Disclaimer: I don't own Saw or any of the music or movies I may reference.

I will dedicate and sacrifice my everything for just a second's worth
Of how my story's ending
And I wish I could know if the directions that I take
And all the choices that I make
Won't end up all for nothing
-Hoobastank

PRESENT DAY

Adam nervously shifted his eyes to his right, barely glimpsing Lawrence who was seated next to him.

"I don't know," he said weakly.

"What did you plan to happen? How was tonight supposed to turn out?" Lawrence pressed.

"I did NOT intend for us to end up in another game, Lawrence. I'm not part of this!" Adam insisted.

"You're part of something, maybe without meaning to be," Lawrence argued. "Because the only other explanation is that someone has been following both you and me, for the past several months, knew you were going to confront me in the parking lot, FOLLOWED YOU there, then followed us to Nibs…"

"Lawrence…" Adam cringed.

"Or you could just come clean and tell me you've come back to get your revenge on me for abandoning you."

At that, Adam whipped his head to the side, looking at Lawrence in a way that said he was both appalled and terrified.

"That's not it at all!" cried Adam. "I didn't do this to punish you, Lawrence! I did this to save you!"

An awkward silence hung between them for a few seconds.

"Did what?" asked Lawrence. Adam crumbled in embarrassment at having fallen so easily for Lawrence's manipulation, and hung his head, inwardly scolding himself for not having better control of his own emotions.

"Look, I…" Adam began. "It was like, a few days after that story on the news, about the discovery of the bathroom. I got a letter—someone slipped it under my door—that said, 'STAND BY FOR INSTRUCTIONS,' and it was signed with a red spiral."

Lawrence gulped. The red spiral was an emblem of Jigsaw, but it still didn't mean that it was one of Jigsaw's apprentices who was doing this. Anyone who'd read a book or an article about John Kramer would have known about the significance of the spiral.

"I asked around my building if anyone had seen anyone come up to my apartment and slip something under the door, but they said they hadn't. I set up a camera in the hall to see if they'd come back, but I didn't catch anybody."

Lawrence nodded.

"Then, when the news broke that they'd uncovered the identities of the bodies, I got a note saying what I had to do. I had to send you a note asking if you'd seen the news, send you the box of chains and pictures and all that stuff. I wasn't going to do it, I hoped it was just some skuzzwad messing with me, but…"

"Yeah?" Lawrence asked.

"I got another letter. Well, not a letter, it was a bunch of polaroids of you, going about your day, leaving the hospital and all that jazz…and another picture of a sniper rifle," said Adam.

Lawrence didn't say anything. He slowly raised his head as if he was about to nod, but never lowered it.

"Didn't take a genius to decipher that shit," said Adam. "If I didn't follow these instructions, someone was going to kill you."

Lawrence let his head drop; his face completely shielded by his thick blonde air.

"So, getting us both put in another torture trap was somehow a better option?" he groaned.

"I actually thought it was! You've gotten out of one of these before, I figured you could do it again!" Adam explained. "I mean, I could do nothing and let you get your brains blown out, or I could do what I was told, and have you put in another trap, where you'd have a CHANCE of getting out! But I never knew I was going to be put in here, too!"

Lawrence turned his wide-eyed gaze away from Adam and into the empty room they were in. He thought about what he would have done in the same situation. He thought about how Zep had participated in Jigsaw's game to preserve his own life. He thought about how far he himself had gone for his own family.

Letting someone die wasn't as easy as it sounded. Despite the choices he had made since his family had left him, Lawrence still had respect for human life. Apparently, so did Adam. When given the choice of letting someone die, or doing something controversial, even immoral, to give them a chance to live, wouldn't he have done the exact same thing?

Nevertheless, Lawrence had to ask the following question:

"Why didn't you go to the police?"

