If I was then I wouldn't be one ('cause I'm not one)

Kim sighed as she walked down the hall of the space station towards Engineering. Somehow, with how close together all these different locations were, she had a feeling that this wasn’t how the actual space station was designed.

She opened the door and ran into Dawn coming out. The cat girl had an irritated expression on her face, and her tail was standing on end.

“Hey, Dawn, everything okay?” She asked. “What’s up?”

Dawn rolled her eyes in response and then nodded over her shoulder to where Gina was busy connecting wires together and grumbling to herself.

“-Stupid challenge anyway, I don’t know what’s the point of- oh, hey Kim. You come here to do some of your tasks?” Gina looked up at the schoolgirl, barely able to hide the frustration on her face. “By all means, get to it. I hate this stupid stuff.”

“No, I don’t actually have any tasks in Engineering,” Kim said, shaking her head. “I just came down here because I figured someone else would, and I wanted to group up with some other people. You know, strength in numbers and all that.”

“A logical solution,” Dawn agreed. “The saboteurs have been keeping their heads down and going through the motions of doing their tasks, but they’re likely looking for an opportunity to strike. We should stick together and try and do our tasks as a group. It will take a lot longer that way, but we’ll have a much better chance at winning this challenge.”

“Yeah…” Kim nodded, a solemn expression crossing her face.

“Eh? What’s up, Kim?” Gina grinned, leaning forward. She’d just finished her work crossing the wires. “You don’t seem all that enthusiastic about that idea. Wait… don’t tell me you’re the saboteur? Because that would be rich!” She held her stomach and doubled over laughing. Kim rolled her eyes.

“It’s not like that,” she said, shaking her head. “I just feel a little bad for the saboteurs, you know? Whoever they are, if we win, they’re both going to get -10 points. And then everyone’s probably going to hold a grudge against them. Will they even get chosen during elimination then?”

Gina nodded. She’d moved onto another panel to work on. “Yeah, it definitely sucks alright. But hey, come on, we’re not that petty. I know if one of my friends was the saboteur, I wouldn’t have a problem picking them.”

“Same,” Dawn agreed. “They’re just doing their job as they’re supposed to. It’s part of the challenge. I can’t really fault someone for trying to get ahead.”

Kim considered that. “Yeah, I guess you have a point,” she agreed. “I mean, if Mary was the saboteur, I don’t think I could stay mad at her, you know? I might just pick her regardless.”

Dawn grinned. “Exactly. We shouldn’t let this get in the way of our friendship. Now, I have some tasks in Medical I need to accomplish, you want to come with?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Kim agreed. With Dawn, any Medical tasks would probably be fixed relatively quickly and easily. She turned to Gina. “Hey, you gonna come with? Strength in numbers and all that?”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Gina said, waving dismissively at them. “I still have a few tasks to finish up here, and I don’t have any in Medical, so it’d be a waste of time.”

Kim sighed and rolled her eyes. They were trying to be strategic here, but Gina was so lazy she didn’t even want to do extra work.

“Well, good luck then,” she said, leaving Engineering with Dawn. The two headed down the hall, discussing the best strategies they could think of for staying safe from the saboteurs.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what Sylvia said,” Dawn mused, stroking her chin thoughtfully. “She was very vague about how eliminations would be determined this round.”

“Yeah, she was,” Kim nodded. “She said it would be fairly straightforward and eliminations like usual if the saboteurs win, but not a lot about what would happen if the workers win.”

“What that tells me is that she’s very confident that the workers won’t win this challenge, or that she’s hiding something else,” Dawn stated. “I think we should-”

“Aaaaahhnnn! OH, FUCK! YES!”

The sound of Gina’s orgasmic moans echoed in the girls’ ears, and they doubled back to Engineering. Kim threw open the door and both girls raced inside, where they saw Gina lying on the ground with her eyes rolled back into her head, twitching and shaking. A crooked smile spread across her lips as she basked in post-orgasmic bliss.

