XXXVI: Witsonee Border Patrol Station.

Isperia Martorell, 16
Applicant #17

"Is she asleep?" she asks, voice hardly above a whisper.

Tarquin leans off the wall beside her a ways, just enough to gather a look at Emmi's face. "I think so."

She nods and leans back herself, finally satisfied in some regard. She was actually starting to wonder if the bruises under Emmi's eyes weren't just from getting tossed and thrown about, and judging by how still and content she appears now sleep definitely factored into it.

At this point Tarquin's the only one who hasn't slept for more than a few hours, but she doesn't think she's going to get anywhere with that. Not today.

Not any day, really. Who does she think she is? She doesn't have the magical cure-all, can't fix this for them, can't have a rational, well-thought out conversation even like most people would. She's just exhausted, both mentally and physically. Every part of her body still aches; her head hasn't stopped thumping since she woke up, or maybe it was even before that. She has no idea.

Now she's hungry too on top of everything else, and beyond thirsty to boot. They get out of the desert, mostly, and now they're at the mercy of dehydration all over again.

Who would've thought?

Once again Tarquin shifts beside her as he seems to do every other minute or so, but he never wavers from whatever spot he's picked for the moment. Sometimes the wall, sometimes the floor. His face no longer has the puffiness or slightly reddened look from crying - it's been a while, again. No way to tell just how long, and that's really not how she likes to be measuring time, but it's the only thing she's got to go on.

She must have spent too long lingering on the side of his face, because he turns to her and offer a weak smile.

"Thank-you," she says, because it feels too awkward to just be staring at him for no good reason.

"For what?"

"You know what for. You saved my life."

Him and Emmi both, really. She's going to be thanking people for the rest of her life, however long that even is.

"You don't have to thank me for that."

"Are you serious?" she asks. "I wouldn't... I wouldn't be here right now."

"And we still don't know that being here is going to do any good," he points out. "They're just letting us rot. Letting us die."

She may not feel like she's about to die, not yet anyway, but Soran certainly looks it. She's getting more and more scared by the minute to even look at him because she doesn't know what she'll have to confront when she does. What if they do leave them in here to rot, to die? What if he dies right here in front of them all and they can't do anything about it?

She wouldn't be able to do anything about it. She could never be useful like that.

"I don't wanna die," she whispers.

"I know."

"I wanna go home."

"Me too," he agrees. "I want... I hope they can understand."

"They won't," she says, and he nods in agreement.

"They never did," he continues. "That's why all of the Victor's were so close, why the Nine basically disappeared off the grid together. Because no one else understood. I never got it when I was little. I didn't think I ever would."

They hoped they never would, too, and that had seemed like such a beautifully real possibility. That another kid would never have to deal with the horrors of the old world and the games they played in it. They would start to remember those things, celebrate what came after them, learn not to repeat them...

What the hell was this, then?

"If we get out of this, and it was worth it," Tarquin starts. "You can thank me then."

That makes sense. It's something she can accept, too. For all she knows they all die in here and that's the end of it. If they do somehow manage to get out of here who knows what hell could be on the other side of it - it could be even worse than what they just went through, for all she knows. She's not sure she can even imagine something that bad, but it exists. She knows it does.

She's never been a particularly optimistic person. The opposite, in fact. But she really does hope she gets to thank him, because it'll mean something came out of this. Something better. Something brighter.

It's that thought alone that's keeping her from wishing that she was the one dying.

Tarquin slumps down the wall a bit; eventually his head brushes against her shoulder and stays there after he spends a few minutes shifting about. There's no room to move over even if she wanted to unless she wants to take up residence sitting on Emmi, who no doubt wouldn't appreciate it after fighting sleep for so long in the first place.

She doesn't really want to, anyway. It makes her feel a little less cold.

Her eyes are almost on the path to closing again when the door scrapes open. At first it's so quiet that she almost dismisses it, until the figure on the other side steps through.

For a second, she feels something almost like hope, until it fades away again. It's just more of the same. Another unfamiliar person in uniform.

"Mr. Vierra, we'd like to speak to you again, if you don't mind."

