Sean Ward

Sean Ward is Ink Greer's long-time friend, and also his Contact. He is later thrown into Exit/Corners as a Contestant at the very end of Chapter 18. However, he turns out to be one of the three ringleaders behind it.

Appearance
Sean is a young man wearing a blue hoodie with the initials of BB University. He has blond hair and a small beard. His voice is rougher than Ink's voice, but higher than Rae's voice.

Personality
Sean is laid-back and hopelessly flirty. He does not really care about the problems presented to him, such as being thrown into Exit/Corners, and will instead do things that he usually does if not given a task, which is usually to chat with Ink or flirt with the female Contestants. He demonstrates this by immediately flirting with Aether, Liza, and Tiana the moment he wakes up in the lobby. Liza appears to be the one he is most attracted to, as he flirts with her the most. However, this also seems to be because of her personality; while Tiana threatens to attack him and Aether is shy and vulnerable, easily being frightened and upset by the attempts causing Sean to leave her alone, Liza is annoyed and irritated by his flirting, and despite asking him to leave her alone, is not frightening enough for Sean to do so. Later on, he also appears to flirt with her with the express purpose of annoying her as he seems to find it funny.

He sees himself as very charming and charismatic with the ladies. In reality, however, he is slightly self-absorbed in this view, as he fails to flirt with any of the female Contestants and has little evidence of having any relationships when confronted about them and asked how many he has. Even Aether, who is usually kind and quiet, uses the psychology she is studying to claim that Sean is sexually frustrated, much to his embarrassment.

Overall, Sean acts as a source of comic relief. His attempts at flirting always go horribly wrong, his casual and laid-back attitude makes him seem jarringly unworried considering his life is in danger, and he has made a weird joke at the expense of Ink, asking if he would ever "fuck a book" because he had recently learned the term "bibliophile". The joke also shows that Sean is not very intelligent, as he simply uses a word without knowing exactly what it means and assuming that he knows the meaning simply because of what the word sounds like. Aether calling him out on his behavior also leads to a humorous conversation that causes the Contestants to turn the tables on him and make jokes at his expense instead, causing him embarrassment and leaving him with less self-esteem.

However, all of this turns out to be lie when he is revealed as a ringleader of Exit/Corners. In reality, Sean is a manipulative and controlling sociopath, which causes him to be emotionless and allowed him to act friendly and easily fool the Contestants (being a sociopath, he is a good actor, able to show and conceal emotions effectively at will). He has no qualms about letting people like Beth and Rae die and measures people's worth by their importance to him and how they can help him if they are dead or alive. As mentioned by Ink, he measures people like negative space, "by the hole they leave behind", effectively being willing to let anyone who is not important to him simply die. He even tries to lie to the Contestants by telling them that Beth is alive.

Background
Ink mentions that he knows Sean from high school, but they did not communicate much at that time. Sean joined the BBU a couple of years earlier than Ink did. Ink also mentions that Sean was person who helped him socialize in a new place. Sean makes a lot of jokes about things around (often inappropriate), but Ink claims that this is not his normal behavior.

Story
Sean, upon being revealed as Ink's Contact, asks what the PDA he is using is for, but Ink does not know as well. He reveals that he suddenly received in the mailbox. Ink asks Sean to enter his room to search for any traces of what happened while he was kidnapped. Sean finds nothing in the room. Shortly after the completion of the first Corner, he reports to Ink that he is followed.

After the second Corner is solved, Sent creates multiple simple puzzles to stall for time. Sean is placed into the lobby unconscious with Tiana, and soon wakes up and starts flirting with the female Contestants. Sean effectively becomes a Contestant himself alongside Tiana.

Sean, being a ringleader of Exit/Corners. later murdered Beth, as he was assigned to do, but he was not yet revealed as the killer until the end. As Liza was about to sacrifice herself in the third Corner (which was hers), Sean stepped in and sacrificed himself instead. In reality, someone else was supposed to sacrifice themselves, but due to Liza having made up her mind and the fact that she was not supposed to die, Sean pretended to sacrifice himself in the room. He later left unscathed, presumably through another exit or passage, with the program ensuring he would not die himself.

Sean later returns to the laboratory that the Contestants have forced their way into after Tiana was discovered. With Tiana stating that he is Aether's father, he explains what Exit/Corners and the CORNERS program are about. He reveals that he is Aether's father because she is an AI, and forcefully terminates it, leaving her body. He then chases Ink and the remaining Contestants out of the hotel after they escape.

He is the first character to have a major different outcome based on choices made. In the normal ending, he chases after Ink once all the Contestants (if any) have fled in other directions. Ink refuses to go with him to leave the CORNERS program normally and imagines that there is no floor under him (as the outside of the hotel is negative space, nonexistent and exactly what he believes it to be). He falls calmly into the void below as Sean tries and fails to catch him, causing the program to crash. If all of the Paranoia has been unlocked (by using alternate puzzle solutions, allowing for the Chapter 17 secret and changing dialogue) Ink realises that the program is more malleable than the ringleaders had realized. He imagines the thread he saw in front of him earlier and forces it to open to another kind of void. Sean implodes from the impact and what little blood and viscera is left of him is sucked into the void, while a new AI in Aether's body comes to help Ink.

In Chapter 29, Nolan confirms that Sean and Tiana are still sleeping in their pods if the normal ending was reached, and that he will deal with them, most likely by paying them off to remain silent. He reassures Ink that he will never see Sean again. In the Paranoia ending, where Sean is dead, Nolan mentions that he is paying off Tiana, and when moving on to Sean, says that he will ensure that the police do not arrest Ink for killing Sean. He also begins to mention that Ink is transgender, which Ink quickly tells him not to go into. In either ending, he also mentions the point of Contacts (considering they were actually only 3 out of 5 real people), and that they were to prime the Contestants for Exit/Corners. Sean's messages to Ink were meant to make him focus on Aether more, but it was less successful than anticipated due to Ink de-syncing from the CORNERS program.

Trivia

 * Sean is the only character to have a determinant status.
 * Sean is the real identity of Aether's father.
 * Due to being a new Contestant to Exit/Corners, a ringleader, and already being close to Ink, Sean and Tiana do not have a Trust meter.