Chapter Text
The crystal of his scotch glass clinks against his platinum ring. It’s the only sound in his immediate vicinity that feels real. Around him, the viewing gallery hums with the muted, perfumed murmurs of his peers.
His eyes flick back to the central holoscreen.
There they are. Subject 104 and Subject 112.
He leans forward, the leather of his armchair creaking softly. By all metrics of human psychology and evolutionary biology, they should have turned on each other three weeks ago. Survival demands selfishness; the Game is specifically coded to reward betrayal. It is a math equation where love equals death.
“Oh, how I adore those two,” Kim sighs dreamily, chin in hand as she twirls a lock of black hair around her finger.
He glances at her, but doesn’t speak behind his black visor mask.
124 adjusts his grip, taking more of 230’s weight even though his own breathing is shallow.
They stumble into the alcove of a ruined, rusted out transit husk. 230 slides down the corroded metal wall, leaving a streak of crimson behind. 124 doesn't leave him. Instead, he drops to his knees in the blood stained ground, framing 230’s grime-streaked face with trembling, bruised hands. Words are exchanged, too breathless and broken for the gallery’s audio scrubbers to cleanly pick up, but the translation isn't necessary.
124 leans in, pressing his cracked lips against 230’s in a desperate, clinging kiss.
A collective, breathless gasp ripples through the velvet draped viewing room.
Kim’s manicured hands flutter to her cheeks, the diamonds on her wrists catching the ambient light of the holoscreen. "Oh, my god," she squeals, the pitch of her voice piercing the refined quiet of the room. "Did you see that? Tell me the drones caught that angle!"
Around her, a chorus of high-society women erupts into a frenzy of delighted, fluttering whispers. They lean over their crystal tables, eyes wide, fanning themselves like teenagers at a boyband concert rather than donors of a slaughterhouse. They are the platinum tier sponsors, the heiresses and bored socialites whose bottomless trust funds keep the Game's exorbitant orbital servers running.
He doesn't watch the kiss.
He watches the reflection of the women on his screen.
“Oh my— I told you, didn’t I tell you? I knew there was love in the air! Ever since the sexy little one there swapped the cross–”
“Sexy?” Mando repeated, frowning. “He looks like an evil minion.”
“It’s called taste, Menudo, fucking try it sometime,” Kim snaps.
“You want to taste that gay fucking minion stop riding your high horse.”
“I’m not riding a high horse! I am a feminist!”
“Kim shut the fuck up—” Mando slapped her on the arm, gesturing wildly to the screen, where 230 was suddenly shoving 124 backward, violently scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand and pantomiming a dramatic, full-body dry heave.
Kim’s jaw dropped, her hands flying up to her hair in horror. "No! What is he doing? Why did he ruin it? What’s his problem?”
Mando howled with laughter, slapping his knee so hard his champagne sloshed over the rim of his crystal flute and onto the carpet. "Because they're psychopaths, Kim! I told you! Look at them! The romance is dead, sweetheart. They’re about to gut each other."
“My minion is not a psychopath,” Kim pouted, picking up her flute again to take a suspiciously passive aggressive sip.
“Yeah keep sipping your fucking champagne and imagining its that plebian’s piss,” Mando mutters under his breath.
“Menudo!”
“My name is Menende—“
“Wait what’s he doing now?” Kim squinted at the screen like a granny. “What’s he doing?”
The Game Maker reached out with a gloved hand and tapped the console, amplifying the audio feed from the stairwell. The sterile hum of the VIP room was suddenly pierced by the metallic scrape of boots on concrete, and a voice:
“Pow.”
Mando leaned forward, “He’s gonna do it! Look at his eyes, Kim! He’s gonna slit his boyfriend’s throat for a ticket out!”
“He is not!” Kim shrieked, slamming her champagne flute down. “He’s just deflecting because he’s scared of intimacy! Right?” She looked toward the silent Game Maker for validation, but he offered none.
“I want them to have sex,” Monika announces.
"Shut the fuck up Monika,” Mando and Kim spat in unison.
“Fucking Monika,” Kim sneers. “Fucking freak, look at her. Motherfucker’s teeth throwing gang signs. Motherfucker’s eye so lazy one half is searching for her tits.”
“Other half is looking for her father.” Mando elbowed Kim, nodding to Monika, who was currently squinting into her champagne flute as if the bubbles might eventually arrange themselves into an ocular prescription.
Monika then looked up, and loudly announced: “I like this song,"
Kim turned the volume down.
"Moving on," Kim says, turning in the front seat to face the back, creaking beneath the movement. "Sometimes I have sex with the survivors and pretend they're my sister.”
Silence hangs. Everyone turns and stares.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" The Game Maker asks slowly.
Kim looked around, “Oh so this is suddenly not a safe space.”
“What are you talking about?” He repeats, brows furrowed behind his mask.
“I imply… nothing.”
"No I think you're implying that you want to shag your fucking sister." Mando frowns.
"It's not illegal to be misunderstood," Kim buries her whole mouth in her champagne glass.
"It is if you're misunderstood within ten feet of a playground." The Game Maker continues.
"Oh so now I'm the local kiddy fiddler."
"Well." Mando says.
"Oh. Oh. Oh my--- Wow. You--- Wow---" Kim sputters over her righteous indignation, "These implications--- just---"
"Why are you trying to be an incest-princess!"
On the screen, the stairwell held. Thanos’ finger gun was still aimed at Namgyu’s chest. Namgyu’s actual gun was aimed somewhere between Thanos’ ribs. Gi-hun stood behind them, looking less like a man and more like a witness who had accidentally wandered into the wrong religion.
The footsteps kept coming. Unhurried. Which, in the Game, was always worse.
“See?” Kim said, almost pleading now. “He’s stalling. That means he doesn’t want to do it.”
