CYOA Page 168
Sep. 12th, 2013 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lumy12You've lived with the secret long enough; it's time to find out the truth.
"Sorry, Joel," you mumble -- and you bolt before he can stop you.
Unfortunately, Joel's faster than you are, so it's only going to be a matter of time before he catches up to you. A very short matter of time.
"Kylie!" you yell as loud as you can. She's still pretty far away, but she hears you and turns to look. She and Mark each pull a gun out of their lab coats.
Fuck... you don't want them to shoot Joel, of course! You just need their assistance in preventing him from dragging you off with no answers.
"It's okay!" you tell them -- just as Joel catches up to you. You stop running before he does something that might get him shot (like tackling you, maybe?), and when Joel pulls up beside you, you position yourself between them, just in case. "It's okay," you pant, "I just need... to talk to you."
"I'm sorry," Joel says to them, and he's panting as well. "I told her... your work is classified. She--"
"Not about your work! About the incident."
Kylie looks confused... Mark, impassive. Neither of them seems to be inclined to shoot, as their guns are pointing uselessly at the ground.
"They ain't s'posed to talk about that either," growls Joel. He takes your arm. "Now if we could just--"
"No!" You shake him off, then turn to Kylie pleadingly. "Please... I really need to know."
"Why? Why is it so important to you?" she asks suspiciously.
"It just is." Aaahhh, lame Joel-type answer! "I... knew someone. In Salt Lake City. A Firefly. And I never heard from him after... um, he left..." Your face is bright red and you're sure they know you're lying.
But Kylie looks more sympathetic than suspicious now. She tucks her gun back inside her coat. "What's his name? I probably knew him."
"Bill," you blurt out the first name that pops into your head that sounds common enough.
"Hmm... I don't recall a Bill being there..."
"That's what he told me to call him. Maybe it was short for something. Like... Billy?"
"...No Billys or Williams come to mind. But... are you sure he left?" she asks gently.
"Uh... I mean, I assume he did... but I dunno... Joel, stop it! She wants to talk to me!" You wrench away from him for the last time -- and move to Kylie's side. Mark has wandered back off to the pit -- still nearby, but like he wants no part of the conversation.
Joel moves toward you. "Don't do this, kiddo. Please."
Kylie eyes him warily (and maybe it's your imagination, but now it kind of seems like she's trying to figure out if she knows him?). "What don't you want her to know?"
You can't look at Joel right now; you feel like you've just betrayed him somehow. ...because I have? But fuck that -- he should've trusted me enough to tell me the truth!
"I'm just tryin' to keep her from gettin' hurt. She don' need to--"
"I do need to know!" you insist. "What was the incident?"
She looks between you and Joel, and seems to come to a decision. "It's admirable, wanting to protect her," she says to Joel, "but sometimes the not knowing is worse than knowing the truth."
"Yes! Exactly! Thank you," you tell her, relieved.
"And you don't need to be... manhandling her," she admonishes Joel (which kind of annoys you, but whatever). "She clearly wants to know what happened to her friend. Don't you think she deserves to know?"
Joel starts to protest, and Kylie ushers you away; for a moment, you think Joel is about to pull a gun and shoot her, but you decide that was probably your imagination, too. "Maybe we should sit down," she says.
But there aren't any sit-down-y places in your vicinity and you don't have the patience. "No, it's fine. Just tell me what happened. Please. The Fireflies were looking for a cure," you prompt her.
"Yes. That hospital in Salt Lake City had a functioning lab. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement; we provided soldiers for their protection, they gave us free rein of the facilities. In time, it actually became almost exclusively used as a lab. We were running tests on people who were... resistant to the virus. Immune to it."
So Joel didn't lie about that part! You're not the only known case of immunity. "Are there lots of immune people?" you ask innocently (and hey, if Kylie couldn't tell you were lying before, she won't suspect anything now).
"No. Not lots. Only a few, that we found."
Okay, so he exaggerated...
Kylie gives you a wistful smile. "We had one, that day... a real promising one... the doctors were about to extract the virus from her..."
