It’s so hot today—or rather, the heat has changed. The air is sticky and pulls at them, so close and oppressive, like the whole island is a rubber band snapping together.
Sweat beads on the backs of their necks and their faces turn red, and no amount of fanning cools anyone down. The sea is too cold for any long-term solution, and jumping in and out of it is only making them hotter. Even the shade is sweltering, almost more humid for the lack of sun to blame it on.
They lie beneath umbrellas, close to the ocean, where the tide brushes their feet in cooling strokes.
“This is it,” Rhys says. “This is how it ends.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Theo says.
“Maybe it’s already ended. Maybe I’m already in hell. Does this feel like one of the circles to you?”
“You’re here, aren’t you?” Theo mutters.
“Seventh,” Kalpana answers. “Violence against neighbors, I think. All those plunderers and tyrants immersed in boiling blood.”
“That sounds about right,” Isko mutters, carefully not looking at the others.
Isko: Am I going to tell Araminta about Rhys? No, I think, like all things, it’s whatever Rhys wants. If he wants to tell her, he can.
“Corrupt politicians are in the eighth circle in boiling pitch. Do we think we’re there yet?” Araminta asks before anyone can respond to Isko. It’s too hot for drama, even for her.
“No, blood feels a closer match; it’s more humid than pitch,” Rhys says. “It’s not where I thought I’d end up. I always thought I was a shoo-in for the second circle. All that lust.”
“What do you think?” Theo asks Isko.
Theo: He just didn’t really seem present, not since he vanished on us last night at dinner. I was trying to draw him back in.
“I think that all the things I would want from heaven are the reasons I’m going to hell,” Isko says. “No sex in the afterlife, that’s lust. No food, that’s greed. I mean, what is there to live for? What’s the point of paradise?”
“Where are you residing then?” Theo asks. “You can’t just say all the sins are sexy.”
“All the sins are sexy,” he says. “But let’s see—cheating? But no, I’m in an open relationship. Sodomy? That’s too easy.”
“I bet Araminta knows about sodomy,” Jerome laughs, glancing around the circle like they are all in on the joke. “You know what they say about girls with daddy issues.”
Rhys: Jerome is such a bastard at times, isn’t he? [Laughter] He’s not wrong though.
“That’s the sixth circle,” Araminta explains, looking directly at Isko and refusing to acknowledge Jerome. She’d used Dante’s circles of hell as inspiration for one of her first collections and is too delighted by this conversation to let him derail her. “Heresy—you’re condemned to a desert with blazing sand and rain made of fire.”
“Not so different from this then,” Isko says.
“Theo?” Rhys asks, challenging smirk already in place like he’s daring Theo to say something real rather than a practiced lie for the cameras.
Theo meets the challenge with an answer that would be comedically over the top were he not entirely serious. “Oh, all musicians are false prophets. People worship our texts, kneel at our altar, and are embodied by a spirit of some sort or other.”
“Deifying yourself?” Rhys asks.
“I’m not deifying myself. I’m competing with God, and I’m winning.” He grins, but still no one is sure if he’s actually joking.
“Eighth circle is a fun one,” Araminta says.
“You should know. Seducers are being whipped in eight, right?” Rhys grins.
Araminta scowls. “Not sure I’m a fan of being reduced to the number of boys who fall at my feet.”
“But there are so many of them,” he teases. “My minx, nymph of desire, men falling one by one. Writing songs about you and everything.”
“Okay, but I’ve asked you not to call me—”
But he’s already singing Peppermint louder than she can talk and soon everyone else is laughing and singing along, and Araminta can only glare and fling her middle finger up at them all before collapsing back onto the hot sand, too exhausted to fight them more.
Jerome: Okay, but it’s not like…normal to have the circles of hell memorized, is it? What sort of a conversation was that, and how are they all like this?
By midday everyone’s miserable but none more so than Araminta. Her wrist has swollen even more in the heat, and the freezer can’t make ice quickly enough. She’s in pain. Jerome’s comments are starting to get to her, and it’s too hot to even find solace in Rhys’s arms.
Ironically, the house is bearable—the air-conditioning limited, but the fans powerful, the shade cooler than outside.
But she’s the only one to cave and choose it over the hum of the cameras pleading for beach views and glistening skin.
“Hey,” Kalpana says, standing awkwardly at the doorway of Araminta’s room.
“Oh, hi, what’s up?” Araminta puts her mascara down.