“Kim you cannot keep making witty commentary after you just admitted to incestous fantasies.” Mando said.
Kim recoiled as if he’d thrown acid. “That is such a grotesquely reductive way to describe vulnerability.”
On the screen, the corridor camera twitched as one of the drones recalibrated, pulling the frame wider. The concrete stairwell yawned black beneath them. Above, the landing light flickered once, then again, turning the three survivors into jerky little cutouts of themselves.
Thanos still smiled.
Not a grin, really. Nothing warm in it. It just split his face in a way that suggested the muscles had forgotten their original purpose and were now improvising under stress. His eyes stayed flat. His finger-gun hovered. Namgyu’s real gun didn’t waver, but his wrist had gone rigid with the kind of strain that only comes when your body is begging you to fire before your brain has made peace with it. He held up an identical finger gun.
Gi-hun looked between them with the hollow resignation of a man who had lived through too many variations of the same lesson.
Then, from below—
A helmet appeared first.
Matte black. Featureless visor. Then shoulders. Then the whole body, rising from the stairwell like something assembled out of angles and command structure. Behind it, another. And another. Behind those, movement in both corridors, boots, masks, gloved hands carrying batons and rifles.
The gallery quieted all at once. Even Kim shut up.
The Game Maker tilted his head almost imperceptibly.
Down below, Namgyu’s face drained. “No,” he said, and this time there was no swagger in it. No posturing. Just naked, immediate animal fear. He laughed, a short burst:
“What the fuck—”
—----
Gi-hun answered without taking his eyes off the growing line of black bodies.
“Make peace with your god.”
Namgyu looks at Thanos’s too wide eyes, then back at the staircase.
His laugh died in his throat like something swatted mid-flight. His free hand came up to his mouth and he bit the inside of his lower lip hard enough that his cheek dimpled.
Thanos shrugged his shoulders.
"Okay." He sniffed. "Okay. Cool."
"Stop talking," Thanos said pleasantly.
"I'm not talking—"
"You're talking."
"I'm processing—"
"Out loud."
"Thanos—"
"With your mouth."
Namgyu's eyes flicked between the lead enforcer and Thanos. He was picking at his lip again. A rapid, twitching motion. His jaw worked around nothing.
"Okay," Namgyu said to no one in particular. His voice came out wrong, pitched too high,. "Okay. You gonna put that down?” He raised his own hand. Shaped it. Index and middle finger extended, thumb cocked. A mirror image. A matching barrel aimed back across the gap.
Thanos looked at his own finger gun. Then at Namgyu's. His head tilted like a dog hearing a frequency. Then he fired it.
"Pow."
"Pow," Namgyu fired back.
"Pow pow." Thanos grin widened.
"Pow—" His other hand, the one with the actual gun, was trembling at his side, and he knew Thanos could see it, and he knew Thanos knew he knew, and all of it was just noise layered on noise layered on that animal whine climbing the back of his skull—
“Pew—”
Namgyu lunged.
He made it maybe three steps, arm cocked back, teeth bared, something between a scream and a hiccup building in his chest—
And Thanos's finger-gun became a two-finger V-shape.
And the two-finger V-shape went directly into Namgyu's eyes.
Poke.
Index and middle finger, slightly spread, jabbed forward with the casual commitment of a man pressing an elevator button. Direct hit. Both sockets.
Namgyu made a sound. It came from somewhere between his sinuses and his soul, a strangled, gargling yelp, high and wet. His hands flew to his face. He stumbled sideways, doubled over, palms grinding into his eye sockets, and for one suspended, absurd second the stairwell held nothing but the sound of a grown man hissing through his teeth and blinking against his own fingers.
"What the fuck—"
Gi-hun ran.
Turned and bolted down the corridor with the silent, efficient panic of a man who had been waiting for exactly this window and had been pre-calculating his exit trajectory since the first finger-gun went up. His footsteps echoed once, twice, then faded into the dark.
Namgyu pulled his hands from his face. His eyes were red, streaming. And he was laughing.
Not the performative laugh he used as a weapon. This one was bewildered, high and genuine and confused, the laugh of someone who has just had a bucket of water dumped on them at a funeral. His shoulders shook with it. His mouth hung open.
"Did you just—" He wheezed. Blinked hard. Tears running. "Did you just fucking Three Stooges me? In the middle of—"
Thanos snatched the gun from Namgyu's slack hand.
The laugh died.
Namgyu looked down at his empty fingers. Looked up. Thanos was already three steps away, already pivoting toward the corridor Gi hun had vanished into, already raising the stolen weapon with the loose wristed grip of someone who didn't quite care where the bullets went as long as they went somewhere.
"Oh—" Namgyu breathed. "Oh, you cunt—Oi!”
Thanos broke into a sprint.
"OI!"
Thanos rounded a corner—
The taser hit him between the shoulder blades.
The sound it made was thin and electric and deeply undramatic, a small, fizzing snap, like a lighter refusing to catch. Thanos seized mid stride, every muscle locking at once, and went down like a felled tree.
The gun skittered from his fingers, spinning across the concrete in a lazy halfcircle, glinting under the failing corridor light.
Namgyu moved on all fours, scrambling, fingernails scraping concrete, one eye still half-shut and weeping, he closed the distance in two desperate lurches, grabbed the grip, rolled onto his back, and fired.
The shots were wild. Upward, sideways, into the dark of the stairwell with the blind conviction of a man swatting at wasps. The muzzle flash lit the walls in rapid, stuttering frames. Concrete dust bloomed. A ricochet screamed off a railing.
The third shot caught an enforcer.
Not center mass. Somewhere on the edge of the shoulder, maybe the arm, enough to buckle them sideways, enough to make them human for one shocked instant. A grunt. A stumble. The rifle clattering against the wall.
