For the most part, Deadeyes did not know any of the prospects by name. By their role, or appearance, or what they provided for their Entity, perhaps, but not the name that they called themselves, and spoke upon each other with.
They knew this one. They had heard of it, whispered in frustration and fury, where it had not meant to be heard.
This one had caused issues. Problems, for those that it really mattered to. Not to their peers, even to the ones that sought to kill them, but to Deadeyes’ peers. He had not played by the rules, or had found some way to bend them, the way some prospects inevitably could, and would. He had evaded capture, at least for some time, and whatever death or punishment a being of eldritch, unknowable power wrought on him. And one day, the whispered mentions of the clever little thorn in their side disappeared as quickly as they had begun.
Dealt with, Deadeyes assumed. And they were right—but now the little creature was back. Perhaps causing not as many problems as he had before, what with the way he performed in trials and was dropped back into a campfire just like the rest of them. Execution, then, had not been an Entity’s way of dealing with him. It had likely been a sort of death for him, but for whatever reason, he was back. Perhaps he had escaped his jailers, or perhaps he had been let free. Deadeyes neither knew nor cared. The thing they were most curious about was how this little prospect had gone and made such a nuisance of himself before.
Deadeyes waited for them at a place they found most fitting. It was more in-between than anything else in the Fog. It was wrapped in total darkness, cloying and billowing with a humid, thick black Fog, only lit from above briefly.
A Survivor jumped through the hatch, and Deadeyes reached forward. Their fingers closed in the back of Vigo’s poncho, stopping their descent into the darkness in a moment, leaving the Survivor suspended over nothing, though Deadeyes stood there in the black void of the Hatch as if it were solid ground.
“Vigo, correct?” they asked in a very even voice, like none of this was particularly strange. “The little scientist. You haven’t gone and made yourself a nuisance again, yet, have you?”