If I ever acquire wisdom, I suppose I'll be wise enough to know what to do with it

[Maraoone]

"Well shit. One out of two ain't bad though."

Flores and Morales were vaguely similar, to be fair. Had the same vowels kinda.

Anyways.

"And good."

Matias crossed his arms. Continued rocking his leg.

"Kay. If I'm gonna be in, you'll have to give me more specifics then 'define progress','" he said, air quotes around the last two words. "You have to have done something already, yeah?"

[almostinhuman]

She'd at least managed to get somebody onboard. Tentatively, anyway. She'd need to sell it a little better first.

"Hm... we've at least learned some things about the collars. Roughly where the camera is", she pointed to the black space on her own collar, "there's a few little pinholes that could possibly let us disable them somehow. Shoshanna had some additional ideas she could probably give more detail on."

Provided she was okay, and provided they could find her. Neither was a guarantee.

"Oh, and Luanne said she'd figured something out. Though Anthony showing up stopped her from saying what."

Luanne had completely slipped her mind in the bedlam. She hadn't followed them into the room, so she was probably still by the pool. Hopefully she was still okay out there.

"I know it isn't much, but that's what I've got. Like I said, the others could probably give you more."

[Maraoone]

So. Like. One percent progress then.

They'd been told about where the cameras were, like, day one of this thing. Close and personal perspective, they'd said, and that had stuck in his mind because there were kinda creepy undertones if you thought long enough about it. And oftentimes there wasn't anything to do but think, so.

Anyways, that was given info already. The rest were hypotheses, and the Luanne thing mattered fuck-all because she hadn't said anything and she wasn't here.

He was throwing his lot in with them because for one, as of now, it was all he had the physical capability of doing. Jewel Evans had managed to kill someone with a shot knee last season, but also the dead girl had literally been asking for it. Mercy kill, basically.

Bit too familiar.

Karen Ruiz's way out had been kinda cooler, what with the gunfight and the sudden secret final boss shit with Jhamel, like, scenes like that were why he watched SOTF.

He was digressing, point was, his chances of killing his way out here had plummeted to near-zero. And, his teammates all seemed to fucking hate him, Ashanti maybe included or not among said people, so cooperating with his team had also slipped out of reach. Maybe, in a second or two, she'd come back, surprise him, say that she smashed Seo-yun's brains out or something, that'd be pretty cool, and then everything would be fine, she could help him get up, and they'd be on their way like nothin' happened. But, it'd been a solid couple of minutes, and she wasn't back, so something was keeping her one way or the other.

So that left Nadine. Nadine and her fuck-all ideas.

He didn't, like, voice much of this, because the thing about having a fucked leg was that mobility became a much more difficult concept, and your choice in allies became very, very limited, so he had to take a bit more discretion than usual with the shit he said, lest he be left alone or worse.

So, instead of voicing one of these thoughts, he just nodded slowly, and posited this question to her.

"Wanna get looking for the others then? Maybe find me some crutch thing or spinny chair thing?"

[almostinhuman]

So they had one more person on board. Not necessarily a huge boon to their efforts, given his busted leg and all. But still, it was at least one more person who wouldn't try to kill them, and one more person who'd get to go home if they actually had a breakthrough. Maybe two or three, depending on if Ashanti and Luanne were still around and down for it. She could almost claim she'd accomplished something, which made her feel a little less shit overall. After everything that'd happened in the past few days, she could use a minor victory.

Of course, getting him out of here was gonna be a problem. He probably couldn't move too well now, and trying would only exacerbate the bleeding she'd barely managed to staunch. And she certainly wasn't going to carry him; the last time she'd carried someone (if a dead someone) was with two other people, and she'd still nearly dropped him. The last thing Matias needed in his condition was that.

A cursory look around the banquet hall didn't immediately reveal anything that'd serve well as either a crutch or a wheelchair, though. She'd give it a closer pass, but she might have to leave him for a bit to get what they'd need. Not exactly something she was keen on doing, if Seo-yun or Anthony or some other murderous asshole was still around.

"Right. I'll find something." She got back to her feet, continuing to scan the room. "You just... hang here, I guess."

Like he had any choice in the matter.

-----------

As it turned out, there wasn't much of anything of use in the banquet hall. Not for the purpose of getting Matias out of the room, at least. She was gonna have to leave him, exactly what she was worried she'd have to do.

"Hey, Matias," she called out to him from across the room, "doesn't look like there's much here for you. I'm gonna look in the nearby rooms. Be right back."

She didn't wait for an answer as she headed out the door.

(Nadine Flores continued in I am blue and unwell)

[Maraoone]

"I'll hang."

And so he did, while Nadine walked around the room, and eventually left the room altogether.

