In the gilded courtyard of a hotel he couldn't afford, the man drained his last Scotch and considered his mortality. He was a young man in the medical sense, but there was grey in his black hair and no Slow-Tox could help the drag in his cheeks, because age hadn't put it there. Age had nothing to do with Chris McLean, but still he sat there, and thought about dying.

He was ruined.

Chris raised his fist to his forehead and groaned under his breath. God damn it all, he was ruined. He was done. This went beyond losing Total Drama, it went beyond even jail. When the cops found out, they'd put him in front of a jury who would put him the chair. If the public got wind, when the public got wind... He closed his eyes and tried not to see himself beaten and bloodied in a ditch, or his legs dangling down from the branches of a bent tree. Whatever was to be the nail, he was a man condemned to the coffin. It was a matter of time.

"Evening."

Chris opened his eyes again, towards the floor where a pair of gemmed heels glinted up at him. He raised himself up and there stood a dark-skinned girl with an earnest, immaculate smile. She looked perfectly suited to the glamorous old lobby in a shapely black dress, a sparkling web of diamonds over her shoulders like a cape. She repeated slowly, as though he were stupid, "Good evening!"

"Yeah, hi..." said Chris. He was less taken with the glitzy little sprite and more worried by her implication. Women in diamond capes wouldn't have any interest in someone like him, unless they recognized him from the show. And for the first time in his life, he really didn't want that.

"Before you speak, know that I know you're Chris McLean," said the woman, dashing Chris' hopes. "And I know about the contents of that bag you have, in the room upstairs... now don't look at me like that."

"It's only..." Chris said, but she cut him off. They might've looked strange, but no one seemed to be looking.

"It's only me," she said back. "Me. Death."

The kerfuffle of drinks being poured and people chuckling continued around him unabated. She might've just offered him a cigarette. "The Great Equalizer. The End. The Reaper," continued the woman, ticking off her manicured fingers. "All those names. I am she, and she is me. You and I were thinking about each other, just now."

The woman didn't look like Death. She carried no scythe, and she was far from bones. Even the black she wore seemed lively, vivacious. She looked somehow familiar too, but Chris couldn't say from where. He was finding it hard to concentrate on her, or anything, as his head was suddenly aching terribly.

Chris was dumbstruck and hadn't invited Death to sit down, so she helped herself to the empty stool next to him. She didn't take her eyes off him to adjust her web or shoo away the bartender. When at last he found his voice, he said, "Look, I don't know what you're... But look, whatever you're talking about, 'a bag upstairs' or..."

He was just remembering that he was full of Scotch and baby aspirin. Maybe that was why Death was here. But she only snorted at him playfully, as though he'd just said something very funny. How could she have known about the valley? How had word already gotten out?

"Who else knows?"

He forced the haze from his voice and the woman - Death - lofted her brows. He forced his pained eyes into hers and demanded of her, "Tell me."

"No one, for right now. And you don't need to worry," she added, somewhat coldly. "I'm not here for you."

"Dude, you can stop being weird now," Chris retorted, now feeling impatient as well as incredibly nauseous. And fuck, his head was hurting...

His irritation only seemed to encourage her. "It isn't weird to know what I know," she chirped. She took a frank sip of a drink sitting before her, which Chris hadn't noticed a second ago. "You and your father were careless. I'm here to help with that."

Chris snarled, "Keep your voice down," but there was no venom, no urgency. Whoever this chick was, whoever she claimed to be... all that mattered was that people on the outside knew what had happened at Ephraim Ridge. And suddenly the thoughts of death were back, of rats in ditches and his purple body dangling from a rope. He might've sobbed if she hadn't stopped him.

"These fucking rubes don't know anything yet," said Death suddenly, as if hearing his thoughts. Now she too seemed impatient, but her smile had deepened as well. She looked uncanny, her lovely face no longer looked natural. Now it looked like a mask.

"Don't you understand," she asked. "Don't you see, I'm here offering you salvation? A way out?"

And without another word, she whipped the diamonds from her shoulders in an odd jerk, like a twitch. Chris stared, and looked around vaguely at the few other patrons in the bar. None of them were paying any attention. Maybe they had all seen stranger in their time here, in this hotel at the end of the world. No one here was just vacationing, he knew. When he took flight from the Ridge, from what his father had done, he called in every last favor he could to get a room here, and only just made it. This hotel was a hiding place, a safe house for the famous, for when the tides turned. It only occurred to him then how odd it was that this woman was able to find him here.

"How did you know-"

"I told you, I'm Death," she retorted. "I know everything."

The woman winked, stood, and draped her diamond-web over his shoulders. She took care to caress his bare forearms as he did so. Chris was surprised to find how warm and alive and eager the hands of Death felt.

Eleven months ago, if a woman wearing a small fortune and claiming to be Death had approached him in a hotel bar, he wouldn't have sat there and entertained her. But Chris McLean no longer knew what was real and what wasn't, and that was nothing to do with the whiskey in him.

"Whatever you're offering," he mumbled. "I don't want it."

"Well I'm not offering you a choice."

"You're weird," he slurred finally. Behind him, Death nodded at the bartender and he took their glasses away. "You're a weird little lady."

"Yet you invited me in, time and time again," whispered Death, who was helping him awkwardly to his feet. The marble floor was spinning in a dull, white haze beneath him. He felt that he might fall into its blankness at any moment and never land; just fall, forever and ever.

Nothing was said by anyone as Death walked him to the door, his feet trembling and diamonds rattling. Even the bartender barely looked up, even though Chris hadn't paid for his drinks.

"Did he... d-did you..." Chris tongue was failing him. The night outside was cold and smoggy. "Did you have me drugged?"

"You invited me in, Chris McLean," chirped Death, repeating herself. "You brought me to that shit-hole and you handed me... children..." Her voice rose as they walked through the parking garage. Cars everywhere, people here and there, but no one so much as glanced at them. "Those were children that you offered me. You and your father."

She sounded a horrible blend of fierce and melodic, like she were singing his crimes to the angels.

"They... were criminals. And I just... wanted to make... Wait, what did you do to my dad?"

They were approaching an armored van which, once again, Chris had failed to notice a second ago. The back door was open and an empty-faced man in a suit was standing beside it, waiting to receive him.

"Wha'd you do..." Chris tried to pull away from her and ate shit on the concrete. "No!"

"Be still," crooned Death, or whoever she was. "I'm not here for you, as I said. Not like that. We need you alive, for the moment. I shouldn't tell you this, but you're our very last chance."

Chris McLean thrashed and flopped inside his leaden muscles, his liquid bones. His vision blurred as the woman looked at him through the tinted window, turning his room key over in her hands.

Darkness was at the corners of his vision. It spread and beckoned him as he felt the car rumble to life, out of the garage, and away. The woman turned on her heel back to the hotel, towards the contents of the bag in the room Chris had been staying in, now quite abandoned. He would not be returning for his possessions.

Thirty minutes later, miles away from the hotel, and even further from Ephraim Ridge, someone in an executive suite received a phone call.

"I have the applications," Death said to them. "Looks like all sixteen are here. So we have our proof, that these kids existed."

The executive cleared their throat and corrected her, "Exist, madam. 'Lost' does not mean 'gone'. "

"You think they're still alive?"

"Enough are, surely," said the executive. "Some of the staff survived, like the chef. We have him in custody. There's only one confirmed death among the cast."

"Those poor kids, I bet they ran," said Death. "I bet they think the nightmare is finally over."

"It can be," said the executive in earnest. They too sounded sympathetic, only slightly. "I imagine they'll cooperate, once we find them. And we will find them, Sierra. We will."