Sacrifice is a choice you make...
The cell burst open, the barred metal door clattering onto the ground. The Shostakovitch siblings looked up in surprise and felt their eyes widen when they caught sight of the ruined state their Captain was in. She stood there, brown curls tangled and disheveled, pants and shirt ripped and covered in blood, her skin freshly scarred, bruised, cut and covered in dirt and blood. Her small pouch, which was attached to her belt loop beside a walkie-talkie, was surprisingly the only thing still intact and looked rather heavier and more full than what they recalled, and she had a bow and a quiver full of arrows slung over her shoulder.
She looked around the cell before finally settling her gaze upon them, face unreadable as she stepped inside. She handed them each a handgun, then walked over to the unconscious blonde and leaned down, placing a slightly bony finger to the side of her neck, searching for a pulse.
"She's just fainted," Elena said softly.
Ayden did not reply as she focused solely on the blonde. She furrowed her brows as a strange feeling took over her whole being within seconds; it was almost as though she had literally gained a physically empathetic perception. One touch to Rosalie's throat confirmed the strength of her pulse, and that touch also let Ayden's enhanced perception flow through the whole body of her new friend. The blonde's breathing was strong and regular, and no bones were broken; she had but a mere concussion and a bit of blood loss, no more.
She must've healed from the rest already...
Pulling her hand away from Rosalie's throat, she shifted slightly, balancing herself on her heels, then hoisted the limp body over her shoulder.
"Come on," she muttered. "We're getting out of here."
They got to their feet and followed her out without hesitation. Elena did not know what to think when they stepped into the hallway. It was dark as most lights had died out, and others were just dysfunctional flickering, but the blood stains on the walls were perfectly clear. Where did all the blood come from? Where were the bodies— why wasn't Ayden making some witty, disgusted remark as she usually would at a scene like this?
"Don't panic," Ayden suddenly said lowly.
It was then that Elena realized she had started hyperventilating a bit. How did Ayden know? She hadn't even spared her a glance since they'd left the cell.
"Just keep walking," added Ayden.
Damian felt sick to his stomach at the sight before them, even more so when they reached the end of the hallway and caught sight of a ripped leg on the floor.
"Whoops," Ayden muttered, kicking it towards the shadows before turning towards the right, leading down another hallway.
She stopped for a moment when she caught sight of an extinguished torch laying on the ground, pushed her foot under it, then, hacky-sack style; she kicked it up into her left hand. She walked over to a flickering lantern on the wall, then smashed it with the burnt side of the torch, igniting it.
"Do you know where you're going?" Damian quietly asked as they resumed their walk. She did not reply. "We could be heading towards more of them, for all we know."
No response.
Suddenly, as they neared the end of the hallway, Ayden stopped again. She handed the torch to Elena, then crouched down to gently place Rosalie on the ground.
"The exit is just around this corner," she said, shifting the unconscious girl into a sitting position. "Wait here, for a sec; I'll be right back." Both siblings simultaneously opened their mouths to protest, but she turned and gave them a hard look. "That's an order."
And with that, she got up and went ahead, rounding the corner where, a few feet ahead, stood a closed wooden door. Taking a deep breath, she stalked toward it, bringing an arrow out of her quiver in the process. Once she reached the door, she pressed her ear against it, even though she didn't really need to.
"It's gotten pretty quiet, don't you think?"
"Yeah, but I'm not complaining. Although I would like to hear that girl scream again— God! She felt so good."
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she continued to listen, her grip subconsciously tightening around the arrow.
"Do you think Doc will let us have another go?"
Pause. "Eh, probably not. He's got a long list of sciency shit he wants to try on her."
She didn't know what had gotten into her, but as soon as he said that, she found herself sniffing the air.
Sigh. "God, I'm getting hard just thinking how tight—"
Snap.
The arrow snapped in her hand. She smelled them— she smelled herself on them.
"Pinche wey..." (fuckin' dude...) she muttered under breath.
They were one of the first men to have ripped her from her virtue.
"Hey! Did you hear that?"
She heard them being to scramble about, but she did not wait any longer as anger rose inside of her once more. She grabbed another arrow from her quiver then, without waiting for another second, she kicked the door open and stabbed the first man she found herself standing in front of with the arrow, then snapped his neck before pulling the bolt out, letting his body fall, limp, onto the ground. She then turned to the other one who was panickingly trying to reload his pistol and felt her face shift as a cold smirk grew on her face.
She tilted her head to a side, her smirk never wavering as she stepped right in front of him, staring at the stubbled man with her devil eyes.
"I hope you're hard enough for this," she purred.
And then she stabbed the bloody arrow into his own heart before piercing her fangs into his throat, her free hand going to the back of his neck to keep him from moving as she drank until she drained him. Then, she dropped him onto the ground, still holding onto the arrow as she did so, causing it to rip from his chest, splattering more blood on her.
"Ahora estoy llena," (Now I'm full) she said softly as she stared at the dead men for a moment, breathing hard.
After a few seconds passed, and she finally came down of the high, she placed the bloody arrow back into her quiver before glancing around. She let out a humorless chuckle as she found familiarity in the cliff nearby; it reminded her of the one she'd been knocked out on. She rid the two dead men their still somewhat intact jackets before grabbing them by the collar of their shirts and dragging them toward the cliff, throwing them off it, knowing they would land on the others she had killed before she'd been captured... well if their corpses were still there.
She took a deep breath and concentrated on her face she was sure still looked demonic and waited a few seconds for it to go back to normal. However, she grew distracted by a faint rustling coming from the trees.
She sighed, annoyed, and tilted her head back to see a man in his late twenties pointing his pistol at her with trembling hands.
"You're brave to face me after what you just saw me do; I'll give you that," she spoke in a dark tone.
She turned and walked over to him, practically strutting, her battered look giving her the appearance of a devilish warrior angel. She stood in front of him and gently pried the gun from his hands.
"You won't kill me," she said.
He scrambled to grab a knife from his belt, though as soon as it was within her sight, it was out of his hand and stabbed into a tree, and he was thrown against another. He had never felt such pain as thus he was currently going through as she threw him from one tree to another and damaged one of his knees along the way to the worst.
He laid on the ground after what felt like forever, his eyes shut in anticipation. He slowly opened them when nothing came and gasped in fear when he found himself staring into a pair of blood-red eyes.
"I'd kill you, but since you didn't actually try to kill me, or at least try hard enough, I'll let you run back to that little demented cult of yours. Let 'em know what's comin'."
With that said, she headed back inside the building, with the two jackets, after morphing back into her human mask. She threw the Shostakovitch siblings each a jacket before hoisting Rosalie over her shoulder once more.
"Come on," she said. "The coast is clear."
It was a relief when Rosalie had finally woken up. However, she was still too weak to walk on her own as she wasn't used to going through torture of any sort. For Ayden, though she was glad the four of them could walk now without much support needed, she found it to be harder than she thought, having to lead three others through the deadly jungle. Since Elena and Rosalie weren't used to this kind of stuff— Rosalie being but an archaeologist in training, and Elena for having a body too young to endure such expedition— Ayden had to hoist them, one by one, onto her back to get across some gaps and other difficult obstacles. Thankfully, she had to do no such thing with Damian.
To say they felt bad for letting her do most of the work was an understatement, especially when they could see she was clearly exhausted even though she hid it rather well. However, there was no pulling her away from her ways. She was stubborn, and they knew her well enough to know such, so they let her be whenever she made a decision and followed her orders, retraining themselves from questioning any thought running through her head; she was like an overly dedicated student studying for an exam that would determine their life career.
Unfortunately for their curious minds, they could not find out what was going on in her head as even her facial expression remained hard to read, especially through her short conversations with Roth.
"Ayden, I think it'll be best if you rest."
