XXIX: Day Seven, Night.
Soran Faerber, 18
Applicant #8
His body feels sort of dead, but his mind isn't.
That's unfortunate.
He wakes up because his hip is digging uncomfortably into the ground and he rolls over and nearly into Icarus, who's apparently asleep beside him. His whole body protests the movement, his side and chest throbbing and aching. It even hurts to breathe, though it's not so painful that he can't. It's just slow, takes more effort. His knee aches when he sits up and wiggles his legs - can't remember anything even happening to his knee, but there's that.
He can still wiggle his two certainly broken fingers and stupidly puts weight on them to push himself to his knees and up the wall, using it as a support.
It's sort of stuffy in here, and he can't really see.
Outside he goes.
He makes it a few alarmingly wobbly steps before Icarus chimes in. "Where are you going?"
"Outside," he maintains. "You don't have to follow me."
Two more steps and he hears the clear sound of Icarus getting to his feet. There was no point in even bothering with that - he just wasted energy even saying it. He doesn't get very far once he's outside after nearly tripping down the single step that leads in, anyway. It's just as fucking dark out here. Still no idea where the fuck he took them.
It seems a little easier to breathe, though. He leans up against the wall and inhales, again, ignoring the burst of pain in his chest, clutching a hand to his side.
He can sense Icarus hovering, see him when he turns his head a fraction of an inch lurking in the doorway like some sort of creepy, watchful guardian.
"Can I help you?"
"What are you doing?"
"Standing here."
"Why?" Icarus asks slowly, although he stays put. It's as if half of him is almost trying to listen, for once.
He shrugs and that hurts, too, so much so that he struggles to keep his face blank.
"Well, when you're done, there's a first-aid kit in the bag. We should be able to stitch some of you up, if some of you needs stitching."
"We?"
"Well, that was me sort of implying that you're doing the stitching while I supervise, because fuck that, first of all, and also my mother tried to teach me how to sew when I was younger and I was terrible at it."
"You really never stop talking," he observes, beginning his slow, careful crawl back to the front door. "That's not even what I was talking about."
"I know," Icarus snaps, although it's halfhearted. "What else do you want me to say?"
He shrugs again, and fuck does it hurt. He inches up as close as he can get to Icarus without fully bowling him over and tries to skirt past him, but Icarus grabs him by the wrist and holds him there, crushing his painfully broken fingers in his grip.
"Ow," he says exaggeratedly, and Icarus' grips softens, which just kind of leaves him there holding Soran's hand, effectively. It's as awkward as you could imagine it being, but it's kind of nice in the sense that it was expected. If it wasn't awkward he'd be even more weirded out than he already is.
"You appear to be holding my hand," he tells him, and Icarus looks down, like he wasn't even aware.
But oh, he was. And he definitely still is.
Icarus is very easy to figure out and indefinitely confusing in the same beat. Soran can't really read him right now, though that may be the incessant pounding in his head and general blood-loss still making him a tad woozy. He can't really tell the difference. It's certainly a good time for Icarus to take advantage of the situation, to figure things out with Soran standing right in front of him. He can't be fucked to fight back right now.
He'd probably get his ass handed to him anyway, and that would be more embarrassing than Icarus having to save his life in the first place.
"I don't understand how I can hate you and like you at the same time," Icarus says finally, confusing creasing his brow.
"I feel that on a level you don't even understand. It's a part of our charm."
Icarus laughs, studying the ground between his shoes. "Our charm. Right."
That's a thing they have, a thing they share, oddly enough. Some weird twisted part of Soran doesn't want to see him dead, doesn't want to die either but then it'll be all over. Icarus probably wouldn't last without him anyway, as terrible as it is to admit. They've come a long way since that first day. It only took six more to figure things out.
And Icarus doesn't really look like he's figured it all out yet.
"Alright, let go of me," he insists. "Get this first-aid kit that apparently exists, would you?"
He waits a second, tugging his hand out of Icarus' piss poor grip when he refuses, and pushes his way inside. Icarus grabs at him again - this motion is filled with just a tad more determination, and Soran pretty much knows what's about to happen based on that action alone, unsurprised when he spins around and Icarus' lips land against his.
