"Do we have any guarantee the hint will help us?" Emma said, looking towards the camera. "We could give all the vaccines to somewhat trustworthy then decide on a plan to distribute them. I don't see the point in sacrificing any of us over something we can't be sure of..." Her voice was sounding increasingly worried as she looked at the state Ghost and Midge were in.

---

“Look, you’ve got th-three choices,” Teddy continues. “One, sacrifice Emma or Adriana to get the hint. T-two, wait the thirty minutes for the hint, which will p-probably kill Ghost and Midge. Or three, let us out now, let Albert’s death g-go to waste, and let whoever get screwed over by n-not know which vaccine is which. It’s a fucked up situation and there’s no right answer, but you just need to CHOOSE.”

---

"Th-the hint's only usef-ful if we w-want a child vaccine," Ghost stammered. "B-but we can c-cure two people guaranteed even w-without the hint."

“So we’re j-just going to murder Violet and Bradley like that?” Teddy retorted.

---

Midge just stands there, the coat draped over her, shivering violently.

Faint thumping and distressed cries can be heard over the intercom.

---

“Pull yourself to-ducking-gether!” Teddy immediately screamed at the camera. “Y-you’re running for d-ducking president! What did you think you’d be doing all day?! You’re also the o-only one here not literally freezing to death, so knock the whining the duck off!”

It appears Teddy’s tongue has begun to freeze in a family friendly manner.

---

"J-J-Just...do what E-Emma...s-s-s-said." Violet stammered. "H-Hurry up! W-We're all...g-g-gonna freeze...to d-d-death!" She hugged the flag tighter around herself, moving closer to the middle.

The group heard footsteps and shuffling papers. Was Helios about to do something...?

---

Midge runs her darkening fingertips around her neck, pulling out a silver chain, a ring hanging from it. She looks at it, bringing it inches from her face. It looks like she is about to break into tears, but her face is cracked and dry. Her body stops shaking, and she hangs there, eerily still.

"..." whatever she's trying to say is lost, even in the silence of the room.

And yet for now she holds on.

Her extremities and face had been devoid of feeling for minutes, but Adriana somehow was still lucid, even if her fingers were now a sickly purple.

"H-h-hey Midge-- stay awake!" she stammered out with as much force as she could muster. "Pretty sure Helios almost has his hint, and you'll be so embarrassed wake up in the infirmary with a bunch of us standing over you like..." She looked down at Albert's corpse. "...like some TV show character!"

Soon they heard Helios’s frantic, desperate voice over the intercom.

“J-Just shut up, okay! This isn’t as easy as you think it is! Having to be responsible for people’s lives! No one even thinks of my person! I’m just a punching bag in a suit to them! No matter what I do, people get angry. I swear, there’s not a single goddamn person who even cares about me in this country!”

The freezer fell silent, but people swore they could hear faint sobbing.

Eventually, the sound of a pen scribbling on paper drifted over the intercom. Then, Helios’s voice finally returned, but now it sounded weary and resigned.

“I-I just signed a law… If someone p-puts Adriana in the backroom…we’ll get the clue…”

“I’m sorry Adriana…Sorry I couldn’t make a difference…”

((btw I’m not sure if I’ll post again before I go to sleep. I had to write this twice and now I’m just really worn out…))

---

Midge lets out an extremely dry chuckle, barely any breath passes between her lips. She looks over at Adriana blankly.

"Thank you."

“All right.Y-you hears the man,” Teddy says as he cracks his knuckles. He clearly doesn’t have any qualms doing the dirty work.

---

As soon as Helios finished speaking, Adriana closed her eyes and sighed. She looked at the nearest camera with a pained look.



"I'll have my death like I had my life-- with nothing to do with you." she said, mustering some meager amount of vitriol.

She then took her purse and shoved it into Violet's arms. "Take care of each other." she murmured.

Adriana put her hand on the freezer's backdoor, nodded at Midge, then in as fluid a motion as she was able, opened the door, went through, and closed it behind her.

Midge clutches at the ring as he watches Adriana leave. Her eyes glimmer with intensity.

"If by some hellish power, our paths cross again, I owe you for this. This chance."

"...As you wish." As soon as it was clear Adriana wasn't going to resist, Teddy backed off and let her go into the back freezer on her own terms.

