Beth Marche

Beth was a retired registered nurse. She was also one of the five original contestants in Exit/Corners.

Appearance
Beth was an old woman with a pale, wrinkled complexion. She had pale blue eyes and grey hair tied back in a low ponytail. She wore a purple cowl neck, black pants and an open green duster cardigan. She also wore a gold necklace with an emerald pendant.

Personality
Beth was the calmest out of the contestants, and usually the one to stop arguments between Liza and Rae. While she normally was quiet and reserved, she had a tendency to yell when she saw that the others are disagreeing or doing something dangerous, such as Rae and Liza's fighting and Ink attempting to play with a real sword. Despite controlling her emotions better than the other contestants, she was easily upset when anything reminds her of her deceased family, such as being able to communicate to Earl in her Gemini and encountering a replica of her garden that she was willing to die in.

Background
Before the events of Exit/Corners, Beth was married and had 2 children; Earl and Ellen. She and her husband both had large families, and they decided to have a more manageable number of children. At some point, Ellen had twin grandsons. 14 years prior to Exit/Corners, she was taking care of her daughter and grandchildren when an earthquake struck her home, which was uncommon for the area. Her daughter and her grandchildren died, and Beth watched in horror as her granddaughter saw the sun roof collapsing on her. Beth herself managed to survive, badly injured. When she got to the hospital she had an argument with her son, with Earl blaming Beth for not taking care of her daughter and her grandchildren. Eventually, Earl committed suicide over his guilt. Beth got money for life insurance afterwards. While her grandchildren weren't insured, Ellen and her husband both had life insurance. Beth felt extreme guilt over receiving the insurance money as she felt she didn't deserve it due to Earl's suicide and losing Ellen to the earthquake which she wanted to prevent. In memory of Earl, she carried out the instructions written in his suicide note, to take care of her huge garden. Eventually, however, taking care of the garden every day caused her to experience paranoia and her body tiring from doing the same thing every day.

In reality, however, while Ellen and her twin grandsons died, Earl's suicide was faked and her granddaughter did not die after sustaining injuries during the earthquake. Instead, Earl created a new identity for himself, Nolan Thatcher, and renamed his daughter Liza Thatcher accordingly. Liza was blind, presumably due to the injuries sustained in the earthquake, but had been told she got it in an "accident".

Meanwhile, Nolan would go on to create and become the CEO of a company, Thatcher Biometrics, which was a company for scientific development, specifically computer and AI programming. During this time, he created the CORNERS program, a program able to simulate real life by adding in the bare minimum information required and using Rae Nandon's RN system (stolen without his permission by his girlfriend Tiana) to "search" through the human brain once it was made readable by the program, allowing users to see and feel things as long as they imagine or believe it to exist.

While a buyer was eager to purchase it for a large sum of money, the program would not work as on them as it has a bug causing its users to cough up blood whenever they reject the notion that the world is real, and as such Exit/Corners was created and Beth was selected as one of the contestants along with Ink, Rae and Liza. Beth eventually realized who Liza and therefore Nolan was, as she remembered her granddaughter's laugh which never changed unlike her physical appearance, and made Beth feel like her family was whole again, even if just for a moment. Ink would later attempt to reveal this to Nolan if Beth trusted him enough to give him a letter to read to Nolan.

Story
Beth and Rae ask Ink and Aether to place their hand on the "Contestants" counter screen upon them leaving their room. She and Rae are the first ones to wake up. Beth introduces herself along with Rae while waiting for the fifth contestant, Liza. Once she shows up, she argues with Rae as she believes the group kidnapped her and provokes Rae. Beth then breaks up the fight with a loud and stern interruption (though her anger disappears almost immediately). She tells Liza that even if they kidnapped her, they would not lock themselves in the same room as her where she could see their faces and Rae to be more courteous to her because she just got kidnapped like him, and is forgivably alarmed, to which the two half-agree. She asks them to apologize, and while neither of them were likely to have said sorry, Ink noted that she seemed pleased that the fighting had stopped. She asks Liza to place her hand on the screen and she complies, causing Sent to appear. She is shocked by it, to which Ink agrees that it is unsettling, and Sent leaves them with the mandatory puzzle. She asks what the puzzle is, not seeming to understand it, causing Rae to simply tell her that it is a puzzle. Ink tells everyone that it is best to attempt the puzzle and unlock the door so as to leave as quickly as possible, and Beth along with the rest of the group starts on the puzzle.

Once she reaches her Corner through the green door, which according to Sent is chosen if the contestants value the past, she finds that it is exactly like her garden, sending her into a deep shock. She tells the group that if there is anything of importance in the garden it is buried in the center, and sits under a tree. While Ink, Rae and Aether start digging for it, Liza refuses, causing Ink to tell her to "at least pretend to be a decent person" by going over to comfort Beth. After digging, Aether finds a chest that Beth owns, only for Beth to tell them that the lock mechanism has been replaced with a puzzle by Sent. Annoyed, Rae asks Ink to smash it open with Liza agreeing, despite Beth asking Ink not to. If it is smashed open, Beth's Trust with Ink severely decreases and the puzzle is skipped, but if not, Ink solves the puzzle on the chest.

