Bad Guys Win

[Dr Adjective]

[Esther Ježek didn't hang out with that YouTuber for long.]

Morning came altogether too slowly. Even tired as she was, sleep continued to elude Esther. She made short work of the book she'd brought for the journey aboard the ship, she ate, she chased the tails of fanciful theories of what the hell Janus-Hayes wanted, and of even more fanciful plans of how she might escape alive and somehow bring the fight back to her tormentors. It crossed her mind more than once that she could play the so-called game as presented, she could hunker down, pick off fellow competitors with her new rifle, try her best to combine luck with judgement and outlast the trio of horrors in the arena with them... but the thought never got far. It just brought her mind right back to Dusty. The inescapable image, tattooed onto the insides of her eyelids, what it looked like when a human being died.

Maybe that's what her dad had looked like, five years ago. She'd always resisted the lure of imagining it before, satisfied her overactive imagination with theories on the who, the why, rather than the gruesome what.

But, no, playing their game was a non-starter. The sick bastards could take away every kind of physical freedom, but how she felt, how she reacted, how she chose to behave going forward? They couldn't take those things from Esther. She'd made mistakes, she'd done things she was ashamed of, but she chose to believe she was ultimately a moral person. She cared. She wouldn't kill her peers just because a gun had been put to her head whilst another was put in her hands. She'd de-escalated the day before, hadn't she? She'd tried to save Dusty, too. She was a good person. She had to remind herself that. The second she gave that up and took the path of least resistance, set before her and intended for her by her captors, that's when the bad guys won.

Eventually, worn down by cold and fatigue, Esther found some fitful sleep.



After that, morning came altogether too quickly. Per usual, Esther woke up exhausted.

As before, she chose to read the announcement in silence, rather than have to hear any more of Sycamore's voice. It was easier to hate him without that humanising element. Words on a screen were the system, a voice in her ears was a person. As for the system, it congratulated her on surviving, complimented her thrilling attempt to fight of the Chimaera. Esther snorted derisively as she read it, thinking back to her actual actions. She'd run away, then she'd missed most of her shots at a large target in a narrow space, then gotten her new ally killed. Maybe someone else had done a better job on the other two monsters, though. Next it suggested treating her peers as disposable assets as raw firepower - as she'd seen first hand - wouldn't cut it. The casualty list came as a pleasant surprise, in a sense: only four dead was fewer than she'd anticipated, and none of them had been at the hands of human participants. The term subsumption gave her pause, though. As in subsume? It was, what, absorbing people? Or becoming them? Made the firepower warning seem to make even more sense. Further good news came when it was confirmed that Chimaera was heavily wounded and they weren't sure how well it was doing, and one of the three Revenants was damaged too. Besides all that, the weather remained cold and miserable, and they advised staying out of particularly open areas due to "extreme weather". Fine by Esther, she planned to hunker down in her little fortress for as long as was practical.

So. Esther faced down the prospect of a third day surviving. She began to fear that the most dangerous things to overcome would be the pervasive cold and the boredom, as they'd wear her down over time regardless of whether anyone or anything else came along to attack. So she busied herself replenishing the small fire of yellowing Russian documents she'd assembled in the relative safety of a filing cabinet tray set on a desk. Then, mystery dip MRE breakfast.

Oh, the joys of arctic living.

[ItzToxie]

Truthfully, it was hopeless. The reality of the situation dawned on Carl as he entered the school. He couldn't protect Reinette. He couldn't protect Chevy. What chance did he have of protecting Charlie? Yet here he was, still clearing corners, still looking for shelter, still keeping Charlie behind him in case anything would show up, as if his piece of shit pistol with one magazine was enough to take it on. He was mighty tempted to pull the pin on Lucas' grenade and just give the nearest creature a hug, but he had doubts if that would even be enough.

Yet here he was, still trying. Maybe he'd get a lucky break. Carl didn't believe in luck, but fuck, maybe just this once he'd be proven wrong.