---

Emma looked like she wanted to stop Adriana, but after looking around at the others in the room she simply watches her go into the back. "...I hope this is worth it." She muttered while looking down.

---

Adriana opened the door. She began to step through.

"You were irreplaceable, Adriana... I wish I could have told you that." Helios sniffed over the speaker.

She closed the door.

One minute passed. One long minute. It was like you could hear the clock ticking.

"Here is your clue." Null announced. "Helios. Vaccine number ONE is not fake."

"That's... that's it?" Ghost mumbled weakly. "Adriana had to die for that? We're no closer to figuring this out than we were before..."

Listlessly like they were dreaming, Ghost turned to the deep freezer door and took a stumbling step towards it. They looked like they wanted to head for it and check on Adriana, disregarding what splitting from the group would do to them.

Her body was nearly completely frozen. A blue crystalline layer of ice was over her skin, and her face was stuck on one of anguish and...sadness.

"Shit! That was completely worthless! They might as well have just said 'two of the first three vaccines are real!'"

"Is this just a joke to you, Null?! Who do you think you are? Think you can just play with people's da lives? Well, I hope you're ready cause there's gonna be a reckoning!"

A loud slamming sound could be heard before Helios spoke again.

"Unless someone can think of a way to determine the child vaccine based on that pathetic clue, I'm ending this farce of a trial!"

---

"Grrr..." Teddy stood there with a pained expression on his face. "G-Give the first vaccine to Violet or Bradley, and the other t-two to the other!" He finally shouted. "It's the b-best we can do for them..."

---

"Do-Don't...c--care anym-m-more. Let us...out..."

---

Midge stares idlely in the direction of Adriana's corpse. She sways a little, wincing in pain at carrying her own weight.

"Just g-g-give...someone the v-v-vaccines..." Violet hugged Adriana's purse to her body. "P-Ple...please..."

"A-Alright, I decided." Helios gulped. "I-I'll take vaccine #1. Bradley can have #2 and #3."

"Helios, what the DUCK?!" Teddy shouted through a frozen tongue.

Then...the door unlocked. Despite how pissed everyone was at the outcome, they took no pause to rush out and into the hospital room.

“Agh…”

There was coughing, shivering, and just a general thankfulness to the situation being over. A panel in the ceiling soon opened above Bradley, and a box dropped. Inside were two vaccines, not labeled. Neither of them had caps.

"Congratulations. Helios. Bradley." Null announced. "Since Albert died in the cold, nobody will be credited for his death."

"Credited...?" Ghost wondered.

“Uh...there’s a fireplace in the Oval Office, everyone.” Helios murmured. “I’ll get it started right away.”

Everybody exchanged wary glances but then headed over.

The fire was already started when they arrived, as promised. Helios stood with his back against the wall, probably afraid of being attacked, but everybody crowded around the fire, warming themselves as much as they could.

There was an empty vaccine on the desk. It appears he'd already used it.

“Frostbite is li-likely.” Emma shivered. “We should take the necessary precautions.”

“I-I’m so sorry everyone…” Helios said. His head was hung with defeat. "I-Is it so wrong that I want to live...?"

Teddy grunted. “You’re a fucking moron.”

“I did what we had to. I-”

“Stop talking.” Emma cut him off. Slowly, she walked over to the desk and flipped the computer open--the FBI database. No badge input was necessary, it seemed a screen was already open before the computer was put in sleep mode.

She sighed heavily. “I thought something was up…”

"Oh Helios, you should have told us you and Teddy were pals."

Midge clutches her hands, which are now red and swollen in front of her body.

"As a voter, I would have liked to know."

As the others crowded around the monitor, Teddy moved the other direction, putting some distance between him and the group. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, and very consciously looking the other way to avoid making eye contact with anyone.

However, it seemed like even at a time like this Teddy couldn’t resist making a wisecrack at Helios’s expense. “Maybe He should have. It’s not like admitting it could’ve made his odds that much worse,” he said with a smirk.

---

Bradley stayed huddling close to Midge grateful for her warmth "Th-thank you Mr Helios..." He stammered catching his breath "But do you feel any better? If you injected the child vaccine then neither of these are useful to me." He asked clutching his prizes tightly.

