What do you see, Kaneda?

[Dr Adjective]

[Evie McKown went Two by Two, all on her own.]

The rest of the fifth day was ultimately uneventful, at least for Evie. Just one. Long. Walk.

Wandering off into the wilderness had seemed like a decent idea at first, they were going to go on the hunt for Alex, they were going to find friends, they were going to Achieve Things. Yeah. All Evie seemed to have achieved was covering herself in snow and losing her temper at an asshole with a gun. She'd also achieved not getting killed for it, which was something. Oh, and she'd achieved storming off without the one person she seemed to be able to rely on, the one person who'd taken the time and care to patch her up where a smarter choice would probably have been to have just taken her stuff and bolted.

So, time to build on those outstanding achievements then. She'd already brushed all the snow off of her coat, so that was a start. It hadn't gotten that wet anyway, so a long walk in the sun was plenty to dry out the lingering damp. Next step, getting out of the frosty hellscape and back to where there had been shelter. Hell, if she wanted to find anyone, heading towards shelter seemed like a much smarter gamble than away from it anyway. On some level she and Claire had probably been aiming for the town, but Evie decided to go back the way she'd come. She knew the terrain - at least a little bit - and knew the journey was no more than a day if she didn't let herself get waylaid.

The intention was to return to the Infirmary, at least initially. During the hike, Evie paused to rest, eat, drink, and a look over the map saw her change her mind to aim for the Listening Station instead, back where she'd started. It was fairly isolated from the rest of the Research Station, probably a safer place to sleep before venturing into the main complex. In search of what, or who? Top of the list was Kelsey Brewer, now that Alex was already dead. On some level she'd always been higher up than him, but Evie had had Claire's priorities to take into account before.

Claire. Claire kept trying to hail her on the walkie-talkie for the first couple of hours. Evie idly listened to the transmissions at first, never answering, but eventually elected to just turn her radio off. She occupied her ears with singing instead. Just a little gesture towards being her own, authentic self: she sung the songs she was embarssed to share with her dad.

When she reached the outskirts of the Research Station, the combined cold, exertion, and ultimately boredom had taken their toll on her. Faced with the choice of two doors, one up into the main building, one down into the connecting tunnels: where she'd really started her ordeal, the tunnels winding beneath the outpost, beckoned. It would be darker, less spacious, much less comfortable... but for all those reasons, much less appealing to anyone else. Probably safer. If she ran into anyone not well armed, she was bigger and fitter than a decent portion of her class, an advantage she could leverage well in close quarters. She had pretty decent eyesight in the dark, too, at least by her own inflated estimation of her capabilities. Yeah. The tunnels were the play.

"Took a tour out to see the stars, but they weren't out tonight,"

The squeak of long neglected hinges punctuated her soft singing, and she lowered her voice further as she entered the enclosed space. Singing was good for her mind, but it wouldn't do to give her position away while she was exhausted.

"So I wished hard, on a Chinese satellite..."

Just about immediately, darkness swallowed her. Evie floated in it for a moment. Distinct from it. She knew it stretched out in all directions, one much further than the others, but couldn't comprehend its extent in any of them.

Her mind went to the flashlight in her bag.

"I want to believe, instead I look at the sky, and I feel nothing..."

Anyone down here would've heard the door, let alone her faint voice. She could afford some eyesight. Some brief rummaging later, it clicked on, and the darkness stretching before Evie's eyes receded. She could see walls, she could see floor, she could see a way forwards in the unfeeling concrete tomb she'd chosen to traverse.

"You know I hate to be alone," she stepped deeper in, searching for a suitable nook to curl up and sleep in. She missed Claire. She deeply missed Kelsey. But at this point, reaching out to Claire with an apology would be asinine at best.
"I want to be, wroooooong..."

At length, she found somewhere that suited her. Evie wrapped herself up in her coat, and eventually, alone, she slept.



Consciousness came back abruptly. Evie's eyes opened, and for a brief few moments, she was confused by her inability to see. She fumbled around for a light, and the feeling of concrete brought her back to reality. She was not snugly wrapped in a blanket, but an overcoat. This was not her room, this was an underground corridor. Presumably some noise had awoken her so suddenly, but since it had since fallen silent, it couldn't have been the terrorists' announcement. With her supposed good eyesight being useless in the complete, inky darkness, the girl elected to use her flashlight again. What was the worst that could happen? She was probably alone anyway.

