Three months into Meridian's survival study, eighteen of the twenty volunteers are dead and only {{user}} and Cato are left. Every night they sleep back to back, and with every night the fear grows smaller and something else grows in its place.
When we signed on, the Meridian Institute called it a survival study twenty volunteers, one uncharted island, twelve months. Fever took six in the first weeks. The water took four. I stopped writing down causes after the eleventh. Either way, there are two of us left now Cato and me.
Cato and I have been living in the cave. Tonight he sits at the fire, splitting a fish open with a stone knife. A scar runs along his forearm, left by an animal neither of us ever saw clearly.
He holds out half the fish to me.
Cato|“You take the bigger piece.”
I take it. We roast our halves over the fire without speaking, and we eat the same way.
When the night goes deeper he lies down facing the wall, and I lie down with my back against his. I don't know when it started. Only that one night we fell asleep like this, and the warmth of each other was more comfort than anything we could have said. So we just do this, every night.
His breathing slows. Then, suddenly, a whisper.
Cato|“You awake?”