"If we keep taking breaks we'll never get off this godforsaken island," she grumbled.
Yamatai was her original intention when she joined the expedition. She had sought this place. Not this way, of course, but she had pushed them. She had pushed and pleaded and insisted. Well... she mainly did so because she wanted to get the whole thing done and over with. And now they were stuck there, and it was all her fault. She'd had a feeling something bad could happen, and now it did because she convinced them to go on with their plans. She added a few twists and tweaks to better their strategies and such, but that only straightened their path to hell. The boat kept going long after what made sense, long after what was typical. Maybe even a little past what was safe. Whitman was determined, his creditors and many others were practically hounding him. Sam was totally devoted to Ayden, arguing her case every night, long after the decision was made. And Roth...
Find Roth! He will know what to do. Roth will get you all out of there. Just keep moving!
But even as Roth quietly told her it was getting too dangerous to keep going, and how supplies were running low, Ayden hadn't been worried.
What was the worst that could happen?
She had thought to find the island, land and spend a few days unearthing its mysteries, retreating every night to her lent tent, maybe catch a fish or two for her dinner before turning in for the night, falling asleep listening to old sixties songs from the small radio...
She hadn't found this nether island. It had found her. Its jaws had leaped up from the merciless ocean to rip the Endurance and her dear, dear compatriots from the Feral Force apart and devour them all whole.
The Isle of Yamatai had been a place of many mysteries, all of which would chew her up and spit out the bones. Everything that moved on the damned rock was trying to kill everything else. It was like that Predator movie. If the monstrous Predator didn't kill the humans, they would go crazy and kill each other either way.
She had known the nature of the food chain from second grade. She had known about First Aid and the priorities of shelter or water or food or clothing from the extra course she had taken in college.
She had known of pagan rites. The human sacrifices of many cultures.
Days already spent on Yamatai, she realized she didn't know anything; she learned all about the Western civilization, but not further than west.
The Island had beaten the civilization out of her and reduced her to raw survival force. But her mind was still sharp as it ever was, soaked in adrenaline, a desperate cling at her humanity, and with the stakes raised to a matter of life and horrifying death.
Her inner self and body slightly calm from listening to the heartbeats of the three sleeping figures behind her, she folded herself into a ball, clutching at her bow, just waiting for the sun to rise.
She stretched her hearing further from their perimeters and closed her eyes momentarily as she listened to the patrols of madmen and fanatics creeping a few thirty trees away, not knowing their targets were closer than they believed. Eyes snapping open, she made sure Elena, Damian, and Rosalie were well enough hidden from sight before silently running off to get a closer look.
She ran through the trees, then climbed the last one that was near enough she could see her enemies, but far enough they wouldn't see her. Her eyes narrowed dangerously as she stared down at them, bow at the ready.
Her gaze was so intent that the men were beginning to fidget, though they knew not where the predatory gaze was coming from. She had watched the hawks with their razor sharp eyes picking out meals from the long grass. She had watched the prey animals sit up with sudden alertness, survival instincts of their own telling them when they were in danger.
She thought she knew ancient cultures and languages, but then she found out so much more.
She learned that gods and ancient powers were totemic. They all had different names for their Gods, but they all worshiped the storms, the predators, the sun, the moon... The same story of the Lost Souls painted over and over again in their tortured hand. She learned the differences between carefully written letters of various languages in a textbook, and the wild, desperate graffiti clawed on the walls, begging for someone to hear their message. She learned the rise and fall of empires from the leftovers that the Island had not deigned to crush into pulp.
The message was the same, written over and over, language after language, culture after culture, century after century...
NO ONE LEAVES!
She had thought she knew agility from the stealth training at the camp. She thought she knew how to run, how to dodge around obstacles, walk a balance beam, and clear hurdles.
She was wrong.
Yamatai had taught her how to run, really run, as her life truly depended on it. Yamatai had taught her how to get around obstacles, and to avoid being knocked down without slowing even a little bit. Yamatai had taught her how to scamper along a tiny ledge or climb a wall of sheer stone and ice.
Ayden didn't weep for it any longer. She soaked herself in it, devoured everything she saw and heard. She had the mind of an honor student, and this deadly, dangerous education would mean her life. She had the energy of the place now. The hungry savagery of predator and prey, the dance of strike and escape. She knew when to attack, and when to defend. She knew sight lines and taking cover.
And for all that, she was still running. Yamatai had taught her how to survive hell on earth, but not how to claim a place in it. She thought she knew what she was capable of. She thought she knew her limits. Every hour that passed taught her differently.
Find Roth! Just keep moving!
The days were long and cold. The nights were worse, but she was learning. These were lessons she'd never thought to learn. Lessons that she could not learn any other way. A thousand lessons in things that only Yamatai could teach her.
You have to rest, Ayden...
She groaned, then dropped from the tree and hurried back to the trio. Once she reached them, she settled in a corner, brought out her radio and turned it on, letting it play some twentieth-century music. She sighed as a Marilyn Monroe song began to play. Don't get her wrong, she loved music from that century, and she loved that singer, but at the moment she wanted something more... familiar.
She pressed a few buttons, switching the radio station and a small nostalgic smile made its way onto her chapped plump lips as a familiar song reached her ears.
Ya no estas mas a mi lado corazón...
She closed her eyes and leaned her back against a tree, hugging her knees to her chest.
En el alma sólo tengo soledad... y si ya no puedo verte, por qué Dios me hizo quererte para hacerme sufrir mas...
"Siempre fuiste la razón de mi existir," she began to whisper the words as the song soared on.
Adorarte para mi fue religión; en tus besos yo encontraba el calor que me brindaba, el amor y la pasión...
She did not open her eyes when a tear escaped her closed lids nor when she heard a faint rustling behind her as she knew who had woken up. She simply sighed and continued to whisper the words of the song.
"Es la historia de un amor como no hay otro igual... que me hizo comprender todo el bien, todo el mal... que le dio luz a mi vida... apagándola después... hay que vida tan obscura... sin tu amor no viviré..."
"That's a nice song," Elena said softly.
"Known it since before I even knew how to speak," Ayden replied in a mumble. She opened her eyes and looked up at the tar-black sky as another tear fell from her eye. "It was my mom's favorite."
Elena blinked in surprise; there was a lot Ayden had told her about herself. It was always somewhat vague, but it was still a lot. Never, however, had she ever spoken of her mother, brother, nor really anyone in her family. Elena couldn't help but wonder what this island was doing to her.
"Sleep," Ayden spoke a slightly bit louder, though her tone remained soft, voice slightly raspy from the many days spent screaming in pain.
"You should too," said Elena as she laid back down, eyes never leaving her Captain's back.
Ayden sighed, shaking her head to herself. "I can't," she muttered before sighing once more. "Sleep; we're leaving at dawn."
Elena sighed and closed her eyes, knowing better than to argue with the stubborn girl.
When she was sure the young Russian girl was asleep once again, she clasped her hands together and shut her eyes, tilting her head upward.
It was strange; she hadn't done that in a long time.
Pray.
Ayden had never considered herself very religious. She was a believer, but, at this point, she didn't know what to believe in anymore as everything she had ever believed in always seemed to disappoint her in the end. That's why she always preferred to believe in what she read and learned in school because those things were more than often accurate.
In her high school days, she had studied endless forms of worship to one god or another. The Ancient Cultures were wrapped in their adoration of the same things— the Sun, the Moon... they worshiped all sorts of animals all the way to planets and stars. As part of her studies in school, she had traced the origins of many religious cultures. Plenty of cults and pagan rites were off-shoots and derivatives of the cultures that came before them. But what each and every definition of faith came down to was a good-for-nothing mortal, begging for compassion from forces beyond their comprehension.
