Survival Of The Fittest

He’d tried. June had shoved medical supplies into his hands, and Marshall had tried his best. But his best wasn’t good enough, and California only lived long enough to smile, kiss Kai and die.

Marshall slowly loosened the pressure on the bullet wound, and looked down at his hands. He wiped them off on his pants, but there was no rubbing away the red, glove and bandages both already stained with Chloe’s blood and now with California’s, too. (And there was no blood in Jacob’s case, but he saw that, too.)

He picked up the revolver, dropped where June had discarded it. He turned away, and fumbled into unloading it to check how many bullets were left, the task so difficult, then shut it again.

Amid the haze of… everything… Marshall picked out what Kai had said, and focused on that. The danger zones weren’t working. Something was truly wrong with the game.

If Kai was right, there wouldn’t be anyone where they were going. And Marshall chose to believe he was. He could load his revolver up later (and hope what was left would be enough if he saw Matthew again before then).

When Marshall turned back, he looked at June and then quietly rested a hand on her shoulder, just for a moment. A silent thank you – one he’d make verbal later, when there was more time. June had done what she could. He’d need to make sure she knew that.

He didn’t dare touch Kai. Last time he’d touched Kai’s shoulder, he’d gotten punched in the face. This time, it would be the least he deserved.

But they had to cram that grief down and get moving. So that maybe someone would get out of this. Maybe Kai, at least, would live long enough to hate Marshall for failing to keep his promise. Maybe Marshall would last long enough to hate himself for failing someone who’d been there for him for so much of this game. But guilt, hate, grief, none of it had any place here, when they were so few, so close to whatever end was coming.

“Kai,” he said, voice quiet and damp, so close to breaking out into sobs and barely holding together. “She's gone. We need to get moving.”

Kai wasn't any more composed than Marshall was. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the blank smile on Cali's face. The spike of sudden, desperate hope he'd felt when rushing back down the mountain had only mattered because she was part of it.

Now what? Now he had nobody. Now nothing he had done mattered. He might as well have let the girl at the trapping camp shoot them both.

He stayed silent and hunched over for several minutes as those dark feelings roiled inside of him. Maybe some part of him was hoping there would be a twitch, a sigh, something from Cali that proved they were wrong and she was still alive. Nothing.

Marshall said they had had to go. That "we" had to go. Pulling Kai back into the collective like there was no question about it. He expected June to argue at least, but she didn't. Kai wanted to argue too, but he couldn't speak.

And Cali had told him to go.

No matter how much he wanted to stay in this spot and never get up, she'd told him to go. He'd be letting her down. He'd failed at so many things on the island, but she had searched for him and stayed with him. He had no idea what was at the beach. Maybe the upper pass was a fluke. Maybe every other Danger Zone was still functional and they'd all die. But she'd told him to go. To try and see.

If it was in his reach, he couldn't let her down again.

"The collar," he said tonelessly to Marshall and June. The words came out warped and only with great effort. He grabbed at the collar around his neck for emphasis. "It beeped but didn't-" Kai shook his head. He figured his point was clear, since he obviously still had a neck.

"I don't know if that's how it is everywhere, but..."

They had tools. Marshall was insisting they go. Cali...

Kai touched her face. She was still warm. She wouldn't stay that way for long, but for now she was still warm.

He closed her eyes and gathered her in his arms before painfully and unsteadily rising to his feet. His leg was bleeding again where the stitches has torn as he ran. He couldn't bring himself to care about that too much.

With as much care as he could manage, Kai brought Cali deeper into the hot spring's enclave and laid her back down out of view of the trail. It was warm here. It was the best place he could leave her. He didn't have anything left to cover her with, so he folded her arms over her chest as best he could and rested there for a minute with his hand over hers.

"I'm-" He started to whisper to her and choked on the words. I'm going to go.

Marshall and June were still there and watching, but Kai was beyond self-consciousness at this point. He didn't look at them until he finally pulled himself away from Cali and limped back over to pick up the grenade launcher.

"I don't know what's going to happen. They might just kill us. You don't have to come." He took a deep shuddering breath.

"But if I can't do anything else, I'm going to make them kill me themselves."

((Kai Rosado-Prince continued in Trespasser))

Marshall thought about approaching California as Kai laid her to rest. Sharing some last words, or saying something. But in the end, he stayed back and waited as Kai had his last moments with her. While they waited, he retrieved his belongings and make sure he was ready to go. He kept the revolver in his hand. In the distance, he thought he heard shouting down the mountain. If Matthew was still down there...

The hot springs hadn’t worked. When would he learn that screaming from the mountains never did? That it just drew crazy to him?

Kai came back, and shared his intent. Said they didn’t have to come with.

“I’m coming with,” Marshall said, before Kai’s words had even finished echoing through the space.

Marshall didn’t know if making the terrorists kill him would accomplish anything. He wasn’t even sure if he had the guts to dare them. But if there was a chance of getting more than one person out, then it was a chance worth taking.

Besides… he’d failed everyone else. If he left Kai to save himself, he’d just be failing Kai, too.

He followed along a few feet, but glanced back at June and lingered behind to see if she was following.

((Marshall West continued in Trespasser.))

June hadn't really done much but watch in horror as the scene played out in front of her. It felt like she wasn't supposed to be here, like she was an intruder on one of the most intimate, horrific memories of Kai and Marshall's lives. It was déjà vu, it was her disembodied self looking at her going through Medea's death, Iris' death, Dick and Darryl's death. June had felt alone and isolated in grief, and now, in the worst way possible, she had company.

She had nothing to offer but her mere presence, but somehow Marshall thanked her for it, somehow Kai spoke to her, offered her to come, even, as if they hadn't hurled invectives at each other a couple minutes ago, as if she hadn't called him a ghoul, and this all, too, felt unreal.

It was the overwhelming static of ocean waves, an indescribable bout of grief and empathetic bereftment.

And yet, in the middle of it, was a wild hope.

The danger zones weren't working, Kai had choked out. It took her a while to pick out the words, between the slurred enunciation and the static of her brain, but then it her, a shock to the brain. The terrorists were blowing up, and the danger zones weren't working.



When June had found Marshall, she had been alone and friendless and moorless, she had not sought him out for any reason other than to keep herself from unraveling completely. But now, in the middle of all this death, she had found a solid, tangible reason to keep going. They might kill us, you don't have to come, Kai warned. But June wanted to come. She had a broken arm, and no weapon to call her own, and no remaining friends, and no other reason to live. And she wanted to live.

She heard shouting somewhere down the mountain that sounded vaguely like Matthew, but then what? She'd follow her anger and rage into oblivion and for what? Momentary satisfaction? She had fantasized of oblivion many times, fantasized of bullets to the brain and slashes to the arteries, but she wanted to live, she realized, and she wanted everyone else to live too. She didn't want anyone else to feel bereft like her, she didn't want anyone else to feel bereft like Kai and Marshall.

Where else was there? There was nowhere else to be, but with them.

June gave one last look at California's body, now laid in its final resting place.

No more.

When Kai left, and Marshall left, she followed.

((June Madison continues in The Long Way Down))