Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This is such bullshit, Nicole thought to herself, as she stewed in her torn leather seat at the very back of the bus.

It was a scorching hot summer day, and to make matters worse, it was also humid, which meant that not only did the surface of the bus seats burn your skin if you weren’t carefully keeping every uncovered inch away from it, but you were also sweating at the same time.

Nicole wasn’t tall enough to see much from her position, but by scooching towards the middle row(come on, nobody actually wore seatbelts) she was able to just barely see the tops of a few of her classmates' heads. The first she focused on were a pair of shiny blond heads towards the middle of the bus, the sight of which pissed her off all over again.

One of those blonde heads, the slightly fluffier one with a few cowlick stands sticking casually in the air, belonged to Jecka, her best friend by default, and as she was slowly coming to realize, the only real friend she had at this school. The other, tied into a ponytail so tight you could see her darker undyed roots, belonged to Kelly, that fucking whore. Nicole hated Kelly, but that wasn’t unusual, she hated most of her classmates. What made matters worse was, Jecka also hated Kelly.

So why was she sitting with that dumb fucking bitch, and why was Nicole the one alone? Well, that little problem involved another couple of heads, these ones closer to the front... A crown of black hair belonging to Hunter, who Nicole might have actually liked if he weren’t so boring, and the glaring blood-red dye job sitting next to him. Ari.

Nicole’s ex-girlfriend.

Now, Nicole definitely wasn’t gay. Absolutely not, no way, nuh-uh. She knew this for certain, because she had TRIED dating Ari, and the only thing she had enjoyed about the relationship was how easy Ari had been to manipulate and emotionally abuse. The sex was just okay.

Anyway, the reason these four heads of hair were intertwined with hers was that after Ari had finally dumped her, she was apparently so damaged by Nicole that she went back to men. She was still gay, and she was going to be miserable in the closet for the foreseeable future, with or without her boring new boyfriend, but that was that.

And according to Jecka, that was that for their friendship. Now she was sitting with a different girl, Ari was dating a guy who had also just gotten out of a toxic relationship, and here Nicole was, torn between the indignity of having nobody to sit with, and the hyper vigilant effort to make sure no weird rapist-in-training tried to take advantage of that situation.

Speaking of rapists, Nicole’s attention was drawn to the front of the bus as the last few students filed on board, and Counselor Johnson stood up. “All right, that seems to be everyone... It’s a long drive to DC, and I expect you all to be on your best behavior the whole way. I also hope you’ve all used the restroom already, because we won’t be stopping for a while.”

”Don’t worry, we’ll just pee out the windows,” Kylar called back, eliciting chuckles from a handful of students, and an eye roll from Nicole.

“Very amusing,” the Counselor droned in response. “That reminds me, though, I know it’s a scorcher out there, so we will have the air conditioning on for the duration of the trip. Let’s make sure our windows are up so we don’t hemorrhage cold air.”

Nicole sighed, and scooted back over to the window. She didn’t give two shits about compliance at the best of times, but if she left hers open, she was dead certain the Counselor would take scolding her as an excuse to hit on her.

She had her hands on the window’s switches when she bore witness to a strange sight out on the courtyard. Ms. Ames and Coach Colby were out there, having what seemed to be a passionate argument with Principal Lynn, who seemed to be getting more and more animated with every word.

The school security guard, a former mall cop with disturbingly severe anger issues, was just making his way over to them, when Coach Colby suddenly swung the back of his hand across Principal Lynn’s face, sending her glasses flying, and sending her crumbling to the ground like a sack of potatoes. A chill went up Nicole’s spine as the security guard started running, but instead of placing Coach Colby in handcuffs like he deserved, he hauled Principal Lynn to her feet, and started dragging her back into the building.

As Ms. Lynn disappeared into the doors of her own school, and her two employees headed for the bus, Nicole’s mind raced to process what she’d just seen. What was that-

“Well hello there Nicole!” Said a nasally voice beside her. It sounded like Steve Urkel without the charm.

She turned around to face Jeffrey, the lucky future rapist who had managed to take the seat next to hers while her back was turned. “What the fuck do you want?”

He sulked a little at her response, but frustratingly did not lose his smile. “It’s going to be a really long trip is all, so I thought you might like to watch some youtube videos on my PSP with me. Have you ever seen AMV Hell?”

“No, what the fuck is an AMV?”

“It’s like an anime music video...”

Nicole scowled. First she had to deal with the fallout from losing both Ari and Jecka, and now she had to deal with this too? “No, I don’t want to watch any fucking anime. If you really want to keep me entertained, then give me your PSP and kill yourself like all the asian kids who made it.”

Jeffrey lowered his head, frowning. “That’s not very nice of you. Here I-”

He was interrupted as the bus lurched to a start, backing out of its parking lane and rolling out of the school.

“All I’m trying to do is be considerate, you know.”

Nicole half-groaned, half-sighed. “You could be considerate of literally anyone else in our class, so why do you choose me, when I have never showed any interest in fucking you?”

Jeffrey blushed, and shrank in his seat. “I wasn’t trying... To...”

Just as Nicole was about to lay into him even further and find an empty seat so he could jack off to his bag full of anime books, her attention was once again drawn up to the front of the bus, where the four adults in charge of this trip... Counselor Johnson, Coach Colby, Ms. Ames and some bus driver whose name she didn’t know... drew some black objects out of a duffel bag at their feet, and pulled them over their heads, quickly revealing what they were.

Gas masks.

“What the fuck...” Nicole asked under her breath, as a few other students also began noticing this and speaking up. Instead of responding to their queries, Coach Colby whispered something into the bus driver’s ear.

All of a sudden, a hissing sound erupted across the entire bus, over everyone’s heads. Some kind of green gas was pouring in from some tiny devices that none of them had noticed before.

The first student to try and stand up was Karen, who accidentally stuck her face directly into a cloud of gas by doing so, knocking her out cold, right back into her seat. A few more students followed suit, motivated primarily by shock. The rest of the class took their cue from this to stay seated, or to try and pull their windows back down, which wasn’t working, leaving them sitting ducks as the gas drifted downwards.

As Jeffrey lost consciousness beside her, Nicole was struck by a sudden memory. In the confusion from earlier, she had forgotten to close her window! Her heart racing with panic, she sat up just enough to stick her nose as far out of the window as it could go, the fresh air outside tasting and smelling sweet compared to what was gradually filling up the entire bus.

It wasn’t enough though. She had to escape. She drew in as much air as she could, held her breath, and stumbled over Jeffrey’s body to get to the emergency exit located between the two back seats. She had her hand wrapped around its bright red handle, and was pulling on it with all of her might, when she heard Ms. Ames’ cold, stern voice behind her.

”And where do you think you’re going?”

The last thing Nicole knew was a sudden pain in the back of her head, as the world went dark.

------------------------------------------------------

It was a loud bang that woke Nicole from oblivion. The first thought to cross her mind was ‘This isn’t my bed,’ and after what felt like an eternity, ‘This isn’t the bus.’

It was the sound of screaming, all around her, that brought her back to her senses. She forced her eyes open, a headache forming behind them as they took in the light reflecting off of the surface of her desk. For only the briefest of moments, she entertained the idea that she’d been asleep at her desk, and had dreamed the nightmare that had occurred on the bus. If that were true, why would people be screaming?

She finally lifted her head, to see Coach Colby and the Counselor standing at the front desk, the former fiddling with a tiny remote control, the latter shaking his head in disapproval. He then noticed her, regarding her with a soft smirk. “So good of you to join us, Nicole.”

The fog of confusion lifted from her mind as she looked around her, to see she was the only student still in their chair. Everyone else had gotten to their feet, and crowded against the back wall, as if trying to melt into the plaster. Several of them were covered in blood, grey matter, and other various bits of viscera.

Everything came together when she followed their gaze, to see a boy lying face down in the middle of the classroom, between two rows of desks. Although ‘face down’ was a bit misleading, as his head was nowhere to be seen. ‘It’s not like Dad...’ She thought. ‘Dad was face down, and he still...’ She felt bile threatening to rise up in her throat as she immediately tried to shut down the thought train she was on, flashes of what she had witnessed back then invading her mind and forcing these uncomfortable comparisons. She fought back the urge to vomit, and just barely held on with a series of short coughs.

Coach Colby chuckled. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? They needed a demonstration, and he was looking at me funny.”

The remote control... Nicole realized with a chill. This led her to another realization, that there was something strapped around her neck, as it also was on all of her classmates. Some kind of collar made out of leather and steel... And containing, she would bet anything, explosives.

The Counselor stepped up to the first row, clapping his hands for order. “Alright students, settle down. I’d like you all to please return to your seats, unless you’d like to join Brian here in permanent detention.”

Slowly, and very warily, the crowd at the back of the room began to disperse, as Nicole searched her memories for anybody named Brian. Nope, nobody she knew.

“To put it simply,” The Counselor continued, “There is no field trip to DC. There was never going to be. The truth is, this particular class has been randomly selected from all highschools across the nation to participate in an experiment. One that we call-”

Behind him, Coach Colby suddenly pounded his fist against the blackboard, causing the white screen covering it to roll upwards, revealing two words written in chalk. They simply said, in all caps, BATTLE ROYALE!!!

“Your assignment,” The Counselor continued, “Is to kill each other until only one remains. We are going to-”

“You can’t do this!” Cried Megan.

“There is no way this is legal!” Added Trody.

Coach Colby held up his remote again, cutting off any number of similar comments.

The Counselor raised his hands in front of him, palms out. “Okay, I understand your concerns, but yes, this is legal. Of course there's no point in explaining how to any of you, though. And don’t worry, your families have already been compensated for this... At least, the ones who were compliant enough that they didn’t require silencing.”

He grinned at this, seeing the panic shooting across some of his students' faces. “You know, I hear Principal Lynn had to be silenced. Not my type, of course, but I still wouldn’t have minded being a fly on that wall.”

Smirking, he stepped back, allowing Coach Colby to take his place. “All right, let’s can it with the whining from here on out. Next person to open their traps is toast, ya hear me? So here's what’s going to happen. You’re each going to take one randomly selected duffel bag. Inside is some camping supplies, a couple of bottles of water, and a weapon, ranging in lethality from binoculars to a fucking AR-15. You’re gonna leave this room in alphabetical order, and once you’re out, the game is on.”

“Psst...” Nicole heard from the seat next to her. She turned her head to see Ari sitting there. “This can’t be real, right?” She whispered. “I mean-”

“I said silence!” Coach yelled from up front. Ari’s gaze shot forward, only for her head to immediately snap back over the rim of her chair. Nicole could only observe in horror as it bent back further than it should have been able to, bounced back with an audible crack, and came to rest with her eyes staring dumbly at the ceiling, the handle of a throwing knife sticking out of her forehead.

The Counselor sighed. “Really, Scott?”

Coach Colby shrugged. “Don’t look at me, nobody teaches their brats to listen anymore.”

Nicole bit back a scream, a flood of unexpected emotions pooled into and around her heart. She had hated Ari... No, she had hated how much she had loved Ari. She had hated everything about her, from her hair dye, to her shitty taste in TV, to her awkwardness, and all of the small pleasures they’d enjoyed together. She was Nicole’s first-

Nicole flushed as she turned her gaze to Hunter, sitting in the back row, just sitting there stunned. She left me for you, and you’re just going to sit there? You’re not even crying? She thought, even as she just began to realize that there were tears rolling down her own cheeks. You gutless little coward.

“Attention please...” The Counselor pleaded, drawing Nicole’s eyes back to the front.

“The boundaries of the game are made up of individual sectors, each of which have been evacuated for our use. Every so often,” Coach Colby continued, as if he hadn’t just murdered two teenagers in cold blood, “one of those areas will be activated, and everyone still lingering there will get a quick little jolt to their collar, which will explode, just like our friend here,” he said, motioning to Brian. “So you’d do well to pay attention to the schedules in your bags. Other than that, I think we’re about ready to start moving out. When I call your name, report to the front to collect your duffle bag!”

He picked up a sheet of papers from the desk, and took a second to shuffle through them before raising his gaze back to the class. “Anderson, Kyle!”

“Sir!” A terrified Kyle bolted to his feet, stumbling awkwardly as he stepped into the aisle and made his way up to the front of the class.

“Little nervous there?” Coach Colby asked him, a big shit-eaing grin on his face, as he thrust a duffle bag into his arms, sending him stumbling back from the impact. “Feels like you got a heavy one. Probably something good in there, huh?”

Kyle seemed lost for words for several agonizing seconds before he finally managed to form two words, his voice cracking between them. “Thank you!” He scampered into the hallway and out of sight as the Coach returned to his list.

“Ashford, Kylar!”

“Oh fuck yeah!” The school’s most infamous bully cried, marching up to take his duffel bag with noticeable gusto.

From there, Coach Colby read off name after name, most of which Nicole was unfamiliar with, but a few of which she knew. Baker, Trody. Clovis, Ariel, who the Coach smugly marked as absent. Demersman, Emily, who seemed just as excited as Kylar. Ellis, Karen. Harper, Kelly. Jorgensen, Jeffrey, who the Coach couldn’t help but tease, first by shoving him, then by holding the duffel bag out of his reach, before finally sending him off, presumably to die. Moore, Crispin. Murphy, Hunter.

And then, “Schwartz, Jessica!”

“It’s Jecka!” She shot back.

“Shut the fuck up, Schindler’s bitch, I’ll call you whatever the hell I want to.”

Jecka stormed up to the front so angrily, Coach had the remote out of his pocket and pointed at her neck by the time she reached him.

“All right, now, let’s both of you calm down,” Counselor Johnson interjected. “Scott, we don’t tolerate antisemitism. Apologize.”

The Coach lowered his remote, smirking. “Yeah, whatever, that’s about to be the least of her problems.”

Jecka’s face was as red as a tomato at this point. “You had better not have laid a finger on my mother.”

“Guess you’d better survive so you can go home and find out.”

Still furious, Jecka took her bag and stormed off.

The next few names flew by in a blur... Smith, Braxton. Tunney, Megan, and a few others. Until there was only one.

Coach Colby chuckled. “Well, now. I guess that just leaves... Yuu.”

Nicole warily rose to her feet, before he motioned for her to sit back down. “No, not that Yuu. The other Yuu.”

Counselor Johnson casually knocked three times on a closed door next to the blackboard, which would presumably lead to another classroom. “You can come out now.”

The door opened, and Nicole felt goosebumps break out over her arms, and a terrifying feeling develop in the pit of her stomach, as the last person she had ever expected to see waddled into the room. From his shirt with so many Xes it should be dating Scott Pilgrim, to his black Monster Energy hat covering a recently shaved head, he weirdly looked even fatter than when she’d seen him get arrested.

“Keith?” She asked in disbelief. “You’re supposed to be in prison!”

Her piece of shit gamer brother laughed, picking up a duffel bag off the floor. “Yeah, and they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Kill your entire class, and they’d let me out early for good behavior. Sounded like a sweet deal to me.”

“And what about me?”

“What about you? You’re a sociopath. You’ll kill me if I don’t kill you first.”

Shit. He was right. She would do that.

“This way, please,” Counselor Johnson motioned for Keith to leave the classroom.

Keith laughed. “Yeah, anyway, good luck out there Nicole.”

He departed, as Nicole noticed something strange. There had been three duffel bags left on the ground. The abandoned ones that were supposed to be for Ari and Brian... And one for her brother? What about her?

Her growing sense of dread was vindicated when the Counselor picked up both of the remaining bags. “I think I’ll leave you to it, then. I’ll be with Priscilla in the control room, come and join us when you’re finished.”

He left the room, closing the door behind him as his choice of words flashed across Nicole’s mind like a blinking red light. Finished?

“What the fuck?” She cried incredulously. “What am I supposed to do without a bag?”

“Hmm, what indeed?” Coach Colby taunted her, licking his lips. “I guess you’ll just have to stay here with me, where it’s safe.”

As he advanced on her, his hand drifting down to the buckle of his belt, Nicole was driven up and out of her seat by a sudden spike of fear and revulsion. She started backing up between the chairs behind hers.

“Oh come on, why get shy now? You think Bobby and I didn’t sample the goods while you all were unconscious?” The Coach asked, sending a repulsed shiver up Nicole’s spine. “You probably already know this, but can you imagine how surprised I was to find out little Ari over there was a natural blonde?”

Nicole stole a quick glance at Ari, whose lifeless eyes were still staring at the ceiling. “You’d better stay the fuck away from me. I would rather-”

”Rather what? Rather die?” Coach Colby interrupted. He held up the remote with his free hand. “It’s not ideal, but I don’t need your head intact to enjoy the rest of you.”

Nicole could sense the bile rising in her throat as she considered his threat. How often had she said she’d rather die than be molested? And yet here she was, facing that very dilemma for real, and she felt sick with herself for every step she took towards the man who held her life in his hands.

As soon as she was close enough, he grabbed her by the arms and pulled her into a tight, powerful bear hug, squeezing the breath from her lungs. He buried his nose in her hair, and took a deep, uncomfortable sniff. “Oh Nicole, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this to happen.”

Before Nicole could come up with a sarcastic comment, Coach let go of her, spun her around, and shoved her into the front desk, bending her over it. He held her there at a forty degree angle, his giant hairy hands grabbing her in places she refused to acknowledge, her mind desperate to disassociate and go anywhere but here... But she won that battle, and with a flash of inspiration, she knew what to do.

She waited until she felt his breath on her neck, and his tongue grazing the rim of her ear, before she leaned forward as far as she could, and suddenly drove the back of her head back into his face.

She felt the crunch of his nose breaking, and a spurt of something very hot dripping down her back, as he screamed and backed up. Finally free of him, she saw that she had not only shattered his nose, but he had apparently bitten his tongue nearly off. “You bitch!” He hollered, in between screams of pain. “You... Dirty whore!”

As he collected himself and started coming after her, she darted back to her seat, or more specifically, Ari’s seat. She wrapped her fingers around the knife’s handle, and struggled to pull it out, trying to ignore the uncanny way Ari’s head moved as she fought against it.

Just as she once again felt the Coach’s presence looming behind her, she managed to yank the knife free, so she instantly whipped around and slashed. She couldn’t see where it had cut at first, but after everything she’d gone through, the impact still felt satisfying. She felt it cut through something soft, something hard, and then the air.

Time seemed to slow for Nicole as she raised her eyes, and absorbed the damage that she had done. She had cut Coach Colby diagonally across the face; The scar went through his right eye, across the bridge of his nose, and across the left side of his lips, and it looked deep enough to have cut through bone. There were no more insults or threats coming out of his mouth, rather, they were replaced with a hysterical, animalistic cry of pain as he clutched his face with his hands, blood pouring out from between his fingers.

As time sped back up, Nicole lost her last shred of control. Clutching the knife in both hands, she charged forward, plunging it up to the hilt between his sweaty man-boobs. Despite their disparity in weight, the force of her attack sent him stumbling backwards, and she fell on top of him, slipping from the confines of sanity as she withdrew the knife and started stabbing away at him, repeatedly sinking the knife into his chest, his stomach, his neck and even his face, as every shitty memory she’d ever had of him played in her mind. The humiliation of him harassing her when she was half-naked in the locker room. The indignity of every single creepy, suggestive comment he’d made to her and the other girls. The skin crawling terror of learning about his hidden cameras. The fury she’d felt when the judge had acquitted him in light of his good reputation and years of service to the community. She kept stabbing him long after he’d stopped moving, not to mention long after there was anything left of him resembling a person.

Throughout all of this, Nicole didn’t make a sound, having scared away her own voice. As her adrenaline ran out, and she finally sat back to admire her work, she wondered if she even had it in her to scream. Would anyone hear her, and come barging in? Would they give her the quick, painless death that Coach Colby never would have? She took a deep breath, but was only able to find enough of her voice for two words. “Fuck you.”

As soon as they had escaped her lips, and reality started to flood back to her, her stomach lost its resilience, and she threw up all over the Coach’s mangled corpse.

As she slowly regained color to her face, she reflected on the last few moments she had just experienced. Had she, though? Had any of that actually happened, and had she actually survived what should have been her certain demise?

She had no doubt that Coach planned to murder when he was done defiling her, and he probably wasn’t even planning on using... Using...

The remote! She checked his body... Both hands, every pocket she could find, but there was nothing interesting on him except his wallet and his remaining half-dozen throwing knives, all of which she took. So he must have dropped it somewhere between when he pointed it at her and when he was trying to hold his face together.

Nicole scoured the classroom, checking the trash can, under the front desk, under the student desks, every corner, everywhere, and found nothing. Where had it gone?

But the longer she searched, the clearer it came to her that she was running out of time. Coach Colby was expected somewhere eventually, and the more time went by, the more suspicious Counselor Johnson and Ms. Ames were going to become, along with who knew how many other personnel. She had to go, and fast.

She ran to the windows, half expecting them to be locked, but she was able to undo the latches and slide it open quite easily. She was greeted by the melodic sound of crickets in the grass, and a flood of fresh air, just as sweet as before, that raced in to replace the nauseatingly visceral aroma of death that was diffusing outside.

She was also relieved to notice that she was on the ground floor, which was one small miracle at least. She grabbed a nearby student desk, climbed up on it, and after taking a few deep breaths, she threw herself out the window, landing in a hedge down below.

From there, she only had one goal; Put as much distance between herself and the school as possible. Everything else would have to come later.

From the sound of gunshots echoing across the distance, it was becoming all too clear that the game had already started, with or without her.

Chapter Text

Hunter Murphy had never had much luck with girls, even if it might appear so from the outside looking in. He had been involved with three girls this year alone, after all, but looks could be deceiving.

It had all started with Megan. She was his first girlfriend, not only of 2008, but of his entire life. He had grown up in the same congregation as her, and while he distinctly remembered hating her when they were kids... And he was not the only one... The onset of puberty had created the inevitable bridge of attraction between them. And when he had finally gathered up the courage to ask her out earlier this year, she had accepted instantly.

He had been excited at first, but after two months, nothing had really happened. Well, nothing except movie dates, dinner parties, sitting together at mass, and the occasional closed-mouth kiss. True, he was just as catholic as she was, and they both considered premarital sex off the table, but from Hunter’s perspective, there were other things they could do. Smaller, more experimental things they could get away with as long as they confessed. But Megan hadn’t wanted to do any of those things either.

Now, Hunter knew he wasn’t a smart man, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. People were good at different things. Some people had brains, other people had brawn. He was tall, well built, and athletic enough that he could reliably bank on a Football scholarship. But one thing he really prided himself on was his faithfulness, both to God, and those he pledged loyalty to. Even if they stayed at a slow pace the whole way, he had committed to the idea of respecting Meghan’s boundaries all the way to the altar.

And then, along came Nicole.

Now, by Hunter’s estimation, Nicole wasn’t some vile temptress, or anything like that. Sure, she had manipulated him in order to exact some petty revenge on Megan, which she had only just come back to school from, but she hadn’t been wrong about what they had. He had wanted more. It had been a one-sided relationship, and he might never have gotten out of it without Nicole’s wicked machinations.

Either way, once his relationship with Megan was over, he had felt relieved.

And then Nicole rejected him, making it clear that she had no actual interest in him.

A month or two later, Hunter started dating Ari, who in an ironic twist of fate, had just gotten out of a toxic relationship with Nicole.

It seemed almost poetic in a way... Hunter and Ari had both dealt with toxic, controlling and manipulative relationships, and they had both witnessed Nicole’s cruelty first hand. And for a while, things felt perfect. Ari was kind, she was gentle and sensitive, and she would do all of those little things with him that Megan wouldn’t. He still didn’t want to go all the way before marriage, but it was okay, because she respected his boundaries just like he once had Megan’s.

And yet, as time went on, he had been coming to realize that her heart just wasn’t in it. There was a coldness behind her kisses. Her smiles wouldn’t reach her eyes. She would do whatever he wanted, but it never felt like SHE wanted to do them. He had been realizing, lately, that she didn’t love him, she loved being with someone other than Nicole... And if he was truly being honest with himself, he just loved being with someone other than Megan.

He had intended to bring this all up during the field trip... Get a hotel room with her if possible, and talk everything out... But his plans had been thwarted when he witnessed her being murdered right in front of him.

Seeing her killed in an instant like that... One second, she was whispering to Nicole, and the next, her eyes were staring blankly at the ceiling... His legs had turned to jelly, and refused to move out from under him. His terrified heart had anchored itself to the floor to keep himself from being killed next. As he stepped out of the classroom with his duffle bag, anger and shame welling up inside him, he kept playing her final moments in his head on repeat, wondering if there was anything he could have done to save her.

Maybe not, but there was still something he could do now.

He stepped to the side, out of view of those still inside the classroom, and opened up his duffel bag. Inside was everything he’d been promised, including... He noticed, as his heart started beating round ten times faster... A beautiful five inch long hunting knife.

Now, Hunter wasn’t a smart man, but he knew his weapons. His hobby was collecting guns and knives, marveling over their designs on both a functional and aesthetic level. While he had never killed anything bigger than a bug himself, he had helped his uncle clean and prepare freshly killed deer while camping before, and he knew how much damage a knife like this could do.

His adrenaline started swirling inside him as he imagined it. The Counselor was right inside near the door. If he chose the right moment to burst in, he could take him out with one throat slash or kidney stab. After that...

Coach Colby had the remote, and would surely activate his collar. But did that really matter? It had taken around five or six seconds for Brian’s collar to explode, so he would technically have time to attack him. He wouldn’t survive, sure, but didn’t God have a plan for that? Sacrificing yourself to save or protect others automatically got you into heaven.

Which was exactly where he knew Ari was waiting for him.

And hell, as long as he was willing to negotiate his life, why not trap that fat fuck in a bearhug, killing him suicide-bomber style?

I’m okay with this, he decided, as he wrapped his fingers around the knife’s smooth handle. I just have to-

His thoughts were interrupted by the hammer of a glock, being cocked and loaded in front of him. He raised his eyes, first to the barrel of the gun pointed at his face, and then to the face of the man holding it up at him. It was the school security guard, a former mall cop with severe anger issues. How had Hunter not noticed him standing there?

“You’re gonna want to keep moving that way,” the guard told him, his voice cold and uninflected.

Hunter felt his face going red, as he struggled to find a reply. Unable to form words, he just took off running down the corridor, zipping up his bag and abandoning his plans. He had been so stupid... If turning on Coach and The Counselor were so easy, the entire class would have doubled back on them so far!

And how was the guard even here? He hadn’t been on the bus with them!

He might have pondered even more, if immediately upon leaving through the front door of the school, his feet hadn’t collided with something soft, sending him sprawling to the ground.

Thankfully, because he had his hands out to stop himself, and the duffel bag slung across his chest to break his fall, he didn’t come down as hard as he could have, and his face was protected. His bare palms hurt a little from the concrete, but otherwise, he felt fine.

*Thunk!*

Before he could make any attempt to get back to his feet, his attention was grabbed by the sound of wood being pierced with steel. He turned over, straining his neck, to see the tail end of a small, slender object sticking out of the wall, still vibrating from the impact.

“Shit...” A frustrated mumbling drew his attention back to the courtyard, where a boy with shaggy, sandy colored hair was struggling to load another bolt into a small, metallic crossbow.

The situation slowly dawned on Hunter as he glanced at the mass he had tripped over, to see the body of Brielle Moss, her raven colored hair splayed around her face, a crossbow bolt sticking out of her neck. She had been the one student to leave the classroom directly between himself and... Crispin!

The sound of another bolt hitting the chamber snapped him out of his stupor. Not even bothering to get back up to his full height, he slid off his duffel bag and leapt into a full on charge, and before Crispin could fire another shot, he tackled him with a perfect spear to the gut. The two of them hit the ground, causing a half dozen loose bolts to roll free of Crispin’s person.

Before Hunter could do anything else, Crispin reached up and wrapped his hands around Hunter’s throat. Unfortunately for him, his tiny string bean stoner arms were no match for Hunter, who grabbed both of Crispin’s wrists and squeezed as hard as he could, causing Crispin to scream in pain and let go. On pure instinct, Hunter reached out, grabbed a crossbow bolt, and brought it down on Crispin as hard as he could, not even aiming for anything in particular.

Time seemed to freeze, for both of them. Crispin stared dumbly up at Hunter through his one good eye.

Hunter stared back, slow to process the image of his other eye, destroyed and dripping a trail of blood from the bolt that was now sticking out of it.

As time caught up with them, a scream of pure agony escaped from Crispin’s mouth, as he found the miraculous burst of strength to push Hunter off of him, scramble to his feet, and run aimlessly into the woods, leaving his duffel bag and weapon behind.