Her grandmother had told her that every myth had its root in at least one truth, one fact. Ayden had believed her and told herself that if she wanted to understand the truths of the universe, she had to start with that one unimpeachable fact.
When she joined the crew that saved her life, her goal for when she reached the island with them was to simply understand. Simply learn something more. It was a search for fact... but she had found something far beyond the usual thrill she sought.
Now she found herself praying for rescue once more, praying for help... Of course, she expected no answer. She had never really thought much about the Supernatural, though she knew people that did. But she had no respect for people who ignored God until they needed a magic wand to rescue them.
The ones that came before her on the island had a thousand different names for gods and goddesses. Mathias had bent a whole island of lunatics to his manic needs by invoking the names of Ancient Queens.
One thing that Ayden had discovered was that the ones that got anything out of any faith, even as all others turned jaded around them... The true believers all had the same quality. They asked to understand before they asked for help.
Ayden wanted neither. She only sought escape. If not for herself, then at least a safe root for her companions.
Each religion had its soothsayers. Even Mathias claimed to know exactly what to do. Prophecy was the point of any cult, any faith. Ayden had been fascinated with the story of the Oracle of Delphi, but she never really believed the future could be foretold. It was a position that seemed justified when she got through to the rescue choppers. Warnings from lunatics and cultists didn't add up.
She controlled her own destiny.
Crack!
She snapped out of her thoughts and jumped to her feet, killing the intruder within less than five seconds.
Her face showed no emotion at all as she looked up from the dead man to the trio who stared back at her in shock. Pulling her knife out of the man's neck, she straightened and grabbed the blown torch she'd taken with her from the building they'd been experimented at.
"This is why I didn't want to stop," she said as she built a small fire to light up the torch. "I hope you've rested enough because that's all you'll get for a while. We need to find Roth."
"Up the mountain?" Rosalie asked.
"The only way to Roth," confirmed the young captain. "We should go now; if we stay any longer, those guys will find us. And if they don't, the wolves will."
"Right."
No other word was said after that. They put their stolen jackets back on properly, picked up their weapons and followed Ayden deeper into the wood. The trip was silent for a long moment before suddenly, Elena broke it, deciding to play 'twenty questions' with them, mostly to keep herself awake. She and her brother conversed with the blonde archaeologist in training, all three unaware that the girl leading the way was recording them in her radio.
"Ayden!"
The girl stopped walking and instantly tensed when she realized she'd been about to draw one of her weapons from being startled. Damian noticed too, though he made no comment about it, merely taking a mental note.
Taking a deep breath, Ayden craned her neck to look at Elena from the corner of her eye.
"What?"
Elena frowned slightly. "I was talking to you."
"Really now?" Ayden's voice was faint and distant. "What did you say?"
"I asked you a question."
Ayden turned fully around and looked at Elena for a long moment, face unreadable. Suddenly, her eyes softened, and her body relaxed a bit.
"I'm sorry," she apologized. "I didn't mean to stray." Elena blinked, taken aback by the girl's unusual behavior. "What is it that you wanted to know?"
"Uh... nothing important really," said Elena in a sheepish tone as they resumed walking. "Was just wondering... can you tell us something about you no one knows?"
Had they been cartoons, Ayden would've collapsed to the ground in shock and surprise at the question.
I'm a vampiric super soldier, she thought. Technically no one knows that anymore since those who did are dead now...
Of course, she didn't say that, though. She wasn't that stupid.
She thought for a moment, their feet stomping softly against the dirt path being the only sound that had settled upon them.
"I have mixed origins... Mexican mom, Haitian dad, Spanish and Portuguese maternal grandparents, and half French and half Haitian, and Japanese paternal grandparents. I'm not really Canadian; I was born in the US... like my brother." She paused. "Oh, and my brother's really my half-brother."
The blonde and the siblings were left too stunned to speak after that was said and simply followed her as she silently led the way, neither of them finding it in themselves to break the silence again.
This already painful night was going to be a long one...
—
She was glad to see them again; there was no denying that, but the reunion was only slowing her down, almost as much as keeping an eye on the trio following her was. So, she did what she thought would be best; she made them go with Reyes and the others, much to their dismay. They knew she was strong and could look after herself, but after everything that had happened with Dr. Blake, they didn't want to leave her alone. The rest of the Endurance crew could understand why— her change of character was more than showing that. But, if there was one thing that hadn't changed about her, it was her stubbornness, they discovered as, soon, she stalked away from them, an ever so determined look on her face.
A few minutes away, Ayden found herself running back to the crew, hoping desperately to find them before Mathias' people did, the warnings crystallized into prophecy in her mind. She knew this journey was changing her. She had already lost so much of herself to the island, and to Clayton before then. One by one, the aspects of her personality had been smacked out of her, and she almost felt like a simple marionette being pushed and pulled, back and forth, by the world. But something she hadn't expected to lose was her skepticism. She hadn't expected to become, anew, the believer she had once been. She had lost faith long ago, but now it was returning. Perhaps it was the island's doing, what with its inexplicable storms and typhoons conjured from nothing before her eyes. What with the seemingly angry wind that tried to gust her off the face of a mountain...
She stopped.
Faith.
She needed to have more faith in the crew— they had survived so far without her help; they could take care of themselves. Roth— he was the one she needed to find, and soon.
Turning back on her heels for what felt like the hundredth time, she resumed running in her previous direction, only stopping when she came upon a rather familiar ladder.
Her breathing hitched as the realization hit her; this was where she'd been taken from the last time she'd been abducted.
She climbed back up, jaw clenched as she kept herself alert. After reaching the area above the rope ladder, but before moving ahead, she took a little detour where she found a rather ancient-looking staircase. Below and to the left of it, leading up a hill alongside a building, there was a white ledge overlooking a stream. Biting her lip, hesitating for a moment, Ayden finally stepped forward and dropped down, waded across the stream and carefully made her way through a narrow crack in the rock wall into a cave, where she surprisingly found a treasure map for this area. There was also a salvage net, but she knew there was no way she could use it because there was no way to light her torch in there.
Grabbing the map, she turned back and returned through the crack in the rocks to the main area and climbed the wooden wall to get back to the area at the top of the ladder. Turning her back to the cliff, she rushed forward, scrambling up the wooden wall on the right to get into the building itself, where she found more arrows. Around the east back side of the building, she found some food, more arrows, and a previously inhabited base camp.
She had no idea for how long she'd been running for, but now that she stopped she could feel her exhaustion wearing her down again, so she decided to sit down and rest for a while. After counting eighteen hundred seconds, she was once more on her way.
Crossing the wooden bridge ahead, she slowly started up the steps. As she neared the top, she came to a stop when the smell of men caught her nostrils. Bringing out her bow and an arrow, she aimed steadily then shot her arrow into walls to distract the nearby enemies. She felt the pride of knowing she'd made the right decision when she saw her shot alerting the two men on the other side of the low wall. For a while, she stayed in her cover and shot another arrow at the wall a little to the right of the two guys.
The man on the right then turned around to look where the shot had come from. While he was busy, Ayden quickly took out the one on the left with a quick headshot before killing the guy on the right before he realized what was happening. Just as she was about to shoot another one, a shot intercepted her, hitting her next target.
Eyes widening slightly in surprise, she grabbed another arrow and spun around, pointing it in the direction the shot came from, only to find herself face to face with Elena. Jaw clenching, she yanked the younger soldier by the arm and almost threw her against the wall, eyed narrowed into the most ferocious glare she could muster.
"What the hell are you doing here, Shostakovitch?" she demanded.
Elena's heart dropped. "Last name? Ah, gee— I'm in trouble, aren't I?"
"Damn right, you're in trouble! What the hell were you thinking?" Ayden all but hissed at her.
"Oh, I don't know, maybe how my best friend could die out here if she doesn't have anyone to cov—"
"I don't need your help."
