Finally away from the gang, the group breathes a sigh of relief.
'Finally,' Anna states, clasping her hands together on her forehead. 'We finally made it out.'
Quin jumps in. 'Thank goodness we all made it out. Right, Zane?'
Zane simply mumbles back in agreement.
The blonde-haired woman doesn't join in on their jubilation, just standing in the corner looking stunned.
She is not the only one. Sid gets off the boat and begins walking into the water, as if wanting to go back to the burning ship.
The ship at this point has been burning for so long that there is a huge plume of smoke rising from it into the air that can be seen from a mile away.
There were no more escape boats, Sid thinks to herself before miserably falling to her knees.
'Papa!' she cries out. 'No, Papa, why did this have to happen to you?'
Her usual deminer totally as she lay in the sand crying.
Her crying is cut short when the barrel of a gun is pressed towards the back of her head.
Standing behind her is Zane, with a remorseless look in his eyes, ready to kill.
'Just do it,' Sid encourages in her depression. 'I have no reason to live anymore.'
'Wait!' Quin yells out, witnessing the scene, and runs towards them.
'Why should I?' Zane argues, waiting for an explanation. 'She was the one who put us in this situation to begin with. We could have all died on that ship.
She is a great liar, and now that her crew is gone, there is no telling what she will get up to.
She already fooled all of us before. It's best to strike while the wound is still fresh.'
'Even at that,' Quin argues, catching up and getting in the way of Zane's fire, 'there is nothing she can do to harm us now. She is just a defenceless girl. Besides, you said it yourself: she has already lost everything important to her. Can't you cut her a break?'
'Defenceless? It's not like she was holding a gun to our heads when she got us captured. She doesn't need any weapons,' Zane argues adamantly. 'Now get out of my way.'
Quin doesn't budge.
'Zane,' Anna calls out in a calm tone. 'Don't kill her. Like I said, she has her uses.'
Anna walks up to Zane and lowers the barrel of his gun.
'She knows where the gang stockpiled food and other supplies on land. And besides, she lived with those guys long enough, she is probably the person amongst us who knows the most about this damn apocalypse.'
Hearing Anna's argument, Zane finally relents, putting away his gun.
Sid, who was unfazed by their entire argument, remains on the ground sobbing.
She desperately grabs onto the sand on the shore, but the water washes it out of her hands, as if the world was showing her a cruel metaphor of her own life.
Anna picks her up by the armpits.
'It is sad, what happened to your family. Although I'll say they had it coming. But what is done is done, and you've got to get your ass off the ground if you don't want to end up like them.'
Sid doesn't respond to Anna's words, just staring lifelessly at the plume of smoke.
Anna notices the blonde-haired woman get off the boat and lets go of Sid to walk over to her.
'Are you okay?' Anna asks, worried about the woman's state because of how much she is trembling.
'I—I'm fine,' the woman stutters.
She takes a few moments to compose herself before speaking again.
'Those things... under the water... and on the boat, what were they?'
'They are monsters,' Anna responds. 'They first appeared six months ago with the apocalypse.'
'Monsters! We better inform the police, they can deal with them, right?'
'There is no police,' Anna breaks to her sadly.
'What do you mean? Were they paid off by the gang?' the woman questions naively. 'I knew something was wrong when no rescue came for us for so long. What do we do now? Who do we report what just happened to?'
Anna struggles to get herself to speak, not wanting to break the woman's sense of safety.
'What's wrong?' the woman questions.
Seeing as Anna isn't going to answer her, Zane speaks up from the back, where he is keeping an eye on Sid.
'The nation is dead.'
'What does he mean by that?' she questions, not understanding what Zane was referring to when he spoke.
'He means, um...' Anna stumbles over her words.
Zane speaks up again.
'Anna, do not try and preserve her false sense of security. Safety is an illusion. Speak to her straight. Dampening the blow isn't going to make it any less painful.'
Hearing Zane's cruel but true remarks, Anna gets herself together and delivers the news.
'There is no government anymore because it was destroyed.'
The woman is confused and silent, looking at Anna for further clarification.
Anna looks away from her to the empty city beside them.
'About six months ago, I don't know exactly how long it has been, the world fell apart. The Bad Word is what everyone called it. It spread around, killing millions of people in a single day. We were lucky to survive. Some of the survivors we met previously who said they had witnessed its effects said it would turn you to dust.
'Most of the survivors either left the city or died.
'With a disaster like this, the government was probably the first to die, so there was no one coming to save us.
'This city in front of us now is empty. It's just us and the monsters.'
The woman, still doubting, shakes her head in disbelief.
'That can't be right. She's lying, right?'
She turns to look at Quin and Zane. From their expressions, she can tell Anna wasn't lying.
She begins breaking down.
'It can't all be gone?' she clings on desperate for hope, but only silence follows her words.
'No! All I've worked for, everything is gone. I thought if I just endured enough and made it out of that basement, that I could finally live my life with the glory I've been striving for all my life.'
'My mother! My mother is gone too?!'
She looks up at the sky and begins cursing.
'Mother! You told me all I had to do was endure, endure a bit more and you can have it all!
Now look at me!'
The others just stand to the side silently, watching her break down.
She takes a deep breath before letting her head fall, no vigour for life present in her mannerisms.
She looks forward before beginning to walk off aimlessly.
'Wait!' Anna stops her, grabbing onto her hand.
The woman turns her gaze to Anna, expecting the reason for being stopped.
'Why don't you come stay with us? Ou—'
The woman cuts her off.
'Why? So I can have a gun pointed at my head every morning?'
Anna has nothing to say to her, so she turns her face away.
The woman pulls her hand out of Anna's grip, and Anna tries reaching out to her again, but Zane stops her.
'Let her go. She has decided not to stay with us. We can't force her.'
'Wait!' Zane calls out, now back in the ship. 'Take this.'
He tosses Catherina's golden gun to her.
'To keep safe.'
She catches it and looks at it without saying anything.
Then she continues walking off, waving the gun over her head as she departs, a sign that it was received.