Immortality

[carduinal-cyn]

((Previously, on SOTF TV...))

---

(Olivia del Rio continued from Sea, Swallow Me)

Olivia felt like she'd been running for three months. She'd lost sight of Ivan and Verity and Tenga and her head was all in a tizzy and she knew somewhere on this boat was the deranged shell of a man calling himself Anthony Golden and he needed to die.

No time to catch her breath, to introspect. She put up her dukes and boxed at shadows. She could have sworn she heard a cockatiel twittering at her in the darkness: her exhausted mind's last line of defense against paranoia and panic. Perhaps it was a sign she needed to rest, or a harbinger of coming insanity. She felt like a cornered animal, sweaty and ready to leap at the first sign of an intruder. There wasn't enough time to think what would RJ think, what would Lucia do because they were dead and gone and if she thought their names she might break down ugly-crying on live TV and then it'd be easy pickings.

She glanced over her shoulder. For all she knew, there was a monster behind her.

[Applesintime]

The monster wasn't behind her.

Instead, he was in front of her.

Stepping out from behind a lifeboat, rifle raised.

[carduinal-cyn]

Olivia's eyes bulged out of her head, like a cartoon character. She let out a half-choked cough, fuelled by an emotion caught somewhere between surprise, rage, and mortal fear.

Anthony Golden.

The blond British bastard's burns only further betrayed his brutality and barbarism. Liv couldn't help but stare. Anthony was no stranger to the announcements: this was the face of a killer, now every bit as monstrous as RJ must have thought he was before he... ooh, just thinking about it made her want to strangle him. A pity she wouldn't be able to pull it off with that gun pointed at her.

"...Didja miss me?" she asked, tentatively.

Her lone bit of leverage. They'd met once before, when Mangrove Garden was still alive and well, and the only thing she had to worry about was snagging her favorite crossbow and meeting up with old friends. She'd played coy with Anthony then, a little flirty. Then she'd kicked him in the balls. Seeing him now, she only wished she'd had the foresight to do worse.

[Applesintime]

"Not at this distance."

Advancing forwards, the monster's eyes stared right into hers, gun still trained on her. Anthony didn't see Ivan. Maybe he'd finally ran out of gas and died where he stood. Maybe someone else had got him. Maybe they'd been separated and Olivia was nothing more than easy pickings. Still, he wasn't going to fuck this one up, not this time. He'd missed too many easy shots. Fucked up too many kills and only got out by the skin of his teeth.

This time, he would make sure.

"Only you and your boyfriend left. Everyone else is dead. Have to say, Ivan must be real fucking stupid if he couldn't kill Verity." Was it the burning embers and smoke rising up from the stairwells that was making him uncomfortably hot, or was it the righteous anger and relief he felt that he'd finally be able to end this? No more killing. No more fucking players. Just Tottenham, London and probably a lengthy stay in hospital.

Shit, he'd been dumped eleven times over by now. Sorry, Rebecca. Turns out morals don't mean shit when it's your bloody neck on the chopping block. Your friends dying. You experiencing pain after pain. When it was between going home in victory or going home in a box.

[carduinal-cyn]

"Oh, ha-ha," Olivia spat, rolling her eyes. "I don't have a boyfriend. You think I give a shit about that, when you shoved an axe through RJ's head and killed all those other people? You're a fucking psycho."

Was that all people thought of her? She supposed she'd played into it earlier, pinning Anthony against the wall all those days ago and pulling that swimsuit stunt for the cameras. The audience was probably having the time of their life right now, leering at some forgettable "bad girl" who camped out and survived all the way to the end, like a coward. No amount of teambuilding or cheery greetings would dispel such an indelible image. For the first time, Olivia felt a pang of self-consciousness. A death of ego, to go with the death of her body.

Well, if she was going to go, she may as well take the beast down with her.

"Tell me something, will you, before you blow my head off... You said you hated everything about this show, back at school. So what gives? I've heard your name a million times on the announcements. Probably gave yourself the ten-kill by now, easy. You play almost as good as Seo-yun. What's it like to be a mass murderer at 18, you two-faced..."