Looking up the stairwell, he saw a feint glimmer of light, along with a makeshift barricade. Someone, or something was here. Could be a human, could be bait. As long as it wasn't Reinette's voice up top, they'd have a chance.

"Hey! We're human! You human too?" Carl kept his pistol low, but he was ready to raise it in case shit hit the fan again.

[Dr Adjective]

There was a sound of footsteps. Even Esther's light frame made plenty of noise in the airy stillness, not that she was trying to keep quiet. If she wanted to hide, she wouldn't have erected the barricade in the first place. No, something told her the monster she'd encountered before would have little trouble tracking her by other means anyway.

Then a shock of ginger hair emerged above the mess of upturned tables and cabinets, haphazardly stacked as well as her noodly arms could manage under such miserable conditions. It was followed by scowling blue-grey eyes, and the muzzle of an old Soviet submachine gun. A strongly accented voice scratched out of a throat irritated by sneezing and coughing, issuing its owner's answer.

"Yeah, who's fuckin' asking?"

Beat. The curiously specific question had set Esther's thoughts racing. The word subsumption came back to her. It stood to reason...

She audibly sniffled, then asked her second question.

"You got monsters that speak and build, then?"

[ItzToxie]

"Uhh Carl. Carl Kowalski. Me and Charlie here are just looking for a place to lie low. Shit's bad out there..."

Understatement of the century. He'd guessed whoever he was speaking to wasn't one of those things, though it brought him no ease. After all, this was a 'game'. Only one goes home. Maybe people would start joining in soon...

Though, they were still here, Esther had chosen not to end Charlie and him yet, so for now things were as okay as they could be. She spoke again, and Carl sighed. This was a stupid conversation. It was so... outlandish, like, it was one of those old horror games he played on the PS1. If he talked like a robot then the words would just fit right it.

"Yeah... Yeah you could say that. The big ass spider bear can talk, though if you could hear that you wouldn't have to worry about it sneaking up on you. The ones I'm worried about are the ones that got Reinette and another girl. I don't know her name. You can't tell them apart from a distance, they look normal, but- up close they're corpses. You can tell. They've got wounds on them that killed them, at least the other girl did. They're- They're being puppeted by these weird fuckin' things."

It made no sense. What in the fuck were they?

"Fuck dude, they look like- you know those old fireworks? The ones that at first look like one of those smarties candies, and then you light it and then they expand into this little carbon snake? They look like that but a lot smaller, like, pencil thin. They're not too tough, you can step on them and kill them, but there's a lot of them. A lot. They'll surround you, and I guess crawl in you. I think they kill you, I hope so anyways, and then they take you over. You talk like you, you act like you, but you're not you, you kill everything that's not like you, or you make it like you."

Carl glanced at Charlie. He didn't look anything like he did the day prior, or the day prior to that.

"I don't know how to kill them. That's why they scare me."

[Dr Adjective]

Esther's eyes stayed busy while she listened to Carl's story. She saw a gun, but she also saw that it was pointed down. Half of her focus remained on that, going forwards. Besides that, she could see ample evidence that the older man had seen some shit. His description of the creature as a big ass spider bear corroborated further, that's probably what she'd say if pressed to explain what the hell had killed Dusty. So she was pretty open to the notion that he was being honest with her.

Next, the hell worms that, well, subsume. That would further explain his hesitance to believe she was a regular human being, then.

"Shit."

Esther stood up to her full height, which barely made her any more visible than when she'd been crouching. But it was a show of good faith.

"Don't know what the fuck you do to that with conventional weapons, nope."

She would've preferred if he just set up shop downstairs and let her have her second-storey hideout to herself, really. But you can't just ask someone to do that for you, even Esther was more socially adroit than to openly ask a total stranger to be her proverial canary. No, like with Dusty, she'd have to be open to cooperating. Strength in numbers and all that. What other choice did she have?

"Look, it's not much, but I got a fire and plenty of old paper to feed it. Not like I get extra heat by not sharing it. I'm not about to kill you guys just 'cause the cunts in suits told me to, so... yeah."

