“Sorry, what?” Natalie’s head spun as she tried to absorb what she was being told. Jeremy looked a little annoyed, and Natalie felt bad for making him repeat himself. The black stains still on his face from the bear’s blood made him look more intimidating in the light of the meeting hall, almost like Native American warpaint.

“For now, we’re trapped here.” He repeated, and Natalie’s confusion didn’t go away.

“Because of the clouds?” She asked. It didn’t make much sense to her. Clouds didn’t just make people disappear, not in the way they were describing. Then again, they were meeting without the Boathouse team leader, so unless this was some sort of elaborate prank on her...Well, it hadn’t been the first time, but most of the people in the room barely knew her. What would they gain from this kind of weird story?

“Yes, because of the clouds.”

“Uhm, I’m sorry, I just dont...I don’t understand.” Natalie cringed, wishing she could melt into the floor. Yasmina gave a little laugh as she sat in the chair next to her.

“Believe me, none of us really understand either. But the truth is, quite simply, that we’re trapped here right now, and we need your help.” She said.

“My help? Sorry, I just, I don’t know what I can do, I mean, I don’t know any better than you what’s going on.” Natalie stammered. Yasmina shook her head.

“Not with that. You let us worry about that for now, but we’ve got some other issues to work through because of that.” Yasmina continued.

“Right now, we don’t have a dining hall staff on campus because of it, so we’re looking for other options. For someone to take charge of preparing the meals for everyone.” Jeremy continued. Natalie glanced between them as they looked at her, and suddenly it clicked. Her gut twisted in on itself as her anxiety flared.

“Me? But I- I can’t… What about..” Natalie’s throat closed up on her as she looked around the room. She couldn’t do it, she wasn't ready, there wasn’t enough time, what about someone else?

“Hold on, you're suggesting putting her in charge of cooking for everyone? She looked like she’s ready to fall apart.” Arnold whispered harshly as he came up beside Jeremy, obviously trying to keep her from hearing and failing miserably. Natalie sunk further into her chair at his concerned glance her way.

“Natalie, we wouldn’t ask this of just anyone. Katsuki says you did a wonderful job with breakfast, and as much as I’d like to say there’s someone else who can take charge, there really isn’t. Everyone is going to have to help out in some way or another while we work through this situation. We’re just asking you to do what we know you’re good at.” Yasmina reached out and took her hand, rubbing her thumb on the back of her wrist.

“I know it’s a bit overwhelming, but we’re going to have some others working for you as well. Mostly, we need you to help organize them and teach them how to prepare the meals. None of us have a good grasp of how much food we need to prepare to make sure everyone gets some, or all the steps and time it takes to get everything ready. And since you already have that experience, you’re the only one we can turn to for that right now.” Jeremy continued.

“But...I mean, sure I did it for breakfast, but...How long are you expecting us to be trapped here?” Natalie asked, and Jeremy sighed.

“Unfortunately, we don’t really know that yet either. Which is another reason we need you. We need to ration the food we have, to stretch our supplies as much as possible. We’re working on some ideas on how to get some more, but you’re the one who can look at what we have and tell us how long it will last in the first place.” He replied.

“You’re asking a lot of her all at once. She hasn’t even said yes yet.” Xavier grumbled from his seat off to the side.

“We’re just trying to explain everything plainly. She deserves to know what she’s getting into before she accepts.” Jeremy replied.

“That’s only if she accepts.” Xavier added.

“Look, Natalie, I know we’re asking a lot of you. But as we’ve said, we don’t have many other options. We could go ask around if anyone else has the same experience as you, but I doubt we’ll find anyone. I know at least none of the staff members have food service experience, so if it’s not you, it's probably going to end up being a chaotic, disorganized mess in there.” Katsuki said. Natalie looked at him and a small smile crossed his face. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll be working closely with you to keep things moving. I probably won't be there all the time, we’ll need a group working the farms as well, and Ruth isn’t going to be able to handle an entire farming group on her own. But I promise, if you have any troubles, you can always come find me.”

“That goes for any of us. We’re not going to just leave you high and dry, but we can’t do what you can, and each of us have other things to lead that need to happen around campus as well.” Jeremy added. Natalie took a deep breath, looking back at Katsuki. He smiled gently at her as the anxiety in her gut twisted.