What is surprising is how calm it is, an almost eerie sort of gentleness... nothing like the first time.
They really got this backwards. That's not surprising either, knowing the two of them.
He's too tired to fight back, but he also wouldn't. Icarus is holding his damn hand again - he gets the feeling that's going to be a thing whether he likes it or not. The other hand is curled around the side of his neck, which is burning with pain now that he's focusing on it, probably from nearly getting choked to death. Icarus is being gentle, though, like he knows, thumb pressing in just barely against the edge of his jaw.
He pulls back, getting no more than an inch. "Oh, so you like like me, huh? I get it now."
"God, you're the worst," Icarus says, but there's a color to his cheeks that wasn't there before - it's great that Soran notices these things now, clearly, when he never noticed them all that much before.
"I take pride in that achievement," he informs him. "Now seriously, where's the fucking first-aid kit?"
Percius Marigold, 17
Applicant #2
So, he's alive.
He also has one less hand than he did a few hours ago.
Problematic isn't a strong enough word to describe that, but he isn't sure there's one in his vocabulary that will fit. If there is, it's escaping him.
That could be because he's almost blacked out half a dozen times since Gideon chopped his fucking hand off, since he said if I can't kill you, they can't either and that was all that came out of his mouth before he grabbed Percy by the arm, raised the tomahawk—
He nearly throws up just thinking about it.
Once Gideon had left he had crawled into the wardrobe in the next room, ripping down everything from the hangers to wrap around the stump that was his wrist. He hadn't sat there for very long. He had heard screaming, a gunshot. Then nothing, save for the car driving off a few minutes later. He had come tumbling out of the wardrobe, landing on his stumpy arm, and nearly blacked out for the second time.
He's lying there, still, the pickaxe crushed beneath him, cradling his arm to his chest, when he hears the sound of another car.
God, he just can't catch a fucking break, can he?
He either wants to murder everyone left or just die himself, he's not sure. It would be easier if Gideon had just killed him. That would have been nice. It's not like he got the chance to ask, really.
He drags himself to the window and hauls himself up. It's not like the nicer cars the Sentinels had - it's an old, beaten down pick-up truck.
Other applicants, then.
He can't decide if that's a good thing or not.
He stuffs his wrist under his good arm because it hurts less, as little as that makes sense, and scoops up the pickaxe before he wobbles his way back out into the hall. He could run, maybe, but he's not sure he can really do that without blacking out. It hurts like nothing else has hurt before. Arguably worse than seeing Nic die, because at least he could go to sleep and forget it had happened for a while. He's not sure he could fall asleep feeling like this.
His pace is nothing impressive. He hears the car doors slam shut, at least two of them, and then voices floating up from the first floor.
But hey, at least they could kill him, maybe. Or he could kill them.
Like he said, he really hasn't yet decided. His thought processes are shot to hell.
There's someone standing at the bottom of the stairs, just one. They're not facing him, looking towards the sound of the voices... there's someone else here?
That complicates things.
He considers backing up, but that just draws things out and he's no longer in the mood for that. Life or death, he doesn't really care. The voices are getting louder - two girls, at least, by the sound of it. And he thought he was loud. They're making a racket, alerting both him and whoever's standing at the bottom of the stairs to their exact location.
Finally, from his position at the edge of the balcony, he sees two silhouettes enter the great room at the bottom of the stairs, pausing suddenly when they notice whoever's standing at the bottom of the stairs.
It's a very quiet situation, surprisingly.
"I know you're up there, too," the person says, and he goes still. "I knew someone was still here."
Ah, not another applicant then.
That's a Sentinel, one that they left behind for this exact reason.
Like he said. Problematic.
It's hard to make them out, but he knows one of the girls is Jahaira, and judging by the purple the other must be Arwen. The only other person with purple hair got murdered out back not long ago - he knows that for certain.
Everyone's trying to make a decision right now. He can't even begin to think of what he should do. The woman's got a gun, and that's just what he can see. Jahaira and Arwen haven't moved, but they will.