[Applesintime]

Charlie just sorta let Carl do the talking. She still hadn't gotten over yesterday. How it had just all went to H E double hockey sticks in just a few moments. They'd ran into someone and they were both friendly and had more guns, which was always good. Especially when going up against whatever the fuck Janus-Hayes would throw at them today. If not for the having watched someone brutally die in front of her, Charlie could almost imagine this being some knockoff Resident Evil style game.

But it was real life.

"I think, uh," Charlie began at Esther's query, "if you had fire or something, you could maybe burn it. You'd need something with either enough explosive power or enough area of effect." God, her kingdom for a Tomahawk. All that power she'd had at her fingertips on the John Warner, twelve Tomahawks and a bunch of torpedoes, not that they'd do anything against land-based targets. And then her first summer, she'd spent some time with The Sullivans, which was even more boom and bang and explosives!

The thought brough a smile to her face, no matter how brief.

"Thanks for letting us stay here. While we get our bearings, anyway. We still gotta get back at them for killing Chevy." She smiled, weary and tired and broken.

[ItzToxie]

"Thank you. We appreciate it!"

Carl steped forward, Charlie behind him. Esther wasn't in on playing the game either. Just about everyone he's met so far has had the same sentiments. It was a small positive in a net negative.

"Likewise," Carl said as he climbed the stairs. "Said this a couple of times to people I've met, but even if someone 'wins' this, I doubt they'd go home. Best case scenario, probably shot as a liability."

The image of the things puppeting Reinette killing Chevy came to mind.

"Worst case, testing out something worse than what we've fought here..."

[Dr Adjective]

Lots of words. Esther was good at running her mouth, not so much at holding a real conversation. So she just sort of made affirmative noises in acknowledgement that maybe fire would be a good defence against a swarm of robot worms. Like old school D&D area damage versus swarm enemies, it made sense.

More positive grunting for the thanks. She didn’t really know who Chevy was, but she could imagine a similar feeling to how she felt about watching Dusty die. A dull ache in the brain and the heart, a deep, creeping fear of sharing that fate. She hadn’t even known him for more than a day, but she’d wanted to believe he was a friend. As for present company, Esther had decided not to get attached. That was her intention, at least. She’d be cooperative, she’d be pleasant, mutual aid and all that good stuff, but they wouldn’t be friends. Some animal part of her brain kept quietly trying to suggest to her that dang, this Charlie woman was quite attractive, based on nothing but Carl’s voice she’d been expecting a boy for some reason, but she pushed that aside. No time for it. Or for any sort of attachment. She did have a real nice smile though.

Similarly, she kept her guard up when the two passed her admittedly flimsy barricade. Gun down, aimed low and away, but finger ready to move back to the trigger if anything should happen. On some level it was intentional, projecting her inner mood as a visible attitude: defensive, closed off.

“Yeah. Been thinking about it. They already ‘killed’ everyone, right? Why waste effort letting one-a us live?”

Then again, why waste effort trying to survive in that case? If there was one sure-fire way to foul their experiment, wouldn’t it be for all the participants to just… opt out, the hard way?

After seeing Dusty’s remains in the bleak light of morning, she’d certainly considered it. Better to go out on her own terms with one bullet, than be ripped apart like that.

But she couldn’t do it. Janus-Hayes had her number, everyone’s number really. They all wanted to live, and there was still a faint hope.

Esther’s train of thought was interrupted when she sniffled again, loudly. Stupid arctic cold. She adjusted the rifle slung over her shoulder with an awkward shrugging motion.

“Uh. I’m Esther, by the way.”

Stood to reason neither of them knew her, after all. She’d only really recognised that Zandah guy on the ship, after all. Not that she was making a connection or anything, just needed to be able to communicate.

[Applesintime]

"I'm, uh, Charlotte, but just call me Charlie. Otherwise I sound like I'm out of one of those old novels where Victorian girls bitch and whine for like, four hundred pages over men or horses or war or some shit and that isn't my vibe at all." Now, bitching and whining in her mind for like, four minutes about not having military-grade explosives to distract her from the unshakable feeling that she was gonna die here and she'd never see her mom or dad again? That sounded a hell of a lot better!