Leading a bunch of people to make food, day in and out, until they figured out how to escape? That meant working with people, the same people, for long days, and eventually, she'd do something stupid, and everything would go wrong, and everyone would blame her, and nothing would ever work again, and it’d be all her fault for being a-

“Natalie?” Yasmina asked, and Natalie sighed, looking at her bare feet. She didn’t want to, but what choice did she have?

“Okay. I'll...I’ll do it.” Natalie whispered. She didn’t see the smiles on their faces as she stared at her toes.

“If that’s settled, we need to figure out how to split the labor. We’ve got more than enough work to do, so we need to allocate our resources.” Xavier grunted.

“We’ve got a few different groups we can make based on basic survival needs. Food and safety are our two biggest problems, so long as getting clean water doesn’t become an issue for a little while.” Jeremy walked over to the blackboard, quickly drawing out a few columns and labeling them appropriately.

“We’ll have to split up the food group into a few sub-groups. Natalie will be in charge of the dining hall itself, and Ruth will take the farm. We’ll have to see if any of the boathouse staff know anything about fishing and can lead a group in that, and Zoe or hunting, if she thinks that’s a possibility.” Katsuki continued, and Jeremy quickly outlined the hierarchy, with Katsuki’s name over the rest of them.

“All right, what else?” Jeremy asked.

“My group will be split in two. Safety patrols and maintenance. I saw Connor and James in the triage center, their injuries weren’t too bad, they could take over being the ones in charge of the safety patrols.” Xavier said.

“I thought they were the archery staff. Do they know gun safety?” Yasmina asked.

“All of the ranged sports staff went through training to take over each other’s jobs in case of sickness since there were only five of them. Connor and James will be fine, and I’ll give them a hand otherwise. As for maintenance, we need to fill that out from the beginning. We’ll need someone who’s good with their hands and following instructions to lead them…” Xavier said, and all eyes went over to Arnold, whose eyes widened.

“Wait, what? No, I’ve never done maintenance work before, I’m Craft Shop!” Arnold said.

“Way I see it, we don’t have much of a need for a craft shop at the moment. You and whoever’s left in your team can help me out with getting a maintenance group going.” Xavier replied.

“At the moment, that’s just Finn. None of the other craft shop staff have been accounted for.” Katsuki sighed.

“We’ll need some heavy lifters there. We should take the time to figure out and build some defenses around the camp in case we’re attacked again. Designate a few places we can fortify and defend easily, and can tell the camp to evacuate to the closest one in an emergency. Places those bears can’t get into easily and can’t destroy, where we can kill them from a safe distance.” Brian added. Xavier nodded with him.

“We’ll add that to the maintenance group’s jobs, then. We’ll have plenty of raw materials from all of the destroyed cabins.” Jeremy replied.

“That’s another thing. Hate to say it, but something’s gonna have to be done about the bodies.” Xavier stated.

A nervous silence fell over the group, and Natalie fidgeted in her chair. The heavy, oppressive mood felt like she had been dunked underwater.

“Right. Uh….Shit, what do we do about that.” Jeremy sighed.

“Best options at this point are a mass burial, or cremation.” Xavier grunted.

“What? No, what about their parents, their families? We can’t just...Their families deserve a say in how they’re...laid to rest.” Allison struggled to speak, her voice still hoarse, the emotion thick in her voice.

“Don’t like it any more than you, but we don’t have the manpower to dig individual graves. We can’t keep them topside, or they may attract more beasts, and a bunch of dead bodies is a wonderful way to spread disease.” Xavier replied.

“I’d rather not have a plague roll through the few people we have left. We have enough on our plate already, mass illness is the last thing we need now.” Jeremy shivered.

“Of course, but…” Allison struggled, and Arnold laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“I don’t know how we’re going to be able to assign a group to...body relocation. We can’t ask kids to dig through and find the bodies of their friends. It’ll traumatize them.” Yasmina argued.

“Not like we have too much of a choice there. Unless all the staff wants to pitch in on that by themselves and leave the campers unsupervised for however long that takes.” Xavier replied.

“We’ll have to ask for volunteers for that, and restrict it to the older kids. Take shifts, or something. We can’t have them becoming so traumatized they go off the deep end.” Arnold said, and Allison glared at him. Natalie shrunk back in her chair, the pure anger coming off of her thick in the air. Arnold leaned back, an apologetic look on his face. “Sorry, that didn’t come out very well, did it?”

