If you want blood, I’ll give you some.

[Gundham]

And he might have nailed it, too, if Juanita had been a hair slower in arriving.

((Juanita Reid continued from HEAT UP))

But the gun was already out and the safety was already off. So, when Juanita rounded the corner and saw Evie down, with that weird kid Fitz and his deadly, deadly rifle, lining up another shot, she didn't hesitate to shoulder it and pull the trigger.

If she had hesitated, she might have factored in a few things. Like the fact that she didn't have a great line on Fitz, he was a ways away and sitting down at an awkward angle. And the fact that the shot would blast the entire gun backwards into her clavicle, so hard that it felt like Schwarzenegger's T-101 himself had hauled back and slugged her for so badly disgracing the gun that bore his name.

She realized all these things a second too late, after they'd already happened and she'd staggered back heavily against the church, her shoulder fizzing with pain and the gun perilously close to falling out of her numb fingers. At this point more dignified entrant might have regained their footing, swaying but unbowed, and shouted "Leave her alone!" followed by cuss words that compared Fitz to various genitals.

Juanita, her jaw tight with pain, could only muster a strangled grunt.

"Ggh..."

[Dr Adjective]

She wasn't exactly relying on sound for perception, that would imply intentionality. Rather, the sounds around her were all Evie had to suggest events as she hissed through the burning sensation coursing through the interconnected mucous membranes behind her eyes. She would have screamed - the feeling had rapidly grown to feel as though Kaede had physically thrust Evie's face into an open fire - but her throat seemed to have closed entirely.

At least that meant she could hear, much as the pain served to distract from really taking anything in. Movement, faltering, but towards her. Coughing, groaning. Kaede was hit for sure, hopefully badly. Perhaps other footsteps were Fitz, perhaps they were Kaede. Impossible to say.

FItz had a gun.

Fitz had a gun.

The agony gripping Evie, not to mention the constricted airways, probably would've been enough to trigger a panic response without that concern on top of them. Realising an armed hostile might be taking aim at her that very second was certainly more than enough. She was going to die here, because she'd underestimated Dani's little goon? Because her prodigious luck had finally run out, and she'd failed to hit both targets? Because she wasn't really the main character, the centre of the universe, destined to win?

Something hit her face. Hot and wet. Evie recoiled, stumbling over her own feet and careering backwards, feet struggling to find purchase on the frosty ground. No, not like this. She couldn't die like this, after everything she'd done to get here, not so pathetic and ignoble.

A familiar kind of crack split the air, a thunderous boom more akin to a cannon than a firearm, and at last Evie's throat permitted a scream to escape. She slipped, falling hard onto her back, unable to tell if she'd been hit amidst the pain searing through her head and beginning to throb where she'd hit the icy earth. She scrambled back on her elbows, feeling for injuries, desperately trying to force her eyes to open. Her fumbling hands fell upon the familiar shape of a second gun in her coat pocket.

No. Not like this.

Another gunshot punctuated her panicked thoughts. Different. More muted.

A more lucid Evie might've put two and two together, and realised it was Juanita's ridiculous shotgun. The panicked Evie on the ground desperately trying to pull out her handgun, face smeared with blood and pepper spray, did not. Her eyes parted enough to take in the pale arctic daylight and the vague silhouette of a human form holding something rifle-shaped.

A third unique report sounded, and for the second time a hastily fired bullet tore splinters from the church.

[ViolentMedic]

Fitz heard the gunshot. He felt a tug on his arm. He fired again before he was ready, his hand clenching without him intending to. The shot went wide, with no indication as to where it landed.

He attempted to correct his aim, only to find out that his hand – and arm – weren’t listening to him.

Fitz didn’t look. He just used his other arm to get up. One of the bags hanging from his shoulders slipped off, but he didn’t look down long enough to register that it was his supplies that had fallen, and Alex’s head that had remained with him.

Rifle brought down and tucked clumsily under his elbow, no regard to gun safety, he heard Evie fire another burst of gunfire. He didn’t look, either at her or the second person. Or at Kaede at Evie’s feet.

He just ran, not looking at the red that he scattered behind him. He promptly charged right into an open grave.

