III.

Evie woke up.

The last thing she remembered, she was tearing at the hair of her bastard of a girlfriend, furious and heartbroken that she’d wasted so much time on someone too naive and pig-headed to learn anything, who would always put her second to some old creep she wasn’t even considered qualified to meet.

Bastard of an ex-girlfriend, actually.

As Evie came back to herself, she realized she wasn’t in Amanda’s apartment anymore. Instead, she was laying on a grated metal floor in a giant warehouse storeroom. The air in the old room was musty and tasted metallic, like the leftover blood from their fight drying on her lips.

She sat up cautiously. The grates beneath her were awkward and stiff, barely giving her hands any purchase as she tried to scramble upright. When she’d finally righted herself, she crossed her legs and took a moment to adjust to the dim lighting.

The walls were corrugated metal, with big, sweeping red-brown rust stains dashed across them. She was raised nearly a full story above the ground, but she could make out concrete floors and wood boxes below her. The platform she was on was wide enough to fit ten of her, so at least she wouldn’t fall over the edge and break her neck by trying to stand up in this creepy murder warehouse. 

The ridiculous description came instinctively, a baseless insult to make herself feel better, but it sent a shiver down her spine. She’d known the stories about this town even before she moved here for school - probably had them to thank for being able to afford an apartment on a part time student salary without her family’s money - and between the cheap newspaper covers and the rumor mill, it seemed like things had gotten worse recently.

Please, Evie reminded herself, there’s no way I’m here because of the Jigsaw killer. My ex is just a vindictive freak. She took a deep breath, and rose slowly to her feet. Her back ached in protest. She should sue Amanda for damages.

Where the fuck was Amanda, anyways?

Evie bit back the urge to call out for her indignantly. She didn’t need shit from Amanda anymore. Not that Amanda had ever had much to offer her to begin with. She’d get out of this… whatever this was on her own. 

Step one, find a ladder and climb down. She didn’t see one, but that didn’t mean one didn’t exist. She had enough room to do a full circle around the platform, try to find a way off.

Evie turned around. 

Forget suing. She was going to kill Amanda.

She was first greeted by a blast of harsh, off-yellow light directly in her eyes. But worse than that was the sight the light revealed in front of her.

Just below the platform she was standing on were two large glass tanks. The tops of them came up to foot level with her, just beyond the lip of the grate she’d woken up on. There were strange mesh lids preventing her from sticking her hands in, held in place by huge padlocks she needed to stretch to reach.

And inside each of those tanks was a fucking human being.

“Hello, Evie. Would you like to play a game?”

The disembodied voice was modulated, but Evie could tell who it was immediately. It seemed that vindictive freak of an ex and Jigsaw killer weren’t mutually exclusive after all.

“For months, you have felt qualified to direct—to control—other peoples’ hearts. But are you capable of listening to your own? I thought it would be fitting to make you choose between two people you love. But you don’t really love anyone, do you?”

Goddamn, Amanda was even more fucked up than Evie thought she was.

“Instead, you will have to choose between what J…” the loudspeaker crackled, and the voice it carried buckled. “…you will have to choose between the relationships you expect others to throw away for your sake. Your teacher, or your family.”

She couldn’t be serious. This couldn’t be happening.

“In front of you are two tanks. One holds your brother, the only family you have left, and the other holds your professor, the best shot you have at being something other than a starving artist. Each tanks holds a key, placed on the floor. You have until both tanks fill with water to choose who will live and who will die.”

Dr. Edwards stood in one tank, screaming through a gag Amanda must have put on him and trying his hardest to push off the mesh lid holding the tank closed. His voice turned from searing anger to shrieking pain, and Evie realized the mesh was made of crisscrossing barbed wire.

In contrast, the brother she hadn’t seen in years slouched in the other one, seemingly resigned to his fate.

“As the tanks flood, the keys will rise to the top. You may fish out a key from one tank only. Once it is removed, a mechanism will activate, locking the lid to the tank and dooming the person inside to certain death by drowning. However, you may then use that key to unlock the other tank and save the one inside. Who will live, and who will die? Make your choice.”

Evie winced at the slow sound of water splattering onto the floor of the tanks. She hated that she was even entertaining this. She should probably spend her time appealing to whatever conscience Amanda had, but the idea of groveling at her metaphorical feet made her almost as sick as the choice placed in front of her and twice as angry. 

So instead she dropped to her knees and crawled over to the tank her brother was in. If he was too lazy to try to save his own life, she wouldn’t be. He’d always been like this: he’d hated her for leaving their parents’ before he could, even though he was two years older and the only thing stopping himself. 

Dr. Edwards, by contrast, was reasonable, and capable. An actually mature adult by all accounts.  She had to trust he could figure this out on his own.