Then a boot came down on Namgyu's throat.
The sole of a regulation boot pressing into the soft trachea. Namgyu's eyes bulged. His mouth opened. The gun was kicked from his hand, far this time, vanishing into the dark.
He choked. And then he laughed.
It came out wrong, squeezed, a wheezing rattle that sounded like a garbage disposal eating a balloon. His chest heaved under the boot and the sound kept coming, bubbling up from whatever part of him had stopped distinguishing between terror and hilarity three rounds ago.
Two enforcers hauled Thanos up. He was limp, blinking, twitching at the edges, the residual current still chasing itself through his nervous system. His head lolled. His eyes found Namgyu on the floor.
Namgyu found him right back.
"Oh, so that's how it is, Thanos!" Namgyu screamed. His voice was shredded, half-crushed, and delighted. The boot shifted on his throat and he kept going anyway, words leaking out around the pressure like water through a crack. "That's how it is, yeah?! You're fucked!"
Thanos blinked at him. Didn't respond. His jaw worked around nothing. A thin line of drool connected his lower lip to his chin.
"Go after him," one of the enforcers said, gesturing toward the corridor Gi-hun had taken. Two units peeled off, boots already moving.
"You're not going nowhere at the end of the game!" he howled, craning his neck against the boot, trying to aim his voice at Thanos’s half conscious body. Spit flew. His eyes were wild, red, streaming, incandescent. "Fucking PUSSY! Run, yeah! Run! See where it gets you! See where it—"
"No more of that, lovebirds."
The voice came through a filter. Clipped, modulated, stripped of identity—
Namgyu stopped.
His mouth was still open. His chest still heaved. But the shine in his eyes flickered, interrupted by something smaller and more genuine: confusion. Pure, reflexive confusion. His brow creased. His lips moved around the shape of the word without producing sound.
Lovebirds?
The moment lasted less than a second. Then Namgyu bucked. Explosive, full-body, the kind of movement that only comes from someone who has never once in their life successfully calculated the odds before acting. He twisted under the boot, grabbed for the nearest enforcer's sidearm, fingers scrabbling at the holster, at the thigh plate, at anything within reach—
They hit him. Hard. Across the jaw. His head snapped sideways and his hand fell away.
"Easy, easy—" he gasped, the words tumbling out before the pain had even registered, his voice cracking clean in half on the second one. He caught himself. Swallowed. Smoothed it down like a wrinkled shirt. "Easy. I’m cool. It's all good in Namgyu-town. We're all—we're all friends here, yeah? We're all—"
He grabbed for the gun again.
The taser caught him in the ribs. His whole body clenched in a violent contraction, teeth slamming together, spine arching off the concrete. A sound came out of him that wasn't a word.
The second taser hit the base of his neck. This time his eyes rolled. His fingers spasmed open and closed, open and closed. His heels drummed against the floor once, twice, then stopped.
They grabbed him under the arms.
Dragged.
His boots left twin streaks through the grime. His head hung forward, chin on his chest, a thin rope of saliva swinging from his lower lip. He was still breathing, rapid, shallow, the breath of a dog that has been running too long in the heat.
From somewhere far away, or maybe very close, his mouth moved.
"...'s all good..."
The words were barely there.
"...'s all good in Namgyu-town..."
The corridor swallowed him.
—---------
The world returned in fragments of pain and cold concrete.
Namgyu was being dragged. His heels bounced against the grated floor, sending rhythmic shocks up his spine. His jaw ached with a deep, throbbing pulse where the enforcer had struck him. He sniffed, a harsh, wet sound, tasting blood in the back of his throat. His fingers twitched compulsively against the floorboards, trying to find purchase, trying to find a weapon, trying to find anything.
Ahead of him, two other pink enforcers hauled Thanos by the armpits. The man wasn't struggling. He was walking with them, matching their militant stride with a bouncy, exaggerated limp, his head lolling to the side.
"Lovely marching tempo, boys," Thanos chirped, his voice upbeat. "Really sets the mood. I feel like we’re on our way to a parade. Do we get sashes? I want a sash. Pink, if you’ve got it."
Seems he’s feeling chipper, again. Maybe the high-voltage taser had just factory-reset his brain. He was practically skipping between the two heavily armored guards.
"Quiet," one of the enforcers said, his voice distorted through the helmet's modulator.
"Right you are, captain!" Thanos said, flashing a bloody, too wide grin over his shoulder at Namgyu. "See you at the finish line, family! Don't trip, boy—!”
Then, without warning, Thanos jolted.
“Ah!” He yelped, high-pitched like a kicked puppy, jumping as if he’d been shocked again. “Did you just grab my ass?”
The enforcer on his left stuttered mid stride. “What?”
“You did! You fucking faggot, what the hell—this guy just grabbed my ass!” Thanos yelled, twisting in the enforcers' grip and pointing a limp, wagging finger. “Man just fucking fondled my egregious ass!”
The hallway went dead silent save for the dragging of boots. The other enforcers turned their featureless black visors toward the accused guard in silent judgment.
“I did not—” the enforcer began, his modulated voice cracking.
Thanos gasped, scandalized. “HR! I want HR! I know my rights as a meatbag—”
BZZZZZZ.
The enforcer jammed the electrified of the tazer tip directly into Thanos’s damaged eye socket. The wet, ruined one.
Thanos’s scream was spectacular. It tore out of his throat, raw and shredded, all the theatricality vanishing into pure, unadulterated agony. His legs gave out completely, dead weight dropping against the guards' grips as his body seized. Put the freak in his place.
Behind them, dragging along the floor, Namgyu snorted. He bit down on his own split lip to muffle it, his shoulders shaking with silent, manic laughter.
They reached a junction in the tunnels. The heavy iron doors above them groaned, gears grinding in the dark. Without a word, the enforcers split. Two dragged Thanos down the left corridor into the pitch black. The remaining two hauled Namgyu to the right.
