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As they followed the skipping child back to the democracy chamber, the number zipped from Faust to Eirlys, glowing out of her hand. She had a splitting headache stemming from her ears, probably a remnant of the sub-zero wind. Even looking at the lanterns on the walls set it off.

Welcome back, she thought. I'm busy. Get used to bullet points.

— It was all Eirlys' fault.

— She hadn't been strong enough.

— She hadn't been clever enough.

— She'd thought that freefalling for the rest of her life would be punishment enough, but now she was back she had to carry the burden of Greer's death.

— A lump in her throat; slight blurring of vision. Tremors in her voicebox. All this was unhelpful. She had to get strong. She had to get clever. She had to be competent enough that something like this would never happen again.

— Tarquin, the man skipping alongside the child to try and make friends: exploitable. If he'd helped her with no expectation of a reward, then he'd do it again. He'd actually looked uncomfortable when she offered to vote on a reform of their choice.

— Kari, the child with a big grin: dangerous. Aside from the fact that Eirlys distrusted happy people, as well as silent people, the child must have seen what happened down there. It was possible they were being led into a trap. In response, Eirlys drifted to the back of the line.

— Connie, the woman fighting back imaginary enemies with her axe: exploitable. Prone to vanity. She would probably go along with anything if she thought she were manipulating Eirlys.

— Faust, the man shuffling behind with his hands in his pockets: not a threat. He didn't look assertive enough to stand up to serious criticism, and she'd already put him on the back foot with a comment about him being moody.

— The democratisation of reality: a real thing. Saheel had been right to consider other strategies. She would have to apologise. Unfortunately, she wouldn't be able to apologise to Greer.

— It was Eirlys' fault.

— Eirlys had forced Greer into an uninteresting situation, condemning her.

Eirlys slapped herself, loud as a whip crack, and Faust turned back to squint at her. She shrugged, so he shook his head and kept walking, bowed over under the weight of his own damn problems. Now her face stung in multiple places. A red mark formed on her cheek.

— Unhelpful thoughts wouldn't fix the situation, but competence would.

— Analyse to understand.

— The first motion they needed to pass, then: majority rule. Saheel had wanted to minimise the chance of bad actors before anybody could completely derail the process. Had he been too pressed for time to debate it, or had the others rejected it out of hand?

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She tapped Faust on the shoulder, the least patronising of the three. "Excuse me, Faust."

Even though all she said was his name, he physically recoiled, holding his arms out in a cross to shield him. Did she think he was a vampire?

"Who invokes the name of the moody one?" he said. "What are you after? A vial of tears?"

"Ha," said Eirlys, trying to smile.

Faust frowned. "Go ahead, poke your fun like the rest of them. What's one more insult on a pile of thousands?"

"I'm sorry," said Eirlys.

"No you're not."

She shrugged. "Did Saheel say anything about changing the democratisation of reality to a majority rule?"

"Considering he was there for all of two minutes, after which Greer dropped dead? I'm surprised I even remember his name. They were going on about having a spa day, or something."

"Thank you," said Eirlys. "Watch your step."

Because he was walking backwards, Faust nearly tumbled down the gigantic set of stairs, and Eirlys absentmindedly used her climbing reflexes to catch him. He brushed himself off and kept walking.

— Nearly there. The child hadn't changed behaviour. Still, she needed to be careful. Let the others go in first.

"Hey." Eirlys grabbed Faust by the arm, pulling him back into a fork on the staircase that presumably led to another team's rooms.

"WHAT?" he said, shoving her into the wall. "That makes three people, now! Why does everyone think they can just push me around?"

"Sorry." She tried not to fall over, but her legs bent backwards, slipping on the smooth marble and she quickly found herself on the ground. It smelt dusty. Her glasses bounced down the steps.

"Oh, shit, sorry," said Faust, chasing after them, then passing them back to her. "Uh, you look a lot stronger than you are."

She yanked on his hand, hard, bringing him down to her level, and said, "I am strong, you just caught me off guard."

— Eirlys had to stop getting caught off guard.

"God, of course you are," cried Faust, nursing the arm she'd yanked. "I was almost feeling a little bit of remorse, but instead you had to double down on your campaign of harassment! Were your cutting words not enough? Must you thirst so for my blood? I swear, everywhere I go people just give me nothing but shit!"

— Maybe he actually believed she was a vampire.

"I'm sorry," said Eirlys. "I'm bad at being a people person. I just wanted to a) wait to see whether Connie and Tarquin were about to spring a trap, and b) ask your opinion on changing the democratisation of reality to a majority rule."

"You're saying my team might be in TROUBLE?" Faust spat at her feet, then dashed back down the stairs.

Eirlys lay there, listening for gunshots. None came, so she picked herself back up, dusted herself down, and crept into the central chamber past a stunned, shellshocked Team Shame. The kid was... doing some kind of jig next to a park ranger who had an ice pick — Eirlys' ice pick — lodged in his windpipe.

— He's still alive.

Indeed, the ranger was gargling, wide eyed, and letting out a horrible wheeze that sounded like somebody blowing through a vacuum tube.

— Saheel?

She found him a couple of paces from the ranger, choking on a puddle of his own blood. His priest's robe was torn ragged by bullets. Eirlys counted eleven holes. Somehow, he was still breathing. But then they all were.

"The twelfth bullet?" she asked.

Tarquin motioned to a schoolteacher slumped in front of a door labelled 70,000, a streak of blood running down it. Her cardigan was stained by a wound spreading out from her chest. She was clutching, white-knuckled, a clipboard. Alive.

— Greer. Don’t look at her body.

"We need to heal them, now," said Tarquin. "I can’t stand just watching them suffer. All those in favour?"

— Thumbs down.

7👍 1👎 — INSUFFICIENT MAJORITY

Eirlys stepped over to the park ranger, bent down, picked up his gun, rested it square on his forehead, and pulled the trigger.

Click.

— He must have emptied everything he had into Saheel.

"What the fuck, Eirlys?" shouted Connie.

"You might want to look away," said Eirlys, grabbing hold of the pick, pushing against the body with her foot to shunt it free.

"What do you think you're doing?" said Tarquin.

"First things first," she said, swinging down the ice pick.

— Force his hand.