“Aagh—”

Sliding down and landing on his ass, the rifle slipped out of his grip. Fitz reached for it, and caught sight of the arm that hadn’t listened.

The bullet had gotten him in the elbow that had been sticking out as he aimed. He saw blood, and some splintery white bits that might have been part of the joint.

Fitz stared at it for a good five seconds, going white. He started to tremble.

Then the pain broke through the shock.

The shriek was short but deafening, quickly cut off through clenched teeth.

[Gundham]

Okay. Evie was down, but alive. The other girl - crap, it was Kaede - was dead. Fitz was hit. Not down, but hit, running, leaving drops of red in his wake. Okay. Chase him down, get him with the kni-

A gunshot.

"GAH! EVIE, WHAT THE!?!" Juanita ducked to one side as a small puff of splinters and gunpowder clouded the air. The shotgun jogged loose and hit the snow.

Evie was shooting at her! A single thought grabbed hold of her brainstem and yanked: RUN.

No need to tell her twice. Juanita scrambled for the corner of the church, leaving the useless gun behind. She hit a patch of ice as she rounded the corner and fell hard against the side wall, hip first. Her shoulder, already pulverized, hit the wall a second later and starbursts of pain erupted from it. She staggered another step or two. There wasn't a ton of distance between her and the shooter, just a blind corner. But a fresh ragged-edged hole in the siding suggested that the gun was more than capable of punching through it.

Somewhere in the graveyard, Fitz shrikeked.

Juanita took that as her cue to move. More distance. Put walls and pews and bibles between her and the gun. Leave Evie to her screaming prey. Another step, another slip. The ground here was iced over, where some of the eavestrough had broken away from the church long ago. Her leg tremored, adding its complaint to the chorus of pain demanding her attention.

Okay. Okay. Fitz was screaming. Alive, incapacitated. Juanita was down her shotgun, and not going anywhere fast in her condition. Evie hadn't shot Fitz yet, but when she did, she'd have yet another gun to add to her arsenal, and only one target in the vicinity. She should've known. Evie hadn't respected the ceasefire, Juanita had been stupid to think she'd respect an alliance. Which meant that Juanita had to suck up the pain and hobble her way over to the snowmobile, hopefully in less time than it'd take Evie to shoot Fitz and start looking for her.

It was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

[Dr Adjective]

It was hard to piece together the timeline of events, just going by sounds. Bangs intermingled in quick succession, and even had she focused, Evie wasn't familiar enough with the weapons nor the space to judge which was which, fired from where, or by whom. Someone started screaming roughly as she returned fire, someone who sounded like they were probably Fitz. A moment or two later, another familiar voice joined in. The standing figure tossed their gun and seemed to start moving away. Evie likewise kept scrambling back on her elbows, until her head came into contact with something hard.

Panic had robbed her of most reasoning, but some part of her mind recognised a headstone, at least as far as knowing the rough size and shape, that it could be moved around and used for cover. Evie felt for the edge of the grave marker, rolled onto her knees, and circled around to the side she presumed safer.

She remained there for several seconds, clenching her burning eyes shut, gripping the Desert Eagle tightly in both hands, listening for anything that could be a threat.

Her breaths came rapid, shallow.

She willed herself to calm, to focus. No easy task.

Nothing else pierced the silence.

Evie's breaths slowed, slowly but surely.

She was alone.

No. Wait. What about Juanita? Hadn't... didn't she... Oh. Fuck. It rapidly began to make sense. Juanita had saved her from Fitz, and for her trouble, Evie had fired blindly in her direction. It had been her voice that responded to the gunshot. God, had she hit her? If she had, it'd probably prove fatal sooner or later. Then she really would be alone. Fitz and Kaede lay dead, she'd burned her bridges with Claire, Kelsey was committed to the cold earth, who else did that even leave? Ten or so people who feared and hated her, intended to kill her, or more likely both.

Maybe it was for the best. Her preternatural luck had seen her through once again, and if that was going to continue, she'd have to get used to being alone. Only one person was leaving the island alive, after all, right?

At length, Evie released her left hand's grip on her gun, and felt around the nearby ground for snow. Pressing the half-frozen water to her burning eyes was only minimally effective, but it felt better than nothing. After that, she rose to her feet. Forced her eyes open again to get a sense of her surroundings.

