Checkmate {Harvey}

[Tom]

Blood is the first thing he noticed when the door finally opened.

"Shit."

The word leaves his lips under his breath, gravelled by the disbelief. Eyes travel across the rich bathroom walls and floors, until he can see Amrin's empty eyes. For a second, he almost breaks. There's a pain that flows through his chest as he can remember her words towards him. Cold, unnerving, and full of calculated fluctuations. Dead bodies are stacking up, Harvey knew this was only going to get worse before better. A heavy hand over his heart as he prays to a god his mother used to. Eyes scanning Amrin as he tries to avoid her eyes. Looking for the one thing that Amrin would never give up without her life.

Except, there's no notebook. Nothing there, but Amrin's dead body. A chill runs down his spine as he almost nudges Fiora, but he doesn't. Too many eyes. Too many people. This wasn't what they needed to discuss in front of others. Fiora speaks as his eyes reach Poppy. Fire that once burned through her no longer there as he feels himself steady his feet, planting them a little heavier to the floor.

"What the hell is this."

Malcolm Nox. Blaine Goulding. Adam Taupe. Poppy Rohan. Amrin Delphine. Five dead and eight of them left. Pieces on a chessboard being pushed around, over and over. Fingers grasp the hem of his shirt, comforting himself as he looks away from the bodies, hearing himself whisper under his breath once more. They were being played. This game wasn't theirs anymore and he's tired of being a pawn in it. Heavy like stone, he stares away from the bodies, trying to avoid eye contact with others.

"Chaos."

A notebook missing. His name for the ones to leave. No name in the will. Beryl. Fiora. Adrien. Whitney. Indigo. Coralie. Violet. Which of them would kill? Was there more than one killer? Fingers tap on the hem of his shirt as he can remember the chill of being alone. The loneliness of the past filling him once more. There used to be days when he could smile more than before. After all of this, even if he's to survive, there's gonna be no more smiles. No more sunshine to make him feel at least whole for a little bit. Harvey's been around death too much, praying to a god he doesn't believe in for his mother's advice. Eyes glance at Adrien and Indigo as they pass him. Words heavy in the air, with a certain desperation to them.

"We're leaving, Indigo. Now."

For a second, he almost decides to follow, but Harvey's tired of following. This was no longer a game where trust could be had. Fiora was the only one he could really trust. Indigo was the other, except he wasn't sure anymore. Eyes glance around the room before he huffs and heads towards the only place that he can remember having significance since the start of the competition.

Alone. The lights flicker off. Harvey's never been more terrified of what could happen in the dark, until this moment. Eyes wide, fist clenched to protect himself. Feet stop with a certain vigor before the lights flicker back on. A moment to take a deep breath as he steps into the game room where a game of chess is left unplayed. Pawns standing tall. Kings and queens staring the others down. Knights, rooks, and bishops ready to protect the important ones. As a kid, he always loved the pieces. The type of wood making the pieces what they are. Fingertip touches the king, knocking it down as he stares at the rest of the pieces.

A king for Malcolm. A rook for Blaine. A knight for Adam. A bishop for Poppy. A queen for Amrin. Pawns left across the board, rooks and knights and bishops pretending like they are apart of a new game. Another king stares down the field and for a moment, Harvey can feel the stare on his back. The shiver that runs up his spine as he pockets one of the rooks. Stone, tall, strong, and sturdy movements. Fingers begin to pull apart the room, searching for something, anything. The way there's a feeling of being watched makes him feel on edge even more so than before.

"Alright. Let's play your game."

Words slip from his lips as he moves tables, chairs, and whatever he can on his own. Eyes glancing around for anything useful. He's tired of these games this killer wants to play. Eyes glance around the room as he pulls cushions off of chairs. Curtains tossed about as he searches long and hard for what something; anything. All of this was a game of life or death now. A game just like the Hunger Games where there was no winners, only dead bodies and trauma left behind. A deep breath as Harvey ignores the feeling of eyes and the worry for the others, despite knowing any one of them could be the killer.

Checkmate.

Harvey was going to do everything in his power to cause the checkmate on the board.

No longer bound by the same rules as before, he wasn't playing anymore.

Life or death.

Harvey would choose justice.

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[Tom]

A key is all he finds among the ashes of this game.

Blood coats his memories, the way empty eyes stare back to him. Harvey Slate was strong like stone, solid and always carrying himself on steady breaths and steady steps. Ever since his mother died, he swore death wouldn't follow him anymore. Told himself on the nights where the cold could have taken his bones, swallowed him whole that he wasn't going to let death follow him. No chill to his skin, no fear in his heart, and definitely no more sorrows upon his cheeks. Tears weren't meant for death. Walling himself off from the cliffside of the sorrow he had been used to.