...Am I the HER? But Joel said... "When was this, exactly? That this happened?"
"Let's see... it was a year ago, last spring."
"So like... April?"
"It was the end of April, yes." If Kylie thinks it's odd that you're trying to pinpoint the date, she doesn't show it. "This girl came all the way across the country to help us. Our leader was with her when she got infected-- or got bitten, anyway."
Not exactly, but-- "Marlene. Marlene knew her?"
Kylie quirks an eyebrow. "Yeah. You knew Marlene?"
"Just from-- Bill mentioned her." You think your credibility just went up, and the woman has no reason to suspect you of being that immune girl. You told her you're from Jackson, not Boston, after all. You don't think you look much different from a year ago, so you're assuming Kylie either never laid eyes on you or has a shitty memory for faces. "It's sad that she never made it to your lab."
"Oh no, she made it," says Kylie. "She was there that day."
What?! You glance at Joel... and find that he looks very unabashed for someone who was just caught in a lie. He's definitely on edge... like he could snap at any moment. It's a little unnerving. Why did he lie about Marlene?!
"She was supposed to escort the girl, but she couldn't at the time, so she sent someone else in her place." Kylie shakes her head. "Biggest mistake of her life. Although, to be fair, he was only supposed to take the girl to her contacts in town. Not all the way out here."
You barely hear what she says after the biggest mistake part. You would rate Marlene handing you off to Joel as one of the best things she ever did -- definitely not a mistake! "So, wait. You guys were still looking for a cure then. And this girl was going to help you with that."
"Yes. We were trying to develop a vaccine, actually. And this girl... her white blood cells were normal, there was no fungal growth at all in the limbic-- sorry. In layman's terms, she was a perfect specimen of immunity that if we could just... replicate somehow, in the lab... we were pretty excited."
You can think about Joel's lies later; this isn't the time to get upset about anything. You're starting to get a sick feeling in your stomach, like you already know what she's going to say: "But then this guy just took off with her and that was the end of it." "But...?" you press.
Now her smile is rueful. "But. Yeah. The man who brought this girl to us?" The smile disappears... and her voice goes quiet and cold. "He decided we shouldn't be using her for our research. He... decided to take her away from us, and... he killed everyone who crossed his path. Including Marlene."
...
... ... Uhhh... wait, what? You must have heard her wrong.
She puts a hand on your shoulder. "Including your friend, too, probably. I'm sorry. With all those soldiers we had in there... I don't know how this one guy was able to just... but he did. And he got away with it."
You don't dare look at Joel right now. You're so shocked, you're not sure how to feel. And yet... it fits. It fits so well that it seems fucking obvious. Like you should have known all along. But why did he have to KILL everyone? And why would he decide I shouldn't help after we traveled all that way FOR THAT VERY FUCKING REASON?! "But you survived..."
"I never saw him. The medical staff... er... anyone who wasn't an active soldier was ordered to evacuate. Except... the doctors with the girl couldn't leave her, she was already sedated for surgery and they were monitoring her vitals... I don't know. There were enough soldiers in between the shooter and her that they figured it was safe. But..."
...But he's JOEL. They underestimated him. FUCK--
And here you are now... with a Firefly seeking a cure... "Are you still looking for immune people?" you ask her softly (although Joel still probably fucking heard you).
"Looking? No. Much easier to find infected than immune. But if one fell in my lap? That would be fantastic."
Joel finally speaks. "C'mon, kiddo, you got the answers you wanted, now let's go."
But you're not sure you want to go yet. He keeps calling me kiddo... which isn't unusual, granted, but it's like he doesn't want them to know my name? In case they know who I am?
Maybe they should know who you are. Maybe now you can do what you were fucking meant to do!
If you tell Kylie that you're the girl in her story, turn to page 243.
If you leave with Joel so you can maybe think that through a little more first, turn to page 246.
Carlos
Date: 2021-04-03 05:26 am (UTC)RE: Carlos
Date: 2021-04-03 02:17 pm (UTC)