Survival Of The Fittest

It was a well known fact that Blaise found personal attachment distasteful. Even confronted with such terrible acts, and make no mistake that the accusations against Lorenzo were about as terrible as they could conceive, they would have found it difficult to be angry. It merited a raised eyebrow, yes, a shake of the head, and ties with the offender would have to be cut without hesitation. They could forgive much but a violent breach of bodily consent was too far beyond the boundaries of their moral apathy. As an idea they cared for it more than most others; many nights had ended prematurely due to a lack of clear and eager affirmation. It was a line they would not cross, and if you found yourself on the other side they had nothing but contempt for you. Yet hearing such a story would not inspire the rage that seemed to physically pour off of Tyrell, they could not imagine themself in such a state. Unsettled was a certainty, disgusted was a necessity, but angered? Anger was a selfish emotion, reserved for those that took from them, not from others. It could not be roused for anything less.

As soon as Artem's name rang across the sky, Blaise's head snapped to Lorenzo. Their face twisted into a mask of indescribable fury. Sharp black nails dug into Dante's hand without comprehension. It was a miracle of whatever composure lingered that they did not shriek or dart forward to make good on their mocking promise to cave in Lorenzo's skull. What he had done was so much worse than any of these heathens could recognize. The gape-mouthed Luddites surrounding them knew nothing, not even a fraction, of what had been done. Artem, cherish his simple blinded soul, was so far beyond the scope of their reality. He wasn't a person, not really. He was a cosmic blessing, an ideal form that graced the streets of Chattanooga of all places. Skin like silk paper too delicate for the harsh realities of nature, a face and figure so gentle a harsh breeze might cast a ripple through their surface, hair hewn from the first rays of the first yellow sun and preserved until such a time there were eyes to fully appreciate it. They were those eyes. He was a gift sent to unassuming surroundings for them to discover. To nurture into the breath-taking spectacle he could be under their care. It had never been time, of course, even they were not so arrogant as to believe they were ready to guide him yet. They planted seeds, offered an article here and there, sought permission for a subdued picture even rarer, enough to place the idea in his head so it would not seem so alien when the time came. As high school had wound to its end they knew they were still unprepared, but this did not concern them. He would be there when they were ready, even if they had to do a little searching, and they would show this world beauty it had never dreamed.

Lorenzo, stupid, crass, vulgar, tasteless Lorenzo had chosen that as his prey. It could have been anyone, and perhaps they should all question how many other times it had happened, but at least in this one moment he had chosen Artem. Petty crime and debauchery did not nearly capture the scope of what he'd done. He did not assault a boy, he did not deface art, he violated the very soul of artistry and aesthetic. The words Tyrell spat were as insufficient to convey that as his cow-headed skull was to conceive it, but they had nothing better to add. There could be nothing better. There were no words for what Lorenzo had done, not in any tongue that they could understand. They hated him for his deficiency nearly as much as they hated Lorenzo, but neither of them capture the brunt of their anger. No. That was reserved for Violet.

They spat on the pier as Lorenzo hit the ground. A gunshot went off, tearing their vision away from him to her for the first time since the fight started. "What the fuck have you been waiting for? Shoot that thing, or must it crawl to you in weeping surrender before you can hit it?" At least, that was what they intended to say. Their ears still rang from Violet's previous failure, so their retort and any response were mangled. Useless. A useless willowy waste of air and energy. How she could shoot an unarmed man on accident, yet watch all of this without firing a single shot until it was over was beyond them. If there was any justice in the universe she could provide this one service, one truly beneficial act in what Blaise was certain was an endless parade of myopia. If not, perhaps that gun was better in more industrious hands.

A clean shot.

Camila reserved little sympathy for the heinous criminal. Know the victim or not, her intimacy with the situation mattered little. The settled chill of the frisson that had run down her spine when she had imagined that Lorenzo...

