Veridis Quo

[ViolentMedic]

Marshall’s self-control snapped at the sound of Jess shrieking his name, and the rope coming loose.

“DJ JAZ—agh!”

He slipped immediately in his attempt to run forward and toppled down again. Ow. No time. Get up.

No, nevermind. No time to get up. Just move.

Marshall rolled towards where Jess’ hand occasionally flailed out of the water. Uncomfortable was a word for it, rolling over ice in bare legs, but he couldn’t fall down if he was already down here. It was undeniably faster. He left the remains of his rope where they were. Half of it was underwater now, lost to Jess’ flailing. The rest, he just forgot about, because he had to get her out now.

He hit Jess’ bag, perched precariously on the ice near where she’d fallen. Marshall sat up, dug a hand under the strap, and rolled it as far towards his own as he could in one motion. It careened along, helped by the ice. Good. Less weight.

Then he was at the hole in the ice, feeling distinctly stupid for being here. He got up to a crouching position. He tried to keep low, spread out as much as he can, that felt like it was helping somehow. Something about weight distribution. He rolled up his sleeve and plunged his hand into the water.

“AAAAAAA--” he yelled, both out of cold and to motivate himself, nevermind what it did to the ice. He grabbed her wrist and yanked. The moment that Jess’ head broke the water he yelled, “CALM DOWN! I’M HERE! CLIMB!”

And if she couldn’t—

Or if the ice broke—

...He’d think about that when it happened.

For now, he just pulled.

[backslash]

((Kai Rosado-Prince continued from You Missed My Heart))

In theory, Kai had survival skills. He'd spent a lot of time camping and hiking, some of that during the winter. The surroundings here were more daunting because there was always the looming knowledge that there was no safehaven of civilization to return to when he'd had enough. In theory, though, he could handle a snowy forest for at least a few days.

In practice? His self-preservation may have needed some work. Because he heard a girl's shriek followed by someone else yelling, somewhere beyond the trees, and he immediately pivoted to hurry towards it.

Kai broke through the trees and the scene unfolding before him processed in snapshots. The hole in the ice. The guy stretched out on his stomach (Pantsless? Okay, sure?). The figure on the edge of the lake, urgently fumbling with something. Kai himself, sprinting towards them. Didn't quite work out that that was what he was doing until he was in the middle of doing it.

"Hey- what's-" He stumbled over himself in his attempts to start a sentence as he nearly skidded to a stop next to Chloé. "Who- fell?"

The more important question caught up to him a second later again. "Can I help?"

[midnight_twelve]

Chloé’s focus was torn between the log pile taking rough shape in front and the ongoing rescue operation behind; everything else was a blur that only flashed by in each split-second whip of her head. Adding to that the combination of Marshall’s yelling and her own thundering heartbeat which drowned out the footsteps for most of their approach, she had very little time to react when she finally noticed the large boy bearing down on her. Just enough time to spin on the spot, fall backwards, but manage with a flick of the lighter to put a meagre half-inch flame between herself and Kai.

“WOAH! WHAT ARE YOU-”

Rather than slamming into her at full speed like she’d instinctively braced for, Kai slid to a halt next to Chloé. She didn’t know Kai, not nearly as well as she knew most everyone else in their year, which obviously made him difficult to trust. He was physically imposing, but not visibly armed, nor openly aggressive. Maybe Chloé was naïve to trust so easily, but she would yet refuse to believe anyone had turned to violence without clear proof.

“Don’t run at people like that! What if I had a weapon and freaked out and… ah, ah...!”

She let the lighter fall to her side. Not that it didn’t pay to be cautious- she'd shuffled back a few feet before the flame flickered out, for all the good it would have actually done. In fact, despite his arrival seeming engineered to cause a heart attack, Kai's words suggested he was here to help. Still panting, she tried to answer his questions as quickly as they came.

“It’s Jess! Kawazoe, she fell through the ice and Marshall’s trying to get her out.”

Chloé allowed her eyes to wonder from the potential threat of the newcomer for the first time, falling back on her sorry pile of damp wood. The sticks were too large to catch alight, arranged all wrong, positioned at the mercy of the elements. Hopefully Kai had done his time in the boy scouts.

