Survival Of The Fittest

Click.

Parker looked towards the noise, and saw Nia, staring at him. She stayed silent - as she always was - but with both hands wrapped around the grip of her pistol, Nia was rendered literally silent, as well as figuratively.

In Magic: The Gathering, a lot of the focus of the game is on trying to figure out what your opponent might have, in order to try and minimise their impact on your own gameplan. This concept is known as "Playing Around" your opponent, and it serves as one of the first fundamentals most competitive players, and even casual players become acquainted with. However, there is an addendum to it that players often learn with experience, and that's to not play around what you can't beat in the first place. Sometimes the best way to maximise your win percentage is to take an aggressive line that relies on your opponent not having something you can't beat.

In this case, Parker couldn't beat Nia if she simply decided to pull the trigger, so he had to just hope she didn't.

He tried his best to look into her eyes, not the barrel of the pistol, as he rose to his feet. Both of them seemed like empty holes at this point, but at least staring into Nia's eyes felt like it had the hope of achieving something, it was a sign of confidence that he forced himself to present. Even though he really didn't feel it. She looked distracted, bored almost, as she looked back. Not exactly what he wanted from a person who's decisions would dictate the potential length of his lifespan.

His eyes flicked down to her side, after a moment, noticing the nick in her t-shirt. The faded pink fabric was torn at the side, and a deeper, darker pink was overtaking it as blood seeped through. His eyes went back to hers. If she was in pain, she didn't show it, not looking down at the cut herself or wincing as another gust of sea air rolled through the bridge.

"I wasn't lying. I really don't know how to treat bullet wounds." he commented, pointing at her side with the hand not carrying the axe.

It occurred to him half a second later that telling Nia a way in which he wouldn't be useful was probably not the best foot to start their negotiation on.

The air up here was better, the smell of death washed off the deck by the salt smell on the wind. The human mind had a way of blocking out constant stimuli, but the sea air had stayed strong on her nose since before the beach had even come into view. She remembered, on the first day, walking away from the sea with Alexander's arm in hers, hoping she'd never return. A lot had changed since then. No use in keeping promises to a girl who no longer existed.

People so often believed that, regardless of all the changes they'd witnessed in themselves in the past, the them of the now was the real them, the one who would persist of the rest of their lives.

Nia knew better.

The person she was right now was temporary.

That was for the best. "We're done. We're broken. We're all just fucking gone."

The person Parker right now was also temporary, and more than likely a person he had never imagined himself becoming. Certainly she couldn't imagine him ever willingly putting himself in a position where the fear she saw in his eyes was a possibility. Parker—no, it would be inaccurate to say he was the type who preferred not to take risks. It was more accurate to say he was the type whose risks were meticulously calculated. He never stood to lose anything he couldn't recoup. Standing on the wrong end of the barrel of a gun was a fairly serious violation of that ethos, obviously.

She liked it, she thought. " - I swear to fucking God, you guys can't become like us."

Parker had never loved anyone as much as himself. She had, and that had been her mistake. She did not think herself so petty as to hold her own error of judgment against him, but it would be a lie to say she felt otherwise. The trick to dealing with irrational emotions was to not act on them. All she had to do was not shoot him. That was already decided. It was funny, wasn't it, though, that that decision was hers? That nothing in the world he did or said could stop her now if her mind had been made up? It was very funny. She could laugh, but she didn't.
Her last conversation with Jeremiah had been an argument. That wasn't funny.
He spoke, and the hint of a smile on her face flattened. Her eyes followed his, confident that if he was bluffing it would be easy enough to pull the trigger before he could lunge at her.

He wasn't bluffing.

Human perception was fascinating. She imagined it was adrenaline, primarily, that had gotten her this far without noticing anything amiss, that and a single-minded focus on fleeing. She had felt maybe a moment of pain at what she now recognized as the moment of impact, but nothing more until this moment. The instant she saw the blood, the ragged hole in the side of her shirt, she felt a sharp, burning pain in her side. As though her brain needed a reminder to produce a pain response.

She released a hissing breath from between her teeth, the only concession she made for it.

This was nothing. She had felt far worse. Lying. Michael. Liar. He didn't see. He couldn't have.

Nia took strides backward away from Parker, watching for any sign of movement from him, before allowing her bags to slide off her shoulder and holstering her pistol. Charging her would still be suicide, of course, unless he thought he had the strength and speed to kill her in one swing of his axe. She rather doubted it. Her hands free, she spoke without burden.