"Uh, yeah, you do," Elena argued. "You just don't like to admit it. You never do."
The look in Ayden's eyes darkened. "Don't talk like you know me, Shostakovitch. You don't know anything."
Elena clenched her jaw and looked at her captain intently. "I'll have you know that I know a lot more than you could possibly imagine. You know why? Because as your best friend, I—"
"We are not best friends, Elena!" Ayden growled.
Elena fought back her tears with a glare of her own; why was Ayden talking like that?
"If we weren't, you wouldn't have helped rescue my brother. You wouldn't have jumped off a plane for me, or taken a bullet for Damian. You wouldn't have taken and endured all that torture for us, but you did. If we weren't best friends, I wouldn't be here, but I am, so suck it up, Jaubert, and accept things as they are. For once, stop pushing people away— stop pushing me away."
Ayden stared at her for a good long moment, dark eyes gazing intently into her before she slowly released her. "Were you followed?"
Elena blinked back her surprise as she shook her head.
"Damian and Rosalie, where are they?"
"I left them with the others; they're still looking for our unit and that girl you were talking about."
Ayden looked down at her and eyed her pistols. "Still got any ammo?"
"Got enough."
"Then shut up and follow my lead."
Then, without exchanging further words, Elena and Ayden continued to shoot at the men from their hiding spot.
It went on like that for a while, the girls hiding in the shadows while shooting at the men before they even got the chance to see them. After basically having massacred all of Mathias' men in the Mountain Temple, Ayden came upon a narrow cliff, Elena following close behind. They managed to climb to the top, where they finally found Roth, a good half-yard away, trying to fend off a pack of wolves with his handgun.
"Argh! Get back!" Roth yelled at the wolves, "Go on! Get out of here! Go on!"
Reacting instantly, Ayden snatched the handgun from Elena's grasp and aimed it at the wolves, shooting them one by one, mercilessly, before pushing herself off the ladder and onto the solid ground.
"Roth?! Roth, I'm coming!" she said as she then ran towards him, dropping the handgun as Roth collapsed. When Ayden reached him, she saw the bad wound on his leg and instantly felt guilty for not coming sooner. "Thank God you're alive." She sighed in relief as she knelt beside him and helped him lean against a rock.
"That God's got nothing to do with it," Roth replied with a grimace. Then he looked at her and smiled. "You don't know how much I'm glad to see you."
"Well, you better be," Elena huffed as she walked up toward them, picking up her handgun from the ground. "We came a long way."
Ayden rolled her eyes at the Russian girl, then sighed. "Roth, this idiot girl is Elena. Lena—" Elena's eyes lit up at the sound of her nickname. "— this is Roth."
"Nice to meet you, sir."
Roth nodded tiredly. "Likewise. I've heard a lot about you."
Elena smiled. "All good things, I hope."
"Introductions aside," Ayden cut in as she inspected Roth's wound. "Ah, man— they did a real number on your leg."
"Nah... looks worse than it is," Roth replied.
"Have you heard from any of the others?" Ayden asked. "My radio's been bugging a lot, so I haven't got a signal since I left them."
Roth shook his head. "Nothing," he replied. He then tried to stand up.
"Whoa— what are you doing?" Ayden exclaimed.
"The wolves took my food pack. The transmitter from the lifeboat's in it. If we don't get that back, we're not getting off this bloody island."
"But that's not what you need right now. You need... you need bandages, morphine, antiseptics—"
Roth cut her off with a sigh. "Also in the pack."
"Ah, shit," Ayden grunted, as she looked desperately at the night sky as though it would give her the answer she sought.
"Exactly," said Roth, looking down for a moment, before he moved again, trying to get up and walk.
"What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?!" Ayden demanded.
"I have to recover my pack," the old marine tried to insist in a firm tone, but his voice came out strangely weak.
Suddenly, he groaned in pain, and the girls watched as his body went to fall straight to the floor, though Ayden caught him quickly before he could hit the ground. After shifting his weight a bit in her arms, Ayden pulled Roth to one side and gently laid him on the ground in a way that he was laying, but also slightly sitting.
Without looking up at Elena, she spoke quietly. "Keep an eye on him; I'll be right back."
Her tone, as per usual, left no place for an argument. Elena, however, didn't even try to argue as she knew it would be pointless. She stared off at Ayden's retreating form for a moment before looking over at Roth, searching for any more injuries.
—
The Endurance crew scattered slightly as they reached a cave to take shelter in. While a pair went ahead to gather some wood, Damian remained on edge, avoiding everyone and anyone's gaze, his own shifting rapidly from one place to another, worry etched onto his dulled blue eyes.
"If she doesn't die, I'm gonna kill her myself," Damian grumbled to himself as he plopped himself down on the ground, his spot farther away from the rest of the group he'd found himself stuck with.
"She's gonna be fine," Rosalie reassured him as she went to sit beside him and leaned her back against the tree. "I mean... she's with Ayden, what could go wrong?"
Damian shot her a glare. "I don't know if you noticed, Rosalie." She bit her tongue, not liking the way he spat out her name. "But a lot of things have gone wrong on this island."
"Gee, I can see why Ayden doesn't like you," she snapped. "You're either a cocky little ass or a downright jerk." Her hard look turned into a glare that could win over his if they ever did a contest. "And, I don't know if you've forgotten, Grayson." His jaw clenched as she called him by his first name. "But I was also held prisoner and experimented on, so chill your manhood; this isn't a macho-men contest, I was just trying to be nice."
Damian's expression softened slightly at her last words as he let out a sigh and leaned his back against the tree as well, his eyes shutting for a moment before looking up at the sky, which was hidden behind the thick leaves of the tall trees. "I'm sorry, I'm just..."
"Afraid for your sister and the girl you're madly in love with?"
"Yeah... wait, what?" Damian gaped at the blond young woman.
Rosalie snorted. "Well, you're not exactly subtle about it. You follow her around without question and have this 'lost puppy' look on your face whenever she's near you. You look at her like she's the only thing in the world... the only thing in your world; it's like watching a man discover an eighth world wonder. I can only speculate that she's the only one who doesn't realize the obvious."
The young man sighed, discouraged.
"What made you fall?"
He looked back up at the blonde, giving her a questioning look. "What?"
"What made you fall in love with her? Her beauty?" Her tone was somewhat accusing upon saying this. "The genuine innocence she is fully aware she still has and tries to hide so badly?"
Damian shifted his gaze back up, his eyes peering effortlessly through the leaves towards the dark sky. "I fell in love with her courage," he began, his voice becoming oddly soft. "Her strength, her determination... her selflessness, her sincerity, and her flaming self-respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she isn't all she should be. I love her and... it's the beginning of everything."
"Do you believe it's true love?" Rosalie asked him, genuinely curious.
When he gave no answer, Rosalie looked at him for a moment, trying to read his face a bit better. Nothing. She got nothing out of it.
"What if she doesn't love you back?"
Damian's face suddenly hardened at her words. "She does. She just doesn't know it yet."
"How do you know you really love her?"
"What is this? 'Twenty-one questions'?" Damian retorted, irritatedly.
"Just answer the question," Rosalie snapped.
The young man rolled his eyes in a slightly over-dramatic way, groaning slightly under his breath. "I just do."
"And how do you know she really loves you back?"
Damian clenched his teeth, never tearing his gaze away from the sky. "I just do," he repeated.
It was Rosalie's turn to roll her eyes. "I'm pretty sure a person would know if and when they fell in love with someone. And are you honestly so gullible to believe that you're the first and only guy she platonically cares for? Have you forgotten the unit you're both part of? The one that's composed mostly of men? Some she's probably known even longer than you? Like... I don't, Andrew Carson?" she pointed out.
