Red Of Tooth And Claw

[Shiola]

((Erika Stieglitz continued from Leviathan))

There wasn’t much light left in the day by the time she’d reached the Infirmary.

The building was set off to the side of the village and had only one major point of ingress. She knew she could hole up there, and there were woods nearby to flee into if things got bad. It probably wasn’t any more secure than the myriad other structures in the village, but she’d spent more time near it than any of them. Watching Desiree’s group gave her a good idea of at least its surroundings.

The whole way there, she’d had little else to do but dwell on what had happened. What she’d done, and what she was going to do. A few times she’d tried to think of what she’d make of a life after this place, to push her thoughts to the future. It wasn’t easy to come up with anything; more than a few times she found herself staring vacantly off into the distance, her mind grasping desperately at anything that wasn’t here.

There had been enough light to see the mess inside. Erika had methodically swept each room with her PSG-1 at the ready, though the sights before her caused her grip to falter more than once. The trail of blood led her past a decrepit mattress and into the main room of the Infirmary, where she was greeted by an almost unfathomably foul smell. The mixture of blood, vomit, and rot was particularly disgusting, even as much as she’d been quite intimately acquainted with all three so far.

The bodies had both been placed on the beds, and seeing them gave her a moment’s pause. Desiree must have been one of them; there was only so much a sheet could cover. It didn’t look like there was much left of her head, but this was where it had happened.

The first person she’d killed. A fluke. Until now she hadn’t actually seen what happened to her. Even though she knew it had to have been quick, even though Danya said as much, she wanted to see what happened - what she’d done. Erika couldn’t remember what Desiree looked like, from school or in that brief moment as she was pulling the trigger. She still couldn’t, and it felt wrong.

The group that stayed here must’ve moved her body, and put the sheet on it. Out of respect. Treating her with some kind of dignity, as if she hadn’t stopped being Desiree the moment that bullet burst her skull open. Her life ended because Thomas had something Erika needed, and because she had to know she could do it. Just one moment to hurt and hope. To know that giving up wasn’t an option. It wasn't what she intended, and yet it was.

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to be...”

Staring at a corpse and hoping she’d feel more guilty about it wasn’t going to help. They’d all been taken against their will, and left here to die for reasons the terrorists refused to articulate. That, more than anything, was the reason for this. It wasn’t all on the choices she made.

“It wasn’t supposed to be any of us.”

Erika pulled away the sheet on the other body, finding a face she recognized. It took a moment, as decay had pulled the skin on her face taut. Violet was another one of the photography kids. She had been pretty cool. It was hard to remember whether it was the GSA or anti-bullying club she’d been into. At some point Violet had talked about that kind of thing in class.

Her corpse had nothing to say, outside of put a bullet in Quinn Abert if you see her.

Pressing further into the Infirmary, Erika now realized she was in the part of the building she’d seen from so far away. A hole in the wall near the window and the dried red stain across the nearby wall confirmed as much. She eyed the main room. Imagining the kind of firefight that would take place in here. This side of the building didn’t smell quite as horrid as the entrance, and the storeroom wouldn’t be too hard to barricade. The window opposite was an easy way out, too. Light was falling rapidly, and this place needed work. For a moment, she considered abandoning it in favor of the woods.

Her eyelids felt heavy. Travelling in the dark might as well have been suicide, given how easy it would be to just stumble over someone. More than anything, she needed rest. Erika sighed, wrinkling her nose as the sour smell of decay continued to waft from the two occupied beds.

“Fuck it.”

The abundance of first aid kits she’d scavenged so far meant that she had everything she needed to keep the worst of it off of her. Deaths by trauma didn’t create significant disease risks from corpses in the same way death by disease might. It was the same reason it was okay to handle a fresh kill while hunting, but why one might want to avoid a dead bird in the park. Still, she didn't have to smell like Death to play the part.

It was only beginning to dawn on her that she now had a greater frame of reference for what human corpses were like, than for animals.

Erika dragged Desiree’s putrefying body towards the front entrance, wincing from behind a pocket surgical mask as a few errant pieces of her skull remained on the bed. With some effort, she managed to prop her across the front desk.

A totem. The first thing that anyone would see when they walked in here was the ragged remains of her face. It might keep some of them away.