His head jerked up so fast his neck cracked.
“Hey,” he says, oddly blank. Blinking at his right.
The separation meant execution. It meant processing. It meant the end. Not at the big dramatic finale with lights and blood and everyone watching. Now. Off-screen. Quiet. Administrative. A side door and a bolt to the skull and some bored bastard hosing the pieces into a drain.
Thanos was being hauled the other way, half-limp, half-bouncing, still twitching from the taser, still stupidly alive. His pulse began to hammer so hard it made his vision wobble. The corridor suddenly felt too narrow, too bright. His thoughts split into little animal fragments, all of them screaming over each other.
They’re splitting us up. They split people up when they don’t need them anymore. They split meat before they package it.
“Wait,” he heard himself say, but it came out thin. Cracked. Useless.
The enforcers kept walking.
“Wait—oi, no, no, no, hang on—"
He twisted so violently his shoulder screamed. One of the enforcers hauling him nearly lost their grip. Namgyu planted a heel, tried to wrench himself sideways, toward the other corridor, toward the retreating shape of Thanos’s back.
“Thanos!” he barked, and hated how wrong it sounded, too desperate, too much like fear. Thanos glanced back over one shoulder, grin smeared and uneven, one ruined eye wet and furious.
"Oi," Namgyu choked out, his voice cracking, pitching high and whiny. He dragged his heels harder, thrashing weakly like a caught fish. "Oi, wait—hold on, please! Where are we going? Hey! Look at me when I'm talking to you! Where the fuck are you taking me?"
Neither enforcer looked at him. The modulated voice was flat, bored. "It’s not an execution."
Namgyu froze mid-thrash.
"We're getting you to your dorms," the enforcer continued, his grip on Namgyu's bicep unyielding. "New dorms. New and improved."
Namgyu blinked. The rusted metal slipped slightly in his sweaty palm. His breathing was still ragged, his chest hitching, “But we… tried to escape—“
“Orders from above,” the same enforcer cut in, clipped.
Namgyu wiped a streak of drool and blood from his chin, his jittery fingers twitching against his leg.
"Oh," Namgyu muttered, his voice dropping an octave, trying to forcefully stitch his dignity back together. He adjusted his posture, straightening up slightly between the two massive guards. "Right. Obviously. Just—checking, ha-ha! Funny goofy. Silly boy. Making sure we’re all on the same page—”He dragged his feet deliberately, forcing the enforcer on his right to take more of his weight. "Dude, my shoes. You’re scuffing the limited editions, yeah? These are vintage, you uncultured cunt. Lift me up. Lift me up!"
The enforcer on his left ignored him, but the one on his right adjusted his grip, pulling Namgyu closer to his armored side.
Namgyu sniffed hard, his eyes darting frantically. His left hand hung limp, but his right hand, the one pressed against the enforcer’s tactical belt, was no longer jittering. It was perfectly, terrifyingly still.
His fingers ghosted over the enforcer’s rig. Snap. Clip.
He felt the cold, hard edge of the stun baton slide a fraction of an inch out of its sheath.
Namgyu’s posture shifted. The pathetic, weeping drag of his shoulders vanished, replaced by the coiled tension of a cornered dog. He calculated the distance to the throat. The angle of the armor plate. The probability of survival.
Just the rhythmic, heavy thud-drag of boots on concrete. Namgyu picked at his bottom lip again, the skin peeling under his thumbnail. His eyes darted between the two blank black visors.
Then, the enforcer holding his right arm leaned down. The featureless helmet hovered inches from Namgyu’s ear.
Namgyu’s fingers stopped. Heart pounding.
"Huge fan," the enforcer whispered.
Namgyu froze.
Smiled.
Not consciously, like a machine mid-cycle when the power drops.
He didn't look up.
"Of the two of you," the enforcer said, same volume, same angle, away from the mic sensitivity, he registered, they were turned away from it, "as a… pair. I just wanted—" A pause. Like they'd rehearsed this and were checking their place in the script. "We're not supposed to. Obviously. But if we could bet—"
Namgyu looked up.
"The two of you," the enforcer said quietly, "are the best thing this Game has produced in eleven seasons."
Eleven.
Namgyu sat with that number for a moment. Didn't let it show anywhere on his face.
"We talk," the enforcer continued, barely a murmur now. "In the rooms. After shifts. You've been the conversation for six days running. The cross thing. The corridor. Tonight—" A breath. Something almost like a laugh behind the filter, pulled back before it formed completely. "Tonight was—everyone's going to be talking about tonight. The VIP gallery is losing their absolute shit over you two. Haven't seen engagement metrics like this since Season Four."
Namgyu let his fingers drift away from the enforcer’s stun baton.
It slid back into its housing with a soft, compliant click.
"Yeah?" he said.
He rolled his shoulders, shaking off the residual numbness of the taser. He cleared his throat. Then, with a casual, almost breezy motion, he reached out and clapped the enforcer on his left squarely on the back.
Smack.
It was a light, experimental tap against the shoulder of the pink jumpsuit. A pub-greeting between friends.
"Good to know,” Namgyu said.
Instantly, both enforcers stopped dead.
The rhythmic thud-thud of their boots ceased, leaving only the low hum of the corridor's ventilation. The silence was sudden and suffocating. Both featureless, black visors slowly turned to face him.
Namgyu’s bravado vanished like spit on a hot skillet. His Adam's apple bobbed sharply as he swallowed dryly.
The enforcer on his left shifted. A gloved hand rose slowly into the air. Namgyu braced himself, waiting for the crack of a baton or the fatal pop of a sidearm.
The hand came down.
WHACK.
