Survival Of The Fittest

((Samantha Ridley continued from Darkness Within))

Samantha sat in silence against the outside wall of the sawmill. She was too late, Cyrille was dead, and Jane had killed herself when she found out. Ishida was responsible for Cyrille's death, and by extension, for Jane's as well.

Sam felt like a failure. Even when she was at the place where something happened she was always too late to do anything. It made her feel like a spectator, just like someone watching from home she felt helpless to do anything on the island, but since she was on the island.... Sam didn't just feel she was a failure, she was sure she was a failure; She failed to realize she had friends on the island, she failed to find them, and she had realized during the prior day that she most likely had been given a quiver if that was a case then it's being missing was her fault as well.

There was only one thing left to do. Only one thing she hadn't failed at, at least not yet. She had to kill Reiko Ishida. That was the only thing she could still do.

((Simon Fletcher continued from The Moon is Laughing at You))

He had no idea how long he'd been trekking around the island. Around a whole day, possibly? It was dark now and Simon was feeling ridiculously tired and hungry. At this point, he just wanted to find somewhere quiet to lie down and take a breather.

Now what? It was honestly a good question. Simon had walked a good chunk of the island, ignoring everybody who had crossed his path. He wasn't sure exactly who he was looking for. Did he want to find Glory or Alex, to make sure they were alright? Or was he looking for R.J. or Sarah, to find out why they made the choice to kill someone? Either way, he somehow had completely failed to find anybody he could have possibly been searching for.

The sawmill seemed like a good a place as any to rest. It wasn't a danger zone, it seemed pretty empty, and he could find a good hiding place easily. Simon might be able to sleep for a little while, and everything would go back to normal in the morning. In the morning, maybe he could forget about the announcements or disregard them. Maybe in the morning, he wouldn't be a killer.

And there were the shapes again. In the back of his mind, Simon could feel the two girls following him. It was killing him that he couldn't remember which one was which. Eva was the one with the baby, right? No, no, that was Eve. Eve Walker-Luther, killed by the girl he had let get away. Eva was the other, the one R.J. shot with Simon's assigned gun. He really could have laughed if the situation hadn't been so fucked up. And there you were, Simon Fletcher, thinking you were being so good and moral.

He tried to stop thinking, to ignore the shapes. The sawmill area was fairly large, and he was at the outside wall of the mill itself. The place was fairly quiet, which was pretty unnerving. Simon would have preferred some birds himself, but whatever. It really, really wasn't important. The boy, exhausted in every way, slumped against the brick wall. He wanted to close his eyes, but that just made the shapes worse. Instead, he glanced around the area.

There was another person. Simon hadn't noticed her at first, but she was definitely there. The person, who he was pretty sure was a girl, was sitting against the wall herself, dark shadows of her items beside her. She could be a dangerous killer, but Simon was finally too damn sick of this whole situation to care. He had just spent the last day slinking around and hiding, and he was getting really annoyed with it.

"Hey!" He managed to bring himself to his feet, his legs shaking a bit. "Uh, ni hao. I'm Simon Fletcher." He rethought the whole standing thing, as it was getting a little painful. Simon instead sat back down and gave the girl a small wave.

A shadow moved toward the building. At first Sam didn't notice it's presence, but when the figure sat down, and then spoke, she found it hard to ignore. She grabbed her bags and moved closer to Simon. Sitting down on the root of a tree near the boy, she responded. "Hi, I'm Samantha Ridley, call me Sam."

Trying to put on a less depressed face, she grabbed a half-empty water bottle out of her bag and, taking the cap off, took a swig. "So, how have your last days been treating you? Mine could've been better, but considering what some people have been going through out here I don't really have room to complain."

The girl, Sam, had sat down by him and started to drink from her water bottle. She asked him about how his last days had been, which was a fair enough question, probably. But still, Simon gave a slightly acidic laugh.

