Devil Like Me

[Shiola]

Day 4
11:30 AM

((Erika Stieglitz continued from High Hopes))

After a few close calls with populated areas, Erika managed to find the Temple. Ty had mentioned waking up in it on the first day, and it largely matched his description. She’d marked it on her map as a potential shelter. It was isolated and on high ground, which was the perfect spot for her as far as she was concerned. It was unfortunate that it had to remain a danger zone today, but the brief journey there would be a good chance to get a good look at the place.

Provided she could avoid getting into a protracted gunfight. Michael Froese had shot Camila to death, but they’d left out just as much detail with her death as they did Blake’s. That could’ve meant anything. As far as she knew, Michael didn’t have any formal training. She’d never seen him at the range or heard that he’d had any interest in guns. He was the kind of guy who if he had said anything about it, people would know. Nerdy guys didn’t have a good track record when it came to expressing a vocal interest in firearms in American high schools, as unfair a judgement as that was.

It doesn’t matter if he knows what he’s doing. Most people who shoot people don’t exactly know what they’re doing. Sometimes they don’t even know why. All he has to do is get me first.

At some point as she closed the distance to the Temple, she became uncomfortably aware of how much more isolated she’d be at this particular moment than any other. It was a so-called “danger zone”, and yet she hadn’t heard anything resembling an explosion so far. Either that meant everyone had gotten out in time, or she’d be stepping over bodies other than Michael’s to claim her prize.

The door to the temple was half-open - whoever had left last hadn’t bothered to shut it completely.

Or he got here first.

Erika drew her rifle, half-opening the breech to check that a round was loaded. Mentally preparing herself for what it would feel like to pull the trigger on someone when she could see their face. Much as she knew she’d have to aim for the center of mass, she hoped she would have a chance to aim for the head.

It would be easier if he didn’t have a face left to stare back up at her.

The barrel of the gun entered the temple first, as Erika used it to push open the doors. It smelled horrific inside, sweet and rotten. The source was quite clear, though Erika ignored it at first as she swept the open room, checking any corners Michael might’ve been able to hide in. As she spotted a half-collapsed roof beam, her mind drifted to Ty’s pained explanation of his first moments on the island.

She wished Claudeson had let him hang. His choice to save Ty wasn’t a kind one, and the announcements made it clear that his self-righteousness and personal fortitude were a thin veneer the island had quickly managed to strip away.

There was no one here. She’d made it. Now, she could look.

If he even was a he, he was unrecognizable.

Was.

It was small, one of the smaller students at the school. There was nothing left of the head besides a bloody mass on the floor, which was currently host to a small army of ants, working diligently to strip flesh and brain matter away from the fragments of its skull. Its abdomen was distended, no doubt a result of having two days to decompose in here. A ragged chunk had been torn from one of his legs, likely by a scavenger.

She reached up and tore down one of the moldy sheets of fabric from the ceiling and cast it down over the body. It’d do nothing for the smell, but at least she didn’t have to look at it.

In front of the torn painting, a large rectangular metal roadie case lay on a small wooden crate. It seemed to gleam against its decaying surroundings. Erika stepped around, making sure that she’d be facing the door. Just in case he showed up too soon. Slinging the Martini-Henry across her shoulder, she knelt down.

As she opened the case, her eyes went wide.

"Holy fuck."

She recognized the weapon immediately. More than that, she recognized what it meant for her to have it.

What it meant that they had given it as a reward - it was exactly the kind of thing she’d fight Michael for.

Her hands traced the stamped writing on the receiver.

PSG-1
Kal. 7.62x51
HK Oberndorf am Neckar
Hergestellt in BRD

It was something of a legend. A Cold War relic sought after by many, but something few recreational shooters ever got their hands on. Essentially, it was a heavily modified Heckler & Koch G3 Rifle that was meant for tactical precision shooting. It was issued in response to the German police’s demonstrably inadequate sharpshooting capabilities after the Munich Massacre, and quickly built up a reputation as being an amazingly accurate semi-automatic sniper rifle, far surpassing its contemporaries.

She’d shot a G3 before, but had only ever seen pictures of these. They cost fifteen thousand dollars a piece, weighed almost sixteen pounds, had an illuminated crosshair for low-light conditions, and could shoot half-inch groups at a hundred yards with minimal effort.

It was hers, because they knew who she was, and what she could do with it.

That made her feel almost as sick as the rancid smell of decay that permeated the ruined temple.

