...til Dawn.

[Dr Adjective]

[Evie McKown's heart was missed and she was patched up.]

Maybe it was for the best that the radios didn't see any use.

Some small part of Evie had been harbouring a childlike excitement about the prospect, looking forwards to calling back-and-forth, saying stuff like over and roger that. It was silly of course. She knew it was silly. But it'd be something to take her mind off of the endless dull pain emanating from her flank and the endless dull dread of being trapped on an island where people she thought of as friends would try to impale her as soon as look at her. She could forgive herself wanting a little bit of silliness, wanting to pretend it was all just a game with voice chat, given the circumstances.

But no, maybe it was for the best it didn't happen though. The battery life was presumably limited, and though she hadn't wasted much on the first day, Evie was conscious that every transmission was a use of a limited resource.

Instead, she and Claire walked mostly in silence. Slow and careful. Forever alert to the possibility of another attack while Evie was weak. They spoke from time to time, little nothings about the cold or the pain mostly, but nothing memorable.

At length the duo found their way back to where they'd met, the strange little concrete cuboid bristiling with aerials. The familiarity was little comfort. It felt like going backwards, and further inspection seemed to suggest it was occupied. No sign of Alex, at least. Ultimately, there was no reason to stay, so they carried on. Evie briefly considered suggesting taking the underground tunnels, but decided against it in the end: she'd learned the hard way that restricted movement was to be avoided. The last thing she wanted was to be trapped in the dark with unfriendly company and few options of where to go. So off they went overland, from the station's remotest outpost in towards the main complex. Even without the threat of hostile occupancy, the place looked foreboding against the early sunset, all rust, shadows, and harsh shapes.

But shelter was shelter.

So as soon as the pair got inside, out of the wind and snow, there was a clear unspoken agreement that they were staying. Fuck going back out in the cold said Evie's pale face and running nose, and Claire's expression gave assent aplenty. Conveniently, it appeared that the building they'd chosen to creep into was residential. Hard to point exactly to what gave that sense, the home comforts that might once have decorated the place and made it feel lived in had clearly been stripped away, either by departing scientists or arriving terrorists, but a distinctly domestic vibe still permeated the space. It was somewhere to come home to. Or maybe Evie just wanted it to be home, at least for the night. After making sure they were in the clear, she and Claire headed upstairs to find some incredibly sparse bedrooms. The layout of the space troubled her: only one route back out. But her feet only ached more with a modicum of heat creeping back into them, and despite being physically able to carry on, her fatigued mind cried out for rest. No time to let perfect be the enemy of good enough.

Mercifully, after a short chat, Claire agreed to keep watch for the first half of the night. Anticipating a long period lying still in a drafty room, Evie did the best she could to ensure she wouldn't die of hypothermia overnight - wouldn't that be fucking embarassing, after surviving getting stabbed? - and retrieved the windbreaker from her assigned bag and an EXTREME STEVE-branded beanie from her personal one, using the former as a makeshift blanket while the latter kept her head a little bit more warm and comfortable in the absence of a pillow.



Sleep came slowly.

For what felt like hours, Evie lay awake, her eyes closed. Faint sounds of Claire doing... something, carried across the room from time to time, but mostly she was kept lucid by her own thoughts. There was nothing to distract her from them any more, after all. No conversation, no objective, no fight, no nothing. Just her and a dark room and an inability to shut out the intrusive thoughts any longer.

She was going to die here, wasn't she?

Evie McKown was going to die, aged 18, never again to see her mother, her father, her brother, her dog. As for her friends, maybe she'd see them again. Maybe they'd even be alive when she did. Maybe they'd try to kill her. Because they'd be having the same thoughts as she was, wouldn't they? That they didn't want to die aged 18, never again seeing their families, their stories over before they'd even begun. Because they'd be like Alex, wouldn't they? Sure they wouldn't all have obsessively studied the so-called game and drawn up their plans in advance, but they'd be making their plans now, they'd be making peace with the fact they'd have to kill at least once if they wanted to survive peaking in high school.

So. Could she do it? Could she look into a former-friend's eyes as she drove a spear into their flesh, see the desperation, the fear, the hatred? Could she look past it and twist the blade, make sure they'd died at her hand?

Could she go home after that, like, really go home? It was the standard ending to every story of war from Troy, to Germany, to Vietnam, to Iraq. The journey changes you. You can't go home again. By the time you get there, it may or may not have changed, but the journey changes you.

Even still. Evie feared death. She feared dying at all, she feared dying with her potential unrealised, she even feared dying without getting to kiss Kelsey one last time. She didn't want to see Kelsey, or anyone else she cared about for that matter, die to pave her own way home, but she didn't want to be a brick in their road back either. So she was faced with a choice, one which really ought to be easy. Fighting to survive was not only naturally human, it was animal. Just a shame that Evie had spent the whole of her young life distancing herself from that reality. She'd have the start the journey to predator from a significant handicap, if she chose to embark on it. She did have the fitness, at least, but she was the kind of person to get genuinely upset at killing an insect rather than shooing it outside all the same.

It was hard to say for sure when sleep did eventually take Evie. Her thoughts transitioned to dreams, dreams of fighting and of running. Dreams of violence and of fear. Dreams of home.

By the time her eyes opened again, Evie McKown was almost surprised to see Claire's face, not her mother's. She had the sense of being back home in her room. The shades of her thick winter duvet and her expansive collection of soft toys faded away in favour of a rotten bare mattress and a dusty ruin of a room. No well-loved sea otter plush to spoon with, no computer beckoning her to waste an evening fighting simulated wars. No, she couldn't go home again. Not this morning. It was a nice idea, a vague journey to victory where she didn't have to kill any one specific recognisable face or face their families when she got back. Reality begged to differ in the shape of a weary smile from a girl she regretted not knowing all that well, to whom she already seemed to owe her life.

Evie rose, gathering up the plain overcoat she'd been draped with. Offered it to Claire on her way to take her place.

Sunrise would be coming soon enough. Until then, Evie took her own new place at the uncomfortable plastic chair. It didn't feel like going home, just like going back to elementary school.

Elbows forward on the thin wooden frame before her. Alone with her thoughts, alone with the pain blossoming from her bandaged abdomen.

Evie tentatively lifted up her bloodsoaked shirt, inspected the dressing. Still pristine white. Good sign. She prodded at her belly, scowling at the slight paunch. At least a diet of nothing but bread and water might help get her abs visible again.

She thought about Alex Avanesian. She thought about wrenching that spear from his hands and showing him how to drive one into a person's chest. The idea of killing the boy nauseated her. It filled her with dread.

And just a little bit, it made her smile.

[Evie McKown will soon learn how nothing is permanent except change.]