Silent Key

[Shiola]

((Henry Sparks continued from Here We Are Now Going to the South Side; I Pick Up My Friends and We Hope We Won't Die))

The battery icon on the walkie-talkie had one bar left. Henry and Camilla had both remembered to only switch them on at the right time of day, to conserve battery life. These things were supposed to live in charging stations when they weren’t in use; the kind of radio used by construction workers and security guards. The first day they looked brand new, but hours of sun and dirt meant they now wouldn’t have been out of place in some dingy industrial office somewhere.

Henry now only held one of the pair, having given the other to Morgan. He lost track of which of them had been carried by Camilla, and which he’d carried with himself across the island. They had both been tuned to channel seven, for no reason other than that it was easy to remember. They were the seventh abduction, after all. When he handed it to Morgan, he’d asked him to keep it tuned to channel one. It felt wrong to use the same one he’d used with her.

She had died the day before, according to the announcements. Couldn’t say for sure if it had been after she abandoned the walkie-talkies, or beforehand. Danya left out so many details. Henry couldn’t imagine why someone wouldn’t keep them, though. Henry hated that he felt almost relieved not having to confront her about Theo. The path she'd taken still felt like one he could've helped steer her away from.

Just a silent key, now.

There was a tradition among amateur radio operators of honouring the callsigns of other radio operators who had passed away. It used to be that the signs weren’t used again, but these days they were kept from reassignment for only a year at most. Henry had heard the ceremony twice so far, which wasn’t surprising given the average age of most of the people building radios in this day and age.

Most of the time he didn’t mind talking to the old guys; they were really enthusiastic that a young person was interested in their hobby, like they’d all been at his age. Losing them was a dark side to that; he never knew if he had anything he could say to comfort men so far beyond his years.

They called out to the callsign three times to the callsign of the operator who had died, sometimes saying a few words about their life, the kids they left behind, their faith, or where they were interred. After letting the silence hang for a minute, they’d end the transmission. Henry wondered if they’d wait until his death was announced to call it, or if any of those people knew he didn’t really believe in a God like they did. Those words and abbreviations might have already sailed over his head, having hit the airwaves the day they’d confirmed the abduction.

CQ - CQ - CQ - KC4ASH

CQ - CQ - CQ - KC4ASH

CQ - CQ - CQ - KC4ASH

KC4ASH - SK

Henry turned the dial on the radio to channel seven. He raised it to his face, nearly calling her name. Eyes fixated on the half-empty battery symbol, he turned the dial back to one.

There was no one but a cabal of murdering psychopaths to hear that transmission. It was redundant, too. In a way, they had already immortalized her with a broadcast and a number.

Camilla wouldn’t get more than that. He didn’t know the details of what she did, or why Diego killed her. It was possible it was revenge for Theo, in which case Henry felt wrong to even feel anger about what Diego had done. Part of him wanted to add Diego to their list, but he hated so deeply that he even had a mental list of people they needed to kill that he didn't mention it to the others. Hunting him down was no more a sign of respect to Camilla than speaking her name into empty space.

He wondered how he could think that and simultaneously continue on the path he walked down.

B030, and KC4ASH. At least I’m known by two sets of numbers and letters.

Henry shuffled uneasily at the entrance to the Commissary. He’d volunteered to keep watch outside while Aurelien and Morgan scoured the interior for signs of Blaise or Michael, or any other killers. It was probably not necessary for him to stay out here, but he was content with any excuse to keep out of the action. If they opened a broom closet and Michael was whimpering inside of it, he didn’t want to be party to what came next.

Even if he knew he wouldn't lift a finger to stop it.

Peering into the open door of the Commissary, Henry called out to the two of them.

“Hey, uhh… you guys find anything?”

[Cactus]

What little there had been to find was long gone; the only things left behind by those who had come before them were those that one wished not to find.

Blood.

Bodies.

Fort Jeremiah.

Morgan turned his head to peer at the splotchy mass laying on the floor across the Commissary. The first time that he had stepped into this place, he had found his friend in the throes of a mental breakdown in a storeroom. Now, the only thing left for them was the remnants of what they had once been. Human beings and classmates and friends no longer, they were hunters, they were predators.

For some, they were prey.

