Wren didn't need them all to listen. She'd learned too much, and if too much was revealed all at once there would be a panic. Too many of the sixty-eight would not handle all the uncertainty, vague words she could not comprehend. So she chose her audience carefully, the people who needed to hear. She knew who the leaders were and she was not. She'd survived the fog, resurrected right from their memories. She didn't need to lead; she was exactly what she needed to be.

Ronan. Xavier and Bianca—the pair was starved for power—and Eliza because she was the only one who might understand. Felix who was smarter than he seemed and Casper who could work the hydrofarm. Kennedy. Terra. Already nine of the survivors would know. She'd keep the number low for now.

"Okay, you've got your little town hall here," said Xavier, tapping his fingers against his crossed arm impatiently. "Want to let us know how the hell you survived?"

"We're not alone in these woods," she said. She waited to watch their reactions, who was surprised and who already knew. She was doubtful that nobody else had seen the nomads, but then again, she was the only one who dared to travel far. "There are other people alive."

"What do you mean?" asked Terra, to which Wren rolled her eyes. She meant that there were other people alive, it wasn't that hard to understand. "There's another camp?"

"We're the only camp," she said. "They call us Stonegate, seems we're notorious. They all travel by family, smaller groups. I call them nomads."

"And you rode out the fog with them?" This time it was Ronan, who seemed more concerned than confused. "You shouldn't have just trusted them, you don't know anything about them—"

"I look like I'm fourteen years old and I'm better with a knife than they could ever realize," she snapped. "And I never said I trusted them."

"But you found shelter with them in the fog?" he asked. She nodded. "You said they had a name for our camp. What do they know?"

"Not much," she said. "They said there's been no activity in these parts in thirty years. They called it the Exodus."

"Thirty years ago?" This was Eliza. Wren was getting sick of repeating herself, but the way Eliza bit her lip proved that the gears were working in her mind, that she was connecting dots together Wren had hardly thought about.

"There's more," she continued. "The beast we saw? There are more of them. Good news is they're mortal—"

"How do you know?" asked Terra.

"I killed one." At that, the others all went silent, staring in disbelief. Five feet tall, the face of a child and she had brought the monster down.

Ronan shook his head. "That thing was a giant, Wren," he motioned towards her skinny knife, "You killed it with that?"

"I stabbed it," she shrugged. "Multiple times. But that's beside the point. The beast came up and grabbed me from behind. It wasn't trying to kill me, it was dragging me someplace. That's how I had time to fight back. The nomads said they don't know who controls the beasts, but it has something to do with a 'sailboat in the sky.' I don't know what the hell that means but that's where the beasts seem to be taking people."

"A sailboat in the sky?" Bianca scoffed. Though she tried to suppress a laugh, it was hard to stifle the sound. Xavier and Casper both shared the disbelief; the others' eyes all narrowed. And then there was Eliza, whose brows furrowed in the middle and skin went pale as though she'd seen a ghost. Wren was right to bring her in; she'd figure it out. "You believe any of that shit?"

"If it was trying to kill me it would have," she snapped. She reached into her pocket slowly, almost unsure if she should reveal the next thing she knew. Still, she unrolled her fist, revealing the little red rock and steel. "It's Marko's flint. The beast had it."

"That means the beast had them," said Ronan, "And if it was taking them someplace, they could still be alive."

"Or it stole it from their dead bodies," said Xavier. They all were thinking it. Nobody could respond in the silence that followed.

"There's more," Wren sighed. Everything else she'd learned was child's play compared to this. This was the real doozy, this was death creeping upon their door. "The fog settles in the fall, October through December, they said. They call it the Dead Haze. Right now it's March."

"What does that mean?" asked Terra.

Eliza frowned. "It means that unless we can rebuild the bunker and the hydrofarm, we need to get the hell out of this camp."

"Where could we go?"