So with the unnatural cone of light preceding her, Evie stretched the stiffness out of her legs, and set off deeper into the tunnels, wishing she had Claire’s night vision goggles.

[Gundham]

((Karin Han continued from The Day of Sagittarius))

The big building to the north-east.

That was where they'd been heading, back then. The big building to the northeast. Some kind of research station, according to the map.

She'd debated long and hard about Josh's offer. For whatever reason, she didn't doubt that he'd make good on his promise to reward her if she brought him Victor's head on a silver platter; the guy had a brain that'd made an exploding cuckoo clock look neat and orderly, but there were obviously rules to whatever twisted game he was playing. Rules that were as twisted and fucked up, but rules nonetheless. So, yeah. He'd make good on his offer of food and weaponry, but she didn't doubt that before she finished chewing he'd snap her sunglasses just to watch her reaction and then put a bullet in her. That'd be the interesting thing to do.

So she knew two things. One, she still needed her sunglasses. Josh or no Josh, that was just a fact. She'd gotten this far by grouping up or hiding out at nights, but that wasn't always going to be an option. Between Beefy Beatrice, Choi Latte and Whine Press, Windy Kennedy, Victor and whoever Victor might have bitched about her to, not to mention anybody who heard her named on the announcements, the target on her back was only getting bigger. Second thing, she wouldn't be walking into Josh's little "Yay! You murdered a guy!" buffet without anything less than a gun in her pocket.

She'd found the research station easily enough, but the map really hadn't done justice for just how big the place was. Even if Victor was here, he probably wouldn't be the only one, and there was no telling how many of her classmates would have congregated in the various outbuildings. With the sun getting low, she'd opted to make her way down to the underground tunnels, where she wrapped herself in Choi's extra clothes, and spent the night flitting in and out of consciousness.

Now she was wide awake. Her internal clock suggested that it was probably early out, but that was just a guess. Either there hadn't been any announcements yet, or she'd slept through them. Impossible to tell. There was no daylight in her corner of the tunnel, just darkness. Karin liked the dark. Even after the abduction, she'd still always preferred the quiet and solace of night time to the gaudy brightness of day. There was something comforting about darkness. In darkness, Karin could do what she liked, away from everybody else, unseen and unobserved. It was the same feeling she got during stage productions, lurking in the wings while everybody's attention was focused on center stage. Every tic and tremble from the actors was on full display for everyone to pick apart, but she stayed hidden and invisible. She could make jeering faces, stick out her tongue, flip off everybody in the auditorium, and never get caught.

Other people didn't like the dark. They didn't know how to wear it, how to wrap it around themselves the way she did. They feared what was in it, what might be lurking. And in a place like this, darkness meant danger, possibly death. Karin doubted anybody would come down here if they could avoid it.

At least, that's what she thought, right up until she heard the footsteps echoing nearby.

Someone was down here. Possibly hunting, but more likely hiding. Maybe someone who'd seen Victor. Failing that, someone who had things that'd be worth stealing.

She clicked on her flashlight, cupping her hand over the beam and letting it give her a sense of the contours of the room. She made her way towards the sound, traveling fleetly but quietly. Soon enough, she spotted a flashlight beam roving the floors and walls. Shit. She should have guessed that they'd have a light. Her heart started thudding anxiously. Okay. There was a good distance between them. Enough distance? She didn't know. You couldn't exactly failure-test a debilitating phobia to see how much space it'd take before you could trigger without having a full meltdown. Bile crept up the back of her throat. Even just looking at it from this angle made her want to throw up all of that precious, precious bread.

All right. All right. Think. All right.

She still had the advantage here. She had the element of surprise. The darkness was on her side. What was that old saying? Nobody's afraid of being alone in the dark; they're afraid of not being alone in the dark.

Yeah. She'd just have to keep her distance, use echoes to take control of the situation. She could do this.

She took a deep breath, and then boomed out, "Who goes there?!"

