"Not fast enough," Yun-Jin scoffed. "Like this. Snap your head with your hips."
Laurie attempted the move again, this time freezing her pelvis in place as her arms and head moved. It was a sad imitation of the way Yui did it beside her.
"No! You look like a corpse," Yun-Jin cried. "It's not hard!"
"Well, then why don't you do it?" Yui asked cooly, unimpressed with how the flashy producer decided to butt into their fun.
"I've been watching idols train for years, sweetie. I know what I'm talking about. And you aren't giving her good feedback."
Yui rolled her eyes and shook her head at the older woman's insistence. "It's not an 'idol dance,' it's just for fun!"
Nea, seated on the log bench next to Zarina, buried her head in her hands. Jane wasn't entirely sure why the Swede hated Yui's dances so much, although she heard her mutter something to herself about "can't escape tick tock in hell," whatever that meant.
"I don't know what I'm doing," Laurie said in dismay. "It looks cool when Yui does it."
"She's not exactly helping," Yui muttered under her breath, giving Laurie a pat on her shoulder.
"It would be easier with music," Yun-Jin reluctantly admitted with a toss of her vibrant hair.
Kate looked up from the patch she was applying to the sleeping bag in her lap and looked like she wanted to say something before closing her mouth, shifting closer to David sitting beside her. He said something only she could hear, and she shook her head with a weary smile. "I don't think she wants my kind of music, darlin'."
"Correct." Yun-Jin huffed, but shrugged. "I mean, if you want to. But I'm not sure it would help...that much." She gave Laurie an exasperated look, and the blonde gave a nervous grin between the two women.
"I'll keep trying!"
Yui smiled, cocking her head towards herself to get Laurie's attention. "Watch me again. You'll get it."
Jane tore her eyes away from the group and moved closer to the fire, joining Nea and Zarina on the bench. "How are you ladies doing?"
Zarina gave her a funny look. "Looking for gossip, Jane?"
"Me?! Of course not! Just checking in on everyone. Is that so wrong?"
"Who are you trying to get dirt on?" Nea asked mildly, picking at something beneath her fingernails.
Jane's faux frown turned upward into a smile. "What do you have for me?"
Nea cocked her head and smirked as she met Jane's eyes. "Gotcha."
"Hmph." Jane crossed her legs and glared at the younger woman. "It's not like we have anything else to talk about."
"We have ways to prepare for the next trial," Zarina offered. "Have you seen Tapp's book?" When Jane gave her a curious look, Zarina smiled wryly. "He has a notebook with info on all the killers. Whole pages." She looked over her shoulder to make sure he wasn't nearby. "It does look a little...um, disorganized, but it has been helpful. I've been helping him with a new page for the Pig; apparently he tore his first version out and had to start over."
"Ugh, I don't care about them!" Jane cried out in annoyance. "Why would they have anything interesting to say beyond 'graaagh' and 'boo!?'"
Zarina shook her head. "I think you're limiting yourself. They were brought here for a reason just like the rest of us. Some of them are intelligent enough to maybe give us an understanding of why, if we can convince them. We can't get them on our side, but we might be able to piece together what we're here for."
"I think you're giving them waytoo much credit. Frankly, it's stupid to think there's a reason for all of this," Nea muttered with a glare. "We're here because we're here. No more, no less. We just have to play the game we're offered. Just hope it gets us closer to getting out." Her brows furrowed deeper as she threw something into the fire in preparation for whenever her turn was next. "Don't be dumb."
"I suppose you know exactly what the Entity has planned, hmm?" Jane remarked cooly before Zarina shot them both a warning look.
"I don't have to," Nea sneered. "But you're awfully curious about information that doesn't matter, anyway."
Zarina held up her hands. "No arguing. We're on the same side."
The women on either side of her gave one another a glare before returning their gazes to the fire. Zarina pursed her lips - Nea wasn't mad at Jane, really, but at whoever let it loose within Jane's earshot that she was one of the first people to use the tent for activities other than sleeping. That was a bit of gossip Jane didn't let go of for a while, chasing Nea up and down the campfire with as much fervor as one of their pursuers to try to get her to spill everything. "If you want to talk about us," Zarina said with an exasperated sigh, "why not talk to Dwight? He'll give you the lowdown on anyone you want."
