Chapter Text
Adam Faulkner-Stanheight
Fucking punk-ass vegan bitch . Adam reminisced his latest romantic failure, lit a cigarette, wondering when the hell his next client would arrive. It was cold as fuck and he was starving. He only had two dollars and fifteen cents to his name and rent had been due yesterday.
“You the photographer?”
“About fucking time,” Adam turned, seeing the man with the bandage over his throat. “Joe said you needed a tail with lights. Got the cash?”
“Yeah. Half now, half after I get my photos.” Bob, that was his name, supposedly. Adam didn’t ask questions. He never cared enough to. He only cared about the thick envelope full of bills and he took it and eagerly counted the cash. Eight hundred, all there. It’s pay day, baby!
A folded up piece of notebook paper with the guy’s home and work addresses were included.
“All right. I’ll get your pics. See you next week, here, same place.”
“Be careful. This man’s dangerous.”
Adam raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t signed up for playing James Bond here. But he needed the money. “Alright. Noted.”
He left ‘Bob’ and walked back to his apartment to get his camera. It was midday Monday, and doctors liked to work on Mondays. It was time for a trip to the hospital.
First, he needed to lay eyes on the actual target. Doctor Gordon was just a name and if Adam started taking the wrong pictures of the wrong guy, there went his rent money. His stomach growled as he leaned against the hospital wall just outside of the Oncology wing, pretending he was someone waiting for a patient, just some son of a rich old geezer who had one too many cigars and top shelf scotch and was now suffering liver failure - but don’t worry, he’s got two donors lined up to keep his overpriced dinosaur ass walking this earth to step on all us poor little people…
Adam had to remember himself and return to his actual job. He often came up with stories for his targets. He didn’t give a damn about them, not really, but he sure got bored with all the stake outs.
And when he couldn’t smoke, it made his mind get all disorganized and twisted. Fucking hospitals and their no smoking policies.
Thankfully none of the nurses paid him any mind. They were all busy, running around, caring for the sick who had health insurance.
He perked up and his thoughts silenced when out of the double doors a tall blond man walked by, white lab coat whipped by the speed, an entourage of younger looking doctors shadowing him.
“Doctor Gordon,” an attractive Asian woman was at his side, looking up at him with a big smile, “For renal medullary carcinoma, what is needed to regulate the hypoxic stress response in the sickle cell trait?”
So this was Gordon? He looked like a DILF larping Grey’s Anatomy.
Ah, but those were the ones with the wildest kinks. All that religious repression and daddy issues.
Adam quickly turned to keep his back to the man and decided now was the time to leave. He knew who he would need to keep through his lens now.
He sighed and decided to walk around, see if he could score on a free meal. He’d need to find out when Gordon got off work.
If only it wasn’t so damn cold outside.
Amanda Young
Everything she was, was because of John.
For months she took in every lesson he gave and tried to learn just a fraction of the brilliance he shared to her. He had given her the tools to thrive and thrive she did.
She could now calculate torque with gear ratios, knew the amount of tension required to dislocate - but not tear out - an average male’s arm. She knew how to predict one game’s time based on the body weight of their target to make sure the game would be fair when they experienced blood loss to fill up a beaker on a pressure sensor. And more importantly, she now knew that everything she experienced would soon be shared with others who were in dire need.
She believed John and what he represented.
She was currently sketching a design for her own trap - something to symbolize what they were. It would rip a person’s ribs outwards, spreading them like angel’s wings, and she hoped John would be pleased when she showed it to him. They were angels of death, deliverers of truth.
In the next room she heard coughing and jumped to her feet. These days, John suffered terrible coughing fits that wouldn’t stop. She walked in on her master hunched over the workbench, hand over his mouth, hacking.
“John, we should get you some oxygen.”
“No. Not yet.”
She knew he was putting this off, not for any practical reason but pride.
He didn’t want to accept that he was dying, even now.
He had lost weight but still was able to walk around. But the tumor in his brain, it was likely growing still.