Upon opening it, they see the green key, but under it a large amount of cash, which Beth tells the contestants is her "insurance money". When the group asks where it came from, Ink mentions that insurance isn't supposed to be given for Earl's suicide. Beth then explains the earthquake to the group, and Ink feels like laughing despite the depressing situation. Beth then abruptly decides to stay and die in her garden, as she feels happy there, also laughing to herself and already knowing why due to her being a nurse. Sent appears to explain this to everybody else: The room is filled with laughing gas, which is fatal if a person stays in it for too long. However, the door is unlocked and anyone who wants to leave can do so. When Beth refuses to leave, Ink and Aether attempt to persuade her, but she refuses and Rae and Liza tell the two to abandon her before leaving. When they refuse to abandon her and nearly die, Liza comes back to save them as Ink is the group's strongest puzzle-solver and she is not going to let him die, while Aether escapes with the two of them as the door shuts. Rae then asks Beth why she changed her mind, revealing that she is alive and left the room. She tells Rae that seeing what Liza did inspired her to leave as she realized that she could still help the other contestants and it would be selfish of her to let herself die there.

In Chapter 18, if Beth has a high enough Trust with Ink, she will give him an envelope, asking that he reads it only if she dies during the game and once he has made it out alive. While Ink is shocked that Beth thinks she will die, he honors her promise, telling her that she is the bravest person he knows when she asks him to be brave for her

Beth dies at the end of Chapter 22. She was found dead in what is presumed to be a hotel room by the contestants, by Aether and Rae (the latter of whom came after hearing the former's screaming). They inform Tiana and Sean of her death at the black wing, and the latter along with Aether try to tell Ink and Liza what happened at the lobby after they come back from a private conversation. However, Ink forces his way into the room where she died, causing him and Liza to discover the body themselves.

In Chapter 23, it is confirmed that the body is Beth's. Liza convinces the contestants that they should not enter the room where she died as it may be trapped, with Ink and Tiana volunteering to go in to examine her body and the room for traps and signs for her cause of death, finding that something hit the back of her head. Initially deciding that the puzzle may have killed her, they decide that they will need to do it anyways, as they will have to come back, but decide to go to the black wing first (doing so together for safety and, according to Aether, because Beth would have wanted them to), leaving her body behind. While leaving, Ink messaged Sent on his Gemini asking why she had to die, with Sent only cryptically replying that he was afraid.

In Chapter 25, Rae, after running off to the blue wing to find clues about Beth's death, mentions float glass. Ink goes back to the puzzle in the room with Beth's body, but after solving it, only the door unlocks. When he asks Rae more about it, they conclude that Beth was hit with a pane of glass. Remembering the advice of the Ink in his head and Sent's comment about controlling all electronics (but not mechanisms, as he concluded), Ink opens the unlocked door to the bathroom, revealing a broken painting that was smashed over Beth's head. Because Sent is unable to open doors, Ink concludes that she was murdered by a contestant.

In Chapter 26, the contestants discuss their alibis. Ink tells the group that only 4 contestants could have done it, and when Liza asks if he is simply talking about everyone except himself, he mentions that he is excluding her too as she was in the stone hallway with him, but included Sean who was likely dead but had no alibi either. The contestants proceed to the next room, where another puzzle awaits them. However, Ink tells them that it is not important and that they needed to deduce who killed Beth. Asking how he could do that, the contestants proceeded to rant about their alibis and accuse others in a triangle, with Rae accusing Aether, Aether accusing Tiana and Tiana accusing Rae. After confiding with Liza about a way to figure it out, Ink came up with a way to find out who killed Beth. Asking them to do a pop quiz, he asked them to answer "How many contestants are playing Exit/Corners?", with their names, dates, answers, and the question in full (with Liza holding Rae's paper due to him only having one arm). Ink then deduced that Tiana knew more about Exit/Corners then she let on, because she was the only one to spell it as "Exit/Corners" in the question. The contestants had only heard it and never seen it written down, and also never heard it as "Exit or Corners" or "Exit Slash Corners", causing Aether and Rae to simply write "Exit Corners". When Tiana fires off a rebuttal asking him how he knows it is spelled "Exit/Corners", he informs her that "a little birdie (Sent) told me". Tiana then holds Aether at knifepoint before kidnapping her while allowing everyone else to leave.

When Ink, and possibly Rae and Liza, go after her and end up in the ringleaders' laboratory in Chapter 27, Sean later arrives in Chapter 28 and tells them that Beth is alive, probably drinking tea as they speak, as no one was ever in any real danger in the CORNERS program. However, Ink realizes that Sean would not have needed to take Liza's place if that were the case, and that Beth really is dead. When Ink escapes the hotel later, he remembers Beth's envelope and opens it to find two letters: a letter to Liza (who has already left) and a letter to Earl/Nolan. Ink reads Beth's letter to Nolan to the void in hopes that he will hear it.

If the player goes into the Extras section in the menu and checks the Standings after her death has been confirmed by completing Chapter 23, Beth's portrait will be grayed out and faded on the Trust meter, indicating her death.