Before she can even blink Tarquin has pulled away from her side and is hauling himself to his feet, using the wall above her head to pull himself up.

"You don't have to go," she tells him. Only Icarus has blinked himself awake with the minimum amount of commotion, looking between them all in silence. Tarquin doesn't look anything other than resigned, as tired as she feels all the way down to her bones.

"Hey, wait a minute," Icarus interrupts, sounding more awake than she gave him credit for. "I want to talk to someone too."

Everyone stills. Even the person putting the cuffs back around Tarquin's wrists freezes once the job's done and stares down at them, at Icarus who is otherwise unmoving but has a very odd look in his eye.

"You wanna come in here and grab this one?" the man asks, leaning a ways out of the doorway to gesture into the hall. A moment later someone else appears, another uniform, and takes up nearly the whole door-frame with how broad their shoulders are.

Icarus looks at her. "Can you take him?"

She blinks herself properly awake and scrambles across the floor, though it's not very far to go in the first place. She helps Icarus ease Soran to the ground, though he doesn't move or show any signs of waking even with their hands prodding and pulling at him. Icarus is up on his feet before the transfer is even really finished, wobbling alarmingly on one leg while trying to test his weight on the other.

Soran is just barely leaning up against her legs, but she can still feel how cold he is.

"What are you doing?" she murmurs, and he clamps his mouth shut when the other man approaches, closing another set of cuffs around his wrists. Whatever he was about to say, she has no idea.

Hell, maybe he doesn't even have one himself. That's sort of how they're operating at this point.

Though they've made a point about being loud in the past the door closes behind the four of them almost as quietly as it opened, and everyone left in the room besides her remains still as can be. Emmi appears to be in the midst of one of the deepest sleeps of her life, and Soran...

She doesn't really have a choice but to confront it now.

His skin is white, like paper, almost translucent in parts. He almost looks blue but his pulse is still there when she brings a hand to his neck, faint as it may be. He's not dead.

Not yet, anyway.

She really didn't want to do this, but she's not sure she's equipped to handle this alone.

Ria sighs, and stretches an arm as far as she can manage to wake Emmi.

Icarus Devereux, 17
Applicant #10

He had a dream that he was dead.

Maybe, sort of. He doesn't really know what being dead feels like, but it just felt that way. It felt like nothing was wrong.

He had woken up, and for a second almost wished it was true.

So he's come to a decision. Either he's dying today, or he's getting the hell out of here. Whichever happens first.

Tarquin keeps looking back at him, the two of them being led down the hall like wild animals. Maybe it's because he doesn't know what the hell's going on, or what the hell's going to happen, anymore than Icarus does. Maybe it's because walking is painful, and every single step he takes on his presumably broken foot or ankle is earning one hell of a noise out of him.

Probably both.

One guard deposits Tarquin inside the first door they encounter, another interrogation room. He's led to the room across the hall and watches the empty-handed guard stride away, gun in his belt but hands swinging freely.

He's gone, by the looks of it. That means this one will probably stay.

Great.

The man holding onto him is also conveniently the one that stays inside the room with him, which feels lucky even when he fastens him to the chair back like old times and then sits down across from him. He's got a few options here, really, he just hasn't decided yet which one will be the most effective. He probably won't know until they're all finished.

"So, what would you like to talk about?"

"What's your name?"

The man leans back in his chair, slightly more casual than the rest. "Darrien Stadler."

"Alright, Darrien, well I'm sure you're aware of the fact that we need help."

"In what respect?"

Maybe he shouldn't have even bothered with this route; he's not sure he can handle this guy for as long as he needs to. "We need a doctor. You know that."

"That's not my decision to make, kid."

"Who's is it, then? I need—"

"What you need doesn't matter - nothing you say is going to change their minds unless it's what they want to hear."

"What do they want to hear, then?" he asks. "We've been in here for what, days? What do they need?"

"Every detail you can give them. They want everything they can get before they anyone from the Capitol gets involved."

"So let me guess," he says slowly. "The Federation has no idea we're here. No one does."

That gets ignored, so he's assuming he's right. No one fucking knows they're here. They could all die in here and no one would be any the wiser - the whole world already thinks them dead anyway. They'll dump all five of their bodies into some unmarked desert grave and be done with it, like they never even existed in the first place.