Amanda wished there was something more she could do for him. Anything.
But all she could do was serve as his apprentice, learn as much as possible.
Because one day, she would have to do this alone.
“Amanda, soon we will need to begin our next game.”
“I’m ready, John.”
He looked up at her, nodding. “I will retrieve Doctor Gordon. And you will need to acquire Adam. Will you need the detective’s help?”
She wrinkled her nose and had a sour taste in her mouth. “No. I’ve got this on my own. Don’t bother with the oaf, Adam looked light enough.”
John nodded and went to leave. Amanda would have suggested Mark go with him - to make sure he was fine - but she didn’t trust Mark Hoffman as far as she could throw him. Which was not far.
Adam Faulkner-Stanheight lived in the southside of the city, a worn down building with a broken elevator and smelled like mold. Not the worst she’d seen and still miles better than where she came from, but she felt she could sense the soul of a person by the environment they lived in.
She waited at a crooked table by the mail boxes, planning to play it cool when Adam finally left to go do his voyeuristic freelance work, as she had seen him do many times before.
Like clockwork, he came downstairs a quarter after seven, his camera slung around his neck. She tried to keep her had down and walk by him.
“Really rockstar.” He was looking right at her, the faintest passing smile on his lips.
She paused, feeling his attention, nervously looking behind her in hopes he had been referring to someone else. She did the best thing she could do, which was awkwardly walk away.
“Sorry, your hair. It’s very… rockstar. I really like it.”
She had made it to the stairs but now, she had to look at him. She waited for him to continue. He had no idea. So why was he talking to her? She went to turn away when he didn’t speak again.
But then he did.
“Speaking of rockstar, I’ve been instructed to hand these out. They don’t completely suck as far as buddy bands go.” He held out a folded up poster, some underground punk band it looked like, and she was beginning to feel curiosity uncoil in her chest.
Why was he so nice to her? This wasn’t making things easier.
“Do you live here?”
He had an earnestness about him that made her sad. “Just visiting.” She turned to leave.
“I’ll see you there!”
This was not the personality she was expecting from him. He liked her, more than the other people he walked by every day.
She had cut her hair, hoping it would have made it easier to work for John. But now, she regretted the decision.
“Look - I’m not gonna see you there, am I?”
Despite what she needed to do, she felt herself liking him. “Probably not.” She forced a smile, hoping he would leave.
“Can I take your picture?”
She couldn’t help but be amused and let it show. She didn’t laugh but she was close to. And nodded. She would be taking his camera, later, so it didn’t matter.
“Hold on.” He aimed his lens and the flash of the camera blinded her temporarily.
“Thanks. See you - later.”
He had a sweetness about him that Amanda forgot existed in people. She continued up the stairs and looked behind her, Adam having turned away to greet some neighbors who were trying to get home.
“Ladies! Want to go to a show tonight? Only five bucks!” He mouthed to her as he left, “they’ll be there,” humor in his eye.
She smiled back and lost sight of him.
She turned and walked up the stairs, knowing what door she needed to lockpick. Her backpack felt heavy, even though the only things inside were robes, the pig mask, several syringes, and a gun.
Getting in his apartment was easy enough.
The place was sparse and smelled of sharp, acidic chemicals. She paused to see a door with red light glowing around the cracks. His red room.
She knew better than to disturb it, not wanting Adam to catch on that someone was in his house when he got home.
She donned the robe and pig mask and hid in the closet and waited.
It would be many long hours before he came back.
While she waited, she wondered what Adam’s friend’s band would have sounded like. But she pushed it away as a sense of regret washed over her. No. She had to be strong. John needed to test him. He was worthy to be saved.
She knew this would work out. Maybe, if Adam won the game, he would be taken in by John like her.
This gave her renewed resolve and she eagerly waited for Adam to come home.
Peter Strahm
He was enjoying having a woman in the house.
Will was also an early riser and the two of them would start off their morning routines meeting in the kitchen for coffee. She would be dressed in running gear and he would go to his gym to lift weights or swim. Come back. Have breakfast. Begin work.
