SOTF Archive/SOTF Classic

Alice looked at Sandra in surprise. She didn't know Sandra much herself, but apparently they both knew Bryony. The other girl hadn't struck Alice as the type who'd be friends with Bree, but she supposed she didn't control her friends' lives. So she couldn't exactly complain.

Either way, she was more concerned about Lizzie's response. She definitely seemed prepared to blow up; there was a sense of instability, the way her voice changed when she'd talked about Nancy's victims. Alice couldn't imagine what it must be like to lose a loved one, or the feeling you'd get that you could, if you wanted, try to avenge the victim. Murder the murderer. Did that make things better?

Alice didn't know.

She opened her mouth to speak, possibly to confirm with Sandra or reassure Lizzie in some way, but then a man named Ty Yazzie stumbled in. Alice turned to look at him; he looked awful, and swear aside, she wasn't sure he was conscious, he looked so fatigued.

"Uh..." She moved to say something again, but looking at Ty again, she instinctively stepped away, towards the safety of the others.

Lizzie didn't want Nancy to get away it. It made sense. He didn't want a murderer to get away with taking lives either. His thoughts returned to the events of the first night. Keith wasn't sure if Jasmine was a murderer and that bothered him. It wasn't even clear if Jasmine had been sane enough to answer the question if he had asked it. There were more important things than the murderers though. He had to keep focused on that.

"She probably won't,' he responded to Lizzie quietly.

"I mean, unless we get rescued."

The odds were against both possibilities. If the terrorists got their way and only one person lived, the odds were still against Nancy. A rescue was unlikely as well, it had only happened once and he didn't know anything about how it happened. He still managed to feel some hope for it though.

Then Tyler came in, looking like shit. Alice moved across the room away from Tyler, but Keith hadn't caught what he had said.

"Sorry, didn't catch that."

She probably won't, said Keith, but fuck that.  Probably wasn't good enough.  She needed to know for sure.  She needed-

Someone outside the room.  A face she recognized.  A voice she recognized.  "Yaz!"

Didn't matter that his first word was 'motherfucker,' didn't matter that he looked sullen and beaten as shit.  She'd spent the past day looking for him to no avail, and now here he was, as though her quest had summoned him.  And there was so fucking little reason to be hopeful, but now.

She pulled herself over the couch in one fluid motion, grabbing her bag as she went.  She bounded over to him, not quite smiling but not really grimacing either.  She stopped a little ways from him, not really sure what she wanted to do.  She really didn't know him well enough to hug him, but she wanted to anyways.  It was the first good news she'd had since they'd parted ways.

"Hey," she said.  "I've...I've been looking for you."

The other woman spoke from behind her.  Lizzie turned to look, and shook her head.  "No," she said.  "Sorry.  I haven't seen her."

The voices were all fuzzy. Hard to pick out exactly what anyone's saying. Hell, hard to pick out exactly who anyone was. Ty just sank against the doorway on his way to the floor, struggling to keep his feet steady and his eyes open. Cards on the table, it wasn't working out so well. He was already hunched in the floor with his lids drooping in the fog.

He tried to mumble out a few words, but even he wasn't real sure what he was trying to say at this point. Never was too good with words anyhow. He only managed to choke one out before he slumped to the floor. Only fair that it was the last fuckin' one he'd say with a clearer head.

"Help..."

Sandra gasped as Ty slumped to the ground.

"Holy shit, is he okay?" she cried.

Sandra hadn't expected something like this to happen, though she probably should have. In a game like this, it would have been more surprising if no one had gotten some kind of injury. People were dead, for chrissake.

From her position in the room, she couldn't really see Ty's figure that well. Lizzie was in front of him, anyway.

So Sandra stood there, feeling not particularly useful right about now.

If Alice were more inclined to bitter commentary, she'd have chastised Sandra. Of course Ty wasn't okay, he'd collapsed. Fortunately, mostly for her own sake, Alice kept her mouth quiet in duress. So no sassiness was to be found.

Unfortunately, Alice also froze in place and didn't move aside from letting her bag drop to the ground with a loud thud. She stared, eyes wide, at the blood-covered boy.

Was he going to die? Could Alice help? Should she? She took a step forward, then froze again. She was barely aware of the rest of the goings on, a sudden, frightening idea entering her head.

If he died...well, the game would end sooner, right? One less obstacle, and all. But Alice saw Ty lying there, muttering something too quietly for her to hear, and that sprung her into action.

She moved, pausing to pick up her bag, and scurried over to the collapsed classmate's side, where she knelt next to him. Unsure of what to do, she began checking his heart rate, holding her small left hand under his jaw against his neck like they did in the movies.

Keith wasn't sure to do. Tyler, well, Tyler looked like shit. He had asked for help, but Keith had no idea how to help, although it looked like Alice was going to try. Lizzie seemed like she was glad to see him, but Keith didn't really know her, and had only just now seen her on the island, so it didn't count for much.

He hung back. Alice was helping, and Lizzie was interested in Tyler. Maybe if he just waited a moment he'd find out something important. Any information mattered of course. Any of it could be useful for keeping them alive. Although they were all going to die unless he or someone else figured things out.

That was the truly important thing.

He stared at her, his eyelids fluttering.  Lizzie had a lurching sense of terrifying unreality, like she was in a dream and unable to run, her legs turning to mush as the monster she feared came closer and closer and closer.  And then he was falling, and all that came from his lips was a single, pitiful whisper: "Help..."

Had Lettie asked for help?  Had Tina?  Had Sabrina?

