This fanfiction is set in the universe of the Among Us game by Innersloth.
Impostor Brown wished her kind wouldn't send her on this mission –she'd never felt confident in her ability to take out crews without being found out and ejected. And if she had to do it, she wished her chosen partner would carry out most of the heavy work.
But that day, neither of her wishes came true. As she takes out crewmates one by one, she must battle her fears of being found out –and time threatens to run out.
I've fallen into the rabbit hole and started actually playing Among Us. The game is so addictive! I'm one of those people who don't like being impostor and prefer crewmate, though, and I especially don't like becoming impostor without a few warm-up games as crew beforehand. This fic is basically a fictionalised retelling of a particularly tense game I played as impostor on the airship.
I play in public lobbies with random people, and I have no idea about other players' genders: please don't feel offended if you recognise yourself and I got your gender wrong. I either tried to guess from your nickname or just picked at random for the sake of the story.
This story is also available on AO3.
Brown didn't want to be here. The Impostors needed to stop the airship from reaching its destination, she understood that, but why did it have to be her? And with barely any time to prepare herself to boot, on a layout she only knew in passing. As the freshly-embarked crew scattered in the hallways, she aimed for the cockpit, the decorative antenna on her head bouncing with each step, and stress made her bump into obstacles and doorways. In the back of her mind, she noticed her tablet warned of several people abandoning ship. Good. Crewmates defecting early made her task that little bit easier.
Her breathing only calmed once she reached the steering wheel and, while pretending to stabilise the craft's course, took the time to plan her next move. Her stomach was ready for a kill now, but she was alone in the room. With so many people on the ship, she should easily find an isolated crewmate using the vent system, and then she could return and pretend she'd never left.
She walked away from the steering wheel, ready to hop into the vent in search for her first victim, but stopped almost immediately: she should call a sabotage to lower her risks of being spotted. With determination, she took her tablet, cut off the lights, and jumped into the vent.
Brown couldn't see anyone in the vault from her hidden point in the vent, and the cockpit appeared to still be empty as well, so she tried the viewing deck. There, she found Cyan alone, standing in front of the lights panel. The Impostor noted with mirthless irony how similar to her he looked with his own antenna –how fitting for her first victim. Just as she was about to come out of the vent and kill him, lights went back on.
With a silent groan, she decided to wait in her hiding place. If he saw her come from the vent, he'd run away before she could reach him, and for all she knew there could be several potential witnesses just nearby in the kitchen.
She was soon relieved when Cyan, rather than leaving, ran to the plank outside for his upload. Perfect, it was one of the best killing spots! She followed him, only to realise with frustration they had company: Rose already stood there, the floating heart above her head like a beacon taunting the Impostor to do her deed.
Of course, Brown didn't. She readjusted her position and pretended to join the two crewmates for an upload of her own. After a short while, Rose left, then returned immediately to check for a body. Brown almost laughed: as if she would kill Cyan just after been seen with him!
Cyan finished his own upload, and he and Rose left Brown's view. Just as she was about to leave and, hopefully, find someone to sink her teeth into at last, Purple's dead body was reported.
Only Purple had died so far, which, considering Brown's failure to find a suitable kill, didn't come as a surprise to her. What did, however, was that the person who'd reported the body, Blue with his backwards cap and his mechanic's overalls, was her Impostor partner himself.
Among the usual chorus of people asking for the location of the body –the engine room, Blue revealed– or disclosing their previous position, Rose mentioned Cyan and Brown had been together before the report. At least, Brown's failure to kill provided her with an alibi. The Impostor added some meaningless chatter to appear even more crew; now this was something she was actually good at.
Suddenly, White, who sported a floating halo above her head, spoke in a quiet yet assured voice: "I saw Purple go to the left of the engine room. It may be a self-report."
Brown felt a shiver run down her spine: this was bad. This was very bad. The last thing she needed was to lose her partner so early and have to take down the remaining seven crewmates on her own. "Any reason to believe so?" she tried.
Her worry only grew worse when Blue immediately tried to deflect White's deduction with a random accusation of his own: "Black is suspicious," he accused.
"Black?!" Red scoffed. To Brown's annoyance, his black suit and fedora made him look so serious compared to Blue and his backwards cap.
