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Grian stares at the blade in his hand. It looks childish, like a knife he might see in some kid’s show. It’s got a silly looking handle that gives the illusion that the blade might be foam and bend when he presses down on it. Except it’s real, in his hands, and sharp. He winces when he presses it against his fingertip, a bright droplet of blood sliding down his hand.
Joel smirks, cracking his neck in preparation and flipping the blade in his hand. “Fuck, this game is getting good now.”
“You would think that, wouldn’t you.” Grian replies without looking at him.
Joel half tilts his head, half turns it towards Grian, looking at him through his lashes in a lazy yet sinister way. “Killing people without consequences? Dream come true.”
Grian scoffs and Joel rolls his eyes at him.
“Come on, Grian, let’s not act like in the outside world—”
Grian flicks his hand, the blade flying towards Joel’s neck. Joel freezes, his words caught in his throat, but he still has that fuckass smile on his face. Like he’s amused. “Don’t fucking talk about the ‘outside’ world. Not here.”
“Why, scared your boy toy is going to figure out what a piece of shit you are outside?” Joel”s eyes flick towards the boy standing in the blue vest across from them. Grian doesn’t have to look to know who he’s looking at. “He’s going to figure it out either way. He’s going to hate you. Despise who you really are.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m the only one who really knows who you are. You know that.” Joel continues, unfazed.
“Break it up.” Two pink soldiers stand between them, their guns pointed at their heads. Grian holds his ground for a second but lets up, glaring at Joel who simply looks back in amusement.
The gates open behind the soldiers and they turn their attention to the blue team. They tell them to go inside, herding them into their deaths. All Grian can think about is that he hopes that Mumbo survives. If anyone deserves to live in this wicked game, it’s Mumbo—the guy who can’t even hurt a fly yet has somehow made it this far.
Grian glances at the dagger in his hand. Mumbo had traded his red vest and blade for Grian’s blue and key. It meant Grian would have to do the killing to pass this round while Mumbo only had to survive for thirty minutes. If he could find the exit, he would guarantee his safety, but who knows what that looks like. All Grian can hope to do is that Mumbo hides well, runs fast, and stays safe until Grian can find him.
Joel elbows him in his side. “Hey, you wanna like… team up?”
“What?”
“You know… I’m not asking for a partnership. More like a… one-night stand of sorts.”
“A one-night stand.” Grian deadpans.
He has half a logical mind to turn him down. Joel has been a pain in the ass the entire time they’ve been here together, afterall. He’s rash and impatient, more concerned with having fun than survival. He clashes with Grian upon every belief and morals he holds himself up to. Joel has a one-track mind, and when it comes down to his survival versus another person’s life, he will choose himself three times over. Sometimes it doesn’t even have to come down to survival.
Joel is driven by his thirst for blood, chasing the thrill of butchering someone and having their blood run down his arms, splattered on his face. It’s a trait Grian fucking despises of him.
“Not a chance.” Grian answers, turning instead to watch the clock above the door tick down to zero.
“Oh, come on. Think about it.” Joel stands in front of him, blocking his view, “It’s not like the blue team is going to roll over and let us kill them. They’re going to fight back, right?”
Grian glares at him and Joel just watches his eyes, unflinching. His eyes flicker back and forth as he looks at Grian’s left and right pupil, like he’s searching for something.
The other half of Grian’s brain is emotional. It’s animalistic, and it almost scares him when he consciously realizes it is there. Of course, Grian is driven by logic, by his constant planning and control. But there is a part of him that is just like Joel. A part of him that will do anything to survive and ride off that thrill of risks and danger. That exhilarating feeling of having someone’s life in your hands and ripping it apart.
Maybe that’s why he hates Joel in particular, more than any of these annoying old fucks in here. It’s because he sees himself within him, a reflection under their different faces.
“Two against one are better odds,” Joel trails off, pleading. Grian grinds his teeth, his jaw tightening. The timer above the door goes off in a buzz, signalling their time to enter the room and start hunting.
Grian stands there and Joel stares at him.
Time is running out. And Joel’s right.
If they’re going to be killing people anyways, might as well work together, right?
“If not, I might need to tell Mumbo how you’re like outside.” Joel pouts, mockingly, “I wonder how he would react if he found out you were a cont—”
“Fine.” He brushes past Joel to enter as the rest of the red vests file in.
“Can you stop skipping around me.” Grian sighs, speed-walking down the halls. It’s already hard enough that it’s a fucking maze, but it’s shaped in a way that looks like different alleyways under the night sky, things get confusing fast. It doesn’t help that Joel can’t sit still in excitement. “It’s distracting.”
“So I’m distracting you, huh.”
“Shut the fuck up and help me find people to kill, would you?”