Still there, heavy and sticky like the skin of old soup. But Camila did not feel the rage about her, the spitting and the perhaps swoon-worthy machismo shown in the clash of steel and steel. It was not her place to judge- or perhaps she was too scared to, an errant thought she tried to hush. Executing a man in cold blood seemed a perversion of justice, a skip of the stone too far away from shore. She... had expected someone to die. But not here, not now. There was a difference between thinking it and seeing it. And the corpse-to-be was right there in front of her where she would see, they all would see, where the whole world would see, and he had a family, and they too would be able to see, and-

Tall one was still working the gun.

"Wait," her voice warbled, cracked on the single syllable. Camila stood up from her relaxed spectator's poise, suddenly filled to overflowing with the rushing dread of adrenaline. She reached, for the gun, for the girl, it didn't matter. All the bandages in the world wouldn't fix the mistake this girl could never take back if she fired.

"That's enou-"

The crack of bone, surprisingly close. Her bone, she realized not a second later, as the sand rushed to meet her halfway.

Ty watched Lorenzo writhe on the ground, sure that a persistent spiderweb of pain was spreading out from his abdomen. More than a few opponents fell to that sequence of blows before, and that was usually where things stopped. Of course, he couldn't stop-

"What the-?!"

Before he could continue to admire his handiwork, the deafening crack of a rifle broke his concentration and sent him scrambling backwards. His hands rose instinctively, though it was clear from the sand that had spattered over his legs that the shot had missed. Ty shook his head in frustration, looking back to Violet. The girl was hurriedly chambering another round in the rifle. He supposed he didn't much care how it was that Lorenzo died, though it seemed better to leave it on his conscience than someone else's.

Then again, she wants to leave. What better kill to check off that box than someone she won't feel bad about?

Ty noticed the smaller girl suddenly reach for Violet's gun. If Camila got it, it was no longer a factor he understood; she seemed to want to put a stop to this. Ty looked down to Lorenzo, who seemed to have gone still. With the crowbar it would be easy to break him open, keep him from going anywhere. There might be enough time to get to the gun afterwards, or at least find cover.

If Camila gets the gun, she'll definitely shoot me then. Violet probably won't.

It was a split second decision, and not one that Ty was at all comfortable with. Still, the gun needed to be controlled in this situation, otherwise there was no predicting what might happen next. Besides, Lorenzo couldn't run faster than a bullet. Not in this state. If Ty had to wrestle it from Violet himself, he would.

Ty turned and ran to the pier, crowbar in hand. Stepping through the small pool of Dante's blood and leaving crimson footprints on the dock, he stopped just short of the scuffle. As Violet managed to get the upper hand, another shot rang out and Ty felt the now-familiar sensation of a bullet whizzing past. Instinctively he scrambled out of the way, leaving a clear shot at where he knew Lorenzo to be.

"For fucks sakes, could you try intentionally shooting someone for a change?"

He froze, waiting for what was about to happen next.

It was impossible to even think, the pain was so intense. More than anything he’d ever felt in his eighteen years. It felt like shock waves of pain were ricocheting through his body with every breath and insignificant movement he made. His head was still so fuzzy that he couldn’t even focus on anything happening around him. He knew he had to move. He had to get up, he had to try and defend himself. Tyrell was still there, and he was still in immediate danger, and yet his body wouldn’t listen to him. All he was capable of was gripping his side and desperately begging the pain to stop. He felt like he couldn’t even hear, every sound around him muffled and indistinguishable from any other.

Was this it?

Was Lorenzo going to die here?

All of a sudden, he was snapped out of his stupor by the first sound to break through his pain-induced haze. The loud crack of the rifle woke him from his daze almost immediately, and the sand that sprayed over his face when the bullet lodged itself in the ground but a few inches from where his head lay sent a bolt of adrenaline rushing through his veins. His head snapped up to look towards the pier. He saw Violet, gun in hand, quickly starting to load up another round, and he knew this one was bound to hit home if he didn’t get the fuck out of dodge, and fast. Before he could act, Tyrell’s hulking form ran past his field of vision, headed for the group at the pier.

