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Dr Adjective · #1

January came all too fast.

Nine days ago, Evie had seen her family again for the first time since she left for school exactly a month ago. The sixth of December, 2021. A date she'd never forget as long as she lived. They'd been so delighted to see her, so relieved to see her alive and - all things considered - well. Having dodged their phone calls until that point, they were of course full to the brim with questions. Evie could tell they were barely holding back their curiosity, knowing that she'd been through hell and would perhaps not feel like discussing it. Navigating that day had proven easy enough after a while though, boundaries were wordlessly negotiated and established, and lighter topics prevailed. Evie asked what had happened in town for the last few weeks. How the Ravens had done in the lead up to the playoffs. The masks stayed mostly intact throughout, and they behaved just like they were a normal enough family, like it was a normal enough Christmas Day. Evie's parents had brought some gifts, she got to explain again where she'd stashed the handful she already had prepared, as her monologue to the camera had evidently not made it off the island. She hoped that it never would.

Seven days ago, Evie was finally questioned by the authorities. She'd dreaded it. If she couldn't tell her parents what she'd done, who she'd become, how could she tell a cop unburdened by unconditional love for her? Ultimately, it all came out like an avalanche. A few probing questions established what little she knew of the AT's operations, how the bus attack had gone down and what the auditorium afterwards had looked like. Then, apropos of nothing, Evie had decided to volunteer that she knew where they could find eight of the bodies, if they were still looking for them. From there, the mask slipped, truth spilled forth. How she'd killed Chloé first, a scuffle over her gun and who ought to have it. Chloé pulled the trigger, Evie was lucky that it jammed, swung a punch that put the other girl through a less-than-sturdy chair and put some of said chair through her in turn. Excuses, explanations, how it hadn't been her fault, how it had been mercy. Evie moved swiftly past how she simply could've not tried to forcibly take the gun away, and dwelt on how Chloé had tried to shoot her with it, how that justified fighting back and how she hadn't even meant to do anything more than defend herself. She hadn't meant to kill Chloé, just... not leave her defenceless, no, not that, just... just... put the power of self-defence in more capable hands. That was it. That justified it. It had to. As far as Evie knew, that body was still in one of the houses, the one with writing on the door marking it as an intended place of safety.

Next DeMarcus and Lara, they came as a pair. She'd buried them both, so to speak, in the graveyard. Found empty plots and covered them over with blankets weighted down with stones. They hadn't been her fault either, just as she'd been trying to tell Iris at the time, she wasn't a killer, but violence had chosen to find her anyway. DeMarcus fired first, someone threw a flashbang, Evie unloaded the gun she'd taken from Chloé. When her eyes cleared up, Iris was gone and the other two were dead and dying respectively. DeMarcus was self defence, then she'd put and end to Lara's suffering. Besides, really, what did anyone expect of her? The first thing that happened to her was Alex trying to run her through with a spear, then almost all of her friends had died while she was recovering from the wound he'd left her with, nobody had ever given Evie an option that wasn't fighting for her life, violence had chosen to find her. It wasn't her fault.

Dani was harder to work around. Evie began to tear up again, thinking of the scene she'd tried to forget. The day she'd accepted violence, and set innocence aside. She didn't labour the point on that one. She'd found Dani Bird in the basement, and she'd decided by then that her way home was to toughen herself up enough to win the sick game she'd been put in. So Dani's body was down there, respectfully preserved once again under a blanket and placed alongside Ashlyn Graves. Ash had been there already, Evie explained, she didn't remember much other than that it had been announced that her own sister had been the one to kill her.

Next was Anthony. She'd meant to do something with his remains, but Kelsey had appeared, and taking care of the living had superseded respect for the dead. She'd meant to go back down into the basement and move the body, but she needed to recover from getting the shit kicked out of her, she needed to steal as many moments with her girlfriend as possible, and then before she knew it, she was laying Kelsey to rest out in the graveyard too, and then someone had set fire to the whole church. Whilst Juanita - oh, Juanita had been with her for some of those events - went to find out where the smoke was coming from, she'd been accosted by Kaede Tsurumi, and mere minutes before the cavalry had arrived, Evie had killed her too. Her body was somewhere by the church. Anthony's probably wouldn't be very salvageable, hers might have gotten lucky, depending on how the fire spread and how the building came down.

