There was the sound of a helicopter in the distance, and Audrey rose and stood there in the cold, trying to ignore the pain and the blood oozing from her wounds. Those wouldn't matter, not when it was over.
The aircraft came into view and she followed it, first with her eyes, then with her legs once it became clear that it was going to land somewhere more open. Limping, she moved.
And when it landed, she stood and watched, her hair flying and her skirt rippling in the artificial wind. For a moment she was afraid that she would be knocked down, but she hadn't been able to limp quite close enough for that. The men in the chopper were out almost as soon as it landed. She tensed for a moment as they moved toward her. She was so used to hiding, so used to the thought that everyone was a potential enemy in the end.
But they were polite and nothing else. They escorted her to the helicopter, and as she settled into one of the seats, she imagined she felt a weight lifting off of her. Audrey allowed herself to relax, to let a dull sort of relief settle over her. Perhaps a heavy blanket of regret as well, for the things she had and hadn't done. Perhaps not; not yet. She was tired. Weary. That much she was sure of.
There was a large man sitting across from her, watching her. Sizing her up, she thought. It was hard to tell through his facial hair. When their eyes met, he nodded. That was all. It was curt, but perhaps there was a hint of respect there.
Audrey nodded back. And if her gaze was a little icy, if there was a little bit of resentment there before she looked away again... well, maybe there was. She refused to believe that her classmates had all died for nothing, but they were dead all the same. There had to be a better way, and for a moment, this man in front of her was an embodiment of the government's failure to find that way in time to save her class.
Selfish, but it made her feel better. A little blame to go around, before there wasn't time to blame anymore.
There was a reason to find, after all. The plan, a success? Yes, was the word she’d thought just a little while ago. But the answer was no. Not yet. There were still many things that she had left to do.
Program V2 Epilogue: Living On
Program V2 Epilogue: Living On
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After the helicopter landed, everything happened in a rush, but not quite in a blur. There were people. Military personnel, in a military camp, because there had never been any doubt that it was the government that was running this show. Somewhere in the hustle and bustle, the bearded man vanished. She hadn’t figured out what he was there for - he hadn’t looked like a soldier.
It was just as well. His job, his name, his exact responsibility for getting her whole class killed… it wouldn’t have done her any good to know. She was looking for the top of the food chain.
The thoughts came with some difficulty as she tried to adjust to what seemed like chaos around her. Audrey hadn't seen so many people in one place for a long time now. They were moving purposefully around the camp, more order than chaos, doing whatever military people did, but just the volume of what talking there was, the sound of their feet on the grass and dirt - it was overwhelming.
Then she was walking, being escorted by two men in uniform, to a little medical station. There, the medics told her that none of her wounds were life-threatening, and that they'd look her back over after the briefing. The one thing that they did do was pull out the taser prongs. The prongs were barbed, and the procedure hurt, but she was finally able to take the taser out of her skirt band. She didn't want it afterwards, didn't want to keep carrying it around, but she dropped it into her bag anyway, letting it fall among all the other things that she no longer needed.
She wasn't supposed to forget. What Kyle had done and how she had failed to convince him was part of that.
So the taser went in the bag. Some of the medical personnel gave her looks for that. Perhaps they thought she was strange. She wondered, briefly, how many winners they had seen come and go. She wondered what had happened to them, how they had acted, if they were okay, now, years after the experience.
She didn't have much time to dwell on it. She was still being escorted, this time to an official-looking tent in the middle of the camp. The briefing was about to start.
Audrey had a feeling she knew who was going to be inside.
And as the military grunts who were escorting her stopped outside, as she pushed aside the flap, she saw she hadn't been wrong.
It was just as well. His job, his name, his exact responsibility for getting her whole class killed… it wouldn’t have done her any good to know. She was looking for the top of the food chain.
The thoughts came with some difficulty as she tried to adjust to what seemed like chaos around her. Audrey hadn't seen so many people in one place for a long time now. They were moving purposefully around the camp, more order than chaos, doing whatever military people did, but just the volume of what talking there was, the sound of their feet on the grass and dirt - it was overwhelming.