He had to go. Regardless of the pain he had to force himself to act or he was going to die, right here, right now.

That wasn’t an option for him.

Forcing himself through the pain as best he could, Lorenzo lifted him body from the sand and forced himself to his knees. He darted his eyes around him until he spotted his weapon, laying a few feet away in the sand. Gritting his teeth and pushing himself up with his good arm, Lorenzo managed to get himself standing. He had to move faster! He kept screaming it in his head, drowning out the sounds of the mess going on behind him on the pier. Clutching his side with his left and, and wincing at the pain that shot from his bicep, Lorenzo ran as fast as he could force his body, scooping up the maul with his free hand, and booking it towards his day-pack, having left it behind when he first went after

He made it to the bag unscathed, but he knew that at any moment Violet’s gun could go off in his direction again, or Tyrell could come charging after him. He looked at the treeline nearby. Once he was in the trees, he could lose them and find himself a place to rest. Until then he had to power through. His eyes were streaming tears of sheer pain and discomfort, but that was better than being dead, so he didn’t care. He hooked his am under the strap for the bag and took off as best he could. He stumbled a few times, the pain taking its toll, but he refused to give in and let himself be killed. Another loud crack of the rifle going off spurred him forwards. He didn’t feel it hit him, so he just kept moving.

He didn’t spare a moment to look back, because he knew if he did it would only slow him down.

He reached the treeline and fell against on for support, almost dropping the maul in the process. He panted heavily and gripped his side with a choked sob. He had to keep moving. He made his way into the wood, as fast as his legs would take him, propelling himself off the trunks of the trees, thinking only about survival.


[B03 - Lorenzo Tavares Continued In Break Your Halo]

Violet didn't like the way that Blaise was talking to her. Not one bit. They spoke like someone that had control of things, but they weren't spinning the yarn, here. This was all Violet's doing. Loading the gun again for another shot was not Blaise, but Violet. Her web. Web coming down like marionette strings, tangling everyone up and getting them all sticky with squicky fluids and nonsense. Spindling limbs, pulling down on the lever, eight-fold eyes watching the empty shell cartridge whose-it fly out of the chamber, pushing back up on the chamber, feeding from the magazine, lining up a shot. Getting it right in line with Lorenzo's skull. There was nothing to him but the bones, she realized. No person within. The rest was set dressing. Spun from fragile yarns, not silk. Blaise didn't deserve a verbal reply. It would have come out in strange tongues anyway. She hung over his twisted, scrunched up face for a moment before she pulled the wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait WAIT—

"Gyaugh!"

A shot rang out and flew off into the distance, between the trunks of trees. Violet turned and swung the gun at the first thing she could find, rifle-whipping Camila as hard as she could manage. Then, instinctively, she flinched away, almost taking herself right off the pier and into the water, dodging away from something that probably wouldn't come. All of the tension that had kept her body in place was gone. The gun, having made itself familiar in her hands over the course of the last few minutes, now felt alien and strange. She didn't know what it was good for if it couldn't prevent things like that from—

But Violet didn't consider herself a victim.

She wouldn't let it ever get to that point. Even though she flinched away, even though she lashed out, even though, even though the spot burned with rot, she wouldn't get to that point. Pivoting, Violet stepped back from the edge of the pier and closed the distance between herself and her bags. Where was her gun pointing? At everyone and anything that moved. Her mouth opened to issue an apology but then closed again and opened once more to let out a shaky sigh, and then another, and then another. It was a little easier when she got rid of the source. Not the source. The spark. It was a little easier to see the spark felled. She couldn't look at anyone. How much of that was Violet and how much of that was just being startled? The actual space the pier had for walking was smaller than she thought. Why had she let her guard down? She took her bags by the straps and slung them over her shoulder, almost missing the mark. When she looked out at the other ones, no longer tangled up in much of anything, she saw that Lorenzo was gone. The biggest unknown, disappeared.