The sound of the front door creaking open again broke her from her stupor, and she quickly shrugged the Martini-Henry off her shoulder and aimed it in the direction of the noise. There, standing on the doorway, was Michael Froese aiming a pistol at his own head.

Dumbfounded, Erika lowered the rifle slightly, and called out to him.

"Michael?"

[Kermit]

((Michael continued from Becoming A Jackal))

Michael had pointed the gun at his own head as soon as he entered the DZed area. The safety was on. The silhouette of a person aiming a gun to their own head was always pretty recognizable. If Erika was legit fucked in the head, he doubted she'd risk shooting at him, because if she missed he looked like he'd shoot himself and steal her kill. If Erika was still rational, he figured he looked like he was an immediate threat to himself and only himself, or maybe he'd just weird her out enough for her not to shoot him.

It was a means for conflict resolution and nothing else.

Eventually, he came upon a big wooden building, which he guessed was probably the temple. Same as the commissary, it had a mural painted on it.

At least the cult had been artsy. Michael liked that. He didn't like the art itself - it was too vanilla and shallow for his tastes, or at least the murals were. Like, a painting of the sun rising over the temple doors? That was boring. There was no deeper meaning to be extrapolated, there was only "wow our cult is relentlessly positive, here's a picture of the sun rising!". Like, fine, but that wasn't anything anyone who'd ever seen the sun didn't know.

He hadn't taken his ADHD meds yet. That was it. Quickly, he slipped his backpack off, kneeled down, pulled out the pill bottle, and popped five pills, swallowed them dry. Pack back on. Gun back to his head.

He walked up to the entrance. If Erika was going to shoot him, this was the likeliest time for it to happen.

He closed his eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled. Opened his eyes. Pushed the doors open.

Erika was there. She turned around, aimed the rifle at him. If it was going to happen, it would happen right now.

She lowered the rifle a bit; said his name. He nodded his head and put on a sad smile; his eyes quickly glanced around the room. The ominous, faceless angel was a nice touch, but he was pretty sure the only reason it didn't have a face was because it had rotted away. There was also a dead person under a blanket, and from the outline of the body and the splash zone of dried blood and little bits of stuff that looked like desiccated worms or spaghetti, he could tell someone had shot them in the face with a really big gun. Finally, there was a kinda crate-box thing. It contrasted harshly with the rest of the temple's aesthetic. He figured the prize was in it.

He looked back at Erika, made eye contact. A routine for him now. He kept the gun pointed at his own head.

"Hi. We gonna talk this shit out or what?"

[Shiola]

Michael seemed unnaturally calm. It was just about as unnerving as everything else about this situation. She had previously found herself practically drowning in fear at the prospect of a gun pointed in her direction, yet it seemed entirely natural to him to hold himself hostage like that.

If nothing else, she sort of wished she could face down something like this with as much confidence.

He’s motivated by something else. Something other than dying.

Erika cocked her head, caught off guard by Michael’s prompt to talk this out, whatever that meant. Glaring into his sad eyes, she found herself more and more averse to the idea of raising the rifle and pulling the trigger, despite the parts of her mind screaming at her to do so.

Just as much as she told herself that he’s a threat and one more person between you and home, she pictured the gaping hole that her weapon would tear in his chest. Thought of how it would smell after a few days left to decay in the temple, how the insects would move from one body to the other, and multiply.

She thought about the jacket she was wearing, and all it had meant to its previous owner. What material remnants of Michael Froese the human being might she find on his corpse? How pathetic and hypocritical would she feel when, despite her best efforts, it would find a way to get to her?

To try and survive the game was to be profoundly alone. It was hard to feel even a bit like her old self talking to the others, knowing what she had to do. They all seemed a bit delusional, huddling in groups and biding their time until… until what, exactly?

In front of her was someone who, by virtue of his actions if nothing else, seemed just as painfully aware of the stakes as she was.

And he wanted to talk.

Erika gently pulled down on the lever of the Martini-Henry, so that the cartridge wasn’t kicked out of the breech so much as pushed back slightly.

“Drop the mag, and empty the chamber. I’ll put mine down once I see yours is clear. Then… yeah dude, we can talk this shit out.”

Looking down at the case in front of her, she noticed a set of black takeout containers and coke cans next to the rifle. The food the terrorists mentioned.

“There’s, uhh… dumplings. If you want them. We’re gonna have to talk about the gun, though. If… that’s what it is you wanted to talk about.”

[Kermit]

Michael caught that little moment of hesitation; the slight, brief waver in confidence. It told him enough; that she was still human enough to be psyched out.

