Inertia

[Maraoone]

((Mattie Wilkinson continues from Could You Spare My Blood?))

Mattie had not moved an inch for the night, even following the explosion he'd heard last night. He tossed and turned, for sure, every little itch and sound pulling him from slumber, but he kept his eyes closed the whole night, sometimes asleep, sometimes not.

Hunger gnawed at his core. It chewed at him the same way a wolf would chew on a half-stripped bone, its teeth finding any string of fibrous muscle to tear away from the tendon. It shook and flailed until the meat came loose. Acrid saliva trickled down his throat, his attempt at satiating the beast. It carried on regardless, coming back for more and more of him. It was impossible to ignore.

There were a few more protein bars left in his bag. All he had to do was reach over, open the zipper, and he'd have some form of sustenance in him.

He stayed in his sleeping bag, pinned to the ground almost.

To retrieve the bars was to get out of his sleeping bag, to open his eyes. To open his eyes was to acknowledge that he'd have to spend the sunlight trying to penetrate through his eyelids. To open his eyes was to acknowledge he had to spend yet another day here.

The day wouldn't start until he told it to.

[Gundham]

((Cecilia Moreno continued from It's Hard to Imagine, But One Day You'll End Up Like Me))

It had been a long and rather frustrating night. She'd spent most of the afternoon sleeping in a tangle of desert shrubbery - hardly a suitable bed, but it was the only thing that passed for cover in the flatlands. After waking up in the middle of the night stiff and raked with scratches, she'd wandered the sands by moonlight for a while but hadn't found a thing. She'd eventually given up and elected to hide in her shrubbery until it was light enough to see properly.

This had proven to be a rather fortuitous decision. In the early hours of morning, she'd spotted a long, dark form lying beneath a raggedy bush. A duffel bag sat on the sand beside it, tightly zipped up. A person? A body? Whatever it was, as far as she could tell it wasn't moving. Could it possibly be a trap? She herself had considered setting up the spare sleeping bag and stuffing it with bracken to make a decoy. It wasn't impossible that someone else had had the same idea.

Cecilia peered warily at the bush, her senses on high alert. She scanned every twig and fiber, her ears pricked for the faintest sound of predatory intent. She didn't see anything, but that didn't necessarily mean nothing was - ¿Que? Did the sleeping bag just move, or had she imagined it? She stared. It could've been a breath from inside, or it could have been the wind, or nothing at all.

She looked at the duffel bag. If there was water in there, or food, she wanted it. Another set of rations would get her through the Animales' time limit, and then some. She could hide out here in the desert, biding her time, reserving her strength while all of the others killed each other. And if there was a dead body in that sleeping bag... well, she'd need to touch it. She needed to know what her gift did, how it worked. Food, water, or power. Any of those things was worth getting at least a little closer, wasn't it?

She crept nearer to the bush, one careful step at a time, her footsteps almost soundless against the soft desert sands.

[Maraoone]

They were not the first footsteps he'd heard throughout the night. Many creatures lived their lives in the desert. Maybe some insectoid stragglers, those left behind from the swarm. Maybe a coyote just passing by.

Mattie kept his eyes closed.

Even if he tried to do something about it, he was all wrapped up in this sleeping bag. Not much difference he could make on the outcome one way or the other, right?

[Gundham]

Closer... closer...

She was close enough to see the sleeping bag in more detail now. The contours suggested that there was definitely a person inside - living or dead, it was hard to tell. Whoever it was, they clearly hadn't heard her approaching. She mulled over her options. She could try throwing a pebble at the bag - it'd certainly show if they were dead, or sleeping. But if they were hostile or armed, they might counterattack.

Then again, what was the alternative? If she tried running up and snatching the bag, she'd provoke a hostile reaction, no matter what. And if the sleeping bag was booby trapped, she'd be better off keeping her distance. At least this way she'd give herself time to run if she needed it. Cecilia sank down, crouching on the balls of her feet, and felt around until she picked up a smooth, rounded rock. She took a breath, wound up - then chucked it at the sleeping bag.

[Maraoone]

The body in the bag convulsed.

"Shit shit fuck shit."

More flailing.

Eventually, he calmed down. Slowly opened the zipper, opened his eyes to a girl in front of him.

He blinked a few times.

"Cecilia?"

[Gundham]

As soon as the bag started swearing, Cecilia drew her new scissors and leveled them defensively. Not a body. She should have left it alone!

