XXVI: Day Six, Evening & Night.
Soran Faerber, 18
Applicant #8
Truth be told, he doesn't know if Icarus is coming back.
It's slightly worrying. It's really worrying that he thinks it's worrying.
It's not so much himself that he's concerned with, more along the lines of what stupid thing Icarus could get himself into while he's doing nothing but avoiding his own problems. A problem that Soran very much created.
He's not ashamed of that. It was getting kind of annoying having to deal with it when Icarus clearly had no handle on his own emotions, no way to figure out which way was up. It would be better if Soran thought he helped, really, because he may have just in fact made it worse. As of right now it's certainly appearing that way, because it's been close to twelve hours and Icarus is still gone.
He does that a lot, he's realized. Ruin things. It's sort of a problem.
He tries to sleep for most of it but keeps hearing things, distant ones that keep him from going under fully. Out in the back room, more from the front. Almost every time he starts pacing around the perimeter, looking at things that aren't the source of noise but could've been, if he was well and properly insane. More than once he thinks he sees things flickering out of the corner of his eye.
Maybe he is going insane.
He hears another noise and peels himself from the floor, the routine already growing old. Stares at the cabinets in the middle room like they're going to have changed, and enters the front room once again. He sees the silhouette from afar but almost doesn't make sense of it, thinks it's Icarus until even the last second.
They turn around.
It's very decidedly not Icarus.
"Oh, there you are," the man says. "I was starting to think the tracking was a little off."
This is one of the men standing near Carnelia's side at the front of that room, when everything went to hell in the first place. Soran doesn't remember him looking so much like the boogeyman before.
"You found me," he announces. "Congratulations."
"You know, I didn't think any kid of Quinn's would be this ballsy."
"Surprise," he says flatly, foot already inching back. He has no fucking weapon, why was he not carrying something around this whole time?
Lesson learned.
"Is the other one here too?" the man asks. "Without the bracelet keeping track of him is a little dicey."
"I have about as much fucking clue about his whereabouts as you do," he spits, angry at his own stupidity and this random asshole and just the whole situation, really. He considers himself decently tall, strong enough, but this guy looks like he comes from a race of giants. That probably means his odds aren't the greatest if he's here to kill him.
Why the hell else would he be here?
Fuck it.
He dives away, towards the back room as quickly as he can manage, nearly slipping over the floor and tripping in his haste to get there. He just needs to get something, anything, no matter what it may be.
He needs to be able to defend himself.
And he gets there, that's for sure. His fingers close around the wrench first, his last real choice but the only one close enough.
A hand locks around the back of his jacket, the other one around his arm, and throws him to the ground like a doll.
He hits the concrete so hard he swears he feels some it crumble beneath him, like that's a thing that just regularly happens, and his head cracks into the ground for good measure, distorted stars flitting in and out of his vision. A foot gets planted on his chest, a heavy one, no surprise there. The man leans down over him, fuck fuck his chest is going to collapse from that alone, this isn't good.
By some miracle he managed to hold onto the wrench, but now the man is grabbing a hold of his fingers. Pulling, pulling—
Two of his fingers give way and crack in more than one place. He bites down on his tongue until blood fills his mouth, the wrench clattering to the floor.
That's not so good.
"Tell me where he is," he says.
"I told you, I don't fucking know," he manages, head and fingers throbbing. His whole body is throbbing, really.
"Try again."
"I don't know. Why the fuck do you care?"
"I was hoping for a two for one deal here, you know—"
He throws himself up, just enough to dislodge the heavy weight of the foot against his chest. He fumbles for the wrench again, fingers screaming in protest as they bump against it.
The man pulls something from his back. A sword. For fuck's sake, he really though the medieval era practices were over in this godforsaken country.
He abandons the wrench just in time to throw his arms up over his face, as the sword comes down. The blade bites into the soft inner skin of his arms, slicing open and immediately spilling blood down onto his face. Once, twice, three times. There's so much blood in his mouth it's threatening to choke him. He raises the sword again - Soran sees his opportunity, through the ribbons of his own skin peeking out of the tears in his jacket, and grabs onto the edge of the sword with his hand. It's already ruined anyway, no point to it now. He tugs at it, pulling furiously until he gains enough leverage to tear it away, throwing it clear across the room. He attempts to roll after it but doesn't get anywhere near close before he lifts him up again by the collar of his jacket like he's a damned kitten.
The sword is gone, but there's a knife in his hand.
Apparently he didn't get enough training to account for that.
Soran struggles, but there's no point. He's not getting away from him, strong as he is.
The knife plunges into his side. Everything fades inward, to that single point of pain.
He's not sure if he screams - it sounds like it, and he must, judging by the look on the bastard's face. There's so much satisfaction there he could be sick.
