Survival Of The Fittest

((Gray Emerson continued from Tell No Tales))

Sean had been unresponsive since they'd left the freighter. Gray had spoken a couple of times but he was quiet himself, so the silence suited him just fine. They hadn't come across anyone else either, so it had been all quiet. Not that there was anything wrong with that of course.

As for as things currently stood. Gray was looking alright for food and water. He took a sip from one of his bottles of water as he walked alongside Sean. They'd entered a gated off group of houses and Gray couldn't help but feel slightly jealous of the houses the former occupants had owned. Sure they didn't look like much anymore but it was clear they had been something special back in their day. The fact they were all identical took away a little bit of their mystique, but Gray still wished he had a house like them. Not that there was anything wrong with his house back in Seattle but he had to admit the ones he was looking at would have been better back when they weren't decaying.

In general they'd be a good place to hole up and rest for a while. It was strange for Gray since he didn't like to stay in one place on the island too much. He always seemed to be spending more time walking places then he actually spent anywhere. The walking was messing with his knee too. He could feel it lock up as he took another step forward and stopped to hop on the stop.

"Come on." He muttered as was forced to drag himself to the curb. "Hey, Sean we gotta hold up. Knees gone again." Gray looked at the house in front of him and shrugged. "We can rest in there." Gray hobbled up the lawn and through the doorway. The house was about as bad on the inside as it had been on the outside, but after looking around there was a living room, with a sofa. Gray hopped over to it and dumped his bag on it. Leaning on the sofa he tried to pop his knee back but it wasn't working. He sighed and shook his head.

He collapsed back into the sofa. Left leg stretched out in front of him. He had two choices either he could wait it out or he could effectively beat his knee up. He didn't feel like doing the second thing at the present moment.

"It's gone pretty bad this time."

"I'm fine with that..."

((Sean Mulcahy continued from Bloodship 2014))

Sean only talked when spoken to these past few days. The hours were spent walking; if they weren't walking, they were thinking, and Sean did not want to think right now. Thinking meant thinking back to all the mistakes and all the horrible things everywhere that nobody could do a thing about or, worse, he totally could have done a thing about. All the stuff he could have stopped or changed or influenced and steered into another direction. The world felt hazy, no longer changing and disconnected when he thought. It was strange to him... strange and scary. So they were walking.

Turns out there's only so much walking the human body can take before it begins to rebel against you. He had to admit, if silently, his feet were starting to ache and it seemed like his stomach was getting ready to reach his back. There were food stores, but limited. His entire gameplan had been to build up the ship, their great pirate vessel, and everybody had seen how that went. Well, 'everybody' in this case was Gray and Sean. Everybody else was pretty much dead.

They heard about Corey on the announcements. It was heard to react... just another person, another name. How much can one continually lose before they're numb to it, driven over an edge somewhere between giving a care and wanting to put a gun against your temple? Sean tried both of those and neither seemed to work out for him. Stuck in the middle it was, then.

He took a liar's chair against the wall. It was small and hard and wooden but still better than being up on his feet. Sean kept his arms crossed, eyes alternating between the door and a window. If there was anything to be appreciated, it was a roof over their heads to keep them out of both sun and rain alike. Quiet was good. Nice was good. Of course, things weren't going to stay quite and nice but... nice to think.

Gray glanced over at Sean who had taken a chair in the corner of the room. If he was honest with himself Sean didn't look like he was doing good at all. He probably needed help or someone to talk too. But Gray couldn't find the right words, nothing felt sincere or real enough. It was either too harsh or too soft.

If he wanted to be completely honest though Gray was almost scared to ask. Sean hadn't been speaking at all, well, he spoke in reply to Gray but that was it. Gray knew what his normal stance on personal problems was; stay out of it unless you're asked for advice or they ask if you can talk. Sean of course wasn't going to do either of those things, not that Gray could blame him; he had killed someone and seen someone else die.

It wasn't something anyone who was sane wanted to think about, let alone share with someone else when they didn't want to. At the same time though Gray didn't think it was good for Sean in the long run to keep it all bottled up inside. He had seen Sean have what he could only describe as a mental break while they were on the ship and now he had retreated inside a shell. Only coming out of it to respond to him. If anything it was probably worse.

Gray wished Kyran or Claire was with them. They had always been better on the personal emotional stuff than he was. They'd be better at looking after Sean and making sure he was ok. Instead Sean was stuck with him, the kid who had popped his shoulder back in after falling off a half-pipe and who had suggested another kid just deal with it when they broke their wrist. Gray wasn't convinced he would be any good at looking after someone on an emotional level, yet he had to make sure Sean was ok, because Sean was his friend and friends looked out for one another. That's why after a heavy mental debate Gray decided to ask the question he had been dreading for hours.

