Chapter 17: Who Gets to Decide What You Deserve?
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Happy Christmas Day, everybody! I hope you're enjoying your week and this story. We're super close to the ending now, and I am excited to see how things wrap up. This story ended up going in directions a little different than I intended, but I think as a story, I've got a good foundation I can use to rebuild an even better version of it down the line. Hopefully, in the next year, I'll be able to make some deep revisions that bring out its full potential.

If you'd like to get early access to this story and support me a little in the process, you can do so via Patreon to read new chapters up to two weeks early. You can also visit my LinkTree for additional ways to both consume and support my work. And please check out the STWL Presents webpage where all our bundles are coalesced. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Special thanks to my patrons of honor: Alex, Chloe Werner, Grymmette, Zoey Jones, Elliana May, and Amanda Robins!

“You can call me Jackie.”

The stranger was unremarkable beneath her mask. Jackie was older than Cindy had pictured, and the bags under her eyes aged her even further. Despite this, she stood with her shoulders back and chin up even just to sear canned meat on a skillet.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve said my own name out loud,” Jackie mused, staring off into the distance. “There’s a number of things you need to know right away. We’re safe here, generally, but it’s dangerous to stay in one spot for too many hours at a time. Patrolling the island takes a lot of time, and I have several smaller camouflaged camps across the jungle that you’ll need to memorize.”

Cindy grunted in acknowledgement, her eyes wandering around the messy room but always returning to the rifle propped against the wall.

Jackie continued, “This lifestyle is difficult, stressful, and exhausting. Having someone to talk to will hopefully ease the boredom a little. That being said, you can’t trust your own senses much; the island will use every trick you can imagine, and some new ones, to get in your head and disorient you. The first couple of months are going to be miserable, probably the first year overall. Speaking of, I hope you like space blankets; it gets cold in the winter.

“What about the temple?” Cindy picked some faded papers off the ground and squinted at the illegible scribbles. “You mentioned one earlier. Where is it? Is that where the ‘goddess’ lives?”

“Oh, that’s a little up the mountain. Nothing lives there, so don’t worry. There is a path, but it’s not reliable, and I haven’t changed the guiderope in some time. The island’s influence is stronger there than anywhere else, so it’s going to be a long time before you’re ready to go near it.”

Without a table, they had to eat on one of the large crates. The meal was as pitiful as the tarnished metal plate Cindy was eating off of. Spam and cold canned corn did not make a promising first impression of Jackie’s lifestyle. Inspecting the old fork closely, Cindy thought she could see specks of rust on the handle.

Jackie stared at her, not even touching her own food. Cindy worked hard to avoid eye contact and chew her slop. The low buzz of the lamp, combined with the smell of the dank basement, weakened her appetite so much that every swallow was a challenge.

“So… how long have you been here?”

“At least half my life, now,” Jackie replied flatly. “I do my best to keep track of the seasons, but I mostly live in the moment. Doesn’t much matter what year it is, anyway. Not here.”

Cindy pushed the arguably-human-grade meat across the plate for a bit.

“Um… I’m going to need a place to sleep.”

“Here, of course. This room is big enough for two.”

Cindy glanced around, confident that it was not, and said, “I still need a bed.”

Jackie nodded slowly. “Yes.”

Scowling, Cindy asked, “Do you have another cot somewhere?”

“In storage, no doubt.”

“Where is that?”

“You’ll get lost if you go. Stay here where it’s safer. I’ll grab what you need.”

She stood and picked up her spear, heading for the door. Cindy, not even trying to hide her disdain, said, “I’m going to need a toothbrush, too. And clothes to wear!”

Cindy waited until she heard Jackie ascend the stairs at the end of the hall, then counted to one hundred. That was surely enough time.She threw open one of the small ammo boxes and began stuffing rifle cartridges into her pockets.

The rifle felt alien in Cindy’s hands, and she was afraid to hold it too tightly in case it went off by accident. Cindy took the stairs slowly, nerves screaming that Jackie would catch her any second. Walking through the halls agonizingly slowly, so as not to telegraph she was on the move, Cindy found her way to the front doors and emerged into the evening light.