The man releases him and shoves him back. Soran stumbles into the wall with the knife still buried hilt deep between his ribs, a scream threatening to escape every time he inhales. It hurts. Of course it fucking hurts. Why would he think it wouldn't?
"Try again," he says. "Tell me where he is."
He stays silent, knowing that he's got two options for opening his mouth, and it's either another scream is coming out, or an entire mouthful of blood. Neither are particularly appealing options. He wraps his hands around the hilt of the knife and pulls; blood spurts from the wound as it comes free from his side, soaking into his shirt and jacket in seconds.
He lobs it back into the darkness of the second room. He'd rather bleed out than let him have it again.
This time when he approaches Soran doesn't even bother moving. What the hell would he do at this point, except prolong it? His arms are on fire, his side even worse. His legs have turned to gelatin certainly from the blood-loss, or perhaps how bad everything just hurts.
His shoulders are suddenly on the receiving end of a vice tight grip as the man slams him up against the wall and then wraps both massive hands around his throat. He struggles - futile, and then attempts to kick at him but his legs just won't fucking cooperate. Nothing will. The hands squeeze tighter, tighter. He tries to inhale and nothing happens.
He couldn't breathe.
It was quite a terrifying thing, to suck in a breath of air and get nothing in return. His throat burned like someone had dropped ashes down it, like the hands around it was on fire. Everything was swimming, his vision wavering like the man trying to choke the life out of him was a mirage in the desert, except he wasn't. Soran couldn't get that lucky. He was real, and Soran knew it because everything fucking hurt, and he could feel everywhere he was bleeding, and how little air he had left—
He throws a hand up, scrabbling at the man's face. He claws towards his eyes, the whites of them the only glaringly obvious weakness he could see. The man grunts, hands tightening. Soran was certain his head was about to pop off like a dandelion picked by a child, all the way across the room. Instead he rears back, jerking his face away from Soran's reaching hands, and pulled the both of them from the wall. He only gets one feeble, useless breath in before the man pulls him away and then slams him up against the wall again, harder than the first time. So hard that he feels his head cave the weakened plastered in, black bursting in ugly spots across his vision. He goes completely limp, dazed, and even the frantic need for air can't hit him strong enough to get him to move. His arms won't move. Nothing will.
He can't breathe, and he needs to. But he can't.
God, this is really how he's going to die, isn't it? In the middle of fucking nowhere, choked to death by this bastard because he won't risk letting go long enough to search for the knife.
He can hardly see him, anymore, so maybe it doesn't matter. His vision is fading inwards.
He hears a yell from very far away, and then a hoarse shout just in front of him. Something splatters across his face, burning nearly as bad as the pain.
Soran doesn't recognize the feeling of the hands releasing him, but he recognizes the ground.
He crumples into it face-first, unfortunately for him, and throwing a hand out to stop his progress does nothing when he's already there. The man in front of him is gone, although he can still hear the shouting. He tries to roll over and finally his vision does go black, his body continuing down the path into unconsciousness. He clings to any light he can see, desperately, focuses on the noise. It's just so much yelling.
He can't make any fucking sense of it.
In the little bit of light he can see two shapes moving, though. They nearly look like one, spinning wildly around each other. That's where the shouting's coming from. Something shatters, and he feels the pieces of whatever it is rain down over his feet.
"—fuck. Soran!"
There's only one person in the entire world that would be shouting his name right now.
He doesn't roll over, but he plants a hand under himself and pushes up. He still feels like he could pass out, the dizziness refusing to fade, but he looks up towards the movement, the source of the sound.
It would be hard not to recognize Icarus, even on a bad day. This is a pretty terrible day. He would never say Icarus is small but he looks it, next to this guy. There's glass all over the floor, the muted green of the bottle, and the man's shoulder is bleeding profusely. Soran smears a hand through the blood, sticky all over his face.
God, Icarus just saved his life. He's never gonna live that one down.
He's still shouting, though. There's nowhere to go in this room, not unless he abandons Soran to this man's whims and runs for it, which is something he would have initially bet on Icarus doing in the first place, instead of getting involved.
Hell, he didn't think he was coming back at all.
He crawls forward, knees catching on the pavement. They're going at each other with their fists, for christ's sake, and Soran's learned first hand that Icarus doesn't know how to throw a punch to save his life. The damage to his face, or the lack thereof, is living proof of that. He fumbles for a chunk of the bottle, closing his fingers around the biggest one he can find. There's no way he has time to look for the knife. He half-watches as the man takes Icarus straight to the ground. He knows how crushing the weight is.
Soran has no chance at getting up, but he brings the glass down into the back of the man's leg and pulls.
