"I don't know about you, but I'm getting somewhere I can make a phone call." Arthur immediately let the rest of us know, pulling his eyebrows together in annoyance of not being the only leader present. He hated not being in control, I could tell. Arthur's eyes scanned down the hallway to search for enemies or intruders. While Abigail planned the lockdown, he planned his retaliation.
"I'm going to find Justin. No one we've found has said that they've made contact with any Crimson Gauntlet members yet, and with what happened to Melissa..." She murmured, looking down the hallway in the opposite direction. "I'm worried." She turned her beautiful chocolate eyes back to Rowdy, giving him instructions. "I need you to find Vanguard's Elite's floor, and talk to my brother. We have to convince him that this game has gone haywire, and get him to help us, too. I'll also inquire about Justin's help."
"Oh, yeah, I see how it is. You get to go looking for 'hot pants' Roe, and I'm stuck with needling your brother to get him to help someone that he thinks is inferior. Genius plan, Nashita." Rowdy grumbled, narrowing his eyes.
"Jeez, Rowdy, it's not like that! And Justin doesn't wear hot pants!" Nashita rubbed her temple in annoyance. "Just go get him, okay? Besides, you can drool over Everset while I'm gone." She huffed, and then looked over to me. Her eyes betrayed the true emotion of worry, worry that she would go after her brother and find him maimed or killed. "Fey, you can go with Arthur. He might need the extra help trying to find a way out, or getting that cell phone to work inside this building. Leighton will be okay back at our base room; we can check in with him as soon as we get done with our own missions." She said, only pausing a moment for questions or concerns before stalking off down the hall and around the corner into another section of Crimson Gauntlet's floor.
"I don't drool over Lark Everset." Rowdy grumbled to himself, face turning a deep shade of red as he strutted after her. Unlike her turn, however, he simply headed up the stairs. Onto the floor for Vanguard's Elite, he grumbled the entire way.
"Guess I'm stuck with you." The Administrator grumbled, but he spoke again, more sincerely, after a pause. "Did I ever apologize for holding you hostage?" I shook my head, though my thoughts wandered somewhere else, trying to pin down the solution to his problem. "Then, I'm sorry. I did what I thought would benefit my team the best at the time, plus, I thought you were a Badger. And none of them are good." The boy took a deep sigh, and reiterated. "Down to the one that seems to charm everyone with soft words and tiny smiles, none of them are good." He growled, but I didn't give him much longer to finish it.
"The shop." I blurted out and treaded the opposite way down the hallway as soon as the words tumbled out of my mouth.
"The what? Hey, what in the world are you going on about?" The Administrator followed me, confused.
"The wood shop on this floor has a steel garage door that leads to the parking lot in it, you might be able to get signal from there." I smiled, proud of myself. "It'd be pretty hard to block that off rather than just locking the door." Then, after a pause, I looked back over to him. "And it's alright, no worries. It's not like you actually hurt me." I laughed, and he seemed to smile in acceptance of my forgiveness.
"That's not a bad idea." A sliver of pride wrinkled into his eyes. "Fey, right?" The boy asked as we walked down the otherwise quiet halls.
"Yeah, my name is Fey." I affirmed with a light smile.
The howls of someone in pain interrupted our conversation. We looked back and forth to each other, faces contorting in worry. Our steps increased, becoming faster and more haphazard as we raced toward the sound. The sound reverberated from the large, heavy door with the room number above the door. I never took a shop class, but this was the room. I watched many other students go in before now. Rowdy never went, instead opting to take Home Economics with Nashita. He always loved cooking. The whooshing sound of controlled fire hit my ears, and not too long after, Arthur threw the door open.
The screams finally rolled to a stop, but the sound of fire continued. The first thing in the room attracted my eyes to the flame emitted by a blowtorch. Someone held it steadily in their hands, carefully training it on something that laid on the ground. A dirty footprint stained the clothes of a person curled on the floor, showing that their assailant had held them in place earlier, though it wasn't as if they could do much. Ropes lined the corpse's wrists, knees, and ankles. They probably were around their shoulders, too, but everything on the body crackled with fire from the chest upward.
"Stop!" I screamed, but the mangled plea came out more as a staggered yelp that held no meaning other than raw terror and pain. The attacker shut off the blowtorch, and flipped up the welding hood that covered their face. I found myself looking into amused yet annoyed deep green eyes.
Ezekiel threw the hood aside and tossed it on a nearby table before looking back at us. I certainly didn't want the first time that I saw his face to be like this. Small black streaks lined the side of his face, presumably from taking the helmet off. Freckles dotted the bridge of his entire face densely, under his eyes and across his nose. His lips curled into an eternal sneer. Even though there wasn't anything wrong with it, not a blemish nor scar, I could tell he hated the fact that we looked at his face. Something about him seemed different, though. Something else about his appearance felt amiss from his usual costume.
"You're a bit too late." The boy snarled, pulling up his mask back over the bottom half of his face. He nudged the body at his feet gently, as if now kicking it would cause the person pain. "I'm afraid there's not really much hope for that one left."
After examining the clothes of the person, I could finally identify the victim. The small, heeled shoes on their feet tilted when Zeke nudged them, and the small gears that lined the entirety of the shoe sparkled under the bright light. Ezekiel Flynn killed Jules Krieger.
