the eleventh hour; Indigo/Adrien {clue}

It was smart. Can’t get a confession to the authorities without a pulse. So Fiora had been here too. Interesting. She had convinced Adrien to save the boy he’d just shot and then left? And Harvey had said he’d done it for her? Indigo tried to absorb this new information. Harvey had always been the most cryptic of the interns, with a somehow quiet flair for the dramatic.

But something was off. The person that had murdered Whitney in front of him would not have so readily admitted their guilt. Maybe when there was only one person left. Not when the tables could still be turned. That masked motherfucker wanted to pull all the strings.

“What should we do, well—“

He was interrupted by someone barging into the room. He almost threw the lighter at them in a panic, but it was just Fiora. The gloom casting her face in a frightful shadow. But she was holding medical supplies. Things she put down as she started to search the bar for something. He asked her if she’d seen the others and she replied, hesitantly that Coralie was dead. Goddammit. When? He looked down.

Harvey was going into shock. Without some pain pills, his system wouldn’t be able to handle the shot. Indigo’s gaze drifted to Fiora. She hadn't found anything and was crying softly on the other side of Harvey. She hadn't attempted to use the bandages or the shot. She knew. He’d suspected her too for a while. But—

"The g-game isn't over. I-I'm not the killer. T-though I think Fiora and you already knew that." Yes, Indigo had suspected as much. Harvey was fairly low on his list of suspects.

Well, psychopaths generally did not care for anyone. At this range, Adrien hadn’t shot Harvey accidently. And the killer would have told Adrien to let Harvey bleed out, quickly agreed that Harvey was the murderer and watched him die. It wasn’t her. So who was it? Violet had already proven she wanted to help people. She’d helped him and cried over Whitney. Fiora and Harvey were pals.

"After all, you're supposed to be the smart one here, Indi."

“Not smart enough, Harvey.” He responded quietly. The dying boy admitted he had a motive, spilled his secret. But it was too late to prove his innocence.

That left the people not in the room—

Beryl and Coralie. Both were selfish, privileged pricks. Though Beryl had been distraught when Adam vanished. The pieces were falling into place, or so he hoped. Coralie didn’t care for anyone but herself. She’d made that clear. But she was dead now too, according to Fiora.

DAMN! It had to be Beryl. But that didn’t sound right, even though Harvey pointed the finger at Beryl as well.

What was he missing?

“Don’t let them get away—“ Harvey whispered, before he stopped moving and lay still. Even with the tiny illumination, Indigo could see that the light had left his eyes. He was quiet for a moment, straightening up standing tall, his mind going into overdrive, ignoring whatever Adrien and Fiora were doing for a few minutes. Another person dead, and nothing he could do about it. He didn’t blame Adrien though. He might have done the same thing, especially after Whitney. Peas in a pod, the two of them.

And just like that, the missing piece clicked into place. He’d been so caught up in attempting to decode whether the killer was calculating and cold or killing indiscriminately and emotionally that he’d never stopped to consider the possibility that it was both. That was why the killings seemed so disjointed. There was more than one calling card because there was more than one killer.

One emotional, and one calculating.

Why hadn’t he seen? He’d thought the game was cat and mouse, but it wasn’t. It was cats and mice. One person couldn’t have pulled all of this off. He’d begun to think so after the revelation of secret passages in the house. But even with that to get around, no one could be in two places at once. It was the perfect alibi. One killer could be in the room with others, reacting to a body, while the other was off killing someone else. And then reverse the role later. Damn! He should have spent more time getting to know the others instead of getting high and focusing on winning every event.

“I am an idiot!” Indigo moaned aloud, slapping himself in the face.

“OW!“ He shrieked, having slapped his head wound. He saw stars for a moment. This changed everything. Especially since Fiora had found Coralie’s body during her search for medical supplies. One killer had faked their death. The other had to be one of the three— no, the two not here. His money was on Beryl. He started pacing frantically, flicking the lighter on and off in rumination, uncaring whether Adrien and Fiora were confused.

“What do we do, Adrien?” he said, finally answering his friend’s desperate question. Blaine’s body was found by Violet and Whitney. Whitney had been strangled in front of him, and Adam was dead a room or two away. Fiora had found Coralie. He was right. It all came back to the struggle in the bathroom. Oh, very clever. Very clever. The perfect time to fake your death, when everyone was frantic. “For the last few—", Hours? Minutes? Days? Time was an illusion.

“I don’t know how long I was knocked out, but I’ve been ruminating on the fact that I didn’t get to check for a pulse. And then someone knocked me and Whitney out and tied us up. I—I don’t know who put us the secret room, but...” He stopped pacing for a moment, his vision blurring. He wiped away the tears and resumed pacing. Their partner in crime faked their death during that fight. It was too perfect. “We’re in more danger than I thought. But you and Harvey knew that, didn’t you, Fiora?”

It sounded like an accusation, so he quickly went on before anyone could say anything.

“There are two killers. One person couldn’t have pulled this off alone.” Goddammit, why hadn’t he seen? Thank you Harvey. You may have just saved the rest of us. “It’s the bathroom. We will find our answers in the bathroom. I believe Amrin faked her death and has been playing possum on the floor. She’s perhaps the second smartest person here after me. She’ll have been the brains, and someone else will have been the brawn. We go there and Poppy will be on the floor alone.”

But who would partner up? He would have said Beryl and Adam, or Harvey and Fiora. No one else seemed that close enough to work in pairs. But Adam and Harvey were dead. And who was Amrin even friendly with? He moved behind the bar, muttering incessantly to himself, waving the flame back and forth as he looked at the labels. It must have been Amrin that caressed his face. Had to have been.

He needed proof for what came next.

Thirty-five to forty percent to be exact.

He grabbed a bottle of Bacardi rum and some of the gauze that Harvey would not be needing, getting the top off the bottle with his shirt and stuffing the latter item down the neck, setting it alight with the lighter. It illuminated much more.

“What do we do, Adrien?” he repeated. “We find Violet and Beryl, and then we get the hell out of this house.” His heart was beating a mile a minute and the neurons in his brain were moving so fast they were about to ascend to another plane of existence. He held the Molotov up. “One of those two must be partnered with Amrin. We get a confession. And then we end this.” Fiora agreed with a quiet okay, tenderly draping her jacket over Harvey's unmoving form. It gutted him to think they hadn't solved this in time.

For Harvey. For Whitney. For all their fallen friends.

They'd made so many mistakes.

But they could end it now.