There's an immediate spurt and gush of blood as he drags the glass down, from the back of the knee to the middle of his calf. It cuts a path down the center of his leg, nearly to the ankle. He howls in pain, rearing backwards. Soran sees the hands coming back for him and forces himself to stay put, fingers held tight to the glass.
His hand slams into his chest. It already hurts, is aching fiercely with the lack of air, and he swears he feels something crack.
There's no choice in the matter when he finally loses his grip on the glass, fingers slippery with blood. The man grabs him by the shoulder and slams him into the ground, which is possibly even worse than the wall. He can't wiggle free, can't do much of anything other than watch the very manic glint in his eye, the one that glances away for a too-long second.
He can see Icarus when he turns his head to follow, back on his feet.
"Fuck, don't let him move!"
He has absolutely fuck-all idea about what that's meant to be about, but clearly the man does. He pushes himself off of Soran, lunging off of him only a meter before it clicks. Soran grabs his arm and yanks him back down, locks an arm around his shoulders to keep him there as the man's weight collapses back on top of him. He can see nothing at all then, except the fabric of the man's shirt scratching at his face as he struggles to free himself.
But he hears it, the same way he's heard everything. The slick swing of the knife, the heavy thud of it connecting with flesh. The sharp, horrific scream that sounds nothing like the man above him but certainly has to be. The warm, wet splatter of blood again, all over the ground. He can still feel it dripping from his burning side, the inside of his arms. It's all fading into one noise, a symphony of all the awful things he hadn't imagined happening up until ten minutes ago.
He hears it, again and again, until the man goes limp on top of him. He sees only a sliver of Icarus stumbling away and then dropping to the ground like his legs have stopped working. The knife goes clattering to the ground between them. Soran rolls free of the dead weight of the body, reacquainting his face with the ground.
"Fuck," Icarus manages. "Fuck, shit. Fucking hell."
Soran can offer up nothing more than a weak groan in response, muffled into the floor. He can hear his own blood rushing in his ears more than any footsteps, and jolts when hands press insistently at the backs of his shoulders.
"Fucking chill, it's me," Icarus insists. "Jesus."
"Please don't," he mumbles.
"Don't what?"
He groans again, a few words that turn into a garbled string of noises as Icarus keeps his hands firmly where they're planted. It hurts. He's not sure why it hurts.
"God, you are not okay," Icarus mutters. His hands are still there though, still prodding at him like he has any right to. "Look at me, I'm serious."
He does, kind of. He twists his head to the side - he can't really see Icarus, just a very blurry outline of him. He would rather be left here than do anything else right now. He's never been in this much pain in his life. Every inch of him is throbbing, pulsing with all the blood that's leaking out of him like a faulty faucet. He can't even see properly enough to know if Icarus' face is bleeding, or if his vision is just that bad.
"Weapons," he says weakly, and Icarus looks around, quickly skittering away. Well, that was a sufficient distraction, and a good way to get him to leave for even a few seconds. He lays his head back on the floor, trying to move. He can still feel everything, even if he's a little numb. It feels like he took a wrecking ball to the chest. He curls his legs and arms up a little, trying to alleviate the pressure. He's fine to die like this instead, limp on the floor. At least he can say he chose it.
There's the grating sound of metal against the concrete floor, the slide of the sword as Icarus finds it in the darkness. "Fuck. Fuck, that's not good."
"What?"
Icarus goes off muttering to himself while he lays there limp on the floor, finding his home for the foreseeable future. His footsteps are more frantic now, but Soran can't raise the energy to give a shit. He really couldn't care less right now.
"God, I guess I need you too," Icarus says, a second before he slides both of his arms somewhere under Soran's chest and yanks him to his feet in one graceless pull. Everything spins so violently he nearly throws up and winds up clutching at Icarus' arms like a baby that just took its first steps, trying to recognize the feeling of the floor under his feet.
"Don't—"
"We gotta go," Icarus insists. "The bracelet's fucking flashing, they must know he's dead. They know we killed him, fuck."
It takes him a long moment to process that. He can see something red flashing in the vicinity of their arms - that must be it. It's like the red flash of an emergency vehicle. The body's just in front of him, blood seeping over the numerous slashes and stabs all across his back. He wishes he even had an inkling over how many times Icarus stabbed him; it's never going to be enough. They fucking killed him. Are they allowed to kill them?
It's too late to wonder that now.
Icarus starts hauling him off. He has no idea where, couldn't care less. It's hard to even keep his feet firmly planted on the ground every time they lift up from it. For once in his life Icarus is doing all the work here, holding him upright and keeping him from melting back into the floor. A blast of wind hits him in the face, sand stinging what little of his eyes he's been able to keep open. He keeps them squeezed shut while Icarus half pushes and half drags him into the car, depositing him into one of the seats with a thud. He lets his body go loose again, head lolling to the side until it nearly rolls off.
