Survival Of The Fittest

((Daniel ‘Danny' Brooks continued from Hideaway.))

On the plus side, he'd escaped the asylum. Danny was real happy about that. Honestly, the whole place was really making him feel claustrophobic. All that dust and rats and people with molotovs. Yeesh. Being out in the open air was nice. Jogging the length of the island was nice.

And, maybe, he'd avoided people a bit. He just… he didn't know what he wanted. He knew he wanted to see his friends. He'd seen people here and there in the distance, but he'd been a little on edge about going near them. There was this constant… buzz that he was feeling. Like static or something just under the skin. He felt wired and nervous. It wasn't a feeling that was familiar to him. Not like this. Being afraid of everything. Usually he was just afraid of very specific things.

He still carried the CD player, tucked under his arm like a football.

"It's just you and me," Danny muttered outloud as he approached the warehouse, patting the CD player lightly. It wasn't comforting. A CD player wasn't going to talk back unless he found a CD, and then only in set lyrics.

But maybe there'd be… something here. He didn't know what, but a warehouse had… things in it. Like the storage closet probably had things in it. Except this time Sandy wouldn't be there. And sure, Danny didn't really mind if Sandy turned up again. Sandy was okay. Despite the whole molotov thing. And the being a jerk thing. Jerk was better than murderer.

The warehouse was pretty dark, although it was still possible to see. But shadowy and spooky. Danny shivered as he stepped inside, looking at the nearest shelves.

It didn't take him long to see that it stored everyday stuff. Most notably, he found soap and towels.

"Aww, nice." Danny pulled a bar of soap out of the box and a towel, sticking them in his bag. Nothing wrong with wanting to be clean, right? As he tucked them away, his eyes swept the area and came to rest at something on the floor.

There was a sprawled shape there. Danny hadn't immediately noticed, too focused on the shelves. Squinting in the shadowy darkness of the warehouse, he made out the shape of a person. A guy, it looked like. Just lying there.

Danny felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on him. Even so, he took a few steps towards the guy.

"...Hello? Hey, uh… guy?"

The smell was awful. The guy wasn't moving.

"Hey? Come on, man, this is no time to… to, y'know, whatever you're doing." Though who would take a nap on the floor of a warehouse in a murder game? Fucking no-one, that's who.

Even so, Danny didn't want to admit the truth to himself. But he got close enough to make out the face. That weird baseball-playing junior who was always lingering away from crowds. Cristo. Cristo Morales. Danny didn't know him well, only knew his name because of the sports, really.

And he had a bloody hole in his chest, and he wasn't moving and—jesus christ, he was fucking dead. He was really fucking dead, you couldn't fake that blood, he could… he could see where the gash dug in past the meat and despite all the shadows it was clear as day that it wasn't faked. That's all Cristo—this dude who played baseball and stared weirdly at people and did shit—was. A pile of meat and bones that wasn't doing anything.

"No. Nononononono..." Danny took a few steps back, clinging to the CD player all the tighter. "Nonono..." He abruptly sat on the ground, back against one of the shelves, curling up and hugging the CD player to his chest as he stared at Cristo's body. "Nononono..." He just kept repeating that to himself quietly, as if saying it would make it so, and Cristo would just… get up.

((Bridgette Sommerfeld continued from State of Shock))

Her journey out of the asylum was terrifying.

The building itself was creepy enough, but the fear of some psycho popping up and slicing her up made traversing the abandoned wards so much worse. Every moment was spent watching her back, pausing at corners, praying that nobody would jump out. Miraculously, she'd made it out of the asylum alive, and across a bridge, too.

A small part of her regretted abandoning Joshua and Keith. They may have been naive and delusional, but they were also willing allies. She had no idea how well-armed either of those two were, but at the very least they'd make good company...or meat shields. Safety in numbers, after all.

But it was too late to go back. Now Bridgette was alone in the woods, weak and defenseless. She'd dug through her backpack again and again, but she'd found nothing of any use to her. What would she do if someone cornered her? Throw her compass at them? Squirt hand sanitizer in their eyes? Strangle them with bandages? The closest thing she had to a weapon was the flashlight, but the impromptu bludgeon wouldn't do much against a gun or a sword.

