A Catastrophy Played By a Symphony

[Applesintime]

((Matthew Bell continued from Scholar's Mate))

Not a drink left unshattered in the place. If there was any alcohol left in the bar, which Matthew didn't think there would be on account of the terrorists hating fun. They'd probably spun a tale to Danya about how all the kids would do is mope and grieve and do his least favourite thing, dying of natural causes, and he'd poured all the bottles down the sink or into the ocean.

Well, given the whole shitshow they were in, maybe their 'natural causes' weren't so natural. Without Danya's help, there sure as shit wouldn't be people drowning or freezing or falling off of cliffs and mountains. They were a hell of a lot more natural than falling face-first into a spike pit and getting your head blown off, though

Sitting in one of the few booths that hadn't been collapsed on or shredded by shrapnel - what the fuck had happened to this place anyway? - Matthew just... he just kinda sat really. There wasn't really much else to it. Processing what he'd just done, what he'd just seen. It was probably hypocritical to go all 'oh woe is me I am such a sad sad person' and it was also pretty fucking lame regardless, but you know what, he'd just blown his friend's face off after all of the shit that he'd gone through, maybe he deserved a little moping around.

The Army wasn't coming. Whatever the fuck had happened, Danya and his merry crew had been unimpeded. Maybe they'd fought them off successfully, maybe they managed to escape. Shit, maybe the explosion that had all alerted them was just someone's gas stove or a propane tank going kaboom and cutting the feed off. They'd all read into it that the army was coming, but maybe there wasn't anything coming. Maybe it was just something else and they'd all jumped on a little hope.

Matthew sighed, reaching into his bag and pulling out a food bar. He wasn't even hungry, but he had to do something, and going around killing people didn't seem awfully fucking appealing anymore. When he'd first killed Jack, Ren, he was pretty fucking happy. Less players, less bad people, less people for Kitty to use as human shields. Now he was what, seven people in, and the worst he'd felt about it was Shawn. Half of them hadn't really fucking done anything. Cali was... well, that felt a lot harder to justify than Ren. And Valentin and Alexander... well, the less said about that one, the better. He could try and blame Shawn for it all he wanted, but Matthew had pulled the trigger.

Maybe that was his thing all along. Matthew does the dirty work while Shawn sails along cleanly without a body to his name. But he couldn't bring himself to think that way about his best friend. Not when his body wasn't even fucking cold.

God, he wished this place had a drink. It'd make thinking harder, and that's what he needed right now, to stop goddamn thinking. Getting up and grabbing his rifle, he squeezed himself out through a hole in one of the side walls that was just kinda barely staying up - seriously, what the fuck had happened to this place? Did the Air Force come in to bomb Danya and seriously fuck things up? Did it just collapse of its own accord? The rest of it looked like a stiff breeze would knock it over, so it had been a stupid ass idea to go there, but he'd been drawn there anyway.

Letting the cold chill embrace him, Matthew checked both ways before starting to cross the road.

Probably wasn't a good thing, but he just kinda wanted to keep going. Killing. With no army, there was no way out other than what he'd already been doing. Play Danya's little game so when it gets down to it, you can get there and strangle the bastard to death. It wouldn't be as simple as that, but fuck, he had to have something to keep him going, a nice pleasant thought that at the end of all this he could make sure this never happened again. Not like the Army he praised so much was doing a single fucking thing to stop it.

[almostinhuman]

((Jacob Winters continued from it's raining somewhere else))

Bad luck, it seemed. Salem was nowhere in town, far as he could tell. Or at least nowhere he'd managed to check. Unfortunately, that meant he was out in the wilderness, where Jacob would struggle to follow, or up the mountain, which Jacob wasn't sure he could even begin trying to ascend now. It'd been hard enough when he wasn't hurt, but with his leg busted and his head still reeling, he didn't fancy the odds. He'd probably just tumble down the mountain for real this time, no Greg or goats to save him.

