It’s the ninth installment of the Challenge SL&A and we open up this week’s episode post-elimination, the house still reeling from Priscilla’s Big Move. Without a Rookie/Rookie team to gang up on in deliberation, the House Vote is truly up in the air for probably the first time all season.

While the Rookies are chuffed with themselves for disrupting what has been a very cushy game for the Vets so far, they’re definitely not out of the woods. Most of them are basically just as likely to get tossed into elimination as they ever were, but now instead of facing a unified front of intimidating Vets, the cracks are starting to show.

Cory is the first to accidentally alienate himself from the wider Vet camp, mostly by seeming a little too comfortable with the recent upheaval. Cory and Nelson have been partnered with Rookie girls Bettina and Priscilla, and have seemingly formed a bond with Jeremiah too, though we barely saw that develop onscreen. As a result, Cory’s happy to have his friend return from The Lair and is possibly over-eager for the Vet-on-Vet warfare to begin, believing himself to be in a strong position with some Rookies in his pocket.

Josh, the permanently paranoid, relays to Vets Ashley, Amanda and Kyle that he thinks Cory has been working with the Rookies and is therefore not to be trusted. Realistically, this should have been the strategy of every Vet, especially those paired with Rookies, since the Vet Truce was always going to be temporary, but whatever. I wouldn’t consider it disloyal at all to start sowing seeds among the Rookie crowd in preparation for the inevitable end of the Vet Truce, and maybe Josh doesn’t really either, but casting aspersions on Cory is a good way to not be the first Vet sent into the Lair. Whether it’s strategy or genuine upset that leads Josh on his anti-Cory campaign, it works. Ashley eats it up, guided as she is by her genuine belief that everyone in the game is out to get her because of her Double Champ status. Sure.