#apex2

Team Associated's all-new A550 Rally Car is a highly detailed and fun-to-drive Ready-to-Run RC car. Built on a budget friendly Apex2 Sport chassis, the A550 Rally Car is a beautiful true-to-life scale version of the Group B cars from the golden era of rallying during the 1980s. These cars were some of the fastest, most powerful, and most sophisticated rally cars ever built! (Pictured: #30126, 30126C Apex2 Sport, A550 Rally Car RTR and LiPo Combo.)

Aidan stumbles into a cockpit, the windows dark and lights flashing all around. The co-pilot seat is empty. He tries the door behind him, but it won’t open. Vague murmuring still filters in from the cabin.

A roar of thunder shakes the plane. He’s nearly knocked off his feet, flailing as another strike lights up the room. He eventually manages to stumble into the pilot seat, where he fumbles to strap himself in. Casting his glasses aside, he only gives the countless dials and displays a glance before straightening up and gripping the controls.

The plane shudders again, anything outside the windshield obscured by heavy sheets of rain. Aidan’s hands tense, and he leans in, clearly trying to pull up on the steering wheel thing. If his expression is anything to go by, it’s not moving as easily as it should.

After consulting a screen, he peers out ahead. It looks like he might be in some kind of mountain range. If he is, he’s falling fast.

It takes some deal of struggle before the plane tilts horizontal, if only for a moment. Panting, he he keeps one hand on the controls and casts his headset off to try the one hooked up to the plane. He barks something into the microphone, but it’s lost in another blast of thunder. He fumbles with buttons on the headset, but the plane starts listing again.

“Fiddlesticks!”

He focuses back in on the dashboard. Sweat trickles down his neck as he wrestles with the controls. He grits his teeth at one of the dials as another major shudder rocks the plane. Hazy edges continue to fly past the windows.

He coughs. With a wince, he suppresses a second one and continues tugging at the controls. A blinding flash of lightning sears the screen, and more warning buzzers join the chorus.

Aidan breaks down into a coughing fit that eventually subsides into strained wheezing. He strengthens his grip on the controls with one hand and reaches into his jacket with the other. His hand jabs into an empty pocket. He tries every other pocket on his person, juggling the handle between his hands the whole way, but he still comes up empty. Nothing on the floor, either—his inhaler is gone. 

He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and repositions both hands on the controls. More lights are flashing, but he can’t seem to focus on any of them. Wheezing badly, he loosens his tie, but it doesn’t make a difference. The controls cease to budge. The plane is going down. 

He fumbles with his restraints, tosses the headset aside, and hurls himself at the cabin door. After several tries, he manages to unlock it and stagger into the cabin.

The seats are empty. A small cassette player secured to the floor murmurs away, but no other living person is there. He falls to his knees with a laugh-like wheeze. Several more flashes of lightning come and go before he’s able to force himself back to his feet and into the cockpit. After a couple of disoriented collisions with the walls, he collapses to the floor.

His wheezing near-silent now, he pulls himself just far enough to peer out the window. He stares so long I’m not sure if he can even tell what’s out there. More rain. Maybe ocean. 

No one in the plane, no one else around to crash into.

Just him.

Unable to even keep coughing, he feels his way around and finds the controls. He forces the plane to its highest speed as it plummets. 

The airplane gives one last massive shudder before everything goes white in a deafening crash. When it all settles, the deluge roars through cracks in the walls invisible in the darkness. Moments later, a flash of lightning illuminates the water seeping into the room and the broken body crumpled by the door.

It all started yesterday afternoon, when Itsurou left for his study hall. As per the unofficial rules, he had two people accompany him—Arthur, and the culprit. It was then that Arthur decided to take Itsurou’s key as a joke. Unfortunately for him, Itsurou’s only apparent reaction was pretending to lock his door behind him when they left. But the culprit noticed. That was when their plan began to form.

They weren’t planning to do any test runs of their setup. Instead they just determined certain weights and other parameters in the lab room. Even if they were caught, they could have passed it off as part of their plans to combat the oxygen poisoning.

After curfew, they snuck out of their dorm. Their first stop was Kazusuke’s room. They were sure Itsurou had something up his sleeve to keep his study hall secure, so they went for the only gloves available, turning them inside-out to conceal their identity. After that, they went straight to the study hall. After all, if it was suddenly locked, the plan wouldn’t work.

But it wasn’t. After selecting a gun, locating the bullets, and grabbing a fire extinguisher just in case, they spent some time in that back room figuring out exactly how the weapon operated. Then they set out to gather the other materials from all over the school. It must have taken quite a bit of time and effort, but that wasn’t enough to dissuade them.

Having calculated precisely where and how they had to place everything, they went into the art room and set up their murder machine. Once all the pieces were in place, they used duct tape and plaster to put the broken walls back up, but not without leaving a small hole vital to their backup plan. They made sure a single string was threaded through it before obscuring the gloves. They left to get what little sleep they could manage.