Violet was next, and she was surprisingly less stiff than Desiree. Dragging the body across the floor left the appropriate amount of gross liquid across the wooden floorboards. There was a pretty large splotch of dried blood near the entryway to the main room, on which Erika left her facing down. Anyone taking a closer look would realize that she was posed there, but the hope was that no one would come close enough to do so.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw what looked like panties on the ground. Erika tried her best to block out any speculation as to who they belonged to, or what they were doing there.

The mattresses were next. It took more than a little while to move them, even more without setting down her rifle. Blocking out the windows made the room quite a bit darker, though she left the one across from the storeroom uncovered. It was her only route of escape in the event the place was compromised, either from a fight she couldn’t win or a designation as a danger zone.

One and the same, really.

After almost an hour, she was done arranging things as she needed them. The reception area now painted a far more frightening picture of what had happened inside, and she’d pushed some debris in the way such that she’d hear someone approaching. The open space wouldn’t present many opportunities for cover if anyone pressed through from the front entrance towards the storeroom.

Erika closed the closet door, wedging it closed with a shelf. Content she could at least try to sleep, she set her duffel bag down on the ground and used it as a pillow. Not once in the night did she move her hands from the rifle lying next to her.

---

Day 5

Sleep was no reprieve.

She didn’t remember the details of the dreams. Night terrors were like that; they didn’t really manifest clearly, so much as visceral images and feelings. The taste of blood, the sound of gunfire, the feeling of sharp teeth tearing at her arms and legs.

“Saffron! Oh my God, Saffron-”

Screaming.

“You… knew…”

Darkness.

“Make it swift.”

Broken laughter.

"I’ll do my best. I promise you."

The last thing she remembered was a wooden bridge giving way, and the feeling of falling as she descended into a dull grey fog. Erika awoke with a start, her eyes wild and chest pounding as she scrambled to discern the noises she was hearing. Voices, coming from outside.

I slept too long. They’re just outside. They’re here.

Her trembling hands reached for the PSG-1, moving to check the chamber. The magazine fell out - that wasn’t the button she was looking for. She tried to put it back in, but the bullets were facing the wrong way. Did she load it wrong? Had she been carrying it wrong the whole time? No, it couldn’t be put in backwards. Guns didn’t work like that. Why couldn’t she - no, she just had to turn it around. Turn it around and check the chamber. There was one in there. Just like she’d left it. No one was here. Then why did she hear -

‘Erika Stieglitz notched up a double kill when she sniped both Katie Agustien and Saffron Fields. They died holding hands though, which was cute.”

Right. The announcements.

They died holding hands.

She’d die alone.

“...continued her rampage down at the beach, where she shot Oliver Lacroix. Sadly too much time had passed for it to count as a triple. She then capped things off by putting a bullet in Tom Swift's head. Quite the busy day for Ms. Stieglitz.”

Four.

Julien was still alive. Still in pain. Now he knew who did it to him. Erika waited for the name she was hoping to hear, panic overtaking her as Danya read the last ones.

“Then to finish us off, Lucas Brady rammed a branch into Coriander Silverman. Points for improvisation, if not for style.”

“No. No, no no no. Fuck!”

Ty was still alive. Katie didn’t do it. She never would. It was his crowbar that Erika had seen, which meant they’d met. Which meant he had to have known, now. How she didn’t even have the courage to be honest about using him. How she couldn’t even kill him herself.

She should’ve just shot him. Let him kill himself. Anything but this. What the fuck was she thinking?

I didn’t want to get my hands dirty.

As if that mattered now. Six dead, because of her. Because she was a coward.

I just want to survive.

For what? You don’t even know what you’d do with the life you’d save.

“I don’t… I don’t want to die…”

Shaking, Erika leaned the PSG-1 against the wall next to her and wrapped her hands around her knees. Tears streamed down her face as she struggled to slow her breathing, the ragged staccato gradually becoming more painful as it went on.

---

And it went on for what felt like hours.

Probably only twenty minutes, if her old anxiety attacks were any comparison.

Of course, none of them had been about anything like this.

Simple stuff, like worrying someone at school clocked her.

Or how the planet was dying and no one was doing enough.

Erika always told herself that even if everything did collapse, she’d at least feel better knowing she was on the right side of history.

Where the hell was she, now?

