I stare around the clearing as Aaron begins to drag the bodies and places them in a row. Kate is still on the floor comforting the mute who is still unconscious. The tears have finally stopped falling from my eyes however my entire body continues to shake slightly.

It all happened so fast, three murders in less than thirty seconds.  

Eve’s throat is completely torn open however the blood has finally stopped pouring out. I glance at her pale face once more before Aaron places her blue bandana across her face. He then places the boy a few feet away from her – the one whose neck he snapped – and does the same with his blue bandana.

Finally, he places the girl down, the one that attacked our mute however he is less sympathetic towards her. He covers her face with the veil of her team colours and he then gets to his feet.

‘’We should go to the LIS, we need to put in the two letters,’’ he suggests.

‘’What are they?’’ I ask, not that it really matters but I can’t stand the silence.

‘’The boy’s was ‘C’ and the girl’s was ‘H’,’’ he explains, ‘’Eve’s was ‘Y’.’’

‘’So that’s ‘C’, ‘H’, and ‘O’. Any ideas of what it could be?’’ I ask.

Aaron shakes his head, ‘’it’s too early to guess. Remember what they said to us about guessing?’’

I nod.

‘’We’re halfway there,’’ he states.

I nod my head again, then nudge it towards the mute on the floor with Kate, ‘’we’ll go whenever he is awake and up for it.’’

I sit with Aaron a few feet from Kate and the mute as we wait for him to come back around. After a few moments, Kate gets to her feet and begins walking around the clearing with her eyes glued to the ground. She appears to be looking for something.

‘’Whatcha doing Kate?’’ I ask.

‘’I have an idea,’’ begins Kate, ‘’because we still don’t know that poor boy’s name.’’

We watch as she gathers twigs and begins piling them up in a bunch beside the mute. It’s quite shocking that none of us have actually made much an effort to talk to the boy, what’s even worse is that we don’t know his name! I guess before we found out what the people that are behind this did to him, we all just assumed he didn’t want to talk. We overlooked the fact that perhaps he couldn’t.

‘’He can use the twigs to spell out his name for us. It’s not much, but it’s a start,’’ continues Kate.

‘’Good idea,’’ I admit, ‘’I can’t believe we didn’t think of that before.’’

‘’That is pretty smart,’’ adds Aaron.

As he speaks, the mute begins to stir on the floor. Kate places the twigs that are in her hand onto the ground and rushes to the boy. She kneels down on the ground beside him and lifts his head onto her lap, resting it gently on her upper legs.

‘’Thank you,’’ she says immediately, kissing him on the forehead.

I turn to Aaron and he cocks an eyebrow.

‘’What’s that all about?’’ he asks.

I shrug my shoulders and turn back to the two of them.

‘’Thank you, thank you, thank you,’’ she repeats and kisses his forehead once more, ‘’you’re so brave.’’

He winks at her and she smiles.

‘’Want to tell us what that’s about?’’ I ask.

‘’He saved me,’’ she answers, ‘’well, he pushed me out of the way of that girl. She was going to hit me with the rock.’’

‘’Ohhhh,’’ I reply.

That makes more sense. He put his own life at risk for hers. Quite cute considering they don’t know each other properly.

‘’Look at this,’’ she says.

She kisses him once more on the forehead and helps him to his knees. She then displays the twigs out before her on the ground and turns to him.

‘’Use the twigs to spell out your name,’’ she instructs.

He stares at the twigs momentarily, then picks up the first. I watch as he places it out before him horizontally. He picks up another and places it vertically – with the tip of one end touching the midpoint of the vertical twig. It’s a ‘T’.

Next he picks up a twig and snaps it in half, placing it at the bottom of the other two. It is in fact the letter ‘J’. We watch for about a minute as he forms three more letters. An ‘A’, a ‘C’ and finally, a ‘K’.

‘’Jack,’’ smiles Kate, ‘’that’s a nice name.’’

He smiles back at her.

‘’Jack,’’ I repeat again quietly.

***

The LIS building looks the same as it always does, and the place seems to be deserted as we approach it. Either the red team haven’t come yet, or have been and gone. Most likely the latter of the two considering how long we waited in the clearing for.

‘’Approach slowly,’’ orders Aaron, ‘’we don’t need to lose anyone else.’’

He leads the way as the semi-spherical LIS building draws nearer and nearer. We climb the steps into the silver building and while Aaron approaches our input pad, I walk over to the red team’s pad.

‘’They’ve already been here,’’ I explain, ‘’Eve’s letter has been put in.’’

‘’Good, that hopefully means they won’t be back anytime soon,’’ replies Kate.

I step outside the LIS building and stare into the distance at where I know the red team are. I can’t see them at the moment, but for all I know they could be watching me from the cover of the tree line. I still can’t believe Niamh.

She is nothing like I remember her. Sure, it had been over two years since I saw her before that night we went out, but she didn’t seem to have changed at all when we had gone to the cinema. She seemed like the Niamh I remembered from before she moved away.

Now she seems like an entirely different person. She is a psychopath! I will never be able to un-see her slitting Eve’s throat so careless, so maliciously. She really is evil. Nobody should be able to murder so freely and think nothing of it. Since we came here, she has been an entirely different person. My mind wanders to Aaron as he snapped that poor boy’s neck so easily.

No Alice. That’s different.

Is it though? Is it any different at all?

‘’C’mon Alice, we’re heading back,’’ calls Kate from the entrance of the LIS building behind me, interrupting my reverie.

‘’Coming,’’ I reply absent-mindedly and head back inside.

As we walk back, I weave my fingers through Aaron’s and we walk hand-in-hand. After a few moments, Aaron squeezes my hand to get my attention. I look to him and he smiles, then nudges his head ever so slightly to our companions – who also have their hands joined. I turn back to him with a broad smile on my face and my heart melts slightly, they look so cute together.

‘’That is adorable,’’ I whisper, biting my lip to stop myself from fan-girling any further over the pair of them.

‘’Not as cute as us though,’’ he winks and I feel my cheeks rouge.

I’m not even sure if there will be something between them. Perhaps Kate just wants comfort from Jack to cope with the fear – or maybe it’s the other way around. That’s certainly how myself and Aaron started. Things just snowballed from there.

‘’Not yet anyway,’’ I smile weakly, the events of the day haunting my mind no matter how hard I try to push them to the back of my head.

The walk back to the camp is slow and tiring, the fact that my sleep was interrupted last night is beginning to take its toll. The sun is still slowly rising in the sky, it is still a few hours until midday. I yawn as we enter the camp and Aaron instructs me to sleep.

‘’I don’t want to, it’s all I do!’’ I reply, feeling quite useless.

‘’No it’s not,’’ he replies, ‘’now get some rest!’’

‘’What if the red team attacks us?’’ I question.

‘’They won’t,’’ he assures, ‘’not if they know what’s good for them. I’m not in a very merciful mood.’’

I sigh and retrieve my sleeping bag, rolling it out on the ground beside Aaron. Despite how much I want to sleep, I can’t bring myself to fall asleep. Instead, I close my eyes over and rest my head against Aaron’s thighs.

His body heat begins to fill me up and I snuggle up to him. Despite how aggressive and violent he is with the other team, he makes me feel safe. As I lie against him, he places his hand on my hip and pulls me close to him.

‘’Try get a bit of sleep, we don’t know what lies ahead of us today,’’ he explains.

‘’I’ll try,’’ I whisper, and pretend to doze off.