“Gina!” Kim exclaimed, crouching down next to the punk girl. “Dawn, is she-”

“Cumming like crazy?” Dawn was trying very hard to hide her disgust. “Yes. Yes she is.”

“But there’s no other doors to Engineering,” Kim said, looking around. “That’s the only one. There’s nowhere to hide in here, and we would have seen someone if they left the way we came in.”

“No doors, no…” Dawn mused, glancing at the vent near the floor. “But that vent looks big enough for a person to crawl through. I would certainly have no trouble.”

Kim glanced at Dawn’s figure, and agreed that the cat girl wouldn’t have any issue trying to fit through that vent. Some of the curvier girls, though…

“We need to inform somebody,” Kim said. “Sylvia mentioned something about a big button in the meeting room to call everybody together, right?”

“No need,” Dawn said, shaking her head. “Look.”

Their pads were flashing red, with the words EMERGENCY REPORT lighting up the screen.

Dawn and Kim glanced at each other and pressed down on the screen together. They were immediately teleported to the meeting room along with everybody else. They were all sitting in chairs around a big table, like they were shareholders on a board. The girls all took a second to process the teleportation.

“Whoa! Hey, what the fuck!?” Dani groaned. “I was in the middle of scanning my card in Admin!”

“You were getting it wrong the whole time, too, and had to repeat it a lot,” Rose tittered, and Dani shot her a dirty look.

“We found a body,” Dawn reported. “Well… I mean, not a body, but we found Gina cumming her brains out.”

“I see…” Mary’s face fell. “So much for hoping we could all get through this challenge just by doing our tasks. I guess the saboteurs really are trying to stop us.”

Kim appreciated the sweetness of Mary hoping for something like that, but she was a lot less naïve. From the start Kim knew there was no way this challenge would just be some harmless game of going about fixing repairs to the space station.

“Excuse me, Dawn, but you said ‘we’ found the body, is that right?” Dakota leaned forward in her seat with an inquisitive look on her face. “What do you mean by ‘we’? You weren’t alone?”

“Oh, that was me,” Kim said. “I was with Dawn the whole time.”

“So you two were together?” Mary asked, narrowing her eyes. “Then please, provide the rest of us with an explanation as to what happened. From the start. Walk us through the events from your perspective so we can understand better. That way we might be able to figure out who targeted Gina.”

Oh, that’s right, Kim remembered. Mary loves mystery novels! I totally forgot!

“There’s not a lot to tell,” Dawn said. She could recount the circumstances perfectly from memory. “I had just finished up my tasks in Engineering, while Gina still had a few to complete.”

“And you were alone at the time?” Mary asked.

“Incorrect. I was with Gina,” Dawn repeated.

“Sorry, sorry, I mean you and Gina were alone together?” Mary clarified.

“Yes,” Dawn nodded. “I was waiting with Gina.”

“So you stuck around in Engineering even after you finished all your tasks?” Dani frowned. “I don’t know, Dawn, that seems pretty suspicious.”

Dawn shot her a look. “I was sticking around because there’s strength in numbers,” she replied. “I didn’t want to go wandering the halls alone and getting jabbed by a needle when I didn’t see it coming.”

“But you were alone with Gina,” Morgana pointed out. “What if she was the saboteur?”

“Well, she clearly wasn’t,” Dani said, rolling her eyes.

“That isn’t really the point, though,” Dakota said. “If Gina WAS the saboteur, then that would have been a very reckless decision of Dawn’s, to wait alone with her.”

“I chose Gina for one simple reason,” Dawn said plainly. “Whether she was the saboteur or not, she was the best decision. After all, if she WAS the saboteur… well, then the workers would be able to win the challenge fairly easily anyway, even if I did get eliminated first.”

The room fell silent for a second as they tried to process what the smart girl was saying. Dawn provided further clarification.

“You know, because she’s dumb.”

“Ah. Yeah, good point,” Dani nodded.

“Gina couldn’t lie to save her life,” Morgana agreed. She liked the punk girl, and respected her in some ways, but Gina was pretty crummy when it came to faking things. As a professional faker, she knew a novice when she saw one.

