Loyalties (an Among Us fanfic)

14. Red

The next thing I knew was Blue brutally slamming my head into the wall. As my brain bounced around violently, I dropped the weapon and staggered backwards to the doorway of Electrical. It took me forever to regain my sense of direction and stop myself from falling.

And, oh, how my heart dropped when I saw Blue's expression.

"God . . . God damn it, Red," he hissed, both hands curling into fists. "Just . . . why?"

His tone scared me shitless. I couldn't even answer. What I could do, however, was reach down and take the knife as quickly as possible to try again. Blue charged at me so fast that I had to throw myself back into the hallway. My back rammed into the wall, but I didn't let go of my knife this time.

"Just when I thought I could trust someone for the first time, the universe decided to say no,"  he seethed, storming out of Electrical.

I backed away into Storage while shaking. "It's okay, Blue," I replied. "Nobody's perfect. Nobody's right all the time."

"The whole time, you were playing me. The whole time, you were playing everybody." He sounded heartbroken and furious and hysterical. Every word was a needle to my ears.

I almost tripped over a pale green crate. "No, Blue, not the whole time. Not when I boarded this ship. I had no intentions to kill anybody. I wasn't even supposed to be an impostor, and killing people was the last thing I wanted to do—"

"I don't give a shit whether you were innocent or not, whether you wanted to kill or not. Doesn't change the fact that you've just slaughtered the rest of the crew, does it?" he yelled, following me to the north hallway. "In fact, it's worse—when and why in God's name did you switch sides?!"

I took a deep breath, the memory still clear as glass in my head. "After I kicked Cyan off and we left Mira HQ, I went to talk with Orange . . . and I guess you could say I walked in at the wrong time."

"Did that dick actually convince you to murder the rest of your colleagues?"

My grip on the knife was as stable as my sanity. "Please, Blue—he showed me the truth. You don't know the Human Empire like us. You don't know the atrocities they've done."

As we walked into Cafeteria, Blue sped up. "Bastards. Both of you. You and Orange can go burn in hell together."

I nodded and felt the tears quickly returning. "I know. . . ."

I suddenly stopped backing up, and then I lunged at Blue to slice him up like a swordswoman. He easily sidestepped my slash, but I attacked again. And again. Many times. Of course, my skills with weapons was far from a swordswoman's, and I had about zero eye-hand coordination. Even so, Blue seemed to be playing this carefully. He knew just as well as I that one slip-up could determine the winner right then and there.

It was like our own little dance—both of us were moving around Cafeteria on our feet, making moves based on what the other would do. We were practically synchronized. Except the price for not being able to keep up was our lives.

Blue dodged another jab, but instead of leaping away, he grabbed me with both arms. Before I knew it, he'd flung me into one of the tables. I knocked it over with a deafening thud then fell right next to it. When I tried getting up, though, my hip suffered, and I needed to place a hand on the fallen table for support.