Stillness reigned. Unless...

"Fitz?"

Not that he was likely to answer, if he were lying in ambush. Evie cast her limited gaze around the graveyard, lucky to even be able to discern the difference between solid ground and open graves. Nothing. The frozen earth, the battered wood of the church, the unfeeling grey sky. Nothing, at least, until the impossible quite abruptly crashed through the carefully constructed walls that bounded Evie's reality.

“This is the Interpol Incident Response team and SEALs. Your collars should no longer be active and you are not being monitored. Please make your way to the beach as soon as possible. You're going home.”

Her breath caught in her throat. At first, she assumed somebody to be playing a cruel trick. Trying to set up a trap, perhaps. But no, no student sounded like that. But then... could it actually be true?

A burst of red tore through the pale arctic daylight. If someone were fucking with her, they'd have to have assembled quite the collection of gear on-island to do it. A megaphone, a voice-changer, a flare gun, plus whatever weapon they'd used to acquire all of that for themselves. No. It was real. After everything she'd endured, Evie McKown did not have to see the ordeal through to its true, bitter end. She ought to be glad for that. Her survival wasn't some nebulous destiny she'd convinced herself of any more, it was a certainty. The cavalry had come. She was going home.

So why did she feel cheated?

Evie didn't have time to ponder that. Her reality was realigning. Rapidly. No more deathmatch. No more cause to see her peers dead. Morality reasserted itself. If Fitz, Kaede, or Juanita were still alive, she had to get them to a medic right away. She had to. If only to be able to live with herself when all was said and done. To be able to say she'd tried.

"FITZ!?"

[ViolentMedic]

Other gunshots and shouting went unheard by Fitz as he opened the one bag he still had strapped to him. His fingers were slick with blood and clumsy, and when he opened the bag he came face to face with a decomposing head. He’d left his first-aid kit out there in the graveyard. Alex’s head was all he had.

Out of other options or ideas, he wound the strap of the bag tightly around his arm to try a tourniquet. He pressed his back to dirt, and stared upwards. Fast, high-pitched breaths were slipping through his teeth. He tried not to make noise, and failed.

He couldn’t use the sniper rifle in this state. Kaede had the date machete. He didn’t even have Armand. All he had was a half-blunt throwing star somewhere in one of his pockets, and he couldn’t reach for it without letting go of his attempted tourniquet.

He heard his name.

He said nothing.

Then he heard the unfamiliar voice, echoing across the island. Announcing their arrival, and ending with the three most important words he’d ever heard.

“You’re going home.”

A flash of red illuminated his grave. The flare was a nuclear blast that disintegrated every remaining brick of the mental wall that Fitz had built over two weeks between the need to survive and anything that didn’t help that.

Sitting there, blood staining his fingers and a badly bound tourniquet being his only medical treatment, he stared upwards as the red faded from his vision.

The game was over.

“...heh.”

Of course it would happen now. If it’d been five minutes ago, he’d be uninjured and Kaede would be alive.

Fitz tightened his mouth after that noise slipped out and looked down. Then another huff of laughter slipped through his mouth. The avalanche broke, and he started cackling. Voice raspy from two weeks of roughing it and not enough water during it, but his manic laughter rang out of the grave, and just as clearly started to become damp as he started sobbing at the same time.

He heard his name again, shrieked with more urgency.

He screamed back.

“TRUCE! TRUCE, PLEASE! PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME HERE!”

He tried to climb to his feet, screaming all the while. His hand tightening on the tourniquet, so similar to the one that had ultimately failed to save Tenshi.

“DON’T LEAVE ME HERE! DON’T LEAVE ME! PLEASE! PLEASE! I WANT TO LIVE, I WANT TO LIVE--”

[Gundham]

The snowmobile was in sight. Juanita hustled over to it, not bothering to secure her load. Her leg was practically burning with pain, every step sending a spike of pain through her calf and thigh. The muscles felt rigid, throbbing. The simple act of lifting her leg and throwing it over the seat was excruciating: the lift was like wrenching her hip joint out of a vise clamp; the swing, like someone had stabbed a sharp pair of scissors into her inner thigh and yanked it down towards her knee, gliding, tearing, splitting skin and muscle apart like gift wrapping; the final thud of her boot hitting the mud guard was a solid punch to the calf that curled her toes and made her wince.