Damian looked back down at her and glared angrily at her. "What's your point, Barbie?"
"Look. I don't doubt she cares about you, but... love? I haven't known her for so long, but I can already tell she's afraid of the word itself. The only times she actually says it is when she wants to stab something or someone, which, by the way, is totally not a sane way to think. We've all gone through hell in our time here, Ayden more than any of us. If you really, truly love her, you won't rush her into these kinds of feelings that scare the life out of her."
"Who says I'm rushing her into anything?"
"You're practically obsessing over her loving you back!" Rosalie growled. "Damian, if today she is uncertain or uninterested, leave it there, because all you can really do for now is hope that, someday, that love you feel for her will be reciprocated. If you really love her, you won't act out on your feelings; because if you push her into what you want to happen, what you might share will never be real."
Damian was silent for a long moment before looking over at her, a slightly defeated look clouding his usually confident eyes. "How do you know?"
"A person can learn a lot when they watch things happen from the sidelines," Rosalie said softly, a half-hearted smile curling onto her lips. "I don't know Ayden well, but I can tell she's been hurt a lot. Taking things too quickly and rushing into love usually doesn't end well, that's why I'm telling you not to rush her into this. She's still young. You both are. Grow up a bit more first, don't let yourself fall in one trip; there's no point in rushing it— especially not if you want to do it right."
Damian sighed, deflated by the idea of having to wait longer to clearly confess his feelings to the Captain of his unit. "This sucks."
Rosalie chuckled, shrugging slightly. "Sometimes you gotta make sacrifices for the ones you love."
—
Ayden walked deeper into the woods once more, following the wolves' footprints, crossing a small stream and climbing some old buildings on her way through. In the end, she managed to retrieve Roth's backpack from the wolves' lair after killing the leader if the pack. She left the place with a small limp she had no doubt would heal in a few minutes, but not before taking some fresh wolf meat with her.
When she got there, she passed the meat to Elena, who instantly began to cook it in the fire she'd built when Ayden had left, while the latter began patching up the still unconscious Roth. After that, it didn't take long for Roth to wake up. When Ayden noticed him coming back to them, she instantly helped him sit up.
Roth took a look at his bandaged leg and said, "It's not bad." He smiled, "Where did a young lady like you learn to do a thing like that?"
Ayden let out a half-hearted and slightly humorless chuckle. "I'm in the army— that's one of the first things we're taught."
Roth shook his head. "Nah, I don't believe it was there that you first learned it." Ayden tensed but said nothing as she kept tending to his other injuries. "You know exactly what you're doing... a little too well to have learned this there."
"What's to say I didn't?" Ayden countered. "I've been in the army for almost two years now; I can't exactly say I've learned nothing because, then, I'd be lying."
"You'd be lying if you said you learned everything you knew in the army," he retorted.
Ayden could not counter that argument because he was right. "Fine, oh, Roth the Wiseman; how do you think I learned this?" she asked quietly.
Conrad Roth looked intently at the guarded girl who warily glanced back at him with calculating tricolor eyes. "I think you got into some trouble a while back before you got drafted. You got hauled down a real rough path in which you had to teach yourself how to survive."
She stared at the wistful man for a long moment before a sound resembling that of a buzzer came out of her mouth as she permitted her lips to curl up into a small sheepish and yet slightly mischievous smile.
"Wrong answer; I was insanely clumsy when I was a kid. Had to learn to patch myself up after my mom got tired of doing it herself." There was that pain, again, hidden behind her smile. "Now rest, you've lost quite a pint," she said.
She then turned her attention to Elena. She quietly instructed the latter to position herself in such and such way so she could examine her and tend her wounds. Elena noticed how Ayden tried to avoid as much physical contact as she could, and could only frown when the latter shied away when she suggested she be taken a look at as well.
"Finally, we get a break," said Elena, resting her head against some of the craters surrounding them at the camp they had settled at, as she closed her eyes. "Was it really dangerous? The search for Roth's pack, I mean."
Ayden thought about that for a moment and hid a grimace with a nonchalant shrug. "Well, except for the wolf that attacked me, not really. It was easier than I thought it would be."
Elena sighed. "This island... it's insane. Since we've been here, nothing normal has happened."
"And you expected things to go normally while stranded on an island?" Ayden asked in disbelief.
Elena bit her lip, giving her a sheepish look. "I was expecting the possibility of having to pull a Tom Hanks in that movie... Lost or something like that? Where he was stranded on an island..."
"I think it was Cast Away... with the volleyball he drew a face on and turned into his best friend, right?"
Elena smiled slightly. "You saw it?"
Ayden hummed in confirmation. "Saw it with my mom and my brother when I was a kid."
Elena blinked, surprised; this was the second time she'd mentioned her mother since they'd met. She hesitated for a moment, then dared herself to ask what she was thinking.
"Can you... tell me about them?"
Ayden was silent for a moment, then turned away, the expression on her face hard as ever. "There's nothing to tell," she replied curtly. Sighing softly under her breath, she then permitted herself to slightly relax her tense muscles. "I hate this; it's been like some weird nightmare."
After that, they let silence settle between them, the only audible noise being the growing wind forewarning another storm, the crackles of the fire still going on, and a few howls.
"You should sleep," said Elena, eyes closed and head pillowed by her jacket.
"... I can't."
Elena's eyes opened and looked over at Ayden, who was staring at the flames of the burning fire. "Why not? Is it the storm?" she said a bit teasingly, trying to lighten up the mood.
"It's not storms I'm afraid of," Ayden mumbled, poking at the fire with a stick. "My mind tends to get a little too active sometimes; simple imaginations can end up seeming so real. It's worse when I sleep. My mind goes haywire, and my dreams become vivid. With everything that went down since Norway, I don't think it'll be dreams I'll be having anymore; if I close my eyes... I'm afraid I might not wake up with all my mind."
Elena stared at her for a long moment, then closed her eyes and spoke quietly, "My mother used to tell me this story when I was a kid."
"You still are," Ayden muttered.
Ignoring her comment, Elena said, "It was about an ill princess who was locked up in her room most of her life. Her father always told her scary stories about the world, so she wouldn't dare to leave."
"Let me guess," Ayden cut her off. "One day she decided that she couldn't handle that life anymore, so she ran away, vowing never to return."
Elena smiled, eyes still closed as she hummed in confirmation. "She traveled the land and soon realized her father had not completely lied about the cruelties of the world, but after having trained for months on end, learning how to fight and survive, she decided to finally step back into the world with her old alias. The, then, fearless warrior princess fought and taught others, her name becoming lyrics to the songs sung amongst many across the kingdom."
Ayden sighed, throwing more wood into the fire. "Elena, you're not making sense, so just tell me already: what's your point?"
Elena propped herself up on her elbows, then looked at her. "My point is... I don't understand how you could even feel fear," the girl said honestly. "I understand feeling it before becoming a super soldier— I mean, you were pretty sick. But now you're... you're you! Captain Carmen Jaubert, the first ever youngest militant to reach such a title in a short time span. You're practically a freakin' goddess— fearless and—"
"Being fearless doesn't mean you have no fears, it just means you're strong enough to face them." Ayden glared at the dancing flames that illuminated her face in the dark of the night. "I didn't always have the strength to face it all, Elena. I didn't have the help you had while growing up." Shutting her eyes, she let out a wavering breath. "I wasn't slowly built into soldiering; I was thrown into it. I only went along with it because I didn't know any better."
"Ayden..." Again, Elena found herself having no idea what to say. "I... I know—"
"No," Ayden cut her off. "You don't know. You don't know anything about this, about me." Her eyes opened and stared intently into her own green orbs from across the dancing fire. "You might have felt but a pinch on this island, but you don't know pain. I know what you were gonna say, Lena. 'It gets better.'" There was a mocking edge to her tone now, but the seriousness behind her eyes was deadly. "But the truth is, it doesn't. It'll never get better."