"Nothing," he called back. His shoulders fell and he shut his eyes for a moment. "Absolutely fuck-all."

((Morgan Dragosavich continued from Here We Are Now Going to the South Side; I Pick Up My Friends and We Hope We Won't Die))

It wasn't at all surprising that there was nothing of substance to be found within the Commissary, he and Michael had gone through the store-room as thoroughly as they could before he had ditched Morgan for the first time, trying to find anything that they could use to replace Morgan's absent supplies. Jeremiah's corpse aside, he knew that somewhere in the area, Camila Canizares was rotting away, oblivious to the mental destruction that her own demise had caused someone whose friendship he had once held as dearly as anyone. In the absence of a brother, his pal sometimes felt like a sibling. They didn't always get along, and Michael sometimes balked at some of Morgan's more spontaneous ideas, but in the end, they always had one another's best interests at heart. It was likely why when Lizzie had been shot, Michael had helped, he had stayed by and he had been the one that Lizzie had charged with ensuring that his own name sounded off over the announcements.

That he had made a promise to Aurelien about killing anyone else and near-immediately broken it only proved how far gone his friend was. Even worse was the fact that Morgan had been visualizing murdering his best friend; shooting him in the head and watching his glasses crumple to the ground, seeing the life drain from his body — it was enough to make him feel as though he were doing a great justice to the memory of who Michael Froese had once been and alternatively, sick to his stomach.

Sighing as he pushed the feeling away, he felt the walkie-talkie shift in the pocket of his pants. Henry had handed it over as a sort of passing of the torch, though what kind of torch he had passed, Morgan wasn't sure. Something was up with Henry, had been since he'd found the walkie. His fellow science buff was usually logical, firm in his decision-making but gentle with how he presented the information. It was a sound decision to make sure they all had a way to communicate, but the ghastly look on Henry's face as he did worried him.

This was a bad situation they were in, nobody doubted that. People were going to lose their minds; hell, maybe the lot of them had already and they just didn't know. Sane people didn't make plans to kill their classmates, did they?

Aurelien was seeking vengeance. Morgan knew that he wasn't looking for vengeance, per se — more like he was trying to do his friend a favour. Stop a self-destructive spiral.

It just seemed like a shame that to do so, he would need to enter one of his own. Maybe that was why Henry was so upset. He didn't have a target, no one whose name needed damning.

Not that any of them needed help to be damned.

"Aurelien, any luck?" Morgan called over, knowing full well that the boy was sharing in every facet of his misfortune.

[Pippi]

((Aurelien Valter continued from Here We Are Now Going to the South Side; I Pick Up My Friends and We Hope We Won't Die))

It really was a sick joke, wasn’t it?

He’d run out of things to say, things to think, things to consider about this goddamn village. It was just a black mark for him now, an albatross that he couldn’t escape from. Henry had mentioned, back at the lake, that they’d be going back into the village, but Aurelien hadn’t thought it would hit him with anything more than dark bemusement at the fact he couldn’t seem to leave this place. Like it was some sort of cursed village in one of the folk tales his grandma loved to tell.

But it was affecting him worse and worse each time, returning back to this cluster of buildings, back to where everything had fallen apart. Now he had another body to think about, one whose blood had splattered onto his hands, and now the village was just a reminder of yet another person he could have saved but didn’t, another killer he needed to find but hadn’t.

He’d been optimistic leaving the lake. Now he was closer to frantic.

At least the commissary was a new building for him, a slightly different set of wooden walls and ceiling. A tiny silver lining on this dark cloud. He still hadn’t talked to either of the other two upon reaching the building, though. He hadn’t been sure what might have come out of his mouth if he had, but he knew it wouldn’t have been anything good.

Aurelien kicked a pebble, mace lying against the wall next to him, crossbow cradles in his hands. The rock bounced once, then lodged in a knot in the wooden planks. He’d seen everything there was to see here, which, of course, wasn’t fucking much. Ransacked shelves and storage. A mess that had once been a corpse that had once been a person. That was it. There was nothing here for them.

And really, they should have figured that out as soon as they’d done a cursory search of the place. They didn’t need things anymore, they had plenty of weapons, they had enough supplies. They needed people. They needed killers. They needed their goal.