"Could have been better, could have been far better." There were the shapes, behind him again. Why couldn't Simon have stopped to think about his actions instead of just trying to be some kind of fucking 'good guy'? It probably would have ended a lot better for everyone involved. To be completely honest, he was a little jealous of Sam. She seemed to be holding it together really well, considering they were on the third day of a full-on murdering spree.

"For one thing, I..." He had to say it. Simon had to tell someone, or he would go completely insane here. "I, er, I think I might have...uh, I think I might have killed two people, actually. I mean, not like that! I didn't shoot them or anything, but...still. I let a murderer get away, and I, um, ended up losing my gun to another one." It felt good to admit it, actually. "Also? One of my closest friends is dead, and I didn't even see him before it happened."

Well, damn. That did feel good. Simon leaned back against the wall.

"You sure you're okay?" He tried to make his voice as far away from a whine as he could. The whole situation was pretty messed up, and Sam had probably seen some terrible stuff too. It wasn't like he was the only one on the island to have problems.

It seemed he hadn't had the best experience either. Letting a future killer get away, and losing his weapon to another was, well, it sounded like a mistake Sam would make to be honest.

"You sure you're okay?"

"No, not really, but my issues extend back to before we were abducted. Many of my friends were moving, or going to college, and I felt... lonely? depressed? However you'd describe it, it kinda turned me into a crappy person, ya' know? But at least those that left are safe, right? That's why I'm not as bad as most of us are, enough of my friends aren't here for me to worry about. Anyway, my best friend, who is in the grade below us, thank God, told me to come on this trip so that maybe I'd feel better, meet new people, and so on..."

After a brief pause and another drink of water, Sam continued, "I honestly thought that no one I knew came on this trip, but than I hear one of my friends' names on the first announcement, Cyrille... killed by Reiko Ishida. And this morning I find that Cyrille's girlfriend, another friend of mine, killed herself because of it. Fucking Ishida! She'll pay!"

"Sorry if that was a little long winded, I had a lot on my mind." She added pensively before drinking the last of the water in the bottle and discarding it carelessly on the ground.

And, just as he figured, Sam was having a pretty shitty couple of days. It came with the kidnapping, Simon supposed. But there was a good amount of stuff from before the whole SotF thing that was bothering her too. Simon took off his glasses and started cleaning them on his shirt, without really thinking about the action.

"Yeah...I know where you're coming from. I figured that since I was going to college soon, I could use this trip as practice. I mean, get used to talking to new people, letting off a little steam. Even if I didn't hit it off with some new folks, I always had a few friends to fall back on. It seemed like it would be...i don't know...fun." It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Simon had wanted to reward himself for all his hard work at school, for making into the college he wanted.

He still was rubbing his glasses against the cloth. "That's...I'm sorry." Simon stared at the ground. Of course he wasn't the only one losing friends. "Reiko Ishida...she's one of the ones with multiple kills." Simon knew the girl's reputation as being intimidating (even if he sometimes forgot what vowel her name ended with), but he wouldn't have pegged her as a killer. He wouldn't have pegged anyone of them as a killer.

"No, no, you're fine. It's good to say this stuff." Simon put his glasses back on. "I knew Cyrille, vaguely. She was on the debate team with me, and a big history buff too. Now I wish...I should have talked to her." He sighed. "Her girlfriend...is that Violetta? I don't think I knew her." And now she was dead too. Damn. "But I'm sure she didn't deserve this. Trevor didn't either." Or Eve and Eva, don't forget them. Your fault, still your fault.

"Thanks for listening, and understanding, and all that. You seem like a good guy, and you shouldn't blame yourself for what happened after those people got away. Lots of people would've done the same thing you did, I'm sure." Sam said, "I've felt... I've felt like I was helpless to do anything here."

She fell silent for a moment, but then spoke up again "I know you won't approve of this, and it certainly sounds fucking horrible, but honestly if I ever meet Ishida I think I'd use the opportunity to get back at her for my friends' deaths. I- I think the thought that I could still do that might have been the only thing that's kept me going since the last announcement."