Elena cringed internally as she realized that Ayden was right, but she didn't want her to be... not with this. "Or worse. It will only get different, and all you have to do is hang around long enough to see that you can make it work," she tried to persuade the super soldier.
Ayden looked at her for a moment longer before her lips curled into a tight smile, the kind that revealed nothing. "Sometimes, things are just too much for someone to keep hanging around, especially when you know it won't work."
Elena spoke no other word after that. She simply sat up, exhaustion leaving her body almost immediately as she leaned a bit forward to soak in as much warmth from the fire as she could, her elbows on her knees as she squinted her eyes to look more clearly at her companion who had long torn her gaze away and was now looking at the flames anew. Ayden looked... well, not just exhausted, but also ill. The greenish hue of her veins stood out in the orange light of the fire. Now that she looked more closely, Elena could see many distinct lines running along most of Ayden's neck, collar, arms and wrists as the rest of her body was covered by either her slightly ripped trousers and shirt. She had to look away; those weren't the kind of marks one self-inflicted.
If Elena pondered it long enough, she could vividly imagine someone— people strapping Ayden down and torturing her. The American-Canadian soldier said nothing. Elena had thought she would; the girl had a sharp tongue; she had hoped she'd say the first word. She did. But not the word Elena had hoped for.
"Don't bother."
Before the young Russian could think of anything to say, a groan of awakening alerted them of Roth's submerge out of unconsciousness.
"Rested enough?" Ayden asked, a hint of sarcasm etched in her tone.
Roth grunted. "I feel like I didn't sleep at all."
Ayden snorted humorously. "That's because you were out for about, approximately, twelve-hundred seconds only; that's not enough time for a good rest after the past few weeks we've spent here."
"We can't afford to rest any longer if we want to get off this goddamn island."
Ayden nodded in agreement. "So... I assume the plan is to take the transmitter up to the radio tower?"
"Would it work?" Elena asked, her brows furrowing in concern. "The weather's pretty harsh right now."
"I don't know if you've noticed, Miss Elena, but the weather has a habit of being harsh on this island," said Roth. "Besides, it's the best shot of broadcasting a strong signal in every direction."
"But what if the storm interferes with the signal?"
Ayden knew her companion was right, and though she knew that they had to try at least, she couldn't help but hesitate; Roth seemed to have noticed it.
"Look, Ayden." He sat up a bit more and placed a comforting hand on her knee. "We need to send out that SOS, and I'm not climbing any time soon. And I know there is no way you will be letting your friend here go there either."
Elena's eyes widened momentarily before she sighed in defeat, her shoulders slouching slightly; she knew he was right and there was no way she would win the argument this time around. "I was afraid you were going to say that," she said softly.
"You can do it, Ayden," said Roth, his voice soft and fatherly— a tone Ayden had become quite unfamiliar with while growing up. "After all, you're a member of the Devil's Brigade."
Ayden smiled slightly, in spite of herself. "I'm Captain of the Feral Force."
Roth gave her a warm smile. "Successor of the Devil's Brigade."
Ayden shook her head, looking down at her hands. "I don't think I've made a good job in succeeding them."
"Sure, you have," said Roth, sliding his climbing ax over to her. "You just need to believe it yourself."
She looked at him for a moment, then, letting out a small breath, she said, "Well, let's get this horrifying show on the road, then."
Then she reached for the climbing ax, though before she could fully take hold of it, Roth caught her wrist. "Just be careful, Ayden."
A tight smile on her lips, she looked back up at him then nodded before getting up, sending Elena a hard look to which she nodded in return. Walking past the fire, Ayden grabbed the transmitter then walked out into the dark of the night, setting off for a communications relay at the very top of the mountain, in hopes of contacting the outside world and calling for aid.
Heading for the rough stone wall, Ayden moved close, then set the ax into the rock and began to climb it. She soon rounded to the right, then up a bit more to reach the ledge with a wrecked plane.
"There are a lot of crashed planes here," Ayden mumbled, slightly discouraged as she crossed over the plane's wing to the area on the right.
Climbing the next section of craggy wall, with a strong pull, she finally reached the ledge above. Latching onto the next section of climbable rock, she moved to the left, then, leaning towards that side, she tensed her muscles slightly, then jumped, quickly latching her climbing axe onto the next section of rock, where she scaled the rest of the way to the ledge above, near the wolves' den she had previously visited.
Nearing it, she noticed white graffiti on the cliff wall. Stepping out onto the wooden bridge, she hopped down into the water on the right, then moved under the waterfall into the tunnel entrance, and began to follow the passageway into the cave.
Once deep inside, going down a passageway she had not seen before, she came upon two movable objects; the first was a large hanging cage with cocoons dangling from it, making her want to puke at just the sight of it as she remembered her first day on the island.
"Hmm... gilded figures... must've been servants of the Sun Queen..." she mumbled.
Shifting her gaze to the other movable, which consisted of a simple smaller cage on the ledge to the right, she soon found that the two cages were connected by some kind of pulley system. After studying for a quick yet long enough moment, she jumped from the red ledge onto the larger cage, then ran across it and quickly jumped to grab the ledge on the opposite side of the room. When she reached the far ledge, she lit her newly acquired torch on the brazier, then jumped back onto the large cage.
She stumbled slightly as her weight caused the cage to sink to the floor. However ignoring it, she used the torch to burn the three cocoons. This action lightened the weight within the cage, so instead of staying sunken to the floor, it rose to its original level. Jumping onto the starting ledge, she then moved around to the smaller cage on the left and, with a slight grunt, shoved it off the edge. It sunk to the floor, causing the larger cage to rise.
Moving back around to the red ledge, she jumped once more, this time to grab the bottom bar of the larger cage. Quickly climbing onto the platform, she took a running jump toward the climbable wall on the left, then threw herself into the air, her arm flying forward to latch onto the wall with her climbing ax, where she then proceeded by climbing right, then upward, to reach the ledge above. She then followed the passage, which soon led her to a large treasure chest.
"This may have been built in honor of her Priestesses. Incredible," she muttered under her breath, glancing around the decorated cave in awe.
Her gaze settling back on the treasure chest, she became hesitant on whether she should open it or not, but curiosity got to her and pushed her into finding out what it had. She discovered there was a map to the Mountain Village, which pertained to all its relics. She knew she wouldn't go looking for them, but the map was treasure itself, so she neatly folded it, then put it in the pocket of her pants.
Turning back on her heels, she ran back the way she came and jumped into the air, sliding down the zip line that hung the cages to the ceiling, all the way down to ledge she'd first jumped off. Following the tunnel back, she went on in a jog till she was finally outside again.
It was raining by then, but she didn't let that stop her as proceeded to scale the next climbable cliff just beyond the wooden bridge and waterfall that had first led her into the cave. Once at the top, she crossed the grassy ledge and jumped to latch onto the next climbable section with her ax. Climbing to the top, she quickly took cover behind the crate in front of her before the three men in the huts ahead could see her. Grabbing an arrow from her quiver, she waited for a moment, for the men to finish talking and settle down. Peeking a glance above the crate, she saw there were two men on the left, and the third was on the right.
Moving a bit more out from behind the crate, she aimed for the lone man through the window of the shack, arrow pointing towards his head; she knew it'd be better to go for the kill shot right away, otherwise, he would alert the others. Once she'd taken care of him, she moved back to the cover of the crate. Taking a deep breath, she quickly shot out of little more from her cover and made quick to take good aim of the standing man on the left with a headshot as well. Then, she took out his partner, the firebug, with, again, another headshot as he got to his feet. Then, after making sure the coast is clear, she continued making her way up the mountain.