After such a fruitless day - and after what he'd found instead of Salem - it was probably time to call it quits for now. Find a place to hunker down. And maybe find a place to get a bit addled, now that he was out of weed. And the map revealed one such place where that might be possible.

Of course, it'd help if he hadn't stumbled upon it right as someone was leaving. A someone he had reason to avoid - Matt Bell. Another repeat offender on the announcements, but not the one he was personally looking for. Unfortunately, Jacob had only noticed him right as he stumbled out from between the houses across the street from the lodge Matthew was just leaving.

Jacob froze. It was a bit late to book it and hide, especially given his leg. He settled for awkwardly waving at him, displaying his empty hands and hoping that was enough to stop him from attacking.

[Applesintime]

Up went the rifle, purely on instinct at this point. It took him a second to place the face, given this guy wasn't on the 'immediately shoot on sight' list. Yeah, he'd made a whole fucking thought about how killing people was the only path forwards, but looking at this guy - Jacob, Jacob Winter or Winters or something - with a little look of pure fucking fear on his face, showing empty hands like a little kid accused of stealing didn't make him any more enthusiastic about the idea of gunning someone down who was unarmed. The Marines probably wouldn't like that - but with how his ears still gently rang, he was pretty sure that door was shut.

"Jacob," Matthew called out, letting the rifle drop slightly. "Got a few questions for you. Kai, Marshall, uh, what's her name... June! You seen any of them running around?" That whole little shitshow had led to Shawn's death, if June hadn't shot him they'd still be teamed up and ready to kick some fucking ass. Sure, maybe Shawn'd betray him at some point, but... but he wasn't gonna think about a friend like that, especially not a dead one. He still needed to finish off the last remnants of Katelyn's murder group, so Kai had to go and if June and Marshall wanted some lead too, all the better for it.

"Not going to shoot you." You're not worth the bullet, Matthew thought, shifting his feet with a gentle crunch of the snow and watching his breath turn into mist. If Jacob wanted it, he'd happily fucking get it, but once he slipped past that bravado, gunning down another unarmed man didn't seem very appealing.

[almostinhuman]

Jacob shook his head.

"Not seen a trace of 'em."

It was true, too. He'd bumped into nobody today until now, the dead body aside. He wasn't sure how many of them were left, but probably not many if he'd been alone for that long. They'd been here for, like, two weeks now, and the slaughter hadn't let up the whole time; the herd had to be mighty thin by now. And he'd never encountered any of the kids Matt was looking for the entire time he'd been here, either. Why Matt wanted to find them Jacob had no fuckin' clue. Maybe it was in line with why Jacob was hunting Salem, maybe he had some old petty grudge from before their lives went to utter shit, maybe he just wanted to kill everyone in some weird order he'd made up in his fucked-up head.

But as long as he was here, holding Jacob at gunpoint, he might be able to help Jacob out, at least a little.

"So, uh..."

Jacob's arms lowered, crossing over his chest as his posture relaxed a bit. He sure fucking hoped Matt wasn't lying when he said he wasn't gonna shoot him.

"How about you? Seen Salem anywhere?"

[Applesintime]

"If I had seen him, he'd have a bullet in him." It wasn't a betrayal, that was something closer to what Shawn had done even if he refused to see it that way, but Matthew still felt goddamn pissed about him. Salem'd always been a pretty cool guy outside of all this, but here he was gleefully ticking up his body count like half of the deranged fuckers still wandering around the place. Given that Shawn was now dead, well, Salem was the only person he could call a friend left on this island, and he figured a meeting would leave one bleeding to death on the floor.

"Or I'd have a bullet in me. After all, I did put a bullet in his sister." Although Matthew cracked a humourless grin, his pose remained static, disciplined, the rifle pointing far away enough from Jacob to not be holding him at gunpoint but close enough that he could easily put a bullet into him if needed. That wasn't public knowledge quite yet, huh? Nothing about it on the announcements, same with whatever had happened to that mysterious non-Evie he'd shot. Danya was actually kind of shit at keeping this shit tracked. Another thing to needle him about.

"You looking to kill him?"