Icarus clambers up beside him, weapons clinking together before he begins tossing them in the empty space between their seats. He watches them fall, knives and the sword and the everything else they had—
"Alright, let's go."
He blinks hazily. Everything is so fucking blurry - is the blood-loss destroying him that bad? Icarus is looking at him expectantly, leaning forward like he's waiting for something.
Soran looks forward. The steering wheel is in front of him.
"What?" he croaks out, staring at it. "You're not serious?"
"You have to drive."
"How— how is you not knowing how to drive going to be any worse than me driving when I can't even see straight?"
"There's nothing out here for you to hit. Foot on the gas, hands on the steering wheel, and go."
"No," he insists weakly. "Fuck you."
Icarus reaches forward and jams the keys in the ignition. The car rumbles to life, and he winces. "Do you wanna fucking die tonight?"
"Kinda."
"Shut up," Icarus snaps. "We're not dying tonight, because I saved your ass and we killed that guy and now we're getting the hell out of here. Are you listening to me?"
"I'm trying," he says, and isn't lying for once. Even his sentences are hardly making any sense, let alone the thoughts in his own brain. Foot on the gas, hands on the steering wheel - does he really wanna die tonight? After everything? He isn't so sure anymore. He thought a little part of Icarus wanted to die as well; clearly that isn't so much the case anymore.
He came back. He saved Soran's life.
"You can do this," Icarus says. "You're gonna be fine, alright?"
"Careful," he says slowly, swallowing to loosen up the taste of blood down the back of his throat. "That almost sounded concerned."
He launches a hand out until it bumps against the wheel, tightening his fingers around it. They're coated thick in blood like syrup, making it almost impossible to grip. Still, he knows Icarus is right. They don't move, they die. There's nothing else to that particular equation. They just killed one of the people hunting them when he doesn't think that was in the rule-book at all.
His foot inches against the gas pedal, sending the car forward a few feet. He can hardly see anything around him.
"You got it," Icarus says, and if Soran could raise the energy to make fun of him he would. The issue seems to be that Icarus really does look concerned, a shade of something different in his eyes for once. Figures he can see that clear as day and nothing else. His hand is even slightly outstretched, like he's ready to grab onto him if he so much as wavers. So many levels of concern are in that one little gesture.
He's concerned, but not concerned enough to drive. Asshole.
"You got it," he repeats, as they shoot away through the dust and the dirt, leaving the blood behind.
Almost all of it, anyway.
Icarus' words would be foolish at any other time of day He doesn't have it. Not any of it. He could still bleed out in this car, right here next to him. Driving won't matter so much then.
But Icarus says it, so he believes it.
Isperia Martorell, 16
Applicant #17
"You see that?" Meris asks.
Ria looks up, shielding her eyes against the settling sun. Her little project of sorts lies abandoned in her lap, the tin can Meris found and not much else, at the moment.
She's smart, but she's not sure she's smart enough to make any kind of explosive decisive.
That takes a special kind of talent, one she's not sure she has.
Besides, the more pressing matter at the current time seems to be the small outline of two figures approaching from the south. Smaller, but steadily getting bigger. Definitely headed towards them. The two of them are pretty well concealed, laying low near a cluster of rocks. They're pushing something along that looks like a bike, bigger than normal.
"You said a car might have most of the stuff, right?"
"Yes," she says slowly. Strangely enough it's the ingredients to make a bomb that see like the difficult things to put together out here. Once she has them it's just the combination process.
It was Meris' idea, but she's the one doing it. It's a self-defense mechanism, really, but on the other hand she knows it would be much easier to kill someone with a bomb, from a slight distance, than to ever have to do it with her own hands. At least then she could pretend it had been someone else, or that it had at least been quick enough that they didn't suffer.
She's going to load it with everything she can find, including the nails that she's found no use for yet.
Nails will do the job pretty effectively as a projectile.
Meris looks very thoughtful, standing above Ria. "Stay here."
"What?" she says, more than slightly alarmed, as Meris leaves the cover of the rock and heads down the hill towards the figures that are still coming towards them. She slides further into cover herself, dragging the bag and tin along with her, holding them close against her chest. Right now that's what important, she knows, but what the hell does Meris think she's doing? There's two of them. Either she's planning on killing them, or she's going to attempt an alliance.
Either way, Ria's wondering in the back of her mind how she's going to get away. If she kills them, takes the bike, that's one option. Then she'll be stuck with someone who killed one more person than she has, risking herself for what? The chance of a bomb that may not even work?
The other option is they kill her. Ria really doesn't want to think that way.
