Among Us

Chapter 18

I set the cubes back in the compartment gingerly, as if they were radioactive. I mean, they were radioactive. 

I then exited through the vents and closed I behind me. Then I ran to med. 
I covered my nose and mouth with my hand as the door opened. The bodies were wrapped with a metal sheet now, something to muffle the stench of rot, but it still smelled really bad. I reached Barrack's body, which was near med scan, and knelt down.

Under his bed was a fabric bag containing all of his belongings. I noticed a list taped to the bag's side and read it.

Clock

Notebook

7 pencils

Water Bottle

Sar Wars Trilogy novel

Nothing unusual, for Barracks at least. 

I took out the clock, which had died long before the second death. It was a small one, made to sit on a bedside table. 

I pulled out the thick novel Barracks had brought. It had a bright red title and a masked man on the cover. I flipped through it quickly. No hidden pockets. No notes. Nothing, just an ordinary book. The water bottle was bone dry. The pencils were near the bottom of the bag, the led tips having left a grey stain.

I grabbed his notebook and quickly scanned through it.

I found the page where he mentioned dating Kate.

I knew from the moment I saw her she was the one. Her smile lit up the whole room, and when she made eye contact with me, I felt my heart flutter, like butterflies. Nobody else liked me. I knew that from the start. But she liked me. She understood me. 

We kissed the next day, after training. Nobody noticed. Nobody cared about us anyway. But we cared about each other. And the second her lips had touched mine, I knew that was all that mattered. 

I felt like crying. His words seemed so sweet, so sincere, and now all he had loved had been stripped away. 

I ran my finger over a wrinkled dot near the bottom of the paper. A tear.

Kate's tear.

I closed my eyes and felt a tear squeeze through. Two people. Two people in love, only for their relationship stripped away. Finally, together in the afterlife. 

"What are you doing?"

I jumped and scrambled up, only to be met with Jacks' startling blue eyes.

"Just reading." I said quickly. "I wanted to take a break from .... all of this."

Jacks sighed. "You have to tell me, Em. You could have been killed."

You could have been killed. Was this a lie? some phrase he had said to not seem suspicious?

But the other side of me was overpowering. He was scared for me. He had told me to go to the bathroom because he knew it was close by. He would hear my struggle, my yells. He knew he could save me in time. Here, not so much.

"I know, I'm sorry. It was impulsive of me." I said. "I just want to read a few more things, is that okay?"

"Yeah." He said. "I'll keep watch."

He left and I knelt over Barrack's stuff again, scanning the pages as fast as possible.  Nothing suspicious. 

I noticed the page after his last entry was ripped out. Weird.

I slipped the journal back inside the otherwise still empty bag. I felt the clock's smooth metal against my finger-

I froze, my hand shaking. I looked beside the bag, where the silent clock lay. 

That wasn't a clock.

I grabbed it and pulled it out, careful in case it was another radioactive element. 

It was a small box with a glass window near its center. Through the window I could see an arc changing from green to yellow to red. A small needle lay motionless at its side. I clicked a small red button that was beside the small window and the needle turned on, shaking wildly. It then rested on green.

But that didn't last long.

As I watched, the needle slowly rose to yellow. It passed by the orange with no hesitation. It hit the end of the arc, the red needle nearly blending in with the arc's color. 

I noticed another small screen near the bottom, on it, there were two yellow dots, side by side, below where Admin would be.

Of course. It was a radiation detector. It was detecting the elements in the vents.

I thought of Barrack's last moments. He was probably fooling around with his radiation detector, only to find there were two deadly elements in the vents of admin. He had then turned around to tell everyone-

but he never got the chance.

He was shot, and in the struggle, the murderer had slamed Barrack's head against the Admin table. Then the murderer panicked and set it up as a suicide.

Then Kate's death. Kate must have slipped that she knew something was up. The murderer panicked and turned Ari on her. 

I knew what had happened to Ari, and why. But Sam? I knew she had been poisoned, top suspect Jacks. But what was the motive?

I ran my head through her last moments.

We caught Ari. Ari was ejected, but not before yelling how she had been tricked.

And Sam had heard. Sam had heard who, probably, and the murderer knew it wasn't long before she suspected Ari had been telling the truth. 

So what happened? Sam was killed.

I thought again and again. How could the murderer have known? Everyone was in the dorms.

I froze again, cursing.

I looked at my shaky palms and stood up, facing the wall. No.

Nonononono.

I had only suspected. Only on a hunch, only on some body language.

But now, I had proof.

The only other person who had been with Sam and Ari had been Jacks.