[almostinhuman]

Jacob's eyes widened minutely at the comment about Cali. He'd not known that bit of info yet. Had it just happened, or had just been revealed on one of the announcements he'd missed? He wasn't sure it even mattered at this point. He wouldn't be surprised if pretty much everyone left had blood on their hands by now. Well, except for him, but that wasn't for lack of trying. It didn't seem right, that they were possibly all that was left by now. But it did seem like the standard way these things go. It was much more like what he'd assumed the whole affair would be like, more than the early days of laughing and getting high and relaxing with a bunch of semi-strangers.

To Matt's question, Jacob nodded.

"That's the idea."

[Applesintime]

"Well shit, good luck with that." Salem had a long list of bodies to his name, nearly as many as Matthew did. At this point there were too many for him to remember the explicit details except whoever he killed, but it was at least like, five or so? He'd wiped out the wheelchair girl, uh, uh... yeah that was the only one that came to mind. What a bum goddamn deal for her. Anyway, point still stood. Jacob was gonna have to get real lucky if he was gonna be the one to put an end to Salem, and luck was in real short supply here.

Matthew could help. Offer one of his spare guns, the shotgun or something. But in this kinda environment, handing off a gun to someone you barely knew was dumb. He wouldn't interfere by putting a bullet in Jacob, but at the same time all he was gonna do was shrug his shoulders and move on. With how many guys were dead there were probably a good few guns to find scattered around here anyway. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps or some shit.

Shrugging, he glanced back behind him, just in case there was someone there looking to sneak up on the two, before returning his gaze to Jacob.

[Dogs231]

In the distance was a figure, its tall form broken by the spirit weights on it, chest pressed, hard to breathe now, like Giles Corey below the rocks, shoulder laid low by the weight of the boulder, the ghost of Sisyphus hanging like the devil on her shoulder. Its eyes were lightless and devoid, her expression one of complete and utter obliteration, an annihilated self—staring not at them but at something nonexistent in the distance, somewhere else, a thousand miles away from everything in the world.

And there was nothing behind its blue-gray eyes but endless twilight.

S091: CLAIRE HAIG — CONTINUED FROM "Last Words"

Claire was in pain—from the dull, throbbing hurt that felt like a masher striking at her brain to the burning flame-like tendrils of misery that crept down from her shoulder to her back, to the pangs of gnawing hunger in her stomach (she had not willingly eaten anything in some time), to the acute, knife-like stabs in every single joint, death by a thousand cuts, to the wound in her reality, an echo in her very soul—she was in pain. Everything hurt—existing hurt. And yet, despite that, she did exist.

Once, she thought, there was something extraordinary about pain. Its mangled embrace was a step outside the realm, into another world, an instinctual precursor to their current existence in a world that sought to rend them of emotion, turn flesh into machine. Even here, in an alien universe from the one they had departed, it kept her vigilant, shocking her awake even as her mind clambered into the dreaming place. But now—after what felt akin to a thousand years of suffering—she had realized it.

There was nothing extraordinary about it. After one has experienced pain for long enough, there ceases to be anything special about it. Only the pain itself remains. In her time here—in this Hades of an island—she had come to understand that fact, the banal nature of its languid evil and the insipid prosody of her pain. There were only so many eternities of torture to endure before they ceased to mean anything—before one began to check out from the hotel of their inner faculties, no lights behind them.

Claire was long, long past that point. Her movements were lethargic and lugubrious, a mourning, slog-like march towards the end that was indeed approaching. The winds of change had, in that manner, taken all the wind out of her sails, leaving her dead on the high seas of the soul, her slow movements guided by nothing but the pull at her of the hands of fate, dancing and twirling along like just another marionette on the strings of a higher power, powerless to resist the whims of that which lay beyond her.

[almostinhuman]

"Thanks, though I think the submachine gun I got's more helpful than luck."

It felt unsettling, speaking so casually of the weapon weighing down his bag and what he intended to do with it. But he supposed he'd long passed any hesitancy on the matter. This was the plan, and nibbling around it out of some uneasiness with saying so wouldn't do him any good. Especially if he wanted to convince someone to help.