Then she was walking, being escorted by two men in uniform, to a little medical station. There, the medics told her that none of her wounds were life-threatening, and that they'd look her back over after the briefing. The one thing that they did do was pull out the taser prongs. The prongs were barbed, and the procedure hurt, but she was finally able to take the taser out of her skirt band. She didn't want it afterwards, didn't want to keep carrying it around, but she dropped it into her bag anyway, letting it fall among all the other things that she no longer needed.
She wasn't supposed to forget. What Kyle had done and how she had failed to convince him was part of that.
So the taser went in the bag. Some of the medical personnel gave her looks for that. Perhaps they thought she was strange. She wondered, briefly, how many winners they had seen come and go. She wondered what had happened to them, how they had acted, if they were okay, now, years after the experience.
She didn't have much time to dwell on it. She was still being escorted, this time to an official-looking tent in the middle of the camp. The briefing was about to start.
Audrey had a feeling she knew who was going to be inside.
And as the military grunts who were escorting her stopped outside, as she pushed aside the flap, she saw she hadn't been wrong.
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Military Brigadier-Jerk General David Adams. Mostly Brigadier-General to her at the moment.
He looked more like the part this time, a peaked cap on his head instead of a sloppy beret, and a military jacket instead of fatigues. Same person underneath, though, no matter what clothes he was wearing. He was one of the nation's highest ranking generals; he was the man who had blown Marley's collar and ranted about it on the announcements afterwards. Marley, Ashley's boyfriend. Ashley, who Frank had killed.
Adams gestured to a seat, a battered office chair, and then leaned back. He studied her for seconds that stretched into a minute, maybe more.
"You did good, kiddo," he said at last.
Audrey let a few seconds pass, too, before inclining her head in a sort of gesture of thanks.
"Did I?" she said. "I, um, seem to remember stabbing your biggest killer in the back." Dylan, she thought, but did not say. Dylan, who had supposedly been her ally, who had spared her at the final four. Dylan, who had killed Frank.
She pulled the chair out slowly before settling into it. The thought of remaining standing only crossed her mind for a moment. She wasn't here to rebel. She was here to figure things out.
Adams shrugged lazily. "Program isn't a matter of who racks up the highest body count. Never has been. Fact that you knocked off the girl who did kill the most is doubly impressive. Anyone winds up sat there across me, in some way another, did good."
He paused, removing the cap and setting it down on the desk. Up close he didn’t look quite so young, the blonde hair thinning up top. He had to be in his forties, at least.
Adams steepled his hands, lacing fingers together. "So. Congratulations, you didn't die. There's the gooey emotional part out of the way with," he sat up. "And now, I know the question on your mind has to be 'what next?'," Adams raised an eyebrow. "Am I right?"
That made her smile, inappropriate as it seemed for the situation, but it slipped off her face as quickly as it had come.
Question, he had said. Singular.
"That's one of my questions," she said, watching him carefully. "What does happen next? Or rather, what did you have in mind?"
"Now that… that depends on you," Adams paused for almost too long. "You see there's a certain school of thought who views this little game of mine, of ours, as what you’d call a training exercise. Or alternatively, a recruitment, ahh… program."
He stopped once again. Every other moment, the Brigadier General seemed to be sizing her up.
"So this is where I offer you the opportunity to serve your commander-in-chief out on the front lines. For America and The General, and all that." Adams sounded, for some reason, less than enthusiastic.
Audrey's mouth compressed into a straight line.
This was it. This was the opening she was waiting for all along. These were the answers she had promised Dylan and Louisa.
"Recruitment program," she said, rolling the words around before fixing her gaze back on Adams, who was watching her just as intently. And perhaps, she thought, there were still little cameras watching both of them, hidden in the shadows of the tent. "What was all of this really for?"
Adams tilted his head to the side, watched. "Anyone that winds up sitting in front of me has gone through fire and hell. Particular set of people views that as the perfect way to temper a soldier. In practice the only people who come out of there alive and want more are broken so bad that they’re damn hard to fix. Maybe impossible."
