Chapter Three - People Like Us
Co-written with Renegade Vic
The tape stopped. The room was buzzing with intense suspicion and the metallic stench of fear and hatred began to fill the room. Ava felt her hands curling into fists at her sides as she glared at the bald-headed lurker. He'd helped Jigsaw. That fucker had pushed them a step closer to their doom…and here he stood, alive and relatively well. Somehow, it just…didn't seem right. Her teeth clenched and she momentarily contemplated snatching the knife from Xavier's hand and plunging it into the base of his throat. But there were antidotes involved. Two of them. There was a chance, an unbelievable slim chance, that she could survive this. Just as long as she got one of them. She glanced around at her 'teammates' with a critical eye. Which one them would go for the 'complementary' antidote? The answer was a clear and simple one.
Xavier.
He'd kill for that antidote; he'd already proved that with Gus. And Ava had no doubt they would have more reason to fear him as the test progressed. More gas equals faster death and she was sure there was more gas being pumped into the house with every second that passed.
"What's that mean?" Jonas asked, breaking the heavily silence. "'Kidnapped the others'?"
"How would I know?" 'Obi' replied, his voice never raising even slightly, his tone perfectly cool and even.
"Because you put us here…"
Laura. She was leaning against a large, industrial shelf, a mixture of anger, horror and realization spreading across her face.
"The car…" she said slowly, in disbelief. "It was…" She didn't look up for a second, but it seemed as though she had remembered what it was she needed. "I knew, I knew him," she said hoarsely, raising her head to look Obi in the eye. "You were the last person I saw…before I woke up here…"
The others were turning to look at Obi, rage burning behind the eyes of the entire group.
"You did this!" Laura's voice had risen and she sounded braver, and indeed angrier, since she'd woken up. Ava didn't blame her for a second.
"Are you sure it's him?" Jonas asked her, glancing sideways at the 'traitor' within their midst. "You better be sure."
"…I'm sure."
"You would've done the same. I did what I had to do," Obi replied matter-of-factly. He was getting defensive- and with good reason. Jigsaw had just revealed his hand in a situation where there could be no winning.
"I'll give you a choice," Xavier hissed, pulling the knife from the "dead" mannequin and gesturing toward Obi with it. "You've got five seconds to get us out of here!" Mike was sure that he was meaning to be intimidating- but Xavier with a knife was barely any scarier than Xavier without a knife. He was a fucking pushover, really- if anything, it seemed like he was nursing his pride after Mike had turned the tables on him earlier. Anyone he could intimidate, he would.
Predatory piece of shit.
"I don't know the way out," Obi stated, eyeing the knife with a thoroughly bored expression. The sound of breaking glass followed his statement- and Laura began to menace him with a broken bottle.
"Bullshit! You put us in here, you can get us out of here!" she shouted, the anger draining from her face as desperation crept back into her voice.
"No. I can't."
"Then you're a dead man," Xavier growled, advancing toward Obi, knife level with the accomplice's throat.
"So are you," he taunted, still as emotionless as before. Xavier lunged toward him- stopped short by Addison, who grabbed his arm.
"It does not gonna- wait! Wait, wait, wait! Listen to me!" Xavier stepped back, knife still clenched as tightly as before. "We got two antidotes at the back of that oven, we're wasting time here."
Addison to the fucking rescue. Mike could hardly help but roll his eyes at the events playing out before him. So this 'Obi' guy had been the one to drug them all and put them there? It didn't make sense. There were ten of them to start with- nine if he had put himself there of his own free will. If he was using chloroform to do it, there was no way someone wouldn't have woken up well before he had gotten everyone in place. Addison lived on the south side of town, last Mike had heard- and he lived in the apartments just off of central downtown. Between just the two of them, it was impossible.
Jigsaw was setting him up as a fall guy. Why wouldn't he?