Good.

He watched as she did a thing with her rifle's lever. That was either a good or a bad thing. Probably a good thing. If she was going to shoot him she'd have done it by now. She asked him, using technical terms (meaning she knew more about guns than he did), to unload his gun. She revealed the prize was a gun, asked if he wanted to talk about it. He didn't.

His thumb wormed its way up to the button that made the thing with the bullets fall out, pressed it, shook the gun a bit, and let the magazine fall. He smirked and raised his right eyebrow; kept staring into her eyes the whole time. He had the syringe (cap on) and the insulin vial he'd used earlier that day during his pod change nestled in his pocket if he needed them. "Mag's fresh and I haven't cocked the gun since I last reloaded it. Pretty sure that means nothing's in the chamber. I dunno, you're the expert here." He let it linger as he lowered the gun from his head. "I'm cool with just the pistol. It works fine with my, uh," Gimmick? "- strat. I meant like... the reason we're here; why we're the only two people on this island who can be in this specific place without getting our necks exploded. About -" he consciously rolled his left wrist, feeling the rubber band brush against his skin. He grimaced and inhaled sharply, tears welling in his eyes.

He was inducing his humanity. His voice was quiet, pained.

"- About how much it hurts to have done what we've done. Just... this might be our only chance to talk about it with someone who understands, y'know?"

[Shiola]

The expert, he called her. Her experience was one of the few things of her old self that got to live here, and she still bristled at Michael’s choice of words. It used to mean just doing well in competitions, or impressing men at the range who thought they were looking at their kind of girl.

Here it meant being a particularly efficient murderer.

Watching Michael unload the gun, she noted that he didn’t lock it open. Dropping the magazine wasn’t a comfortable action for him, either. His explanation of not having a round in the chamber fell a bit short, though.

He just wants to talk. Relax.

She wanted to speak to him. What they were going through was lonely, necessarily so. The place they found themselves in now was an experience few would ever get to share. Though she continued to harbor suspicions of Michael, on some level she recognized the paradox that these next few moments would likely be the safest she’d experience on the island owing to the Danger Zone.

I won’t have another chance to get this off of my chest. At least, this is the only safe one to take.

Erika nodded, closing up the metal case with the rifle and the food, picking it up. It was heavy, but she didn’t plan on going far. Only out to the steps of the temple, away from the smell of mold and decay.

"Yeah, I get you. I think… I’d like the chance to be honest with someone, at least once."

She walked towards Michael, stepping around the corpse and pausing in front of him. The question of whether he was walking around with an empty chamber remained. If it was a bluff, she meant to call it.

"That looks like a 1911. Rack the slide back and it’ll lock open if it’s empty. Show clear and we’re good."

Michael obliged, and the pistol locked back. Empty, just as he’d suggested.

"Alles klar, then."

Taking in the open air, Erika sat down on the highest step of the temple. Setting down her bags and Martini-Henry, she laid the rifle case across her lap. Producing the cans of coke and takeout containers, she set them on top of the case as a makeshift table. After a brief moment of scrutinizing the soda can, she cracked it open.

It’s disgusting corporate sugar fluids, but it’s also a fuckton of calories I’m not getting otherwise.

Here they were. Award-winning killers. Taking a moment to make each other feel better about what they’d done, or what they’d planned to do. Either too tired or too worn down by their actions to do the smart thing and turn on one another.

Maybe it’d help to talk this out. Maybe not. It was at least time spent not fighting or dying.

Erika turned to face Michael, who still hadn’t touched any of the food. A hint of her old genial self seemed to return, though still mostly buried under their chosen topic of conversation.

"Danya left a lot out. Like for me, at least. I’m guessing for you too. How’d Camila die?"

[Kermit]

"I don't speak German!" Michael was tempted to say as an in-joke to himself and the cameras. This was it, then. They were going to have a talk. A picnic in the rain. Michael sat down on the step and unconsciously took in the scent of the cola Erika'd cracked open. He'd never really liked Coca-Cola. He took a glance at the can. It wasn't even diet coke. It was nice to know the terrorists didn't care that much about him.

Erika said they'd left out details from her kill in the announcement, asked about Camila. Michael shrugged his shoulders lightly and stared out into the rain.