She does a half sort-of army crawl further behind the rocks, tucking the canister away into a crevice between two of them, wrapping Mel's sweater around it for good measure. She's not taking any risks.
There's not such a good view between the gaps in the rocks. She grabs at the edge of them to pull herself up, trying to stay as low as possible. She even pulls her hood up over her head to hide her hair, hoping the gray will blend in better than the blue. Hopefully they'll be distracted enough by Meris that they won't notice her looking, because she can't imagine what would happen if they did.
It's difficult to make out the figures from this distance. She knows Meris only because of familiarity, because she knows the situation. She can't tell whether she ever spoke to them or not, although it's a likely not.
She can't tell what's going on either as they get closer and closer. They stop some distance away from each other; she can't tell if it's close enough for them to hear each other or have a civil conversation.
She's also not sure how civil a conversation can be between two different groups of people who haven't had any familiarity with each other over the past six days.
If only she had worked a bit faster, maybe the bomb would have been a more viable choice.
And then what? She's going to bomb two people who she doesn't even know straight to hell? And for what?
For what?
She doesn't want to kill anyone else. She's not sure she can ever again. That just means she's doing to die, then, and she doesn't want to die either.
If only she could make a damn decision, one that really fit her. She doesn't want to betray Meris, but she has the option. She doesn't want to kill, but she doesn't want to die.
From this far away she can't even make out what they're doing. She's not sure who left the starting town with a bike, and there's no way to figure it out now. If this conversation is going well, she has no clue.
She slides back down the rock, hitting the ground with a thump. There's nothing she can do now. She doesn't have the guts to get up and go over there herself, back up Meris like any other good friend or ally would. That's what Mel would do if he was still here - he would be at her back, at her side, defending her or fighting with her.
And here Ria sits, like a coward. Listening for a conversation she can't hear, waiting for any sort of sign...
She nearly flattens her hands over hears at the mere thought that she could hear something, whether it be something going wrong or right. Like she said - a coward at its finest.
No, no. She has to figure something out. There's no use abandoning Meris now, not when she's still trying to help. She won't do any good in diplomatic conversation, but maybe if she crawled out from behind the rock that would be enough to distract them for at least a few seconds. If Meris has to kill them then so be it. Better Meris than her.
She braces her hands against the ground, preparing to get up.
Stand up, her brain says. Stand up before something awful happens.
She's shaking like a leaf, she realizes, hidden away behind the rock where she's safest. It's the terror at showing herself that locks all of her limbs in place, that keeps her from doing anything at all.
"Get up," she says aloud, digging her hands into the ground until she feels the bitten edges of her nails start to tear even further. "Get up, you idiot."
She can't.
And that's when the screaming starts.
Jupiter Valens, 14
Applicant #16
He shouldn't be surprised when Meris lunges for him first.
He is, though. He's surprised by a lot.
She grabs him by the legs and tackles him to the ground, knocking the bike's handlebars from his grip. He looks like the weaker of the two - at least Sabre has the muscle mass of a more than slightly active human being, one that looks imposing enough.
Try as he may Jay absolutely does not look like that.
He falls with her wrapped around his legs, and then the bike falls half on top of them. Something smacks him in the face, causing his eyes to well up with tears and blur over so thoroughly he can't even see properly.
"Give me the bike," she had said.
He had replied with a very eloquent uh, no? and now he was here, because Sabre hadn't looked all too eager to speak up.
Speaking of Sabre, what the hell is he doing right now?
Meris isn't all that heavy, so he feels instant relief as the bike is lifted off the both of them. She's strong, though, stronger than she looks, and doesn't give an inch even when he attempts to kick her away. Sabre drops the bike to his right and it crashes to the ground; it will be a miracle if it ever starts again. It's not what matters right now, but it's what Jay is thinking about to keep himself from panicking.
Screw that, he's panicking. He's panicking a whole hell of a lot.
There's so much dirt and dust being kicked up into his eyes that he can hardly see, so he misses when Sabre finally gets Meris off of him, who's windmilling around so much that she keeps striking him with her feet. She's strong, definitely stronger than him, but two against one was never a fair fight in any sense, especially not out here.
He rolls out of the way once Sabre has her up, missing whatever scuffle ensues as a result. Probably Sabre getting hit when he doesn't want to, hitting back when he wants to even less.
He hasn't been with him very long, but he gets the sense that Sabre never wanted to kill Faye.
Finally his hands find the metal bar and he rolls back over, practically crawling back towards where the two of them are doing... what, he's not sure. It looks like Sabre is trying to avoid as much of it as humanly possible, succeeding only half the time. But it's giving him enough time to do something.
He's not sure what, but he's going to do something.
