"I hate everyone."
"Except me, right?"
"No, especially you."
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It's funny, isn't it? That when the whole world decides to become infected with a brutal and fatal virus, the real monsters are the ones still alive? Blake Finnegan lost most of...
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MARS, BLAKE, AND SYLVIE HAVEN'T RETURNED. And they should have. By now, most definitely. My mom is pretending it doesn't bother her. That this isn't a burden. Usually, when we think we've lost people, she's obviously stressed.
But there's something different here. Something that seems almost catastrophic.
"Mom?" I ask carefully. Zane and his pitch black hair and thin glasses works to the left with a few other members whilst mom stares at a giant map she has stuck against the wall in the council's office.
"Jacob and then Sylvie." She shakes her head.
"We don't know if either of them are dead..."
"Half of the council wiped out." She continues, ignoring me.
"We don't know for sure. We can send a team out and-"
"Yes. A team. I'll work on it." She sighs, running a hand down her face.
"I want to be on that team then." I declare, holding my chin high.
"No."
"Mom-"
"I said no." She shoots me a look.
But she doesn't get it. It's not just Sylvie missing out there. It's Mars and Blake as well. People I know better than anyone else at this camp. People I survived a fortnite with. A fortnight. Out there. None of us getting bit. That sort of thing...well, it really connects people whether you like them or not.
"No one else can shoot like me." I decide to press despite the concern and exhaustion written across her face, "With a bow that is. But arrows are a better material and you know it - they don't run out, you can retrieve them, you're less likely to survive their scars. Let me go. Let me make a team."
"Your team would consist of teenagers." She glares.
"Maybe. But it would be the best for the situation." I don't deny it.
"I can't Penelope. I can't lose more people. Including Jacob that's four in a short amount of time. I'll put a team together. You stay out of it." She says in a tone that means this isn't up for discussion.
I'm about to fight it anyway. About to try and come up with a new argument when Ella enters the room looking a little more than stressed. Her eyes find me and my mother immediately.
"Anais." She breathes, almost like she's out of breath, "Is it true?"
"Yes." My mother sighs, "Yes, Sylvie is gone. For now, but we're working on it."