"Honestly, most of the deets they left out for Camila, they included for Bryan. I don't know why. Maybe they thought I was more believable as a ruthless killer than Claudeson, I guess. I think they leave out the details when they want someone to be an antagonist, if you follow me." He paused. "It was assisted suicide, nominally, but really it was like... I talked her into letting me shoot her. I was at the commissary, and she called out from outside; said if there was anyone inside she'd leave. I, uh..." his eyes glazed over. He saw everything happen again as he spoke. "...played dead to lure her inside. We talked for a bit, and then I looked into her eyes," he saw her eyes. "And I told her she was dead inside, and I tapped the gun on the table and I said I had a way out, and she said she didn't know, and I held her hand and I told her it was okay, and she said yes and she asked me to shoot her in the gut, and I raised the gun and I pointed it at her gut and I looked into her eyes, and I shot her, and I looked at the hole I blew through her and I looked back into her eyes, and then I walked away. It's fucked up, but, uh... the fact that she was okay with me being the person who murdered her made me feel - " he hesitated. "- makes me feel kinda... warm and fuzzy inside, I guess? I dunno."

He blinked and scratched the back of his neck. He looked down at the ground and picked away at the step he was sitting on using his fingernail.

"Guilt never really goes away, I think; just ebbs and flows, erodes away at us like marble. I think it's better when we let it out, though. Our problem is we've spent our whole lives thinking there were rules. Now there aren't." He paused for a few seconds, letting the words sink in. "Same question, back at you. What's the story with Blake? Desiree too, if you're comfortable with it."

[Shiola]

Erika listened to Michael intently, taking in every detail. Watching his face, seeing him relive those moments in the same way she’d heard veterans react when people asked them to share war stories. Camila wanted to die, or Michael talked her into it. That made him feel better about it, and Erika supposed she couldn’t fault him for feeling that way. The gut shot couldn’t have been an easy way to die, but she kept thoughts on that to herself. Anything that made what they had to do more palatable was worth holding onto, she supposed.

As for Camila’s part, she couldn’t even begin to empathize or understand. Probably best not to think too hard about it.

"Well, if she really didn’t want to die I don’t think you could’ve talked her into it. It’s not really all that weird that you’d feel kind of privileged that she’d have asked you to end it."

She couldn’t necessarily agree that there weren’t rules, though, and she made that much clear.

"I dunno if I’d say there aren’t any rules. There’s still one big rule. The same rule everything else finds easy to follow. Survive, no matter what. No matter what it takes, just don’t give in. That’s the only one that matters now."

Taking a sip of her coke, she straightened up, looking back to Michael. She hadn’t been even a bit honest with the others so far, and it took her a moment to run the events through in her mind once more.

"Comfortable with it, no, but sure. Mine were… definitely murders."

Finishing the can, she set it down next to her on the step. Something still pinched the granola-filled parts her mind when she’d considered tossing it aside. Her explanation wasn’t without a few pauses to collect herself, to hold back emotions that threatened to obfuscate what she was trying to say, but it was steady.

"That first day I was struggling with the like, morality of it all. I spent the first two days jumping from group to group, watching people lose it, seeing folks get shot at. Wanted to do the right thing, but there was this… I dunno, feeling. Like everyone was just trying as hard as they could to forget that the way out of here, the only way out of here, is to be the last one standing. I’ve had this crazy fear of death as long as I can remember, way worse than you’re supposed to. Made it hard to go outside some days, it was part of the reason I smoked so much weed.

So that fear it - it never kept what I had to do far from my mind, y’know? So that first day I ran into Katie, Ty’s friend. They boxed together sometimes, she knows how he fights. I knew what he’d try and do to save me, and I had this fucked up idea like… if I had to do some awful shit to survive, I wanted to be the one to do it. I wanted to be responsible for it. I didn’t want him to go down as this monster just to save me, when I’d been thinking all along of doing the same thing. So I told her, if she wanted to make it out, if she wanted to save her girlfriend, she’d have to kill him if they ever met. ‘Cause I couldn’t do it.

Ended up running into him myself. After he killed. Chris was a friend of mine, and the way she died…"

Erika thought back to that moment. The kiss they shared. Where his teeth had been.

"I’d tried to hide in the woods. He wanted to stay with me, but I knew what he’d do to protect me, and I knew what had to happen in the end. I had a few ways I could do it. We had two guns. The weapon they gave me was a cyanide pill, which I knew he’d take if I asked him. Like you, I could’ve talked him to death too, I guess."

She looked back at Michael, who no doubt was waiting for her to explain the murders. In way, she felt like she was explaining one that just hadn’t been announced yet.