But none of that hurt as badly as what came next.

“You’re going home.”

The words hit her like a freight train, leaving her numb and pulverized, shaking in her seat. The faint hope of rescue had already been snuffed out once, and to hear it again, blaring loud and crystal clear from somewhere out there, felt impossibly cruel. What if it was a trick? What if it was some kind of dream or illusion, or some perverse kind of purity test to winnow out those who didn't want it enough?

As if in answer, a flare shot upwards. It shone like the heavenly host, burning the sky red. Juanita watched it arc, her eyes glistening with tears.

It was real. The message was real. That realization didn't stop the tears. If anything, it made them flow harder.

The soldiers... they'd know what she had done, wouldn't they? And even if they didn't, everyone else did. Her and Evie both, everybody knew about them. What if the other students told the soldiers, and they gunned her down or cast her out, left her and all the other murderers behind? They couldn't do that, could they? They couldn't just... not rescue her, could they? Even if she didn't deserve it, they still had to... right?

Fitz's scream brought her back to reality. He was calling a truce, begging for help. Juanita hesitated, clutching the ignition key. Evie was still there, with her full armory. She hadn't respected the first ceasefire, or their alliance. There was no reason to expect her to honor this one. The smart play here would be to take off alone, leave the two of them to their fates.

Juanita fired up the snowmobile. She looked up again at the flare's smoke trail. It was still there, sharing the sky with the church steeple. The steeple where she'd woken up. Her eyes traveled downwards, taking in the bell tower, where her long torturous climb had driven her to despair over her chances of survival. The sanctuary, where she turned her back on God and formed the legion. The pews where they'd spent days going over battle plans and strategies for murder.

She'd have given anything to go back to that bell tower on the first day, and to throw her arms around the terrified Juanita up there and tell her not to give in to the fear and despair, tell her that there was so much pain and bloodshed that could be avoided if she could just to do the right thing.

But it didn't work like that. It was too late for that Juanita. But it didn't have to be too late for this one. Maybe, just maybe, there was still something good in her left to salvage.

She throttled up the snowmobile and gunned it towards the graveyard. "Truce!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, bellowing to be heard above the engine. "Truce!"

[Dr Adjective]

Truce? Truce felt like the wrong word for it. This was no ceasefire, no temporary armistice, right? Even with her desire to win, Evie couldn't imagine wanting to keep fighting when the option to simply leave was on the table. To go home as rescued victims, at worst as the tools by which somebody else had committed murders. But she got the idea. Peace.

A man-shaped blur rose in the near-distance, accompanying the voice. It had to be Fitz. Evie shoved her gun into the nearest pocket and stumbled towards him, using the odd gravestone for balance along the way; with the frost, the uneven ground, and her compromised eyesight combined, it was impossible not to stumble.

"Peace!" She declared, waving her empty hands above her head, a gesture to demonstrate how unarmed and harmless she was. "I... I can't fucking see, is--"

The familiar sound of a small petroleum engine cut her off. Juanita? She was okay too? At least as okay as anyone still alive on the island could be said to be? The answer swiftly came in the form of her voice in agreement. Evie too raised her voice to combat the growl of the snowmobile.

"Truce! Peace! I... I can't fucking see, come help me with Fitz!"

[ViolentMedic]

His screaming cut off once he heard them screaming back. Truce, peace, help. And if it was a trick, Fitz didn’t care, because they had nothing to gain from tricking him and he had nothing to lose from not believing.

Relief. Just enough so that he could stop shrieking, though tears were still streaming from his eyes and when he spoke, it was half-distorted by sobbing.

Two voices. Evie and whoever had shot him. Didn’t matter. All that mattered was climbing out of this grave.

“Truce! Yeah, I… truce!”

Fuck, think. Think. What did he need? His thoughts were all mucked up and jumbled, not fully reshuffled from ‘win or escape’ to ‘just live.’