“As much as you’re having,” Aurelien replied. He didn’t try very hard to keep the bitter tone from his voice. He looked down at the pebble stuck in the wall, then turned to glance over at Morgan, raising his voice so Henry could hear him from the entrance.

“There’s nothing here. Just dust and bodies.”

He paused. He made a disgruntled sound with his mouth. He lowered his head, looking up at Morgan, eyes only just visible from beneath his matted hair and bloodsoaked bandanna.

“We need to move on. We’re just wasting time here, we have find one of the players.”

[Shiola]

Nothing.

Morgan sounded frustrated, disappointed even. Henry felt relieved. It was just another empty building, another gamble that they’d run into some player. They didn’t know enough to guess where any of these people would go, so they had to just try to comb through any potential hiding spots they came across. Assuming, perhaps falsely, that some of them would be hiding.

He didn’t know. If he was trying to play this game, he’d do everything he could to group the kills together. Condense the amount of energy and time spent removing other people from the equation so that he could spend the rest of it recuperating, physically and mentally. Set traps that would work without needing to be there to set them off. Most of the time he would allocate to hiding, planning, and trying not to think about how broken and empty the task would make him feel.

So if they were anything like him, maybe hiding and biding their time was what they’d be doing. Except they weren’t like him, so it was little more than a guess. One he’d been too happy to keep voicing around Morgan and Aurelien.

Henry stepped into the building, no longer having to keep himself away from whatever they might find. Watching Aurelien move to the entrance, his companion almost seemed to fit in with the rest of the damage in this place.

And when he spoke, Henry saw that even more clearly. Aurelien seemed to be of this place, now.

“I’m sorry-”

He stopped dead just ahead of the doorway, his fists clenched. He knew he should’ve stayed outside, kept himself mentally distant from those two, from all of this. There was just no helping it.

“We have to find one of the players? Do we really? By my reckoning the killers will outnumber everyone else if we keep going at the rate we’ve been going. It’s not like we’re stopping anyone from offing themselves, or getting their collars set off. We’re not buying any more time, even if we stopped the worst of them. Or is that not why we’re really looking for them?”

Hands trembling, Henry could barely contain his anger. It wasn’t entirely meant for Aurelien or Morgan, but there was nothing else he could do with it. Castigating the island itself was even more of an exercise in futility.

[Cactus]

Aurelien didn't even try to hide the fury that had been swirling within him, and before Morgan had a chance to interject with a retort of his own, Henry beat him to the punch. Listening to the diatribe, he winced. As far as punches went, this one was a haymaker. Henry was a kind soul, anyone who knew him at school knew that. It was the reason that he'd never had much time for the interpersonal drama or the usual high school bullshit. Outside of the failed rocket launch that had garnered his friend the nickname of 'Spaceboy', Henry was very much the kind of person who floated through high school while knowing that he was destined for bigger and better things. This was but a stop along the way for him, while he scienced his way to NASA or whatever sky-high career aspirations he had.

Survival of the Fittest had a funny way of stepping in front of whatever future plans people had and rendering them moot. Watching your future very likely go up in flames in front of your very eyes had a funny way of making people a little touchy.

He would know.

Morgan wasn't much of a crier, and he was fairly certain that he'd cried every single day over the last ten days. It was one of the many things that was infuriating him and driving his sense of frustration. While he knew he wasn't on the same vengeance train that Aurelien was - Blaise had better be careful if they found her - or was it him - or they, he wasn't sure and at this point he didn't give a fuck. In his eyes, Blaise was a murderer, so any and all considerations were moot. He would endeavour not to misgender them while he watched Aurelien carve their heart out, rip their head off and throw it in the sea, all in Dante's name.

Wow, rage had a funny way of taking over, didn't it?

Blinking, he took a breath and tried to compose himself. Genderfluid serial killers aside, he knew his own quest was far simpler. If he saw Michael again, he'd shoot him without hesitation. Michael, like a rabid animal, needed to be put down. Morgan knew that he would worry about the repercussions of how mentally fucked up that was going to make him later.

If there was a later for him.

One could only hope.

Stepping over towards Henry, he held his hands up in the air in a defensive posture.

"Hey, let's just calm down, that's not what - you didn't mean it like that, right Aurelien?"