Just what way, is the question.
She raises the gun. Jahaira takes off, a second later, back down the hall. Arwen dives out of the way as the gun goes off, slamming into the plaster behind where she had just been standing. She's not going to get the chance to run like Jahaira just did, no thought behind the action. Clearly there's very little loyalty there, not like Gideon's for Jupiter. There's really none at all.
Arwen lurches to her feet, grabbing the edge of the table in order to fling herself a few paces to the left, away from where the gunshots are hitting. Percy makes a decision, then. He's not going to be able to run either.
He didn't want to kill Jupiter, not Verity either, really.
But this woman is not either of them.
His wrist throbs in agony as he tears down the stairs after the two of them. Gideon took the fucking tomahawk, too, leaving him with this damn pickaxe like he has a single clue what to do with it. There's a shout of pain, another gunshot that shatters something like glass. The two of them are closer together now, no sign of Jahaira coming back. That's real nice.
The woman turns at his approach, fires a shot that just barely misses his head as he dives to the ground. His arm screams in protest - he wraps his good one around her knees and pulls until she falls to the ground half on top of him.
He didn't really have a plan beyond that.
Her elbow collides with his nose, pain bursting beyond his vision, causing his eyes to well with painful tears. She catches him in the jaw, too, and his head spins around and cracks into the floor. The pickaxe gets ripped out of his hand - that's strange, considering she's apparently punching him with both hands that he can see. Where did the gun even go? Did it fall out of her hand when he tackled her?
A shadow stands above them - oh, Arwen is still here, right.
And she's got his pickaxe. That makes a lot more sense.
They're twisting and turning, not still for more than a second at a time Arwen buries the pickaxe in the back of the woman's shoulder, all the way through, and it cuts into his upper arm as it passes through. There's no indication that it hurts her at all, despite his lesser injury hurting a whole hell of a lot. They're not really human, that he understands, but it's still annoying.
They roll onto their sides. She catches him in the face again. The pickaxe slams into the floor between them, narrowly missing both his side and the woman's.
Something pushes into his ribs - he recognizes the shape of it before she punches him so hard his vision whites out, and he fumbles for the gun tucked under him with his only remaining hand even though he can't see, closing his fingers around the grip and yanks it free from his own crushing weight.
There's a louder shout, right in his face. Arwen's connected again, this time right below the woman's hip.
He grapples still for the gun, no idea how it really works beyond his fingers closing down on the trigger.
He presses down. The gun goes off. He didn't really expect it to, for some reason.
The bullet hits her directly in the center of the face.
He closes his eyes at the moment of impact, feeling blood spatter all over his face, his hand, the floor. Everything around him, really. His ears are ringing from the proximity, and there's a soft thud as the body rolls over from the momentum, face-up.
"Fuck," Arwen announces. He rolls over himself, allowing his eyes to open when he only has the ceiling to look at. She sags to the ground at his feet - her chest is bleeding, that can't be good. He can't tell what it's from, but what else would it be, other than a bullet? Can you survive a bullet to the chest once the adrenaline fades off?
Maybe. He doesn't have a clue.
"She fucking left," Arwen manages, her voice labored. The pain is evident without looking at her. "That bitch, I knew she would—"
He ignores the rest of it and rolls over onto his knees and hand, blocking out the rapid spin of his brain in his skull as he gets to his feet.
"What are you doing?" Arwen asks. Her voice already doesn't sound so good, a little weaker... he doesn't want to imagine why.
"Going after her," he decides. He keeps the gun in hand this time, even though Arwen has since abandoned the pickaxe on the ground next to the body. Jahaira can't have gotten far - the car keys are abandoned on the floor where the two of them were standing. She could have run like he was considering, but again, not that far.
He can find her. He has to do something or he'll just shut down, and Arwen doesn't look like she's going to be doing much of anything, possibly ever again.
He leaves her in the main room, wondering how long she has left if she's that grievously injured. If he does find Jahaira, if he kills her, will Arwen even be alive at that point to know?
