Loyalties (an Among Us fanfic)

9. Silence

"Orange?" Yellow exclaimed, quickly darting his gaze back and forth between Blue and Orange.

Even Brown seemed surprised. "Really?" she asked, leaning against the Laboratory wall.

Commander White eyed Blue intently. "What makes you say that he is the impostor, Blue?" he inquired, and the tone of his voice indicated a bit of disbelief.

"Yeah," I chimed in, "what evidence did you find out—"

"Shut up, Red, I'm getting to that!" Blue snapped, casting me a glare before turning back to Orange. "Let me guess, carrot—right as the seismic stabilizers went off, you either disabled that scanner"—he pointed to the circular device—"or programmed false info into it. That sound right?"

Orange stood there, closest to the scanner, and he folded his arms while we all looked at him. "On the contrary, that sounds quite wrong, Blue. But tell me, what could lead you to think such a thing?"

"You said you were in this place when the sabotage happened. Who else could've done it?"

"How do we know that scanner has even been messed with?" Orange asked, tilting his head. "If that isn't false info, then where in the Milky Way did you get it from?"

Blue tapped the side of his helmet. "From a nice place called the brain, which is home to a valuable species named common sense."

"Please get to the point, Blue," Commander White sighed.

Blue gestured to the device again. "If these scanners worked like they were supposed to, we would've solved this murder mystery at the beginning, but an alien impostor couldn't allow such devices to interfere with its plans. No matter what, they had to be out of the way. It's no surprise that the first thing you did was to go here and take this scanner out too. You probably hid the hard drive somewhere, but guess what? I don't need that."

"I'd just like to say that we've seen the impostor's incredible prowess and skill many times through this expedition," commented the Commander. "After all that, I don't think they would make themself so obvious out of the blue and waste all that hard work. Much less a complex individual like Orange."

"Maybe that's what he wants us to think?" Brown questioned.

Blue pointed at her. "A damn good answer." He faced Orange again while leaning against the test tube table. "I've been sus of you ever since you stuck that hard drive into the Mira HQ scanner. But now, I'm certain. See, whenever these sabotages happened on the Skeld, someone always died. But right now, we're all perfectly fine. Why waste a sabotage and not take the opportunity to kill anyone, right?"

White stepped forward. "I'm not so sure, Blue—you seem to be talking as if this alien is supposed to be a perfect mind, capable of executing its plans without flaw. And we already know how unrealistic it is for a human to do that."

"But that's the point, Commander—it's not human. Trust me on this." Then, Blue passed intense looks to everyone else despite the visor obscuring his eyes. "Does anybody really have any counter-evidence that clears Orange of suspicion?"

I stayed silent and watched everybody. Heard nothing.

"It's not like you would know anything about this organism either, would you?" Orange countered. "And you say I'm programming false info into these scanners, but wouldn't I have done the same thing on the Skeld?"

"If you wanted to risk discovery, then yes. I think you chose to disable that scanner entirely instead of reprogram it, so when you ran your software through the one on Mira HQ, we'd think your software actually made sure it was fixed. If you did that to the one on the Skeld, you'd have no reason to insert your software into the one at Mira and the one here on Polus."