- Part 1 -

Arrhythmia

This is a game;
No wrongs,
No right.
Only a winner and a loser.
-Bastille

Aubrey isn't quite sure where Chloe's plan ends. She thought that, logically, it would end after Barney drew his gun on her and she retreated back to the couch. But it doesn't appear to. Or maybe they are just moving onto Plan B. Or, quite possibly, Chloe is just winging it as she sits on the couch and stares hard at Barney. She's unflinching – even as she wipes at her cheeks with the palm of her hand. In all the years Aubrey has known Chloe, Chloe Beale who insists 'everyone has some good in them', Aubrey has never seen Chloe look at another person in such complete and utter disgust.

Aubrey stares at him, too, and sits down. Something has to give. They can't all die like this. Something has to go their way. Statistically, not everything can go wrong. Right?

Barney walks to the other side of the room and stands with his back slightly to them, looking at them only out of the corner of his eye. He lifts his walkie-talkie up close to his mouth. "Sheriff, do you copy?" he mumbles, "Over."

Beca sighs and collapses backward on the other side of Chloe. "He's not answering, because he's dead," she mutters.

"You don't know that," Chloe whispers, still not taking her eyes off the deputy.

Beca closes her eyes and leans her head back, rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers. "We all know he's dead."

"You cannot know that," Chloe spits back, her voice low but vehement, "He could be the one doing this for all we know. The deputy could be in on it."

"Chloe's right," Aubrey whispers, "We don't know anything until we've seen bodies."

Beca lifts her hand from her head. "In that case, the only people we've ruled out are Tyler, Cynthia-Rose, and my dad. It could be anyone not here."

"Or someone we don't even know," Chloe adds.

"Whoever this is knows Aubrey," Beca reminds them, "It has to be someone that she, at least, knows."

"Or some sort of stalker," Chloe suggests.

Barney fusses over the buttons on his walkie-talkie.

"If he's in on it, he's a really good actor," Beca comments.

"Maybe he doesn't know he's in on it," Chloe whispers.

Barney holds his walkie-talkie into the air near a window and flicks the screen like he's looking for cell bars.

Aubrey leans back and flinches as something at the base of the cushion pokes her in the spine. She sits up again and glances behind her. Her map and pen are sticking out from behind the cushion. Apparently, she never pushed them all the way down into the couch. She pulls them back out from their hiding spot. Maybe she missed something the first time around. Like another dock. She carefully unrolls the map and spreads it across her lap. Large black letters are scratched across the entire sheet of paper – letters that she didn't write. "Beca," she whispers.

Beca leans forward and peers around Chloe.

Aubrey angles the map so only she, Beca, and Chloe (who finally stops trying to stare Barney down) can see it. "I left it in the couch when we went to the kitchen," she explains.

The first line is larger and darker than the second line, the words 'I shot the sheriff' written over top each other several times. The second line is smaller and the letters don't overlap: 'But I did not shoot the deputy (yet)'.

Neither Beca nor Chloe say anything.

"Do you think it's a threat?" Beca asks, and Aubrey thinks she hears a bit of hope in her tone.

Yet. Aubrey stares at the word. It sure looks like a threat.

"We have to warn him, even if it's not," Chloe whispers.

Aubrey looks at Barney.

Beca is the one to voice the thoughts inside Aubrey's head. "Do we?"

xxxxx

"Have you talked to Beca about any of this?" Mrs. Beale asked.

"No, thank you," Aubrey quickly shut down the suggestion.

"Look, I don't know Beca very well," Mrs. Beale said, "But from what I can gather, the two of you might just be on the same page here. Neither of you seem to like each other very much, and doesn't Beca have a boyfriend?"

"I don't know," Aubrey answered, "She said she didn't want to stay with him over break. She asked to stay with us." That didn't sound like Beca and Jesse were currently on the best of terms. She hesitated. "That's when Chloe starting getting…ideas."

"So you don't think Beca will have the same sort of reservations you have?" Mrs. Beale asked.

"Beca kissed me," Aubrey reminded her.

"Well, kissing and sex are very different," Mrs. Beale said, "I think you should talk to Beca about this. Why don't you call her? If you both say no, Chloe is kind of out of luck anyway."

This wasn't the kind of advice Aubrey was looking for. She was hoping for some magic words that would steer Chloe away from Beca forever. "I can't call Beca," she said, "She's busy."

"Call her later," Mrs. Beale said, "And then call me back."

"She's busy forever," Aubrey replied.

"Aubrey…"

Aubrey picked at her blanket.

"Do you want me to talk to Chloe?" Mrs. Beale asked, "Maybe I can get to the bottom of what she's feeling."

"What?" Aubrey sat up straight. "No!" She internally scolded herself for yelling. "No…" It only made sense that Chloe's mom would talk to Chloe though. She should have never called her. Panic welled up inside her. Chloe was going to kill her. She couldn't even think of a way to talk Chloe's mom out of talking to her, because this was Chloe's mom. "Um…" She quickly pressed her fist against her mouth as her stomach lurched.

"Bunny, take a few breaths," Mrs. Beale said, sounding concerned now, "I'm just trying to help. And I really think that what you should do is call Beca."