“Continue with your story,” Mary urged.

Dawn nodded and continued. “Kim came in a few minutes after I had finished up my tasks. She said that she was looking for other people, because she didn’t want to be ambushed alone either and figured there was safety in numbers, just like I did.”

Mary glanced at Kim, who nodded.

“After Kim and I talked for a bit, we agreed to go to Medical so I could do my tasks. Gina said we could leave, so we went. Then a minute later, we heard her moan, and doubled back to find her body. That’s everything that happened.”

“So you two just left her there? Even with all the talk about sticking together?” Dakota frowned. “That sounds pretty suspicious if you ask me.”

“It was the smart thing to do,” Dawn replied. “I didn’t trust Kim all that much.”

“What?!” Kim gasped. “Why not?!”

Dawn shrugged. “I don’t really trust anybody when it comes to games like this. For all I know, you could be lying to me. You certainly have the skill for it. So Gina was my insurance policy. If we went off together, and I end up on the receiving end of an orgasm, even Gina would have been able to connect the dots and identify you as the last person I was with. That’s what I was counting on. So yes, it would have been nice for the three of us to go to Medical, but I felt very safe accompanying you there.”

After hearing Dawn’s explanation, Kim couldn’t even be mad about the woman’s assumption of her as the saboteur. It was clear that she had thought about this pretty carefully.

“Don’t worry,” Dawn assured her. “I trust you now, obviously.”

“I see, that does make sense to me,” Mary agreed. “And Kim, you’ll corroborate this?”

“Well, I don’t have the amazing memory she does,” Kim admitted sheepishly. “But for the most part… yeah. That’s how it happened, more or less.”

“I see, in that case, I think it’s safe to say that neither one of them are the saboteur, then,” Carly sighed in relief. “So that just leaves the rest of us.”

“Yeah,” Marley nodded. “Who was alone a few minutes ago and doesn’t have an alibi.”

“Excuse me, but no, it’s not that easy.”

Mary’s voice held a stern coldness to it that Kim was unfamiliar with. Everyone looked at her in surprise, not expecting her to be so forceful.

“…What’s up, Mary?” Kim asked, confused.

“First, I’d like to thank you for being so honest and open with the rest of us,” Mary said. “But don’t think that just because your stories add up that you’re free of any suspicion in this matter.”

“Huh? But Dawn said we were already gone!” Kim protested.

“True, but you’re forgetting something,” Dakota said, eyeing the girls with her golden eyes. “There are two saboteurs here. For all we know, it could be the two of you. You could have concocted this entire BS story to hide the fact that you killed Gina together.”

The table was silent for a second as everyone processed that.

“Hey, now that you mention it, there’s only one door going in and out of Engineering,” Rose pointed out. “You said you were out of there for barely a minute?”

“Approximately one minute and six seconds,” Dawn confirmed.

“And what, you two run back after hearing the orgasm, and you don’t see anything? Don’t hear the footsteps of someone running away, through the only door to the room?” Rose narrowed her eyes. “I’m with Mary and Dakota on this one. That sounds fishy.”

Kim started to sweat. For a moment, she wondered if the two of them were going to be subjected to a witch hunt.

Dawn handled things a lot more coolly though.

“We thought it was odd, too,” she agreed. “Before we reported the body, though, I took stock of the room, and I had an idea. You know those vents all over the station? The ones that seem comedically too large to be necessary? What if the saboteur got into that room through the vents?”

“The vents?” Dani frowned. “Is that even possible?”

“I tried going into the vent myself,” Marley said. “I wanted to see if we could. But it said that access was restricted when I tried.”

“So the vents are off limits, then, so much for that theory,” Dakota smirked. “This isn’t ‘Die Hard’ kitten, we can’t just go around sneaking through the air ducts.”

“Hey, wait, that doesn’t mean anything!” Kim protested. “Remember, Marley isn’t even technically a competitor in this challenge! Maybe that’s why she couldn’t use the vent!”

“That actually kind of makes sense,” Morgana agreed.