She stood up and stretched, "I'd even be willing to give that bitch an advance warning if I could figure out a way to do it, but the only thing that would be guaranteed to reach her would be the announcements, and I doubt Danya is the kind to do favors willingly."

"We're all pretty helpless, I think. I mean, what have I really done here, besides messing up?" Simon's tone was quiet and bitter, but he really did appreciate the girl's vote of confidence. Even if he still felt guilty.

Simon went quiet and listened to Sam. "You want to kill her, then? Reiko Ishida, the girl who's already got 4 lives under her belt?" Even if the other student had revenge to push her on, that seemed like a feat to behold. "Are you sure you can do it, I mean? Even if you have a good reason to want her dead...killing's hard. I mean, if you fight her right now, you'll lose. Sorry, but you're too...understanding." Like me. Simon didn't recognize his own voice as he spoke. He sounded...cold? "You'll hesitate, because you haven't killed like Reiko has."

He was absent-mindedly playing with a blade of grass. "And the warning thing." Simon rolled the little plant into a ball. "Well...Danya does notice somethings. Everyday, everybody that does a certain...action gets a nod from him." Oh geez, what was he saying? The shapes behind him were edging Simon on to continue, to tell Sam what he was really thinking.

Because it was his fault they were shapes, Simon obeyed them. "...I'm going to be honest. I can't make it through this game. The winner is going to be Reiko, or Maxwell, or Clio or someone like them. Me? I tried at least three times to yank this collar off while I was walking around. I couldn't make myself do it." Simon did not look Sam in the eyes. "I can't even kill myself. But you know what? I don't want to survive. I don't want to go back to regular life with Eva and Eve and everybody else's shadows following me around. You want to kill Reiko? Well, I've got a plan. Danya will give her the warning, and you might be prepared to do what you have to."

Simon stood up and dusted his pants off. The shapes stood up with him, always out of the corners of his eyes. He tried to ignore them. "What I'm going to say is probably ten times as horrible as what you did, trust me. But first...what weapon did you get??" The boy's voice was very quiet now. He was so hungry, so tired, so damn guilt-ridden, and he was beginning to see a way off this island.

Simon's voice... it seemed as if he was speaking with a different tone... It seemed almost creepy to her somehow. He was asking if she thought she could bring herself to kill Ishida. Sam hadn't thought about whether she would be able to go through with it, but she was sure she could, she had to.

She sat back down and stared at him in stunned silence, was he saying what she thought he was saying? She had realized that Danya would pay attention to a kill, but she wasn't prepared to kill for the sole purpose of sending her message... He was right though, no one was likely to get off the island without a single kill, and if Sam wanted her revenge she would have to compete with people who had gotten a head start.

"What I'm going to say is probably ten times as horrible as what you did, trust me. But first...what weapon did you get??"

A chill went down Sam's spine. she had a feeling she knew where this was going and she didn't like it, but she couldn't find the words to argue against. The only words she could find were those that answered his question, and she spoke those hesitantly, "I... I got a Bow...."

Sam was quiet for a long time, and Simon almost regretted opening up his big ol' bag of issues on the poor girl. After all, she was managing to stay way more put together than himself. And here he was, about to ask her to...well, shoot him. That was a pretty damn big burden on anyone, especially someone who had never before.

"I... I got a Bow...."

Simon balked at her voice. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." His tone had returned to it's normal state. "I screw up a lot, I know. It's how I ended up with no gun and two deaths following me." He felt like an asshole. Sam seemed like a truly decent girl, and he had been rather direct with the whole killing thing. Still, if she was going to go after Reiko...