It's a cold ache that takes him once more remembering the way his mother had let the last of her life anchor her words to him. The silent screams that broke from his boyish body as he grasped for her hands, but he's always too late, never strong enough to tell her he loves her, not strong enough to apologize for his brattiness. Beryl annoyed him the first they met because he was once what Harvey was. A brat with no remorse for others, but Harvey had grown up too fast and suffered at rich hands, snuffing him out slowly and slowly, but he still stands with the cracks in his stone skin.

This fucking game wouldn't break him. This game of chess was nothing more than a brat playing games with them. The dead would live six feet under, where the roots will forever hold them while someone else sits upon a fortune of a dead man. Harvey didn't want that anymore. No amount of money could pay for the lives of a handful of innocents or maybe that's what they were always meant to think. A chill runs down his spine as he grasps the silver, holding the cold in his fingers until it breaks his gaze. Eyes fill his skin, sets him on edge as Harey does what he's always been great at.

Ignoring those stares from somewhere unknown, he rips apart the game room. Pieces scattered to the floor with a wooden and metallic clank and thunk. Pool table pushed onto its side looking for any locks, any answers to why they were here playing this game of murder. Harvey was tired of this. Tired of them playing this stupid fucking game that made his chest burn with that same fear for his mother once more. Malcolm. Blaine. Adam. Poppy. Amrin. The dead do not deserve to have been cut off so soon. The anger fills his lips as he flips a table on it's side. FIngers ripping curtains from their expensive poles, breaking bits of the wall with it.

"Let's fucking play. Come out whoever the fuck you are."

Eyes combing the room for any answers. Harvey Slate was raised to wall off his heart, hold himself tall and pretend like he knew everything in the world. Boys and girls with silver spoons held nothing compared to what he's gone through. The words he's been called. The hatred thrown at him just for how he looks, for how poor he is, and for the things he can't control. Holding the demons of his own head at bay, never striking a single person, despite wanting to. Harvey wasn't a killer. Harvey would never be a killer, but there were certain moments he'd give in to his mind and imagine the ease of bopping some rich kid in the mouth for saying something about the way his hair was or the way his body was.

The key burns in his palms as he kicks over a chair, ignoring the feeling of uselessness that washes over his skin. He wasn't a pawn. He wasn't meant to be a pawn in everyone else's game. Harvey Slate had started slow, but he was stronger, faster, and smarter than a good amount of them. Stamina was his strength, but right here and now, he's nothing more than a weight dragging them all back into the water where they'll drown together in fear.

This was a game, but not one at the same time.

A reality in which they live on someone else's board.

Harvey was going to shatter the game.

Break the chains this killer or killers have tied them to.

(Harvey looks for the secret door in the game room)

[Tom]

Torn apart, this game of kings, queens, and pawns feels broken.

Holding the eight ball in his hands from the pool table that's been overturned by his anger, he swirls he smooth surfaces between his fingers. Cold, heavy, and symbolic of making or breaking a life. The Nox home was meant to be his eight ball, the make or break it moment in his life that would define him forever. Fingers brushing the blackness of the ball, staring into it's number as if the answers he wants are there; in the smooth expanse of black and white and not in the rooms of killers and pathetic mind games meant to drive them all nuts. It's a brief second where he breaks out into a laughter feeling like he's losing his mind over and over again.

It wouldn't be the first time.

Nothing like the times he spent in an orphanage with tears prickling at his eyes where his mother sometimes wept with him in his dreams. Nothing like the days where he was just a kid living on the streets of Five with no comfort except the eyes of a friendly girl who used to leave him biscuit on the steps as if he were a dog to be trained. Homelessness was something he swore to never go back to out of his own volition, but it's better than being stuck in a house questioning if everyone was unworthy of his trust or was worthy of it. Stabbed in the back by so many others throughout his life that he's used to this pressure of being watched under a microscope, a specimen meant to squirm for someone's pleasure.

The eight ball flies into the wall with a harsh thud, throwing it like a baseball on a field where he wasn't some poor boy with a tragic background. It feels good to break down on his own out of peering eyes. Harvey could imagine how the rest of them would react. Beryl would claim he's the killer. Indigo would shrug and try to read his behavior. Fiora would try to look through his eyes and be greeted with nothing. Adrien would ignore it, probably grind his teeth with his thoughts jumbling around at a million miles an hour. Whitney would paint the picture into her head. Coralie would scream at him; try to kill him probably. And Violet, well he always assumed she would cower from that, but who knows anymore.

It's almost a pity that he wishes someone would just try to do so to ease his mind.

Instead of flinging himself into more destruction, he breathes with the sounds of his own mind counting up. One. Harvey Slate was no killer. Two. Harvey Slate told his mother he loved her. Three. Harvey Slate was just a boy surviving. Four. The world was a cruel, but forgiving place. Five. Harvey Slate wasn't going crazy. Six. Malcolm Nox was dead. Seven. Harvey Slate was breaking. Eight. They're all pawns. Nine. He is made of stone, sturdy, but slow. Ten. There's only one thing he has left; a functioning brain.

