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Alex hears the voices of her friends fighting in the downstairs of Adler’s estate arguing about what they should do, what’s happening to them, who’s fault is it, how much time they have left. She sighs and closes her eyes.
This isn’t what’s supposed to happen.
She’s not supposed to be lying down, she’s not supposed to be sleeping, but what the hell? It’ll all loop again anyway. They’re not gonna run out of time to escape because they already ran out of time. In the first loop, in a past life. They were already stuck, and anything they do that theoretically changes the loop just restarts it. Maybe make another one.
She’s tired. She hasn’t slept in what’s felt like years. It probably has been.
She doesn’t sleep anyway.
She makes her way downstairs where the voices of her friends have quieted down significantly. Clarissa must’ve stormed out, with Nona following her, and the remaining boys giving each other the silent treatment.
She trudges her way through the intense glare of her best friend and step-brother, takes some old coffee that’s been left since Adler’s death, and breaks the cup in the sink. The boys yelp in surprise at her sudden extreme attitude, and yells at her as she leaves the house. The shouts stop, and she feels their eyes watching her with worry and fear. She continues.
She sees Clarissa’s and Nona’s footprints on the gravel leading away to the dock. Away to the supposed-to-be-exit. She knows, despairingly, tiredly, dejectedly, that it isn’t real. They can’t leave.
They don’t want them to leave.
Her feet walk on their own, away from her friends, away from the house, closer to the heart of the island. Closer to them. She lets them lead her away. It doesn’t matter anyway.
She blinks her eyes and she’s at the cave where it all started.
It isn’t time yet, she thinks. The ghosts are antsy this time around, they didn’t even bring Clarissa with them. It’s just her, and the water at her feet, and the echoing stone walls, and the cold air of the cave that is her tomb.
They know her decision at this point. They don’t even have to ask. She has seen every outcome, she knows every ending, none of it will free them.
It doesn’t matter.
She’s gonna come back anyway.
Over.
And over.
And over.
Again.
She’s so, so tired.
Her lungs and eyes burn, but she barely feels the pain. It’s scary, she thinks, how she’s almost familiar with it. How she’s treating it like an old friend instead of the all-ending fate it should be. The waters push against her chest, the pressure making her head feel like it’s exploding.
She vaguely wonders if this is how they felt. They whisper, “you should know, too.”
As her body hits the seafloor, she waves goodbye to the world.
And wakes up on a ferry taking a trip to Edwards Island. Her best friend is talking to her new step-brother, and as they get closer they see Clarissa and Nona waiting for them in the main square.
She sighs, and wishes she could sink again.
They won’t let her.