August 30
The midnight meal is over.
It’s a new day. But the world has changed forever.
I keep thinking about what happened with the Hunters and Survivors. I see Indira’s treacherous face. I watch my father’s oily kiss. I hear my last, vestigial faith in humanity turn to ash.
I don’t eat. I merely drink. I watch my glass being refilled and keep on drinking until my liver protests. I feel different than usual.
I am waiting. The meet, the rendezvous. Yes, I am like those SOE women behind enemy lines. Waiting for my confidential source. The person who can save me.
The only reason I ever agreed to come to this godforsaken place.
The cabin door opens now. A knock, an entrance. I see the figure. The same person at the meal, hovering by my glass. I recognise her from the briefing. The health and safety person. The wasp waist. I wonder if I am seeing things.
She doesn’t shut the door. Her hands are gloved. She is saying something. My marching orders. I wonder if she is @PatientX.
There is someone behind her too. I recognise this person. It is the same face as the photos I have saved on my laptop.
It is the face of my MARATHON suspect.
And I realise, suddenly, how wrong I have it. How badly I’ve miscalculated.
Coming here to the Farm was a terrible error. A catastrophic mistake.
Run, run, run, Anna. Run as fast as your legs will carry you.
Too late. My vision blurring slightly. The world curved at an angle.
I think of those drinks at the Ruins after the Forest was over. The way in which they could have slipped something inside the tankard. That the meeting with @PatientX was the perfect pretext.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The strange feeling builds. Viral, almost, taking over every floor. The change is fuzzed but concrete. Something terrible is happening to me. The smash, bang, wallop of it. I have never felt like this before. It’s as if my body and brain have been hijacked by someone else. I am thinking thoughts that are not my own. Thinking other people’s thoughts.
Thoughts from the unconscious. Free from inhibitions. There is a knife beside me. It is there like a symbol from my dreams, imploring me to use it. I am Lady Macbeth. The demon woman.
Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures; ’tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil.
Now the thoughts become unstoppable.
The two of them are beside me. They have done this to me. I drank my own demise earlier. I no longer have control over my own mind. I am their puppet, tugged by them, tormented.
I will catch them. I will expose the traitors. The voices are on my shoulder, inside my head. These two intruders are spurring me to action.
The sleeping and the dead.
I can’t let what happened in the Forest stand.
Indira has stolen my company, my family and my life.
Yes, it is so clear now. It always has been.
The bitch must die.