Chapter Text
There aren’t many ways this could have gone more wrong: Ryan’s body on the floor, dead Hacketts all around them, the sheriff saying, You know I can’t let you go.
Laura can’t explain why she doesn’t take the shot. So many are already dead. I’m not killing people, she’d said to Ryan, but if she lets herself think about it for more than a few seconds, about the dead girl in the pool and the woman upstairs and the way her husband had tried, in vain, to revive her—no. Focus.
Travis Hackett.
His blood on her tongue.
The two-second pause and the grim set of his mouth.
The burst of adrenaline enough to compensate for that sudden loss of her werewolf-strength as she lunges for the shotgun, reaching it a moment before he does.
It’s easier to take the shot when it’s a monster clawing at you, or when it’s pitch-dark and there’s a struggle and you can almost say it was an accident.
There are no prison bars this time. He reaches out and takes a step forward. She stumbles back. He takes another.
She can’t do it.
He wrenches the gun out of her hands.
He locks her in a cell.
Again.
She’s so fucking angry at him but she’s angrier at herself for not shooting the goddamn asshole when she had the chance.
She screams as he walks away, and for a split second, she wishes she were still infected so she had the strength to break these fucking bars and tear his throat out. She should have killed him. Back then, in the cell. Tonight. She had so many chances and now Max is all alone because she didn’t have the courage to do one thing.
Laura huddles in the corner of the cell, wrapping her arms around herself. The asshole could’ve at least gotten her a shirt.
She closes her eyes. Breathes in and out.
There’s always a way out. There has to be. She just has to think.
An hour later, Travis returns.
The cold has set into her bones, and she doesn’t remember the last time she ate. It’s hard to fan her anger into more than an ember when there’s nothing left to spark.
He cracks open the door just long enough to toss her some clothing. A ratty old dress. Likely one of his mother’s, and Laura’s stomach roils again at the memory of the struggle, the pull of the trigger, the splatter of her head. Still, she pulls it on, watching him look down and away.
“What’s the plan here, Travis?” Her voice has gone hoarse. “You gonna lock me up for another two months?”
He’d had this wild-eyed, desperate expression the whole night as he’d positioned himself between her and his family, telling them to wait, his gun hovering in uncertainty and indecision. He was one person at the top of the well, he’d said, trying not to fall to the bottom with the rest of them. Well, he’d sure lost this round of tug-of-war, she thinks. There’s a level of hollow exhaustion to him that she’s never seen before. She wonders if he regrets it.
“It’s over. Chris is dead.” His eyes flash. Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best reminder. She tries again. “Just let me find Max and go home.”
He lets out a short, empty laugh. “You stupid, reckless girl. You think this is over? This isn’t over.”
Sheriff Fucking Hackett and his cryptic-ass statements and his smug fucking face. She can’t take it anymore. He had his chance. He had fifty-eight days worth of them.
“Travis—”
And then everything changes.
“Max is dead.”
Silence.
Her mind goes utterly blank except for the echo of his words.
“What did you say?”
“Your boyfriend’s dead,” he repeats evenly, as if he hasn’t just upended her entire life. He continues to speak, something about the rest of the counsellors and how he’s accounted for all their bodies and what a goddamn mess everything is, but she isn’t paying attention because none of it matters when Max, her Max, is gone.
She’s on her feet, fingers gripping the bars of the cage. She barely remembers getting up. “I don’t believe you.” Her chest heaves, and she breathes faster and faster. “You’re lying. You’re lying.”
“Laura—”
“I left him—on the island—he’s safe, he was supposed to be—”
For the first time, he gives her a look that’s close to pity, and it claws at her chest. “I found him on the docks. He must have swam over.”
The thing about Travis Hackett is that he’s a shitty liar, at least to her. It’s why he always ignores, obfuscates, and talks around things as much as he can, because whenever she asks him anything point-blank, he stutters and stumbles around the lie as if his mouth can’t physically form the words.
That’s how she knows.
His voice is steady. His eyes are calm.
“Oh, God. Max.”
The white noise in her head overpowers everything else. Her vision swims and she stumbles. In the corner of her eye, he reaches for her. She can’t help picturing it, picturing him all alone, and God, why didn’t he wait for her? An image: Bobby Hackett’s torn and mangled body, only it isn’t Bobby, it’s Max, it’s Max and he dies alone and in pain because she wasn’t there, because she failed–
“Breathe, Laura,” he snaps.
“I—don’t—” she gasps out as Travis flings the door open and grabs her. It’s the last thing she remembers before everything goes dark.
