Ye Not

[MK Kilmarnock]

Coleen stopped before the window. It would take too long to pull the AK out of her bag. She wasn't feeling very much like a Spartan about her ability to throw a spear and hit its mark. Fiyori had gotten away, and she had gotten away after shooting Olivia for reasons none of them would ever understand and after watching Georgia Lee slowly fade away for the very same reasons.

The same girl who just the day before, Coleen had pulled her from her breaking point. She had to be strong for so many people and when she couldn't keep it up, she never expected for somebody to be there and take her role. Coleen turned to look at the two others in the room. Olivia had taken a shot somewhere in the abdomen, but there was so much blood it was hard to tell where it was all seeping from. None of the first aid in the world could fix that. She learned that lesson a long while ago. Enzo probably wanted everything they could to keep her with them. Enzo was a good person, Coleen decided. No doubt.

She quietly stepped on over, spear lowered to the floor. "... Now what...?"

[Maraoone]

and they came back, Coleen and Enzo, and there they were, standing over her, almost scratching their heads and shrugging their shoulders because what now? What to do for the dead girl?

"I.. I don't know."

And it was really, really sinking in now that she was the dead girl, she was the next name on the announcements, she was the next corpse you'd pass by in the hallways, the next sight to avoid and turn your head at, the next person to enter your nose and enter you and become you, and God how she'd longed to fit in back in elementary school, middle school, high school, just fit in and be normal and be like everyone else, and now she'd be like everyone else, rotting, decaying, she'd be like everyone else, and this wasn't how she'd planned on fitting in, so she chuckled and chuckled and then coughed red onto her chest.

And then she'd be the next Abby, and people would stumble upon her corpse and they'd see her and smell her and they'd scream and run and they'd see her face every time they blink, in their nights under closed eyes, they'd see her, and she'd never leave, never ever until they die, and no no no

no

she did not wish to inhabit Coleen and Enzo's minds for the rest of forever, long or short that forever may be, she did not wish to haunt them, stay with them, not that way, no. And look, there they were, standing over her, and their eyes looking at her, pitying the dead girl, and when she looked at them, she knew that, no matter how god oh god she wished that they could put her back together, wrap bandage after bandage after bandage until she stopped leaking until she felt like a broken vase put together with tape or glue, no matter how much she wished for them to do that, no amount of tape or glue would ever keep her together, and there was no sense in their being there, so just rip the bandage off, throw it in the corner, let her bleed and

"Leave. Please leave," she said in as strong a voice as she could muster.

[Namira]

Enzo picked themselves up, after a second or so. Took a deep breath.

Okay. Okay. Think. They had to think. They had to be cool here.

There had to be a way out of this. They had to think their way out of this. C'mon, Enzo brain and Enzo heart, you don't like one another, but...

They swallowed hard and forced themselves to look Olivia's way. Then, they forced themselves not to look away. Olivia was hurt and Fiyori was gone. Fiyori didn't matter and five minutes ago didn't matter and turning back the clock didn't matter either. This was now. This was the situation. Fuck Fiyori.

"Whoa whoa whoa whoa, hold on just one damn second, Rick," Enzo's voice was energetic, determined, almost. Coleen, without someone to chase, looked one part lost and one part... Enzo didn't know what to call it. Resigned? "No, come on. That's not how we do things. We can stick with you, we can help."

Kneeling back down. "C'mon, Olivia. Fight through it. We've got this."

[MK Kilmarnock]

She shook her head.

No more watching people die.

Coleen stepped outside the room and waited for Enzo to make their decision about what to do. She looked down either end of the hall and saw, for the moment, nobody. No gunshots, no screaming. There couldn't have been many of them left anymore, but the exact number wasn't available to her. If the voice over the announcements gave it, Coleen ignored it once she heard Georgia Lee's name. Somewhere down the hall, Cameron's body lay, still rotting. Arthur's was in the same room. Why return to this place?

What was worse, why was seeing corpse after corpse becoming less of a surprise? It made it feel all less real to her. She herself felt less human... a bad way to be, but she was starting to see it as the only way to cope. The only way to survive.

She hadn't sung in a while, come to think of it. Coleen hadn't felt a musical note in her heart since learning of Cameron's death, but as she fiddled with the hair tie in her hands, flexing and relaxing her fingers and feeling the gentle tug of the elastic band, some battlefield muse was willing to push aside the rubble and rotten flesh to reach her. Her voice cracked on the first few notes, but she sang one of the first songs Cameron had taught her down there in the basement.

"You could be the man of my dreams
But dawn is breaking and dreams are fleeting
All of our quiet voices carry..."

[Maraoone]

Fight through what? The way her eyes blur for a second every time she blinks? The way her stomach screams every time she breathes? The way her eyes pulse every time she tries to look at Enzo? At Coleen?

