The field looked terrible.

Ruaan stepped out with everyone else and stopped for a second to take it in. The same packed earth, the same high walls, the same narrow strip of sky above. But scattered across the entire space were wooden boxes. Dozens of them. Closed, uniform, placed at intervals that felt deliberate.

He already knew what was inside.

He had known since Seo told him at dinner. Guns and bullets. Whether fake or real was still a question he hadn’t gotten a clean answer to and was hoping to resolve before anything was pointed at him.

The energy in the field was different from the button game. That had been tense and quiet. This was loud and buzzing, with people moving toward each other in the focused urgency of men who had already decided who they wanted standing next to them as whatever was about to happen started unfolding.

Ruaan looked left and looked right.

No glasses anywhere.

He turned in a slow circle scanning for Seo and found nothing. No crooked frames, no BL comic, no dramatic hair entrance. Just grey uniforms and dark blue and black clustered in groups, everyone already gravitating toward their preferred partners like magnets finding each other.

His eyes kept moving and landed somewhere they didn’t want to land.

Cullen.

He was standing near the centre of the field in full black, relaxed, his hands in his pockets, looking directly at Ruaan with an expression that was warm in a way that meant nothing good. He raised one hand and waved. Then stuck out his tongue.

Ruaan looked away immediately.

His whole body did a small involuntary thing that he refused to call a shiver and absolutely was.

’I must not become bottom ten,’ he told himself firmly. ’Not today. Not for him.’

The speaker crackled.

Everyone went quiet.

"Attention!"

The voice from the speaker was not Harolin’s today. A different officer, reading from something, the kind of flat announcement voice that meant rules were coming.

"Welcome to this week’s Thursday game. Listen carefully. The rules will not be repeated."

Everyone on the field stilled.

"Step one. Every prisoner will collect a numbered paper from the officers stationed at the boxes. Your number determines your partner. You do not choose. The number chooses for you."

The groan that went through the crowd was immediate and collective. People who had been standing next to their preferred partners looked at each other with the expression of people watching something good get taken away.

"Step two. Once you have your number, spread out and find the person holding the matching number. Numbers come in pairs. A and B. For example, number 102A and number 102B are partners. There are over three hundred prisoners in Blackmere today. Finding your partner is part of the game."

Murmuring started. Someone near Ruaan muttered something unflattering about the officers who designed this.

"Step three. Once partners find each other, they will collect their equipment. The A holder receives a gun. The B holder receives a bullet. Partners must couple the gun and the bullet together and agree on one target to eliminate."

The murmuring got louder.

"Step four. You have thirty minutes from the sound of the buzzer. The game is called Eliminate Your Rival. Any prisoner who is shot is eliminated and placed in the bottom ten ranking. The last players remaining without being eliminated rank up."

A pause.

"One additional rule. If your partner is eliminated before you find them, you may steal another player’s partner by force, provided that player has what you need to complete your pair. Use whatever means necessary."

The field absorbed that for a moment.

’Whatever means necessary’ sat in the air and everyone understood what that meant in Blackmere terms.

"If you are holding a gun with no bullets, you are incomplete. If you are holding a bullet with no gun, you are incomplete. An incomplete player cannot eliminate anyone. Choose your targets wisely. The game begins at the sound of the buzzer."

.

.

The line for numbers moved fast.

People grabbed their papers and scattered immediately, clutching them close, not showing anyone. The smart ones turned away before they even looked at their own number. Trust was not a feature of this game.

Ruaan took his paper.

Unfolded it.

98A.

He looked at the small metal object the officer pressed into his hand alongside the paper.

A bullet.

He closed his fingers around it and stepped to the side and stood very still and thought.

98A meant he needed 98B. That person had the gun. Which meant he needed to find them, hand over his bullet, and together they pointed it at whoever they agreed on.

The problem was finding one specific person among three hundred in thirty minutes on a field this size, with everyone else actively hiding their numbers and at least two people that he knew of specifically wanting to point something at him.

He could feel eyes on him already.

Cullen was somewhere behind him.

Yoon is somewhere in the blue section.

Harolin somewhere he couldn’t see yet which was somehow worse than being able to see him.

He closed his eyes for one second and opened them.

The person standing directly in front of him made him take a full step back before his brain caught up with his feet.

Finn.

He was standing there with his paper folded in his hand and his cold flat eyes looking at Ruaan with the expression he always wore now, the one that had replaced the tired vacancy Ruaan had first seen in the cafeteria. This was something sharper and more deliberate. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

He scratched the back of his head and looked at his number one more time to make sure.

"Are you 98A?" Finn asked.

Ruaan checked the paper and looked back at Finn.

"Yes," he said carefully.

Finn’s mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Something that knew it had won something. "I’m 98B." He held out his hand. "I have the gun. Give me the bullet."

"Wait," Ruaan said. "We need to talk about who we’re targeting first. That’s how this works. We agree on..."

Finn reached forward and took the gun from wherever it had been and held his other hand out and waited.

Ruaan hesitated.

Finn kept waiting.

Ruaan dropped the bullet into his palm.

Finn loaded the gun with the practised efficiency of someone who had done this before or had thought about doing it many times. The click of the bullet sliding into place was very clean and very final.

"Careful with that," Ruaan said. "If it’s real..."

"It’s a tranquilliser," Finn said flatly. "It’s not real. It won’t kill you. Just puts you down for a bit." He checked the chamber. "Did you want to eliminate someone?"

Ruaan looked around the field. Cullen was visible near the far end, already talking to someone, already working his angles. Yoon was somewhere in the grey section doing the same.

He thought about it.

He shook his head. "Not right now. But we need to agree before you just..."

"Good," Finn said. "I have someone to eliminate."

He raised the gun and pointed it directly at himself.

"Me."

Ruaan’s mouth opened.

The shot was fired.

Finn’s body hit the ground.

Without drama, he fell, immediately, the tranquilliser doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The field went quiet in a circle around them.

Everyone who had seen it just stood there and stared at Finn on the ground and then at Ruaan standing over him with his hands at his sides and nothing in them.

Then the speaker crackled.

"First elimination registered. Number 1004. Ranked to bottom ten."

A pause.

"Partner of 1004. Number 2525. Top one of this elimination."

The silence lasted about two more seconds.

And then it broke.

Because every single person on that field had just watched Finn shoot himself and eliminate himself and hand his partner the top ranking in one move, and every single person had arrived at the same conclusion at the same time.

’If you eliminate your own partner, you could end the game in seconds.’

The field exploded.

People turning on their own partners. People running from their partners. The careful quiet calculation of thirty seconds ago became something completely different as three hundred men processed the new information simultaneously and started acting on it.

Ruaan stood over unconscious Finn on the ground and looked at the chaos spreading across the field and thought about his own partner situation very quickly.

He had no partner anymore.

He had a top ranking from the first elimination.

But the game was still running and there were people on this field who had a bullet and a gun and a very specific person they wanted to use them on.

He looked up and found Cullen across the field.

Cullen had stopped moving. He was looking at Ruaan with an expression that had shifted from warm to something else. He was recalculating, the same way everyone else was recalculating.

Then Cullen looked at the person standing next to him. His own partner.

BANG!