Survival Of The Fittest

((Anthony Jones continued from Time's Arrow))

Wouldn't it be funny to die here, he thought. Well, maybe. He doubted he'd find the particular circumstances truly amusing in the moment. And, really, there wasn't a sense of novelty to lean on either, judging by the, uh, scenery he'd passed on his way down here. But, some forsaken rough-hewn basement excavated beneath a house of worship wasn't exactly what leapt to mind when he thought of the island's perils. And honestly, it was so boring. For all the lurking dangers, and all the trouble he'd sought, to have things wrap up here would be, if not unexpected, certainly something of a twist.

He didn't clutch his bag to his chest or his eyes to the exit. What would happen would happen. And things had happened here, it seemed. Evidence of movement, trails of dust. Ash in incense holders that seemed fresh enough, though it seemed almost like a sign of madness to suddenly presume to be an expert of incense-based dating. It was all loose and crumbly, at least, which is probably wouldn't be if it were old. Who'd done it, he didn't know and never would. It was like something out of a Tomb Raider game with an ancient sealed vault peppered with lit candles that would burn out in hours rather than the decades or centuries they'd ostensibly left to gutter, only it was easy to imagine some other poor kid who treated the whole concept with more gravitas than he did making that sort of offering.

He shrugged and continued turning the beam of his flashlight through the dusty space, though truth be told, there wasn't much else to it. There was still some time to go before he needed to worry about rejoining with his aspirational partner in crime, and here was a place as interesting as any to spend it.

Time ticked by, as it did whether he willed it or not, whether he let it slip on past or thrust his fingers into its weave and steered it according to his own imaginings.

Well, mostly the former. The latter had seemed rather difficult as of late. Where did you even start? It was one thing to have the will, quite another to have the knowledge and know-how and inspiration. To find direction by sheer will imposed on the currents sluiced through his grip. In other words, what the fuck was he even supposed to do? He'd had his ideas, vague and vibrant and grand and ignominious by turns, but the shape of it all had become clear enough. Still, there were two ways things would end here, and both of them had a sheer gravitas to them, an inevitability that was true promise rather than hint or hope. Destiny would find him, sooner or later, if he didn't find it first.

He didn't suppose destiny would be found laying around in the corner down here, but it didn't hurt to check. Maybe it had gotten caught in a cobweb. Maybe it would all be revealed in some dormant incongruity awaiting his more intently appraising gaze. Maybe he just liked the momentary isolation and cool intimacy of his surroundings. And so he meandered on in that tiny space, keeping watch for a clue for what he was even supposed to be looking for.

Footsteps issued from above. He continued his examination of one anonymous stretch of wall, the reticulated solidity of the bare aging material, expecting the eventual pause or turn of someone who'd come in petition of a higher power or who hadn't the stomach for the depths of debasement on display all around. Instead, they grey closer, honing in, by reckoning of the increasing volume, toward the little room he'd secreted himself away in. Braver than he'd expected, then. She stood straight and finished his appraisal of the bare surface surrounding him, but didn't turn in greeting.

[The footsteps belonged to Evie McKown.]

Her presence was heralded further by the sound of a trapdoor opening.

Then further still by the abrupt stab of light into the darkness.

Behind that intrusion, in the gap between dawn's early light behind her and its artificial counterpart in front, a young murderess stepped carefully into the cellar. She'd swept her light across the immediately visible area first, and once satisfied that nobody was lying in ambush, she began to descend the steps. The flashlight was gripped tightly in her left hand, arm crossing her chest, so that her right wrist could rest over its partner, that hand bearing a MAC-11 submachine gun. As she'd learned days prior, the little bullet-hose wasn't much use for marksmanship, but in a cramped environment like this, she'd have little trouble filling the limited space with lead if need be.

