Chapter 67 What Happens After #2
“He won’t follow,” Kayla says suddenly.
No lead-in. No context needed.
“Snow,” Ghost says, to anchor it.
Kayla nods. “He won’t come back with us.”
I lower myself onto the other bed, food balanced on my knee. “He was never going to.”
She looks at me then. Searching, not accusing. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. The temptation of freedom was always going to be too much for him.”
Hatchet’s pen taps once against the pad. He doesn’t look up.
Kayla stares at the wall opposite, jaw set. “We’re really doing this.”
“We are,” I say.
She lets out a breath that might almost be a laugh. “Walking back onto that island. Back into the asylum. Back into all of it.”
“And taking on the Director,” Ghost adds mildly.
“And him,” she agrees.
There’s no bravado in it. No fire. Just facts laid out in a line they all point back to the same place.
“I don’t see another way,” she says. Not asking. Stating.
“There isn’t one,” I tell her. “Not one that ends it properly.”
Hatchet writes then, quick and precise. He turns the pad so we can see.
If we don’t finish it, it finishes us.
Kayla’s mouth tightens. She nods once.
“I need it to be done,” she says quietly. “I can’t leave it open. Not after everything.”
Closure. She doesn’t use the word, but it’s there all the same, sitting between us like something solid.
I understand it too well to comment.
Ghost finishes eating, folds the carton neatly, lines it up with the others on the desk. “Then we go back,” he says. “And we end it.”
No one argues. No one dramatises it.
Hatchet closes the pad and sets it aside. Decision made.
Outside the window, the city keeps moving, oblivious. Inside the room, something settles into place, heavy and deliberate. For a moment, it almost feels like resolve.
That’s the part I don’t trust.
Kayla sets the food down like she’s made up her mind about something else entirely.
Not the island. That’s already decided. This is different – quieter. More internal.
“I’ve got a plan,” she says.
No buildup. No emphasis. Just a statement dropped into the middle of the room like it’s been there the whole time and we’re only just noticing it.
Ghost looks at her, expression unreadable. I don’t move. Hatchet’s eyes lift from the pad, attention sharpening.
“I always had one,” she adds, as if she’s correcting an assumption none of us actually made. “It didn’t start like a plan. More like…a direction.”
She gestures vaguely, as if the shape of it exists somewhere we can’t see yet.
“I’ve been adjusting it as things changed,” she continues. “As we learned more. As people showed their hands.”
No one interrupts. No one asks what the plan is. That’s the thing. We don’t need the details yet. We’re not at that stage.
I study her while she talks. She’s calm. Not performative. Not trying to sell us anything. This isn’t a speech. It’s an inventory being taken out loud.
Hatchet writes, quick strokes, then turns the pad.
You didn’t tell us.
Kayla’s mouth twitches. “I didn’t need to. Not until now.”
He considers that, then inclines his head. Acceptance.
Ghost pushes off the desk and folds his arms. “You sure it still works?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No qualifiers.
“And if it doesn’t?” he asks.
“Then we adapt,” she says. “Same as always.”
There’s no bravado in it. Just competence. The kind that comes from having thought through every ugly angle and deciding to move anyway.
I realise, distantly, that I believe her. Completely. Not because she’s right about everything, but because she’s never lied about the cost.
Hatchet closes the pad and sets it aside again. End of discussion.
For a few seconds, the room settles into a strange equilibrium. No raised voices. No tension pulling us sideways. Just alignment.
This is the moment that feels dangerous.
Not because anything’s wrong – but because nothing is.
I let the quiet sit for a few seconds longer than it needs to.
“Say it works,” I begin. Hatchet is already reaching for the pad again.
Kayla looks up. Ghost stills. Hatchet’s attention snaps to me fully, sharp and focused, like I’ve just stepped out of formation.
“Say we go back,” I continue, keeping my voice even, practical. “Say we finish Seytan. The asylum. The Director. All of it.”
I don’t rush it. This isn’t a challenge. It’s an accounting exercise.
“We don’t get pardons,” I say. “We don’t get our names back. Our faces are everywhere. Court records, footage, articles that never get taken down.”
Kayla doesn’t interrupt. She’s listening properly now.