Hunter stumbled to his feet, half in a daze, his brain still piecing together the events of the last... Minute? Maybe less? He picked up both his and Crispin’s duffel bags, and stalked off into the woods himself, deliberately taking a different path from Crispin’s. The crossbow, unfortunately, had broken during their scuffle, but whatever.

There was nothing he could do now but move forward.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Karen Ellis couldn’t stop shaking as she sat on the floor of what appeared to be a very recently abandoned one story house, hugging her knees to her chest. She sat with her back against the wall, under a window that was open just enough for her to hear outside for any sign that her pursuers were still out there, looking for her.

She took her glasses off just long enough to wipe the tears off of her face. She never wore a ton of makeup, but the little she had worn for this trip was already smeared from all the crying she had done.

This wasn’t how her dream field trip was supposed to go down. She had arranged to meet with a small group of friends, and on their free day, they had all been planning to go see Twilight together. They had all seen it before, of course, but together? In DC, at a fancy theater, with a bigger crowd than their backwater Virginia town could muster?

She should have been making precious memories, not hiding for her life like a trapped rat.

Of course, even if she could meet up with her friends, would she be safe from them? Or were they playing the game too?

The first people she had run into after leaving the school were the worst ones possible. Of the four, she knew three of them, as they were in most of her regular non-AP classes; Trody, Braxton, and their de facto leader, Kylar. The fourth she didn’t know well, but he had a fairly famous reputation; Richard Fardette. He was an angry boy who would fly off the handle at a moment’s notice.
As soon as they had seen her, they’d given chase, making their intentions clear through their awful chants. “Kill the nerd!” “Fuck that uggo bitch!” “Rape the lesbo!” And she wasn’t even a little gay, but did they care?

She’d finally lost them in this abandoned village, hiding in the most boring, unassuming little cottage she could find, and she had heard them searching for her for a little while. It was quiet now, as if they’d given up, but with her life and more on the line, she wouldn’t dare look outside to check.

She was just going to sit here, and wait...

And wait...

She broke out into a cold sweat as she remembered something Coach Colby had said. Every so often, an area would become active and trigger the explosives in their collars. With this in mind, how long could she actually stay here? What if the bullies had fled because...

With that thought, she bolted to her feet in a panic, threw her duffel bag on a wooden desk, and rifled through it. She had already extracted her weapon, a tazer, but she had yet to see what other essentials she’d been given.

Among some bottles of water, some dried food and extra batteries, she found a map, a schedule, and a flashlight that she immediately switched on so she could read the former.

She quickly figured out where she was, and read the schedule to find that, to her relief, her area wouldn’t be activating for another two days.

Her relief was short-lived, however, as she was interrupted by a loud banging on the door.

“Hello?” Called a familiar feminine voice. Karen almost relaxed with the knowledge that the intruder was a girl, but no, there were some scary girls in her class.

She stuffed everything back into her bag, and dove under a nearby table, praying for the poor lighting to be her cover.

The outsider opened the door, and stepped cautiously inside. “I saw the light, I know somebody is in here!”

Karen recognized that voice, and the unique cadence attached to it. The extra stress she placed on certain syllables. That slight, subtle valley girl twang.

She stuck her fist in her mouth and bit down hard to stifle any stray sounds she could make. It was Emily! The last person she would want to be alone in a room with at the best of times!
“Come on out... It’s okay... I’m not gonna hurt you...”

Karen felt her heart racing as she realized that it wouldn’t take long for Emily to make her way to the living room, where she was hiding. What kind of weapon had they given this depraved psychopath?

Sure enough, from her hiding spot, Karen soon saw Emily’s black crocs and purple pant legs stalking about the room.

If this were a movie, it would have been a sneeze, a cough, or a suspicious set of footprints that gave her away. Instead, Emily shined her flashlight under the table with no prompting.
As soon as she saw the whites of Emily’s eyes, Karen drew her tazer, and held it out threateningly, daring her to move.

Instead, Emily held her hands up, palms out, defensively. “No, wait! I meant what I said! I don’t want to hurt you!”

Karen remained silent and still, refusing to take her attention off Emily.

“You’re hiding, right?” Emily persisted. “So you’re not playing. That’s good. We can trust each other.”

Karen hesitated. “Show me your weapon,” She demanded.

“Yeah, dude, of course!” Emily raised her left hand, bringing a small sickle into the light. It was basically a fun-sized scythe. Karen tensed up upon seeing it, but Emily shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking, it looks pretty threatening, but this thing is ridiculously impractical. It sucks as a throwing weapon, and it has no reach. I had to face down Trody earlier... That dude had a fucking ninja sword... I had to bluff the hell out of him just to get away!”

Karen felt her muscles ease. Emily probably had encountered at least one of the bullies, as they were briefly in the same area, so that did check out.

Emily pointed to Karen’s tazer. “But you? I’m in way more danger from you than you are from me.”

“Okay,” Karen relented, lowering her tazer a bit. “But what do you want with me?”

Emily’s eyes narrowed, as she lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I think I found a way out of here... But I need someone like you to help me pull it off.”

“Because I’m smart?”

“I mean you are, aren’t you? I’ve always admired that about you."

Karen raised a dubious eyebrow. “What do you mean you admire me?”

“I mean I like you, obviously!” Emily said, with no hesitation. “I know I never made the effort to be your friend, but that’s because I’ve always had other friends... Cooler friends, no offense... To keep up appearances for. But you’re really smart, and you’re really nice, and why do you think I’ve never been that mean to you?”

Karen realized, with a flush, that Emily was right. Sure, she’d caught a sarcastic remark every now and then, but the more she thought about it, Emily had never been as cruel to her as she had been to their other classmates.

Karen smiled warily. “Okay. I’ll trust you, so what do you need me to do?”

Emily put her sickle away, and reached out to Karen. After only a moment’s hesitation, Karen took her hand. Emily helped pull Karen out from under the table, on her hands and knees, and that’s when Karen felt a sudden blinding pain in her neck. She tried to speak, but all that came out was blood as the use of her voice only made the pain a million times worse. She reached up to her throat, and felt the tip of a curved blade sticking out of it.

The last thing she felt was Emily’s breath on her ear, as she whispered, “Thanks for the help.”

As the world became dark for her, it became brighter for Emily. She stood up, placed her foot between Karen’s shoulder blades, and with a violent jerking tug, she pulled her sickle free of Karen’s throat, blood spraying everywhere, with an extra little bit of effort to get through the spine.

Karen’s body twitched, convulsed, and ultimately came to rest on the carpet, in a condition that was not too dissimilar to Nearly Headless Nick. Emily dutifully scooped up Karen’s tazer.

She hadn’t lied to the poor girl... Not once. She didn’t WANT to hurt her, she had to. She had always liked Karen, albeit less as a friend, and more as a novelty. A nice girl in an evil world... Emily respected that. Unfortunately, this game was no place for a nice girl. Poor Karen was going to be killed eventually, and whoever did it would wind up in possession of this beautiful tazer, so why not Emily?

And she definitely had a plan for how to get off this island. It was called winning. There would only be one winner in this game, and Emily would never, ever, ever allow herself to become a loser.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As Kyle Anderson marched along, swinging his machete this way and that, the foliage in front of him gave way in a clean and satisfying fashion as he cut through it, he couldn’t help but whistle.
After what the Coach had said about the weight of his bag, he had expected something more powerful to be waiting inside, like an AR-15, or an Uzi, or even some hi-tech science fiction ray gun. As it turned out, his weapon hadn’t been a firearm at all, but he wasn’t about to complain.

Instead, he’d been given a long, thick, shiny looking machete, straight out of the Jason movies that he technically wasn’t allowed to watch.

Sure, he didn’t need to travel through the overgrown forests. He could have stuck to the easier, already cleared paths. If he had done that, though, he’d never have had the chance to break in his new favorite possession. He was enjoying swinging his machete around, and the plantlife was going to suffer for it, because he wasn’t quite ready to kill a person yet.

Would he be ready when the time came? Could he? To be honest, the thought of killing another person made him feel kind of sick... He didn’t know if he had it in him to kill anyone at all, except for maybe his mother.

His insane, hyper religious mother.

Kyle didn’t know what he hated more... That his parents were divorced, or that custody had been granted to the parent who chose to STAY with the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Most kids got lucky when their parents split up, getting two birthdays, and two of every holiday. Kyle wasn’t allowed to celebrate birthdays OR holidays. Hell, he was lucky he even got to go to school... The elders actively discouraged any kind of education that went against their teachings, especially regarding college, since you were expected to dedicate your future to Jehovah.

Thanks to his Dad, however, his attendance at school was a mandatory stipulation for his child care checks. If Kyle got pulled out for any reason, those checks would stop coming, and the custody case would be revisited.

Still, Kyle generally found a way around things he wasn’t allowed to do. He had friends he could watch objectionable movies with. He knew people he could buy cigarettes from at school, and as long as his mother believed he was involved in after-school studying, he could play video games at the barcade.

And now, here he was on this weird island, being told to kill all of his classmates. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he could join a group in an alliance or something, right?

As he mulled this all over in his head, he came to the edge of the forest. He almost turned back, but movement out beyond in the clear caught his attention. It both looked and sounded like some kind of a scuffle was taking place.

Crouching low, he crept to the edge, and peered out onto the lawn of a lighthouse overlooking a cliff. Had he really climbed that high?

Not too far in front of him were five figures, four of whom were standing, and a fifth who was on his knees, getting his ass handed to him. It took a minute for Kyle to identify him, until he realized that it was because the figure’s glasses were lying in the grass a few yards away. With a black eye, blood trickling from his hairline and nose, it was Jeffery!

He felt a pit in his stomach as he realized what that meant for the other four figures... Kylar, Braxton, Trody and Richard. They were playing the game. Even worse, they had formed an alliance, and they would sooner kill Kyle than let him join.

He watched in horror as Kylar laughed, casually pointed an assault rifle at Jeffery’s head, and pulled the trigger... Or he tried to, only to find it stuck. He turned it over in his hand like a broken phone, and tossed it to Richard. “Here, Dick, you figure it out.”

Kyle watched as Richard’s face grew red. “Hey fuck off with that shit, asshole! You’re the dick!” He threw the gun back at him, as Braxton and Trody laughed.

“Here, I’ll try this.” Kylar drew back his arm, and slammed Jeffery across the face with the but of the gun. “I think it still works guys!” The four of them laughed as Jeffery spit out a stream of blood, including at least one tooth.

It was then Braxton’s turn, as he stepped up, and thrust the heel of his boot into Jeffery’s bleeding face... And just as Kyle was about to run, something unexpected happened. Jeffery caught Braxton’s boot, gave it a sharp twist, and bit down as hard as he could on Braxton’s calf. Shocked, the other boys tried to pull the screaming Braxton away from him, at which point Jeffery let go, and punched Kylar hard in the crotch. Kylar stumbled backwards, clutching his privates, and dropping the AR-15.

Jeffery picked it up, and after fiddling with it for about ten seconds, he fired a hail of bullets into Braxton, who jerked around with each hit like he was being electrocuted. Trody took off running, but Richard wasn’t so quick on the uptake. He charged AT Jeffery, who took him down as well.

Standing up to his full height, his posture still crooked as always, Jeffery went to pick up his glasses and put them back on. He eyed Trody, who had already managed to take himself out of range, and turned to Kylar instead. The most famous bully in their class was struggling to stand upright as he backed away from his once favorite target, and unknowingly toward the cliff.

“No... Please... You don’t have to... Let’s talk about this!” Kylar tried reasoning.

But it was to no avail, as Jeffery opened fire on him, at the same time that Kylar went screaming over the cliff. Kyle couldn’t tell exactly how much damage had been done to Kylar, but he wasn’t getting back up anytime soon.

Braxton was already very visibly dead, but Richard was still conscious, leaning up on his elbows as he tried and failed to speak. Jeffery pointed the AR-15 directly at his head, his own face growing reader with rage with each second. “The safety was on, you... You... Idiot!”

As he pumped a stream of bullets into Richard’s skull, splitting it open like a watermelon on the beach, Kyle chose that time to make himself scarce, turning and running back into the woods.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As Hunter crept through the woods, he was once again plagued by the endless loop of fresh memories in his head. Weapon fanatic though he might have been, he had never witnessed any kind of human carnage up until this afternoon. He hadn’t been in the room when any of his grandparents had passed away. He’d never personally seen anyone dying, and the most gruesome injury he’d ever witnessed was the occasional broken bone on the football field.

But now? He had seen three people die in the space of only two hours. Okay, one of them had been killed before he had seen her, but the image of Brian’s head exploding was going to haunt him for years, and Ari...

He tried to suppress that memory as soon as it bubbled up, but all he succeeded in doing was replacing her face with Crispin’s, as he stabbed the poor guy’s eye out of his socket with his own hands.

He had never had any issue with Crispin... They were never friends, but he hadn’t hated him either. It was self defense... But was it? Could he have reasoned with Crispin if he’d tried?

With all of this swirling in his head, he was unable to think straight, but thankfully, he had some advice from his uncle to fall back on... “If you’re lost in the woods, find a river and follow that.”
Hunter wasn’t necessarily lost... Well, maybe in the sense that he had no idea what to do or where to go... But following a river was simple enough advice, so he stuck to it as well as he could, letting his own mind have its way with him as his body carried him forward on autopilot.

Before long, however, he began to hear splashing ahead. He slowed down a bit, and moved a little more into the foliage as he walked, until he came upon a peculiar sight. There was a point where the river opened up a bit, forming a small basin, and in that basin was the last person he’d been expecting to see, Nicole Yuu.

She wasn’t really doing anything, other than just wading around. She was fully clothed, at least as far as Hunter could tell with her being chest-deep in water, but the sight was still an almost majestic one...

Or it was, at least, until he noticed that something was off. Her shirt, as he remembered, had been white with black sleeves. Now it had taken on a slightly pinkish hue. Despite the deepening twilight of sundown, he could also just barely make out the small tendrils of red liquid swirling around her in the water, as the realization hit him all at once.

This was Nicole, of all people. Of course she had already killed someone, and if she caught him staring, he was going to be next.

He chose this moment to back away from her, unfortunately stepping onto a twig that broke under his heel with an audible snap.

He froze, but it was too late. Her eyes met his, and neither party looked away for several agonizing seconds until they were interrupted by the sound of a gunshot nearby.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

Nicole finally burst out of the woods, leaving the tree-line behind and entering a clearing, where she found a river cutting across her path, surrounded by stones and sand on both sides. Before she could even think about crossing it, her legs and lungs gave out, and she fell to her hands and knees right at the edge of the grass, coughing so hard she could barely breathe.

Nicole had never been much of an athlete... She’d dabbled in most of the different sports as a kid, because that was just what you did in gym class, but she’d never given any of them any more effort than she had to, and even that was more effort than she put in now that she was older. She couldn’t remember the last time she had run this hard, for any reason, and blaring pain in her lungs were giving her a subtle clue as to why.

All of her classmates were hunting for her, and she was going to go down from fucking smoking.

After her own lungs finally stopped trying to murder her, she let herself collapse, just lying in the grass, trying to force herself to relax. She was way too young to have a heart attack, after all.

She stared at the stars for a few minutes, wondering what would have happened if she had just stayed home, pretended to be sick and missed the trip. Would they have come for her, to collect her from her house? Considering what the Counselor had said about visiting their parents, it seemed likely.

She could have skipped. But she never would have. That was the truly diabolical part of their plan... Anybody would have skipped a normal school day, but a class trip? A chance to hang out and fuck around in an entire different city, away from your family, where the teachers chaperoning would barely be capable of keeping track of you?

Fuck, now she felt robbed AND terrified.

After lying there for a while, her lungs calmed down, and she’d gotten her heart under control, but there was still one problem. Her skin felt radioactive. No, not just her skin, even her clothes felt weird. Every single inch of surface area on her body just felt wrong, and it wasn’t just from Coach’s attempt to violate her. His blood was basically pig’s blood, and she wouldn’t feel clean again until it was rinsed off.

“He actually had normal blood,” she said to herself, just to hear the sound of her own voice. “I’m surprised he didn’t bleed raspberry jelly like a fucking donut.” Hearing those words escape her own lips, she found herself laughing uncontrollably, until that also set her off into a coughing fit.

Fuck it, it was worth it, she needed a good laugh.

She sighed as she got back up to her feet, and studied the river. It seemed calm enough where she was, but about fifty feet further down, it led to a waterfall, after which it looked like the current was going to become much more dangerous.

She dipped her hand into the water, and found the temperature to be nice and cool, but not freezing. Perfect.

She briefly considered undressing first, so she could clean and dry her clothes separately, but no, she’d seen way too many horror movies to not know why that would be a terrible idea.

Walking around in wet clothes would be uncomfortable later, but it wouldn’t be THAT bad. She may have regretted wearing short pants on the bus, but they would certainly be convenient here.

With that in mind, she took off her shoes, emptied her pockets, and walked slowly into the water, which was about chest deep for her, and after everything she’d been through, it felt amazing. The sun had just about completely gone down now, but the moon was full, giving her enough visibility to keep track of where she was.

She reached behind her head, untied her hair, and let it flow into the water, running her hands through it as a surprising amount of blood and viscera washed out of it. It was nice to finally get one of these shitty teachers out of her hair.

She let her mind go blank, enjoying the feel of the water on and around her, occasionally squeezing handfuls of her shirt to get the pig’s blood off of that, until she was interrupted by a loud snap.

She became alert immediately, looking around for any sign of movement, any shape that shouldn’t be there, until her eyes locked onto a tall, dark shadow lingering right at the tree-line that she had come from previously. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she was able to make out just enough to identify him as Hunter Murphy, a boy who she... Honestly wasn’t sure about.

On the one hand, he was a jock, so fuck him on principle. But aside from that, was he a threat? She had engaged in a sort of flirtatious relationship with him earlier in the year, just enough to get revenge on Megan, and once the damage was done, she’d let him know in no unclear terms that her interest in him was never genuine.

He hadn’t shown any sign of rage or entitlement over her at the time, in fact, after her rejection, he’d let the whole thing go scarily easily. Would he use this game to try and get revenge?

Throughout their flirtations, he had never gotten pushy or aggressive with her, which was to his credit. He’d definitely wanted her, but he had also been respectful about it. The worst thing he’d done was skeet all over his family’s possessions like they owed him money, but she had asked him to do that.

She knew he was a church boy, but so was Kyle, and he was still a sex pest.

Her train of thought was derailed by the sound of a gunshot, which sounded like it was coming from somewhere nearby.

Taking his cue from that, Hunter stepped forward, out of the shadows. He held his hands up like he was getting arrested, two duffel bags slung over his shoulders. “I’m not playing the game,” he offered. “We should get out of here, it’s not safe. You can trust me.”

Nicole’s eyes narrowed at his statement. If he wasn’t playing, where had the second duffel bag come from? She waded towards the water’s edge, and feigned as if to climb out of the river. Instead, she decided to take advantage of the poor visibility. “I’m not wearing any pants,” she lied. “Can you look the other way? Now, please?”

Even in the dark, she could see his face turn red. “Oh, um, okay.” He turned his head and closed his eyes.

Seizing her opportunity, she crept out of the water and picked up one of Coach Colby’s throwing knives from the pile she’d left on the ground. It was time to test her luck with these things. She drew her arm back, picturing herself throwing a dart at a dartboard, and threw the knife as hard as she could.

It flew true, flying straight for Hunter’s chest... Where it landed butt-first before bouncing off of him and to the ground.

“Huh?” He asked, looking down. “What the fuck was that?”

Embarrassed, Nicole clenched her teeth and threw another one, which missed him by a few inches.

“Oh, okay, they gave you throwing knives. Yeah, I could never figure those out either.” He studied her for a moment, and she found herself hoping she didn’t look as pathetic as she felt after two failed murder attempts in a row. “Hey, can I ask you something? If you can’t use those very well, then where did all that blood come from?”

Nicole felt a strong impulse to answer sarcastically, maybe tell him it was from her period or something. But no, he would probably believe her, so she wouldn’t get the angry response she wanted. Might as well just tell him the truth. “It’s from Coach Colby. I killed him and took the knives from him.”

She expected him to respond with disbelief, but instead, he just smiled. “Oh, so you avenged her then. I’m glad.”

Nicole was taken aback. As it turned out, she was the one in disbelief. “Oh yeah, well what about you? Who did you kill to get a second duffel bag?”

Hunter reached up, absently scratching his cheek. “Oh, that? I... Well...”

Just as Nicole was about to lay into him, he was interrupted by the sound of a gun being cocked. Nicole turned and saw another figure walking down the river from up north... It was her brother, sporting a shit eating grin, and what she remembered from his games to be some kind of hunting rifle.

She clenched her jaw as he pointed the barrel directly at her face. “Well, look who it is,” he remarked in his gravelly voice. “I’m surprised your ass even survived this long.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Hunter asked. “What are you, like thirty?”

“That’s my brother,” Nicole explained through gritted teeth.

“Yeah, and I’m only twenty seven, not thirty,” Keith explained, switching his aim between them.

Hunter swallowed as the barrel pivoted in his direction. “Yeah, but you get how that still doesn’t make any sense, right?”

“It’s a long story,” Nicole offered. “And it should have been a longer prison sentence.”

“That reminds me, weren’t you the one who got me arrested in the first place?”

“Dude, does it even fucking matter? They were going to catch you at some point!”

Keith smirked, looking very much like the cat who had caught the canary. “Well they’re gonna have to catch me again, because I’m going home and you’re not.”

“Okay, yeah, you’re definitely siblings...”” Hunter observed.

Both Nicole and Keith turned to him in unison, and said in perfect harmony, “Fuck off!”

Hunter took a step back, as Keith started chuckling. “Who’s this, your boyfriend? What a relief, I didn’t think you liked dick.”

“Hey, at least what I like is legal. Your little 15 year old pen pals, on the other hand...”

“Hey, I told you, they’re legal in their countries!”

“And I told you, 15 year olds aren’t-”

“Yes they are!” Keith interrupted. “I’ve looked this up. They’re legal in a bunch of countries, like France, Italy, Germany... Parts of Japan...”

“The fact that you know all that actually makes you look more like a pedo,” Hunter pointed out.

“Thank you!” Nicole exclaimed.

With a frustrated grunt, Keith stepped closer to his sister. “All right, I’m done talking. Which one of you wants to die first?” Since neither answered, he pointed the gun at Nicole’s face, grinning as he peered down the iron sight. “You know what? Dealer’s choice. It’s gonna feel really nice getting rid of that mouth of yours for good.”

Before he could pull the trigger, yet another figure burst out of the trees behind Hunter. It was Crispin, howling like a banshee on its last breath, running directly at Keith.

“Hey what the fuck?!” He shouted, and he tried to swing the gun around to fire at Crispin, but he was too late, as the younger boy barreled right into him, grabbing at his camo jacket and wailing almost incoherently for help.

Stunned by this new development, Nicole barely had time to notice the object in Crispin’s bleeding eye socket before Hunter told her, “Hold your breath!”

“Huh?”

Before she could react, Hunter charged at her, wrapped her up in a bear-hug and took a flying leap, bringing her with him as he dove into the river.

Is he... Is he fucking crazy?! She thought, and tried to say, before the situation registered for her. The water felt much colder and harsher now that she was being forced into it, and she was being squeezed by the force of Hunter’s arms and both duffel bags as she felt his legs kicking them down the river.

Powerless, all she could do was shut her eyes and hold her breath for as long as she could, hoping Hunter knew what the fuck he was doing, and wasn’t just trying to drown her.

Her hopes were dashed as he took them over the waterfall, and into a much stronger current that took them rapidly away from their attempted assailant.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Frustration and confusion gave way to blind rage as Keith watched his quarry get away. He tried to shove this pathetic little one-eyed twink away from him, but he kept rushing right back at him, and for what? What the fuck was Keith supposed to do? He wasn’t a doctor!

He finally gathered enough of his wits to knee Crispin in the balls, which at least had the desired effect of forcing him back a few steps and doubling him over.

It didn’t matter though, because the one person on this island that he actually wanted to kill was long gone. Best case scenario, she was going to drown, robbing him of the satisfaction of watching her take her last breaths at his hand.

And of course there were no real rules here, so whatever he did with the body afterwards was nobody’s business but his own... Another good reason to not let her wind up all drenched and bloated.

The boy in front of him whimpered, reminding Keith of just who it was who had foiled him from grabbing his golden opportunity. An opportunity that he might not get a second time.

Instead of shooting him and being done with it... Because this little piece of shit was not worth wasting his bullets on... He kicked him square in the chest. sending him toppling over onto his back.

”Hey there, let me help you with that,” he offered, and the kid must have believed him, because this statement was met with a smile, and a series of small, quiet noises. How much of his brain had that bolt already damaged?

It didn’t matter, really. He lifted his foot in the air, and with the strength of a hard leather steel toed boot, he stomped on the other end of the bolt, sending it as deep into Crispin’s eye socket as it could go, penetrating the other side of his skull and effectively nailing him to the ground beneath him.

Crispin’s body convulsed in a violent death rattle, and then he was gone.

Keith didn’t bother searching his first victim’s pockets... His duffel bag was gone, and he had heard from Counselor Johnson that all the student’s belongings had been confiscated before the game... Well, except for one, but that was classified, and Keith didn’t really care anyway.

It was late, and if he followed the river himself, he’d either find Nicole dead, or she had already gotten too damn far away for him to keep up.

Well, whatever, he thought. It was time for dinner anyway, and some of these houses still had canned goods if you knew where to look.

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As soon as Hunter released her from his embrace, and the water around her became less oppressive, Nicole finally broke the surface, sticking her head above the waves and gulping down as much air as her burning lungs could take. Drying her eyes as well as she could and looking around, she found herself in the middle of a lake, surrounded on all sides by rustic looking cabins and boathouses.

The object of her growing ire, however, was climbing the stairs of a rock wall bordering the shore. “You asshole!” She shouted, swimming after him. By the time she reached the stairs herself, he was already sitting at the edge of the property, dumping the water out of his shoes. “What the fuck was that? We could have drowned!”

“Yeah, but we didn’t though,” he countered, way too casually.

“What if we went over a big waterfall, with like rocks at the bottom and shit? What if we’d been carried through an active area, and our collars had gone off? What the fuck were you thinking?”

Hunter left his shoes drying on top of the rock wall, and stood up to face her. “I was thinking he had a gun, and I don’t. Or what, were you gonna throw a knife and actually hit something this time?”

Her face burned as it grew redder by the second, the flames in her eyes truly coming out. She marched over to him and shoved him as hard as she could. “We could have just run away!”

“Where? Back towards the school? He would have just chased after us!”

“Oh, bullshit! He’s a whale, he wouldn’t run if his life depended on it, let alone ours!”

“Again, he had a gun…”

“A rifle, not a machine gun!”

“Oh yeah...” He was quiet for a few seconds. “Well, I didn’t think of that. The point is, we’re alive, and-” The butt of another throwing knife bounced off of his chest. “Can you stop that please?”

Nicole continued undeterred. “Why? This is a fucking death game, dumbass! Why are you trying to save me in the first place? I didn’t ask for that shit! You want to jump into a river and drown, do it the fuck yourself!”

Hunter’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. He sighed, unable to come up with anything to say in return.

She held out her arms in challenge. “You want to get out of here? Survive, and go back home? Fucking kill me then. I’m right here.”

When he once again failed to respond, she closed the distance between them one more time, except slowly this time, with a smirk and a saunter. “Oh I know what this is...” She got right up in his face, or as close as she could with their height gap. “You’re trying to save me to make up for the fact that you couldn’t save Ari.”

Finally, finally, she’d said something that had gotten to him. His indifferent expression morphed into an angry scowl, and he met her challenge with a glare that could melt iron. She waited with cold anticipation to see how he would respond. Would he try to kill her? Throw a punch? Maybe even start crying?

Instead, he slid one of the duffel bags off of his shoulders, and dropped it on the grass at her feet. “Good luck,” he told her, before turning and stomping off towards the door of the cabin.
She stood there in disbelief as he jiggled the doorknob a few times, and even tried pounding on it. God he was a fucking idiot. Her own anger cooling, she picked up the duffel bag, along with a rock that was about the size of a hockey puck, and threw it with all of her might at a window next to the door, which shattered on impact, startling Hunter into falling backwards off the porch and onto his ass.

She didn’t even try to hide her cocky grin as she strutted past him, reached through the window, and unlocked the door. “It’s abandoned, stupid.”

She entered the cabin, leaving the door hanging open for Hunter.