Her gaze flicked back and forth from the cursing, writhing blob to the duffel bag, quickly calculating whether or not she could scoop it up and run before the occupant emerged. No, no chance. She took a few steps back, keeping the scissors pointed at the bag.

The zipper split open. A head emerged. Blinked. And then it said something she hadn't been expecting - her name.

"Cecilia?"

El Pacificador? What was he doing here? Where were the others? Had she wandered back towards them by mistake?

She thrust the weapon at him, eyes looking around for an ambush. "What you are doing here? You follow me?"

[Maraoone]

He blinked at her a few more times, hand retrieved from inside the sleeping bag, rubbing against the spot on the side of his forehead where a welt would probably grow a couple minutes later.

"Follow? I w- I was sleeping here!"

Half-true, half-lie. He'd tried to follow her, but had given up halfway. He'd followed her the same way a kid in the back of a pack of kids visiting Disneyland tries to follow the rest of his peers, falling more and more behind until he was hopelessly lost in a sea of noise, just stood right in the middle, because it'd make no difference whatever direction he tried to go, or if he tried to go in any direction at all. Which was to say he followed poorly.

But she didn't need to know that. Not yet. It'd scare her.

His voice had come out louder than he intended. His eyes softened, tried to counter that harshness of tone.

"I'm sorry I just- I just woke up and I"—his eyes widened a bit as the glint of metal caught his eyes—"you can put that down you know? Please?"

[Gundham]

Cecilia's dark brown eyes scanned Pacificador up and down, and she took a moment to make her decision. She slowly lowered the weapon, but shifted her stance to make it clear that she'd draw it again if he tried anything.

Her mind swirled with questions. Why was he sleeping here? Why hadn't he stayed with the señal?

She took another look around. No obvious tracks in the area. Only one sleeping bag, only one duffel. No sign of the other two. What was he doing out here all alone? And, more importantly - were his friends going to come looking for him? Had they split up to find her and drag her back? Or had they cast him out?

"It is only you? Where are your amigos?"

[Maraoone]

He bit his lip.

"I don't know."

It felt harder to breathe all of a sudden. Like his sleeping bag was suffocating, crushing him. It was also kinda stupid to hold a whole conversation wrapped up like a burrito anyways so, like, he slowly pulled himself out of the bag, eyes on the scissors blades the whole time, movements slow and deliberate so as not to startle the girl. And then he was partially out, sat cross-legged on his sleeping bag.

And he still found it hard to breathe.

He said, eyes on the blades still, avoiding eye contact, "After you left, these two people began fighting in front of us, and I..."

I ran away like a fucking pussy.

"It felt dangerous, so I left. I- I thought they would've followed but they didn't for some reason and... I couldn't turn back."

He swallowed.

"So here I am."

[Gundham]

Pacificador's story was light on the details, but he seemed genuine enough. There had been a fight, and he had run away. Whether they'd been fighting about chasing her, or fighting to kill one another wasn't clear. It didn't seem like the other two were anywhere around, and that was really all she needed to know.

"I see. Gracias." She nodded a curt thanks for the information. That was all she needed to know; El Tigre and Bicho Palo weren't chasing her, or at least not anywhere in this vicinity. Now that she knew that, no point in sticking around. There were bodies out there somewhere, just laying in the sand unused. Waiting for her. She'd just turn around and go now. And as for Pacificador...

There was one more thing she needed to know. He'd said something said that still didn't make sense. She needed an answer, and she'd get one at scissorpoint if necessary.

She opened her mouth to ask the question, when a squeal of feedback rattled across the desert. Another announcement?

The Animal woman sounded calm, like she was having a casual conversation. She rattled off words like, "fatalities" and "werebat" and "mauled," that Cecilia didn't understand in the slightest. She looked over at Pacificador. He'd be able to understand all of this. Since she was here with him anyway, might as well use him as a translator before she left.

Someone else had died from a cannonball, and a hot streak? Was there a student who could fire a cannon out of his chest, or something? It all sounded like gibberish. She forced herself to listen intently to the rest of the broadcast. Someone called Tamara was dead, she learned. The name meant nothing to her. Neither did the next one, Andrew. She had no clue who either of these people had been, only that they were now dead.

Pacificador made a soft, pained noise.

Cecilia ignored him and kept listening to the announcement.

[Maraoone]

A shaky inhale.