Calling Beca was a worry of the past, because Aubrey completely screwed herself by calling Chloe's mom.

"Hey, I see no reason to tell Chloe you called me right now, okay? This can be a conversation between us."

xxxxx

"What are you talking about, Beca?" Chloe can barely keep her voice down to a whisper, "We have to tell him." She looks at Aubrey to back her up.

"Chloe's right," Aubrey says again. As desperately as they need to get away from him, there has to be another way that doesn't include anyone else getting killed. They can't just let someone die. But, also, if they don't get rid of him, it's possible they might all die. It doesn't matter. They can't knowingly allow him to die.

Beca stares at Aubrey, and it looks like she's having the same argument with herself in her own head. It's Mortality vs Morality. Aubrey isn't even sure where her father would stand on the matter in this situation.

"Look," Beca says slowly, looking tentatively at Aubrey before she looks at Chloe, "I get where you're coming from, but we can't save ourselves with this guy around. Is his life worth all of our deaths? He's a liability, Chloe. He held you at gun point."

"He probably has a family who cares about him," Chloe hits back, "They're going to wonder where he is, and then they're going to find out he's dead – because of us."

"I'm not saying we kill him," Beca argues, "I'm just saying that maybe it needs to be every man for himself with some people."

"Letting someone die is the same thing as killing them." Chloe snatches the map from Aubrey.

"We need to think long term," Beca whispers.

Chloe stands up. "How is this for long term?" she asks, "You survive, but you can't live with yourself, because you killed someone?"

"We should tell him now and then get out," Aubrey interrupts, "Whoever wrote that could still be here."

Beca and Chloe both look around the lobby.

Aubrey realizes that it probably doesn't matter whether or not they tell him about the map. If someone wants him dead, he's already gone. They could be anywhere, watching them, waiting for the right moment to strike. It's impossible to hide when they don't even know who they're hiding from. The only thing they're doing by telling him is clearing their consciences. He's going to die. She locks eyes with Chloe, and she's hit by the sudden urge to close her eyes and go back to sleep – to just block everything out.

Barney's radio crackles and someone speaks – muffled, indistinguishable words, barely recognizable as English. His arms fly up into a brief victory V and he nearly slam dunks the radio on their way back down. "Sheriff, do you copy?" he asks loudly, "Over."

There is more static and indecipherable words. Subdued elation falls over everyone – except for Aubrey, Chloe, and Beca.

"The sheriff is dead," Beca whispers again, this time to everyone "He's either the one doing this, or he's dead. We need to know who is on the other end of that walkie-talkie."

xxxxx

Aubrey could do this. The longer she thought about it, which was only about fifteen minutes, since that's how long ago she hung up the phone with Mrs. Beale, the less she understood what her own problem with calling Beca was. After all, it wasn't like she was calling Beca because she was the one who wanted to initiate something. She just wanted to shut it down once and for all. Hi, Beca, Chloe wants us all to have sex, but I don't want to, so let's never do it, okay, bye. Simple. Unless Beca suggested Aubrey take a hike while they went through with it without her. There it was. That was the problem. She swallowed thickly and stared at herself in her mirror, phone in one hand, trying to figure out exactly what she wanted to say. How could she say anything when Beca + Chloe might cancel out Aubrey?

"You can't have sex with Chloe," she tested out on her own reflection. Too forceful? "I don't think you should have sex with Chloe." Not forceful enough. "If you have sex with Chloe, you won't even live long enough to regret it." If you take the clothes off my girlfriend… She pushed a few things across her desk. This shouldn't even be a conversation she needed to have, and suddenly her anger was boiling because of Chloe. She jabbed Beca's number into the keypad before she could reason herself out of it then pressed her phone against her ear.

"What's up?" Beca answered after the third ring, "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Aubrey was still trying to secure the right words. She glared at her desk, breathing hard into the phone.

"I swear to god, Aubrey, if you whisper 'seven days'…"

Aubrey's stomach churned. "Do you want to have sex with me?" she asked bluntly. That didn't come out right at all.

"What?" Beca breathed.

"If I asked you to have sex," Aubrey couldn't back out of the question now, and the answer was important to know, "Would you say yes or no?"

"Are you on drugs?" Beca asked, and Aubrey couldn't tell if her tone was concerned or amused.

No, she wasn't on drugs. But she definitely wished she was, at the moment. "Answer the question."

"I can't think of an answer to that question that might not end in my death," Beca said.

"Then there's nothing stopping you from answering honestly." Aubrey turned and hoisted herself up to sit on her desk. "So, which is it?"

"My day is going fantastic," Beca said instead, "I had Burger King for lunch. I was on my way out the door to go to Guitar Center when you called to accost me."

"What about Chloe?" Aubrey asked, ignoring her deflections, "What if she asked you?"

"I would say no," Beca said slowly. It almost sounded like a question, and Aubrey wondered if the answer was no because Beca actually did not want to have sex with Chloe or because she was scared of Aubrey. "Dude, what is going on?"