There was really nothing modern looking inside the cabin, outside of maybe the refrigerator in the kitchen. It was cozy enough, though. The living room and the kitchen were separated by about half of a wall, topped by a shelf that was decorated with wooden carvings of the kinds of woodland critters that Snow White would sing to... Deer, owls, chipmunks, bunnies, etc. In the living room, there was a burgundy couch covered by a few faux-native american style quilts, sitting across from a nineties style box TV and a fireplace. There was a dining room that was bare aside from a table, chairs and a stack of board games. Every wall was lined with boring looking books and old National Geographic magazines.

As she heard Hunter opening up the fridge behind her, she found the stairs that lead to the second story, and ventured up them, not giving two shits about the wet footprints she was leaving behind.

On the second floor, she found exactly what she had been hoping to find in a place like this... Several bedrooms that were stocked with clothes, and a bathroom.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While Hunter was enough of a gentleman to let Nicole use the shower first, he hadn’t had any reservations about stealing some fresh clothes from the bedrooms while his own wet clothing dried outside. He had been lucky to find a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans that fit him, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he was curious about what outfit Nicole would choose.

Still, there were more important things to worry about, which is why he sat by himself in the dining room, looking over the map and schedule from his bag. They were soaked, but not completely ruined, and he figured both would dry just fine if he left them by the fireplace overnight...

But it was the overnight part that was important, because according to his schedule, this area was going to become active around noon the next day.

Just as he was about to grab some wood for the fireplace... There was a stack of pre-chopped tinder right outside the door... Nicole finally came down the stairs, and to Hunter’s surprise, she was wearing a loose fitting sports jersey and grey sweatpants, with a towel wrapped around her hair. She caught his gaze, and shrugged. “The only women's clothing they had that fit me were dresses, and fuck that shit.”

Hunter decided not to comment on that, and instead told her what he’d figured out from the schedule. “So yeah, we gotta be out of here by then.”

Nicole collapsed onto the couch with a sigh. “Well, that gives us some time to sleep first, right?”

“Yeah,” Hunter replied awkwardly, “I guess it does.”

There was a long, awkward silence between them.

”I’m not fucking you,” she asserted.

Hunter just nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

Hunter just shrugged.

“Okay,” she ventured. “If I’m going to share a house with you for the night, you at least have to tell me who your extra duffel bag came from. And don’t lie to me, I saw Coach only give you one.”

Hunter blanched, and stammered “I did it in self defense...”

“Did it to who?”

“Crispin.”

Nicole was quiet for a moment, leaving Hunter to awkwardly wait for her to get mad at him for being violent, or maybe even shame him for not finishing the job. Instead, she just laughed. It started with a giggle, before long evolving into a full-body fit of hysteria. “That... That was you?! You did that?” She asked in between breaths.

“I didn’t think it was funny, I-”

“Of course it was fucking funny!” She interrupted. “It was fucking Crispin! Hell, you took out his winking eye!”

Hunter raised an eyebrow, baffled. “His what?”

“The eye he always winked at all of us girl with?” She pointed out, her laughter slowly cooling down. “There is no way that was an accident.”

“Yeah, well, it was...” Before she could ask any more questions, he abruptly walked out the front door to collect some firewood. As he gathered up four large pieces right off the top, he began to ponder his own actions. He was doing all of this for Nicole, but why? He didn’t have any feelings for her, at least not anymore, and she definitely wasn’t a good person. He didn’t owe her anything. He didn’t have a purpose for taking care of her.

In fact, as he realized with a cold sensation in his gut, without Ari, he didn’t have a purpose here at all.

Pushing these troublesome thoughts to the back of his head, he carried the tinder back inside, and knelt down in front of the fireplace to stack them inside.

While he was lighting them with a match from his bag, Nicole spoke up, sounding gentler than he was used to. “I’m sorry about earlier. Thanks for saving me.”

Hunter flushed. “Don’t worry about it. You avenged Ari, so we’re even.”

“So, why couldn’t you do that? Is it like a religious thing?”

Hunter nodded. “Jesus didn’t exactly condone revenge. We’re supposed to turn the other cheek. But there’s nothing in his teachings that says you can’t be grateful that somebody else got revenge for you.”

She sat up and inched towards the edge of her seat. “Oh yeah, then why are we at war with the middle east? And don’t give me that ‘to protect our freedoms’ bullshit, our freedoms were never on the line. We’re there to get revenge for nine eleven, and to line our greedy pockets with oil money.”

Instead of rising to her challenge, Hunter just sighed. This was an argument he’d had with countless members of his own family and denomination… One of the few things he and Megan had in common was being more left leaning than the rest of their church. “Yeah, I don’t think Bush is a real Christian.”

Another silence unfolded between them, as Hunter finally got the fire going, and started moving the tinder inside of it around with his hunting knife.

“So what happens tomorrow?” Nicole asked. "Because I can’t believe I’m saying this about a guy, but I don’t want to murder you.”

Hunter smiled at that. Under the circumstances, it was probably the nicest thing he could ever expect her to say. “I don’t want to murder you either.”

“So do we split up when we leave this place, or are we in an alliance, or something?”

Hunter thought for a moment. He didn’t want to play this game. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to win this game, because being the lone survivor on the backs of all his dead classmates would more than likely condemn him to hell.

“What are you planning to do?”

Nicole was quiet for a moment, before replying, “I want to find Jecka.”

Hunter nodded. “Then I’ll help you find Jecka.”

“Seriously?”

“I’ve got nothing better to do.”

“You don’t mind being my human shield?”

Hunter smiled, satisfied with his work as the heat from the fire spread throughout the room. “Not at all.”

For the first time since they’d been abducted and forced into this nightmare, Nicole finally allowed herself to fully, completely, relax. “Cool.”

To be continued.

Chapter Text

As Jecka scanned the horizon, she was careful to close her eyes whenever her gaze took her directly in the path of the rising sun. It was morning on her class’s first official full day in this crazy murder game, and while a sunrise could be beautiful, it could also be annoying as fuck if it lingered directly in your eyeline. It made driving at certain times of day bad enough, but today, it was making her desperate search for potential rescue ships even more aggravating.

She lowered her binoculars... The pathetic excuse for a weapon that she’d received from her duffel bag... And rubbed her tired eyes with the back of her hand. She never should have volunteered for this task.

Jecka sat at the very top level of the island’s lone lighthouse, sitting in some ancient wooden chair that made her butt feel like it had a million splinters in it, right next to the very recently destroyed giant light bulb. If the actual light source of a lighthouse had an official name, Jecka didn’t know it, and she didn’t care enough to ask.

Either way, it didn’t matter, because whoever had brought them here had destroyed said bulb, presumably so nobody could use it to try and summon help.

Thankfully, Kelly’s friend Naomi had come up with a better idea.

Raising the binoculars back up to her eyes, she looked down at the beach, where three other girls were feeding and tending to a giant bonfire. Among them were Kelly Harper, and two of her cheerleading friends, Naomi and Shirley. Since Jecka had no other connection to the cheerleaders, she had no idea what their last names were.

Inside the lighthouse cabin, however, were Nikita Rivera, a rare hispanic girl for their school who worked part-time at Chipotle, and Jenny Fillmore, a girl who was mostly known for a tragic event that had occurred during her freshman year, which Jecka didn’t really want to think about.

She watched the three girls work, until she was distracted by the sound of a loudspeaker somewhere off in the distance. There was some feedback, followed by the wary voice of the infamous Remedial teacher, Ms. Ames.

“Good morning, students,” she announced monotonously to the island. “I must say, we’re all very impressed with how industrious you’ve all been since we released you all into the wild, as more than half of you have been successfully eliminated.”

Jecka almost did a double take. More than half? That many kids had died so far? She didn’t know the exact number of classmates she had, but half alone had to be a pretty huge number.

“There are no real updates to report, so without any further ado, allow me to list off the students who are no longer among us.”

Jecka’s nerves tensed as the names were announced, but thankfully, there weren't very many that she knew. From the boys, Crispin and Braxton, neither of whom she gave a shit about. From the girls, Ari, who she already knew about, and...

The next name hit her like a punch to the gut. Karen. One of the nicest and most wholesome and innocent people she had ever known, her best friend in a past life. They were no longer friends, and a reunion had never been likely, but the fact that she would now NEVER be able to reconcile with her hit hard.

And who had done it? Who even could have done that, murdering someone as sweet as her in cold blood?

She received one potential answer as Ms. Ames announcement concluded, and she noticed a commotion down at the beach. A body had washed ashore... No, it wasn’t a body, it was still faintly moving. It looked like... Kylar?!

To her utter astonishment, she then watched on as Kelly, Naomi and Shirley dragged him out of the water, and over to their bonfire. Instead of tossing him in for kindling, as he deserved, they were actually fussing over him.

Setting her binoculars down for later use, she stormed down the spiral staircase that led down into the cabin.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By the time Jecka had made it down to the beach, Naomi was already tending to the unconscious Kylar’s wounds, but Jecka ignored her and made a beeline for Kelly. “What is this?” She said, gesturing to Kylar by the fire.

Kelly scrunched up her face in confusion. “What are you talking about? He’s still alive, so we’re helping him.”

“You’re helping Kylar,” Jecka clarified, placing extra emphasis on his name.

“Yeah, so?” Kelly replied. “I know he was a bully back in school, but we’re trying to save as many people as we possibly can here. If we deliberately abandoned anybody, we’d be just as bad as those asshole teachers.”

Jecka motioned back to the cabin. “And what do you think Jenny’s going to think about that?”

Kelly looked back and forth between Jecka and the cabin, puzzled, until the implication finally clicked for her. “Oh...”

Jecka jumped on this. “Yeah, oh. How do you think she’s going to feel when she finds out you sheltered the guy who raped her when she was fifteen?”

Kelly was silent for a moment, stressfully glancing around at all the involved parties, hands on her hips. “I’ll figure something out. I’ll take care of it.”

“Oh will you now?”

“Yes, I-” She was interrupted by Nikita bringing her Kylar’s duffel bag. “Yes, I’ll think about it. I’ll probably move him into a room by himself so he can recover in private, and just... Not tell Jenny he’s here. And if a ship comes by before the game ends, then we’ll move her onto it before him.”

“And if a ship doesn’t come?”

“Then it won’t fucking matter, will it?” Kelly responded, raising her voice.

“And how are you planning to control him?” Jecka asked.

Kelly scoffed. “He has two non-fatal bullet wounds, three broken bones, and...” She opened the bag and pulled out a fire axe. “No weapon.” She thrust it into Jecka’s arms. “And you get to upgrade from those binoculars you won’t stop complaining about.”

Jecka just stood there for a moment, taking in Kelly’s smug grin. Her bleeding heart was going to get her killed, but Jecka didn’t have to be around to see it. “I’m going out on patrol.” She turned on her heel, and marched off towards the back door of the cabin.

Kelly, however, followed close behind, trying fruitlessly to argue her case, but Jecka had heard it all before. They would never have the same interpretation of that old story about the medicine man and the snake.

They bickered all the way to the front door, Jecka gathering up her supplies, Kelly fussing over her. As they made it to the front steps, Kelly closed her door behind her. “You remember how to use this?” She handed Jecka a small handheld device, about the size of an old gameboy.

In response, Jecka took it, turned it on, and showed her the screen. It showed two dots, representing her and Kelly, and a handful of dots out by the beach. It was Kelly’s weapon, a GPS tracker that let her see when other players were nearby. It had been instrumental in gathering the other girls to the lighthouse.

“Before you go,” Kelly offered, “thank you. It means a lot that you’d do this for me, especially since you don’t actually believe in my stupid little rescue plan.”

Jecka smiled warmly, her frustration starting to melt away. “I don’t need to believe in your plan. I believe in you.”

She gently cupped Kelly’s cheek with her hand, and after staring into her piercing blue eyes, she drew Kelly in for a long, tender kiss. It was the kiss of two lovers who knew any moment they shared together could be their last.

Jecka was the first one to separate.

“I love you,” Kelly told her.

“Yeah, you too,” Jecka responded. “I’ll be back before sundown.”

“You promise?” Kelly asked.

“I promise.”

Their gazes lingered with longing, until Kelly opened the door and slunk back inside. With a heavy sigh, Jecka turned and walked off onto the battlefield.

In the beginning, Kelly had just been a rebound friend for Jecka. A replacement for Nicole. She hadn’t chosen Kelly for any special reason, it had just made sense at the time. Kelly was uncomplicated. She was too dumb to be dishonest, and generous to a fault. She was always willing to sit with Jecka at lunch when nobody else would.

On top of that, she was convenient. She was Jecka’s only coworker at FYE, so of course they spent a lot of time together, and without Nicole, Kelly had been the ideal person to relax and gossip with.

Eventually, she had found herself actually enjoying their time together, and their dynamic started to evolve from friendly to flirty.

When Kelly finally confessed her feelings to Jecka and asked her out on a real date, it hadn’t been surprising, but her answer still hadn’t been a solid yes. At that point, Jecka still hadn’t been sure what her sexuality was. She’d been with guys before, but the sex had always been awkward and mechanical. She found women attractive, but she also knew firsthand how aggravating they could be, so could she really love one?

She could never see herself with an evil monster like Nicole, or a whiny, codependent parasite like Ari. But what about Kelly?

She had given Kelly a conditional yes, on the grounds that she didn’t fully understand where she stood, but she trusted Kelly enough to experiment with her.

Kelly, for her part, wasted no time proving herself. For one, she gave Jecka the best sex she had ever had. She actually felt things for once, both physically and emotionally, that she didn’t know if she could ever live without now that she knew them.

Kelly stuck around afterwards, either cuddling with her, or sleeping soundly and peacefully next to her.

For another thing, she was sensitive, and perceptive to Jecka’s feelings. She cared about Jecka, and was never shy about showing it. Sure, Nicole could be thoughtful once in a while, but Kelly was consistent.

As for the ethics of their work relationship, it was just them at the store, and corporate rarely ever visited, so who gave a shit?

She had originally applied for a job at the mall so she could work at Hot Topic and get a big titty goth girlfriend. Instead, she had wound up working at FYE with a big titty cheerleader girlfriend.

And yes, that’s what Kelly was to her now. Her girlfriend. The person she loved and cherished more than anyone else, even if they had their ideological differences.

The rest of the school didn’t know about it, but as Jecka was in no hurry to be objectified, and as Kelly would put it, they didn’t need to know. Even the other girls at the lighthouse were still in the dark.

The world was theirs, and with Kelly’s wealth, it always would be.

Okay, to address the elephant in the room, Jecka did not love Kelly for her money, but she’d be lying if she said the money wasn’t nice. They could do whatever they wanted, go wherever they wanted, eat or buy whatever they wanted, Kelly’s pure was basically a bottomless pit.

Jecka had initially felt guilty about this, until Kelly had been insistent that she liked spending on her. She didn’t really collect anything, and surprisingly didn’t go shopping that often, so it was fine.

For her dad, however, the money was the only reason he approved of them being together. Her mom didn't give a shit one way or another, but to her dad, any dollar Kelly spent on Jecka was a dollar HE didn’t have to spend on Jecka. He had said this to both of their faces.

When she had gone a good distance from the lighthouse, Jecka examined her map. There was an abandoned town a couple of miles ahead. She always got the creeps walking through ghost towns, but if she was going to find people to recruit to Kelly’s cause, it looked like a good place to start.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Based on the data she could read from Kelly’s GPS tracker, Jecka had been right on the money about kids congregating at the abandoned town. She could see six dots in that direction... Two that were near her position, two that were a little further out, one that was off and on its own, and another in-between the two pairs. That last one was the only one that seemed to be actively moving.

As she approached the outskirts of town from the woods, she scanned the perimeter to see if there were any specific locations that matched up with this data. Logically, she should only be able to place the two dots that were closer to her, so where would they be?

Comparing the data with what she could see, her gaze locked onto a modest looking church towards the center of the strip, only one story tall, but with a bell tower rising up from the side.
What were they planning? Whoever it was, would they be stupid enough to...

Before she could even complete the thought, it was answered by the powerful, booming sound of the church bells being rung. Jecka covered her ears, way too close to the source of the noise for comfort.

As soon as it died down, she fished the binoculars out of her bag, and sure enough, she could make out two female figures conversing with each other just under the bells. Her skin broke out in goosebumps as one of them pulled out a megaphone.

“Hello out there!” The first girl spoke, her voice being amplified with a metallic sounding echo. “It’s Rachel Duffy and Jarmine Hartgrove! We’re not fighting, and you don’t have to either!”

Jecka felt nauseous. This was the same kind of plan Kelly had come up with, except louder, and a lot more conspicuous.

“If there’s anyone here who wants to take a stand against the teachers, find us-”

She was cut off for a brief moment of silence.

“Hunter? Is that you? What are you trying to tell us? Why are you waving your arms around?”

So Hunter’s out there, Jecka thought. And waving his arms around, is he trying to warn them that they’re about to get themselves killed?

Jasmine took the megaphone. “Hey, Hunter! Come up and join us! Rachel’s always had a crush... Hey!”

There was the sound of a struggle between the two friends, as Jecka fought to make up her mind. There were a lot of people here she could recruit, and these two girls would obviously be willing to join. But was it safe?

She took a few steps towards the church, but stopped dead in her tracks when she heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire, combined with cries of pain from the two girls. This went on for around twenty seconds before it stopped.

Scared of what she might see, Jecka took out her binoculars, and to her surprise, she saw Jeffery in the bell tower. He stared down at the bodies of the two girls, until he bent over, and picked up a large, medieval style sword that looked to be even taller than he was. Jecka’s jaw hit the floor.

He turned it over in his hand, before a distraction from further out in town caught his eye and drew him out of her sightline.

Suddenly, Jecka changed her mind about this town. It was way too hot here. She turned on her heels and hurried away from town, until she hit a lone road crossing her path. Just up the road was some kind of structure, but she was too far away to tell what it was, but it looked like a good place to calm her nerves and relax for a bit. It was wooden, didn’t appear to be painted, with four ornate walls under a slanted roof, like a small bus stop.

She checked the tracker again, to find that none of the kids from town had followed her. She breathed a sigh of relief at this. She had no idea what the fuck had gotten into Jeffery, but she felt much better leaving him to Hunter and the others than having to deal with him herself.

Catching her breath, she trudged up the road, but as she got closer to the structure... Inside was a metal bench, next to a stone statue of some guy dressed vaguely like a pimp... She noticed another dot appearing at the edge of her view, seemingly right where the structure stood. Someone she could just barely make out was sitting there, just barely hidden in the shadows with a dark hoodie over his head.

She stopped for a second, weighing her options. There was no guarantee the person she was about to approach would be safe. She never would have expected Jeffery to murder anybody, so nothing was off the table. Still, whoever it was, they weren’t actively stalking or killing anybody else, so maybe it was worth the risk?

Carefully, she pulled the axe out of her bag, and slid it behind her into the waistband of her jeans.

She approached the structure, walking casually, but ready to turn and run at a moment’s notice. As soon as she was about ten feet away, a familiar figure stepped out from behind it... And Jecka felt a confusing mix of fear and relief. Fear, because she knew this boy had a thing for her, and had displayed some creepy behavior before. Relief, because he wasn’t automatically coming after her.

“Oh, hey there Jecka,” Kyle offered, waving at her with the hand that wasn’t stuffed into his hoodie pocket. “I’m glad to see you’re still looking gr- Still in one piece.”

“Yeah, you too...” Jecka examined him warily, although she didn’t know what for.

“Man, I’ve seen some crazy shit out here,” he said, stepping closer to her. “Have you seen Jeffery? That dude just snapped!”

Jecka nodded. “Yup. I’m aware.”

“So what have you been up to? Just running around and hiding?”

Jecka shook her head, still eyeing him. He didn’t look like he was about to attack her... Would he behave himself at the lighthouse?

“Oh, well, if you want, I could travel with you. I could protect you, you know? If that...”

“Are you playing the game?” Jecka asked, deliberately interrupting him.

“Who, me?” Kyle seemed taken aback. “Well, no. I mean I figure I might have to kill someone eventually, but it hasn’t-”

Jecka made a quick mental calculation, and pointed off towards the east. “There’s a bunch of us hiding out at the lighthouse. We’re trying to use a signal fire to attract a rescue boat. If you’re not playing the game, you should head there for protection.”

Kyle looked off towards the east curiously. “Okay, but what about you? It’s dangerous out here.”

Jecka steeled her resolve, seeing exactly where this conversation was heading if she didn’t stop it. “I’ll be fine.”

She tried to walk past him, but he stepped in her way. “Hey, what’s your problem? I’m just trying to help.”

She stopped, and narrowed her eyes. “Which is nice of you, but if someone doesn’t need your help-”

“You do need it though!”

“Fine,” she corrected sternly, “If someone doesn’t WANT your help, then you’re not entitled to help them anyway. Respect my answer and fuck off.”

Kyle drew in a deep breath, gesturing towards the town she’d come from. “Jecka, it’s dangerous out there. I would feel better if you would just let me...”

“No!” Jecka cut him off. “You help people for their benefit, not your own. Why don’t you tell me what you actually want?”

Her challenge only stunned him for a second. “You know what? Yeah. You know what I want.”

“Well you’re not getting it.”

“And why not?” He shouted, raising his arms out beside him. “All those times I was nice to you? Let you cheat off me? With all the assholes you’ve fucked, you’re just going to let the one guy who’s nice to you die here as a virgin?”

“I don’t care about any of that!” Jecka shouted back, anger flaring in her voice.

“Then what is it? What do I have to do to have a chance with you?”

“Nothing!” She screamed back. “You never had a chance, because this isn’t a fucking video game! You can’t just make the right choices and do all the right things to win a woman over! You’re not entitled to anybody like that! If someone’s not attracted to you, I’m sorry, but it’s gonna be a red light no matter what you do!”

She tried getting around him once again, but this time, he pulled out a machete. Jecka’s eyes widened as she saw the sunlight shining off of its smooth, steel body, the point aimed directly at her.

“How about now?” He challenged. “Am I entitled to some attention now?”

Jecka glared at him, but refused to back down. “Compensating for something?” She taunted.

Kyle half chuckled between breaths. “Hate to break it to you, but your stupid plan with the lighthouse isn’t gonna work.” With his free hand, he searched the interior of his collar for a moment, before stopping on one particular part. “Feel that, right there? My dad works in electrical engineering, and I know a recording device when I feel one. The teachers are listening to every word we say. If they haven’t popped your head like a pimple just yet, that means they know your plan, and I’m sorry, sweetheart, it’s not a threat to them.”

A chill went up Jecka’s spine as his words registered. Did this mean Kelly was in danger?

“Oh, that struck home, didn’t it? Well maybe I think you owe me for the information.”

He took a step closer to her, machete blade still raised at her. She shook her head. “You wouldn’t have the balls.”

“Try it.”

Needing no further invitation, Jecka tried to bat his hand away and shove past him. Instead of slashing at her, he grabbed her by the upper arms and tried to stop her. She tried to pull away, jerking from side to side to escape his grasp. A struggle ensued between them, and when she finally managed to shove him away, his machete went wide, and she felt a painful sting across her face.

As Kyle collected himself, his look of frustration turned to shock, as she lifted a hand to her face, feeling the blood streaming down her cheek. She didn’t have a mirror, but from what she could feel, Kyle had left a deep slash going down diagonally between her left eye and her nose. It cut her cheek, and had only been an inch away from partially blinding her.

She glared at Kyle, her emotions draining out even faster than her blood. “You cut my face,” was all she told him, eyes locked with his. She had dropped the tracker, and for the moment, had forgotten its very existence.

He pointed the machete at her again. “That was your fault! You made me do that!” He claimed in exasperation.

Slowly, she reached behind herself and drew the fire axe. “You’re serious, right?” She asked him, locking in. “Come at me. Let’s fucking do this.”

Instead of meeting her challenge, Kyle backed off slowly, real fear in his eyes. “Nope... Fuck this!” He turned and ran down the road like a dog off the leash.

There was a part of Jecka that wanted to just let him go, and continue on her way. Maybe return to the lighthouse to get her wound healed, although a sinking feeling in her gut was telling her it would definitely leave a scar either way. That part of her had chosen to be polite and remain silent, as the majority vote told her to teach this asshole a lesson once and for all. After only a moment’s hesitation, she gave into years of raw animalistic hatred and took off after Kyle.

He wasn’t on the road for long... In an effort to lose her, he ran between trees and bushes, jumping over puddles and vaulting over boulders like some parkour douche. Jecka kept pace, though. He was decently fast, but she had run track in middle school. She was a smoker, but so was he. This was not a good matchup for Kyle.

When he finally stumbled over an exposed root, she reached out and grabbed his hood, yanking him towards herself, but due to her own momentum, they both tripped over each other, falling head over heels down a shallow hill in a jumble of tangled limbs. As soon as they came to a stop, with Kyle lying on his back, his machete lost somewhere to the wilderness, Jecka dashed over to him and sat on his stomach, in the kind of a reverse cowgirl position that he had NOT been hoping to experience.

Gritting her teeth and screaming her frustration, Jecka raised the fire axe, and brought the blade down as hard as she could between Kyle’s legs.

He screamed, howling uncontrollably in pain, as Jecka jumped off of him, and in one fluid motion, swung her axe down in the center of his chest.

His screams evaporated as the blade got stuck in his ribcage. He sat halfway up, looking dumbly at the weapon sticking out of him, and fell dead on the spot, spread-eagled in the grass with his chest and crotch pouring blood.

Jecka sat down a few feet away, adrenaline cooling off, as she regarded her work. She had never killed anyone before, and while she didn’t really feel anything about it herself... Fuck Kyle and everyone resembling Kyle... She felt a deep sense of shame develop in her heart over how Kelly would feel about this.

And it was all this asshole stalker’s fault. She had always gotten a creepy feeling off of him. So many adults at school had told her she was wrong, and she was wrongly judging a boy with an otherwise squeaky clean record, but she now knew her instincts had been right on the money.

She was about to stand up, when she was startled by the sound of a slow, patronizing applause. “Very nice work,” Emily observed, leaning against a nearby tree.

Jecka eyed her warily, another classmate she had always had a bad feeling about. Not bad enough to keep her from buying pills off of her, but enough to have always kept her at arms length. And in this setting...

Emily sauntered over to Kyle’s fresh corpse like a vulture, wrapped her fingers around the handle of the axe, and tried to pull it out, to no avail. “Damn, couldn’t get through the bone, huh? Yeah, I know the feeling.” She raised her gaze to meet Jecka’s, a sweet smile plastered across her face. “I had the same problem when I killed Karen.”

Just as Jecka was about to tell Emily about the lighthouse plan, she froze, unsure of what Emily had just told her. She had to play her statement on repeat in her own mind to even register it. She had... She was the one. It had been Emily. A million different questions, statements and curses danced right at the edge of her lips, but only one got through. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Emily casually shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I’ve heard a bunch of different theories from a bunch of different professionals, but none of them can ever seem to agree on anything.” With a toothy grin, she reached back to her own waistband, and drew a revolver. “In any case, I think it’s your turn to run away like a scared little rabbit.”

Jecka slowly got to her feet, unsure of what to do. Could she actually get away if she did try to run? “What?”

Emily’s wicked grin turned into an annoyed scowl.. “Did I fucking stutter? I’m giving you a head start. Now start running!” She fired a bullet into the grass at Jecka’s feet. “NOW!”

With no further prompting, the gears in Jecka’s legs sprang to life, as she turned around and bolted. Forgetting all of her fatigue from chasing Kyle, she dashed away, trying to remember her form from middle school.

She had to warn Kelly, both about the collars, and about Emily. She had to-

BANG!

Something heavy slammed into Jecka’s shoulder. She stumbled, her upper body feeling a pain she never felt before, as the hot metal seethed her muscle. But she keeped moving regardless. If she could just-

BANG!

This time, the impact hit her in the small of the back. She slowed to a stop, her legs going numb. She looked down at her stomach, where she saw a large hole sitting just below and to the left of her belly button, which was pouring blood like a faucet. The pain was beginning to fade though, as an icy coldness spread throughout her body.

She thought she could hear another bang... She thought she could feel another impact... But who could even tell anymore? It didn’t matter, all of this was a dream anyway. She was at home, in her bed... No, Kelly’s bed, which was much softer and way fluffier than hers. It was like falling into a cloud, and as she fell over backwards, she could feel that she was falling into that bed, and not the grass on some deserted island.

She was falling into Kelly’s bed, and Kelly... Was that Kelly standing over her? She was blonde, but was that a new hairstyle? It was pretty.

“Well that was disappointing,” Emily droned, as blood began to stream from the corners of Jecka’s mouth.

She was already losing consciousness when she felt something cold pressed against her temple.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This time, it was Kelly who sat in the light house, watching out the window. This time, she was staring into the depths of the island, waiting for any sign that Jecka was coming back. The sun was already setting in the distance, and she was definitely late, but... She had to come back, right?

She had promised.