After she left, there were a few minutes of lying down on the floor, staring at the ceiling, dull-sharp thigh ache thrumming in the background, thigh feeling all heavy like all the blood was just pooling in that particular part of his body, like his thigh itself was attaching him to this part of this world. Which was true in a sense, he guessed. And then, he got kinda tired of that shit and tried to, like, shift position but that hurt like fuckin' hell, like a fuckin' hammer just being fuckin' slammed against his thigh over and over again, so he just gave up.

Eventually, he recalled that one time he'd rolled his ankle while chasing after a ball during this one soccer match, and something something coach shouting RICE, which, like, rice was cool but what's the point of shouting random words when his ankle was fucking broken? And no, no, he said, RICE, rest, elevation, compression, ice, first-grade first aid shit, he told the team. And, like, there wasn't any ice adjacent as far as he was concerned and the compression part was kinda covered by the tight-as-fuck bandage, and he was resting, so elevation it was for now. So, he leaned over and pulled a chair close to him and propped up his leg and elevated it and eventually, the dull-sharp ache just became a dull-kinda sharp ache instead so that was good.

Ten or fifteen minutes into waiting for Nadine, staring at the ceiling and tracing the wall patterns like that lady in that one English story with the fancy mansion and the crazy wallpaper got tiring, so he propped himself up and caught sight of a camera. ​And, like, he decided to engage in a staring contest with the camera cause why not?

And so the next ten or so minutes went.

"Shit, I blinked, start over."

"Wait, shit, fuck, dust got in my eye, start over."

"Hey a minute ain't bad, start over."

And as you'd expect, he lost the first seven matches, he kept count. The eighth match or so, the camera actually, like, turned away from him, pointed at the entrance. And he thought that Nadine had finally come back or maybe Seo-yun had recovered enough to finish him off because, like, par for the course for the day, but nothing and no one came in. The fucker actually ended the staring contest. Got bored of it. So, he flipped it off.

"Fuck you I win this round."

And yet it still didn't turn back to him. Got bored of him. And, like, it occurred to him that this was how a lot of SOTF just went, behind the scenes. Sometimes, he'd ask himself where all these redshirts came from in SOTF, these losers who just showed up and died in the more important people's stories, like, how come he only saw this supposedly top ten guy in a kill compilation for the winner of the season? And this was what they did in their spare time, apparently, just sat around and existed all boring as fuck. Hours and hours of their time passing by without any damn consequence, without ever ending up in the highlights, hours and hours wasted just like that.

It was even funnier, if you thought about it, because in this show, you could spend hours without anything mattering, you could have all the time in the world, but then you make one shit decision, and the entire course, duration, perhaps, of your life is affected just like that. One shit decision, and you go from potentially being part of the best team in this game to being part of a decent duo to just hitching on to the mercy of some escape team, hoping they know what they're doing while knowing they don't.

He really, really fucking hated it. He really didn't wanna think about it, but Nadine was taking fucking forever and his mind had been going places and now there weren't any other places to go than this pathetic den of self-pity and self-hatred he was way, way too familiar with. Because that's what he did, just fucked things up for himself and felt sad about it and did nothing to better himself after the fact.

He wouldn't be able to help his family this way. They'd stay in their shit house with their shit jobs and shit life, now down a son, brother, and they wouldn't even see a cent of royalties or however contestants made money from this show because how do you even make money from this if you can't even end up in the highlights? much less win? And, like, he felt like a fucking burden now, all decrepit and unable to do fucking shit, unable to run after Ashanti or kill Seo-yun or even fucking walk around this room, only able to just sit around and be all sad.

Like, if he'd just been a second slower, if he'd just stopped and maybe took note of the fucking guns in both Seo-yun and the other girl's hands, then maybe Ashanti wouldn't have, like, disappeared. Like, she probably saw him get shot like a fucking idiot and decided that there were probably people out there with functioning brain cells that she could ally with, that was probably what happened, yeah, and like, fair. And, like, he didn't even like her all that much, he still didn't quite forgive her for what she'd said to him about Leslie before. But he had someone, and now he didn't have anyone, and his hopes of getting out of here were next to nothing and it just sucked is all.

And speaking of getting out of here, where the fuck was Nadine anyways? Or Shoshanna or Rhonda for that matter, or that other girl he'd taken the crab claw from or that other other girl he'd left the crab claw with? Where were they? Had they just up and fucking died?

His brain tired of itself like a car running out of gas, just not having the energy anymore for angry thoughts and self-despair thoughts. Because now his brain had gone places, it had gone to the last place, and so all there was to do was wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And, finally, some of his questions got answered. They got answered when Nadine finally walked back in here, big broom in hand, shell-shocked. No companions in hand.

((Matias Juarez continues in The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living))