The guide rope Jackie had mentioned started just outside the eastern entrance of the compound and followed a narrow trail up the mountain. Cindy ran, breathing haggard, gun clutched perilously in her arms, scraping her legs on rocks as she tripped her way up the crumbling mountain face. She didn’t know how long she had before Jackie realized where she’d gone, but her head start was shrinking every moment.

Cindy wasn’t going to let her friends risk their lives for her, but she had no intention of laying down and letting this stupid fucking island take away her chance at a normal life.

The path was well-worn but steep. Running became unfeasible quickly, and Cindy was slowed further by continuously glancing behind her to look for Jackie in pursuit. Even though the mountain wasn’t any taller than a high-rise, much smaller than the average skyscraper, Cindy found herself struggling to breathe as she got higher up. Her vision was spotty around the edges, and she was starting to feel dizzy. More than once, she found herself swaying and had to plant her feet firmly to reorient herself. Darkness eked into the corners of her vision. Something was wrong, but she tried to shake it off and follow the guideline.

Higher up, the trees grew thicker, and the ground evened out just enough that Cindy didn’t have to lean forward as she climbed. The gun was heavy in her arms, and an unfamiliar weight pressed down on her shoulders. Her foot slipped on a loose stone, causing Cindy to tumble forward, and she only barely caught herself before falling onto the gun.

As she stood again, the soft ground crumbled beneath her. Cindy screamed as she fell, sliding down the slope and kicking her feet in a desperate attempt to catch herself on something. She grabbed for the guideline, catching it briefly but only cutting the skin on her palm. Her foot hit a large tree root sticking out of the ground, and she was knocked off-balance. Her body pivoted until she was sliding down nearly headfirst. The gun flew from her hands, and she covered her head in desperation as she stopped sliding and started tumbling.

Cindy came to a stop halfway down the hill on a slightly more generous incline. She couldn’t see where the gun had fallen, and the clothes she’d borrowed from Terri were torn and caked in dirt. Gritting her teeth, Cindy rubbed the tears out of her eyes and screamed, hammering her bloody hand into the dirt in frustration as she cussed the island and everyone who had ever set foot there.

Someone laughed. Cindy spun around, but the sound bounced around the trees. The rifle had disappeared, and Cindy felt much more naked than she had the day she’d first borrowed Terri’s clothes. In the corner of her eye, a figure stepped out from behind a narrow tree, but they were gone when Cindy turned.

She jumped to her feet and half-ran, half-slid further down the mountain, never straying more than a yard from the frayed guideline. A rock pelted her in the back, and someone to her left whispered her name into her ear, but Cindy kept her eyes forward. Then she blinked and the ground was out from under her. She fell into the sudden chasm, hitting the ground and tumbling over in the mud, realizing after a few moments that it was a riverbed. The guiderope was done, and the horizon looked different.

Another pebble hit her, this time in the head, and she cried out.

“Should have held tighter onto the gun.”

Cindy scrambled away from Winter’s voice, but from behind her, she heard Roberto add, “I mean, there’s only one thing you could do with it, but it’s not like you have other options.”

“Shut up!”

There were footsteps all around her. Cindy spun around, but there were too many indistinct figures running circles around her in the distance. She was surrounded, and every time she paused, the footsteps behind her got closer.

A hand grazed her back, and when Cindy turned, Diana was standing there.

“Cindy? What’s wrong?”

Cindy tried to take a step back, but Diana grabbed her by the wrist. It was a warm, firm grip, and Cindy almost sobbed at how real it felt, but she pulled harder, and Diana’s hand burst into a black smoke that wafted away. The apparition stared at it with utter shock and amazement for a moment before screaming and clutching the stump of her arm.

“Stop it!” Cindy cried, clutching her head. “Stop it!”

“What did you do to her?!”

That voice… took Cindy a moment to place. She turned around slowly to see a hulking man with broad shoulders and dead eyes lumbering toward her with Jackie’s rifle in his hands. She recognized his face from the mirror, but her eyes were stuck on the barrel of the gun as he pointed it toward her.

Someone’s arms wrapped around Cindy’s neck from behind, causing her to cry out.

“Don’t worry!” Terri whispered into her ear. “I’ve got you.”