“Yes, please help! Do you know how to start a fire?”

[Pippi]

The second plunge was just as horrifying as the first.

Even with the knowledge of what it would feel like, even as she was prepared for it to happen as her fingers gave way, the sensation of the ice-cold water rushing up past her face as she fell beneath the surface again was almost enough to make her heart stop and her lungs seize up completely. Her scream erupted into a torrent of bubbles, rushing to the surface, and she felt the lake flood her throat, her eyes wide and desperate, too late to shut her mouth and stop the flow of water, eager to consume her, ready to destroy her.

Her body felt so heavy, so aimless. She was numbed to her very soul. Her mind was painfully, acutely aware of everything that was going on, watching on helplessly as every other sense began to shut down, fraction by fraction.

She couldn’t imagine anything less peaceful than drowning. She wasn’t floating through space, letting herself drift towards the end. She was suspended in midair, watching herself get ripped apart.

Her limbs felt like putty, yanked out of her sockets, but she had to try and do something, she had to fight against this, Jess had never once in her life been a quitter and she sure as fuck wasn’t prepared to be one when it mattered most. She kicked as hard as she could, one shoe, already loosened by her flailing, slipping off her foot and drifting down to rest in silt and sand. The phantom limbs of her arms miraculously found their way above her, searching frantically for purchase on the rope, the edge of the ice, anything at all. Her hands broke water, then dropped back down again, filled with lead. She couldn’t find the edge of the hole. The rope, mere inches away from her fingertips, constantly eluded her grasp. And she would try, she would try until it as all over, but she couldn’t keep kicking, she couldn’t keep holding her breath, she couldn’t-

Something grabbed hold of her wrist, squeezing firm. It was lucky that her arms had been wrenched free of her body, floating next to her like some bargain bin Rayman, because she felt herself being pulled bodily upwards, and she let herself get carried, using the last of her strength to kick herself up and grab hold of whatever was rescuing her, her fingers clutching fabric and digging in tight.

Her head broke the surface, and she gasped for her, slapping her arm down onto the ice, refusing to let go this time. She could barely see, nothing but faint shapes and damp hair in her line of vision, but she could tell now it was Marshall, Marshall with his hands around her arm, hoisting her out like a particularly unruly catch of the day, Marshall who had saved her. She half-crawled, half let herself be moved, her torso flopping onto shore, the rest of her body shortly following afterwards. She didn’t even notice as her skin pressed into the ice, her body already frozen to the bone. Water flowed out from every direction underneath her, the epicenter of a brand new lake atop the lake. She felt heavy. She felt lost. All she could do, in between deep, gasping breaths, was to mutter;

“I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay…”

She barely reacted as Marshall helped shove her body closer to shore. All the strength had seeped out of her. She was able to raise her head to see where they were going, and that was it.

“I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay…”

She had already started shivering.

[ViolentMedic]

“Wo--”

What was about to become an excited shout of triumph cut short as Marshall remembered that, right, they were still on the ice.

Instead, he lowered his voice as he gave Jess a little push in the right direction. “Small steps! Towards Chloé! One foot at a time, don’t think about anything else!”

He remained very still where he was as Jess slowly wobbled her way towards the shore, not wanting to either slip and fall backwards into the hole, or to agitate the ice and make a new hole underneath them.

As he did, he shuddered and peeled off the woolly glove that he’d plunged into the lake before clenching his numb hand. He was splattered with water, and it was like icicles impaling him. Especially since it was on bare skin for the most part. But aside from his arm, he’d avoided soaking. He glanced back at the hole. His shirt and assigned windbreaker could be glimpsed sinking into the icy depths.

The ice still creaked.

His nerves were crackling like mad, like he was waiting for the race to begin. But there’d been no signal yet. He might beat someone to the finish line if he ran before the signal, but it wouldn’t matter if it got him disqualified. In this case, disqualification was drowning in a lake.

No-one would pull him out. They might try, but the others at shore were too far and Jess was in no condition to manage it.