"Look. I know it sounds crazy. Or evil, or whatever. But...I'm going to die. And, truth be told, I want to. It's been...a long couple of days." There were Eva and Eve again. Simon could almost hear the chatting of two girls and the crying of a baby. "I...I don't want you to die pointlessly too. Maybe you can do it. Get your revenge or Reiko, stay alive, make it home one way or another. Somebody has to."

Simon's voice now was completely different than the one he had used when he had spoken about Reiko before. It was level, a little soft, with an air of hope to it. The kind of tone he had always used back at Bayview. It was weird to hear it now; had he spoken like this since he was brought to the island? Simon didn't know for sure.

"I-I understand if you don't want to. It's your decision on who you chose to kill." Simon took his glasses off and set them down silently on the grass. "But, I mean, I'm at the end of my rope here. I'm...okay with leaving, now."

His tone was more comforting, but the words weren't. She had a feeling this was what he was going, but still, hearing what he said was hard. He wanted to die, and Sam needed to send a message that could only be sent with a death. Even if she helped him to end his life, that was no guarantee that Danya would tell everyone about her grudge with Ishida.

"I-I understand if you don't want to. It's your decision on who you chose to kill. But, I mean, I'm at the end of my rope here. I'm...okay with leaving, now."

She covered her face with her hands, wondering what she should do. After a moment she looked up; "okay..." She cleared her throat and repeated, "...okay, I'll do it, anything to - to help... uhh... how do you wanna... how do you want this done...."

The two people whose deaths he caused were laughing at him. Stupid Simon Fletcher, the fuck-up who can't even kill himself right. They seemed to be closer now, more in his frame of vision. And okay, they had a point. He was being a loser, a complete coward, but he was just done. Finished. Simon wanted out, and if he couldn't do it himself, he'd find some other method.

Besides, there really was only one way to get used to taking somebody else's life.

"...okay, I'll do it, anything to - to help... uhh... how do you wanna... how do you want this done...."

"Um, let's see." Simon was no master assassin, but he had a pretty good memory. If he had read something about how to kill someone even once, in some sci-fi novel, there was a good chance he remembered it. "Well, you've got a bow. The best place would probably be the heart. Either that or right here." Simon touched a spot at the bottom and back of his neck. "It'll go quickly. No pain." Simon was pretty sure about the neck thing; he had read in somewhere. That Steinbeck book, Of Mice and Men. It's amazing what you can pick up.

He turned away from Sam for a second, to face the empty land. "Er, I'm no good at this. Mom, Dad, Jessica, everyone from school. I'm sorry I failed you. I really thought I could do better. But," He grinned, and it looked real, if just for a second. "I'm not going to cause anymore problems. I promise." Simon rubbed his nose. "So, uh, see you later?"

The boy turned back to Sam. "Just shoot straight, okay? Don't worry, I won't scream or anything." Back in real life, Simon would yell at every shot they gave time. Now...he didn't think it would be the same. "And...um, thank you, Sam." Simon Fletcher shut his eyes,

(Mirabelle Nesa continued from instinct•algorithm)

The giddiness had started to wear off.

Maybe it was the sheer amount of time they'd spent on this island, maybe it was simply the grime that had accumulated over days without a shower, but Belle had lost the ebullience that had kept her going over the past few days. It had begun waning almost as soon as she'd left the mountain--around the time Clio Gabriella had fled without a fight.

She wasn't disappointed, no, that would have been unreasonable, possibly suicidal. How could she be disappointed that an armed murderer had passed her by? How could she be disappointed that she had been robbed of an opportunity to fight, to maintain her certainty? How could she be disappointed, now that all she had left were her thoughts?

"I'm sorry I don't talk much," Belle said, apropos of nothing. They were wandering through an intricate and surprisingly large complex of buildings. "Just..." she broke off. "I really don't know what to say."

She was about to add something else--what, she wasn't sure. But then she caught voices in the distance and her face fell. "You hear that?" she whispered.

The back of the neck, huh? Sam dug through her bag until she found an arrow. Then she picked up her bow and walked closer to Simon.

