((Henry Sparks continued from ][))
Though he’d been hearing sporadic gunfire across the island all day, the loud cracks coming from the direction of the Yacht seemed to be enough of an excuse to stop. At least, for the time being.
After a few adrenaline-laced moments of searching, Henry managed to find some relatively decent cover where he was still able to see the Yacht from afar. A mossy boulder hidden behind some brush seemed like enough to mask his position. All he had to do was try his best to ignore the mosquitoes and the threatening-looking sky.
It felt nice to be sitting down again. He’d gotten used to the weight of the gun; it wasn’t dramatically heavier than one of his telescopes, and he didn’t have to worry so much about causing damage to it. If it was only the gun, he wouldn’t have been as exhausted. As it stood, the weight of all of his supplies, plus the ammunition, plus the gun…
“Ow.” Rolling his shoulders, Henry winced. He checked the time on his wristwatch, thankful that the terrorists had decided not to confiscate it. There wasn’t really much mischief one could get up to with an analog wristwatch, as far as they would be concerned.
It was a little bit troubling how easy it was to imagine things from their perspective. Obviously not on an ideological account; what they’d done was a monstrous evil made all the more despicable owing to their apparent lack of motive. From a problem-solving perspective though, it wasn’t hard to think of the challenges that went into designing the collar, making sure that there were no dead zones on the island where they’d lose a signal, or even wiring explosives that were sufficiently resistant to shock and moisture within the small frame of the device.
He wondered how many people like him had fallen into work for the AT. What could’ve motivated someone who was intelligent enough to orchestrate this to ignore how evil it all was?
Perhaps I don’t want to know.
It was now time to call Camila. Though he suspected she had no way of telling the time, establishing some kind of consistency would help them avoid the unenviable situation of having a walkie talkie going off at an inopportune moment. He first tested the device by calling her name.
“Camila?”
It crackled to life in reply. ”Henry?”
"Hey, I made it somewhere I can talk for a bit.” Henry crossed his legs, reflexively composing himself despite the fact that the other potential interlocutors couldn’t actually see him.
Promised Nick I’d tell the truth. Hope he’s alright.
“About the announcements - I don't know about the others, but Nick didn't murder Beryl. She was badly wounded and paralyzed, and he ended it for her. Poor guy fell apart after that.”
Henry’s voice wavered slightly, thinking back to Nick and Michael’s mutual breakdowns. It was hard to see anyone like that.
“I'm almost to the Yacht - How're things on your end?"
For a moment he’d worried that some of his message had gotten lost, but was relieved when he received yet another fuzzy reply.
"I figured as much about Nick. A lot... I saw a lot yesterday, after our last talk. It's- I- Abel and Benny... yeah. You probably heard what happened to them. Now I'm with some other folks and-”
A brief gap, though she was still holding down the button and he could hear the hesitation in her voice. Her journey since they’d last seen one another hadn’t been an easy one, no doubt.
“-and I think they'd want to talk to you, actually.”
On the other end, Henry could hear the others clamoring to speak. It was… odd? He’d never thought of himself as someone people would have a whole lot to say to. At school he’d managed to fly under the radar when he wasn’t doing something supposedly “weird” like sitting alone and knitting, or reading a book. Even then, it was usually just Morgan, who could understand why things like that really weren’t so odd. Knitting and books led to sweaters, and occasionally rockets.
"One at a time, you guys, Yeah, so. Nikki, Mike, Bert, and I, we built a little hut. To stay out of the sun, you know. Uh… You know those guys? And Angie's showed up too, if you know her."
Henry didn’t know many of them well, but expressed enthusiasm for their resourcefulness. Shelter that wasn’t marked on a map was bound to be safer than the ones that were.
“Hey there! You guys built a hut? Neat!”
Bert had been fun to talk architecture with on occasion, though she didn’t seem to share his enthusiasm for weird seventies brutalist architecture. People who wanted to build things always seemed kin to Henry. Nikki and Angie he knew less so, but he had no reason to suspect they were anything but good people. Mike was on the baseball team, wasn’t he-
Max and Jonah are also baseball players!
“Mike - Mike Brown, right? I saw some of your team yesterday. Jonah and Max. They’re sticking together, seemed like."