"Shit, they'd have to be close to the bathroom if Indigo and Whitney were taken."

A wildfire burns from his chest as he rushes through the door, leaving behind broken pieces of himself on the floor of the game room, trashed beyond recognition. Fists bruised and burning, but in a way that feels like control. The room is cold from a lack of a fire underneath the hearth in the den, no burning to be seen. A chill runs through his skin as the eyes feel stuck on him still, burning through him with the intent to kill, to murder, to break Harvey Slate apart like the orphans back in the orphanage or the homeless on the streets who were territorial beyond belief.

Fingers slide across an end table, pretending like he doesn't have the urge to trash another one of these fancy rooms that carries more than just money in them anymore. Ghosts live behind these walls, creeping through the drywall with those haunting words upon their tongues. Dead bodies to match those dead people. The key is held tightly to his own hand, holding out for a way to find them. To find someone and solve this entire thing because he's tired of playing the idiot who doesn't know anything. If he could get his hands on Amrin's journal, things would be easier.

The process begins with flipping the room apart, pushing furniture out of the way and looking for a secret passageway, a secret door, a vault, whatever he could find in order to figure out who was playing this game with them. There's whispers in the walls here, memories of Malcolm Nox and others who stare back in those paintings as if the room wasn't creepy when he saw his dead body. The colors splash together with a certain melancholy that aches through his chest as he pushes the chair out of the way. Harvey Slate wasn't meant to die.

He's survived hell and back.

Death wasn't supposed to find him so soon.

But it had.

Cold, dark, and full of mysteries.

Death had found him in the walls of a place he hated more than anything.

(Harvey looks for the secret door in the Den)

[Tom]

Nothing.

Toppled over tables, shattered glass, ripped painting, all of the den is thrown apart from him. The anger pulsing in his stomach, filling his mind up with anxiousness. He's scared once again. Scared of the idea of seeing death again and again. Harvey's been stone cold since the start of everything, built walls to keep himself standing tall, pretending like he had a chance in hell at winning the fortune, except he knew the truth. Deep down, in the dark corners of his mind that Harvey Slate would stay a poor boy with no home. By the time he's old enough to live on his own, they'll throw him back on the streets again, where he'll rot until he's either recruited into a gang like the rest of the lost kids or stabbed to death while trying to steal a loaf of bread.

Harvey Slate wasn't like Beryl or Adrien. Hell, he wasn't even like Fiora or Violet. Harvey Slate has always been apart of the poorest of people, struggling to stay afloat in a place that continues to push the poor farther and farther down. The rhythm of his own heartbeat echoes across his head for a moment, nothing in the room to find out what he's supposed to do with this key. The game of pawns and kings continues as he can feel the eyes on his neck, staring holes through him. Silently, he paces for a moment, letting his anger fume at the edges of his skin. It's all irrelevant to him, all he wanted was to escape the life outside of the bubble society has made for him.

The letter Malcolm had sent him was the gateway to better days, where he could smile at his mother's grave and not feel like the stone cold weight of the world was going to crush him. He's done every job in Five that he could as a kid from a poor life on the streets. Any job people would give him within reason, he never worked with the local gangs who desperately wanted control. Harvey's played the game of control in his early years with rich kids and a orphanage made to hold the richest of rich until they became of age. The world echoes with the weight on his shoulders as he decides to kick one of the side tables, pushing out the door of the den, leaving behind the glow of a cindering fire going out.

The eyes were still on him, making him bloom with a fire's glow. Harvey was tired of this game they were playing. Normalcy was what he craved, he wanted stability all of his life, but the chaos was ringing out to them all. The kitchen was where he floated to next, out of annoyance for logic not seeming to work. Silently, he makes himself a sandwich with the meats and cheeses still cold, chomping at the bits of it as he starts to search the room for some sort of lock for the key to go into. The mansion was colder in the kitchen, a chill running down his spine as he removes appliances from the counter,opening cabinets and moving tables and other items around the room.

Harvey wanted answers. Amrin's notebook was still out there somewhere. Harvey's not seen Blaine or Adam's body, but they had to be somewhere. Eyes glance around the room as he swears there's something chilling about the kitchen. Fingers prying open the fridge once more, moving items around, not destroying this room yet. The door shuts with a thud as Harvey checks everywhere once more. Death lingers in the shadows watching, but Harvey wasn't like the others. He had always been a slow start in these things, but now he was in a groove and no one was going to stop him.

Not some killer's games.

No matter the cost, he wasn't going to lose this time.

(Harvey looks for the secret door in the Kitchen)

[Tom]

The kitchen ends up being useless.