Although she had never used a bow before, she had a general idea of what to do. She readied the arrow and drew the string. She was shaking due to nervousness, but she couldn't afford to be so unstable if she wanted this to be over quick. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves.

More so her awakening, this would be her true beginning on the island. She released the bowstring and the arrow took flight.

[Girl #48 - Kaitlin Anderheim. Continued from Some Fantastic.]

She had finally caught up to Peter and Max in the remains of that long gone wood, but things hadn't exactly worked out for the best between the three of them; since Max had run off after an argument with Peter, Kaitlin really didn't know what to think about the two of them as she walked on with Peter beside her after that. Max had been shouting something about Peter's plan and how he was manipulating them, how he planned on disposing of them; she didn't want to believe it, that much was certain, but as they walked on with a somber tone and they failed to find their way to a place of safety, she couldn't help but worry and wonder. Even as she clung to the fluffy source of comfort in her arms, she couldn't stop wondering. She just needed to know.

"Peter? What happened back there? Between you and Max I mean."

All she knew then was that something had happened, that there was a single gunshot and then the two of them were trading shouts of varying volumes, trying to keep things quiet yet combating their own tempers in a tense situation filled with panic and paranoia. What little she had managed to hear was far from enough to get a clear view on the situation, far from enough to answer all the questions that were stirring around in her head.

Things here were not as cut and dry as her mother would have had her think they were, not as simple as black and white; the world didn't work that way, people didn't work that way, but Kaitlin wanted to hope for the best when it came to Peter, wanted to know what happened so she could avoid admitting that her mother may have been right. But she couldn't shake the feeling that she didn't quite know Peter as much as she hoped. That he may not be exactly what she pictured in someone she put her trust in.

"I just want to know what happened, what went on between the two of you. I mean, all I heard was the gunshot and then some shouting, I wasn't there for the entire thing. I'm glad I caught up to you two but..."

She held Theodore closer to her chest as she tried to draw the words she wanted to say from thin air, not sure exactly what she wanted to say but trying her hardest to figure it out fast. She didn't want to leave it hanging there like that, ending her question with barely voiced doubts she wasn't even certain about.

"I just don't know what to think about all of this and everyone here. I want to hope that everyone is like you, that no one wants to play this game, that everyone just wants to go home like us. But after that stuff this morning, after listening to that man..."

She swallowed hard when she thought back to that announcement earlier in the day, that horrible moment when the names were read off like a list with a quip to accompany every morbid act of cruelty committed by the very people she'd gone to school with, the people she'd shared classes with. But even if she wanted to think the best of them early on, even if she didn't want to believe that students just like her would turn around and kill their friends, she was still afraid of ever meeting anyone who had their name read off on that list.

Everything she'd heard that morning began to twist the memories she had of these people, her classmates; that boy, Ivan, she was just barely taller than him and yet when she heard his name and that the brutality of his kill had earned him some sort of twisted reward, she remembered him as a behemoth of a man, towering above the meek young girl with the teddy bear in her hands. Maybe she did have good reason to fear her classmates.

"I'm just... I'm just scared, Peter. I don't want to be here..."

---

It had been a long and mostly lonely night for Kaitlin, still clinging to the stuffed animal for any sense of normalcy and comfort, the occasional short conversation between herself and Peter breaking the relative silence. She still trusted him and thought of him as a friend, possibly the only one she had in all of this, but she had never really spent any time with another person, let alone a boy; yet here she was, spending a night with the only friend she truly had in a place where the nightmares dreamed up by her mother would come to life. The murders and the assaults, the violence and the... the other things that could happen here. Maybe her mother had been right to fear all of these things, to keep her away from all of this, to keep her from socializing for years and only letting her take those classes because it would help keep her safe.

Those classes...

"Hey, Peter? Did I ever tell you that I took Tae Kwon Do since I was young?"

