Honest to God I should toss y'all like a rotten salad

“Morgana… is a saboteur?” Mary asked, scrunching up her nose. “Are you sure, Kim?”

“I don’t know,” Rose said, shaking her head. “That seems really hard to believe, if you ask me. I mean, that girl seems like she wouldn’t be able to keep a secret to save her life.”

“I know it seems that way, but Dawn was really certain about it,” Kim said adamantly. “She had this whole big theory about how it has to be Morgana, because of who got eliminated and in what order. She thinks that Morgana eliminated Gina and then Carly so that when she wins, you or Dawn might be willing to buddy up with her.”

“I understand that logic, at least,” Rose nodded. “It’s the same reasoning I used in my first challenge to ally with Holly; I targeted Dakota to eliminate her, because Holly was the most likely person to pick me as her buddy and I wanted her to win. …It didn’t end up going that way, though…”

“So in that case, Dawn should be safe, right?” Mary asked, her voice filled with hope. “After all, like you said, she wants Dawn and me to pick her, right? Assuming she’s actually the saboteur.”

Kim shook her head. “Or she doesn’t need to keep Dawn safe anymore.”

“Kim is right,” Rose nodded in agreement. “The only thing that matters is who’s ahead of the other. If Carly comes in eighth and Dawn comes in seventh, that still means Dawn gets to give out a rose, even though she’s almost at the bottom. It answers my question from earlier, too.”

“Question?” Mary asked.

“About why Dawn wasn’t eliminated before now,” Rose reminded her. She kept trying the door, just to see if it would open. It wouldn’t. “I thought that the saboteur would eliminate Dawn first, since she’s such a threat, and the fact that she hadn’t been eliminated yet meant that she had to be the saboteur herself. But if Morgana wanted to make sure she could get Carly before she targeted Dawn, that would make sense.”

“We have to assume that the saboteurs can control these automatic doors, just like they turned out the lights and sabotaged O2,” Kim said. “The question is whether or not we were targeted specifically to separate Dawn from the rest of us, or if the doors have been closed all over the space station. If we were targeted specifically… then Dawn might already be dead.”

Mary shook her head. “We can’t think that way,” she adamantly declared. “Let’s try and find another way to get there. Maybe the other doors will be able to open. We might be able to track down Dakota, too.”

She looked around warily as they left the room, and headed down the hall, looking for a way to get to the other side of the O2 Room. “We said we’d meet up in the O2 Room, but she’s not here. You don’t think something could have happened to her, too, do you?”

Kim wanted to say she didn’t think so, knowing Dakota. But she couldn’t be sure. “Actually, Dawn and I talked about that, too. If Dakota isn’t the other saboteur, then she’d be a good target for Morgana; after all, Morgana and Dakota have some… issues about each other. So there’s a chance Morgana wants me to last longer than Dakota, so that I’ll be able to pick her.”

“Well, here’s hoping that Morgana likes me more than Dani then,” Rose said.

Mary and Kim stared at her incredulously.

“What?!” Rose exclaimed. “I haven’t ever gotten immunity in a challenge before! Just once I’d like to not be on the chopping block for elimination! Is that so wrong!?”

“Well… it’s not wrong…” Kim and Mary glanced at each other and sighed.

“…Rose, please be more tactful,” Mary pleaded. “It’s stuff like this that rubs people the wrong way. I’m still not fully convinced that you’re not the saboteur.”

“I’m not!” Rose protested. “You heard her! It’s Morgana! It’s gotta be! If I was the saboteur, why didn’t I get you before we fixed O2, huh?”

“…You raise a good point,” Mary admitted, sighing. “I thought it was you and Dani… I was certain enough that I was even willing to go with you, betting you’d eliminate me, and then Kim or Dawn would bring that up. But you didn’t. So my money is on Dani and Morgana.”

“Dani and Morgana? That’s an… odd pair,” Rose murmured.

“…We could be the only ones left, you know,” Mary said quietly. “If those two are the saboteurs, they could have eliminated Dakota and Dawn already. So it’s just the three of us. Maybe we should go to the Meeting Room and call a meeting, just to be safe.”

