"Man, this SOTF thing sucks."

[ViolentMedic]

“Oh! ...Oh.”

Now that he thought back to school… right. He’d seen her with Ren on occasion. It was easy to remember now that he thought about it – Ren always had those punk clothes that were utterly inappropriate for school.

“Sorry for your loss,” Marshall said, the words coming out

Ren, who’d refused to give up Kitty. Like Kai.

Marshall instinctively reached out towards her. To put his uninjured hand on her shoulder, maybe. But his hand froze mid-air, remembering what had come of him grabbing Kai’s shoulder. He instead awkwardly hovered his hand there, then pulled it back.

“I’m not going anywhere, if you want to talk about it.”

-

She didn’t end up talking a lot. But she stayed.

-

The next morning came with the usual. Joshua killing a third girl. Perante Losoa, another one of Marshall’s lacrosse teammates, walking into a danger zone. Matthew’s two murders, including California’s friend. Her brother, Salem, winning BKA.

California hadn’t responded when Marshall tried to broach that subject. For once in his life, he didn’t push it.

The day was spent waiting. Quietly recovering, then returning to restlessly doing squats as his energy started to crawl back into his limbs. Acutely aware that every moment he waited for Chloe was another moment that another classmate was possibly dying. Unsure as to how to prevent it, but mourning it anyway.

-

Night came. Then day, and another announcement came.

Donovan was dead – someone that Marshall had regularly lectured about his problematic teamwork, despite being on a different sporting team. Andrew was dead. Andrew, who Marshall never managed to give the location of the safehouse to. Could that have gone differently? Salem won BKA. Again.

California still wasn’t responding to tentative attempts to check how she felt about that. But she did lay down an ultimatum.

She wanted to look for Kai.

Marshall didn’t want her to leave alone. And he wanted to see Kai, too. At least to apologize for chasing him away. For failing Jessica. But Chloe… he had to wait for Chloe.

But checking the surrounding buildings as a first step sounded reasonable. Maybe Chloe was curled up in one, like Marshall had spent most of Day 3 doing. Unable to move, due to physical injury or emotional trauma. They agreed on scouting the neighbourhood and then coming right back.

In the time they’d waited there, twenty-one classmates had died and they’d done nothing. A thirty minute search of the neighbourhood would at least be doing something.

((Marshall West and California Fox continued in D’état, de grâce.))

...

Fifteen minutes after they’d left, someone else entered the safehouse.