Are You What I Think You Are?

Day 10, PM for entry

The art exhibition is a designated path cutting all the way through the woods to the lookout where many pieces of art created by the community are presented. These pieces include surrealist sculptures, paintings and drawings hung off trees, and many others. It isn't uncommon for people to become disoriented trying to navigate the exhibition as it is sign-posted with what emotions or concepts the pieces represent rather than any actual directions.
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Shiola
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Are You What I Think You Are?

#1

Post by Shiola »

((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.”
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#2

Post by Namira »

((Garnet continued from No Exit))

She gave Erika her back. Twice. It was pretty redundant to dwell on how easy it would have been for Erika to kill her at that point. The opportunities were innumerable now, and Garnet was some way towards believing that she was never going to see it coming. Should they stay or should they keep running across one another, sooner or later, Erika's tolerance would snap and the gun would be turned on Garnet, and that would be that.

So much wishful thinking that there was some repentance to be found. Garnet had tried, or she'd thought she had. She'd tried to steer that ship the slightest bit back on course, but the storm had swept it away long before then. The alternative now wasn't redemption, it was Garnet reaching inside herself for what she'd lacked over and over and over again and discovering she had guts after all.

Sure. Yeah.

Her fr—Erika did a better job of dealing with her injuries than Garnet had done the other way around. There was something strangely calming about seeing the wounds be treated, as much as she flinched and hissed and felt tears springing to her eyes with each sting and poke of the needle. Perhaps just the reassurance that regardless of whether Erika was going to put a bullet in her, she wasn't dying just yet. Perhaps that it was a removal of the ever-present reminder of how she'd just fucked up.

Try as she might, Garnet couldn't access that place in her head she'd been the other day, the kind of righteous mania that had swept her up, fired her courage, made her actually believe. Maybe that flame had been false all along, a heat she'd told herself she felt but had nothing behind it. No substance. Yet again, when it had come to following through, she hadn't. Only difference between punching Marco in the face and shooting at Yuka is that it'd been more lethal for her to fail.

That morning, Garnet's eyes opened.

For a second she felt warm, dozy, almost comfortable. A familiar voice calling to her. The voice... the voice.

Erika.

The return wasn't a crash or a flood. Instead it simply seeped into her, reminding her of the bone-deep fatigue, the soreness, the grime, the aching in her chest and her stomach.

Garnet sat up.
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#3

Post by Shiola »

"Hey."

Watching Garnet sit up, Erika immediately recognized a familiar sequence of sensations her friend seemed to display. It was surely routine for most of them. Rousing, confusion, discomfort, alarm, a brief moment of terror, and then quiet resignation. Initially Erika had thought of suggesting where they might part ways, putting some kind of time limit on how long they'd spend with one another. Keep to her original stated aims of just giving Garnet a day, the time Erika knew she could afford to give.

Seeing someone come to life like that, that look when they remembered where they were and who they were with - no, she had to understand. It was the only way either of them would ever find peace.

Erika knelt down next to Garnet, wincing momentarily until the pain in her side abated. She took a second to compose herself, and catch her breath.

You'll get it. You were almost there, yesterday. If you could see it, what you have to do, we could talk about it, maybe...

Suddenly lucid again, Erika pointed vaguely up towards the canopy, as if the birds were somehow the carriers of the morning's announcements instead of the speakers haphazardly installed around the art pieces.

"Announcements are soon, I think. How're you feeling?"
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#4

Post by Namira »

"Hurts less."

They'd spoken little during their time together, only the bare minimum needed to convey what they were doing. Lift your arm. Sit still. This'll sting. Although their friendship had revolved around playing a game together, you couldn't have a group that stuck together as long as theirs without having some camaraderie, a social connection. Everyone had chatted before and after sessions, sometimes during, cause a little crosstalk now and then wasn't the end of the world. There'd been an ease, a familiarity, she hadn't even needed to think about what she was saying, it was just hanging out with a friend.

What was left of their bond now? Garnet had thought it was broken but that wasn't true. There was some twisted semblance of what they'd had, or else Erika would have killed her a dozen times over.

