* * *
“The clock strikes ten as the sun has finished setting. With only eight hours to go until dawn, and the end of the competition, our seven remaining girls are picking up the pace. None of them have visited three pylons yet, and several have yet to find their second. On the other hand, the abandoned city is helping girls change that in rapid succession.”

The camera cuts in rapid succession through the three girls currently working their way through the abandoned, silent city. With no sign of traps or struggles near them, all three start to feel more confidant. The Chinese traitor Ling is the fastest to move, feeling sharply the time that she lost back in the carnival, trapped in Saul’s sadistic house of mirrors. Having taken a minute to more or less repair her bikini, she is covered in healing cuts, her bikini stained but intact, and is moving through the city at a jog, checking on each building before moving to the next. She freezes in the rubble as she hears something, and watches silently as Amy walks past. The Irish mother is still naked, but has composed herself after her ordeal in the tidal pools and is moving much more quietly than she did previously. Ling watches her go, debating whether to try and thin the competition. She reaches down quietly, picking up a pipe, and watches Amy again, and then sighs silently and lets it drop to the ground. Clearly, even now she can’t quite bring herself to attack her fellow victim. Instead, she starts for another building.

Sierra, not far away, has no such compunctions, but after sizing up the gap between her and Amy, clearly decides that it’s not worth the risk. Instead, the young Guatemalan refugee stays in the shadows of the building. She found Ling several minutes earlier, and has been shadowing her to see which areas she’d already found. When Ling enters a building and comes out two minutes later with a wide smile, Sierra knows that her silence paid off. She dashes into the same building, deftly avoiding the few remaining tripwires left behind by Janet Weiss, and taps the pylon with a smile.

“With Amy still searching, Sierra is retreating towards the pools and Ling is on her way to the forest. Within the Pools themselves, Sam and Shen Lee are in the middle of a cat and mouse game that isn’t looking great for our Canadian beauty. It’s been a few hours since we’ve taken a look, so let’s get a quick reel of the highlights.”

The camera shows a shot of Sam, crouching up to her neck in water under a rocky overhang as Shen Lee stands above her, silently searching the skyline. It cuts to a quick shot of Sam crawling across a wide stone arch, as Shen stands underneath and frowns. From there, there is a shot of Sam at the pylon, pressed against it and ready to dash for safety as soon as the frozen shadow across the way moves. “They’ve just been… well, they’ve been sitting there for about an hour and a half, now, actually. Shen’s aware that if he rushes in while the tide’s high, he’ll be stuck in the water, she might be able to swim for safety, and his traps here are spent. Sam’s aware that if she chooses a direction, Shen can cut her off. Neither is completely sure that the other is there. Good times. Let’s get back to them later.”

“As for the Carnival, well… Saul’s attractions may have cost him some time, this time around. There are two girls in his zone, but both have given the booth where he’s been playing a wide berth, as they search from opposite directions. And now…”

Miko freezes as she enters another maze of tents, seeing movement ahead of her. The young gambler tenses, pressing herself against a tent as she tries to peer ahead and see what there is to find. A moment later, the fabric stretches around her, and two small white hands grab at her face, pulling her back into the tent. Miko tries to scream as the fabric wraps around her, struggling and trying to punch vaguely out.

“Quiet.” Sonja hisses in her ear. Miko feels something press against her throat, and freezes. “Or Saul will kill us both.” She pushes aside a fold of fabric, and blinks. “I know you.” She says slowly.

Miko nods very carefully, painfully aware that the older, taller, and slimmer Serbian woman has every advantage, along with a shard of sharp glass at her throat. “The forest pylon.” She whispers back. “We left.” She swallows, and then winces as the motion draws a tiny bead of blood. “Are you going to kill me?”

Sonja hesitates. That had been her plan, when she saw someone moving. Only one of them can survive this, after all. But now, with the girl under her, at her mercy… the uncertainty is clear on her face.

For a moment, the camera lingers over the two of them. Their relative states only heighten the power of Sonja’s position – four inches taller and four years older than her prisoner, her short hair dirty but straight, unlike the tangled mess that Miko’s ponytail has become. Her build is more athletic, and while Miko’s huge breasts are larger than Sonja’s relatively modest C-cups, she’s handled the past hours with far fewer scratches and scrapes. The glass she holds is just the icing on the cake.

“Let me up.” Miko begs softly, tears streaming down her face. “We can help each other. Tell each other where we’ve looked, before Saul finds us.”

“One of us is going to die.” Sonja points out.