Right now it was helping to only think about that. One purpose, one goal. Lorenzo. Something to hold onto while she guided herself away. A comforting lie. A gleaming spider's thread in the darkness.

Any comfort she found in managing to bring Camila down before more harm could be done? Gone, replaced by a choking feeling in her throat that threatened to override the adrenaline rush that had been mitigating things so far, keeping them from going in the red, shutting her down completely. The head-rush was keeping her from becoming an immovable object by propelling her forward with unstoppable force, but right now she was stalling out a little. The web was broken. Swept up and away by the broom of fate. Slowly, things started to come back into focus. The red tint in her vision was starting to fade away, replaced by an all too familiar overly vivid clarity to the scene she saw. She could see everything so clearly that she could almost,

almost,

feel it.

"I'mmagonnachaseafterhimsorrydon'tfollowme," she muttered, once, twice, three times, as she stepped down off the pier and into the sands, past the spots where her still hot shots had landed, and into the trees, not daring to look back, no longer thinking about what she had done, only thinking about what still needed doing.

Nor did she actually start to look for Lorenzo. Not yet. Once she was far enough in, she took a different path.

She needed a fresh starting point.

[Violet Schmidt continued in I Want To Make You Cry, I'm Nothing Like You.]

And suddenly he was breathing again.

Okay, he'd been breathing the whole time, because he appeared to not be dead. He was pretty sure he'd know when he was dead and that being dead wouldn't hurt this much because honestly the kingdom of heaven would kind of be a ripoff otherwise. But he'd opened his eyes and sucked in air with the sorta gasps you hear off of someone who just got CPR in a movie, lungs working overtime to make up for however much time had passed with him breathing in shallow spurts. He was cold and pale and sweaty and in pain and he was alive.

He sat up with a jolt without actually realizing he was doing it and immediately had to lean back on his hands to keep himself from collapsing again. The head rush was real strong. Kinda familiar, like when he forgot to eat all day or he forgot to drink anything at a track meet. Except bad enough that he thought his vision went black for just a moment. After a few desperate inhales his breathing went back to... well, not steady, hadn't been steady in a while, but at least kinda rhythmic. Ragged but not stopping. His eyes danced around wildly, trying to take stock of his surroundings and piece them together with what he remembered. How much time had passed? He remembered bits and pieces. He remembered the gunshot, he thought maybe he remembered more. He remembered the pain, dulled slightly now by painkillers but still very much there and unforgettable. He remembered Camila helping him, he remembered Blaise and realized their hand was still stuck tight to his. They remembered... Violet? Violet was gone. Lorenzo was gone. Tyrell was... oh, Tyrell was here.

Hey, Ty, he said, except he didn't really get the words out because no part of him was really working like it should right now. Some incomprehensible noises came out of his mouth instead as Dante looked up at him. Followed by a sob, suddenly. More sobbing. He felt the wet on his cheeks, like a dam had finally broken.

He'd forgotten to be scared until now.

Violet was out of control, generously assuming she'd had any to start with, and she had to be put down. The second innocent casualty to her mayhem crumpled to the floor as the only person she needed to kill started to get away. With their luck she'd accidentally plug a round through Tyrell's thick skull and bash their teeth out trying to control the recoil. No more, no one else was going to fuck this up. Their hand tightened on the bottle looking for the right opportunity, and when it came they would spring forward to shatter it against her knee. If that wasn't enough to bring her down they would stab her in the heel, the thigh, the calf, anything they could reach until she had more holes than her understanding of marksmanship. The possibility that she could die never crossed their mind. Lorenzo had stolen from them, and by incompetence she had become his accomplice. Nothing would stop them from taking back what they owed.

Violet moved.

Blaise lurched forward.

The world spun on its heel and before they could register the rotation they landed flat on their ass where they'd started. A miasma of poor decisions gurgled in their stomach. Exactly how many swigs they'd taken in the last hour of baby sitting evaded them, much like basic motor functions, clear vision, and patience. They were well past their normal indulgence, and they'd be furious if they weren't preoccupied trying not to hurl. This outfit offended enough senses without adding the scent of whiskey vomit to its resume.