Joel smiles, matching his pace. Grian stares straight ahead, more concerned with the fact that they have to track these blue vests down and kill them in order to proceed into the next game. It’s one life for his own, a sacrifice he’s willing to take. Joel on the other hand seems more concerned with torturing Grian than saving his own skin.
“Relax, grandpa, we have thirty minutes. Plenty of time.”
Grian ignores him, turning the corner as Joel continues to badger him. “You know, I really don’t understand your attachment to this guy. You barely just met him a few days ago.”
“He saved my life.”
“I saved your life. You don’t look at me like that.”
Grian stops this time, facing him. Joel’s only one or two inches taller than him, barely any difference in height, but it still annoys Grian that he has to look up to him, like he does to everyone else in his life. He tilts his head at Grian, who looks at him in a way he only reserves for Joel.
The thing is, Joel doesn’t need protection in a way Mumbo does. Joel is self-sufficient; he doesn’t need Grian in the same way Grian doesn’t need Joel. But there’s a part of him that will always want him. Carnally. Desperately.
Grian doesn’t need Joel, but he wants to need him, and that is the key difference.
“Can we just… get through this round. Please.” He hears how defeated he sounds and he thinks Joel does too becauses he drops it.
Suddenly someone with a blue vest runs past the opening in front of them, gasping at the sight of the two reds. Joel glances at Grian and he nods, breaking into a sprint after them. They chase him down, following closely at the twists and turns the maze takes them until they reach a fork in the road.
Joel nods at Grian and they understand each other immediately. Grian takes the right, running through the straight halls until he chases the back of someone dressed with a blue vest. They’re struggling with the door in front of them and manage to get it open with the key hung around their neck, rushing it open. Grian lunges, following closely behind and the both of them realize at the same time that it comes to a dead end.
It comes down to this. His first kill in the game.
Grian stares down the blue vest as they circle each other, his dagger in hand. The blue vested man has his hands out in front of him to defend himself. He has half a mind to feel bad about what he’s about to do—killing an unarmed, technically innocent man—but he has no choice, really. Kill or be killed, that is the rule he lives by.
He rushes at him, reaching to stab his dagger up and into the man’s stomach, but the man dodges, directing his hand away from his body. Grian charges again and they scuffle around the small space, with Grian trying to cut into this man and the other trying to dodge his every move.
Grian steps out, slashing at him and it connects, cutting a thin line into the other’s side. He cries out, holding at it as the blood seeps out onto his green tracksuit.
It’s been too long.
The man attempts to run out the door, maybe to find temporary solace, and Grian is almost tempted to let him—to feel the thrill of the chase again. But when the man reaches the open door, Joel slides in, revealing himself.
The man backs away in horror as Joel swiftly stabs him in the stomach, leaving him to fall backwards into the corner. Grian comes around to Joel’s side as the latter flips the blade in his hand.
“Geez, you were having all the fun, weren’t you?” Joel huffs. Both of them are standing in front of the man, laying on the floor clutching his stomach. Gruesome sight, really, as he pants and pleads for his life.
Joel reaches forward to end the life of the man sitting in front of them before Grian stops him, grabbing his arm.
“Wait. If you kill him, you’ll pass and you have no incentive to help me.” Grian says.
“Of course I’d help you.” His face scrunches up.
“I don’t trust you.” Grian watches his eyes this time, left and right, back and forth.
“Then what do we do.” He replies simply.
“We kill him together.”
“Fine.”
When they kill the second person, finally granting both of them passing this round, Grian turns around immediately. His only goal is to find Mumbo, to make sure he’s safe. He didn’t hear his number called when people were being eliminated, so his only hope is that he’s still hiding in a corner somewhere. When Grian finds him, he can keep him safe.
Joel follows him through the halls. “Where are you going? Looking for Mumbo?”
“None of your business, we’re done here.”
“Oh come on, Grian. I know you.” Joel walks backwards alongside him so he can bother Grian face to face. “You have that look again.”
As Grian is about to ignore him again, Joel almost anticipates it and steps in front of Grian’s path. “Did you forget?”
“Forget what.” Grian doesn’t want to entertain his nonsense, but Joel is a burly guy. More muscular than he is at least. His shoulders are broad and he’s blocking the entire hallway so Grian either has to turn around and be blocked by him again or listen to his nonsense for one second.
“Your debt.”
Grian bites the inside of his cheek. “So what.”
“So. We keep killing.”
“We already passed, we don’t need to do that.” Grian side-steps him, but Joel steps in his way again, “Move out of my way.”
“Each person who dies adds to the money pot.”
Grian pauses.
Joel continues, “100 thousand each. And with every blue person we kill, that’s one less another red can get. Killing one blue guarantees a red person’s death as well. We’ll double the pot.”
He steps closer to him, “Pretty fucking smart, no?”