A strange aroma greeted her on the descent, faint, but definitely distinct from the crisp winter air above. A faint scent of incense, or some kind of scented candle. Stood to reason that a church might have some, maybe somebody had burned a few recently. Or, if the air didn't circulate that much, maybe not recently at all. It was faint, more clinging to the surfaces than actually in the air, but it was an oddly welcome surprise to break up the routine of rotting, disused buildings and snow. It was also a sign that somebody must've been down in the cellar already, if they weren't indeed still there now.

"Hey!"

Her voice was sudden, and harsh. Commanding, she hoped.

"Anyone lurking in here? Come out slow, if you are!"

"Lurking, indeed."

He turned, swinging his own light around, and was met with a sight that came with a complimentary shot of adrenaline. Despite all his ruminating and pontificating on all the various forms and foibles of the less mentally resilient contingent, the sudden appearance out of the gloom of someone tall and fit with clothing dappled by dark blotches was a striking sight, to say the least. And no less for the recognition that came with it—girls that size didn't exactly come in six packs—and the name that had rolled so easily off the tongue of that spectre of the morning who met each pre-dawn with a tally of the previous days iniquity.

In short, the girl had killed.

He hefted his bag, still laden with the useless lifesaving machine they'd given him. Well, almost useless. You could get a lot of leverage off the straps if it came to it. Of all the times, though, to be now, when he was momentarily separated from his partner in non-crime... He could wait it out a bit, or attempt to, but frankly there likely wouldn't be the luxury of such time before whatever happened here, happened. Either way, it seemed prudent enough to try to divine her true intentions; all he needed was to strike first if it came to it, whether that was not or in five second or five hundred.

"Evie? He said, "You look like you...had a hard time of it."

Not the greatest, he had to admit, but any port in a storm.

A hard time indeed. In the harsh electric light, framed by the stairway down, Evie must've cut a striking figure. The gun in her hand for starters, but then the torn, bloodstained overcoat. The messy bandage wrapped around her neck. The dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. Anthony, for his part, seemed to have had that slightly better a time, or rather less-bad. Nobody could be said to have enjoyed a good time of their ten day stint in hell-frozen-over. Bedraggled, worn down, but not so directly brutalised as her. He seemed to be taking the surprise unusually well too, but after this long expecting attempted murder around every corner, perhaps he too was jaded to threats that were merely implicit.

It took a little longer for recognition to come to the newcomer, she knew the boy's face, but struggled to put a name to it at first. He had her at a disadvantage, as the saying goes. Definitely one of the athletics crowd, someone she'd crossed paths with at the gym, but not so much at the pool. So she talked, giving herself time to think. A weirdly familiar feeling, so like blathering back home to pretend she hadn't forgotten something pertinent like a name, rather than admit it and upset anyone. Was upsetting this boy really a great risk to her? Surely not, but old habits die hard.

"You could say that,"

The gun didn't come down, of course it didn't, but her voice softened, and she made sure to angle her flashlight away from his eyes.

"I lost an argument with a spear day one, then it's all been downhill."

Memories started to surface, a gamer, but largely in other circles that her own. A bit of an ego. Arguing over how a future could possibly be utopian if it still relied on exploiting non-human animals.

"What about you, Anthony?"

She was pretty sure that's who she was talking to, by now. Ninety percent.

"Just... hiding out here, waiting for the end?"

He scoffed.

"The end will come whether I wait for it or not."

Well that was fucking edgy.

He gave another half-shrug and continued. "I'm not—I mean, I've got some harm reduction in store if anyone wants to breaks the rules of argument like that. Theoretically."

A bit heavier on that last word than he expected, but, hey, he was afforded a splash of emotion at this point. Resigned as he was to the sharply tapering path of his life, you still felt something when you were staring down bloodstains and bandages and the barrel of a gun. Evie could level the business end toward him, give the smallest of gestures. And then, even with all his faculties focused on it, the bullet would still beat the impulses from his optic nerve to his brain. And honestly? He found that fascinating. A surge of yearning gripped his chest at the thought of it. A sun he might never see again, thoughts and theories and hopes and dreams. Words or argumentation he'd never get to toss or catch in response.