Taking a seat by the fire, trying to stay away from it, Charlie held her hands up to it and rubbed them together so she could get some warmth in them. It was cliche as all hell, but it was actually pretty useful!

"So, we've met the Chimera and Vermiculus. What about the, uh, Revenants? They're some kinda experimental shit, people who've been fucked up by Janus-Hayes." They could become that. Whoever won here might become Remnant D. The thought sent a shiver down her spine that the heat wouldn't stop.

"I guess if you shoot them enough they'll die anyway. Or burn them. If we had a flamethrower or something, that'd probably be the most effective way to kill... most of the shit here, really."

[ItzToxie]

"Maybe. All we got is this piece of shit pistol..."

Carl paused.

"Well..."

He pulled the grenade he got from the blind kid. "I reaquired this. Don't feel to happy about it, but I was saving it for a rainy day, or a really fucking rainy day. Only way I see this thing being used is close enough for something to eat me though. I figured I'd make absolutely sure, but... Fuck if this don't do it, what will?"

Carl pocketed his gear again, and removed his gloves, warming his hands by the fire. Wasn't smart, if Esther wanted both of them dead, she'd have no trouble lighting them up. All Carl could think about was that it wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen to them now. He glanced at her.

"There's not much I think we can do unless we get rid of those things. Days ago I thought we'd be able to beat this and get out, but now I'm not sure. If it was just the bastards, we could do it, but not with those things running around." Carl noticed another one of Esther's armnaments. Even through his morose face, his eyes lit up.

"I could handle them. But this shit... I don't know." His heart was beating a million miles a minute now. An idea was forming, almost instantly. He knew it was suicide, he knew it couldn't work-

But it could though.

Carl couldn't kill monsters, but he killed people before. Didn't mean a difference if they were trained or not. He's even killed Wagner shitbags before-

"That rifle... You don't have any reason to trust me, but I just had an awful idea. You mind if I use it tonight?"

[Dr Adjective]

Esther wasn’t sure whether to be heartened or horrified by Charlie’s attitude. Compared to Carl’s dour outlook, broadly mirroring her own, she seemed unusually talkative and animated; casually talking strategy like the monsters were miniatures on a board, not the nightmare things that had turned her peers into meat puppets or crushed a boy’s skull like a grape in a single bite.

But maybe that was how she coped, not letting it be entirely real yet? Esther was no shrink, but that sounded plausible. A little wall to keep the reality out?

But then the optimism, if one could really call it that, seemed to catch on. Carl’s eyes filled with inspiration in a way that even a shut-in like Esther couldn’t miss. He had a bright idea.

Previously, her logic for fortifying up with Dusty had been essentially that she couldn’t use two guns at once. But now that she was in possession of both, giving one up suddenly seemed much less appealing. What if she needed to shoot something really far away? Besides, trust was indeed a currency in short supply, why invest it in him?

“I dunno, I…”

Her mind’s eye cast back to Dusty’s lifeless remains.

For a long, silent moment, Esther stood and thought of the state of things. The same fate awaited just about the entire expedition, or worse, unless they did something about it. All of them, ideally. She’d spent enough time online bemoaning society’s unwillingness to work together for a collective good, why if they all got together there would surely be nothing the capitalist class could do to keep them suppressed, right? Yet here she was justifying the same self-centred attitudes she hated, out of fear. Just like everyone else, really. Nobody wanted to be the first to stand up. First one to stand up gets smacked down the hardest. That’s how entrenched power always kept the masses down.Her thoughtful expression set into a scowl.

Well. Fuck that. Fuck the cunts in the suits and the labcoats. Fuck anybody who thought they had a right to control someone else.

Fuck ‘em all.

If she followed Carl’s implications, and she suspected she did, he didn’t plan on going on a (nightmare spider) bear hunt. Nor did he seem set on mercifully putting down the other students before they could fall victim to the mutant horrorterrors. And Esther’d be damned if she didn’t do her part in some direct action with a truly, unambiguously evil target.

