“I’m afraid there’s another problem here. Someone among us is currently holding a rather deadly special role.” As I spoke, I looked in the crowd to spot the tall, muscular Throskart who had given me crap before. “A very rare role that has certain immunity to the no attacking rule. And before you ask, no, it’s not that role, the one some of you have heard about with a mission to kill everyone else in the group. The role is known as the Saboteur. They’re not only empowered to kill one contestant a night, they’re actually immune to being voted off. But they have to keep killing a contestant every night, or they automatically join the executions.
How do I know this, you ask? Because the Saboteur is always paired with a second special role—a role I was given. The Inquisitor.”
Paydirt. Muscle head looked like he was shitting bricks. I was confident then that I’d at least guessed part of the plan. Both the real plan, and the fake plan the Saboteur had no doubt told him. “If you don’t believe me, have a look here.” I took out the role card. “The Inquisitor’s job is to catch the Saboteur. If they fail, they die, even if they survive the whole way. But if I expose the Saboteur, they get executed. There are a couple ways I could theoretically do this, but the relevant one right now is through Interrogation.
“You--you must think I’m the Saboteur, don’t you?! Well go ahead and Interrogate me, I dare you.” The muscle head stepped up, to his credit, but I shook my head.
“I do not think you’re the Saboteur, no. I do think you knew that a Saboteur exists. What I think was that someone told you to antagonize me so that I would think you were, to throw me off the scent. Clearly, whoever they are doesn’t have a high opinion of my intelligence if they thought I’d accuse someone who was being so obvious.”
He bristled at that. Man, this dude did NOT have a poker face. “At least, that’s what they told you. But we’ll get to what I mean by that in a minute. I’m glad you came up here though, please don’t leave. It’ll help me set the stage.” By now, some of the crowd of Throskarts had come up to see the card. “Go ahead,” I told them, “pass it around, do whatever. Even if you rip it up it’s not like I won’t have the role anymore.”
I gave it away freely. “But don’t worry, no one here is gonna die, to them at least. I’m going to make sure of it right here and now. I know for a fact that the Saboteur is in this crowd. So to start with, I need you, yes you, the one with the straight black hair, to come up as well, please.”
Now this guy had a poker face. For now at least. I checked to see if anyone was trying to sneak away.
No one was. The real culprit definitely wouldn’t be that stupid, anyway. “The Saboteur has already made several mistakes,” I began, “to start with, when he was first hatching the conspiracy which, among other things, is the reason why Darril here hatched the plan he’s described.”
“Yes,” I said, briefly turning to Darril with a wry grin, “I’m well aware you knew of the existence of a Saboteur too. Which brings me to...
Mistake #1: The Saboteur found not one, not two, but three conspirators this morning, and told you to come up with a plan, then they separated from you. My bet is that they said something like they didn’t care what you came up with as long as it created strife among the contestants that would lead to chaos. Chaos that would provide the Saboteur with cover.
But more importantly, they probably told you to be quiet about it. Either way, when I was scoping things out, it seemed pretty odd that the three of you were talking things out so calmly in the midst of a dozen or more arguments. You were acting so casual, that you didn’t seem casual at all. That was the mistake.
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Anyway, in the end Darril came up with the plan. Credit where it’s due, Darril, you came up with something viable that would not only do that, but was also greatly to your own advantage too.”
“You, Mr. Muscles—uh, sorry, what’s your name?”
“Me? Oh, uh, Barnett.” Good. The man was seriously off balance. I could almost hear the fat, lazy hamster in his head trying to turn its wheel as he’d been taking in everything I’d been saying.
“Barnett, you had a role both in Darril’s plan and one the Saboteur—or rather, this guy I brought forward who you thought was the Saboteur. That was his role in the whole business.”
I turned to them, making sure to still keep one eye on the crowd. “At the start, you presented yourselves to these two as the Saboteur, and told them you should come up with a plan to sow chaos together. That was the real Saboteur’s job for you.”
For only a moment, Darril went open-mouthed. So, he hadn’t actually figured that out then. “You were the only one the real Saboteur approached—an interaction that unfortunately, I didn’t see, but one I'm confident took place. Now that, that was a pretty good move, I admit. Probably the best move they made in this whole thing. Three suspects, for three questions. If I had suspected either of you of being the Saboteur because you were the only ones making big moves, I’m out one question already. Then if I ask you who the Saboteur is, or if I don’t accuse you but do ask who it is, you say yes then point me to him. I’d accuse him—”
“Caleb,” said the black-haired Throskart, actually interrupting me to tell me his name, “thank you, I’d accuse Caleb, and boom badda bing, the real culprit deals with all three of my Interrogations in one fell swoop.”
“And I’m not gonna lie, it might even have worked, or at least gotten me questioning things enough to be thrown off the scent, if it wasn’t for Mistake #2.
Mistake #2 happened in the lanes. As I’m sure most of you saw, I made pretty short work of my 200 baddies. Shorter work than any of you finished your own ‘jobs’ in fact.
Shorter than any of you...except one...single...person. They were in a lane that released 10 spiders. I could see them quite clearly precisely because they were the only other ones not fighting.
I thought that was odd, but then I remembered something that made me even more suspicious. Near the start of the rush, I thought I noticed someone who had been on course for the center lanes suddenly veer aside. I didn’t make anything of it at the time, until I realized it was our very same 10 spider speed runner. They surely would have had enough in the tank to gain more merits since they finished before I did, so they must have gone for less on purpose. Probably, they wanted to appear too weak to be the Saboteur by only getting 10 merits.
I say on purpose because it was clear to me, in fact it was so obvious I’d say even some of you must have realized, there are those among us who received special information about this round—like the nature of the lanes and where they’ll appear. As for how I’m one of them even though I’m a human, that’s my secret. But they forgot to pretend to struggle against the spiders. Once again, they tried so hard to be innocuous, they actually stood out.”
My denouement had reached the climax. The sun had nearly finished setting. “Now that we’ve come this far, I must say, one of you in this gathering who is positioned closest to the normal water stations looks pretty familiar. Yes...the young lady with the red hair, please step forward.”
They tried to bolt, but two other Throskarts grabbed hold of her gently but firmly, being careful not to actually hurt them. “Thanks a ton for that,” I said, “heck, I might even pass a merit or two your ways later, you two.” I walked down toward her, and she glared at me.
“You have nothing but conjecture,” she spat, which was impressive considering all that water she hadn’t been able to drink today. “Are you really going to accuse me without a single shred of real proof?”
“Pretty much,” I said, and someone in the crowd actually chuckled. “That’s the beauty of this little Inquisitor vs. Saboteur minigame. I don’t need any proof whatsoever. We may be out of the jungle, but there’s still no rule of law here—only the rules of the game.”
I glared back. “Mistake #3,” I said, “you failed to realize that I am not, in point of fact, a dumbass. Invoke Interrogate. Are you the Saboteur?”