Respawn: Last Man Standing

Chapter VI: On Trial

  As the team begins making their way to the next flight of stairs, Drake begins to hear a subtle whispering of a voice behind him, calling his name gently. Drake turns around and sees Georgie, Jake and Will walking, but none of them talking amongst each other. "What?" Georgie asks.
  "Did someone... call my name just now?" Drake asks.
  "No" Georgie says.
  Drake slowly turns back around as he says "Hm..." as they all continued walking.
  "Do you need some rest?" Ziya asks.
  "No... I should be fine to keep going" Drake replies. "I want to at least make it close to Floor 40 before we stop".
  "... If you say so" Ziya says.
  They continued on to the next floor, Floor 42. As they walked through where fights had already taken place, Judy continued searching each and every body for food. Meanwhile, Drake kept hearing subtle whispering calling his name every so often, though he kept trying to ignore it. Putting it off in his mind, he simply passed it off as yet another crazy anomaly that occurs in Pyramid.
  After reaching Floor 42, they decided to stop and rest. "I need to take a break" Ziya says. "I feel like I'm getting sick again".
  "Is it the bad food?" Will asks.
  Ziya stares up at Will, with the same usual emotionless expression. "Something like that" she says. As she, Judy and Drake fall asleep, Drake once again finds himself in a dream much like the one before. He was once again face to face with a reflection of himself. Except this time, the reflection was cracked from head to toe, much like a mirror that was punched where the heart of the reflection would be. The whispering Drake could hear before was slowly growing louder and louder.
  "It's too late" the reflection says, "you've already made your choice".  Shards of his reflection's body kept falling like before, but now the shards were falling faster. "I think it's only fair to let you know that you've chosen the harder route" the reflection says. "At least before, you could've died with your sanity still mostly in tact". Before giving Drake time to respond, he was quickly cast in a void of darkness. Nothing but endless black, and an intense silence surrounded him.
  Eventually, he woke up from his strange dream. He and Judy had woken up, and Judy was waking Ziya up so they could move on to the next floor. It took a little while, but eventually Ziya woke up. They continued dedicating their time to walking. Each floor growing quieter and quieter had given them the opportunity to progress without conflict. Before they could make it to floor 41, Ziya had collapsed again. The team waited for her, although restlessly. She seemed to be getting more and more tired, much more often as they progressed.
  Eventually, they continued their efforts until they made it to Floor 40. When there, they could see that there was no longer debris laying around. In addition to knives, the team also found some curved daggers. The floor was clear, however, there were now hills of concrete and pits laying about. There were still concrete walls to hide behind, however, they were smaller. The team couldn't see nearly anybody else on this floor with them. The rest of the competition was likely hiding within the various pits, if not behind the small concrete barriers.
  The team decided to rest here. Will, Jake and Georgie all took this time to sleep. As Ziya, Drake and Judy stayed awake, Drake and Judy could see Ziya's eyes were beginning to close as well.
  "Do you need to rest again?" Judy asks.
  "... Maybe" Ziya says in an exhausted tone.
  "Zizi... are you alright?" Drake asks.
  "I'll be fine" Ziya says. "I'm just a little... worn out is all".
  "Are you sure about that?" Drake asks.
  "Alright then" Judy says as she stands up, "Drake, you stay here and watch over Ziya. I'm going to scout around for more food. That cool?".
  "Yeah, that should be fine" Drake says. After Judy leaves, Drake looks down at Ziya. "Look, it's obvious that you're sick... is there anything around here that'll help with that?".
  "Nah, there isn't anything in Pyramid for that" Ziya says. "There's nothing we can do about it. Just... don't worry about it right now. I'll be alright".
  "How can we be so sure about that?" Drake asks. "What if it won't be alright?".
  "Well, my Respawn counter hasn't gone down" Ziya says. "So that's one way to know".
  "And if it does go down from your illness?" Drake asks. "What if you don't get any better?".
  "I'll get better" Ziya says. "You've always worried so much, you know?".
  "I do not know" Drake says. "Remember... amnesia?". Ziya laughs a little bit, then Drake says "Get some rest".
  "Yeah... alright" Ziya says as she finally closes her eyes.
  As the team rests, Judy continues searching around for food. There were a few dead bodies with very little food around. Judy was ready to give up her search for now until she came across a pit with a small package wrapped in brown paper. When she went over to the package and opened it up, it was a full set of rations for one person. She quickly stuffed the rations into her pocket, and ran her way back to her team. When she got back, Drake was eating a little bit of his own food. "Find anything?" Drake asks.
  Judy thinks for a moment, then pulls out what little food she found from the dead bodies. Keeping the full set of rations to herself, she only gave up what she took from the other's. "Not much" Judy says.
  "Better than nothing" Drake says.
  "Yeah..." Judy says. "Anyways, Ziya fall asleep too?".
  "Yeah, she's still very sick" Drake says. "I don't really know or care about the other three though".
  "No one really cares about them" Judy says.
  "That is also true" Drake says. "How should we continue though, with Ziya being sick?".
  "Dunno" Judy says. "She'll likely want to keep pushing forward anyways".
  "She we stop her?" Drake asks.
  "Are you nuts?" Judy asks. "We don't have very much time, and we have a job to do. We can't afford to move at our leisure".
  "Ah, I guess that much is true" Drake says.
  "I did find this" Judy says as she takes out a large curved dagger, and hands it over to Drake. "It looks like a Kukri blade. I figured with Ziya, our best hope of surviving in this place being kind of out of it, then you'd be the second best choice".
  "You're not keeping the dagger?" Drake asks.
  "Nah, keep it" Judy says, "it's yours. We'll need one of our teammates with a high amount of lives to have a good weapon".