*crack*

Erika opened the second, now-warm soda can and drank from it, looking around at the now dimly lit storeroom. A strange sort of calm washed over her, like she’d walked into a soundproof booth. It wasn’t always like this after an attack. Sometimes more came. Occasionally she’d just pass out.

Sometimes, she just felt calm. Like it was impossible to imagine ever being that upset. It didn’t make any sense, but that was how she felt. She was sure her therapist had explained it once, but she couldn’t remember.

That lady’s gonna have a rough time. Sorry, Doc.

Her mind wandered easily, now.

She reached into the bag and pulled out the weapon she’d taken from Tom. It wasn’t just a sickle - no, it was a tactical sickle. The blade gleamed in the light. Mall-ninjas always went for this kind of thing, but she doubted those guys ever really thought about what it would be like to really use it. What it would do to someone else.

Her gaze drifted to the door. This place was no danger zone, at least not yet. Not for the fifth day. Maybe she could just spend it waiting. Trying to figure out how guilty she should feel. Thinking about her therapist, and what neckbeards in trenchcoats thought combat was like.

Then again, maybe not.

[Cicada]

((Demetri Futscher continued from Sleep Is The Cousin Of Death))

At some point along the way he started remembering that Yearbook photo booth they'd set up during Prom. It was a meaningless curiosity- like, what would happen to all those photo packages they'd sent out. They'd taken plenty of kids photos, enough that Demetri couldn't quite remember who'd shown up to the table and etched their faces moments from disaster into 2"x2" memories for all time. Cecil, if he remembered. Mercy, for sure. He could very distinctly recall that moment in time where he'd been along with her, wondering why Mercy never got a boyfriend (a girlfriend, if that was the way she swung. He didn't even know that for sure) when she was clearly girlfriend material for some lucky dude clearly reaching way out of his or her league. Maybe at some point he'd started musing to himself, that being his friend held her back. The cuckery was infectious.

Why did she stay, then? It was a question that was hard to answer, much as he tried to think about it. Among others. Why hadn't he done anything yet? Why was he still going if standing around getting shot at was all he planned to do?

As if he hadn't had enough of bullshit tests without easily definable answers back in English class, he had to give himself one more set of success-proof questions for the road. The long, hard, winding road that he could only half-halfheartedly stumble down as each yanking forward of his bad foot was... not more painful than the previous, just the same amount. Somehow, that made it worse. Repetition. Endless monotony, like that one dude in the Greek story pushing a boulder up a hill. He didn't have much for entertainment left save his own thoughts, what with his bleeding being staunched by the one barely read book he had on him.

Being alone with the rambling echo in his own skull had never been that appealing in the first place, now it was all but unbearable. That was what he sounded like to others. Shitty jokes and excuses.

He realized, at some point, that if he turned left he'd walk right up to the doorstep of the house he'd spent his first night on this island with. The house that would be low quality Photoshopped into a series of jokes at his expense over the fact that he'd somehow managed to friendzone himself so hard he'd spent an entire night in a bed with a buxom girl and had fondled, at most, a phallic thing in the form of an actual gun. The house of two corpses, both of whom had trusted Demetri, both of whom he'd unfailingly let down. As he'd realized those things he hadn't slowed a step. He'd continued to trudge on. One foot. Rest. The next foot. Rest. Slow creaks of his dilapidated bones. Dry mouth slowly crumbling to sand.

This larger building emerging from the trees in front of him, maybe, looked like a decent place to rest. Maybe not inside, where he'd be easily cornered. Somewhere against a wall on the outside. He could finally have five minutes to rest, to let some of the now seemingly perpetual curtain of sweat dampening his already overheated, overtaxed body cool. Five minutes to process, anything at all.

He'd heard announcements after all, but maybe he was putting off trying to really understand. LeCuck and Brady were both killers now as well. Morbidly, he was surprised they hadn't started sooner. But he didn't want to think about them. Way easier to think about things he could pretend wouldn't hurt him and kill everyone remaining that he was cursed to care about.

> be me
> one good leg left
> yes im counting my penis as the third
> guess which of the three is the token still useful one
> extended my dick is small joke is my best material
> this is why i could never be a rapper

On and on it went, as Demetri eventually slowed to a standstill by the closed infirmary doors, swaying like a dizzy metronome. He was tempted to collapse to the ground. Didn't, if only because he wasn't sure who was around to see. If it were anybody at all he wanted to at least pretend he could project strength, even if it wasn't true.