“I-I need help out of the hole, I can’t… my arm’s fucked up, I can’t climb, I left my first-aid kit up there, I…”

Babbling. Stop. What did he need? Deep breath. Think. THINK. Think as loudly as he could over the pulsing pain through his arm, that had spread across his whole right side.

“Toss my kit down, or help me out of the grave, or… something! I won’t… I can’t fight even if I wanted to, just help!”

[Dr Adjective]

It took some time, it took some doing. Cooperation was a rusty tool in Evie's kit, just barely kept functional by Juanita satisfying her irrepressible want for company. But at length, Fitz was removed from the hole. Adding Juanita's eyes and hands to Evie's knowledge of first aid, the two girls dressed his wounds about as well as could be expected under the circumstances. Good enough to survive the short journey to the presumed professional medical aid awaiting with the Navy at the very least. After all, that was the whole point of it all, wasn't it? As long as everyone made it to the rescue party, things were going to be okay. The less time spent getting there, the less time spent on the island, very much the better.

Right?

"Snowmobile seats two, right?"

Evie gestured over towards the blurred shape in the middle distance. Her sight was certainly better than before, but it felt worth checking.

"I can walk just fine, I just need a minute for this stupid pepper spray to wear off, you two should take it."

It was just good sense, they had six functioning limbs between the two of them, Evie was just apportioning resources appropriately, right? And maybe she wanted to say her last goodbyes to Kelsey, now that the interruption to her makeshift funeral was - quite conclusively - over and done with. But that was all. There was no other unfinished business; the game was done, called off as a no-contest.

By all accounts, she ought to be more than glad to see the last of her prison, the frozen rock that had claimed two weeks of her life and damn near killed her.

Yet something about it called her to linger just the same.

[Gundham]

Evie volunteered to stay behind, which nicely wrapped up the problem of trying to get three people onto a snowmobile that had only two seats. Well, more like one set with enough room for someone to uncomfortably spoon the driver while trying not to fall off.

She'd have argued against it if she'd had any mental faculties left. She and Evie were still partners, in some way or other. Splitting up wasn't safe, even now. There was no guarantee that other kids had all heard the announcement, or that they'd buy it if they had. And when it came down to it, Juanita also didn't like the thought of taking a ride with a guy she'd just perforated. But she couldn't have vocalized those opinions. Her brain was busy occupying itself with a riotous symphony of pains and aches that kept tensing her up and dissolving her thoughts into radio static. It was hard enough to focus on the problems in front of her, much less anything else.

"Yeah... sure." Juanita took a breath, then swung her leg over the seat. It hurt. Bad. Between charging up and down the stairs, getting tenderized by the Cobray, and hauling Fitz out of the grave, she was spent. She shimmied forward a bit and motioned for Fitz to get on behind her. She wasn't exactly in Formula One condition, but he wasn't seem to be in any shape to drive either. But the army sounded close. She'd just have to tough it out the bumpy ride, and then... whatever came after.

"Look..." she said to Evie. "I'm gonna... I'll come back. I'll drop him off, and I'll come right back. Okay?"

((Juanita Reid continued elsewhere))

[ViolentMedic]

Fitz couldn’t have made out a lot of individual moments. But someone did… must have… helped him out of the grave. There wasn’t a lot that could be done for the arm, but it was enough to make the bleeding slow. To keep his bones from being exposed to the air more than they needed to.

It hurt even worse now… but he wasn’t going the same way as Tenshi. He was on his feet. He was still thinking. And he had time before infection set in and made Evie and Juanita lop off his arm, too.

The rifle was left in the grave. He didn’t try to retrieve his supplies. They wouldn’t be of use. But he still held onto the bag with Alex’s head inside. He didn’t know why. What would they even say if he tried to take it onto the boats? What would his family say if he tried to return it?

The others… the girls that had been his biggest danger minutes ago, but who were now the only thing that had stopped him from dying in that open grave… they were talking about the snowmobile. Taking him and leaving Evie behind.

He couldn’t say he objected to that. She wasn’t losing blood. She could still fight back, if she had to. But Kaede would--

…

Fitz turned to stare in Kaede’s direction. She hadn’t moved since she was gunned down.

“She’s… she’s, uh...”

...No. He didn’t have to ask.