Orange nodded vigorously, her sprout flapping on her head as she did so, and she pointed to an empty spot at the table: "Black's dead."
Brown looked frantically around the table for a grey crewmate, or anyone Blue might plausibly have mistaken for Black, but no such luck. She didn't realise Black had actually been one of the early defectors, not that it would have changed much: either way, Blue's accusation made no sense.
Rose voicing her trust of Cyan and Brown, and Green's announcement he'd skip the vote did little to ease Brown's growing dread, especially when White reiterated more forcefully it was without doubt a self-report.
Blue had to be panicking inside, and his attempt to correct his mistake only dug him into a deeper hole: "I mean Red," he backpedalled.
Even with the suit on, Orange looked like she was pursing her lips at Blue: "Hmm. Suspicious."
"Red ran past the body," Blue insisted.
Brown's heart sank: there really was no way to save her partner after such obvious blunders, was there? All she could do was showcase her own innocence. She stared at the other Impostor in fake disbelief: "How can you confuse Black and Red?"
As for Red, he didn't take kindly to being falsely accused, and he glared at Blue. "I think he's an Impostor."
"That's weird, I admit," Brown agreed, immediately tempering it with, "I'm still going to skip, though." Even if several people had already voted, she hoped she could sway enough of the others to save Blue for now.
"I skipped too," Green nodded, thankfully still confident in his early decision.
White frowned and pointed a finger at Blue. "Vote Blue," she insisted.
Rose turned a trustful gaze to Brown –at least one Impostor was still above suspicion– before looking to the rest of the table. "I agree with Brown it was suspicious."
If there was any possibility left of swaying the vote in favour of a skip, Brown had to push for it. She tilted her head and elaborated as if she hadn't heard the various calls to vote Blue: "We don't have enough proof yet, and there are still a lot of us." Openly assume her vote, lie on her motives. Hopefully, she still had a chance of saving her partner –slim as it was– without attracting suspicion on herself. She pressed her finger on the Skip icon.
So sure about his imminent ejection, Blue afforded to drop the pretence: "Well done, crew," he muttered.
As the results were revealed, however, Brown perked up under her disguise: while Rose had joined White and Red's votes against Blue, Orange and Yellow had skipped like Green and Brown herself. Moreover, Cyan had joined Blue's vote on Red! Oh, how interesting. Brown would sure hold that against him later.
At any rate, the majority had decided to skip. As the crew scattered again, Brown hoped that nobody would call an early meeting to expose Blue's last comment as proof, and that he'd make the best of his borrowed time.
No one was ejected. (Skipped)
2 Impostors remain.
The meeting had contorted Brown's stomach into an unnatural shape, as always, and she'd have to wait until her body readjusted before she could get a kill. She spent the time in records, pretending to store folders. The long task offered her a chance to be seen apparently working, all the while not requiring much concentration on her part: perfect to calm down her nerves and think.
As White walked past to go to the gap room, then came back a moment later, Brown considered making her her first victim. But the Impostor wasn't ready, and White left for the showers room immediately. After a brief hesitation, Brown decided against following her: it would appear suspicious and there was no guarantee she could indeed get the kill.
Frustrated, she continued faking the task until the necessary wait before the next murder neared its end; then she paused in front of shelves to open her sabotage map. Had there been any witnesses, they'd have wondered why she spent so long to file a single record, but she'd checked nobody was watching –neither in person nor through the camera.
She cut the lights and trotted to the cargo bay without meeting anyone. After a brief hesitation about fixing the lights to appear innocent, she decided to try to get a kill instead. At the safe perhaps? It was the perfect killing spot, isolated in a corner and hidden from view behind boxes. Just as she thought the place was empty, she noticed Rose fidgeting with the safe's lock. Brown afforded a smirk: perfect! She ran at the unsuspecting crewmate, plunged her knife into her back and devoured the top half of her body.
Her deed done, she went to the lights panel to find Orange already fixing the sabotage. Even with Rose's mutilated remains at the safe, the Impostor deemed it safer to be seen helping: staying away from view for a very long time always attracted crewmates' suspicion.
