Bloom and Scatter [Free! Zombie AU]

Endgame - Part 1

There was nothing but static coming through the radio.

"Hello?" Rin tried, "Anybody there? Hello?"

Nothing.

Rin lowered the mouthpiece into his lap, feeling frustrated beyond all belief. He exchanged a look with Makoto but found himself pausing at the slightly frightened, slightly alarmed expression on his face.

"What is it?"

Makoto didn't speak at first, eyes dropping to the mouthpiece in Rin's loose grip, "You were holding that, this whole time."

Rin frowned at the offending item in his hand, "Yes?"

"And you only hit CALL when you spoke?"

"... Yes?"

"How..." Makoto gulped, pale as a ghost, "How did Yamazaki even hear what I said?"

It took a moment for his words to sink in. Rin's eyes widened and he tossed the mouthpiece aside like it was burning, staring at it as it clattered against the wall of the shelter and onto the ground.

"He got the Pocari," Rin recalled breathlessly, swiveling his gaze to Makoto, whose face must have mirrored his own, "He didn't explain how."

"Maybe he was lying," Makoto's voice was shaking, "Maybe he just wanted to test us. He didn't get the Pocari. He just wanted to us to send it to Tono Dam and see if we would survive."

"That's..." A stretch, unfathomable, but it made more sense than anything Rin was thinking of. And yet, Yamazaki knew way too much, beyond just peddling information. He seemed to know their movements. Hell, he answered Rin the moment Rin switched the radio on. And it had been in a black box, all wired up properly, as if it had been prepared for them... It was one thing to have people reporting back to Yamazaki on private lines. But Yamazaki knew too much. Rin quickly scanned the ceilings, desperate to find CCTV cameras. Nothing. Only crumbling concrete, light fixtures and loose wires. This was just a lowbrow maintenance area of some sort for a local water reservoir.

Things weren't adding up, in a big way. This went beyond government conspiracies or mad science experiments. The messages, the targeted violence, being singled out... it was getting personal. It was becoming fatal.

"What's happening Rin?" Makoto was clutching his head in his hands, "What's going on? Why are these people hunting us? What are they? Where is my family, and my friends, and your family—"

"Calm down," Rin said, like a hypocrite. God knew he was on the verge of losing it himself. He hugged Makoto tightly and forced himself to breathe, to think, "Okay? Don't panic. Things are... they're not normal. Nothing is normal. Right? And it's getting harder and harder to think about this logically, no matter how much of a genius you actually turned out to be in the grand scheme of things. We could be hallucinating. The fog could actually be poisoning us, and we're having delusions."

Wow.

Wow, Rin. Wow.

Makoto must have thought the same thing because he was startled out of his tears and asked him incredulously, "About the exact same thing at the same time?"

"Shared delusions," Rin countered hurriedly, "We're feeding information to each other, filling in the blanks. Look, it's the best thing I can come up with right now, all right? This is degenerating into a horror story, and not the kind you can fend off with guns and smarts. Makoto—please calm down—listen to me. Listen. We are going to leave Iwatobi. We're going to leave, the moment our clothes are dry, and our weapons are combat-ready. Okay? We don't need to go anywhere these people tell us to. You've nearly died more times than I can bear, and I promised that you wouldn't. So, I'm going to wash my hands of all of this. Your family was probably evacuated. My family is... well, they're gone, regardless. We don't need to know what happened here. We don't need to stay. We're just going to go, okay? Okay?"