“No, it didn’t, and the next time you call someone crazy for being traumatized by seeing dead bodies, I’ll be there to rip your goddamn tongue out of your fucking face.” Allison growled. Natalie shrunk further into her chair. Allison’s glare wasn’t even directed at her, but just being the same direction as Arnold had Allison’s furious expression faced towards her, and she could feel the pure rage pouring out of the head lifeguard.

“Allison, he didn’t mean it like that, and we don’t need to be arguing amongst ourselves right now. Arnold, please...Think about what you say before you say it.” Jeremy rubbed at his face.

“Sorry, Allison.” Arnold nearly squeaked, and after a moment, Allison looked away from him, slumping back into her chair. Natalie breathed a sigh of relief as the tension in the air melted away.

“We’ll need to figure out how to deal with the bear corpses as well. We can’t have those sitting around, who knows what kind of problems that might cause.” Brian said.

“We’ll have to see if we can use the trucks to drag them somewhere to burn them, elsewise we’ll have to bury them as well.” Xavier added

“Okay, so other than adding some more people to help out Allison and the lifeguards, are there any other jobs we need to assign people to?” Jeremy asked.

“We’ll need some way to communicate around the camp while we’re spread out, so unless we can figure out how to get the radios working again, we’ll need runners.” Katsuki replied.

“Do we need a separate group of people for that? Doesn’t seem efficient, what would they be doing the rest of the time?” Brian asked.

“As long as each group has enough people, we can send someone from within the groups to carry messages to other groups as needed. Having a group dedicated specifically to that is a waste of resources. Xavier, any ideas if we can get the radios working?” Jeremy turned to the older man as his eyes went skyward.

“Good question. We’ve got a radio repeater hooked up to an antenna on the roof of Andromeda, best place for it since it's the center of campus. I’ll have to take a look to see if that’s the issue. Might be we can just shut it off and we’ll be good, but there might be some dead zones that way.” Xavier replied.

“All right, any other group we haven’t thought of?” Jeremy asked, and as Natalie looked around, she saw that everyone else was doing the same. After a few moments, Jeremy nodded.

“That’s a good place to start for now. We can adjust things later if we find something isn’t working, but I think we’ve got a good base for things for the moment. Does anyone have anything else that we should discuss before we start figuring out how to assign roles?” He continued.

“On the subject of campus safety, where are we all going to be staying? We’ve already seen how unsafe the cabins are. It'll be a lot safer for everyone if we consolidate sleeping areas. Maybe here in the meeting halls? There’s plenty of space for everyone between them. ” Brian said. Natalie’s heart sank.

“Some of us don’t have cabins to go back to anymore anyways.” Natalie murmured, and several pairs of eyes looked at her.

“I’m sorry to hear that. We’ll see about getting you some extra things. We’ll probably have to share some things around anyways.” Yasmina replied. Natalie nodded. As much as the chef’s coat was nice, she did still need some shoes, and some other changes of clothes.

“We’ll need to take stock of which cabins are still standing in the first place, see if we can pull the beds out of them, or maybe just the mattresses. That move is going to be quite the project on it’s own.” Xavier sighed.

“We’ll start with just the beds first, getting everyone able to be in a safe spot for the night is more important. We’ll let people get their personal things later on. Or after we dig out what’s left of them, in some cases.” Jeremy continued. Natalie frowned. Hopefully some of her stuff was still in good enough condition to be used under the rubble, but after leaving her trunk open before she left, she wasn't sure how much of it might be salvageable.

“If that’s everything, then let’s start figuring out how we’re going to sort out who is going to be assigned to what job.” Jeremy continued.

“We should probably keep cabin groups together as much as possible to make organization easier. We’ll have to sort through those who have specific skills that will be useful like Natalie and Zoe, but otherwise, it would be an easy way to organize who does what.” Katsuki suggested.

Natalie froze, her stomach twisting up in anxiety. Would that mean that her cabin group would end up working for her? She looked around, her eyes wide as Jeremy and the other team leaders nodded.

“I’ll agree to that. It may take a little while to get through asking everyone, but we can do that while we bring in each cabin group to inform them what’s going on.” Arnold replied.

“D-does it have to be by cabin groups?” Natalie hated how her voice trembled, and Yasmina turned to look at her again.

“Is something wrong with that?” She asked. Natalie took a shaky breath.

