Make for the beach

The flare's too risky, Jade thinks, shaking her head slightly. It might not work at all, and even if it did, LaShonda said it takes about half a minute for this pocket fire to light up. They might see me tossing it out there and if that's how long it takes to cause a distraction, it'll come too late. I'm going to just have to move really, really carefully... and run for it if my luck doesn't hold!

Slowly, Jade lifts one foot and places it back down on an exposed root a half-step away, taking a moment to breathe before trusting her weight to it. Then, her eyes pick out her next step, and she lifts her back foot to ease it over there, pausing for a moment afterward to ensure she keeps her balance.

This is going to be even harder than I thought...

Another step, slightly to the side. She can't be totally sure that the tree still blocks the mens' view of her, but it was the only place she could put her foot down. The next bit of exposed root is an easy step, but when she starts to go for another one, she sees at the last moment that it's a fallen branch, not a root! Jade pulls back and lands her foot back on the root where it came from more out of blind luck than anything else - for a moment, she teeters dangerously, windmilling her arms in a frantic attempt to stay balanced!

That was way too close, she thinks to herself, and all over her body she can feel the itch of sweat glands going into overdrive. Okay... that's another root. Carefully, now!

Another step. A longer one, more difficult, but Jade lands her foot in the right spot. Then, she has to bring both feet together, standing delicately on a root only six inches long and perhaps two inches wide.

Thank you, dance lessons!

Another step puts her in a position where she can take a moment to breathe.

"I'm startin' to think she's not up there," one of the men suddenly says. "I mean, I think we'd be able to see her, right? She's a ginger, she practically glows in the dark! Not like that black chick we nailed before."

Jade feels her stomach drop. Oh no, LaShonda, she thinks. God, I'm so sorry... and that means I probably am the last virgin left! If they got her, then they probably got everyone else. She was the toughest of any of us.

"Maybe we should take a look around," one of the other men says. Twigs snap and leaves rustle as he stands up - Jade leaps as far as she can, stepping down on a tuft of green that makes only the slightest noise, then again, then once more to a largish flat rock.

"Hey, did you guys hear that?" That was Anton.

"No, jackass, we heard you makin' noise when you shouldn't. Ah fuck, we might as well look for her now."

Jade crouches and springs, jumping as far as she can while the other two men get up. Her foot hits bare dirt, then another flat rock, and then she's on the steep slope. A last, **** jump lands her foot on a stick which snaps under her weight, and then she's over the rise, rolling sideways down the other side.

"There, I know I heard something that time! It came from over there!"

Jade starts to scramble to her feet, when suddenly there's a flapping, screeching noise in her face, and sharp claws flailing at her. She swats at the thing blindly, and it takes to the air - a huge white seagull, rudely awakened from its sleep among the reeds. It screams at her again and then climbs up into the air, making its way off down the beach to the ocean.

"Ah, it's just a fuckin' bird!" one of the men says. "Come on, if she were hidden over there she'd be gone by now."

Jade wastes no time in making his words true, getting to her feet but crouching low, and moving across the sand as fast as her legs can carry her.

A surf-pounded rock riddled with hollows serves as a resting place for Jade... the rock sits well above the waterline, but Jade has been to the seashore often enough to recognize the signs of low tide. Six hours from now, the rock will be at least half-submerged, but Jade plans on staying no longer than six more minutes.

Her latest club is a slim and gnarled piece of driftwood, and Jade has increased its potential with a heavy stone at its end, tied on as firmly as she can with the bandages and tape from her kit. There are large shells scattered on the beach, and for a moment Jade considers taking a cue from LaShonda's playbook, sharpening one of them to use as a knife. No, she decides, I've got no idea how to fight with a knife, and if the guy's close enough to me that I can use it then I'm probably toast anyway. Better to not have something he can grab and use against me.

She eats the last of the food in her pack - the last she'll have to eat on this island, hopefully. She also drains the water bottle, as it seems best at this point to travel light and fast. The first-aid kit she puts back, even though the most useful parts of it are gone. The pager and map are both still there, as is the black map-device.

The device beeps.

Jade almost drops the pack, startled. Could the Directer be trying to talk to me? she wonders. Seems kind of pointless, I'm certainly not taking any more of his deals this close to the end! Anything he offered me would be a trap, for sure...

The device beeps again, and the screen lights up. Carefully, Jade pulls it out of the pack, placing her thumb over what seems to the the front-facing camera. The blank white screen fades to show the Director's face.

