Notes: It's a short chapter - actually the next few are all short, but it's cause I didn't want any massive chapters, hopefully the cut-off points all make sense xD

"You seem better than usual."

Sam felt better than usual, too, for the day after a sacrifice. The residual apathy clung to her less this time around. Enough that she managed a small smile at Jake as her boots swept back and forth over the grass for anything hiding in the meadow of the clearing. "Yeah. It was a little easier this time."

He hummed a kind of confirmation. It took another moment before he asked, "Any idea why?"

Yes. She'd finally gotten a hug from somebody.

Wowww. That's really all it took, huh? Putting a lot of weight to one stupid little thing.

Well, it had meant a lot. Even if it came from a killer. Jeff had been entirely right about Susie, Sam couldn't believe she'd ever doubted him; the girl was very sweet. Even if she did… kill people. Which… Yeah, there wasn't really… Look, she was…

Okay, maybe there wasn't much she could defend the girl with. She'd ended up here, after all. No one innocent ended up in hell, right? She must've killed people before, to end up a killer for eternity.

Sam was looking at the ground, her smile quirking into a slight smirk. "Guess I'm getting better at this." See how long that would last. Next sacrifice may be a different story.

They fell back into comfortable silence, every minute thawing her more from the weaker hold of hopelessness.

It was a sign of the absolute fucked-uped-ness of this place, that finding a syringe on the ground was a good thing. And yet Jake seemed glad to have found it.

"Your medkits need supplies?"

"No shit, you don't want it? Really?" It was one of the more sought-after supplies in the storeroom. She figured he'd rather have it for his own stuff, or for the camp as a whole.

Jake shrugged a shoulder, holding it out to her. "You have that skill that needs healing a lot, right?"

She hadn't explained all the details of that particular double-edged sword yet, but she'd shared her frustration with figuring out the rules a while ago. He knew her situation— or part of it, anyway.

Sam's smile fell a bit, but she reached for the syringe. "Sure. …Yeah, thanks."

He didn't let go when she grabbed it. "Sam." Sam watched him uneasily, pulse picking up in her throat. "You're—" He faltered, looking taken aback. "Um…"

She could feel her face heating up, and her eyes nervously flicked to the side. This kinda didn't make sense. She was blushing, nerves jangling and making her fingers twitch on the item between them. But she'd never really felt anything for Jake before. Like… nothing beyond a platonic appreciation. Why the sudden awkward tension?

"You're uh—" He was just as flustered. "You're doing well, that's all. I was going to— I was just going to say, I'm—"

Jesus, it had never been this awkward between them before.

"I'm uh— proud of you, I guess." His brows furrowed, frowning. "…I have to go."

That was probably for the best. As soon as he let go of the syringe, she turned slightly, giving him the out to leave, heart still pounding.

What the fuck. Jake? …Really? Him? He just… wasn't her type. Like, at all. Sure, they had a bond going, they got along well, and she definitely trusted him. But romantically?

She took another breath, gradually returning to calm.

She wasn't even remotely interested. So why the blushing and the awkward tension?

Fuckin' weird. Okay.

Sam turned her eyes back to the way Jake had left, tapping the barrel of the syringe against the side of her finger. Well now she didn't want to be here. But if she left she'd get more of that awkward.

She covered her face, groaning. Well that was sucky. One of the few people she'd count as something like a friend, and now there was this weird tension hanging between them. From fucking nowhere. Goddamn it. He was essential to her support system. Fucking up their relationship with anything more complex would be awful. And she didn't want that from him.

Letting out a long breath, she shook her head. Fuck.

Give it a minute. He'd probably be going off to do whatever mountain man stuff he did in the woods. She could head back to her bunk and keep working on her tapes project. And maybe possibly avoid him for the rest of the day. This was fine.

Turned out, it would be surprisingly easy to avoid Jake, because Meg still had one more skill to teach, and it was time to gear up and learn to harness some adrenaline.

Training was not her favorite thing in the world, but Kate was there, too, and… well, she liked Kate.

And after her… god, it was such a bizarre moment, wasn't it? But her weird hug with Susie had made it a little easier to be around people again. And she needed all the skills she could learn.

After training, she focused on the tapes again. All she had was time. Day after a sacrifice, she wouldn't have another trial right away. So she picked a few tapes to stick in the pockets of her shorts and headed for the orchard to do some listening in a spot where she could lay on the ground and breathe in something living.

The tapes were continuously odd. There was an otherworldly kind of distortion to them, something that was lessened by the less-than-stellar sound quality of the junk tape deck's speaker, but was always present. It reminded her a bit of the whispers in the fog, or the voice in the back of her head. The Entity was always present, somehow. Even then. Maybe even more so then.

So these tapes… they'd just shown up? A tool they were given, or something that had been secreted to them through some surreptitious means?

A tape ended. The click of recognition was like a generator being completed, that's what it reminded her of. An alert that she'd succeeded.

Sam took the tape out, glanced at the next label, and put that one in instead. "Gimme what you got, Nikki, let's go," she muttered, closing her eyes again as the distorted static played over distant indistinct noises. The second label on the tape had been Hope. Might as well get a little more of that.

Studying the tapes was boring in a way - so much seemingly dead air - but she started to imagine the sort of people that had left the tapes. Sam grabbed herself a very convenient snack from their lovely impossible trees, and lay on the ground again with the next tape. She chucked the core of her apple into the woods. Then it was time for the next tape, on the road for a fifth skill of the day.

She was only a few minutes into it when she scowled.

Why was she getting the wet ankles thing? It was her day off. She'd been through the wringer last night; the Entity was supposed to let her soak up some positivity before it wrung her out again.

Groaning softly, Sam stood and brushed any dirt off of her shorts, grabbing up the tapes and the player, then walked back toward camp, trying to think of what skills would be useful. She could only think of the tapes, and tried to think of other useful things. Feather Fall. Yeah, that felt essential sometimes. And— before she let the thought 'Unwilling Survivor' finish in her head, she quickly thought of what she'd learned earlier. Meg's adrenaline. Hope. The one only labeled as We'll Make It (look, it was still the day after a sacrifice; she looked for things that might lighten the mood).

She needed to change her clothes. She was still dressed for training earlier, she should at least grab a jacket. And she didn't have her medkit, which was unfortunate.

Shit, should have remembered Claudette's—

Too late. She was already there, practically glowing, all pale skin and bright clothes in the blue light of the MacMillan estate. …Fuck. This is what she got for assuming she'd be off for one fucking night.

Notes: Hey y'all, guess who the killer is. XD And yeah, re:earlier: it will make sense.