A roll of the shoulder; his eyes hadn’t left her. "Thing is, for me, it was never about whichever person came out the far side, it was about everything that happened to them on the way. It was about showing what it means to be part of this country.
"You do things our way. Or you don't.
"Whole lotta don'ts you just walked away from."
He looked more like the part this time, a peaked cap on his head instead of a sloppy beret, and a military jacket instead of fatigues. Same person underneath, though, no matter what clothes he was wearing. He was one of the nation's highest ranking generals; he was the man who had blown Marley's collar and ranted about it on the announcements afterwards. Marley, Ashley's boyfriend. Ashley, who Frank had killed.
Adams gestured to a seat, a battered office chair, and then leaned back. He studied her for seconds that stretched into a minute, maybe more.
"You did good, kiddo," he said at last.
Audrey let a few seconds pass, too, before inclining her head in a sort of gesture of thanks.
"Did I?" she said. "I, um, seem to remember stabbing your biggest killer in the back." Dylan, she thought, but did not say. Dylan, who had supposedly been her ally, who had spared her at the final four. Dylan, who had killed Frank.
She pulled the chair out slowly before settling into it. The thought of remaining standing only crossed her mind for a moment. She wasn't here to rebel. She was here to figure things out.
Adams shrugged lazily. "Program isn't a matter of who racks up the highest body count. Never has been. Fact that you knocked off the girl who did kill the most is doubly impressive. Anyone winds up sat there across me, in some way another, did good."
He paused, removing the cap and setting it down on the desk. Up close he didn’t look quite so young, the blonde hair thinning up top. He had to be in his forties, at least.
Adams steepled his hands, lacing fingers together. "So. Congratulations, you didn't die. There's the gooey emotional part out of the way with," he sat up. "And now, I know the question on your mind has to be 'what next?'," Adams raised an eyebrow. "Am I right?"
That made her smile, inappropriate as it seemed for the situation, but it slipped off her face as quickly as it had come.
Question, he had said. Singular.
"That's one of my questions," she said, watching him carefully. "What does happen next? Or rather, what did you have in mind?"
"Now that… that depends on you," Adams paused for almost too long. "You see there's a certain school of thought who views this little game of mine, of ours, as what you’d call a training exercise. Or alternatively, a recruitment, ahh… program."
He stopped once again. Every other moment, the Brigadier General seemed to be sizing her up.
"So this is where I offer you the opportunity to serve your commander-in-chief out on the front lines. For America and The General, and all that." Adams sounded, for some reason, less than enthusiastic.
Audrey's mouth compressed into a straight line.
This was it. This was the opening she was waiting for all along. These were the answers she had promised Dylan and Louisa.
"Recruitment program," she said, rolling the words around before fixing her gaze back on Adams, who was watching her just as intently. And perhaps, she thought, there were still little cameras watching both of them, hidden in the shadows of the tent. "What was all of this really for?"
Adams tilted his head to the side, watched. "Anyone that winds up sitting in front of me has gone through fire and hell. Particular set of people views that as the perfect way to temper a soldier. In practice the only people who come out of there alive and want more are broken so bad that they’re damn hard to fix. Maybe impossible."
A roll of the shoulder; his eyes hadn’t left her. "Thing is, for me, it was never about whichever person came out the far side, it was about everything that happened to them on the way. It was about showing what it means to be part of this country.
"You do things our way. Or you don't.
"Whole lotta don'ts you just walked away from."
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That was the answer. That was the reason.
There was no grand rationale, after all. There was no magical explanation she had missed that would somehow justify it all to her, somehow show that all her classmates' lives had been worth some greater good that she could believe in.
In her heart, Audrey knew that she hadn't expected one.
So she wasn't surprised. She wasn't surprised at the irritation. Not at the disappointment. Not even at the anger tugging at her gut, rushing up to pound at her temples in sync with her sleep deprivation and the only gradually loosening grip of the fear of death.