A few hours prior, Kylar had woken up, and as Kelly had predicted, he wasn’t making a fuss. He was too banged up to cause them any problems even if he wanted to. She had been down there first to talk to him, but he was currently being tended to by Naomi, who was under strict instructions to not let Jenny know he was in there.

At any other time, Kelly would have insisted on watching him herself, taking responsibility for the life she had made the decision to save. Unfortunately, she had something more important to do, keeping watch for the girl she loved, who was out there right now putting her safety on the line to support her.

It didn’t matter how long Kelly had to wait. She’d go without eating or sleeping, if she had to. No matter what Jecka was going to overcome whatever challenge she had encountered, and she would return to her.

She just had to.

To be continued

Chapter Text

In the months following their falling out, Nicole had tried everything to rekindle her friendship with Jecka. She had tried talking to her, and even apologizing to her, several times. She had tried to convince Ari to put in a good word for her, to absolutely no avail. She had tried getting close to Kelly, Jecka’s rebound friend, just to be stonewalled there too. She had even gotten desperate enough to try asking the counselor for advice, which she should have known would be a mistake.

When she had explained the situation to him, and asked him what she could do to get Jecka back, he had launched into a litany of invasive questions about her sexuality, the nature of her relationship to Jecka, if she might consider spending time with him instead, etc. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to get the green light from her, he’d started asking much more uncomfortable questions about what sex actually meant to her... If she enjoyed it, if she ever genuinely wanted to have it, if she viewed it as more of a pleasurable or transactional thing... She had barely been able to keep up with this interrogation, all of these questions she was not ready to answer, and before long she made an excuse and got the hell out of there.

Now she had two highly stressful groups of intrusive thoughts plaguing her every day... An uncertainty about her identity, and the fact that she was now officially the only kid in school who was lonelier than Jeffery. Throw her survival and the imminent danger of her surroundings on the pile, and you had the perfect recipe for a constant migraine.

Well, with Hunter, at least she had one male friend who wasn’t trying to get into her pants.

Or was it two? Could Bradley still be alive? As laid back as he was in most situations, it was kind of a coin toss. She hadn’t been awake when Ms. Ames gave her announcement that morning, and when Hunter told her about it, he hadn’t been able to remember the nearly two dozen names she’d read off. All he could say was that Karen, Crispin and Braxton were dead, and Jecka wasn’t.

At least not yet.

This sucked... She needed a distraction from her own head. Earlier that morning, when they had been leaving the lake area, Hunter had been talking her ear off about his knife collection, which she didn’t give a shit about... He had even made some stupid pun about serrated edges being a double edged sword, but at least it had been nice to have someone else’s voice filling the silence for a while.

He was being quiet now, so she was going to have to take the initiative.

“What do you think this island was, before all this?” She asked him.

“Huh,” he responded, and thought for a few seconds. “I dunno, but it was inhabited at some point.”

“It would have to be sometime recently though,” she pondered. “There’s this show on History Channel-”

He chuckled. “I don’t watch the History Channel, dude.”

Nicole set her jaw, a wrinkle forming on her forehead. Was this boring motherfucker mocking her? “Hey, I listened to you talk about your fucking knives for over an hour. I’m not into very many things, so if I want to talk about my documentaries, we’re gonna talk about my fucking documentaries.”

“It wasn’t-” He started, but he sighed, and gave up. “You’re right, go ahead, talk about your documentaries.”

Nicole nodded, as they trudged through the woods. Hunter was using a walking stick, but she knew he didn’t actually need it. Guys were so simpleminded when it came to finding what they thought were cool looking sticks.

“So there’s this show I’ve been watching on History lately called Life After People, it’s this show that explores how our architecture and infrastructures would degrade, like how long it would take and stuff, if the human race suddenly disappeared...”

”Sounds interesting,” he replied, maybe half sarcastically.

“Anyway, none of the shit they show has happened here. Plantlife hasn’t retaken anything, the buildings still look relatively new, hell, I was able to take a hot shower yesterday. This place had to have been evacuated, like, a week ago, at most.”

“Okay...” Hunter stopped, turning to face her. “And what’s so weird about that?”

She spread her arms for emphasis. “Dude, an entire inhabited island was abandoned all at once, that recently, and nobody’s been talking about it? Nothing on the news? Not one person selling their story to an online journalist? It’s like they literally just disappeared.”

“Or the person removing them made them all sign NDAs or something.”

“What the fuck is an NDA?”

“It stands for Non Disclosure Agreement. It basically means you legally can’t talk about something.”

“Oh...” Nicole replied. You learned something new everyday. “Well who would even have the power to make them sign something like that? And why would they?”

Hunter just shrugged. “Hey, I’m just as far in the dark as you are. I don’t even know the name of this island.”

The name of the island... It hadn’t even occurred to Nicole to ask that. “Shit... We don’t even know how long we were knocked out, so who’s to say we’re even on an island off the coast of Virginia?”

Hunter looked skywards in concentration. “Let’s see... They abducted us around mid-morning... We woke up in the evening...”

“Same day, though?”

“..............Fuck, I dunno.” He turned back around and kept walking. “Well, we don’t have any leads about where Jecka is, so maybe for now we just look for clues in that village? See if anybody left anything behind that might help us?”

Nicole sighed, and followed after him. It was as good a plan as any.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Hunter and Nicole finally broke through the treeline, they found themselves on a stone path that was wide enough for two cars to pass each other in opposite directions, but for some reason wasn’t paved. They traveled east down that road, as per the map, until they came upon what they were looking for... A small village that looked like it had been plucked out of the middle of nowhere and just dropped in the thick of the forest. The road just continued through it, with houses and a few larger buildings located on either side, and only a few of them were off in a spot that required an extra turn.

Hunter Led Nicole into this enigma, still holding onto his walking stick, because that’s what you did when you found a cool stick on the ground. Hell, it had better reach than his knife. Maybe he could tape them together and make a sick spear…

“No cars,” Nicole noted from behind him. She was right.

“No garages or driveways either,” he added.

“Is it me or does this keep getting spookier and spookier?”

He gulped, any number of childhood fears awakening at that moment. “Do you want to split up or stick together?”

“Safety in numbers, dude.” She held out her hand towards the first house, gesturing to him to lead the way.

Hunter nodded, and approached the first house on the left. It was small, unassuming, and honestly pretty boring looking. The door was unlocked, so he let himself inside, with a glance over his shoulder to make sure Nicole was following. He flipped on the lights. “Electricity still works,” he said out loud, for no reason in particular. He was reminded of Nicole’s comments about that dumb history show, but she didn’t say anything back.

The hallway was nothing interesting… The maroon carpet was old and kind of dirty looking, with stray bits of cat litter stuck in its folds. The walls were wooden paneled, with no wallpaper to speak of, and only a bookshelf lined with fake plants stood at the end of it. He turned the corner to the living room, and his breath caught in his lungs. He opened his mouth to speak, but his voice was cut off by the feeling of bile rising up his throat.

He fell down to his knees, clamping a hand over his mouth, and trying to force himself to not vomit as he took in the sight of Karen Ellis’s dead body, nearly decapitated on the carpet.

“What the fuck...” Nicole whispered behind him in disbelief, as a million panicked thoughts raced through Hunter’s head.

“Oh my god,” he managed to choke out. He bolted to his feet, and grabbed Nicole by the upper arms. “We have to get out of here! If her collar went off, that means the area is active! We have to...”

Nicole shoved him away, and slapped him hard across the face. “Shut the fuck up, and calm the fuck down. If her collar went off, then ours would have too by now, dumbass!”

“Oh...” He replied, cheeks feeling hot with embarrassment. “Then how...”

She shoved past him, and to his utter shock, she knelt down over the body. “This wasn’t an explosion, her neck was cut with something.”

As she started poking around Karen’s nearly severed neck, Hunter felt another layer of revulsion hit him. “How can you just...”

She peered back at him for a moment, measuringly. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”

“Oh...” A sudden memory struck him. “Oh, Coach, right?”

After a long pause, she shook her head. “No, it was... Forget it, I don’t want to talk about it. Look, I want to investigate this, okay? If you can’t handle it, go check some other houses, and meet me back here if you find something interesting.”

Hunter slowly nodded, and while he was reluctant to split up, he would rather do that than stick around here. He left out the back door, and moved onto the next house over, a two story that featured a few children’s bedrooms on the top floor, but nothing of note. The same proved true for the next three houses, where he was able to find a few odds and ends that told him about the people who had lived there... House number four definitely belonged to a fisherman, with all the equipment and paraphernalia, and taxidermy fish mounted to the wall... But it was in house six that he finally found something inexplicable.

In the bottom of one particular sock drawer, he found a framed picture, maybe eight inches by eleven, that showed three people standing in the foreground of a lavish mansion that sat comfortably behind them. Two of the people pictured were a lovely elderly couple who looked to be of hispanic descent, and in between them, smiling cheerfully with their hands on her shoulders, was Emily Demersman.

Just as he was deciding whether or not this warranted a visit back to Nicole, his thoughts were interrupted by an explosion nearby. He tucked the picture in his pocket, and exited the house, to see a small smoldering fire in the road in front of the first house.

He rushed back, opened the door, and stormed in. “What happened?!”

Nicole whirled around to face him, looking uncharacteristically ashamed. “Um... I can explain?”

Noticing that Nicole still had her collar on, Hunter’s gaze lowered to Karen’s body, where he found to his brand new revulsion that what remained of her neck had been cut free. It had been pointing at the far wall before, but now its lifeless eyes, empty yet somehow still fearful, gazed up at the ceiling. “Hey, Nicole, why is Karen headless now?”

Nicole shuffled her feet slightly. “Cuz I cut it off...” She explained, like a child who had just stolen a cookie.

“And why would you do that?”

She sighed dramatically. “I was curious about the collars, okay? She wasn’t using hers anymore, so I just wanted to look!”

“Okay,” Hunter relented, since that was at least kind of reasonable. “Did you find out anything?”

She shrugged sheepishly. “I found out they explode if you fuck with them too much. It takes about five seconds, so I threw it out the window.”

Hunter just shook his head.

“Okay, well, I also figured out from the footprints that whoever killed her was wearing crocs. Does anybody in our class wear crocs?”

Hunter tried to think about what he knew about his classmates and their shoes, and came up with nothing. “I don’t really stare at peoples’ feet all day. Is that a common thing?”

Nicole uttered a sharp, bitter laugh. “You’d be surprised. Your twin does it.”

“My twin...” It took a second to figure out what she was referring to, but when it hit him, he scrunched up his face in anger. “Kyle is not my fucking twin. I hate those stupid rumors.”

“Okay, well, what did you come up with?”

Hunter handed over the picture. Nicole studied it for a moment, her expression darkening. “I think Emily wears crocs, too...”

“You think she did this?”

“Hard to say, but it’s weird that we already found two clues related to her.” She squinted at the picture. “Is that mansion located on this island?”

Taking her cue, Hunter pulled out his map, and unfolded it on a table. “It’s not pictured or anything... And the village is, so probably not?”

“The village is, but the lake houses aren’t and we know those are here,” Nicole countered. “I wonder if it’s in this big clearing down towards the southern end? Might be worth-”

They were interrupted by a commotion out on the road.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Trody Baker’s legs were on fire as he furiously pumped on the pedals of an old bicycle that he’d found stashed in the woods. It was old and rusted, and he could tell from the cobwebs that it hadn’t been used in a substantial amount of time, but when you’re running for your life, anything that moves would be a lucky find.

He knew exactly where he was going... There was a village coming up, and if Karen had managed to escape from him and his buddies there, then he could surely pull off the same disappearing trick himself.

As he finally made it onto the primitive stone road, he reflected for at least the twentieth time that day how badly he wished he had never re-enrolled into high school.

Life had honestly been pretty good at Hot Topic. The pay was decent, or at least it was good enough that he had some money left over every time he paid his portion of the bills. He liked the people at the mall, well, except for his boss, and he basically got paid to sit around all day and answer questions about the punk and gothic stuff he was into anyway.

And then Nicole and Jecka had gotten him fired... Well, kind of.

It wasn’t like he got fired because they shoplifted. That would have been bullshit, because it wasn’t like he was a security guard or anything. Yeah, he was supposed to engage with customers to make them feel watched so they wouldn’t shoplift, but he wasn’t actually required to put a stop to it. Company policy had been very clear about the fact that employees like him were not expected to risk their lives for the company. All he had done was check the back for something a customer wanted, which was part of his job anyway. It’s not his fault they had him working alone.

The actual reason he had gotten fired was because the store manager had it out for him. He wasn’t sure why... Was it his looks, his work ethic, his attitude? Or maybe, possibly, it was because Trody had fucked his daughter.

Whatever the reason, the store manager had seized on this opportunity to accuse Trody of being in on the theft. Like it was an inside job. This might not have worked, if Trody hadn’t fucked up by admitting he knew the shoplifters from high school.

He knew he had plenty of job opportunities waiting... He had made friends with a lot of the people he’d met on his initial job hunt... But instead of reapplying to Denny’s or Target, he had taken his firing as a sign to do the right thing and make another attempt at making something of himself, by going back to school. He had been proud to do it. His parents were relieved, and proud of him for making the right choice. He had gotten back on the right track to his future.

Now, however, he couldn’t help thinking about how much better his life would be as a Denny’s waiter.

A sudden bit of turbulence below him, and he looked down to see that the chain, by far the rustiest part of the bike, had finally snapped. Realizing he had pushed this ancient bike to the end of its no doubt historic life, he hit the brakes, ditched it in the middle of the road, and dashed between two nearby houses. He couldn’t see his pursuer anywhere, but he’d been absurdly clever and resourceful thus far. He couldn’t afford to underestimate him again.

He made it through the alley, reaching the shared back area of this odd little neighborhood. The two backyards he stood between were separated by a pair of white wooden fences that were only about three feet tall, with the yard on his left featuring a vegetable garden, and the one on his right containing a big plastic turtle shaped sandbox and several cheap looking toys.

This was perfect. All he had to do was pick a yard, lie down, and he’d be perfectly hidden by the fence!

He turned to the house on his right, looking for the external gate, only to see Jeffery standing on the other side of the yard, staring directly at him. His eyes were obscured by the sun reflecting off of his glasses, but his wide, creepy grin still spread across his face for the whole world to see.

He was pointing his AR-15 directly at Trody’s chest.

Before Trody could say anything, Jeffery pulled the trigger for a short burst of gunfire, pumping three bullets into the chest of Trody, who went down like a sack of potatoes.

Trody just lay there, quiet as the grave, and showing no signs of life, as Jeffery knelt over him and started shuffling through his bag. The bag lost a significant amount of weight as Jeffery pulled out a crowbar, glanced it over, and then tossed it aside.

He reached down again, but was interrupted by the booming cacophony of bells from the church. He turned his head in the direction of the noise, seeming to hesitate, before finally deciding to abandon his victim and move on, disappearing between another two houses.

For the next few minutes, as two girls yammered to the world through a megaphone, Trody continued to lie there, petrified, until he finally let out the breath he’d been holding in since he had been shot down. He lifted up his shirt to feel the fresh bruises beneath his bullet proof vest. This had been his real weapon... The crowbar was a dummy that he had picked up in an abandoned hardware store earlier.

He continued to lie there, with no real motivation to move. He was still alive, Jeffery thought he was dead, there was no need to hurry.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What the fuck were those two idiots doing? Nicole wondered, as she peeked out the window, staring at the two girls that were brazenly calling attention to themselves atop the church.

“It’s Rachel Duffy and Jalane Hartgrove! We’re not fighting, and you don’t have to either!”

It was infuriating, but Nicole couldn’t help but let them pique her curiosity. She hadn’t been able to actually see who had been shooting at each other earlier, but this would surely draw them out. Even from the poor visibility of her vantage point, she should be able to…

“We have to stop them,” Hunter said from behind her, walking away.

“Stop them?” Nicole repeated, in disbelief. “Wait, no, what are you...” The front door opened, and Nicole grunted in exasperation. If he got himself killed so close to where she was hiding, she’d surely be discovered too! “Get back here!”

The two girls continued. “If there’s anyone here who wants to take a stand against the teachers, find us-”

Nicole made it outside, immediately crouching down near the door, to see Hunter... That fucking idiot… Standing in the middle of the road, waving his arms over his head for the girls to see, trying to signal them to stop.

“Hunter? Is that you? What are you trying to tell us? Why are you waving your arms around?”

Nicole looked around desperately, to see if anyone had spotted them. She didn’t see anyone on the road, going down either direction... Were they actually okay?

“Hey, Hunter! Come up and join us! Rachel’s always had a crush... Hey!”

Hunter turned to Nicole, extending a hand out to her. “We’re going to go join them!” He announced. “Come on, there’s safety in numbers, remember?”

Nicole shook her head fiercely, motioning for Hunter to lay the fuck down and try to hide somewhere.

“Oh come on!” Hunter said, frustration bubbling over. “We have to trust people Nicole! Sometimes, there’s-”

Before he could even finish his sentence, the sound of gunfire erupted from the belltower. It was accompanied by the screams of the dying girls, the final bit of which was amplified by the megaphone.

Hunter froze, his face blank with shock, until Nicole broke free of her hiding place, grabbed his sleeve, and attempted to pull him off the road.

Before either one of them could run away, a shadowy figure leapt from the tower, executing a perfect superhero landing in the grass. He stood to his full height, a giant medieval sword resting over his shoulder, and stared directly at them.

Jeffery’s eyes locked with Nicole’s as she broke out into a cold sweat. This was not the pathetic dweeb who couldn’t even tie his shoes. This was something else, like a monster who had taken over his question mark shaped body. Nicole found herself frozen, as though his glare had been that of a cobra.

Jeffery took one step towards her, before another figure moved into view further down the road. Nicole could tell from the shape of his head that he was either Braxton or Trody, and he was creeping away in the opposite direction from them.

Jeffery followed her gaze, to see Trody trying to get away. He stood there for a moment, glancing between the two targets, before shooting Nicole a hungry, toothy smile, with eyes of pure insanity. Then he turned to go after Trody.

There was a cold message in that smile... He was only letting her escape for now.

“We have to go, right fucking now!” She told Hunter, before pulling him off the road with her and running back into the trees.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Trody rubbed his chest, trying to ease the pain that the three bullets he’d been hit with had left him with. The vest had saved his life, but damn, that shit still hurt. All three bullets had left their own huge bruises that would probably get worse if untreated. Could bruises get infected with anything? Fuck, Trody wasn’t a doctor, there was no way he could possibly know.

He had almost made it out of town, and after all the excitement he’d already been through, he wanted nothing more than to find somewhere practical to hide until this whole game was over.

He stopped when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned, curiosity winning out, as he saw Jeffery standing right behind him, wielding a fucking claymore with both hands. Several questions ran through poor Trody’s mind before it was separated from his body.

How many fucking weapons had this stupid Japan kid collected?

How could he wield that big-ass sword that was as tall as he was?

Couldn’t I have just hidden in one of the houses instead of trying to leave?

These questions would remain forever unanswered as the sword cleaved cleanly through his neck, sending his head rolling off into the grass, while his headless body toppled over.

The last sight he was able to register before everything went dark was Jeffery picking up his head, and stuffing it into his duffel bag.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The world around Nicole flew by in a blur as she and Hunter ran as fast as they could through the forest, down hills and across one dirt road, trying to put as much distance between themselves and Jeffery as possible. There had always been an underlying layer of danger in Jeffery’s demeanor, like a powder keg that was just waiting to be lit, but he had never looked quite like this before. He had looked at her like a pair of eyes staring at her from under her bed.

With every set of trees that they passed, Nicole became more and more certain that their trail was becoming harder and harder for any pursuer to follow, if Jeffery had even been following them at all.

But then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of something that stopped her heart. It had only been for a fraction of a second, but she had seen a flash of hot pink lying in the grass about fifty feet off in the distance. She slowed to a stop, grabbing onto a sapling to halt her momentum.

Hunter stopped a few seconds later, breathing heavily. “You think...” He gasped, “We've gone far enough?”

But Nicole didn’t respond. She just shook her head, and took off back the way they’d just come from. There was no way she had just seen what she thought she had, but she had to be sure. “Jecka?!” She called, as Hunter followed along, trying to shush her.

Up a shallow hill, around some trees, pausing briefly to catch her breath and recover from a sudden coughing fit. It had to be around here…

Pushing through some brush, she finally found what she was looking for. “Jecka!”

She ran the last few yards to her former friend, lying in the grass, both covered in and surrounded by blood. She stopped in her tracks for only a moment, taking in the sight in front of her, before collapsing to her knees by Jecka’s side. She lifted Jecka’s head and shoulders into her lap and brushed the hair out of her face, which looked very pale indeed. She noticed, to her utter revulsion, that somebody had written BANG! Across her forehead in sharpie. She checked Jecka’s neck, and then her wrists, for a pulse... And found one!

“Water!” She called back over her shoulder. After a moment, Hunter handed her a water bottle. She unscrewed the cap, poured some onto Jecka’s face, and then tried to force some into her mouth, wiggling the opening between her lips, pouring a little in and then leaning her head back to make her swallow.

To her relief, Jecka started coughing the water back up, her eyelids slowly fluttering open. She stared at Nicole’s face for a moment, her eyes blank and distant. “K... Kelly?”

“Bitch, do I look like somebody who watches Blues Clues for fun? It’s Nicole! Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

“Ni... Cole...” Jecka struggled to say. Her eyes began to slowly close again.

“No... Stay with me! Jecka, please...” Nicole bit her bottom lip. This wasn’t good. She had lost a lot of blood, and her consciousness was already fading. “Jecka, please, you have to tell me... Who did this to you?”

Jecka’s lips moved to form words, but there was no voice behind them. “Jecka!” Nicole pleaded, desperation creeping into her voice.

For one solitary moment, Jecka’s eyes lit up, her gaze growing sharp. Her left hand shot up to grab Nicole’s forearm, hard enough to leave a mark. She stared into Nicole’s eyes, struggling to speak, her voice raspy. “Emi... Ly... Watch out... For... Em...”

Her head snapped back, her grip on Nicole’s arm tightening like a vice. She spat up blood all over Nicole’s shirt, as her body convulsed... And then fell limp. Her hand let go of Nicole’s arm and fell to the grass.

“Jecka? Jecka!” Nicole once again held onto Jecka’s head, trying to find any remaining signs of life in her friend’s eyes, but there was none to be found.

Jecka was gone.

Nicole sat there for what felt like forever, as still as a statue, trying to process what had just happened. It was over. One of the coolest people she had ever known had just died in her arms. The one person who had gotten close to her in the darkest period of her life, filling the hole her father had left behind in her life. She had truly believed their friendship could be rekindled one day, but now that chance had been taken from her.

Taken by Emily, another girl she had thought was her friend, but who was growing a darker and darker shadow under her as the day wore on.

She stood up, allowing Jecka’s upper body to slide off of her knees. She had no idea what to do. She had no idea what to say. She was going to break down if she didn’t-

Before she could do anything, she found herself compressed as Hunter wrapped his arms around her. She was stunned for a second, until she regained control of herself and tried to struggle free. She squirmed this way and that, trying to shove him away, but she couldn’t fight both his grasp and her own emotions at the same time. She finally caved in, her arms dropping limply to her sides, as the dam finally broke, and the tears started streaming down her face. They fell smoothly at first, but before long she was openly sobbing in a way that she hadn’t done since she was a child. She hugged him back, her tears soaking into his shirt, as she let all of her inhibitions go.

Every time she thought she was done, and it felt like her eyes were finally drying, another memory of Jecka would dance through her mind, setting off another raincloud within her. She had no idea how long they stood there like that, with Hunter offering her his support while asking for nothing in return, until she finally ran her eyes dry, and he released her and stepped back.

They stood there in silence, which was somehow not awkward, until she broke it. “I want to bury her.”

She knew they couldn’t do that... They had no shovels, and they definitely had no time. Instead of pointing this out, Hunter reached into his bag, pulled out something vaguely squarish, and unfolded it to reveal one of the faux-Native American blankets from the couch at the lakehouse. He walked over to Jecka, unfolded it, and placed it over her face and body. It was the best they could do.

Nicole fought against the urge to... Oh, fuck it, why not? He knew where he stood with her, he wasn’t going to get the wrong idea. She marched right up to him and hugged him again.

“We’re going to go find that mansion,” he stated. It wasn’t a question, because it didn’t need to be a question.

Nicole just nodded.

To be continued.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6

Kylar Ashford’s head felt foggy as he swam up through the depths of his subconscious, into the shallows that lay just below the surface of sleep. His eyes were still closed, and he didn’t quite feel like opening them yet, but his body felt... Weird.

He felt the dull thud of a muted headache, which would either go away entirely or blare to life all at once if he dared to wake up fully.

This didn’t feel like his bed... It felt firmer, and maybe also smaller? He stretched out his left arm, only to find that side of the bed was placed up against a wall. Okay... He instead tried to move his right arm... Why couldn’t he move his right arm?

With a sudden sense of alarm, Kylar opened his eyes, his headache suddenly feeling like he was being stabbed through the skull. He shut his eyes tight, but it didn’t help, so he tried to apply pressure to-

Again, why wouldn’t his right arm move?!

He raised his head just enough to check out his surroundings. There was one window, and while it was beginning to rain outside, there was still enough moonlight to show him the interior of his surroundings. He was in a small room that was about the size of his dad’s office, and aside from himself and the bed he was on, it looked mostly empty. If this were a hospital room, or even the nurse’s office, there would be some kind of medical equipment, right? A couple of posters?

His right arm was done up in a sling, but it was an amateurish job at best, as if somebody had just taken off his sweatshirt, wrapped his arm in gauze and tied it over his shoulders. There was also something around his neck, but he couldn’t tell what it was… Was that why he had been wearing an explosive collar in his dream?

Either way, his body hurt like he’d been hit by a train. Kylar had received Lacrosse related injuries before, and there had always been pain at first, but he’d always been allowed pain medicine to help him deal with it... From Aspirin to Percocet, and the necessary prescriptions to keep him comfortable while he healed. This was different. In addition to his arm, his head hurt, his chest hurt, his left ankle hurt, and he noticed
several pieces of exposed flesh were covered in bandages.

Those fuckers forgot the pills... He decided. He had been injured, probably during Lacrosse, and because these hacks forgot to medicate him, the pain had made him delirious enough to have that fucked up dream about the death game.

“Hello?” He called out. “Is anyone out there? Do you have any Percocet? I’m in a lot of pain right now, I could use...”

The door opened forcefully, and a girl with darker, brownish skin poked her head in. He recognized her... From Chipotle? What the fuck was she doing here?

“”Shut up!” She told him sternly, in her thick accent. “Give me one moment.”

She then slammed the door, just as quickly as she’d opened it.

By this point, Kylar was thoroughly confused. He tried sitting up, but the pain in his chest suddenly became overwhelming. It felt as though every single one of his ribs were exploding out of his skin. He gritted his teeth, trying not to scream, as he laid back down. He had never had an injury this bad without a ton of pills to get him through it before. What the fuck was going on?

After he spent a few more minutes lying on his back, still as a rock and breathing as shallowly as possible to get the pain to go down, the door again opened, and Kelly Harper stepped in.

Seeing her tear streaked face, he grinned with pride. So she was that worried about him, huh? Well, she had gone down on him behind the gymnasium a couple of times back in sophomore year, before she went all Jesusy and shit. Maybe she really did care about him.

“Hey Kelly...” He winced as the sound of his own voice set off the pain in his head again. “Hey what the fuck happened to me?”

Kelly grabbed a wooden chair from a bare wooden desk in the corner, and slid it over to him, seemingly unaware of what the sound of it scraping against the floor was doing to his headache. “How much do you remember?”

Kylar thought for a moment. Did the dream count? Probably not. “I remember getting on the bus for the field trip... Oh!” He suddenly realized. “Did we crash or something? Did anyone else survive?”

Kelly shook her head. “No, that’s not it. I guess you’re lucky, though, if you don’t remember. Was there anything else at all?”

“No... Well, I did have this weird dream, though.” From there, Kylar described, in pretty accurate detail, the events of the previous evening. From waking up in an unfamiliar classroom, to seeing some kid he didn’t know get his head blown off, all the way to his fateful encounter with Jeffery.

Once he was finished telling his tale, Kelly took a deep breath. “Kylar, all of that happened. Like, for real.”

Kylar’s lips parted, as he searched her face for any hint that she might be fucking with him. “N- No way! How?”

She gestured to the room around them. “Kylar, where do you think you are right now? I’m hiding here at the lighthouse with a few other girls, and we fished you out of the water to save you.”