“That’s true,” Mary nodded. “Did anyone else try getting into the vents?”

Everyone else at the table shook their heads.

“When Marley couldn’t, I figured we weren’t allowed to,” Carly admitted sheepishly.

“I hate cramped spaces like that,” Dani frowned.

“Ruin my hair with all that hot air? Please!” Rose sniffed.

“I just didn’t even think about it, myself,” Morgana admitted.

Mary sighed. “...So much for that idea. Okay, when the meeting is over, someone other than Marley please try to use a vent. We’ll need to see just what limitations there are on the saboteur’s movements. Then we’ll know for certain whether or not Dawn and Kim are guilty.”

“That doesn’t prove anything, though,” Dawn pointed out. “The saboteurs might have special permission to use the vents that we don’t. It did say access was restricted, not prohibited. Language counts.”

As a Literature major, Mary couldn’t argue with that.

“But what would be the point of doing that?” Rose groaned.

“Because would make the challenge more interesting,” Dakota answered. She leaned back in her seat and frowned, steepling her fingers together. “Just think about it. This is a locked room mystery, of a sort. Everything’s been arranged to frame Kim and Dawn as the saboteurs. But if the saboteur is capable of sneaking into closed rooms through the vents, letting them frame people, that makes things much more complicated. And thus, more interesting. I’m sure it’s a far better show because of it.”

She actually smiled at the thought. “It would take a special mind to do something like that, though. Someone very well-read, who knows a lot about mysteries, perhaps?”

Dakota turned and looked pointedly at Mary, and Mary’s mouth fell open.

“It-it wasn’t me!” She exclaimed.

“Well, if we work from the assumption that Dawn and Kim are innocent, and were framed by an imposter using the vents, then you’re a good suspect,” Dakota countered. “After all, you’ve been guiding this meeting the whole time. That’s what I would do as the saboteur. Take control fast and organize the witch hunt to frame innocent people, and hopefully let the votes do some of my work for me.”

“Mary’s not like that!” Kim protested. She looked desperately at her friend. “You wouldn’t try to frame me, would you?”

“Of course not!” Mary exclaimed. “Dakota, don’t say stuff like that unless you’re certain!”

“That’s the thing, though,” Rose said, glancing at Mary with **** suspicion. “We can’t be certain. We don’t know who is and isn’t the saboteur.”

“That’s true,” Carly agreed. “If the saboteur can use the vents, then anyone who was alone at the time of the ****- err, I mean… orgasming? Is a suspect.”

Dakota crossed her arms over her chest and scanned the room with a cold glare. “So?” She asked icily, looking from face to face. “Where were you all?”

“I was with Rose in Admin,” Dani said immediately, looking grateful for once that the blonde had stuck around to tease her.

“Same, I was with Dani,” Rose nodded. “If this happened only a few minutes before the meeting, there’s no way either one of us could have gotten there and back again without being spotted by the other, even when using the vents.”

“So you two have a good alibi,” Mary noted. She still seemed suspicious of them, though. “Neither one of you are the saboteur… or at least, not the saboteur who did this. But we can’t discount that one of you was the saboteur looking for an opportunity to target another mark.”

Neither Dani nor Rose seemed pleased by that assessment, but neither one of them could really refute it.

“I was with Marley the whole time,” Carly declared. “She’ll back me up.”

Rose snorted. “Come on. That’s not how this works.”

“What?! Why not?!” Carly protested.

“Because you two are on the same team together!” Morgana pointed out. “You’re basically one person, remember? It doesn’t count as an alibi if you’re both invested in lying!”

“…Okay, yeah, that makes sense,” Carly admitted sheepishly. “Withdrawn.”

“What about you, Morgana?” Dakota turned to the goth, and she flinched.

“I-I… I was by myself…” Morgana stammered, unable to meet Dakota’s eyes. That didn’t go unnoticed by her.

“You can’t look at me while you say that? Hiding a guilty conscience, perhaps?”

Morgana gulped. She didn’t want to be kicked off just for being uneasy around Dakota.