He doesn't really know Arwen anyway, so it's not like he's doing it for her. Why is he doing it, then? Because his brain is fucked beyond repair? Because three people have already died here tonight and he just doesn't care anymore? He's not sure he's cared much at all, since that first day, frightening as it is to admit. Nic was the moral compass, the goodness in the world. The goodness in everything.
Down the hall he goes. He hears a terrified chatter before he gets that far at all. Why would she have stopped so soon, when she knew what was going on back in the main room?
He turns the next corner. Jahaira is standing there, most definitely the source of the incessant babbling, hands moving around frantically as if she has to clue how to keep them all.
There's someone else at the end of the hall too, watching her with an unreadable look in her eyes. Emmi.
He's not sure what to make of that. Isn't sure he even wants to know.
It just never ends, does it?
Arwen Paoul, 18
Applicant #1
She's in quite a bit of pain.
That probably has something to do with the bullet lodged in her chest.
If she just acted the same as always, like it was inconsequential, it shouldn't hurt so much. It wasn't working like it usually did, though. It fucking hurt.
Percy disappears and not a minute later there's more shouting, but this time something is different about it. Something familiar, she can't but her finger on it through the pain but there's something there she can almost recognize...
She struggles her way to her feet, grabbing at everything she can to pull herself along down the hall towards the source of the noise. Every step gets worse, feels more impossible. Her legs are turning to lead the more the blood soaks through her shirt, pulsating away down her stomach. There's way too much of it to be survivable that close to her heart.
Oh, well. At this point she just wants to know Jahaira is going too, as terrible as it sounds.
There's another gunshot and she flinches, despite herself. For some reason there's a difference in her head between Percy shooting a Sentinel and Percy shooting Jahaira. It just doesn't make as much sense.
It wouldn't have made any sense a week ago, but here they are.
She's about to walk in on it, she can tell. She sees Percy first, just sort of awkwardly standing there, the gun hanging limply from his only remaining hand, as she's noticed. That's sort of disturbing. What's more disturbing is that he's not doing anything, as if he's on the fringe and just sort of observing whatever else could possibly be going on in front of him.
She rounds the corner properly and considers, outright, just sitting down right where she is.
Jahaira is bleeding, trying to avoid a swing. Arwen can't get the name out through the pain, but it's on her lips.
Emmi.
She grapples for the wall and then her legs give way, finally, and she slides to the ground. Percy reaches out a hand as if to catch her but doesn't move close enough to do so, standing there mesmorized. Watching the two of them go at it.
Emmi is alive. And Arwen is going to die.
That seems slightly cruel.
There's another gunshot. Jahaira screams, collapses as a bullet tears through the lower part of her shin. It seems vicious, too vicious for what she'd say Jahaira deserves, but she's not sure about any of them anymore. Maybe they all deserve the worst possible sort of outcome except for Emmi, it seems, who survived the survivable and is standing here in front of her.
Two seconds later and Jahaira is dead. It's anticlimactic in Arwen's very slow-processing brain, she tries to track the movement of the next bullet and only sees Jahaira hit the floor on her back, blood pouring from a wound in her neck. Almost as much, or maybe more, than how much she's bleeding. She's not sure in the darkness, without being able to really see.
Emmi's figure is blurry, walking awkwardly. It's both her vision and Emmi's own stature, clutching at her stomach when she crouches down by Arwen's side.
"Am I hallucinating?" she asks dazedly, and one of Emmi's hands cup the side of her face. She smiles.
"I almost wish," she says. "I almost wish you were."
She hums in agreement and lets her head slump back against the wall. Emmi is still holding her firm, Emmi who is still alive by some sort of miracle.
"How?"
"What can I say, I'm unkillable," Emmi announces, although there's no humor in her face. "How much pain are you in?"
"A lot," she admits, almost finding it stupid before she realizes no one here cares. Back home an admittance of pain is weakness; almost everything is in their world. That's what she's been taught since she was young. You put on a face when you wake up and you don't let anyone see the emotions underneath.
She's too tired to hide it all right now.
