Survival Of The Fittest

The fire crackled, giving the wall of the building a haunting glow. It was quiet; more silent than expected and yet still, somehow, calming. The stars were clearly visible and the moon, while not overpowering, gave a serene glow to the surrounding area, illuminating the area enough to be almost cinematic in nature. The campfire was not overly large, but was enough to provide warmth without betraying the occupant of the building's location to anyone else.

As he leaned against the exterior wall of the Menagerie, Connor Lorenzen looked into the fire, mesmerized by the dancing flame.

One day down. Two to go.

((Connor Lorenzen continued from Remember the Name))

Ever since he'd been separated from the others earlier on in the day, Connor had basically done nothing but walk around the island, keeping to the wooded areas and avoiding anyone he could. At a point, he'd debated approaching some voices that he'd heard in the woods, but then he'd heard gunshots and made a very deliberate trek away from the area. Avoiding the lake and the waterfall within it had led him southernly, and eventually he'd managed to make his way towards a cluster of buildings that looked like it had once been some sort of animal preserve. The door to the largest building was tightly shut, and Connor didn't want to go in and risk interrupting anyone inside. Was anyone within? It was hard to say, but he gathered that he'd rather not find out. Obviously, sleeping inside was preferable to sleeping outside, but if he had to do it, that was fine. Wandering around the back of the building, he'd managed to find a wooded area almost immediately beside the rear of the building, unexposed and somewhat private. This would do fine, and so he'd gone about quietly setting up his camp.

As the day had crawled along, Connor had done a great deal of thinking. Much of it had been very basic things; the football team playbook had been recited more than a few times, and Connor had even challenged himself to name every quarterback currently on an NFL roster. It had taken him probably an hour to remember that Cody Kessler was now backing up Blake Bortles, which he was admittedly a little disappointed in himself by. He was usually better than that. After he'd done that, he tried to go back through all of the Super Bowl winners from the present, getting stuck at XI. For the life of him, he couldn't remember who'd won that year - 1977, long before he'd been born.

After that, his thoughts had finally turned once more to the situation at hand. By then, the sky had started to colour, and the sun was making its way across the sky. He knew he'd need to select a place to sleep, and obviously somewhere indoors was the way to go. After he'd managed to scout out a decently covered spot within a few bushes and trees near to the building, he'd decided to build a small fire to keep him warm. He recalled his Eagle Scout training - because of course he'd been a boy scout, no Lorenzen would have missed out on that - and he'd made himself a pretty decent campfire out of some branches he'd pulled out of the woods, some leaves, and a page or two from the survival guide that he was supposed to have read.

Yeah, no thanks.

Connor had his own internal survival guide, and he suspected it wouldn't line up with the one the terrorists issued them. By the time he'd gotten his fire started, the sun had departed, and the night sky filled the air. All he could see were the stars above; far more than his native Chattanooga. It was a truly beautiful sight, unlike anything he'd ever seen while at home. Light pollution was an unfortunate part of living in the big city, but wherever the terrorists had selected as the final resting place of the George Hunter High School graduating class of 2018, it was nowhere close to a city. Connor was filled with a serenity as he alternated looking at the fire and looking at the stars.

If he closed his eyes and relaxed, he could almost forget the touch of the explosive collar around his neck. It was like a sinister sort of camping trip; he hadn't been camping in a number of years. Once he got back home, he'd have to make a point to take a trip every summer. Take a weekend and enjoy the outdoors as he had when he was young. Just a weekend, though. Training would have to come first if he were going to wrest the starting job away from whatever shleps he'd be competing with.

His own knapsack sat beside him, the incredibly oversized bag of beef jerky that he'd purchased in Washington as a novelty item ending up being anything but in this particular moment. It was Teriyaki flavoured, it was delicious, and there was a lot of it. Between that and the haul of snacks that he'd picked up at the final rest stop before they'd changed buses, he wouldn't have any issue lasting three days on the food he had. Not ideal, of course, but nothing about this was ideal.

Leaning against the back wall of the building, away from any of the doors or the footpath that led towards it, Connor let out a small sigh as the flames eagerly spread to another branch. The fire had been going for a little while, the lighter they'd provided had really helped out in that regard. He had some more kindling and branches on his other side, occasionally stoking the flames. Oddly enough, though he'd been walking all day long, he didn't feel much like sleeping. He was tired, but there was... something, anyway. Something was stopping him from letting his mind shut down. It was a small feeling, a niggling sense of wrongness that he couldn't shake.

Connor stared into the fire, watching the embers dance and the flames crackle.

As long as he didn't think too hard, this was almost nice.

Almost.