“I...well, not most, but...I don’t get along with mine…”

“Gonna have to learn how to get along with people you don’t like at some point.” Xavier rumbled, and Natalie’s heart fell.

“Sorry Natalie, but we don’t have too many options. Everyone’s going to need a job, and we can’t cater to everyone’s preferences. If it becomes a serious issue, we’ll figure something out. It won’t be just your cabin mates anyways, you’ll have some staff members and others besides them. As a team leader, you’ll have to figure out how to manage everyone, even those you don’t get along with.” Jeremy replied.

Natalie sunk further into her seat, once again wishing that she could sink into the floor. They didn’t understand, none of them did. She wasn’t cut out for this, and now being forced to work with the people she had been purposefully avoiding? How was she supposed to do that? Between the argument she’d had with Victoria before her phone was broken, and then leaving them on their own against the bears, they had every reason to hate her. How was she supposed to work with and manage people like that?

“How are we going to inform the other staff? Shouldn’t they know first?” Katsuki asked.

“We’ll have to bring them in with the groups as we go, we can’t leave the ones we haven’t told yet unsupervised, and we also can’t let them be the last to know. Allison, the lifeguards and the injured are going to have to be told last after we get everyone through from the rest of the basement, you good with that?” Jeremy asked, and Allison nodded.

“I’ll be the one to tell them, but I agree about waiting until we’ve done everyone else. No sense in having someone accidentally overhear down there.” She replied.

“Should we go in order of the cabin sites then? How many should we start with?” Arnold asked.

“Katsuki, you’ve got the best idea of what our numbers look like. Ideally, let's keep the numbers of each group around, say, a dozen? There’s going to be a lot of questions and confusion, so we’ll need to make sure we’re not overwhelmed by them.” Jeremy replied.

“Aquarius first then. I believe all of them made it back, that’s a dozen right there.” Katsuki said.

“Not all of them survived though. We lost Christina Walker.” Allison murmured, but Natalie’s mind was elsewhere, her panic slowly rising, horrified realizations streaming through her head one after the other.

If Aquarius was first, then her cabin group, Ursa Minor, was next. With the other Ursa Minor cabin gone, then anyone who survived the massacre she ran from of the Cassiopeia cabin site would get filtered in with them to make the full dozen. There were certain to be at least a few of them, it had been a large group, and Natalie couldn’t imagine that at least a few had managed to escape to the woods before they were all killed.

A dozen other campers, all with ample reason to hate her and everything she stood for. For leaving them to die while she ran to safety.

“Are you all right, Natalie? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Yasmina asked. Natalie turned to look at her, her stomach roiling in anticipation and anxiety.

“I...I just don’t...I need some air.” Natalie stood, and Yasmina stood with her as she swayed.

“Do you want someone with you? I know we’ve dumped a lot on you at once.” Natalie shook her head.

“I just...need some space.” Natalie’s breath hitched, and Yasmina nodded.

“Don’t go too far, all right? Stay around the meeting halls.” Jeremy said. Natalie nodded as she walked shakily towards the exit. Around the meeting halls. She could do that.

The wood floor of the porch was hot under her feet as she stepped outside, but luckily the packed dirt pathways were a bit cooler. She breathed in deeply, trying to settle her nerves, the warm, summer air flooding her lungs.

Her feet took her around towards the back of Andromeda, automatically heading towards Hydra meeting hall. The steps she and Chuck had sat on just yesterday afternoon called to her. It totally wasn’t a coincidence that it just so happened to be the meeting hall on the opposite side of Andromeda from Medusa, the main building completely blocking her view of anyone going between those two.

How the hell had they gotten into this mess? How the hell was she supposed to get out of it? Natalie sat heavily on the steps. If only she hadn’t accepted the stupid scholarship to a camp in the middle of nowhere. No matter how good it looked on her college applications, this wasn’t worth it. Nothing was worth getting stuck in the middle of the mountains, attacked by demon bears and being forced to lead people she just knew weren’t going to listen to her. She’d already tried working with Victoria and the others, only to be shot down, and now there were the not-so-subtle threats Victoria had made about the alcohol, plus her own abandonment of the whole group to the bears to top it all off. She wondered if the alcohol had survived the cabin being crushed. Maybe she could find it before the others and take it for herself, getting drunk seemed like a great idea with everything else going on. Maybe she could confiscate it under her new authority anyways. She could always excuse it as being needed for cooking supplies. There was no end to the things she could do with alcohol in her cooking, and it might be worth it just to see the look on Victoria’s face.