When they opened their eyes again, both Violet and Lorenzo had vanished. It was difficult to determine who they were more furious with until a convenient target presented itself. Aborted speech paired with blubbering gave away that Dante was awake and as useful as usual. No, even less than usual. Usual Dante was empty minded but agreeable, able to be moved whichever way he needed to go to be out of the way. No risk to anyone but himself, hadn't they thought that just before all of this boiled over? It was not as if things were different now. They could easily walk away and leave him to his fate without consequence. With a good enough excuse he might even laud them for it. That was his value, no? But value meant nothing if you did not possess it. Without their care eventually Dante would die, and any worth he had would be meaningless. In this way by posing a risk to himself, he posed a risk to them. They had already let one robbery slip by unnoticed, and while Dante's puppy dog naivete could not trade with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of Artem's potential in any normal proposition, he was here. To their drunken slurry of anger, disappointment, and possessiveness, that was enough.

The clink of the bottle rolling at their side was the only warning when they reeled back and slapped Dante across the face. Before he could recover they latched onto his collar, dragging his face close to theirs. Warm breath bathed in alcohol washed over him. "You will not die here," they managed to say with only mild slur, "We're leaving. You'll be fine. Do you understand me?"

Dante was theirs. The urge to keep him might fade with sobriety, but until it did even his own weakness would not take him from them.

((Blaise d'Aramitz continued in Student Government))

Camila didn't immediately react to the roots of pain that had started to settle. She was up on her feet and steady for all the moment she needed to confirm that people had fled and that nobody was in danger of dying. No, not even the flirt. He had the energy to cry- energy to spare.

Camila then evaluated herself. The pain that had gnarled itself stubbornly into the soil of her flesh was a sudden blossom, furiously hot, weeping and reddened skin in an unbroken stripe over the whole of her collarbone. Swelling had already settled in, a tire with a bit too much air pressure. Libra- the planets retrograde would make burdensome demands of her health. Sounded about right.

"If we're leaving, we'll have to support him," and the subject him was the obvious one, the one minus a leg.

"I doubt he's in a state to walk by himself." Camila took the steps of the pier two at a time. She almost drifted the flirt's way, something about his squeezed and juiced innocence leaking from his eyeballs, she felt a pang of sympathy gently drag her heart behind the wrong rib cage and leave it to die in an alley. But first and foremost, the practical details.

When she tried to reach into her bag though, her arm stopped her. It was an innocent moment at first, a split second where she assumed it was business as usual.

Stubborn, obstinate, furiously protesting with pain enough that the moment she tried to move it she could have started sobbing pathetically herself. She didn't. She instead considered the list of tasks to be done. Check the map, undone. Put her shirt back on, undone. She chewed on the fat of her own silence, found it thick. For a helpless moment she could have screamed in frustration, maybe thrown herself off the pier for a quick round two of eating sand. She willed her arm to obey. It did- technically- but the agony of a single tensing of the wrong muscle could have been her body busily tearing itself to shreds, her shoulder whimsically fleeing her body by bursting out of it's socket as the minefield of dull pain of her unmoved arm seemed liable to turn to an actual explosion the moment she dared do anything for herself.

She needed to rest. A moment, to herself, and then some more. She could have that the moment she could have her dominant hand back. She was crippled- she could carry her weight no more than she could awkwardly rip her broken bones out of her body and defend herself with them.

"... Could you help?" She asked of Lorenzo's former enemy, now the latest of awkward additions to this group of vultures emotionally drinking off the flirt's vulnerability.

So uneasy- almost worse than the pain of her injury. She hated to ask, much as she hated to have no choice but to.