She’s not in the cage when she wakes.
The relief that she’s not stuck in that foul-smelling cage—or back in the county jail cell—is eclipsed by the newfound terror that she’s on a bed, wrists handcuffed behind her back. It’s a small room: one barred window with the curtains shut, a closet to the left and a bedside table on either side. Light peeks through the edge of the curtain. With some effort, she manages to wriggle herself to a kneeling position, and she tries to slide over the edge of the bed before a hard yank at her cuffs pulls her back.
She’s chained to the headboard.
Motherfucker.
Okay, she thinks. She can do this. It’s just another puzzle, another obstacle to overcome, there’s light coming through the window so it must be after dawn, and once she’s free, she’ll go find—she’ll find—
The tenuous hold she has on her emotions slips as she remembers.
“Max is dead.”
In the emptiness of the room, left with nothing but her mind and her memories, her grief breaks free and consumes her.
Time slows to a crawl.
She doesn’t know how long it is before the door opens. Minutes since she woke, maybe. Or hours. She’s lost track.
Travis Hackett steps inside. He’s wearing his uniform. He still looks like hell and he reeks of smoke, but he’s cleaned up, not a trace of blood—her blood—on him. In one hand, he carries a tray with a sad-looking sandwich and cut fruits on a paper plate, and a plastic cup of water in the other. A distant part of her mind registers the way he favours his right arm and shoulder.
He approaches her silently. She doesn’t even look at him. Doesn’t even want to move.
After a long moment, he breaks first. “You need to eat.”
Laura doesn’t respond.
He swears under his breath and she finds herself being yanked to a sitting position, the cuffs digging into her skin roughly as he attempts to maneuver her dead weight with only one good arm. He leans around her, and a moment later, one of her wrists is freed.
“Eat. Or I’ll—”
“What?” she croaks out, interrupting him.
They’d tried this game once already. He’d used her and Max as leverage against each other whenever they pulled the starvation game or tried other tactics. Travis never followed through with his threats—it was all posturing, but it was enough for Max to fold and give in.
He doesn’t have anyone to use against her now.
“You’ll what? Kill me?”
She slumps against the headboard, too exhausted to keep herself upright. She’d started to shake hours ago. With clinical detachment, she diagnoses the signs and symptoms. Mild cognitive impairment and tremors due to low blood sugar, chapped lips and dizziness due to dehydration… Something cold presses against her lips. Without thinking, she gulps down the water greedily.
He presses the sandwich into her hand. For a second, she imagines herself shoving it right back in his face or throwing it against the wall. He almost seems braced for her to do it.
“I didn’t peg you as the type of girl who lives only for a boy,” he says. His words are harsh and judgmental, but his eyes are strangely watchful, waiting for her reaction.
He says it to bait her, and despite herself, it works. She takes an angry bite and swallows it down. “And I didn’t peg you as a creep-ass pervert who likes to chain women to your bed, but I bet that’s the only way you can get any, huh?”
Weirdly, the tension in him seems to ease at her words. He scoffs and gives her a slow look up and down that makes her flush. “Don’t flatter yourself. I had no other choice. You left me no other choice.”
“Bullshit. You always have a choice. Did you lock up those hikers, too? That journalist that went ‘missing’? You’re just as fucked up as the rest of your family.”
That gets her a reaction. His jaw clenches, and he looks as if he’s about to say something before he decides against it. He rises from the bed instead. “Finish eating. When you’re done, you can take a shower.”
“Just like old times.” She aims for sarcasm but she falters halfway through, her voice cracking when she remembers all the reasons why it isn’t.
A small mercy: he doesn’t comment on it. He merely glances over at her, at the sandwich in her hand, and nods before he leaves.
Ten minutes, he said, or I’ll pull you out myself.
Same rules, different place, different time.
It takes forever for the water to run clear. She stands under the spray of the hot water, lets it run over her face, her hair, her body. As tired as she is, her muscles aren’t nearly as sore as they should be after all the running and fighting. Her short-lived time as a werewolf had healed all of her injuries, and it’s an odd feeling to poke and probe at the places where she can still feel the memory of a bullet punching through her chest, smooth skin where there should be deep gouges.
Where had she gone wrong?
They had a plan. She’s sure they discussed it. He left the island, but why? He was safe there. He should have been safe.
If she’d just been quicker—if Travis had been forthcoming the start—if she’d been nicer to him in the jail, maybe—
It doesn’t matter how much she dwells on what they should’ve done. When she thinks about how this all started, she can trace it back to her.