“I wanted to talk to you about something.” She perches nervously on Araminta’s bed.
“Sorry, could you not sit there?” Araminta says, glancing at the door.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Kalpana says. Araminta sits on the only chair, pulled up to a vanity desk, so she just leans against the wall instead.
“So I kind of overheard some of what Rhys said to you yesterday.”
“What about?” Araminta asks, but her hand pauses as it reaches for lipstick.
“The game of chicken. About how he didn’t like you playing.”
Araminta’s jaw clenches so tightly it’s a wonder she can still talk. “That’s not what he said. He had a problem with my legs around—you know what, actually, no, this is none of your business. Don’t ruin such a lovely day.”
“I don’t want to intrude. But he forced you to change outfits, and he was so possessive during the handcuff challenge, and I’m just worried—”
“Don’t be,” Araminta snaps. “I can handle myself.”
Kalpana: Christ, how do you say to your friend “I think your boyfriend is manipulative and selfish and you’re better off without him”?
Araminta: Is she stalking me? How did she know about that? Maybe Rhys had a point—maybe she wasn’t just flirting for the competition.
“Besides, there’s no point getting into all this—it’s the island, right?” Kalpana continues. “It’s such a goldfish bowl, I keep forgetting just how much is waiting for me outside of it.”
“Rhys and I will be just fine outside of this island.”
“No, of course. But it’s not the be all and end all that it is here, right?”
Araminta still regards her suspiciously. “Is there something you want to say, Kalpana?”
Kalpana shakes her head, knowing that if she pushes too far Araminta will go running from her—and likely into the arms of that prick.
And then she wonders too at how this looks: Is she too involved? The savior swooping in? Has she said something wrong that the audience will pick over? Is she being condemned for not doing enough?
Suddenly, any sense of what is right or what is clever vanishes, and there is only a vast expanse of watching viewers in her mind, waiting for her next move.
“No,” Kalpana finally says. “I just wanted to check that you were okay.”
“I’m fucking fantastic.”
By the time Eloise flickers onto the screen, the heat has broken and so have they. They are exhausted, weary from surviving the day.
The alarm asking them to go inside was their first relief. Now Eloise calls: “Are you ready for your next challenge?”
They nod their heads blankly, knowing it is what the producers want.
“We’ve got another physical challenge for you all, but this one is about achieving equilibrium with your partner—reading and responding to one another.”
Outside they find some sort of inflatable, a gladiator arena of sorts with six disks and long cords connecting them to the ones opposite.
It reminds them a bit too much of the trial all those days ago.
“You need to stand opposite your partner, pick up the rope, and try to balance as the disks move beneath you. You’ll have to be in tune with your partner, their body, and their movements.”
Jerome: I’d literally rather die.
They suspect the joy in this challenge may simply be in making them all look like fools again, people who think so much of themselves forced onto a glorified bouncy castle.
“Whichever pair can balance with their partner the longest wins three points each!”
It’s over fairly quickly.
Araminta is struggling, her injured wrist throbbing after only a few seconds, but she grits her teeth and tries to power through. The disks shift beneath them and they have to twist and turn, always with that rope gripped, threatening to lurch their partner off if they move too suddenly. Maybe it’s the surprise—the sound of a body crashing into the cushioned mat beneath—but as soon as Jerome hits the ground, Isko falls too, though Araminta is certain she felt no sudden shift.
They are back around the firepit and Eloise lights up on screen.
“Congratulations, Theo and Rhys! That’s three points each! Tomorrow is our last day competing in pairs, so enjoy your final opportunity for a sense of camaraderie before you’re all turned against one another again!”
Rhys snorts. “Oh god, is that what we were supposed to be doing?”
“I think we failed miserably in that case,” Jerome says.
Eloise’s voice cuts through over the speakers: “It’s weird, isn’t it?”
They all freeze for a millisecond before turning as one back to the screen, where Eloise has turned away from the camera but is still very much projected on it. And talking to someone else, not them.
She should have disappeared. This is a glitch, a transmission they were never supposed to receive—unless they are? Who can tell on this island? Surely everything is under AHX’s control, right down to the phase of the moon and the stars in the sky.
“Talking to them while all this happens out here is starting to feel like lying. Like, how am I supposed to be like ‘Oh, well done, Theo. There’s a point—isn’t that great!’ without being like ‘Oh, by the way, your old bandmates are all being accused of pedophilia and grooming a bunch of fifteen-year-olds. They definitely did it too. There are pictures. Of them at a party full of teenagers. It’s all anyone can talk about, but good job ditching them! Excellent timing!’ I just can’t help but feel like he ought to know, you know?”