Skipping ahead and jumping over to the hut on the right, she went through it to the other side and climbed up onto the roof. Then, jumping onto the next ledge, she turned to face up the mountain and scrambled up the wooden wall onto the ledge above. She then jumped over to the little island in the middle of the raging stream, then walked across the narrow beam to the ledge with a strange-looking statue.
"This is too much jumping," she huffed, irritated, as she readied herself to jump once again, this time, to the upper level of a larger hut.
Stepping out onto the ledge, she used a wooden crate to climb onto the roof, where she found a bird's nest. She looked at it sadly when she noticed the deceased birds in it. Swallowing hard, she turned herself away from the sad and sickening sight and dropped down onto the ledge below the one with the crate. She then dropped down once more and entered the lower level of the hut, then finally, exited onto the ledge overlooking the stream, turned right and hopped over to the ledge on the side of the hut.
Crossing over the ledge at the front of the hut, she jumped onto the wooden platform in the middle of the stream. She jumped from there to grab the rickety wooden arch above, pulled herself up, then jumped onto the ledge ahead, climbing up to the next level. There, she jumped again from the wooden cart to the climbable rock wall ahead, latching on with her ax before climbing to the top. After she crossed this ledge and jumped to latch on to the next climbable wall, she scaled to the top and reached a rather rickety wooden bridge.
She turned left and cautiously began to cross it, though just as she reached the middle of it, it began to collapse beneath her. Her reaction coming quickly, she sprinted ahead, then leaped forward, thrusting her arm forward as she did so, her climbing ax embedding itself into the cliff wall ahead. A slight grimace on her face, she clenched her jaw, then pushed her muscles as much as she could as she climbed to the top. As she climbed the steps beyond the bridge, the crackling sound of static emitting from her walkie-talkie caught her attention.
The sound of Reyes' voice then emitted from the radio strapped to her waistband. "Ayden... are you there?"
"Reyes! Did you find Sam?" was Ayden's immediate reply.
"We're still on her trail."
Ayden exhaled through her nose in disappointment. "I'm going to try and send an SOS from an old radio tower up here," she informed the woman. "Any tips?"
Suddenly, the sound of Alex's voice took over the radio. "Hey, Ayden! You're gonna need to find the communications console," he instructed her. "It'll look like a bunch of old switchboards."
Nodding absentmindedly, Ayden replied, "Okay, I'll let you know when I find it," as she neared the edge of another cliff she noticed had a zip line that would lead her to another base.
Letting out a shaky breath in anticipation as she knew there would no doubt be more people down there she would have to kill, she ran forward then, throwing her climbing ax over the cable to hold it with both hands, she let herself slide down the zip line into the narrow canyon below. She was immediately ambushed by three Solarii soldiers. Quickly killing them off, she made her way forth when the coast was clear, staying alert.
After looting their bodies for a few bullets rather than arrows since they weren't bowmen, she went around the corrugated metal wall, then followed down the shallow stream into the cave and squeezed through a gap in the rocks, emerging in a new base camp. It was abandoned, and she was practically freezing to death in that ripped tank top, and thin jeans, so she sat by the dying fire on the ground, poking it about with a rogue stick, sighing when her body quickly soaked in the heat, despite the extremely light rain.
After a few moments in the heat, she finally stood back up, mentally prepping herself for the upcoming action. "Okay, Ayden. Pull yourself together; they're counting on you."
If there was one more thing Ayden was coming to hate, it was being ambushed. If there was such thing as an ambush and abduction competition, she was sure she would win without any second thoughts from whoever would judge it. After she was ambuscaded for the umpteenth time, she finally managed to slither her way into the control room she had so desperately been looking for the past hour or so.
A few more turns and climbs were taken before the young Captain finally reached the control room, only to be all the more infuriated when she discovered that the controls were not working, and probably hadn't been for quite some time, now that she thought about it. Glancing through the window in front of her, she noticed a radio tower quite a distance ahead.
"You gotta be kidding me," she grumbled.
She shut her eyes for a moment, then, with one deep breath, she turned toward the hole in the north wall of the control room and squeezed through her way through the narrow space, where steam pipes ran along the inside of the wall. She moved forward through the twisting passage until she came to a low opening blocked by metal slats. With a roll of her eyes, she brought her leg back, then swung it forward, kicking the grate, before she crouched her way through, within seconds, emerging outside in the next area.
When she emerged from the tunnel with steam pipes leading out of the Mountain Base, light snow had begun falling.
"Snow?" she mumbled to herself. "This isn't normal... then again, nothing in this damn place is..."
She looked ahead and saw the radio tower in the distance. Turning right, then dropping down off the ledge, she crossed a bridge on the right side up ahead, and then went on her new little journey to the radio tower.
She tiptoed her way across a slightly ruined iron bridge, becoming more cautious as she nearly reached the other side, hiding behind a truck that seemed a little out of place, in her opinion. Suddenly, she was grabbed from behind and found herself struggling against the grip of her attacker before managing to push him off her and kick him off the bridge. She cringed inwardly upon seeing his body fall into the empty air, then collide against oddly spiky rocks on the edge of the mountain, killing him after the second hit.
Fighting off and killing another few Solarii soldiers, she moved a little further northwest, rounding a corner of the upper floor of the previously guarded building she'd had to go through, then jumped to grab the rope that led out to the base of the tower. She then climbed across and dropped down on the metal platform, then went around to the side of the platform and approached the ladder leading upward.
Climbing the tower was much more difficult than she had anticipated; the rusted iron of each metal bar did no good to her freezing, chapped hands and the higher she went, the more she shivered. At one point, when she reached the middle, the bottom part of the ladder fell off. She was lucky she had just climbed past it, for, if not, she would have fallen to her death.
Making it to the top platform, she forced herself to not look around her as she went up the other ladder, all the way up to another, smaller platform. Crawling onto it, she finally chanced a glance below and felt a bit of bile pour into her mouth when she saw how far up she was. Glancing up, she groaned upon noticing another ladder.
"I don't care what people say, I'm taking a vacation once this is over," she grumbled to herself as she pushed herself and began to climb once more. "I'll rent a room at a hotel and stay in the whole time..." Grunt. "Better yet. I'll quit!" Grunt. "I'll buy myself a house in Vancouver and lazy myself up—" Grunt. "— I'll sleep in every freakin' day and rest up for my thirties..."
She panted and gasped, trying to catch her breath when she finally made it to the tip of the tower. She remained there for a long moment, trying to calm her nerves and the rather intense shivers running down her body. When she deemed herself calm enough, she brought out her walkie-talkie and contacted Alex.
"Alex?" she said rather breathlessly.
"Ayden!" The man was clearly surprised, yet relieved by the tone in his voice.
"I'm at the panel," she told him, pulling the cover open, revealing the small rusted control panel.
"Okay... the tower should boost a signal from the transmitter."
Ayden nodded to herself as she placed her radio on top of the panel. Pulling up the transmitter, she stuffed it in the small empty corner of the panel. "Okay."
"Alright, find the emergency channel and get a clear signal on your radio before you broadcast the SOS."
Following his instructions, she first swiveled the left stick on the keyboard, clockwise, to tune the radio.
"Hey..." he said after a moment. "We got everything crossed for you down here, Ayden."
She took a deep breath, absentmindedly nodding as she thanked him aloud. When the needle on the readout on the right pointed to the fourth tick mark from the left, excitement began to build up in the pit of her stomach when she began to faintly hear an announcer's voice speak.
It came from a nearby rescue plane that managed to pick up her signal.
"You've tuned to the International Emergency Broadcast Response System. Please identify your situation and location coordinates and stand by for a response."
"Mayday, mayday," she spoke in a strong voice. "This is Carmen Jaubert, Captain of the Feral Force Unit of America, rescued victim and survivor of the Endurance. We are stranded on an island in the Dragon's Triangle. We need help and medical supplies. Please respond."