[Applesintime]

“Oh Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up.” Anthony sighed, his finger tensing up on the trigger.

[Espi]

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Click.

[Applesintime]

His finger untensed on the trigger, Anthony quickly tossing himself behind the lifeboat again. Shit, Ivan had got here quicker than he thought. He was hoping to have some time to make it painful for Olivia. But whatever. The stage was set, and he was going to finish this.

Poking his head out, he realised it was not Ivan.

"OH, FUCK OFF I KILLED YOU!" Anthony screamed at Kaya, retracting his head in case her little fucking dinky piece of shit gun started making pathetic sounds in his direction. How the fuck was she alive? Anthony had shot her! He had watched her go down! He had stepped over her GODDAMN BODY! Fuck, he should have fucking double-tapped her, because now it was one versus two, soon to be one versus three. He didn't like those odds.

Blindly poking his rifle out of cover, he returned fire in the vague direction of where he thought Kaya was.

[carduinal-cyn]

Olivia decided it was a less-than-smart idea to stick around.

She ducked behind the nearest crate she could find. Her heart hammered in her ears. She dared not look... no matter how her curiosity swayed her.

[Espi]

In a distant hallway, there was a hunk of metal.

It was laying on the ground, a trace of dried blood on it. A bullet was lodged in its side. Once, it was a cutlass. Once, it was carried inside of Kaya Robinson's trenchcoat. Now, it was a discarded shell, its purpose fulfilled.

"Sure did. I'm a ghost now, here to punish you for your sins," Kaya's voice rang out.

Bullets clanged against the wall. There was no further reply from Kaya save for the sound of jammed shells falling to the ground in a clatter.

[Applesintime]

Anthony laughed, a slightly unhinged and high pitched giggle. It was all he could do. This situation was just so, so fucking absurd. He’d shot Kaya. Watched her fall to the ground. Dead. And here she was like a bad memory, shooting and shouting at him.

“Fuck you! Might want to take a fucking look behind you, maybe Ashanti and Amy’ll be there to fucking haunt you too!” Anthony’s rifle poked out from his cover, firing another blind shot at the direction of Kaya’s voice.

“God fucking damn it!” Anthony quietly cursed to himself as he withdrew the rifle, cocking the bolt again. He should have just shot Olivia. Every goddamn moment he spent fucking around trying to kill both of them was one more second the walking dead had to shamble his way back to here.

Anthony could take two people.

He couldn’t take three.

“You two are on separate fucking teams! Why the fuck are you teaming up?! Are you that fucking desperate to escape judgment?”

[carduinal-cyn]

"Judgment", he said. Somewhere along the line, this little creep had got it in his head that everything he said and did was justified. If RJ were still alive to comment on this, he'd probably be making quips — that it'd only be a matter of time until Anthony Golden started putting people in death traps for denying him health insurance, or something along those lines.

Olivia hoped that the would-be Punisher would be punished in turn. The sentence: one bullet for every time his voice cracked when he screamed the word "fohk".

[Espi]

"Gosh, it sure was wrong of me to kill a murderer, wasn't it? Hey, maybe all tue people who shoot people for killing other people should just go down with the ship, eh? What do you think, Tony?"

Gunshots echoed from the distance.

"I mean, did anyone you kill even kill anyone? I think you have a bigger body count than any of your victims combined. Are you seriously this delusional? I wish I could be as optimistic about myself as you."

More gunshots.

The gun clicked. Kaya muttered a curse as she continued looping around the hallway. She was parallel to Anthony right now, in the process of loading the Zip. The only weapon she had left besides her wits.

[Applesintime]

Anthony leaned out this time, aiming at Kaya.

"Yeah. You." A brief response to her last question.

He pulled the trigger back, feeling the kick of the rifle as it whispered.

[Espi]

There was a yell of pain. A thud as a body hit the ground. A quieter clattering as the gun skittered across the floor into the nearby flames.

Kaya Robinson: Deceased