((Camila Cañizares continued in Student Government))

There were few things as unsettling and deeply frustrating as standing next to a person with a gun who can't figure out where to point it. Even moreso when she neglected to actually take time to aim or follow up. There was no committment to any one decision on her part, and Ty looked on in shock and confusion as Violet scrambled and quickly absconded from the area.
It wasn't outside the realm of possibility that he could have stopped her, perhaps managed to charge her while she was getting her bags and wrestle the gun away. Then again, she might've just turned and shot him. Given what he'd seen from the wound to Dante's leg, Ty knew he could't afford to chance it. Not while there was still so much to do.

I can't go out slowly. Not like that.

He grimaced as he watched her ramble off into the distance, following Lorenzo's path. Every predatory instinct he possessed told him to give chase, to follow out of sight and wait until he could ensure the other boy's timely death. Until he could see it happen, and finally stop thinking about it. He only managed to take one step forward though, as an uncharacteristically rational thought cut through the maelstrom of vengeful thoughts.

Doesn't really matter who gets him, at this point. Does it?

Violet saw his actions as reason enough to put Lorenzo in the dirt. Ty had written the recipe for Lorenzo's demise, and put in more than enough line work. His signature was signed onto Lorenzo's fate at this point, so it wasn't any loss to wait and let things play out. If the bastard managed to get the upper hand and kill her, there was some balance in that too. She'd have fucked up enough times by that point to have earned it.

It's my fault he escaped.

If she was intent on shooting him, it was best he had moved out of the way. With her aim, it was just as likely she'd have hit Ty.

Idiot.

Word of Lorenzo's actions both on and off the island could spread easily. With any luck he'd hear the name on the announcements sooner rather than later. It was just a matter of time. If they encountered each other again, the mistake was easy enough to rectify.

His unflinching stare at the path the two had taken was broken by unfamiliar, though expected noises. Dante had woken up, and the strange and seemingly drunk girl nearby appeared to be trying to tend to him. It didn't appear to be working too well. For a time, Ty simply stared down at the two of them, still gripping the crowbar.

Now that Ty saw her clearly, he recognized the girl who'd tried to wrestle away Violet's gun. He'd shared a cooking class with Camila, and he'd gotten the sense she was headstrong, if not a bit distant. An honest person, as far as he could tell. It was enough of an admirable quality to rouse a glimmer of respect on Ty's part. That connection seemed to quell the urge to take out his frustration on Camila for her part in Lorenzo's continued survival.

"We" will have to support him? When the fuck did I agree to that?

Ty remained silent, watching Camila closely. She tried to hide it, but it was clear to him she was in an immense amount of pain. The cracking sound he'd heard wasn't just the rifle stock impacting her shoulder, clearly. It was impressive that she was trying to power through it, though. What impressed him more was that she was able to power through her pride as well.

She's asking me to help? Is she that desperate?

Ty looked at the three of them. One girl far and away out of sorts, and the other broken but willing herself to continue. Dante appeared to be more conscious than before, though that wasn't helping him - the boy looked terrified. Despite everything he'd thought in those first moments on the island, they were looking to Tyrell for help. Like they'd expected him to actually do something.


"Sure thing."


He set the crowbar down next to his duffle bag, and knelt beside Dante. It wouldn't be any use to take him somewhere safe if he bled out first. As Ty began searching through his issued medical kit for a tourniquet, he spoke matter-of-factly to the wounded boy.

"Alright, so this leg's not gonna be much use to you. Can't put any pressure on it, and this is only good for an hour, maybe two. After that it's gotta come off and you've gotta hope the bleeding doesn't start again. A round stitch might work to keep it shut, but you don't want to be making a lot of noise out in the open here."

He sighed, wrapping the tourniquet just above the wound. They'd patched him up well enough; Ty had enough scars to know what a decent job looked like. Moving him was entirely likely to get the wound bleeding again, though.

"Look, your best shot is sticking around someone who'll help you get from point A to point B and ride out as much of this as you can. Somebody who'll die for you, 'cause if the person you have to depend on seriously wants to get out of here, they're eventually going to put a bullet in your head or kill you in your sleep. You... are an easy ticket out of here. It'd look like mercy, and they get to go home with a clear conscience. It's that simple. If you want to live, you need to accept that. Unless you can un-fuck this leg, that-"

Ty tightened the tourniquet, continuing his diatribe to focus Dante's attention away from what must've been quite a bit of pain. He shot a glance at Blaise as he did so. Hopefully she understood what he was doing.