Once again, she felt tired.
"So," she said, "it doesn't really matter what I do from now on."
At least not to the government. They had what they wanted. An example. And really, what did the rest of her life matter to those outside this camp - outside this tent, even? No one was going to see her again, not in any way that they'd recognize. Months, years down the road, she'd just be another name taped on the longest camera footage for whatever number this Program was.
But she owed it to her classmates to be a little more than that.
"You don't need more soldiers." The eye contact, the conversation - only a formality now. She had the information she had wanted. Adams had explained all he needed to. "Just… give me a job. A desk job.”
There was no grand rationale, after all. There was no magical explanation she had missed that would somehow justify it all to her, somehow show that all her classmates' lives had been worth some greater good that she could believe in.
In her heart, Audrey knew that she hadn't expected one.
So she wasn't surprised. She wasn't surprised at the irritation. Not at the disappointment. Not even at the anger tugging at her gut, rushing up to pound at her temples in sync with her sleep deprivation and the only gradually loosening grip of the fear of death.
Once again, she felt tired.
"So," she said, "it doesn't really matter what I do from now on."
At least not to the government. They had what they wanted. An example. And really, what did the rest of her life matter to those outside this camp - outside this tent, even? No one was going to see her again, not in any way that they'd recognize. Months, years down the road, she'd just be another name taped on the longest camera footage for whatever number this Program was.
But she owed it to her classmates to be a little more than that.
"You don't need more soldiers." The eye contact, the conversation - only a formality now. She had the information she had wanted. Adams had explained all he needed to. "Just… give me a job. A desk job.”
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December 2025
Forty faces on the wall.
Every day she added more of them. Pictures, photographs of the fallen. There were none at first, just an empty wall, a fresh coat of paint, a new office.
Junior Advisor, the placard read. There must have been half a dozen others. Not exactly like her. It wasn't schooling that had gotten her here. Just Dylan, and everyone else. A different kind of schooling, she supposed.
Different summed it up. She wore different clothes when she went out, used a different name - any resemblance was easy to brush off. More often than not, the government supplied her with what she needed. When she did go out, she met new people. She joked. She laughed. She never told them too much truth. She never let them get too close.
Sometimes, she missed her family.
Forty faces on the wall, and the last one would have been hers if she hadn't lived. No - perhaps not. Perhaps no faces on the wall in that case. Just a new soldier somewhere on the front.
Weeks passed. She was moving back, now, into history. Into previous Programs. She taped up on the wall pictures of those she didn't even know.
She was building a database in her mind, on her office wall, and on her computer.
Progress was slow. The public might not even care when the new website appeared. Adams hadn't been particularly receptive. But he hadn't refused, and that meant she had government approval. So it didn't much matter if they wrote her off as a dead end project.
A little paragraph whenever a photograph on the webpage was clicked, typed neatly in twelve-point font. Accomplishments, awards, anecdotes. Something to remember them by. Nothing from the Programs themselves - it was the people who mattered, and what they did in the Program she was willing to write off, to defer the fault, even if that wasn’t the truth. She made them as impersonal as she could. It was easy for the Programs before hers. Sometimes looking up the information, sometimes requesting others to find it for her. Then just writing it up. Eventually, her intention was to get a designer to polish up the website for publication. There was always something to do, and sometimes she could forget that there was a person behind every name. Afterwards, she would scold herself. Remembering was what she was here for.
It was harder, of course, when she had been doing the write-ups for the Program that she had participated in. She still hesitated whenever anyone spoke of her winning it.
When she had taped Frank's photo on the wall, she had looked at it for a long time afterwards. See you in the afterlife, she had said, back all that time ago. Then she had been selfish; then she had not died.
He would have to wait.
She had only dwelled on all the other photos a few seconds shorter. Even Maxim's, who had been the first to threaten her, whose bandanna lay neatly folded in a drawer in her desk - she never had known exactly what to do with it.