“Depends. Can I help?”

[Applesintime]

She was forcing herself to be optimistic, really. Charlie's little human brain didn't want to cope with the horrors that she'd seen, of bears talking in human voices and robotic worms that turned people into their puppets, or... honestly, compared to the rest of them the Revenants didn't seem too bad! They were just people. Sure, really fucked up people who had been modified by eggheads to be a lot more durable, but durability didn't matter when you were shot in the head. Unless these guys could survive a shot to the head, in which case Charlie didn't know.

Carl was sort of down at first, mirroring the part of Charlie's brain that hid behind what her heart was shouting about. He was talking about how if they couldn't get the monsters down, they had no chance of getting the fuck out of here. And yeah, she could sorta symphasise with that viewpoint. But there were five monsters, and, uh... well, there were more than five people alive on this island at the moment. If they all worked together, they could beat the monsters.

But that wasn't gonna happen.

Chevy's death had proved that. Elizabeth had shot him in the leg and made a run for it like the bitch she was, and she'd... you know, come to think of it, why was every guy or gal on this island who was into her some sorta psycho? First cowboy man, then Elizabeth. This probably had some sorta implication for outside this fucked up place, something like Charlie attracting weird people. Maybe there were just weird people on the ship.

Letting out a chilly exhale, she thought. About how they could use this shit to their advantage. How they could defeat the island, all the monsters on it and the military-industrial complex (Raytheon would never do shit like this! Or the guys who made calculators as well as military shit!) with just a fragmentation grenade, an old Soviet pistol, a PPSH and a Soviet rifle. And, uh, like ten flares.

It was a very difficult problem, she had to admit. If the issue was how to operate a nuclear reactor? Charlie'd have that done in no time. But, uh, she wasn't good outside of that.

Judging by the look on Carl's face and the way he spoke, though, Charlie had the feeling he'd had an idea. He was the grizzly old Marine, the old dog who came in at the hour of need with a pocket full of grenades and a cigar in his teeth. Or a crayon. He was a Marine, after all. As he spoke, Esther seemed to pick up on the idea too. A plan was forming. It might be shit. It might get them all killed. Maybe they'd all be filled with worms.

But a plan was a plan.

"Whaddya got, Sarge?" Charlie grinned cheekily. She didn't know what he was exactly before he left the Marines, but it seemed like a fun little nickname to tease the old-timer with.

[ItzToxie]

"... It's Gunnery Sergeant." Carl smiled. He knew there wasn't gonna be a happy ending to this. So long as that stood around and waited, nothing would change. People would still die for nothing. Someone would get something worse as a reward for 'winning.' Carl looked back over at Esther.

He wanted to say no but- "Yeah... Yeah you can help. If you let me take that rifle... I want you to keep Charlie safe while I'm gone. I might come back after this, but probably not, this might be a one way trip for me. I need you two to be ready for anything... So-"

He pulled the grenade out of his pocket, and handed it to Esther.

"Save this for a rainy day. Don't toss this at the bear, or at the worms. That's not for them. It's for you two. Don't let anything take you or her alive, you get me?"

He glanced back at Charlie.

"If you let me take that rifle, I'm not going to leave you empty handed, either of you. Way I see it, I'm already dead, so... I don't need none of this." He stepped towards the fire, and pulled out his pistol. He held his arm over it, with the PDA attached.

He brought the butt of his pistol down on it, again, and again, and again, until the crack of glass and electronics rang for the room to hear. He brought it down one more time, breaking through plastics and computer chips. He rolled his wrist to the side, and let the remnants of Dr.Sicko's voice fall into the flames.

He looked back at Charlie once more, and flipped his pistol over, holding it by the barrel as he held it out for her to take.

"I want you all to keep fighting, whether or not I come back. I'd let you come with, but that blizzard would kill anyone out there who isn't prepared. On top of that, what I'm going up against will kill you even if you are so- I need to do this alone. I've told too many people that I could help them, and I was wrong. I'm not going to let anyone else get hurt on my watch, so this is my mission, my element."

