You can't tell the whole truth, obviously. Firstly, because you think Madrigal might actually kill you for it. Secondly, because you can't just roll over like that. Let her win? With that look on her face? Unthinkable.
So instead, you just take some minor sub-truths, and… extrapolate.
"Well, I mean, Margo— Margo's mad at me, right? She's— I mean, I'm blacklisted from town, now she's murdering— surely I'm next, right? I mean, she's after me! I didn't—"
"You thought you'd have better odds not telling anyone?"
"I— well, I mean, frankly, would you have believed me? Especially if it were a 'he-said she-said'— well, 'she-said she-said'— well, you know! That. She's— you know, uh, unnamed authority figures haven't been the most welcoming towards me…"
Madrigal's face puckers, but she doesn't respond. You raise your eyebrows. "I'll— just say all of it, huh? I'll wait until the end—"
"Okay. Most authority figures haven't been too welcoming, so, you know, I feel like it would've just been more trouble than it's worth— also, I was in shock! I was in shock. I mean, God, his head went— it was like a melon, there was just bone, and— I almost vomited. Twice!"
"Is that all, or—"
"I— I don't know why you're going on about this, personally. I mean, you're just overlooking the fact that, gee, I don't know, we've got Clarence Waites over here—"
?Clayton Wayes. Clarence Waites was a sculptor. Clayton Wayes survived his cremation.?
"Clayton— whoever! I mean, isn't this important? Doesn't it matter just a teeny bit more than me waiting a teeny bit to—"
Madrigal exercises her jaw. "Okay, I'm just gonna assume you're done."
You basically were. "Er, more or less—"
"Okay. Cool." She steps forward so she's right in your face. "You're a fucking psychopath."
It doesn't sting as much the second time, but it still stings.
>[-1 ID: 6/11]
You cross your arms in defense. "What? But I just—"
"Not welcoming? Are you fucking kidding me? Are you yanking my leg, Charlotte? Is that it? Because how I see it, you've gotten infinitely more the welcome you deserve, because the welcome you deserve is zero. God, I— do you really lack any comprehension of how lucky you are?"
Oh, now she's just making things up. "'Lucky?' Hah. I—"
"You don't! Goddamn. That's frankly spectacular, that's—" She brushes hair back from her forehead, glances sideways toward Ellery. "Ell, are you—"
He's still got his head in his hands.
"…I'll tell him later… Goddamn! You realize— you read the newspaper a couple weeks ago? Headline, uh, 'NIGHTMARE SIGHTINGS CONTINUE — GATOR FOUND MAULED' or something?"
You read the newspaper every week, but you skip all the parts that look boring. This is generally most of it. "Yes?"
"Okay! Then you saw the stats on the survival chances, yeah? It's something like an 85% mortality rate if you go it solo. Eighty-five percent. You go nuts, or you get eaten. Find a group, and you're down to 20%, just like that."
"So—"
"Shut up. And because of this, people will set requirements. Or they'll make you cough up an induction fee. Or they'll make you swear a fucking blood oath. There's eighty million strings attached, because, you know, you can't just pick up any mongrel you find squatting in the mud. Some people are here for a reason."
She pauses. "Like you. But anyways, you ungrateful little shit, Monty's only got one string. One! It's called, 'don't be a fuckhead.' Got it? 'Don't be a fuckhead.'"
The kind of people you have to put up with! "I don't think it's called that."
?It's called Section 1.1. in the Rules and Procedures. Which, incidentally, contains a great number of strings.?
"It's called whatever I want it to be called, numbnuts, because he informally let me name them. 'Don't be a fuckhead.' Okay? And guess what, Charlotte?"
You can guess what. "And I don't think you need to be using…"
"You're a fuckhead. Objectively. You should've been out five months ago. You've been treated with nothing but politeness and respect—"
"You punched me!"
"Outside of my capacity as quartermaster, yes. Also, you knocked me out and dragged me into the brush, like a psycho."
Ellery raises his head slightly. "What?"
"Nothing but politeness and respect— and you have the gall to say we haven't been 'welcoming?'"
You decide to sidestep this question. "Have you got anything else?"
"Yeah. 'More trouble than it's worth?' More trouble than— to report a murder? A murder? That is legitimately the most selfish—"
"Um, anything other than that?"
"Yeah. Couldn't you, I don't know, bring Monty or I or whoever to the corpse? Why did there have to be a she-said she-said—"
"Oh," you say. "Margo dragged it into the cave. I mean, what was left. Um. There was a lot on the grass."