So many of humanity's stories dealt with the inevitable end, and acceptance, even celebration, thereof. That was some fuckin' copium. It was opined with some frequency by the presenter of one of the channels he enjoyed that those who saw immortality as a descent toward a denouement just as inevitable by the grinding forces of ennui simply lacked imagination. You couldn't sift through a week's worth of humanity's collective media output if you dedicated every remaining day of your life to it. There was so much to see and explore. Just, whatever happened, in short order, he wouldn't even remember it. There was no eternal imprinting of a final moment's pain onto one's soul. There was nothing to fear past that horrible instant because there would be nothing left to feel.

Anyway, the girl with the gun.

"By the sound of it, you're not really waiting around either."

A lot of words to say he wasn't looking to start a felt, but felt confident that he could end one. God, whether I wait for it or not, harm reduction, break the rules of argument, Evie had forgotten how distasteful she'd found Anthony before. Talking to her, of all people, about harm reduction when her personal philosophy had revolved around it for over a decade now. Acting superior because he'd hidden in a cellar and evaded the violence around him, as if anyone actually had the option of opting out of it. Unless, of course, they were happy to accept they wouldn't be the one singular person the terrorists didn't murder by-proxy. No. The blood on Evie's hands belonged elsewhere, she believed that. She had to believe that, long enough to make it out alive. Moral crises could come later.

"Yeah. You could say that."

It wasn't lost on Evie that while she was pointing a gun at the boy, he seemed oddly calm about the situation. Smug, even. Like he had an ace up his sleeve, like perhaps he planned on keeping his head down until his hand was forced by either someone like her, or by progressing all the way to the finale. In fairness, had Evie's own hand not been forced by mercy and self-defence thrice already, it's the sort of thing she might've found herself counting on. As for the fourth... no, no time to think about that. No time to blink, and see Dani's head turning to ruin in the space before her eyes opened again.

"I... I don't want to be this kind of animal any more, not any more than I have to."

That was the understanding she'd come to, in the end. It wasn't good or evil, right or wrong, to fight for her own survival. The scenario had been lain out, the only outcome was that a single victim walked away alive. Evie accepted that as unavoidable. In that sense, the guilt for all the deaths lay at the hands of the people who'd forced them into the situation, who'd made escape impossible, fighting back impossible. Put a metaphorical gun to every one of their heads and told them to kill. In the jaws of such circumstances, all that was left was the primal drive to survive it. Neither good nor evil, simply animal.

And the sooner everyone else was dead, the sooner Evie could stop being that kind of animal.

The sooner she could go back to being the bleeding heart, the vegan, the girl never wanted to upset anyone and whose heart broke any time she accidentally stepped on a snail.

"Only one of us gets out alive, right? Pretty futile to still try to hide from that, or fight it. None of the good intentions, none of the big friendly groups, none of it changed anything."

Deep breath.

"So I want that getting out part to come as soon as possible... even if it isn't me, whoever it is, they don't deserve to be here any longer than they have to."

In a sense, she was talking past Anthony. He was a useful prop, but her excuses were being made to herself, to anyone at home watching, judging. God, she hoped her parents had tuned out by now. Yet she remained quite aware of him. Quite ready should he decide to make a fight of things. Killing Dani had been intended to harden her, the way soldiers were once blooded to get them accustomed to taking a life, but... it would still certainly be easier to pull the trigger if he were really hiding a weapon; if he made the first, sudden move.

"So, really, what're you doing down here? Futile hope? Waiting to die? I don't get it."

"I'm looking at some fucking dust and spiders, mostly," he said. "I was wondering if some murderer might come crawling out of a dark corner, and here we are."

He shrugged a shoulder, felt the weight of the machine in his bag dig the strap into his shoulder. Started blocking out distances, leverage, weight. God, Evie was being insufferable. He didn't doubt she had only the best of intentions in mind. For herself. And that was the whole fucking tragedy of it all. Everyone was someone else's nuisance. Someone else's threat. Someone else's obstacle to their next peaceful sleep, to seeing their next sunrise. You could call it the Nash Equilibrium, or the Tragedy of the Commons. Anthony called it being a fucking psychopath.