He looked back at Esther.

"I can do this. I know I can. I'm not sure about the monsters, but this? I'm positive. What I'm about to do is what I'm trained to do. But only if you let me."

[Dr Adjective]

Sarge?

Nope. Gunnery sergeant. Esther didn’t know the difference, nor did she care to. Both signified being a racketeer for big business, to quote the late, great Smedley Butler. More importantly for the situation, however, it signified that he probably knew what the fuck he was doing taking a rifle out into a blizzard to presumably wage a one-man insurgency against their common enemy. Sure his experience was most likely in countering insurgents, but if the military had seen fit to promote him, he had to have some meaningful experience, right?

While she was busy rationalising why it wasn’t a terrible idea to give up versatility of armaments, Carl had started explaining. He wanted her in a support role, essentially. She got that. Someone had to stay home and make the molotovs, a revolution can’t be 100% militants and 0% logistics, medics, communications, all that good stuff… and moreover, Esther was no fighter. At best, she brought above-average firearm knowledge to the table.

So that was fine. It helped that it was a less scary role to take, too. Speaking of molotovs, Carl also offered her a grenade, explaining it as essentially the ultimate in saving one bullet for herself. Given that the likelihood of her body being hijacked by robot worms was currently greater than 0, she appreciated the gesture, and stowed the explosive in a jacket pocket.

If she was still on the fence by that point, the grand gesture of smashing up his PDA helped to convince Esther beyond reasonable doubt that Carl meant business. He’d forego the lifeline of information to… well, it stood to reason those things were being tracked. Wouldn’t be a surprise if they were recording, too. Which meant time was at a premium if anyone was actively listening in.

So by the time Carl looked back to her, Esther had unslung the Dragunov from her shoulder, and was holding it out to take.

“Never thought I’d die fighting alongside a state goon, if I’m honest. Strange fuckin’ bedfellows, right?”

[Applesintime]

Gunnery sergeant! Right. Uh, close enough. He'd mentioned at some point being a drill officer, she thought. Now Charlie was thinking about Carl standing over a bunch of green-faced recruits yelling at them to tie their shoelaces and to drop and give me twenty and all that hard-ass shit. It did actually kinda fit him. A little snigger flew out of her mouth, thinking about him being a grumpy old man hardass. Hell, maybe they'd have bumped into each other if he were still in, the Marines and the Navy were closely linked because they both liked the water.

"Carl, what do y-" He was talking like... like once he stepped out of this building he wouldn't come back. A suicide mission, and the thought of that actually sent a chill down Charlie's spine. He wasn't going after the monsters and he sure as shit wasn't going to kill people, so what the he-

She jumped a little as he went smashy smashy with the PDA. OK, this was kinda freaking her out now. There was only one thing that wasn't killing the monsters or other people and that was... going against Janus-Hayes directly. Shit. That had to be it. That's why he kept talking like he wasn't going to come back, because he probably wasn't. Shit. Esther had the grenade, and now the gun was offered to her.

Charlie reached out to take the pistol, fingers wrapping gently, hesitantly around the grip. She'd only held a gun a few times before, and it was standard Marine fare, during that first summer when they'd been shuffled around all the Navy components to see what they wanted to be an officer for. She hadn't found it too interesting, but there was something pretty damn fun about popping off a couple of shots down the firing range, even if she was a shit shot. Charlie had told herself she'd go to a shooting range once she had some time, but she never did make the time.

And now she wished she had. Because that shooting range coulda been the difference between living and dying. Between killing a monster and being killed yourself.

"Carl, I, uh," she fumbled in her bag, reached in and pulled out a couple of flares, "I dunno if you can make use of any of this, but it might help you. Light a way, I mean. These things probably give off some good light, and I don't wanna let Esther have all the fun of gifting." She flashed him a shy little smile, aware that Carl would have much more to do with the rifle than he would with a bunch of measly flares.

"I don't know what you're trying to do, but... go get 'em, Devil Dog. Oo-rah." With her free hand, Charlie gave a little salute.