"God oh god oh god."

Another shaky inhale.

He blinked, eyes focusing on the blur of green and brown and blue and orange behind Cecilia. The sunrise-tinted sky, sagebrush-littered ground, sandy soil, the horizon where they all met all smeared together like a kindergartner had gotten his hands on a palette. He sniffled, covered his face with his hands, covered his shame.

"We're all gonna fuckin' die here."

He said these words to no one, muffled into his hands like a girl screaming into her pillow.

Andrew and the other guy had died in his absence, according to the announcements. Tamara, they said his name was. Funny how that's how he finally found out his name.

There was a part of him trying to reach for small comforts, saying that he'd achieved exactly what he'd intended. He'd sensed trouble, ran away from it, and he'd avoided it.

And a much, much louder part of him told him he'd stepped into one fight and prevented anything from happening, ran away from the next fight and everything had happened.

There was a way to verify whether he would have made a difference, but he was devoting all his willpower right now to not doing that to himself. He couldn't afford to know. It'd be a form of self-harm to find out.

A sob caught in his throat.

He tried wiping his eyes, vision blurred right back.

No point in doing anything if it'd all lead to the same fate, right?

Cecilia stood unmoving all the while, as if the terrorist hadn't said anything at all, just looking upon him and all his cowardice.

God this was embarrassing.

[Gundham]

Cecilia didn't know how to respond as Pacificador went from distraught to full-on tears while the announcement progressed.

It took her a second to piece it together. He had said something about violence, and that he'd run away. But if the other two had stayed...

"One of your amigos?" she asked, hesitantly. "She says their name?"

[Maraoone]

Amigos, huh? That's what she thought?

He tried to laugh, but it just came out like another sob.

She didn't even know a thing. Blissful ignorance.

Another shaky inhale. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Yeah. Two of them. The ones we were with. Andrew, Tamara." He claimed the latter as a friend, but his name stumbled out of his mouth unevenly. He claimed the former as his friend, but he'd run away from him as easily as he'd run upon him.

"Both gone now."

[Gundham]

The ones we were with. Andrew, Tamara. Both gone now.

She watched the tears slide down Pacificador's cheeks. "Lo siento," she said quietly. I'm sorry.

She said it because it was what you were supposed to say in situations like this. The truth was, she didn't share his grief. Cecilia didn't feel things the way that other people did. Hadn't, for a long time. Something had short-circuited and burned out somewhere, and now her feelings didn't branch off in the right way. They went off in random directions, looping around and tangling themselves into a thicket of emotion. Sometimes they emerged how they were supposed to, other times they came out all wrong. Sometimes, maybe a lot of the time, they got lost all together, and she wound up feeling nothing at all, even when she really, really tried.

What was she supposed to feel, in this moment? Remorse, or guilt maybe? Sympathy, for this crying boy in front of her?

She didn't feel any of these things. Their deaths were not her fault - and Pacificador had run away, which meant that the other two could have as well. Nor did she feel sympathy for Pacificador, not really. His friend's deaths were tragic. But she couldn't share in his grief, even if she wanted to. She had no time for that. Two days ago, El Tigre - no, Andrew. Or was it Tamara? - had overpowered her without breaking a sweat. And someone out there had just overpowered him. Her classmates were blowing buildings apart and tossing tigers through the air; if she wanted any hope of surviving a confrontation with them, she needed to get moving and explore her gift.

There was nothing else to say. She turned around to leave - and hesitated.

Was it Andrew, or was it Tamara? She didn't know.

She hadn't known the name of the girl with the hedgehog spines or the little girl with the tail, either. They hadn't used names back then. What was the point? Every day, girls came and girls left. What was the point of knowing someone's name if they were going to be gone tomorrow, or you were?

Three years, she had spent at that school. And in all that time, she had never learned a single student's name. Sure, people had introduced themselves, and she overheard names in class. But the information never stuck. She never remembered it, any more than she would remember a specific blink or an individual breath of air. Because she didn't want to remember. Because any day, at any moment, the men in the black SUV could show up, and it would hurt so, so much less to be taken away from people she didn't know. What did today matter, if you could be gone tomorrow?

She didn't know. Had never known. Maybe it didn't matter. Or maybe... maybe it did.

Cecilia turned back around, and looked down at Pacificador.

"Tell me your name."

[Maraoone]

He didn't understand, but he complied anyways.

"Mattie. Why?"