((Caroline Ford continued from Shoegazing))

The Temple had been further than she'd anticipated. Daria and Caroline had spent the better part of the afternoon trekking across the island, their efforts to avoid other students and to keep Caroline on track adding a considerable amount of time to their journey. In the course of their travels Caroline had made a point of providing Daria with as much information on her personal demons as she was capable. She wasn't entirely sure it all made sense to the other girl, but enough of it seemed to stick.

"If I keep asking, it's because I need reassurance."

"Sometimes I just can't tell."

"The worst of it comes and goes, but no, I hear them all the time. I tell myself not to acknowledge them."

At some point she’d found a reason to head in this direction, but the precise words she’d found to explain it to Daria now seemed to slip away, like a fish that didn’t like being picked up and wanted back into the ocean. She could almost see the words flopping away from her, slipping back into the water and speeding away in that unreal way that fish picked up speed the moment they went back in the water.

Somewhere Sacred. Somewhere Warm.

That was it. A place the islanders had decided was holy might help her keep in touch with Him, and it so happened that place’s elevation and relative isolation would make a good shelter. At least, that’s what Daria seemed to think. Regardless, setting a goal gave her something to try and focus on. It made all the energy spent trying not to trip over branches and rocks feel worthwhile. There was a voice in her head telling her it’d be easier to just fall, land on the ground, and stop moving altogether. Let the ground reclaim her.

While appealing, she knew better than to stay in one place. Not moving meant spending precious energy fending off the garbage people (who she hoped weren’t real) who brought her garbage thoughts (about hurting herself), and she didn’t have enough bags (defense mechanisms) to fight them all off without help (friends like Regina, or she supposed Daria).

Apparently burning garbage was terrible for the environment. Carbon emissions and all that, plus the particulate matter that wasn’t something anyone wanted to breathe in. Yet she couldn’t help but find the idea appealing. Apparently it could be used to generate power, and freed up space that would’ve otherwise been taken up by landfills.

God, do I ever want to burn them all away.

Maybe they’d cremate her when this was all over. That’d do it.

I’m doing it again. Can’t indulge them.

If she did, Quinn might leap out of the shadows again and try to strangle her. If Caroline saw Quinn again, she knew she’d have to light the bitch up with four or five shots from her shotgun, sore shoulder permitting. She’d told Daria as much.

”If I see her again, I’m going to light that bitch up with four or five of these.”

Caroline’s mind was suddenly pulled from her ruminations on various destructive kinds of fire towards the smell and faint gloam of an entirely productive use of it. A campfire! A warm place, relatively isolated from the rest of the island. There was no God here, but that wasn’t exactly a change of pace.

A solitary soul sat silently aside the fire, seemingly swimming in his own sea of suppositions.

“Splendid. Daria, it’s Lorenzen. He’s made fire. We’ll join him.”

Ambling out of the woods, she held the shotgun at the ready but in the least threatening manner possible. It was pointed up. Presumably Connor wouldn’t take that as a sign she was about to shoot him, unless he was much taller than she’d remembered.

“Lorenzen. I see you’ve made a fire. Well done. We’re kind of damp and tired and it’s been a long and troubled day, troubled would be a mild way of putting it. Could we join you? I have to imagine you meant to rest here, and this isn’t some kind of lure in the way an angler-fish might use to devour its prey. Did that make sense to you? It’s been a long and troubled day.”

When he heard the voices, Connor Lorenzen made no move to flee, or to hide, or to make himself scarce. In fact, he took a second to try and identify them and when he couldn't pick them out, he simply leaned over and placed another handful of sticks on his small campfire. Logic in this situation probably dictated that he should be scared of whomever was coming out of the bush, but he didn't feel fear. Rather, he felt a sense of sorrow, recalling that his classmates would all almost certainly perish out here. Whomever the voice belonged to was a living person, with dreams, hopes, and desires.

Yet another for his own personal wall of remembrance.

It wasn't until the slight girl emerged from the bush, her face reflecting red and yellow in the embers of the fire, that Connor had his first small brush with uncertainty. Upon first glance, the girl wasn't familiar to him; though that could have been due to the low light, but she was carrying something that was a familiar sight. The shotgun was pointed up in the air in what he surmised was a non-threatening manner, so he only lost about half of a breath upon seeing it. The girl moved a bit closer but stopped on the other end of the fire, and then addressed him by name. He wasn't surprised; most people knew who he was.

It was a sentence or two into her oddly-phrased explanation after which Connor finally did place her - it was Crazy Carrie.

His lips slightly curled upwards. Of course it was.

Flipping through the rolodex and choosing a kind smile to wear, Connor gestured to the campfire with his right hand and turned the charm up to one-hundred.

"Ain't no lure, honey. Y'all are more than welcome to come on in and put your feet up."

What else was he supposed to say? The substantial weapon Carrie had - Caroline, rather; he didn't want to risk referring to her by the unpleasant moniker she no doubt carried behind her back - was enough that if she wanted to sit down, she was going to sit down, whether he liked it or not.