The worst of it—well, the second worst; the worst was probably the murder—was the hypocrisy of it all. He could draw a line from A to B and from B to C, and in the process necessitate a line drawn from A to C. She was trying, in the words of a former Dumbass-in-Chief, take the high horse and then claim the low road. To have some sort of noble struggle in gunning people down. To have them accept their fate, or to Shanghai them into a facsimile of it, for the benefit one person and one person only: the one pulling the trigger that brought her one name closer to home.

It seemed rather warm in the cellar all of a sudden.

"I could say the same of you. What's your reason to keep being an animal, if they're so easy to put down?" he said, eyeing the distance between them again, careful not to take a step or raise a fist in that moment but to stand in apparent placid impatience. "I can see your angle. You just want to feel better about it. Is this the talk you give to everyone you kill? 'What's the point of going on?' 'You should thank me, actually?''"

That seemed to give her pause. He scoffed again, almost smiling.

"Maybe," he continued, the air hot and heavy in his trembling chest, "you should consider—" and cut himself off with one fluid motion, striding forward and slinging the bag off his shoulder to swing with all his strength at the girl standing before him.

Many thoughts populated Evie's mind. Already, she suspected that Anthony was possibly playing the long game, and she'd been the first to force his hand towards violence. That had her eyes drifting back and forth to his bag, his pockets, expecting him to produce a gun, a blade, something dangerous. It was joined, however, by very mixed feelings about his out-loud responses. Describing her as a murderer, well, yes, she'd as good as admitted to it, but an unconscious part of her brain still rejected the label. She'd embrace killer to an extent, but not quite murderer. Despite what she'd done to Dani, despite how flimsy her excuse for that being merciful had been. And speaking of flimsy excuses, next he accused her of making flimsy excuses to make herself feel better, to justify doing the thing she already wanted to do and not confront the truth of it.

Perhaps if she had time to think, perhaps a therapist to talk it through with? Maybe Evie would've eventually admitted that he was absolutely right.

However.

Evie did not have time to think about the accusation. She was not relaxing on a nice sofa, being asked how it made her feel. She was not in a state of mind to confront her own psyche, she was not ready to interrogate her own faults, how even Chloé had almost certainly been her own fault. No. Evie was standing in a dark cellar, with perhaps thirty people metaphorically between her and making her way home alive, and alone. So no, Evie's response was far from mature and thoughtful. It was anger.

Anger that only got worse moments later.

Another thing that Evie had neglected to reflect on, in her time on the island, was the anger simmering inside her. She'd never thought of herself as a particularly angry or violent person, yet on at least three occasions already she had lashed out... with varying intensity and consequences. Perhaps it was the frustration of being incarcerated on a frozen rock, perhaps the built-up paranoia of living in fear ever since she'd come dangerously close to being impaled, then later shot, perhaps she simply had a deep well of resentment towards so many of her fellow students who she'd wanted to badly to fit in with, peers who would never truly know her, because she was so deathly afraid of being authentic. Probably a mix of the three. A mixture which went from bubbling over to absolutely exploding when Anthony finally made his move.

She'd thought the danger would be inside his pack, she hadn't expected it to be the pack. How ironic that his defence against her would mirror hers against Alex.

The roar of Evie's SMG filled the small room, but it came too late to stop the weight flung towards her. Her arms were forced down, her left crossed over her chest and pushed back, whilst her right flew off to the side under the weight of the blow, slamming hard into her shoulder. A metallic clatter heralded her gun's journey across the floor into some unknown corner. She let out a wordless snarl of fury, and threw herself at the boy, bringing her right fist back up in a vicious hook aimed for his jaw.

"MAYBE," she growled, "YOU SHOULD FUCKING CONSIDER,"

Anthony was off-balance, and Evie was all too glad to keep it that way, raining blow after blow wherever she could land one.

