week two, saturday night

[jettisons]

[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?

Comments

[jettisons]

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?

[completelycrazy]

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

[jettisons]

"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.]

[completelycrazy]

[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.

[jettisons]

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

I'm not playing this to the end.

[completelycrazy]

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

So what's your plan?

[jettisons]

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.]

[completelycrazy]

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?

[jettisons]

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.

[completelycrazy]

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.

[jettisons]

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.]

[completelycrazy]

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.

[jettisons]

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

[completelycrazy]

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.]

[jettisons]

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.