..."You?"
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#5

Post by Shiola »

Erika shrugged with one shoulder, having learned by now not to raise the other one too far. She caught the words “I’m okay” in her mouth before taking a second. Nothing about her could’ve seemed okay, and she didn’t want to lie.

“Like shit, but better than yesterday.”

Trying to be the friends they once were, it was like they were taking a break from who they had to be out there; the characters they both played in SOTF. It felt good, and made it easy for Erika to understand why so many groups had stayed together through all of this. Having another person around made it easier to forget who she was, and who she had to be.

What they knew of one another, the way they’d used to talk and the places they found one another - that was the fiction now, the make-believe. They were pretending to it here; it was enough of an escape that Erika wasn’t sure either of them knew how to stop.

“I was about to shoot myself, y’know. Lucas shot at me ‘cause he wanted to be the one to do it. I haven’t tried again since. The pain keeps me hanging on, sorta.”
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#6

Post by Namira »

Terrible, but better.

Garnet didn't know how to think of that. Better because of her? Better because things hurt less?

Better because there were a few less people in the way, between her and the end?

Garnet didn't ask any of those questions. She couldn't even think of some inane bullshit to fill up the empty spaces and force through a generic conversation. She both wanted that and didn't. Didn't, because it would be a joke, and obvious fraud. Did, because... because maybe that fantasy was all that was left of normal. Ever again.

Erika jolted her out of it with what she said next. Garnet's initial reaction was shock, shock, and, in spite of herself, an empathic twinge of sorrow. No matter how much she told herself not to feel sorry for this person, she just—ugh. Fucking—goddammit.

"Good timing for you then, I guess."

In another time or place, that would have been callous. Now, it was almost matter of fact.

She told herself not to think of the rifle, and when she'd found it.
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#7

Post by Shiola »

Erika felt foolish for expecting more than that, but the feeling didn't persist. She knew where they both were with one another; if that situation had gone differently, Erika's demise probably would've been a relief to Garnet. That they both seemed to realize this almost felt good. Like there was some relief in not having to hang onto the conceit that other people weren't necessarily obstacles to long-term survival. It was honest.

"Fantastic timing. Like finding out after you jump off a rooftop that you didn't really want to. Said I deserved to die, but I didn't get to kill myself. He had to do it, because he was meant to. Ty apparently helped him on the way, too. Lucas made it his whole purpose."

She smirked. The whole thing seemed like such a fucking cosmic joke, in retrospect, but not a very funny one.

"And he ended up saving me. He ended up being right cause... I don't get to take the easy way out now. I can't. I guess I should be glad, shouldn't I?."

The speakers crackled overhead, and Danya's voice cut off Erika as she trailed off. The sardonic assclown began reading off the names of the previous day's dead, and Erika stared ahead as she had each day before, trying to commit names and faces to memory. Assessing threats. Hoping for familiar ones, so she wouldn't have to cross paths with them again.

Six dead and three killers in, and Danya made it to Yuka. Danya didn't embellish or joke much about her kills. It must've been her methods. Guns were quick, or they were if you knew what you were doing, if you didn't get sloppy. Yuka and Amber deserved better than that.

Then, the name she'd been waiting for. He died fighting someone else, Claude, the weird Jesus-freak turned killer. Drowned him. Won the battle, lost the war, Danya said.

Her eyes shut at the mention of Ty's name, and she kept them shut through the rest of the announcements. The words from the speakers turned to white noise, and Erika curled into herself as much as her injured body would allow. Though she buried her head into the crook of her arm, she wasn't able to mask the sound of sniffling and the appearance of tears.

It's over. He's not suffering anymore. He went out fighting. Wasn't that what he wanted? Wasn't this what I wanted?

He could've been here. They could've fought to the end together. He could've died that day they met in the forest. She could've asked him to stop her from doing this. She accepted him, and he would've accepted anything in return. Even what she was, now. And she wouldn't have felt like she was insane, that she had to convince anyone of anything.

They could have and should have and might have, but they didn't. Now it was really over.








Erika looked up from her arm, wiping the tears from her eyes as she met Garnet's gaze once again. She shook her head in a pre-emptive denial. It was fine, of course, and this spree killer in front of Garnet deserved no concern.

"Sorry. I wasn't ready for it. I thought after everything I'd just no-sell it when it happened, feel nothing, but..."