It felt like they were a couple on a vacation. He was in heaven.
Will had a high libido and he was more than happy to accommodate her needs.
Every morning he woke to her face in his bed, he knew he wanted to that for the rest of his life.
“Hi, sir, this is Detective Wilhelmina Maddox, I called yesterday inquiring on historical documents related to a crime back in eighty-one.” Will was on the phone, the two of them going over the same pictures of her childhood, the same names of witnesses or persons of interest who were either dead or in retirement homes now, and again, trying to see if they had missed something.
His study was covered with carefully arranged documents and a corkboard was hanging to track the timeline. Will was sitting cross-legged on the carpet, cell to ear, trying to look up a license plate number.
He couldn’t help but admire the view, her lowrise yoga pants letting him appreciate the soft skin as her shirt rode up.
“Yes, sir, it is,” she went on her knees and reached over for a sheet of paper, “a red Honda Civic, EZ9738. Yes, back in eighty-one. Thanks. Yes, please call me back if you have any record found.” She hung up and sighed, turning to him.
“Any luck?” He handed a fresh cup of coffee to her.
“No. We’re getting nowhere, Peter.” She sounded exasperated as she took a loud sip.
He knew now was the time to bring it up. “Well, I’ve got good news.” He loved the way she lit up. “Prints are back. We have a match.”
“Finally! With who?” She jumped to her feet, bouncing, looking ready to burst.
“Philip Rhodes.”
“Do we have a location?”
“San Diego. He’s been locked up for the past five years.”
“What are we waiting for?” She got to her feet, phone in hand, eager and hungry.
He smiled but was swallowing back the bitter taste of melancholy. Things had just started feeling wonderful.
But he couldn’t deny the hope in her eye and the glow on her face being beautiful to see.
“Yes, hello?” Will had dialed the phone again. “Can I get the next flight to San Diego? From the DC area or Richmond. Whichever is faster.” She looked at him, grinning.
This wasn’t the end of things. It was only the beginning.
Peter decided then, that when they closed this case, he would marry her.
John Kramer
The drug relaxed him and made him sink into the floor.. The dark was filled with only the distant breathing of the two men echo off the bathroom. The room was cold and damp but thankfully John had gotten used to the smell of rot, blood, and excrement that clung to the tiles like mold.
In the direction where Doctor Gordon lay, the rustle of clothing followed by his distant confused groans brought John’s focus to sharpen. And so, the game begins.
“Hello?” He called out gently, at first. The rattle of chains. The grunt of surprise. More jingling of metal. “Hello?! Help!”
John’s heart was chemically slowed but he could feel his blood quicken slightly despite it. He kept himself still.
Gordon had stopped trying to pull the chains. He was breathing, loud and deliberate, likely forcing himself to calm down. An intelligent man, always in control.
Only now, it must have been terrible for him, to find himself completely out of control. The scrape and scuffle of a man trying to orient himself in pitch black and the defeated sigh were the last thing before another long period of silence.
And then, on the other side of the room, the sound of water splashing, coughing, sputtering, and then the distinct whoosh of the bathtub plunger being removed with the gurgle of water draining had John holding back a tsk of disappointment.
The key was in the bathtub. And Adam, it seemed, unsurprisingly, was too panicked to notice it. It was likely going to slip down the drain. The boy was brash and driven by his emotions. A lost cause.
More splashing. Coughing. “Help! Someone help me!”
Gordon moved.
“Is someone there? Hey! Shit, I’m probably dead.”
“You’re not dead.”
“Who’s that?”
“No point in yelling, I already tried it.”
“Turn on the lights!”
“I would if I could.”
“What the fuck is going on! What is going on? Where am I?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“What is that smell?!”
“Shh! Hang on a second, I think I found something.”
John could see the lights through his eyelids but he resisted the urge to wince.
“Holy shit!” The sound of Adam gagging followed by his screams filled the bathroom. “HEEEELP!”
Adam had gone into full panic.
“No one can hear you,” Gordon sounded defeated.
