Christine sits alone in her room, flipping through radio channels, listening carefully for even a crackle out of place. Easterman's voice rings through the room, poisoning the air with false promises and lame praise. There is a tension growing in her shoulders, but she persists. She's been at this for hours, since she woke up, and she intends to continue until she is forced into a trial by the guards.
Gunner gently knocks on her door. Christine doesn't respond. He knocks again.
"What?" Christine growls, not moving from her place at her desk.
"You missed the therapy today. The others are worried. I'm worried. Behavior like this is how... I... Nevermind. Have you eaten yet?" Gunner asks gently. He's been a little off the last few days, seeming a bit dazed and out of it, but he is regaining his gentle concern for the well-being of his girls.
"I don't need food right now. I can't miss her again, I can't let this go. I was so close! I could have left here with only a scar on my hand and rage at the cruelty of this place but I was too late. They'd already found her. Stopped us from leaving. And I've been stuck here, feeling their claws rip my brain apart piece by piece as I sit here, rotting, waiting. I knew she was alive. I knew she would be back. I can't miss her this time. I have to be here," Christine rambled, a sob pulling at her chest as she thinks of every piece of herself she's lost while in Sinyala. She stubbornly swallows it down.
She'd been horrified when she'd seen her first trial victim, the union boss if she remembers right. A rough first core trial. Her actual first trial had been a brief MK in the orphanage, no real humans hurt by her own hands. Only the corpses of those who had failed before her. When she saw the Union boss for the first time, she'd been confused. A real human. How... bizarre. And Franco, god he was insufferable but at least she'd had Gunner. He'd been with her from the moment she got to Sinyala, forced her to stop staring at Amelia while she hung there, suffering. He comforted her, telling her that he'd keep her safe and help her survive this. She believed him. She still does.
When they got to that meat packing plant her stomach finally gave up as she realized what she was going to have to do. She vomited everywhere, finding a safe area in the dark to hide and recover while Gunner threw projectiles at the targets and... well... Liquidated the Union. Christine still heard his pleas in her dreams occasionally. It made her sick. Trials with real human victims became more common, and every time she felt her empathy drain. She tried to remind herself that these were people, she should feel disgusted! But it was so difficult when she saw so many of them die over and over. The carnage was constant and unavoidable. It was kill or be killed. She felt ashamed by how numb she was becoming.
"She offers you false hope, Christine. Something to cling to and worship when your place is here, with Murkoff. We're safe here. If we perform well, they let us stay. They feed us, clean us, give us our own spaces to decorate and sleep in! What more could you want?" Gunner offered, placing a hand on Christine's shoulder that she promptly shrugged off, turning to look at Gunner in horror.
"Safe? We fight for our lives every day! Everyone and everything wants us dead in this facility, and you act like this is actually a place of charity!" She spat, disgust dripping from her words.
"You're young, and sheltered. You don't understand how bad the world out there can be. Men are cruel, and dangerous. No where is safe out there. The only safety is this, the sleep room. Nothing can touch us here, nothing can hurt us. We're safe. The trials are just a way to prove we should be here to begin with! We kill those who would dare to try to take this sanctuary from us, and Murkoff rewards our loyalty with safety," Gunner explains, his tone growing more stern and serious. He means every word.
"You're insane Gunner. You've been here too long, and you're fucking insa-"
"DON'T!" Gunner takes a deep breath. "Call me that. I'm not insane. I'm lucid. I am trying to protect you. The world outside these walls is just another trial. It's just as dangerous, just as violent. The only difference is that the people put there will lie to you. They'll tell you youre safe, they'll tell you you're loved, and they'll ship you off to fucking Europe to fend for yourself. They'll watch as you flounder, a scared little child with wide eyes growing duller and duller as your friends are slaughtered in front of you, and then they'll kick you to the streets when you come back changed. We are safe here. If we perform well, we get to stay."
There is a long pause, Christine gets the impression Gunner wasn't making up random details for shock. He'd just told her something about himself she hadn't known. She feels bile prick at the back of her throat at the disgusting ideas he spat at her, but she doesn't even know where to begin arguing with him. Her life outside of the facility was better than inside, but it wasn't peaches and cream. No one took that flier because their life was going well.
"I'll eat. But I'm never going to stop looking, Gunner. You can't make me. I'm getting out of here one day, and it won't be because Murkoff lets me," She says, standing from her desk and pushing past him to make her way to the mess hall.
Sydney was standing in the hallway, clearly listening. Christine eyes her skeptically, but says nothing as the girl begins following her, a file folder of documents clutched to her chest.
"I found these while we were in there. You're gonna wanna see this. Gunner was more wrong about all that than you think, I just haven't had the heart to tell him," She whispers, not wanting Gunner to overhear as he wanders back to his own room, likely a bit too frustrated to eat with Christine at the moment.
"More wrong than insisting that fighting for your life every day is safer than living a normal life?" Christine asks dryly, looking around for a place to sit as she approaches the mess hall counter for food.
"There was a new trial today. A prison farm, Coyle's running it with the help of the victim," Sydney explains in a hushed tone.
"Help? The victims can't help, they're always restrained," Christine says, looking at Sydney with concern etched on her face.
"He's barely a victim until we make him one. I got the impression that before we killed him, he was exactly where he wanted to be. That's what I'm saying. Murkoff is noticing more and more when the people here don't want to leave. When they're obsessed with the primes or crave the pain. That's two trial victims that are obsessed with their respective primes now, and this one isn't even tied up until we have to kill him. Before that, he's happy to just follow Coyle around. They're tracking down those freaks who have the hots for him, and shoving them in there as Wardens. Submissive little freaks gunning to get a taste of Coyle's... ahem... baton," Sydney finishes her explanation with an awkward pause. Christine's eyes widen.
"Wait they... the victim... gross..."
"Mhm. The point is, Murkoff isn't taking kindly to folks that like it here anymore. The second you overstay your welcome, they're gonna make you the next trial victim, and it doesn't even have to be because you did poorly anymore. Gunner's advice is dangerous," Sydney says, eyeing her own tray of food with eyes that didn't look particularly hungry.
"I never cared much about escape before this. I wanted out, sure, but I don't have anything waiting out there for me. I didn't care if I got out or not. If I saw my chance during another escape I'd take it, but Inwas never as devoted as you. I need out now. I can't let these bastards turn Gunner into a trial victim, and they're gonna if we let them. He'll follow us if we all go, he'd never let us fend for ourselves out there without his help. I wanna help you with this, Chris.
"Keep me in the loop, please. Gunner is the only family any of us got left, I can't let them make him the next victim. The execution was brutal, Christine. More personal this time. There weren't any fancy machines, it was just us and a weapon. We had to kill that man with our own hands, no separation. I can't let them do that to Gunner," Sydney finally concludes, her eyes desperate as she looks at Christine.
Sydney liked to pretend she was an emotionless little chaos junky when she was in trials, but Christine was seeing more and more of this genuine side of her these days. The crow must be a good influence, she'd overheard Sydney venting to the creature a few more times since she discovered that the girl had been letting it stay with her.
"I'll keep you posted, Syd. Thanks for the documents. We're gonna figure this out. We just have to be vigilant, and wait."