"DROP--AXE. COME-HERE."

No, she said. Go away, she said. Leave us alone, she said. Please. She remembered. She remembered there would never be an "us" ever again.

A pause, a look away, down and to the side.

An odd sound eminated from Nia, as reality seemed to dig its claws back into her, expression twisting from disinterest to something else. First a smile, bemusement almost, as she seemed to weigh up the situation, before twisting with pain as she seemed to finally react to the wound. That was the cause of the noise, he was pretty sure. Parker tried to focus on that, the nuances of her expression, her body language - Not the gun in her hands. Looking at it wouldn't tell him anything he didn't already know, but it was almost impossible to look away.

The gun drooped down in her hands. She too a few strides back though, careful to keep a distance between them, before she finally began to dump her equipment on the floor. The gun was pointed in his general direction for a little longer, before disappearing into the holster, at which point his attention returned to her. Her expression had flattened again, but she looked less disinterested now, just calm.

She spoke to him with a few short motions, the most complex being her quick spelling out of AXE.

He wondered if there was anyone else on the island who could understand her now, other than him. Jeremiah had died, and Stepney had too, and those were the only people he knew for sure that could read ASL. It didn't seem unlikely that there'd be another person who could sign, but it also didn't seem like it had to be true. Maybe that was why Nia had decided not to kill him. He was the only person she could speak to.

The decision of whether to obey or not was an easy one to make. Even if he was on flat, dry ground, trying to make the 10 step distance between himself and Nia before she was able to pull her gun out again would be optimistic. Being able to disable her in one axe blow also seemed unlikely.

The axe clattered against the floor as he threw it to the ground beside him. A few footsteps echoed through the boat as he walked forwards, taking measured steps, trying to make sure he didn't spook her as he looked around. His eyes scanned the treeline by the beach briefly, looking for movement. Parker hoped the other boy hadn't stuck around.

"What next?"

The first few steps were obvious enough that Nia didn't feel the need to fill Parker in on them. Time, in this particular situation, was of the essence.

Her bag, first. The first aid kit came out, and she found herself regretting having not taken more supplies from the other kits she'd scavenged; she had been operating under the assumption that any injury she'd acquire would be either minor enough to require nothing more than an antiseptic wipe and a bandage, or serious enough that the contents of three or four kits would do nothing to save her. Not that she'd exhaust her kit on this injury, but it would make more of a dent in her supplies than she was comfortable with. No matter. There would be more supplies. She could always take Parker's, if she was truly desperate.

More important for the moment was a grey sweater, the only item of clothing to have survived the purges of her few personal items over the course of the last few days. It had come in handy as a makeshift blanket, and she wanted to be prepared in the unlikely event of a cold night; as it were, the thick weave had another use. She pulled up the bottom of her shirt and pulled it through her collar; she thought for a moment to take it off entirely, but the momentary risk of blinding herself wasn't lost on her. One eye stayed on Parker with every move; she pointedly took a moment to shift the pistol further back on her waistband, such that he'd have to reach behind her to grab it. The hammer she placed in her bag, for now.

Safer. Never safe.
Still loved you. Couldn't quit. Prolly 'til you killed her.

She couldn't allow distractions. He'd been crying. She could barely stand to look at him, her hands twitching with everything she wanted to say, she kept the gun on Michael.
she
She hadn't told him she loved him, not once, they talked logistics and nothing else ,

sweater. The sweater. Folded neatly to not take up too much space. She pressed it hard against her side, she was hyper-aware suddenly of just how much blood she had actually lost and the awareness made her lightheaded in a way the blood loss alone could not. It was slowing, though, that was something, the pressure would help. It wasn't seeping through the layers of fabric, not yet, at least. She had known from the moment she noticed that this wasn't a fatal wound. Unless she had been thoughtless about it.
WISH--YOU--HOME. BUT. YOU--HERE. WE--TOGETHER. YES?

"I-O-D-I-N-E." She had to spell with one hand, both because she didn't know if there was a sign for iodine and because her other hand was occupied. "M-I-X--FEW--DROP--IN--S-A-L-I-N-E. TEN--ABOUT."

It was potentially comforting to have something to focus on immediately. Not actually comforting, not having a gun pointed directly at his head right at this moment didn't assuage the fact that there was still a potentially fatal disparity of power, but it distracted Parker from thinking about it too hard as he counted out the drops from the pipette. He was careful to heed her instructions, and ten drops tinted the solution a dark red-yellow that somehow managed to look far too desaturated to be orange as he shook it to ensure it diluted as well as it could.