"No. I'm- I'm sorry, Enzo. I c- I can't- you can't do anything." Deep breaths again. Every word felt like a mile. "Just, uh just- just look." And then she looked down at herself, at all the red blooming from her stomach. "I don't want to- I don't..." don't want to hurt you, she thought she said as she stared into the distance past Enzo, past Coleen, past the ceiling, as her eyes blurred once more. And the ceiling turned into this gray ocean, grayer than the one she woke up to all those days ago in that cave, and if she ignored the smoothness of the floor and the windows and the anatomy posters and the people who couldn't heal her in this doctor's office, if she ignored all that, she could pretend she was back at the cove, just laying there, laying as the tide washed over her and rocked her to and fro to and fro like a paper boat a paper boat pierced with holes. bullet holes. and she was being rocked in the cove, and she never hurt anyone, never met Irene and Hannah so she never scared them off, never abandoned Bernadette, never dragged Georgia Lee out for a book, never slept on her, and now never hurt Coleen and Enzo just by being here, she'd avoided all of that just by staying in one place and was that so hard? Was that so hard to do? No it wasn't and wasn't that a wise decision you made just by staying in your cave

in your concrete cave

and then her eyes focused again and Enzo was still there, staring at her. Expecting that something could change. And wasn't that cute?

"Th-thank you, thank you, Enzo. But, please-" and she grabbed onto Enzo one last time, held onto her one last time- "leave."

[Namira]

The look on her face was nothing but pain and the determination in Enzo was brittle.

Olivia knew what the score was, or at least, knew what she thought the score was, which was pretty much as good as. And Vinny knew, more than they could vocalise, or tell a camera, or put into a thousand vines, that this wasn't their choice to make.

It shouldn't have been a choice in the first place. It was completely fucked that anybody had to make up their mind how okay they were with dying, how little or how much they wanted somebody to help them.

But it was still the choice that was on the table, and Enzo couldn't take that away from Olivia, no matter how much they wanted to. Sooner or later it was out of your hands. Enzo could rail against Fiyori, they could scream about what Alessio had done, that Blair had wound up killing Georgia Lee, about Irene and Abby and Cams and...

They could rail against that. They could put up the fight against this place, and what it was doing to people, they could try and keep their hopes up.

But this was Olivia here, dying. Saying she didn't want their help anymore.

And they couldn't fight that.

Enzo's shoulders slumped.

"All right, Olivia. You win," they stood up, and as much as they wanted to look away, didn't. "Take it easy, okay? See you, uh, see you when I see you."

They managed a smile, and then stepped outside.

[Maraoone]

and so they stepped out of view and now Olivia would no longer inhabit their minds and that made Olivia smile a little. and so she had one less sin to account for, one less wrongdoing upon her friends. and her eyes blurred out again, and it felt so so cold like the sea washing over her robbing her of her warmth sapping it out, and she felt herself rock again sway again like the paper boat she was, and where would she go? where would the sea bring her?

where did she deserve to go? where did souls like hers go? her great-uncle's soul she knew where it went. it went up above far far up in the sky into heaven. it went up there, she knew it, because mom and dad had said that he was a good man and good men deserved to go up there. and- and they'd prayed. prayed for his soul. and there was this man, this man in a suit whose main job main thing to do was pray and he was wearing a suit and he shouted words of god and then he said quietly nice words about her great-uncle good words about him and Olivia remembered that it made dad and mom feel a little better cry a little less. and all she could do was hope that mom and dad were watching or at least thinking her thinking about her praying for her praying those nice words good words, and now she remembered a bit of what the man in a suit said, and she guessed it went something like

"Our father, who- who is, who art, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth..."

and then she paused a minute to think about the next word, but by the time she remembered, she could not speak anymore, but it did not matter because the thought counts, right? it has to count because it's all she had left, no word no breath no movement no vision and, and

thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who trespass us. and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

and

and

forgive me for my sins lord

oh lord forgive me for disobeying my mother and my father, for going on the trip without her permission

oh lord forgive me for leaving georgia lee behind. forgive me for scaring off irene and hannah

and forgive me for leaving coleen and enzo behind for hurting them like this

and forgive me if i have forgotten anything i must be forgiven for

forgive me for cursing

forgive me for

forgive me for

oh lord forgive me

oh lord

oh lord oh lord oh lord oh lord

G062: OLIVIA FISCHER: DECEASED

36 STUDENTS REMAINING

[MK Kilmarnock]

Coleen looked up from where her head rested on her arms, folded across a pair of knees tucked closely to her chest. The song had lost its strength and luster a while ago, though she hummed some of Vanessa's guitar licks here and then. She felt Brady in her feet, and B.B.'s groove in her stomach. Cameron was in her heart.