[Shiola]

The dumplings were still good. A bit cold, and with more meat than she’d cared to eat, but it was better than dry ration bars. Erika tried to savor them, eating slowly so she didn’t feel nauseated. The meat was probably not going to do her digestion any favors, but the calories would give her an edge on an island likely now full of the malnourished and starving.

She wondered what the cafeteria at the AT was like. Who made this food, anyways? It was easy to imagine them being comically evil from where she was sitting, but looking at the takeout container she couldn’t help but imagine something awfully typical. The banality of evil, and all that. Maybe they talked shop over lunch breaks, working through little hiccups in the system that kept them all here trapped and terrified.

Or not. Maybe most of them looked at the people who worked too eagerly on the SOTF project with suspicion. Like, most of them were just doing their jobs and there were a couple of real psychos sprinkled throughout their ranks. Most of them maybe vaguely agreed with the agenda of the organization, but the money probably mattered more. They’d sit far away from the wide-eyed sociopaths who’d watch clips together over cheap cafeteria pizza, the same way edgy kids at school would share frightening liveleak videos.

The idea that they were all kind of frightening people who got a semi from the sight of blood was a little easier to handle than the idea that some of them were in fact, reasonable. It couldn’t be the case, though - you needed stable, reasonable people to pull off something like this. They just couldn’t be very good people.

What a weird thought; people associated good with “reasonable” and evil with “unreasonable.” Moral and immoral. As if only evil things occurred to people whose minds didn’t work properly. As if most people weren’t capable of it.

Erika wasn’t insane, but she was certainly evil by the standards of the other people on the island. In this situation, she couldn’t say she disagreed. She wanted them all dead, because she wanted to live. Understandable, reasonable, something she took no pleasure in, but pretty fucking evil; at least from any perspective besides the creature that just didn’t want to die.

If she made it, she’d have to ask them why they did it. Even if she didn’t get a satisfactory answer.

Why’d you do it? What are the ideological underpinnings of killing like, a fuckton of kids? No one was trying to kill you, before you did this. Now the whole world wants to. Why would you do that? Is there some political or social aim? Why didn’t you guys just do the normal terrorist thing and like, bomb some shit? I could give you a couple of ideas. Pipelines, maybe some CEOs. Did you know there’s like one hundred companies responsible for seventy percent of carbon emissions? With your resources and moral deficiency, you could really make an impact...

That would be the [speech 100] answer to all this. A fun thing to fantasize about; convincing the Arthro Taskforce to become eco-terrorists. To start targeting the rich and powerful instead of helpless teenagers.

Helpless?

Erika momentarily stopped chewing one of the dumplings, her gaze drawn back to the PSG-1. Relatively helpless was probably a better way to put it. The way things were, she could probably keep this up for a while. Hide and wait. Ration food, shoot anyone who approached, try not to implode from the stress of what she was being forced to do.

That was a passive way forward, though. More cowardice than she was willing to accept. Doing that left the collection of weapons and ammunition in the hands of others, too. Even if she ignored everything else, eventually there would be another confrontation. The last thing she wanted to do was have to face down the person who lucked out and found a rocket launcher or something.

“Well, that was tasty. Thanks Michael.” She said, well aware there was no one else in the room.

There was a camera in the storeroom. It was too obvious a blind-spot to not have one. Erika looked up at it.

“And uhh, whoever the heck made it. I wish I had your conscience.”

She hung her head, setting the empty container aside. Eventually someone would see this. Maybe she’d get to watch the footage someday. See what everyone else did. Erika wondered how evil she’d look to herself from that vantage point.

“...mine fucking sucks.”

[Ryuki]

(Yuki Hayashibara, continued from there’s a pale imitation burnt in my eyes)

Yuki continued her island journey with a heavy heart. Yesterday, the remaining two Hayashibara sisters had grieved the loss of their eldest, so there was still an air of sadness emanating from the pair. With slow, methodical steps, they made their way through the village.

The village had always seemed quiet, but as evidenced yesterday, the silence masked gruesome scenes. You could not let yourself be caught off guard by the eerie atmosphere, otherwise there would be devastating consequences. Hopefully, with someone you trust, you could mitigate this issue.

