We Must Hunt a Madman

The river’s frigid embrace relinquished its hold, casting them onto a secluded bank deep within the forest, far from the echoes of chaos. For a long moment, they lay there on the damp earth, sputtering and gasping, the weight of their soaked clothes pinning them to a carpet of pine needles. The only sounds were the strained rasp of their own breathing and the indifferent chirping of birds in the high canopy. The quiet felt unnatural, a fragile veneer over the screaming in Nicolas’s mind.

He pushed himself into a sitting position, his back finding the solid trunk of an ancient pine. The world dripped and settled around them. "I think," he said, the words cutting raggedly through the stillness, "I think we lost him."

It was the wrong thing to say.

Like a triggered snare, Katrina launched herself from the ground, landing on her feet with a feral grace. The exhaustion on her face was eclipsed by a storm of pure, incandescent rage. Her eyes, narrowed to slits, fixed on him.

"What is wrong with you?" she hissed, the question a low, dangerous prelude to the eruption that was to follow.

Nicolas flinched, bewildered by the sudden attack. "What are you talking about? We made it out. We’re alive…"

"Alive?" She took a step toward him, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides. "I have been rotting in this digital hell for two years! Two years of running, fighting, watching people die, all for one thing: a chance. A way out. We finally had it, Nicolas. A book. The answer to everything, right there in my hand!"

She jabbed a finger in his direction, her voice rising with every word. "And you! What did you do? You threw our only key, our only hope, into a pit of nothingness!"

"He was going to kill you, Katrina!" Nicolas shot back, scrambling to his feet to face her. "There was no other move!"

"I don't care!" she screamed, the sound raw and torn from the very depths of her soul. "At least it would have been a move! At least we would have gone down fighting for a chance! But now? What do we have now? Nothing!" She kicked a loose stone, sending it skipping into the river. "You've been here for a handful of days, and look at the wreckage you've left! Suge is gone! The only person who had ever faced Gein and survived, and he walked right into that fortress for you! The guidebook is gone! And now every monster, every mercenary, every last twisted piece of code in this game is probably looking for us! And for what? For one of your stupid, pointless acts of heroism!"

A cold fire ignited in Nicolas's own chest, pushing back against her wave of fury. "And what was the alternative, Katrina? Stand there and let that little girl be torn apart by thylacines? Is that the secret? Is that how you've survived all this time? By turning your back and letting everyone else die around you?"

The direct hit silenced her, but only for a heartbeat. The anguish on her face hardened, freezing into a mask of bitter resolve. "You can stay here and philosophize if you want. But I am not dying in this place." She turned as if to leave.

"And go where?" Nicolas challenged, his voice sharp. "What's the plan?"

Katrina let out a hollow, broken laugh. "Plan? Don't you get it? There is no plan. We have nothing. It's over, Nicolas. We lost."

He watched the defeat slump her shoulders, the fight draining out of her. And in that void, a terrible, desperate idea took root. He let the silence stretch, then spoke a single word that made her freeze.

"Pazzo."

A real laugh, sharp and bordering on hysterical, burst from her lips. "Oh, that's brilliant. Truly. We'll just trade one maniac for another. A perfect strategy."

"He's not a strategy, he's a resource," Nicolas said, the insane logic of it solidifying as he spoke. "Think about it. Gein plays the game, but Pazzo helped build it. He knows the source code. He knows its foundations. He could know about a flaw, a back door, something Gein could never even imagine. It’s a long shot, but it's the only one we have."

"The man who was seconds away from drilling a hole in your skull," Katrina stated flatly, her voice dripping with ice. "You seem to be forgetting that part."

"No," Nicolas said, taking a step closer. A dangerous glint ignited in his eyes. "That's the part that makes it work. He wants my brain, right? My 'fresh' brain is his golden ticket out of here. So what happens if I take that ticket hostage?"

He saw a flicker of understanding in her eyes and pressed his advantage. "What happens if he knows that the moment he tries anything, the moment I die, his ticket is punched forever? He'll be trapped in his own creation for eternity. He won't be able to use my brain if I'm dead. He'll have no choice but to cooperate."

Katrina stared at him, wrestling with the terrifying logic of his plan. "And assuming you can even find him, what makes you think you can trust a single word that comes out of his mouth?"

"I don't need to trust him," Nicolas said grimly. "I just need to be more valuable to him alive than dead. You know I'm right."

After a long, tense silence, she finally gave a sharp, reluctant nod. "Fine." She turned away again, her posture rigid. "Let's go."

He held fast, forcing her to look at him.

"Why?" he asked, his voice quiet now, stripped of anger. "Why do you do this? The walls, the anger… you don't have to fight everyone, all the time."

Her face became a blank slate. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know you saved my life," he insisted. "Back in that lab. When you could have just left me for dead. You didn't have to come back for me when Gein had you. Why?"

For a second, just a second, he saw something flicker behind the icy guard of her eyes—a ghost of an old pain. She tore her gaze away, staring into the dense woods. "For a moment… I remembered what it was like out there," she ground out through clenched teeth. "I acted how I would have… in the real world. It was a mistake. A moment of weakness."

"That's not weakness, Katrina. That's humanity."

She looked back at him, and her eyes were glacial. "In this world, they're the same thing. And I promise you, it won't happen again."

With a final, violent jerk, she pulled her arm free from his grasp. The conversation, and whatever fragile truce it might have offered, was over. Without another word, she strode into the shadows of the trees. After a moment, Nicolas followed, the two of them moving together in a heavy, suffocating silence, venturing deeper into the wilderness to hunt for a madman.