He took in her words once more after he finished his own invitation; there were a few things that piqued his curiosity. The first was her declaration that we had a long day. Who was we? Connor only saw the lone girl, here. Was someone else hiding back there in the bushes? He couldn't see anyone in the darkness, nor did he hear anything outside of the crackling of the fire or the soft breathing from his new campfire companion. Perhaps she'd explain. The second thing was innocuous enough, so he asked.

"I'd go as far to say that today ranks well up there with the worst of 'em." He leaned forward a bit, giving the pretense of concern. In truth, he was more curious. "Caroline, honey. How're you holding up?"

The grapevine was at times, a brutal thing within a high school ecosystem. Connor being as plugged in as he was, knew most of the real important goings-on, all of the events that were important or newsworthy as the years went on. Caroline's mental breakdown years prior had been an ugly, notable event, the nickname that had spun out of it proof of that enough. The poor girl seemed unsettled and shaken, but that was to be expected. That she was dealing with it outwardly as well as she was - better than fruit loop Amber or sad sack Drew, no doubt - was a surprise.

Almost too much of a surprise.

Not a lure? So he knew what she was talking about, with the fish. It might've even been an attempt at a pun, somehow.

No, that doesn't add up.

Still, fire preserved the righteous. Like a moth to a lightbulb, Caroline jaunted over to the campfire, sitting on a nearby rock and setting her shotgun down next to her. Taking no heed of Connor, she began to remove her torn sweater, which while mostly dry, still smelled vaguely of lakewater. It ended up tearing more as she removed it.

She frowned. Once, it had been a comfort. Light, and only just a bit warm for Washington. Definitely too warm for this place. Reminded her of the pills she'd lost in the lake, and her fruitless effort to get them back. She lamented that it now just left her with a white dress shirt, an item of clothing she wasn't entirely convinced didn't have some kind of dirt-attracting curse on it.

Carefully folding the sweater and setting it aside, she picked the shotgun back up again and let it sit in her lap, taking a moment to enjoy the warm caress of the campfire.

"Holding up? Bad, I guess. Lost my meds after waking up. Couldn't keep track of people, I sorta freaked out. After I calmed down, I ended up at a tree full of shoes. Like, the one that's marked on the map, not like I'm making it up. It's called that, a shoe tree. Useful crop, I guess. Something that must've been Quinn tried to kill Kaitlynne. You know, the horse girl? I shot at her. Quinn, I mean. Missed, but she ran off. Daria was there, right-"

Caroline turned around. Daria wasn't actually there!

"Oh."

She'd been right there the whole time, hadn't she? They'd travelled across the island together. They'd had full on conversations. Caroline had hoped she'd stick around, help her navigate this place. Maybe they could find Regina together, and then she wouldn't be such a burden on one person.

she abandoned you. like anyone should.

Caroline blinked, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. She cleaned them on the hem of her shirt, before putting them back on and looking at Connor.

"Okay. So I guess she wasn't there."

A thought occurred to Caroline, and she pressed the button on the shotgun that swung out the cylinder. She'd always been wary of some of the members of her church who were aggressively pro second amendment, even bristling against the prohibition that they were prohibited on church property. She just didn't see what was so interesting about guns. They existed to kill, something anyone should hope they are never in a position to do.

"I know I saved Kaitlynne's life. The shell, I fired it. See? I don't actually know about Daria though. If you know if she was even here in the first place, maybe I could parse the last few hours and figure things out."

This thing was kind of neat though. It was like a revolver, and a shotgun! It made things a lot easier for her to figure out, like which one of these five shells she'd tried to put too many holes in Quinn with. It was the one with the little dimple on the back, she assumed. After pulling it out to show Connor, she reached into her pocket and produced another shell, sliding it into the empty space and closing the gun back up.

"It's safe unless someone's shooting you with it, don't worry. Gosh, I feel really stupid. I'm ill, but I'm not some kind of invalid. I know what's going on here. I just hoped people wouldn't fail each other so quickly. "

Whoa, Nelly. Connor listened to Caroline's barely contained speech patterns with a thoughtful and curious look on his face. Inside though, he felt something gnaw at the pit of his stomach. Crazy Carrie was never someone that he'd ever given more than a second thought about, other than feeling sorry for her. He genuinely couldn't remember having any conversation with her. So that she started the first conversation off that they'd ever had with the revelation that she'd lost her medication was, well - Connor wouldn't have behaved much differently if it weren't for the fact that this unstable classmate of his carried one of the most ridiculous-looking weapons that he'd ever seen.

Yet still, when she finished, he smiled at her. Kindly; non-judgemental. The kind of look that he'd been practicing his entire life.

"Lord willin', you have had a day, haven't you?" At the very least, he could help her out with one thing. Poor girl was likely beyond help in every other sense of the word. "I haven't seen Daria here; you came in alone, but she was on the trip with us. So y'all can rest easy."