The impact hit Namgyu right between the shoulder blades. It was hard enough to rattle his teeth, expel all the air from his lungs in a oof, and send him stumbling a half step forward.
But it wasn't a strike. It was a pat on the back. It was the physical equivalent of a silent, begrudging nod.
Namgyu stood frozen for a second, wheezing slightly as he processed the dull ache in his spine. He looked up at the featureless visor. The enforcer didn't speak. He just lowered his hand, turned his head forward, and resumed walking. The second enforcer followed suit.
Namgyu wiped a fresh smear of blood from his nose, his chest puffing out just a fraction more as he jogged slightly to catch up with them.
“Plot armour,” he mutters under his breath.
—---
In the velvet draped quiet of the VIP viewing gallery, the audio feed from the corridor crackled softly through the localized speakers of the Game Maker’s console.
Mando, who had been leaning over the crystal table trying to dab a mayonnaise stain out of his trousers, froze. He blinked, turning his head slowly toward the screen, his eyes widening as he processed the muffled, filter-heavy whisper of the enforcer.
"Kim!" Mando called out.
"What?" Kim called distantly from the other side of the room, currently plucking her eyebrows in the reflection of a silver platter.
“Kim!”
“What!”
"A fucking enforcer snitched on our asses!" Mando practically leaped out of his leather chair, pointing a manicured finger at the holoscreen. "He just told the minion about the gallery! He’s breaking the fourth wall, Kim!”
Monika suddenly sat up from the couch, "Russia.”
“MONIKA!” Kim and Mando screamed in dissonant harmony.
Monika laid back down.
Kim inhales shakily, “If you name one more landmass, I swear to God.”
“I’m telling you!” Mando slapped his hands down on the crystal table, rattling the champagne flutes. “The pink bitch just told him about the engagement metrics! He told him about us! The integrity of the Game is compromised!”
Kim spun back around so fast her sequined dress sounded like a startled rattlesnake. She gasped, hands flying to her cheeks, “No! The... the unprofessionalism! Game Maker! Did you hear that? The staff is fraternizing with the poultry!”
The Game Maker didn't respond. His masked face remained fixed on the holoscreen. Beneath the black visor, his jaw ticked. He slowly set his scotch glass down. The crystal clinked against the coaster, a defining sound in the sudden quiet of his section of the room. A single, gloved finger drifted toward the glowing command panel on his armrest.
Down in the concrete bowels of the facility, Namgyu was practically strutting.
The dull thud of the enforcers boots was no longer a death march, it was a backbeat. He walked with a loose, rolling swagger, rolling his shoulders and popping his neck.
“Look at that smug fucker,” Kim sneered. “Look at this cunt. Motherfucker think he Adele. God he looks like he stinks of poverty.”
“What the fuck does poverty smell like, Kim.” Mando asked.
“Don’t like what you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything Kim I’m literally asking you a direct fucking question.”
“Bermuda,” Monika said.
"Kim." Mando turned to face her fully. "You just described a human being as smelling of poverty."
"Aspirationally." She waved a hand.
"That's not a defence. That's not even a sentence."
"I support the poor," Kim announced.
"When?"
"Conceptually."
The Game Maker reached for his scotch.
"The minion's still walking," Kim interrupted, squinting at the screen. Her voice shifted, softening into something approaching maternal concern, which on Kim's face looked approximately like a sneeze. "Aw. Look at him. Little strut. Doesn't know anything. Little dickhead. Aw.
Monika sat up again. Turned toward the screen. Her good eye tracked Namgyu's strutting silhouette through the corridor.
"I think," Monika said, in the careful tone of a woman arranging her thoughts into a sentence like furniture into a very small room, "that he is attractive in a way that requires explanation."
Kim and Mando both opened their mouths.
"Don't," the Game Maker said, without looking up.
They closed their mouths.
Monika lay back down.
A beat of silence fell over the gallery, broken only by the distant ambient hum of the facility's environmental systems and the soft, rhythmic clink of Kim rotating her champagne flute between her fingers like a tiny, expensive fidget toy.
Then Mando said: "What does that even mean."
"Mando—"
"What does that even mean."
"It means exactly what it—"
"'Attractive in a way that requires explanation,'" Mando repeated. "What— What is she, writing his Goodreads review? Fucking Monika.”
"Some people," Kim said primly, "have a nuanced relationship with physical attraction."
"She's describing a man who just got tased in a sewer."
"And yet."
“Oh go sniff your fucking vagabond.” Mando sighs.
"—I don't actually go around sniffing the destitute, unlike some people—"
"No one is sniffing the destitute, Kim!"
"Then why are we discussing it!"
"You brought it up!"
"...I know what poverty smells like because of my gap year."
"Kim—"
"Volunteering."
"I don't care—"
"In Tuscany."
Mando turned and stared at her.
"Very humbling experience." Kim added.
"Okay, Kim."
"Changed me as a person."
"Okay, Kim."
"I cried."
“Kim."
"I stole a dollar from a homeless man's cup whilst he slept because I wanted to buy myself a water."
On screen, Namgyu stumbled slightly over a raised grate in the floor, caught himself, looked around to confirm no one had seen, and then continued strutting as if it had been intentional. A stylistic choice. Part of the gait.
"I want him to win," she announced.
"You want him to have sex," Mando reminded her.
"I contain multitudes."
"Monika also wants him to have sex."
"Monika wants everything to have sex, Monika is a convicted sex offender.”
“Estonia,” Monika says.
The champagne flute Kim threw didn't shatter. It simply bounced off the armrest of Monika's couch and rolled under the curtain, which was somehow worse. Like the universe refusing to validate the gesture.
Kim sat back down.
"Fine," she said, to no one. To all of them. To the general concept of the evening.
—--
On the right-hand feed, Namgyu was still walking.
Still strutting, technically. The distinction mattered to him, apparently.