“I’ll go with that,” Kim nodded. “That’s probably a faster way to make sure Dawn is safe, anyway. Who knows if we’ll be able to find her with half the doors here shut down.”

The three of them changed course, heading in the direction of the Meeting Room. It was a little harder to navigate with some of the doors blocked and without Dawn’s memory to serve as a perfect guide, but they were able to handle it fairly well.

They’d just about gotten there when they heard a loud moan and shout from Admin.

It only took a second for everyone to place the moan and to realize what had happened.

“It’s Dani!” Kim exclaimed, and the three girls rushed over to Admin as fast as possible. Rose threw open the door and stepped into the room, and the trio engraved the image into their eyes.

Dani was slumped over the scanning table, hips twitching with shock as her eyes rolled back into her head. A string of drool dribbled out of her mouth.

And right next to her crouched Morgana, staring wide-eyed at the three of them like a deer caught in the headlights.

She had the grate to the vent in her hands.

“…This isn’t what it looks like!”

EMERGENCY REPORT!

The girls were all transported back to the Meeting Room for Morgana’s trial.

All five of them.

“Wait!” Kim looked around. “Where’s Dawn?! Shouldn’t she be here?!”

Even as she said that, she already knew the answer to her question.

“If she’s not here, that means she’s been eliminated,” Dakota said, narrowing her eyes. “What a surprise. The two of you were alone together, and now you come back here with your partner dead under mysterious circumstances.”

“She’s not dead!” Kim protested. “She just orgasmed!”

“…Right, thank you for admitting that,” Dakota sneered.

“I didn’t ‘admit’ to anything, it’s just how the challenge works!” Kim groaned. Dakota seemed like she would take anything Kim said at this point and twist it into evidence of her guilt. “And besides, that’s not what’s relevant right now!”

Mary stared daggers at Morgana, who was drilling a hole in the floor with her eyes. She was sweating so heavily you wouldn’t be mistaken to think that she’d been the one stuck with a horny syringe.

“So, Morgana, what do you have to say for yourself?” Rose asked, crossing her arms over her chest with a slightly-bemused smile. She seemed to be the only one enjoying this challenge.

“I, uh… wrong place, wrong time?” Morgana couldn’t really offer any defense.

“You could definitely say that,” Rose tittered, twirling a lock of her hair. “I certainly think you would have preferred to be somewhere else, somewhen else rather than get found out by the three of us in the middle of the crime.”

“‘Somewhen’ isn’t a word,” Mary corrected Rose automatically.

Rose rolled her eyes. “Whatever. This is pretty open and shut, right? Dani was orgasming in front of us, Morgana was climbing into a vent, that’s about as close to guilty as I could imagine, given the circumstances.”

“It doesn’t look good for you, Morgana,” Kim agreed, shaking her head.

“This is a witch hunt! I’m innocent! I swear!” Morgana wailed. But everybody could see she was grasping at straws. The vote was just a formality at this point.

Morgana turned her tearful red eyes to Mary, knowing she was caught.

“…I’m sorry,” she apologized, hanging her head. “I…”

Her voice caught in her throat. “…Huh? I can’t, I- huh?”

“It’s Sylvia’s doing,” Dakota muttered. “She probably made it so that the saboteurs can’t actually admit to their crimes. That’s what I would have done, anyway.”

“So not only can Morgana not admit that she’s a saboteur, but she can’t even tell us who she eliminated,” Rose said, frowning. “That’s so annoying! Why have a stupid rule like that?!”

“Because if she could tell, then we might be able to coerce her, probably,” Kim said. “We could say something like ‘tell us who the other saboteur is, and if you do, we promise that one of us will pick you as our buddy for the next round’ or something.”

For someone in a position like Morgana, that would have been a very tempting offer. Whether the saboteurs won the challenge or not, she wasn’t safe either way. She would take the guaranteed security in a heartbeat, especially after making an enemy of everybody here.

The fact that she couldn’t take that deal really bummed her out.