Who the hell was Daria? Connor couldn't immediately put a face to the name, not that it mattered, though. As Caroline popped the chamber on the shotgun, his eyes widened a bit, but she was only showing him the shell. He supposed that it made sense. If she truly was as batty as everyone said she was, clinging to what she knew was real was probably a smart way to go about it.

"I'm not worried," he admitted, actually truthful. "People do strange things when they're scared. I'd imagine a lot of people are scared right about now. They'll act in the only way they know how, and some people lash out."

Connor looked supportively across the fire at Caroline. The flames continued to flicker and dance in the evening.

"Ill or not, I think you should be proud of yourself for tryin' to help someone else. It takes a lot of strength to acknowledge that you aren't prepared for something, and y'all are just tryin' your best. I think that's admirable."

He could almost smell the odor on the words as they came out of his mouth, but what was he supposed to say? Holy hell, you shot at someone, you crazy bitch didn't have the same ring to it. These poor kids were going to go through hell before it was all said and done. He supposed that when he got back home, he'd likely have to go to some sort of therapy. If not for the appearance, just to reconcile the sudden entire loss of his entire social group. Best to nip anything in the bud before it caused problems for him down the line.

A face popped into mind. Oh, was she talking about math Daria? Maybe. That was the only Daria that he could think of. His somewhat off-brand interest in mathematics had garnered him a strange group of tertiary friends in the school. If you wanted to know business, mathematics was a great place to start, so he'd jumped into it early and always kept up on it. They were the kind of friends that knew he was only around every once in a while, but the kind of friends that he could do math projects with and let that very small part of himself run wild. Connor Lorenzen was the last person in the entire school who'd have been considered a nerd, but...

Daria was one of those friends. The mathletes and the athlete.

And he knew that she was here.

One of the days of the trip where he'd been wandering the city, he'd ended up at the aerospace museum with a few of them, almost by accident. It had been fun. The thought filled him with sorrow, but he coughed, squeezed it up into a ball, and buried it. There'd be time for that nonsense later. Where it wouldn't matter whom he was friends with. He'd be better off for having his secret group of friends and not just being the prom king or the quarterback.

They would see him as a man of his people.

"Sorry. Got some smoke up the gullet."

He paused, then something genuine admittedly piqued his interest.

"I hope y'all don't mind me asking, but," his voice was deliberate, devoid of judgement, "your illness, what - are you going to be all right? Can I help in any way?"

The second question surprised him a little bit as it came from his mouth, but while he was trying not to think about anyone he cared about right now, he couldn't help his nature. The people would be watching, and as long as he was stuck here, as long as he had to tough this out, he may as well play it true to form.

Gosh, I feel really stupid. I'm ill, but I'm not some kind of invalid. I know what's going on here. I just hoped people wouldn't fail each other so quickly. "

"You'd hope," Daria said blearily, stepping into the firelight. "But we know better by now."

(Daria Bhatia continued from Shoegazing

Day wound down to night. Katelynne faded away when they weren't looking. Daria couldn't stop worrying about her. What if she'd fallen ill somewhere? What if her injuries had gotten the better of her? What if Quinn had returned like some slasher villain, hutning down the victim who had escaped, killing her quietly somewhere on this mad, bloody Island?

She appreciated Carrie taking the lead, as she appreciated Carrie cluing her into what to watch out more. Explaining it that way made it feel more comprehensible, not a threat so much as a health condition, like an allergy or a tendency towards seizures. She couldn't help the prickle of nervousness she sometimes felt when Carrie's eyes got that strange, far-away look, or when she clutched her gun and spoke of gunning Quinn down. Daria shared her rage, but she also felt trepidation, hesitation, uncertainty. The idea she hadn't finished forming was still ticking along at the back of her head. She really needed an answer to her question. She needed to start identifying the holes in the system.

Or maybe that was cowardice. Maybe she was focused on the plan, rather than the execution, because she had no idea how to even begin convincing people how to do what she wanted them to do.

Binary choices. Zeroes and ones.

“Splendid. Daria, it’s Lorenzen. He’s made fire. We’ll join him.”

Daria jerked out of her reverie, eyes up to the firelight they'd approached without her even realizing it. There, lined in shadow, stood Connor fucking Lorenzen. Hulking, haughty, golden boy of George Hunter. They'd shared a few classes, mostly higher-level applied mathematics: he was frustratingly sharp, no idiot jock, and so god damn soaked in unreflective privilege that Daria had reflexively disliked him from the first day she'd met him.

"Ain't no lure, honey," he said, and she felt her skin crawl with anger. "Y'all are more than welcome to come on in and put your feet up."