Darrien's toying with his radio, now, avoiding Icarus' eye entirely. "Someone just might."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Someone just might, he hears again, and misses whatever Darrien says into the radio, no doubt something massively important. It feels that way.

"I want you back out here, Stadler. In case the two of them start poking around," a tinny voice sounds through the receiver and makes something ugly crawl down his spine

"On my way," he responds, and stands up. He's got no time left, now, not nearly as much as he wanted in the first place. There was a chance before that he could talk his way out of this, or perhaps into something marginally better, but not anymore. That time's up. That doesn't mean he still doesn't have a chance.

Darrien rounds the chair and has unhooked him from it, sealing his wrists back together, before he even thinks to do anything in the few seconds it takes. He gets back to his feet, desperately trying to steady himself when he can hardly maintain his balance. He has to do something before he opens the door; there's someone else out there, and no way he takes on two of them and wins.

A bolt of pain shoots through his ankle yet again. It's not entirely purposeful when his leg gives way, when his knee hits the ground with a painful thud. Darrien lets go with one hand, as if to steady him at the elbow and pull him back up. Icarus throws himself forward with the gained momentum before he can, practically tumbling towards the closest corner of the room as the last hand Darrien has on him falls away.

He's still half on the floor, can feel the massive presence looming over him, and switches directions. Back towards his legs. He collides with them, unable to do anything with his arms other than push, and Darrien topples like a fucking giant, first hitting the chair and then the desk as he tumbles over it, hitting both with a great thud and the floor with an even louder noise.

He crawls across the floor after him, just managing to crawl over top of his back before he could get to his hands and knees. Icarus loops his hands over top of his head and locks the chain holding his hands together around Darrien's throat until he can pull them no more.

"I really don't wanna kill you," he manages, but locks his hands together and keeps pulling, until Darrien's hands begin to struggle futilely for the chain that's closed around his throat. He's already red in the face, the color spreading out from his neck.

He's going to match Soran in a few days, is what he thinks quite hysterically.

If he doesn't kill him, that is. And it's not like he'll have the mark of fingerprints bruised into his skin.

He lets go the second Darrien goes limp underneath him, doesn't even think for a second that the man could be faking it just to throw him off. He doesn't move when he clambers off of him.

He can't even tell if he's breathing, and isn't about to check.

There's still the sound of whoever's outside the door, presumably the guard left out there. He's not going to have a choice about that.

He fumbles the keys free from Darrien's belt and pops the cuffs off. His wrists ache and burn but he has no choice but to ignore it, grabbing the key-card and the handgun stowed away beside each other just as the door beeps from the outside, the signal of someone about to enter.

Icarus gets one good look at the guard's eyes, at curiosity that quickly trickles into alarm when he raises the gun, closes his finger over the trigger.

It changes into something else, when the bullet fires. He just doesn't know what.

He's out in the hallway before the guard even hits the ground. He sees the blood for a second, spreading rapidly over his chest as he steps over him, but can't bring himself to focus on it. If he does, if he really thinks about it, then it might be all over again.

Everything he did... it just goes on.

The door across the hall chimes just the same when he holds the key-card to it, but the woman beyond it is entirely different. She's already halfway to her feet, responding to the commotion that he's caused, but there's no sense of alarm in her eyes. She looks almost terrifyingly calm, like she's fully prepared for whatever was out in this hall, whatever she was about to encounter.

It almost makes him feel worse when he pulls the trigger again.

It's worse this time, hits closer to the neck. There's a spray of blood as it tears out the back, all over the white wall behind. Tarquin jolts so fiercely he nearly knocks both himself and the chair over. He had been about to look over his shoulder, no doubt to look at the intrusion himself, but now his eyes are squeezed shut.

Probably for the best.

"What did you just do?" he chokes. "Oh my god, are you insane?"

"We gotta go."

"Everyone in the building probably just heard that, oh my god—"

"Which is why we gotta go," he insists, wiggling the key around until the cuffs pop free just like his did. "Take her gun, let's go."

