probably a lesbian...?

The moment the trial gates open, Christine grimaces. “Ew. Immediately ew.”

“Grow up, you've drilled a guy's dick off his body before, a grunt humping a mannequin is the least concerning shit we've seen all week,” Sydney shoots back. Christine supposes she has a point. She still didn't like seeing the man grind himself against the plastic doll. 

“Let's just get moving, I don't particularly want to stare at the man either,” Grace speaks up, looking to Gunner to lead. He hums in agreement and begins trudging forward, giving the frisky grunt a wide berth.

“Stay where I can see you all or stay hidden, we don't know what to expect while we're here and I can't risk someone going down while Grace or I are too far away to help,” Gunner says, flipping his x-ray on as he rounded the corner and entered the prison gates.

“Lots of idle grunts nearby and… One of those new things, a, uh, biter? Is that what we're calling them?” Gunner asks as he drops to a crouch and peeks around the edge of the fence to see the armless human before them. This one is male, at least he's pretty sure.

“A what?” Christine asks, peeking past Gunner to see just in time for the biter to jerk its masked head up and lock eyes with her. 

The biter growls furiously as it spots Christine, and charges. She yelps, springing back slightly before the chain attached to the biter goes taught, and yanks the poor thing back. It lands flat on its ass with a painful thud, and begins to try to scramble back to its feet again. Sydney giggles a bit at the sight.

“Into that shed. It's dark and the dumb dogs don’t have much of an attention span, it’ll move on pretty quick if it can’t see us.” Sydney points at a doorway leading into a storage area, the interior pitch black. The group all slink over, and as they disappear into the darkness, the biter grunts and thrashes a few more times before going silent.

They find the key they need quickly, Gunner sneaking back to the locked room they'd passed to get the detonator. Everything seems to be going well until Sydney peeks around the corner one more time to look at the biter while Gunner sets the detonator timer.

“I can't believe they're letting us use bombs,” Christine says idly.

“Don't stand too close,” Grace chastises Christine briefly before the snarls of the biter picked up again. It had spotted Sydney staring at it, and was beginning to charge once more. 

Sydney smiles at the creature, giggling as it yanks at its chain once more, then twice, and then… 

SNAP! 

The sound seems to echo through the trial environment, and the biter falls flat on its face, momentarily prone but free. It begins to scramble to its feet quickly.

“Shit! Hurry it up with the bomb!” Christine yelps just as the wall explodes.

Sydney hucks her stun at the biter frantically as it screams and lunges, giving them just enough time to bolt for the now open sewers.

“I didn’t know those chains broke so easy! Damn!” Sydney says with a slight panicked pant as they pass through the sewer.

“I guess we didn't alert the one in the courthouse enough to let it break free. We'll have to be more careful,” Gunner hums, ducking into the next room.

There is a strange energy in the stairwell, and an even stranger set of noises echoing through the area. Coyle is nearby, talking rather quietly to… someone else. Another man? The other voice is deep and masculine, but nasally, like his nose was broken or plugged up. Both of them sounded out of breath, and Christine and Sydney exchanged a look.

Christine and Sydney hadn’t had time to tell the others about the documents Sydney had found or the things she’d learned about the trial from other reagents before a guard had called Christine by name to participate in the therapy this time. Then they’d kinda jumped right in, Gunner was still tired from the last therapy session and wouldn’t be much help for much longer, so they were in a bit of a hurry. As they round the corner and look out at the showers though, everyone in the group quickly learns exactly what kind of trial this was going to be. 

Gunner enters first, to make sure the room is clear of threats, and freezes where he stands, silently looking out at the showers as his face turned crimson and his shoulders tightened. 

“What, what’s happen-” Grace begins, but as she and the other two girls push into the room, they all freeze.

“You didn’t tell me they were gonna be doin’ that where we could see them…” Christine whispers to Sydney, trying not to stare.

“No one said they’d be all out in the open like that, I assumed there’d be some sort of obstruction!” Sydney hisses back, very much staring.