Orange finished turning the lights back on before Brown could open the panel, and as the crewmate went to fix wires, Brown ran into medical. She had to wait for her body to process the previous kill before she could get another, so in the meantime, she might as well pretend to be crew looking for dead bodies to report.
Just as Brown ran past the door to electrical, White came into view from the other side, paused on the doorway, then ran back to where she'd come from. What a suspicious movement, if Brown hadn't known better! Could she exploit it in the next meeting? How wide was crew vision; had White truly seen her, or did she just realise she'd forgotten a task in electrical?
With the thought in the back of her mind, Brown opened vitals. Rose had, obviously, died, but everyone else was still alive. Shame. To spend the time until she could murder someone else, Brown decided to go to the admin table, which would take her as far away from the body as possible and give her steps a purpose. Depending how soon the next body would be discovered and whom it would be, she could either lie or tell the truth about the vitals readings.
The Impostor passed White, who was coming from electrical again, and saw Cyan working deeper in the maze-like room. Brown silenced a groan when White walked towards vitals, as it'd make lying about the timing of Rose's death impossible; but then White left for the cargo bay without even going all the way to the panel. What? What had it been about? No matter. Brown continued her path into electrical as if nothing worthy of note had happened.
Cyan was still busy with his task, but as tempting as it would be to kill him, Brown's metabolism hadn't yet finished processing Rose's flesh. Like she'd originally planned, the Impostor climbed the ladder to the main hall and went to the cockpit without incident.
She didn't truly pay attention to the admin table, since she'd just meant it as her alibi and there were enough people left to make it hard to remember everyone's positions. Just when she closed it, she noticed her partner had sabotaged the lights. Time to get a second kill if she found a target!
She hopped into the vent, found the vault to be empty, and exited in the viewing deck, ready to murder whoever would come to fix the sabotage. Unfortunately, lights came back on almost immediately, so she returned to the cockpit the way she'd come: no need to give anyone a chance of realising she had vented.
She trotted to the armoury and stopped to open her sabotage interface. With nobody around, she might as well close doors to slow down crewmates and keep them on their toes. However, she'd barely had time to lock the main hall when Green came in from the kitchen and Red from the hallway on the other side. Now she had to move before they found her standing immobile in an empty space for no reason.
She started walking, only to bump into the wall and stumble about as she closed more doors in the back of the ship. Oh no! Her attempt to dissimulate her sabotage had only made her act even more suspiciously! Green at least would sure realise she was the one locking doors!
Just as she noticed with with relief she hadn't had time to close the kitchen and Green wouldn't know what she'd been doing, Cyan reported Rose's body.
Brown was glad to see Blue had killed Banana at some point, and there were now only five crewmates left alive –Cyan, Green, Red, White and Orange. Sure, taking them all out on her own would prove difficult, but her mission seemed slightly less daunting.
As soon as the meeting started, Cyan peered at Blue with avowed suspicion. "Hmm, Blue?" he said, more an accusation than a question.
"Where was it?" both Red and Blue asked at the same time.
Brown groaned inside: even if Rose was her own kill, not Blue's, he had obviously crossed path with Cyan very recently and should be able to guess an approximate location. Pretending complete ignorance only made him sound more guilty.
Green didn't wait for the answer to the question before stating his own location: "I was in the armoury."
"Rose was dead at the safe in cargo bay," Cyan explained. "Blue was just standing there looking at the body."
"Cyan was with me," Blue admitted, at once proving how fake his question had been.
Uh-oh. The evidence was more damning than Brown had hoped, especially after White had already called him out earlier for his self-report. But perhaps Brown could provide her own spin against Cyan, either to get him ejected now or, more likely, to sow suspicion for later use? Remembering his previous vote, she frowned, "Cyan, didn't you vote Red in the last meeting?"
He shuffled awkwardly. "Yeah, I don't know."
"Are you ratting on your own teammate now?" she insisted, to which Blue shook his head with a "nah". Brown went on, "Were there witnesses?" If so, she could twist the truth into an Impostor reporting the body against his partner to save his own skin.
Red, intent on showing how far he was from the body, suddenly spoke: "Green and I were in the armoury."
"I'll vote Blue," Green announced as he pressed his finger on his tablet.