There was no sugarcoating it. There probably was a way to sugarcoat it, actually, but Aubrey was unfortunately not very good at that type of thing. It was a waste of time. "Chloe," she said, speaking as clearly as possible so Beca couldn't ask her to repeat herself, "would like for the three of us to," she was going to have to actually say it out loud, "have," she temporarily pressed her lips together, "sex."

Beca was silent.

"Say something," Aubrey demanded.

"Uh, wow."

"Something useful," Aubrey elaborated.

"What do you want me to say?" Beca asked.

Aubrey stood up. "Say no," she answered.

"No," Beca said back quickly, "Obviously no…" Her voice trailed off. "Are you okay?"

Aubrey frowned in confusion.

"That's kind of…" Beca trailed off again. "I mean, even for Chloe…especially for Chloe. That's not….cool…"

"I'm fine," Aubrey answered, "I just wanted to know the answer."

"Wait, did you want to, you know…?" Beca asked.

Aubrey frowned harder at the implication. "I would rather have sex with a Treble," she replied.

"Seriously?" Beca asked, "So, given the choice between me and Bumper, you would -"

"I never said a specific name." Aubrey wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"Donald?" Beca asked.

"No." Aubrey regretted saying anything now.

"Unicycle?"

"Beca!"

"Jesse?"

"I swear to god, Beca…"

"Just tell me which one," Beca said.

"One from a very long time ago," Aubrey answered, unable to hide sounding flustered, "Okay?"

"But say it was between me and Bumper," Beca said curiously.

"Me or Kimmy Jin?" Aubrey shot back.

"You really want an answer?" Beca asked.

"Mhm," Aubrey hummed.

"Then you have to tell me," Beca said, definitely entertained by the conversation now, "If you had to choose between sex with me or slowly undressing Bumper and letting him put that manly -" She didn't have to get any further before Aubrey actually gagged and made a disgusted noise to stop her.

"Fine, it would be you," Aubrey choked, "Happy?"

Beca breathed a quiet laugh. "I'd choose Kimmy Jin."

"What?" Aubrey blurted out.

"Dude, I'm kidding," Beca said before Aubrey had time to think about it further, "Hey, I gotta go. Goodbye, Aubrey."

"Goodbye," Aubrey said tersely, rather bitter about Beca's 'joke'.

"Talk to Chloe," Beca added, "She's probably just going through a phase."

Aubrey wanted to tell her if it was just a phase, it would have stopped after they left Barden (and Beca) behind, but she didn't really feel like unpacking that. Before she could say anything else, Beca hung up.

xxxxx

Chloe accidentally crumples the map.

"I can't hear you," Barney says into the walkie-talkie, "If you can hear me, I'm gonna try walking outside. Everything is going great here. Over."

Aubrey stands up. "You can't go outside," she says quickly, "It isn't safe."

Barney doesn't even so much as glance at her.

"And you would be leaving us alone," Aubrey tries to play on his desire to please Mills, "If you walk out that door, we'll all be gone when you get back."

"Why would you tell him that?" Jesse whispers.

Aubrey ignores him. "The sheriff would never let you keep working for him after that," she says.

Barney stops midway to the door. "I'll keep the door open," he says, "Run and I'll shoot you in the foot." It's so casual the way he says it. Like their well-being couldn't be lower on his priority list. As long as he still has their bodies to present to Mills…

"You should see this." Chloe offers the map in his direction, "I think someone knows you're about to walk out that door."

"Someone wants you to walk outside so they can shoot you," Beca says upfront.

Barney snorts in response and finishes walking to the door.

"Why would we lie?" Beca asks and also stands up.

"If you would just look at this." Chloe quickly uncrinkles the map, "Someone wrote this while we weren't here."

Barney opens the door, and Aubrey feels like she should jump into action and stop him, but she can't convince her feet to move. She's stopped by the thought of him pulling his gun and shooting her. Nobody else moves either. "Chloe," she whispers, trying to prepare for whatever might be about to happen.

Chloe turns, squeezing the edges of the map into the palms of her hands so tightly the paper begins to tear. "Someone has to do something," she says. No one budges. "Do you guys even care?"

It isn't that Aubrey doesn't care. It's just that she can barely feel anything at all.

"I think we'd all care more if he didn't have a gun," Beca whispers, "No one knows what to do."

"Holy shit," Barney exclaims all of a sudden, not in fear, but with joy, and lowers his walkie-talkie to his side, "Where were you?"

Aubrey looks up, but she can't see any farther than the door. Barney is blocking her view of outside.

"I guess the sheriff's okay," Jesse says, giving Beca a look.

Aubrey has a gut feeling something is still wrong before Barney even speaks. "We need to go, and we need to go now," she whispers, "I'm sorry, Chloe, you're right, but we need to leave him behind or we're going to die."

"No, that means you think Beca is right," Chloe tells her.

Aubrey doesn't have time to explain how she agrees with what Chloe is saying, but their only option is what Beca is saying, because her hunch is quickly confirmed.

"Have you seen Sheriff Mills?" Barney asks the newcomer, "He went down to the docks." He pauses then asks calmly, "Hey, when did you borrow a shotgun?"