"Hey Sean, how're you doing?"

"I'm fine."

He knew it to be a lie, and Gray very well likely did too. He didn't look to the other boy to confirm something that he already knew, but there wasn't much else Sean felt like saying.  Thinking on the situation was just bringing up the same points over and over again. Everything had gone so poorly and he took the wrong direction at every turn. How many times did he imagine the deaths of his 'crew'? Really, just a couple of kids he strung into playing along with him before it all went down the toilet.

He estimated the number to be eight, maybe ten vivid replays of Sara's body, Aria's body, Ruby pointing that gun at him, Ami beating her to death. He paid respects to Sara the best he could. Probably never would get the chance to look at Aria's body again, the person he directly killed. Direct or indirect, though, made no difference when it came to how much he held himself as responsible.

So, now what? Why go on living when he was plagued with guilt? It was this question Sean was trying to answer, but when tasked with responding to Gray's question, he could only answer 'fine'. Suppose, from a certain point of view, it was an entirely true statement. He, himself, had come to next to no physical harm. Felt a bit thirsty, though.

Sean reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of water, unscrewing the cap. He pressed it to his dried lips and took a tiny sip before capping it and setting it on the floor beside his feet. He wished he had his music. Right now, music was quite possibly the only thing that could take his mind off of things. It's how he relieved stress at school and at home, removing his focus when being social was just a little bit too much for him. The terrorists had removed even that luxury, so that Frank Sinatra couldn't even coach him out of this mess.

"... Yeah. Fine is about right, I guess."

So Sean lied to him and that was that.

They both knew it was a lie. There was no way Sean possibly thought he was going to fool Gray. It was an obvious lie and they both knew it. Yet they still both accepted it as the way of moving the conversation on or ending it. Gray really did wish that Kyran or Claire was with them so that they could help. He didn't know what to do to try, he didn't talk about emotions much, he just moved on.

He knew that not many other people could function like that. They had to let it out and talk to someone or just express themselves in some way. He didn't know if Sean was one of those people though. If he was, keeping it all inside wasn't going to do much good. Gray looked at the boy sat in the corner of the room. He looked so small and defeated. Gray realised looking at Sean that he hadn't been through anything over the course of his time on the island.

He was lucky; maybe one of the only lucky ones who hadn't had to kill someone or do something that was going to haunt them for the rest of their life, for however short a time that was going to be. He tried to flex his leg but was greeted by the complete lack of movement. He sighed and pushed himself up, bending his right leg he pushed down hard on his left knee. A sharp pop and a stab of pain let him know he'd fixed the problem.

"Damn." He muttered as he flexed his leg to get the feeling back. It had been a painful one that was for sure. It probably had something to do with the lack of comfort and the stiffness of the rest of his body. Sleeping wasn't something where comfort was taken into account anymore. It was nice to have the use of his leg back though.

"Hey Sean. I'm thinking we rest here and then try and find Kyran or Claire after sleeping. You cool with that?" Gray wasn't quite sure why he was bothering to ask Sean. He had a good idea of what the answer was going to be anyway. Regardless it made sense to at least include Sean in the whole decision making process, even if it was just to say yes to things. "There might even be beds in here." Gray hadn't realised how much he had missed sleeping in an actual bed until he'd mentioned it. If there were beds he was sleeping in one, no questions asked.

Sean had winced at the popping of the knee, the most pronounced movement he'd made since the two of them seated themselves in that room. It was something... not a 'start', per se, but the preparations thereof at least.

They were alive. They always had that to cling to. They were alive, but a very large part of Sean was dead. Any idea of longing for adventure was gone. He'd be happy if he never saw the ocean again for the rest of his life, realizing it wasn't exactly that fun when it was trapping him from leaving hell. Water on all sides, an impenetrable barrier that isolated all of them into a nice little bird cage where they could all die.

No other bird had gotten to him yet, though. Kyran and Claire, they were both alive just like Gray. To learn this was an actual surprise, since he had started to block out the announcements so long ago. Who was alive and who was dead? How many kids were left? To Sean, these things were completely impossible to tell because he had forced out the information. He didn't want to know, he didn't want to know, things were better off when he didn't know.

"Yeah..." was the exact response Gray expected, and it's the exact response he got.

Kyran and Claire, they could still meet them.

Alex was dead, though.