Yuki still held her sister’s hand tightly. It was in order to keep them together, as well as out of consolation for their grief. Yuki spotted the red building ahead of them and turned to her sister.

“Should we go in?,” Yuki asked.

[Maraoone]

((Yuka Hayashibara continues from there's a pale imitation burnt in my eyes))

The rations Yuka had salvaged from Yuko's corpse remained untouched, as did her own. Something gnawed at her from inside, but she let it be. It felt right. They trudged on across the island, away from the houses.

There had been little to no words traded between the sisters since yesterday. Their path from the houses to elsewhere was slow, eternal, like in the woods, and there did not seem to be a point to any of it other than to go, to be, and even that seemed unnecessary. Any motivation or feelings to be had on the matter were left at the house with Yuko's body, and she was back to where she had been the first time Yuko had died. And it didn't feel like it mattered, anymore, feeling something or not, having motivation or not. The only thing that kept her moving was Yuki's hand, tethered to Yuka's. It tugged her across dirt paths, between the same old dilapidated shelters. Yuki was all she had left, so there was not much choice but to hold on.

The announcements had occurred at some point in the past, but there was nothing of note. Yuki was alive, Yuko was not, that was all she needed to know. Her eyes had dilated, she thought back to a bus, the last selfie they had, and then she came back, and there were no words in the air, like before.

Eventually, they came upon a red building. Yuki stopped, Yuka continued for a few steps, and then she stopped as well. There had been a question, asked by Yuki. She turned back to her sister after a while, and nodded.

"Yes."

Why not?

They headed towards the building, and as they got closer, two things stopped her in her tracks.

The first was the stench, familiar. Maybe it was remnants of the house from yesterday. Maybe she'd never be able to wash it off. Maybe it would follow her for forever. Or maybe it was something else. Either way, she wanted nothing to do with it. And the second was the boy standing in front of the doors.

She had always hated Demetri. He and Garren were gross, misogynist, one of the few unpleasant presences in her life, back when those could be counted on her hands. Yet she was never able to get rid of him. Yuki kept him around, tutored him despite both Yuka and Yuko's endless warnings. Yuki had insisted on helping him, insisted the jokes were just that. She had always been oblivious to the way Demetri looked at Yuka, whenever he visited.

The contempt felt novel, different. On some level, she could appreciate that. She didn't feel like approaching that feeling, approaching Demetri, but she didn't feel like not approaching it either. So, she stayed in place, slightly swaying, hand still in Yuki's hand, eyes locked on Demetri.

[Cicada]

Demetri had found the time to rummage through his bag, now fallen to the ground where a doorstopper might have found itself if there were any door to be stopper-ed. One arm wrapped around the spear, which he leaned against, propping up the hot air and emasculation that was the essence of his being. In that hand a square cutout, glossy finish of a properly developed photo. The last day before the buses had left Washington, Demetri had found a place to develop a couple of the photos he'd taken on the trip. He'd intended to show them to Faith on the way back, when of course he'd been too much of a wimp to actually ask and he'd taken an awkward seat a couple of rows back, shepherded there by Ms. 'Brains On The Floor' Garcia who had promptly ignored all his communicative attempts at awkwardly glancing Faith's way (in a very Brady-esque manner, in hindsight. Though Demetri supposed Facebook Boy's method would have involved more trying to catch a glimpse of the A&T) and had sat him in a place where he would, unbeknownst to him, never get the chance to talk to his friend again for as long as he'd live.

They all looked kind of stupid, the lot of them. Demetri a bit winded, when he'd run from where he'd set up the camera to get himself into the shot. He was a clear 2/10, pointy elbows. Max, Lucas, Faith. All of them looked so innocent. Definitely not killers or killed. Everyone was smiling, at least kind of, whatever the fuck that edgy Fakku O-face Max called dignified photo poise was. Canon's White House lawn stretched on in the background of the photo.

Demetri stared in silence at the photo for a long while, long enough that he didn't notice he had company until it was close enough to turn him into the next shitty morning announcements one-liner.

Yuki and Yuka both looked... well, terrible, in most senses of the word. Emotionally scarred, near-run thing on the physical scarring. Somewhere someone who could read his impulsive thoughts live would have prepared a long HuffPost rant about how his reducing of women to their looks in moments like this was a total failure of the patriarchal eat the rich flat earth society or whatever the conspiracy was nowadays. He could tell it was the two of them- the remaining two alive Hayashibaras- but they were a far cry from themselves in countenance. Worn down, melted by a few days of damp and muck and spilled human blood.

