“Hear that? You’ve got some redecorating to do, Tel,” Ernie says, smirking. The door to Telly’s home shuts. Once more, we’re back that long distance.

  “Ugggggh,” she says, bending down and sweeping off beer cans from her couch, the same motions one would use to smooth out a bedsheet. “Okay, you know what, use the couch for now; I’ll clean these up and put them away.”

  “Thank you,” I sigh to her. I step over the floor, picking my way around the cans, wary of every little sharp knurl of aluminum and broken tab. I’m munching on my second wheel of cheese for the day; it’s chewy and tangy, but with such a sweet dairy scent that it’s floral. “I appreciate that you’re accommodating me for my problem instead of taking advantage of it.”

  “Ooh, burn,” she says, with a little witchy laugh, and she already has a big armful of cans between her hands and elbows. “Man, you know, it’s been so long that I forget what does and doesn’t hurt a person, you know?”

  “I’m sure you’ll pick it up again,” Ernie chimes in, looking across the floor. There are hundreds of those cans over the linoleum, and Telly does her work of getting rid of them. She stands near the stove, which she’s using like a counter, and chucks them through the gap in that corner of her house, one by one. “You missed this one,” Ernie says, kicking a can at his feet. It doesn’t go the right way; it skids to the foot of the couch, knocking against a leg of the coffee table with a hollow clonk.

  I grab it. “Catch.” I toss it Telly’s way without really paying attention, but my throwing arm is good. It hits her square in the head—

  “Ow, hey!” Telly said, rubbing her head—and then she blinks. “Wait, what.”

  “What?” Ernie says, too.

  I sit up, cross-legged and looking left. Telly bends down and picks up the can. She frowns, then crushes it against her forehead.

  “Still an ‘ow’?” Ernie asks. He’s no longer leaning against the wall, but is back at attention, as if he were back at the election.

  “No. That one didn’t hurt at all.”

  Ernie walks over and gently punches her in the upper arm. Telly doesn’t recoil, but his yellow knuckles strike striated metal-skin with enough momentum that she takes a single step to her right. Her face is bored, once again. “How about that?” Ernie asks.

  “Nope.”

  “But you felt the one Sammy threw.”

  “Yeah.”

  They turn to look at me. I shrug.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “It might be nothing.”

  “That wasn’t nothing!” Telly says.

  “Maybe I’m exempt from that rule in more than just me getting hurt?”

  “Try it again, to see if it’s not a fluke,” Ernie says.

  “Nope,” Telly adds. “I am not getting hurt a second time.”

  “Then try it on me,” Ernie adds, with a smile. He picks up a particularly twisted-up can from Telly’s pile and approaches me. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt pain. Wonder what it’d be like to feel it again.”

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  “Why would you even think that?” I protest, but I take the can from his hand anyway. “I’m not here to hurt anyone. Besides Cieze, maybe.”

  “Yeah. But first, check if this works every time.” He grips the back of the couch with one strong, firm hand, and gestures with his head. Where his arm hairs would normally be, I just see more green spots—and lots and lots of his blue streaks, turned into ultra-fine cracks. He might have been a particularly hairy guy before all this. With a sigh, I drag the twisty point of the wrinkled-and-crushed can against his outer forearm, applying barely any pressure—enough to scratch a person’s fingernail and bring out the white texture of damaged keratin. A new line, of dark yellow, cuts in the millimeter-wake of the point, and Ernie flinches his arm away, eyes on the scratch.

  “That hurt, too?” I ask.

  “It did.” His smile returns. “Hello again, pain. Now I remember why we’re not friends.” He smooths over the scratch with his other hand, and shakes his head, still smirking.

  I lay back down on the couch, one head on the armrest-turned-pillow. Telly is taller than me, so my feet don’t quite reach the other armrests, even though I’m in her body-shaped indent in the cushions. I alone have the power to cause pain outside of the Adversary, and I don’t need a dedicated blade—those were two separate beer cans. But, in turn, I’m vulnerable. If Cieze’s assassination attempt didn’t work, maybe Fark’s would come thereafter? Or Adol’s? I have to keep these details under wraps. Cieze already knows I can be harmed, so that cat is out of its bag, but not the other way around… “No one finds out that I can do this, okay?” I say.

  “Heheh, yeah, obviously,” Telly says, looking over her shoulder. “As long as you’re keeping up your end of the promise.” The promise that she’s the one to take the blade first, but I figure that now extends to any implement, since I don’t have the blade.

  “Sure,” Ernie answers. I trust Telly to hold onto that secret. I’m not sure about Ernie.

  It all might not matter, though, if I catch Cieze. “If this works for everyone,” I say, thinking aloud, “Maybe I can corner Cieze early? Then we don’t have to do an election.”

  “Buddy, no,” Ernie says, his face stern. “Don’t kill people. Majority vote if we’re 100% certain and the Adversary is actually active, then maybe, but not by yourself.”

  “No, not even then,” Telly adds, side-eyeing Ernie with an annoyed squint.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I say, and sigh. “I’m just...he tried to kill me.”

  “And I’ll talk some sense into him at the next election.” Ernie nods. “I’m still staying with you. I won’t let him in this house, if that makes you feel better.”

  “It does.” I sigh.

  Telly finishes scooping beer cans out of her home and trots back over to the two of us. “You’ll be just fine, Sammy.”

  “Will I though? At least three people want me dead and I was one vote away from getting there...”

  “Heheh. Yeah, they were dicks. They’ll accept you, though. Every day’s a new day.” She tilts her head, and her neck cracks with the sound of metal being stamped flat. “I’m gonna go get some more food. Want me to pick some up for you two?”

  “Good idea,” Ernie says.

  “Please,” I say. I look up at Ernie. Do I want to be alone in the room with him? ...His explanations make sense to me, but I’m still on-edge. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Cieze is the Adversary, not Ernie. Ernie can be trusted.

  “You okay, little buddy?” Ernie asks, leaning down, his hands on the back of the couch.

  “No,” I answer honestly.

  Telly makes her way out of the room. The door creaks open, her footsteps clank out, and the doorway squeals its way shut.

  “...Look,” Ernie says, putting on a softer smile. “This game being a matter of life and death...no one likes it. No one’s comfortable with it. I know you’re scared. But the fact that they were so close to voting you out yesterday...that’s what’s going to keep this from happening again. Taking a life is serious. There is no one here willing to do it. That’s why the game has gone on for so long, you understand. Nothing more than protest votes will happen against you.” Ernie straightens up his shoulders again. “You’re gonna be alright, Sam.”

  I look down and grind the heels of my palms against my eye sockets. “Thanks.”

  “Do you like Shamus?” I look back up, and he’s getting his mint-lid cards out of his pocket.

  “Shamus?”

  “A two-player card game. And we work together to win it.” He clasps the deck in both hands.

  I’ll take a trust-building exercise. Now that I know who the Adversary is, we really are in this together.

  I hope Telly will be safe out there.