Arthur didn't have any words to express his grief, he could only stare blankly, shivering in his own skin. He figured it out long before I did. My eyes examined the walls, remembering the reason that we traveled here in the first place. Someone coated the windows with sharp tin, welded to the surface; whoever did it probably used the tools in this very room. The embers engulfing Jules' body crackled louder, reminding me that their body no longer resembled the person I met this year.
"How do you live with yourself? You parade yourself around, and everything you do is toxic." Arthur hissed, but Ezekiel seemed completely unfazed. In fact, his hands itched back towards the blowtorch, as if he prepared to use it on Arthur. "You're living evil, and I'm going to take care of it." In the next second, the Administrator dove for a nearby broom. He flung the handle sideways toward the Advisor, trying to knock the potentially deadly item out of his reach.
Ezekiel dodged and ran in the other direction, as if he could get better weapons in the room other than the barrel of controlled flame. His hand slapped the table that he laid the helmet on, and his hand curled around a weapon that I hadn't noticed before because of all of the flaming chaos. He lifted a darkly colored pistol in his grasp and turned to level it with Arthur's face. "I'll take out that other eye of yours if you don't watch it, Cross." He threatened. My eyes darted around the room like a frantic animal looking for a hiding place from a hunter. I had to find something to help us get out of here.
Arthur swung the broom up and it connected with Ezekiel's wrist, making him drop the firearm immediately. He let out a cry of pain, and the trigger engaged as it hit the floor. A bullet found a new home in the wall, just above Arthur's head from the whack. Despite the chaos and my breath strangling me, I finally found a solution to our problem.
I darted forward, grabbed Arthur's arm, and headed towards the door as fast as I could run. Ezekiel ducked down, trying to find where his gun vanished to beneath one of the woodworking tables. Before we made it out the door, I took advantage of the welded shut windows and switched off the lights. As soon as I closed the door behind me, I felt confident that we abandoned the werewolf in complete darkness. It would take him some time to navigate out of there, with all the dangerous tools swimming around in the darkness.
We ran down the hallway, already out of breath, but not willing to stop for anything since Zeke had a weapon that we could not face. I only had my small, compact crossbow, and Arthur's sickle didn't do us much good in the fight, either. He ended up using a shop broom because of the extra length on the handle.
A girl came into view and watched us bound down the hallway. Her face immediately warped into a terrified expression as if we intended to chase her. She looked strikingly familiar, but I couldn't quite place her from this distance.
"We're not against you, I promise!" I yelled as we bounded towards her, closing the gap more and more with every second of air that left our lungs. I finally recognized her deep, kind green eyes and animal lover's t-shirt. "Shelby, it's okay!" I screamed, and even though cautious, she seemed to believe me and realize that because we were not chasing her, we were running from something else.
"This way, come on!" She called, heading down the hallway when we almost caught up to her. She stopped in front of a very large door, and Arthur and I skidded to a stop in order to keep from trailing down the hallway. With a quick glance up and down the hallway, and after she confirmed no one hear her except for us, she knocked on the large door in a unique pattern. After a pause of a few seconds, the doors with the Crimson Gauntlet banner slowly opened up to reveal the team that our own team sought out.
Shelby ushered us in and closed the door behind us. In a matter of seconds, Harriet, Avery, and Justin worked their best to shove all of the loaded boxes back up against the door so that it would have trouble opening again. They turned this place into a literal safe room. I let out a deep sigh of relief before sitting down on the floor and wiping my eyes. I just wanted to go home and leave this convoluted mess behind me.
Sobs tore me out of my self-pity. When I looked up, I watched Arthur bury his head in his hands and bawl. He only barely made a sound, like someone trying to cry in the middle of the night without waking those who lived with them. When Shelby tried to question him, he refused to say anything.
"Jules died." I whispered, eyes rumbling as a warning that tears threatened to manifest. I didn't know how else to say it, and they needed to know. "When Taylor said that players would be eliminated, Zeke took it way too seriously. He has a gun, too. He tried to shoot Arthur, and he killed Jules." A pause entered my voice as it waivered. "Melissa died too, when everything started. She was allergic to the gas that put us to sleep."
The room remained quiet for some time as the new company processed this information. Justin trotted over to me and sat next to me with his legs crossed, draping his arm around my shoulder. "This is going to be a rough night." He sighed, looking over at me. "That's why we've stayed in this room other than one of us scouting every once in a while." He squeezed my shoulder in an attempt to comfort me while Shelby tried her best to snuggle the nearby crying Arthur. "We thought if the entrance ceremonies turned out that drastic, that what came after couldn't be good in any way, shape, or form." He answered, shivering. "We need to call the cops."
"We can't. Arthur's phone doesn't have reception in the building, and we can't get to the Principal's phone in order to make the call." I answered, eyes solemn. "We're trying our best to find a way to the office that doesn't include conflict." The plan being brought up reminded me about Nashita's own quest. My heart pulsated with worry when I noticed she didn't stand among the Crimson Gauntlet members. I opened my mouth to inquire about this to Justin, but a knock at the door silenced my words. This one didn't sound anything like the one that Shelby used. The sound we all heard sounded like a plain knock without any pattern. Indecision of whether or not to answer the sound grappled everyone in the room.