“Y- You-” Kylar just stared at her, stunlocked, as his cheeks grew hotter and hotter He vividly recalled those last few moments when Jeffery punched him in the dick and shot him off the cliff, which... Now that he thought about it, some of his wounds… And he was just realizing that Kelly was also wearing one of those shock collars… “You’re saying that whiny loser faggot actually kicked my ass? Motherfucker, I swear to God I am gonna find him and rip his fucking head off!”

“Hey, hey easy...” Kelly reached over, and placed a gentle hand on his broken right forearm. “You’re not hurting anyone in this condition.”

He squinted, raising his head as far as it would go. “What condition am I in, then?”

“Well, nobody here is a medical professional, but Naomi’s dad is a surgeon, and she says you most likely have a broken arm, two cracked ribs, a sprained ankle, two minor bullet wounds... And maybe a concussion?”

He shook his head. “Nah, I’ve had concussions before, I’d know if I had one now.”

“Oh. If you say so.”

“So who all is here right now?”

Kelly let go of his arm and sat back in her chair. “That would be me, Naomi, Nikita, Shirley, and...” She looked like she wanted to say something else, but changed her mind. “And Jecka, but she’s out. She should be back any minute though.”

Kylar felt his hopes rise at the sound of Jecka’s name. “Oh yeah? Why’s she out, finding some pain meds for me?”

“No, she’s looking for more kids to recruit.”

“For what?”

Taking another deep breath, Kelly told him about their plan. “We found a pantry in the cabin... There was some canned food, and basic medical supplies, at least enough to get you bandaged up. I know it’s not what you’re used to, but hopefully it should be enough to tide you over until we can flag down a ship to rescue us.”

Kylar thought this over for a moment. “So that’s why you don’t wanna kill me?”

Kelly nodded. “I hope I don’t have to kill anybody.”

“And what if a ship never comes? Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill you to save myself?”

Kelly chuckled. “You think you’re a threat in that condition?”

“Hey fuck you!” Kylar snapped. “I still have one good arm, bitch, that’s more than enough to choke you out.”

Kelly shook her head, and stood up. “I’ll bring you something to eat, once you’ve calmed down a little.” She turned and headed for the door.

“You don’t think you’re making a mistake?” Kylar called after her. “I haven’t killed anyone yet, but you don’t know what I’m capable of.”

Kelly stopped at the door, and stood there frozen for a moment, her hand on the knob.

Kylar wasn’t used to being ignored like this... If getting angry didn’t affect her, maybe picking apart her dumb bleeding heart logic would. “What if saving my life is the one mistake that gets you killed, or fucks up your plan, or something?”

Kelly turned around, and this time, she sat down on the edge of his bed, a gesture that actually caught him off guard. “So there’s this one parable I really like, about an old medicine man who nurses an injured snake back to health. Once it’s healthy, it fatally bites the old man, and when asked why, it says ‘You knew I was a snake when you took me in.’”

Kylar lay there staring at her, waiting for her to finish the story... But that was it? That was the end? He couldn’t help it. In spite of his anger, in spite of his pain, he laughed. It was a good, hard, long belly laugh that made his cracked ribs hurt even worse, but he didn’t care. “What a fucking idiot! And doesn’t that prove my point, though? I’m a fucking snake, bitch. You shouldn’t help people who are just going to hurt you in the end, you need to look out for yourself.”

Instead of getting angry, Kelly just nodded. “Yeah, that’s how a lot of people interpret that story... Including Jecka,” she added wistfully.

Kylar continued to chuckle. “Yeah, that’s why we shouldn’t be letting all these fucking towelheads and wetbacks into our-”

“Let’s not get THAT extreme,” Kelly interrupted.

“Well what the fuck do you think the story means then?”

Kelly met his gaze and held it, unwavering. “I don’t think the medicine man was an idiot. I think he was a saint. The kind of good, charitable person that we should all strive to be. To offer help at your own expense isn’t stupid, it’s righteous. It’s what Jesus would have done.”

“Yeah right, when did Jesus ever sacri-” He trailed off, the answer being so obvious that even he caught onto it. “Oh...”

She smiled. “I mean, I know it’s a cliche, but he did die for our sins.” She stood up from his bed. “I know you’re a snake, Kylar. Even if you do find some way to bite me, I’ll die knowing I gave my life to help someone in need. That’s the kind of mistake I can live with.”

She opened the door, but paused under the doorframe. “We have Campbells soup and some assorted flavors of Chef Boyardee. What would you like?”

Kylar shrugged. “Got any Beefaroni?”

“I’ll bring some right out.” She snickered, covering her mouth with her hand. “And on second thought, please don’t bite the hand that feeds you!”

As she exited the room to prepare his meal, neither of them noticed Jenny Filmore standing off in the shadows, glaring through the door as it closed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I think we might be biting off more than we can chew,” Hunter called out over his shoulder.

“What makes you say that?” Nicole responded, sarcastically.

“Even the weather doesn’t want us to find this place!”

The two of them had spent the last three hours searching fruitlessly for the mansion that had been featured in Emily’s photo. The map had been questionable at the start, not even showing any evidence that the mansion existed, but now that they were traveling blindly through the woods, with no real landmarks to go off of, it had become basically worthless.

They only really had two advantages going for them; One, they were on a relatively small island, and walking a straight line in any direction would take them to the shore eventually, so they wouldn’t have to get lost if they decided to abandon their current objective.

And two, Nicole had deciphered from the scale of the ocean in the background of the picture that if the mansion did truly exist, then it was somewhere elevated, high above sea level.

Thus, they knew their best shot at finding their destination was to keep moving upwards whenever possible. Thankfully, it hadn’t all been one straight hike up... They would occasionally hit level areas, like the one about twenty feet behind them.

To put it bluntly, this meant that it was the worst possible time for it to start raining.
To be fair, it wasn’t a monsoon or anything, but when you’re hiking up an incline with only loose dirt making up your path, even a light drizzle would make your path far more perilous, and turn every plateau into a giant mud puddle.

On the bright side... Well, what little bright side there was... Hunter’s Walking stick was finally proving useful.

“This would be so much easier with a pair of cleats,” Hunter pondered aloud.

“Easy for you to say, I-” Nicole was interrupted by the curious feeling of her foot hitting something, giving a split second’s worth of resistance and then immediately giving way. She stopped for a moment, staring at the ground, but seeing nothing that she could have kicked. Fucking weird. “I don’t wear that shit like you do.”

“I’m surprised I’ve never seen you play any sports before,” Hunter mused. “I mean, you do look pretty athletic.”

Nicole blushed slightly, not sure how to register that comment. Was it an honest compliment about her figure, or some veiled insult about her being lazy? She had played a handful of sports when she was little... Soccer had been her favorite... But she had outgrown that kind of thing years ago.

As for her figure, it wasn’t her fault her metabolism was awesome. “Thanks, I think?”

Hunter didn’t seem to hear her, but he did stop in his tracks. He glanced around, slowly and cautiously.

“Hey,” Nicole ventured, why’d you-”

“Shh!” Hunter glanced back at her. “I think someone’s out there.”

Taking Hunter’s lead, Nicole, crouched down, and scanned her surroundings. They were in a very thick portion of the woods. Even a steep hill was covered in trees in every direction.

She waited there, quietly, until Hunter gave the signal to keep moving. After another couple of minutes, they came to another level.

“Did they go away?” She asked as soon as the incline was behind her.

“I don’t know,” Hunter whispered, still casting a wide, suspicious eye at their surroundings.

Nicole suddenly remembered the mysterious thing she’d kicked. Had it been a trap, to alert someone to their presence? But just as she was about to suggest this to Hunter, a shadowy figure entered her field of view, off towards the right. It was posed as if it was aiming a gun…

“Get down!” She called, grabbing Hunter by the sleeve and forcing him to the ground with her. She did so just in time, too, because there was a loud bang, and the trunk of a tree burst into a spray of tiny splinters right above them.

At the sound of the gunman reloading, Nicole scrambled to the thickest tree she could find nearby, finding barely any traction on the muddy ground, and plastered her back against it. She spared a glance at Hunter, who wasn’t having nearly as easy a time moving as she had. He attempted to get to his feet, but immediately toppled over, just in time to accidentally dodge a much larger blast that actually managed to cut a skinny tree behind him in half.

“Oh come on, can’t you just stand still this time?” The gunman bellowed, an edge of cheer in his gravelly voice.

Nicole’s skin crawled as she recognized the voice. She peaked around the tree just to be sure, but yes, there he was. With a cocky grin, and his massive gut jiggling with every step, Keith was once again bearing down on them... And this time, he was wielding two large firearms. He had the same hunting rifle he’d tried to take them out with earlier, but now he also had a shotgun.

“How the fuck is that fair?” Nicole shouted back. “How do you have two guns while we still don’t have any?”

Keith laughed. “Gee, I dunno, how many people have you killed so far?”

Nicole gritted her teeth. Not too far away, Hunter had also finally found his way to some cover of his own, crouching behind another large tree.

“I don’t suppose you’ve figured out how to throw a knife yet, have you?” He asked her.

“What the fuck do you think?” She shot back indignantly.

Another gunshot, this one into the ground, spraying them both with wild splashes of mud.

“You know all about guns and shit, right?” Nicole offered. “What do you think we should do?”

Hunter risked a peak at their assailant, and then ducked back into cover as another bullet flew by him. “He has a short ranged weapon if we stay put, and a long range weapon for if we run,” he observed. “And he’s closing in. We don’t have time to think we need to do something to-” He turned his gaze to her.
“When I say now, try a throwing knife.”

“What?!” She snapped. “You know I suck at that!”

“Do it anyway!”

Nicole groaned, but she warily rose to her feet. What the hell was he thinking? She pulled a knife from her pack, and held it between her fingers, waiting for the signal.

After a few seconds, she heard the jarring sound of a crack of thunder nearby. Next to her, Hunter broke cover, running for another tree. Keith fired again with his shotgun, just missing him. “Now!”

Steeling her nerves, and reminding herself how fucked they were either way, Nicole broke cover and threw her knife at her brother with all her might. It flew directly at his chest, but she’d never know if it was going to hit, because he raised the barrel of his shotgun like a shield to deflect it.

He smirked, but before he could taunt her for missing, Hunter also broke cover, and with one hand on each end, he threw his entire duffel bag at Keith. He raised his gun once again as a protective reflex, but the sheer size and weight of the bag still knocked him back a few feet, and Hunter was charging at him right behind it.

Nicole looked on in horror as Hunter grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and tried to wrestle it away from him. The two were locked in a struggle, each pushing and pulling, gaining and losing ground as their feet slipped and slid underneath them.

Finally, Keith pulled Hunter in, and thrust his head forward, his temple smashing against the younger boy’s nose. Hunter let go and stepped back, hands flying to his face, blood seeping through his fingers, as Keith closed in, and shoved him as hard as he could, sending Hunter careening backwards.
He slipped in the mud, and disappeared over the edge of the plateau.

“No!” Nicole screamed, and tried to rush over to see if he was okay, but froze in her path as a bullet hit the tree in front of her. She turned, slowly, to see her brother closing the distance between them, the barrel of his shotgun pointed directly at her upper body.

“Hey there sis,” he sneered, now less than a few feet away.

Nicole felt the icy grip of fear on her heart, but it wasn’t alone. She was pissed. Pissed that she had let his bullshit define her life for so long, Pissed that he could even be here, after everything he had done and gone to prison for. “You think this makes you look cool, don’t you?” She chided.

His face scrunched up in confusion. “What was that?”

“You think the fact that you get to live out your pitiful little gunslinger fantasy against a bunch of teenagers changes what you really are? No, it doesn’t change a fucking thing. You’re still just some pathetic basement dwelling loser. The air you breathe would be better spent on a tank full of snails. You know what? I think I know the reason you shut yourself off from the outside world... It’s the same reason you chase underage girls. It’s because you’re so mentally and emotionally stunted that you’re terrified of any woman who’s old enough to have any agency, any woman you can’t control. That didn’t change in prison, and it won’t change here. You’re completely worthless.”

The rage in Keith’s expression grew and grew with each word. “You sure you want to say all of that into the barrel of a gun?” He asked, coldly.

“You know what? Yeah, maybe I do.” Her arms shot out, and she wrapped both hands around the aforementioned barrel, surprising both him and herself. She raised the barrel to her own face, pressing it against her forehead. “If you’re gonna shoot me, grow some balls and fucking shoot me. But you’re gonna look me in the eyes when you do it.”

His smile faltered as she locked eyes with him in defiance. It didn’t matter that he was the one with the gun. She had taken control of the situation, and if this was really her time to die, the least she could do was try to haunt this blubbery bastard’s nightmares.

His grin returned, however, even bigger than before. “You know what? Maybe you deserve a more personal touch.”

Her skin crawled at his choice of words, but she felt a moment of hope when he dropped both of his guns and cracked his knuckles.

He was giving her an opening!

She reached into her pouch for a knife, but her brother was faster. Before she could even pull anything out, she was blindsided by the force of his ham hock sized fist crashing into her left eye.

Nicole had heard the phrase “seeing stars” before, but all she could see as she fell helplessly to the ground was a blinding screen of red, which then faded and dulled into yellow and black static that took over her entire field of vision.

Her eyes, as well as a significant portion of her face, felt like they had been replaced by that pins and needles sensation that happens when your leg falls asleep. She felt something dripping from her nose and down her chin, but she couldn’t tell if it was blood, tears, or just the rain.

She hadn’t even really begun to register the fact that she was lying face down in the mud, until her vision began to clear and she started to pick herself up.

As soon as she was up to her hands and knees, she was struck with another forceful impact, this time to her stomach. Keith had kicked her so hard with his leather steel-toed boot that she’d been sent airborne, experiencing a few seconds of weightlessness before crashing back down into the dirt and rolling spine-first into a tree.

Nicole hadn’t eaten since her stay at the lake house, but there was still plenty of blood in her system, enough for her to vomit up so much of it that she was surprised none of her organs also came up. Her body curled up almost involuntarily into the fetal position as she clutched her stomach to try and quell the agonizing pain within.

She wasn’t able to stay on the ground long, though, as she felt a violent tug on the back of her head. Keith had picked her up by the hair, forcing her to her feet so that when she opened her eyes, it would be his sick, perverted grin that greeted her.

Nicole opened her eyes, and spat a mouthful of blood into his face.

Nicole laughed as his grin twisted into a mask of rage. Even as he systematically brutalized her, she was doing everything in her power to prevent him from enjoying it, and for that, she could die happy.

Without saying another word, he spun her around, wrapped one of his big, beefy arms around her throat, and pulled back hard enough to unintentionally crack her back against the curvature of his bulbous gut.

As her airways were cut off, she found herself struggling to breathe, gasping for air like a fish on dry land.

She grabbed at his arm, straining to wrench it away from herself, suddenly pissed at herself for being a lifelong nail biter.

She flailed, kicking at his shins with her heels, but even that wasn’t enough to phase or dissuade him.

When the fuck had he gotten so strong? She wondered this, as she had never actually seen him working out before. Had they been forcing him to lift weights in prison or something?

As the blood rushed to her head, and the world started to go dark, she found herself unexpectedly blessed with a moment of reflection.

She had always known that it was likely that she wouldn’t survive to graduation, but she had never expected to go out like this. She wouldn’t have expected to make it halfway through a death game, especially considering all of the people she had already outlived.

She had seen horrifying, bloody human gore, what with her Dad’s suicide and all, but she hadn’t expected her own brother to be the one who reunited them.She had never expected to love Ari and Jecka, especially for the second time each.

She had never expected to find such a genuine friend in a dumb jock whose only conceivable future involved CTE treatment.

Just as Nicole was about to slip from consciousness and make peace with her fated spot in the underworld, she could hear a dull thwack coming from behind them, and Keith’s hold on her loosened. A curious object, both hard and soft in different places, toppled down her face and to the grass. It was his hat.

As his grip broke completely, Nicole crumpled to the ground after it, gulping down every breath of air she could like it was going out of stock. As the world came back to her, little by little, she glanced up, to see Keith feeling the back of his head with his left hand, which came back covered in blood, and unless Nicole was mistaken, a chunk of skin and hair. He stared at all of this, stunned, before slowly turning around.

The figure standing behind him was holding a wooden baseball bat, which Nicole could just barl\ely tell had a bunch of nails sticking out of its tip.

The figure swung again, this time catching Keith in the face. Nicole couldn’t tell how much damage had been done, but he screamed in pain as he ambled around blindly, his hands flying up to clutch to his bloody face. He tried to back away and give himself some distance from them, but stumbled, and ultimately wound up toppling over the edge of the plateau, not far from where Hunter had fallen earlier.

Nicole shrank in on herself as the figure now stood over her, fearing that the nail studded bat he was welding would taste her blood next. Instead, he just stood there and held out his hand to her.

It was then that she finally took a close look at him, illuminated by the moonlight breaking through the clouds. His brown hair was short, but long enough to show off his natural curls. His body was wide, but it was more muscle than fat. He wore a black leather jacket over a white wife beater shirt and jeans.

“You okay?” Bradley Lynch asked her.

She offered a weary smirk as she took his hand, and allowed him to help her to her feet. “I’m perfect, can’t you?” In spite of her words, she felt dizzy on the way back up, her head seeming to spin as her body wavered.

“Yeah, you are not okay,” Bradley assessed, but he led her to the edge of the plateau anyway, both of her arms clutching one of his for support.

Way down at the bottom of the slope, at the next plateau, her brother was still alive and conscious, trying to get to his feet, and ultimately giving up and crawling over to the base of the hill.

“What the hell is this guy made of?” Bradley asked, slinging both of Keith’s guns and Hunter’s abandoned bag over his shoulders.

“Doritos, Monster Energy Drink, and child porn,” she replied bitterly. “Usually in that order.”

“Seriously?” He replied.

Behind him, another figure came into view, also barely visible under a generous coating of mud. Hunter drew his hunting knife, pounced on Keith’s back, and buried his knife up to the hilt between the older man’s kidneys.

Keith screamed again, but to Nicole’s horror, continued to try and climb up to her.

Hunter twisted the knife, and Keith finally went limp and stopped moving. His chest heaving with each breath, he pulled his knife back out, and fell over onto his back, exhausted.

Bradley nudged her, gesturing down towards Hunter. “So, is he cool?”

Nicole pondered this for a moment. If someone had asked her this two days ago, it would have been an instant no. But now, after everything they’d been through, what could she say now? “I mean he killed my piece of shit pedophile brother, I think that’s pretty cool.”

“No, I mean is he safe?”

“Oh... Oh! Yeah, he’s...” She struggled to find a clever description, but she was noticing how slow her thinking was becoming. “He’s a fucking puppy.”

Bradley sighed. “All right. Then, as soon as we get back down to him, we-”

“Down to him?” She interrupted. “Shouldn’t we bring him up to us?”

“No, it’ll be easier to join him, and then use the stairs to get back up.”

She shot a bewildered glare at him. “What fucking stairs?”

Mostly with Bradley’s help, they both descended the hill to the previous plateau. As soon as they reached it, Bradley let Nicole slide off of her arm, and gestured to Hunter, who had also gotten to his feet. “I think this belongs to you.”

Hunter’s face reddened as Nicole limped over to him. “Wait, we’re not... I mean, I’m not...” He protested, even as he slung Nicole’s arm over his shoulders, and slid his own arm behind her back.

“You are for now, big guy,” she interrupted, patting him on the shoulder with her free arm.

Bradley smiled, and drew both guns. He held one in each hand, measuringly, and ultimately tossed the shotgun to Hunter, who caught it with his own free arm.

“All right, you’ve both been through a lot, let’s get you both out of the rain.” Bradley turned, and led them through about fifty yards of mud, until they came to, of all things, a series of huge stone steps built into the side of the hill. He turned upwards then, and Hunter and Nicole both followed.

Hunter had long since resolved to be Nicole’s ally, and nothing else, but having her in constant physical contact like this was testing him, especially while he was still coming down from the adrenaline of the fight, and his first ever kill. “So, um, are you two friends, or something?”

Nicole chuckled. “Let me put it this way. If doing drugs was a job, he’d be my favorite coworker.”

Up ahead, presumably having heard this, Bradley also broke out laughing.

“Seriously, though,” she continued, “He’s the only guy I’ve gotten high with who never tried to take advantage of me. And he’s in a gang, so he always has the good shit.”

“When you can afford it,” Bradley called back.

With that established, they continued to follow Bradley up the steps, the rain temporarily breaking on the way up, until they finally reached the top, and were greeted by a site they never actually expected to see... The mansion from the picture, sitting there boldly and beautifully in the light of the full moon.

Their guide turned towards them, and spread his arms invitingly. “Welcome to Casa de Bradley!”

To be continued

Chapter Text

As it turned out, the mansion was quite a bit smaller than it had looked to Hunter in the photograph. Unlike those massive, sprawling properties that celebrities liked to show off on TV, this was only one building, and it only seemed to take up as much space as the local library back home. It was several stories tall, but it didn’t tower over the trees, so much as rival them, except to the east, where it had a clear view of the ocean below. It certainly wasn’t tall enough that you could see it from anywhere else on the island, even though according to the map, which Nicole had finally figured out after they’d reached the estate, it wasn’t located too far from the village.

Still supporting Nicole, who was in the process of trying to put the map back in her bag with only one free arm, he followed Bradley to the door.

Now that he had time to think about it, he did vaguely recognize Bradley... They had a couple of classes together, namely Shop and Math, but had never really spoken. The previous year, Bradley had tried out for the football team, but hadn’t made it very far before getting into a fight with another applicant, getting them both booted.

The idea that he had been previously acquainted with Nicole, and that the main thing they had in common was drug usage, was something he was still trying to wrap his head around when Bradley opened the door and ushered them in.

“The locks aren’t damaged,” Hunter observed. “How’d you get in?”

Bradley shrugged. “I broke in through a service entrance off over there,” he replied, gesturing vaguely off to his left.

Entering the mansion, Hunter stood there a moment, gawking at his surroundings. Right through the door, they had walked into a wide open space, which aside from the support pillars, seemed to stretch out almost to the edges of the property, save the doors that were spread here and there.

Standing right in front of him, though, was the centerpiece... A massive grand staircase that immediately reminded him of the movie Titanic. It lead up to the second floor, which surrounded the perimeter with an atrium that looked down over the first floor. It didn’t lead further to the third or fourth floors, but there were probably smaller staircases off to the side of the third floor that lead farther up.

The first floor was furnished with several lovely chairs and couches, all fitting the same wooden legs and leather padding aesthetic, a few marble statues whose characters Hunter couldn’t begin to identify, and a few glass case-topped tables(of various sizes and shapes) and racks on the wall that displayed various artifacts, from ancient books and animal fossils to different kinds of firearms.

It would almost have been impressive, if the layout hadn’t been so clustered and poorly thought out.

The piece Nicole seemed the most drawn to, however, was the appropriately named fainting couch off against the wall to the left, which she stumbled over to and instantly collapsed onto. She let out a huge sigh, stretching out her weary body over its leathery cushion. “Please tell me there’s food here...”

Bradley nodded. “Yeah, there’s definitely some stuff... Can either of you cook?”

Nicole shamelessly shook her head, and Hunter followed suit.

“Well, there’s microwaveable stuff, at least. Actually, now that I think of it, there’s something here I know you in particular are gonna like!” He disappeared off into a room to the right, and after a moment, he came out carrying three green and black cans. He tossed one to Nicole, and then one to Hunter, who examined the label. It was Vault.

“Oh fuck yes!” Nicole cried, opening the tab on hers and guzzling down its contents. “These have been so hard to find lately! How many does he have?”

Bradley grinned, taking a few big sips from his as well. “About three or four twelve packs.”

“Not anymore,” Nicole laughed, "we're definitely stealing this shit.”

Hunter opened his can, bemused. “Isn’t this just a ripoff of Mountain Dew?”

“Yeah, it’s Mountain Dew for people who aren’t pussies,” Nicole shot back.

Hunter tried his. It was all right. “Tastes more like Jolt.”

“Never tried Jolt,” Nicole replied. “Hey, are there any, like, ice packs in there? My eye is killing me.”

“I’ll take a look,” Bradley offered, “and in the meantime, you should probably get some rest. You got pretty beat up out there.”

“Should I, though?” Nicole responded, dubiously. “What if I have a concussion? Aren’t you supposed to stay awake for something like that?”

“Do you have a concussion?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“I can take a look,” Hunter piped up, taking the flashlight out of his bag.

Nicole narrowed her good eye at him. The other one was badly bruised, and on its way to becoming a shiner.

“No,” Hunter admitted, “But I’ve been doing sports for years, and I have some experience with sports injuries. I’ve both seen and had my fair share of concussions.”

Nicole turned her gaze to Bradley, who just shrugged and made his way back into the kitchen. “All right, I guess... Go ahead?”

Hunter nodded, and approached Nicole, who was still lying down on the fainting couch, which made him feel oddly nervous. He felt the color rise to his cheeks, so he coughed awkwardly to try and rid himself of it. There was nothing romantic about this. He was checking on the health of a friend, with her permission, not doing anything unsavory. Nothing confession-worthy.

“Can you please, um, sit up?”

Nicole groaned, but complied. She swung her legs over the seat, so her head was against the back of the couch like a normal person. Leaning over her, he placed a hand on the seat next to her thigh for support. “Do you, um, have a headache, or any feeling of nausea?”

“I mean both, but I think the nausea is from when that fat fuck kicked me.”

“Oh...” Hunter didn’t know about that, but he couldn’t help much there, dealing with blunt force trauma was out of his wheelhouse. In any case, she hadn’t lost consciousness, so... “Ears ringing? Double vision? Balance issues? Light headed?”

“No, no, no, and... Maybe a little at first, but it’s gone now.”

“Open both eyes, as wide as you can.” She opened her good eye to almost its full width, but she could barely get her swollen eye open at all. Hunter shined his flashlight in both, and while she winced away from the light, everything looked as normal as it could be.

He wanted to check something else, though... He put down the flashlight, and raised his hand to Nicole’s face…

“Excuse me?” She asked, glaring at him. And to his surprise, she was also blushing now. “Where is that hand going?”

“I just want to feel the wound for something...” Hunter muttered, defensively.

Nicole sighed, but closed her eyes and relaxed her body, showing him a level of trust he never would have expected before. Keeping his focus on her eyes, he ran his fingers over the bruise, applying pressure at a few key points... And his heart sunk a bit at the response one particular spot gave him.

He backed off, and Nicole opened her good eye again. “So am I dying or what?”

“Well,” Hunter said, taking a deep breath to prepare both Nicole and himself, “I don’t think you have a concussion. You do, however, have an orbital fracture.”

“A what?” Asked Bradley, who had just reentered the room.

Hunter turned to him, almost feeling guilty of what he’d been caught doing. For emphasis, he placed a hand over the area of his skull between his eye and his ear. “It’s this part of the skull right here. It’s the orbital bone.”

“Does that happen a lot in football?” He asked, tossing Nicole a bag of frozen peas.

“Yeah, to idiots who try to play without a helmet.”

Nicole’s good eye widened a bit. “Is that, um, is that bad?”

“Honestly, it could be a lot worse. It doesn’t look bad enough to require surgery, but with a doctor and a few weeks of rest...”

“Neither of which we have.”

“Yeah, so probably a good idea to take that nap that he was suggesting,” Hunter concluded. “Ideally, some painkillers and antibiotics would be nice...”

“Got it,” Bradley replied, before disappearing into another room. He came back a minute later with two small pill bottles. “The dude who owned this place is old as hell, so like, every single bathroom is its own pharmacy.” He tossed both bottles to Hunter, who scanned the instructions. “And check out the name on those... It’s fucking Bill Stamboli, dude!”

“Who the fuck is Bill Stromboni?” Nicole asked.

“Stamboli!” Bradley corrected. He turned to Hunter, who also shook his head. “Okay, I guess neither of you have ever been to New York, then?”

“Yeah, I lived in Buffalo for like six months when I was nine,” Nicole replied. “Not the city though.”

Hunter just shook his head.

“Okay,” Bradley started, grabbing a chair and sliding it over to join them. Hunter took his cue and did the same. “So he’s this really rich dude from the big apple, and he’s officially into real estate and investing, but there’ve been rumors for decades that he’s also into something shadier on the side. He has his own private island, and he likes to brag about how he built an entire community for his servants and their families to live on, with a school for their kids and everything.”

“And you think this is that island?” Hunter asked, setting out the appropriate amount of both pills for Nicole, who scooped them up and swallowed them with the remains of her Vault.

“Seems pretty conclusive to me,” Bradley responded. “Looks like we’re in New York.”

Nicole coughed as the pills went down. “Have you seen anything in this mansion that reminds you of Emily?”