Now, she sat in her office, her fingers trailing over the cool metal of the drawer’s handle as her eyes lingered on the pictures on the wall. She had betrayed Dylan to survive, had made sure that she would be the one to carry out her own plan and no one else. She had thought this over many times, but less as time went on.
She no longer wondered if she should regret what she had done. Back then, she had made her decision. Now, it didn’t matter what they would have wanted to happen to her, or what she would do if she had the chance to do it over again. Now, she was just living on as best she could.
Voices passed her open office door, loud enough that she didn't need to stick her head out to tell what they were talking about. Something about the Program. The next one was coming up soon. There had been suggestions of an office betting pool - not very patriotic, but money talked.
Audrey leaned back in her chair.
If this website didn't work out, then something else. A monument? Probably too expensive. She would think of something. When the past was dealt with, then she would deal with the future. To change the Program, eventually. It would take a lot of time.
She had survived. She had time, now.
Forty faces on the wall.
Every day she added more of them. Pictures, photographs of the fallen. There were none at first, just an empty wall, a fresh coat of paint, a new office.
Junior Advisor, the placard read. There must have been half a dozen others. Not exactly like her. It wasn't schooling that had gotten her here. Just Dylan, and everyone else. A different kind of schooling, she supposed.
Different summed it up. She wore different clothes when she went out, used a different name - any resemblance was easy to brush off. More often than not, the government supplied her with what she needed. When she did go out, she met new people. She joked. She laughed. She never told them too much truth. She never let them get too close.
Sometimes, she missed her family.
Forty faces on the wall, and the last one would have been hers if she hadn't lived. No - perhaps not. Perhaps no faces on the wall in that case. Just a new soldier somewhere on the front.
Weeks passed. She was moving back, now, into history. Into previous Programs. She taped up on the wall pictures of those she didn't even know.
She was building a database in her mind, on her office wall, and on her computer.
Progress was slow. The public might not even care when the new website appeared. Adams hadn't been particularly receptive. But he hadn't refused, and that meant she had government approval. So it didn't much matter if they wrote her off as a dead end project.
A little paragraph whenever a photograph on the webpage was clicked, typed neatly in twelve-point font. Accomplishments, awards, anecdotes. Something to remember them by. Nothing from the Programs themselves - it was the people who mattered, and what they did in the Program she was willing to write off, to defer the fault, even if that wasn’t the truth. She made them as impersonal as she could. It was easy for the Programs before hers. Sometimes looking up the information, sometimes requesting others to find it for her. Then just writing it up. Eventually, her intention was to get a designer to polish up the website for publication. There was always something to do, and sometimes she could forget that there was a person behind every name. Afterwards, she would scold herself. Remembering was what she was here for.
It was harder, of course, when she had been doing the write-ups for the Program that she had participated in. She still hesitated whenever anyone spoke of her winning it.
When she had taped Frank's photo on the wall, she had looked at it for a long time afterwards. See you in the afterlife, she had said, back all that time ago. Then she had been selfish; then she had not died.
He would have to wait.
She had only dwelled on all the other photos a few seconds shorter. Even Maxim's, who had been the first to threaten her, whose bandanna lay neatly folded in a drawer in her desk - she never had known exactly what to do with it.
Now, she sat in her office, her fingers trailing over the cool metal of the drawer’s handle as her eyes lingered on the pictures on the wall. She had betrayed Dylan to survive, had made sure that she would be the one to carry out her own plan and no one else. She had thought this over many times, but less as time went on.
She no longer wondered if she should regret what she had done. Back then, she had made her decision. Now, it didn’t matter what they would have wanted to happen to her, or what she would do if she had the chance to do it over again. Now, she was just living on as best she could.
Voices passed her open office door, loud enough that she didn't need to stick her head out to tell what they were talking about. Something about the Program. The next one was coming up soon. There had been suggestions of an office betting pool - not very patriotic, but money talked.
Audrey leaned back in her chair.
If this website didn't work out, then something else. A monument? Probably too expensive. She would think of something. When the past was dealt with, then she would deal with the future. To change the Program, eventually. It would take a lot of time.
She had survived. She had time, now.
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