"I just didn’t wanna see him die. He had a lot of good in him, and I… I loved him. Even after what he did. It sounds stupid that I’m worried that’s the part of this that makes me a bad person, doesn’t it? I turned him away, told him to go find Katie. I said I wanted someone decent to make it out, in case my plan to hide didn’t work out. I wanted to make sure he’d try and find her. With what he’d done, and what I said to her, that might as well have been a death sentence. If you hear their names together, that’s why. Before he left he gave me that gun there, so that I’d have something to defend myself with. So that’s where Desiree comes in."

She removed one of the .577/450 cartridges from its bandolier, holding it out in front of her.

"It’s a single-shot, big bore rifle. The kind of thing you use at long range, or back in the old days with a bunch of guys firing in volleys. Not a good thing for close quarters, like yours. My thought was, I’d find someone with a handgun, take them out from far away, and then I’d have something to defend myself with. I’d get my kill, I could hide. It wasn’t about the person, just the gun."

Glancing at Michael, it should’ve been clear enough to the both of them what that would’ve meant if he had crossed her sights.

"I did competitive shooting back home. It’s one of the things I really feel like I’m good at. There was this guy, Thomas, about two hundred yards away. I watched him for a while, lined up a shot. Just as I took it, he reached down for something. Desiree was behind him and it just…"

She eyed the cartridge, hoping the sight meant she didn’t have to paint a clearer image of what happened to the girl’s head.

"I should’ve shot him too but… he just went down. Cowered. All of his friends abandoned him, left him out there to die. Listening to that I just couldn’t do it. If I had, it might’ve been easier to deal with Blake."

The cartridge slipped easily back into the bandolier.

"I left the group I was with when the third announcements hit. I spun them a line about what I’d done. They believed it, but I didn’t know if it’d hold up. Deep in the woods, Blake saw me, snuck up and took my gun. I expected him to shoot me, but it turned out he just wanted my stuff. I figured it was some moral line in the sand to him, you know he was into that cadet stuff. So, I negotiated. Told him that if he left me with nothing, he might as well have been killing me. Which, he should have.

Thing was, I had two water bottles left in my bag. One of them was the one I was using, the other was where I’d put the cyanide. I thought like… if I ran into someone like Camila, I could give it to them as an easy way out. Or maybe I could leave it somewhere conspicuous, and someone might take it and that would be a way I could have one less person without having to be around for it. None of this was supposed to be personal…"

She clasped her hands together, holding on to keep from fidgeting. Like Michael, as she spoke, it felt like seeing it all over again.

Don’t look away.

"He took it, and everything else save the one bottle of water. I knew it was only a matter of time before he took a drink, and I knew the woods better than he did. Followed him for a little over an hour, until he finally did. I saw him fall, walked closer, and then… I just watched. I made him look at me. I wanted to see it. Dying. I wanted to see if I could tell when someone wasn’t really there anymore."

Erika looked into Michael’s eyes, haunted and hollow. Even as strung-out as he seemed, there were still glimmers of life and thought and emotion in them. Like a set of lights in the distance on the highway, late at night. Faint, but unmistakable.

"One minute they’re a human being, the most significant thing that there can be. A thinking piece of nature, that can know itself. All that good existentialist shit. The next minute they’re just… meat. Like that kid over there. Food for everything else that’s lucky enough to still be alive."

Staring at the two trays of rice and dumplings before them, Erika nudged the one that wasn’t marked with "V" towards Michael.

"I’m fighting so I even have time to feel guilty. I don’t think there’s time to take some kind of moral stance on this, in this place. With these collars. Given the stakes like, what do people expect me to do, give up?"

[Kermit]

Michael listened, still picking away at the step. He'd promised Erika that he'd lend her an ear, sort of, and as much as it always hurt him he was a person who usually kept to his word. Well, no. Not usually. Sometimes, maybe?

He kept to his word only when it would make him look bad if he wasn't keeping to his word.

Erika told him it wasn't his fault; said him feeling warm and fuzzy inside wasn't weird. She sounded like Morgan. Michael'd purposefully phrased the story he told her in a way that made him sound morally ambiguous-ish. She believed what she wanted to, and he'd let her for now. This was his chance to see into her mind.

Michael knew that just as every person had a way to be talked into killing, every person had a way to be talked into dying. He knew it well. He'd talked himself into both.


Erika disagreed with him on the rules thing, and that was okay; he also disagreed with him on the rules thing. He'd been lying.

In life, there was one rule. There had only ever been one rule; he'd learned that over the past three days. It was a soul-crushing rule, but it was a truth.

The rule was: This too shall pass. Everything dies. You couldn't run from the universe forever. Living was palliative care.

