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Benedict opens his mouth for a split second before closing it again. This repeats a few times until he's able to spit something out that's barely coherent. "It wants us to find. It. It. Wants someone to challenge. It." And then he goes quiet. You doubt you're getting any more than that out of him.
"Look. If I had to put my say into it?" Adam speaks for the first time in what feels like forever. "I know what it's like to see someone rotting away from an obsession. We have to stop him. I don't care HOW we do it. Killing him in cold blood, convincing him to stop. I don't care."
"Fuck, man, isn't it a bit much to go immediately to trying to gut him alive?" You rub a hand along the back of your neck hand. "And wouldn't that result in everyone else on the ship trying to kill us in return? We all fucking saw what they were doing back there when he told them to cry for him."
"Five against, shit, I counted at least fifty people back there." Lex shakes his head. "Yeah. No go. Any other ideas?"
"Well, here's the ideas I thought of." You clasp your hands together. "We can try convincing him. Find some way to get him to stop this hunt. But if Benedict is right, he's probably too far gone for that. We could try just...riding this through, I suppose. Help him in the hunt. If we survive, we'll probably get a massive paycheck after this."
"No." Ashley chokes out. "I have a fucking family back home. You guys might have nothing but each other but I have a brother, I have a band, I have people who CARE about me back in the City. I'm not throwing my life away for this god damn job. You can't make me."
No one feels like speaking up after that.
"Fuck." Ashley leans back against one of the empty cots. "Sorry. It's-"
"No, no." Lex lets out an exhausted sigh. "I get it. I do."
"If we're already within its range of effect, would it even let us leave?" Adam mutters as he stares at the floor. "Back when Nicole helped me with Benedict with an 'incident', it only took a few minutes from our perspective. But apparently a whole day passed by in the outside. He didn't even fully transform then!"
For a moment, Ashley looks like she's on the verge of killing someone right here and now. "So are you fucking saying we're stuck here anyways? That the FREAK of a Captain and his stupid fucking offer isn't even a choice we have? I don't understand a lick about ETF anomaly ratings but if some random chef can dilate time like that, then we're already FUCKED!"
"No, no. Don't think so." Lex tries his best to comfort Ashley. "Chef guy said it wanted a challenge. If we don't even want to fight it, then we can't challenge it. We're fine."
"Huh." Adam seems completely baffled at the oddly rational statement Lex said. "That actually makes sense. Wait-" It then clicks for him. "FUCK! He's fucking himself over back there! He's motivating his crew! He's basically INVITING that damn thing's attention, isn't he?"
"Fuck." Your group unanimously murmur out a single resigned word.
