BLANK SLATE || the challenge: spies, lies, and allies

01 - compromised.

"Well, this is interesting." Roxanne chuckled, looking around at her fellow American contenders—or, "agents", as TJ had already started to call them this season—tugging on the chain and lock that bound her wrists together to no avail. From what she could see, from the vets, it was herself, Kaycee, Tori, Amanda, Ashley, and Aneesa for the women, and CT, Faysal, Devin, Josh, Cory, and Nelson for the men. As for the rookies...

She had absolutely no idea.

She knew them. Vaguely. She knew Michaela from her season of Survivor. But she had only a vague chance to be able to get to know the rest.

There was Jeremiah from Love Island. Tommy and Michele from Survivor. Corey from 12 Dates of Christmas. She was pretty sure that was it for the Americans. 

But she really had no idea who'd be coming for her. She didn't know if they  knew who they'd be looking for. All she knew is she just had to stand there, and wait.

And then, they came.

It was two unfamiliar men first—a dark-skinned one and a lighter-skinned one, covered in tattoos. Neither of them came for her—the tattooed man called out for Kaycee and the other ran for Tori. She was waiting for a familiar face until...

In came Kyle motherfucking  Christie.

Roxanne and Kyle had a... a troubled  relationship. As people, they had a mutual-respect-sorta-friendship thing going for them. But as competitors, they could not stand  each other. They'd likely work well together, but in the game, they simply could not tolerate each other's presence. But when Kyle came down shouting for a Survivor  player, Roxanne couldn't help but shout, "I'M RIGHT HERE, KYLE!"

...To which he replied with an emphatic, "NO, SCREW YOU!" before giving in to whatever he was trying to figure out and running to Amanda, of all people.

To each their own, she figured, and went back to looking around. Her eyes eventually settled on the brick in front of her, which had randomly-colored letters and numbers on it.

They had to mean something.

It took a couple people running by—some familiar faces, like Nam—but mostly unfamiliar ones, each with different flags plastered on their helmets and shirts until she saw a man with what looked like the Hungarian flag on his helmet. He looked like a lost dog until he made eye contact with her, but didn't move.

Noticing that some people—like the tattooed man that chose Kaycee and the two women that had run past looking for Cory—had come in with knowledge of who there was and wanted a specific person, she felt the only reasonable thing to ask was, "Are you looking for me? Pop-Rox?"

The man stepped closer, basically cutting off her sentence. "Yeah, who are you?"

"Roxanne. Pop-Rox."

"Yeah, I wanted— I wanted you." he nodded, but didn't move another muscle towards her, stadting to raise the sledgehammer instead.

"Okay, am I your partner?"

"Yeah."

Roxanne held her still-bound-together hands out. "Okay, you have to unlock me. Now, this wall first, the one by me. There's... There's these numbers and letters on them, we need to memorize them, and then break it. just do it in one go. Yeah?"

"Yeah." he nodded, and smashed the side she was asking him to. She proceeded to the next side of the rectangle, repeating the numbers under her breath until she memorized them.

"Black four, orange two, green one. Can you remember that?"

"Yeah. I got you."

They continued this process until all of the walls were smashed, as best as they could, and they were able to start freeing the chains. They seemed to be a little bit above the middle of the pack—ahead of people like Michaela and her partner but behind Kaycee and hers. Glancing around, she noticed CT and his partner having basically the same strategy that she had—which she felt was pretty funny. They seemed to grab their safes and chains at the same time, heading to the next part of the challenge completely tied up, with CT only maybe two steps ahead. Two steps was a lot in the game—but Roxanne was sure she was solid with the combination, if there was one.