Lizzie was down on her knees before she even knew what she was doing, hands flying over his body, drawing on half-remembered lessons from school or from her parents or from some of prepper aunts and uncles.  But she didn't know what she was looking for.  She didn't know what she was doing.  She was completely and hopelessly out of her depth.

One of the other women was at her side.  Lizzie hadn't even noticed her arrive.  She seemed to move with much greater confidence, and Lizzie left her to it, drawing out everything she could think of from her bag.  She pulled out one of her bottles of water.

"Can you drink?" she asked, holding it near his lips.

Water. When was the last time he drank? It was all too goddamn fuzzy to tell right now. So angry, so driven, so close, and then it all just kinda fell apart in the doorway.

What'd he been looking for?

There were hands on him. A bottle at his lips. Too tired to care about the former, or to question the latter. He just drank it down before clunking back against the frame. Couple seconds passed, and he looked up. Some girl he didn't know feelin' on his neck, and Liz.

A hoarse chuckle came out as he saw her. Couldn't really say way, just felt right to his spinning head. "Thought you were..." But he lost the sentence. "Hadn't...hadn't seen you since..."

Harry crossed his mind. The pain welled up across his face, but the rest of the words wouldn't come. Just jangled around in his head, too quick to catch.

Sandra bit her lip with unease. Alice and Lizzie seemed to already have this covered. She looked around the room, and to the people in it.

She was getting restless again. She wanted to move around, to walk around again, but... there were people in front of the doorway. More importantly, there was an injured person in front of the doorway. She paced around the room for a few cycles, before looking at Ty.

"What..."

She wasn't sure whether the question was a good one to ask right now. She wasn't even exactly sure whether Ty could answer the question in his current state, even if he wanted to.

She had let the question die in the air halfway, so she swallowed... then tried again.

"What happened?"

The situation was intense; Ty Yazzie was a relative unknown to Alice, but he was hardly a threat at this stage. She stood up, clasping her hands together at her chest and wringing them.

His heartbeat was detectable, so she assumed he wasn't imminently dying. She had to hope she was right, because the only other things she knew of medical action was basic research for her writing, and even that was better for describing how something looked than actually doing it. She didn't know what, if anything, had caused Ty to collapse. For all she knew, it was just the pressure getting to him.

Standing further back from everyone else, Alice continued wringing her hands, a nervous habit since she was young. She felt useless, unable to contribute meaningfully to the situation, so she retreated into her thoughts.

Namely, Bryony.

Was she in a state like this? Alice knew that her friend was somewhat frail, easily stressed out, already having trouble at home. She had no clue how Bryony would survive here. She might be fending for herself well enough, or she might be dying. She might already be dead, Alice realized, but the announcements tomorrow would tell her.

She hoped she could find her before then.

While Lizzie gave Tyler water and they talked, Keith was trying to remember everything he could about the older boy. He knew he was a wrestler, so he was probably at least a bit aggressive. He insisted on getting tattooed and putting pieces of metal in his face, so he probably didn't care that much about getting a real job.

Keith briefly wondered how getting dropped on the island had impacted the Arby's he worked at. They'd probably found someone to take his shifts. Or they'd just been understaffed. That always sucked. Curly fries didn't make themselves after all. His parents probably were impacted a bit too. Keith was supposed to have installed some new software on the office computer after the field trip.

What mattered in the present though was that Tyler was probably an aggressive guy and just seemed kinda shifty in general.

Keith responded to Sandra's question before Tyler could respond.

"He probably got in a damn fight."

It was the explanation that made sense.

He drank greedily from the bottle, water spilling across his face and shirt. Christ, he looked bad. Was he hurt? Like, really hurt? But she didn't see anything obvious, but she didn't know what to look for, but-

"I know," she said, because talking was easier than panicking. "I heard. That's why I-"

Keith spoke, and there was something awful in his voice, something hateful and spiteful and dismissive. Lizzie jerked her head up to glare at him.

"His friend got-" she started, her words almost insensible, just outrage and indignation given voice as best she could. "You-!"

So hard to find the right words. Instead, she turned back to Tyler.

He was way too goddamn tired for this. Lizzie beat him to the indignation punch, but smartass on the other side of the room was probably too slow on the uptake to figure out what she was sputtering about. He rolled his shoulders a little as he sat up, gave a little cough and a shake of his head to clear the cobwebs. His eyes found the ceiling as he struggle just to stay awake. Couldn't fall asleep. Not here. Not with these people. 'Specially not before he felt them out.

"Come across your best friend...belly cut open...some bastard standin' over him with a fuckin' sword. You figure you'd 'get in a damn fight,'" he growled slowly, flicking his gaze up into the boy's eyes. "Or you the kind that just leaves 'im to die?"

Ty already knew the answer didn't matter. But he wanted to see it. Wanted to hear the judgmental little bastard try to stutter around being a hypocrite, a coward, or a goddamn naive idiot. Probably all three, from the look of him. The ones that jumped at him usually were.

Usually.

"Hey, man, wh-"

What the fuck, was what Sandra was going to finish with. Of course Ty got into some altercation, unless Keith figured she thought he'd beaten himself up?

But then Lizzie responded, and then Ty responded, and suddenly there was this overwhelming tension in the room, and Sandra was on edge, because she felt like the whole scene could blow up at any minute.

"Guys, fuckin'... calm down, alright?" she said, her voice quivering slightly.

She prayed that things wouldn't get any worse, but then... she had to have a backup plan. She looked to Alice. They were both looking for Bryony.

Salvage as many innocents from within the group as possible.

Well... she figured if worse comes to worst, she could just carry Alice out of there, if need be.