Wren simply shrugged. "I don't know. You want to be a leader?" she asked, "Figure it out yourself." She couldn't handle the questions any longer, the way they stared at her as though she knew. She told them everything she knew. She wasn't meant to lead. She couldn't handle the skepticism—she didn't know what was true yet or false, all she'd heard were rumors. She could learn though, she could chase the beast again. But she wasn't meant to lead. She wasn't meant to play the hero.

As she exited the cabin, she saw eyes turning to face her, whispers dashing through the crowds. They saw exactly what she needed them to see: a girl who turned death away, who clutched her knife and stabbed a hole in the sky itself. Invincible. Dangerous. Immortal. She was exactly who she needed to be.

~*~*~*~*~*~

As the rest dispersed from the cabin, Eliza could not stop to think. Her mind was whirring too fast, the pieces coming together quicker than they should and causing her stomach to churn and she had to be wrong. It could not be that simple or perhaps it was but she had no evidence besides words spoken a lifetime before and a gamble that the world was smaller than she believed.

She hated the bunker with all her heart, that yellow-lit room with the cryopods and the cabinets that held everything they could ever need besides the answers and if the Dead Haze was real then answers were imperative to their survival but who would leave that behind for the kids who knew something they should not? Once upon a time they were meant to save the world but once upon a times were meant for fairytales and fantasies. Reality was upon them now, and now they were not even meant to live.

But perhaps they didn't know. Trapped underground for longer than she could ever imagine, perhaps they did not know that the air would choke them to their deaths, would squeeze the air from their lungs and banish them below ground. Cryosleep was supposed to help, to buy them time—everyone must have understood that, it was the only reasonable explanation—but clearly it was not enough. Or maybe they knew all along. Who knew when the grand plan began?

"Thought I could help you find whatever you're looking for." She knew the voice behind her well. However many hours trapped in that storage shed meant she'd recognize it a mile away. Bianca.

"I don't know what I'm looking for."

"You came down here pretty damn fast."

"Wren just changed everything," she said. She didn't turn to look at her, couldn't tear her eyes away from the yellow light, their industrial sun. "You realize that, right?"

"If it's only March we have plenty of time until October," said Bianca. "We fixed the freezer, we'll store meat to last through those months, and we can find the hydrofarm in all the rubble and make it through—"

"Or we can find out everything we can about the sailboat in the sky," she said. "The bunker isn't survivable. They wouldn't have destroyed it and ran if it was."

Bianca sighed. If there was one thing she knew it was that she could never understand the way Eliza saw ends in every unanswered question. They never found a body in the bunker. Nobody ever spoke of it but they all knew the space was empty. Only Eliza could piece together why.

"What was your number?" she asked, changing the subject, anything to relieve the stress that weighed too heavily on her friend's mind. "On the pod?"

"Twenty-eight," she muttered, not asking why. It didn't matter why.

Bianca grazed her fingers against the cabinets until she found the certain number. 28—Elizabeth it read. "Elizabeth?" she asked. Eliza's spine shot up, her stomach dropping through the floor. "You woke up and gave yourself a nickname?"

"Elizabeth didn't sound right," she said, the words coming out too quickly, as though she was asking a question. "So I shortened it. No big deal."

Bianca hadn't expected her to get defensive. It was nothing but a name. But something else soon caught her eye, not high above the cabinets was there a dark red stain upon the wall, glaring at her for not having noticed sooner. "Has that bloodstain always been there?"

"Always and since we woke up are very different things," Eliza murmured. "But yeah, it's the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes."

"What do you think happened down here?"

She could not look at the blood but heard the gunshot ringing in her ears. "I think there are some things we weren't supposed to know." 

a/n

all my friends are out of town so I actually have nothing to do except write so... here's another chapter!

shorter chapter and largely a recap. but Wren can't keep this information secret. 

QUESTIONS:

-how will everyone react to Wren's information? will this be a divisive point or will they finally start working together? 

-how long can Wren actually avoid leadership? What does she think the camp sees her as/what does she think they "need" to see her as?

-was Eliza actually looking for something in the bunker? 

-what was the bloodstain??