User blog:Joeaikman/Ten Hated Wikians - Chapter 5

The door opened, and as it did the water washed out like it was a tsunami wave. Of course it pulled Sega out with it, drenched, pale and cold. It was GIR that had found him, and now his feet were also wet from the water that had come out as he opened the door. Most of the excess ran off down the corridor, pooling in the corner at the bottom, but a fair bit found its way into puddles along the way. GIR leaned down and checked Sega’s breathing, before carefully helping him to his feet. Sega would live, but he may need a change of clothes if he didn’t want to catch pneumonia.

“Hey Sega? What happened? Did someone lock you in there? The door wasn’t locked when I got here.” GIR was worried for his friend, but Sega looked even more distressed. He couldn’t be close to GIR, this person could well be the one that was trying to murder him. He could trust no one. On the other hand, if GIR was trying to kill him why did he open the door? That made no sense, so Sega clearly decided to trust the other Wikian for now.

“You missed out on two deaths. We found Nail st…stabbed to death and…and…” GIR couldn’t finish his sentence, instead he guided Sega around the corner, which was where the door to Coupe’s death room was. Outside it was the body of Bran, his face still trying to catch his final breath, his eyes were wide and there was deep cut around his throat, presumably where the wire had cut into his skin, but there was no blood. Wach knelt over him, with Matoro and Joe stood behind him. Flats and Assy were nowhere to be seen, but they might just not have stumbled this way since the body was found.

“He was definitely throttled from behind.” Wach spoke as he rose from his crouching position, dusting his hands on his jeans as he did so. He was a large and intimidating man, with a grown out beard that almost blocked his mouth from sight. “He probably didn’t get a sight of his killer, although if he did it isn’t much use to us. Other than that there isn’t much to tell that is out of the ordinary.” This was the second person to die because they ran out of air, and all the murders so far had been horrific.

It was Matoro that found the murder weapon, tossed aside in the corner. It was a friendship bracelet, with beads baring the name Kung. Matoro dropped it the moment he realised what it was, but Wach pocketed it, possibly so he could use it as evidence later on, should he have a confrontation with the killer.

“Right, so I’m going to leave now.” Joe said, slowly edging away from the group, eyeing each of the others up suspiciously. “I am fairly certain that there will be a remote control police button somewhere in the manager’s office, so I am going to check there. None of you follow me, alright?” With those words he ran, albeit not very fast. He had long legs, but not much in the way of pace or stamina.

After that the others all moved along too. Matoro said he needed to use the toilet, and ran off looking very green in the face, whilst Sega and GIR left together, heading off to the maintenance room to check if there was any CCTV footage of Bran being throttled from behind. Wach offered to stay and look after the room, on the condition that Matoro came back at some point to pick up the job. He sat in the same spot that Brandon had and waited for whatever might come at him.

-

Assy had been hiding, and he wasn’t proud of it. A king shouldn’t have to hide, he should be able to stand tall and defy his foes, ride them down on horseback, or burn them alive for treason. Yet here he was, cowering in a fort of cushions, as if he was Janos Slynt in the larders of Castle Black. No, he was not that bad. He was the true king, Stannis Baratheon, Azor Ahai reborn! If only Melisandre was with him, she might have seen the face of the killer in the fires, and then this entire escapade would be worthless. He would drive them through with Lightbringer and put an ending to the suffering of his people. Alas the Red Woman had left him, and Stannis had no hope of finding out who the culprit may be.

He was not sure who amongst his followers were still alive. Ten of them had entered these halls with him, and two were definitely dead. Grav and Coupe had met their ends. Coupe had been killed by poison, which was a woman’s weapon, made for shadows and sneaks, so he suspected Nail of his death, yet Grav had been killed by a clever contraption, and he doubted that a woman had the brains to construct such a work.

Poison was also the tool of cravens, and none were more cowardly than GIR, maybe he was the killer? Except GIR was weak willed, and Assy doubted that he had the strength of mind to murder so many people in cold blood. Joe and Sega were both brutal in their own way, but poison wasn’t their style. Matoro seemed the most likely candidate for the murder to Assy. He was craven enough to use poison, and was also the only person who knew the secret that the murderer used to kill Coupe. He would have to avoid this one.