The trial victim, the Warden, is down below, on his knees for the Sergeant. He gags and whimpers and praises the vile man above him, while Coyle talks dirty to him and urges him to continue. Christine feels a strange pang of anger pull at her gut, watching them like that. She’s heard the Sergeant talk during trials, she knows his beliefs.

“Just another fuckin’ hypocrite,” She growls, slamming her fist down on the button to start the trial.

For a moment, the group isn’t sure the button worked, but then there’s a rumble in the nearby pipes, and the hiss of water spraying out everywhere. The mist it creates is cool to the touch, and the Warden jerks his head in surprise, letting out a whine at the sudden cold shower. In doing so, his jaw must have clenched, because Coyle howls in pain and backhands the man to the ground, throwing himself back and away from the pain and winding back to strike again until he seems to notice the water dripping off of his wide brimmed hat and onto his gloved hand. He turns, furious, towards the group in the office, and immediately clocks what had happened.

“You wanna cut in on this dance?” Coyle screams, turning to hold a hand out to the Warden, who flinches away for a moment before he recognizes the gesture and nods. He’s still clearly nervous, but he seems less immediately afraid. “You’re gonna die on your knees, and I don’t mean prayin’! Back to your pin, Fuckpig!”

“Some victim,” Christine growls as the pair leave.

“He seems like he’s exactly where he wants to be, based on the shit he was saying,” Sydney huffs with a bitter laugh.

“I can’t fathom finding a single thing worthy of worship about that man,” Gunner grumbles, trudging out of the room and down the stairs with a huff.

The trial was… frustrating. The steam valves were simple enough, Christine and Gunner had knocked those out quickly, it barely took them 5 minutes. The pig heads however…

“I swear I’ve been in every fucking room in this stupid fucking farm and there’s nothing! Where the fuck is it?” Sydney growls, pacing a bit in the dark of the cafeteria where they’d regrouped. Coyle’s shock prod was buzzing distantly, but he wasn’t within earshot of the reagents quite yet.

“I’ll do one more sweep, we’re sure no one dropped one while running from a grunt?” Gunner asked.

“Positive. I know the one I dropped got picked back up and shredded,” Grace sighed, also visibly frustrated.

“How is your stun charge, Sydney?” Gunner asked, shifting his ESOP a bit to get more comfortable before he began sneaking about again.

“About a minute left before its battery is charged again. Need me to cover for you incase the dog gets loose?” She replies.

“You really shouldn’t call them dogs, Sydney. They’re people. We need to remember all of the enemies we face here are people. Humans,” Grace chastises lightly. Christine nods in agreement.

“Barely! Look, I get wanting to remember that the victims are people, they’re pretty lucid most of the time, but the ex-pops barely even know what’s going on around them, some of them can’t even talk!” Sydney shoots back in defense.

“Enough. We don’t need to sit here arguing about who is and isn’t human while a very real and dangerous man is hunting us like prey. Let’s find this last pig head and get a move on,” Gunner interrupts, moving to the door that led to the farmyard. Sydney follows, her footsteps quiet, but noticeably heavier as she pouts.

The pig head is located on a bench in a perfectly well lit barn that Gunner and Sydney both agree they had already looked in. Sydney grumbles and complains about the whole ordeal but Gunner seems like he’s in a hurry, and keeps walking rather quickly back into the safety of the dark cafeteria. Just as the pair enter, they hear a delighted cackle and the sound of retching.

“Serves you right you bigoted pig,” Christine says with a manic laugh as she and Grace round the corner of a dining table, just barely out of reach of a now staggering Coyle, who was angrily growling and screaming between bouts of nausea and vomiting.

No one in the party was particularly fond of Coyle. Grace, strangely, seemed the least phased by him. She still hated him, same as the others, but his bigoted remarks rarely got to her as often as they did the others, in particular Gunner. Grace had explained once that it was because she was used to the comments. Many people felt brave enough to speak to a black woman the way Coyle spoke, even in a big city like New York. 

That had surprised Sydney the most. She’d assumed things were better up north, farther from the deep south where she’d grown up. People from up there always acted like racism didn’t exist and that the south was making a bad name for Americans as a whole. Grace had explained that it was alive and well in the North, just a little more subtle to those who weren’t directly affected. 

