wanderlust | emerson scavenges {day 3}

Mac's heart stopped beating hours ago. Emerson has been pacing the halls ever since.

Jack and Wolf have both gone off to deal with their own separate agendas — and of course, they've all been instructed on where to meet up come nightfall — but this late in the day, Emerson finds it ironic how there is little to be afraid of. All the tributes are off in their own dark corners, licking their wounds, mourning new friends that have left them far too soon. He knows it's safer to travel in packs, and he far prefers having his allies by his side to venturing solo, but he can't lie and say it isn't nice to have a few moments to himself. To breathe.

He tries to force his thoughts to quiet down, focusing on his surroundings more than the dilemma unfolding inside of himself. Today, he watched a friend day — today, he watched another friend take a life. He is a witness, a bystander, an accomplice. For the first time, on the third day of this torture, Emerson has had his first taste of the carnage that awaits him. There are still so many people left to die, so many tragedies that haven't happened yet. They are like the corpses of stars still burning in the sky. Glittering just out of reach.

And that must make Mac a supernova, a galaxy of colors fading into the unknown until all that remains is indigo. It sounds more beautiful than choking on your own blood in an elevator shaft.

Glancing down at his hand and the keycard resting in it, the spoils of sponsorship he genuinely feels he has done nothing to deserve, Emerson feels the echo of static along his fingertips. He remembers drawing circles along his dying friend's back, whispering calming words as his breaths became more and more shallow, watching with tears in his eyes as a false sun sank beneath the mirage of a horizon. It looked like the fields of wheat caught fire in the moment Mac left this world. A final blaze of glory.

But here in the living, less than a day later, that warmth has already been replaced with cold steel. The door of a vault beckoning to him, trying to make a dragon out of a boy who just wants to go home. Greed does nothing for him. As long as he can keep Wolf and Jack alive, as long as he can make sure he doesn't fail them like he did with Mac, he promises he will never want for anything else. He begs and pleads for the impossible, knowing no force on this planet could ever will it to be so.

Still, he knows full well that getting what you want takes hard work. And he's willing. He swipes the card, peering in to the gleaming bounty and searching for something that will help him to even the odds that have been stacked so cruelly against himself and his friends.