It has always been possible to choose.

For love, he thinks, for the love of the game, and he pulls the lever.

The last wave of acid cascades over his chest.

Bare yellow fat shines brilliantly in the halogen light.

He is vindicated — complete — he has won. He has chosen.

Only a few drops remain.

He pulls it -- again, and again, and again.

The last drops splatter, one at a time, on the bleeding ruin of his chest.

00:03.

00:02.

00:01.

00:00.

Mechanisms click. New pumps prime.

The sprayheads beside his face hiss with air, and then go silent.

Above his neck, he remains — has become — whole.

Jean lets himself stop breathing, in favor of analgesic oblivion.

(It doesn't last long. Pain rouses him.)

Time passes, as he fades in and out of consciousness. Half an hour, one would expect.

A door behind him opens, then clicks closed.

He doesn't speak first. It's not his scene to direct.

The fear is present. And the pain, of course.

A pair of gaunt, pale hands slip a blindfold over his eyes.

Something new pours over his chest — water? Something else?

Whatever it is, after the searing pain of anything touching his wounds, the pain ebbs, somewhat.

He screams, for his audience. 

He’s glad he kept his voice fresh for it. 

It happens again, and again, and again, before a pad is pressed down against the worst of the burns and a bandage is wrapped around his chest.

(It was promised he would survive; and Jigsaw is very careful, and he is fair.)

He screams and sobs and chokes until his voice begins to go. 

Once it’s hoarse enough to be perfect —

“Please let me live.”

“I told you. Not gonna die today.”

The voice is distorted, mechanical, passed through some kind of filter.

“Do you get it?”

He does. 

Is it best to say it?

(Pain.)

 No. A little tension. A hanging thread. 

“Please,” he repeats. 

“Do you get it,” he repeats, unmoved.

Well, all right. The climax now, then.

"Yes. I do."

“Good. Next time you want to kill someone? Leave me out of it.”

There’s a pause. A hand, turning his head side to side.

“…got all of it,” he says. 

He respects that. It’s audible.

"Yes," he says, ambiguously, voice at an orchestrated tremble.

(It was a beautiful trial. Jigsaw should know.)

"Make it right," he tells him. "When you wake up. Tell them I don't kill like that. Tell them I was fair."

A needle in the side of his neck.

He's so grateful. For the guidance; for the relief.

The world fades out.

When he wakes, he’s being loaded into an ambulance, from a roadside he doesn’t recognize.

He asks for his sister, again and again, as he fades in and out of consciousness; as they transport him, as they give him painkillers.

They find her, eventually. For a while, she holds his hand, and there is more pain.

Then he is lucid enough, and stable, in a hospital bed, and he begins to ask for the press.

The hospital does not particularly want to accommodate a press conference at this time — and, while he is stable, his doctors strongly advise him to wait to speak to the press until he's had time to rest, to heal, to save his energy for the skin grafts and the physical therapy and the psychological recovery. He hasn't even had a chance to talk to the police, yet, who are very eager to see him.

Perhaps the press will be more enthusiastic.

In the meantime, he watches the IV drip. It fails to take away the pain.

Jean is very famous, as is (at this point) the Jigsaw Killer, and the hospital PR department caves quite quickly to the pressure and comes to an agreement with his agent and the various news outlets now clamoring for a spot at his bedside.

Jean is asked — because his agent knows the kind of man he is — to curate the final list.