If You're Feeling Sinister

[midnight_twelve]

By the time Chloé finally paid a visit to the island’s church, she had already long since prayed every prayer she knew. Instead she just sat, head bowed, and reflected on the disaster that had been the past day.

((Chloé Delacroix continued from The Domesday Book))

It was almost funny, the sheer bad timing of the situation. Ships passing in the night; Marshall had headed to the research station, she had gone there to find him and at the same time he had come back here looking for her, and by the time she got back to their headquarters he’d returned to the research station all over again. Still, the news about Richard and Darryl and Iris was heartening, and Marshall’s survival- and continued commitment to their plan- was even more so. Chloé hadn’t known for sure if Marshall would ever come back, after she’d done such a great job of driving off Kai and Lara.

That was almost funny too, in a similar way. She’d lost Kai by being ruthless and threatening the killers, something she had done because she didn’t want to be seen as naïve. She was never going to start executing killers for no reason, it would only be to buy the innocent time. It was brutal but it was pragmatic, but Kai couldn’t see that. So then she went and switched up her strategy just in time to alienate Lara, who might have responded better to that pragmatism of the original pitch. She couldn’t keep flip-flopping between pacifist and executioner, she had to make a choice. If it came to it, could she pull the trigger? Could she kill Kitty, or Janice, or Jezzie, or any of the guilty to spare the innocent? Turning the gun over in her hands, Chloé wasn’t sure. It was a horrible thing, ugly even by gun standards. She felt some disgust at just touching it. But she felt power, too. That was what she needed, wasn’t it? That was how civilisations worked. Some people had power, and they kept everyone else safe. Chloé Delacroix wasn’t naïve. A country needed an army to protect itself from outside, it needed police to protect itself from within. But Chloé Delacroix wasn’t naïve. She knew people abused that power. Armies killed innocent people. The police killed innocent people. Did she have a right to decide who was innocent and who wasn’t? In some way, Kitty and the like were killing for survival too. It was for selfish self-preservation not the good of the many, but…

Logically, it was a simple exercise in utilitarianism. If her plan failed, only one person would survive this island, same as if she did nothing at all. If she succeeded, even if only a few people managed to get out alive, the number would still be higher. Therefore she could do whatever it took to make the plan work and still be in service of the greater good. There was no situation where she made things worse. Kai didn’t want Kitty to die, but did he want to die himself? Without her plan, his best case scenario was one or the other, and most likely they’d both die with the target Kitty would paint on both their backs. If he’d just stuck to the plan, that would still have been the worst case scenario, but there was a chance, a slim one maybe but a chance they could both have lived.

It was easy to call her peers illogical, but for all her rationalising Chloé still doubted she could actually take a life. It went against her fundamental principles. Thou shalt not kill. There was more nuance to that commandment than people realised, and the Catholic church had debated endlessly matters of self defence and capital punishment, but it a rule she didn’t know if she had cause to break. Was her purpose here justified? She looked up at the altar. She had always believed that God had a plan for her. Surely this was it?

“Tell me what to do. Please.”

There was no answer.

Chloé almost began to cry, but she stopped herself again. She wondered where all the tears go, when you hold them back. Kai’s arrival at the lake, the first announcement, the fight, the second announcement, Lara’s exit; every time she’d started to freak out, she’d beaten her heartbeat back into place and forced a brave face. She could feel a pressure mounting inside her now, getting harder to ignore. She looked at the gun once more before stashing it back in her pocket. What if she couldn’t handle the responsibility? What if she snapped? She wished Marshall had just taken it when she offered it to him. But now Marshall was on the other side of the island and it was her burden to bear. As she stood to leave, still undecided, she could only hope she wouldn’t have to make the decision any time soon.

((Chloé Delacroix continued elsewhere))