The only thing people had to do after they were born was die. They could take any road life gave them, but in the end, all roads led to Rome.

The island hadn't done anything but locate Rome on the map. It made everyone cognizant of their deadline; that was all. The deadline had always been there, only up until now it had been a loose definition of 'someday'.

The people who wanted to survive the island wanted that definition to go back to 'someday'. They wanted to keep running. Michael didn't. He liked knowing. It took away the anxiety.

He did not say any of this aloud. It wasn't his job to moralize.

It was his job to demoralize.


Erika admitted to being a murderer. Michael kinda already knew that from her thing about survival.

She told him her story. There were no half-truths, as far as he could tell. There was no ulterior motive; only the need to share the narrative inside her head with someone.

It was a love story, of course. She was in love with Ty. She was in love with the idea of not dying.

It seemed like she was the villain of her own story.


She said some existentialist stuff. Bullshit, as Camila would have called it.

Then she tried to justify her actions. Bullshit, as Michael would have called it.


Michael didn't want the food. He didn't want the coke can. He didn't want to drink soda knowing it would be his last time.

He also didn't want to check his blood sugar.

"I'll pass on the food. Thanks for offering, though. I think -" he paused for a moment. "- and let me explain, 'cus I know this'll sound like moralizing at first but it'll become apparent that it's not — but I think you actually have given up. Everyone left alive has. We're just... giving up on different things in different ways, but we're all giving up on something; at least we are if we're smart. You and I, we've given up on -" he switched his humanity off. His voice was low, deliberate and assertive. Eyes unblinking; pupils dilated. Face blank save for a small, barely visible smirk. "- We've given up the pretenses — well, I have, at least. You're getting there. You can see that there's a darkness inside you, but you're still having trouble seeing the darkness in other people. You're still figuring out that deep down, all humanity ever was was a bunch of glorified monkeys. Notice that I told you how I killed Camila and then gave you some pseudophilosophic bullshit about guilt;" his gaze darted up, making eye contact with Erika. "I didn't say anything about why I killed Camila. Here's a fun science fact: the human eye can see more shades of green than any other color. Do you know why that is?"

[Shiola]

It was becoming increasingly clear that whatever Michael was, wasn’t what she expected. More than anything else, hearing him speak made her realize that despite his overtures, he was still playing an angle here. Laying his cards on the table with the stark drop in his emotional affect made that much obvious. What wasn’t immediately clear was what he was trying to get out of it. The unsettling demeanor he adopted was immediately undercut once he began to spin some nihilistic entry-level sophistry.

While the reasonable part of her wanted to believe he hadn’t gone through all of this just for a fight, the possibility hung over their interaction. Showing weakness of any kind simply wasn’t an option. In the event that wasn’t enough, there were more than enough heavy, blunt objects nearby.

Erika shook her head, a grim smirk and a chuckle at first her only response to his question. She dryly replied to his question in between bites of a dumpling, still inwardly processing his interrogation of her psyche as she did so.

“The cones in our eyes are adapted for it. The human race grew up around a ton of green, so it’s the center of our visible light spectrum. Same kind of reason our eyes face forward, or why we’ve got thumbs. It’s what we needed to survive. I can see where you’re going with this, but the act of calling us glorified monkeys is exactly the kind of thing that something which isn’t a glorified monkey would do.”

After a brief pause to take a bite out of a dumpling, she began to feel a little bit more animated. Part of her felt a tinge of shame that she found facing down someone so clearly unhinged a little bit exciting. There was a kind of momentum in the way she responded. Erika felt an uncomfortable level of familiarity with it; she knew well the voice she was using. It often haunted her.

“Everything that lives just does what it has to, or it dies, but we’re the only things alive that can ask questions about why and how. That difference is the reason we’re apex predators that kill everything else on the fuckin' planet just by existing. You don't survive this shit by pretending not to be a human. You be human and do the same thing every other person has done when they find themselves in the state of nature."

It's not Darwin you wanna talk to about this shit, it's Hobbes.

Erika set the container aside, and placed the others on her duffel bag, brushing her hands off on her pants afterwards. It seemed silly to care about grease stains on a rifle, but she did.

"I won't pretend to know you. Don't pretend to know me. This is probably the most peaceful half hour either of us is going to have until this is all over. Don’t waste it on nihilistic garbage, and don’t bullshit me, Mike. Why'd you do it?"

[Kermit]

Michael hadn't been expecting such a visceral reaction. Erika was already where he'd been trying to lead her. Cool. Aight. Wonderful. That made things a whole lot easier. He was crying on the inside.