He rolled his neck once, twice, cracked two knuckles that probably didn't need cracking, and then leaned slightly sideways toward the enforcer on his right, with the relaxed, conspiratorial lean of a man sidling up to a bartender he's already tipped.
"So," Namgyu said.
The enforcer said nothing.
"So," Namgyu said again, louder, as if volume was the issue, "if me and Thanos are the stars of the show—"
He let that sit for a moment, giving it room to breathe, giving the enforcer an opportunity to either confirm or, apparently, die. "—do we get better rations? Because that sludge you fed us on Tuesday tasted like dick." He paused. "Just throwing it out there. Constructive feedback. For the suggestion box. Anonymously, obviously."
The enforcer did not respond.
"I'm serious," Namgyu continued. "I don't know who's preparing that, but they've got a real gift for making protein feel like a moral failing." He gestured vaguely. "There's, what, two old guys left? The sexy one and the other one who looks really fucking depressed all the time, tragic little face, fucker ran off—" He waved a hand. "Why don't we just stop feeding them? Redirect the resources. Invest in the talent."
A beat.
"I'm the talent," he clarified.
The enforcer on his left exhaled through his modulator. It was not a laugh. It was the involuntary breath of a man who had been holding it too long.
—--
In the gallery, Kim made a sound. It was soft and involuntary and came from somewhere between her sternum and the part of her brain that had never fully matured past the age of seventeen.
"God," she breathed. "I love him."
Mando's head turned approximately one degree. One eyebrow climbed.
"Don't start fondling yourself," he said.
Kim turned back to the screen. "This man," she said, her voice resuming its normal register, steady, almost performatively unbothered, "was crying into an autistic man’s shoulder two hours ago."
"Okay, first of all—"
"I mean it affectionately."
"That's not—"
"I mean it with tremendous love and respect for the neurodivergent community." Kim pressed two fingers to her sternum. "I have a cousin."
"That's not a credential, Kim."
"He's very gifted."
"That's still not—"
"He can name every capital city in the world." Kim stopped. Her eyes drifted, slowly, toward Monika.
Monika was looking at the ceiling.
Kim turned back to the screen.
"The point," she said, "is that he was crying. Forty minutes ago. Face all screwed up, holding on like—" She stopped. Her fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the stem of her replacement champagne flute. "And now he's walking down a corridor asking guards to stop feeding pensioners. Like nothing. Like that's just—" She exhaled through her nose again. "Like that's just him."
"Yeah," he said.
A beat.
"I want them to win," Kim said.
Mando didn't disagree.
“I have an idea,” The Game Maker said.
The gallery shifted. Spines straightened. Champagne was set down. Mando pressed both hands flat on the crystal table, leaned forward, and whispered to Kim:
"Oh how ominous.” Even lower, “I'm wet."
The Game Maker turned his head.
The silence that followed was of a specific species.
"Can you all," the Game Maker said, with tremendous, controlled calm, "stop sexually harassing me."
The gallery collectively pursed their lips.
"I am—" He looked around the room. Not angry. Something more exhausting than anger. The expression, insofar as an expression could be read around a visor, of a man at his limit. "I am at my job. I am at my place of work. I am attempting to run an eleven season international broadcast enterprise. And I cannot—" He stopped.
He started again. "First, that—" A pause, during which the word bitcoin seemed to move behind his teeth without being released. "A boy tells me that I was his sexual awakening.”
“When the fuck did that happen?” Kim asks.
The Game Maker inhaled. “I don’t know what you’re implying.” Continued. "Then I am called ‘'vaguely attractive.'" He this the way a prosecutor says Exhibit C. Everyone shared a look. Kim coughed.
"I don't think you're unattractive," she offered.
"Kim."
"I think you're atmospheric."
“Kim.”
“Like Ghost Face. Or Darth Vader. Sexy? Objectively. But—”
"Kim.”
"Game Maker," Mando interrupted, raising one hand, "We hear you. We see you. We respect you, deeply, as a—" He gestured, casting around. "—as a professional. As a visionary. As a man who has had his boundaries violated in the workplace and deserves to be believed. I want you to know, personally, that I respect those boundaries."
"Thank you, Mando."
"I think Monika doesn't, though," Mando said.
"Norway," Monika said.
"MONIKA!" Kim and Mando screamed.
Monika pulled the cashmere throw over her face.
"I'm just—" Kim turned back toward the Game Maker, affecting composure. "What's the idea?"
The Game Maker was quiet for a moment.
Not the charged, about-to-speak quiet of a man building toward a pronouncement. The considered quiet of a man reviewing, internally, the sequence of decisions that had led him to this room, this job, these people, this exact evening of his life. He picked up his scotch glass. He did not drink from it. He simply held it.
"A rule change," he said.
The gallery stilled. This happened occasionally, rule changes, they were infrequent enough to feel like weather events. Kim sat up straighter. Mando's hand paused over the champagne flute. Even Monika's cashmere throw shifted, suggesting she was, beneath it, operating an ear.
"Sponsor investment applies to pairs." The Game Maker's voice was level. Professional. Slightly too professional, in the way of a man who has rehearsed a sentence while not, technically, rehearsing it. "Historically, the model is one-to-one. One sponsor, one player, one outcome. The house absorbs the loss if the player is eliminated. Standard." A beat. "Going forward, for the remainder of this season, paired investment is permitted. Two players. One stake. If one goes, the stake transfers. If both survive to the final round—"
He stopped. Turned his glass a half rotation on the coaster.
A silence.
Kim's mouth was slightly open. She looked at the screen. She looked back at the Game Maker.
"You're saying we can sponsor Thanos and the minion together," she said slowly.
"I'm saying the option exists."
"And if they win—"
"They have to kill eachother," Mando said.
"Conditionally."
"But together."