"Yeah," she growled. "Sure. Just let me...check around first." Wait, that sounded ominous. Also, she wasn't doing much to hide the reluctance in her voice. "We, uh...we lost someone," she explained. "Awhile ago. Katelynn. Quinn attacked her, and I'm just...wanna make sure she's not somewhere we can..."

No strong character here. Just a lot of mumbled excuses. And Daria knew better than to linger in the scene when she'd stepped on someone else's lines. Or her own.

She moved off into the darkness, half-heartedly searching for signs of a girl she was pretty sure she'd never see again. Guilt warred with anger inside her. She should have kept her eyes on her. But why was it her responsibility? They'd already saved Katelynn once. Did they have to keep saving her over and over again? At some point, wasn't she responsible for her own actions? But if Daria hadn't wanted responsibility, why had she tried to save her?

Responsibility. It kept coming back to responsibility. How responsible were people like Carrie with madness blinding them? How responsible were people like Lorenzen, good-naturedly ignorant about the ways the deck had been stacked in his favor? How responsible were people like Quinn, when the only reason her violence had ever been unleashed was because of the bombs strapped to their necks? And how responsible were the terrorists for all the killings that occurred under their watch?

Daria felt the old exhaustion rearing up again. She breathed deep (in, out), trying to fight against it. No, not fight. To fight against that tiredness was to swim against the tide. You could do it a little, but you had to choose your battles. Float with it. Follow the waves, Mirror them with your breathing. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.

When had she first become conscious of it? Of all the subtle ways the world was shaped to the advantages of the rich and powerful? She thought it had come with racism first--with kids speaking to her in their best Apu impressions, with jokes about her bellydancing from raunchy third-graders or naive comments about pantheism from her well-meaning fifth-grade teacher, or in the sixth-grade skinhead wannabe who'd delighted in trying to wave cafeteria hamburgers in front of her face as though she didn't wolf those same burgers down every day or, the idiots on the street screaming half-heard slurs at her as their car whipped around the corner or out of sign. All these little things, these signs that there were those who did belong, and those who didn't, and how strange those lines were and how easy it was for her to fall by accident into the didn't belong box instead of the did. The privilege of default skin.

But there was another kind of privilege, too. Like the car her parents had bought for her with almost no discussion, and Daria loved her little green Camry but one of her Youtube friends would talk to her about how difficult it was to scrounge and save each much for car payments, for gas, and for insurance, and Daria would nod along knowingly while feeling an ache in the pit of her stomach that seemed to radiate from her parent's credit car pressed against the wallet on the back of her phone case. And on some level she'd always been aware of this other privilege, in the extra snacks she could always bring on trips, in the new phones her parents could buy her when her friend's phones stayed cracked and glitchy for months, in the rumpled ruckus of the friend's houses compared to her own. If they're skin made them belong to other world, her money put her in some other one, too.

The weight of this--of the privilege she didn't have, and the privilege she did--always threatened to smother her, and she tried her best to ignore it. Men like Connor Lorenzen made that difficult. They reminded her of all the privilege she'd never have, and all the privilege she did.

But Lorenzen wasn't the enemy here, from his casual ease to his even-more-casual misogyny. Like Carrie, like Katelynn, like Daria herself, he'd forced her by people who wanted them to do their dirty work for them. He was much as a victim as any of them. Who knew terrorism and victimhood were such great equalizers?

And besides...whatever half-formed plans she had, she was going to need more than the rich Indian girls of George Hunter High on her side. As much of a host unto herself as she was.

She was almost smiling, almost calm, when she returned to the fire to catch Carrie's words, and spoke. She sauntered closer, squatted down near the fire. "Take it Caroline's been filling you in about our experiences," she said, with a wry look at Carrie. She liked this voice she'd found. The wry, good-natured one with the cynical twist. It felt honest. It felt confident.

So she stayed quiet as Connor asked his questions. And her face fell when he asked the last one.

Caroline smiled, with her mouth and not her eyes. Her eyes didn’t really find it all that funny, but she wanted to make it clear to Connor that no, there wasn’t anything he could do.

"Hah, nope! You sure can’t. As I was telling, umm… I guess, myself, or-"

Daria appeared out of the ether. Or, the woods. Either way, Caroline smiled with her eyes this time.

“Daria! See? She is here. That’s good. Okay so…”

give it a rest. you think they want to hear it?

She knew he wanted to hear it, because he had asked. It was obvious that he just wanted to know if he’d shoot him four or five times, like she’d planned to shoot Quinn four or five times if she ever saw that bitch again. Of course she’d tell him all he needed to know, so he didn’t think that of her.

It was a hurtful stereotype to think that anyone with a mental illness was somehow dangerous. Most of all they were a danger to themselves. Hopefully she could disavow him of that if he thought it.

Connor spoke up, suddenly. “Y’all are dangerous. Shut your mouth.”