If she hadn’t investigated the bunker at the lodge—if they’d gone to the Harbinger Motel—if she’d spoken to Chris Hackett directly instead of leaving a message—if she hadn’t wanted to leave a day early—
Max would still be alive.
He should still be alive. The plan should have worked. Why didn’t it work?
“–ra.”
She blinks.
“Laura.”
The water shuts off. Travis is there, saying her name like it isn’t the first time he’s tried to get her attention, his fingers gripping her chin to make her face him. He never did respect her personal space.
“It’s been half an hour,” he snaps. He shoves a towel at her, pointedly not looking anywhere but her face or the wall.
She can’t find it in herself to be embarrassed. It isn’t anything he hasn’t seen before.
Travis turns his back and stands at the door as she towels off. Out of habit, she glances at his waist, but he’s out of uniform now, and from what she sees, he’s not wearing a holster or carrying a gun. It’s disorienting to see him in casual clothes. Travis Hackett in jeans and a simple plaid button-up, looking like any old guy she could walk past on the street.
On the countertop, there’s a pair of sweatpants and an old Hall and Oates shirt that are both a size too big. She twists the bottom of the shirt and tucks it in, and she doesn’t have to roll up the legs too much for it not to drag. He isn’t that much taller than her, after all, and she has a sneaking suspicion that she’s wearing his clothes.
When he turns around, she’s clearly closer to him than he expected, because he visibly startles when he sees her. Then his face goes carefully blank.
“Is this your house?”
She catches a glimpse of another bedroom down the hall. It can’t be a motel room—the place is too bare for that, without the gaudy motel decor, peeling paint, or cigarette smoke.
He gestures for her to move ahead of him, back toward the room. “I was wondering when the questions would start.”
“You gonna answer them for once?”
Nothing.
“Don’t know why I bother,” she mutters.
Laura freezes at the doorway to the bedroom. The sheets have been changed, but the handcuffs and the chain are still there. She spins around and grabs his wrist. Travis jerks back from her but she holds on, and he goes completely rigid as he looks between her face and her hand.
“You know I’m not infected anymore. Take the cuffs away. It’s not like you aren’t going to lock me in here, anyway. Or better yet,” she takes a shaky breath, “let me go.”
“Laura.” It’s a warning.
She drops his wrist. Belatedly, she realises that she’d grabbed his bad arm—his right arm, the one she’d found herself latched to with teeth no longer sharp enough to bite through. “Shit. Sorry.”
He casts her a quick, sharp look at her apology, as if she’d surprised him with it. Of all the things to apologise for, maybe he’s thinking—but this is the only thing she’s willing to give at the moment. Anything else wouldn’t be true. Not when Max is dead.
“I can’t,” he finally says. “You know that.”
But once she’s further in the room, he collects the handcuffs and the chain and tucks them in his pocket. He casts her a dark look, and she can almost hear his voice in her head telling her, Don’t make me regret this.
“I really don’t. I’m not playing dumb. It’s over. Let me—let me make arrangements for Max, get him home to his family—”
“Why did you leave Max on the island?”
Her throat closes. “Why are you asking me this? What’s the point?”
“Answer the question.” He’s all Sheriff Hackett again, levelling her with that intense stare. It's his classic Detective Dick Whippet look.
At that thought, she almost smiles before her grief snatches it away.
“‘It stalks your breath but shuns clear water.’ That’s why. We thought… if he was there, no one could hurt him, and he couldn’t hurt anyone either.”
He nods. “So how did he get to the docks?”
“He… swam.” Suddenly, everything clicks. The reason why her mind had kept getting stuck on a loop, fixating on the plan, on how it should have worked, because the only possible way it didn’t work is if he’d turned back when she did, swam back to shore, and what killed him was—“How did he die?”
The Hacketts were dead. His niece in the pool. His mother. That big guy who stabbed Ryan, and his father. She’d killed the werewolf in the basement, too, whoever it was. Who was left? What was she missing? Did one of the counsellors shoot him for some reason?
Even as she thinks that, she knows that isn’t it.
Travis slides a tablet over to her, face-down. “How do you think he died?”
You do science, he'd once said to her. He wasn't wrong. She likes having the facts before her, evidence she can see and touch and feel. An objective view, cause-and-effect, numbers and pictures that she can work with.
She doesn’t want to look.
He leaves the decision to her. Doesn't push, for once. Just waits.
She doesn't want to—but she has to.
She turns the tablet over. The pictures of Max tell a clear story.
Laura stumbles over to the trash can and throws up what little was left in her stomach.
“Chris wasn’t the First,” Travis says quietly. “This isn’t over.”