None of the crew had really known what to do with that information, so the conversation had died shortly after that. It was uncomfortable to realize that not a single one of them had been raised without the pressure of bigotry weighing on their shoulders in one way or another. Gunner had it the easiest, but even he had been hurt by others assumptions about his lifestyle before he’d joined the military.

Gunner cracks a smile as he watches Coyle hunch over and vomit one more time, and then takes the opportunity the distraction has bought him to lug the pig head out into the courtyard to shred the rotting flesh.

The final puzzle had been simple. Everyone took a number, and shared what they found over their radio. Grace had been the closest to the keypad when the final number was found, and types it in quickly. Excitement buzzed around the crew as the final gate swung open. Every one of them was tired and just wanted to go back to their sleep room cell and relax. The sooner they got this execution over with, the better.

Sydney ran up ahead first, checking everything out to see if there was anything they needed to worry about, any insertion gates nearby whatever device they’d be operating to kill the poor warden. She froze as she opened the door to reveal… nothing. 

“What? How are we meant to kill him?” Grace mused, looking around the empty room and rather pointedly not at the naked man tied down to the desk.

Gunner and Sydney exchange a glance. They were the only members of the group who had ever been incarcerated, and they both recognized the objects tied to his desk.

“The name of this trial makes more sense now…” Sydney says grimly, stepping forward gently and picking up one of the socks.

“You don’t mean…” Christine looks at the poor man in horror, picking up one of the socks as well.

“We kill plenty of people in these trials, this is no different,” Gunner says, picking up a sock on the other side of the table as Grace joins him.

The weight of the locks feels heavier than it is in the girls’ hands. Gunner’s eyes are noticeably duller, and he seems unaffected by the prospect of what they need to do.

“This is different. This is direct. No devices, no levers or pulleys, just a weapon and a man and our own hands,” Christine murmurs, saying aloud what the other two girls were thinking.

“He isn’t a man. He’s a pig. Said so himself, he’s Daddy’s little fuck-pig. And what happens when pigs get all nice and fat and outstay their welcome?” Gunner’s tone is flat and aggressive in a way the others have only seen reserved for knocking a prime asset away from one of them. He’s pushing something down, steeling himself for something. For murder, the girls all suppose. The Warden does his best to cower away, whimpering sadly, but he can’t move far.

“Fat pigs get butchered,” Sydney whispers, her eyes getting a little duller as she says it. She was thinking about something else now as well, far away from that room.

Gunner raises the sock as high as he can, the tether keeping it attached to the desk limiting his range a bit, and swings it down with a disgusting thud. The Warden screams in pain, but it doesn’t even look like they’ve done anything to him yet. Sydney swings next, and the two trade blows on the Warden for a while before Christine closes her eyes, turns her head away, and joins them. Grace feels bile rise in her throat, but she follows suit. None of them wanted to be there longer than they needed to, and this was going to be a slow process.

Coyle never showed his face during the execution. The reagents were left alone in the room with the Warden the entire time, listening to him beg and cry for mercy and help that would never come until he let out one final gurgle of breath and went limp. None of them could tell if they’d just finally hit an important organ or if he’d just finally bled out, but the pile of gore that was his body was an ugly sight regardless. A trial gate opened and Coyle busted down the doors only after the Warden was long dead, and the group scrambled quickly away, Sydney hucking her stun at him as they left to buy them a little extra time. She’d found a rig recharger while looking for the last pig head, so she wasn’t worried about getting to the shuttle.

They were all pleasantly surprised to find the shuttle already there when they arrived back at their starting point, but the vile nature of the execution still hung in the air and stifled any comments they would have normally made. The ride back was quiet. No one wanted to talk about what they’d done. It had been similar when they’d killed Lot 7 for the first time, or the Idol. The brutal methods used on the Lot and the personable nature of the Idol had left a sour taste in their mouths when they’d been forced to participate. This was similar.