Cyan clearly saw Brown's suspicion hanging over him, and he felt the need to justify his vote on Red in the previous meeting. "I didn't know who it was. It was a bad vote," he apologised. "But yes, let's vote Blue now."
Amid the back-and-forth, Brown missed White's quiet voice as the crewmate said, "Brown, Cyan and I were together the whole time." The Impostor, still laser-focused on her attempt to make Cyan seem suspicious, wasn't sure she heard the next sentence right: "Then Brown goes off and then Cyan."
Without the relevant context, Brown felt her blood freeze in her veins. Wait, what? Did White mean they should vote out Brown next, and only then Cyan? Where did that come from?! Had her efforts been too heavy-handed? Instead of paving the way to Cyan's ejection next, had she doomed herself and her side?
"I'm still suspicious of Cyan, though," she forced herself to say before casting her vote, dead last again.
A lump of dread in her throat, Brown watched the results show up. There was, of course, no saving Blue this time. He had received unanimous votes –even his own.
Blue was An Impostor.
1 Impostor remains.
Still reeling from White's sudden suspicion looming over her –or so she believed– and terrified the woman might call a meeting to expose her, Brown struggled to unlock the vault's door with trembling hands. She took a few breaths to calm herself while pretending to dress the mannequin and, having once again sabotaged the lights, she jumped into the vent. As usual, she needed to wait for her body to adjust before she could claim her next victim, but it wouldn't stop her from prowling about in search for one.
She still didn't find anyone in the cockpit or the viewing deck, so she returned to the vault. She touched the ruby briefly before changing her mind and deciding that, as nobody was around, there was no need to fake polishing it. Better to try to find a potential target elsewhere, even if the lights had already come back on.
Nearing the doorway, her stomach churned as she noticed the camera's blinking red eye. Someone was watching! They would know she'd come from the vent! While she was unsure of the camera's range, it seemed likely they had seen her arrive from the back of the room; and she couldn't pretend to have been downloading, as she'd already claimed upload before the first meeting.
There was only one possible course of action: the person on cameras had to die.
Despite her attempt not to break her pace –no need to give the watcher any indication she'd noticed the camera–, Brown couldn't stop herself from stumbling into the doorway. She quickly recovered, left the vault and turned off into the hallway to the engine room.
As she made her way, staggering from the stress, a worrying thought crawled its way into her mind: what if the watcher suspected her enough to leave security and call a meeting? That person would likely come through electrical rather than the armoury, and Brown would miss them. Not that she could recognise who it was anyway!
She was soon reassured as the camera in the engine room blinked as well. However, another worrying thought replaced the previous one: what if there was more than one person in security? She could only hope it wouldn't be the case.
She crossed the armoury, dashed into the kitchen and ran along the hall of portraits, thankfully not meeting anyone along the way. Finally, she breathed with relief when she saw Orange sitting alone before the screens. Wasting no time, she broke the woman's neck, bit off the body up to the waist, and ran back to the hall of portraits before anyone came in.
Only then did she take the time to pause. She needed to stop people from finding the body, fast. She locked all the airship's doors –and berated herself almost immediately for cutting off her own escape route to the kitchen. She had to hope she wouldn't have to run away fast.
She then pondered which sabotage to use to attract the crewmates away from Orange's remains. Should she send the airship into a crash course? It might not be the best: if people realised the cameras' light had switched off, they might decide to check security for a body rather than go immediately to the gap room. Or they might want to monitor the ship through the cameras during the emergency. Whatever the reason, it could backfire on Brown.
On the other hand, calling communications would provide a natural explanation for why the cameras had gone dark, as long as nobody realised the order in which the two events had happened. At any rate, it would discourage people from wanting to watch them. Slightly more confident after activating the sabotage, she went to the kitchen and vented to the main hall.
Her relief didn't last. Just as she reached the closed door to the engine room, Green arrived behind her. Oh, no! While he wouldn't have seen her vent directly, he might've seen the shadow! At the very least, depending on where he'd come from himself, he might understand she'd appeared from nowhere in a room with a vent.
It was much too early for her stomach to have digested Orange's body, so she had no other option but to keep the pretence of innocence. She swiped her card to open the door, ran through the engine room and found White struggling with communications' door.