She bit down on Cindy’s ear hard enough to make her scream. Cindy flailed, but her legs were stuck calf-deep in the mud, and no matter how hard she battered at the fake Terri, it would not let go of her. The false Clay raised his gun to aim–

A sharp metal spear burst through his chest from behind, spilling black smoke everywhere. The figure’s eyes bulged for a moment before his entire body dissipated; the gun hit the ground and, mercifully, did not go off. The figure holding Cindy disappeared immediately, and she fell to the ground, decidedly not sinking into the soil. She brought a hand to her stinging ear to reveal blood.

Jackie stepped forward, glowering through her mask as her shadow fell over Cindy.

 

“Reckless! I can’t believe someone your age is still acting this much like a child!” Jackie, in her frustration, wrapped the bandage around Cindy’s hand tighter than she needed to. “Even if you weren’t being hunted by a supernatural force, running into unknown wilderness with a gun you haven’t been trained to use is the most careless thing I have ever seen someone do! You have no respect for your own safety.”

Cindy pulled away her arm, crying, “I’m not going to live the rest of my life in fear of something I can’t even see! I know it’s dangerous, but the only chance I have at freedom is fighting back. I am not going to live on this goddamn island for the next twenty years. Maybe this fucking ‘bedroom’ is enough for you, but I’m already sick of it.”

“I don’t think it’s sunk in for you yet, so I’m not going to mince words. Even if you don’t realize it, when you stepped onto this island, you stepped into a war zone. We are facing an enemy more unknowable and merciless than any foreign power. And I promise you, however afraid you may or may not be, dying is nowhere near the worst thing that this creature can do to you.”

“Fuck off,” Cindy said, but her voice trembled.

Jackie took a deep breath and recomposed herself, letting her shoulders fall. “What happened to you is tragic, Cindy. I understand that you’re angry, but you need to take this seriously as the life-or-death struggle that it is.”

“I understand that. But I… This isn’t my fault! I don’t deserve this just because I… All I did was make a few mistakes. I’m not a bad person. So why me?”

“Nothing about this is fair, but there’s no denying that it was our actions that brought us here. We’re just going to have to live with the fact–”

Jackie cut herself off and raised a hand to silence Cindy. Without turning her head, she glanced at the double doors and listened intently. It was another moment before Cindy could hear distant footsteps.

In one fluid motion, Jackie pulled the mask back on and threw her torn metal spear at Cindy. It hit her in the face and fell to the floor while she grabbed for it. Cindy picked it up and scowled at Jackie, who was facing the double doors but kept the gun barrel down. People were running down the stairs as fast as they could.

“Cindy!” echoed a familiar voice.

She froze. Alex kept calling out as he ran down the hallway, a barking dog at his heels, and then the doors burst open to reveal him, Diana–clothes wet, hair disheveled, but otherwise unharmed–and Nightwing.

“They’re gone! Everyone’s gone!”

Once they were sat down, Alex downed a whole bottle of water before explaining, “We got back and finished packing, but Terri wasn’t having it. She started talking about not taking ‘the easy way out,’ that she was going back to the cave to look for answers. There was a big argument, but she convinced Winter, and then Roberto and Chris weren’t going to split the group…”

“Nobody wanted to give you up without a fight,” Diana told Cindy.

“They were being stupid,” Alex said. “No offense, but if there was anything we could have figured out on our own to save you, it would have already happened. We all went into the caves, but me and Diana stayed further behind the others. So when… when it happened…”

Diana explained, shakily,” We saw them being attacked by something. It was hard to see in the dark and… I started running away before I could get a good look at it. But they were taken by something and it seemed to be alone.”

“Just gone. All at once. Barely even a struggle. Like we’d wandered into an ambush.”

“They barely had time to scream.”

Cindy’s vision spun, and she had to sit on the cot to avoid falling over. Her stomach threatened to reject every foul thing she’d eaten that day. Her decisions hadn’t mattered at all.

Jackie picked up a large army backpack and slung it over her shoulder, then picked up the rifle.

“Your friends are in serious trouble; we don’t have much time before it… I shouldn’t have been so distracted.” She picked up her gun again. “We have no choice; the only way to save them is to lure the entity out. We’re going to the temple.

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