Eventually Bridgette stumbled upon a warehouse - her eyes lit up at the prospect of hidden supplies. It was still early, so maybe there was still some goods in there. She edged towards the entrance and poked her head in. She couldn't see five feet in front of her; good thing she already had her flashlight out.

Bridgette stepped inside, shining her flashlight into the darkness. Everything here was conveniently labeled, but none of it seemed to be of use to her. Bridgette scowled as she walked through the aisles, the beam scanning shelves. Soaps, towels, bedsheets, nothing of immediate use to her. All that was in here was basic, everyday supplies - just like the toothbrush and toothpaste she discovered was her assigned weapon. Her chances of survival shut down by a bad stroke of luck.

It was so unfair.

As she made her way through the warehouse, Bridgette noticed quiet mumbling coming from somewhere around her. Her hyper awareness made it impossible to ignore. Her heartbeat quickened as she went from aisle to aisle, getting and closer to the noise. Once she was sure she was on top of it, Bridgette turned the corner and shined the flashlight at a familiar hunched figure. She spoke its name out of habit.

"...Danny?"

The flashlight caught something else, in front of the boy. Bridgette tilted her flashlight up, and the beam rested on a corpse.

She froze.

Danny didn't hear the footsteps. He only noticed someone else was there until a flashlight shone in his face. The glare was too bright for him to see who was holding the flashlight. He raised a hand to block his eyes, recoiling.

"Don't kill me!" he yelled.

The person behind the flashlight said his name. The flashlight turned to land on Cristo's corpse. The glare stared to fade from his eyes. Danny rubbed his eyes, watery either from the glare or from staring at Cristo, and as his eyesight cleared up he recognised who he was staring at.

"Bridge? Oh, thank god, you're not… you're not..."

Danny trailed off as he looked at Cristo again. He recoiled again, hugging the CD player, before realising what this might look like to her.

"I just got here!"

Maybe that came out a little high-pitched. A little defensive. But really, Danny couldn't have killed the guy. That… that big hole in his chest… Danny couldn't have done that. All he had was his CD player. And Bridgette wasn't crazy, or stupid, or… or anything like that, so she'd see.

Danny panicked. His sudden outburst made Bridgette tense up again, instinctively taking a few steps back from him. He claimed that he didn't kill the other boy, and it didn't take a genius to figure out he was telling the truth. There wasn't any blood on him, and the horrible gash in his chest wasn't caused by some sort of blunt object.

Plus, Danny wasn't a killer. She'd known him for years now, and she knew that he didn't have it in him to murder somebody. He'd immediately begged for mercy when she showed up, and he was still very skittish.

In short, he wasn't a threat. Bridgette wasn't in any immediate danger.

She exhaled. "Okay, I believe you," she replied, forcing herself to smile. "Are you holding up well?"

"Am I holding up well?! Sure! I'm dandy! Why wouldn't I be?!" Danny's voice wavered between loud and even louder. It was watery, and broke a lot. He hadn't meant to snap, he really hadn't, but… but Cristo was right there.

Cristo made it real. Not real like Irene shooting that gun. But real like… imminent sense of his own flimsy mortality real.

"How could I be fine? We're… we're gonna fucking die, Bridge!"

Oddly, the moment he said that outloud something seemed to loosen in his chest. He was going to die. That wasn't comforting at all, but he'd at least admitted it to himself. It was out there. He couldn't deny it now. And that, in a weird way, was a relief.

"...This sucks," he said. Voice calmer, but still watery.

But Bridgette was here now. That… that was something. Things could be worse. Although now that he'd thought that, he'd just condemned himself to Murphy's Law and things would definitely get worse. But right now they were… not too bad…

Danny looked at Cristo once more before trying to look elsewhere.

And then Danny panicked again. Bridgette didn't know what she was expecting, really. It was a dumb question in hindsight - she was just trying to be friendly, maybe calm him down with light conversation. But clearly it wasn't working. He was like Keith, in a way: babbling on about their impending doom as if they had to state the obvious. Yes, they were all going to die, and crying about it only made it more apparent.

But blubbering aside, Danny was still a close and familiar face: a potential ally. Sure, he didn't seem to be in the best emotional state, but he was still a good deal stronger than her. Plus, he'd make good company even if he wasn't all that useful. At least she wouldn't be alone.

