In a moment of pure impulse, Sasha reaches across the table and pulls the heroin-filled needle out of its little acrylic coffin.
Daniel's eyes go wide as she pushes away from the table, going over to an open space on the floor and putting the needle to the skin of her forearm. It's slightly cold and it stings a little bit as the point penetrates the most superficial layers of her skin.
"What are you doing?" Daniel asks, and quite a few other people in the room are begging her to put the needle back, but not for the same reason.
"You can't take his challenge," Francie warns, gesturing at the wall at Sasha's back. She doesn't need to turn around to know that her votes are rising again - she can see it in all of their faces.
"Please don't do that. It's not worth it," Daniel says, getting up and coming over to Sasha. When he gets closer, he says in a lower tone, "I'm not worth it."
"They're not going to eliminate me for this," Sasha says confidently. If being in this house for a week has taught her anything about Bigly Brother, it's that the more sensational things you can do, the more people will want to see it.
"Just give me the needle back," Daniel says, looking over her shoulder. His face is pale and she doesn't want to know what her number is - there's a difference between knowing they won't vote her out, and feeling it in her heart.
"They think it's cheating," Taylor says. "It's Daniel's challenge, and if you do it for him, this won't end well."
"I don't care," Sasha says, and then the newcomer, Alan, stands up so abruptly that his chair falls over.
"Eliminate me!" he shouts, and the room breaks into anarchy. A baker's dozen voices all talking at once, all trying to cover their own hides, the numbers on the wall behind them losing focus as the audience tries to follow along.
"You don't want that," Francie warns Alan. "It's not a good thing."
Sasha smirks. She can't tell him why he doesn't want to be eliminated because there are too many eyes on her right now, and to say it in no uncertain terms - they way she whispered it to Sasha and Daniel in the yard - would mean a swift and painful punishment in front of a live audience.
"Please give me the needle," Daniel says to her, holding out his hand, but his words are drowned out by Alan's own anguish.
"I don't want to be here and I don't care what you say - I didn't sign up for this!" he shrieks. "Let me be eliminated. I want to go home!"
Francie and Taylor are both trying to shut him up, and the rest of the group seem to be trying to establish some physical distance between themselves and the time bomb that is Alan. They scoot their chairs away, or even go so far as to get up and cross the room. He's hysterical and therefore dangerous.
"You have to stop saying that," Taylor hisses, toeing the Bigly Brother line. "Everyone comes here voluntarily, including you."
"I didn't!" Alan screams. "I just woke up here. I'm a prison-"
Then Taylor hits him, a clean slap across the cheek to cut off his words and dull his hysteria, and he growls, "They kill people who say stuff like that. Shut up."
And then the room falls into silence. The lights flick off and cast the room in complete blackness, and a few people scream in shock. All that's left are the red letters and numbers of the screen at the front of the room.
"What's happening?" Sasha asks, dropping the needle to the floor and reaching for Daniel.
The glass clinks softly and she watches as the numbers on the wall begin to change. She was up to 837,947 - closer than she thought to the edge - and now her number is dropping fast, Alan and Taylor's numbers each rising with the same rapidity.
"Oh no," she hears Francie breathe, barely above a whisper, as Alan hits the mid-500,000s and slows, and Taylor's number keeps climbing.
They all watch it turn over to a million just before the lights come back on and all the other names disappear. Taylor's name is now the size of the wall, below it the message, "You lose."
Everyone is standing there, silent and slack-jawed, except Erica. She screeches and passes out, relying on Dustin standing nearby to keep her from hitting the ground at full force.
Then Meredith's voice comes serenely over the speaker.
"I apologize, we appear to have encountered some technical difficulties, but everything's working again now," she says. "Balance has been restored to the house. Taylor, please remain in the Elimination Room. Everyone else, return to the house and enjoy your evening." "What?" Alan asks as the door to the living room pops open. "What does that mean?"
Francie pulls him out of the room before he has a chance to say anything else, and Taylor scoops Erica out of Dustin's arms, tears streaming silently down his face.
Daniel guides Sasha out of the room and they're just beyond the door frame when they hear Erica wake up behind them. She's distraught and her wails send a shiver through Sasha's body - she thinks about Melody and the way she looked just before the door swung shut, and suddenly she has the urge to vomit.
She leans against Daniel for support and puts her lips to his ear so she can whisper just audibly, "We have to get out of here. I can't take another elimination."
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Author's Note:
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