Did he want Matt's help, though? That he wasn't so sure. He got the sense the only way he'd be getting that is if Jacob agreed to help Matt on his own crusade. It was a line Jacob wasn't sure he was ready to cross, despite all the other crossed lines before it. Molly may have killed before they met, and she may have wanted Jacob's help and protection, but she hadn't asked Jacob to hunt anyone down for her. Was killing Salem so important to him that he'd actively aid in killing three more people just to get it done? And if they did kill Salem, it seemed all too likely that he'd be in Matt's sights next. It seemed inevitable, really, that someone like Matt was gonna eventually start shooting first and asking questions never.

This train of thought was interrupted when Jacob's eye caught movement on the horizon. His vision hadn't entirely unblurred yet, but he could at least tell that someone was heading their way.

"Yo," he nodded at the approaching figure, "that one of the one's you're looking for?"

[Applesintime]

Well, good thing he didn't offer over a spare gun if Jacob had a goddamn SMG in his bag.

That did grab his attention just a little, eyes glancing towards the bag Jacob carried with him. An SMG, an automatic weapon of any kind really, was a gamechanger here. Julia had nearly gunned down the three of them - and now there was only one. Funny how things went. - just by sheer volume of firepower. Matthew had a rifle, and that was still a hell of a lot better than the pistol in his waistband given he knew how to use it, but an SMG for close range? The idea floated around his head of demanding Jacob drop that bag of his, but before the rifle could go back up he remembered that little shotgun of Shawn's that was in his bag. That was probably better. No point intentionally antagonising any more armed people.

He'd win that fight, though. Honestly, apart from Kai and his grenade launcher it was hard to think of a fight he wouldn't win. A good shot with the rifle and if they weren't dead, they'd be bleeding out. Whip out the shotgun if they got too close, and then if all else failed he had the pistol. Just don't let them get the drop on you.

Speaking of worrying about people getting the drop on him, Matthew glanced behind him when Jacob nodded at the mysterious figure, primed to raise the rifle and fire blind if he had fallen for 'hey look behind you'. After everything he'd done, how far he'd come, that would have just been a fucking embarassing way to go.

"No... I don't think so." He turned fully, rifle trained on the figure that kinda looked more feminine the closer it got. God, they had terrible light here.

"HEY! WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?" Matthew shouted out. He had the idea of telling them to put their hands up, but uh, if they did anything sussy he'd just put a bullet in them, easy.

[Applesintime]

Something loud rang out from the other end of the town and Matthew's finger nearly goddamn slipped on the trigger as he startled. The mysterious girl approaching them was lucky enough that he had a little more discipline then that, though. At first he thought it was an announcement or something playing but it was too early for that. Way too fucking early. It was loud enough that even on the other end, he could still kinda make it out. Something something, Interpol and SEALS, collars not being monitored, home.

Home.

Glancing over to where the sound had come from, a big red flare shot up into the sky like a star guiding them home. Matthew stared at it for a second, having forgotten about the figure approaching. Slowly, he broke out into a grin. Home sweet fucking home. He'd lasted long enough that whatever happened in that explosion a day or two ago had given the Army enough time to pull them out. (And yeah, it was the SEALS not the Army but fuck it, they're like the Navy's army. Or no, that's the Marines.)

But it was bittersweet. Corbin and Shawn should have been with him. They'd all be going home together, friends forged by this shit into brothers. But it was just him. He'd left Corbin to die like a coward and Shawn was dead as well. God fucking damn it, if he'd just waited. If he'd went somewhere else, searched somewhere else, maybe Shawn would still be alive. After that betrayal he didn't know what he'd think of him, but he wanted his friend back now. If he didn't get to go home, why did Kai? Why did Salem? Why did any of those sons of bitches deserve to go home over someone else?

"Jacob, uh, take our friend," he nodded at the figure, "and get out of here. I've... got someone I wanna grab, make sure their body gets home to be buried. I'll meet you there." It was a lie, and he felt bad about lying to someone who hadn't done anything.