"Dwight?" Jane scoffed, before considering the question seriously. "What do we even know about our intrepid leader?"
Nea snorted and shrugged. "Other than his obvious need for a xan?"
"Don't pick on him," a soft voice piped up from behind them. The three women turned their heads in surprise to see Claudette walking up to join them with a bundle of dried flowers in her hand, rubbing the closed fist with her other hand in discomfort as they stared at her. "Um...not that you are."
"We aren't. Just talking." Zarina nudged Nea to make room, but Claudette shook her head.
"I'm okay." She gestured with the blooms in her hand. "Has anyone seen him, actually? Or Jake? These are ready to make into a salve and I told them I'd give it to them next."
"I think he's in a trial," Nea replied, before she snapped her mouth shut with an overly self-conscious expression that piqued Jane's interest. "Jake is."
Claudette, too, made a strange face, but the two girls' eyes didn't quite meet. "Okay. Thanks. If you see them and I'm gone, just tell them I was looking for them. I'll just...leave these with Ace."
As she walked away, Zarina gave Nea a comforting pat on the back.
Jane leaned forward with sparkling eyes. "Care to tell me what's going on there? I promise, I have lots of advice I can give you if it's - "
"Piss off, Romero," David interrupted gruffly, reminding the women of his presence and snapping their attention to him. Jane thought, for a moment, that his muttered warning was out of concern from Kate, but she had apparently fallen asleep at his side.
"Not necessary, King," Nea insisted under her breath, but she didn't look angry.
"S'fine if yeh wanna chinwag," he grumbled, his eyes sharp as he stared at Jane. "But don't push."
Jane tilted her head, appraising him carefully. The blonde at his side really did a number on him. She smiled, just a little amused, before she looked back to Nea's purposefully turned back. "Fair enough. I'm sorry, Nea."
Nea grumbled something in response. It was enough for Jane to move on.
"Alright. What sorts of interesting things are in that silly book, then, if you want to talk about it?"
"Here, hang on." Zarina stood and walked to one of the tents where a dark brown messenger bag sat that everyone recognized as Tapp's. She pulled a tattered, overstuffed notebook out and returned to the log, looking around her to see if the detective was around. "I think he's in a trial, but he won't mind." She took a seat, opening the book to a page that appeared to have a signed photograph of one of the killers stained in blood. The pretty man with carefully coiffed hair. "We already know some of them can speak. Even if they choose not to most of the time. Most of them."
Despite herself, Nea looked over to the page and made a face. "Ugh, he doesn't shut up."
"Right. And these guys…" Zarina turned a few pages back to a group of newspaper clippings about a place called Mount Ormond and a few hastily scrawled notes beside a sketch of a large-eyed girl. "Jeff helped on this one. They can speak, but usually only to each other."
"S'that the kids?" David pulled Kate's waist a little closer to him as he frowned. "Weird lot."
Jane's brow furrowed. "Kids?"
"The youngest one probably isn't even out of high school," Zarina said grimly, pointing at one of the notes. "Jeff said he felt weird giving us their names, but...I guess he knows a little bit about them. The taller girl and bigger boy are probably close to Steve's age, but the skinny one with the grinning mask is a little older."
Jane frowned, the thought giving her a sad emptiness even as a shiver ran down her spine. "Damn. Anyone else?"
"Well..the one with a gun mutters and chuckles to himself. The masked man - the Ghostface, I think everyone calls him? He doesn't talk often, but I've definitely heard him taunting us. Generally, the more human looking, the more likely they can speak. But there are enough exceptions that I can't say that's a hard and fast rule, either." She flipped the pages, first to a series of notes about the axe-wielding woman, then to a page that appeared to be written in delicate, slanted cursive. "The Shape -" Zarina's eyes flicked to Laurie as she lowered her voice "- doesn't speak at all. Even though he looks human. But the thing on his head is a mask, so we don't know if it's by choice."
"What about that big guy?"
"The Oni?"
"No. The reeeeally big guy."
Zarina's face screwed up. "Uh...the one with the zombies? I don't know if I'd count him in the list."
"He's just tall," Jane insisted.
"I guess. Jill and Chris say they've heard him say something, but no one else."
"Does she count?"