She took pride in those memories, the great skill she could exhibit despite her appearance; not too short yet not tall, Kaitlin was awfully skinny and always seemed to be smaller than the other students at school. Yet, here was this young girl, shy and scared and instilled with a fear of everything from a young age and she could probably fight circles around the much meaner girls in school, around the boys she always saw towering over her. Yeah... she was proud of that now. She could keep herself safe if anything happened, so maybe she didn't need that thing in her bag.

"Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that if something happened, I could defend myself, y'know? But I don't know if you could..."

She was smiling idly, staring up at the sky as she spoke with the teddy bear in her arms always keeping her comfortable, offering just a little more warmth during the cold dark nights in hell. Of course, as she talked and trailed off into silence, she realized what she had implied about Peter, about his inability to protect her or himself. She scrambled for an explanation to wave away that implication, to prove that he was more than capable of doing any of those things.

"I mean, that's not to say you're not strong and that's not to say you couldn't protect me, it's just that I don't know if you have any advantages over these other people who have already killed. I mean, I don't even know if you have a weapon and yet everyone else..."

Everyone else could kill us without a second thought. They all had weapons and so many had killed already...

Her words caught in her throat for a moment as she thought about what she was going to say, about what she was trying to point out. But she didn't want to say that, didn't want to point out that they had such small chances. She didn't want to think about it herself, why would she ever want to bring it up when talking to Peter?

"Um... I want you to have this."

She pulled the bag she had been assigned closer to herself untied the metal object that she had left to hang from the container; she didn't want to be carrying it around in her hand and it certainly wouldn't fit in the bag itself, so she had just left it hang there. She never thought about it, never talked about it, never wanted to ever address that it had even been there to begin with. But tonight, she was breaking that blockade on her train of thought, addressing the issue with the boy she'd come to trust in this game of survival, in this story driven by the forces of chance and fate.

She held the epee out to Peter.

"I trust you with it. I don't want it and... and I know you'll only do good with it. So, I want you to have it."

She trusted him completely.

---

They'd been walking for some time now, moving onward throughout the day as at least one of them tried hard not to think about the announcements from earlier. Kaitlin just hated the thought that so many more of her classmates were dead, that so many more the people she had gone to school with, the people she'd had lunch with or bumped into at the mall, that so many of them had killed another in cold blood. She hated it, she didn't want to think about it, she just wanted to get home and see her mother, apologize for everything she'd ever said to her; yet every time she thought about getting home after all of this, she hoped deep down that if anything was going to come from this horrible show that it would be the return of her father.

"Daddy..."

She whispered quietly into the ears of the bear she still held tightly against her chest, never wanting to let go of it after the announcements that morning. Now it was getting late again, they were getting ever closer to another cold lonely night on this island and ever closer to another solemn morning filled with despair and sadness; more deaths to be read off the list and more people to worry about, more reasons to avoid everyone they saw or heard in the distance. They were coming close to a building now, finally coming across somewhere new in their wandering borne of confusion; she didn't know how or why, but every time they sat down to rest they were somewhere other than the place they'd wanted to reach. So few landmarks in the desolated remains of that forest had long crippled their ability to properly follow the map.

"Peter? Where are we now?"

She looked up at the boy as she snapped out of her thoughts, looking up at what had quickly become their destination. So close and yet it seemed so far away, they would never-the-less push onward to reach it before it was too late; if they were lucky, they'd have a better place to sleep than a little spot on the ground. If they were really lucky, it would have a working shower and beds, maybe with hot water and a private place to change. Almost three days of walking and wandering around through clear cut forests and dank dark tunnels had left Kaitlin feeling... well, a little yucky.

Of course, when they had finally gotten close to the building and turned the corner, the scene they were met with was not exactly a good one. Kaitlin's heart almost stopped. In a moment, both her arms were wrapped around one of Peter's and she was holding on as tight as she could.

"Peter..."

She no longer clung to Theodore... she clung to Peter.