Among Us: Salvation

Chapter 3: Blame

Raised voices swirled around the cafeteria in a cacophony of frustration and easily provoked tempers. Rage clamoured to be heard, and the round table rocked as several crewmates rose from their seats to continue their shouting matches. Whatever friendships may have blossomed during the voyage splintered, draining through the fractures with every pointed finger and accusation.

"Will everybody stop yelling?" Uma demanded, lifting her hands to appease for calm. "Arguing is counterproductive."

"How do we know it's not you doing this?" Isla said, her cheeks flushed a heated red and her fists pressed into the cheap wooden table.

"That's low, isn't it?" the captain spat. "Considering everything I've done to get Octavia's death investigated, don't you think it would be rather stupid of me to be asking for that if I was the killer?"

"Not if you were covering your own back," George reasoned, inclining his head to Isla to bolster her allegation. "You could be the one pulling the strings. How can we be sure we can trust you?"

"How do we know we can trust you?" Athena shot at the pink astronaut before the captain could respond. "How do we know you didn't sneak out and murder Theo?"

"Says the person who hated him."

"I hate most people. He wasn't special."

"George was with me," Martha said from her fiance's side. "We had dinner late, and then we went back to our dormitory at nine."

"I think it was Nikolai," Selene threw into the mix, glowering at the man in question. "He always isolates himself from us, barely speaks a word, and I've never seen him do any of his tasks. If you ask me, that's suspicious."

"I have," Severn said. The eyes of the room turned to his mousy voice, and he shrunk a little further into his seat. For the first time in over an hour, the monotonous murmur of the vending machines and the slight groans of the ship could be heard. "And he returned my ID to me last night after I'd left it in the admin office."

Having spent the meeting in silence, Nikolai sat up in his seat at Severn's defence of him. He went to speak, but withdrew at the last moment.

"That means nothing," Selene said, shrugging.

"Doesn't it?" Severn replied. "If it was him doing this, he had the perfect tool to deflect the blame. He could have kept my ID card, dropped it by Theo's body, or logged into the system with it, and used it as evidence against me. But he didn't. He gave it back to me. And what was stopping him from killing me last night? I was alone. If he was going to kill somebody, I was right there."

At his side, George shuffled, his knuckles blanched white from the pressure of squeezing them into fists during the furious exchanges. "You seem to have given this a lot of consideration, Sev," he said, softening the angered tone he'd taken with Uma and Athena for the sake of his tender-hearted friend.

"It's logical," Severn insisted. He ran the conversation from the previous night through his mind, recalling as much as he could. His eyes swept over to the captain. "Nikolai returned my ID at about ten and told me he was heading back down to help you with some tasks. Did he?"

Uma's brow creased, and she clicked her tongue. "Yes. He met me at about five past. We didn't finish our work until gone midnight."

"And when did Theo's vitals drop to zero?"

"The system said just before eleven."

Severn resisted the urge to smirk as a blessed calm finally washed over the crewmates and a hushed reflection filled the silence. Even though it wouldn't clean away the horrid remarks already made, he hoped they'd take some time to hesitate before firing their scathing attacks at one another again. "The only way we're going to figure this out is if we work through it together. If we use only our own misgivings about each other as evidence, we will more than likely end up condemning the wrong person."