"The bag!" Sabre yells at him, and the sheer volume of his voice has Jay stopping in his tracks. He wasn't aware the dude had a volume above a low-medium, and now he's yelling? What's wrong with today?
He grabs at the bag, spilling over onto the ground and spreads out everything he can get his hands on. The gas canister hasn't opened, by some miracle, everything is still there.
And there's something else he hasn't seen before, about the size of his hand, ending in a long metal spike.
Someone grabs his arm and wrenches it back. Oh, there's Meris again. Apparently she got tired of Sabre screwing with her.
She kicks him in the back, a solid, real kick and he does a literal faceplant into the back of the bike. Something in his face splits open; blood flows into his mouth immediately, he suspects, from his nose and God knows what else.
And he never even grabbed the tool, but Meris hasn't either. He has no idea where it is now.
She's twisting his arm so much that it's going to pop out if she doesn't just quit it - he shouts at how bad it hurts, can't imagine how much worse it can get. There's blood in his eyes, now, and he can't even so much as see it. So his forehead is split open too, then? How much blood is covering his face right now? In the very least, he's hoping it looks cool.
"Jay!"
Another shout again. He blinks some of the blood from his eyes.
The metal tool lands a foot away from his free hand - Sabre must have lobbed it as close as he could get without interfering for real. He stretches out, inch by inch, until his fingers brush against the edge of it, his pinky curling around it and dragging it closer.
He rears back, as suddenly as he can. The back of his skull connects with Meris' face or something equally detrimental, because she howls with pain.
Good. Now they have the same fucking nose.
She flails backwards. Sabre all but catches her as she stumbles back into his arms away from Jay, clutching a hand to her face. He scoops up the tool, lunges forward.
Sabre's eyes are saying this wasn't what I had in mind.
Yeah, it wasn't what Jay had in mind either.
He buries the spike in her chest, over where he's certain the heart has to be. She gasps, chokes out something. It takes a few seconds before her legs go limp and he yanks the thing back out, watching as blood soaks through the thin layer of her shirt instantly.
Sabre is still holding onto her, staring at her with his eyes very far-away.
"Shit," he says. "Shit, ow. What the fuck?"
He sits down with a thud, smacking his tailbone into the bike as well for good measure. He clutches at his nose, presses his sleeve to it to try and stop some of the bleeding. He can't even tell where the vast majority of it is coming from, and he still can't really see properly, either. He wants to look at the bracelet, wants to have confirmation of what they just did...
There's a loud thump and then a second later hands are pulling at his wrist. He flinches.
"Just me," Sabre informs him. "Are you okay?"
"Great," he manages. "Peachy. Fine and dandy. I'm being a baby, sorry."
"No, you're not. Don't say that."
He nods. That hurts too. Sabre continues peeling his hands away until they're resting limply in his lap, prodding at a spot on his forehead that's almost certainly split open by the feel of it.
"Is she dead?" he asks.
"I— I think so."
"You think?"
"She's not moving."
Okay, well he'll take that. He really doesn't want to get up and check. It's not like he can see very well anyway.
"We killed someone," he says, almost dazedly. "Fuck, we killed someone."
"We did," Sabre agrees. He's a million miles away right now, Jay can tell. That's probably a nice place to be. Hell, Sabre's killed two people now, he's probably just mentally living and on vacation in whatever faraway place he's chosen.
"I'm okay," he insists. "Head wounds bleed a lot - that's a thing, right?"
"I think your nose might be broken."
"Oh, okay," he says. "Uh, nice, I guess?"
"If it helps, I think a lot of people would define that as cool," Sabre says, and Jay almost winces at the layer of awkwardness that seeps into his voice, like Sabre isn't even sure that's the truth. To put it in a sort of awful way, he doesn't think Sabre knows all that much about what's cool and what isn't. But it almost... it almost sounded like a joke.
After they just killed someone. Coming from Sabre. It's so wrong on so many levels.
Sabre offers a hand up and he rises to his feet with the help of it, swaying for a few moments. Sabre steadies him and then leans down to pick the bike. Jay holds onto that instead while Sabre re-packs the bag.
"I don't think walking's gonna end well for me right now," he decides.
"We'll drive for a bit. The gas should hold long enough."
He nods, clambering onto the back of the bike without being asked. He already knows he can't drive for shit, and Sabre's been at this for a few days. He's just going to crash them into a rock at the rate he's going. The blood in his eyes is certainly a problem he didn't think he was going to have today, but apparently Sabre thinks it's cool. Or not, and Sabre's just saying that for his own benefit.
Probably the latter.
A few moments pass, a quiet settling over them. He turns even though his head throbs and spins. Sabre is staring past Meris' body, at a safe distance over it, to the hills not far away.
