Chapter 61: Verdict
The girl remained silent.
"Sarah, I’m trying to help, okay?"
Ryan’s voice maintained its placating tone, though there was something harder behind it. At his continued coaxing, Sarah slowly raised her head again, though she couldn’t bring herself to look anyone in the eye.
"I-it..."
She stammered unintelligibly a bit before doing her best to rein in some control over her throat. This was her only chance.
"It... it allows me to share damage inflicted on me with anyone, if they’ve accepted getting attached to the skill."
Ryan’s brows furrowed.
"And they both knew this?"
She fell silent again.
"Sarah?"
Finally, she replied in a meek, almost inaudible voice.
"They didn’t know what the skill did, so... so they accepted it."
Ryan’s furrow devolved into a full frown. He stared at the girl sharply.
"They trusted you, and you killed them."
For the first time, Sarah fully raised her head, meeting Ryan’s gaze once before quickly averting it.
She spoke, her voice growing faster and more desperate as she did.
"I-I didn’t want to. I would’ve died if I hadn’t. What use would I be if I died? How could I be a good person if I died?"
"What the fuck are you even saying?"
Brandon voiced most of their confusion. His face was a mix of befuddlement and disgust.
Ryan held a similar look, but didn’t curse. The boy took a deep breath, rubbing his forehead as he considered everything.
In the end, there was only one question that mattered now.
"How do we know you aren’t lying about the target needing to be voluntary?"
If she was, then at any time any of them could just be turned into sacrificial lambs to protect her.
"I..."
Sarah opened her mouth to explain, only to stop midway. A screen appeared before her, one visible to Miles. It seemed exactly like his own.
Then, as though responding to her thoughts, it flipped around, showing them all a single line of text describing the skill. The rest of it was all blurred out.
[Support pillars: All great people stand on the pillars of others’ support. All cowards do too. Shall you not find pillars of your own? You pitiful coward.]
Like usual, the system was being verbose with its description. But it wasn’t entirely useless, as Miles could parse some meaning from it.
It lined up roughly with what she said. He doubted other people could give her support unwillingly at this stage at least, especially given how the system phrased it.
Still, Ryan hesitated. He glanced to the side.
"Chloe, can you?"
The girl quickly grasped onto what he was implying, stepping up to Sarah and placing a hand on her shoulder.
One of the few unstained places on her body.
Chloe closed her eyes for a bit, then opened them, before turning back to Ryan.
"It’s the same."
Miles quickly caught on to what was happening.
’She used inspection.’
So Chloe likely wasn’t lying about the acceptance thing. She’d just deceived her friends into saying yes.
Ryan stared silently at her for a few seconds more before shaking his head.
"I don’t think she’s lying."
"We still can’t trust her," Brandon countered, still watching the girl suspiciously.
Ryan’s forehead wrinkled as he considered the best path forward, before suddenly freezing.
"Let’s put it to a vote then. We need to decide what to do with her."
It was a bit abrupt, but Miles could understand why. It would be hard for Ryan to just make decisions like this arbitrarily. He wasn’t Morgan. So how he managed them had to change.
Brandon looked like he wanted to say something, but just fell silent in the end, letting Ryan continue.
"On the topic of Sarah, we have two options. Let her join us again while we keep an extremely watchful eye on her, or we leave her to fend for herself."
He paused.
"If you want her to leave, raise a hand."
Unsurprisingly, Brandon’s hand was the first one up. Another soon followed him. Mia.
Ryan’s eyes widened a bit at the sight. So the girl explained herself without any prompting.
"It’s just too risky, Ryan."
That was all she said, and Ryan didn’t press her any further. He looked around.
"Any other objections? None? Ok. If you think she should stay, raise your hands."
He raised a hand the moment he finished the sentence. Chloe hesitated a bit, then raised her hand after him.
"If she can’t force anyone to accept the ability, then as long as we keep an eye on her, it should be fine. She’s been with us so far without causing trouble."
Sarah raised her head, staring at Ryan in surprise, but the boy didn’t glance at her. Brandon didn’t look all that convinced.
"So then what? What if she can force it on someone? What if she deceives one of us and gets that person killed? Are you willing to take responsibility then?"
Ryan didn’t back down an inch.
"That’s why I’m calling for a vote. Whatever the group decides, whether it is what I want or not, is what I will go with."
"So what, our opinions just don’t matter then?"
"The vote isn’t even over yet."
Ryan rubbed his forehead with frustration before turning to face the two who still hadn’t raised their hands. Miles and Grimm.
Both for and against were tied, so the final choice depended on them.
Miles hadn’t once taken his gaze off the girl since Ryan proposed the vote. He silently balanced the choices in his mind.
By all manners, it was likely better to get rid of her if she was so willing to turn coat. It had been to save her life, but she’d killed two close friends in the process. Those were her friends too. What would she be willing to do to strangers to survive?
She was in all manners a bad person. And yet, he still hesitated.
He felt like he understood her better. The limits of what she was willing to do to live, what type of person she was, and even her powers. She wasn’t an actively dangerous person.
As much as he’d have loved to trust every other person here, he couldn’t say he knew any one of them half as well now.
More so, leaving her didn’t just sit right with him. It wasn’t in a moral sense either. He just felt a sort of cognitive dissonance at the choice.
After all, he didn’t think himself a very good person either.
So, he raised his hand. Almost simultaneously, Grimm spoke.
"I abstain."
Sarah was staying.