Day 3: Helena (Morality and Ethics)

You’re back at Rebekah’s kitchen table, though “kitchen” feels like a misnomer. It’s a war room now—coffee cups and cables tangled with notebooks, a laptop halfway through updating its forecast model, and a whiteboard that’s seen more ink than most term papers. You’re not even sure what half of what she’s mapping out is for.

There’s no music this morning. No banter either. Rebekah’s in strategist mode: legs curled under her, hair pinned up, eyes flicking between post-its like she’s running diagnostics on a failing system.

Your breakfast is silent—she’d made toast, slightly burnt. You fried up some eggs and hash browns to go with it. It’s not much, but it’s something.

Finally, Rebekah speaks. “We’re idle.” You glance up. She doesn’t look at you. “And that’s not good. Momentum matters.”

You nod. You know she’s right. In a game like this, the score is only part of the picture. Motion creates story. Stillness breeds suspicion. That’s why the other players spend so much time on the group chat, bragging and dissing and joking around. Look active even when you’re not active. You just dip in and out when you feel like it. And that doesn’t seem to please Rebekah at all. You checked on some of her tournament videos and saw she’s a motormouth. She likes to be in her opponents’ faces to whatever extent is allowed by the rules. You’re just not built that way.

There’s been progress this week. Helena’s completed the **** contract challenge and is off working her angle on Delilah. But Sabine hasn’t even been approached. Then there’s Claire’s ghost hovering somewhere offstage, unresolved.

And your hand? One card of a diamond flush held, 3 more in play this week. The odds of making it another straight flush are incredibly low, but you are in a strong position.

But as she says, right now, nothing’s moving.

It would be nice to take the next two days just to rest, but with Rebekah as your manager that’s not going to happen.

You glance at the player dashboard on your phone. No new notifications. No new plays. You consider opening the group chat again, checking to see if anyone answered your late-night question. But your thumb hovers, then drops.

Not yet.

Rebekah taps her pen on the edge of her mug. Not impatient. Just… measuring time. She finally sighs and mutters, “Stasis is ****,” more to herself than to you.

You push your plate away. “Maybe. But sometimes you wait for the pieces to move.”

She arches an eyebrow but doesn’t argue. Just makes a note on her pad with a line you can’t quite read.

Outside, morning light filters through the slatted blinds. The air tastes like old ambition and lukewarm caffeine. You feel the day stretching ahead—not empty, but unscripted. And that might be worse.

Midday finds you half-hunched over your laptop in the back corner of the campus café, trying to complete a paper and ignore the fact that you need to reach out to Sabine. The sun cuts in through the blinds in bright diagonal stripes, patterning the table like a chessboard. You’re not making moves. Just thinking about the next one.

Sabine Moreau.

She’s not a challenge yet. Not officially. She hasn’t been approached. She hasn’t been told. You’re not even sure if she can be approached—not like the others. Rebekah is giving you space on this one, but that space feels like standing on the edge of something steep, and you don’t know whether you’re the one falling or pushing.

You open her bio card—really studying it for the first time since you found out who she was. Her availability is rated at 20, mostly because of how professional she is according to the card. You suspect that they, like you, are also thinking about her disability. Her kinkiness is in the 60s though, but again you’ve seen how inaccurate all of this can be. As to her sexual rumor: “Once told a guy, “You can’t top me if you can’t out-argue me.” He never tried again.”

It doesn’t tell you anything good. And it doesn’t help you resolve the battle raging in your mind over this one. Part of you wants to try. After all, she’s sexy, smart and if the kink rating is anything to go by uninhibited to at least a degree and in the right situation. But… you don’t want her to be an object. Besides, how would you even reach out to her?

You pull up the campus social media app and stare at the blinking cursor for too long.

Then you type: Hi, Sabine. You don’t know me, but I’ve seen you around campus and… well, something came up that I think we should talk about. Would you be open to grabbing a coffee sometime soon?

You read it back twice. Three times. It’s vague enough. Safe. Respectful.

You hit send.

It takes five minutes to get a reply. Long enough for your heart rate to tap out a nervous little beat against your ribs. Just one line: What’s this about?

Of course she asks. You would too.

You sit back. Consider all the ways you could dodge. Say it’s about a club, a shared class, some project. You could even lie. But you don’t want to. That’s the problem.

So you don’t.

You write slowly. Deliberately. Every word a bead of guilt.

I’m taking part in something this week. It’s… competitive, and it’s gotten complicated. You’re technically involved, even if no one asked you. I want to explain, face to face. No pressure, no expectations. Just clarity. I owe you that much.

You stare at it. Then, reluctantly, you hit send.

It’s a full minute before she replies: Tomorrow morning. Disability services lounge. Back corner. 10am.

That’s all.

No emoji. No tone softener. No indication of what she’s thinking.

You close the chat. Your gut twists. Not because you’re nervous. Because she said yes. And now you have to explain.

You send a quick message to Rebekah to let her know you’re meeting with Sabine. She says she’ll be there, but you tell her to leave it to you. The last thing you want is Rebekah’s bull-headed, unemotional strategizing being dumped on a woman you’re still not sure you should be challenging.

By night you’re back in your dorm room, going over one of the philosophy books you have for your Ethics 103 class. It’s quiet. Just the hum of the mini-fridge and the buzz in your head. You lie back, phone balanced on your chest, and open the group chat for active players and handlers.

It’s as busy as always and it takes you a while to scroll back to the message you posted last night.

“Does anyone else feel like this game is messing with them?”

Responses came in.

Milo Gutierrez:

“You? Really?

I signed my life over to a woman who makes me beg to schedule my own classes.

Yesterday she made me crawl to the faculty lounge just to bring her tea. In front of her TA.

This game isn’t messing with me. It owns me.”

A pause.

Professor Ravensmoor: “Are you complaining, little ****?”

Milo’s reply comes seconds later, crisp with fear: “No, Professor. Sorry, Professor. Thank you for correcting me.”

Then comes Graham West: “Oh, it’s messing with you? Adorable. This is the dream of every college freshman isn’t it? Sex with one or more new girls every single week? No strings attached?”

A smiling devil emoji punctuates the message.

Rhett: “Please remember: all psychological trauma must be approved in advance via Form 6B.”

He’s attached a gif of someone waving a burning “Rules Don’t Matter” banner.

Finally, Rebekah chimes in—blunt as ever: “If it’s not messing with you, you’re not playing deep enough. Keep your head in the game and your eye on the prize.”

You stare for a bit.

Then, just before you close the app, one more message trickles in via AnonymousBot03—something you haven’t noticed before in your cursory looks at the chat: “The deeper it gets, the more it knows what to take from you.”

That doesn’t help. You feel like it might have taken too much already. You lock your screen. Set the phone face-down on the desk. And exhale.