Survival Of The Fittest

Daniel tilted his head. He was looking at the snow queen, his work, but he was listening and talking to the actual girl here.

"You sound sure of that."

“I am.”

She says.

“Someone has to come save us.”

She didn’t say the rest.

“If we save ourselves first, and we can save ourselves rather easily. There’s a whole location that doesn’t have cameras and everyone knows it. There’s a mean to break it, and it’s rather easy. I can do it. I can even find a way to stop the collars.

“It’s not that hard if we all worked together. But nobody wants, so I’ll do all of it myself, hoping someone will pick the slack once I’m gone. I’ll be so strong and even if I’m wrong, I’ll be strong.

“I can do it.

“The real question is: can you?

“I think you can. You can step up.”

Daniel turned to face her.

It was a bit hard to follow, but at the same time it was almost hypnotic. The way she tossed around promises of salvation and damnation and affirmation reminded him of a mildly to moderately sketchy mystic. Or maybe a cult leader.

He took a breath in.

But, he hesitated.

Her unspoken word stayed in her mouth. She took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly.

“What did you get from the terrorists, by the way?”

"A... kinda weird looking gun."

Daniel tapped his bag, where it was stowed away. If he was gonna stay outside this long, he might as well find a nice forest clearing or something and test it out. It would be ideal to figure out how to shoot before someone decided to start a firefight with him. If this girl had a gun, they could do that together, which would be nice.

...did that make them friends? Daniel feared he was feeling too amicable towards this stranger with a dangerous plan.

"What about you?"

"Oh. I had a weird looking knife. I can gave it away." She turned around, walking toward the building. "I don't need weapons."

And she didn't really need anybody else. She was a one woman army, or whatever. Strong, leading, smart, or something. Marian wasn't stupid.

"I like your snowman."

Without really thinking about it, Daniel started walking with her.

"I like yours too."

"And, uh..." He scratched the back of his head as he walked. "I didn't catch your name."

"Marian."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Daniel."

"I gotta' do something real quick, give me a minute."

"Huh?"

Marian headed toward the mine, and would come back later.

Daniel supposed he was supposed to wait.

She came back later.

"Anyways, can you be a sweetheart and keep making snowmen for me? I gotta' go do something else."

Daniel blinked at her for a moment, then shrugged. "Sure."

High point one: he was right about her name being Mary-something, even if he didn't get it exactly. High point two: of all the things a cult leader could ask him to do on murder island, making snowmen one of the least bad options.

He sat down in the snow and started rolling another snowball.

[Daniel Ozanne continued in Some Like It Cool]