"What do you want me to do?" Emmi asks.
"Stay alive," she mumbles.
"I'll try my best."
Arwen hums and focuses on the stroke of her thumb over the side of her cheek, Emmi this close to her, alive and mostly whole, it appears. She wants to know what happened, why things had to be this way.
She doesn't have the energy to ask. She's not sure Emmi has the energy to tell her, either.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs.
"For what?"
"For not being here sooner."
"I was the one that was going to protect you, remember?" she manages. That seems so long ago now, a distant memory that seems to be fading away faster and faster by the second. She said they were allies, that she would protect Emmi, and she didn't. They both fucking suck at their jobs.
"Yeah, you did," Emmi says. Arwen's eyes are really heavy, and it's already hard to see, but there might just be tears in Emmi's eyes. She doesn't think anyone's ever cried over her before. She's never deserved it anyway. She's not even sure what the people back home will mourn; the actual her, or the image they thought was her. No one probably even knows the difference.
Except for Emmi. Emmi who is going to stay alive.
Maybe that's all that matters.
"Stay alive," she repeats, the words almost failing her. She lets her eyes close, burns that one last image into her head. If that's the last thing she remembers, then so be it. Emmi's lips are chapped, cracked when they press against the center of Arwen's forehead, but it's nice and she wouldn't trade it for the world.
It's worth something. More than most things.
At least she got that.
She's dying, almost gone, but at least she's dying knowing Emmi lived.
Like she said - that's worth it.
Tarquin Vierra, 16
Applicant #4
He's acting like one of them.
Staying in the shadows, moving too fast to be properly seen for any one second, constantly itching with the thought that he's going to have to shoot..
He no longer feels like himself. He feels like a character in a play, like he's taken method acting a step too far. The mask fits too properly to his feet, his throbbing ankle no longer a concern. It can't be, or else he'd be moving too slow. Who knows how long Ria really has, how long it's going to take him. It already feels like he's been gone too long.
He's starting to recognize where he is, though, the tunnels that he spent the most time lurking around. He manages to find the dead end first and then backtracks back to the tunnel she pointed out initially, and only then does he grow more cautious, starting to move a bit slower.
You see, he never came down here. While it was tempting in some respect, he couldn't bring himself to do it. The temptation of real medical supplies, among other things, wasn't enough to get him down here.
It's become easier to force himself this way when it's someone else's life on the line. His mangled ankle wasn't going to kill him - the snakebite in Ria's system would.
So really, he didn't have a choice at all.
The tunnel slopes steadily downward and then plateaus out. There are lanterns on the wall again like that first main tunnel he fell into, but placed more sporadically.
Light means people, usually. He doesn't think he'll get so lucky as to not see anyone this time around.
He nocks an arrow as the light grows brighter, penetrating the darkness as if it's artificial. That doesn't make any sense. It's pure white, almost, more intense by the second. There's a door embedded into the crumbling dirt wall just ahead, a solid sheet of metal that looks heavier than he can imagine. There are two lights on each side of the door, bright florescents encaged in metal bars.
Okay, now it really doesn't make any sense. But a door means a room, and she said it was the Dark Room...
Quite the opposite, in fact, if this is what she was talking about.
He approaches and pulls at the wide handle - it gives way easier than he was expecting, the door opening a few inches soundlessly. The first ten or so feet inside are nothing but more lights, floor to ceiling this time, spread out evenly along two steel-gray walls the same color as the door. Beyond that it's something else, something that officially makes no sense at all. It's too white, too clinical...
Too everything this place is not.
He takes a few cautious steps in, leaving the door ajar behind him just an inch. It's freezing and he shivers despite the layers he's got on, getting closer and closer to the room that almost looks distinctly like a lab, all white everything. The chairs are the only things that look out of place - makeshift pieces of wood and fabric strung together poorly, but everything else looks like another place. Clean, even counters with dozens of drawers, more hanging from the wall. There's a little automated wall dispenser for gloves and another next to it full of packaged syringes.
This definitely shouldn't be here. It looks like something you'd see in a Capitol research lab, or maybe in the bowels of Three. Not here in the middle of the mountains, tucked away in the valley.