The frustration heavy on his lips as he closes the cabinet, leaving behind his half eaten sandwich, he steps out of the room, moving through the empty hall alone. Dark, no power, and he's alone. Death lingers in these lavish walls where he dances alone with a murderer watching his every moment. The key held tightly in his grasp, fingers clenched securely around the item. The cold metal almost knocks him into a memory of sleeping out on the streets, alone with no one else. The world is spinning and he's nowhere near enough to surviving that day. Food had been scarce and he's lost all of the usual jobs he had. It took a single kind kid who gave him a meal and a place to stay for the night that got him through that. The job of nanny came after that, wth lavish walls like these ones.

It had been all fun and games then, until he was called scum and the kind kid got smacked for jumping in between the strike. Fired for experiencing that moment, violence was something he knew too well now, but he didn't want to be apart of this violent game. Fingers push open the door to the sun room, where Fiora and him had tried to win the original game, but clearly lost in the end. The sun room looked as comfortable as the day he first stepped into the room. Large curtains to cover the windows that had left sunshine through, but now there's nothing but an eerie darkness. Fingers slide across the soft chair that'll be left here in the memory of death and blood stained floors.

"It's too quiet in here."

Moving furniture around is simple enough, being more careful than before to not give any noise to where he was, remembering that there was a killer on the loose. Harvey Slate was a fighter, but he didn't physically fight much. There's been a few times he's thrown a punch at some rich kid or at another homeless person trying to steal his stash, but other than that he was fairly peaceful. Pulling the curtains away, he can feel his heart thump, knowing that something was very off about all of this. Harvey was losing his mind, but he was trying to keep himself together. A silence fills the room as he moves furniture around the room, hoping to find something.

"You're not going to win this game. I promise you that."

(Harvey looks for the secret door in the Sun Room)

[Tom]

The reflection of himself, disheveled and bloodshot eyes, is what makes him move the mirror.

The entrance to whatever the killer has on the other side stand before him. Spinning on the ball of his foot around to stare at the rest of the room, he checks the area around him. Alone by himself just like he had always been. The killer was on the loose and he couldn't trust anyone at the moment, for a moment he freezes, remembering the past with his mother and her sickness. The anger comes back in flashes, but instead, he moves the mirror to the side, staring himself and the rest of the room down. All angles needed to be watched if he was thinking about entering the den of the killer. His heart was beating out of his chest as he stares at the door for a little too long.

A pawn is what the killer wanted him to be. Harvey Slate was never a pawn in the game, always a rook among the rest, sturdy, tall, and solid as stone. Dependable was a word he's heard from many of his employers, but his attitude was the issue. Malcolm even mentioned his determination to break through any roadblock in the letter that brought him here. A killer was nothing in comparison to the days he spent staring or the rich kids treating him like the dirt beneath their feet. Strength came from the determination to break through the limits people put on him. Harvey Slate stood sturdy like stone, holding himself steady as he slips the key from his pocket, gripping the metal taut as he stares at the entrance.

"Karma clearly-" Whitney. Her voice reaches his ear as he grows closer, almost muffled mostly by the whole door and wall blocking the whole area out. Karma. Karma would bite them all in the ass. Playing a game of drama and heirs as if any of them would get the fortune. It's quiet for a moment before he hears another voice coming through. "-your desire and my problem-" Indigo. His voice makes him shudder. Whitney's desire and Indigo's problem, the words click and Harvey can feel his heart sink. Whitney couldn't. Could she? Instead of doing anything, he throws a hand harshly on the entrance, banging loudly and shouting.

"Hey! It's Harvey, I'm gonna get you out of there!"

The slap echoes along the walls of the sun room, eyes peering over to the mirror for a second noticing no one there. Harvey had to be being watched right now. Panic builds in his chest as he notices the keyhole finally. Harvey fumbles with the metal as he bangs once more, just as loud, trying to get through to them. Indigo could be in trouble. Whitney might be the killer. Harvey knew someone had to have taken Amrin's journal. Was it her? Harvey couldn't fight Whitney. Even if he were armed, he was certain she would somehow have the edge on him. Swiftly, he's going for the keyhole, but the key falls to the ground with a clatter.

Stupid.

Harvey leans down and grabs it as he starts pushing the key in the lock. Panic bubbling at the edges of his throat. Tears almost daring to come out, but he's not going to cry for someone else. You're used to people underestimating you, Harvey. Everyone underestimated him. Harvey stood tall like the stone of his mother's grave, filled with enough sorrow to drown the world, but he keeps it locked behind a dam, drowning in it. Banging on the entrance once more, he shouts again twisting the key to try and make it work.

"I'm here! I'm going to get you! Hold on! I promise!"

(Harvey attempts to use his key on secret entrance)
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(Failure)

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