But he had one last thing to do. Nodding at Jacob, he broke off into a run, heading in the direction of the flare calling them home.

((Matthew Bell continued in One Last Roll in the Dark))

[Yonagoda]

There was a shambling girl trudging to this little group.

She dragged herself. There was something clogging up her sinuses.

"Do you see it?"

"Do you see the light? The smoke? They said- There's..."

She trailed off. Her voice was too hoarse. The tips of her fingers were turning blue.

"Interpol. Coming."

[Dogs231]

There was no response to the rancor but the hissing, flute-like sound of the Aeolian. Claire was merely its vessel, carried along by it, drifting where she may, where it sought her, where needed, where she needed to be, content to be taken for the ride. Her arm, the one which held the golden blade of the khopesh, hung limply at her right side, the only signs of life in it the precise and careful clutch it had on the go, muscles tight and taut around her wrist, a dead man's hand the way it looked like rigor mortis.

Her eyes stared off into the distance—seeing, without seeing—towards the smog as if their whole world was going up in flames. She watched the crimson red star, a bloodstained Polaris, the diamond-shaped luminary of the flare rise and fall like the Sun, making everything clear, a doomsaying prophet. So, that was it, then. The end of it all: the worst game in history. She took another step, moving like a revenant, passing the broken bodies that reflected on her like a carnival's hall of mirrors, a mirror image of her.

"I see them," she said, unsure of whom to. Again, with conviction: "I see them." There was a deadly pause as she swallowed, as it swallowed—the fear and doubt. She wanted to say that she expected this, that it gave her joy, their liberation, but inside, there was a sinking feeling that everything—all of this, their whole lives to this point—had been rendered pointless, the story's narrative changing, going from their hands authoring to the hands of fate telling their tales. The hands of the clock ticked forward.

At the end of the Lord of the Flies, William Golding's opus, she recalled, all of the island's castaways found themselves suddenly spirited away by those men who saw themselves as above the rules of nature, the scarred children themselves having born witness to their degradations to their most authentic selves. In that book, the end drove home that void feeling, the loss of innocence, the pointlessness of the atrocity exhibition the literature had showcased; here, there was no theme, just an ending.

It was an ending. It was not hers.

[almostinhuman]

Suddenly, everything was different. One moment he's talking with some semi-stranger about their respective murder-hunts. The next, all that and their entire time here were flushed down the drain. The violence, the deaths, the narrative he'd been building up in his head to justify his own participation in it. All wiped out with a handful or words and a light in the distance. Rendered meaningless by this late arrival and the promise of a ride home.

Home.

He didn't quite register who it was that was talking to him now. He didn't even turn to look at them.

"O-oh... yeah..."

He should be excited. Thrilled. This is what he wanted when he was with Molly earlier. A way to go home again, to put the burden of his vengeance down without having to sate it, to see his friends and boyfriend and family again. To have a future again.

But instead he felt dizzy. Numb. Nauseous. Because why now? Why only him and whatever scattered handful were left? Why couldn't they have come for Molly or Jezzie or Greg? For Tully or Kathleen or Dawn? For Alexander or Lily or D? Why couldn't this have happened any time in the past almost two goddamn weeks?

"I-I..."

He drew in breath, harsh and ragged. He was gonna go to it, of course. Dying here wasn't a real option. But he couldn't go just yet.

"... you go on ahead. I-I have something... someone I have to get."

He stumbled away. It wasn't wrong. There was one thing he had to handle before he went.

((Jacob Winters continued in silence tells me))

[Yonagoda]

The two girls stood there for a while.

One reached a hand out.

"Let's go," she said. There were no words that could encapsulate the churning in her brain. But those two were enough, she hoped. And if they weren't...

It won't really matter, anyways.

She thought about her parents. Warm clothes. Food. Now that it became a genuine possibility, every second was absolute hell, because she wasn't there yet, wasn't on a ship or a plane or whatever it is that could take her out of this place.