He listened to the creaking, mouth tight, still crouched like an awkward, deformed spider…

…

……

Jess was some distance away now. Moving very, very slowly… but moving.

The moment he decided it was safe, he dropped back down and rolled awkwardly away from the hole.He grabbed the remains of the clothesrope on the way, which now consisted of his pants, two scarfs, and the traitorous sweatervest that had not held onto the rest. Mostly dry. He scooped the bundle under his arm. He ignored the shore for now in favour of shuffling towards the nearest bag. Both his own belongings and Jess’ were strewn over a distance, his bag marking where the ice was at least solid.

He reached her assigned bag. He hooked a hand under the strap – and now that he had the time to notice, it was soaked. Horrific to touch. He swung it in the direction of the shore, then moved for the next. Soaked, too. He wondered if she had any spare clothes to warm up with. Maybe Chloé would, or—was that another person on the shore?

He flung it, and aimed for where he’d left his own bag. Slowly, but surely, he flailed and rolled his way across the ice towards the shore, scrambling about for the supplies that would get them through this, so that Jess could focus on the immediate concern of not freezing to death. He was too damp to put his clothes back on, so he just stuck them in his bag once he reached it.

They kept going.

Finally… finally… they were within reach of the shore. By this point, he was back on his feet. Easier to carry the bags slowly once the ice was solid again.

The moment he got close enough that the other two would be able to help out – at least once they’d helped Jess – he plopped the supplies on the ground. Half-numb, out of breath, covered in ice burns along his legs and soaked arm from rolling about, and pantsless. Somehow still in better shape than his partner. But they were alive, mostly supplied, and within reach of help.

“WooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” he bellowed, all that stored noise letting loose in a half-ecstatic half-infuriated rush.

Victory.

[backslash]

"Yes," Kai breathed in response to Chloé's question. "I can do that." There was something overwhelmingly relieving about being handed a task that he knew for a fact he could do.

He didn't waste anymore time, dropping his belongings near where Chloé's were scattered. Her haphazard wood pile was never going to catch without proper tinder and kindling. Hell, it was still sitting right on the snow. Kai quickly crouched down and began sweeping the snow away with his hands, piling it up in loose banks until a rough circle had been cleared down to bare dirt. He'd done this before what felt like countless times, but now he had to do it all in fast-forward.

When a space had been cleared, he dumped the wood onto the dirt, brushing snow from it as best he could. It still seemed too wet. The snow still falling wasn't going to help. Kai glanced quickly around for a better spot, something sheltered, but there was nothing except-

His eyes landed on the discarded beach umbrella.

Well. Blessings in disguise.

Kai snatched the umbrella up again and popped it open. He probably looked like a madman to Chloé, stopping in the middle of building the fire pit to do this. Grinding the end of the pole into the hard dirt, Kai forced it down with a grunt until he was satisfied that the umbrella would stand on its own. With that done, he went back to assembling the pit.

Larger, wetter logs that wouldn't catch well made the barrier to contain the fire and keep melting snow from seeping into the center. Everything else went in the middle. Kai stopped again to make a dash back to the treeline, scouring the nearest trees for any deadened branches that had dropped their needles and then rushed back with the gathered tinder and kindling.

Finally, with that packed in between the rest of the wood, Kai knelt and took the lighter from the ground. Using a lighter was less impressive than building a fire bow, but speed was more important than style right now. Sheltering the small flame with his free hand, he held it to the driest of the needles.

Seconds ticked by, but finally the needles began to smoke and then catch. Kai didn't realize how tightly he'd been clenching his jaw until he relaxed.

He waved his hand at the other three, gesturing them closer as the fire really began to take. It was hard to guess how long it would burn, but the little bit of warmth it was already giving off made him realize all over again how cold and wet it was out here.

Sitting back on his heels, Kai turned his attention to Marshall and Jess for the first time. "You need to get out of those clothes."

[midnight_twelve]

Chloé stepped back again, this time out of the way so Kai could take a crack at the fire. He seemed confident he could get it started, and that confidence seemed earned. Convinced, she turned her attention instead to Jess and Marshall. She nearly cried with relief when she saw their success and ran down to the water’s edge to help them ashore. On the way, she scooped up the windbreaker and an emergency blanket that had been in her first aid kit, unfolding it ready to drape over her poor shivering classmates. Kai was right though, their wet clothes needed to come off first.