I hate what I did to him. I miss him. I was wrong.

"...I guess I'm not like that. Not for everything, at least."
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#8

Post by Namira »

Garnet didn't know whether it meant anything to her that Erika had realised she hadn't wanted it.

She wanted it not to mean a thing.

She felt it did.

The longer they stuck together, the longer Garnet clung to this shred of normalcy, the worse it felt. But tearing away from it, severing that last link that she had--that was almost too unbearable to consider.

What little resemblance they had to a conversation broke to pieces as the announcement played. Garnet covered her face. Death, death, death. She was past mourning individuals now, each fresh blow just another splatter across her bloodsoaked mind. She could barely even muster the energy to hate herself for being so numbed to it all.

One name did break through for Erika, though. Garnet heard that slight noise from across the way and looked over.

Garnet wanted, for a second, to express condolences.

Garnet wanted, for a second, to twist the knife.

Then she did.

"Think the others are feeling how you do right now?"
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#9

Post by Shiola »

Garnet’s words cut deeply, the question a succinct summation of how Erika had felt every time she broke down, every time she found herself sickened at what she had to do.

So many others.

Erika knew she had killed fourteen people, and she knew that she had wounded countless more in doing so. She’d seen it on the island already, and if she survived she’d spend the rest of her life trying to figure out how to face them.

Her suspicion was that there wasn’t going to be a right way. Some might forgive her, see her as a victim of circumstance, but Erika wasn’t even sure she really believed that by now. Why she did it or who was responsible couldn’t change that she had done it.

But it’s not those people I need to talk to.

Anyone on the outside who couldn’t understand why she did this, couldn't be made to. None of them were here. None of them would ever understand what it was like to have a bomb strapped to your neck for days on end. What it felt like to have to become something you weren’t, just to save something that you eventually realize isn’t coming back.

Garnet got that because she was still here. She was the only one who had anything to say about it that Erika wanted to listen to.

And she was asking if Erika thought about how she’d made others feel this way. She must’ve thought that this was done coldly, that Erika didn’t know or didn’t care about the lives she had to destroy.

Part of her felt hurt and empty at the way she replied, but Erika suppressed those emotions. All it meant was that Garnet still wasn’t where she needed to be, where Erika needed her to be. Garnet didn’t ask the right questions, and so she didn’t get the answers she really needed. Not yet.

You’ll get there.

Erika reached out and took hold of her’s hand, hesitating for a moment as her friend glared back at her.

“Yeah, they do. Lucas hunted me for days because of what I did to Desiree. And I watched Katie and Saffron hold each other at the end. Tonya had a son. Amber was my friend, her parents know me. I saw it in Yuka, yesterday. She was there when I shot her sister.

I know what I've done, Garnet.”
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#10

Post by Namira »

Garnet didn't know whether she'd made a mistake and she didn't know whether she cared. She'd wanted the comment to hurt, when she said it, that was the point. But if Erika reacted badly, would she...

Erika didn't get violent, but she did take Garnet's hand. Garnet jolted, but didn't jerk away.

She knew, and... what? What else? That hadn't stopped her, knowing what she'd caused, the hearts she'd ripped to pieces.

"I said I wouldn't throw you away, but you're that many steps down that path and you kept going?

"You're walking away."
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#11

Post by Shiola »

Erika shook her head.

“I’m still here, now.”

This part of her was just as real as the instincts that led her to run and hide and kill. Those instincts were meant to be there, as monstrous as they were. They protected her, let her do what she had to do. She wasn't sorry for what she did, only that she had to do it. The part of her that spoke now was trying to save something more, though.

“I just need you to...”

End this.

She trailed off, letting go of Garnet’s hand. Words didn’t seem to be enough. There wasn’t an easy way to ask for what Erika needed from her. It was hard to imagine Garnet like that, and she almost didn't want to. Still, Erika knew if Garnet did figure it out, that might make it all okay. It would silence the inner voice that never seemed to run out of ways to make everything hurt.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to walk away from you. I didn’t want to walk away from Ty. I had to. I thought I was supposed to love people, not... this. I wish I could’ve saved anyone else, but we don’t get to do that here, not in the way we’d like. Different ways, I guess.”