The next step was at least simple enough that even he could figure it out, as he rummaged through the first aid kit on his own, picking out cotton pads from it, and pouring a little of the solution onto it. He was, as he looked at the darkened colour of the material, vaguely remembered that Iodine was toxic if you ingested it orally. He wondered if it was meant to be used on a wound as big as this seemed like it would be, surely Nia would absorb a lot of into her bloodstream, and that likely wasn't going to do her any good. He declined to share those thoughts though. It was on her decision. And he wasn't sure if that was really how it worked.

It was all useless information anyway, wasn't it?

Chances were Nia would find a reason to shoot him before anything like that kicked in. He needed to figure out a way out of this, one that didn't rely on her fucking up, because she was being far too careful for that. But he was drawing a blank. Nia would reach her gun before he could. Talking to her didn't seem to be working. Trying to just tackle her and take it to the ground was a coinflip, either of them could come out of.

Was he willing to bet his life on a coinflip?

He made eye contact with her again, silently asking for the next step in her instructions.

"WRONG," she did not exert the necessary energy to sign. It would become obvious quickly enough. Instead she reached out and grabbed the bottle out of Parker's hand, letting the folded sweater fall out of her grasp as she checked the first aid kit with her other hand. Scissors, she found easily enough. They qualified as a weapon, she imagined, for anyone physically adept enough to fight in close quarters, or anyone able to procure enough trust to come close enough to use them.

Once you had that trust, available weaponry was someone irrelevant, anyway. There were many, many moments where Alexander could have easily killed her, the lack of weapons in his possession aside. She simply had to trust that he would not. That sort of trust was a nonrenewable resource. It drained out like blood from a soon-to-be corpse. All around the island, people who loved each other would watch each other die, or else betray each other. Those who survived would be the ones who knew.

It was funny. Wasn't it? I'm sorry.

She had to concentrate. It didn't matter.

"YOUR--S-A-L-I-N-E," Nia did sign, pointing at the bag Parker had dropped. He could argue if he wanted; she would be happy to take the additional five seconds she would need to level her gun at him again if that would encourage him. She didn't imagine she would need to. Instead she turned her attention back to the saline and iodine solution, using the scissors to poke three small holes in the bottle's cap. The wound was still bleeding, she noted, but it had slowed. It only seemed to hurt when she looked at it.

Pain was only salient when you paid attention. HE--STAY. YOU--STAY. I--TEACH. TOMORROW. NOW--REST. The solution, of course, was to find more relevant places to expend one's energy.

The blood washed out as she squeezed the bottle, the sterile liquid flowing through the wound. It stung, her teeth vice-gripped onto the inside of her cheek hard enough she tasted blood, which felt appropriate, frankly. Pain served as a distraction from worse pain. She could see inside the wound, now. She saw muscle. It moved when she moved.

Now rest.

Parker's expression stayed level as Nia demonstrated what she intended to do, trying to wash the wound in her side out, rather than attempting to clean it. He wondered for a moment where she'd learnt that. Why she'd learnt that. They'd never really talked about plans for the future, but maybe that played into it, or maybe she'd just come across it whilst researching for researching's sake. For someone he'd talked to so much, Parker was realising he knew relatively little about Nia as a person, rather than as an online icon on a Jabber server.

His eyes tracked over to where she had placed the scissors, behind herself and further back, out of reach. Another piece on the board to keep track of. Not that using them to start a fight conferred much of an advantage, the blades were relatively short, maybe 3 or 4 inches. Unless he managed to get her eyes or neck, it wasn't going to do much but hurt in the short term, and both of her hands were going to be free to grab her gun.

Her hands moved, and his eyes snapped to them, reading the letters and putting them together. Saline. She wanted his saline. He tugged on the strap of his bag, dragging it across the floor towards him, before unzipping the top. His hands quickly found the metal box, stacked neatly at the top of everything, just for times like this. He had another kit spare, but really, that was only a minor consideration. Any sacrifice that made it more likely he'd get out of this was worth it. The bottle was opened in front of him, and he prepared to add more iodine to it, but paused for a moment.

"Do you need more Iodine solution or just pure saline to wash it out?"

It was better to ask than to waste resources. The more they talked, the less likely she was to shoot him. The near silence of water rushing in and out of the boat was deafening. All three justifications came to him after his lips had started moving.