“I’ll give you some privacy. I need a moment to think, anyway. Let me know if you want to borrow my jacket or my sweater for a bit.”



Chloé couldn’t quite hold back a shuddering gasp as she walked away from the fire.

She’d barely kept it together. She’d panicked when Jess went through the ice and panicked when Kai showed up, and nobody had even tried to hurt anyone else yet. How could she get through all this? Without Marshall’s bravery and Kai’s skills, Jess could have frozen to death by now. What could she do? She knew a little first aid, which wouldn’t be much good if she didn’t pick up the supplies she’d scattered all over the floor. She gathered what she could while keeping her back to the hopefully undressing Jess, and shoved the supplies back in the bag the terrorists had provided.

The number on the bag caught her eye as she zipped it back up. 114. She assumed that was her number, that every poor soul on the JEM senior trip got a different one. How many of her classmates were there? Chloé still had her election speech memorised, the last time she’d addressed all of them at once. She’d promised to work with them all to tackle all the challenges they faced.

One-hundred-fourteen, at the minimum. You could look at that two ways. 113 obstacles to survival. Or “two heads are better than one” multiplied by at least 57.

Maybe she didn’t have Marshall’s courage or Kai’s survival skills, but they did. She didn’t have to do this alone. She turned back to her classmates.

“I know what we have to do.”

[Pippi]

Jess nodded. Nothing more than that. Just nodded. Wasn’t often that she was lacking in anything to say; ‘Jess’ and ‘quiet’ went together like oil and water. She was trembling violently from head to toe now, though, teeth chattering too much for her to even mumble out her mantra any longer. Her thoughts were almost all frozen out. She was Jess right now. Nothing more.

Almost all. She was lucid enough - for the moment - to realise a few things, for her head to be in the game where it mattered most. She could tell she was on the shore, now. Her feet had sunk into the snow, loosened up and melted by the fire crackling away nearby - she didn’t know where that had come from or who had made it, but it wasn’t wholly important at the moment. She could feel the frozen earth beneath her left foot, now unburdened by its previous confines, gravel and grit digging in through the fabric. She was safe - or safer, at least. The ground would no longer give way beneath her. No more falling. No more floating through space.

She could tell that Marshall was nearby, too; the victory cheer he’d unleashed had almost knocked her off her feet, making her wince and her ears ring. Even when the noise remained as nothing but an echo, she could still feel his presence, so full of life and energy even after everything that had just happened, standing nearby. She felt so tiny, even smaller than usual, in his shadow. But there was no way in hell she would begrudge him that moment of celebration. She owed him her life, no two ways about that. He could be as loud as he liked. It was the least she could give him right now.

There were others nearby, too, barely more than vague, human-like shapes through her sodden hair - though she couldn’t see it, icicles were already starting to form on the tips of her single remaining messy pigtail. One of them was the saviour who’d thrown their scarf onto the lake, surely. There was someone else nearby too; the firestarter, maybe? She would thank them both as soon as she was able. Whenever that was. It had to be soon, didn’t it?

Most importantly of all, at least as far as her addled brain was concerned, she could think and feel enough to be hit with a brief flash of indignation when she was asked to remove her clothes. She wasn’t exactly shy about exposing skin, normally; her usual crop-top only kept the barest of essentials concealed, after all. There was still a pretty significant difference between that and stripping off totally, out in the wild, in front of other people. If she’d been feeling more like her usual self, emblazoned in bright neon capital letters, she might have let this guy know that she wasn’t that kinda gal, and what exactly they could go and do to themself.

But the snow was gently falling, sticking to her hair and skin, and the wind that followed alongside it made the sensation of her soaked clothing clinging to her so much more prominent and so, so much worse. She couldn’t stop herself from trembling, layers of clothing glued to her body, leeching the warmth out of her. She couldn’t speak. Could barely move. Was struggling to think clearly anymore.