It was familiar, at least, how he stared at them. It was that way when he was over working on tutoring plans and homework with Yuki- something that didn't change, even now. Yuki he didn't need to look. He needed to hear her, to respond. Together they made music in the language of numbers, that was how it went. His eyes would wander. He'd stare at Yuko a little, mostly not because again, 'least attractive'. Nowadays, 'most dead'. So on. Yuka was pretty in a 'white guys trolling Thailand looking for girls with all kinds of genital arrangements' way. His eyes would idle on her, until he realized he was doing it, then stopped, then felt guilty for being beta almost moreso than he felt guilty for being a creep.

Here and now he waited for Yuki to say something. Watched Yuka. For all of a moment.

This wasn't the comfort of the Hayashibara's cute little home. And it never would be. Familiarity was lost. His eyes fell to dirt.

"I was there when she died."

His solemn confession, in a weatherman tone. He held onto the photo for dear life. Close as they were, his friends weren't there for him. Why would they be, when he wasn't there for them?

[Ryuki]

The area around the infirmary smelled of rotted meat. The same smell that had permeated the cabin containing Yuko’s body. There must be more bodies inside. Like a scene out of a horror video game or film. Yuki’s train of thought imagining such a scene was interrupted upon seeing Demetri at the entrance.

Demetri was someone Yuki had patiently tolerated as a tutoring client. She didn’t agree with him ideologically, however she was willing to see past that in order to get him to cooperate. Her sisters weren’t exactly enthusiastic about her tutoring him though. They had told Yuki that Demetri was misogynistic. Sure, while his jokes were pretty edgy, Yuki wanted to see the best in others, as naive as that sounds.

Demetri said something that shook Yuki a little. Demetri said he had been there, when Yuko died. She didn’t know if this was true or not.

“You were, really?”, Yuki asked, curiously. She paused, thinking of what to asked. Then finally, she spoke.

“What happened? Tell us everything,” she said, as firmly as she could.

[Maraoone]

There was a moment when the meaning of the word 'she' was in doubt. The idea Demetri was proposing was incomprehensible, and so Yuka decided not to comprehend at all. She stared blankly at Demetri, until Yuki spoke.

Yuki knew, she knew immediately what Demetri meant.

Yuko had only been alive for a day on the island.

Yuka had only been a few meters from her, that day.

Demetri had been with her, that day.

Yuka and Yuki had not even been afforded a glimpse of Yuko since the kidnapping.

Demetri had.


Yuko didn't even like Demetri.



Yuka let go of Yuki's hand, folded over, clutched her gut. Then, she leaned back, tilted her head back, and began to cackle.

[Cicada]

She'd laughed, and he hadn't even been trying to be funny. For once.

Something about her cacophany put him on edge. All of a sudden he was wondering if she was going to pull a deus ex machina's worth of gun on him and decorate him with a couple of extra holes. He would have taken a step back, firmed up his grip on the spear. He was rooted in place. Something about flight or fight and him managing to choose neither of the above.

"I found her and she was the one who asked me to come along. She'd gotten a bunch of us together to hole up in a house and hide for a bit." He averted his eyes from Yuka pointedly. He'd started staring again, this time for more nerve-wracking reasons than male gaze.

"Like, she was going to look for you guys. ASAP, I swear." He wasn't in a rush with his dead man's drawl, not even to defend the ghost that had been haunting him for the better part of the whimperingly grand finale of his life. "We just needed a little more time." Excuses.

"Look, when she-" And he didn't know how to finish that sentence. He did not, after a fully silent second. Not one word of a bad punchline came to mind, to break the oppressive emptiness between the sporadic presence of his weasly voice.

"Her last words were for you guys." And loud. Echoing eternally, as he witnessed just how much of their sister still existed in the survivor's faces. "She said... I dunno. Bring us all together. Don't give in."

He could have left it at that, he supposed.

"She said to kill people. Avoid the no kill collar detonation. If it came to that."

In hindsight.

[Ryuki]

Yuki was taken aback by Yuka’s sudden outburst of laughter. Yuka sounded like a madwoman. This situation and Yuko’s passing must really be taking a toll on her psyche.