No, he’s not acting like it. Why would he just let me sit here with this gun if he thought that?

Or, he didn’t. Maybe if she told him what was really going on with her, he’d change his mind.

Or he wouldn’t.

After an uncomfortably long pause, Caroline resumed something akin to an explanation. Like she used to explain books nobody else seemed to understand in English class. Slowly. Methodically. Using the right words so that it was clear she knew what she was talking about.

She stared into the crackling campfire, trying to focus on how to say only as much as she had to. Explaining things was a trigger for some of the voices. Especially when she explained them. Her own voice held a flat monotone, stopping and starting as she fought through the overwhelming white noise.

“So it’s… they call it. Undifferentiated Schizophrenia. It’s not neat and tidy. Mostly I hear things. People say things, then it turns out they didn’t. Voices that I can’t believe. Sorry, voices that aren’t. Darnit, aren’t there. If I say things that don’t make sense… look, I think they do when I’m saying them… yeah. That.”

Nervously, she spun the silver band on her ring finger. It always read the same thing no matter what. The one thing she knew would always guide her. That was it meant, beyond the words. Feeling its presence helped sometimes. It helped now. She took a short breath, and looked from the fire to Connor.

“Wires get crossed. One perception bleeds into another. Things trigger it, usually. Sometimes it just happens. So, maybe I’d see the fire was spreading, or you’d just look on fire to me. I asked you about her because, although we talked for a few hours, it’s also entirely possible she left, and I just imagined she was still there. Even saying this means shutting out a lot of things. Focusing. It’s work. I’m actually better right now than I could be. The medication is still kicking ‘round my system. It doesn’t stop everything, not if you go through what we just went through. Otherwise I’d be able to find my way back to baseline till I got home.”

Caroline paused again, though this time because of a yawn. She spoke through the tail end of it.

“Prayer helps. Friends, too. Christ’s looking out for me. Regina was looking out for me. I wish they were here. At least the fire's nice.”

Connor listened as Caroline explained her illness in detail, filling in a lot of the cracks for the tidbits that he didn't know. As he listened, Daria made her way out of the woods, as if to emphasize the point that Caroline wasn't a crazy person, after all. He was tickled to see that it was the Daria that he'd assumed it was. Of course, when Carrie was finished speaking, the overwhelming evidence that he had in his mind supported what the rumblings around school had been.

She was certifiable.

Nodding, understanding or at least giving the impression that he did, Connor considered his options for a moment. It had to have been late, close to midnight or even later, and around a softly burning fire seemed the right place for him to set up camp. So unless something went seriously wrong, he wasn't going anywhere. For the time being, it didn't seem like the girls were, either.

"Well hon, I'm really sorry that you have to go through that. Ain't an easy path you're walkin', that's for sure."

He sighed, and leaned back against the wall of the building. Caroline was going to use prayer and good feelings to combat her mental illness. He supposed in this place, it was as good a tool as any. Not to mention her giant shotgun. He would remember this conversation. When he returned home, perhaps he would do a bit of research on her condition, make a contribution to some research or something like that. He could start a fund, maybe even name it after her. Connor bet her family would end up appreciating that.

"Ain't an easy path for any of us, I reckon."

At the list of names she read off, Connor blinked in familiarity at all of them. He knew the good Lord above was probably turning a blind eye to whatever was going on down here, and it was just as well. While not a religious zealot or a bible-thumper, Connor saw the importance of church in the community and had been his fair share. He smiled, though. Maybe he could lend Caroline at least a measure of solace.

"Speaking of, though. I actually saw Regina earlier on today. Woke up in the same spot. Last I saw before we all got separated, she was chummin' around with Mike Brown and," his eyes narrowed as he tried to remember the fat kid's name. He'd been thinking of him by a pejorative all day, and he couldn't remember. "And some others, too. She was doin' all right, if not a little scared."

Turning to look at Daria now, who'd said very little but listened as Caroline explained her truth, Connor allowed a small smile.

"Consider me filled in. Glad to see you're still in one piece, Daria. Y'all said you got attacked by... Quinn?"

The name didn't ring a bell to Connor, but he put on a face like he couldn't believe it. In a manner of speaking, he couldn't. Kids attacking other kids so quickly? Their school had seen its fair share of drama, but it surprised him a little.

There'd be a good bit of reputation polishing he'd have to do when he got home, he gathered.

Caroline yawned again. There was more talking, though not to her. Maybe it was easier for them that way. People could have a hard time talking to her, because she was sometimes hard to follow. Sometimes she’d just come up with words! Then people would ask what they meant, and she’d just babble. They’d stare off in a different direction like they saw something more important, and walked off.

She didn’t want them to leave, so she stayed silent. Set the shotgun beside her, and lay down with the duffel bag as a makeshift pillow and the shotgun as a makeshift stuffed animal. The fire made the lack of blankets at least acceptable. An airy whisper escaped her lips, one she knew at least from the tone they could probably understand.