It was their stated goal, sure. Henry had gone along with it, but as the numbers dwindled and their still-breathing classmates got fewer and further between, the chances of confrontation were starting to become inevitable. The reality of that was probably starting to sit as well with Henry as any of this could.

"It's just, I mean - these people are doing horrible things, right? They need to be stopped. Could you imagine one of them getting to go home after what they've done? Could Blaise or Justin or Erika or Michael, could any of them just walk back into George Hunter like, gee everyone, I'm back!"

So much for staying calm. Morgan was starting to get animated and he threw his hands in the air.

"I'd rather find them before they find us, man."

[Pippi]

Aurelien turned, and Aurelien looked towards the doorway, and Aurelien stared Henry down for seconds that felt like an eternity. He didn’t say a word, not even after Morgan had clearly finished talking. The silence hung in the air, thick and crackling with tension, so much so that Aurelien wondered if his hair was standing on end right now. He looked down at Henry, noticing, as if for the first time, how much shorter the other boy was, how much smaller everything about him was, how all of his belongings looked almost comically oversized on him.

He made one, single movement, as he stared Henry down. His arms shifted, and the crossbow lowered, angled towards the floor. Henry had, for the most part, figured him out. He didn’t need that realisation to be taken to its most extreme conclusion.

Morgan was trying to play peacemaker, and Aurelien understood why. The last thing they wanted, when they were getting this close to the wire, was for their group to splinter, and for emotions to run high and dangerous. But at the same time… was it so bad? Was it really so goddamn heinous that Aurelien was still dead set on finding the killers and bringing them to whatever counted for justice on this island anymore? Yeah, he wanted revenge on Blaise. Sure. He didn’t wanna hear for one second that he wasn’t justified in wanting that. But he also hadn’t seen any problem, now that the number of killers was getting closer to eclipsing the number of innocents, of doing something about them, of giving them the reward they deserved. He’d thought they’d all been on the same page here. Apparently he’d been mistaken.

He wondered how long he’d been mistaken for. Maybe not too long. Maybe he’d been right up until very recently. Maybe actually being on the announcement, maybe actually taking someone’s life had given Henry a serious change of heart. If that was the case, Aurelien understood totally. But he wasn’t in any damn state to change course now. Their goal had been to stop the players before they got too out of hand. If they stopped now, then they had failed, completely and utterly.

Aurelien was not prepared to fail. Not after everything he and Morgan and Henry had already lost. Not after Ariana. Not after Lizzie and Jackson. Not after…

“No,” Aurelien said, very slowly, very softly. “Morgan’s correct.”

He handpicked each word, slotted them in one after the other, knowing how important this conversation could be, how much he needed to keep this from getting out of hand.

“In… all regards. Like... what is there here for us? We said, there’s nothing. Nothing at all. Is that what we’re looking for? To do nothing? After all these days of… wandering, of blood being spilled, we’re going to settle for nothing? Even if we can’t… if we can’t save everyone, even if there’s people who want some sort of escape, or people we just can’t fucking get to in time, we’re not… there’s still good people out there… who I wanna try for… and just…”

Aurelien could feel his pulse quickening, his hand clenching, his other running and tangling through his hair.

“If we don’t do anything, yeah… the killers are gonna dwindle. But it’s not gonna be because people stood up to them, it’s not because people tried to do what was right, it’s gonna be because we let the island become nothing but killers and they’re gonna take each other out because they can, because we let them, because we fucking decided doing nothing was better than that.”

Aurelien took a beat, took a breath, then pulled his bandana down, over his nose and mouth, storming off and away into a side room. He closed his eyes. There was blood in his veins, blood on his face, the scent of blood flooding his nose and mouth. He stifled a curse, kicked another small pile of debris, took deep, copper-filled breaths.

Never had been good at moderation.

[Shiola]

He listened to Morgan, striking a conciliatory tone while he went on about who didn't deserve to go home, like their actions on the island defined them and what they deserved more than the rest of their lives before it had. Henry stayed perfectly still as Aurelien ranted to his face about how horrible it would've been if they did nothing. He stood silent, knowing that he could've pointed out how fighting back against these people didn't really change the end result, it just exposed them to more bloodshed. It was just an exercise in pretending they still had any power here. Ultimately, they'd still be playing the terrorists' game no matter who they decided had to die earlier than everyone else.