He doesn't wait to see if Tarquin actually listens, only hopes that he does as he steps back out into the hall. There's no one else there yet, just a body and two doors, a smear of blood on the floor where he fell.

It's only a matter of time.

"Do you have a plan?" Tarquin asks, sounding more breathless than he has any right to. "Fuck, I don't know how to use this."

That's real great. "We need to get out of here."

"How?"

"There might be someone here who knows we're here, too. That, or we need to find a way out."

"And what then?"

He grabs Tarquin's arm, instead, because he doesn't have a single good answer for that, hasn't been able to come up with one for shit. The two of them stumbling about would probably look hilarious to anyone watching if they weren't both black and blue, scraping their bare and ruined feet along the floor, through the smear of blood the guard has left on the floor. It'll be less funny once someone finds out what they've done, what he's done. It won't matter the differences between the two of them, though. They're all getting blamed for this one.

Unless they get out, which is already seeming less and less likely by the second, but it's not like he can take back what he just did.

"Okay," he starts. It really does hurt to walk without any assistance, but he's ignoring it. "If we can't get out, one of us needs to find the entrance to this place. Like I said, someone might be here could help us. If not, one of us needs to find a phone."

"And call who?"

Well, he's not exactly invested in ringing up his parents right now, but at least they'd do something. That he knows. They have no love spared for each other but they wouldn't leave him here to die.

"Whoever you can think of," he answers. "Tell them we're alive, and that we need help."

"You can go get the others, I'll start looking," Tarquin insists, and an alarm blasts so loud through the hall that they both jump into each other. It only causes a world of pain for them both, he's sure. More pain flares up all the way to his knee, would have caused another collapse if Tarquin didn't keep holding on. There's a rotating light at the end of the hall, obnoxiously orange-yellow. The whole hallway is bathed in it.

"I lied, I'm not going anywhere," Tarquin says. "I think they know."

No avoiding that now; it doesn't matter, anyway, because they just have to turn around the next corner and that's where the room should be. He doesn't know if he should be accounting for another guard outside their door as well, but he has the gun up just in case.

He really doesn't want to shoot anyone else. He's so fucking tired of it already.

Tarquin, in the very least, seems to notice something that he doesn't. His hand tightens around Icarus' elbow a second before they turn the corner. There's a third set of footsteps, and then a fourth.

He hears it too late, and two seconds later the barrel of his gun is leveled with someone's forehead.

He backs up at the same time they do, slides backwards a few paces and knocks Tarquin back in the process. Whoever it is already has their hands up, unlike the guard behind them, who has a gun pointed back back before Icarus even blink.

"Oh my god," Tarquin manages, although it sounds different than when it was directed towards Icarus before. "This isn't real, right? You're not actually here."

The man in question smiles, just a little bit. Too much for someone who has a gun pointed at his head. "Nice hair, kid. I'm gonna pretend that's a tribute to me."

His hands are fucking shaking around the gun. He could press down on the trigger in one flat second and kill whoever this is.

That's probably what he should do, to the both of them.

"Sir, I need you to go back to the lobby—"

"Nah, I'm good here," he answers, and the guard's frustrated noise is almost amusing, muffled by his wide helmet. "My kid is pretty fucking smart."

"What?" he asks.

"There was something on the news a few days back... you lot, by the looks of it. I didn't think they'd mind me poking around in here if it wasn't true."

"Sir—"

"Shut your fucking mouth, would you?" the man asks, looking something beyond relatively calm for the first time. Icarus wishes he felt the same way. "You have a doctor in this building?"

Something in him almost cries out, at that, but his hands are shaking bad enough already. "Good fucking luck with that. We've tried."

He knows who he is. There's something itching in the back of his mind, some familiarity but it feels like it only existed a very long time ago. The man looks him all the way up and down and then Tarquin, the both of them looking like nothing more than zombies roaming the walls, like something that someone reanimated. Finally he looks at the door, as if sensing Icarus leaning towards it. He just needs to get through that door.

"How many of you are there?"

"Five."

"Five?" he repeats slowly. "Five of you, from New Haven?"