Henry paused, thinking of what else he might add. The last few hours had been an exercise in ignoring chaos - turning away from the sounds of gunfire and screaming that had echoed throughout the island in pursuit of a loftier goal. Guilt had hounded him the whole way, for not stopping to assist whoever he could. It was at least encouraging that others had stepped up where he’d been unable to.
"I know the announcements sounded bad but, mostly I’ve seen people working together. I’m glad it’s the same on that end too.”
He slumped back against the rock, his weapon cradled in one arm and the walkie talkie held loosely in the other. Though he was sure he’d sounded convinced over the line, his words rang hollow to him. Every sign of hope was shadowed by the impossibility of their situation, and the absence of any obvious solution that would save them. No part of this was easy.
Camilla spoke up, though as she did so he heard another voice cut in on the line.
"I was with Max's group yesterday, actually."
"Are they trying to escape too? Fuck, not too, I mean, generally, I mean, everyone wants out, ahaha, y'know, you don't, fuck, have to answer that."
"No, Max didn't plan on escape. He...wanted to form a player hunter group... but that's neither here nor there."
It took only a few moments for the meaning of the term to register in Henry's mind, and he instinctively cut back into the conversation, his words dripping with outrage. Max seemed too intelligent to resort to something like that, and it was infuriating Henry hadn't seen that before when they'd encountered his group.
"Player hunter?! What the hell?"
"He made it sound so- Christ, I'm- I met him right after I woke up, and then Lucas came in, and he wanted to find his girlfriend. Max... He wanted to make sure everybody could meet who they wanted to. Or at least that's what he said. He also said he'd just disarm them at first but somehow? I felt like that wouldn't be the case."
Henry quickly drew down his tone, realizing in context it might've sounded more than a bit judgmental. This was a situation that none of them had any context to deal with, it made sense people would follow someone who presented some clear goals, even if it
"That's... No, I don't think it would stop there. People are scared, and a lot of them are armed. Going after people because of what that terrorist tells us each morning is just playing into it all. Just in a different way."
"I know I shouldn't have gone along with it- I should have run the first chance I got, just- I didn't know what else I was supposed to do... Lucas had the shotgun, Max had the man-catcher, and I- well... didn't."
As he heard her voice crackling through the line, he felt a pang of guilt for jumping so quickly to judgement. Trying his best to soften his tone, Henry conceded feeling more than a bit lost, himself.
"I know, I understand. Frankly, I don't really know too well what I'm supposed to do here either. I have a few ideas but none of them are exactly good. We have to try, though. I think they want us to feel boxed in, so we make choices we would've otherwise never considered. Just gotta remember who we are. They can take away everything else but they can only take that if we let them."
"I- Right. Do you think they can record the- what's going on by the walkie talkies?"
Henry paused. Between that and the other person's blisteringly obvious backpedaling, he was beginning to put together a picture of what they were all thinking on the other end of this conversation.
"I would be surprised if they weren't. I couldn't tell you if the collars are recording but I'm sure the cameras are."
"We did wonder if the collars were recording, yeah. Uh... that's probably something Nikki was gonna mention?"
It wasn't clear that they were, but it was entirely possible that the collars had built in microphones. It really depended on how sophisticated these devices even were, and how reliable the terrorists believed them to be. The safest option was to assume that they were being recorded at all times, if only because the cost of making a mistake was so high.
They had the ingenuity, and the drive. All they'd be looking for now was an opportunity.
Henry sat up straight, and spoke into the walkie-talkie with a new sense of urgency.
"Alright. I need you and whoever else is there to listen to me for a second. Just stop whatever it is you're doing and pull them over."
"Right... we're not doing much anyway. Guys? It's important, listen up. What is it?"
“Alright. You all listening? I have to believe they’re confident enough in what they’re doing not to just kill us for talking about it."
He shot a glance at a nearby camera, continuing to look at it as he spoke.
"They’ve invested too much into this to let it all go to waste. I do a lot of tinkering with old radios, electronics, that kind of thing. I know enough to know the big problem here. You don’t need that much explosive on a collar to kill someone. I’m confident most of their design is the tracking and signal components, all of which are going to fail-safe if something disables them or blocks the signal."
Henry put a hand to the collar around his neck. Hoping it would remain silent. He took a sharp breath in, and continued his explanation.