So she nodded one more time, before reaching down to grab hold of the hem of her shirt.

She barely managed even that simple of a task, all feeling in her fingertips having vanished, scrabbling hands finally managing to find purchase, and peel her clothes away from her body. Her skin was pale, darker patches dotting her sides, sections of skin ripped away from her palms. She let out a muffled whimper as her clothes caught on her hair, and she struggled to free herself, the neck hole of her t-shirt misshapen and out of place.

With a gasp, ice-cold winter air filling her lungs, she yanked the shirt off of her head. She flung it to one side, not caring where it landed. She stood, breathing as heavy as was possible with a body trapped in an iron vice. She hadn’t felt any sort of change, shirtless in the snow. She wasn’t feeling any colder, any warmer, any less certain than before. The others around her sounded as though they knew what to do. She needed them. She needed them to tell her.

“Wh’next?” Jess mumbled through blue-tinged lips, fingers fumbling with the buttons of her cutoffs.

[ViolentMedic]

Oh, the other person was Kai! Marshall didn’t know Kai aside from being vaguely aware of his name, but he seemed to know how to handle the situation. Chloé had delegated starting the fire to him, and he’d done so, which meant Kai was as good a person to trust as any.

“You two are literal lifesavers! Thank you very much!” he said, beaming at them both.

Marshall shuffled towards the fire as Chloé stepped away to think, yelling “Thank you!” after her again. Warmth! Glorious, beautiful warmth! With… where had they gotten an umbrella? So resourceful!

Kai gave the orders, as the obvious survival expert. Clothes off made sense. Wherever droplets had soaked through his clothes, or hit his bare skin, it felt like being stabbed. Marshall couldn’t get much more naked, and wasn’t sure if it was meant to include underwear, but he figured it was better to go with a misunderstanding than disobedience followed by death.

“Okay! Avert your eyes!” He wasn’t self-conscious, but he wouldn’t want to subject anyone to public exposure without permission. He was self-aware enough to also not look at Jess unless he had to.

He left his shoes on. Shoes weren’t clothes, and water had rolled off the rubber material. But the jacket – one sleeve soaked, the rest lightly damp – and the underwear and remaining glove – both lightly splashed, but more likely to dry soon – were piled up tidily next to the fire.

“I think, uh, we need to dry Jess, right? Then dress her again? Maybe if we use the least important clothing item around? Aha!” He went for the bag, and the clothing rope that he’d shoved carelessly inside of it, and found the cold but dry clothesrope that had escaped splashage. He awkwardly flung the clothing rope bundle between him and Jess while averting his gaze from her. “Um, maybe something from in here! The sweater vest betrayed me, so using it as a towel might work? Jess will need new clothes, though... Her bags felt soggy, but maybe she has spare clothes that survived!”

Marshall didn’t. He’d eschewed clothes in his carry-on in favour of studying materials so that he could work on the bus. He’d noticed when he’d first awakened on the lake that the terrorists had taken both the study materials and his precious camera, so the bag had been empty except his hairbrush, toothbrush, and a lunch of sandwiches, an apple, and a thermos of once-hot black tea. Could he heat that up somehow? Jess could probably use it.

“Either way, warming Jess is the priority! I’m in tip-top shape!” Marshall said brightly.

He’d been jam-packed with energy since they reached the shore. He almost started doing squats to work some of it off and warm himself up – whenever he needed to move, it was usually either running or squats – before remembering, oh. Even if they could withstand looking at his ‘situation,’ they probably didn’t want to see that. So instead he just started lightly jogging on the spot.

And Chloé was back! And she had a plan! Of course she did. Chloé was smart, resourceful and a fantastic class president. If anyone would know what to do, she would. Marshall immediately turned towards her, optimistic expectations clear.

[backslash]

Realization hit Kai somewhere in the half-second between speaking, Jess moving, and Marshall responding. He quickly averted his eyes away from Jess as she peeled off her shirt and grabbed for his bag. More importantly, he grabbed for the beach towel inside, and he flung it blindly back at her almost in a panic.