Garnet couldn’t save her the way she wanted to, but she could still save Erika, and herself. She could end it. If she understood, then everything would be alright. They could still be friends, then. They’d be on the same side. For a moment.

“So I’m going to do what I have to, I won’t stop. I wish you’d understand, but I can’t make you. Maybe you already get it, I dunno. Ten days and you’re still here, and camped out with me, of all people. And you’re alive.”

Erika hung on that last word. Alive. Speaking uneasily, as if she wasn’t sure she was, but she knew Garnet to be. She sat back, checking the collar radar once again. They were still alone.
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#12

Post by Namira »

Erika claimed that she was still here, but that wasn't true. She wasn't.

Garnet had left her twice. The first when she'd failed to catch up, the second when she thought, or maybe just hoped, that she'd done what she could. Maybe that had been Garnet walking away as much as Erika. Maybe that was the beginnings of throwing Erika, discarding her.

The third time she left Erika would be the last.

Garnet didn't speak at the denial, but she gave Erika a long look. Here with Garnet was a far cry from here, no matter how they stalled their way through conversations, no matter how long they abided with whatever... code, whatever agreement it was that kept Erika from butchering her and Garnet from finally doing something about all of this.

(Codes, Was that what they called cowardice now?)

But there it was plain. Erika wouldn't stop. Garnet had known that on some level when she'd helped her before. She'd known that it was an excuse she was making for herself, kidding herself that maybe a few words would reverse course.

She breathed.

"I don't know who you are.

"I don't know who I am."

Garnet laughed, a harsh little bark.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to get. That I'm a lucky fucking idiot? Someone who picked a bunch of fights, accomplished nothing, somehow didn't die?

"That's why I'm alive. It's luck."

She didn't even stray towards the gun, she didn't even really know if she was still antagonising Erika.

"I should go," she mumbled.
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#13

Post by Shiola »

It wasn’t the laugh that caused Erika to recoil, but the words that followed. Erika wanted to think it was a turn of phrase, that Garnet didn’t mean it the way that Erika heard it. Trying to ascribe her survival to chance, like it was an accident somehow.

None of this is an accident.

Garnet mumbled something, but the words didn’t really register to Erika. She stood back up, turning her back on Garnet for a moment. Waited. Nothing. Not even the shuffle of feet or the soft *thunk* of one of those big shells being loaded into the Martini-Henry.

This isn’t working. It’s never going to work.

Her hands balled into fists. She turned back, crying out in disbelief.

“Luck? You think you’re lucky?!

The bottom fell out of what might have been an expletive-laden tirade, and Erika threw up her hands. Looking around to the trees and the cameras and to their collars, she still couldn’t find any words for it. How Garnet could use a word like luck here. How anyone could think that this was just happenstance, some cosmic fuckup. No. People did this. People made this place.

She reached up towards her collar, tugging on it nervously. Thinking of how she hadn’t been awake when they put it on her, how violated she’d felt when she woke up and how she still felt that way every single time she woke up and it was still there. They did this. It wasn’t luck. Their lives were stolen, and every breath they took now was one they took back.

And Garnet thought the moments she lived now belonged to chance. Luck. Didn’t see where her own actions came into play when it came to surviving, to living her own life again. Had every chance to try again, to cross the line she needed to and take back control.

Maybe no one was ever going to understand. No one could know who Erika was anymore. No one would let her go, let her escape. No one would escape with her. No one would tell her it was okay, that they understood, that they really were friends, and they’d make it all stop.

There was always going to be a collar, even when this one came off.

Her fingers curled around the grip of the pistol sticking out of the back of her waistband. A semi-automatic. Pull the trigger, and the mechanism takes care of the rest, loading a new cartridge all on its own. She wasn’t so different. Decide to kill, and some mechanism in her mind took care of the rest, going through every motion until it was done, without thinking, without manual input. It just had to be done.

I promised my friend twenty-four hours. So that’s the time she has.

It could wait. She let go of the handgun, leaving it tucked into her waistband. Erika looked back to Garnet, aware of the thoughts that might’ve been going through her head at that very moment. The tone of her voice was muted, underscored by resignation. Her right hand trembled slightly, and she clasped it in the left to stop it from doing so.