[Dr Adjective]

The sound of footsteps came to an abrupt stop. The beam of light wavered, jerked to the side, then disappeared. Amidst the visible signs of Evie's startled halt, there was also the sound of her cursing softly under her breath. Barely audible under normal circumstances perhaps, but in the oppressive stillness of the echoing tunnels the gentle "Shit..." carried all too well.

Evie hadn't seen anyone. There was only one direction they could be in, at least. Worst case, she could sprint in the opposite one. With neither of them illuminated, the only problem was having no idea how far away they were: bolting in the opposite direction would be fine if she had the distance to navigate the door at the other end without being caught up to. Evie was more of a swimmer than a runner but, with her fitness and her long legs, she was by no means slow on her feet. But that distance would mean little if all her company had to do was fire off a bullet or two in her direction to drop her. With that in mind, she quietly stepped to the side, pressing her back to the wall. It wasn't a lot, but maybe, just maybe, it'd save her life if gunfire came her way and its source aimed centrally.

Unarmed and uncertain, what the hell else was she meant to do?

Well. She could respond, too.

"Evie!"

Her voice reverberated about the space in a way that might've been pleasing in nicer circumstances. Evie had often enjoyed making sudden noises underneath bridges to hear the echoes. Here though, not-alone in the darkness and the cold, it simply added to the sense of unease. Another uncanny thing to add to the pile of abnormal experiences.

"Who are you?"

She hadn't recognised the voice, but even if she had, it seemed like a good bellwether for the other person's intentions, to see how - or if - they would identify themselves.

Nervous, Evie's fingers fiddled with the flashlight she still held. Maybe if they were closer than she thought, she could dazzle them, then figure out what to do next. Run, hide, fight, whichever seemed most sensible. She bit her lip, calmed her breathing. Told herself it was going to be fine. She had options. She had outs. She was strong and smart, stronger and smarter than a lot of her peers. Evie was confident. It was going to be okay.

[Gundham]

Karin listened to the voice that came bouncing back up the tunnel. Evie McKown. She hung around with EXTREMELY STUPID Dodds and his crowd sometimes. Probably definitely a lesbian, if the subtle glances she'd picked up between her and Kelsey Brewer were any guide. Much bigger than Karin. Definitely not someone she felt like fighting toe to toe with if it came to that.

Evie didn't seem to recognize her voice, which was... interesting. Karin briefly debated shouting something like, "It's me, Dani Bird! Hold on, I need to put my clothes back on... No, daddy, just leave the money in the nightstand..." but knowing Evie's lesbionic urges she'd probably come charging over with the flashlight.

Probably wasn't the greatest idea to identify herself off the bat, either. Evie did have that do-gooder aura about her, and she hadn't shown up on the announcements yet. She'd probably get all pearl clutchy if she found out that she was talking to Karin Han The Murderer. As much gravitas as her new status might carry in the abstract, it didn't seem like it'd really move the needle much against someone a full foot taller than her and built like a linebacker. But hey, Evie wasn't unreasonable. She might buy the self-defense aspect of the whole Ashlee thing.

"It's Karin," she said, leaving it at that. "I'm not looking for a fight."

[Dr Adjective]

Karin. Karin Karin Karin. Evie turned the name over in her mind. It was jumping out to her for some reason, but her early morning brain was struggling to recall what that reason was. It wasn’t that her name was Like Karen But Different, no, that was stupid.

She had to respond while she considered.

“Me neither, just…”

Yeah, what exactly was she doing down here? Nobody she was looking for was going to be at the Listening Post, she’d just sort of autopiloted onwards to where she’d initially intended to sleep the night before. Fuck. One too many things to try to think about at whatever uncivilised hour of the morning this was.

“…looking for friends, you know?”

Didn’t have to admit who, yet.

As for Karin, the obvious reason would be that she’d come up in an announcement, but Evie couldn’t quite remember that with certainty. Alex’s death loomed largest over yesterday’s, and after losing her shit over STEVE and Mitch’s deaths early on, plus knowing Claire was taking her own notes, she hadn’t really paid the closest attention to the details after the second one anyway.

Still, she willed herself to remember, positioned violent words around the name Karin… Han? It was Han, wasn’t it? She tried to imagine Danya saying it, Karin Han bludgeoned someone, someone was stabbed by Karin Han, it had to be in there somewhere.