This was the Doctor Gordon John knew. A man resigned to his fate. A man who did not realize just how much he was turning his back on, to appease his more immediate urges. John hoped after all of this, he would make the man see the error of his ways.
If Gordon survived, this would prove useful to John in the future. Having a medical doctor who would aid him had boundless opportunity and potential. So John was rooting for him, despite his sins.
“What the fuck is this!”
“Calm down, just calm down. Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know - yeah!”
“What’s our name?”
“My name is Very Fucking Confused, what’s your name?! What’s going on here!”
Gordon sounded annoyed. “My name is Lawrence Gordon, I’m a doctor. I just woke up here, just like you.”
John could visualize every moment. From Adam trying to force his foot through the chains with a grunt to Gordon rolling his eyes and become even more aggravated by Adam’s juvenile behavior.
“Recognize him?”
“No.”
“Well, do you have any idea how you got here?”
“No.”
“What was the last thing you remember?”
“Nothing. I went to bed in my shithole apartment and woke up in an actual shithole. So what about you, huh?”
“Well, there’s… there’s not much to tell, really. I was on my way home from work and uh, I don’t remember anything else.”
“First dead body I’ve ever seen. Look different in real life. They don’t move.”
“From the looks of these chains, someone didn’t want us to go very far either.”
“Can you see any scars?”
“What?”
“This is what they do man, they kidnap you and drug you and before you know it, you’re in a bathtub and your kidneys are on eBay.”
John could already tell this would be an amusing game, at least.
“No one has taken your kidneys,” Gordon’s voice held disdain. John sympathized, Adam would not have been his preferred cell mate either.
“How can you tell from way over there?”
“Because you’d either be in terrible agony or you’d be dead by now. Trust me.”
“What are you, a surgeon?”
“Yeah.” Gordon sighed. “So you gonna tell me your name, or what?”
“Adam.”
They continued to exchange pleasantries. It was both fascinating and mundane how the two interacted. Never would their paths have crossed if not for John. Two completely different universes, colliding.
“Use your shirt.”
They had finally found their tapes and needed the cassette player in his hand. He felt the damp slap of the fabric on his arm and the eventual pull of the device from his fingers.
And then he heard his own voice. “Rise and shine, Adam. You’re probably wondering where you are. I’ll tell you where you might be. You might be in the room that you die in. Up until now, you simply sat in the shadows, watching others live out their lives. But what do voyeurs see when they look into the mirror? Now, I see you as a strange mix of someone angry and yet apathetic. But mostly just pathetic. So are you going to watch yourself die today, Adam? Or do something about it?”
“I don’t get it.”
Of course you don’t.
“Throw me the player.”
“No, you throw me your tape.”
More back and forth. Griping. Adam just complained, but Gordon kept his calm until he finally conceded to Adam.
“Doctor Gordon, this is your wake up call. Every day of your life, you have given people the news that they are going to die soon. Now you will be the cause of death. Your aim in this game is to kill Adam. You have until six on the clock to do it. There’s a man in the room with you. When there’s that much poison in your blood the only thing left to do is shoot yourself.” John heard himself cough on the tape. “There are ways to win this hidden all around you. Just remember, ‘x’ marks the spot for the treasure. If you do not kill Adam by six, then Alison and Diana will die, Doctor Gordon. And I’ll leave you in this room to rot. Let the game begin.”
Mark Hoffman
He entered the break room, needing a cup of coffee. Seeing Kerry and Matthews, clearly in the midst of an argument, he stopped in the doorway and immediately turned to leave.
“Hoffman,” Matthews called out, “hang on.”
Kerry had her hands on her hips, biting her lip, looking furious.
Matthews took out a cigarette. “I need to get out of here. You have lunch yet?”
“I can eat.”
“Good, you drive, I’ll pay. But keep it cheap.”
“Larry’s, then.”