The water had risen to cover their feet now. She could tell just from the sound of it flowing that it wasn’t hitting dry ground anymore. Each second was marked by sickening little splashes.

Evie inspected the tank lid cautiously, careful not to cut herself on the wire. It seemed to be constructed of two layers, each with a thick metal edge. Barbed wire crisscrossed the bottom layer, stretching from one edge to the other. The top layer seemed empty but for a hollow groove inset horizontally across the center.

That was probably how the lid would close after she took the key out. If she took the key out. There was no reason she had to play by this game’s rules if she could figure out another solution.

Her brother had the gall to wave weakly at her. If she hadn’t spent eighteen years of her life with him, his eyes wouldn’t be enough to tell he was smiling sarcastically at her through the leather gag, but he was still her brother, and he was still as infuriating as ever.

From her upward angle, it was hard to tell how much the water was rising, but she got a vague sense by the changing color of her brother’s jeans and the very bottom of her professor’s coat. Evie tried not to compare the dark, wet splotches climbing up their clothes with blood splatters, but they were just as threatening.

Dr. Edwards was banging on the tank directly now, trying to shatter the glass. Evie’s stomach sank with the realization it probably wasn’t glass at all, but polycarbonate panels. He could hit his fists against it until his knuckles bled - and he probably would. It wasn’t going to work.

She didn’t want to stick her fingers anywhere near that barbed wire, but it seemed like figuring out how to separate the two layers of the lid was her best bet. Nervously, Evie traced the crease in the metal with her fingers, wincing when the bottom of her hand was pricked by a barb. She ignored it and pushed on, searching desperately for any weak spot. She was a sculptor. She knew where to look for weak spots in constructions, how to tell when one was liable to buckle or collapse.

She tried not to let her heart sink when she realized this one wasn’t going to. 

Why did Amanda have to be good at her messed-up secret torture job? Couldn’t she have been as much of a fuck-up of a serial killer as she was a girlfriend?

Wet spots were blooming up their midsections now. Her brother’s flannel flowed loosely around him, billowing out under the new pressure. Dr. Edwards’ jacket was too stiff to do the same. Evie didn’t want to know how constricting that thing must feel sopping wet, but the way he was contorting his back and shoulders to try to get it off gave her a hint.

Were they actually going to die?

By the time her professor had worked his jacket off, he had to bend his elbows at an awkward angle to keep it from dropping into the water. Instead, he wrapped it in a protective wad around his hands and pushed them hard against the barbed wire. 

It was admirable, but it came to no avail. Every thud of his padded fists, every pained grunt, sent a shuddering wince down Evie’s spine. She was furious, and feeling weak, and trying desperately not to be scared.

But she was running out of options. 

Bracing herself, Evie took a deep breath and forced her hands forward, gripping onto the barbed wire and trying her damndest to bend it into a wider opening. Plenty of wire was flexible enough to move with your hands.

Not this. The barbs bit into her palms, and grabbing at the wire to twist it only scraped their sharp edges roughly against her skin, drawing long streaks of blood. 

God damn it, I can’t be losing more blood, I still haven’t eaten - 

She drew her hands back to her body, wishing she had a way to bandage them. She wasn’t going to do anyone any good unconscious. Instead she sat back and panted, trying to catch her breath. As if she could avoid overexerting herself when her heart was racing.

As if she could afford to take a break when the water in the tanks kept rising.

It was up to their shoulders now - the bottom of Dr. Edwards’, the top of her brother’s. Rising up his neck, cradling his face. 

Evie saw the key. 

It was level with his jawline, connected to a surprisingly delicate-looking metal chain. She supposed it had to be, to float in the water instead of sink. 

She nearly reached out and grabbed it on reflex, if only to do something, but she remembered the instructions and just barely stopped herself.

Whoever’s key she took probably wasn’t coming out of this room with her.

She couldn’t take her brother’s. She didn’t want to take her professor’s, to kill him, but she couldn’t take her brother’s. Couldn’t do that to the boy who snuck into the garage with her to play with their dad’s tools, who took his first photos of her novice sculptures, who stole her favorite teddy bear when she was thirteen to patch it up for her as a surprise.

That sarcastic look in his eyes was long gone. They were wild, now, staring at her as the water crept slowly up his face.

She didn’t want to help him. To give in to this nightmarish scenario Amanda had put her in. To prioritize some jerk from her past instead of the man who wanted to open so many doors to her future.

But she had to.

On trembling legs, Evie stood up and walked over to Dr. Edwards’s tank. He’d given up fighting it by now, breathing heavily as the water tickled his throat. He’d need his air soon enough. 

“I’m sorry,” Evie said, and she plunged her hand through the barbed wire and into the water.