"What?" he asks.
"Nothing. Here."
He takes the bag like a good, injured little ally and shoulders it while Sabre clambers onto the bike in front of him.
"I might fall off," he warns him.
"I'd prefer if you didn't."
So would he. It's not like he wants to fall off. He holds on with an intensity that is probably ridiculously unnecessary for the pace they're going to be traveling at, but he's jittery and bleeding and he has a very bad head wound okay, so sue him.
He notices that Sabre turns away from Meris' body, towards the hills beyond. That's the direction they were headed.
But not anymore.
Jay decides to keep his mouth shut, for now.
Verity Alameda, 13
Applicant #3
She knew this would come to a boiling point.
If that's the case, then Damas dying right in front of them was like turning the heat settings on the stove up, after Carnelia had pressed the damn button in the first place. Or maybe Carnelia had put the pot of water on, and Damas had pressed the button...
That's easily the dumbest analogy she's ever come up with, and she's come up with a lot of them.
It's a great time for weird analogies.
Percy keeps looking over his shoulder at her, too often for it to not be something more than just general concern. He's so used to her walking ahead, much faster than he ever could. It must be weird.
It's not just the weird that keeps making him do it, though. He's got his tomahawk, her with her pickaxe. She's got easy access to his back, whereas it would take him a few seconds to turn around and hit her with his own weapon. She really doesn't like that she's thinking that way, but it's the only way to think, really. Ever since this morning something has shifted. Something's changed.
She doesn't like it anymore than she thinks he likes it, but that's what it's come down to.
"Percy?" she asks, and he slows incrementally, enough for her to gain a few steps.
"What?"
"Nothing," she murmurs. "Sorry."
They haven't spoken in hours. Something in her was missing the sound of another human voice out in the middle of this emptiness. The other part just wanted to get a bit closer, not enough to be really noticeable, but just enough to gain on him a few paces before he starts up walking again.
She doesn't want to die. Percy doesn't seem like the type to want to kill her, but he also let Damas die, too. She's certain of it. Neither of them did anything that could have stopped it, but Percy never seemed to care as much as she did. He wasn't the one who pledged to protect Damas, wasn't the one who found him and chose to stay with him right from the get-go.
Maybe Percy never really cared at all, although the weight of the tarot cards showing through his pockets says otherwise.
She doesn't know what to believe, anymore.
"Are you scared of me?" Percy asks, not breaking pace. In fact, this time he doesn't even turn to look at her. It's odd for how many times he has done it in the past few hours.
"I," she starts, unsure of where to go.
"You are, aren't you?" There's nothing accusing in his voice, just quiet resignation. It's still somehow something that doesn't make her feel any less scared or nervous, this lack of judgement on his part. It almost makes her feel worse for contemplating what she's been contemplating, for thinking it in the first place. Truth be told, though, she's been feeling worse this whole time.
Like she said, this is just the time it's come to a boiling point.
"I get it," Percy says understandingly. "Believe me, I do, but—"
She lunges forward brandishing the pickaxe at the same time he turns around to look her in the eye for the hundredth time.
She didn't expect him to turn around again.
He dives out of the way - the pickaxe practically whistles as it swings through the space where the center of his back had been. She's not even sure if she would have strong enough to do any real, death-worthy damage. It was worth a shot. Maybe not now, though, because he's gotten out of the way in time and has whirled on her, eyes wide. She's not sure she can look him in the face and do it; she wouldn't have been able to see the shock, the pain, the betrayal.
She sees all of it now, his fingers tightening around the tomahawk's handle most of all.
"I'm sorry," she says.
"Is that what you've been telling yourself?"
"Don't act like you're not thinking it too!" she shouts.
"Thinking it and following through are two different things!" he yells back. "Fucking hell, I was never going to..."
He trails off. She gets the feeling that's not the truth - it doesn't seem like any of them are so good at telling the truth anymore.
"I was never going to," he settles on, as if that's supposed to be good enough. Maybe for a lot of people it would be. Certainly Damas would have accepted that as an answer, as most of the others would have.
But she's scared. She's scared when she dives forward again, aiming for his chest. Just make it quick, quick is the only thing she can do now, and then it'll be over with. She'll be on her own, but at least she won't have to be so scared anymore. She won't have to worry about him anymore, him or Damas. They'll be gone, and it'll be better that way. Safer.
This time Percy barely gets out of the way in time, but he does. She prepares to turn around, to strike again, hoping for the best—
Something sinks into her back, between her shoulders. Something sharp.
It takes a moment, for the pain to hit. In fact, it doesn't, until Percy tugs it out with an awful sounding squelch. A strangled scream erupts from her throat, a sound that sounds nothing like her. It could be someone else, for all she knew.
