((Erika Stieglitz continued from No Exit))
Erika kept her promise, and gave Garnet a day's worth of relative safety. They journeyed out from the village into the woods of the northern half of the island, Erika keeping an eye on the collar radar, while she was sure Garnet kept an eye on her.
The woods were now familiar territory, and it only took them the better part of the afternoon to find a decent spot near the Art Exhibition, a few steps off the path littered with aging sculptures and carvings. It might’ve seemed too conspicuous otherwise, but having the radar and two sets of eyes was enough to feel secure in a small copse of strangely adorned trees.
Trusting each other didn’t seem like much of an option, but it was enough to know they both needed one another. Erika did her best to help mend the mess that Yuka had slashed and stabbed into Garnet’s arm, using up what was left of her sewing kit and sterile wipes to close the nastiest of them.
She was far more deft with the needle on someone else than on herself, and she couldn’t help but feel a certain point of pride in how clean and tidy the dressings on Garnet’s arm looked. It made it easy to silence the voice in her head that said it was a waste of resources, a distraction that would get her killed.
It might’ve been easy then to ask Garnet to help with her own injuries, but Erika only asked for a bit of assistance redressing the work she’d done on her arm and leg. The gash in her abdomen continued to flare up in pain on regular intervals, but it wasn’t bleeding anymore. Mending it would take steady hands, skill, and more twine and sterile liquids than they could afford.
It took more than Garnet had, and she knew her friend would try and help anyways; either because she still cared, or because it was easier to rationalize a mistake than deliberately trying to kill someone.
It was enough that she was there. Seeing her friend as more than just a name on the announcements, or some empty husk where a person used to be. Erika knew she could still be more than that. For Garnet, she’d try and prove it.
A few times in the night Erika had almost tried to say something. Thinking there was some magical combination of words that might make her understand, but none of the sentences forming in her mind sounded even a little bit convincing.
That’s the whole conceit of this place though, isn’t it? I can’t explain what I’m doing. You just have to do it to understand. You almost did, didn’t you?
After some time spent sitting in silence, Erika opted to take the first shift to rest, keeping her knife close at hand. In the few hours she was out, she was set on by muddled visions of steel and blood. Nightmares that blurred the line between the place she’d fallen asleep in and surreal, distorted impressions of her new reality.
There was a rescue helicopter. Men with guns, pulling the collar off Garnet and ushering her to a ladder. Erika could see them, they weren’t so far away, but she couldn’t get up. Couldn’t move, even to breathe. Her arms and legs just wouldn’t respond. A soldier stared down at her. She tried to scream, to beg him for help. The words didn’t pass her lips, and he merely shook his head and walked away.
She woke with a start, wild-eyed and panicked. It took a minute to stop scanning the empty skies.
Garnet had passed out having not woken Erika. They were lucky no one had happened on them in the night. Erika let her sleep for the time being, bending her own promise only slightly. She promised Garnet a day, and it hadn’t been twenty-four hours yet.
Sitting in front of her open duffel bag, she tried to take inventory of what she had left. Even scavenging from others, the only thing she was really replete with was ammunition; rations and water were both running low.
The water still tasted of iodine, and she was sure at least a little bit like the old t-shirt she’d used to filter out particulates. Whether her ad hoc sterilization was still working, she couldn’t be sure. At least for the moment, she wasn’t sick in any serious way. She still felt gross, and worn down. The lack of food was starting to feel like more and more of a problem; the last substantive meal she had was the “award” she received earlier in the week.
On top of all that, she had been long enough off her meds that her endocrine system was surely some kind of disaster. She didn’t even want to guess what her hormone levels were. Even if it was affecting her, she wasn’t sure she could distinguish that imbalance from the rest of her general malaise.
Lowering her shirt back down over the gauze wrapping, Erika couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. It stung a little, but didn’t bleed or smell bad. Luck had been on her side in Lucas not hitting her dead on, but surviving it - that was on her.
That she was here, meant the part of her that once put a gun to her head wasn’t winning. It meant the others hadn’t yet beaten her. There were still options left before she would have to face her fears again. It didn’t feel good, but it didn’t feel horrible either.
And I still have Garnet.
Looking down at the array of weaponry in front of her, she saw purpose in each item.
Looking up at Garnet, she couldn’t help but feel like keeping her here was some new kind of cruelty. Yet as she sat methodically loading bullets back into the pistol’s magazine, it still felt necessary. She had to understand. In the back of her mind, Erika had almost been hoping someone else would come by.
Placing her weapons back where they belonged, she zipped the bag shut and slung it over her shoulder.
“Garnet, wake up.”
