To The Brasshead

Gemma awoke on the bed of the apartment building, climbing out and inspecting her body in the mirror. Nothing happened to her overnight, anyway. She checked her watch, 8:45 AM. She climbed into the shower, removing her clothes, and firing a smoke bomb underneath her feet. After what was probably the briefest shower she ever had, she got back into her old clothes and sat on her bed. She gave Andrei a message on her watch, a basic 'At the Best of Luck hotel, Respond as soon as you see this.' Within a few seconds, she got a response.

'At the gym a few buildings down to the left.'

Well, shoot. It was only a few buildings, sure, but that was a lot of time. A lot of time others could use to do something to her. She could just ask Andrei to go get her? No, that's ridiculous. She'd just run. Simplest solution, and therefore the right one, probably. She looked out the door, and nobody seemed to be there. She started running, bursting through the stairways, jumping down the last few stairs.

"What has you in such a hurry?"

Gemma turned around, seeing Huang behind her. Completely still and silent. She wasn't even sure he was breathing.

"Oh, I was just…going to the gym, you know."

"Well, gyms can't move. It'll still be there, regardless of your speed."

"I know, but…"

"I see. A young woman walking alone can cause many issues. If you feel an escort in order, I'll be happy to go along with you."

"Uh…no thanks. You don't need to do that." She replied, glancing at the door.

"The gym is on the left to this place, correct? Vanessa and I are just about to go that direction ourselves."

"Oh, you are? Well, in that case…I'll tag alone, sure."

"Excellent. If you could give Vanessa a few minutes, we'll be with you shortly."

After a few minutes, the two of them were ready to go, and the three of them went out.

"So Gemma, what has you so scared to go out?" Vanessa asked.

"Hm? Oh it's nothing in particular. It's just that we're only on challenge four, you know? So I don't really know who to trust yet."

"You can trust us." Vanessa replied with a smile.

"I wouldn't say that, exactly." Huang sighed. "This is a game for survival, of course."

"E-excuse me?" Gemma asked.

"Well, only five of us can make it to the end, and we are in a group with three other people, so adding a sixth person isn't exactly the wisest move, I'm afraid."

"Oh…I, I see." Gemma replied, her voice growing more and more ready to escape these two.

"Relax, we aren't going to try to kill you!" Vanessa replied, glancing at Huang.

"Uh, thanks!" Gemma yelled out, seeing the gym and immediately going in.

She gave the fifteen coins needed to the smiler behind the desk, and went into the gym, where Andrei was lifting a dumbbell in silence.

"Hey, Andrei." Gemma yelled out.

Andrei put the dumbbell down, waving to her.

"So, you training? Gemma asked.

"Yep." Andrei replied calmly. "Gotta stay in good condition. Especially when there's nothing good to eat around here."

"Oh yeah, food." Gemma whispered. "I kind of forgot about that."

"You need some?" Andrei asked, offering the chocolate bar next to him.

"Oh no, it's fine! I can buy food somewhere else! Actually, you want anything?"

"Somewhere with eggs and chicken, I guess? Food the hosts were giving us was terrible for training." Andrei replied, scratching his head.

"So, y-you're getting weaker?" Gemma asked, before seeing the sandbag shaped hole in the wall, alongside the sandbag on the floor with sawdust leaking out of it.

"Not yet anyway." Andrei sighed, standing up and taking a bite out of the protein bar. "I just underestimated myself with the bag there."

"O-oh, right!" Gemma stuttered. "But hey, I found this food place called the SurgeStation a few doors down, you want to eat there?"

The two of them went to the SurgeStation, and Andrei got the chicken and eggs he was thinking about, while Gemma got quinoa.

"So, any updates on that Lloyd guy?" Andrei asked.

"Keep your voice down!" Gemma yelled in a hushed tone. "We don't know what he's doing!"

"Well, he isn't here anyway." Andrei replied calmly. "He seems bad, but not this bad."

"You never watched this show, did you?" Gemma asked.

"Nah. Don't think it broadcast where I lived, anyway."

"Right, right. Well, every season of this show has one contestant who has some idea of what's happening next, who's job is to stir up trouble for the others. And considering Lloyd's a big name on level four, it's probably him."

"Meaning?" Andrei asked.

"Meaning that he could hear anything we're saying!"

"Oh. Right. So, what do we do?"

Gemma looked around and took a small slip of paper out of her bra, sliding it across the table face down. Andrei looked at her, slightly flustered.

"It's fine, just read it." She sighed, looking him in the eye.

Andrei hesitated slightly, but picked up the piece of paper.

'You can kill Lloyd, right? And then we blame it on Aurora.'

Andrei nodded. No harm in doing this if the man in question was this bad, and if she was lying about all of this, he could just pin it all on her.

"So, how do we do this?" He whispered. "Do I just take…this person out now, or?"

"I think we should do it today. He's probably planning to kill me ahead of time, so we need to catch him by surprise."

"And how do we do that?"

"We need to trap him somewhere."

"Okay, but where?"

"Well, when we were scouting out buildings yesterday, I found one that would help us. I'll send it to you."

"The brasshead?" Andrei asked.

"Apparently it was meant to be a bank before construction ended. The security's hopefully still active, and it was apparently meant to be the greatest security technology of it's time. I heard rumours the leader of Nova still uses it."

"Okay, but wouldn't we get caught in there?"

"We'll say one of them tried to kill me, but then blame it on the other. Accidental murder still counts, and we wouldn't have done anything."

"Right, right." Andrei nodded. "But how do we get them in there?"

"I'll give them an invite in. Tell them there's some equipment in there we could use later." As Gemma was saying that, she took out her watch, starting to type something over it.

"Now, should we get going?"

"Yep, she's on to us." Lloyd sighed.

"What do you mean?" Aurora asked.

"She just invited us to go into a secure building, alone. She's trying to get us killed before we can do anything to her."

"So, what are we doing about it?"

"Dear, the real question is what's Amber gonna do about it. We get her and Ulrich into the building to scout things out, and then we kill Gemma, and blame either Ulrich or whoever Gemma convinced into this."

"You think Gemma got someone to do this?"

"Clearly." Lloyd scoffed. "What can she do alone, smoke me to death? Oh no, a higher risk of lung cancer in thirty years, I'm so scared." He threw up his hands and put on a mocking face, which Aurora chuckled at.

"Anyway, I'll call Amber." Aurora replied, still chuckling.

Amber and Ulrich were in a coffee shop when she got the message. Ulrich was drinking a glass of milk, and Amber wasn't drinking anything, just enjoying the atmosphere.

"What's Aurora asking me about?" She muttered to herself.

"She send you something?" Ulrich asked calmly.

"She wants us to go to the Brasshead. High security bank building, big deal."

"Why does she need us to go there, exactly?" Ulrich asked, sipping his milk.

"My guess is that it's something to do with Lloyd."

"So…we going?"

"I think we need to." Amber sighed. "He's planning something."

"Right, right." Ulrich replied, chugging down the rest of his milk. "So what's the plan?"

"We kill Lloyd, maybe? If we do that, we'll need to frame someone else for it."

"So…who's that gonna be?"

"No idea. We'll see when we get there. If we can't find anyone, we'll just stop Lloyd from killing anyone, and then figure it out from there."