The Island (18+)

Chapter Fifteen - Piper | Leader

Chapter Fifteen : Leader

Two days. In a mere two days, we had gone from seventeen to sixteen bodies.

A cold silence drafted above the infirmary room as we all watched Cortland inspect Aspen's body. I felt a numbness sweep over my body. During the time we carried Aspen's body over to Cortland, many people couldn't stand to watch. The only people left in the infirmary other than me were Remington, Harvey, Kit and Amara, who was awake and sitting up, tears brimming her eyes. Diana was sitting somewhere on the beach with more salt in her eyes than the ocean surrounding us.

You can't do this, Piper. You can't blame yourself.

I wanted to disassociate. Her body was limp and her hair was tangled in front of her face. Cortland was assessing her body but all I could see was how young she was. How young we all were. I wanted to scream into her lungs and bring her back to life. I wanted to scrape my palms against a tree and feel the first layer of skin peel off, showing me the muscle underneath. I wanted to fucking shake myself into a stupor for thinking that we would be able to handle this Island.

"She took her life," Cortland said the words we were all thinking. A sob broke from Amara's voice and I just stood there, wondering why I wasn't feeling anything.

"I can't find any bruises or marks on her skin to prove that it wasn't a voluntary drowning. While it's not the most common way of committing suicide, it's the only logical conclusion I can draw without doing an examination or autopsy." Cortland turned to where I stood and I could see that he was beating himself up too. I could see we were both struggling with the sensation of feeling hopeless.

"Why would she-" Amara's voice broke before she clutched her chest.

"None of knew her," Harvey whispered. "None of us knew what she might have been going through."

I saw Kit nod and turned to me. "We need to start building rafts to try and get to the mainland. This isn't the fuck what I signed up for and someone needs to know that she died and no one came."

"So you remember the way that we came? The route back to the mainland?" Amara hissed out to him.

"No but-"

"We are in the middle of the largest and deepest ocean in the entire world. You'd sooner die out there then you would right here." Amara's voice silenced Kit.

"She's right. The risks outweigh the rewards," Remington murmured. "But we need to think of something. We don't have any contact with the experimenters and no one has come back to get us. Who knows when the comms system will start working and no amount of money is worth a life."

Then all five faces looked at me and everything became too heavy.

My dad used to tell me I was born a fighter. I came out kicking and crying from birth, enough so that my mother passed out from the exhaustion. She died so that I could live. You're a leader, Piper. You break the ground you step foot on and you don't let anyone come in between you and your dreams. People will look to you and you're going to need to show em'.

I looked up at them and breathed out. "Smoke signals. In the morning and every morning from now on, we light smoke signals as big as we can get them. Kit, Rem, I need you to take Aspen inland and," my voice cracked. "Bury her."

I saw Kit and Rem nod before I turned to Harvey. "I'll help you get lunch ready and I'll speak to the rest of us that are here. No one else dies."

I didn't wait for Harvey's response before I made my way to the door and finally spoke to everyone, but quite possible only to myself. "We don't need heroes anymore, we need survivors."