"Structurally."
Mando stared at him for a long moment. The kind of stare that doesn't need much help becoming a question.
The Game Maker looked at his console.
“There would also be leniency,” he continued. “Certain adjustments. Bathroom breaks… adjusted lighting—”
“Lubricant?” Monika suggested quietly.
“MONI—” Mando and Kim began, then stopped.
They turned to each other. Slowly.
Kim raised an eyebrow, slowly.
Mando’s shoulders raised, lips pursing.
The eye contact lasted approximately one second and contained, within it, an entire conversation.
“Invest wisely,” The Game Maker added. “There are only four players left.”
"I'd like to register a paired investment," Kim said immediately.
"Kim—"
"I'd like to register a paired investment in Players 230 and 124," Kim repeated, sitting up very straight. "On behalf of myself and—" She gestured toward Mando with an open hand, as if bestowing something.
Mando closed his eyes. "Kim—"
"My esteemed colleague Menudo—"
"Mando."
"—whose name I have tragically forgotten." Kim smiled serenely at the Game Maker. "We would like to sponsor the pair."
The Game Maker looked at them.
“Ok,” he said.
Kim clapped.
"Don't clap."
She clapped again, twice more, in defiance.
"I want it on the record," Mando continued, addressing the Game Maker, "that I was not consulted. I want it noted that I am here under protest. I want it—"
"Would you like to register the investment, Mando," the Game Maker said flatly.
A pause. "Yes," Mando said.
Kim made a sound so high-pitched it bypassed the human ear and went directly to the loyalty centres of the brain. Mando pointed at her. "If you make that noise again I'm contesting the investment."
She pressed both hands over her mouth. “One itty bitty request… say we invest over ten million—”
"You would have full access to their security footage, vitals, and audio feed," the Game Maker said. "Unfiltered. Unedited. Real-time.
Kim's hands were still pressed over her mouth. Her eyes, however, were doing everything her mouth wasn't allowed to.
"And," he continued, in the tone of a man reading from a policy document he wrote himself, at three in the morning, while drinking, "you would be permitted to submit one care package per forty-eight hour cycle. Non-weaponised. Contents subject to review."
"Define non-weaponised," Mando said.
"If it can kill someone, it's weaponised."
"What about emotionally."
“Standard inclusions: food supplements, medical supply, one personal item per player." He paused. "Per pair."
"Can the personal item be a note?" Kim asked.
"Yes."
"From us?"
"Within guidelines."
"What are the guidelines."
"Don't be weird."
The silence that followed was approximately two seconds too long.
"Ballpark definition of weird," Mando said.
"You both know what weird is," the Game Maker said. "You are both, frequently, weird. You know when you're doing it."
"Sometimes it just comes out," Kim said.
"Then keep it in."
"Like a sneeze?"
"Kim."
"Sometimes if you hold a sneeze it kills you."
"Then sneeze into a tissue and don't send it to a Game participant. Investment registered. Combined stake. Forty-eight hour care cycle commences at next checkpoint. Any questions?"
"Just one," Kim said brightly.
"No. Investment registered," the Game Maker repeated. He turned back to his console.
The gallery settled, or did the closest approximation of settling it was capable of, which meant Mando leaned back in his chair and Kim picked up a new champagne flute and Monika's cashmere throw resumed its earlier stillness, suggesting its occupant was either asleep or performing sleep.
On the left-hand feed, the corridor containing Thanos had gone quiet. The enforcers had deposited him in a holding alcove and withdrawn to either side of the door in the posture of men paid to stand still and succeeding at it.
Thanos was sitting on the floor.
Cross-legged. Back against the wall, hands loose in his lap, head tipped back against the corroded metal, looking at the ceiling. His ruined eye was half-shut. The other one was open all the way, tracking something that wasn't on the ceiling.
Kim watched him for a moment.
"What's he thinking about?" she murmured.
"He's thinking about the next person he's going to poke in the eye."
"He's thinking about the minion," Kim said softly.
Mando opened his mouth. Closed it.
On screen, Thanos's jaw moved. Almost imperceptibly. Like he was rehearsing a word, or unlearning one.
The Game Maker ran a hand over his visor.
It was a very specific gesture. The gesture of a man who, at some earlier point in the day, had possessed hair, and whose hand had not yet received the memo that the visor had rendered the motion both redundant and impossible. The gloved palm traveled from forehead to crown, found only matte black polymer, and completed the journey anyway.
He settled back in his armchair.
"Does anyone want to invest in… that Dae-ho fellow?” He asked casually.
The gallery processed this. It took approximately three seconds, which in gallery time was a geological age.
"Who?" Kim said.
"Dae-ho." The Game Maker's voice was even. Professionally even. "Player 0—" A fractional pause. "Vaguely attractive. Thematically relevant. Assisted Gi-hun. He’s… quite the investment.” He coughs. “Very efficient.”
"What about Gi-hun?" Mando asked, as if just now tuning into this line of questioning. He tilted his head at the screen, where the left-side feed was currently showing empty corridor, the old man had long since vanished into the facility's labyrinthine guts. "He ran off. He's still in, isn't he? Where'd he go?"
The Game Maker was quiet for a moment.
"He's being handled," he said.
Kim nodded, accepting this. Then: "He was with that other one, wasn't he. Earlier. The tall one." She frowned, casting back. "They were in the corridor. The one where the—" She waved a hand, reordering events. "What was his number. The one who started the whole rebellion thing."
The Game Maker's thumb circled the arm rest.
"Dae-ho," he said.
“Oh. That’s Dae-ho?” Kim blinked.
“He… was significant to Gi-hun's narrative arc in the mid-game." A beat. "Made several statistically unusual decisions. Worth noting. A rather attractive fellow.”