She was agreeing with him aggressively.

He inhaled, closed his eyes, exhaled. His voice was soft.

"Erika, I don't think we're really disagreeing about much here. The fact that we fuck shit up when we're left to our own devices... that's what I was talking about when I said glorified monkeys; that's the darkness inside. Everyone's always been at least a little fucked up; the island just makes us honest about it." He opened his eyes. "The human eye can see more shades of green than any other color, because humans are predators. I -" he laughed a singular real laugh, more like an amused exhalation. "- I got that from a TV show. I don't know if it's true or not. Next time I'll probably use the positioning of the human eye, I think. It leaves less room for interpretation. I..." He paused. "- I killed Camila because... because I don't think I had a reason not to. I'm running out of reasons not to do shitty things, I think. It's... it's scary, y'know?"

[Shiola]

Reacting as she had seemed to bring Michael back down to Earth, at least a little. He seemed to be approaching something close to a point, as far as she could tell. If this was anything other than indulging his broken mind by showing him a bit of her own. Erika softened her tone in response, letting their interaction defuse itself.

"It is, a little bit."

His explanation made sense, insofar as she was willing to trust his word. It was easy to sympathize; it frightened her how easily she’d been able to cross the line between a victim of SOTF and an active participant. Hearing the name on the announcements, and then looking at a corpse and understanding that she was the one who’d done that; it made her question everything she’d known about herself.

Only, she’d come to the conclusion it was no less a part of her than all the good she knew she was capable of. Whether it was callousness, cowardice, or some kind of courage - it was part of her. Here, it was at least a source of strength.

“I’m starting to feel less scared for myself, and more for everyone else. If the choice is between killing and dying, it isn’t really a choice. Not how I see it, anyways. Most people haven't figured that out, at least the ones I've met. Lots of folks said we - the kids in SOTF - were blameless for what happened to us, and what we have to do.”

Erika reached down, and unbuttoned the bandolier of Martini-Henry cartridges, placing it on top of the rifle on her duffel bag. She then ran her hands across the metal rifle case sitting across her lap, almost affectionately. Looking to Michael, she punctuated her explanation with light taps on the metal.

“The weapon they gave us - me - is called a PSG-1. Präzisionsschützengewehr. Thirty caliber sniper rifle, comes with a bipod and a scope. Semi-automatic, with detachable magazines. It can consistently put holes in a circle less than three inches wide, at three hundred yards. It has a forward assist that you can use to close the chamber quietly. I didn’t read all that in a manual, I just remembered it.”

She shook her head, almost in awe.

“I thought about hiding, when I had one to my name. Now, with Blake’s death making me a target, and this… They handed out a German precision sniper rifle. To me, to fight you for. Like, if that’s not a fuckin’ message, I don’t know what is. Guess I’d been training for years, I just didn’t know it. I understand what I have to do. I don’t like it, but I know I can do it.”

Her hands balled into fists, nails scratching the top of the case.

“You’re running out of reasons not to awful shit. I’m not sure there is a good reason to hold back. You didn’t fight me for this, and you don’t seem afraid of dying. So what’s your deal? What do you want?”

[Kermit]

Michael'd lied about the reason he killed Camila. He'd killed her because she'd asked him to. The rest was retroactive justification, he knew that.

Erika was half right. The choice between killing and dying wasn't a choice. They were the same thing.

Erika didn't know the life she was fighting for was already over. She didn't realize the world wouldn't let her move past what happened on the island if she made it off.


She did some show & tell with the BKA weapon. It was a sniper with a short abbreviated name and a long wacky German name. She seemed to know a lot about it. Michael was reminded of the way he used to talk when he was telling people stuff about marine biology.

That last thought almost broke his composure. He bit the inside of his mouth to make it go away.

She asked him why he hadn't tried to kill her yet. She asked him what he wanted.

He stared out at the treeline and his eyes glazed over. He was now full of regret and sadness and self-hatred and other such emotions that he'd become accustomed to.

His eyes grew watery. "I don't -" he inhaled deeply. His voice was shaky. "- I wanted to lose myself. I wanted this to be a fresh start, I guess. I think it's working. I dunno."

[Shiola]

Erika’s eyes narrowed as Michael seemed to space out again in response to her question. His vague answer was anything but satisfying ; but then again, she didn’t entirely know what she was trying to get out of this conversation, herself. If nothing else it was preferable to the alternative.