He nods. He knows, he knows, he knows who they are and it almost sounds like he's going to do something about it. Icarus' eyes might as well be on fire.

"I'd hold out my hand, but I don't think you'd care," the man says. "Ferrox Mervaine. Nice to meet you. Or not, your preference."

"You're not fucking serious," he spits, but even as he says it he knows. The familiarity finally clicks. And Tarquin fucking knew, he knew from the second he saw him, of course he would, like that's just his thing. Maybe it is, because it's not like Icarus would know.

"I'm deadly serious, really," Ferrox says, and then looks over his shoulder. "Put the gun down."

"Like hell I am. He's killed two other guards already."

"Oh, that's it?" Ferrox asks. "I'd have killed a few more if I was in his situation."

His hands won't stop no matter what he wants. Chances are if he fired the gun right now he'd miss both of them no matter the proximity, but hopefully they don't know that. It's the guard that seems to be the issue, him and his steady hands be damned. Maybe it's just because of how bad he hurts, all over. Every single part of him is aching.

Maybe he's just terrified.

"I need you to listen to me," Ferrox says. "And it's gonna sound dumb as hell, I'm aware of that. Just hear me out. I need you to trust me, even if it's for a few minutes. You need to put the gun down. I am not going to let anything happen to you, not to any of you, but I'm not going to have any choice in the matter if this one shoots you."

He doesn't know if he can. It feels like his hands are glued to it, even if it feels like it's about to fall to the floor more with each passing second. If he lets go of it and something happens to him, to one of them, that's on him.

It'll be his fault.

"You can trust me," Ferrox insists. "It's weird, but I'm a lot more invested in saving lives, these days. I'm going to make sure you're safe. As long as you put the gun down."

"I don't think I can?" he says, rather stupidly, and his voice breaks in the middle for good measure. Even Tarquin looks as if he's about to cry, though, so he's not so sure it's that terrible of a thing.

It's just a long time coming.

Ferrox takes a slow, even step forward, and then stretches his arm all the way out until his fingers curl around the barrel of the gun.

"The door," he croaks, and it sounds even more pathetic than he'd like to admit. "They're in there."

Ferrox doesn't miss a beat and doesn't turn around, either. "Open it."

"I don't care who you are, you know," the guard says. "Intimidation isn't going to work here."

"Oh, if I was going that route, I would've stayed in the lobby and let my wife come looking. She's a lot scarier than I am. Open it."

"I'm not—"

There's a little pull against his hand, and the gun falls out of it. Ferrox turns around two seconds later with the gun in his hand, now, and points it straight ahead, towards the center of the guard's forehead that Icarus is so convinced he would have missed if he had taken the shot. He had already thought Ferrox was intimidating, if he was being honest, and the feeling skyrockets now. Maybe that's the territory with having previously almost-dead Head Gamemaker as your credentials.

"What are you doing?" the guard asks.

"Nothing right now, but you have three seconds before I shoot you in the head. Open it."

The guard wavers for the first time. Icarus would know if he could see the man's eyes, but he can't. The gun lowers an inch, and even over the sound of the alarm blaring through the hall he can practically hear the seconds ticking down.

The guard reaches down. Icarus watches the key-card come free from his belt and then witnesses him press it against the sensor outside the door, hardly willing to believe it when the light flashes green, when the door clicks open after it.

"Pleasure doing business with you," Ferrox announces, and the smile on his face slides right past intimidating and straight into terrifying. "Go."

He doesn't know if that's directed towards him or the guard but he doesn't care either way. He slides around them all and drags Tarquin with him, who doesn't protest at being pulled along and stumbles after him into the room. All three of them are still on the floor, that much he expected. What he didn't expect is the burst of panic that follows the door opening, at how quickly Emmi turns around and Ria's eyes, somehow even more wide and scared than usual, at Soran...

Emmi looks up at him. "He's not breathing."

Or maybe I do like the number four better after all, hey? Me and math, man, they don't make a great combination.

As of Tuesday I'm officially done writing this story, aka the Official Behemoth, in about an eight month time span, so thank you to everyone who has stuck with me thus far. It means more than you know!

As for the numbers game, you'll have to stick around until next week to see.

Until next time.