Sean weakly got up, walking into the next room to lay down on the bed. He didn't even bother to tell Gray they had the luxury of a bed - it's something that the guy would find out anyway once he followed him in here. The mattress was cold, hard, felt a little damp and wasn't in the greatest of conditions. It was still a bed, better than the floor and better than the cold deck of the ship he would never again see.

Sean was left wondering if he wanted to see tomorrow.

Talking to Sean was worse than pulling teeth. Gray couldn't blame him, he'd been through a lot but a little extra emotion in his responses would have at least made it easier to gauge his mood. Instead Gray got to fly blind with the blandest answers known to man. But they had a plan at least. They were going to go and try to find Kyran and Claire. Gray didn't care how long or how hard it was going to be. He was going to find them.

Finding them would require more luck than anything else. The fact he had found Corey and then found Sean had been all luck to being with. It hadn't even ended well there and the group had fallen apart. Gray hadn't thought about that much, but it had started to become a pattern that whenever he ended up in a group it would immediately fall apart. He was with Andi, Oscar and the others until they'd broken up on the overpass and Andi had disappeared saying she'd be back. She hadn't returned, but her name hadn't turned up on the announcements. So at the very least she was still alive. Gray still didn't know why he cared so much. He'd thought too much about it that it always kept coming back to the same reasons. None of them enlightening.

Then he'd met up with Cassandra and Corey, funny how the first person he'd met for his second group was another person from the day of the food fight. He wouldn't see Steven again though. That chance had come and gone without any input from him. Regardless that group had broken up as soon as they'd gotten to the beach. The group with Sean and Corey lasted all of two minutes before Corey ran off and now he was gone as well and so was Cassandra.

Gray was like some kind of bad luck charm for groups.

He watched as Sean got up and walked out of the living room and into the room next door. Once he was gone Gray sighed and put his legs up on the sofa, digging through his bag he pulled out his water and took a sip.

So he had a goal with Sean and it was the same goal he'd been trying to accomplish for the entirety of his stay on the island. The goal where even when he'd actually been successful in part of it he'd failed in another way.

He'd found Sean but Corey had died. He'd lost Andi. She may have even returned to the overpass but he wouldn't know since he'd just left. He'd let Cassandra run off and she'd gotten murdered. He'd let Oscar go his own way and he'd ended up dead.

He couldn't even succeed properly. Couldn't move forward.

Standing up Gray walked out of the house. He looked out across the whole collection of broken down houses. Just like the remaining people in the sick game they were playing.

Everyone left was broken in some way.

How was he broken? Gray didn't know. He wasn't one for introspection. His thoughts again went back to that time on the playing fields. Andi had shaken him and he'd just ditched and left the problem behind. He'd tried to make a change sure but as soon as he'd gotten onto the island he'd regressed, gone right back to what he was comfortable with.

The only reason he had become de facto leader of two groups was because he was so good at pretending to be calm. He couldn't actually lead in any way. He could barely organise his own life, let alone try and look after others on an island where the options were death, escape or win.

What had he been planning to do with his life after Aurora anyway? Everyone else had been talking about going to college, moving away to start lives elsewhere and what about him?

Simple, he was going to stay in Seattle and make a career out of skateboarding or snowboarding. Nice lie he'd told himself there, try and distract from the fact he'd messed up his own chances of having a future. He'd slid through school, only doing what he needed to. He could have gone to a college. It wouldn't have been a good one but did it really matter? He could have got a degree or something, some sort of backup plan. But no he was going to be a pro skateboarder or had he not wanted to leave Seattle because he was scared?

Trust the game of life or death to make you realise how much of a fuck up you were.

Gray finished the water and tossed the bottle away.

"Fuck man." He sighed as he looked up, resting his head on his hands.

Did he even have enough time left to make his life actually mean something?

Well, he was still alive, so he could still do something. He could still find Claire and Kyran, could still help Sean. Saying that he could stop people being hurt was stupid, he couldn't do that. He drew the gun and looked at it in the moonlight, watched the light reflect off it. He still had the ability to make a difference.

The important thing was how he chose to make that difference. He didn't have long left. People were still dying and soon death was going to come asking for him, like it had done for Steven and Corey. It was to come as one of his classmates. He had the ability to stop it. It almost got him when the car hit him but he'd gotten lucky. His luck had to run out at some stage and the way things had been going it was going to happen sooner rather than later.

He stuffed the gun back down his trousers. He'd just need to be ready, need to have a purpose, need to actually feel something.

Then the answer to his first question smashed through his thoughts.

He was broken because he found it exciting. He'd gotten a rush from the stand-off with Sean on the boat. If he wanted to trace it back further he'd gotten a rush when Adonis was threatening to beat him up back at Aurora.

How did you explain that one?

Gray didn't want to.