White and Green fixed the sabotage quickly enough. Brown then walked to the cockpit while Cyan reached communications belatedly and, realising there was nothing to do there anymore, left again.
While Brown was pleased to have been seen away from Orange's body, it also meant almost everyone was grouped together and she couldn't kill, even if she was now ready. She needed to let them disperse again. In the meantime, she checked the admin table, mostly to pretend being active. The lone icon in security attracted her eye until she realised it was actually Orange's body. But she could get the person in records.
As she left the cockpit, Cyan ran in. The Impostor briefly turned around, tempted to kill him, before deciding against it. White and Green knew she'd been nearby: killing here would make her culpability all too obvious. Leaving the cockpit for good this time, she went to the gap room via the brig. Right when she was about to take the floating platform, Blue sabotaged the airship from beyond the grave and sent it to a crash course.
For a while, Brown hesitated: now would be the perfect time to kill someone… if people weren't about to flock to the very room she currently stood in. Running away from a sabotage was a sure way to get herself ejected in the next meeting. Yet it was so tempting! But no, it was too dangerous. Oh well, at least she could paint herself as a good crewmate by fixing the sabotage.
She had already entered the code a couple of times before Cyan came from the brig, Green not far behind. Cyan took the platform to the other side and after a few tense moments and repeated efforts to type in the code, the airship's course stabilised.
As she looked away from the panel, Brown noticed Green climbing the ladder and Red, who'd arrived in the meantime, following him. If the Impostor hadn't known Red was a crewmate, she'd have found his behaviour very suspicious. As tempting as it was to wait and kill one of them to blame the other, it would again be too risky with so many eyes having seen her there.
So instead, she left for the engine room, then the main hall. She whipped out her tablet without stopping and locked doors to slow down the crewmates some more. With her eyes on the sabotage menu, her gait became erratic; just as she bumped into the doorway to showers, Green arrived from behind.
The Impostor felt panic grip her. Not only had Green seen her come from a vent room earlier, he might now guess she was sabotaging! While Green made a stop in the last side room, Brown ran further into showers and locked the last doors, then hid by the broken shower head. Feeling slightly better now she was out of view, she waited a few seconds for her tablet to regain access to the main craft's systems and sabotaged the lights.
The cover of darkness helped her breathe more calmly. She left her hiding place and aimed to chase Green. She didn't have to get far: she found him trying to open the door from showers to records. She shot him dead with a smile of relief and, as usual, ate half his body. Now that was a clean kill! Satisfied, she ran to the vent in the corner and emerged in cargo bay.
She stopped herself before going to medbay; she was too close to a lights panel not to fix it. Only once she'd reached it did she realise the sabotage had actually already been fixed by the surviving crewmates. In the meantime, her excitement from Green's murder had vanished. She'd left a body in security and another very close to records. She needed to be seen in the front of the ship to give herself a good alibi, except her two possible ways out of the cargo bay brought her dangerously close to the scenes of her crimes.
Still, medbay and electrical were probably safer than records. She returned to the door and had just opened it when Cyan reported Orange's body.
"Orange was dead on cams," Cyan announced.
White gave him a nod. "Cyan and I are safe."
Brown nearly groaned in displeasure: Cyan had been her main target for ejection! Though she obviously couldn't disagree frontally, she still tried to stir doubt: "White, I trust you. You accused Blue early. But what makes you say Cyan's safe? I'm still suspicious of him."
White tilted her head. "We were together the entire time."
"Alright," Brown was forced to concede.
"White probably trusts me because I didn't kill her," Cyan elaborated. "But honestly, I barely saw her."
Now that was something Brown liked to hear! "Ah…" she drawled.
White, still sure of Cyan's innocence, peered at the third crewmate. "It might be Red."
"Nooo," he immediately protested. To Brown's pleasure, he sounded so suspicious! Perhaps White clearing Cyan wasn't too bad, if Red could become a replacement.
Brown let her eyes run between White and Red and tilted her head. "I don't have fresh information," she apologised.
Red spread out his hands and tried to defend himself, "I just finished my tasks."
Cyan, who'd listened thoughtfully, nodded in agreement with White. "I was thinking Red too. Brown seems safe."