Zarina stopped at the page she landed on, one with little information other than a crude drawing of a girl with sharp spikes in her shoulder and a pressed red leaf from one of the trial locations. "Her? Well, Adam and Yui have heard her. Yui says she cries and screams, mostly." Zarina sighed softly before she pressed her lips together. "I feel a little bad for her; scary as she is."
Jane tapped her finger to her chin, thinking. "So only a few of us have heard them, hm?"
"They pick favorites, we think. But we're also not sure why we can understand each other at all, for some of them."
"What do you mean?"
"Nea."
Her hair swished under her beanie as she turned her head to look at Zarina.
"What language are we speaking right now?"
She opened her mouth, then shut it. "Uh...I don't know. Sometimes it sounds like Swedish. But I don't think anyone here but me speaks it. I just…know what you're saying."
Zarina nodded. "Right. We can all understand each other. No matter what our native tongue is. But for them," she tapped on the pages of the notebook, "it's a little random. If you spoke their language back in reality, you can understand them a bit, but even that isn't always true." She shrugged. "It might be up to what they knew when they were alive. Might just be up to the whims of the Entity."
Jane also gave a shrug. "Ace and I haven't heard anything you haven't. No Spanish speakers here, I guess."
"Well, let's not hope for anyone new," Zarina said grimly, shutting the book.
A loud yawn got Nea's attention as she looked back to the fire. Steve approached the group, shaking the sleep out of his eyes and fluffing his hair before sitting against the log bench.
"You can sit up here if you'd like, dear," Zarina offered.
He shook his head. "Nah. Nah. I'm okay down here. Just had to, uh...swap with the next crew who wanted the tent." Jane glanced at the tent that Nancy and Jonathan entered as he spoke.
With another shake of his hair, Steve stretched his arms above his head, looking after Claire and Cheryl talking quietly with each other near Ace's blanket. With a tap at Nea's knee, he nodded at the pair of girls. "You think I have a chance with either of 'em?"
Nea looked over to where he indicated, then looked back with a deadpan stare. "Steven, they're lesbians."
"Oh." His eyebrows rose, then scrunched together. "Exclusively?"
"That's what that word means."
"I don't know, I think they're a little more flexible than that," Jane mused, even as the girls smiled at each other with some shared secret.
"Most of us have had to be more flexible than usual," Nea muttered under her breath before she looked up and stood with a jolt. A strange, echoey scream came from the edge of the woods. That in itself happened frequently enough, but Nea ran to the noise regardless with sudden haste.
Sputtering coughs and wheezes gurgled out of the body that burned into the campground, and Nea knelt down to help Feng's head off the ground. Feng only screamed in response, arms struggling against an unknown enemy. Nea grasped the flailing girl's wrists with a sharp "Stop!" Her movements gradually slowed, eyes still wild and wide, as Nea hushed her. "Hey. It's me, dumbass. You're back."
Feng choked out more blood as her wounds began to heal.
Nea gripped her hand tightly. "Do you want something to help?"
Feng nearly responded before another body burned in. Quentin, his eyes fearful under his sweat-soaked hair. With a growl of rage, Feng struggled into a position where she could stand, despite Nea's protests. With a determined fury, Feng stormed towards the teenager with her palm raised. Quentin turned his head just in time for her hand to connect with his face with a sudden clap that drew several pairs of bewildered eyes to where Feng screamed at him.
"You're a fucking asshole!"
Quentin gripped his red cheek with one hand, anger quickly overtaking his hurt expression. "I couldn't -"
"Bullshit! You could've tried blinding him! But nooo, you had to leave me!"
Quentin's volume rose over hers, fists balled. "I couldn't do a damn thing and you know it!"
"Bull! Shit!" Feng wiped the blood from her mouth and made a motion like she was about to hit him again, but Nea had her arms in hand just as Steve ran up behind Quentin in case he had to intervene.
Nea looked sharply between the two of them, noting their teammates weren't back. "What happened?"
"He fucking left me!" Feng's voice rose to a shriek as she bared her teeth at Quentin, frustration causing her body to shake even as Nea slipped her hand in hers. "He saw that scissor handed fucker on me and didn't do shit!"