He walked back inside and lay down across the sofa. He was planning on figuring out where to go next. But instead he found himself falling asleep for the first time he could remember since waking up what felt like a lifetime ago.

((Matt Vartoogian continued from Intermission))

Matt and Finn spent a good amount of time walking before they made it to the town.

Matt had insisted that they go to town after hearing which locations were made danger zones and marking them down on the map. He'd been tearing the permanently removed danger zones away from his map, and he'd noticed how the area that the terrorists were allowing them in was narrowing in on a few locations. It seemed likely that they intended to force everyone to converge in the town.

They didn't really talk much on the way over, either. A bit of conversation here and there, but nothing too deep. Finn seemed to be trusting him a bit more, but they still lacked anything to bond over. It made things awkward.

Matt looked around the town, seeing the old, largely dilapidated buildings, before spotting the gated area. Matt gestured toward it, and Finn seemed fine going there, so they walked past the empty security booth.

"Let's just camp out in one of these houses for a while? Should be relatively safe."

((Finn Grant continued from Intermission))

Finn and Matt had gained a mutual trust. Although, Finn was sure that Matt thought Finn trusted him more than he actually did. Finn was still slightly weary of him and he didn't want to let his guard down around him. It was pretty evident so far that you shouldn't trust anyone in SOTF. Someone could be your friend one minute and the next they could be trying to kill you. This was the reason why Finn had been so reluctant to give Matt his gun yesterday. However, he had eventually decided that it was better to try and gain Matt's trust than to risk him dying and leaving Finn alone again.

What also annoyed Finn was his dependency on Matt. Every so often, Finn had to use Matt as a support because of his injured leg. As a result of this, Finn was slowing them down and was becoming a burden. He hated the thought of becoming weak. A weak ally in SOTF was a useless one, and Finn knew that Matt would be better off without him. He suspected that the only reason Matt was keeping him around was because Finn had a gun.

As they approached an area of large, gated off houses, Matt suggested that they should rest in one. Finn gave him a nod of agreement and headed off down the street. He decided on a house not too far away from the entrance of the gated area and headed in. Everything was covered in dust and dirt, but it was better than nothing. Walking further into the house, Finn entered a room then stopped in his tracks. The room he walked into appeared to be the living room, and there was someone lying on the sofa.

"Oh." Finn said in a surprised voice.

The noises were enough to wrest Sean from his false sleep on the only-passably comfortable mattress in the bedroom. Though his eyes were shut, his own nagging thoughts kept him conscious long enough to hear the opening of a door, footsteps and, finally, the voice of a guy saying 'oh' in a somewhat shocked manner.

Numbed to the fear that might come with an intruder, he wearily set his feet to the floor (and his mother always told him he should never sleep with shoes on... ha! Showed her) and began stepping to the doorway. He had the presence of mind just before leaving the room to instead poke his head out, viewing the events that were to transpire in the other room.

He recognized one of the boys immediately: Matt Vartoogian. Pretty cool guy. Maybe 7 out of 10. The other was turned a little far away, but he thought he made out part of Finn's face.

So these two were still alive, then. Sean wasn't sure if he was happy, surprised, or the exact opposite of either or both of those things. He wouldn't describe himself as close to either of them, and he had seen too many people die. Had Gray not taken his gun away, he wasn't entirely positive he'd make it through this night.

Well, who was he kidding... he already proved he couldn't even take himself out properly.

Sean stayed close to the wall, hiding most of his body and only peeking out from the side of the door as the two stood inside. If either of them looked his way, he might have to slam the door shut and barricade it. He searched, in vain, for something to use as a barricade out of the corner of his eye. Worse comes to worse, he might just shove the bed in front of it or something. No, not enough time for that...

Maybe he'd just curl into a ball and disappear.

Gray's moment of peace was interrupted almost as soon as it started. He didn't remember falling asleep but he'd remember the jolt of energy that went through him once he realised why he'd woken up. There were people moving around the house, and it wasn't Sean. Adrenaline was already starting to flow through Gray as he lay on the sofa. What did he do in the situation he was in? He had his gun and Sean's gun sure but he didn't even know who was in the house with them and he didn't want to shoot someone who was friendly by accident.

That meant he had a couple of choices in front of him, he could just throw away moral's, shoot first then deal with the consequences later or he could go with what had worked so well for him since the beginning and play it calmly. Hide the fact he was worried and just act like everything was cool. A routine he'd perfected throughout his stay on the island and one that had paid off for him every time. In the end Gray just didn't see any reason not to use any other method.

He raised one hand up in greeting to the new arrivals. "Hey."