“You’re alive. That’s on you.

But you’re right; it’s time to go.”

Any rational person would have shot Erika in the back when she turned, or killed her in the night. Garnet was still figuring it out. Garnet needed time. She needed to leave. Erika’s nervous posture quickly gave way to a pragmatic one and she shrugged the shotgun off of her shoulder, catching it in her right hand. She turned it on its side, and set it down in front of Garnet. She then produced the box of shells out of her bag, and set it down next to the gun as well.

“I think we should switch long guns before you go; you're not gonna hit shit with that thing.” She pointed to the Martini-Henry.

Garnet nearly killed her with it, without even knowing it. A slug that tore through the wall of the closet during her gunfight with Yuka. Erika could still smell the sulphur, the splinters of wood. In many ways it felt like the closest she’d ever get to knowing what the inside of a coffin was like.

She continued, extolling the merits of the Browning Auto-5. It really was the better weapon for someone like Garnet. It would keep her alive.

“You need something that’s easier to use. This can hold a few shells at a time, and you don’t have to fuck with a lever, or really spend all that much time aiming, you just point and shoot. I made the sling out of shoelaces I tied together. The kick is basically the same. You’ll do fine.”
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#14

Post by Namira »

Suddenly, Erika raised her voice. Garnet surprised herself by not flinching. It took her a few seconds to really piece together why. Erika was reacting, properly reacting, and with something other than the jagged doubt, the resignation that said she was plodding step by step towards another killing or else dying herself. That little bit of anger almost outweighed everything else that Erika had given her to that point. It showed she still had something in her, that there was a scrap left within that wasn't fixed on death. Even how she'd responded to Ty dying had felt more like an involuntary bit of emotion, and hell, she'd said herself that she thought she wouldn't feel a thing, like she'd been expecting it, and expecting not to care, either.

But Garnet calling it how it was? That got her to care.

The first time Garnet picked a fight with the wrong person, Erika had been on hand—by fluke—to bail her out of trouble. It was just that simple. No grand design, no survival expertise. Nothing that Garnet was doing to help her survive for all this time. She hadn't been tough, she hadn't been brave, and she sure as hell hadn't been smart. What else did you call that but luck?

Garnet looked across at Erika, seeing how she fidgeted and shook, seeing the discomfort and uncertainty running through each motion, every breath.

In that moment, Garnet was certain Erika was considering killing her.

She flexed her fingers.

The moment passed. An inch of tension seeped from the air. Erika laid one of the weapons in front of her. Garnet looked down at it. What Erika said did make sense. The rifle was unwieldy and her inability to properly aim it was a chunk of what had landed her in hot water when she'd tried to—when she'd tried to kill Yuka. (The other was home-grown Garnet stupidity, recklessness, ruthlessness... the list of ingredients in that cocktail went on and on). Thing was, between Erika's experience and the collar radar, with how Garnet knew Erika must have killed with that other rifle that she'd broken, was letting her have another long-ranged weapon a good idea? Erika was beaten up and running on fumes—Garnet tried and failed not to consider that her own presence probably had kept Erika from hurling herself into danger again—if she was able to hang back and snipe from afar, she could deal even more damage. If, on the other hand, she was forced to continue to engage up close, while the radar would give her an advantage, Erika would still have to expose herself to a much higher chance of—

Garnet's thoughts slid off the rails as she realised that she was considering how best she could set Erika up to die.

Couldn't even fucking do it herself, could she? Still, after all this time, could only hint around the edges, make out that it was some kind of—ohh what a tragedy it would be if Erika somehow died due to rough circumstances, finally running into an encounter she couldn't shoot her way out of. Heaven forbid Garnet muster the guts to do something about it herself. She'd already proven she couldn't.

She stooped and picked up the shotgun, then dropped the other on the floor.

Fuck it.

Garnet straightened up.

Take care?

Don't die?

See you later?

"...Bye."

((Garnet Barnes continued in +1 DETERMINATION))
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#15

Post by Shiola »

“...yeah.”

That was it, then. A “bye”, and nothing more.

Erika knelt unmoving as Garnet left her the Martini-Henry, leaving with the Auto-5 and whatever impressions she’d gleaned from their time together. She remained held in place, waiting until the sound of Garnet’s footsteps was too distant to discern.