In the mean time, she felt compelled to break the choking silence again.

“Is it… just you?”

Just in time for it to click.

…was shot by Karin Han.

Well,

shit.

[Gundham]

Karin clicked off her flashlight.

Evie wanted to know if she was alone. Karin's initial impulse, of course, was to bluff that there were others lurking out there in the dark, just waiting for her to tell them when and where to stab. But she'd tried that against Choi Latte and wound up nearly getting choked out for her trouble. Trying the same kind of stunt on someone Evie's size in an enclosed environment was basically asking to get throttled. Besides, Evie was clearly playing it cautious, keeping her light off to avoid giving away her location. She'd probably keep it off as long as Karin presented a threat to her. But if Evie thought she was surrounded, that'd tip the scales too far the other way, and make it so her optimal move would be to flick on the flashlight and sweep it across the room. If she did that, Karin was fucked. Her muscles would lock up, and she'd be too busy vomiting and crying to put up any meaningful resistance while Evie turned her into a red smear on the concrete.

So, yeah. Keep Evie fearful, but not too fearful. Make sure the light stayed off. She could do that.

"It's just me right now," Karin said, letting the last two words hang there like empty vessels for Evie to fill with any meaning she liked.

She padded forwards softly, keeping her feet low to the ground. When she spoke up again, her voice would emanate from somewhere new and keep Evie second-guessing her location. Keeping it so she wouldn't know where to fire the gun or flash the light.

"I've seen a lot of people out there. I might've seen your friends."

Another few steps, straight backwards this time. Retreading ground but throwing off the echoes, adding some confusion to the mix. Filling the darkness with herself.

"But I'm looking for someone too," she said. "He took something of mine, and I want it back. He said he was coming here, so maybe you've seen him."

A quick lean to the side, towards the middle of the passageway. Projecting her voice so it'd go bouncing off the walls in a different way.

"So what do you say, Evie? I help you, you help me?"

As soon as the words were out, she backed off, pressed herself up against the wall and sank down into a crouch. If she was really, really lucky, any bullets or beams would pass by harmlessly overhead.

[Dr Adjective]

That realisation sat in the forefront of Evie’s mind. It would not fucking budge. She was talking to somebody who had killed. With Fitz, it had been… different, somehow. His gun had been right there in the open, making no secret of its intimidating power. Plus she knew him to some extent. A lot of known quantities.

Evie didn’t just not really know Karin, she didn’t really know where the other girl was. Not-alone in the dark with a killer, a killer with a gun. It was plausible she’d killed in self-defence: someone just like Evie had taken too much of a liking to her gun, gotten ideas, it made plenty of sense. But that didn’t make it true. On the other hand of course, there was opportunity. Maybe Karin could be what Fitz had refused to be. Or maybe Evie could be the one to succeed at disarming her. Maybe.

Meanwhile, Karin was… moving? Her voice seemed to come from a different angle every time, the echos threw off Evie’s capacity to accurately judge the distance, but the way they changed seemed to at least suggest that Karin was making that happen on purpose. So, for her part, Evie elected to move backwards. Slowly. Softly. One gentle step after another. Closer to the way out.

“Yeah,” she agreed, deciding that keeping the conversation active was likely a wise approach.

“I can do that.”

She paused for as long as she felt she could without prompting Karin to answer, then followed up. Someone always had to give first in any exchange, and Evie was certainly a giver by nature.

“I was hoping to find Kelsey. Kelsey Brewer,”

Being a cheerleader, and exceptionally pretty, Evie felt safe presuming that Karin would know of her.

“Who’s your thief?”

[Gundham]

Ding, ding, ding. There it was.

Kelsey Brewer. Definitely a lesbian. Almost definitely Evie's lesbian, although this could be some sort of anguished "I need to confess to her before I die" sort of situation. But, nah, she'd been picking up some pretty heavy vibes through the rumorsphere lately. Maybe Kelsey didn't want the other cheerleaders knowing she was gay. Maybe Evie was closeted. Hard to know, hard to say. Not hard to manipulate, though.