The big question know was if they planned on being friendly or not. If not Gray had his gun on him, and Sean's was in his bag. So as long as they didn't just shoot him straight away he'd be fine.

Matt was relieved to see Gray lying on the sofa.

First, Gray had always been a pretty chill guy. Not someone he knew particularly well, since they had exactly zero in common, but someone who was always friendly enough. Hell, he'd even started that food fight way back when. That seemed so long ago now.

Second, Gray hadn't killed anyone yet. The odds of running into someone who wasn't a killer were getting progressively more abysmal. If anything, Matt had been horribly unlucky running into Theo, Jaq, and Joachim together on the second day. There had been so few killers then. Or maybe there were the same number of killers, and those that weren't killing were dying. Matt wasn't sure what he'd do if he ran into a KK or Hansel at this point. Joachim was still out there, and god knows how many people who weren't killing before were going to be killing now that they were so close to the end.

The bloodshed would continue, it would play out all around him. Matt just had to make sure none of it fell on his head. Keeping it away from Finn would be a plus, too.

"Hey, uh, how're you doing?" The question was half curiosity, half platitude. It would be nice to get some information out of Gray about where he was before committing to anything. They were still right by the door; they could turn and run pretty easily.

Or at least Matt could.

Finn flinched slightly as the guy on the sofa raised his hand. He was expecting him to be holding a weapon and was relieved to see that he was just greeting him. Now that Finn had more time to study the boy's face, he realised it was Gray Emerson. Finn had never really talked to Gray before, the only thing he knew about him was that he was the cause of the food fight that happened back at school all that time ago.

It was surprising how relaxed Gray was. He didn't seem fazed at all that two potentially dangerous people had just walked into the house he was staying in. It was the type of mannerism you'd use if someone had just walked into a classroom back at school, not in a game where you need to be on high alert every second of every day in case someone tried to sneak up and kill you. Finn wouldn't have been nearly as calm if he was in Grey's position.

Luckily, Gray didn't seem to pose as a threat. He'd greeted them pleasantly enough and he didn't appear to have a weapon on him presently, unless it was hidden on him. This made Finn feel a lot more relaxed, but he was still unsure as to why Gray was so laidback.

"Urm, hi." Finn replied in an apprehensive tone.

From the corner of his eye, Finn saw something move. His head whipped to the side as he saw someone peeking out from behind the door. Finn only saw a fraction of the person's face so he couldn't make out who it was, but he could tell that it was another boy. This made Finn feel considerably less safe. Could this be a trap? Maybe this was why Gray was acting so calm, because he knew he had backup.

"Hey!" Finn exclaimed at the figure hiding in the room. "Who're you?"

Welp. Crap. There went that.

His heart nearly leaped out of his throat when the person (who was indeed Finn as he guessed) looked in his direction so suddenly and called out. Sean jumped back away from the door out of instinct but, of course, the two had already seen him. Panic began building up in his body - why were the two of them here? What did they want with him and Gray?

Gray was still out there... if those two intended to kill him, there was nothing Sean could do to save him. He could only slow them down from getting him, which he did by slamming the door shut with his foot and dragging the old grungy bed towards the door as fast as he could to block it. There was a dresser, too.. that might help. The other twin-size bed wouldn't be able to manage much either than just backing up the first one.

Sweat ran down Sean's neck and trapped between his neck and his collar, making the already uncomfortable ring even harder to deal with. He resisted the urge to tug at it in irritation. He wasn't dying. Not yet.

Gray rolled off the sofa and onto his feet. He suppressed a yawn. He couldn't have been asleep long since he hadn't actually dreamed of anything. That or he had just passed straight out. Regardless he didn't feel threatened by Matt or Finn. He had already had a gun pointed at him by one of his friends, so there wasn't anything else that could really surprise or scare him. Plus they seemed mentally stable; no one greeted someone like that unless they were still sane. There was just something different in their voice. Kind of like Sean's was different on the boat, something almost dreamlike about the way he was speaking.

"Eh, doing good. I guess."

He nodded in response to Finn's greeting.

"What about you guys?"

It was at that moment Finn must have spotted Sean in the other room, because he called out if someone was there. Gray raised his hands to try and calm Finn down.

"It's just Sean. He was asleep in there. We aren't trying anything."

Things now had the potential to get ugly and Gray didn't want that. Sean was unstable enough as it was, he didn't need someone getting aggressive with him, that would throw what little stability Sean had regained all out of whack. Sean had already slammed the door shut and Gray could hear him dragging something across the floor.

"No one is aggressive here." He spoke louder, hoping that Sean would hear him and stop whatever it was he was doing.