"Here," he muttered, again a few seconds too late. "Get dry first, yeah. I've got an extra coat." It had been in with his other things, but he was fine for now in his own jacket. That and moving had kept him warm enough. "I think- everyone might have one." His voice dipped lower as he spoke, almost trailing off.

Chloé marched back up with a declaration of some kind of plan. She was pretty much the only safe person to look at right now. It was between her and the scenery, and he'd seen about enough of the scenery today. So he gave Chloé his attention, or at least part of it. His hands still moved while his eyes flicked between her and the contents of his bag, searching out the first-aid kit. If it was any good, there ought to be an emergency blanket or something for dealing with hypothermia.

Kai wasn't necessarily banking on it being any good. Still, he looked, and he was actually rewarded for it. Pleasant surprises were going to be uncommon. He'd take one.

He stood and spread the blanket out wide, holding it like that between himself and Jess in offering. He kept his gaze on Chloé, partly to signal that he was still listening, but mostly to avoid looking at Jess.

"...We might be able to dry your clothes by the fire if we're careful," he muttered to Marshall. He wasn't sure if Marshall heard him over the... everything that Marshall was doing.

[midnight_twelve]

Chloé ignored the cold and the fear and the distracting jogging nakedness of Marshall, pushed it all aside as the words of her pitch fell into place on her tongue. She glanced around once more for cameras in earshot, leaned in conspiratorially anyway just in case, and began.

“I am going to get everyone off of this island.”

She imagined scepticism on her classmates’ faces without even searching for it, and didn’t give them time to voice any dissent.

“Remember, more people have escaped this nightmare than won it. The statistics are on my side, not the so-called “player’s”. If we can hold them off long enough to get everyone together and work out a plan, we can all go home. But I need your help.”

“Marshall: I need you, Richard, Iris, the rest of the student government. We’re the closest thing to authority figures on the island. It’s up to us to maintain order. Kai and Jess: you’re going to help us round up everyone we can trust and get them to a defensible location.”

Chloé fetched the map and tried to show it to them without her eyes straying below Marshall or Jess’s own eye level.

“There’s this town, on the southern side of the island. We can set up barricades if there’s a town hall or a church or something. Share warmth and supplies, offer first aid. Even if only a few of our friends have weapons, we can defend the entire group so long as we stick close together.”

The obvious flaw in the plan remained. Addressing it was the hardest thing yet; harder than openly discussing escape after Danya’s ultimatum, harder than imagining their classmates as “players” in a death "game".

Not everyone could survive, not through the night. Someone had to die each day, or else everyone did.

“We keep an eye out for anyone who might have snapped and killed, try and apprehend them. If there’s a police station or something at the town, we can keep them locked up. If the plan works well enough that no one gets killed all day and we need to buy ourselves more time… it’s the players who'll have to pay.”

[Pippi]

It was a little hard to focus on Chloe’s plan, all things considered.

Sight and sound was still coming through in patches, thanks to the water clogging up her ears, and her hair still draped in front of her eyes, now even more messed up thanks to the removal of her upper layers. Marshall - she thought that was him, anyway - had still been speaking as fast as humanly possible, plans were getting drawn up, objects were getting thrust towards her. She caught the flying towel, bright colours so very unfitting for the current situation, with her face and chest more than her still-trembling hands. Even that weak impact was enough to make her stumble and almost lose her footing, inches away from collapsing into a messy heap on the ground. Something caught in her throat, and she was pretty sure tears were threatening to leak out.

There was too much going on, too much for her to focus on all at once, so she had to pick one thing and pour what little remained of her attention into that. And right now, that had to be getting warm and dry again.

She could just about tell that the others were looking away right now; it was a gesture that was much appreciated, even if she could barely feel anything at all right now, shame included. Her cutoffs and leggings had found their way to her ankles, swimming around her sole remaining shoe, laces already undone from her frantic flailing earlier. She shook her leg, trying to kick them off and closer to the fire, managing it on the second attempt. Her clothes lay in a crumpled heap, still in the snow, not even in the vicinity of the flames, but it wasn’t like they could get any more damp. She could move them in a second.