Nia raised two fingers. "SECOND--ONE," she didn't bother signing, her gaze flitting rapidly back and forth between her wound and Parker's hands as he dug through his own med kit. He had his own pair of scissors, after all. The distance between them was small enough that if he felt like retrieving them and lunging at her he would almost certainly succeed. Of course, considering the size of the scissors and Parker's general lack of athleticism, while it was possible he could strike a fatal wound, he wouldn't be able to do so quickly and definitively enough to avoid retaliation.

The possibility of killing her marred by the inevitability of dying himself in the process would only scan as a possibility if Parker hated her. Parker didn't hate her. Nia wasn't sure Parker really hated anyone. Emotions that strong took too many options off the table. Parker never left himself without a path forward, or at least a path out.

Which was part of why it was still so funny. Why her lips kept threatening to twitch into a smile. Muscle tissue twitching in a hole in her side. It didn't matter.
What would he have wanted?
She nodded as he handed the bottle to her, took it, poked holes with the scissors again, quick motions, nothing lost, she tempered whatever feeling it was that pulled at her mouth, excitement, glee, something otherwise irrational, she remembered that a wrong move could always be fatal, her many advantages aside. She squeezed the bottle, rinsing the remnants of iodine and blood both from the wound. It leaked blood, still, but slowly; she loathed to put the sweater against it again, considering how unsanitary it likely was. Closing the wound would do for now.

Scissors back behind her back, saline bottle put down, sweater still folded, she looked through her own med kit, still constantly glancing at Parker's hands, catching every minor movement. Sutures would be idea, but there unsurprisingly were none. Butterfly strips would do for now, followed by a thorough bandaging and constant checks. Butterfly strips were unlikely to hold if she moved too much or too fast. A near inevitability. Any solution was temporary.

She wished she'd thought to search for a sewing kit back at the commissary.
She wished she'd said more when she had the chance.
She wished she'd shot Nick when he walked out the door.
She wished she'd killed Michael the first time he'd asked.
She wished for a lot of things.

Nia straightened, the wound straightening with her. She could pull the gaping skin together, though doing while applying the butterfly strips would be difficult. Her gaze drifted back to Parker, her head tilted in thought.

She handed him the butterfly strips.

"LINE--UP," she signed, motioning to the wound. "COVER--TOP--BOTTOM--UNTIL--CLOSED. I--HOLD--CLOSED. UNDERSTAND?"

She did not blink.

"NOT--DO--WRONG--MOVE. UNDERSTAND? YOU--UNDERSTAND. I--KNOW."

She pulled her skin taut. The pistol pressed into her side, heavy.

Mutually assured destruction. It was all she would ever have.

Nia was repeating herself.

That wasn't something she did often, even in text, although she often took a circuitous route to get to her point. Here talking for her took time, so every time she raised her hand by her head and pointed her finger up, it drew more an more attention. Why did she feel the need to make so certain that he understood. Parker accepted that it would be something she would be concerned by, given that this would determine in large part her future abilities, and he also absorbed the subtext - Do it right or I'll shoot you. Something just seemed off about it though, he just couldn't put his finger on it.

There were more pressing matters for his attention right now, at least, as he looked at the wound properly. It was deeper than he'd thought initially, or at least it looked worse than a graze, as the blood oozed out of it and made the exact nature of it hard to determine. Not that he'd have been able to diagnose it, let alone establish a prognosis on it, given how little he really knew about medical science. A frown graced his lips for a moment and he looked back at his supplies, wishing he had the time to put on rubber gloves, but Nia stared back intently.

Best not to delay.

He began taking the packaging off the strips one by one, and layering them across the pressed together flaps of skin, closing it just a little tighter as each piece was guided into place mechanically. Parker was vaguely aware of the option of trying to do something that would prevent the wound from healing, but he wasn't sure there was much he could do that Nia wouldn't notice, and the very existence of the wound was likely enough late game insurance anyway. Bandages, disinfectants, antibiotics, they were all well and good - But they were designed to go with bed rest. Plenty of water. Blood transfusions.

The likelihood was that if he managed to get out of this alive, and didn't run into her within a few days, Nia was unlikely to be competition. A threat, for sure, but not a rival.

Parker finally looked away from the wound, making eye contact with her. He raised his hand, touching his thumb and forefinger together, whilst extending the fingers of his hand. He wore a questioning expression as he made the gesture.

"OK?"

"OK."

It was.

It was.