What they were doing, it just made it more likely that Henry would once again find himself helpless to do anything as someone bled out in front of him. It meant he'd spend the last few nights of his life wondering if anything he'd done had actually been worth it, here, or if he'd just made every situation he was a part of worse somehow by holding onto what felt like some shared humanity. Reminding himself that there was no human problem so bad that someone couldn't somehow make it worse.

Aurelien stormed off, and Henry held his gaze towards the ground for a few moments before looking back up at Morgan.

“It’s not-”

Henry stopped, shaking his head. Wrong place to start. He let the silence smother his anger for a moment, depriving it of oxygen. When he began again, he spoke with less intensity. If nothing else, he seemed profoundly exhausted.

“You’re making a mistake. We find them, they find us, you’re still not making your own choice. No matter what reasons we come up with, they’re still reasons to kill people. That's the point of this, they want us to kill people. Even if we don’t think it, we’re still doing what we were put here to do. We’re still playing the game, on their terms. We still lose. If we end up with one person left, I don’t think I care who it is. If it gets to that point, no one’s making it home, not actually. No one anyone would recognize. They make their point, whatever it is.”

He shrugged, motioning to their surroundings as if lurking somewhere in them, there was a point to all this. Nothing he could find, not now. At least, not lingering in the doorway of this abandoned building. Henry looked over his shoulder, out towards the edge of the village. As much as he stood by everything he said, he couldn't find it in himself to abandon these two. Somehow, he'd find a way to make it work, to rationalize it to himself. If nothing else, so he could say he'd stuck by his friend.

“Look, I’m not gonna stop you, Morgan. I know you feel you need to. It’s just not something that’s easy for me to square with myself. I think I need to just - take a few minutes alone to think about this. Gonna take a walk. You’ve got the radio, just call me if you need help.”

Without waiting for a reply, Henry turned and left the Commissary.

---

Walking away from the building, Henry left the conversation he’d been having on-and-off with himself and his friends for the past few days. Not having to constantly remind himself of what hunting Blaise and Michael and the rest meant to them, it began to seem more clear what doing so really meant to him.

Work the problem was something he told himself because it made him feel like he was ready for his own aspirations. He could make it to space, or take people there. He could be the one to push the boundaries, to make the most of whatever ingenuity or bravery he possessed. Practicing on the small-scale what he hoped to take with him into his future. If he was the right kind of person, his dreams didn’t have to just exist in the space between going to sleep and waking up again.

That idea didn’t exclude the possibility of failure, of perishing in spite of one’s best efforts. It just said that the only meaningful approach in a stressful situation is to work on it, to solve one problem after another until there were either no more problems, or no more you. Sometimes it worked. People using computers a fraction of the power of an average smartphone rescued three men stranded in space with little air or electrical power, using duct tape and moxy.

Sometimes it didn’t work. There wasn’t time, or the situation wasn’t one anyone could salvage no matter how hard they tried. Yet no one questioned that the people who’d died out there were working to save themselves up until the very last minute, even if they knew they were doomed. Someone could use the data they gathered, to prevent that calamity from happening again. That might’ve been the best way for them to face it, he imagined.

So few people got to go out knowing they were doing everything they were supposed to. It was easy to imagine finding peace in it. Henry could never picture himself going out in some sterile hospice, surrounded by family for whom those moments would be forever imprinted into their mind as “his final days.”

And now, he knew that was never going to come to pass. So, what was next?

He walked out to the edge of the village, the punt gun slung over his shoulder. Occasionally he adjusted the awkward weapon, considering whether or not he should’ve kept it at the ready, but ultimately coming to the conclusion he didn’t have to use it, not right now.

That’s not why I’m here.

[Maraoone]

((Diego Larrosa continues from black eyes looking up from below))

The boy stumbled across the forest adjacent to the beach, salt entering his nostrils. The fact that he was back here again was some cosmic joke he refused to acknowledge.

He'd run for an hour, he guessed, from the lake, the only destination in mind being anywhere else, weighed down by his bag and his gun and the grenade launcher around his neck, the world's most macabre necklace. An albatross around his neck. And, he should have known that if he ran without a location in mind, if he only wanted to be somewhere, then he would always come back here. Never mind the fact that he never wanted to see it again, never mind that the terrorists had blocked it off as a danger zone. He was always, always supposed to come back here.