Bradley looked at her blankly for a moment. “Which Emily? You mean the psycho girl with the scene hair?”

Nicole nodded, and passed him the photo.

He took it, and studied it. “I mean, nothing specific, but I found what looks like a teenage girl’s bedroom on the third floor. Seemed pretty impersonal, like whoever owns it doesn't use it very often.”

“I’m gonna have to take a look in there later,” Nicole decided. “I’ve been in Emily’s actual bedroom, I have some idea of the kinds of places she likes to hide things.”

“Any idea what kind of shady business this Bill guy was into?” Hunter asked.

Bradley shrugged. “Who can say? He’s got half of the city either in his pocket, on his payroll, or both. The rumors would say that it’s all drug related, which fits, because I’ve found a ton of it in here since-”

“What did you find?” Nicole interrupted, her interest seemingly piqued.

“Umm, mostly cocaine, different kinds of pot...”

“Oh, now you tell me?” Nicole said. “Bitch, line that shit up!”

“Is that how you ask?”

“Bitch, please line that shit up!”

“Uh, guys,” Hunter interjected. “Again, I’m no doctor, but should you really do cocaine right after taking pain meds and antibiotics?”

“Hey, it’s her choice, right?” Bradley responded.

“Yeah,” Nicole added, “And it’s a death game, remember? If I overdose, you’re both one step closer to winning, so what do you care?”

Hunter grimaced. He didn’t like it, but it made a disturbing sort of sense.

“You sure you want to snort it, though?” Bradley asked. “I’ve only ever seen you spread it on your gums.”

“Yeah, when I was a beginner. I can handle the real shit now,” Nicole insisted.

Bradley nonchalantly reached into an inner pocket of his leather jacket, and withdrew a ziploc bag with a white powdery substance on it.

“Really?” Hunter asked, one eyebrow raised. “You just had that on you?”

“What? It’s worth a lot of money.” He shook his head. “So how do you want to do this? I don’t see any coffee tables down here...”

Nicole thought for a second, then pulled the area activation schedule out of her bag, and held it out to Hunter. “Here, hold this level.”

“Um...”

“Just do it!”

With deep reservations, Hunter did as told. Bradley shook out a small amount of powder onto the cover of the schedule, and lined it up with a razor blade. “Now I don’t have a straw on me either, so...”

Without even letting him finish his sentence, Nicole leaned forward, pressed her face directly onto the schedule, and inhaled the line raw. “Fuck!” She cried, as she scrunched up her face for a few moments, rubbing her nose with her hands, before letting out one pure, ecstatic moan and leaning back, almost melting into the couch. “Oh fuck...”

Hunter stared on, concerned. “Is she... Um...”

“Probably fine,” Bradley replied. “You want any nose candy, while it’s out?”

“I’m good,” Hunter responded, almost instantly.

“Yeah, me too,” Bradley said, putting the baggie and blade away. “Honestly, I’m not really in the mood for it right now. But you know, this guy also has weed.” From his other pocket, he pulled a baggie with a couple of blunts in it.”

“What is it with you and baggies?” Hunter asked.

“They’re... Really useful, and they keep stuff fresh and clean?” He took both blunts out, and offered Hunter one.

Hunter held his hand out, stopping him. “Again, I’m good.”

“Come on, it's a baby drug... What are, you straight edge?”

Hunter shook his head. “No, I drink sometimes, at like parties and stuff.”

Bradley shrugged, put one in his mouth, and lit it with a black lighter with a silver logo on it. It said Black Pistons, with a graphic of two pistons crossed below it.

“Is that your gang?” Hunter asked, pointing to the logo.

Bradley looked where he was pointing, but caught on fast enough. He drew in a long breath on the blunt before exhaling the smoke back out. “I swear, it’s not as bad as it sounds. We’re not like, a gang gang, with like rape a violence and shit. At least not the part that I'm involved with. We’re just bikers. Motorcycle enthusiasts. We go to rallies, ride around, hang out, that sort of thing.”

“How’d you get into that?”

“My Dad's a biker... My Mom's a piece of shit, so fuck her, now I’m also a biker. Well, a junior member, but I’ll be a full member after high school.”

Hunter hesitated, before asking a more risky question. “And are drugs a necessary part of biker culture?”

Bradley laughed. “Fuck no. My dad would be pissed if he found out.”

Before Hunter could ask what his dad thought about the weed, he heard Nicole’s breathing get really heavy out of nowhere. He turned to her, to see her chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. She was asleep.

“Never been much of a snorer, that one,” Bradley offered.

Hunter flushed. He’d seen her sleeping? Oh, well, of course he had, they had done drugs together. “She told me you’ve never taken advantage of her.”

“You’re asking for confirmation, or a reason?”

“Kinda both?” Hunter ventured.

Bradley took another long drag. “It’s simple, really. I don’t try to fuck my bros.”

“She’s your bro?”

“Girls can be bros,” Bradley asserted. “They can be awesome bros if you’re not one of those pussies who can’t handle being friends with them.”

Hunter sat on this for a moment. “And what if she came onto you?”

Bradley stared at him for a second, then burst out laughing. “Yeah, that’d be the fucking day!” He laughed for a minute or two, before calming down. “Tell you what, if she ever gains at least fifty pounds and a big beautiful black booty, I might think about it.”

“Not your type, huh?” Hunter summarized.

Bradley leaned forward, and pointed his blunt in Hunter’s direction. “Yeah? Then what about you? What’s holding you back?”

Hunter’s face turned beet red, as he fumbled for words. “What do you mean?”

Bradley smirked. “Dude, fuck you. You’ve been fawning over her like a guardian angel ever since I brought you here. Well, she hasn’t stabbed you in the back or told you to fuck off yet, so why don’t you just go for it?”

“That... That really wasn’t my intention...” Hunter could clearly remember why he had decided to form an alliance with Nicole. He had n\been feeling lost, with no direction or purpose, and the idea of teaming up with someone else who wasn’t playing the game felt comfortable to him. In the short time since then, though, he couldn’t deny that they’d become closer to each other.

Bradley locked eyes with him. “You’re not a pussy, are you?”

“Am I what?”

Something in Bradley’s countenance turned severe. “I don’t talk to pussies, I don’t ride with pussies, and I definitely don’t smoke with pussies. So tell me why.”

Hunter was lost for words for a second, but he hardened his resolve. “Because my girlfriend literally just died. Also, we’re here. We’re just trying to survive the weekend, with no idea of who’s going to burst out of the shadows and try to murder us at any given time. This just... I dunno, it doesn’t feel like the appropriate time or place to deal with that kind of thing. But if circumstances were different...”

He took another glance at Nicole, sleeping almost angelically on the couch. “Maybe?”

Bradley gave a half nod. “All right, as excuses go, that wasn’t half bad. But if you two both find some way out of here, then you have to say something to her. Deal?”

He held out his hand, and Hunter shook it. “Deal.”

“Good. That’ll give you something to live for. Lord knows we all need that right now.”

Hunter’s head perked up. “Lord?”

“Yeah, Jesus. Long hair, kinda dresses like a hippy, you know him?”

Hunter’s jaw practically hit the floor. “You, are a Christian?” He gestured to the still lit blunt. “And you’re doing that?”

Hunter laughed again. He pulled his free arm out of the sleeve of his jacket, and showed Hunter his tattoo of Jesus on the cross with a pair of gossamer angel wings spread out in the background. “Let me tell you, there are three things the bible surprisingly does not condemn. Swearing, drugs, and abortion. You can do all three, and still get into heaven.” He held out the unlit blunt to Hunter once more. “Well now that that’s out of the way, you want in?”

Hunter stared at it for what felt like a long time, before finally relenting. “You know what? Why the fuck not. I’m probably gonna die here anyway.” He took the blunt and placed the end of it between his lips as Bradley held out the lighter.

“Yeah, cross this shit off your bucket list,” he said as he flicked it to life.

As soon as the fire took hold, Hunter inhaled far too much at once, and immediately regretted it, as a burning sensation enveloped his throat, and he started coughing hysterically. “I’m... So... *COUGH* I’m sorry...”

“No, good, keep coughing, Bradley encouraged. “That’s how it gets into your bloodstream.”

Hunter tried to respond, but couldn’t talk around another explosive round of coughing.

With a sympathetic smile, Bradley patted him on the back. “Let’s go raid those frozen dinners.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At some point while Nicole was conked out, one of the boys had fitted her with a makeshift eyepatch. There was a wad of cotton, drenched in some kind of medicinal fluid, wedged against her swollen eye, and a strip of gauze wrapped around her head to pin it in place.

She had no idea which of them had done this, and she felt disinclined to ask, since by the time she’d woken up from her coca-coma, they had both been higher than the late Coach Colby’s cholesterol, trading jokes about the poor quality of their microwaved Stauffers dinners.

For Nicole’s part, she had woken up famished, so she had elected to heat up and devour a frozen pizza, feeling oddly nostalgic for her brother as she wolfed the whole thing down.

Things had not always been terrible with her and Keith, there had been some good moments between them when they were growing up. Well, at least a couple. Here and there.

Having sated her hunger, she then made the long, inevitable journey upstairs. She had almost felt regal ascending the grand staircase, but slightly less so while using the smaller spiral staircase that led from the second floor to the third as if she were passing through a dungeon.

There wasn’t much on the third floor, and the lighting was much poorer, but she still wandered around trying each door until she found one that fit the description that Brad had given her.

He was right about one thing, it did look eerily sterile, albeit still lavish. It was as wide and spacious as Nicole’s living room, which it had to be, in order to accommodate the huge king size bed resting against the far wall.

There was a closet, a desk with a small flat-screen TV sitting on it, and a vanity over by the window.

This last item Nicole used to examine her own face. The bandage did look kind of cool, but an actual black eye patch would have suited her much better. Then again, there were probably a ton of eye patch wearing girls in anime, so God forbid Jeffery ever saw her like that.

The room was full of pink, but that wasn’t too surprising, since Emily had more of a girly side than most people realized. For example, as much as Emily was willing to join Nicole in tormenting Jeffery over his anime obsession, Emily herself was surprisingly into Hello Kitty, which she loved, and she would defend it, violently if necessary.

As it happened, the only real piece of flair or personality in this room was a stuffed animal of one of Hello Kitty’s cartoon friends... What was its name? Was it like a bat? Or a bunny dressed like a bat?

It didn’t matter what it was, because it looked suspicious as hell. Nicole crawled up onto Emily’s bed on her hands and knees to pick up the stuffy and examine it, and sure enough, there was something in there.
Emily certainly had some trick to getting a stuffed animal open for the sake of hiding things without having to sew them back up, but Nicole didn’t give a shit, so she took out one of her remaining throwing knives and heartlessly sawed the stuffy’s head off.

And if this didn’t belong to Emily, and if she was just traumatizing some random young girl by breaking into her room and destroying her toy? She honestly didn’t fucking care, as far as she was concerned, every soul who regularly lived on this island was complicit.

Inside were a few bottles of pills, a needle, and... Bingo, Nicole thought. She reached in and pulled out an embroidered, leather-bound book with the words “Emily’s journal” engraved onto it.

She sat down and began reading. There wasn’t much written in there, in fact it only seemed to cover the previous summer and spring breaks, but she still took her time, and by the time she was done, the sun had just begun to rise outside.

She stood up, closing the diary, but still held onto it. There was just enough there to share with the guys.

She made her arduous descent to the first floor, where Hunter and Bradley were apparently deep in discussion about the interior of their newly acquired shotgun. If nothing else, she was glad to see them getting along.

“Ahem,” she stated, grabbing her attention as she descended the staircase to them. “I give you, for one night only, a dramatic reading of Emily’s diary.”

“So this place is hers!” Hunter exclaimed.

“Not exactly,” Nicole countered. “But she does keep gushing about her awesome new stepdad, Antonio, and her new grampa Bill, who she says is, and I quote, 'Like some kind of supervillain or something, lol.'”

Bradley sighed. “Yeah, Antonio is one of Bill Stamboli’s sons.”

Nicole grimaced. “And in case you’re wondering, it actually says LOL in the text, multiple times, which is odd, because other than that, her grammar and handwriting are basically perfect, like, the easiest cursive I’ve ever read.”

“Does it say anything important?” Hunter asked.

“Not really,” Nicole admitted, “But she makes constant references to some birthday present she was really excited for. She was bummed that she couldn’t receive it on her birthday, but she has to wait for the time to be right... And that time is apparently this exact school trip.”

A silence passed between the three of them, as they all absorbed the implications of this. Hunter was the first to speak up. “Okay, well, that could mean a lot of things. Maybe her parents bought her a car for her birthday, and she can’t have it until she comes back from DC?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Bradley countered. “Why make her wait for that?”

“I dunno...” Hunter rubbed the back of his head. “My parents got me a car for my birthday, so...”

“Seriously?” Nicole asked.

“Well it was a used car,” Hunter admitted sheepishly, “but it’s still pretty cool.”

Nicole shook her head. “No, she already has the two door Saturn.” Plus, she didn’t want to say out loud, she had always known Emily to get really into violent video games. Could she be living one out right now? “Regardless, I need to go get some fresh air.”

She walked the rest of the way down, passed both boys, and exited out the front door, where she took a seat on the steps. It was nice out here, and the open view to the east gave her a perfect, unobstructed view of the sunrise.

As it rose, the speakers kicked on from wherever the fuck they were hiding, as Ms. Ames’s voice once again played from them.

“Good evening students, I’m glad to say you’ve had another highly productive day, as there are currently only 13 of you left!”

She droned on, a bunch of bullshit Nicole didn’t care about, until she read off the casualties of the last 24 hours, which included Trody and Kyle from the boys, and poor Jecka from the girls, with... Interestingly enough... No mention of Keith. At least they finally said Jecka’s name right.

Nicole sighed, and just as she was about to go back inside to ask for a blunt, a figure stepped out of the woods, and made her way to the steps. She must not have noticed Nicole sitting there at the top of the steps until she had reached that point, because right at the bottom of the steps, frozen stiff as their gazes locked.

Nicole rose to her feet as if on autopilot, as she stared down at Emily Demersman.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t hard for Nicole to notice just how fresh Emily looked compared to her. Nicole’s clothes were covered in mud and blood, both her own and Jecka’s, while Emily’s were still just as clean as if she had still been sitting in class. Even her crocs, which Nicole knew had to be covered in Karen’s blood, were practically sparkling.

Nicole had dried over the last night, but she still smelled of the rain in all of its musty glory. Emily smelled like she’d just left the house after hours of primping and spritzing.

Nicole was injured, with one good eye and a pain in her stomach that still hadn’t gone away, covered by a very scary looking bruise, but Emily still looked pristine.

Nicole might not have noticed any of this if she hadn’t uncovered all of the disturbing evidence against her, and she probably also wouldn’t have noticed the look of barely concealed fury and disdain that flashed across Emily’s face before she covered it up with a more friendly, warm expression that almost looked genuine.

“Oh Nicole, I’ve been looking everywhere for you, I’m so glad you’re okay!” She exclaimed, taking another step up towards her.

Nicole stepped back, eyeing her warily.

Noticing this, Emily backed away, spreading her hands out in front of her. “No, it’s okay, see? I’m not playing! You can trust me!” She put her hands down, and regarded the mansion with a practiced sense of awe. “Wow, I can’t believe there’s a place like this on the island... It’s not on the map, what do you think it is?”

‘Her lying ass,’ Nicole thought. She’d have started laughing at how hard Emily was trying to gaslight her, if it didn’t make her so sick.

“I was hoping you would tell me that,” Nicole replied, taking the framed picture out of her bag and tossing it at Emily’s feet, where the glass broke upon impact. Emily picked it up to look at it, and that split second of anger once again flitted across her face. Her expression then once again took on a mask of feigned innocence. “Nicole, you have to believe me, I have no idea...”

“Then maybe we should ask Antonio and Grampa Bill?” Nicole interrupted, chucking Emily’s diary at her chest, where she reflexively caught it.

It took Emily only a single glance at the cover before the mask broke, and this time for good. She raised her gaze to Nicole, glaring at her the way one would regard the sudden appearance of a mortal enemy. “What the FUCK did you do to Kuromi?” She asked, venom dripping from each word.

“The same thing you did to Karen,” Nicole replied without missing a beat.

A vein started to throb on Emily’s forehead. Nicole had never actually seen her this angry before.

“I knew you were suicidal, but fuck, I never knew you wanted to die THIS badly," Emily said, drawing a machete from the back of her waist band.

Nicole responded by drawing one of her remaining knives. She still wasn’t confident in her ability to throw it, but she was ready to stab a bitch. “What was the plan, exactly? Act all innocent, wait until my guard was down, and then stab me in the back?”

Emily smirked. “Um, no. Did that already, it’s gotten boring. I was actually going to manipulate you into reaching the final two with me and THEN murder you... You know, the same thing you’re doing with Hunter?”

Nicole flushed. “And how did you know about that?”

Emily laughed. “Face it, cyclops, you’re not the only bitch on this island who has her ways.”

Nicole’s cheeks burned at the audacity of this ho. She had murdered at least two of her friends that Nicole knew about, and she had the nerve to get mad over a torn stuffed animal?

“Why did you do it?” Nicole asked, the fire in her eyes growing with every word. “Jecka was your friend, and not only did you shoot her down, but you wrote on her forehead so she couldn’t even die with dignity. And Karen never hurt anybody!”

Emily held up the machete. "What about Kyle? This was his."

"Yeah I don't give a fuck about Kyle."

Emily just shrugged. “Just trying to win the game, Nicole. It was never personal with them, but oh, I’m going to find something fun to do with you. I think you’d look pretty good with an Italian necktie, don’t you?”

As she took another step up, Nicole raised her knife defensively.

“Bitch, if you think that puny little knife is going to-”

Before she could finish her threat, Hunter kicked the door open, and joined Nicole on the porch, side by side with his ally as he aimed his new shotgun at Emily. “What are you doing here, Emily?”

Emily raised her hands, and tossed her machete away, but it didn’t look like she was doing it out of fear. “Oh look, it’s Nicole’s new lackey. I guess, since the old one broke...”

“You’re gonna tell us everything,” Hunter demanded. “About this game, how you’re tied to it, and-”

“No,” Emily responded, flatly.

“What do you mean no?” Nicole asked. “He has the gun-”

“He’s not gonna fucking use it,” Emily asserted. She locked eyes with Hunter and sauntered closer to him, in an almost seductive manner. “You know why? Because the good little church boy here would never shoot an unarmed woman. Then he could never get into heaven and have Jebus gobble his goo. Right?”

Nicole turned to examine Hunter’s face, and was astounded to see Hunter actually gritting his teeth, sweating and slightly trembling as Emily came closer. “Are you fucking serious right now?”

“I’m sorry,” he told Nicole under his breath. “I can’t-”

“Give me that!” Nicole grabbed the shotgun, and after a brief struggle, wrestled it away from him and aimed it at Emily, who by the point already had a revolver out and pointed back at her. All the humor in her face was gone.

“You, on the other hand...” Emily trailed off.

“Yeah, me on the other hand. Start talking.”

“You really think you’re gonna get me monologuing? Fuck off.”

The two stood like that, caught in a classic Mexican standoff, Hunter wondering if there was anything he could do to tilt the balance back towards Nicole, when the unexpected happened.

The door opened again, with Bradley poking his head out. "What's going on out here?" Before anyone could answer, about a dozen feet above him, there was a loud, jarring smash that startled them all out of position, and a sudden burst of flames that dissuaded them from recovering. Bradley retreated back inside as everyone else dashed forward onto the lawn, as a fire spread out over the face of the mansion.

Emily’s jaw was practically on the floor at this point as she observed the damage. “What the fuck?!” Another projectile hit the steps, and this time they had time to see that it was a tall liquor bottle with a rag sticking out of the top. It hit the porch, creating another rush of blistering heat on the air. “There weren’t supposed to be molotov cocktails in any of the bags!”

“Someone just probably made them, it couldn’t have been difficult,” Nicole ventured, before snapping her gaze in Emily’s direction. “Wait, how the fuck do YOU know what was in the bags?!”

Emily opened her mouth to speak, almost answering, before her gaze shot directly at something over Nicole’s shoulder. Nicole turned, and to her surprise, she saw Jeffery just beyond the edge of the forest, stuffing another rag into a bottle.

Nicole turned back to Emily, and to her enormous shock, Emily didn’t just look angry anymore. She looked scared. There was an actual terror in her eyes as she shook her head and backed away. “He’s all yours,” she told them, before turning and running off into the woods. Before Nicole could follow after her, another molly hit right in the space where Emily had been standing, creating a wall of fire between them.

Back at the mansion, the door burst open once again, this time with Bradley, who dumped a bucket of water onto the steps to put out the fire there. “Get inside! Hurry!”

At his urging, Nicole and Hunter dashed inside, Bradley closing and locking the door behind them. “Was that fucking Jeffery?” He asked incredulously, as Nicole and Hunter both nodded. “What the fuck happened to him?”

Before either could answer, there was another crash above them, this time with a projectile smashing through a nearby window. They looked on in horror as it landed in the center of the grand staircase, and rolled to a stop. It was Trody’s severed head, and it stared lifelessly at them above the live grenade sticking out of his mouth.

“Down!” Bradley cried as Nicole and Hunter hit the floor, and Bradley hit his knees, his back to the grenade, covering them.

The explosion was deafening, and the catastrophic effect it had on all of the Stamboli family’s tacky decorations was indescribable. Over a dozen glass displays shattered, several furniture and display pieces were overturned or thrown across the room, and as Nicole opened her good eye to see what had happened, she found she could barely hear anything.

Hunter was bleeding down his right arm, from a spot on his bicep where a piece of shrapnel had hit him. Bradley’s jacket was on fire, so he quickly stood up and whipped it off before the melting leather could stick to his skin.

More importantly, though, the door had been busted open, and Jeffery was approaching the steps.

“Shit...” Bradley picked up his hunting rifle, and ran to the door, firing off a warning round in Jeffery’s direction, but it wasn’t long at all before Jeffery started shooting back with his AR-15, bullets shattering the doorframe, but just missing Bradley as he ducked for cover. “Run!” He shouted to Hunter and Nicole. “There’s a back door, I’ve got this!”

Nicole shook her head, and tried raising the shotgun to help, until Hunter grabbed her arm. “Let’s just go!” He yelled, just as her hearing was slowly recovering. “That thing has terrible range, you’d just get yourself killed!”

Nicole bit her bottom lip in frustration, but she relented and let Hunter lead her off towards the back door, as Bradley and Jeffery continued exchanging shots, and the fire slowly spread around them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jenny Filmore sat at the table anxiously, staring at the barely opaque window of the microwave as the white ceramic bowl turned inside it. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen it being used like this, but it was the first time she’d been able to witness it by herself.

The cabin attached to the lighthouse was not very big. Based on the interior, Jenny figured that before they’d all been sent here, it had housed maybe one or two workers at a time, maximum. There was a small kitchen, a pantry that was pretty hard to find if you weren’t looking for it, a very cramped basement full of supplies, and the dining room whose table Jenny was resting at right now, which Kelly had co-opted as a conference room for her and the other girls.

There was also one bedroom, set off to the side, and while the others had been keeping it from her, Jenny knew exactly who was resting in it now, while the girls all slept on the floor or at the table.

Jenny had been looking outside when her supposed friends had fished that rapist out of the ocean, and she’d been hiding as they moved him into the bedroom. Since then, she had caught so many glimpses into the room while the door was open, she was shocked nobody knew that she knew.

She had been scared to go in there, but soon, she wouldn’t have to.

Truth be told, Jenny had no memory of what had happened to her in Freshman year. She remembered another boy, Trody, badgering her into letting him grab her some punch. He just kept on insisting that she looked thirsty, and that he was trying to do something nice for her. She had been too young to realize at the time that people only insisted on doing nice things for you if they planned to get something out of it themselves... Either they were farming for gratitude and trying to lock you into a social contract, or they were trying to trick you into getting drugged.

The next thing she knew, she was waking up in the hospital, her body feeling weird in way too many odd ways, and the only evidence of what had happened to her was a three minute clip of Kylar Ashford doing unspeakable things to her unconscious body, which likely meant Trody had just been too smart to get caught on camera.

Her parents had pressed charges, but the Ashford family’s lawyer had brought out every misogynist argument in the book to keep Kylar out of juvie, or worse, being tried as an adult. Ultimately, it was the judge who argued that a young man from a good family shouldn’t have his promising future upended because of some brief indiscretion with a girl who should have been more careful in the first place.

The judge faced severe backlash for this decision and even wound up getting disbarred, but due to the law of double jeopardy, Kylar couldn’t be retried, and had escaped justice altogether.

Her family had tried to sue him afterwards, but after Jenny had started receiving anonymous death and rape threats, her mother wound up dropping the case for her safety.

And that was it. Jenny was left high and dry to deal with a deep feeling of shame and violation that constantly rotted at her from the inside out, while her peers constantly whispered about her and gave her the side eye, and the therapy had not been cheap. They couldn’t even afford to move or change schools, so the sight of Kylar just out and about every single day felt like a spear being driven through her heart.

And yet, as miserable as she had felt through all of this, her friends’ decision to take him in and nurse him back to health was a blatant betrayal that only served to spread salt on her festering wounds.

She had believed in Kelly’s plan. She had been the first to join her, before she had managed to recruit Nikita, Shirley, Naomi, or even Jecka to her side.

Kelly had given Jenny hope, only to trample all over it by bringing Kylar into the fold. Now, they were on their second full day in this game, and not one ship had come anywhere near them, Kelly had been inconsolable ever since Jecka’s death had been announced that morning, and only a thin wooden door separated her from the boy who had stolen her virginity from her, as well as her ability to trust the presence of any man who came near her.

But that was okay, because there was one silver lining. She may have been refused justice before, but this was a death game, and there was nothing stopping her from obtaining it now.

Well, nothing except her fear, but she didn’t have to achieve justice directly.

The microwave beeped, but with everyone else either outside or up in the crow’s nest, only Jenny could hear it. She opened up her duffel bag, and pulled out the weapon that had been assigned to her... An unlabeled jar of dark grey powder, with nothing but a skull and crossbones on the outside to mark it as poisonous.

She stood up, sweating heavily, and her knees shaking so hard they started bumping into each other. She crossed the room to the microwave, and opened it, to reveal a steaming bowl of Beefaroni, and she knew it was intended for Kylar. Steeling her nerves, she unscrewed the top of her jar, and poured almost half the powder into the bowl. She stirred it with a steel spoon until none of the poison was visible, and closed the door. She even restarted the microwave at ten second, so nobody would know she had opened it, before returning to her seat and squirreling the poison away.

All she had to do now was wait, resting her head in her hands, until-

The speakers blared to life. “Hello, students!” Ms. Ames exclaimed, sounding a little more excited than usual. “I know you weren’t expecting an announcement this soon, but I do have one important update to share. We’ve noticed that about a half dozen students have been congregating in sector E-10, and we can’t have that, especially not at this crucial moment in the game. Thus, that sector will become active in thirty minutes. I repeat...”

Ms. Ames went over her message again, but Jenny wasn’t listening. Instead, she took her map out of the bag and spread it on the table, because E-10 sounded familiar...

Yes, it was, because it was in fact the lighthouse.

She had barely registered this fact when Nikita burst in from outside, her soft eyes at odds with her intense demeanor as the more diminutive Shirley followed after.

“Where is Kelly?” Nikita asked. “We need to leave. Now.”

“Um...” Jenny started, pointing up towards the crow’s nest. “She’s up there, with Naomi.”

“Then she definitely heard it,” Shirley droned. “Should we go get her? You don’t think she’d... You know...”

Her question was answered as Naomi and Kelly bounded down the stairs, with Kelly’s face completely flushed and still streaked with tears. “What do we do now?” Shirley asked.

“We leave,” Kelly countered, much more shortly than usual. “We failed. This whole stupid fucking plan was pointless, there’s nothing else we can do.”

Naomi and Shirley exchanged a look. “I mean,” Shirley began, “We don’t think your plan was stupid. In fact-”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kelly snapped. “Look, we have thirty minutes. It’s not a long trip out of sector E-10, we should be fine if we use that time wisely. For right now, though, I’m fucking starving. Move.”

She didn’t quite shove past Nikita, but she maneuvered around her so abruptly that she might as well have. She opened up the microwave to grab the bowl of Chef-Boyardee, and to Jenny’s absolute horror, she sat down with it. “Nikita and Jenny, you leave first. Leave together, and don’t stop until you’re out of sight. Naomi and Shirley, leave after them, and take it with you. You know, it.”

She gestured towards Kylar’s room, but Jenny's heart was beating too fast to react to this latest evasion of the truth. Instead, her heart in her throat, she pointed at the bowl, struggling to find words. “You... You...”