Jess hesitated for a moment, still instinctively unwilling to strip totally naked even with the blanket blocking herself from the others. But the moment she shifted, and felt the sodden fabric attempt to desperately cling to her skin, she knew she really didn’t have a choice in the matter. Cameras be damned. Her bra and underwear joined the pile of soaked clothing, before she wrapped the towel around herself, hugging it tightly to her.

She could have cried again, the feeling of dry, comparatively-warm fabric such an alien sensation to her. It would have been so easy to have just stood there, huddled in a towel suited for a very different shore, unmoving. She was tempted. Oh, she was really really tempted. But she was just about cognizant to realise that following that strat would just lead to the towel being as soaked through as her clothes. Just a little bit more work, for just a little bit longer. Then she could finally stop. If only for a moment.

Even after she’d finished toweling herself off, she still didn’t feel whole. Her hair was still damp against her shoulders. It felt like a layer of moisture was still sticking to her skin, a thin film that refused to disappear. But it was better, so, so much better than before. She grabbed the sweater vest from the ground, draping it over herself, before snatching up the blanket and wrapping it tightly around herself, shifting herself into a little cocoon.

There. Step one of turning back from Jessica into Jess had been completed.

She shuffled closer to the fire, now that she could actually move her legs (even though she still couldn’t feel her feet; she’d have to check later if they were still there). She was able to focus, now, on the latter half of Chloe’s - so that was one of her two mysterious saviours - plan, as she stared into the fire, watching them dance about, twisting, turning, reaching upwards. Grabbing for air. Desperately searching for oxygen.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away.

“Um… hey. Yo,” she mumbled. Her voice was quiet, a pale imitation of its usual self. “Wanted to say um. Thanks. T’all of you. For like, everything. I’m um. Woulda died. If you hadn’t, like… thanks.”

It was a mockery of what she really wanted to say, of the way she wished she could let her heart gush her true feelings. She hoped they would all understand anyway.

“I uh… Yo, I wanna like, get everyone home alive too, man,” she continued. “All for that. ‘m all for keeping everyone safe. Just, like…”

There were so many things she could have brought up about Chloe’s plan, so many things she could pick to talk about. So many things that would overwhelm her in an instant if she tried to think about more than one of them simultaneously. Once again, she had to pick just one, grab hold onto it, and focus on that for the time being.

“Whadda we do if like… the church or wherever we’re keepin’ all the baddies, like… turns into one of… uh… shit.”

Why couldn’t she think of the name all of a sudden? It wasn’t on the tip of her tongue, it wasn’t anywhere. She finally looked up, away from the fire and towards the other three, opening and closing her mouth like a stranded fish before finally tapping the side of her neck, finger bouncing against her brand new electronic choker.

“Blast zone.”

[ViolentMedic]

“You have a towel? You are so prepared!” Marshall said, staring wide-eyed as Kai pulled out the single most useful thing he could have, outside of an exit off the island. “Why did you bring a beach towel on a--” He stopped, looking upwards at the umbrella covering the fire – he’d briefly dismissed it as a cold-induced hallucination - and went, “Oh. They must be your weapon! I wouldn’t have thought to use an umbrella like that!”

Once Jess was done with the towel, it was still dry enough in patches for him to dry his numb limb and quickly wipe off where he’d gotten splashback. Using the towel after Jess was a mixture of the relief of starting to be dry, combined with ‘agh’ whenever he brushed against one of the damper parts.

“I’ll be careful, Kai!”

He put his jacket, underwear and soaked glove close to the fire, then retrieved his pants. He gave them a quick patdown to check for water, then yanked them on while hopping awkwardly. Pants back on, he was now allowed to do squats, and idly did so while he listened to Chloé’s plan. This meant considering their situation in greater detail. Something he’d avoided on the lake by necessity.

Most of the first part, he nodded along to. Yes, escape was statistically the better choice. Yes, the student government was meant to hold the class together, and they might not have expected this but they had a duty. But the phrase ‘everyone we could trust’ stuck in his head unpleasantly, after he’d nodded so hard he’d nearly cricked his neck at ‘we can all go home.’ It gummed up his thoughts, made them get blocked up in there. And what to do with the players… apprehending, yes. He approved of that. Apprehending and persuading them to play along with whatever law could be established. But--

There was a visible thoughtful frown on Marshall’s face, as he stopped mid-squat and turned it into a crouch, pressing a closed fist to his mouth as he considered it. Unusually, he didn’t immediately have anything to add. It was rare that he thought about any questions for so long. But there was a lot to think about.