“Well, it’s not like we need her to give us any sort of confirmation,” Dakota said, leaning forward and resting her chin in her hands. “It’s pretty clear what happened. Morgana is the one who eliminated Gina, then Kim eliminated Carly, then Morgana and Kim eliminated Dani and Dawn respectively, and now here we are. We just need to vote the two of them out.”

“Wait, hold on a second,” Mary said, shaking her head. “You can’t prove that Kim killed anybody. It’s too early to assume she’s the second saboteur.”

Dakota snorted and leaned back in her seat. “Oh, really? Who else could it be, then? I’ll give it to you, Morgana could have eliminated Gina and Carly, and she obviously got Dani. But Dawn? I don’t think so. She didn’t have the time.”

Dakota turned to Kim. “How long ago DID Dawn ‘disappear’ anyway?”

Kim didn’t like how Dakota kept insisting that she was the saboteur. “It was a while. There would have been enough time, probably.”

“Fine. Then tell me what happened,” Dakota said. “All of it.”

Kim nodded. “After Dawn and I fixed the O2 in the Greenhouse, we talked about the possibility of Morgana being the saboteur. Dawn said that Morgana was the saboteur, and that she was eliminating the people whose buddies would be more likely to pick her.”

“That does make sense,” Dakota nodded. “And it explains why I’m still around.” She turned to the goth. “I see she understands that even though the two of us have our differences, I might be inclined to be her buddy…”

Morgana shivered under Dakota’s intimidating gaze. Getting eliminated might almost be the better choice than buddying up with her for a week.

“After hearing about that,” Kim continued, “we agreed that we needed to get back to Mary and the others as soon as we could. So we ran through the hall and got to the O2 Room as fast as possible. But unfortunately, the door slammed shut before Dawn could catch up.”

Dakota raised her eyebrow. “How convenient.”

Kim shot her a dirty look. “It’s the truth,” she snapped. “The saboteur must have been messing with the doors to make it harder for us to find our way through this place. And because of that, there was plenty of time when Dawn could have gotten eliminated after we split up.”

“Yeah, Kim was back with us for like twenty minutes,” Mary said. “That would be more than enough time for Morgana to get both Dawn AND Dani. And besides, it would have been long enough for her syringe to recharge, too. If she was the saboteur, then she could have gotten Rose or me, and then that would be it. There would be an equal number of workers and saboteurs, and then the votes would be deadlocked. That’s an auto-win for the saboteurs, right?”

“True, that would be the worst-case scenario,” Dakota agreed. “But would Kim have really taken that chance? After all, she didn’t know if Dani was alive or dead at that point. If she jumped the gun prematurely and eliminated you or Rose, and the other reported it, if Dani hadn’t been eliminated yet then it would be three workers against two saboteurs. She’d have been voted out immediately. Too risky.”

“But if they were communicating, then she WOULD have known!” Mary pointed out.

Dakota narrowed her eyes. “But we never proved that’s the case,” she reminded the redhead. “That was just a theory of yours. For all we know, Morgana was operating independently, and she hasn’t had any communication with the other saboteur at all.”

She turned and leered at Morgana. “And it’s not like she could say anything, either.”

Morgana gulped.

Dakota shrugged. “At the end of the day, you don’t have proof that Kim didn’t just kill Dawn back in the Greenhouse, then come back to you two and lie through her teeth. She could have. Because nobody found Dawn’s body, we can’t say for sure. The girl’s so compact, maybe Kim hid her in a trash can or something, I don’t know. But I DO know that Morgana isn’t the one who killed her.”

“How do you know that?” Rose asked.

But Mary figured it out. She gasped. “That’s right! Morgana couldn’t have killed Dawn!”

“Again, Dawn’s not dead,” Kim felt compelled to remind everybody. “And what do you mean she couldn’t have done it?”

“Just think about it!” Mary urged. “I can’t believe I overlooked that! Remember, we walked in on Morgana eliminating Dani! That means, up until that moment, Morgana and Dani were together! So she wouldn’t have been able to sneak away and get rid of Dawn!”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Kim nodded. “Dani is way too vigilant and paranoid for that. Morgana couldn’t have gotten away from her. If she had tried, then Dani would have run right to the meeting button and called a meeting about it, probably.”