“We’re convicted killers,” I add. “Globally. There’s no country we walk into where that isn’t true.”
Hatchet’s pen moves, fast and quiet, but he doesn’t turn the pad yet. He already knows where I’m going.
“So what happens after?” I ask. “Not tomorrow. Not the next move. After.”
I spread one hand, palm up, like I’m laying out tools on a table.
“How do people like us live?”
The room doesn’t answer straight away.
Ghost exhales slowly, eyes dropping to the carpet. Hatchet stops writing. The pen hovers, then lowers.
Kayla holds my gaze. For a second I think she’s going to give me something reassuring. A direction. A placeholder future we can all pretend toward.
She doesn’t.
That’s when I know I’ve asked the right question.
Kayla doesn’t look away.
That’s the first thing I notice. No deflection. No humour to soften it. Just a steady, unflinching hold, like she’s decided this deserves honesty even if it costs her something.
“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” she says.
The words are simple. Unadorned. They hit harder for it.
Ghost’s mouth tightens, not in disagreement but in recognition. Hatchet’s pen taps once against the pad, a quiet, involuntary sound. He doesn’t write.
Kayla breathes out slowly, then continues. “I let myself think about winning. Ending it. Making sure it can’t start again.”
She gestures vaguely, the same motion as before. The island. The asylum. All of it bundled into a single shape she refuses to name.
“Living after that?” She shakes her head. “That feels like tempting fate.”
No apology in her voice. No defensiveness. Just a line she hasn’t crossed.
I believe her. That’s the unsettling part. I believe she’s planned every step of the fall and none of the ground beyond it.
“I never needed to live once I’d completed my plan. But that was before…” She trails off and her hand unconsciously goes to her stomach.
Hatchet shifts in his chair, just enough for the movement to register. He writes then, slow and deliberate, and turns the pad.
We survive anyway.
Kayla looks at the words for a long moment. Something flickers across her face – not hope. Something quieter. Something more dangerous.
“Maybe,” she says. “If we’re allowed to.”
No one knows how to answer that.
The future, it turns out, isn’t empty. It’s sealed. Locked tight, like a door none of us have tried to open yet.
The conversation doesn’t resolve. It just…ends.
Not with agreement, not with conflict. It thins out, like smoke you stop noticing until it’s gone. Ghost goes quiet, attention drifting back to his food. Hatchet sets the pad aside without writing anything else. Kayla looks down at her hands like she’s already moved on to the next calculation.
No one says so that’s that.
Food gets eaten because it’s there, not because anyone’s hungry.
I take a few bites, more out of habit than appetite, and stop when the taste turns to paste in my mouth.
Around me, the room hums with low, practical movement – not coordinated, not planned.
Just people existing in the same space without colliding.
Snow still hasn’t come back. I checked when I gave the food to the others next door and they said they’d knock when he did. They’ve left us alone so far so that’s both good and unsettling.
That absence threads itself through everything now. Not loud enough to name, but present all the same. Like a loose wire we’re all stepping around without acknowledging.
Hatchet does a slow circuit of the room, eyes on the door, the window, the adjoining wall. Routine, but looser than usual. He doesn’t look tense. That’s new.
I realise I’m not tense either.
That’s new too.
But it’s the quiet that finally trips me.
Not sudden. Not dramatic. Just noticeable in the way a sound dropping out of a room makes your ears ring. The hotel should be louder than this. Pipes. Footsteps. Someone arguing in the distance. Something.
Instead, everything feels…held.
Kayla’s sitting still now, gaze unfocused, like she’s already halfway somewhere else.
Ghost leans back in his chair, legs stretched out, comfortable in a way he usually saves for places that don’t matter.
Hatchet’s stopped moving entirely, attention fixed forward, as if he’s listening for something that hasn’t happened yet.
The room is orderly without anyone deciding it should be.
No clutter.
No raised voices.
No friction.
Just readiness.
I don’t like it.
The sense settles low in my chest, heavy and insistent, before I can put words to it. Before I can work out what, exactly, I’m reacting to.
Something feels off.
Too quiet. Too ordered. Too calm.
There’s a storm coming.