"THAT YOU ARE NOT FUCKING BETTER THAN ME!"

Somewhere along the way, her flashlight had dropped to the ground. Partially lit from its vantage point on the floor behind her, more a silhouette than a human being in the stark half-light, Evie lowered her centre of gravity and hurled herself headlong into her dazed victim, meaning to tackle him to the ground.

The air went opaque with the noise and the smoke and the shock, and for one disorienting instant he thought the AED machine had exploded, discharged the energy to jolt a human back to life in all directions. But no—in those fractional instants that followed, the only space he had to ponder anything but the ensuing give and take, swing and dodge, he recognized it as the weapon his target carried going off, sending a ripple of adrenaline down his side. That his first thought was of his own contribution and not his opponent's was, perhaps, emblematic of the whole struggle.

It really wasn't supposed to be so difficult. One crippling blow. He had the mass, the leverage, the weight. If his shot was clean. He should have expected such an adroit response from the girl who'd had some experience in this sort of thing.

A blow landed hard and heavy on his cheek. He recoiled, tying to blink away the onslaught of pain and frenzied shrieking, and was met with the fresh assault of Evie throwing her entire weight against him. God, she was ferocious. But he wouldn't be so easily swayed, and time was on his side. He stumbled back, managed to keep his footing, threw up his arm to block her assault. Volleying back, he made a jab or two of his own. Slower than he imagined, leaving him unexpectedly winded. Molten heat seemed to trickle from his core.

Concentrate. Efficient motions. She closed again and landed another solid hit, but ate a spirited elbow for it. The softness of her flesh giving way against his rigid, muscle-backed bone. A faint, sickening, inspiring crunch. He could do it. Could find that again. He made a fist, brought it home once, twice. But a dizziness was overtaking him. Surely he wasn't getting nauseous over something he'd planned for so long, had dreamed of even if he hadn't been so quick to admit it?

He reeled and staggered under a renewed assault, falling down to one knee. He could spring on her from there.

Any moment now, he told his coiled legs.

The heat running down his side went cool. Sticky.

...oh.

She shouldn't have expected it to be easy. But Evie had gotten it into her head that she was good as well as lucky, that taking the initiative and not letting up her ferocity would be enough to overcome Anthony's physical advantages. At long last, her confidence had started to get the better of her.

A stray jab impacted her flank, sending an intense jolt of pain through Evie's torso. She retaliated with a vicious blow to the jaw.

"I,"

She moved in close, trying to get inside his reach. Evie was no boxer, but somewhere inside her brain was the notion of neutralising his advantage. Her hours in the pool had made her strong, but his hours on the track were backed up by testosterone. Her fist impacted with his torso, aimed for that sensitive spot where the ribs split, but landing closer to the stomach. He seemed winded, right up until his elbow lashed out and caught her square in the nose.

"DESERVE,"

The second word was spat through the blood now streaming down her upper lip. Some part of Evie's consciousness began to worry: this wasn't going as planned, not only did he not simply submit, he seemed to be gaining ground. There was no time to go for her other gun, even if she could aim it right in the darkness. There was a real chance she could lose here. That she could die here. Adrenaline surged, and she drew in closer still, hammering her fists into where she was reasonably sure kidneys should be.

"TO LIVE!"

Evie's assault was interrupted as a knee suddenly impacted between her legs, and she staggered backwards, gasping for breath. Why hadn't she thought of that? Would've hurt him more. Fortunately, it soon became evident that it wouldn't be necessary. Outlined against the edge of Evie's flashlight's reach, the semi-silhoutte of Anthony Jones slid down onto one knee. His expression seemed to contradict the way he moved: a face ready to pounce, but with legs barely holding him up.

That was when Evie spotted the trail of blood, almost black in the artificial light, leading back along the floor to a spot on his leg that was not quite the same colour as the rest.