"Hold the fuck on, guys. There's nine of us, plus him. How's one guy gonna kidnap all nine of us and set this shit up?" Mike asked, pushing into the center of the group. "So he brought a few of us here, maybe. Yeah, I'm pissed as all hell, but for all we know, this Jigsaw put a fuckin' gun to his head, or his sister's head, or some fucked-up shit, and made him do it. You wanna blame someone, blame him!" He pointed toward the camera, sitting in plain sight on one of the support columns.
"You're defending him?!" Laura shouted, her temper from moments before returning in force. "He kidnapped me in the middle of the night!"
"Did you not hear me right, or somethin'? Did you not hear that tape? He helped Jigsaw, he's not the one who did this!"
"We don't even know what's in those syringes. You willing to stick yourself in the arm to find out?" Jonas asked.
"Yeah," Mike and Addison both replied simultaneously.
"Okay, wait- so who gets them? I mean, there's two…" Daniel interjected. "So which two people get the antidote?"
"We'll work that out later!" Xavier snarled, his hand still clenched around the blade of the knife. He was gonna kill the creeper. He was gonna slit his fucking throat. Ava didn't think that anyone actually cared at this point, despite what Mike had said. The fact of the matter was that he had helped. Helped a madman. A murderer. A killer than was going to kill them all.
With a crash, Laura fell to the ground behind them, knocking over a wooden table, a hand over her mouth. She was weaker than the rest of the group and she was dying faster. Given an hour at most, maybe less, and she'd be dead. They'd all be dead.
"Right now, you're goin' in there." Xavier wasn't in any mood, or state, to take no for an answer. That much was obvious. More so by the sudden movement, where he seized the collar of Obi's jacket and held the knife blade against his throat. "Or I'll kill you where you stand!"
Obi barely batted an eyelash, his face totally devoid of anything that Xavier would have usually seen, or expected, in the people he threatened at knifepoint. And judging by the angle of the blade and the expert grip on the handle, it wasn't the first time he'd done it either.
Reaching up, the creeper pressed the knife blade deeper into his skin…and moved it slowly across his own throat. Xavier inhaled in shock as blood welled up from the shallow wound. Ava was intrigued. That was a risk, a big risk. He could've hit something vital. But he seemed fine. Calm. As the knife had cut him, he'd barely twitched at all.
"If you're gonna threaten me with a knife," he said softly, "you may as well cut me a little."
A tense quiet filled the room and Ava found herself wondering if Xavier was just gonna leap at him and cut his throa--
The heavy, metallic collision of an empty barrel hitting the floor broke the silence and Ava jumped.
"Motherfucker!" she hissed under her breath, her body feeling almost renewed by the sudden jumpstart of adrenaline.
"I guess I'm going in there to get those needles," Obi said, turning toward the ominous looking device. "But I get one," he finished sharply, looking at Xavier. The drug lord visibly shrank back a few inches when the creeper looked at him with those vacant, cold eyes. A monster's eyes.
Psycho.
He blinked once and bent down to the opening. He looked inside it momentarily, before sliding inside it, head-first. Ava moved back to where Laura lay, now leaning on Amanda and crouched down next to them, watching Obi practically disappear inside the device.
"You think he'll pass?" Ava asked under her breath, glancing at Amanda. The other woman merely looked at her for a long moment, as if trying to remember something.
"I don't know. If he has the will…he'll survive. If not…"
She didn't need to say anymore because at that moment, Ava realized what the device that Obi had just crawled into was.
It was a furnace.
Oh, fuck. The antidotes!
Something about the large metal box seemed familiar to Mike, but he wasn't sure what, exactly. He had seen something similar to it in an abandoned building he, Mira, and Dave had been checking out for the hell of it a few months ago- but what was it? There didn't seem to be anything significant about it, other than-
Gas valves. Gas valves along the side. It was a crematory oven, and Obi had just crawled into the fucking thing! If there was something in there that would set it off, he'd be cooked alive in seconds- him and the antidotes he had gone in to grab.
"Wait! Don't touch anything!" Mike shouted, banging on the side of the device desperately. "Don't you fuckin' realize what you're in, man? It's a goddammed furnace!"
Judging by the shock apparent on the others' faces, they had just now realized it as well.