He glared at the sea, dimming as the sun dipped behind him, shadows of the trees creeping onto its surface. Somewhere across that dark, murky expanse, his family lingered, waiting. Mom probably wouldn't be watching him, she'd never been one for violence, but he knew Sarah, big sis, Ate, he called her, probably would. And, she'd seen him fire the launcher, just an hour ago. She'd seen him do that. She'd seen him watch, intrude on two people having an intimate moment. She'd seen him linger, aim the launcher at them for a solid couple of minutes, past the point of what anyone could call reflex. And she'd seen him fire. She had seen him literally, actually blow up his classmates.

Mike was impulse. Cam was self-defense. For the people down at the lake, there weren't really any words for what that was, for what he'd done to them. Not anything he wanted to assign a name to.

His hands hadn't stopped shaking in the hour since. His chest was slick with sweat, droplets sliding down as it heaved, lungs desperately trying to recover air now that he'd stopped. It felt like his heart was going to explode, like he'd fall down right then and there. He wanted to scream. There was a dryness, tightness at the back of his throat, despite the slime that clogged it. He wanted to throw up. He had thrown up, in fact, digested remnants of ration bars and stale bread and leaves spilling out his guts half an hour ago, but the urge hadn't left him. He wanted to leave the launcher somewhere, but he feared it ending up in someone else's hands, in the hands of someone who decided to do the same to him. Karma, taking form.

Maybe one of the people at the lake survived, maybe most of them did. They had friends, probably. That meant there would be more of them, more like Billy and Justin, coming after him.

He saw a boy heading towards him. The gun came out of his waistband.

[Shiola]

As he neared the edge of the village, close to what he imagined to be the invisible fence of the “Bay Area” danger-zone, he spotted a figure stumbling into his field of view. He too, seemed burdened by heavy weaponry. From the look of him, that wasn’t the only thing weighing him down.

As Henry got closer, the other boy noticed him. Raised another gun in his direction. At that distance he now recognized him. In spite of the weapon pointed in his direction, Henry kept walking. He stopped a few paces away from Diego.

Once again, he suppressed what seemed like misplaced anger. Finding it too easy to make Diego his own personal vendetta in the way his friends had found theirs. Like walking into a trap he had watched being set.

I have to know.

It refused to abate, and kept him working through how he’d have to extricate himself from this situation. Kept him looking for a way to turn the situation around, to outwit and kill this person for what he did.

But that wouldn’t save him. Not really.

What, then?

Henry furrowed his brow, looking down at the end of the gun barrel for a moment before looking back up towards his eyes.

“My name’s Henry. You’re Diego, right? Gardening club? You killed Mike and Camilla.”

He waited, wondering if the tremor in Diego’s grip would steady, tighten and let him squeeze the trigger. When Diego didn’t shoot, Henry continued, speaking seemingly without regard to the weapon pointed at him. Where there probably should’ve been fear in his voice, Henry seemed to speak with an air of morbid curiosity.

“Actually kind of glad I ran into you. I need to ask you something.”

[Maraoone]

Diego had three options at hand, right now.

The grenade launcher was not in use because he'd seen what it could accomplish from a far distance. In close spaces, like this, it would destroy both of them. The shovel was not in use because he never wanted to use it again. The gun, Lorenzo's gun, Ty's gun, was in use because it was useful for middling distances like this: distances where you could see your target's face, hear your target's voice, but hold them far enough at bay to keep them from being a threat.

The threat was Henry. That was his name, Henry. He didn't know why his brain had defaulted to the word 'threat,' but the word implied an automatic sort of hostility. It left no room for deescalation, it urged immediate action to resolve, end, terminate, and the situation did not have to go down that route yet, he did not want to go down that route again so soon, it had only been an hour. The gun was up only to protect, to intimidate, that was it. The word 'threat' implied some sort of detachment, dehumanization that Diego had not arrived at yet. It was not something Diego could afford at the moment because he knew his name, his face.