"Could we not?" Ellery's waxen.
"Just—" Madrigal makes a general shoving motion. "Go back to your crisis for a little bit, Ell. Get it over with. I'm occupied."
He sighs, slumps, rubs his eye in silence.
"Cool. Okay, so couldn't you take someone to see the gore? Or the bullets—"
?Flechettes.?
You decide not to share this factoid with Madrigal.
"—Or, I don't know, the blood, the bone fragments… surely she couldn't clean up the whole place in half an hour? And surely she wouldn't shoot multiple people—"
"So what?" you say. "How does this make me a psychopath?"
"It doesn't." Madrigal squares her shoulders. "You lying does."
You heart plummets. "I'm not—"
"Fuck off, Charlotte." Madrigal shakes her head. "You've got too many answers."
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
You're actually offended. "What? That's not— how is that a tell?"
"Gut. But you are, aren't you? It's all over your face." She purses her lips. "So what is it? Some kind of desire to have secrets? Just an utter lack of empathy? Did you enjoy it, Charlotte? Did it excite you?"
"No!" Your face is hot. "It wasn't— it was horrible, okay? It was—"
?Charlie.?
?You're not handling this very well.?
?Actually, it's going fairly, how do you put it, 'godawful.'?
?So why don't you just step aside and— good girl.?
>[-1 ID: 5/11]
You hadn't done anything, but there comes the prickle up your back anyways. Your heartbeat slows. Madrigal narrows her eyes. "What happened?"
"What's the issue?" You (you?) raise your eyebrows artfully.
Madrigal appears lost for words. "Did you do something?"
"No."
"Really?" She surveys your face, then glances towards Ellery. "Ell, does she look different?"
"No." Ellery rubs his forehead.
"Sound different?"
"She sounds exactly the same, Maddie."
"I think you're grasping for straws," you add helpfully. "Anger's not good for the heart. Stresses it out, you know."
Madrigal scowls. "I can manage my own fucking heart. The issue is you, reminder, hiding a murder. And then lying about hiding a murder."
"Also, the murderee being—" You wince as your tongue is wrenched from your control. "—the victim being alive? I understand you've got a vendetta after I clocked you, Madrigal, but surely we can work it out another time. You haven't even asked Ellery how he feels about this."
"Ellery's a big boy who can handle his own feelings!"
"Ellery?" you say. (You don't want to. You don't care about his feelings, either. But you can respect Richard's one-upmanship.) "Are you okay?"
"Fine," he says shortly. He doesn't look especially fine.
"Do you remember anything?"
Without responding, Ellery stands and walks past you and Madrigal. He stops at the maybe-table, shoves half the papers to one side and half to the other, and uncovers a little drawer built into its surface. He feels along the front of it, then sticks one hand in a pocket and retrieves a small metal object.
?I really need to remember to reverse that.?
He sticks the metal object into a keyhole, turns it, and opens the drawer. From it he takes out a syringe.
You clutch your ears as Richard issues a blare of ????feedback????.
In your peripheral vision, Ellery shrugs down his left sleeve, finds a vein, and inserts the syringe. He draws the plunger up. He withdraws.
He pushes the plunger down and releases an ordinary red cloud of blood into the water. Then he coughs.
("Ordinary" might be a strong word. For unknown [but variously-theorized] reasons, blood ought to congeal in saltwater to create a sort of gelatinous pinkish substance. For it not to is moderately strange. But anything's ordinary in the face of silver.)
"Um," you say.
"Could be worse," Ellery says, and wipes the needle on his thumb and forefinger. He then re-stores, re—locks, and re-covers it. "So."
"Have you considered the possibility," you smoothly interject, to Madrigal— "that this is not the same Ellery?"
She furrows her eyebrows. "What?"
"Sorry," Ellery says. "It's the same Ellery."
>[1] Write-in.
You fold your arms. "That's exactly what a different Ellery would say."
"Well," Ellery says, "I mean, yes. But it's also what the same Ellery would say, so I'm not really sure what to tell you." He pauses. "How exactly are you defining 'same?'"
"Is there more than one definition?"
"Oh, yeah. I mean— are you talking same body? Same consciousness? Same ineffable strain of being? And for that matter—"
You fold your arms a little tighter. "You know, the real one. The original."
"The real one!" He snorts. "The real one's dead."
Victory! You surreptitiously pump your fist.
>[+1 ID: 6/11]
"Yes," you say. "He is."
"Three times over."
Madrigal rolls her eyes. You twist a curl of hair. "…What?"
