Death came quickly.
No.
Death should have come quickly but death didn't come at all.
Claire was gone. She watched her jump. Down… down… down… She was okay, wasn't she? How high were they?
Faintly, she could remember it all. The detonation. The rocks. She had only wanted to save Claire and... well, she had. At what cost? Hard to say. She could recall recording a message. Her phone still lay in front of her. Somehow she'd pulled it out, spoke long enough to say goodbye to her family. Now the dust had settled. Everything was perfectly still and perfectly quiet.
And she hated it.
Taking a few deep breaths, Moira tried to compose herself. She was sore but all things considered she wasn't in nearly as much pain as she imagined she would be. The initial impact hurt the most, and now most of the pain had dulled. She knew that, before things went black, there was a beeping noise. That damned bracelet. It turned red, blinked… She wasn't dead though. That meant everything was okay, didn't it?
She knew that wasn't true.
Moira tried to move, slowly at first, then with more force. Her body still worked, she crawled free of the rubble, then tried to make sense of things. Nothing felt right anymore. Above her, moonlight shone in, illuminating the spot she had died on. Looking down at herself, she began to cry. She wanted to believe it was just a head injury. She wanted to believe that what she was seeing was not the truth. She was dreaming, she was dead, she was anything but what she was now.
She decided to block it out. The clothes that hung in shreds around her body were only there because she had been hurt. Rubble was sharp, it was no surprise her clothes had torn. The bracelet had snapped off her wrist at some point too. Small miracles. Be glad for something. If she got out, if she stopped breathing in so much dust, then maybe her vision would clear and she would see herself again. She had to see herself again. This wasn't actually happening. There was just no way.
Getting out was the number one priority now. She ached, but that was okay. It reminded her of the pitiful truth that she was alive. How was she going to get off this island? No, that would come later. Moving came now. The hardest part about escaping was not looking at herself. One hand in front of the other as she maneuvered her way down. They weren't here hands… This wasn't her body. No. Focus. Claire would want her to focus. If Claire were here she'd tell her everything was going to be fine and that they'd get out. But Claire wasn't here. Claire was somewhere else. She was alone now. For survival's sake, she was going to pretend she wasn't alone, and follow Claire's wisdom of getting out alive.
Everything was a mess. The process of crawling down heaps of rubble was bound to kill her if she wasn't mindful. She was only mindful because she had people to get back to. She didn't actually want to be alive anymore. If she thought too hard on it, she wasn't going to want to be alive for them either. Yet, she was afraid to die at any rate. Being afraid to die is why she was like this now. If she had been less of a coward this wouldn't have happened. Maybe if she'd been braver earlier she would have been able to beat whatever virus had done this to her.
Her mind was still in working order, though, and that struck her as odd. She knew it wouldn't bother her at all if it didn't work, but it did, so now she had to live with that too. She had seen Pedro change. She didn't actually know him, but he hadn't been himself. That much was certain. His mind snapped, he turned into something else entirely. His awareness was only tangential. Neil was almost the same way. The virus made him angrier, more violent and while Moira knew he was a twisted freak, he was too much of a coward himself to ever be that violent. He needed help doing so. Was she violent now too? She didn't feel like it, didn't feel angry, just sad. Sad didn't even begin to cover it.
Thinking kept her mind off the glimpses of her body. Escape kept her mind off thinking too much. Broken bits of rock and metal cut her now and again which brought her back to her reality. It was a delicate balance, and when she was on solid ground again she'd reorient it to something safer. The smell of blood burned her nose. Her own blood. It was a botched detonation and she could still smell that familiar chemical smell, though part of it was likely fuel. Nearly half the tower remained standing, and escape was within her reach.
Down she went, though much slower than Claire had. She had leisure time now. No monsters. No explosions. Just the sounds of her lowering herself down. Just her alone. Her hands and feet padded softly along the concrete, and before she knew it, an eternity had passed and she was touching wet grass. Moira stopped then, sitting down to try and relax. The million thoughts in her brain blurred to a numb haze of anxiety, mirroring the distinctive hum of the insects. She kept her gaze up towards the sky because it meant she did not have to see herself. When she was ready to acknowledge it, truly, truly ready, she would look again. Maybe after falling asleep.
"I. Am. Alive." She said, speaking slowly to hear the sound of her own voice. Her throat was dry, her voice was soft and distant but it was her own. Her mind was her own still, only her body was not.
"I am going to be okay." She spoke again, hoping that might make her believe the words. Slowing her breathing, she closed her eyes, trying to experience herself as she was.
Footsteps on the grass forced her to open her eyes. They were light, careful, yet she managed to hear them crunch over small rocks and leaves. A shadow was approaching her. It moved deliberately, so she was certain it wasn't a monster. Another monster? No, too soon for that. Either way it approached her carefully, and in its hands, she caught the glint of metal.
Her curious visitor had a gun.