"I knew you were going to ask me that!" Adam answered in a hurry. "Obviously, because whoever was doing this was watching my ass, too! If they knew where I lived, they could have been following me as closely as they were following you. If I'd gone anywhere near a police station, or met with cops somewhere, how do I know they wouldn't have killed us both?"

Lawrence nodded. That made sense.

"Well, do you have any idea of who's doing this?" he asked.

"No," said Adam. "I mean, maybe. I have, well, I wouldn't call them enemies, but I've pissed a few people off. And a lot of people know where I live—I've had a lot of clients over the years—and I don't exactly keep them as contacts. People come and go from my life, and I don't aways even remember what they look like…"

"OK, OK, calm down," Lawrence said softly.

"I thought if I went along with this person's plan, and you got snatched up and tested again, at least you'd have a chance of survival. I'd rather have that than have someone just take you out with a gun, you know?"

"I understand," Lawrence conceded. "Thank you, I guess. For making the choice."

"Lawrence, you don't want to die, do you?"

Lawrence's silence frightened Adam.

"Sometimes," Lawrence shrugged.

Adam wanted to scream at him that he had a daughter who needed him, but since Lawrence had told him that Diana didn't want anything to do with him, he now saw Lawrence's nihilism from a different perspective. Lawrence, it could be argued, had nothing to live for.

Was the mastermind behind this plot aware of that? Was it someone Lawrence knew, someone from the hospital who had seen the way the doctor passively moved through life seemingly without purpose?

Was it someone Adam had offended somewhere in his past, someone he had told his story to, who still thought Adam wasn't appreciating his life?

"Well, maybe that's why whoever's behind this wanted to test you again," said Adam, getting to his feet. "It's always about getting people to appreciate their lives, right?"

"Not always," said Lawrence. Before Adam could ask him to elaborate, the voice of their captor came over a loudspeaker again.

"Very good, gentlemen. You've made excellent progress. But remember, time is a factor here. This building is rigged to blow up in one hour and forty minutes. I suggest you get back to the task at hand."

"These aren't prerecorded messages," said Lawrence. "Whoever's doing this is watching us and communicating in real time."

"But how?" asked Adam. "I mean, I get the hidden camera aspect, but how can they hear everything we're saying?"

Lawrence glanced down towards his collarbone.

"The collars must have microphones in them," he declared.

"Oh, good call," Adam agreed.

"Let's keep going," said Lawrence, and headed for the door at the other end of the room.

After passing through the door, the two men came to a long hallway of crumbling plaster, dripping pipes and buzzing, flickering lights. The corners of the hallway were shrouded in darkness—if they stepped out of the light, they couldn't be sure what was coming for them. It was about ten yards to the end of the hallway, where they could see another door. By the time they got to it and pressed on the bar to open it, they found it was locked.

"Of course it is," Adam sighed exasperatedly.

"Well, wait—what's that?" Lawrence asked, pointing at a small opening in the wall beside the door.

Adam walked up to it. It was a perpendicular tunnel in the wall that maybe someone could squeeze through if they were skinny enough. The space was only about a foot wide.

"Think you can?" asked Lawrence. Obviously, he was too big to fit through, and his prosthetic foot would certainly be a hindrance.

"Uh…I don't think so…" Adam mumbled, trying to peer through the long tunnel and see through to the other side. If someone were to go, they'd have to squeeze in sideways and inch themselves through. There was more than enough room to stand up straight, but it would still be a longshot.

Adam took off his shoes, knowing they'd be too thick and bulky to squeeze through.

"You're on the right track, Adam," came the voice again. Adam nearly jumped and backed into Lawrence.

They both craned their heads up to look around the ceiling for a speaker, but above the light fixture it was too dark to see anything.

"Your whole career has been about exposing others. Now, if you want to make it through this room you will have to expose yourself."

"Ah, crap," Adam muttered. "Uh, I think I have to take off all my clothes to be able to fit in there."

"Yeah, I figured," said Lawrence. Adam was already unbuckling his belt.

"Do you mind?" he snapped. Lawrence rolled his eyes and turned away.