As soon as Dr. Edwards realized what Evie was doing, his eyes widened and a renewed flash of energy came over him. He flailed his arms, reaching out to grab her wrist, but it was too late. Evie had grabbed the key, yanking it free of its chain and reeling back with all the force her body could muster. 

With a sickening metallic sound, the top layer of the lid shot closed, a metal sheet racing from one side of the tank to the other. It locked into place with a thunk.

Her wrist was bleeding, covered in deep cuts streaked across her skin, and she was shaking. Dr. Edwards was screaming at her, muffled first by the gag and then by the water and finally by the seal of his tomb, but she had a key in her hand and could save her brother. That had to count for something. 

Evie didn’t want to stand. She was terrified if she did she would stumble over her feet. So she shuffled over to the other tank on her knees, using only one of her hands as leverage, grasping onto the key too desperately with the other. If she opened her hand, it could fall, and that would be the end of it. She would have killed Dr. Edwards not just for no good reason, but no reason at all. 

She shakily slotted the key into the lid of her brother’s tank and turned the lock. 

The lid came disconnected from the tank. She heard it disengage with a satisfying click. It was almost enough to block out her professor’s dying shrieks in the background. 

With trembling hands, she reached on either side of the tank and pulled off the now-unsealed lid. She set it on the platform beside her, careful to avoid the barbed wire base, and reached out to her brother. His grip was cold and clammy and nearly dragged her down into the tank with him, but together they managed to work him out.

Evie didn’t think she’d ever been this happy to see him. “Oh my god, you’re okay.” Her hands were shaking, but she managed to undo his gag. 

Amanda knew she shouldn’t read over this stranger’s loyalty card, but she was too damn curious not to. 

“Only ‘cause of you,” he said, voice hoarse. “Come on, let’s get going.” 

“You know how it is with my brother,” Evie lamented, burying her face in the crook of Amanda’s neck. “I don’t miss my parents, ever, but I hate to admit it, I miss him sometimes. He didn’t treat ruining my life like a career.” Then she’d barely resisted a laugh. “No, that’s what his shitty photography was for.”

He stood up, tugging her with him. She was almost embarrassed to lean against him, especially when she had just saved his life, but she felt woozy and his side was a nice solid support.

She needed that support when Amanda stepped forward on the floor beneath them, because between the exhaustion and the fury she would have collapsed at the sight of her otherwise.

“That doesn’t seem like the most appropriate names for a pair of siblings.”

Amanda was standing a few yards from the tanks, probably here to gloat and watch Dr. Edwards die. She was wearing sensible jeans and a t-shirt, with an extremely unsensible black robe draped over her shoulders.

“Oh, believe me, the kids at school made sure we were well aware of that. I’ve already told you I was the class weirdo, haven’t I?”

And she had the gall to be smiling.

Eve Faulkner-Stanheight.

“See, Adam? I told you she’d make the right choice!”

Evie’s back shot up ramrod straight. Beside her, her brother winced.

“I’m not dying so you can get back at your fucking girlfriend.”

“You’re not going to die, I promise. When it comes down to it, people will always pick their family. Always. Besides, it’s not just to get back at Evie. It’s to protect us, and John, and the work that we do.”

“You understand, Evie,” Amanda said. “You’re not going to stand back and be passive. You’re going to do the right thing. Even when it’s hard. You’re like us.”

Us.

Evie’s head was swimming. 

Her brother was fucking in on this. 

“How dare you!” she screamed, pushing away from Adam and stumbling closer to the ledge to yell at Amanda. “How fucking dare the both of you!” She was surrounded on all sides by serial killers, but the exhaustion and betrayal were overwhelming any fear. “You think I wanted that? You think I liked the decision I just made? Like I had any real choice in it?”

Evie refused to cry. She wasn’t going to crumble to the floor and cry, no matter how much every straining muscle in her body wanted to, no matter how much she felt her brow furrow and sting from sheer concentration of holding back tears. She wasn’t going to give either of these two the satisfaction. 

“You’re both monsters! And you want to trick yourselves into thinking I could stoop down to your level?”

Her legs swayed under her. Her arms were still bleeding from a dozen different places and she’d been through hell.

Amanda was saying something, an explanation maybe, some horrible attempt at manipulation, but Evie was screaming over it so she didn’t have to hear it. Her face was warm. Her head ached. She was barely registering her own words anymore. But all that mattered was she wasn’t taking in Amanda’s, either.

Adam was reaching out to her, trying to calm her down, but Evie refused to be placated. She swatted away his hand and stepped forward to get away from him. 

Her knees buckled under her. The grate caught her ankle and her foot twisted painfully. She went down like a sack of bricks, swaying to the left far more than she should. Her head banged against the platform as she crumpled like a ragdoll, the force of it sending her body onto the concrete floor. 

The world went black.

And Evie didn’t wake up this time.