“There you are.” Natalie jumped, looking back towards Andromeda. She sighed, her heart rate slowing back to normal as Zoe walked towards her.

“Hey Zoe.” She replied.

“Getting to be a thing now, finding you in out of the way places. You really don’t like hanging around other people, do you?” Natalie cringed, and Zoe laughed. “No worries, each to their own. To be honest, most of the time I can’t stand people either.”

“Really? You looked like you were good with your cabin group.” Natalie said.

“They’re all good kids, even if they’re a bit annoying at times. Especially Courtney and Sophie. They bicker all the time, it’s so fucking anonying. And the triplets, well, don’t get me started on them and their ideas of fun around tricking others with their name-switching pranks.” Zoe sighed, sitting down on the steps next to her. Natalie fidgeted slightly as she looked at the older girl. “No, most of the time the problem is that people are just so stupid. Can’t stand it sometimes, you know?”

“Yeah, I...I get that.” Natalie replied, her heat sinking. How long was it going to take until Zoe’s opinion of her changed? It generally didn’t take too long, only a few days, before people finally got tired of her.

“Katsuki asked me to come find you, said you got spooked about something.” Zoe continued, and Natalie’s stomach twisted.

“I...I just got overwhelmed, I guess. There’s a lot going on and...Well, it’s bad.” Natalie replied. Zoe hummed to herself.

“They tell you the details? They’ve been keeping the rest of us like mushrooms in there.” Zoe asked. Natalie raised an eyebrow in confusion, and Zoe smirked. “You know, mushrooms. In the dark and fed shit.”

Natalie snorted, and Zoe’s face broke out into a grin. “Good to see your sense of humor is still intact. I’d be more worried otherwise.” Zoe continued. “So tell me, what’s up.”

Natalie sighed, rubbing her forehead. How was she supposed to explain it all? The fact that they were trapped, the burden of leadership, the problems with her cabin crew? There was too much to say, and she was-

“Man, looks like you got a lot on your mind there.” Zoe’s voice got serious, and Natalie nodded.

“It’s...tough to know where to begin.” She admitted, and Zoe nodded.

“Well, you don’t have to share anything if you don’t want to. But if you’re up for it, you could start with why the team leaders have been locked away in Medusa for a while now. Even the other staff members are starting to get a bit antsy.” Zoe replied.

“They’re bringing them in soon to start talking, but only a dozen people or so at a time. They’re trying to keep people from panicking.” Natalie absently replied. Zoe whistled low, and Natalie realized she probably shouldn’t have said that.

“That bad, huh. We’re not getting any help then?” Natalie shook her head.

“There’s this...weird cloud barrier, and anything that goes in it doesn’t come out. It’s around the whole camp.”

“Even over the lake?” Zoe looked over her shoulder, peering down the pathway. Natalie looked the same way, but more up.

“You can see the tops of it over the trees over there.” Natalie pointed up, over the tall trees around them. Zoe followed her finger, frowning.

“Looks like just clouds to me from here. Think we could head down the path to get a better look?” Zoe asked, standing up. Natalie shook her head.

“Jeremy said not to leave the meeting hall area.” She replied. Zoe put her hands on her hips and grinned.

“Well, for one, I don’t see him here babysitting you, and two, we’re not leaving the meeting hall area. That bend in the path is where the lake should come into view, and we’ll still be in sight of the meeting halls, so technically we’re still in the area.” Zoe replied. Natalie glanced down the pathway, her stomach twisting again.

“I don’t know…”

“Come on. It’s not far. We’ll be back in just a minute or two.” Zoe turned and started to walk away, and after a moment, Natalie felt compelled to follow. She sighed, looking back towards Medusa as they headed down the path before the trees got in the way, leaving only Andromeda visible.

“What size shoe do you wear?” Zoe asked, and Natalie looked down at her feet.

“Uh...7’s.” She replied.

“I’d give you a pair, but mine are 9’s. I think Jenna’s got a few extras around that size, I’m sure we can get you hooked up.” Zoe said.