She carefully straightened back up. "Kelsey... Purple hair, right? Pretty girl, one of the cheerleaders? Yeah, I've seen her. She was alone."

Small, soft movements. Tiptoeing into the middle of the hallway. "I'm looking for Victor Grail," she said, a bit louder now, her voice thick with scorn. "He beat the crap out of me. Stole everything but my weapon, left me to the wolves. I'm looking to get it back."

Her teeth grated together, her fist clenching of its own volition as she remembered the incident.

"Help me find him, and I'll tell you where to find Kelsey."

[Dr Adjective]

A million possibilities flared at once in Evie’s mind.

Victor fucking Grail, what were the odds? The very same one she’d just parted ways with, the very same one that Claire might still be hanging around with, and that hopefully Fitz had already alienated too. There was potential there. So very much potential. It all depending on who was still with whom, where they were, what Karin was still armed with, but… Evie felt hopeful again.

Then again, she’d also supposedly seen Kelsey. Was she really going to choose a shot at arming up over actually getting to see her girlfriend before one of them died?

And why take everything but the weapon? That struck Evie as damn near impossible to believe. Stopping short of killing someone, sure, but leaving her with a gun and a vendetta?

Still. It couldn’t hurt to play along a little longer, could it?

“Well, good and bad news there,” Evie begun, with a nervous laugh.
“I was with him just yesterday, if you can believe it, out in the wilderness between here and the town. But… he’s hanging out with Fitz too, and Fitz has a big ol’ sniper rifle.”

Still anxious to be closer to the exit, in case Karin wasn’t bluffing about still having a gun, Evie kept on shifting back along the passageway.

“But. Claire Haig was with us too. She’s a friend. Might be able to help from the inside, if they’re all still together.”

When had Evie become so devious, she wondered? Perhaps all those map games had left their mark after all, trained her to think like Machiavelli would’ve advised. Either way, Evie smelled an alliance of convenience, if she could make it stick…

[Gundham]

Karin called bullshit.

Sure, she wouldn't rule out that Epileptic Fitz had teamed up with Victor. He'd always been a fan of cryptids (didn't know jack about aliens, though), and Victor definitely qualified as some sort of Bigfoot derivative. Claire Hag was another unsurprising factor in the equation. All of that made some degree of sense. But Victor himself had taken Barbie's gun, so why would Evie only highlight Epileptic's sniper rifle?

But that wasn't the only issue with Evie (built like a) Mac Truck's testimony here.

"There's a lot of wilderness between here and there. I came that way yesterday, didn't see any sign of anybody. Can you narrow it down any more than that?" Karin said, after backing off a few steps. Her ankle hit something. The wall? She'd lost track of where she was.

"I'm not worried about the rifle, either. But how exactly do you think Claire is gonna help? It's not like you can phone her up."

[Dr Adjective]

To tell the truth, no, she could not. So that left the second question to answer; how badly did Evie want to have an armed ally in her corner? Badly enough to tip her hand early?

“Well… no. I left them early yesterday morning.”

Evie considered explaining why. It probably helped her come across as authentic, she decided.

“Fitz was giving me shit for being like, wary of him toting a rifle around. Like I was gonna be stupid enough to try and take it off him or something. ‘Cause I’m really that brave, sure. So I decided to look for happier company.”

Hm. Was that too obvious? Nah, she and Kelsey had been pretty discreet about it, they were still the same gaming buddies as far as the average observer was concerned. Besides, why should Karin care if she was a certified girl-kisser anyway? And besides-besides, wasn’t Evie supposed to be being her authentic self before she died?

“But, uh, as for Claire. I should be able to get hold of her. If Victor’s who you say he is, I owe her the assist anyway.”

Yeah, there it is, the post-hoc justification for why the thing she wanted to do anyway was good and moral, actually. That’s the good stuff Evie lives for. Can’t leave Claire alone with a dangerous guy, taking a gun off of him in the process is just a nice little bonus…

[Gundham]

Karin mulled over this for a second. Evie had given her some significant clues here.

"Wary of him toting a rifle around" meant that whatever Evie was armed with, it wasn't a gun, and it was a lousy enough weapon that Fitz thought she'd want to steal his. Which meant the bigger worry was Evie charging her, so she'd be better off staying still and listening for footsteps. As long as there was distance between them, Evie wasn't a threat. Assuming she wasn't lying, of course. But Karin kinda doubted that Evie was capable of a sophisticated double bluff like that.