Mando frowned. He reached over to the secondary console and pulled up the archived mid-game reel, scrolling backward with two fingers. He squinted at the footage. A figure. Tall. Dark hair. Still eyes. Moving through a crowd of jumpsuits like water finding a level.
"Oh," Mando said. He tilted his head. "Him." He watched for a moment. "He's—yeah.”
The Game Maker's glass made a small, controlled sound against the coaster.
"He's not boring," the Game Maker said. The sentence arrived a half-beat too quickly.
Mando looked up from the console.
He looked at the Game Maker. He looked back at the console. He looked back at the Game Maker.
"Sorry?" Mando said.
"I was clarifying."
"You clarified very fast."
"I clarify efficiently."
"And he left with… Gi-hun."
"Provisionally."
"Where are they now."
"That information is managed at a different level," the Game Maker said.
"Okay." Mando said slowly.
The figure on screen moved through the corridor without urgency. Long-legged. Still-faced. He said something to Gi-hun. Brief. Gi-hun nodded. Then they were gone around a corner.
"He's actually—" Mando tilted the flute slightly, gesturing at the now-empty screen. "He's actually kind of—"
"Devilishly attractive?
"Like, deeply—"
“Calm down, ladies and gentleman,” The Front Man swiped his non existent hair again, sitting perhaps an inch taller. “He is… structurally sound, yes.”
"Would I go so far as to say—"
"Mando?” the Game Maker said, suddenly sounding less sure than he was a moment ago.
"I'm just—"
The camera caught Dae-ho in a rare close-up. He was staring blankly at a wall, but doing it with the kind of intense, quiet devastation.
“Oh my god,” Kim breathed.
“Yes?” the Game Maker prompted, perhaps leaning forward just a fraction.
“Oh my god I would suck him then duck him then donald mcfuck him,” Kim said slowly.
A beat. One. Two.
The Game Maker exhaled slowly, the words “Okay.” emerging in a slow stream.
"Like I would--- oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh that--- he's got that look. That look---"
Game Maker set his glass down. He did it with immense precision. Both hands. Level surface. Controlled placement.
"Kim," he said.
"What?" Kim said, still looking at the screen.
"What does that mean."
"You know what it means."
"I know what the first two mean."
"Then you can extrapolate."
"I cannot extrapolate, Kim. I don't have the infrastructure. You said duck him, Kim. Those are real words in a real sequence." His voice was perfectly flat, but beneath the filter, he sounded like a man who had suddenly realized he was standing on a landmine and had already heard the click.
"I was building to something."
"You were building to Donald McFuck."
"Thematically."
"There is no theme that ends at Donald McFuck.”
“Zoom in on the shoulders. I need to see the broadness-to-waist ratio. Give me the thermal imaging.”
Game Maker’s voice modulator emitted a subtle, failing buzz, like a dying wasp. “I… the camera angles are fixed. As I said, he left with Player 456.”
“Good for 456,” Mando said, taking a casual sip of his champagne. “Honestly? Good for the old man. If you’re gonna go out, go out with a guy who looks like he owns a yacht made of other, smaller yachts.”
The Game Maker cleared his throat. It sounded like static. “He doesn't own a yacht.”
Mando raised an eyebrow, turning to look at the masked figurehead. “How would you know?”
“Player dossiers,” the Game Maker said immediately. Too immediately. The words fired out of him like defensive countermeasures. “Extensive background checks. We know everything about the participants. He is… financially stable, but yachtless.”
“Not for long,” Kim announced, slapping her palms on the crystal table. “I'm throwing thirty million on him. If he survives, I'm buying him a yacht. I'm going to feed him grapes on the deck of a destroyer.”
“He might not want an yacht,” the Game Maker said quietly, staring rigidly into the middle distance.
“He’s getting a yacht if I want him to.” Kim’s eyes narrowed in challenge.
“Maybe he doesn’t need your yacht.” The Game Maker leaned forward, accepting this challenge.
“Maybe he does.”
“Maybe he’s got a boat.
“Maybe—”
Monika suddenly sat up from her velvet couch. The cashmere blanket pooled around her waist.
“Africa,” she said.
“Monika, sweetie, not now, Mommy's investing in prime real estate,” Kim said, waving a manicured hand dismissively at the screen.
But Monika wasn't looking at the screen. Her good eye was fixed dead on the Game Maker’s black visor. She tilted her head.
“He stands like you,” Monika said.
Mando looked at Monika. Then he looked at the frozen image of Dae-ho on the screen. Then he looked at the Game Maker.
The Game Maker did not move. The ambient environmental hum of the room suddenly sounded like a roaring jet engine. He calculated the exact distance to the emergency lockdown button on his armrest. Three inches. He could hit it in point-four seconds.
Instead, he said:
“Jestermaxxing larper with a lazy eye cannot compare the sigma to the beta.”
They stared at him. Then turned back to Monika.
“What do you mean, he stands like him?” Mando asked, his voice losing its sarcastic lilt, replaced by genuine, creeping curiosity.
The Game Maker sputtered: “Monika is not—”
“The shoulders,” Monika murmured, her eye tracing the lines of the Game Maker's black suit.
Kim squinted at the Game Maker, then back at the screen. “You know, she's not wrong. It's the posture. Very stiff. Very 'I have a secret and it's making me clinically depressed'.” She snapped her fingers. “Stand up, Game Maker. Let me see your hip tilt.”
“I will not be doing that,” the Game Maker said. His voice was a reinforced titanium wall.
“Come on. Just a little twirl.”
“No.”
“Just walk to the bar and back. Let us see if it claps when you walk. Clap with no hands."
“I am seated.”
“I’m just saying,” Kim hummed. “If you took off that mask, and you had those cheekbones under there?”
She shrugged, taking a sip of her champagne and leaning back into the cushions.
“I'd probably Donald McFuck you, too.”