jettisons | week two, saturday night

week two, saturday night

[Late Saturday night, after things have settled down, Bellamy heads back down to the beach. He's too keyed up to sleep despite his utter exhaustion. Almost everyone else is inside, so it's easy enough to spot Newt closer to the surf. Bellamy hesitates for a moment, then crosses the sand to join him, plopping down in the sand without an invitation, of course.]

If it's not about trust, what is it about?

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[Way to startle Newt, Bellamy. He's very much expecting everyone to leave him alone tonight, especially this guy, and when Newt realizes who's joined him, he's a little concerned that he's about to get his ass beat.

...Maybe not, though.]

In a word? Desperation. Like it or not, we're dependent on the Chiefs. We have to play by their rules. If we don't, we're dead.

[He doesn't have the energy to sugarcoat anything. He doubts it would help, anyway. He's not expecting Bellamy or anyone else to agree with him. The mob at the trial made that pretty damn clear.]

You don't know that for sure.

[Stubborn as always.]

Playing by their rules means most of us die until they decide to stop.

[Newt sighs heavily and scrubs his hands over his face.]

Dude, I'm really not in the mood to get into this again. We don't have any other options.

I'm not here to fight with you.

[Probably. He looks too drained for it.]

I'm trying to figure out where the hell your head is at.

[At least they're both tired as hell.]

Which means you're here to fight with me if you're going to contest everything I say. Why do you care where my head's at?

[It's an honest question.]

Because you're smart, and Raven likes you.

[Honest answer!]

[He snorts.] Still? [It's moderately surprising. He's been lowkey wondering when other people would start getting annoyed by him. Eventually, it's gonna stick. It's a bummer, but, eh, it's just how things go when he's gotta work with people. It's not going to stop him from voicing his opinions.]

Raven's smart too, which is why I don't get why you two seem to think we can get out of here by trying to fight everything. That's a stupid strategy.

[Also an honest answer!]

We never said anything about fighting. What's your plan? Hope you make the final cut and sail out of here?

[Bellamy still lowkey wants to punch a robot, though.]

Right now? Collect data while we play the game, minimizing casualties where possible, but... People are going to die. That's fact. Unless you've got some plan to stop this before Thursday, we'll have four bodies on our hands in a week. [Impending bodies, but still.]

It's messed up, but it's inevitable, and the Chiefs are holding all the cards. We don't even have win conditions yet. Might be that we just have to stop one killer, might be that we have to keep doing this until there's only one team left. [He shrugs. He really hopes it isn't the latter, but they can't rule it out.]

[Bellamy exhales slowly, looking away and staring out at the surf.]

That's what we've been trying to do. Minimize casualties. Austria pushing the Chiefs to prevent that set us back.

[And sure, the Chiefs were going to institute that rule anyway, but just the fact that Austria would push for it at all is what got under Bellamy's skin.]

Yeah, it does. What she did was stupid. [He's never not agreed with that, which is part of what's so frustrating about this.]

Persecuting her for it didn't help us, either.

Defending her didn't help either. How did you expect the rest of us to react?

I wasn't defending her. I was trying to get you to back off and focus.

[Which is defending her, but...]

You're the one that started a mob in the first place.

That was not a mob.

[God, Newt!]

You can say you weren't defending her all you want, but she didn't need you stepping in. And what was that crap you were saying about how we got it right last week?

[He rolls his eyes.] Call it what you want. You distracted a bunch of people from what we were actually there to do.

[And, god, he does not want to talk about the Yato fiasco right now. But, since Bellamy asked...]

We played the game correctly. And, all things considered, that was the best possible outcome for the situation we were put in. He was going to die anyway, so we spared two other innocent people in voting for him. Plus, it made the Chiefs happy, which worked out for us as a whole in this past week.

So that's what matters to you? Playing the game correctly? Four people are dead and that number is about to double. How many can you live with?

No. Oh my god, are you even listening to me? Do you seriously think I'm happy about this?

"We made the Chiefs happy, and it worked out for us"? Is that how you're looking at this?

[It's far too clinical and detached for Bellamy, who already views every death so far as a personal failure.]

[He growls, frustrated. This is not what he wanted to be doing tonight.]

I'm stating facts. When you boil everything down, that's what we're left with. You're right, four people are dead, and they were innocent and they didn't deserve it. That doesn't change what we're faced with.

[Bellamy shakes his head. He's drained and exhausted and so, so frustrated.]

I'm not playing this to the end.

[Newt isn't sure he likes where Bellamy's head is at with that, but... Fair.]

So what's your plan?

Raven and I are heading into the cave this week to see what we can find. If the AI's code is on this island, she can take care of it.

[He leaves the rest unspoken. If it isn't, they don't have a plan.]

Hm. Well there's bound to be something worth finding in the cave. No point in making it hard to get to if it's not.

[could be just more suffering for giggles but let him dream]

I highly doubt any code's on the island, but for argument's sake, let's say you do find it. What's she going to do?

I'm not the tech guy.

[Is that a hint of self-deprecation?]

We dealt with an AI back home that had more reach than this, and she worked her ass off to stop it. She can do it.

Hate to say it, but that doesn't sound like much of a plan. It's not like the Chiefs assembled us at random. [Well, they did, but his point is, they did their research.] They wouldn't have brought someone like Raven here if she could easily dismantle their whole system. And that's banking on there being a system to dismantle in the first place, and on that system being accessible to us.

If you have a better plan, I'm all ears.

[It's not sarcastic or dismissive. In fact, Bellamy sounds a bit desperate. He and Raven have spoken multiple times about a back up plan if she can't get to the Chiefs, and Bellamy still has nothing. It's starting to drive him crazy.]

I already told you my plan. You just don't like it. In between trials, our best bet is exploring the island to try to figure out the nature of our situation. We can't have a real plan until we have some semblance of a grasp on what we're working with.

You're right, I don't like it. We don't have that kind of time.

No, and there's nothing we can do about that. We have to work with what we've got. On the bright side, the island isn't that big, and the only locations we haven't explored yet are the cave and the jungle.

[Unfortunately the jungle is like 90% of the island, but still.]

It's easy to hide things in a jungle.

[He's not trying to be a pessimist, but...]

There has to be something we can do to speed this up.

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week two, saturday night

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