The older woman, Gomez according to her ID, smiled with an uncanny placidity throughout. She appeared thoughtful at times, seemed to make mental notes or calculations, but never seemed to judge. That was what troubled Evie the most. She was a cop, she was supposed to care about people killing each other. So surely she was simply keeping her judgement to herself for now, letting Evie stay in blissful ignorance whilst fully intending to report back to HQ that the girl was a despicable murderer, that she should be sent home to a jail cell, not her own home. It was the way that she probed that gave it away, asking for grisly details in the same indifferent tone as she'd asked Evie how her leg was recovering. She hated her, she had to. She didn't buy Evie's "it was the law of the jungle and I was only that kind of animal for as long as I had to be" routine, she offered no absolution in exchange for the girl's confession.

The gap between then and the New Year was marked primarily by unresolved tension. Three days ago, Evie had half-heartedly welcomed a 2022 she scarcely expected she'd survive to see, then went back to bed. At some point, someone informed her that she'd be flying home on Monday. That extra security would be assigned to her, as well as others deemed likely to be at risk of acts of revenge. Juanita came to mind first. Then Matthew. Of course. The risks might well come from within the small group of survivors, not just from the loved ones of those that didn't make it.

As best she could tell from what Marshall and June had said, he'd been the one to shoot her. Which, by extension, meant he'd been the one to shoot Kelsey too. The thorny knot of anger she'd been nurturing since then was odd, in a sense. Intellectually, she understood that taking a shot at Kelsey was exactly as justified as anything she'd done, and conversely that trying to take Evie herself out after the proverbial final whistle had been blown was actually unforgivable, and yet, it was Kelsey that she wanted to avenge, not her own near-death experience and the potentially career-ending leg injury it had left her with. But no, he'd be protected. Perhaps it was for the best. What good would surviving be if she immediately got herself locked up for murder?

Didn't stop the ideation, though.

It was all that was on Evie's mind as she struggled onto the plane on the morning of Monday, the third of January, 2022. Her meagre possessions in a backpack, her leg a decent way towards recovery but still wrapped in a cast and assisted by crutches, the young survivor, the young killer, thought only of the myriad ways she could make Matthew suffer for what he'd done to her.

On the island, Evie had pondered the idea she knew by the phrase "you can't go home again". It was the name of a book, she believed, but not one she'd read. The idea though, was that after a significant journey, a person couldn't simply go back. They'd be different. Home would be different too. Ever-newer waters would flow on those who step into the same rivers. The truth of the matter was a little different than she'd expected it to be. Salem looked the same. It just looked at her differently now. She walked familiar streets, recognised familiar sights and faces, but the looks she received in return were anything but familiar. Evie was one of fourteen marked people now, someone to be walked on eggshells around, someone to be regarded with equal measures of fear and pity. If her death toll ever became known, the scales would certainly tip in favour of fear.

On Tuesday, Evie tested out her mobility with a walk across town to the Brewer house. The same beautiful blanket of snow created the same beautiful scene beyond the windows of the cosy lounge room. Standing outside, feeling Winter's chill bite more deeply into the tender flesh of where her shin and flank had recovered, the girl couldn't muster the courage to approach the door. She stared through the glass for a while, at the vacant sofa where she and Kelsey had played, where they'd shared their first kiss. Winter's chill turned her tears bitterly cold, and she nearly walked straight into her security as she turned on her heel and headed back home. On the return walk, she promised herself she wouldn't be cold again in the future. The island, Massachusetts, both were too cold. College would be somewhere warm, and she wouldn't come back... at least not outside of summer. At home, Evie learned that Matthew Bell intended to speak to the press about his experiences.

On Wednesday, Evie resolved to take her chance to make him hurt. She didn't get to come home. He shouldn't get to either.

[Black Queen accepts White King's gambit.]