Among Us: Salvation

Chapter 6: One of Their Own

Rage-filled strides beat a rhythm against the panelled floor. For Severn, it sounded like a thousand warriors clattering on their drums, calling in the battle he knew he would lose. No white flags this time, no retreating in the face of pain. He accepted the loss and swallowed down the grief.

They always do this, his mind taunted, his past hurt creeping towards him on feather-light feet. They see the target you have painted on yourself and take what they're owed. What made you think this one would be different?

He rounded the corner into the storage room and found the man he was searching for riffling through a crate, his elbows poking out at rigid angles. Severn cleared his throat.

A mop of tangled hair emerged from the metal box and Nikolai greeted him with a heartbreakingly cheery grin. "Sev, I didn't realise you were there," he said, waving him over. "Check these out. You should try one on." He held out a bright pink flamingo hat and wiggled it at him.

"I... uh..." Severn peered down at his feet as though the answer lay in the worn mesh fabric of his boots. "If you have a moment, I need some help in the med bay." He headed back down the corridor without waiting for a response, knowing that the blue-suited astronaut would follow him like a faithful lamb being led to the butcher's table.

"Are you all right?" Nikolai said, catching up with his brisk strides and falling in beside him. "You're not ill, are you?"

Severn tensed his jaw and gritted his teeth to stop himself from screaming. What he'd once unwisely welcomed as genuine compassion felt tainted, poisoned by a lie.

Silence pursued them into the med bay. Inside the room, he secured the digital latch behind them.

"What's going on?" Nikolai asked at the clang of the locking bolts.

"Step on the scanner."

"I don't-"

"Do it!" Severn all but howled.

With a sickening realisation, Nikolai shook his head. The past few months struck him like a crowbar to the face, raw and unrelenting, the bitter sting a fitting start to the punishment for his deception.

"I had some suspicions, but I dismissed them because I'd stupidly convinced myself you were innocent," Severn said, mousy quiet despite his brave front. "But you're not, are you? You turn into smoke to crawl through vents and kill people." A whirlwind of fury and hurt coursed through him, but he remained steadfast. "I believed so much that you weren't the killer. I would have done anything to prove your innocence, and I was naïve enough to let you trick me with false kindness."

"That was not false kindness," the taller man insisted. "I meant everything. Every word."

"You'll deny that, but you won't deny that you have killed people?"

"No, I won't deny that, because it's true." Nikolai drew his tablet from his belt and set it on the medical cot. He backed away and gestured for Severn to take it. "The situation isn't as straightforward as you might assume."

"Why should I trust you? You lied to me. You lied to everyone."

"Skyline contacted me and ordered me to kill everybody aboard the Skeld. It's all on the tablet. You can verify the communications."

"If that's the case, why didn't you say no?"

"Sev, look me in the eye and tell me you honestly think I would be here if I could refuse the contract."

Despite the secrets and the blades of deception cracking at his ribs to get to the deepest part of his soul, Severn couldn't bring himself to condemn him before at least hearing his defence. "Kill me," he said, bloodshot eyes lifting from the tablet.