Fitz had killed already, and seemed to be tetchy about it. Also good to know. If he was hanging out with Victor, it'd be good to know his weaknesses too.

"Happier company," on the other hand, was a broad descriptor, and one that you'd apply to multiple people. If Evie was really just looking for good company, she'd have named more than just Kelsey Brewer. They were scissor sisters, confirmed.

Karin was still fuzzy on how exactly Evie thought she was going to contact Claire. Maybe they'd left her her cellphone as a "weapon"? Couldn't be any dumber than giving Wholia a carton of ice cream, at any rate. But assuming that Evie wasn't being skeevy (...Skeevy Evie, how had she not come up with that until now? Rookie mistake) and actually did have some way of contacting her, that meant that Karin was going to have to come out of this little encounter looking trustworthy. If Skeevie McKown smelled a rat, she could just alert Claire that Karin was coming, and then Claire could alert the boys, and then Karin would be walking right into the crosshairs of Victor's gun and Fitz's sniper rifle. So if she wanted her sunglasses back, she'd have to sell Evie on Victor's bastardry, and hard.

"Victor is who I said he is. He was a total creep, and on some of the nights when he was on watch duty, I saw him... you know. Doing what guys do at night. I warned the other girls about him, and they confronted him and told him that I was the one who said it. He grabbed me around the throat and took my bag, then he caber tossed me into the snow. I grabbed a gun from one of the other girls and tried to shoot him, but I missed, and... well... you know the rest."

She paused for a second, considering what to say next. "I'm not some kind of freako murderer. I just want to get my stuff back. That's all. So if you can contact Claire and figure out where they're at, I'll tell you where I saw Kelsey, and we can go our separate ways. How's that?"

[Dr Adjective]

The rest, presumably, being how Ashlee had died. Truth be told, of what little Evie truly remembered of that announcement, she didn't recall them giving much context to how that had happened. So... Karin's story was certainly plausible, it stood to reason that the man in charge would avoid giving the whole truth about accidents, he wanted people on edge and ready to kill, right? So there was that. Like Claire had said of Fitz and Victor, it was worth trust-but-verify-ing at least. She was certainly willing to believe a guy would do some perv shit and then react with violence when called on it - she'd met boys before, and the situation was certainly a more permissive one than high school.

As for the rest of the offer, though. Did Evie actually want to separate? How confident was she in her ability to talk Karin into letting her tag along, then turning the confrontation with Victor et al into one where she could get a gun of her own out of it?

To tell the truth... Evie had a lot of confidence in general, but even that was a stretch. Too many ways for it to go fatally wrong.

"Sounds fair to me," she ultimately conceded. Better to let Karin go on her vaguely-suspicious way and sort her own shit out. She could certainly do a lot worse than simply keeping her head down and wait for an opportunity, rather than trying to force one. Just one small hitch...

"We, uh, we'll need to go above ground, of course."

Which might well be an opportunity in and of itself?

[Gundham]

Above ground? Maybe they did leave Skeevie her cell phone after all. The offer did set off some serious "Never allow a person you don't trust to take you to a secondary location" alarm bells, but the prospect of getting an exact fix on Victor's location made her willing to chance it - with some precautions. No way in hell was she turning her back on Evie, and no way was she letting that flashlight anywhere near her eyes.

"All right. Lead the way."

As a show of good faith, she clicked on her flashlight - albeit by holding it out as far away from her own center mass as possible.

She shut her eyes tight, just in case Evie happened to sweep her own beam back in Karin's direction before heading out. It'd probably look weird if Evie saw that, but on balance probably less weird than if she stiffened up like a board and started uncontrollably vomiting. Once the bigger girl's footsteps started moving, Karin opened them again - and immediately wished she hadn't. An involuntarily shudder rattled down her spine the instant she saw the cone of light beaming out of Evie's hand, even though it was pointing in the opposite direction. Her hands shook uncontrollably, and her own flashlight beam jigged madly on the floor at her feet. RUN, screamed her inner voice. RUN, BEFORE THEY SEE YOU.