“N-no!” She said, shaking her head. “I just… you know, it’s embarrassing, being put on the spot like this…”

Dakota didn’t seem to buy that for a second. She stared at Morgana, looking like she was trying to figure out whether or not the goth was lying. Finally, she sighed. “I suppose I don’t have any position to say anything, seeing as how I don’t have an alibi either,” she admitted. “I was by myself, too.”

“So was I,” Mary nodded solemnly. “There are a few of us who don’t, so we can’t say for certain who is and who isn’t the saboteur.”

“And we don’t even know if the saboteur is capable of using the vents or not, either,” Carly noted. “For all we know, it could have just been Dawn and Kim.”

“Let’s not go down that road,” Mary urged. “The second worst thing you can do in a **** mystery is start accusing people without evidence. It becomes significantly harder to find the truth that way.”

“What’s the first thing?” Morgana asked curiously.

Mary glanced at her. “…Don’t split up. I think we should all stay together in one big group, and try to do all our tasks that way. If we do that, we don’t give the saboteur any openings. What do you guys think?”

“I think that’ll take forever,” Dani groaned. “Come on, I have tasks all over this dumb station, do you know how long it would take for all of us to stick together in a huge clump?”

“Well, we don’t have to go to that much of an ****,” Dawn said. “The buddy system is a proven strategy that works. We can just pair off.”

“Unless the two saboteurs pair off together,” Dakota pointed out. “Then nobody will be safe. They can get two of us at once!”

Dawn adjusted her glasses and smiled. “That’s even better.”

“What?!” Morgana nearly fell out of her chair. “But Dawn, that’s so heartless!”

“Ruthless,” Dakota said, cracking a grin. “I like it. I was just thinking the same thing, myself.”

“I still don’t get it,” Dani said. “Why is us losing more people a good thing?”

“Because it will narrow our odds,” Dawn pointed out. “Just think. Let’s say you and Morgana team up together, and we find that both of you have been wiped out, cumming your brains out. Immediately that means the saboteurs are in the same group together. There will only be six people left in the challenge, but we know that two of the six of them are our enemies. That would mean that one of the two teams that isn’t mine for sure has both saboteurs on it, at least from my perspective. And from the perspective of anyone who isn’t a saboteur. It also means that the person we’ve teamed up with is guaranteed to NOT be a saboteur. We won’t identify the culprits right away, necessarily, but it will be significantly more difficult for the saboteurs to make any moves once we’ve identified possible pairs, as well as knowing for a fact who we can and can’t trust. Make sense?”

Dawn’s words sounded reasonable, even if Dani didn’t fully understand them.

“I agree with Dawn,” Mary nodded. “I think that’s the best course of action to take.”

“So how should we determine the groups, then?” Morgana asked.

“I want to go with Dani,” Carly said, glancing at the blue-haired woman, who looked back at her in surprise.

“R-really?” Dani asked.

“I… I trust you,” Carly nodded. “Even if you were the saboteur, I don’t think you’d target me.”

“Aww, how sweet,” Dakota said, her voice oozing with sarcasm.

“Kim,” Mary said, turning to her friend. “I trust you, too. Do you want to team up?”

“Really? Oh, uh… yeah, that should be fine,” Kim nodded. It might be helpful to stick with the girl who lived and breathed mystery novels.

“Um!” Morgana piped up, her voice cracking with desperation. “Dawn… could we…?”

Dawn winced. “…I’m sorry,” she apologized. “But… I want to team up with Dakota for this one.”

Dakota looked surprised. “Really? Me? That’s… an interesting choice.”

“It’s a smart choice,” Dawn said, narrowing her eyes. “You were the one most suspicious of me. If we’re partnered up together, then I’ll be able to easily prove to you I’m not the saboteur.”

Dakota smirked, and shrugged. “Works for me. So that just leaves…”

“Hey there!” Rose slapped Morgana on the back. “Ready to get a move on?”

Morgana gulped and slumped down into her chair. Rose wasn’t exactly the person she wanted to partner with.