"It's not like I'm a doctor or anything," he mumbled. What did he care? Did he want to see Adam topless or something?

He listened to the sounds of fabric rustling and being tossed onto the floor, and Adam's hissing intake of breath as he wormed himself sideways through the space.

"Alright, I'm in," he said.

"I'll be here," said Lawrence, turning back and glancing at the pile of clothes Adam had left behind. "Wait, why'd you take off your boxers?"

"It is a REALLY tight fit back here!" Adam growled from within the walls. "Can honestly say this is the least fun I've had without lubricant."

Lawrence chuckled at that. He didn't want to admit it, but he did appreciate Adam's irrepressible sense of humor. It kept him optimistic.

After a few minutes of grunting and struggling, Adam finally emerged on the other side of the wall. The first thing he did was look down. It was cold in the room, so he was getting a bit of shrinkage. He knew it wasn't relevant to examine his man-parts or even care what they looked like when he was trying to find his way out of a death-maze, but the pain he'd just put himself through pulling himself through a ten-inch-wide crawl space didn't leave him with many other thoughts. When he looked around him, though, he was quite disturbed.

He was in a hall of mirrors.

Everywhere he looked was himself looking back at him. His pale, scrawny body, the disfiguring scar on his shoulder, and his terrified expression that reminded him he was alone and insignificant in the world.

"Larry?" he called.

"I'm here," Lawrence answered back through the space in the wall.

"Uh, it's just a bunch of mirrors here. What do I do?"

"Is it a maze, or just a room full of mirrors?" Lawrence called back.

"Uh, I don't—I don't know—I can't—" Adam stuttered as he turned around and around, trying to find some break in the pattern of images of himself. "I mean, none of them are like, fun-house mirrors that make you look fat or anything," he described to Lawrence.

"Just keep calm and walk through them. Don't get distracted by what you see," Lawrence instructed.

"I think the whole point is to LOOK INTO THE MIRRORS!" Adam argued. "Just don't go anywhere!"

"I'm not! I'm right here!" Lawrence answered. He was trying to be reassuring, but then he remembered something. "Wait! Adam!"

"WHAT?!" Adam snapped back angrily.

"Don't get too far away! The shock collars, remember?"

"I thought you said they were probably remote-controlled, and it had nothing to do with the distance between us!"

"We don't know that!" Lawrence called back.

"Just shut up already! Let me find my way out of here! Bad enough my dick got squeezed against the wall back there like the Doughboy under a rolling pin!" Adam cringed at himself, wondering why he had shouted that last bit.

Suddenly, he saw in a reflection of a reflection, a gnarly red mark on his back.

"Oh, my God!" he screamed.

"WHAT?! WHAT IS IT?!" cried Lawrence.

Adam moved up closer to one mirror, trying to angle himself so that he could look in front of him and see the back of himself.

"ADAM, WHAT?" Lawrence called.

"Uh, there's, like, something on my back!" Adam answered, still looking forward into a mirror, trying to catch a glimpse of the reflection of his back.

"What do you mean?"

"There's…I don't know…it looks like a surgical wound? There's stitches," Adam described. He tried to reach over his right shoulder and touch the red patch, but he couldn't reach.

"Just try to find your way to the other side of this door and let me in!" Lawrence yelled. "Come on, we're running out of time!"

"EXCUSE ME, I THINK I HAVE SOMETHING SEWN INTO MY CHICKEN WING!" Adam yelled back. "Give me a fucking second!"

After conceding that he wasn't going to be able to examine whatever this thing on his back was, Adam turned around and kept walking the path laid out before him.

The mirrors, he realized, were only there to show him what he had just discovered. He didn't need to pay them anymore mind. He just followed the path on the floor around corners and eventually he came to a door with a deadbolt on it. He turned it, unlocking it, and opened it a crack.

He sighed when he saw Lawrence on the other side.