The Impostor's heart jumped in her chest. Excellent! "Thanks," she smiled, adding, "Though to be honest, we haven't seen each other much." Just as the words escaped her lips, she regretted them. Would the open admission make her sound more crew, like she hoped –after all, Cyan had done the same with White just before–, or would it lower Cyan's confidence in her innocence? Either way, it was too late to take them back.
White spoke again: "I have one task left."
"Should we skip and finish the tasks?" Cyan suggested.
Red perked up. "Yeah, if there's only one task left, we'll get rid of the Impostor as soon as we land anyway."
Brown checked the tasks status for the first time, and her mouth ran dry. The crew had indeed nearly finished their tasks, which meant the airship was almost ready to land, which meant the Impostor had very little time until her mission came to an unpleasant end. But her body would, again, not be ready until a long time after the meeting. Possibly not until it was too late!
Still, she had no choice but to go along. "Hmm, maybe?" she said, immediately kicking herself for how reluctant she sounded. Of course an Impostor wouldn't appreciate this plan, it was a very good plan for the crewmates!
"Exactly," White nodded to Red. "Everybody, go to the back of the ship after the meeting."
With a heavy heart, Brown skipped, for once the first to vote.
No one was ejected. (Skipped)
1 Impostor remains.
Brown's only hope was to kill Cyan or White and frame Red. Preferably Cyan: while he trusted Brown, he was also more malleable and might be swayed if Red defended himself forcibly enough. Not to mention Brown had tried to cast suspicion on him; Red could use it against her, even if Cyan hadn't seemed to resent her. On the other hand, while White was dangerously intelligent and had appeared to suspect Brown in an earlier meeting, her current reasoning pointed to Red. Bright people were more likely to follow their own assessment than to listen to whoever spoke loudest. Then again, Brown couldn't afford to be choosy; she'd have to seize the first opportunity she could get.
Anyway, the point would be moot if White finished her last task and the airship landed before Brown's stomach readjusted for another kill.
The Impostor met with Red in the engine room and ran alongside him towards showers. Without stopping, she took out her tablet and locked all the ship's doors to slow down the crewmates as much as she could. Like earlier with Green, she bumped into obstacles as she divided her attention. No matter: Red was her framing target anyway.
The two of them came face-to-face with White, who'd just opened the door from records to go into showers, and they trotted to where she'd come; intent on staying together, White turned around to follow them. The group met with Cyan just as he swiped his card to open the way to the lounge.
In an attempt to appear proactive and eager to accompany White in her last task, especially after her terrible performance in the previous meeting, the Impostor led the way to the cargo bay –not without cutting the lights as she arrived. To her disappointment, Cyan fixed the sabotage almost immediately. Not that Brown could've killed already anyway: her stomach was still reforming.
After a few moments of misunderstanding and confusion with Brown believing their destination was the safe, White led the group back to the showers. Brown locked the doors again as soon as her interface regained access to the airship's systems. Unfortunately, bypassing the security for a more serious sabotage required a longer time. Brown, her heart aching, could do nothing but watch White fix a panel of wires; while she was finally ready for a kill, she was in no position to act without getting caught.
However, a glimmer of hope grew in her heart when she realised the airship hadn't yet begun its landing: White had only done her second wires panel, and she needed to take care of one more in the cargo bay. Perhaps the Impostor still stood a chance!
While she let the three crewmates struggle to open, once again, the door to the lounge, her thoughts turned in overdrive in her brain. Could she kill while their sight and attention were focused on the card reader? No, she couldn't be sure one of them wasn't faking it to keep an eye out, especially as she'd seen both Red and Cyan move briefly from the panel. On top of it, she risked misaiming and killing Red by accident.
She needed to sabotage.
But which sabotage would give her the best chances? Sending the airship into a crash course? She had no idea which side of the gap room the floating platform was; and if White and Cyan stayed together, there would be no chance of framing Red for a murder. White might even decide to ignore the emergency and finish her wires: with all tasks done, the craft would still land safely. Should Brown disable communications, then? But the remaining crew would probably stick together; provided White knew where she needed to go, it wouldn't even slow her down.