He didn’t know her that well, but still. She was a classmate, and a travelling companion. But to think about her would mean thinking about the others, too. The other corpses in this graveyard, and the church, and the town, and the island. He had to rebuild that mental wall and keep going. For just a little longer.

Fitz shut his eyes and turned his head away from Kaede. He nodded his head instead towards the snowmobile.

“I… can hold on. For… long enough.”

He didn’t know if it was true. But it would have to be.

((Russell 'Fitz' Fitzroy continued elsewhere.))

[Dr Adjective]

“I’ll probably see you en route,”

She didn’t have it in her to outright tell Juanita not to bother. It was too kind of a gesture to just reject. Besides, it’s not like the rescue party was about to let anyone go back inland after reaching safety, right? May as well just sound thankful and wave her off. As for Fitz…

“I’ll… do something for her.”

The roar of the little gasoline engine soon died off into the distance, and at long last, Evie was alone again. It’d been a while since she’d been truly by herself, up at the hot spring soaking in the warm steam and grappling with her choices up to that point. Now she found herself in a graveyard, wondering what came next for her life. As best she could tell, she’d go down in history as the last of the V8 killers, the other half of Kaede’s tragically poor timing.

First, Evie cleared the rest of Fitz’ belongings from the grave he’d fallen into. Next, she fished out the emergency blanket from his first aid kit, a morbidly familiar ritual by now. Laying it to the side of the pit under a handful of heavy stones and branches, she trudged over to what remained of Kaede Tsurumi.

Thankfully, her eyesight still wasn’t perfectly clear. The mess that Evie had made of Kaede was obvious enough, but not rendered in its full gruesome detail.

“Fuck’d you go and spray me for, huh? Just… a couple minutes more, we could all have gone home.”

No, that wasn’t fair. Dragging the corpse of her sixth victim over to her temporary resting place, Evie corrected herself.

“You didn’t know. I sure didn’t know.”

She knew why she was burying Kaede, sort of. The authorities knew where the island was now, leaving the bodies somewhere sheltered and obvious would help with recovering them intact. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was talking to the body, though.

But with the cameras off, and not a living soul for quite some distance, it was a chance to truly be alone with her thoughts. Having someone to bounce them off of made it easier to sort them through.

“I’m sorry. About you, about Dani. If it wasn’t about her, well, the others, right? I thought I had to win.”

Sure, she could truthfully say that DeMarcus and Lara weren’t on her. Maybe even make a case for Anthony if she felt like fooling herself. But Dani had been entirely in cold blood. And for what? To make herself a better killer.

Soon enough, Kaede’s body was covered with the silver sheet, weighted down to keep the weather off. Hopefully some day soon, people would come get her, Kelsey, Lara, DeMarcus. Hopefully they’d find Anthony in the cellar, and Dani in the research station basement. Hopefully everyone would get something to fill their children’s empty graves. Evie could always tell herself she’d helped with that.

“Sorry it turned out this way. I just wanted to live, you can understand that, right?”

But she didn’t just want to live, did she? Fresh tears weren’t beading up in the corners of her eyes just because she’d been party to Kaede’s misfortune of falling at the last hurdle, just because she felt bad about surviving through a mixture of luck and ruthlessness.

She’d wanted to win. Winning wasn’t an option any more. Everything she’d done to survive she could make a case for, try to be forgiven for, but what she’d done to win? Now it was all for nothing.

Would someone else have killed Dani instead? Probably. But in the version of events that did happen, she’d absolutely died for nothing.

“I… I hope they find all the bodies, you deserve that much.”

It took some time for Evie’s vision to clear. Crying seemed to help. She wasn’t sure that she actually wanted to leave: it was stupid, of course she should go, but some small part of her wanted to be the last warm body left on the island. She still wanted to claim victory.

But that was stupid. The rescuers wouldn’t wait forever. And she certainly didn’t want to be left behind… not like there was going to be a final showdown even if she didn’t remain behind alone, presumably the terrorists had been driven off, and she’d simply be stranded with the cold and the corpses.

So, after the long silence, Evie turned her back on the graves and set about her trek downhill, towards freedom.

[Evie McKown takes her aim, feels it coming close.]