The Exaba Behind the Glass

After the obstacle course, Exaba delayed the vote. There were still scrolls to use. Maine revealed his own prisoner first and saw Jeff alive behind the glass: battered, scraped, wearing a black robe, and hanging on after everything that had already happened to him. For Maine, it was not good news exactly, but it was a relief. Jeff was alive. That meant there was still someone to rescue. Then Maine chose to reveal Victor's prisoner. The veil dropped, and the arena showed Exaba. Not the host standing before them, polished and performing. This Exaba was thinner, frightened, dressed in tattered fighting clothes, and pressed against the glass as if she had been trapped there for a long time. When she looked down at the contestants, she cried. The host did not explain the contradiction. That reveal cracked the game open. If Exaba was the prisoner, then who was hosting? An impostor? A projection? A copy? A worse version of the same person? The party did not have the answer, only the image: one Exaba running the show, another Exaba begging silently from behind glass. Nick used his Question Prisoner scroll on I.J. He did not ask how to escape. He asked whether she would break up with him if he lost. I.J., trapped above the arena and forced to answer as truthfully as she could, told him that if they survived, they would figure it out. It was not the comfort he wanted, but it was not an ending either. Their relationship remained suspended in the same cruel space as everyone else. Only then did the game return to elimination. Maine, Dhaz, and Victor were placed at risk. The party debated whether voting Victor out might somehow save him, since the whole trap had seemed to target him from the beginning. Hope and desperation looked almost the same in that moment. The votes came in. Maine was safe. Dhaz was safe. Victor Shaw was out. The game took him.