Listen to me, not the leg.

"-that is your reality right now. That's the game you have to play. If not, you've got to find something to do with yourself before your number's up. That's what I'm doing. Putting - well, trying to put that motherfucker down. Making sure he's got nothing to go home to. I've got Erika, hopefully I can see her through the worst of it. And right now I've got you, and I've got this. Alright, let's go slow."

He let Dante get a firm grip around the back of his neck before lifting the boy up to his good leg. His weakness was palpable, but it was clear enough he wanted to continue.

"This is gonna fucking suck, but I'll get you somewhere better than this. Then-" Ty looked back to Blaise again. "-you guys are on your own. I've got some things I need to take care of."

Ty wiped blood from his forehead, and looked down to see his right hand was thoroughly stained a deep crimson. It wasn't immediately clear whose blood it even was. Some from Dante's leg, some from Lorenzo's face, and the rest was his own.

Wearing a smile he was sure wasn't entirely reassuring, he began to slowly set off with Dante, following Camila's path into the wilderness.

((Tyrell Lahti continued in Ricochet))

It was kinda funny but Dante had never been slapped before? It was the kinda thing that happened in romantic comedies a lot when a guy went too far talking to a girl, but Dante had spent his whole life trying to stay as far away from that line as possible, so the worst he'd ever gotten was... the time Katie Agustien threatened to kick his ass, but that was a bad example. Point was he'd never been slapped and this was the last situation he'd ever expect it to happen.

It hurt, it turned out. Not the way that the hole in his leg (and he was super aware, again, that there was a hole, that went through his leg, like all the way through) hurt, because he couldn't imagine anything else hurting like that. But it was sharp and mean and shocked him enough that he stopped crying. Or sobbing, anyway, since the tears were still coming, but he stared at Blaise in dumbfounded silence. We're leaving, they say. You'll be fine, they said. Okay, he thought, because he didn't have room for other thoughts right now. That sounded nice. Things will be fine. Maybe they were right. Blaise was smarter than he was. All he knew was how much it hurt, how wrong everything felt, how far away.

Camila was there, still. Camila had helped him, he remembered. She still wanted to help. He wanted to say no, but he couldn't find the words. Tyrell too. He wanted to help. Dante opened his mouth in the shape of the word no for a moment but didn't say anything. That wasn't right. He wasn't supposed to hold them back. There wasn't much room for guilt between the pain and the fear but it found its way in, anyway.

Tyrell had a lot to say and Dante thought he was missing a lot of it but he tried to listen, anyway, because it might be important, because he owed him. It wasn't fair to him, that he had to help, he'd just gotten here and he didn't know him that well and he couldn't give him anything in return unless he wanted an energy bar or something and he couldn't muster the power to offer that much. He could listen, though. He could listen and he could not scream when Tyrell tied the thing he was tying around his leg because it hurt like hell and his instinct was to kick him away except he knew he was helping and he wasn't sure he could kick at all, now that he thought about it, he hadn't tried to move it at all he couldn't run ever again that hit him like a freight train and he

needed to listen. He was being selfish. People were risking their lives to help him and all he could do was cry. He nodded at Tyrell. He couldn't remember stuff good even when his leg didn't have a hole in it but he would try. Take the tie thing off in an hour, hope it doesn't bleed more. Find someone he could trust to help him. It didn't matter if they would die for him, because he wouldn't let anyone die for him, because if he was going to die why shouldn't it be helping someone else live? If someone he cared about thought it was better to kill him, who was he to argue? But he kept nodding, anyway. Tyrell was just trying to help.

His arm was shaking when he slung it over the back of Tyrell's neck. His whole body was shaking. But he could stand, at least. That was something.

>> Dante Valerio continued in Student Government