@zaidshair
The announcement blaring over the island speaker system was getting old. Lindi had prayed that as the sun set they might get a respite for sleep. No such luck. Lindi looked at her watch, timed the announcements. Every twenty bloody minutes. Great.
If she wasn't going to sleep, she could work at least. But rationing for a large group was beyond her. People had already come by the warehouse to take home their own supplies, and it wasn't like Lindi could stop them. They were scared, anxious, even if they tried to hide it. She could see it. She went to the warehouse anyway, and grabbed a clipboard that hung by the main door, the inventory list.
She needed help, she needed a plan that she could put to the group, she needed a friend. Lindi made the walk over to the tower, amused at how familiar and benign it felt. This same walk would have once petrified her, now she was taking it willingly. Lindi made her way inside the tower, climbed up the stairs, finding Zaid exactly where she knew he would be.
The monitor screens glowed a sickly green-blue-grey, silhouetting Zaid's figure. He sat, absorbed into the screens. He knew she was there, he'd probably been watching her through the CCTV feed.
Lindi came up behind him. His aura hung tight by his body, a wavering mess of perpetual paranoia. Lindi ached for Zaid. She wanted to help him calm down, to bring him back to the man she'd befriended those years ago back on the beach. It would be simple, a little push, smoothing out the edges of his anxiety. No, that wasn't what she was here for today. Lindi set aside the urge, and instead reached to squeeze his shoulder. It felt boney, too thin. "Hey," she said, pulling over a stool to sit next to him. Placing a box of crackers and the inventory list on top of the CCTV control panel. "I need your help." The reason was clear, even here the announcement rang out over the intercom, briefly interrupting them.