She watched him with something like curiosity, tinged with healthy paranoia. Her assumption of ongoing rationality continued to temper her nerves. Parker certainly could worsen her wound in any number of ways, but in his position she'd hardly consider the benefit worth the risk that she would notice. No, she imagined to him the wound itself was enough to eliminate her as a long-term threat. What she had done, what she had had him do, was about as much as anyone could do for this sort of wound in an unsterile setting without proper equipment. That didn't make it enough, but it would have to be.

She would make it so. Care and caution would be necessary. Her chances had always been low. The time her makeshift surgery needed to hold was limited. A million other things would try to kill her first.

"STEP--BACK."

Bandages, then. Wrapped not-too-tightly all the way around her torso. She eyed Parker first, let him take a solid five steps back before nodding, her hands were full again while his were idle. All she had to do was never give him a chance. It had been almost a welcome distraction, a challenge, her mind occupied by thinking five steps ahead of every move he could make until her bandages were secured, stained immediately with a few drops of blood. The first aid kit, packed away. She stood, legs wavering only for a moment. It hurt.

She felt better.

She felt good.

She felt like laughing, again, but the movement might well stimulate more bleeding, so she was limited to a smile as she looked at Parker. The urge to point the gun at him again was present but unnecessary, the threat intimated by its continued existence against her hip. Besides, she needed both hands to speak. For the short time she still had someone to speak to, she might as well appreciate the opportunity.

She would come to renew her past appreciation for solitude, she was sure.

"WE--STAY--HERE."

Memories of the night before. Everything before the morning felt like it was viewed through a haze, as though some clarity had been found through her actions that she hadn't realized she was missing. She had spent the night alone, she had slept fitfully but she had still slept alone in a house unsecured and unprotected and she was lucky to wake up alive, let alone with her possessions intact. In the future she would have to spend more time fortifying her surroundings. For tonight, she could make use of a hostage.

"ONE--ROOM--INSIDE. ONE--DOOR--NO--WINDOW. SECURE. SLEEP--SHIFTS. WATCH--SHIFTS. SLEEP--SAFE--BOTH--BENEFIT."

Her smile widened a touch. She noticed the silence. Just waves crashing against the boat.

Michael was gone. Jeremiah was gone.

"TONIGHT. TOMORROW--I--LET--YOU--GO. OK?"

His consent to the agreement was superfluous, as Nia was well aware, but at least the proposition seemed to be rational. She wasn't wrong that having someone to watch over you whilst you slept was objectively a good idea, as long as you knew for certain the other party was operating in good faith. That was just something neither of them were going to take for granted. Backing him into a room with no way out didn't seem like a particularly necessary step in killing him, but there was the chance she felt it was necessary, and that by not taking the opportunity to try and run now he was helping weight the eventual, inevitable coinflip of a fight further in Nia's favour.

The smile didn't help things, either. Nia normally wore little emotion on her face, not that she wasn't expressive, just that it didn't linger as much as it did in most people. It probably came from having to use your face to portray emphasis and punctuation in what was being said. The way the smile hung on her face looked unnatural, like someone was pulling on the corners of her mouth, affixing it in place. That either meant it was forced in order to give him the impression that she was being friendly, or wasn't something she was doing consciously.

"TOMORROW--I--LET--YOU--GO."

It was a promise, at least. A deadline, a conclusion to the situation which didn't leave either of them dead.

Of course, they were just words. Worth less than the paper they weren't written on.

They exchanged more worthless words, as the day wore along. One voice calling out to a terse response of silent gestures, or the scratching of pen on paper, when more complex concepts needed to be brought across. The distance between them was kept precisely where it had begun, with 5 paces separating them. Close enough for Nia to shoot him before he got too far away, or too close, a fact he was acutely aware of. The drip-feed of facts that came from their short discussions about the island was one of the few things that distracted from it. Locations. People. Descriptions.

He'd finally been able to ask someone where they'd found paper. Nia had even graciously offered to give him some of her own, which had raised his hackles a little. It seemed a relatively rare resource on the island. Giving it away freely either meant you expected to get it back, or you didn't really care about the advantage it conferred, and neither of those felt like a positive sign. He tried not to show the concern as he accepted her charity.

Eventually things had turned into the practical matter of how they'd be organising their sleeping arrangements. The rooms of the ship were damp, and lined with various sea flora, but they were just about liveable. They found one that seemed to lack any windows, forcing them to turn on their torches to look around it even as the sun lingered above the horizon, and a simple "THIS--ONE" indicated it would be where they were sleeping. Preparations were more thorough than just laying an emergency blanket over the sodden mattress and hoping for the best, though. The broken glass of the bridge was put to use, being scattered around the entrance to the room, making every footstep crunch loudly. No-one was getting in or out of the room quietly, for what it was worth.