There's a machine in the far left, almost like an x-ray or something, and another for blood pressure.
Where the fuck did this all come from?
He doesn't really have time to figure that out, much as he wants to. There's another door at the back of the room, smaller than the one at the entrance. Most of the cold seems to be coming from that direction. Sometimes his mom would put medication in the fridge.. he wasn't sure why, but that seemed like a good bet. It was somewhere to start instead of rooting around in the drawers.
There's another blast of cold air when he opens the air, not quite freezing but enough to put a chill in the air. There are things stored all over wall-mounted shelves, containers and vials and God knows what else.
Something else is in the back corner of the room, too, hidden beyond the shadow of a few of the shelves, hanging from the ceiling...
Okay, definitely don't look that way.
Despite the number of things stored in here it's pretty easy to find exactly what it is he's looking for. They're stored in little cardboard boxes, wrapped in a layer of thin plastic. He doesn't understand half of the words written on the front label but just enough - mojave rattlesnake.
That'll do.
Hopefully.
He rips one of the boxes open and dumps both little glass bottles into one of his pockets. How many should he take? Do you need one, or multiple? He takes two more boxes for good measure - better to be safe than sorry, and he's going to need syringes from the main room. Gloves too, maybe, and some antiseptic? He can't imagine this is going to be very fun.
The fridge door slams behind him with a thud and he winces, hurrying back to the box of syringes near the door. He presses the button on the side repeatedly - all at once at least a dozen plastic-wrapped syringes come spilling out all over the floor and he scoops up a large handful of them, kicking the few that remain under the nearest section of counter.
He reaches into the container for the gloves, and there are voices outside the door.
Okay, maybe not gloves, then. He's definitely not going to have time to look for antiseptic either.
He knows with terrifying certainty that if he gets caught again he's going to die. She let him go to screw with him that first time, no other reason. Maybe someone was onto him this whole time; it seems awfully convenient that someone's coming in here now when he's scrounging around for things.
There's only one way out, the main door. What is he going to do, hide in the fridge?
Apparently.
He practically dives back into the fridge, voices coming from just inside the main door a second later. He has no choice but to retreat to the back corner of the room but he keeps his eyes firmly on the floor. It looked like a body, from this distance. He's not going to look. Maybe it's Noelani. Maybe they finally found where he put Yorick.
He doesn't want to know either way.
There's more than one voice coming from the main room now. He recognizes the girl from before, can't help but wonder if she's Robin. She must be. It's another male voice, maybe two with her.
Up above his head there's a vent, and he can stretch his fingers just far up enough to reach it. This place needs a ventilation system - there has to be another near the outside door, then. At least that's what he's hoping.
He gets in, crawls to another vent, and hops out. They'll notice him, no doubt, but he'll have a little bit of a head-start.
It's that or he stays in here and waits for them to find him, waits to die in a fridge.
It's not much of a choice at all.
He pulls himself up the nearest shelf until his feet leave the floor and he pulls at the vent cover until it swings loose. He shoves his backpack in first, and then the bow. It's going to be a tight squeeze. He's not claustrophobic, but it's smaller than he'd like.
Like he said, though, no choice.
He hauls himself in, searching for all the hidden upper body strength in the world, and wiggles half his torso in. At the fridge's door the handle starts to turn; he kicks frantically until he's all the way in, safely hidden in the ceiling. There's no way he's going to be able to turn around to close the damn thing. They're going to notice, maybe look for a while.
But that doesn't matter, because he just needs to get back to the main door.
And then he needs to run like hell.
He has the bomb that Ria gave him, still. It's becoming a bigger presence in his head than ever before.
But not yet. Not now. He needs to get back to Ria first, give her what he's collected.
And then, maybe, he'll deal with them.
He might just have to.
Isperia Martorell, 16
Applicant #17
When she said her vision was wonky before, she must have been lying.
Now everything's truly all gray at the edges. It feels like she's seconds from falling asleep but she's strangely awake, the pulsating sensation all the way up and down her leg keeping her from taking a nap.