When they stepped out and into the decontamination area, Easterman’s praises rang through the chamber. All A+’s, they had all avoided detection for most of the trial and outran anything that spotted them. Trials with Gunner tended to  end in A+’s though. He was a valuable teammate.

When they all got back to the sleep room, Gunner wandered off to the cafeteria to eat and play chess. He always enjoyed playing chess after a trial, it seemed to pull him back to reality after a particularly rough execution. Grace went back to her room to sew, she’d been itching to finish a project for a long while and had been very close when they were summoned for their trial. Sydney and Christine just stood near the nurse’s station for a while, not really doing or saying much. Both seemed a little dazed before Christine’s endorphins finally wore off and she began to cry. Sydney turned to her, startled and still a little dazed, and Christine bolted for her room. Sydney followed at a trot.

When they were in the safety of Christine’s cell, the girl finally let out a scream that sounded equal parts angry and devastated, throwing her hollowed out book on her desk at a wall and watching as various contraband scattered around the room as it fell open. She kicked her bedpost, threw her chair, and screamed again, tears streaming down her face as Sydney watched quietly.

“Fuck!” Christine howled, slumping down to the floor knees first, her legs splayed beneath her as she grabbed at her hair and pulled gently on the root. She never pulled hard enough to yank it out, but the slight pressure tended to comfort her in a weird way.

Sydney padded over to her and plopped down on the ground nearby, placing a gentle hand on her back and leaving it there, knowing that moving the hand was likely too much for Christine to handle.

“We didn’t have a choice, Chris. We never have a choice. It was him or us,” Sydney said, trying to comfort her friend as best she could.

“I’ve never had to do that before…” Christine whimpered softly, sobs still shaking her body as they escaped.

“What are you talking about, you’ve been here longer than me, you've killed plenty of people.”

“I’ve never killed someone with my bare hands. It’s always been with those stupid… Machines. The mechanisms. That separation. I’ve never killed someone like that. We fucking killed him. All because he liked Coyle too much,” Christine said, slumping over and leaning on Sydney for comfort. She was exhausted.

“You get used to the feeling the more you do it,” Sydney replied quietly, wrapping her arms around Christine gently and rubbing at her arms in a way she hoped was soothing. It had always been soothing when her mother did it to her as a small child, before everything had gone wrong.

“I don’t want to get used to it. I want to never have to do it again. Ever.”

“That isn’t how a place like this works and we both know that,” Sydney hums.

There’s a pause for a brief moment, then Christine speaks up again, her sobs beginning to calm but her throat still spasming on a hiccup every few moments. She’d moved a bit so her head was resting in Sydney’s lap while Sydney combed her fingers through the other girl’s hair. 

“Did we kill him for being queer?” She asks. Sydney doesn’t respond for a moment.

“I mean… We didn’t. But it may be part of why they wanted us to kill him. I think it was more about the corruption of power he represented though.”

“They wanted me dead back home for being a dyke. S’why I left. I had a good life there, but I got sloppy. Comfortable. They found out and…” She paused. “She didn’t even have to leave. She still lived there last I heard. Went to some sorta meetings, repented, all that. Pretended she never knew me, that I’d taken advantage, said she never wanted nothing to do with me. Not a word a what she told them ‘bout me was true and I couldn’t even start to defend myself because everything she said was something they already believed. I was the bad seed from the moment I was born and she was beautiful and perfect and good. Of course I tried to tempt her, to defile her. It’s all monsters like me do.”

It was a bad time, but Sydney always found it cute that Christine's accent would get thicker when she was tired or upset. She smiled softly. “I don’t think you’re a monster, Chris.”

“You must be forgetful, last I checked I’ve killed dozens of people in this hellhole. Of course I’m a monster,” Christine huffed, curling in on herself a bit.

“I know monsters Chris. I’ve been one since I was 13, probably before that. Mother Gooseberry made sure of it. You aren’t a monster,” Sydney said with a gentle hum.

“You were a baby. Babies can’t be monsters,” Christine replied, her eyes getting heavy as the feeling of Sydney’s fingers on her scalp slowly pushed her anger and fear away.