The city was gray and dark. A light rain kept everything wet and cold. Being a Tuesday, the two of them were the only ones in the bar that early afternoon. But Mark was in a decent mood. He got this way, now, when there was a game actively happening. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so alive, and powerful. He checked his watch, wondering who would be the survivor, if any would. He’d look at the tapes, later.
He wondered about the one subject, Zep. He didn’t understand why John had chosen him to be included in the game. The guy seemed like he valued his life. “Inferiority Complex,” John had explained, yet didn’t as he usually did. But Mark knew better than to argue. He had knocked the guy out when he got home from work, injected him with the poison, left the envelope on his bedside table, and tucked him into his bed with an alarm at exactly 2:30 p.m., per John’s instructions.
The bathroom trap was the most elaborate puzzle John had conjured up yet. Hell, the man made a damn diorama for it. Mark’s money was on the doctor surviving.
“She’s dead to me,” Matthews grumbled and Mark pretended to be interested in this discussion.
“Kerry?”
“We’ve been over for a while now. She was the one who ended everything. She ruined my marriage. Then she went and cut me off, leaving me in my shitty apartment paying alimony. My son hates me, now that he thinks he’s some bigshot criminal. Teenagers. Kid’s been busted for shoplifting, not grand theft auto. I had to bail him out and all he does is bitch about how I abandoned him. If he only knew how much money I pay to his mother, he’d shut his trap.” Matthews took another puff and waved at Larry to bring him another beer.
Mark kept his thoughts to himself. You cheated on your wife, Matthews. You did this to yourself. Lately, Matthews was getting on his nerves. He was always whining. Taking everything he has for granted. Mark was beginning to sound like John and he wasn’t sure if it was a bad thing anymore.
Everyone around Mark were beginning to look like lost souls, in need of a rude awakening.
“You know what that bitch wanted from me?” Matthews turned, watching him in the corner of his eye. “To join the Serial Killer Task Force. Fuck that.”
Mark blinked. He didn’t like how hard Kerry was going, now that she was in charge of the Jigsaw investigation. So far, the task force included Fisk, Kerry, and himself. Budget cuts and cops transferring to other departments en masse after Jigsaw demonstrated he wasn’t afraid to kill them had been good for Mark’s anonymity. It was likely Jigsaw would go free, at least for the time being. He would possibly join the ranks of the few notorious but elusive. Zodiac. Golden State. With John pulling the strings, Mark knew it was possible. Mark still needed an out - a way to escape and return to his life.
For now, Mark was confident John would ensure he would elude the police, at least as long as he was living and had his mental faculties. But when the cancer finally won, it would be just him and Amanda.
Mark already knew it was likely he’d need to kill Amanda Young if he wanted his secret safe.
“I want nothing to do with Jigsaw. All I got left is the skin on my back. I don’t want to go like Sing, my head blown off. Or Tapp, off his rocker,” Matthews muttered, watching the TVs above the bar.
Mark silently agreed. So long as everyone kept their distance from getting in John’s way, no one else should get hurt. “You don’t have to worry, I’ll get Kerry off your back.”
“No need, I told her to piss off. She won’t be coming back for my help anytime soon.”
You sure about that? Mark had a sinking suspicion that Kerry was going to do everything she could to take Jigsaw down. She was like Will. A workaholic who was good at her job. And catching Jigsaw was now that job.
“Yeah. Hopefully, I don’t ever get on Jigsaw’s shitlist, maybe I’ll be able to see retirement and just go live in an van down by the river. Got nothing else going for me.”
Matthews had an uncanny talent of taking Mark’s already standard glum mood and making him feel downright sad.
“Shit, at last shoot for an RV.”
“Yeah, and a harem of Swedish supermodels. Why not? Shoot for the moon, eh, Hoffman?”
“That’s the spirit.”
Amanda Young
Amanda was still developing her first game. It would be hers. To design, to choose who would participate, everything. John trusted her with this and she needed it to be done right.
She already knew who would be the star of the show. The very cop who put her on this path. Who, ironically, was the cause of her meeting John.
Eric Matthews . The corrupt bastard that framed her.