“Oh, you don’t have to, I mean, we’re going to be going through the cabins to dig out my stuff-”

“How long is that gonna take? Doubt that’s a priority right now, might as well get something on your feet before then. Besides, how sure are you that your shoes survived last night?” Zoe asked, and Natalie frowned. “Exactly. Don’t worry, Jenna’s cool she won’t mind.”

“You sure? I don’t...If she doesn’t want to-” Zoe waved her off, interrupting her.

“If she doesn’t, she’s an idiot and not worth our concern anyways. She’s got extras and you need some, end of story.” Zoe replied.

“If you’re sure…” Natalie trialed off as Zoe came to a halt, looking down the pathway.

“Hmm...That’s interesting. Can’t see the mountains.” Zoe said. Natalie followed her gaze to the small break in the tree line far at the end of the path, the wall of clouds descending from the sky all the way to the lake.

“Like I said, that’s what’s all around us. It’s like we’re in the eye of a giant hurricane, only it’s not moving and we can’t leave. Jeremy took the drone up and showed me the video he took while he explained it all.” Natalie said. Zoe hummed to herself for a moment.

“Welp, that's certainly a problem. Makes sense why you were so stressed. Bet the team leads have got a lot of problems to solve because of that.” Zoe replied. Not for the first time, Natalie was surprised at the level of natural intuition the older girl displayed so casually. A small pang of jealousy at her ability to comprehend the situation so quickly struck through her heart before she squashed it.

“Yeah, there’s...a lot. They asked me to run the kitchen since all the dining hall staff is gone.” Natalie revealed, and Zoe looked back at her, a knowing look on her face.

“Let me guess, you’re nervous about that too?” Natalie indeed, and Zoe grinned.

“I just… they’re assigning groups based on cabins, and my group…” Zoe nodded before she even got to the point.

“I can tell, you don’t really get along with them, do you? Is that way you were sitting by yourself down there?” Zoe replied.

“Some of it.” Natalie said. She couldn’t tell her about what she saw while Zoe had been busy kicking down the door of the craft shop. Not calling out to them had gotten a few boys killed, and she had left the rest of them to die as well to make sure that they didn’t bring trouble to her own group of survivors. Natalie wasn’t sure that Zoe would take that knowledge very well at all.

“Well, you certainly know what you’re doing in the kitchen, if this morning proved anything. Just think of it as your stomping grounds, and don’t take any nonsense from them. If you’re there to lead them, they’re there to do a job, right? Keep it cool and professional, and if they don’t respond to that, then tell the staff.” Zoe said. Natalie looked at her, a bit exasperated.

“It’s not that simple…” Natalie groaned, and Zoe shrugged.

“Look, if you’re right about us being stuck here, this is about survival now, right? Both you and they are gonna have to put aside whatever issues you have with each other. I’m sure you can do it on your end, you’re tough, you’re smart. Hell, better you than me, if I was in charge, I’d end up cussing them out every time they acted out, and then where would we be?” Zoe replied, and Natalie grinned slightly.

“I’d pay to see you chew them out.” Natalie replied, and Zoe grinned.

“They give you any grief, and I’ll do it for free.” Zoe stuck out her hand, and Natalie shook it, her heart a bit lighter.

“It’s too bad you won’t be there with me. They’re thinking of asking you about your expertise with hunting?” Natalie’s statement turned into a question, and Zoe grinned wider.

“Really? Yeah, me and my dad go bow hunting in the fall. Deer mostly, sometimes smaller game, but there really isn’t much around here worthwhile to hunt besides deer. Hunting here, huh? Did you get a good sense of how far into the woods that barrier goes?”

“Not really, the view on that drone screen was pretty small, and it kept moving. You’d have to ask someone else.” Natalie said.

“Well, we’ll have to see. Deer won’t come too close to the camp this time of year, too many people, so unless it’s a pretty wide area, we’re probably not gonna get lucky there. Might be some smaller game we could trap…” Zoe looked at the sky for a moment, and Natalie could see the gears turning in her head.

“We should probably head back. Someone might come looking for us soon.” Natalie said, looking back down the pathway. Zoe nodded, and they walked back down the pathway towards the meeting halls.

“Seriously, though, you need any help, just let me know.” Zoe said, and Natalie nodded, smiling back at her. At least she seemed to have made one friend through everything that had happened so far, even if it was borne out of terrible, horrible circumstances.

She did her best to ignore the gnawing anxiety in her gut, reminding her that it wouldn’t last.