Someone says something off screen, and suddenly Eloise is turning back to them, wide-eyed as she realizes and the screen goes abruptly black.
“Oh fuck,” Kalpana whispers, the only one to speak as they turn to Theo.
But after a lingering moment of shock he stands. “I need…potentially a whole pack of cigarettes. Jesus Christ, those poor girls. Those arseholes. I…RiotParade is dead and those motherfuckers deserve to burn with it.”
@LilyWylkes
I didn’t even think about the fact Theo Newman had no idea this whole time, god that poor boy. He deserves the world after what that band has put him through #Iconic
@ElliotASanders
Can we not let Theo Newman distract from the fact Rhys Sutton is a manipulative piece of shit. I’m so glad Kalpana is there because there’s no way she’s going to let him get away with it and when she finds out about him trying it on with Isko? Oh it’s all over #Iconic
@AzaOnTheNet
TBH they’re all icons at this point—the things they’ve put up with and all the drama they’ve gloriously given us and then being like oh btw which circle of hell are you in? More determining of icon status than “here balance these ropes.” Award them all #Iconic
Kennard only sees Cloutier for a handful of moments the next morning before the team gathers.
“Are you okay? I saw the news this morning—you were…” He places a hand on his shoulder without thinking, then worries that withdrawing it would only be stranger.
“Yeah,” Cloutier says darkly. “I saw you too—guess we’re famous now.”
“This is insane—we haven’t had this kind of media attention when we’ve investigated serial killers.”
“Serial killers don’t tend to be reality stars.”
They start with a briefing, everyone working the case assembled—not just Maes and Kennard and Cloutier but everyone: the whole team on the ground in Lisbon, and those working back in the Lyon office. They’re surrounded by screens, so many people calling in.
The irony is not lost on Kennard that he is now the one performing for a camera.
“Let’s start with our lead suspect,” Cloutier says. “The girlfriend, Araminta Yaxley-Carter. Two witnesses are convinced she did it, and she said something incriminating the day he died. In terms of motive, the relationship was rockier than most, but none of the usual motives are going to hold up because she was a week away from getting off the island and away from him. Unless she provided the cocaine, there’s no way she did it.”
“Speaking of,” one of the agents says, “we’ve found trace amounts of cocaine in the smoking area and some inside, on the stairs. We’ve found pills in Araminta’s hair conditioner; tests are running to confirm what it is, but it won’t be cocaine. We thought we had that in Andrada’s room—we found a powder, but it’s Oxycodone. And there’s a tincture of marijuana in Newman’s room. So we don’t know who had the coke, it was probably a few of them, and this close to the end, they’d probably used up their stash. Possession isn’t necessarily a crime in Portugal, just intent to supply, and as we’ve said, it easily could have been Rhys himself who brought it in.”
“Which makes that line impossible to prove. Even if we found out someone had it, the defense can always say it could easily have been one of the others that got it to Sutton.”
“Unless they confess.”
“Well, that would solve everything,” Kennard sighs.
“Either way, that’s not enough to convict anyone, let alone Yaxley-Carter.”
“Let’s move on,” Cloutier says. “Kalpana Mahajan. There’s plenty of footage of her admitting she hates him, which of course isn’t a crime in and of itself, but if we’re discussing motive, that’s it. There’s also an argument to be made that she liked the girlfriend. It’s all over the internet that she pushed him, but let’s be clear: we have the footage and that didn’t happen. But maybe she intentionally led him to the edge hoping the drugs in his system would take over.”
Cloutier continues. “Then there’s Francisco Andrada, goes by Isko—let’s consider him the jilted ex. We don’t really know the depth and validity of their feelings for one another, but on paper? It’s a motive. He fought with Rhys the day he died, but cranial bleeding was light.”
“What about Theo Newman?”
“There’s tension throughout, they argued on the day, and he claims he tried to save the victim.”
“That’s not much.”
“No,” Kennard agrees. “Then there’s Jerome Frances. We have evidence to say he liked the girlfriend, Araminta. Maybe he thought with Sutton out of the way he’d have more of a chance. On the day in question, Jerome accessed the AHX servers but unless he hacked Sutton to death, it might not be relevant.”
Someone stands up. “With all due respect, this is weak.”
“Yes. Unfortunately, it’s all we have.”