He knew even more than that. He knew Henry liked rockets, was into science, was smart, academically speaking, like Diego. His clothes were dirtied, tattered, slightly bloodied, but he was clothed. A light breeze brushed against Diego's bare back. The nothingness that wrapped around him felt more apparent, now that he was being observed. He felt feral.

Henry had come towards Diego, named the people he had killed. He knew at least one of them then. Probably Mike, hopefully. Cam had never mentioned him before, but maybe they'd met before. He and Cam hadn't talked enough about their prior times on the island for him to know any better.

There was a slight anger coloring Henry's expression. The rifle, impossible not to notice, hung around his shoulder. It was still not in his hands. Diego would probably notice if Henry grabbed it, there would probably be a few seconds of warning, but there was enough space and doubt in the word 'probably' to keep Diego's gun pointed.

The gun wavered. His thumb hovered over the safety, still flicked off.

"Yeah? Yeah, that's me. You, uh, you know either of them?"

[Shiola]

Henry shook his head.

"No, not really."

Looking down, he plucked the walkie-talkie from his belt and showed it to Diego, before clipping it back on.

“Camilla and I each had one of these. We kept in touch from the second day on. Tried to coordinate, a bit. I had some ideas, but it didn’t go too well in the end. Something happened to her. She left her radio next to Theo's body, and I could only guess what happened there. Then they gave her a reward, and then you killed her. I'm guessing that big gun was hers.”

And the smaller one, who did that belong to?

He glared at the barrel of the Uzi in Diego's hand for a moment, before looking back up at him. It wasn't important right now.

"So, why did she die?"

[Maraoone]

The glare felt accusatory. Piercing. Diego looked down, away. He couldn't meet it.

The gun wavered more. His voice shook the same.

"She tried to kill me first, Henry."

[Shiola]

It was half of an answer.

“I see.” Henry replied, almost at a whisper.

He thought back to the announcements, the names and causes he’d worked to commit to memory.

Day Nine. Thomas, by Sakurako, shot. Ivy by Myles, Myles by Ace, all shot, Ace survived. Camilla, by Diego, Shovel. Emmett, Jonathan, both by collar detonation. Claude by Tyrell, Drowning. Tyrell by Claude, crossbow. Lucas A. by Kelly. Shot. Forrest by Abe. Shot. Madison by herself, shot.

Maybe she had to die. Maybe her attacking him just made it easier for Diego.

Mike Brown by Diego. Neck injury?

Henry cocked his head, sizing up Diego. There was no pride in his voice; what he’d done clearly troubled him. The gun was a threat, but it was also a barrier between the two of them; one Diego clearly needed to keep intact.

You’re scared.

Were the others any different than this? Was Diego the exception, or the rule?

There was only one way to find out.

“You’d know better than I do why she did that, I suppose.”

He narrowed his eyes.

"But, why did she die? She couldn't have come at at you with that thing, or you wouldn’t be standing here. What did killing her accomplish?"

[Maraoone]

"What?"

Diego looked back up at Henry. He cocked his head, squinted his eyes a bit.

"I don't– I don't– it accomplished me not dying, Henry. She tried to– she tried to fucking cut my throat. I don't know what else you want me to say."

[Shiola]

A flash of sympathy briefly broke through Henry’s dour expression. He wrung his hands together, as if pressing into the muscle of his palm would somehow press out the worst of his memories.

“I’ve been there. two people died because I was just trying to protect myself, and my friends. One I meant to kill, the other was… an accident. My fault. Maybe it’s the same with you. I can see you’re hurting, too.”

For a moment, he could almost hear himself living out the cliche of the bright eyed idealist facing down people with guns. As if there was anything he could say that would somehow arrest the momentum of this place, and what it had done to Diego, and what it would do to Henry.

He once again found himself unable to take his eyes off of the barrel of the gun. Taking a shallow breath, he continued, uncomfortably aware the answer to his question might not be spoken.

“They said you used a shovel for Camilla. Didn’t say what you used to kill Mike, but mentioned you went for the neck with him, too. And you’re pointing a gun at me right now. I’m wondering whether I’m going to walk away from this."

Anger resurfaced.

"And If I’m not? I want to know why."

He couldn't help but speak with a tinge of sarcasm, as he questioned Diego once again.

"You just want to live, is that it?”