"I couldn't do a goddamn thing!" Quentin's frame shook too, and Steve was careful to make sure the younger boy knew he was behind him before touching his shoulder. Even so, Quentin jerked away with an angry growl and directed his glare back at him. "Don't touch me!"
"Hey." Nea's voice was low and quiet as she said something to Feng. The bloodied and bruised girl kept her angry gaze on the two boys for a few seconds more before she sniffed, spat a red glob at Quentin's feet, and staggered away towards Claudette to get something for the pain as her body restructured itself. Nea followed her, muttering an apology to Quentin that was only answered with silence.
Quentin kept his face turned away from Steve as his breathing heaved, a low shudder coming through his ribs.
"She'll, uh...she'll cool off," Steve said uncertainly. "She doesn't mean it."
"I deserved that." Quentin kicked the dirt. "I could've gotten her."
"Dude, you couldn't have pulled her out from under him."
"I just watched it happen!" The dark haired boy scratched at his scalp with an intense fervor. "I could've distracted him. I could've used this stupid thing," he seethed, slamming his flashlight onto the ground. "But I just...I couldn't...I needed to get out." He touched his cheek again, gritting his teeth. "I had to get away from him."
A rush of wind signaled more returns. Jake, this time, with Bill close behind. Jake gave Quentin a silent, annoyed look. He walked back to his corner of the woods, although his eyes remained fixed on Nea holding Feng on her feet. Bill just shrugged and headed for Ace's table with a pack of cards in hand.
With a frown, Steve looked between Quentin's back and the several eyes now watching them from the fire. "C'mon, man," he muttered. "It's over." He paused. "I've got the Atari right now. You wanna use it for a bit?"
Quentin scoffed and looked back with a roll of his eyes, but Steve's earnest smile gave him a reason not to keep shouting. "It's not a fucking Atari," he muttered, following his friend back to the fire.
"Whatever. Just take a break."
The boys walked back to the tents to grab the Gameboy, passing Jane's watchful stare. Laurie broke away from Yun-Jin and Yui to join them, her eyes filled with concern as she said something to Quentin. Quentin gave Steve a look, but nodded his head and allowed Laurie to tentatively reach her fingers out to his and brush them briefly. She said something else with a nod as she followed the boys to the large tent, glancing back to Cheryl and Claire and beckoning them to join them.
A smile played on Zarina's lips as the young survivors piled into the tent, presumably to talk and share the highly sought-after toy. She reminded herself to look for batteries for the handheld next trial. It would break eventually. But just a moment of happy distraction that kept them around was worth keeping as long as they could.
Jane's head tilted as she examined the notes on the page with a white, ghostly face scribbled in the center. One scrawled note near the end was the same handwriting as the one on the Legion page. Jeff's, presumably.
The Ghostface was a serial killer in the states when I was a kid. He only showed up on the news once he disappeared. Maybe he disappeared here.
A few sentences in Tapp's scratch. Then, at the very bottom, a single sentence that made her eyebrows perk up.
He's leaving one of us alone.
"Rina. Do you know who this is?"
Zarina's face wrinkled as she looked over onto the page. "Ugh. Something about him reminds me of the assholes I used to work with." She paused. "Ghostface, though, right?"
"No, no." Jane pointed to the final note. "This. Who?"
Zarina pursed her lips and looked around her. "Jane, if I tell you, you'll tell everyone."
"I won't! I just want to know." Jane narrowed her eyes. "And if it's obvious, we'll all know eventually, right?"
With a calculated expression, Zarina tapped on her chin with her fingertip. "If I tell you, will you help me collect information next trial we're in together? Gather anything that looks like news, photos?"
"Yes. Yes! Just whisper, whisper." Jane beckoned the other woman closer to her tilted head.
Zarina sighed with a worried expression, but shifted closer to breathe the answer in Jane's ear. "...but you can't say anything to anyone. Okay?"
Jane stared across the fire, where the small figure stood by the trees, pulling on her braids. "Her, huh?"
"I was in a trial with her last time. He saw her - I know he saw her - but he didn't touch her. Just stared. And he was sneaky, too. Killed two of us but somehow kept out of her sight."
The redhead by the woods looked around herself nervously as if she thought someone would jump out behind her.
"I wonder why," Jane murmured as she rubbed her lower lip in thought. "I wonder if she'd tell anyone."