That was little consolation as Parker sat on the mattress, back propped up against the wall as he looked at the diluted column of light that poured in through the door, squinting into the grey and hoping his eyes would miraculously adjust further to the darkness. He expected a figure to break it any time now, only to hear the gentle crunch of footsteps on glass shortly after, which would hopefully be the last thing he heard.

Hearing the gunshot meant he was going to die slowly.

He shuffled his posture slightly, straightening up, whilst a hand shot up to his mouth to stifle a yawn.

He wasn't going to sleep. How could he?

Parker didn't have all that much to say, which was unusual for him, and also made the intervening hours before they went to sleep rather dull. Nia supposed the imminent fear of death had a dampening quality on his usual talkativeness. She also supposed it wasn't as though he had much information that was of use to her. It was more the sound of it, the nostalgic novelty of company, removed from her by barely more than twenty-four hours and yet a seeming eternity away.

It wasn't the same, of course, because her pistol rarely left her hand and then was never more than a few inches away. It wasn't the same because she'd blocked off the weak point through which Alexander had wiggled his way into her heart. It wasn't the same because he was Parker, for all the good or ill that meant. She had always been vaguely fond of him and had never, ever thought to trust him and now was hardly a time to begin.

She learned a few things, anyway.

Parker had run into a fair few people, not much more or less than she had herself, though significantly fewer of the names he mentioned were ones she'd heard on the announcements. One person she'd recalled having died since, and Tyrell, of all people, with whom Parker had apparently had a relatively pleasant conversation. Relatively being the operative word, but at least she'd gotten a bit of secondhand information out of it.

His extra supplies had apparently been pilfered from Garren, who she didn't know at all, and Aoi, who she knew fairly well; frankly it was difficult to call the maneuver clever when it would only work on people who needed the meaning of the words "properly paranoid" beaten into them by circumstance, but whatever had worked for him. She imagined if her luck had been... better by one measure, worse by another, she would have had to resort to burglary at one point or another. As it were she likely had enough supplies to last her most of the remainder of the game, and by the last few days she imagined the landscape would be littered with the supplies of the dead.

He hadn't asked about the blood on her hands. She hadn't volunteered the information. She shared her notes, spoke on her experiences up until the morning's announcement. He had inquired as to her paper and she shared a few sheets and a spare marker without a second thought; she had plenty, after all, and her own notes didn't take up much space. She had taken the amount she had with the assumption she would have to use it to communicate, which was of little use when her primary companion was blind and the only other people she'd deigned to communicate with had been able to sign.

The hours whiled away. Information and logistics. It was almost comfortable, though interrupted often by how she snapped to attention at any twitch movement. She could hardly afford to be careless. She had set up their nighttime accommodations to be practically foolproof, but still, to lose focus on potential danger was to die.

Never a false move.

She smiled at Parker as she signed "GOODNIGHT." Judging by the look on his face, it wasn't reassuring.


Alone with her thoughts once again.

Nia insisted Parker sleep first and insisted too that she hold onto his things while he did. He had no choice in the matter, of course, and she could easily abscond in the night with his belongings, but to what end? It was too many supplies for her to carry on her own; it would only serve to spite him, which she had no strong feelings toward doing. The urge to take his axe, at least, was strong; she could climb up on deck, hurl it into the ocean, but it was too risky, and she did genuinely want to get some sleep tonight.

Tired, sitting on one of Parker's bag to avoid the possibility of crushing something in her own, she leaned against the wall in the dark, accompanied by the sound of water rushing in and out of the boat. She didn't notice the sound, she thought, until she remembered it was meant to be present. White noise, now.

She forgot the smell of the sea until she made herself conscious of it.

She forgot the hot pain in her side until she looked down at bloodstained bandages, barely visible in the moonlight.

The human mind was easily fooled in its perception. Novel stimuli were prioritized, constants were filtered out. The human sense of sight was the most heightened of the senses, and so its input had an overriding effect. Seeing her wound was enough to remind her nerves that they were meant to be sending pain signals. She was hurt. To be hurt was to suffer. To suffer was to be reminded, in the most primal way the human body could say so, that one had made a mistake.

Her greatest mistake, of course, was not killing Michael long before he'd become a threat.

But she couldn't have known.