He was glad to hear Jess speak up. That had to mean an improvement. Marshall lowered his hand again, then snapped his fingers – or tried to, but it was the numb hand and he couldn’t make it quite work – and pointed at her.

“Danger zones!” Marshall piped up. “Jess is right, the terrorists likely employ them for the exact reason of disrupting plans such as this!”

The rest of the thoughts, for the most part, sorted themselves out now that they had something to grab onto.

“There are other flaws in the plan, and parts we can’t know will work without more information. But I agree with aiming for survival of the class, not just the individual. And I agree with finding shelter, sharing supplies, and ensuring everyone stays healthy for as long as possible. So...”

Marshall paused momentarily, his eyebrows scrunching together. Then he slammed a fist into the palm of his other hand.

“I think we should find the shelter in question, and discuss the rest on the way! Even if we might be barred from it later, it’s better to have a safe place to convene in the meantime!”

[backslash]

Kai stood by and listened quietly, because that was what he tended to do in groups. Chloé had big plans. Big ideas, wonderful ideas. Ideas that made Kai clench his jaw again when she got to the conclusion.

Jess shakily speaking up and Marshall's response bought him more time to think over his own. Jess's words settled over him more heavily than Chloé's had, even if they were more palatable. She would have died without someone intervening. Without Kai and the others. Yeah, that was objectively true. No "probably" about it. If she went into shock in the water, she'd have drowned. If she managed to get out of the lake, she'd have frozen. It could have taken minutes, and that would be it.

Maybe it was that or the adrenaline fading away or Chloé's words, but a deep shiver worked itself up from somewhere in Kai's core. He'd been in the right place at the right time. So had everyone else. That was all it took to save a life. So maybe there was something to what Chloé was saying.

How much more likely was it for everyone to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, though? Kai couldn't answer that. He wasn't one for statistics, especially the wildly theoretical.

"Are you volunteering to be the one who executes people?" He asked Chloé when there was enough of a lull. Not accusing, by his own estimate. Maybe a little disbelieving. Mostly just a question.

[midnight_twelve]

Chloé Delacroix was not naïve, even though people often thought or even said she was, in debate, and model UN, and the student council. Her opponents thought her naïve to believe equality and peace and justice could be reached, and her allies thought her naïve for believing they could be reached through cooperation and compromise and democracy. But she wasn’t naïve. She was somebody who knew how difficult the path ahead would be but never stopped walking. She was somebody who knew not everyone could be trusted but gave them the benefit of the doubt regardless. She was somebody who knew the institutions of the world, from the student government up to the real United Nations, were flawed- but she was someone who was willing to work within them and achieve more than those who blindly dismissed them, who sabotaged their own speeches or derided her dream job at the HQ back in Geneva. No, Chloé was not naïve- and so she had not expected the others to go along with her plan without question.

Jess’s concern came first and it was a logical one. Both of those facts were impressive given her condition.

“Hmm. We don’t know how wide the zones will be, whether it’ll cut off the entire town or just a street or building. We get enough warning that we can evacuate, though. Maybe relocate to this research station if the whole town goes out of commission, and back and forth if necessary.”

Marshall spoke next, finishing Jess’s train of thought and alluding to concerns of his own that could wait until later, wait until the first stage of her plan was complete. An ally for now. Chloé had counted on his support less uncertainly than the other two, and while it wasn’t unconditional, she was grateful her friend would remain at her side a little while longer.

Kai’s concern was left until last, and it was the one that caught Chloé off guard. She studied him closely, initially trying to tailor a response to his individual wants and beliefs, say what he wanted to hear- but Kai remained an unknown factor.

“Marshall’s right. Let’s find shelter, and discuss the rest later.”

Without giving them another chance to protest she set off southward.

((Chloé Delacroix continued elsewhere))