“Hey, I’m gonna just…”

Then she was out.

Only for a moment.

Something stole the fire away. It was cold now. Shapeless things gnawed at her in the darkness. Human-shaped voices that hated her. Telling her she hadn’t chosen the right, when she had the opportunity to. A monster that knew that what she suffered only dragged her further from God, further from the truth written in the bark of the Tree. It wanted to take her, just like she knew anyone who found her asleep like this would want to.

For a few traumatic moments, her mind decided to teach her what that would feel like.

Caroline awoke with a start, her eyes wild and struggling to adjust to the dim blue light of the morning. The others didn’t stir. It was quiet, quieter than she’d expected.

The voices were gone, still seemingly confined to her nightmares. It wouldn’t last. The announcements would be coming soon, and following that a maelstrom of violence. Shock, grief, and panic would be made manifest in the only way that scared youths with deadly weapons knew how to.

She needed to find something, anything to hang onto before things got out of control. It was the only way to survive.

Not something. Someone. Regina promised she’d look out for me. I have to find her.

Caroline took off, leaving little sign of her presence other than a human-shaped spot on the ground that had been saved from the morning dew.

((Caroline Ford continued in The Spirit World))

He wasn't sure when it happened exactly, but he'd looked over at Caroline and she was fast asleep, curled up by the fire. That hadn't taken very long but with the way that the poor girl's mind was going, Connor wasn't overly surprised that it had happened. Daria didn't have much to say after that, and so he kept quiet, staring into the fire and engaging in whatever idle conversation came his way.

Connor didn't last very long until he sank into a slumber, the comings and goings around the island finally catching up with him.

---

For a brief moment, Connor Lorenzen didn't recall where he was, and he smiled to himself as he stretched his long limbs out, listening for the telltale pop of his joints extending as far as they would go. Breathing in the fresh, warm air was what brought him back to reality, but that small moment gave him a sense of accomplishment, of dignity in harsh circumstances. One day was in the books, and it hadn't been that difficult to avoid anyone truly heinous. Most of the folks he'd come across were lost, scared, and quite certainly fodder for the horrific terrorist agenda. As he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and yawned, Connor wondered how much money his father would have to pay these people for his return. How many tens of millions of dollars would he have to come up with to buy Connor's future?

He smirked. No matter the figure, Connor would have to wait, years down the line until his father had rebuilt his capital and he were established in the NFL; perhaps after his first contract, and kid him about his own value. Is that all, Pop? Thirty million dollars? I would have figured I'd be worth at least a hundred.

A crude joke, but once time had passed, Connor figured it wouldn't be off-limits. Besides, the Lorenzen family was a team, and his success was their success. Jokes aside, he knew the money wouldn't matter in the long run. Money was material, and some things were more important than that.

Speaking of importance, Connor sat up to check on the status of his fellow campers. He counted the fact that Caroline hadn't gone and disembowelled neither him nor Daria in the night as they slept as a win; the poor girl was liable to be crazier than a rabid dog given a few days off her medication. His eyebrows raised slightly as he looked over at the spot she'd dozed off in, only to note that the crazy girl — and her things — were gone. Daria was still asleep, looking not at all comfortable as she slept on the ground. Poor girl. The second day was bound to be more difficult than the first, and if she couldn't sleep, well - that didn't bode well. He hoped not to hear her name at least until after he returned home. He could offer that as comfort, at least.

Quietly getting to his feet, Connor surveyed the scene for a moment. He felt rather well-rested, actually. The outdoor sleep hadn't really affected him negatively; he'd slept like a log and actually felt great. Hungry, but otherwise pretty good.

After taking a moment to collect his things, Connor Lorenzen quietly left the sleeping girl behind. He felt for Daria, but he couldn't afford to become attached to anyone. Besides, now that Caroline was gone, Daria would be free to live however she wished. Perhaps she'd make it through and survive. Who knew what her destiny entailed?

As for Connor, his destiny was elsewhere.

((Connor Lorenzen continued in Welcome to Your Life))

“Prayer helps. Friends, too."

Daria smiled at Carrie as reassuringly as she could manage.

"Christ’s looking out for me. Regina was looking out for me. I wish they were here. "

"Not alone, Carrie," muttered Daria, her eyes flickering between Carrie and the dancing flames.

"At least the fire's nice.”

She was right about that. After the day's wandering, after the exhaustion of waking up on hellmurder island, after Quinn and Katelynn and Carrie...she found she was tired. The fire was warm, and the night was soft, and their voices gentle. For the first time in hours, she felt like she could take off the mask. For the first time, she felt like she could sleep.