---

"So you really are a mob boss Teddy, like Albert was saying?" Ghost asked timidly, glad Teddy had distanced himself so that they didn't have to themselves. "Y-you must have done something pretty bad to him, he was always so afraid of you. And that's probably why he attacked you in the vault, too."

They then turned to Bradley. "Child and adult vaccines both cure adults just the same. I'm not sure we have any way to tell which you've got in your hands now. Do we really have no more opportunities for vaccines?"

"Yeah... It wasn't a trick from Null or anything. It was real," Helios said, "I just took a gamble on the first vaccine being the adult one. As far as I can recall, you're allowed to give those to someone else. I just wanted to get everyone out of there..."

Helios stared at the laptop and sighed. "I suppose I could argue that an FBI agent being sent after me didn't mean I was actually guilty... but it seems pointless at this point. I don't think there's anything I can say to defend myself anymore either... I just had to win that election."

---

"Bradley you should just take them before someone hurts you for them. At least they have a fifty percent shot at saving you."

Midge let's out a cry of pain as she rubs her face with her hands, feeling rushing back to her.

"Anyway, Teddy, I remember you telling me that you couldn't imagine how this game might affect the election, but now I see you're pretty deep into the politics, huh."

"Also, Helios, you can still just lose the election, I mean clearly you've realized just now that responsibility is hell."

Bradley nodded "Yes Miss Midge, I will." He said before handing one of the vaccines to Violet. "Here you go Violet. Hopefully one of these is the child cure. Didn't seem fair for it to just be me who gets the chance to leave." He smiled sadly "I'm sure your parents probably miss you a lot as well." He said before injecting himself with the vaccine he kept.

---

"Oh...um, thanks." Violet took the vaccine from Bradley, injecting it into her arm. She then opened up Adriana's purse, examining the inside.

"So...what's the FBI?" Bradley asked.

"They're like police." Violet muttered. "They fight bad guys." She shot a glance at Teddy.

"Hmph. Playing the innocent card when you killed an FBI Agent?" Midge shot a disdainful glance at Helios.

"I never-GAH!" Helios shouted. "All of you shut up! Y-You have no idea how I felt about her!"

"Don't feel so bad, Tessy." Teddy laughed. "You guys wanna know the truth about the FBI? They're just another corrupt institution. They're not the good guys, they're not superheroes. They use civilians and throw them away, and they only care about putting away the criminals that aren't lining their pockets. They're liars, manipulators, and just another cog in a crooked world."

"S-She died for us!" Ghost protested. "She was a hero!"

"Maybe she was." Helios trembled. "B-But...I don't care. She lied to me for five years, I told her things I'd never told anyone else. I thought we-" Helios stopped himself and headed for the door. "Just leave me alone."

...

"What do we do now?" Ghost trembled.

"Find vaccines." Emma sighed. "There's no telling whether Bradley or Violet just took a child vaccine, and we won't know until closer to the deadline."

"Good luck, Bradley," Midge says meekly after him before burying her face in her hands.

"Freaking Helios, are you kidding me? What an absolute trash can. Taking the child vaccine. Oh and to the surprise of nobody, turns out he was comically corrupt the whole time. It doesn't matter though, whatever wins him an election. Of course, you can't blame him. Think about how he feels scrutinized instead! Yeah, right."

"I should... I should go help him," Ghost said abruptly, moving to leave. "I'm, well, still fine, so... I want to be of use."

It seems they didn't want to hang around with all the uneasy tension in the air.

[5 minutes left]

Suddenly amidst the direly sick and coughing people, Bradley returned to the dining area. Making his way slowly into the room, everyone noticed the thing in his hands.

A vaccine--more importantly, a child vaccine.

"Bradley, you found a child vaccine?" Midge asked, weakly. She struggled a smile. "Good for you, kid. You earned it."

His hands were trembling, in fact his entire body was shaking. The vaccine jittered in his hands threatening to topple out at any moment but Bradley quietly made his way towards the couch where Violet was resting.

"I...I...I..." Bradley shuddered violently as he hovered over Violet looking down at the vaccine in his hands. While his face was generally pale and dirty with illness, there were clear clean patches where tears ran endlessly from his eyes. Taking a deep breath.

Bradley injected Violet with the vaccine.

