in space, no one can hear you scream | EPA {day 4, d10}

So now they want to run. To the safety of the stairwell, no less.

Wolf scolds herself the second she thinks it.

---

Why is she so bitter? Programmed to respond with a scoff, a scowl, a roll of her eyes; it surely wasn't her parents doing. They were too obsessed with their projects to think of impressing a personality into their work of flesh and blood.

Was it genetic, a slice of deoxyribonucleic acid passed to her from her Grandmother - the matriach, the bringer of death, the creator of horrible things - that made her so callous? Or was it a lack of all of them, nature over nuture? Was her soul simply built to be terrible?

In the same way that Emerson is pure daylight and Jack is a spotlit ray of sun, Wolf knows she is the raincloud. A gloom that prevents them both from being their best, a dark presence set to ruin the mood. Something has shifted since her return. Wolf can feel it. And it is not the lack of Machiavelli, not when four became three. It's her. And what she did. And what she refuses to say, keeping her lips sealed tight, to both of them.

I'm sorry, she tries to say. But Wolf's always been shit at admitting her faults. So she does as she's told and sits, first stitching up Jack's leg and then attempting to mend the fractured strands of what this alliance was back together again. If she had any self-worth left Wolf might have left them to it after that, but she's a selfish girl. They all know she didn't come back for their benefit. She came back for her own: to make herself feel better, to lick her wounds and find sanction from the guilt eating her alive.

MAC WAS HERE AND HE WAS ALIVE.

She sees the way Jackson looks at her across the picnic blanket and wonders if she will be, come morning. Wolf wouldn't blame him if she didn't. Not really.

And then that bitter, poisonous knife slashes out in her mind: Arcadia, sat next to her in the vault. There, with her. Not with him. Terrible, she scolds herself once more. Weren't you supposed to be different from all the other Turings?

Wolf bites down so hard on the inside of her cheek it bleeds.

---

They want to run.

So she lets them - but she refuses to be the leader. Partly terrified she'll turn around again and find herself alone, history repeating itself. And partly... she's not sure what this unnamed reasoning is, taking the rear of their line as her legs struggle to keep up with the boys. Subconscious guilt, wanting to take the brunt of the attack? An excuse if they outrun her this time, leverage for a sick justification of her prior sins? Silently hoping they lose her in the maze that is this place so she doesn't have to watch Emerson die or Jack kill her?

None of it. All of it. By the time they make it to the stairwell she flings herself at the handle, panic rising when it won't budge. Wolf hasn't met a puzzle she cannot solve until now - surely a simple lock can be fixed. Again she tries, shaking the handle - twisting left, right, up and over, there simply must be a way...

... but there isn't. She crouches down, hurriedly pulling a bobby-pin from her pocket and swearing as it slips from her sweaty palms and clatters to the floor. Wolf scrambles for it, but there's no use - a second later she realises there's no lock. No keyhole. Nothing.

Anxiety rises. She's supposed to be the clever one, the conniving one, the one to find an escape route when there isn't one. Adrenaline kicks in and she tries to wedge a knife in the side of the door but nothing budges, despite throwing her shoulder and all of her weight into the door - it won't open.

We're going to die in here, she realises. Her eyes widen and her mouth goes dry, looking up to Emerson and Jack for answers. Words of reassurance. Anything.

What comes out of her mouth next is little more than a whisper.


"We're trapped in here."

Jack felt completely and utterly useless, standing by and watching while Wolf tried to unlock the door to the stairwell. He wouldn't even known how to do such a thing in the first place, but quietly, it answered a lot of questions he had about the girl.

"We're trapped in here."

He sighed. Trapped? He felt ice in his veins. Yet again, this was another case of the creatures being beyond Jack's comprehension- mindless, vengeful masses of plastic training dummies and invisible creatures made of light which could lift cows and erase them from existence particle by particle weren't exactly his specialty. He usually worked with, you know, animals that exist. This eldritch horror shit was getting a bit ridiculous- he would even take the Fae Queens of last Games, or the Thunderwings from the Games before over this: unbeatable foes. Forces of nature itself, crafted in laboratories for some sicko's viewing pleasure.

That's show business, baby.

Spotlight on the three of them still standing in front of the door, a million eyes waiting to see what would come. In order to make himself feel like he was of some use, Jack stepped in front of Emerson in an effort to protect him from whatever was waiting on the other side of that light. He was out of ideas: a rat backed into a corner. But you know what they say about rats: if they can't go around, they chew through. He felt a heat on his arm and watched as somehow the light grew more intense there and began to burn.

Then he realized something: unlike the cow, he and his allies were still on the ground. It hadn't picked them up, they could still try to run. "Come on!" He shouted over the droning pulse of the spotlight around them, "This thing ain't taking us to no secondary location!"

He surged forward.

They venture deeper into the suite. Across the field, dashing into the kitchen area. Emerson can see that the cogs in Wolf's mind are turning, her calculated gaze sweeping across the space. He remains at Jack's side, boy lurking in the safety of a shadow, and he catches his breath as the girl mutters to herself. "Light... heat... burns skin," her words conjure the memory again, the cry of the animal ringing in his ears. That's what death sounds like. He remembers the hitch of Mac's breath as his body came to a halt in his arms, the scream of the cow as it disintegrated. If he must go, he does not wish to leave in that way.

He does not wish to leave at all.

"Is there any food in here? Like meat?" Now, his mind starts piecing the puzzle pieces together, and he glances over at Wolf with wide eyes. "I think it feeds off organic matter." He already knew she was clever, but now he's certain she's a genius. It makes sense. If the entity hiding above them is a predator, then there has to be a reason that it is on the hunt. And regardless of the truth, she's right. If they don't find something to offer up in their place, then they're the next viable meal on the menu. He comes back to life, stepping away from Jack and helping his friend search through the pantry.

"I gotta say, just so y'all know, this ain't something that happens in Ten." He opens and closes cupboards, digging through the cabinets he became familiar with throughout the last week. "But if a suite based on my district is gonna have anything, there'll be meat somewhere." He rummages, casting cautious looks upwards as if the circular beam will appear at any moment, desperate to find a bag of jerky or canned meat or— he pulls open the freezer at the bottom of the refrigerator, and he finds a frozen steak sealed in plastic. "Got it!"

Acting on instinct, he tears through the packaging, balancing the large slab of beef in one hand as he scoops out a skillet from the drawer by the stove. He turns on the gas with a flick of his wrist, slamming the steak onto the pan and waiting for it to start sizzling, for the scent of cooking meat to fill the space and attract their enemy. "Let me thaw this a bit, and then I'm gonna toss it out into the field. That should buy us some time." It's too hot to consider the vents as an option, but he knows that they need to figure out an escape plan. They can't stay here.

"Y'all figure out where we should run next. I'll give the word once I'm all ready."