She would have added Hoffman too, if he wasn’t off limits. Despite how much she tried to convince John he was bad news, John refused to back down.
“Detective Hoffman will be true to our cause. He is an ally. He will help but he will not play your game, Amanda.”
“Why’s he untested?”
“He will face his test in due time. At my discretion. He is not yours to test, Amanda.”
She trusted John would be sure Mark Hoffman would receive his test. She had to believe he would take care of it.
But at least Matthews was hers.
And she would make sure that he would face what he had done, with as many people as possible.
John encouraged her to think big. And the one thing she could do to really scare the piss out of Matthews would be either putting him in a room full of people he framed and imprisoned. Or someone he cared about. She wasn’t sure how John would feel about using Matthews’ kid. He was fourteen. And even though he was that bastard’s flesh and blood, Amanda bore no hard feelings for him. It wasn’t his fault his old man was a piece of work.
Her father was a piece of trash, too.
When the game would go down, Amanda would be there, to make sure the rules would be followed. She could make sure the boy wouldn’t get hurt.
John would say to try to empathize with the subject. To walk in their shoes. She hated the idea of trying to pretend she was Eric Matthews but she admitted it was helpful. She was following him, these days, seeing that he liked to smoke a lot. Whenever he answered teh phone, he looked bitter and angry. He looked bitter all the time. It made Amanda happy, at least, to know what a miserable life he was living.
Matthews didn’t care about himself. She doubted he’d have incentive to fight for his life if he was in the trap.
Hoffman had warned them that it was likely some detective named Allison Kerry, who would be capable of catching the Jigsaw Killer. And John and him conspired on ways to remain undetected by the police. Apparently, Kerry and Matthews had history. And if Matthews got involved, Hoffman suggested it would rattle Kerry and make her slip up.
It was a maze, trying to understand John’s grand designs. She was barely keeping up with the logistics for a house that poisoned everyone inside. She would have to act like she was stuck, like them, and John would watch from the cameras.
As she stared down at the floor plans to the house that John was currently underneath for the game with the doctor and Adam, her thoughts returned to the night she had kidnapped him.
“Can I take your picture?”
She sighed. Thinking on it was pointless. He’d either pass or fail. Live or die. Those were the rules.
She just hoped Adam had what it takes to survive.
The door creaked as it slid open. Amanda turned, seeing Hoffman enter the warehouse. She turned to pointedly ignore him.
“Any word from John?”
“Seeing as it’s only been eight hours, and John had already explained it was timed for twenty-four hours, you tell me, Detective.” She turned to him, a sneer on her mouth.
Hoffman watched her, cool and calm. “I’m asking, in case something went wrong and John needs our help.”
She scoffed. As if he wanted to help John. She knew he was there because John was blackmailing him. “He’s fine. Zep has been doing his part, calling in every hour.” She held up the burner phone, her lifeline to John for the time being, and Zep the narrator as he relayed what he saw on the surveillance screens. “They found the saws. They found the box. But no one’s dead yet.”
Hoffman nodded. “I just came by to see how things were. If John needs me, you know how to find me.” He turned to leave and Amanda was thrilled.
He always put her in a sour mood. Every time she saw his stupid face with his fat lips and dumb expression, she wanted to punch him in the face.
If she could find a way to really fuck with him, it would be one of the few joys in her life.
The phone rang. She picked it up, not saying a word, waiting.
“Adam pretended to smoke a poisoned cigarette. It looks like he got electrocuted. They were trying to fool us.” Then, a cough. “When can I get the antidote? Please.”
Amanda pressed her mouth tight and hung up, refusing to feel guilty. John chose Zep for a reason. He didn’t appreciate life, like she had. But John could save him, so long as he followed the rules.
The rules. Follow the rules. John knows best.
Yet Amanda couldn’t help but feel herself rooting, deep in her heart, for Adam to make it. Of all the people to survive, please let it be him.
She imagined him joining John and her. Maybe he would be a part of what they were. It was a hope that warmed her and gave her comfort as she continued to her sketches.