As Ziya pulls Drake behind her, she lets go of his wrist and points to the small of her back with the hand she previously used to pull Drake. As Drake looks where she were pointing, Drake could see her gun resting in the belt of her jumpsuit. "Don't make it obvious you have the gun" Ziya whispers. "Stay back and don't fight".
"But, Zizi-" Drake whispers back.
"Wait for my signal before you start shooting" Ziya whispers.
"... Right" Drake says reluctantly. Drake then slowly slips the gun in the back of his belt and keeps it hidden behind his back.
Judy pulls out her machete to prepare to fight Georgie, however, Georgie started slowly walking backwards. He put his machete in his left hand, then took out his pistol in his right hand. "No more games" he says before he pulls the trigger. As soon as Judy took a bullet to the head, Ziya charges at Kyle.
Ziya leaps into the air as she tries to attack Kyle with the combat knife. As she jumps, she shouts "Now!". As she was in the air, Kyle holds down the trigger and puts fifteen bullets into Ziya.
Ziya falls to the ground, gasping and choking for air, but her lungs were quickly filling up with blood. Kyle pulls out his machete and plunges it into Ziya as Jon and Frank help hold her down. "Did you really think you'd be able to pull that off?" Kyle asks. "Your Respawns belong to us n-".
Suddenly, a gunshot is heard and Kyle's body hits the floor. When Jon and Frank look up, Drake was already aiming at them and put the last two bullets from that pistol into each of their heads. As Ziya gets back up, she picks up Kyle's submachine gun, and removes the magazines from Jon's and Frank's pistols. By the time Ziya had all of their magazines, she heard another gunshot. When she looks over, Jake and Will were attacking Drake. However, before she could think about going to help him, Jon, Kyle and Frank began to get up again.
Jake and Will approach Drake with their handguns out, as Drake lay on the floor with a bullet hole in his stomach, tightly holding onto his bullet wound in pain. They walked up to him and stabbed him to death several times before Judy managed to slip away from Georgie. Judy run into Will, knocking him over, and tried to slash at Jake with her machete. Jake dodged the blade, then hit Judy with the back of his hand. "Sit down, wench!" He shouts.
Will gets up, and puts Judy in a headlock. He holds her arms above her head, while pulling them behind her neck to keep her from moving. "Watch!" He says. "Watch as your friends die!". Judy struggles, but never was able to break free of his grip. As she struggled, she closed her eyes. When Will notices that she was refusing to keep her eyes open, he tightens his grip and quickly yanks her head too far to the left, causing her neck to snap. "I said look!" He yells. By the time Judy reopens her eyes, Drake was being held down and stabbed to death repeatedly.
As Judy and Drake were being held down, Ziya was getting shot repeatedly. However, she was taking them down faster than they could take her down. That is, until Georgie shows up to attack Ziya. "Your Respawns are mine!" He yells as he tackles her. He lands on top of her with his machete out, pointing down at her. However, Ziya used the momentum of her fall to fling Georgie off of herself. Ziya kicks at Georgie, but he dodged it by stepping to the side. Georgie grabs onto Ziya's face and picks her up with one hand. After lifting her up, Georgie throws Ziya onto the ground, causing her to lose her breath. She struggled to get back up as she coughed and gagged. Georgie then stabbed Ziya over and over, draining her of many of her lives.
Eventually, Georgie stopped for a second. As she looks back up at Georgie, he had his machete held over his head. She instinctively raised her arm in fear as he swung the machete at her, and Georgie cut her left arm off. Ziya screams in pain and holds tightly onto her stubble of an arm as it bleeds profusely, screaming in both horror and in pain. Georgie observes as Ziya's left arm falls to the ground, as the watch on her arm goes from a "91", then goes blank as it turns off. "You don't need to worry about Respawns anymore, girl" Georgie says as he cleans the blood off of his blade with his bare fingers. "They'll all be going to me anyways. I'll make sure to put them to good use". Georgie raises his machete into the air again, then says "Game over". However, before Georgie could strike down with his blade, a loud and thunderous bang rings throughout the entire floor. Both Georgie and Ziya took a large bullet, Georgie took it to the back of the heart and Ziya caught the bullet with her head as it exited Georgie's body. They both fell over to the ground as another man rushes up to the scene, carrying a large sniper rifle.
