Amanda, I didn't know" he said, pleading for her sympathy.

Suddenly Amanda heard Xavier's voice echoing through the hallways. Hadn't he just abandoned them and sworn to escape on his own? What was he doing calling out for them?

She turned to walk down the hall, the opposite direction of Daniel.

"Please, don't leave me," she heard him beg, but she was too distracted by her curiosity and her own fear. Amanda went a little further down the hall and then saw Xavier, his white shirt splattered in a massive amount of blood, a knife in his hand, and crazy look in his eyes. A look of bloodlust.

"Do. Not. Run," he said.

Amanda's eyes grew wide. She grabbed Daniel's shoulder, and they sprinted away, no direction in mind, just driven by the instinct to escape.

"This is bullshit. Don't you dare pretend you still care about Amanda," Mark said. John's face never wavered from the monitors. He didn't look afraid. He didn't look furious. He didn't look like he was capable of feeling any emotion at all.

"It appears that there have been unforeseen complications," John said tranquilly.

"I'm out of here," Mark said, his every word a reflection of his internal seething. "I can't take this anymore."

"Not watching while the events unfold will not make the danger go away," John said. At last, his gaze drifted away from Amanda and towards Mark.

"Who said anything about just letting the events unfold?"

"You would be willing to throw away-"

Here he goes again. Anonymity.

"Yeah," Mark said, cutting him off. He grabbed his jacket and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him so hard that the room quivered.

If Mark had stayed a moment longer, he would have seen the devil smile.

At last, Amanda and Daniel made it into the safe room. The large metal safe blocked the only potential path to survival. As Amanda's heart palpitated, her thoughts became clearer. Her priority was to save her and Daniel. She would do it by any means necessary.

After all, she didn't kill a man and escape her reverse bear trap just to be killed by this homicidal thug.

She jerked the spiked club out of Jonas's skull, the first victim of Xavier's violent rampage, then zipped across the room and swung the bat into the wall next to the door, successfully creating a doorstop that would prevent him from entering the room...for a little while. Xavier staggered through the hallway and approached the door moments later. As he beat against the door, Amanda tried to move the safe, so they could get to the underground passage she knew was underneath. Her efforts proved to be futile. The safe refused to budge. Daniel pitched in, not even questioning how she knew it would lead to safety, but even together it seemed they could never move it.

After several attempts they managed to tip the safe over with one tremendous heave and great effort on both their parts. The floor shook for a moment from the force of the impact. Amanda felt along the floor and found the key hole she already knew was there. But where was the damn key?

"Wait...the key. The one we found with the tape recorder," Daniel said.

No shit, she thought. The real question was, where was it? She tried to remember, but it was difficult to think as Xavier kept beating against the door, a constant reminder of the danger they were in.

Who took the key? Who took the key after we left?

The situation felt hopeless. All she could remember from that room was the horror of Gus's fatal mistake and the now dead Laura's shrieking and Addison's bitching, and Jonas's...Jonas's...

"Jonas!" they said in unison.

Daniel scrambled over to his corpse and, like a cop doing a search and seizure, dug through Jonas's pockets until he confiscated the key.

He threw it over to Amanda. She caught it and inserted it into the keyhole, securing their freedom. For the moment.

"Damn it," Mark said as he pulled into the driveway. As Amanda inserted the key into the lock to save her life, he took his out of the ignition and stuffed it inside the pocket of his jacket, ready to enter the building and forfeit his life as he knew it to save hers.

If I do this...I can't go back, one side of him thought, the honest, logical side.

Bullshit. We'll alter the tapes so that I was never there, the more devious side reasoned, but the tapes were not what he was most concerned about. He was thinking about Daniel. If he saw Mark, he wouldn't have an explanation for being there. If he was on duty and had somehow discovered where they were, he would have brought a SWAT team in, not come in alone. Daniel was smart, and he'd figure it out instantly. Mark would no doubt be incriminating himself if he went in to save them.

Mark remembered the violent way Xavier crashed the bat into Jonas's skull, and the sick way he stood there and watched Addison's blood gush out of her wrists. Instead of helping her or putting her out of her misery, he sadistically left her there to prolong her suffering. Having Amanda and Daniel become Xavier's next victims was too much to endure. Mark was still trying to cope with how he'd let Seth kill Angelina; he couldn't let another murderer kill people he cared about.

I can't just sit here and wait for them to die, Mark decided.

After a split second of hesitation in which he quickly contemplated all the consequences, he gripped the door handle hard enough so that it left an imprint in his palm, and then he pushed the door open. He got out of his car and ignored the voice inside him that told him to stay out of it, to protect himself first. He unlocked the door, directly breaking John's rules, not that it mattered anyway because almost everyone was dead. He entered the house and took off in the direction they went, but not before he gave the camera a nice view of his middle finger, just in case John was still watching.

Author's Note: Mark to the rescue! Maybe. Sorry for grammatical errors, I'm editing the best I can under the time constraints of college and trying to update weekly. Notice I said trying.

Also, I created an Amanda/Hoffman community because there is a John/Amanda community, and was no Hoffman/Amanda community, and that's just not right! Lol. There HAS to be a community for the hottest Saw couple ever! Please let me know if:

You want to be a staff member. (Benefit is you can add stories to the community, including your own, so long as they are Amanda/Hoffman related).

You want your story to be added.

You know someone else who's story should be added.