She didn't tell Tarquin that when he held onto her she couldn't feel it like she normally could. He didn't seem like the type of person to handle that well.
It's been hours though, with her slumped back against this rock that's become her home. She's still burning but she's cold at the same time like a fever has taken over, and she's bundled herself in Mel's sweater over top of her own, nearly managing to cry about it as well. It doesn't help that she's still sweating like a madman.
Her foot has swollen up like a balloon, too. She got her shoe off but has no idea where she put it, and can only roll the leg of her pants up so far.
At least she has water. At this point it's the only thing motivating her enough to stay awake.
It feels like days before she hears any sound at all other than her own pulse in her ears - footsteps, rapid ones, and then a heavy panting. Two seconds later someone practically dives over the rock that's shielding her but she can't even raise a sound of alarm, sitting there limply as she watches Tarquin roll to a stop by her feet. He's got the mask on, but it's still undeniably him.
He sheds the backpack and thrusts it so hard at her she nearly falls over, but not before unzipping it and carefully removing the bomb, placing it on the ground to her left.
"Okay, listen to me," he instructs. "Are you listening?"
She nods dumbly. She really doesn't like looking at a mask, and can't help but wish he would take it off.
"I got six bottles - I think it was the right stuff. Clean syringes, too. They're in the right side pocket. Get a little ways away and then do it, I don't know how many times but hopefully six will be enough. There's more water in there - keep yourself hydrated and then stay still for a while."
"Wait," she says slowly, her throat like sandpaper. "Where are you going?"
"They're not far behind me. A lot of them, maybe all, I don't fucking know. They must have the idea that I'm not using that shit for myself, and they probably saw exactly what I took."
Her eyes drift to the bomb, abandoned by their sides. "There's no remote detonator."
"I know," he explains, and then pulls the box of matches from his pocket. "I left a few in the bag, too, just in case you need them."
"You'll be really close to it."
"I know," he repeats, and she can imagine there's something terribly sad in his eyes, because she can hear it in his voice. Maybe it's a good thing she can't see him then. "I know, but that's okay."
"No, it's not—"
"Listen to me," he insists, voice harsher than ever before. It's probably never been that harsh in his life. There's a chance he really is just that good of an actor, but that's not what she's feeling right now. "They're not going to stop. They killed Noelani, and maybe Mel too, and I'm not gonna let them kill you. If I'm gonna be a good person one more fucking time I'm gonna give you a chance. Maybe everyone else too."
There's only eight of them left. Eight.
What chance do they really have?
She hears something, a shout that's really not so distant at all. Tarquin hauls her to her feet before she can utter a single protest and then puts the bag over her shoulders. He looks bare without it, even wearing a mask, a bow draped over his arm. He helps her scramble over the rocks to their left until she's on flat ground once again, her head spinning the whole while.
"Go, okay?" he asks, a last plea. It's convincing, she'll admit. If she goes, she may just live because of him. Because he got the supplies for her in the first place, because he's going back in the mines to stop them.
He's going back in the mines to die.
"Go," he repeats. She wants to cry, has no idea how she hasn't run dry yet. Who in the world can possibly cry this much?
He turns though and scoops up the bomb, quickly clambering over the rock and disappearing round the bend, back the way he came. She stares for a moment, but he doesn't come back. She doesn't know why she expected him to... he's doing what he set off to do, exactly what he told her.
It just doesn't seem like who he is, to so eagerly offer himself up to die for someone he hardly knows.
Then again she hardly knows him either, so who is she to say what he's like? Maybe he's just this genuinely self-sacrificial all the time, in a not-so literal sense.
If Tarquin's intent was for her to get far, it doesn't work at all. She's stumbling along for maybe a minute or two before the earth begins to rumble beneath her feet and the explosion from behind nearly deafens her, sending her slamming into the nearest rock before she slides to the ground, landing flat on her face. The weight of the backpack is practically crushing her.
There's another smaller explosion, almost like an aftershock. She can hear something crumbling, giving way, smell the smoke and the acrid tang of the fire in the tunnels not all that far behind her.