"I know," Bridgette sighed, leaning against one of the shelves. She kept her flashlight on Danny as she glanced at the shadowy corpse. It wasn't anybody she recognized on sight, but it could've been a person she'd seen in the hallway.

She wouldn't know; she didn't get a good look at its face. The wounds were much more noticeable.

"...Did you know them?"

"Cristo? Kinda. I mean, not well, like… he played sports and he was kinda quiet. But I didn't… I didn't know him well or anything, and… and I wasn't here when… when… that happened."

Danny stood up abruptly. He looked away from Cristo before taking a couple of steps back.

"I, uh… I don't want to be in here anymore. Can I… can I go with you? I mean, friends should stick together."

Immediately, that clip they were shown—he'd forgotten about it until now, or at least actively tried to forget—popped into his head. The two boys who'd been friends. One of them shooting the other.

But Bridge would never shoot him. They went way too far back. Or at least… if she'd shoot him, then anyone would. He had to take a chance somewhere.

"Not that I'll be much good at, like… defending us. Basically everyone I've met so far had actual weapons..."

Cristo. She'd heard the name before, but she couldn't connect it to a face. Maybe that was for the best. She could handle a stranger dying.

Danny immediately wanted to group up; least Bridgette didn't have to ask Danny to join her. She cracked a smile and nodded as he said that friends should stick together, but it disappeared the moment he mentioned seeing other people armed. She knew that some of her peers had been luckier, but she'd never wondered who they were.

Bridgette narrowed her eyes. "Wait, really? Like who?" She thought of people she wouldn't trust with a gun: people like Jae and Isabel, who were mean and vindictive in their daily lives. They may have been friends back at home, but they were dangerous here. She dreaded meeting them here.

Bridgette glanced around the warehouse. They were most likely the only people here, but she couldn't help but wonder if anyone was lurking in the darkness. She shuddered.

She nodded. Thank god, Danny didn't think he could deal being alone for much longer. Danny grinned back. He also jumped on the conversation topic, because if nothing else he was good at talking.

"Jeremy and Irene both had guns. Hell, Irene had a freaking shotgun. They were pretty chill, but Jeremy was too chill, y'know? Then there's Sandy, he had a molotov and was being kind of a dick. And there was this face-touchy girl, Audrey, who had nunchuks, which I guess aren't that useful but they're still… well, nunchuks. Oh, and I saw Alvaro, but I dunno what he had, only that Min-Jae had, like, kicked the shit out of him."

As he chattered, he picked up his stuff and made sure he had everything, still trying his best not to keep looking at Cristo. He… he really didn't want to be around him anymore. Didn't want shit to be that real.

"Uh… I think we should go, though. Yeah? Yeah."

Still, Bridge was here. It was no longer just him and the CD player. Maybe he could find other friends, too. And maybe… maybe they'd do… something. Fuck if he knew. He just knew he needed help dealing with this.

Danny looked down at Cristo one more time before looking away and taking a few steps towards the exit, waiting for Bridgette to follow.

((Daniel ‘Danny' Brooks continued in Be Prepared.))

Bridgette did a mental check on every person Danny mentioned. She didn't know Jeremy too well, but that only meant that she couldn't completely rule him out as a threat. Audrey was in the same boat. Irene was less of an enigma, even though Bridgette had never actually spoken to her: just looking at the girl could tell you that she'd be dangerous with a gun.

Sandy was a quiet kid from art club, and Bridgette didn't think he'd be dangerous. But Danny mentioned that he was being belligerent - maybe the game had already gotten to him. Alvaro seemed like the least dangerous of everyone mentioned. Her impression of him was a slightly awkward but kindhearted kid, and she didn't think he'd snap. However, learning about Jae only confirmed her suspicions about him. She made a mental note to avoid him.

Despite everybody save Alvaro being potential threats, Bridgette felt a little better knowing about all of them. She felt like she had a better grip on the situation now, surveying the playing field. Sure, knowing ten out of a hundred kids wasn't much, but it was something.

Danny wanted to leave, and Bridgette couldn't agree more. There was no point in sticking around: there were too many spots for someone to hide and ambush them, and there wasn't anything of use in here, anyway.

And plus, there was the corpse.

Once they'd stepped outside, Bridgette pulled her map out of her pocket. She turned to Danny as she unfolded it.

"So, where do you think we should go next?"

((Bridgette Sommerfeld continued in Be Prepared))