Kelly looked down at the bowl, confused, her spoon already digging into it. “What? I haven’t eaten in almost two days. If you want one, we can make another one.”

Jenny vehemently shook her head. “Th-That... That was meant for Kylar!”

This time, all four of the other girls turned to her, stunned. “Who told you about that?” Naomi asked, as Kelly ate the first few spoonfuls of pasta.

Jenny’s heart sunk as she backed up against the wall, her hands clenched over her mouth.

“Look, I’m sorry, we should have told you,” Shirley offered as Kelly continued to shovel the pasta into her mouth, eating quickly like she was more concerned with getting it into her system as quickly as possible than actually tasting it.

Before Shirley could finish her statement, Kelly started coughing, pressing her free hand to her chest as little oversalted noodles splashed onto the table.

“Are you okay?” Nikita asked. “Are you choking? Does anyone here know the um... The... um...” She started snapping her fingers.

“Heimlich maneuvre!” Shirley added.

Naomi nodded and approached Kelly, but before she could do anything, Kelly shot to her feet, her eyes bulging out and one arm pressing deeply into her stomach, as the coughing turned to violent retching, and the pasta started being replaced by blood. The other girls scattered, startled into inaction, as a tearful Kelly spewed dark red vomit all over the room, before toppling over, hitting her head on the corner of the table on the way down, and coming to a rest on the cold floor.

The four of them stood around her, hugging the walls behind them, staring in disbelief at their fallen friend. She was never that bright... She could be annoying... But she was still one of the kindest and most genuine people any of them knew.

Naomi and Nikita locked eyes, and after a wordless exchange, they each pulled a gun out of their bag at the same time.

“What did you put in her food?” Naomi demanded, both hands on her uzi.

“Me?” Nikita replied, pistol fully extended. “I didn’t make her fucking food!”

“Bullshit, you’re the cook...”

Nikita gestured to the microwave behind her. “It’s a fucking microwave, you dumb bitch, anybody can use it!”

“Guys!” Shirley interjected. “I made it, but I swear I didn’t put anything in it.”

“Yeah," Nikita agreed. “Which means YOU must have done it when we were outside!”

Watching all of this unfold, Jenny slowly descended against the wall until her knees were pressed against her chest.

Shirley’s eyes widened. “You were jealous of her!” She exclaimed towards Naomi. “You told me you were in love with Jecka, remember? That’s why you killed Kelly!”

Naomi’s face harshly reddened. “I told you that in confidence!”

“So it is true!” Nikita exclaimed, drawing Naomi’s attention back to her.

“I swear if you don’t shut the fuck up right now...”

"Besa mi culo!" Nikita shot back.

It happened in the space of only a couple of seconds, but for Jenny, time seemed to slow to a crawl. Shirley reached for a knife on the counter. Seeing this, Naomi reflexively turned and opened fire on her, perforating her across the neck and upper torso. Screaming in rage, Nikita fired two shots into Naomi’s chest. In her last moments, Naomi swiveled just enough to spray Nikita with bullets as well. It happened in such a small amount of time that all three girls hit the floor at exactly the same time.

Jenny rose back to her feet, tears rolling down her eyes, her voice helplessly caught in her throat. None of the other girls moved. Three pools of blood were rapidly spreading from beneath them, combining with the blood that Kelly had already lost, and before long, a thin sheet of red fluid would cover the whole floor...

And if Jenny didn’t leave right now, it would reach her feet, trapping her like the encroaching guilt of her own actions.

She had done this. She had killed all of them.

She took one terrified step forward... Then another... All trying to avoid stepping in the blood of any of her friends. Somehow, she made it all the way to the door, her feet still clean, and she closed it behind her, entering the hallway.

Before she could even try to process what she had just lived through, a door to her immediate right opened, and Kylar stepped out into the hallway, still bandaged up, still limping.

She froze as she locked eyes with him. She was completely unarmed. She was small, weak, and above all, she was now just as guilty as him. She waited with baited breath for his move.

“Oh hey, I haven’t seen you here yet. What’s your name? And what was all that noise just now, it woke me the fuck up.”

She stared at him in disbelief. He didn’t remember her. After all these years of being taunted by the sight of him, so many nightmares featuring his cruel face, every single daily reminder of his undeserved fortune... How was she supposed to react to this?

With no other idea of what to do, she just laughed. If this was her fate, then so be it, she was going to make the most of it. He deserved to die, and the fact she deserved to die too was only going to make things easier for her. “Oh, it was nothing, some piece of equipment blew. Everything’s fine.”

“Oh,” Kylar said, satisfied. “Well, do you know where Kelly is? There’s something I wanna talk to her about.”

Jenny forced a sweet, innocent smile. There was nothing left but to play her part. “She’s up in the crow’s nest, follow me!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks to his numerous injuries, Kylar was unable to move at a quick pace as he followed the mysterious girl up the spiral staircase to the crow’s nest. His ribs were complaining with each step, but his ankle was worse, despite just being sprained. It felt like jagged glass was slowly cutting into his leg with every step he took. Still it was fine as long as he was careful. He took the steps one at a time, leading with his good foot, keeping his hand on the railing for support.

Thankfully, the girl didn’t stay too far ahead of him. In fact, she kept consistently at just the right pace to teasingly stay just out of his reach.

Not that he would have done anything, especially not in this condition. Besides, she really wasn’t his type. Oh, she was certainly pretty... She was a tiny thing, probably standing just under five feet tall, with a face that was small and heart-shaped just like a pixie’s, and perfectly straight tawny hair that reached just between her shin and shoulders. She had a tight little ass that he was having trouble keeping his eyes off of, but even though she was wearing a loose sweater, he was willing to bet she was an A-cup, which meant she paled in comparison to Kelly’s awesome rack.

Speaking of Kelly, Kylar was burning to hear more about that dumb snake story. Ever since yesterday, he had been unable to get her parable out of his mind. There was just something about the moral quandary behind it all that disturbed him on a deep, fundamental level. He had dreamed about being the snake, looking up at an uncaring face that either stomped on him, shot him, or worse, just sat there watching him die.

He figured hearing the full, unabridged story would help. Was it even a bible story?

After way too long of a climb, the girl opened a trap door that was set in the ceiling, and climbed the last few steps into the crow’s nest as Kylar offered his silent thanks that the path hadn’t ended in a ladder.

Once they were both up, the girl closed and latched the trap door, as Kylar looked around for Kelly. He couldn’t see her anywhere, even after looking all the way around the broken light. “Hey, what gives? I thought you said she was up here!”

“Did I?” She cooed. “What a dirty, lying whore I am. I guess you were right about that.”

“Huh?” He asked. “I never said that!”

“You did, though,” she casually asserted. “You said it in court, you’ve said it in class, you said it for months any time anyone said that I was just pretending to be unconscious in that video.”

Kylar searched his memory, but came up blank. Yeah, her face did look familiar, but... “Who the fuck are you anyway?”

She shook her head. “No. You don’t get that. You can either figure it out for yourself, or die wondering.”

A memory started to bubble up from his subconscious, but he instinctively fought it back down. “Look, I just want to know where Kelly is! So why don’t you just...”

He was interrupted as the speakers once again buzzed to life with Ms. Ames’ voice. “A reminder to anyone still lingering in area E-10. This area will become active in five minutes. If you are still within this perimeter at that time, you will be immediately eliminated. I repeat...”

A chill went up Kylar’s spine as he processed this warning, which Ms. Ames was saying a second time. “We have to go, now!”

She once again shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

“What the hell did I-”

“You ruined my life!” She snapped. “You took everything I had, and you got away with it! I’ve spent the last two years wishing for nothing more than to see you face the despair you put me through, and now I have it. You’re about to die, and I won’t be around to see it, but I don’t need to. Just the fact that it’s been set in motion, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it... That’s enough for me.”

Before Kylar could respond, the girl listed herself into a sitting position on the edge of the crow’s nest. She was still facing him, and the sunlight reflecting off of the water seemed to almost form a halo around her head. And that’s when it finally clicked for him. “Jenny?” He asked, a deep pit of shame and guilt forming in the depths of his stomach.

She smiled bitterly at this. “May your first day in hell last 1000 years, and may it also be the shortest.” With that said, she threw her body back over the edge, somersaulting out of sight.

Kylar raced to the edge, running as fast as he could on his bad leg, but by the time he got there, Jenny Filmore was already dead at the bottom, surrounded by her own blood on a boulder that just barely stuck out of the waves. Kylar grit his teeth, knowing he had to bury whatever he was feeling over this just long enough to survive. He had to get the fuck out of here.

He raced to the latch, and after a bit of struggle, undid it and flung open the trap door. His descent was far more painful then his previous ascent. The pain in his leg was now more equivalent to someone beating it with a sledgehammer, however his adrenaline pushed him forward. Halfway down, he felt what was probably one of his cracked ribs breaking, but he couldn’t afford to feel it.

He finally made it to the bottom, and opened the door to alert the other girls, but to no avail, as they were all dead on the dining room floor. Cursing, he turned and limped through the hall and out the door, where he took one wrong step on the concrete stairs. He fumbled a bit without a handrail, and landed sideways on his sprained foot, crying out in searing pain as his ankle broke.

He sat up, grabbing at his ankle to try and quell the blinding pain, as Ms. Ames once again spoke up from above. “One minute left.”

Kylar screamed back, “Fuck you you pasty old spinster cat lady bitch!”

With one final burst of inspiration, he rolled over onto his good hand and his knees, and began to crawl like that across the grass. It wasn’t far now, he could just barely make it! According to the map, which he had studied out of boredom in his bed, the perimeter of E-10 wasn’t too far away, it was just a few yards short of the treeline…

He looked up, and saw Emily standing just about where the border should be. “Help me!” He called out. This was perfect! If she ran over, and helped him up, they could both escape to the other side just in time! “Help me, please!”

Hearing this, Emily set her bag down on the grass, and... Sat down cross-legged beside it. As Kylar stared in disbelief, she unzipped it, reached in, and pulled out a juice box, which she stuck a straw into and started sipping while just staring at him.

He moved another foot forward, but at that exact moment, the red light on his collar started blinking, just like it had on Brian. All of a sudden, he understood why Kelly’s story had affected him the way it had. Only an injured snake knew how few medicine men there were in the world. Most people you ran into were like Emily... No. They were like Kylar.

His tears had just begun to flow when his collar detonated, ending his life and sending bits of blood, bone and grey matter flying everywhere.

Emily giggled, applauded, and picked up a piece of skull that had landed near her up and stuffed it into her bag as a memento before getting to her feet, and continuing on her way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The fire roared throughout the mansion as Bradley’s strength finally gave out. His shootout with Jeffery had taken them all the way up to the second floor, Jeffery constantly pressing him further and further back into cover, until he had finally delivered enough critical hits to assure his victory. As Bradley assessed the damages, he found several bullet wounds on his torso and lower body... He was lung shot, gutshot, and his left knee had been blown out, and those were just the top three.

He’d wound up in an upstairs bathroom, sitting on the carpeted floor with his back to a silver-plated toilet, when Jeffery appeared in the doorway, still and silent like the nerdy grim reaper.

Locking eyes with him, Bradley took one more blunt out of his jeans pocket, unzipped it from the baggie, and held it out, with his prized Black Piston’s lighter. “Care to give a dead man one final smoke?”

Jeffery stood there for a moment, considering this, before stepping forward and taking both items from him. He held the blunt weirdly, like someone who had never handled one before, and tried multiple times to light the lighter, failing each time.

Bradley chuckled. “Seriously? Then how did you light the mollies?”

Jeffery responded by pulling a candle lighter out of his duffel bag. With only one simple flick of the trigger, he lit the blunt and handed it back.

Bradley accepted it, blood pouring out of his body and mouth as he took one final puff. “You know Jeffrey, I actually use to feel kind of bad for you, until now.” Brad coughed up some blood before continuing. “It’s funny that this is the most badass moment of your life and yet you’re still fucking pussy."

These last words out, his death rattle struck, and he fell limp, blunt landing on the carpet where it only added to the growing inferno.

Leaving his latest victim behind, Jeffery fled, hurrying out of the burning building himself. It would only be a little while now... A few more bodies was all it would take before his dreams could come true.

To be continued

Chapter Text

She stood alone in the center of the room, the twilight outside casting an eerily glowing spotlight around her ephemeral form. Ariel Clovis stood perfectly still in a classroom which was completely empty aside from the bare blackboard and the barely opaque shades pulled down over the windows. As Nicole watched from the doorway, frozen in place, Ariel turned without moving her feet, gliding in place like the figure in a music box. There was anger in her eyes, a barely contained indignation tinged with fear as she stopped, eyes locked with Nicole’s. She moved her lips, and while she formed no audible words, her message was clear: Stay away.

Nicole stepped forward anyway, her legs moving like they were stuck in molasses, and with every successful step, she found herself sinking deeper into it. When she finally made it to Ariel’s feet, she stared down at the floor, which had the consistency of quicksand, and had enveloped her up to the chest.

A thin, bony hand reached down and stroked Nicole under the chin. She allowed it to guide her eyes upwards, where Ariel’s rotting corpse, skin half decomposed, showing bits of bone and wormy mush, glared down at her. There was a knife sticking out of her forehead, which she plucked out, brought it down to Nicole’s throat, and-

Nicole awoke with a gasp, her heart racing, drenched in sweat. She sat bolt upright, in a bed that didn’t feel like her own, next to a giant, warm mass that had never been there before. After a moment of confusion, it all came back to her. Ari had died two days ago. Her body might still be in the classroom, but it had certainly begun decomposing by now if the teachers hadn’t removed her.

She had woken up in a bed that was bigger and softer than she was used to, but the extra space wasn’t the most striking thing about it... That would be the fact that she had shared it with someone.

She turned her head, and felt a strange sensation in her chest at the sight of Hunter Murphy, some dumb football jock that she had barely strung two coherent thoughts about less than a week ago, lying next to her, completely naked save for the blanket draped over his lower body. And, she was loathe to acknowledge, she was just as bare. She admired the definition in his chest... With any other guy, that level of muscle would have put her on edge, but with Hunter, there was no threat. Not anymore.

The previous night seemed like a blur to her now, but in all fairness, it had been very blur-like. After getting away from the burning mansion, there had been a mutual sense of hopelessness between them, and when they returned to the village, after hours of silent tension, it had erupted into a huge fight. She had blamed him for leaving Bradley behind to die, he had blamed her for wasting so much of their time chasing some mystery whose resolution wouldn’t solve a damn thing... They had both been right in some ways, and they had both been wrong in some ways, and all it had taken was a little alcoholic intervention to turn their passions from anger to something even more destructive.

'You told him you weren't going to fuck him,' she scolded herself. 'Then again, we're going to die soon anyway, right? One for the road, I guess.'

She stood up out of bed, eyes briefly flitting to the torn condom wrapper on the carpet. She made a mental note to NOT clean this place up before the actual owners returned from whatever alternate reality they’d been spirited away to. They deserved this, in fact, she wished she had a cigarette to put out on the mattress. That noted, she ambled down the hallway into the kitchen, still stark naked, to reach the freezer and retrieve the one treasure in this house that they hadn’t used up yet.

She opened the freezer door, weirdly enjoying the cold air on her skin, as the pulled out the now half empty bottle of cupcake flavored vodka that had been full and unopened just last night. She twisted off the lid and took another few gulps of what had to be the tastiest booze she’d ever had. It was like heaven in a bottle.

Behind her, there was an audible click, as the light was switched on. Nicole turned, bathed in the electric glow of the ceiling light, to face Hunter. Unlike her, he had pulled a pair of pants on, and he was very clearly enjoying the disparity.

“Well this seems a little unfair,” she pondered.

“Unfair for you,” he countered, his eyes still glued to her.

“That’s what unfair means, dumbass. Keep staring like that, I'm gonna have to start charging.” She offered him the bottle, and turned away, searching for something to wear. She had a vague memory of something sky blue and fuzzy hanging in the bathroom, so she wandered over, and sure enough, there was a bathrobe waiting for her. She pulled it on. “Peep show’s closed, dude.”

Hunter pulled the bottle away from his lips with a gasp. “That is fucking delightful.”

“Yeah, it’s like it’s not even real alcohol,” Nicole agreed, taking a seat in a recliner in the living room. Hunter plopped down in a nearby couch, hands behind his head on one armrest and his bare feet up on the other. There was a confidence in his body language that hadn’t been there before. Was that her doing? She smirked, and decided to tease him about it. “Well, you’re not a virgin anymore, and you’re not married either. Feel like a sinner yet?”

He grimaced. “I’d rather not think about that. Besides, it’s not what Jesus would think that I’m worried about.”

He didn’t have to elaborate, Nicole knew what he meant. “Hey... Did Ari ever talk about me? With you, I mean.”

Hunter stared at her for a moment, as if deciding what to say. “A little, I guess?”

“And what did she say?” Nicole ventured, feeling uncharacteristically nervous.

“These are her words,” he warned. At Nicole’s nod, he continued. “She said there was a lot she loved about you, but it was hard to get to sometimes. She said she felt bad for you, because you wanted to be close to people, but kept them at arm’s length because you were scared of getting hurt, so you hurt them if they tried getting closer.”

Nicole’s cheeks grew hotter with every word... Not out of rage or indignation, but out of shame because she couldn’t dispute any of it. “So that’s why she dumped me?”

Hunter nodded. “She said there was something really beautiful buried deep within you, but she was tired of having to constantly dig for it.”

Nicole nodded, unsure of what else to say. It was hard to get angry at the words of a girl who was no longer alive to defend or explain them. Would things have been different if she had told her all of this while she were still alive? Did she even have a right to ask? “And what do you think?”

Hunter’s eyes widened. “About you?” Nicole nodded. “That’s... Kinda hard to say. I’m a dumb jock, remember? I’m not good at all that emotional stuff.”

“Well, am I a good person or a bad person?” Nicole persisted.

“I don’t believe in good people or bad people,” Hunter replied. “We’re just people. We make good choices and bad choices, and we have to take accountability for them.”

“So rapists and pedophiles aren’t bad people?” Nicole challenged.

“That’s not...” He paused, and took a second to think. “The important part is accountability. If someone like that is labelled a bad person, that implies they never had a choice. They’re bad people, of course they were always going to do bad things. Hell, you could say it’s the victim’s fault for trusting a bad person, because hey, what were you expecting to happen? But if you call yourself a good person, then it’s like you’re saying, you can‘t let one little indiscretion get in the way of all the good you’ve done, or all the good you’re going to do! Either way, it’s making excuses to you don’t have to actually examine the reason why you make the choices you make. So, to answer your question, the difference between good and bad isn't what you are, but what you put forth the effort to be.”

Nicole bit back a retort, because some of that logic was hitting disturbingly close to home for her. Hadn’t she done exactly that before, calling herself a sociopath to avoid having honest conversations with herself?

Instead of saying anything back, she stood up and sauntered through the living room, calling out “Nerd,” over her shoulder as she started collecting her clothes, lazilly pulling them back on as she headed for the front door. Once she was fully dressed, she stepped onto the front porch and sat down on the top step. The morning light shone into the landscape of trees, giving a strange contrast to the situation. For what would probably be the last sunrise she would ever see, it wasn’t half bad.

Only one person could leave this island. They had already done nothing to save over ninety five percent of their classmates, and now as the number dwindled even further, it was becoming clearer and clearer that at least one of them had to die. There was only one thing Nicole could think to do, but she was only about ten percent sure it would work, and she would have to... Say things... That she wasn’t sure she could muster up the courage to say. So she hadn’t brought it up just yet, and the longer she held onto it, the more like a betrayal it felt.

She raised her head at the sound of the door opening and closing behind her. Hunter settled in, leaning against the wall next to the steps, just silently watching the sunrise with her, as the loudspeakers once again buzzed to life.

“Good morning students, and congratulations on making it to your third and final day in the Battle Royale tournament!” Ms. Ames began.

“It’s a tournament now?” Hunter asked, rhetorically. “Is that supposed to make it better?”

“We had another productive day yesterday,” Ms. Ames continued. “Out of the boys, Kylar Ashford, Bradley Lynch, and Mark Dunn were eliminated!”

Nicole swallowed down a lump in her throat. So he hadn’t made it after all.

“I’m sorry,” Hunter offered.

Nicole nodded. “I know.”

“Out of the girls, Kelly Harper, Shirley Jensen, Naomi Fardette, Nikita Ramirez and Jenny Filmore were eliminated. As for the rest of you, we have finally reached the final five! Congratulations! And here are your finalists.” She paused, probably for dramatic effect, before continuing. “Emily Demersman!”

Nicole shook her head, angry all over again. She had only gotten a sniff of what Emily’s involvement in all this was, and she wasn’t anywhere near satisfied with it.

“Jeffery Jorgensen!”

Emily had been scared of Jeffery, Nicole mused. What was the significance of that?

“Hunter Murphy!”

Beside her, Hunter raised both of his middle fingers to the sky.

“Megan Tunney!”

“What?!” Nicole practically spat.

Hunter looked stunned by this as well. “I know, right? I haven’t seen her at all since we left the school, have you?”

Nicole shook her head, as Ms. Ames announced her name. “How do you think she pulled it off?” Hunter just shrugged.

“Since this is your final day, and we’ve reached the finalists, I have two special changes to announce. First of all, starting now, I’m going to announce each elimination live as it happens, until the game is over. Second, the game will officially end at 6 PM tonight. Best of luck to at least one of you!”

The loudspeaker cut off. “So what do you wanna do now?” Hunter asked.

“Do you want to go find Megan, like you helped me find Jecka?”

Hunter thought it over. “We don’t have any leads. We’d have just as much luck finding her by staying here as we would by wandering around blindly.” He stepped away from the house. “I’m going back to bed. If Jeffery or Emily attack, just die quietly so I won’t see it coming when it’s my turn.”

Nicole chuckled. “No promises, dude.” She waved him off as he wandered back inside.

As soon as he was out of sight, she took a sheet of paper and a pen out of her duffel bag. It was time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Down near the northern tip of the island, set a stone’s throw from the waves, was an area nobody was ever likely to see, hidden as it was by dense jungle. It appeared to be a cave from the outside, but it was definitely manmade, as the floor turned into concrete steps once you ventured inside.

Beyond those steps was a concrete floor set just about a foot down, and a few yards away was a heavy steel door with a red wheel looking handle that you turned to get inside... Or you would, if it wasn’t locked, which was how Megan had been keeping it.

She swung the door open, and stepped down into a foot-deep floor that was flooded with the rainwater from two days ago. She wished she could figure out how to drain this part.

She had gotten lucky in finding this place, literally stumbling into it while running from Kylar and his friends the first night. None of them had found her after she’d been fortunate enough to find the door hanging wide open.

As she soon found out, this door led to maintenance tunnels that stretched all the way across the island. She had found so many useful tools, including old television sets that only showed active security footage from various locations, and if she had the ability to record the things she’d been seeing, she could make so much money off of selling snuff films on the dark web. She had seen so many of her classmates killed, most often by either Emily or Jeffery, and she’d even seen a few people having sex... Or being raped, in a couple cases.

More importantly, though, she was immune from active areas as long as she was under there. That was insane. No matter where she went, being hidden behind layers of dirt, concrete and steel had been protecting her! That meant she could be killed as long as she stayed hidden!

Well, that was all well and good, but what she didn’t have down there was food. So, for the third time in three days, she exited the tunnels with some fishing equipment in one hand, and a sledgehammer in the other. She had only received a fucking frying pan in her bag, but these were way better.

She wandered across a small strip of beach, hooked her bait and cast her line into the sapphire ocean.

Of course, she had seen footage of Nicole and Hunter travelling together. Whatever. She didn’t care. They were both traitors, anyway. The deepest circle of hell was reserved for the treacherous and mutinous, and they could both rot there for all she cared. She didn’t need Hunter. She didn’t need anybody. You didn’t become student council president without knowing how to be responsible.

And she was. This made her perfectly self-sufficient. Sure, her plan at the moment was to hide until the game was over and then ask for help from the people who lived here once they returned, but she could be alone until then.

She just had to stay vigilant...

“Hey there, stranger.”

Her heart jumped straight up through her throat as she heard Emily’s voice from off to her side. She turned, to see her ambling down to the beach from around some rocks. Megan didn’t hesitate to drop her fishing rod cold. “Oh, um, hey, I was just leaving...”

“No, it’s cool!” Emily insisted, as if she hadn’t killed over a dozen people thus far. “I haven’t seen you all weekend, how are-”

“Nope!” Megan said, backing away. “Get away from me!”

She bent down and picked up the sledgehammer as fast as she could as Emily quickly closed in on her, holding out a taser. Megan swung wildly as soon as she was close enough, the business end connecting hard with Emily’s hand. Emily screamed, gripping her injured hand with her good hand, dropping the taser in the process. Megan turned, and ran back to the cave.

She tried to enter as smoothly as usual, but she tripped over her feet at the entrance, and fell face-first into the water. She recovered quickly, and fumbled around to try and find the sledgehammer, but she couldn’t see it!

She was barely to her feet, heading for the door, when Emily leapt off of the steps, tackling her from behind, wrapping her arms around Megan’s neck and taking her down into the water with her. Megan rolled over to fight her off, but quickly found Emily’s good hand wrapped around her throat, squeezing tightly with all of the weight in Emily’s surprisingly strong body, holding her head underwater.

Megan gritted her teeth and held her breath tightly, trying to slap and punch at Emily’s face to break her hold, but nothing worked.

Emily switched her grip just enough so that her thumb was pressed into Megan’s windpipe, and she pressed down as hard as she could, until her throat finally gave way.

Megan gasped helplessly for air, but only took in water. Her eyes grew red, and little wisps of blood flowed into the water around her, until she finally fell limp, and the bubbles stopped. Emily stared hungrily into her eyes as the light left them.

The speaker buzzed to life. “Megan Tunney has been eliminated!”

Emily let go of her, and rose to her feet, but she was still angry. She examined her right hand, which had been practically crushed by the sledgehammer attack. She could feel broken bones in it, and at least two broken fingers.

Speaking of which, she noticed the sledgehammer itself just sort of sitting there in the water, so she picked it up, and started driving the heavy part down into the already deceased Megan’s face. “That hurt, you fucking bitch!” She cried, as she obliterated what was left of the student body president’s skull.

Finally sated, she tossed the hammer aside, letting the sweet, sweet adrenaline fade. Her hand was probably broken, but it was a small price to pay for the best damn birthday present she had ever received.

Emily had lived her entire life believing that adults were among the shittiest things on the planet... They were selfish, they were insignificant, they were dishonest and unreliable, and they were so, so pathetic, chasing their tails on useless jobs until they died. But that was before she had met Antonio.

Initially introduced as her mom’s newest boyfriend, he hadn’t wasted his time on any of the usual bullshit. No trying to replace her bio dad, no trying to be her friend, no establishing boundaries or trying to get in some forced quality time... He had looked her right in the eyes and said, “Anything you want, I’ll make it happen.”

From there, he had very quickly established himself as the coolest adult she had ever met. Anything she wanted, he gave her. When she was pissed off, he didn’t throw doctors and pills at her... He took her either to the shooting range or the dump, where he gave her an aluminum baseball bat and let her run wild. When she got in trouble, he put the right money in the right pockets to get her out of it. He didn’t bother her about her grades... He flat out told her that if she flunked out, she would still be set for life as a Stamboli. When she wanted someone to disappear, like her piece of shit addict ex-boyfriend or that bitch Mr. White, they disappeared.

And the best part of all of this? He wasn’t even trying to fuck her! As a matter of fact, he gave every indication that he was completely and utterly besotted with Emily’s mother, which Emily was perfectly okay with. The old bitch needed to get tossed around once in a while, and if he enjoyed doing it, more power to him.

They had gotten married on this very island over the summer, and while Emily had spent most of her time with a super friendly old Puerto-Rican couple, consisting of Mariela, who was Grampa Bill’s main secretary, and Lemuel, her husband... Whom she was still going to report for leaving that damn photo behind... She had met her new Grampa a couple of times, and he just radiated evil, like a combination of Lex Luthor and Hannibal Lector.

He was supposedly some big crime boss up north, and while Emily didn’t know specifically what his business was, she also knew better than to ask. It was probably something cool like human trafficking.

She wanted to change her last name, just like her mother did after the wedding,. but she wasn’t allowed to until she was 18, for some reason.

In any case, it was her Grampa’s insane wealth that fueled Antonio’s generosity, and it was that generosity that encouraged her to ask for something she had always secretly fantasized about for her seventeenth birthday. When asked what she wanted, she looked her mother and Antonio dead in the eyes, and said “I want to hunt people.”