Morning came. The culprit attended breakfast as usual...

...but excused themselves early. They were in terrible shape because of the motive, so this wasn’t that suspicious. But instead of retiring to their room as they claimed, they went upstairs. Without turning on the art room light, they stepped into the supply closet and poised themselves by the peephole they’d made. They also took a puff of their inhaler, just in case whoever came to the art room would hear them coughing in there.

Eventually those of us at breakfast dispersed. Some went to their rooms, some went to their study halls, but Kokoro left for the art room. She stepped inside and turned on the light. That did what it was supposed to...

...but it also turned on one of the pottery wheels. Kokoro may not have noticed because of her own condition, or she may have just stayed away from it. After all, how was a spinning pottery wheel on the other side of the room going to kill her?

And it wasn’t—at least not by itself. But when the wheel reached a certain speed, the telescope glued to its surface extended well past the outer rim. It then slammed into a baseball that was only lightly secured to its own pottery wheel.

The baseball flew into the wall, and the flimsy plaster provided almost no resistance as the baseball continued forward. It hit a small dumbbell and knocked it off a handmade balance beam. With nothing to balance it out, the heavier dumbbell on the other side plummeted. Its side of the balance slammed into the ground hard enough to dislodge the dumbbell from its surface. But the more important result took place on the other side of the pivot. The end of the beam swung up and hit the stock of the gun. This loaded the gun, so it was fully prepared to shoot. But it didn’t cause the gun to fire. That required another part of the trap: the motion sensor in front of the art storage door.

But Kokoro never approached the closet. So she would have been safe... if the killer wasn’t poised inside the storage room themselves. When they saw her approach the door to leave, they started the machine’s alternate mechanism.

With the pull of a string, they activated a switch built into the gun-securing plate. This angled the gun to point right in front of the exit door. The culprit waited and watched. Unlike the rest of us, they could get a clear view of the scene because their farsightedness had made the motive improve their vision. Right when Kokoro reached a mark on the wall, they tripped the motion sensor themselves. This sent a current up wires that rapidly heated the back of the bullet, causing it to misfire. But it was a misfire the culprit had planned.

The bullet struck Kokoro in the back. She was too shocked to do anything but try to catch herself as she collapsed to the ground. She bled out in moments.

The culprit didn’t have much time. They manipulated the gun back into its original position and tugged the string free. They could have hid it anywhere. It wouldn’t have stood out in that closet.

Meanwhile, Kanagi, Tsunyasha, and Ichiriki were all right across the hall from the art room. The gunshot got their attention, and they hurried to the scene to open the door and discover Kokoro’s dead body. This gave the killer no opportunity to escape, but they were prepared for that, too.

Gradually, the rest of us gathered at the scene. Our constant coughing and the bloodied corpse at our feet were quite the distraction, so eventually the killer was able to sneak out of their hiding place. When they slipped into the crowd, we didn’t realize it at all.

And that’s how Kokoro was killed.

Does that sound about right...

...Aidan Doppler?

“Yes! You’ve done an excellent job, Miss Kogamino!!”

I follow the brunt of the crowd into the dormitory hall. I can’t muster the motivation to break away. Why would I need to? Food? Like I’m hungry after that. Check the art room? Whether Kokoro is still there or not, it won’t help me with anything. She’s dead. Aidan’s dead. Mary Jane and Kazusuke and for all I know all the rest of us are dead.

The crowd has started to dissolve as doors open and shut. I’m left ambling around aimlessly until a voice interrupts.

“Hey, move.”

I step aside without thinking. Kanagi and Mahavir shuffle past. Oh. Otoya’s room is at the far end of the hall, right? Not the most convenient.

I watch the trio pass several doors before drifting after them. We all come to a stop at Otoya’s door.

“These pants have, like, sixty pockets. Where d’you think his key is?”

“Don’t know. I’ll help look, though.”

Mahavir and Kanagi set him on the floor, and we start searching pockets. A few writing utensils in his jacket. Nothing else until we finally locate the key in a pocket just over his knee. I grab it by the plastic tag and turn to the door. My hands aren’t as shaky as I thought they were, so I get it unlocked without any trouble. Nothing else keeps the door from opening. I peer inside.

There’s those giant dumbbells. What was he even doing with them? Working out? Blocking his door?

I glance in the trash cans but only find crumpled-up paper. Plenty of that, though. Monochap probably didn’t try to empty them while Otoya was locked up in here. But I’m not seeing so much as an empty bag of chips.

While I’m over by the desk, Kanagi and Mahavir toss Otoya onto his bed. They step back.

“I’m gonna go hang around the gym, I think.”

“.........I’ll be returning to my room.”

First time he’s spoken in a while. I can barely hear him.

“Me, too.”

I stare out the door as they plod into the hall. 

“.............”

At some point I just sit down in Otoya’s doorway. Might as well stick around. Keep an eye on him, or something. There’s nothing to do in my room, anyway.

