[Jay is not desperate. That is what he has told himself every morning so far, as he combs his hair and paints his face in front of a mirror so large it would have cost a small fortune on the Legacy: I am not so desperate to escape that I will bite like a dog on someone else's orders. And: I have survived worse than this. I will make it back to them.
He doesn't want to be here, locked into this unfamiliar place and surrounded by strangers from worlds that are so unlike his that his own seems like a piece of fiction. There is a break in his memory. The tools he usually can rely on to protect himself are gone. He stands in the yawning mouth of the unknown, reaching blindly in the dark to make sense of his circumstances.
But he isn't desperate. He has survived worse than this. Therefore, logic dictates that he can survive this. The food supplies are plentiful, especially if he can slowly build a cache of non-perishables in his room and the water is clean. He has a place to sleep that, while he doubts is truly secure, he can at least bar the others from entering. This isn't a battlefield, or a warzone. It's a game. There are no punishments, as far as Jay can tell, to refuse to play: only for breaking the rules, or playing and losing. An early play is one of the stupidest moves he could possibly make. But if he is cautious, if he keeps his wits about him and learns as much as he possibly can, survival is far from impossible.]
Yes, you probably would be.
[Unlike before, there's not even a note of idle playfulness. Because Ai is completely correct. In this game, to kill is to admit that you have run out of other moves. It is a last ditch, all-or-nothing effort that is more likely to end in failure than success.]
It seems this game is designed to make wolves out of all of us. [And then-- another one of his strange, practiced smiles.] Perhaps it was a bad comparison after all. Do forgive me. I'm still trying to make sense of it all.
no subject
He doesn't want to be here, locked into this unfamiliar place and surrounded by strangers from worlds that are so unlike his that his own seems like a piece of fiction. There is a break in his memory. The tools he usually can rely on to protect himself are gone. He stands in the yawning mouth of the unknown, reaching blindly in the dark to make sense of his circumstances.
But he isn't desperate. He has survived worse than this. Therefore, logic dictates that he can survive this. The food supplies are plentiful, especially if he can slowly build a cache of non-perishables in his room and the water is clean. He has a place to sleep that, while he doubts is truly secure, he can at least bar the others from entering. This isn't a battlefield, or a warzone. It's a game. There are no punishments, as far as Jay can tell, to refuse to play: only for breaking the rules, or playing and losing. An early play is one of the stupidest moves he could possibly make. But if he is cautious, if he keeps his wits about him and learns as much as he possibly can, survival is far from impossible.]
Yes, you probably would be.
[Unlike before, there's not even a note of idle playfulness. Because Ai is completely correct. In this game, to kill is to admit that you have run out of other moves. It is a last ditch, all-or-nothing effort that is more likely to end in failure than success.]
It seems this game is designed to make wolves out of all of us. [And then-- another one of his strange, practiced smiles.] Perhaps it was a bad comparison after all. Do forgive me. I'm still trying to make sense of it all.