Notes: This is a short one. But pretty necessary set-up.
They'd kept the brandy.
Not that anyone at camp had thought to ask her for the jar back - she'd snuck back into the cabin and replaced the spare tape player (kept the tapes, though) and no one had said a thing about it - but still. Principle of the thing.
Sam swore off drinking for a while. And the survivors had depleted a good amount of their stores, too, so no one was offering. The party had put a lot of them in a good mood, though. By the time the nightly trials rolled around, morale was high.
Maybe it was from a good night's sleep feeling close to someone, or maybe it was relief that no one seemed to be questioning her whereabouts, but Sam's performance in trials was surprisingly excellent. Two trials in one night, and two escapes. It helped that she was familiar with the killers and locations, and that she'd picked up a lot more skills since the last time she'd seen those killers and locations. (And she'd had good teammates who were in a good mood and had good tools.) Overall, just a good night.
She even had gifts in the morning for good performance: her beat up Chucks. Chuck Taylor All Star high-tops, lemon yellow, found at a Goodwill and worn through most of high school and her brief foray into college. They'd faded a fair amount from whenever they were brand new (long before she ever got them), but they were still hers. Still had remnants of sharpie doodles on the rubber trim, with one shoe having dingier laces than the other, thanks to that time she got gum on the laces of one and had to replace them. Another taste of home. Not to mention super-long knit socks that came well over her knee (the secret to wearing shorts or skirts in the fall and winter). It was nice to get a little more of her closet. But maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe it was just another sign that her stay here was permanent.
One day after the night with Legion. Two days. She found reasons to check the clearing, looking for items to help in trials (and finding them, it wasn't a completely fabricated excuse), and letting her gaze linger on the tree line. Wondering. Killers could do a thing, sometimes. She'd seen it more than once, now, but would always associate it with her first trial with Frank: something the survivors called standing stealthy. Which was… an interesting name for it. Holding still until their light and heartbeat went away. Creating a false sense of security. Sam could only assume that, if he ever was there, he was doing that. Watching. Waiting. Not moving. Just a silent not-quite-malevolent presence.
If he was there at all, that was. She could be totally imagining it. Just staring very intensely at nothing. Very possible. The only upside of that was that no one was there to see her looking like a complete idiot.
She'd lingered on finishing the Lost Tapes. She wanted an excuse to keep the player. She… may have listened to the mixtapes again. It was so hard to resist! Real music, music she liked, music that made her want to fight. Listening to Frank's tape before trials gave her a little surge of energy, a touch of viciousness. And Julie's may have been a little gloomy, but it was soothing in a way. Then again, there had definitely been points in her life where crying herself to sleep had been very soothing, so… Ah. Yeah… good times, those… High school had been… some kind of roller coaster.
Over the course of just a couple days she figured out where and when were the best places for privacy where she could listen to tapes in peace. Dawn was good, especially on the downstream end of the river by the fog (and the water was nice for sensations and nice for hiding noise from the tapes), and the far end of the meadow in the clearing when it was empty, and the orchard late late at night. It was good that sleep was optional, because her hours were erratic.
She didn't actually take a chance to listen to the titled tapes for a few days. She'd snuck back into the storeroom to pick up more tapes, just once. Meant to look for Susie and Joey, but when she got spooked and had to leave quick, she ended up grabbing a spindly-doodled one and another Project Awakening.
The first Project Awakening tape, once she got a chance to listen to it, was a lot like some of the nameless Lost Tapes: empty air. White noise. Occasional sounds like scratching or warped tape. Tapping. Something that might have been breath, though it was hard to tell. She had to hold the player up to her ear as she sat at the river's edge, bare legs half-submerged in the running water.
Whatever it was, it didn't impart any new knowledge, even when she listened to the whole thing. Just made her feel uneasy. Twitchy. …A little paranoid. And yet she pressed on.
When the first tape ended, she wasn't entirely sure what she'd listened to. Nothing? It had been pretty useless. So she went on to the next.
"Are you very comfortable, Mr. Dawson? …Given that your eyes are still moving, I'll take that as a yes. …Perhaps we'd do best simply confirming statements from the testimony you wrote before the last round of treatment. Blink once for yes, twice for no."
It didn't get any better from there.
It was vague at first, the detached voice of the… proctor? What was he, anyway? The man reading out the statement. It started with a simple timeline, an explanation of terms for some kind of experiment.
Very quickly Sam started to hear that same inference on the tape. The white noise, the scratching. The breathing. Tapping. Static. It was hard to concentrate on the words. She felt a humming, buzzing sort of sensation on her skin, in her head. A blankness that made it hard to recall the words even seconds after hearing them.
She may have flipped the tape more than once.
She may have listened to it more than once.
She couldn't remember.
Her head was full of tapping and scratching and breathing and static. Buzzing. Frayed wires.
Sam slipped out of herself for a moment. Or maybe longer than a moment. She wasn't sure where she went, she just detached from her body, from her thoughts, and was lost. Memories hovered at the edge of her mind but nothing could connect. Dead air.
She finally snapped back into it when the tape player slipped from her hands and splashed into the water.
"Shit—"
The river wasn't deep where she was, there were plenty of rocks in the way to catch anything moving downstream: she should be able to find it easily. And maybe she could have, earlier in the day.
When had dusk come and gone? How long had she been listening, playing the same tape over and over again?
At long last her sluggish responses seemed to mend. Too late, the unease crept in, raising the hair on the back of her neck. She was glad the speaker was underwater. Maybe it would be better if it stayed there.
…But then she'd be caught out for stealing the tapes to begin with. She'd been warned of this, hadn't she? Adam had said the spindly-legged tape would 'corrupt the mind.' She'd just assumed it was that tape alone.
Her thoughts were still a bit scattered, a little hard to catch on to and follow through to a conclusion, as Sam stood up in the water and started poking at the riverbed with her feet to find the cassette player.
It took a second to realize that the cool feeling creeping up her legs wasn't the water rising. It was the call for a trial.
Fuck.
Notes: And now we transition to a bit of whump, friends.