"Y'all said you got attacked by...Quinn?" Connor asked

"Not...us," muttered Daria. "Nother girl. Missing. Can't..." She yawned. "Can't find her." Eyelids fluttering. "Tell ya...all about it when..."

Darkness closing in, warm and comfortable. Memories and faces floating in the shadows. Fears and voices, half-glimpsed shapes from half-remembered movies, a whirl of anxieties. She wasn't awake or asleep: she floated in some limbo between.

“Hey, I’m gonna just…”

A whisper in the air, somewhere in her dreams. Gonna what, Daria? You had a plan. A dream. Take on the game. Break the binary. Make something new, like you're gonna make a new life outside your parents' shadow. Not your father, not your mother, but yourself. Not a player, not a pacifist, but...what? What are you gonna become, Daria?

Gonna just...

Just. Something about just. About justice. About unrigging the scales, and bringing balance back to a broken game. Not something she'd ever given that much thought. She'd never wanted to break a game before. She'd just wanted to go her own way-

(in her head, an echo, Fleetwood Mac's strident voice ringing through the darkness: you can go your own way...!)

, to play by her own rules. Not her parent's. Not society's. She wanted to do what she wanted, how she wanted. That was brave, wasn't it? Ignoring the weight of her mother's expectations. Ignoring the weight of her father's religion. Ignoring the cracks about her skin color, her weight, her appearance, her faith. Ignoring everything that made her feel heavy and sad. Running, because running was better than-

"Good morning everyone and welcome once again to Survival of the Fittest."

That voice shuddered through her consciousness. Nightmare images and nightmare memories faded before that voice, and the image of its speaker, and the dead woman lying nearby.

"I'm glad you all took our briefing to heart. We worked hard on it, so it's good to you see you all taking that inspiration."

She sat up. The sky was the sea-green of a rising dawn, black clouds lurking on the horizon. The air was cool, with a slight sticky hint of humidity to come. The fire was smoking embers: there was no one else in sight. Daria blinked in confusion. Alone? No, there'd been two other people here, Connor and Caroline, she wasn't alone, she didn't want to be alone, where were they, where were they-

"First up this morning, we have what could be a new speed record when Abel Zelenovic was beaten to death by Paloma Salt. Don't worry about it too much, most of you were still asleep."

Daria's head jerked up. Her jaw clenched.

She'd known that there were probably killers loose on the island. She'd heard some shouts, some screams, some distant sounds of fighting. She'd heard the thunder of Carrie's gun, and treated Katelynn's bruised neck. Hell, she'd known from the moment she woke up. That was why she'd started to hatch her plan. Why she'd asked about the rules.

Deep breath. In. Out.

And she listened.

Paloma Salt. Tirzah Foss. Tyrell Lahti. Nick Ogilvie. Katrina Lavell. And...

"Next up there was some Quinn on Quinn violence as Quinn Abert stabbed Violet Quinn in the gut."

Ice in her veins.

Quinn? The same Quinn? Quinn the killer, so hungry for violence that went prowling for fresh meat when she was stopped? A beast. A monster, like Carrie had said.

Dimly, distantly, she heard other names. She didn't really register them. She sat where she was, utterly alone beside a fire that wasn't hers, no weapons, no hope, no path. They'd saved someone's life, and the person they'd stopped had killed again.

What about justice?

The Announcements ended. Daria sat where she was, staring up at the sky. Her throat felt tight. Her chest felt tight. She couldn't breathe.

Alone. No justice. No help. Only killers. The world felt heavy. The world felt dark.

"Hang on," Daria said. "Did you fuckers ignore me?"

Her eyes snapped around, found a camera wired near the corner of a nearby building. She stood up slowly, jabbing a finger at the camera. She didn't try to fight the heaviness pressing down on her shoulders, her lungs, her guts. She let it give her steps weight. She tried to communicate her anger, tried to let it burn through her eyes, tried to make her body breathe strength, the way a bodybuilder breathes strength after they let their dumbells clatter down. She wanted to glisten with it. She wanted to radiate with it.

"I asked a question," she growled. "About your game." She jabbed her finger again, as though she was going to spear them. "The one you want me to play. You...abusive...fucks!" She spat the last word. Deep inside her, she felt something trembling, shaking, quaking like a frightened child. She did want to be afraid. She wanted to be angry. She was going to be angry.

"You had your chance," she said. "I gave you a chance. I want to remember that you wasted your chance. I'm coming for you."

She lowered her hand, glared into the camera lens. She tried to tower, in spite of her fear.

"You fuckers wanna play?" she demanded. "Let's play."

Inside, a scared little voice shook and trembled and cried. She was alone, on an island full of killers wearing the faces of people she'd once known.

But Daria wasn't going to die running. However heavy this weight was, she intended to carry it. She didn't know what justice meant here. But she was going to try and find out.

(Daria Bhatia continued in Binary Suns)