But she should have. She should have known that there were only two paths he could walk. She should have known that he'd be better off dying before walking too far along either. She should have known, because, why? Why should she have known anything? She knew him well enough. He wasn't her responsibility. He was, though, somehow, now, after everything. After they'd shot each other. After he'd spoke lies and run away.

Lies.

Sometimes when she stopped and inhaled she caught the scent of decay under the heavy weight of sea air and she remembered that she was smelling all that remained on earth of Stepney Cruz. Tiny particles invading her nostrils. They had found the rest while checking the rooms. Maggot-ridden organs slopped across the ground. The scent became unbearable when she looked. She wished she could have looked more.

He wouldn't want her to, probably, but he didn't exist anymore.

So it was fine.

She remembered getting milkshakes with Jeremiah. He liked peanut butter, or banana. She always got vanilla.

She remembered his smile.

Lies.

Michael didn't know a goddamn thing.

Parker jerked awake to the sound of footsteps crunching on glass. He'd stopped looking at his watch after the first hour. Each glance had shown a shorter and shorter real interval, despite feeling like the same amount of time, and it had made the purposeless void of time he had to pass feel even more endless. A groggy check down confirmed that he couldn't have slept more than two and a bit hours. His attention refocused as Nia knocked on the wall to attract his attention to her intent to follow through and enact a changing of the guard. Every part of him ached, but he forced his form to obey the agreement they'd forged, and pushed himself off of the bedding.

He realised he hadn't had the energy to put anything resembling an expression on his face. A flat, simple line etched into his features, and a blank stare that repaid Nia's own manic glare. Whatever. She probably couldn't see in the darkness anyway. He turned his head shoulder to look back.

"Night."

Footsteps crunched over glass once again. His own this time.

He supposed, as he settled into a place that wasn't extremely uncomfortable to begin his watch, that he still had the same option he'd had before. Walking away and into the night was still a valid option, just one that Nia had disincentivised by taking away the option of leaving with any resources. It was objectively the safest one in the short term.

But, he needed those resources if he wanted to have a chance, and getting resources wasn't something that was likely to be as easy as it had been with Garren and Aoi. By now people who only had their starting resources would be completely out of them, and anyone who had more than their starting resources was likely better equipped than he was, by the necessity of what it took to acquire them in the first place. He was running out of time there, too, wasn't he?

Maybe two days worth of food left.

He wondered, for a moment, how the initial group he'd met was faring. He remembered Mercy's name being called on the announcements, just for the method of death, poison. Everyone else though, he was pretty sure they'd stayed clear of both sides of things. No-one had killed, no-one had died. Maybe things would have been better if he'd stuck with that group, instead of breaking off, finding himself playing for table scraps later on. If he'd been able to pull off the same thing there, he'd still have nearly a week of supplies to go.

Parker pinched the bridge of his nose.

The greatest tragedy of being on watch like this was that he couldn't even really use the time for thinking. Not proper, deep thinking at least, where he'd come up with usable plans. Every train of thought came sliding off the rails far too quickly. He'd been trying to think of what options he had in front of him right now, but it had only taken a minute for him to land on lamenting a past decision instead. Something he couldn't change.

He glanced down at his watch.

A faint glow in the darkness told him that it was quarter past 4 in the morning. The announcements had been regularly on at 9 am each day. He expected that Nia would like to be woken up a little before then. Maybe 08:30. That left him with 4 and a quarter hours to wait. Listening to the ever changing non-silence of the boat creaking as each wave that crashed against it strained the hull in new ways.

It was going to be a long night.

Still drowsy off the crash from the caffeine pills, Nia was asleep within a few minutes of settling in, despite the insistent tugging on her brain by the thoughts that kept her occupied for her time on watch. She slept surprisingly peacefully, even if she did so curled tightly around her pistol.

She woke to the crunch of glass outside, the room still nearly pitch-black but for the small amount of light outside creeping under the door. The expected knock followed. Parker hadn't run; she'd considered the possibility momentarily while she'd taken her own watch but set it aside. She had taken the precaution of holding onto his bags, after all, and the long-term risk of leaving behind his possessions far outweighed any advantages he might find from betraying her. The four or so hours of sleep she'd gotten would have to be adequate for now. She'd gone to school on less.