No, the Impostor's only option was to plunge the crewmates in the dark once more and hope they'd be far enough from each other to not see her kill. She took a few steps away, opened her interface discreetly and immediately returned to the group to pretend she was trying to unlock the door with them.
She was the first to run into the lounge as soon as the door slid open, but under her apparent eagerness, she shook to her core and staggered on her feet. It was now or never. She needed to be strong just a bit longer. Lights were out, the crewmates couldn't see like her. She could do it.
White followed up close, but Cyan lingered in the back and Red, blinded by the darkness, fumbled in a corner of the room in search for the others. Not good; Brown needed to kill nearer to the middle of the group. In close succession, she doubled back, crossed paths with White, broke Cyan's neck, bit off his top half, set to resume her way forward and stumbled against the door frame.
The Impostor's breath caught in her throat: to her horror, White turned heels and, before Brown could react, passed her right by Cyan's still standing remains. No no no no no, White had seen her with the body Brown needed to report it before Red where was the button how did you report–
All the panicking Impostor could coerce her frozen mind into doing was stop her legs from leading her further into the hallway and return to the scene of the murder.
Then White reported Cyan's body.
In the grim silence of the meeting room, everyone could hear Red gape in shock.
"Why, Brown?" White asked. Shaken? Disappointed? Brown didn't know.
The Impostor pushed through the haze dulling her brain to sound as neutral as she could. "It was Red," she accused. "I was just running around you guys."
Red slammed his fists on the table. "It's Brown!" he shouted.
Brown shook her head and continued, "I'm done with my tasks."
After a brief hesitation, she voted Red. Even if there was still a lot of time left, the last thing she needed was to allow the timer to expire. If she waited, she didn't trust herself not to forget. Hopefully, voting early wouldn't make her appear even more suspicious than she already was: it made sense for her to be assured in her vote, considering she'd flat out accused Red. Red soon followed suit, undoubtedly voting for her.
"Do you think I'm stupid?" White glared, stuttering in her tenseness. "Let's vote you out, Brown."
Brown needed to say something. To defend herself. To convince White of her innocence, of Red's culpability. To explain how her steps had brought her on top of the body by accident. To justify why she hadn't reported it. She needed to acknowledge how incriminating the scene would look to White, and to plead abysmal reaction times. She needed to say… something. Anything.
Incoherent, half-formed responses swirled in her mind, only to be mercilessly rejected for knocking more nails in her coffin. She didn't know how far crew vision extended while lights were out. How much White had truly seen. What would made sense for Brown herself to see. And the Impostor had claimed to have seen Red kill without ambiguity; all she could come up with contradicted that assertion. She should never have been so affirmative. She should have feigned uncertainly. She should have–
In her dissociated state, she sat motionless like a broken automaton. It was over. Her fate was sealed, she was going to be ejected. She had failed. The Impostors had lost.
Red's voice broke the silence. "It's Brown," he repeated.
"Red…" was all she managed to utter as White cast her vote.
Time seemed to slow as the results were revealed, and Brown's brain took a second to process what her eyes were seeing.
As expected, Red had voted her. But White had joined her vote on Red.
Red was not An Impostor.
1 Impostor remains.
The last standing crewmate turned a gaze full of resignation towards the victorious Impostor and waited for the inevitable with dignity. Her thoughts were written all over her body language: against her better judgement, she had made the wrong choice. Now was the time for her to pay for her folly.
Brown shook her head, still in a daze. "No, I never thought you were stupid," she said quietly. On the contrary, she'd thought White a threat from the start. Of all the crewmates, White had undoubtedly been the one who most worried her; even now, Brown was reeling from the tension of the last meeting. White had been a terrifying opponent. The Impostor opened her chest mouth and with a darting of her tongue, granted the woman a quick and painless death.
Only then did the reality of the situation finally sink in. Brown was the sole survivor. The airship was hers. The Impostors had won this battle.
Her legs failed her and, on the verge of tears of relief –or was it hysterical laughter?–, she fell to her knees by White's remains. In her prostrate position, she allowed herself to close her eyes for a moment. "I never thought you were stupid."
THE END
Among Us fanfictions.
My home page (in French).
Last update: 8th September 2021.