"Real Lottie's dead too," he adds casually.
You pause. “What?”
?Don't panic. He doesn't know it, but he's wrong.?
"Oh yeah. Super dead. 'S been dead for— how long have you been down here?"
"Three years."
"—Three years. No, yeah, you're not real, Maddie's not real, I'm sure as fuck not real." Ellery draws his handsign in close to his chest, so you have to lean to see it. "The real ones are dead."
?Again: theoretically sound, wrong in practice.?
"Are you—" You swap curls. "Are you sure?"
There's a strange look on Ellery's face. "Absolutely."
"Oh, for god's sake." Madrigal throws her hands up. "Metaphorically. Metaphorically dead. He likes to do this to scare people, Charlotte; he thinks it's funny."
"It is funny," Ellery says, and raises his eyebrows. "But okay, yeah— well, I don't know about 'metaphorically'. And you're not real. Nothing is. It's all semi-real, at best."
Madrigal shoots you an exasperated look. She's heard this before. Boy, you can sympathize. (While you'd rather not sympathize with Madrigal, you will take what you are given.)
?Ignoring that.?
"…Which is to say, an intermediate state between the kind of reality you would've experienced on the surface, and the unreality of a dream or trance setting. Think of it being the liquid to the respective, uh, solid and gas. It's flexible, kind of stretchy, malleable, but it retains enough of its shape to make it, you know, not an abstract hellhole."
?A crude and inelegant way to put it, but mostly correct.?
"You, and me, and everyone else— everyone else from the surface, I mean, I don't know about the fish—"
?Hateful troglodytes.?
"—we all got altered, see. Sort of— I mean, I won't go into the details. Unless you want me to. But basically, uh, in a manner of speaking, the real Ellery's dead as dirt— you're stuck with the semi— actually, scratch that." He tallies something on his fingers. "…Actually, no, yeah, that's fine. No need to introduce confusion. You're stuck with the semi-real—colloquially, 'real-ish', sometimes just 'ish'—one."
You nod like you understood all that. "Interesting."
(Madrigal shakes her head at you. "NO!" she mouths. "DON'T ENCOURAGE—!")
"Isn't it? Sorry, what was the question?"
"Um." You fight to remember. "Uh, okay, you're not the real one, whatever. I didn't really mean 'real' like that, but whatever. Are you the original?"
"Which original?"
You hate this so much. "You know, the one who got—"
"The first one? He's been dead for three years. The second one? He's been dead for nine months."
You take a deep breath. "The one who went on the expedition with me?"
"Ah. Sure, I'm that one."
Finally. "Okay! Prove it."
"No."
You stare at Madrigal. She jerks her chin up at you. "…Okay," you say. "Why won't you prove it?"
"Because," Ellery says, "you're the one claiming I'm not the same one, aren't you? So you're the one who's got to prove it. That's how things work, I believe."
You'd almost prefer to be back arguing with Madrigal. "Come on. Seriously?"
"Yeah."
"You mean to say you survived getting your skull shot to pieces? And I'm just supposed to take your word for it?"
"Hey, now. I never said I survived. I just said I was the same one." There's a peculiar sort of gleam in his eye. "…But I did survive."
"I— okay, see! You can't just say—"
"I can say anything I want." Ellery scratches his neck. "Like this. I survived because I didn't get shot."
You reel back. "What? But you were there! I watched—"
"You didn't watch." And his voice. Something peculiar there, too. "Lottie, frankly, it never happened."
You swim in abject confusion for a couple of seconds before hitting upon the answer. "Ah! So you aren't the same! You could've just said that, stupid. Would've saved me a lot of trouble."
"No, Lottie." He raises his eyebrows. "Nothing like that. It just didn't happen. To anybody."
"I—" Back to the confusion. "I saw it, though! I vomited!"
"Well." He shrugs. "Clearly you didn't. Not sure what to tell you."
You beseech Madrigal. She gives you a curt half-shake, as if to say— it's not like I really believed you, in the first place. So fuck off.
>[1] But… you did see it. It did happen. And you can prove it… [with what?]
>[2] Change the subject. Get Ellery expositing again. You might be able to steer him into some answers without him realizing. Right? You can do that.
>[3] What? How does he propose to explain yesterday, then? What was he doing instead of getting shot?
>[4] Make more faces at Madrigal. Try to convince her you're being honest. [Roll.]
>[5] Just— just cut your losses. You may have hit a stone wall in this conversation. Leave.
>[6] Write-in.