“Yuka, please!”, Yuki said in a concerned tone, “Calm down.”

They should probably find a place sit and calm down. The infirmary building must have had some chairs leftover, hopefully.

“Let’s get inside, we can continue talking in there,” Yuki said to the both of them.”

Yuki gripped Yuka’s hand a little harder and guided her into the old building. The stench of death grew stronger as they entered. It felt as if there was an oppressive atmosphere weighing down on her shoulders. This place didn’t feel safe, but Yuka was unwell, and Yuki had to do what she could for her. There were a few chairs scattered about around the reception area, so Yuki sat Yuka down in one of those. After making sure she had calmed down a little, Yuki addressed Demetri.

So, according to Demetri’s account, he had met Yuko on the first day. He was with her until her demise. Who was Yuko’s killer again? If Yuki remembered correctly, it was Katrina Lavell. She hadn’t heard any word about her since the first announcements.

“Did you see Katrina Lavell?,” Yuki asked, “She...killed Yuko, didn’t she? Why?”

She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with the info on Katrina, but Yuki had to know why Yuko died the way she did.

[Cicada]

Demetri held the door and trudged in after them. The irony was not lost on him. Two unrecognizable bodies in some kind of ruined repose in the first room. Demetri ignored the stench, cloying rather than fresh, as he was already accustomed to somehow. Demetri didn't sit.

"I forgot about her." One face of many, who'd vanished into oblivion in the aftermath of the massacre in that once innocently prefab trailer park excuse of a home. Demetri struggled to recall anything meaningful from the messy blur of sounds and violently vivid colors. Deafening ringing in his ears, voices screaming in disharmonious unison.

"Katrina somehow provoked Tyrell. That's when everything went wrong. Tyrell came, and we weren't going to let him in, I think. He was looking for shelter, he-" A blinding rush. Himself erupting through the continuum of time like a canonball. "Tyrell threw me to the ground while rushing after Felix- Felix had the gun. I hit the ground, Charelle- she was there- went down with me. I didn't see anything-... nothing else, and I was deafened by the gunshots."

He stared at the long-since burnt out florescent tubes still stubbornly affixed to the ceiling. The unopened set of doors, leading deeper into the building, closed over a grimy trail of something mucky that led into one of the room decor corpses. He couldn't imagine himself getting any closer, couldn't imagine what lurked beyond the next set of doors. Demetri distanced himself from them, one halting step at a time.

"So when I got up Katrina... she was gone. And Yuko was already down. I dunno how it could have happened- or if it was an accident."

Still naive. Still refusing to blame others for the carnage. This wasn't GHHS anymore. He, Demetri, was no longer the lowest of the low. Close, but surpassed, in the days prior.

[Maraoone]

The cackling only subsided for a moment because Yuka was starting to run out of air.

It was hilarious how Yuki could tell her to calm down, as if she wasn't hearing the same words Yuka was.

It was hilarious how Demetri could say to her face that Yuko wanted to kill.

It was hilarious how, apparently, Demetri got to hear Yuko's last words, but he couldn't even remember half of them, only some half-assed summary he probably pulled out of his ass. How the 'answers' he provided were so incomplete.

It was hilarious how, out of all the people on this island, Demetri got to see Yuko, Demetri got to hear her last words, and they didn't.

Once he finished speaking, once Yuka regained her breath, she started laughing again for a few seconds. Then, she said, "It's- it's not fair! It's not fucking fair! Wh- How- Why is it that you got to see her, but we didn't? Why did you get to hear her last words, how is that fair? I- I looked so hard for her, I walked everywhere on this godforsaken island, and then you just got to wake up next to her like that? Why the fuck?"

Her eyes were wet, once more. She thought she'd been wrung out.

After a few deep inhales, exhales, she said, quietly, staring at Demetri, "Yuko didn't even fucking like you."

[Ryuki]

Unfortunately, Demetri wasn’t able to provide any leads into Katrina’s whereabouts. From what she could gather, Yuki deduced that Katrina could have taken advantage of the confusion and claimed Yuko as a victim. Or, perhaps Katrina went for Tyrell, but slashed Yuko by mistake. Before Yuki could question Demetri further, Yuka began to rant at him.

“Yuka,” she said softly. That was all she could say. She didn’t know what to say or how to react to Yuka’s tangent. All Yuki could do was stand there, witness, and listen to Yuka take out her anger.