"Obi- listen, bub. Look around in there, see if there's a…a switch, or a cable, or a tripwire, or somethin' you might set off. This thing won't fuck around if you set it off, you hear me?" Mike began to examine the trap- if, indeed, it was a trap- desperately looking for anything out of the ordinary.
There. On the door. Some kind of wire, running deeper into the device. That didn't exactly seem standard.
"Watch in there, man. Tell me if this does somethin'." Mike tugged on the cable with one finger, pulling what little slack it offered and releasing it.
"You're fucking with my test," Obi replied, agitation creeping into his voice. "So now that you've made it our test…" he crawled out of the furnace, a syringe held tightly in his fist. "Your turn to get the second one."
Was he serious? There had to be something about that second syringe, something that had set Obi off collecting it as well. Was it connected to that cable? What happened if he pulled on it, and the door closed?
"Fine. But I decide who gets the second one," Mike growled, crawling into the soot-blackened furnace, thankful yet again that Jigsaw had at least left him his hair tie. Crawling on his own hair was not a pleasant experience- he had learned that the hard way, working in the garage on Dave's Mazda.
There it was. The second syringe, hooked onto a chain that dangled from the ceiling. Too simple.
Too simple means it's a trap. Just like the key in the door.
The most obvious solution was to simply pull it off the chain- but something told Mike that would be an infinitely bad idea. He reached up, felt along the syringe- and found that it was tied to the chain by some kind of cord.
"Hey Xavier, I need that knife. Toss it in," Mike called, banging on the side of the furnace in case the drug lord hadn't heard him. Hopefully, he would be in a giving enough mood to make a simple donation…
Xavier looked at the oven, then at the knife and then at the oven again, apparently going over his options in his mind. Knife…or antidote? That was the choice, the question that now ran freely through the drug lord's mind. Protection over survival. Which would he choose?
To her surprise, Ava found herself hoping that he did chuck the knife to Mike, as opposed to just letting Obi finish his test. What if Jigsaw got pissed because it wasn't just Obi in the furnace anymore, and just set it off on the idiot rocker, who would then have absolutely no way of getting out. He'd be Roast-Mike within a minute! And she was no Hannibal Lecter.
Shifting, Ava moved to get to her feet and Amanda's hand shot out and clenched firmly over her bicep.
"Don't. There's already enough of them fuckin' with this," she muttered quietly, her grip surprisingly strong for someone who was meant to be progressively having their organs deteriorate within their body. "Don't get in the way now."
"Why do you care what happens to them?" Ava snapped. "Or me?"
"I never said I did," Amanda replied. "You wanna go help, fine. Go help. Just don't come to me and say I didn't warn you."
Her teeth once again sinking into her bottom lip, Ava realized it was probably a good idea to go with what the spiky-haired woman said. After all, who knew how to beat a game like someone who'd played before and won?
Ava hadn't played. Amanda had. Her judgment won out.
Knife in hand, the Latino drug lord peered into the furnace.
"I give you the knife…when you get the other antidote, you give it to me, you got that?"
"Actually," Obi said. "This is still my test. I think I get to decide who gets the other antidote."
"Fuck you, man," Xavier snapped, bending down and throwing the knife into the oven, mindless of the damage the knife might cause if it hit Mike or just fell into the flame pits below the grill, which were for the moment, thankfully dormant. "Use the fuckin' knife then."
"Fuck, man!" Mike hissed, clutching at his now-bleeding hand. Xavier had thrown the knife a little too well- and it had left a long, shallow gash in the palm of his hand. "You'll get the knife back, just chill the fuck out!" Using his off-hand, Mike cut away the cord binding the syringe to the chain with a sawing motion.
Then the tip of the knife caught in the chain, pulling it down.
"Aw, SHIT!" Mike shouted, glancing around the inside of the furnace desperately for another way out. There was a window of some kind at the back, but he doubted he'd be able to fit through it without dislocating something. The front-
-was covered in flames. They were still low, and confined to the very front of the furnace, but that probably wouldn't last long.