Her mother scoffed, but Antonio fell silent, and after a moment’s consideration, said “Let me see what I can come up with.”

The case was dropped until her actual birthday,. when he broke the news that she was getting her birthday wish, but she would have to wait a month for it. He was calling in a favor from his Papa, and he was in the process of bribing several members of her school staff that were in dire need of legal representation to hijack her school trip to DC in exchange for access to his family’s top tier stable of lawyers.

Faced with the prospect of her most precious dream becoming a reality, Emily had been more than willing to accept that compromise.

The school trip had come, she had trusted those involved and allowed them to gas her, but she had been allowed to wake up before the others, who kept being put under over the two days that the trip to the island had actually taken. The Counselor had offered her a fake collar, but she refused, because it wouldn’t be fun if she wasn’t facing the same danger everyone else was.

All they had to do from there was set everyone up, lie about it being legal, and the game was on... And it had been everything Emily had ever dreamed of. Killing people in general would be cool, but people she knew? Faces she was familiar with, and often had over a decade of memories with? She had never felt more alive!

So far, everything had gone according to plan... Well, for the most part. She hadn’t expected Nicole and Hunter to play Scooby Doo and try to figure her out. She hadn’t expected anyone to find her family’s mansion when it wasn’t listed on the map. If she had only accepted the dud collar, and the mansion had been turned into a permanent active area for her exclusive use, as the Counselor had offered, her Grampa’s entire estate wouldn’t be burning down right now.

But worst of all was Jeffery. She had expected that weeaboo dipshit to die the first night, but something had apparently snapped in his head.

Emily would be the first to admit that her eyes had been bigger than her stomach when it came to the size of her class, and how many people she would have to kill, but it didn’t really matter when Jeffery was quickly and efficiently racking up enough bodies to put her to shame, and it make it difficult for her to even FIND victims.

And he wasn’t just running around killing blindly. She had assumed that at first, before she had witnessed him breaking Susannah Chapman’s legs and hiding in the trees to pick off the next three people who were attracted by the sound of her screams.

Emily wasn't just scared of Jeffery, she was terrified of him, but as long as Nicole and Hunter got to him first...

She heard footsteps behind her. She whipped around, to find Jeffery, standing silently on the steps, staring down at her. She froze, eyes locked with his, for several tense moments.

“Well hey there Jeffery,” she started, eyeing her surroundings. Could she distract him long enough to get away, or draw a weapon? “I’ve been looking all over for you! I hope you’re all right.” She felt the small of her back, but at some point when dealing with Megan, her revolver had fallen out of her wasteband.
Jeffery stood still as a statue.

“You know I’ve always thought you were really cute, right?” She offered, changing tactics. Sneaking around him was out of the question, but there was a steel door behind her. Could she get it open fast enough? “I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately...” She started unbuttoning the top three buttons of her shirt, teasingly.

Jeffery didn’t respond, glaring at her as though she were a bug.

“Wait, that’s not what you’re into, right?” She said, kneeling down to instead start untying her shoelace. “Have you seen my feet before? They’re really pretty. I’ll let you wash them for me.”

Silently, Jeffery raised his right hand, to show her what he was holding. It was the taser she had just dropped.

“Oh, you can keep that if you want... How would you like to work together, and win this game with me?”

Jeffery shook his head. Emily rose back to her full height, still trying to figure out her next move, when she realized where she was. She was standing in a foot deep puddle of water, while Jeffery stood just beyond the edge with a taser. Her heart started beating rapidly as she held out her hand. “Jeffery, give me the taser. Please. I changed my mind, I want it back!”

He again shook his head. She charged forward, but he was faster. "NO!" She cried. He bent down, stuck the tip of the taser in the water, and pulled the trigger.

At first, nothing happened. Then the first bolt struck Emily in the leg like a snakebite, paralyzing her entire body. The next thousand bolts hit the exact same way. Her skin started to melt, and her hair caught on fire, although it was put out when she hit the water with an inhuman splash.

Not that it mattered, though, because she was dead before she even fell over.

After almost a full minute, the speakers once again buzzed to life, but this time, Ms. Ames sounded almost scared. She said, in disbelief, “Emily Demersman... Has been eliminated!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It had taken Nicole a couple of hours to write her note for Hunter. She had gone through several rough drafts, countless edits and revisions, and enough false starts that she could have gone through a whole notebook if it wasn’t for her eraser. She could never settle on exactly what to say in it, and to make matters worse, her handwriting was so atrocious that she had to resort to writing the final draft twice; Once very slowly and carefully in pencil, and again in pen, writing over what was already there and erasing any sloppy mistakes she had left the first time.

Finally, by about noon or so, she had been satisfied enough with it to take it back inside. Hunter hadn’t been there, so she had decided to leave it on his bag instead, held down by the arm straps.

She felt mostly confident in what she had written, having made a concerted effort to keep to a steady balance between saying what she needed to say, and implying what she needed to imply. She steeled her resolve, forcing herself to not turn back.

Caring about people was hard. She had avoided it for years, and on the couple of occasions that she had tried it, it had blown up in her face... Although maybe with Jecka and Ari, her mistake had been that she had never truly let her guard down. Maybe she needed to be more honest about her emotions, both with herself and others.

While writing, she had heard the announcements of Emily and Megan’s death, both of which had caught her by surprise. That wasn’t how she had expected things to play out, but in the end, it was just her, Hunter and Jeffery left alive now.

Sooner or later, Jeffery would come for them. With over three quarters of the map now active, it wouldn’t take him long to find her. She was ready to die at this point, but it was the anticipation that was getting to her. It was fucking with her nerves so bad she was expecting to take herself out with a heart attack at any moment.

Thus, it was with a sense of relief that she saw Jeffery cross the road, heading for her, a machine gun pointing in her direction. She closed her eyes, waiting for the telltale bang, but nothing happened. She opened her eyes, curiously, to see Jeffery gesturing towards the church, whose bell tower he had desecrated just days before. “Go in there,” he told her.

Swallowing hard, she stood and did as told. She held her hands up in the air and marched silently through the big glass doors into the vestibule, where he allowed her to stop. She turned around. “Look, I’m tired, okay? I give up. If you’re going to kill me, just do it. Don’t rape me first, and if possible, don’t do it afterwards either.”

Jeffery went red. “Rape you? Why would I do that?” He replied, in his usual wimpy demeanor.

Nicole’s jaw fell open at the shocking lack of an edge in his voice. “Okay, so just kill me then?”

“I don’t want to do that either!” He protested. “I just want to leave you somewhere safe while I go out and kill Hunter.”

She stared at him, overwhelmed by confusion. “Wait, why kill Hunter and not me?”

“Well that should be obvious, I don’t want him getting in the way of our life together, is all. He did protect you for me, though, so I want to thank him first.”

“Jeffery, what the fuck are you talking about?!” Nicole demanded, her patience having long since ran out.

Jeffery blushed. “Well, remember on the bus, when you said I shouldn’t be nice to you when there was a whole busload of other people I could be nice to instead?”

Nicole added up what he was saying in her head. “Jeffery, did you actually think I meant that I would fuck you if we were the only two kids left?”

“Well no, I know you didn’t literally mean that,” he admitted. “But something happened to me on that first night. I was being attacked by some bullies, and they had all this power over me. But then I turned the tables, scaring two of them off and killing the other two, and it was like I was the one with the power! And that was when I realized something: All this time, I wasn’t unworthy of you because I was nerdy, or awkward, or gross.”

“It was literally all of those things,” Nicole countered.

“...But it was because I’ve never been a true alpha male!” Jeffery continued. “Every person I kill on this island, I become more powerful than them. Once they’re all gone, and there’s nobody left to challenge me, I become the alpha of the island! And once that happened, it could finally just be me and you!” He proclaimed, proudly. “Well, you and Jecka, but unfortunately she didn’t make it.”

Nicole bristled at this. “Jeffery, that’s fucking stupid. There can only be one winner in this game. Everyone else has to die.”

Jeffery smiled mischievously. “Not if we kill the teachers... Well, except Ms. Ames, I do still need my Mommy fix.”

“And how the fuck...”

He raised an index finger in the air like a scientist making a point. “I had a few theories about that, but just an hour ago, I discovered a series of maintenance tunnels running across the island. The collars don’t work under there, so if we hide, then when the system fails to kill us, the teachers will have to turn it off to come out and try to find us. That’s when we pop out and take them down!”

Nicole shook her head. “Jeffery, that won’t work, because...” She stopped herself. “Look, even if you do kill Hunter and the teachers, I won’t love you for that.”

“You don’t have to,” he explained casually. “If I lock you up long enough, you’ll be broken by the time I decide to impregnate you.”

Nicole stared at him in horror as these insane words rolled off of his tongue. She was going to say more, until she noticed something moving over his shoulder. Hunter was outside, shotgun at his side, and he was approaching the church’s front door. Jeffery followed his gaze, and noticed this as well. “I’ll be right back, Nicole.”

“No, wait! Jeffery, the thing about your plan is...”

“Don’t try to stop me.”

As he started to walk away, Nicole imagined herself disassociating from her body, and floating in the air, staring down at herself like an astral projection. That was the only way she could get through what needed to be done. She willed her body forward, grabbed Jeffery by the shoulder, spun him around, and kissed him.

Her hands on his cheeks, she pressed her lips intensely into his. He was too stunned to kiss back, so she parted his lips with her tongue, wiggled it between his teeth, and massaged his tongue with hers.

Finally, he relaxed. He sighed into her mouth, filling it with the nastiest breath she had ever tasted, but she held on. As his grip of the AR15 loosened, she gently trailed a hand down his bare arm, tickling his goosebumps with her fingertips, and plucked the gun free of him.

She released him, and took a step back. He was practically in a coma, despite standing on his own feet. His eyes were glazed over behind his fogged up glasses, his mouth hung open, and a trail of drool trickled down his chin.

“Was that all you ever dreamed it could be?” She cooed, as he slowly nodded. Before he could recover, she pressed the nozzle of the AR15 under his chin, pointing directly up. “Say hello to the rabbits, Lenny.”

She pulled the trigger, sending a stream of bullets into his brain, and crashing through the top of his skull. Jeffery crumpled to the ground like a ragdoll, his mind having already preceded his body to heaven.

The loudspeakers buzzed back to life. “Jeffery Jorgensen has been eliminated!”

Nicole sighed, and left the vestibule, to find Hunter waiting for her. Before she could say a word, he raised the shotgun, pointing it directly at her.

Her smile faltered as he pulled the trigger.

A minute or two after her body hit the road, the loudspeaker buzzed to life one final time. “N- Nicole Yuu... Has been eliminated! The winner of the Battle Royale game is... Hunter Murphy!!!”

To be continued

Chapter Text

Chapter 10

“Would Hunter Murphy please report back to the school to confirm his victory, please? All active areas, from this point forward, will no longer be active. And please abandon all weapons on your person before you make your approach.”

Having made this announcement, Robert Johnson shut off the PA and sank back into his chair, sighing heavily as he dragged his hand down his face. This entire situation had just been one unmitigated disaster, and what made things worse was, he had expected as much from the beginning.

Right from his first meeting with Antonio Stamboli... A very charismatic and snazzy dressing man by every definition... He had fully understood the true meaning of the term “Make him an offer he can’t refuse.” This was because the Stamboli family had somehow been aware of all of the legal trouble he had been dealing with, and were quick to offer the exact kind of help he needed.

True, he had been able to fight off one or two sexual harassment claims from his underage students, as it was their word against his, and there was never any hard evidence against him, but the problem had only gotten bigger as more of them started speaking up. Granted he did have tenure, so he had the teacher’s union and all of their protective laws to fall back on, but getting thrown in jail for real was the one thing that trumped them in terms of power.

Well, on paper, at least. Because the final nail in his coffin had always seemed like it would be Nicole Yuu, a fiendishly clever little minx who had managed to put him in check at every turn. Was it the fact that she was a quarter Asian? Was that the reason she had been so devilishly smart? Oh, she didn’t like to tell people she wasn’t fully white, and Robert couldn’t blame her given the racially homogenous environment that Lake Braddock was, but he was no stranger to background checks.

It was thanks to her, more than anyone else, that he had been on the verge of losing his counselor’s license, but then, along came a spider. Once he was trapped in the Stamboli family’s web, he had no choice but to nod along and pretend their plan wasn’t the single stupidest thing he had ever heard.

Their plan was for four legally compromised staff members... The Coach, who was having similar issues to his own; Ms. Ames, who had been exposed for having extremely problematic views BEFORE she could officially make tenure... The security guard, who had a long history of violently abusing his power and was working on extremely thin ice... And himself, to gas the entire junior class, transport them all to this island to play the game, and then fabricate some massive multi-bus disaster, which only Emily would survive... Because she was a recent addition to the Stamboli family, the game was entirely for her enjoyment, and she was supposed to win.

He would have called this plan a delicate house of cards, except most card houses aren’t built using cards that are coated in oil first. This bullshit had never had any chance of succeeding, but he had been given no choice but to try and force it to work with duck tape, hopes and dreams.

Hell, that house of cards had been built on a foundation of lies and bluffs. None of this had been legal at all. He had no idea what that dumb security guard had done with Principal Lynn, probably killed her, but nobody’s parents had actually been visited. To make matters even dumber, the idea that certain areas would trigger peoples’ collars when activated had been a blatant lie! This island had never been equipped for something like that! That had just been a buff to keep people moving!

Oh, sure, he DID have the ability to detonate specific collars remotely, so he was supposed to keep up with that by artificially killing anyone who lingered too long in an active area(except for Emily) but he had to basically stay up about twenty hours each day to make sure he stayed on top of that.

Hilariously, he and Priscilla were basically using the island’s fire alarm system as loudspeakers, and thankfully they were able to do this from the school, because if that system worked from the mansion, they would both be roasted alive by now.

Speaking of the mansion, that was another problem entirely. The idea that Emily might not survive this game had occurred to him, but the idea that Bill Stamboli’s mansion would get burned to the ground? On an island that for some reason didn’t have its own fire department? What were the fucking odds? And with both of these disasters on the table, he didn’t even want to think about what the Stamboli family might do to him.

In any case, this whole debacle hadn’t been a total loss. He and Scott had quite enjoyed handling all of those unconscious teenage girls while bringing everyone to the school. On top of that, security footage was limited, but over the course of the last three days he had collected some very lucrative footage to sell on the dark web. He did lament the fact that Nicole had escaped being recorded during her two most important moments... Getting blasted by Hunter’s gun, first in a metaphorical sense, and later in a very literal sense... But he had recorded the audio of both occurrences, and he would have no problem enjoying both later.

Before he could rewind his audio-exclusive sex tape of Hunter and Nicole to help ease his stressed nerves again, the door to the control room opened off to his side. Priscilla Ames strolled in, and the school security guard poked his head in.

“Mr. Johnson, I’m sorry to interrupt, but what’s the plan from here? I mean...”

“Just bring the fucking boat around, Judy,” he interrupted.

“It’s just Jude,” the guard clarified.

Rob felt yet another one of his nerves threaten to snap. “Jude, Judy, Judo, whatever, just bring the fucking boat around, okay? Try not to shoot a hole in it or something.”

The guard seemed to narrow his eyes... It was hard to tell behind his black sunglasses, which he insisted on wearing inside for some reason, but he closed the door and left.

“You could try to be nicer to him,” Priscilla observed.

“You wouldn’t say that if he were black,” Rob countered.

“You don’t know that.”

Rob just shook his head and leaned back in his chair.

“What IS the plan, though?” She insisted. “These people will literally kill us if we don’t think of something to do to appease them.”

Rob raised his hands halfway to the sky. “It’s not our fault! None of this is our fault! This plan was idiotic from the beginning, and we sure as hell didn’t think of it!”

“Oh, you’re right, we should tell them that, because I’m sure they’ll have the humility to accept their own folly and let us go, right? Instead of using us as scapegoats, and silencing us to make sure we can’t tell anybody about any of this?” Priscilla was almost out of breath by the time her sarcastic rant was over. “Face it, we’re not dealing with regular people. We are dealing with wealthy, evil people with tiny brains and massive egos, we’re like cockroaches to them; We’re only worth the cost of an exterminator.”

Rob bit down on his tongue hard, because she was right.

“Look, we need to clean this mess up and get the fuck out of here. We can escape with Jude on the boat, we just need to clean up one loose end first...”

She reached for the control panel, presumably to kill Hunter, but with a flash of inspiration, Rob grabbed her wrist to stop her. “No, not so fast...”

She flushed angrily at him, having never been a fan of a man’s forceful touch. “Let go of me this instant!”

Rob put his free hand up, palm in her direction, to silence her. “We can use him. He survived where Emily didn’t. I say we hand him over, so by the time Stamboli’s done with him, he might go easier on us.”

He let go, and she retracted her hand. “Do you really think so?”

“It’s a better plan than trying to run, when we only have enough gas to make it to the shores of Long Island.”

Priscilla stood. “All right, then-”

Before she could continue, the phone on Rob’s desk rang. The two shared a glance, then put out their hands in front of them. In unison, they both said “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

Rob put out paper, and Priscilla put out rock. Priscilla swore, and picked up the phone, leaving the room with it as Rob went about the task of collecting all of the data he had recorded that he actually wanted to keep.

Once it was all squared away, he made his way to the front entrance of the school, where the body of Brielle Moss still lay. Someone was going to have to collect all of these bodies and bring them to the mainland so they could be placed in a bus and set on fire. He hadn’t heard anything about it being him, so he was desperately hoping that it wasn’t. Scott Colby might not be averse to intimate contact with corpses, but even looking at one made Rob’s skin crawl.

Priscilla soon joined him, wiping some errant sweat off of her brow. “Well, we might survive this with most of our teeth and nails not being pulled out.”

Rob forced a smile, but chose not to respond. They stood there, fidgeting slightly, for about thirty minutes before Hunter Murphy showed up, emerging from the forest aided by a walking stick, looking all war- torn. However there were no weapons on him..

A lengthy silence ensued, until Rob started clapping for him, and Priscilla took her cue to do the same. “Congratulations Hunter! I should have known our school’s most decorated quarterback would also prove to be its ultimate survivor!”

“I’m actually mostly a running back,” he corrected, “But I also do the defensive line sometimes...”

“What does it matter?” Rob said, approaching him with a wide, happy grin and patting him hard on the shoulder. “You won the game after only killing two people, and you thawed the icy heart of one of them, you casanova you.”

Rob pulled out a small electronic device from his pocket, placed it under Hunter’s collar, and deactivated it, removing it safely from around Hunter’s neck.

Hunter looked confused. “What’s a casanova?”

Mr. Ames coughed. “It means you’re a real ladies man,” she offered stiffly. Rob knew how much it killed her to praise a boy for sleeping with a girl and then killing her, but she was doing an admirable job pretending otherwise.

“I mean I didn’t want to, but...”

“But it was her or you,” Rob assessed. “Perfectly understandable, and I can’t wait to see your face in all the headlines tomorrow!” Another lie, but they couldn’t stop now.

“Yeah, I’m gonna be famous, right?” He cracked a lopsided smile.

“Positively infamous,” Priscilla proclaimed. “But first, we need to get you home.”

Rob laughed jovially, placing a hand on Hunter’s back and guiding him down the road in the direction of the docks. “I know, there’s a little more walking in your future, but don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to rest on the trip back to the mainland. You don’t get seasick, do you?”

Hunter absently shook his head. “No, my Dad and I go on fishing trips sometimes, I’m used to it.”

They continued to exchange small talk, Rob throwing out whatever questions he could think of to keep Hunter’s mind occupied... No matter how simple of a task that really was... Until they reached the docks. They got there, just as a blue and white class 2 fishing boat pulled up along the shore.

As soon as the dock was lined up for them, Ms. Ames gestured for Hunter to step forward. “After you, champ!”

As Hunter stepped forward, she and Rob shared another look, this one more predatory than before. They were going to deliver this dumb jock directly to Bill Stamboli on a silver platter, bound and gagged, and it was going to be the easiest part of this nightmare of a weekend by far.

Ms. Ames gestured next to Rob. “Age before beauty?”

Rob smirked. I’ve got you beat on both counts,” he joked, but accepted her invitation. As Hunter stepped down onto the deck of the boat, Rob prepared to follow him down, until he heard a strange noise from Priscilla behind him. He turned just in time to see her land face down on the dock, the handle a small knife sticking out of her upper back. She didn’t move, but struggled to breathe for a moment or two, before falling limp.

Before Rob could turn all the way around, a dark shape rushed at him, and he found himself staring into Nicole Yuu’s one good eye as she aimed Hunter’s discarded shotgun at his face.

“Hey Hunter, did you see? I actually hit her!” She practically cheered.

“Proud of you, dude,” he called back.

Rob’s face went hot, but he held his tongue as he assessed the situation, and his mind raced through all of the possibilities. There was only one he could think of, and as well as he had predicted so much else going wrong, this one possibility had escaped him. “So when did you figure it out?”

Nicole just smirked.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nicole’s letter to Hunter:

Whatever you do, do not read this letter out loud. There is a microphone in your collar, and the teachers can hear everything you say.

Over the last few days, you have been the best friend I’ve ever had. Maybe even better than Jecka, and maybe even more than I had ever expected out of anyone. I know I can rely on you, so for this reason, I have chosen to trust you.

The truth is, I don’t have faith in us. Time is running out, and Jeffery will be coming for us at any point, and I don’t think we have a chance of surviving this.

We do, however, have one last hope remaining, but it’s very slim. My collar is fake. I suspected it after I escaped from Coach Colby, but I confirmed it when I was comparing it to Karen’s collar, which had a lot of parts that mine doesn’t. I’m sorry I kept this from you, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about you, or if I even wanted to leave this island with you, but now I’m sure. I think I’ve been sure ever since we found Jecka. I don’t give a fuck if you believe in good people and bad people, I think you’re a good person, and you deserve to leave here more than anyone else, even me.

If we do survive and kill Jeffery, here’s what I want you to do... Pretend to kill me. Make it sound believable. If I’m right, then hey can’t track me, hear me, or tell if I’m alive or dead. Let them think you beat me, tell them whatever they need to hear, and I’ll take care of the rest. If I’m wrong, I’ll kill myself so you can go home.

-Nicole

PS: I’m glad I didn’t murder you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“It was Coach Colby’s choice, wasn’t it?” Nicole asked. “He wanted to violate me, and he didn’t want to risk accidentally setting off a real collar in the process, so he gave me a fake one. He was gonna kill me afterwards, so I wasn’t supposed to leave that classroom anyway, was I?”

Rob just nodded, looking this way and that for some chance of escape. “The dud was supposed to be for Emily, but she refused to wear it, so it just happened to be lying around. It was one hundred percent the Coach’s idea, I swear!”

“Oh, and you were so opposed to it, weren’t you?”

Rob flushed. He peered over his shoulder at Hunter, who was still standing there on the starboard side of the deck, his attention on them as the security guard slowly made his way out of the cabin. “You’d trust her over me? She’s evil! She’s only going to betray you!”

Nicole shrugged. “Honestly, I was planning to do that at first. No offense, Hunter.”

“Nah, I get it,” Hunter replied.

“But as far as lackeys go? I like this one. I think I’m going to keep it.”

Rob smirked as he caught a fleeting glimpse of the guard sneaking up on Hunter. Rob raised his hands out at about shoulder level, palms out and fingers spread, in order to block Nicole’s view of what was happening behind him a little better. “All right, I surrender... I’m going to take both of you home to Virginia and reunite you with your families. Just put down the gun, and we’ll all board the boat and get out of here.”

He jammed his tongue into his cheek to keep himself from smirking. With two sacrifices for the Stamboli family, he was sure to get away with everything!

He waited until he heard the telltale sound of a struggle behind him to lower his arms, chancing a glance over his shoulder to see the guard put Hunter in a half nelson with one arm, and placing the barrel of a Glock against his head with his other arm. He turned back to Nicole with a deliberately shit-eating grin. “What now, Nicole? It’s the moment of truth. How much does this boy mean to you?”

Nicole grit her teeth, and her aim wavered. “Let him go...”

“Or what?” Rob challenged. “You shoot me, Judah shoots your boyfriend.”

“It’s Jude,” the guard corrected, but Rob pretended not to hear him.

At Nicole’s lack of a response, Rob started laughing. “Seriously? This is it? The first person in your life you’ve ever decided to show any actual loyalty to? I mean come on, if it were anyone else in his position, you wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me and get them killed. Even Jecka, oh, you might hesitate, but in the end, you’d have no problem showing your true colors.”

Nicole trembled, and to Rob’s immense satisfaction, a single tear fell down her cheek. “Let him go, and take me instead.”

Rob shook his head, taking a step back. “That’s not an option, I’m afraid we’ll be taking both of you. Judas, take Hunter into the cabin and-”

“It’s Jude!” The security guard asserted.

“I don’t care!” Rob screamed. “Will you get that through your jar-shaped head and do your fucking job already?!”

Jude practically growled as he stared past Rob, and directly at Nicole. “Hey kid! I know how to drive the ship. If I let you kill this bastard, and take you both home safely, will you testify that I’ve been secretly trying to help save you kids the whole time I was here?”

Rob’s brain wrinkled over the absurdity of that lie, but Nicole raised her free hand, fingers spread in submission. “Dude, I will swear on my mother’s grave.”

“Hey!” Rob interjected.

“And you?” Jude asked Hunter.

Hunter glanced back and forth between Nicole and Counselor Johnson before answering. “I mean it would be bearing false witness, but at this point, who fucking cares?”

Satisfied, Jude shot Rob a wicked grin. “You know I’ve never liked you, right, you filthy piece of pedophile trash? You and the Stambolis can all rot in hell.”

Rob’s eyes went wide as he turned to Nicole, raising his arms to protect his face. “No!”

Seeing this, Nicole lowered her gun... Just enough to shoot him in the crotch instead.

Counselor Robert Johnson howled in pain, all of his inhibitions and self-awareness gone with the wind as he felt the damage, and all the essential parts of himself that had been pulverized in the blast. His inner thighs had been shredded, and even worse, there was now nothing but a bloody hole resting in between them. He fell over on his side next to Ms. Ames, as Nicole took several steps back to admire her work.

“Cool,” was all she said as Jude stepped forth to push both of their bodies into the ocean. The counselor wasn’t technically dead yet, but for the first time since he’d earned his tenured status, he was in no condition to tread water for very long.

Best case scenario, she figured, he’d be eaten by sharks.

Catching sight of Hunter, Nicole tossed her shotgun away, and dashed forward, leaping off of the dock and into his arms, where he was waiting to catch her, spinning her around until they came to a rest... Or they tried to, but their momentum had sent the boat rocking violently from side to side.

“Careful, you idiots,” Jude called out, climbing back on board. “It’s a boat, remember? We may be safe now, but we can still capsize.”

“Sorry,” Nicole said, her arms still wrapped around Hunter’s waist.

“So what happens now?” Hunter wondered out loud.

Jude sighed. “Well, we can’t just go directly back to Virginia, we don’t have enough fuel. We’ll have to make a pit stop in Long Island.” He glanced up at the while untying the boat from the dock, offering Nicole a rare glimpse of a mischievous glimmer in his eye. “Might be there for a few days, so I hope you two can keep each other entertained.”

“And what about our families?” Hunter asked.

“You didn’t believe that stupid bluff, did you?” Jude responded. They’re all fine. And while we’re at it, Principal Lynn is still alive too. I told Bobby I killed her, but I actually just handcuffed her to a radiator. She should have gotten free by now, which means law enforcement is already getting involved.”

The boat began moving underneath them with a vicious rumble. “It’s gonna get rough from here,” he explained. “The situation is, well, complicated. There’s gonna be several lengthy legal battles, and you’re not going to be able to stay out of the spotlight for very long. All I can really advise you to do is relax for now, and enjoy what little freedom you have while you have it.”

He returned to the cabin, leaving Hunter and Nicole alone to take their respective seats next to each other.

“Hold still for a minute,” Hunter asked. He reached into his duffel bag, pulling out his hunting knife, the one souvenir of this place that he actually wanted to keep, and placed the tip just under Nicole’s fake collar. With gentle and careful precision, he cut it off of her, and flung it behind him into the ocean.

Nicole smiled, her trust in him once again being rewarded. “You know, I might not have been entirely asleep when you were talking to Bradley.”

“Yeah?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

“We made it out alive, so, did you have something you wanted to ask me? Or would you rather wait for all this other shit to blow over first?”

He thought for a second, before turning his head west towards the setting sun that they were currently sailing away from. “I was going to wait until at least all the funerals were over, but how often are we ever going to be in New York?”

With a contented smile, Nicole leaned her head on Hunter’s shoulder as they sailed back to the real world.

The end