My Way Home Is Through You

[Dr Adjective]

[Evie McKown closes the book.]

On previous nights, at least Evie had had thoughts to wrestle with, and an injury to nurse. By now, she was about as fighting fit as she could really be with a recent wound, and her mind had been more-or-less made up. So the evening was simply... boring. There was only so long one could spend playing with the drawers of an empty filing cabinet or daydreaming about literally anything before starting to get a little stir crazy.

For the most part, the daydreaming had a common theme. Alex attacks her with a spear, she gets it away from him somehow, she inserts it back into his body somewhere, he dies. But even the petty revenge fantasies grew dull after a while. The imaginary voodoo doll could only be pierced in so many places before she'd hit them all. Besides that, her mind also conjured a few more pleasant images. Storyboards for the comics she'd long ago given up trying to draw. Romantic encounters with Kelsey. Half-remembered cute animal videos. Anything that was better than a stark, cold med-bay with stark, cold company. A few even managed to combine themes, heroic fantasies where she could kill Alex and get the girl at the same time. Alex cast as an arch-villain in a superheroic world. Visiting an aquarium with Kelsey. Getting good at drawing and doing more comics with Ultra Lutra.

After a time, having grown bored this time of calisthenics to keep her chilly limbs from growing stiff, Evie finally broke out the sleeping bag. Without fanfare, she dropped the curtain on a third, thankfully uneventful, day. She didn't bother bringing up the notion of keeping watch this time. If anyone was crazy enough to wander the cold and darkness outside, and survived? They'd surely be in no state to fight anyone they happened across.

And indeed, familiar sound awoke her again. More people were dead. A surprisingly large number this time hadn't been actively killed. Kitty Graves had notched another two kills. God, it had all become so mundane somehow, and so quickly. She knew these people, she knew their faces, knew a handful of things about them. They weren't just statistics to Evie, and yet, the sheer volume let them wash over her. She had her own worries. She'd had someone try to kill her with a spear, she'd been party to a tense standoff with a gun that, on reflection, she realised she never actually saw and may have been as empty a gesture as everything else Chloé had been pushing.

Meanwhile, Claire was working on her list again. She'd gotten up earlier than Evie, already expended more of her water on washing again. It was a weird thought for Evie, who had spent so much of her life underwater, to suddenly have to view it as a vital, scarce resource. She elected to eke out some more moments in the warmth and security of her sleeping bag, before finally emerging to pack her meagre possessions away for travel.

As Claire too approached the door, Evie finally broke the silence of double-digits hours. She had to say it, not to mention hear it, out loud. To squeeze the proverbial toothpaste out and know it wasn't going back in. She had to.

"Claire,"

Her voice was dry and scratchy. She took a swig of water. It still felt odd to be speaking at all. She'd been so social before, the type to talk altogether too much, and yet now interaction felt awkward and stilted. Maybe it was always this way for those more introverted than her? Maybe it didn't matter.

"We're... we're gonna kill him, aren't we?"

Claire voiced her agreement, cloaked in notions of protecting others, of justice. On some level, Evie agreed, took comfort in those notions. But deep down? She knew she had to be credited with a kill if she wanted even a flimsy chance at going home. She'd have to see Claire dead first too, but she could burn that bridge when she came to it. For the time being, she could lie to herself and play the avenging hero. She could tell herself there was anything but cowardly self-interest in the course she'd committed to.

Because what else was there?

Evie stepped out into the harsh cold.

[Evie McKown presses on towards something better.]