"Oh, uh... whoops" Chris says as he comes up to the scene with his rifle. "I hope she doesn't know it was me who shot her, she won't let me ever hear the end of this".
Jon scrambles on the ground and picks up Georgie's pistol. "Who the hell is this asshole?" Jon says as he points his pistol as Chris.
"Sorry!" Chris says as he joyfully waves at Jon and the others. "Am I late to the party!?".
"Don't move!" Jon yells as he keeps his gun aimed at Chris.
"Okay, geez!" Chris says as he puts his hands in the air, still holding his rifle in his right hand. "It's not nice to aim a gun at people like that. I'm afraid that's my job, you see, I'm a contract ki-".
"Shut up!" Jon shouts. "Who are you!?".
"First it's shut up, now it's who are you?" Chris asks. "Make up your mind...".
"I'll shoot you!" Jon yells.
Chris sighs, then says "I already told you...". Suddenly, Chris brings his sniper rifle down, and presses the butt of the gun against his shoulder. Jon shoots, but Chris had already anticipated the shot and stepped to the side. The bullet barely misses him, then Chris pulls back the bolt of his rifle, loading another bullet in the chamber with a lightning fast, fluid movement. Before Jon could pull the trigger a second time, Chris had already shot Jon in the neck. The force from the bullet ripped Jon's neck in half, completely decapitating him. Chris pulls the bolt back on his sniper and loads the next shot, aims at Jake, then says "That's my job".
In rapid succession, Chris shot down everyone besides Drake and Judy. Once they had the chance, Drake and Judy began to attack the others as well. When Ziya gets back up, Georgie and Jake were trying to get their distance from them. She chased after them, but when she came after them, Georgie shot at her. He missed his shot, but it bought them enough time to keep running. Ziya picked up one of the pistols that were dropped on the ground, loads a magazine that she stole from Jon and Frank into that pistol, and begins to shoot at them. Georgie grabs Jake and uses him as a shield to block the bullets. Ziya pulled the trigger over and over until there were no more bullets left in the gun. By the time it was over, Jake's watch turned off as he ran out of lives and Georgie got away with fifty-one lives. When Ziya turns around in defeat, Chris was finishing off the rest of Georgie's group. Ziya no longer had a watch on her, Drake's watch showed "11" more Respawns, Judy had "3", and Chris still wasn't wearing a watch. All of Georgie's team had died to Chris's hands, and Ziya lost over twenty of her lives. Georgie got away with most of Judy's lives and a small portion of Ziya's as well as the rations that Judy was saving. Ziya stomps over towards Chris in defeat, as they were now all out of bullets and food now. All except for one last magazine that only had two bullets left in it.
"Ziya!" Chris says with open arms. "Looks like I made it in time!".
When Ziya comes face to face with Chris, she winds up her newly regenerated left arm and slaps Chris with as much force as she could summon, despite being tired and worn out from the fight and from hunger. "How could you!?" Ziya asks. "You were late again! Almost too late! I almost lost everybody! Again! I thought you said you'd be following us and keeping and eye out!".
"H-hey! I tried, alright!?" Chris panics. "Do you know how hard it is to move through these towns while staying out of the view of these cameras!?".
"I lost more than half of my lives..." Drake says as he stares down at his watch.
"I lost almost all of mine..." Judy says in a low and saddened voice, "and he got away with the last of our food. I'm really useless". Judy looks up at Ziya and says "I'm sorry... I probably shouldn't have kept the food a secret from you guys, but I couldn't even keep that safe from them!".
"Look, that's just how it is in Pyramid" Chris says. "If you're going to let it bring you down, then you really won't stand a chance". Chris then pulls out a full, unopened pack of rations and throws it at Judy. "Besides, he only got away with one ration. He's not going to get very far with that" Chris says.