-

Wach waited by the door, staring at the wall opposite serenely, a blank look on his face and his eyes calm. Yet inside his head he was screaming. He had wanted Coupe and Bran dead, and he had never been friendly with Nail. What if he had, subconsciously, orchestrated their deaths. Could he have done it, completely unknowingly? He had blacked out as he carried Nail’s body to the room, and when he came to he had moved closer and the body was gone. Then he had found Bran, throttled by someone who clearly had a lot of strength. What was he to think in this situation? He thought back to each of the killings, hoping that he could verify his own innocence.

The first to die had been Grav, hanged in a noose on stage in front of everyone. That death was clearly a trap setup, which means the killer had to know what Grav’s plans had been, or at the very least been able to predict that it would involve a speech. He had never been a fan of Grav, and the two had argued in recent weeks. He wasn’t sure if he would be capable of murdering him, but maybe he could have been. He wasn’t sure.

Nail’s death was likely also a trap set up before everyone entered the complex, but that brought up several potential problems. Someone had to know that Nail would want to sleep in that bed at that exact time, and that seemed unlikely. He had also not liked Nail, finding her irritating and self obsessed. Again though, was that really enough to want to kill someone? Yeah, he hadn’t liked her, but wanting her dead? That seemed like a step too far.

Coupe though…well his death was something that Wach had dreamed about for years. He was the top dog at the Wiki, and that was a position that Wach not only wanted but that he deserved. Coupe was barely around, and Wach had proved himself to be just, loyal and committed. He had asked Coupe, but had been denied, with Coupe telling him that only when he was gone could Wach take over. Had he killed Coupe without knowing it so that he could gain power?

He couldn’t just sit here if that was the case, putting everyone else at risk with his own existence. He had to end himself before he ended any of the friends who were in here with him. He stood up from his position and walked away, the bodies of those that he thought he had murdered left cold and still in the room behind him, never to move again.

-

His search for a button to call the police had proven fruitless. There had been a hidden button saying that was what it was for, but when he pressed it nothing happened. He had checked underneath to find that the wires had been cut. Someone had clearly thought a few steps ahead of him. He tried the computer whilst he was in there, and was surprised to find that it was already logged on. A window popped up the moment that the screen turned on, showing a live feed of the hall leading to the main entrance.

Joe had to hit the computer a few times to get it to work, mostly because it seemed to be a really old, out of date piece of junk. The video feed was jumpy, and there didn’t appear to be any sound. He tried to click other icons to open more windows, but none of them worked. That probably meant that this computer was a set up. In the top right corner of the video window was a little image, an icon depicting the face of a grumpy looking dog snarling. Joe didn’t spend much time thinking about it, becase right then something passed by the video, running.

-

Flats was going as fast as he could, but it wouldn’t be fast enough. He could hear them behind him, chasing him, sniffing for his scent when he had thought he had lost them. He wasn’t sure where they had come from or who had let them in, they just appeared out of absolutely nowhere. Two massive dogs, more like hounds, with fierce faces and even fiercer looking teeth. He had tried to talk to them first, show them that he was a friend, but they had growled at him and snapped at him, one of them had even clawed at his arm, causing it to bleed profusely.

There was a door at the end of this corridor, he noticed, and let out a rare smile as he did. What he didn’t know was that this door was locked, and besides it there was no way of escaping the corridor. He would be trapped and left at the mercy of the gigantic monstrosities that were giving chase at this very moment. He reached the door and desperately tried to open it, but failed. He tried to put more force behind his pull, and put all his weight on a shoulder push, but it stood firm. Then he turned to the corridor, hearingthe snarls coming from behind him, and faced down the canine terrors that he had been running from.

-

Joe watched as Flats stood at the door, his back to it, and fear clear in his eyes. He wasn’t sure what Flats was so afraid of. Hell, he didn’t even know Flats could be afraid. That boy was obsessed with the occult and the horrifying, and he had been the calmest of all of them when they had been locked in here. Joe had thought that maybe he was the killer, because, after all, he had been the last person to see Nail alive.

He wasn’t prepared at all for what was occurring in front of him. The boy had fallen to his knees, his hands clenched together and tears on his face as he pleaded, but what was he pleading to? The hall was empty, yet something was terrifying Flats so much that he thought it was going to kill him. Maybe he had finally cracked under the pressure of being locked in here. Soon he was writhing on the floor, waving his arms in the air as if trying to push something away, but there was nothing there to be pushed. Then the boy lay still. He was dead.

Seven Hated Wikians, all the survivors are dicks

Flats would be hounded out, and then there was six