Every time, Phoebe took a few steps further, let her collar beep for a few seconds more, before running back to safety.
It had been days since she'd seen anyone as more than a passing figure on the horizon. She hadn't been trying very hard to meet others, granted. She had found something with Marcus and Darren that was different from everything going on around her, but that hadn't meant she was oblivious to what the rest of her classmates were doing. They were killing and dying, and Phoebe had been off to the side. She had never quite figured out how, or if, she could integrate with that. How could she move from a wedding to bloodshed?
From time to time, she had stumbled across bodies. She never looked at them very carefully. Each time she found one, she moved away, avoiding those areas that evidence assured her had at some point been occupied. She tried not to think about how her feet and shoulder ached from all the moving, how she was a body, too, or a mind and soul caged in a body that would soon be left behind.
For a while she had told herself that she still had her little world intact. The others, the people from her mock wedding, they were all out there somewhere. They were doing what they had to, doing everything they could to stay happy and stay safe. They'd left her, she decided to assume, for a reason. Maybe they had even come back. Maybe they had come back and she hadn't been there because she'd been so silly and had only waited a few hours. Maybe they were looking for her.
Every happy delusion was eventually dispelled, of course. It was the nature of the game. She was hiding out by the mall on the ninth morning, and when all was said and done and she could no longer pretend, she turned towards the hotel and started walking.
So now, because Darren had thrown himself off a shipping container, Phoebe stepped over the invisible line time and again. Because Marcus had tricked a girl and then murdered her, Phoebe put one foot in front of the other and held her breath as the beeping accelerated. Because Michael was out there without anyone to talk to him and there was no way he could hear that beeping should he step into one of the Danger Zones that now comprised the majority of the island, she gritted her teeth and swallowed the lump in her throat and pushed one step more, one step more.
Because she was scared, she always turned around. The walk away from the mall was slow and deliberate, but when she turned back it was always in a mad scramble. The first time, she had fallen and skinned her knee and been sure she was going to die. The second, her heart had hammered and her breath caught as she stumbled clear and her collar went silent. By the fifth, it was almost banal.
She stayed a little longer with every repetition. They'd been given a specific amount of time, she could remember that much. Was it five minutes? Ten? Not that it mattered. It was hard to estimate time on the island. With the beeping in her ears, it had felt like twenty, thirty minutes even that first time. She was starting to wonder if they'd ever just go through with it.
This was her eighth or ninth venture past the limits, she thought. She'd lost count at some point. She had figured out by now that she could almost reach the hotel. She could see the outdoor pool, all sickly and slimy and some large dark mass floating in it.
Eight days ago, she had tugged on her collar oh so hard and found that it wouldn't yield. Now, right on the edge, Phoebe stopped and stood, looking at the world around her, feeling the pebbles beneath her feet and the sun beating down. She had been outside for a long time. She was probably getting a sunburn on her nose.
The beeping was louder and faster now than it had been before. It was probably time to turn and start that scramble back to safety. She sighed, shoulders slumping, and turned.
She probably should have run, if she was serious about getting clear. Then again, if survival was really her goal, she wouldn't have tempted fate so many times. Instead of racing, pushing her tired and aching muscles and diving across that imaginary border that held meaning only by virtue of having been arbitrarily drawn by the dictators of her fate, she took two, four, a dozen slow steps.
This time, the last time, she only made it halfway back.
G031, Phoebe Cho: DECEASED
34 Students Remain
34 Students Remain