Panting with pain and exertion, the killer couldn't resist a smirk. Her luck had saved her again. She didn't just deserve to win, she was destined to. She was better. Stepping forward, she made haste to capitalise on her good fortune. He'd broken her nose, so without pausing to consider if it were truly necessary, Evie raised her foot and planted it square in the centre of Anthony's face with all the force her anger could supply. As the boy crumpled to the floor, Evie spared a moment to wipe the blood and phlegm from her mouth, before searching through her pockets to retrieve her second gun.

Through laboured breath, she managed to clarify her earlier statement as she briefly took aim. Even in the half-light of the cellar, the gaudy gold design managed to glimmer slightly.

"More than you do."

The moment of his triumph had passed before he'd even known it. He'd ruined it all on turn one. He'd clicked Stealth Rock on Heatran in front of Lando-fucking-T.

Evie stepped forwad and raised her leg, and he didn't have the wherewithal to stop it. His own face made a crunch and a crackle transmitted directly through his skull. His cheek met cold, hard floor that became warm, wet floor.

He felt that one. He felt all of them now.

It was difficult to count in his agony just how many spears of flying lead had transfixed him. They all sort of bled together. Three times, maybe four. Maybe one. It didn't really matter any more. He found himself staring down the barrel of a gun again, awaiting the moment when his consciousness would simply vanish, determined to observe that moment none could ever share of his own passage into oblivion.

The gun erupted, and a leaden drill lanced through his gut. Close enough to matter, far enough to let the moments keep trickling past. To make every breath a trial, an endurance race with no medal at the end.

And, somehow, at the end of all things, he found it difficult to feel truly afraid.

All his failures and foibles, all his triumphs and joys, would be leveled out. Equalized to nothing. Smoothed away like the pattern in a tray of white sand in anticipation of another idle etching.

He breathed, and drew in only agony. He blinked, and wasn't sure if his eyes even opened.

He saw a vast plain stretching out before and behind him, rolling in gentle curves to meet an indistinct horizon indescribably far away. It was neither light nor dark, barren nor lush, all gentle mounds and scalloped hollows in mundane fractal sameness, the subtle perturbations of its genesis writ large. Aeon became instant. Soil churned and rain washed, and gnarled growths sprang forth, following the lay of the land. Outgrowths of that same material, but twisted and curated by that same structure.

By time, and by chance, there came to be a disparity. A heat unbidden, a color unknown. A genealogy of tender, tentative energy smoldering ever brighter. A curl of darker mist, a tongue of searching flame. It spread, took alight, tapered in breeze and thrived in stillness. A collective effort, a wholly transformative one. No longer was the destiny of its reaching substrate to stretch and grow in greywashed silence but to leap and crackle as the flame liberated it, peeling layer by microscopic layer back to form its own substance, and then to drift skyward to parts unknown, to participate again perhaps, or not, but undeniable in the uniqueness of its fate. Nowhere else did such vibrant chemistry occur. Nowhere else did chaos issue forth such a vibrant beacon, offer such illumination with none to see.

There was one little speck among the throng which awaited unknowingly its role yet to play. The marvelous process trickled through the ancestors layered above, warming it, priming it. Liberating it. At last it soared along with the rest, incandescent and free amongst the collective spire of brilliance. By chance, and by time, there came a shift. Tongues which licked hither now guttered yon. A perturbation of the ever-shifting currents. And so what compelled this fleeting spark to leap now caused it to land, to spiral away as its cohort rose. But it did not begrudge its fate, for that was its nature. To burn, to rise, to be consumed, to drift alone at the conclusion of its grand journey and the start of a new one. To ever ponder the shape of what lay next, yet never to observe it. Such was the texture of its destiny, and it did not matter whether it came in one moment or the next, for it came for all. And neither could any deny the singular miracle of it all, the objectivity of a subjectivity found nowhere else. The fact that it all happened.