It worked. Her bomb worked. She was delirious and in pain and struggling when she completed it, but it worked.
She pulls herself up a ways against the rock before it occurs to her to look, and she freezes where she is, half-draped over the top of the boulder, to stare at the bracelet. It still says eight - a bright little number in the otherwise darkness. The ground is still shaking, not as terribly as before. She can't bear to move a muscle even though her arms are fighting against the strain in her leg, too.
It takes three minutes, three very long minutes in which she hardly breathes at all.
The eight becomes a seven.
She has a chance at living, now, but a little part of her dies.
Jupiter Valens, 14
Applicant #16
Seven is all of a sudden a very pitiful number.
A small part of him still expects to wake up from all of this. Or maybe it was just another part of the simulation - a test to see how the brains would react to the stress. Any second now Nyko would take that stupid headset off, deal with a lot of yelling on their end, explain exactly why they hadn't chosen to do it.
Sabre goes to sleep, curled up in the dirt looking bedraggled as all hell. As soon as he's not looking Jay pinches himself several times.
He doesn't wake up.
He flops back into the dirt, swallowing a groan because he knows Sabre sleeps fitfully already, doesn't want to wake him up when it looks like he gets so little sleep as is. He probably spent a decent amount of time alone after he killed Faye, something he previously felt he had the right to reserve judgement on until the two of them killed Meris.
It's really weird to think of himself as a murderer.
They never really thought of the Victor's as murderers, is the thing. They were champions of their sport, revered in the eyes of the Capitol. Like the captain of one of their soccer teams or the lead actor in one of those blockbusters that always came out at the beginning of summer.
No one would think of him that way if he got home. They'd probably just cry a lot.
It was also kind of tragic to realize he was never going to go see a movie with his friends again, but that was beyond the point.
It's also at this point that he's starting to realize they never said anything about a victor, about one final person. What's going to happen to that one person? Are they the victor? The survivor?
Letting them go home to live out the rest of their days in relative peace doesn't seem like a very Carnelia Trevall thing to do. It would send a message, sure, but he thinks they're more about the murder than any old message.
So he's survived a week for nothing, probably - killed Meris, abandoned Tarquin, never knowing what became of any of his now likely dead allies.
But he's alive, which seems like an accomplishment.
He does groan aloud this time - beside him Sabre twitches in his sleep. Some accomplishment that is. All being alive has done is piled more trauma upon his shoulders and brain and just about everything else. If he had stayed in that room like Caiman seemed to be doing he'd be easily, blissfully dead. He wouldn't be a murderer, wouldn't be a terrible fucking ally, for one.
Sabre doesn't seem to mind him, though. That or he's keeping very, very quiet about how uncomfortable he is with Jay's general presence.
Probably the latter.
It feels good to be doing something, though. He's now making a conscious effort to thank Sabre more, to make him smile even once every few hours, get an uplifting comment out that's able to raise both of their spirits even if only for a few minutes. It's not so quiet with the two of them anymore - it only is, really, when one of them settles down for the night with the other left on watch.
He wouldn't be friends with Sabre back home. That makes him feel kind of awful as well.
If he does by some miracle get home, he'll do better. Be better. He doesn't think he's anywhere near the worst person out there no matter what he's done, but there's always room for improvement.
That's by far one of the corniest things he could think right now, but it's keeping his mind off of everything else. The darkness and keeping quiet and remaining constantly on the lookout for anything at all, from a few feet away to the distant horizon.
It's a halfway promise, though. If he gets home, things can change.
God knows it's the only real promise he can make right now.
And say hello to your final (eight) seven because I'm bad at math: Soran, Icarus, Ria, Emmi, Sabre, Jay and Percy. Tarquin was there for a second, but y'know. Things happened. I welcome any and all tomatoes thrown in my direction.
I'm across the continent but settled, now, so the blog has been re-updated because I'm a big fat liar and Percy isn't dead. Oops? Never believe anything I say. It was really only Mal's placement that ended up changing as a result of it.
Until next time.