She waited a moment, breath held in as she hoped for an answer. The excitement downed out of her and turned into panic when she got not response.
"Come on... come on..." Grabbing the transmitter, she tried to broadcast her signal again. "Mayday, mayday, this is Carmen Jaubert, Captain of the Feral Force Unit of America, rescued victim and survivor of the Endurance—"
"This is aircraft N177A." Ayden cried out joyfully, relieved. "Searching for you since the distress call from your vessel. Almost given up hope!"
"So had we!" she admitted, a small watery smile on her face.
"We've got your approximate position, but we could sure use a visual."
"I'll figure something out," she reassured the pilot.
"We'll be heading your way soon. Out."
When the SOS broadcasting was over, Ayden smiled brightly for the first time since Norway as she listened to her friends laughing joyfully through the speaker of her walkie-talkie.
"Ayden Jaubert, you are my hero!" Alex cried out, earning a chuckle from the girl. "Hey, you know, Reyes actually just cracked a smile!"
Ayden relished that small moment of happiness for a few seconds before her mind was back in the matter at hand. Right, need a signal... She closed her eyes for a moment as she thought.
"A fire," she mumbled. "Fuel. Flames... I can do that."
Climbing down to the first platform of the radio tower, she threw her climbing ax over the thick rope above her head, held it with both hands, then jumped, flying down the zip line until she fell onto the cold ground on the other end, grunting in irritation at the slightly painful fall.
"That's one way to get down," she muttered.
She'd fallen into a small clearing to the southwest of the tower. Moving forward down the steps, she found placed fuel tanks a little further ahead.
Well, how convenient... she thought sarcastically. Now... how do I ignite them...
Nearing the tanks, she scouted the objects about, squinting her eyes as she thought. Suddenly, an idea popping into her head when she caught sight of the old empty cabin in the corner of her eye, she brought out her climbing ax and used to crank open the red valve near the tanks. This caused a puddle of fuel to form on the ground.
Turning to the cabin on the other side of the clearing, she jogged her way in, smirking slightly to herself when she found a fire striker sitting on an old table. Snatching it from the slightly battered piece of furniture, she gently placed it on the ground before kicking at one of the legs from the table, in result, breaking it off. She quickly snatched the broken leg from the ground, paying no mind to the table that toppled over being broken, and lit the wooden piece on fire with the fire striker.
Striker... she thought to herself randomly. 's got a nice ring to it.
Running back outside, she stopped a few feet away from the puddle of fuel and threw the burning broken wood she held into it, which instantly ignited the puddle into wild flames. The fire then spread to the tanks and caused them to explode.
"Okay, even a person with the poorest eyesight can see all this," she muttered, inwardly hoping this signal was as clear as she believed it to be.
After a moment's pause, excitement began to bubble up inside her when her ears caught the faint sound of a running engine up in the sky. Her excitement, however, quickly donned out into horror when she saw storm clouds appear out of nowhere. A bolt of lightning suddenly stroke from the sky, hitting the plane, plain center, causing it to catch fire and plummet toward the earth below.
NO ONE LEAVES!
"Oh, come on!" she cried out as she turned and made a mad dash to avoid being crushed.
Within the next few seconds, she was tumbling ass over teakettle down a muddy slope, with pieces of the broken aircraft careening down behind her. Right and left, she steered to avoid the fence-like barriers made of planks and barbed wire; there would be a lot of more wounds if she crashed into them. A bit farther down the slope, there was a burning pile of wreckage. Acting quickly, she steered around it, up the wooden ramp on her left and came out on the other side, sliding down onto a wooden ledge.
As she rolled out onto this ledge, she tumbled over but quickly shot a hand out to regain her grip before she could plummet into the chasm below. Pulling herself up onto the wooden ledge, she waited briefly for more debris to come tumbling toward her. As soon as it did, she ran forward and jumped across the gap onto the next wooden ledge, grunting and gasping in pain, as she tiredly thought,
Why me?
"She's been gone a while," Elena mumbled absentmindedly, lightly poking at the fire with her stick as her eyes remained glued to the flames, ears, however, on high alert.
The sky had cleared as the morning began to rise with the sun, but it was still rather cold where she and the old marine were settled.
"She'll be fine. She's a tough one," Roth reassured her.
"She may be tough, but even the toughest of people need to know their limits. But she's..." Elena sighed. "She's just so darn stubborn. She knows they're there, but she won't even give them the slightest thought. She doesn't get that everyone has limits. That—"
"You just have to learn what your own limits are and deal with them accordingly?"
Elena blinked slightly, surprised that this man knew what she was going to say. "Yeah."
He gave her a kind, wistful smile. The kind that reminded her of her father, whom, just the thought of, made her think of her mother and the rest of her family. The family she lied to, letting them believe she was going to attend a boarding school out of state when, really, she slithered her way into the army under a false identity... well, not completely; everything in her file was true... except for the last bit about her education— she hasn't even finished high school to Minor in Sociology in college— and her year of birth.
Thinking about her family made her miss them terribly, but nothing made her regret her decision; after all, she did get her brother back and gained some real friends and a best friend. Granted, they're all older than her— even Ayden— but she realized that she didn't mind that factor as much as she once would have. Sure, she felt hints of regret in her decisions that landed the rest of the Feral Force on Yamatai (something she had no doubt Ayden had been trying to avoid), mostly because of the torture they'd endured under Dr. Blake's command— something she was thankful she couldn't remember due to being passed out whenever her turn came— and God only knows what the rest of the unit was going through.
But she didn't regret enrolling into the army, even less meeting Ayden. After all, had it not been for the Captain, she probably would've never gotten her brother back, nor would she'd have survived this far out, alone, in the world.
"The thing is, Miss Elena: if you always put a limit on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. That's why Ayden ignores hers. That's what most soldiers tend to do when facing a war that's bigger than what we're usually trained for. No soldier can afford to look for limits, only plateaus. And one must not stay there; one must go beyond them."
Elena shook her head, not wanting to believe that. "Everyone has limits, Mister Roth, whether we like it or not. It's just that not everyone accepts them. And I don't know if Ayden told you what we actually do, but this is not something we can just leave for a... 'decision-making process' meeting. We need to keep ourselves in check, or we'll run ourselves down. Or worse: if we can't accept limitations, if we are boundary-less, we'll be no better than the bad guys."
Roth chuckled. "Not necessarily. As long as you know what you're doing, and what you're doing isn't wrong, then you are nowhere near the bad guys."
Elena smiled back slightly at the retired Royal Marine. "I wish others thought like you, Mister Roth."
"I doubt the world would be more heavenly if others thought like me," Roth replied.
Before either of them could add anything, though, an explosion resonated in the distance. Both heads snapped in the direction it came from and their eyes widened simultaneously upon seeing the plane in the far off distance, crashing down.
"Ayden!"
Elena sprung to her feet and was about to print in the direction her friend had run off to hours ago. However, Roth quickly pulled her back down, stopping her from doing anything reckless... like getting herself killed.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"To find Ayden, what do you think?!" the girl exclaimed herself.
Roth only pulled her back down more roughly. Gee, for an injured man, he sure is still strong, she thought upon struggling to get out of his restraining grip.
"And how will you do that? Follow the yellow brick road? You may be a soldier, kid, but this isn't a battlefield you wanna go in alone."
"I can't just sit out here, doing nothing!"
"Because that's exactly all we can do. That friend o' yours may be reckless, but she's already figured this island out more than the rest of us; she knows what she's doing. She's made contact with a rescuing crew; all we can do now is wait for her return before we reunite with everyone else."
"What if she doesn't come back?" Elena asked in a small voice.
"She will."