Honestly, I just don’t want to bother.

“Miss Kakumi?”

The closest I get to a jump is a bob of my shoulders. I look up as Itsurou crouches to my current eye level. He coughs into a clenched fist.

“Are you feeling all right?”

“How is anyone supposed to feel all right after today?”

“Fair, fair. Then how’s this—are you breathing all right?”

“Yeah.”

Apparently talking was a mistake, because I’m suddenly having trouble keeping my voice steady.

“Thanks to a dead man.”

“Indeed.”

I take a shaky breath, but it’s not enough to get the crying to stop. Guess it’s just hard to watch someone smile and march off to die so you don’t have to.

“I’d like to say I wish he would have talked to us about his plans, but what difference would it have made? ‘Twas clear he was ready to try other efforts to combat the motive, but it seems none of us could concoct anything worthwhile.”

“If we couldn’t cure the poisoning ourselves, the only way to stop it really was playing Monochap’s game.”

“Does that mean killing someone was worth it? Could something like that actually be the right thing to do?”

“Sounds like a bit of an ‘ends justify the means’ philosophy.”

“That’s not right. You could justify anything you wanted with that.”

“ ‘Tis certainly an excellent platform for villainy, yes.”

“But does that mean ‘tis an invalid philosophy one hundred percent of the time? I doubt anything is so clear-cut.”

“So what Aidan did at least could have been the right thing...”

“And we killed him for it?”

“We haven’t been provided the most civilized justice system here, have we? The death penalty for self-defense—and not even that, but defense of others. And voting, in turn, is the same principle.”

“Self-defense doesn’t mean the people we voted for deserved to die.”

“I’m afraid ‘deserved to’ and ‘had to’ aren’t quite one and the same.”

“........”

“But that much is just as true outside these walls as within them, wouldn’t you say? Life and death both will always be cruel.”

“You’re great at motivational speeches, Itsurou.”

“Were you expecting something cheerful? I thought it a bit soon.”

“We’re allowed to mourn them; in fact, I’d say we owe them that much.”

“But once that’s run its course, all we must do is live. That is what they died for. That is what Aidan chose to die for. If the most we can do to repay them is to respect that, then living is what we will do. We’ve no way to know how long any of us will last—perhaps decades, perhaps moments. But even then, they are hard-won moments. Whatever time we may have is worth cherishing.”

“Even if the fair and just options have been ripped from our hands, we can wrest this much back.”

“...”

Living, huh? Not like I wasn’t planning on doing that, anyway. But if we can’t find a way out of here, a way that isn’t murder, then that’s much easier said than done.

Fine, then. It doesn’t matter if it’s hard. We can’t afford to give up. I can’t afford to give up. If Kokoro and Aidan died so I could live, I’m going to damn well do it.

We sit in silence long enough for my crying to taper off. Otoya hasn’t budged back there, but he’s breathing. Itsurou rises to his feet once his throat is clear.

“I’ll let you be.”

“Although...”

He lowers his voice and covers his mouth with one hand.

“I should tell you, something seemed strange about the wiring near the pottery wheel. You may want to give it a look.”

“Farewell, for now.”

“See you.”

He’s made his way to his room before I get up. I’m not checking any suspicious wires right now, but I’m tired of sitting here. 

I lock up Otoya’s door behind me, pocket his key, and walk to my door. It takes me a few tries to actually open it, but from there it’s a pretty clear shot to flop facedown on my bed.

I might end up crying again. Can’t tell.

But I’m alive. Twelve of us are alive. And we’re going to stay that way. I’ll make sure of it. 

Maybe I can’t. Not really. No single person can make sure nothing bad ever happens to anyone.

But I’ll try just as hard as both of them did.

CHAPTER 2 END

STUDENTS REMAINING: 12

The screen goes blank, but I don’t register that as reason to stop staring at it. He’s dead, huh.

“...”

“...”

“...”

My hand hovers over Aidan’s name.

He was the culprit. He murdered Kokoro. Isn’t it only fair for a killer to be killed in return?

Then why doesn’t it feel that way?

I don’t care what he said just now. He didn’t kill her in cold blood. It wasn’t for his own benefit. Yes, maybe it stopped the poisoning for him, too, but only for a while. He’ll still be executed.

At least, he will if we vote for him. But what happens if we don’t? An innocent is killed, and the rest of us are also punished somehow. That’s not fair, either. If I’m going to sentence someone, it might as well be the one with blood on his hands.

But if he was just trying to save us, at the cost of his own life...

...I don’t know that for sure. It may feel like we’ve spent a ton of time together, but I still hardly know him. Maybe Aki’s the only one he doesn’t want to die for him. I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I clench my eyes shut and press down on the screen.

“Okay…! All the votes are in! Let’s see who the winner is! I’m so excited…!”

I don’t bother watching the screen as the tallies flick wildly and teasingly across it. Even when the image has settled, I’m not sure I want to look.

I manage to drag my gaze down anyway.