He came inside; they propped open the door to allow some light in. Breakfast consisted of water, some bread, an energy bar. A couple of caffeine pills. The bottle was large enough she didn't imagine she could safely consume its remaining contents in the week or so remaining on the island; she offered a few to Parker, who accepted only after he watched her take from the bottle first. His paranoid was admirable, she supposed, but it wasn't as though the action was causing her any harm, and besides, he likely had some amount of resentment stewing from having been held hostage for the better part of a day. Between the pills and the paper, perhaps she could mitigate any ongoing negative feelings.

Not that she expected to ever see him again after they split up, of course. But all possibilities had to be accounted for.

The short time spent between her awakening and the announcements was quieter still than the day before. A simple acknowledgment that neither had seen anything suspicious during the night. A noted lack of planning their next moves. Honestly he would be getting the better deal out of it if they agreed to stick together, not that she thought he was likely to see it that way; she had promised to let him go, and any move to prolong their partnership at this point would likely be cited as a breach of verbal contract. She was less on-edge than she had been previously, but she still had no desire to provoke anger where she didn't need to.

It was such that the announcements made for a welcome distraction.

Pen and paper at the ready for notes, as always, though they were barer-bones than even the previous morning, to be more properly filled in when she was alone again. The first names brought a short, rasping laugh to her lips, because she had known, she had thought. Ashlynn. It was inevitable. Julien, she remembered, vaguely. They'd spoken at length, once. He was smarter than she'd given him credit for. It was hard to blame him. In her limited experience the girl was intolerable.

Mostly familiar names on the killer's side. To a degree where she wondered if there wasn't some degree of competition involved, people compelled to score high numbers for the sake of it; it seemed unlikely that there were three or more potential serial killers in their class who were simply killing for enjoyment's sake. Anyone actually compelled to kill for the sake of survival wouldn't have killed five people by now. No reason to put a larger target on yourself than necessary.

The boy in the garden had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. William, his name was, she only learned when the voice spoke his name followed by hers. She glanced at Parker; his eyes betrayed nothing. She imagined he'd known, or at least he had guessed.

More names, nothing surprising, nothing important, she supposed there was nothing important left for her anymore, anyway. The worst the announcements could disappoint her was in learning that someone had gotten to Nick Ogilvie. No such bad luck. Not yet.

The danger zone—the bay area, was that here, she wasn't entirely certain off the top of her head but it seemed likely enough that she frowned, moving to scoop up her papers before—


Her name, again.

A gift.

The end of the announcement came with a loud beep emanating from Parker's collar.

Not hers.



She smiled.

"YOU--SHOULD--RUN."

Marker scratched over paper in mutual silence as the two of them absorbed and catalogued the information. Parker noted everything down in the same way he'd done before, with the extra bandwidth of being able to write allowing him to add a quick "G" to everyone who was mentioned as using a gun, which he'd come to realise over the course of the night was extremely important information. It effectively determined whether or not they held a power position over him, as whilst not everyone who had a gun would be willing to use it, anyone who showed up on the announcements most certainly was.

A few unfamiliar names in particular had begun to stand out to him. Justin, Quinn, Erika. He'd thought for a moment about asking Nia if she knew anything about them, but quietly discarded it and returned to checking his notes as the announcement wound down. It seemed unlikely she had any information to offer on them, and it would more likely lead to him being asked to provide the same, but for someone he actually knew at least a little about - Blaise. Whilst he was sure he'd find a way to describe their appearance and mannerisms despite the difficulty, especially with the motivation afforded by a gun to his head, it would be a lopsided trade at best.

Nia had killed, too. He knew that for certain now, although the literal blood on her hands, and her willingness to shoot at Michael had already lead to him chalking that up as a near certainty. Still, he couldn't help but wonder why. He'd never heard of William before, and now he likely would never know anything about him in the future, either. What could he have done to make killing him worthwhile for Nia? His expression remained flat, puzzling over it for half a second before continuing to write.

The final few words brought forth an urge to groan. Of all the days to force him to start the day with a long walk to somewhere else, of course it would be today, the day where he'd had 2 hours sleep. He opted to close his eyes and take a sharp breath in and out through his nose instead, if only to not interrupt the announcement's dumb sign-off for the girl sitting opposite him, which turned out to be wise as she was promptly named.

Parker stood up, tugging up on the strap of his bag. The questions he had for her were more intense now. He wanted to know what she'd done to earn that reward. He wanted to know what her plans were now. He wanted to know every detail he could.

Beep.

But there wasn't any time.

Beep.

"Peace, Nia."

He took her advice, and he ran.

((Parker_Green - Day 5 - 09:10 Local Time - In Transit to The Finders Keepers Fallacy & Other War Profiteering Parables))