Yuki agreed to some extent. It wasn’t fair that neither one of them got to see Yuko. Or hear her last words. Or wake up near her. After all that searching, it felt like a complete waste of effort. Nothing about this was fair at all. But it wasn’t Demetri’s fault. It wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t Yuko’s fault.

”Yuko didn’t even fucking like you.”

“Yuka!,” exclaimed Yuki, just above a whisper.

[Maraoone]

"Yuki, Yuki, listen to me."

Yuka grabbed onto her sister's shoulders, stared into her.

"I don't know why you fucking insist on giving this pervert the benefit of the doubt, but I- I can't ju- I can't just sit here and listen while he slanders our sister, tells us she wanted to kill people."

She glanced at Demetri for a bit, then looked back at Yuki.

"He was trash at school, I don't think the island has changed that a bit. I'm not here for it."

She walked away from the two, further into the lobby. It was only then that she noticed the two bodies stretched out near the desk, displayed. One of them her roommate back during the trip, Violet Q., the other unrecognizable. The smell still physically repelled her, somewhat, but the sight didn't. She had seen worse, already, and she'd rather the bodies than Demetri. She walked past the corpses, past the trail of blood, turned a corner.

It was only at the last second that she asked herself how the bodies got there in the first place.

[Shiola]

She’d leaned back up against the wall of the storeroom, and was halfway to falling back asleep. It was quiet enough in here she could hear the faint ringing in her ears, true silence having been a distant childhood memory by this point.

Little gaps started to form, early stages of microsleep. She didn’t notice when they started, only the heavy feeling of her head and the sharp breaths she’d take when she realized she was dozing off. The only reason she was even trying to stay awake was the ever-present fear that someone would stumble on this place, and press in further. The kind of person she had to worry about was the same sort who’d ignore the bodies. One who might poke around and notice a door to a storeroom that was being held shut. The smart thing to do would then to put a couple of rounds through the door, something she supposed this hypothetical mystery killer might consider.

I’m the one lot of people are probably worrying about right now, because of what I did. They probably should be.

The worst voice in the back of her mind seemed to enjoy reminding Erika that in fact, she was the kind of person one ought to be worrying about. That wasn’t at all comforting. She tried to find a comfortable way to lean her head against the wall, her eyelids still feeling incredibly heavy.

“...don't know why you fucking insist....”

She blinked, wiping a bit of sand from her eyes. Sometimes she heard things when she was like this, halfway to sleep. Though she had often experienced the strange sensation of thinking someone had said her name or asked her a question when she was really one foot into a dream, something didn’t sit right. She hadn’t heard anyone enter the building. They could have just been hallucinations. Maybe this was it. Maybe she was finally starting to lose it.

...trash at school... I don't think the island has changed that… “-not here for it.”

They were real people, and she still had a few scraps of sanity left.

"Fuck."

Adrenaline burned away her exhaustion and forced her from the floor of the storeroom. Listening closely to the sound of her own movements, she gently slid the shelf a few inches to the side, far enough she could open the door again. Taking the time to move quietly, she could hear footsteps coming from the other room. She moved slowly to the storeroom’s door, PSG-1 in hand.

She pushed it open slightly, just enough for to poke her head out for a split second. She recognized them immediately, a pit forming in her stomach. Yuka Hayashibara. They rarely spoke, but she remembered fondly the glowing dress she wore at prom. Remembered asking half-baked questions about what it was like to be a triplet, when she was completely baked. The three of them all seemed so different.
Erika hovered in the doorway, indecisive. More than anything she wanted to close the door, push the shelf back into place, and wait for them to leave. If she could only just wait them out; continue with the plan she’d had right after killing Desiree. How many people would fixate on a locked door in a decaying, corpse-filled building, anyways?

Most would. It’s like a button that says not to press it. Someone will.

She peered out again, hoping she’d see Yuka’s back turned as she walked away. There were others; she could hear them. After each announcement sold the idea of “hunt down the people who killed your friends” better than the last, Erika knew what was coming for her. If anyone saw her here, more than a roof over her head would be compromised.

You don’t have to do that. Leave it to chance, at least for a little bit. Hide. Rest. Let them kill each other.

The best voice in her head was getting quieter by the day.