Under ordinary circumstances, she wouldn't have been this sensitive. She'd never had an attack this bad, not unless the lights were shining directly into her eyes, not unless she was actually blinded. The island was getting to her. Victor and Josh and Julia and Choi and Press and all the others, everyone who'd threatened her and screamed at her, they'd all cracked her armor, all the psychological defenses that she'd spent so long building up. She needed those sunglasses. Needed them now, more than ever. Before it got any worse.

...Which meant that she had to move. Had to follow Skeevie. It was the only way to get them back. She had to pick up her feet and follow her, no matter how hard her brain kept screaming.

She kept her beam low, following at a distance. Not wanting to get too close, not wanting to get within a country mile of that light. Doing her absolute best to move quietly and smoothly, to make sure that there was no reason for Evie to turn around, to turn that petrifying gorgon head in her hand in Karin's direction.

Finally, mercifully, they were out of the tunnel. Karin maintained her distance, retreating a ways away as soon as she could, clutching her bag to her chest, slipping her hand inside, in case she needed to make a grab for the drill.

"Okay. We're out. Call her."

[Dr Adjective]

It was further than Evie thought it'd be to get back to where she'd first entered the labyrinth, and the staccato of the duo's feet punctuating the gloomy silence gave the lengthy seconds a certain horror movie air. More than once she thought to look back, see what Karin was up to, but never quite mustered the nerve. Some lizard part of her brain said that if she looked, something real might be there. Like going down to the kitchen for a late night snack, where looking out into the darkness beyond the window panes could only make her more anxious.

The journey couldn't have taken more than a minute or two, but Evie breathed a sigh of relief when the dim light of dawn greeted her beyond the screeching door. The sun was far from up, but warmed the horizon enough to allow some visibility in the world above. It was hard to do more than estimate the time of day, but the girl imagined she'd soon be interrupted by an announcement. Experience told her that Claire would probably be awake by now, and better yet, might be alone, expending valuable water in grooming herself or something. In thrall to her polite upbringing, Evie didn't even think twice to wait at the door, holding it open for Karin while she clicked off her flashlight and stowed it back into her bag. The other girl looked nervous... more nervous than could be readily explained by the precariousness of their situation, spooked by something other than Evie herself.

"You alright there?"

Evie didn't know Karin that well, but memories were returning as her brain accepted returning to the waking world and shifted into full gear. She couldn't think of a particular reason why she'd be more scared of the dark than anyone else. Maybe she was claustrophobic? Or something to do with her alien thing? Didn't really matter, in the end. They had things to do, and if not a time limit, then a benefit to doing it swiftly. Karin shrugged the question off, and Evie went into one of her overcoat pockets for the Walkie-Talkie. Click on. Couple of test pulses to hear the static and know that it's still working, as compulsive as clicking kitchen tongs. Back online. Evie couldn't entirely resist shooting Karin a look, in part to be sure she wasn't planning anything with that bag she was clutching, in part to highlight how neat it was that she was actually getting some value out of her non-weapon weapon. Almost subconsciously she found herself drifting closer to the other girl, wanting to keep her within range of, what, a diving tackle probably? Whatever she'd have to do should Karin go for her gun, to leverage the physical advantage she brought to the table before metal-at-high-speed could even the odds.

"Hey, Claire? I'm... sorry about yesterday, are you there? It's Evie. I wanna come back. Over."

As if on cue, a different speaker answered her call.

"Morning all! I'm pleased to announce that we have reached Sunday funday! The fun part comes from your continued survival and getting that much closer to being able to leave, as long as you have the required kill to your name of course."

The forced cheer would be enough to make Evie's eyes roll, annoyed that she wouldn't get her answer until after the smug man was done, if it weren't for the way her eyes were quite well fixed on Karin, for caution. Couldn't let a day go by without reminding everyone how much fun he was having. How much Evie still needed to somehow find a way to kill someone without a weapon, if she ever wanted to see her family and her home again.

"But let's not get preachy — this isn't church after all. Instead, we'll get right to our first kill of the day! The first of your friends to bite it today was Shannon Choi, who played the nail to Karin Han's hammer."

Well,

shit.