Since her back had been to the doorway, Enzo had come from behind her. All of her survival instinct and know-how beaten into her over the last few days told her to be uncomfortable to an opening left like that, but logic said that Enzo wouldn't hurt her, and Coleen was confident in that. She only hunched her shoulders an inch or so at their approach, and turned her chin up to look up at her classmate.

"So... Olivia. How is she going to be?" Coleen asked, quietly so and without expecting an answer.

"... This will stop happening eventually. It won't be long."

[Namira]

"Oh you know," Enzo laughed, more than forced. "She's just taking a second. Sure she'll be along in a couple."

They attempted to smile again, but it hurt even to try. Only so many times you could grin through the pain, and even if they'd managed a brave face for Olivia, stepping out of the room just made the reality twist the knife that much harder.

Vinny glanced down at Coleen, heaved a sigh.

"I'm guessing you don't mean in the 'cause we're gonna get miraculously rescued and ride off on a train of sunshine' kind of way."

[MK Kilmarnock]

It was Coleen's turn to force a laugh.

"No, I don't."

She stood up and took her bag and her spear with her. She pursed her lips, dry from exposure, low water, and a lack of lip balm after she gifted Arthur her favorite one. She supposed she wasn't far away... on the same floor, even, so she could always just go ahead and grab it. Didn't take long to decide against ruining a sentimental gesture.

"You're a bad liar, Vin." Her voice cracked a bit near the end. "Just thought you should know that. Don't, um, take up a living being a card shark. Or a lawyer."

She pulled her hair over her ear to give Enzo a look, burned-side first, and then tucked the spear between her legs. While balancing her weapon between her knees, she swept her hands over her hair with the tie in order to pull it back on. "Can you... do me a favor?" Coleen asked as she worked. "I've never had it in a bun before, at least not that I can remember. Can you, uh... help?"

[Namira]

Enzo went quiet for a couple seconds. Coleen didn't have to add the follow up of an explanation for what she really meant. If it wasn't just a matter of time before they had a happy, miraculous rescue, then it was only a matter of time before they all killed each other. Sometimes it was hard not to think that it was inevitable. They'd been with Cam, and she'd died. Then with Blair and Alba, and Blair had killed, then with Col and Olivia, and Olivia had died.

It was a lot of goddamn dead people.

"No way. I'll be taking the poker world by storm," they answered flippantly.

They both knew that it was just, well, coping. They both knew that it was just a way of trying to distract each other from the fact that Olivia was dying or already dead next door. What else was there, though? It was that or just roll over and die, give up, after they'd persevered for so long and so hard.

"Yeah. Sure, give me a second."

It'd been a while since Enzo had had their own hair long, but back then, they'd experimented a lot, tried out different things. It was kind of weird trying to map putting your own hair in a bun to looking at the back of someone else's head, but they got it after a couple of goes, pulling back Coleen's hair and tying it up.

"All right, there we go," Enzo wasn't sure what was prompting Coleen to wear her hair like this; they knew about the burn, sure, but Coleen rarely if ever had it out and open. Maybe it just didn't seem like as much of a priority to conceal it with all the crap that was going on.

"So, where to next, Goomba?"

[MK Kilmarnock]

Where to? Coleen thought about anywhere on this island appealing to go.

"I don't really know," she replied uselessly while touching a hand to the freshly tied bun in her hair. Her head felt light and controlled now, and she decided it was well worth the price of the pinching and pulling and silent apologies from Enzo as they tied it up with some difficulty. "Cameron's hair tie is really putting in the work..."

She managed a slight smile. It was possible, as some slight measure of compensation, that they could find Vanessa elsewhere on this island. Coleen made that her primary goal.

The secondary, of course, was that Alessio had to die. She scrunched her face as she thought that darker, violent thought. Enzo wouldn't condone anybody killing anybody, she felt. If Enzo left her after that, it would be sad, but that's just the way it had to be. He took everything, so he'd give everything. But that bridge, as her father was fond of saying, would be crossed when she got to it. For now...

"I don't know why I keep coming back here," Coleen vocalized her thought from the other day with a more genuine chuckle. "But let's get the hell out. I'm not coming back unless they force me to."

((Coleen Reagan, continued in Empyrean))

[Namira]

Did it count as taking a stand, if all you were looking to do was go along with someone?

Enzo wanted to keep Coleen from being harmed. They liked her and they owed it to Brady and BB and Cameron, and even Vanessa, really. But for all that they had a knife sitting in their pack, the idea of actually coming out with it and hurting, killing someone else—could they bring themselves to do that, even for Coleen's sake?

The longer this went on, the more vain a hope 'holding out' became. How much of it was being moral, and how much of it was clinging to the option that kidded them out of making any hard choices?

They didn't want to. Straight up. If they could have an ordinary conversation with Kimiko, then there had to be something more to this, right? There had to be another way...

"I feel that," was what they said out loud. "Let's mosey, Goomba."

((Enzo continued in Empyrean))