"Gas valves! Fuckin' gas valves on the outside! Turn 'em off! TURN THEM OFF!" he bellowed, pounding on the metal sides of the furnace frantically. If someone didn't move fast, he was done for. And of all the ways to go, it had to be the single most agonizing and terrifying way he could think of. He had been having nightmares about being burned alive- mostly due to fiery car crashes that left him unconscious as he roasted- lately, but now…
Fuck that shit. There had to be a way out from the inside. What did the tape say? "Once you're in Hell…" what was the last part? Something in here was the key to his survival. He cast around frantically, looking for anything that might relate to the test-
-and saw another valve, located in the corner just inside the grate, with a stylized caricature of a devil painted next to it. The word "Twist" was written on the metal.
That was it. He'd have to turn it off from there.
And he'd have to move fast if he didn't want to burn alive.
"Fuck this shit…FUCK THIS SHIT! I'M NOT DYIN' LIKE THIS!" He shifted to a low squat and shuffled forward as quickly as he could, wincing in pain as the flames shot up and seared his legs. He had to turn the valve. Had to shut it off, or DIE like this. More burning, and nothing he could do about it.
The metal was already hot to the touch, but Mike grasped it tightly, twisting it shut with a noise that was half predatory challenge, half blinding shriek of pain. The flames sputtered for a moment…then died.
He had survived. He'd burned his hands and legs…but he was alive. The syringe was…
Fuck. Where was it? Had he dropped it when the flames ignited, or did he bring it with him? It had to be in the back, still. It just had to. He crawled back toward the back, face low to the metal grating as he searched for the precious needle.
There it was. Still intact.
"I've got the needle! Now get me the fuck outta here!"
Ava watched as Obi and Xavier 'helped' the partially toasted Mike out of the furnace, her eyebrows furrowed in mild concern.
"He's alive," she muttered. "He did some other poor fucker's test for him and he survived."
She glanced over at Amanda, who was running her fingers through Laura's hair in an attempt to calm her.
"You reckon this clears him in Jigsaw's book?"
The other woman barely even glanced in her direction, utterly focused on the task at hand.
"He survived. But he didn't get an antidote for himself. He survived that…but he's probably got his own test."
"You know an awful lot about this, don't you?" Ava muttered.
"I said I played before," Amanda snapped back. "I know what kind of this Jigsaw does. He wants us to survive. I promise."
With a smirk, Ava ran a hand through her hair, a few strands catching between her fingers.
"Promise, huh? I'll hold you to that if I don't die."
Ava dropped her forehead into her knees, wishing momentarily that she could just sleep and just forget everything that had happened tonight had happened at all. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could sleep through the slow death she was in for as the Sarin gas ate at her body and killed her. Like carbon monoxide poisoning from exhaust fumes. You pass out first and then it kills you. She could live with that.
Amanda's hand bit into her shoulder.
"Don't fall asleep," she murmured. "You won't wake up."
"And this is a bad thing, Amanda?" Ava queried, raising an eyebrow. "Dying in your sleep is a gift for people like me."
"People like you meaning what?"
Ava gestured to the group gathered around the furnace.
"You see them? A couple of fuckin' jail-hoppers, a hooker and a kid. Plus some rundown, street racing, adrenaline junkie. Common, garden-variety thugs, am I right?" She licked her lips. "I'm not like them. And quite frankly, I don't think you are either."
Even though she wasn't looking at her, Ava could tell that Amanda had stiffened and turned pale.
"You're the only Jigsaw survivor ever found, Amanda," she murmured. "Somehow, I don't think he would've let you go so easily."
In all her years working in the hospital scene, Ava had seen a huge amount of people come and go through the swinging glass doors. And she'd seen enough to know what happens when a person witnesses a near-death experience. Admittedly, not quite the same when it came to that psychopath, but the basis was fairly similar. There was no way in hell Amanda wasn't somehow involved. They would have never found that tape without her and the door might never have opened if they didn't. Too many things were being influenced by her presence. It didn't make sense. What was she hiding?