With shaking hands Bradley withdrew the needle and let it fall limp from his hands clattering across the floor. "I...I...I..."

"Bradley, what are you doing-?" Ghost asked. "I mean, I don't...I don't understand. Where did you get that vaccine?"

Suddenly Bradley swooned, catching himself on the edge of the couch. His legs trembled threatening to give way but mustering his strength he was able to pull himself up onto the other side of the couch from Violet. Sitting upright Bradley let his head rest on the back of the couch, his shaking seeming to subside as he took a deep breath.

"I found it." He chuckled.

Soon after, the deadline passed. It was...horrifying. It was like a switch had been flipped. Everybody was barely alive, and the next second, their breathing had stopped. It was over.

Only 3 were left in the dining area: Bradley, Ghost, and Violet. It was unknown where Helios was.

"Let's go to the foyer. That's where Mr. Helios will go." Bradley told Ghost. "Can you carry Violet?"

"...yes. Let's go."

They made their way to the foyer. An awkward silence lingered between the two. Ghost carried Violet as best as he could, as well as pulling Bradley along.

"Bradley...I'm sorry but Emma was right. I can't let you leave here. You're not fully cured."

"It's ok." Bradley nodded. "I understand."

Ghost seemed surprised at how easily the situation resolved, and just focused his head forward. It wasn't long until they were at the foyer. As suspected, Helios was there.

"You haven't opened the door?" Ghost was surprised.

"...I thought there was a chance someone else made it." He murmured.

"Violet is fully cured. Bradley isn't."

"Did Violet get the child vaccine after all?"

"No." Ghost was blunt. "Bradley got one for her."

Helios looked away in guilt. Bradley stared hateful daggers towards him.

"I...I really think I can make a difference out there." Helios started. "There are people out there who need me. I couldn't just-"

"I'm not going to stop you, Helios." Ghost said. "But after today...I do wonder what kind of President you'll be."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"I'm going to open the door now." Helios sighed. "I can take Violet." He looked at Bradley. "We'll come back for you."

Bradley took no reassurance from those words. It seemed like he accepted he was gonna die.

Slowly, Violet stirred awake. "H-Huh...? What happened?"

"Bradley got you a child vaccine." Ghost explained. "You're going to be fine."

"W-What? What about everyone else?"

"They're...dead." It seemed like Ghost was trying to find the appropriate words, but went with the cold truth.

Violet got out of Ghost's arms and began to cry. Her sobbing intensified, and Ghost not knowing what to do, hugged her. "W-What about Bradley?" She asked hopefully.

"...he can't come with you. He gave you the only vaccine he found."

Violet began to sob even more. Trying to comfort her the way Ghost did, Bradley hugged her.

"W-Why...?" Violet asked. "I-I don't even know you! Why would you-?"

Bradley interrupted her with a whisper in her ear. Her face turned red with anger and she punched Bradley in the chest, pushing him away.

"...thank you." She added quietly. "You should've just taken it for yourself."

"It's ok." Bradley assured. "I know I could've."

Violet stared at Helios. It seemed she also wasn't too fond of her escapee, but she reluctantly stood by the door.

"Ghost, are you coming with?" Helios asked.

"I'll remain here." Ghost decided. "In case Bradley dies...I can't let him go through that alone."

"It's ok." Bradley murmured. "I don't want you here. I have Einstein anyway."

"Bradley...if you don't want me here, I'll leave. But I don't think you'll want to be here alone. You need to be prepared, for any circumstance."

There was a long pause. "....ok." He acquiesced.

Slowly, the door completed opening.

"THE NUMBER NINE DOOR HAS BEEN OPENED. IT WILL REMAIN OPEN FOR NINE SECONDS."

Helios and Violet stepped through. They just stood on the other side as it closed, separating them from Bradley and Ghost.

"THE NUMBER NINE DOOR HAS BEEN CLOSED. THIS CONCLUDES THE NULLIFICATION GAME. THANK YOU ALL FOR PLAYING."

Violet ran to the door. "Y-You didn't sacrifice yourself, Bradley! We're coming back for you and Ghost! J-Just...just hold on as long as you can!"

"I'll try!" Bradley reassured from the other side. "Good luck, Violet!"

The two children stood by the door, pressing their hands on either side. Then one at a time, they stepped away from it.