"I guess staying hidden isn't much of an option for you anymore" Ziya says. "Now that Georgie already knows you're here".
"Mhm" Chris says, "but that's not important. You seem to be missing your watch now. Don't you think you should take your chance to hide as well?".
"No" Ziya says, "in fact, fuck hiding. One way or the other, we're breaking out of here. I don't care if they watch us do it, we'll turn their sick game upside down before their very eyes". Ziya looks up at Chris with a stern look, then says "and we'll need your help, as much as it pains me to say it. You're good at what you do, and with someone like Georgie around, we're going to need someone like you... also for food".
"That's the main reason, isn't it?" Chris asks as he crosses his arms and smiles.
"Well, yeah... you do always seem to have a good nose for finding food around here" Ziya says.
"So, you want me to stick around closely to your team now?" Chris asks. "And in doing so, we're no longer going to be avoiding the watching eyes of the game masters?".
"Yep" Ziya says. "You in, or not?".
"Hm..." Chris says as he thinks. "I'm sure you have your doubts about me still... so before I give you an answer, I would like to show you something".
"Show me something?" Ziya asks with a skeptical look.
"Just..." Chris says as he thinks. "I know you won't believe me if I tell you something like don't worry about it, or trust me... so just... come along. I'm sure you'll want to see this".
"And if we don't follow?" Ziya asks.
"No more food..." Chris says.
"Ziya... food" Judy says with her mouth beginning to water.
"You weren't very hard to convince..." Drake says as he looks at Judy.
Chris leads the team out of Floor 22. When they reach Floor 21, Chris takes them to the outermost edge of the town. They entered a building and moved to the very back where they found a shallow niche dug into the wall in the back of this building. The niche was not only dug into the wall of the building, but into the wall of Pyramid itself. There, in the middle of the niche, was the name "Mariah Gaeller" carved into the stone, below the letters "R.I.P.".
"I gave her a memorial, and I figured you'd want to see it" Chris says softly as he looks over at Ziya. "I figured you'd probably want the chance to properly say goodbye...".
Ziya collapses to her knees and begins to shake as she stares at the memorial Chris had carved out. Ziya was silent for a while, then quietly says "Can you give me a moment?".
"Take all the time you need" Chris says as he stands next to her.
"... Can you leave?" Ziya asks, getting irritated.
"What? Why?" Chris asks.
"Give me a moment, and leave the god damn room, Chris!" Ziya shouts.
"Oh!... right" Chris says. One by one, Chris, then Judy, then Drake leave the room as Ziya remains crouched at the memorial. Ziya spent several minutes alone, causing the rest of the team to wait in silence. After a while, Ziya comes back out, wiping tears from her eyes. "So?" Chris asks. "All good?".
Ziya nods her head, takes a deep breath, then says "Yeah... and about the team?".
"Of course I'm sticking around" Chris says. "You need help, and Mariah would kill me in the afterlife if she knew I let you wander off on your own in Pyramid".
"So, now we're down to a four man team?" Judy asks.
"Two men and two women" Chris says.
"... Why are we bringing up specifics?" Judy asks. "I was talking about head count, not... you know what? Never mind".
"Hey, don't get me wrong!" Chris says. "It's not like I think we're worse off because half of the team are women! I-I like women! I-I mean-".
"Smooth..." Drake says.
"Well, at least we have one thing in common" Judy says.
"We do?" Chris asks.
"I like women too" Judy says, then walks away from Chris.
"D-did she...?" Chris begins to ask.
"I think you just got shot down" Drake says with a laugh. "If you thought you had a chance with her before, you definitely don't now".
"B-but... I wasn't..." Chris says in confusion.
"Come on, we're moving out of here" Ziya says as she begins to leave Chris behind.
"B-but... I..." Chris says.
"Dude, just forget it ever happened" Drake says. "No one wants to hear about it".