Kim glanced at Morgana. But as expected, the goth had nothing to say.

“That settles it, then,” Dakota crowed triumphantly. “Morgana and Kim are the saboteurs. After all, Mary, you and Rose couldn’t have gotten to Dawn either. Not if Kim’s story is to be believed. Kim is the culprit, and that’s that!”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Kim protested. “You’ve been trying to frame me from the start! Maybe this is just another example of that!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dakota snarled, rising from her seat. It looked like she was about to strangle Kim!

But Kim didn’t back down.

“It’s a pretty big coincidence that those doors closed right as I got into the room,” she pointed out. “Almost as if the saboteur was trying to isolate the rest of us from Dawn, so she could eliminate her without anyone seeing and then try to pin the blame on me.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Any idea who might have been capable of something like that, Dakota?” She mused.

Dakota crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Quit beating around the bush,” she growled. “Just say it already.”

“Guys!” Rose exclaimed. “Enough! We’re running out of time!”

The meeting had a clock, and it was counting down.

“We can take care of this later. For now, let’s just eliminate Morgana and be done with it, okay?” She said.

“No! Come on!” Morgana groaned.

But as heated as the girls had gotten, they weren’t so distracted that they’d forget about the main reason they were there.

“Okay, let’s vote,” Dakota said, sitting back down. “Obviously, I’m voting for elimination. Because I’m not the saboteur.”

She looked pointedly at Kim as she said that, and Kim glared back at her.

“I’m voting for elimination too,” she said, raising her hand. “…Sorry, Morgana. Friends is friends, but that’s the way the game works.”

“I-I understand…” Morgana said glumly, looking down. All her positivity from before the challenge seemed to have drained out of her face. It was clear she thought that nobody would pick her as a buddy now, not after what she did.

“Morgana… I just want you to know that I’m not upset,” Mary said quietly. “I don’t mind that you were the saboteur.”

Morgana’s head snapped up, and her eyes widened. She may not have been able to confirm that she was the saboteur, but the look on her face spoke volumes.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Mary continued. “You were **** into this position by Sylvia, and you had to do your best. That’s how these challenges work. I don’t think anyone would hold a grudge about you playing the game the way you’re supposed to.”

“R-really?” Morgana asked weakly. She wanted to believe it, she really did, but she was afraid that in spite of Mary’s kind words, the others would still be upset.

“We’re friends, aren’t we?” Mary said, smiling gently. “I think that it’s important for us to keep being friends, even if you’re the saboteur. So while I am going to be voting for you, Morgana, that doesn’t mean I’m upset with you.”

“Even though… I lied?” Mogana was surprised that she could say that much. Though perhaps admitting to “lying” wasn’t the same as admitting to being the saboteur.

“Even though you lied,” Mary nodded. “I don’t like liars, but in a situation like this… I don’t think any of us can really blame you. Right, guys?”

“Right,” Kim nodded in agreement.

“I never held it against you anyway,” Rose tittered. “Also, thanks a bunch for ensuring that I get immunity. You know, if we lose.”

Mary thumped her on the head.

“OW!” Rose groaned, rubbing the sore spot.

“Don’t say stuff like that!” Mary cried. “That’s so mean!”

“…Right, sorry…” Rose looked down bashfully. “I guess I just got a little bit too excited, what, since I’ve never gotten immunity before.”

It was clear that she was a little excited. But everyone agreed that Rose should probably keep those thoughts to herself.

She took a deep breath and exhaled.

“…I don’t blame you, Morgana, I understand why you did what you did,” Rose said, patting her gently on the shoulder.

“Oh, so you’re just trying to sweep that under the rug, huh?” Kim said, rolling her eyes.

Rose ignored her. “And with that, I’m voting for you, as well.”

Four votes to one.

“So… what now?” Mary asked warily. “We’re not going to chuck her out an airlock or anything, right?”

Nothing so barbaric. Morgana simply vanished, eliminated.

MORGANA WAS EJECTED!