None of this was real, of course. There were no Akashic Records. No truth or verifiable answer to queries as grand as the texture of the life's final veil, as mundane as the taste of the last morning's rationed sustenance. Secrets kept eternally, yet woven irrevocably into the fabric of all that existed. Each passion, each thought, each pain and fleeting comfort a fact known only to one and soon to none.

Velvet curtains drew close as much in truth as in metaphor, for there was no reality save the incomprehensible, anonymous vastness; and there was no reality save that which was filtered though the lens of perception granted only to the uttermost privileged, those infinitesimal slices of the Universe experiencing itself. He was not going to join the stars; he had already joined them. The flame of his life flickered and guttered and spilled across the floor.

And then he wasn't.

S133: Deceased

Deep breath. In.

Oh God.

And out.

Oh fuck.

Again.

The proverbial red mist cleared. Evie’s chest heaved with exertion, whilst the rest of her cried out in protest at the punishment it had endured. Blood continued to roll over her lips as her nose stung with intense pain. Countless throbbing aches blossomed across her flesh; her arms, her shoulder, her torso, her groin, her legs. She’d been so unspeakably angry, and… and she’d broken the deal, hadn’t she?

By the time Evie caught her breath and stopped to scoop up her flashlight, the sounds of life issuing from Anthony seemed to have stopped.

No, no it wasn’t her fault. It was his fault. He’d attacked her, he could’ve let it be easy and painless, hell, she wasn’t even necessarily going to shoot. There was the explosion to consider, right? Obviously she considered it, that maybe it was already all over, she must’ve, mustn’t she have? But he’d taken the first swing, so she’d been forced to neutralise him, and… and when he was already down… no, no it wasn’t anger, Evie was more in control of herself than that, no, she’d kicked him to make sure he was down for good.

And she could blame the darkness for failing to aim for the head. Yeah. Yeah, it was fine. All fine. Not a monster. Just an animal, like she’d said. She believed it. Because she had to.

As for not finishing him off cleanly, well, he shouldn’t have beaten her up so badly if he wanted that. She’d had to take a moment to recover. Nevertheless, with the grim work done, Evie McKown set about scavenging the aftermath. Food and water, what little there was left to too off her own supplies. Painkillers from his first aid kit. A clean pad to wipe away the blood and phlegm. She left the “weapon” where it lay, seeing little use for cardiac resuscitation in her immediate future, and having better options for violence than an unwieldy brick.

What troubled her, however, was the niggling thought in the back of her mind. The voice that had screamed over Chloé’s fate, grown quieter with each successive death thereafter, yet still remained loud enough to break through when Evie’s thoughts weren’t otherwise occupied. It arose as she scoured the dark corners of the cellar for her fallen SMG. It asked her why this time barely seemed to bother her. It asked why the excuses were so easy to fabricate and to accept.

Evie the Killer asked it to shut the fuck up, and let her work.

At length, the girl gathered her possessions, her means of survival, and turned back towards the stairway. Hopefully Juanita knew how to set a broken nose. Evie could teach her, if not.

((Kelsey Brewer continued from Answers))

There was no sense to it. No grand idea, no real notion of what she might accomplish. She simply made toward the sounds, axe in hand, bag on shoulder. A wisp of a girl insubstantial enough to drift away on the faintest gyre of hardship, of violence. Call it an article of faith. That maybe, she might make a difference. Or, failing that, she might be remembered.

What a fucking pathetic thing to think.

But by providence, or merely her wide-eyed observation she traced the source, a trapdoor almost but not entirely sequestered from view, opened by whichever someone had used it last—multiple someones, it seemed, unless one had a particularly violent imagination—and leading into darkness below. She fished the flashlight from her bag, well-organized in anticipation of such an occasion, flicked it on, and hurried down the steps.

The room was small and nearly bare. A slumped mass to one side, a red pool gleaming in the way old blood didn't. And someone tall and slender standing before it all. Tall and slender and cute and funny and soft and strong and warm. Kelsey blinked, mouth agape behind her mask.

"E-Evie? I—" she said, and cut herself off and ran toward her, arms open, come what may.