"Hey, could you hand me my pants?" Adam asked, not wanting to step out into the room again completely naked.

Lawrence picked up Adam's jeans and boxers and passed them through the door without looking. A few seconds later, Adam emerged.

"OK, what the hell is this?" he asked, turning around.

"Whoa," Lawrence commented.

On the upper right side of Adam's back, his scapula actually, was a red, bruised sore with black stitching holding it together.

"Hang on, move over here," Lawrence guided him more into the light. Though it was still hard to see—the light fixture was directly above them, so that no matter what angle Lawrence looked at the wound from, his shadow was cast over it.

Adam sat down on the floor to put his shoes back on, noticing that, thankfully, the makeshift bandage around his ankle had not come loose.

Lawrence slowly sank down behind him.

"What is it?" Adam hissed as Lawrence prodded it.

"I think you were right—there's something sewn under your skin," said the doctor.

"Well, get it out!" cried Adam.

"Hang on, I don't exactly have any surgical tools on me," Lawrence griped. "Is there anything sharp around here? Anything I can use to cut the thread?"

"No," Adam growled.

"Alright, hang on. This is going to feel weird, but just for a second."

"W-wait, Lawrence, what are you…?" Adam asked nervously. He froze as he felt Lawrence's breath on the back of his shoulder. Before he could verbally react, he felt Lawrence's teeth graze his wound. His eyes went wide, and he felt his stomach clench, until he realized that all Lawrence was doing was biting the thread to pop the stitches.

It still felt awkward as hell, though.

Slowly, Lawrence began delicately pulling the thread through the holes in Adam's skin in order to peel back his flesh.

"Jeez, warn a guy when you're going to bite him?"

"I did," Lawrence snapped.

Adam sighed angrily. "And it's the right shoulder, too. That's got to be significant."

At that implication, Lawrence rolled his eyes. "Oh, my God, I'M. SORRY."

"For what? Shooting me in the frickin' shoulder?" growled Adam. "Or leaving me trapped in that fart-locker to bleed to goddamn death on the off chance you might send someone back for me?!"

"Don't talk to me about bleeding to death! I was—oh, it's a key," said Lawrence. He plucked a small metal key out of the flesh of Adam's back.

"Ow! I had a key in my back?"

"Apparently," said Lawrence. He pressed the flap of skin back into place, but without stitches, it wouldn't stay.

"What's it for?" asked Adam, turning around to face Lawrence.

"Hold still," said Lawrence. He reached out and took Adam's collar in his hand and brought Adam closer to him.

"Uh, Larry?" Adam asked nervously, as his face was now mere centimeters away from the doctor's. But he soon realized Lawrence had only pulled him close so he could see if the key would unlock the padlock on Adam's collar.

It did.

"Ah-ha!" said Lawrence, removing the collar. Adam automatically brought his hand up to his throat to feel his now unfettered neck.

"Let's see if it works on mine," Lawrence said as he attempted to fit the key into the lock on his own collar.

It didn't work.

"Hmm," said Adam.

"No, that'd be too easy," said Lawrence.

"Guess so," said Adam. He pulled his t-shirt back on, and then his one-sleeved button-down.

"How did you not notice you had a key sewn in your back?" Lawrence asked. "Couldn't you feel anything? Didn't it hurt?"

"Well, yeah. But I figured that was from getting flung down the stairs at the beginning of this. Everything hurt. Aren't you sore all over?"

"Kinda," said Lawrence. "But I would know if I'd had an amateur surgical operation. Jeez."

"Well, we're not all doctors," Adam snipped.

"Alright. Did you see anything in there that might help us get to the next—"

Before Lawrence could finish the question, another light suddenly came on. It illuminated more of the long hallway they were in. To the right of the door Adam had just come through, there was more area to be explored. Off in the corner was a staircase. Obviously, they were to ascend to the next floor.

Adam and Lawrence looked at each other, nodded, and proceeded.

END OF CHAPTER 13
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