Miko nods. “But if you kill me, we both might.” She suggests.

Sonja hesitates a moment longer, then nods. Reaching out with her free hand, she pulls the gambler to her feet, leaving her tangled in the tent flap and keeping the sharp shard of glass at her back. “Get me to the pylon, and I’ll let you go. Where have you been?” She asks slowly.

Several minutes later, Miko is leading the way towards the last area of the Carnival that the two haven’t visited, her arms still tangled in the tent. Sonja is following her, a step behind, watching for any signs that Saul is back on the hunt. The two pass through an empty tent, and find themselves at the golden pylon, still littered with the clothing that Saul’s first victims wore, and with the collapsed poles of the tent that the open space presumably once contained. Sonja smiles. “It worked.” She whispers hopefully.

“Let me go, please.” Miko whimpers. “You promised.”

Sonja turns to her. “I did.” She says slowly.

Miko sees the uncertainty returning to Sonja’s eyes, and she starts to cry again. “Please.” She says, taking a pleading step forwards.

Then, without waiting for a reply, she leaps, slamming into Sonja. The Serbian woman lets out a gasp of surprise as she stumbles backwards, the force causing her to overbalance as she windmills her arms, her makeshift weapon flying from her hand. Within a moment, Miko has disentangled herself from the tent flap, and she slams forwards again, sending Sonja careening backwards. Then she spins, and dashes for the pylon.

The sickening crunch from behind her makes her pause. Fearful, almost unwilling, she turns.

Sonja’s eyes are wide. She is overbalanced, fallen backwards into one of the rusty tent poles that still surrounds the area. A blood-soaked length of metal is jutting out of her gut, just below her left breast, and she is gasping in pain as she slowly falls back along it. “Help…” She can barely manage more than a whisper – when her lung tries to expand, it rams into the metal shaft forcing its way through her.

“Help.” Miko says disbelievingly. “You tried to kill me.” She takes two steps towards Sonja, face twisted in rage.

“No…” Sonja whimpers in agony, sliding slowly down the pole. Her arms move weakly, grasping uselessly at the pole, and she tries to tilt her head down. The camera pans down, showing that the pole has entered her body through the back, shattering her spine and nearly paralyzing her. “Kill me…” She looks to Miko, tears forming in her eyes. This is worse than anything she’d feared. The pole is sliding through her, but it’s also blocking her blood from flowing freely. She can hardly breathe, can hardly move, but it could be an hour or more before she finally dies.

Miko steps up to her. She looks across the dirty ground, and picks up the shard of glass that Sonja had held. Her other hand reaches up to touch her throat. Then, with a snarl, she spits on Sonja, saliva slapping against her eyes. “Kusatta ningan.” She spat again, turning deliberately away and tossing the glass on the ground a foot away from Sonja. As Sonja whimpers behind her, she crosses resolutely to the pylon, places her hand on it, and continues on her way.

Behind her, Sonja tries to raise her voice, to call back her killer or even call Saul DeLasse. Anything would be better than this terrible, slow death. But she can’t gather the breath. She shudders, twitching as she tries to reach for the glass, letting out a slow, gasping breath as her movement pulls on the pole and tears her flesh. Her fingers scrabble in the dust. But the glass is too far away. She is left to feel herself bleeding out, still reaching for the death that refuses to come.

Meanwhile, in the forest, Charlton is stalking new prey. He watches with a dark smile as Adrienne creeps through the underbrush, naked and in obvious pain, her left arm clutched tightly against her side and her hair hanging loose around her face. She looks like a naked madwoman, covered in blood and ashes. Soundlessly, he raises his bolo launcher, sliding around the forest floor. “Charlton’s found our little rebel, and is moving in. He knows that she killed Janet, and that’s going to make him hungry for blood. But does he know…”

The announcer cuts off abruptly as Charlton steps out of the woods a mere ten feet from Adrienne, bola launcher in one hand and a skinning knife in his other. He smiles harshly, raises the launcher with deliberate slowness. “End of the line, honey.” He says with a smile.

Adrienne snaps her ‘injured’ hand up, and her eyes fill with fire. Charlton sees the taser she holds as she fires, and his finger closes over the trigger. Both shots slam home. The taser catches Charlton in the chest, sending him collapsing backwards with a cry of pain through clenched teeth, . The bola launcher catches Adrienne across the legs, and she screams in response as she collapses backwards. “What a moment!” The announcer cries, as Adrienne starts to crawl towards the knife. “Can she reach it before Charlton recovers? We’ll find out… after this commercial break!”