She hits the ground face-first. It definitely wasn't someone else.
"I wasn't going to," he repeats, as if that makes it better. As if she's not bleeding out in the dirt at his feet. "I wasn't going to."
It doesn't sound like he's saying for her benefit.
No, that's all for himself.
She can't move. It feels like she's been paralyzed, nothing more than her fingers able to stretch out, searching for nothing at all. She's dropped the pickaxe, too - it lies crushed under her torso, poking painfully into her ribs.
"I'm sorry," he says, and it sounds more genuine in his voice than it did hers.
That's the worst part.
The tomahawk sinks into her back again. It doesn't hurt so much, this time.
A few seconds later, nothing hurts at all.
Jahaira Aurelion, 16
Applicant #23
Arwen stares at her for a very long time before she goes to sleep.
It would be disheartening, if she wasn't so used to it.
She already offered to take first watch, after persuading Arwen six times over that she wasn't tired, even though she was. She could last a few more hours before she woke up Arwen to take over. She can't help but think to the days, so far away now, where none of them bothered to stay up. It hadn't felt real then - it felt like they were untouchable, unkillable. If it hadn't happened yet it wouldn't happen at all.
How wrong they had been.
Arwen rolls over in her sleep, facing away. She always falls asleep now facing towards wherever Jahaira is sitting, like a force of habit.
They won't expose their backs to each other anymore, not for a second.
There was a time when Jahaira really thought they could be friends. Not traditional ones, not the best type to exist, but at least companions that valued each other's company. That time has fled the premises, if it was ever really there to begin with. Chances are she was just imagining that like she's been imagining most things. It's easier that way.
She killed someone, tried to bury the body. Arwen helped her finish. That in itself still feels like a hallucination.
That is definitely the easier track.
She misses the chatter of other people, the conversation that came with being a group. She misses figuring people out, learning who they were and who they are today. She misses those same people asking questions like them in return. She misses answering them.
She could try with Arwen, but she doesn't think she'd get very far.
Jahaira flops back into the dirt and pulls her camera out, shocked at how alien the thing feels in her hands. She hasn't taken a picture since the morning Emmi died, since everything went to shit. Hell, she's barely touched it. In an odd sort of way it feels like her camera and all the photography was what caused it in the first place - it's not, regardless of who brought it up, but it feels that way.
She begins to scroll through the last few pictures she took. Lots of landscape shots, a few of the others. At least one of everyone she once knew - Myra smiling, Gideon mid-glare as he had realized what she doing, Jupiter's cheery smile when they had realized. Emmi and Arwen are staring very dopily at each other, smiling like idiots.
It's the only picture she has of the two of them together.
There's so many angles of that damn cliff, close-up shots of some of the flowers Gideon had brought back with him, the odd color of the rust on the truck in the dawn.
She has shots of the others, too, back at the Institute. Virtually everyone, from close up and far away. The Instructors, too, and Aelia. All of them are tucked away into this one little thing, like a time capsule.
The last photo is one of Raelle, up on the roof the day she had found out she was accepted. Her sister looks peaceful in the sunlight all half-asleep, eyes narrowed to slits like a cat's would be. She looks so small.
Her eyes are welling up with tears before she knows it. Normally she's so good with uploading her pictures to a back-up file the same day, but she had been so preoccupied with packing once she found out that she had simply forgotten to. It hadn't seemed important then, anyway. She would have had all the time in the world to upload them once she got back. Should have had all that time.
It feels like something was ripped away from her, and she doesn't even know what it was. She had no idea what she was really going to do in the future, no whims except for the ones that involved a camera in her hands.
She kind of wants to throw it as hard as she can, but she doesn't. She holds her arms up and takes a picture of the night sky, instead. She remembers a few years back when the resolution was so low that almost nothing would show up in the dark - now when she looks at the screen she can see all the thousands of stars, the off-white glow of the moon.
Her parents had splurged for her fourteenth birthday to get a camera she had been fawning over. She had cried when she opened it.
It didn't matter now.
This camera has done nothing for her. It hasn't made anything better, hasn't turned this ugly, awful mess into something worthwhile, something worth remembering. It's just making her want to forget it all even more. She doesn't want these memories, doesn't want to look at them because they make her stomach twist and turn like she's going to be sick.
But this is all she is. All she's ever known how to be, contained in one little memory chip.
Jahaira already feels like she's lost enough of herself.
She doesn't have the courage to let go of this, too.
Gonna get yelled at for this one, aren't I? I deserve it and fully accept it.
But hey, final twelve, am I right? Halfway there! Let me know your thoughts, opinions, upcoming predictions, etc, if you feel so inclined. I would really appreciate it.
Until next time.