She parsed his unsteady comment, her hands still gently tapping on the case. Much as she knew to a certainty there wasn’t anyone lurking in the treeline, she still couldn’t help but gaze on the wall of green with some trepidation. From this vantage point, staring down the next however-many days on this island and speculating on how many people she’d have to drop to escape did little to calm her nerves.

“Almost literally lost yourself a couple minutes ago.”

Michael seemed to be getting something out of this. He wasn’t particular about it, but it was clearly affecting him, and it was painful to watch.

No, it looks like it’s affecting him.

Remembering his previous emotional withdrawal, she drew back slightly, suppressing her instinct to help him. For a moment, the content of their conversation hadn’t entirely registered with her. Now that it had, she focused on what it was he was trying to say, rather than the various unspoken cues he was putting forward.

“I didn’t realize talking shop over survival and murder was so therapeutic. A fresh start? Who is it you’re trying to be?”

[Kermit]

"Almost literally lost yourself a couple minutes ago."

The sentence hit Michael like a pump of morphine. It was like... it was like the warm, fuzzy feeling. The bad feelings drained away. He felt okay now.

It meant the villain act had been enough to convince Erika. If it was enough to convince her, he knew it'd be enough to convince himself.

It was working.

Cool.

He closed his eyes; opened them again as Erika asked who exactly he was trying to be. Michael's smile was bittersweet, his eyes empty, his voice flat.

"...One of the bad guys."

[Shiola]

They stared at one another for a moment, Erika processing Michael’s declaration as his cold blue eyes bored into her own. The smile he wore wasn’t one of relief at having found himself, so much as it was a practiced sort of menace.

She wanted to believe it was beneath her, but was beyond that kind of self-deception by this point. It was hard to know how to really respond to that statement at first, but an idea crept up on her. Instead of using words, she’d at least start with actions. That would tell her what she needed to know about this person. What kind of bad guy he wanted to be, and what it was he wanted.

Erika stood up, setting the metal case down next to her duffel bag. She knelt down beside it, facing Michael so she could follow his own actions. She didn’t move quickly, giving him enough time to react in one way or another. Other than what looked like pretty typical fidgeting on his part, he didn’t seem to react.

First, she wrapped the bandolier around the Martini-Henry, and then set it halfway into the duffel bag. It fit snugly, but she wrapped the sling into the bag’s velcro straps just in case. Though it was some extra weight, she couldn’t risk being stuck without a backup weapon in case the scope on the PSG broke. She made a mental note to hide or disable it in case she found - or more likely, scavenged a handgun. The rest of the food and Michael’s can of coke made its way into her bag last, before she zipped it back up.

Michael watched, as Erika still silently worked on stowing her weapons. If he had any hostile intentions, now would’ve been the time to act.

She opened the rifle case completely, greedily retrieving the magazines from the box and placing a few in her jacket pockets where they were easy to reach. The rest of the ammunition made its way into the side pockets of her duffel bag, save a single magazine that she kept aside.

It was as heavy as she’d been led to believe, but not enough to be a problem. A strange sense of comfort and familiarity washed over her as she looped the sling around the back of her neck, her right hand immediately finding its place on the ergonomic grip. Her left reached forward and locked the bolt back, before grabbing the loose magazine and slotting it into the mag well.

She was one HK Slap away from having a live round in the chamber, and Michael still hadn’t done anything. No reaching for his gun, no movement in her direction. He just stared.

“That’s interesting.”

She stood up, taking a moment to roll her ankles as they reminded her just how much walking she’d done in the last four days. His inaction told her what she needed to know.

“You keep acting as if this all hurts you, and then as if you don’t feel anything at all. I can’t tell which one’s supposed to be the real thing. So with that whole act, and the fact that you’re even here in the first place; I think you’ve already made it where you want to go.”

Looking down, the gleam of brass on the inside of the PSG caught her eye. She looked back up, motioning vaguely at their surroundings as she did so.

“I’m fine with this… moment, staying peaceful. I’m glad I got some of that shit off my chest. After we leave though, I don’t have any reason not to put you down if our paths cross again. The best I can do is tell you that it’ll be quick and you won’t see it coming.”

She let that last sentence hang for a moment. They were her words, but still felt foreign to her. None of it came naturally, just out of necessity. Maybe that was her natural reaction, then. Her thoughts drifted back to Ty, and Katie. The first thing she did that made her feel like, as Michael so bluntly put it, one of the bad guys.

It gave her pause, and an idea.

“Unless survival isn’t what you’re after. Then maybe, I have a reason.”