“Fail-safe for the terrorists means we die. They already caught us and put us here, losing one or two to a collar malfunction isn’t really hindering them on a large scale." A collar malfunction, intentional or not. "The collars themselves have to operate on a relatively low band radio frequency to keep things simple and reduce chance of latency issues and interference from weather and anything else. They don’t want us all dying if a thunderstorm hits or if they have some kind of malfunction on their end."
He took his finger off of the button to leave Camilla a chance to respond. A moment for them to take in what he was trying to tell them.
"A collar malfunction... or someone trying to get them off?"
That was what they'd been thinking. Or at least, considering. He knew he had thought about it. Henry continued speaking into the walkie talkie and towards the camera, as if he expected some kind of confirmation from its cold gaze.
"Absolutely. Though they have to get them on and off somehow. There’s likely a specific signal keyed to the collars that does it. The only way, and I’m sure it’s the only way, that they could possibly be disarmed is if someone managed to figure out what that signal is, and broadcast it to the collars themselves. Probably part of the reason none of us were awake to have them put on, so that we didn’t see how it was done. If I had to guess they’ve got a boat just over the horizon that’s the primary broadcast point, and some transmitters scattered across all of the zones. Probably not more advanced than that. The more complex they get technically, the more likely it is someone’s going to figure them out and discover the island.
That’s why I’m not sure if the collars are recording us, It’s more information to transmit for such a small device, and the cameras do that job well enough already. This social experiment of theirs goes for what, two weeks? They need them to keep functioning until then, and that means keeping it simple. The ground based transmitters are probably in inconspicuous, elevated locations. I wouldn’t bother trying to find them. Chances are if you do, they’ll just detonate your collar."
Punctuating his explanation, silence fell on the other end. Much of it was conjecture, but well informed nonetheless. After an uncomfortable pause, he heard a reply.
"...Now what?"
He'd prepared something of a response, and was glad they couldn't see his face so as to question its sincerity. Henry needed to convince himself as much as he needed to convince them.
"Well... Don't bet on finding a way to take them off on our own. I don’t want anyone to die trying. Hide if you can, fight off anyone who's taken their side, and buy yourselves time."
"Right... like you said before."
"Until we know more, our best chance is the government storming wherever they’re transmitting from and shutting it down. Even then I couldn't tell you what's gonna happen. They might still kill us all if they think they’ve lost, or they’ll let us live so there are more voices to talk about what they did. I don't know. I think I know how their tech works; but I don't know how they work."
Who did? In all the time this had been happening, no one had been able to figure out a motive past sowing terror. No clear political aim, no clear ties to any rival foreign powers. All they'd shown was cunning, malice, and the resources to keep doing this over and over again. Given the way the current administration handled things, Henry couldn't be sure whether or not it'd be Navy SEALs storming the Arthro Taskforce's headquarters, or if they'd just sink the ship and call it a day.
In the latter case, Henry knew well enough what that would mean for everyone left here. He tried not to dwell on it.
"They- Right. Got to believe they'll make it, or that we'll make or just... I'll do my best. I think- I think there's gonna be rain soon. Seems like it. Should probably go back in the shelter. And uh... talk to you later, then?"
"Yeah, I'll get back to you same time tomorrow. If you have to keep quiet, turn it off and then get back to me after the coast is clear. I'll do the same."
Looking up past his cover, he noticed a particularly familiar silhouette standing near the Yacht. One he had every intention of avoiding for as long as humanly possible.
"I'm gonna try and find somewhere safe to hole up for the night, the yacht is looking... untenable, at this point. Stay safe, Camila."
"You too. Oh... by the way. Thanks for well, being there. Talk to you tomorrow then."
Henry turned the dial on the device until it clicked, and the tiny screen went blank. The chances of catching another clear night sky anytime soon seemed increasingly remote, as were the chances of convincing Wyatt Carter to be anything other than completely unreasonable. If his brother was there, it could be even worse. Neither of the Carters had made anything but a bad impression on Henry in all the years he'd known of them, and that was under normal circumstances.
A single drop of water landed on the back of his hand. Soon it would be followed by others. Wrapping the walkie-talkie in a spare shirt, Henry packed up his bag and made his way into the wilderness, away from the shoreline.
It hurt to turn away from his current objective, but he knew it was necessary. Eventually he'd find out exactly what part of the world this tropical hell was in, but not today.
Even if I do - then what?
Then what, indeed.
((Henry Sparks continued elsewhere))