For a few moments, she imagined the footsteps coming back. Erika listened for the telltale click of the safety on the Auto-5 being switched off. Hoping that it was over before she heard the report of the shotgun, so that as far as she was concerned her world might fade without as much of a sound. Worth it, for that millisecond of understanding. That action that would say I know why you did this. That it might be at least justified. At this point it was impossible to excuse with the promise of a life beyond this.

All she heard was wind through leaves and the din of life in the tropical forest. No footsteps heralding her end, no rounds being loaded into chambers or knives being drawn from their sheathes.

Nothing.

Erika opened her eyes, looking down at the old rifle and the belt of ammunition that belonged to it. The second time it had come into her possession, after Tyrell brought it to her, a twisted kind of gift. The first weapon she’d killed with, making a shot even the terrorists seemed to think was impressive.

The heavy slugs of the Martini-Henry weren’t especially accurate, not even close to the PSG-1, but they were powerful and kept going well past what buckshot or a nine millimeter could do. Protracted firefights weren’t an option for her, at this point. Not when so many were toting powerful weapons they’d been awarded, or scavenged off of the bodies of their classmates. Once again, she’d have to reach out at long range and hope exhaustion and injury weren’t too taxing on her ability to aim. Strike quickly, then retreat into the woods. Use the radar as long as its batteries held out, to make sure she dictated the terms of every engagement.

Focus on the method. That’s all there needs to be, she thought. Only her goals, and how they had to be pursued.

She ejected an empty shell from the rifle, retrieving a fresh one from the bandolier. The brass clattered to the ground, and for a moment she thought she heard footsteps through the brush. Erika fell still once again, though she avoided the temptation to shut her eyes again. The brass cartridge gleamed pleasantly in the sunlight streaming in from the trees.

“Garnet?”

Nothing, still.

She dropped the cartridge into the chamber, and closed it gently. She didn’t need the radar to discern that there wasn’t anyone there.

A strong breeze, some creature scurrying through the underbrush, wishful thinking. An auditory hallucination, drawn out of hope for some vindication, that going this far was some kind of natural response to this situation. She couldn’t help but indulge this obsessive, gnawing desire for reassurance, understanding, some promise that at least part of this was forgivable. That she could stop dwelling on her sins, and could let them speak for themselves.

If someone as good and decent as Erika hoped she once was could follow the same path, it meant she could accept what she’d done. Atone for it, in the only meaningful way. And she knew Garnet could really escape from this place, if she’d done it. Erika knew she was the kind of person someone could kill and people might actually understand why. Society would forgive Garnet where they could never forgive her.

And if her instincts had won out, and she killed Garnet instead? That would say something, too. It was an answer she’d accept, even if accepting it was itself another kind of damnation.

Yet, it didn’t work. Either Erika said too little, or too much. Maybe there wasn’t anything that could’ve been said that would’ve led that way. They were both fragments of who they used to be, and it seemed like the pieces of them that might’ve found some understanding were long since gone.

Or maybe the part of me that wants to die is just wrong. Can’t do it myself, so I try and fabricate a reason to be okay with someone else doing it? Why was I okay with that?

She inhaled sharply, images of Amber stumbling half-dead coming quickly to mind, bringing with it the sight of Oliver’s shattered jaw and Blake’s dying pupils; unable to stop herself from picturing those who had fought back, and the others who couldn’t.

No one else would question why she’d want to end it, at this point. The people who really thought she should die, they didn’t dress it up in desperate quests for meaning and significance in the face of imminent doom, they just thought she was selfish and evil. They didn’t have time for her story, for her thoughts, for who she’d tried to be before all of this.

A monosyllabic farewell and the silence that followed - that was the answer to all of these questions, these nagging, cowardly pleas for reassurance. It wasn’t the one she wanted, but the one she had. Her body still cried out for rest; there was more than enough space in the woods to find it, to steal away from the others and prepare for what was still to come.

For a while, Erika lingered around the art exhibition, checking the collar radar in between long gazes at the dilapidated pieces. By the time the sun had started to set, she had disappeared into the woods, once again making for the northern coast of the island.

((Erika Stieglitz continued elsewhere))
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