(He always gives in when it comes to Joel.
Grian’s debt was astronomical. Between the 465 people who came to these fucked up games because of their inability to pay off their thousands of debts, Grian was among the highest. And Joel knows this, because he knows him.
What would killing a few more here and there do, really? It’ll lower the competition, raise the pot value, and most importantly: make him feel sane. Not so hung up on morals and ethics all the time. In a place like this, there is no place for them. Survival of the fittest.)
He meets Joel’s eyes and the other seems to recognize the look, the corner of his lips quirking up as Grian pushes him aside.
Grian stabs a girl in her back. He doesn’t know who it is, just that she’s standing in the doorway, her back turned towards him and he knows an opportunity when he sees one. He stabs her again, and again, making sure there’s no chance she’d miraculously survive until he hears her number called on the intercom ahead.
Another 200 thousand to the pot.
Then he looks up and in the room he sees Mumbo, curled up in the corner and shaking like a leaf. Grian breaks into a smile, stepping towards him, but Mumbo flinches hard, shaking.
“Get away from me.” Mumbo whimpers, scrambling back into the wall. Grian stumbles back in surprise. “Get away from me, you monster.”
“Mumbo?” Grian obliges confusedly, stepping backwards onto the girl’s hand and nearly tripping. He looks down and sees her face for the first time.
Fuck.
Pearl.
At least that’s what Mumbo called her. Grian wasn’t close to anyone else other than Mumbo and Joel in this place. He preferred his own company even if Mumbo somehow wedged himself into his personal space. Mumbo was more friendly, more talkative. He attracted other people by simply being himself.
She was one of his friends. His makeshift team that would help each other survive until as far as possible. If he had Mumbo’s trust before to protect him, he most certainly didn’t anymore.
“Mumbo…”
“Stay back.” He speaks with as much venom in his voice as possible, a tone Grian had never heard from him before.
“Grian! Did you find someone?” Joel calls from beyond the door. Grian steps backwards, shutting the door before Joel sees.
“No. No one else there.” Grian walks off, hoping Joel would simply follow him instead of checking for himself.
“Did you find Mumbo yet?” He asks. Grian bites his inner lip.
Joel glances at him, catching it. “What?”
“Nothing. I haven’t found him.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“I’m not.”
“I can tell, you know.”
“Just drop it.”
Joel looks back at the hallway, then towards Grian. He starts walking back to the door and Grian grabs his arm. Joel whips his head back, watching Grian’s face as he opens his mouth to speak before closing it.
Joel sighs, leaning his back against the wall beside them. Grian drops his arm, avoiding his gaze.
“I’m not going to hurt him, you know.”
“I know.”
“Then what.”
“I can’t face him right now.”
“What’d you do?”
Grian falls silent to that. What can he even say? He killed someone like he and Joel wanted, like he wanted. He was having too much fun. That control he had over whether or not someone lived or died in his grasp. He had fun knowing that he could kill without consequence, just like Joel did, and that he was gaining more and more money each time he did.
He stopped thinking logically, that’s what happened. He knew he was already safe, already granted his life for the next game. Instead he was selfish, taking more and more for himself while expecting everything else to be the same. Of course Mumno would despise him, even if he hadn’t killed Pearl. Mumbo would despise him if he knew this is how Grian was, the real him. The deepest darkest parts of Grian that he tried to hide away from Mumbo.
This game pulls everything apart. Breaks him down into pieces to digest. Makes him realize just how much of a horrible, selfish person he really is.
But Joel already knew all that. He’s seen him at his worst. Seen Grian do what he does best in his proper element. In a way, this game was almost built for them. Their deepest intentions and darkest secrets they had only confided with each other on were just being displayed for hundreds of other people to see.
“...I killed his friend. Right there.” Grian gestures in her direction. “He’s never going to trust me again.”
“Geez, G.”
“Fuck, what do I do, Joel?”
“Nothing. Just don’t let anyone else near that door.” He looks up at the clock down the hallway, counting down the last few minutes they had in this maze. “He only needs to survive a few more minutes.”
“Yeah.”
“Grian.”
Grian looks up at him and Joel is looking back at him, still watching like he always does. Usually it’s in amusement, or like he’s studying him. Trying to figure out the intricacies that make Grian tick. It always drives Grian crazy.
This time, it looks different. More soft. If Grian had to put a word to it, it was sympathetic in a way, but not in the pitiful type. Joel knew better than to pity Grian. It was different. He wasn’t sure what it was. It made his stomach twist and suddenly he was more aware of the beating of his heart beat in his ears and he was sure this was an emotion that was not allowed in this game. There was no place for softness and something more in a sick murder game like this.
But the funny thing was, this was the perfect place for the two of them. He wrestles with this idea.
“I’m here for you, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know.”