"Attention, all male contestants," he says. "We are now entering what will almost certainly be the final day of competition. At this time, all but one of our female contenders have been deflowered. This phase of the contest is what we like to call 'the Endgame,' and I have some exciting news for you all. While you are still welcome to pursue any and all of the women on the island, the bounty on our final virgin has hereby been raised to one million dollars."

He pauses for a moment. Why is he showing me this? Jade wonders. Is he trying to scare me? Does he think I'm impressed that he's put such a high price on my pussy? Wait... this one isn't Malik's, which he might have thought I had; this is the one that LaShonda left behind! He doesn't know I have it, he thinks he's broadcasting to just the men!

"Yes, my friends, you heard right. This is a change from what you were told at the beginning, when you were informed that whoever took down the last virgin would collect a hundred-thousand-dollar prize. We've seen fit to raise that amount, in the hopes of making this last day as thrilling as it can be. And who is the girl who can make you an overnight millionaire?"

A picture of Jade's face appears on the screen, one she recognizes from the photo shoot she went through as part of the initial preparations. Being **** to pose nude for the cameras had, at the time, been the most humiliating experience she had ever gone through; now, it's just one more thing on a very long list.

"Her name is Jade, but we've come to know her as the Fox," the Director says, seeming to savor the words. "You've heard that she's cunning, tricky, even dangerous... well, take it from me, everything you've heard is true. But the greatest rewards come from the greatest challenges, and so if you're man enough to join the Fox Hunt, you'll stand to find yourself very richly rewarded indeed!"

"'Where is she?' you must be asking. I'm afraid I can't tell you that... that would be cheating, after all. But at this point in the contest, you can pretty much rest assured that she's getting closer to the final house, and so those who want to win big should head that way! Good luck, all of you..."

The device goes black.

"Fuckin' bastard," Jade mutters, and she's about to put it back in the bag when it beeps again. This time, the screen lights up with a map... and on the map, she can clearly see the blinking-circle indicator of her own position, superimposed on a red cross. He's showing the nearby men where I am! Jade realizes.

Quickly, Jade scrolls the screen toward the final safe house, looking for indicators of where the men are. A few are on the beach, as she suspected, and there's a small cluster that's already at the final house. She can't see any other women, though the Director might just not be bothering to show them. She spreads her fingers on the screen to zoom out, and -

The screen goes dark again. That's all I'm going to get, Jade thinks. He know's I've got it, now... he would have seen that one of the "men" was right on top of me. But... how IS he tracking me, or any of the other girls? We're naked, there's nothing on us that could be sending a signal. She digs through the pack. Of course, it's the pager! I'm so stupid, I should have realized that from moment one! When I lost it, they made sure I got another one right away, and they stressed how important it was to hold onto it - "for your own safety, in case of emergency." But they obviously don't give a crap about our safety, they just want to be able to keep track of us!

For a moment, Jade considers leaving the pager there on the beach, but then thinks again. No, it'll be obvious that I ditched it. I need to make them think I still have it; I need to keep it moving. For now, I have to carry it, even though it'll bring the men right to me. The nearest ones could probably be here in fifteen minutes if they move fast. I'll just have to move a little faster, until I can figure out what to do with this thing.

Jade hikes the pack up onto her shoulders, takes a good grip on her stick, and heads into the cover of the trees... all the while, feeling the distant and invisible eye of the satellite tracker burning into her.

Ten minutes of hard running later, she's almost out of breath, but she's finally found what she was looking for: a stream that heads back out to sea. It was necessary to actually move further from the final safe house to get to it, but that's good... it should look like an attempt at strategy, throwing off the men after her by going the wrong way, then doubling back again. Besides, as she was able to confirm on the map, this stream runs almost directly to the finish. It makes perfect sense that she'd use it...

Which is why I'm not going to, not the way they think!

The stream is reasonably large, not quite as much as the one which she travelled down by inner tube, but enough so that she can float down it on a good-sized piece of wood. An old, fallen palm sapling floats high in the water when she tosses it in, and she's even able to get up on top of it and stay afloat without her feet touching bottom. Then, she takes two broad palm leaves and sticks the ends into the empty water bottle; it's a tight enough fit to hold them there, and she drapes them over her back like a cape.

Soon she's in the water, moving downstream with the fronds covering her. They'll think I'm trying to camouflage myself, she thinks. Just close enough to being the truth that they might fall for it!

Carefully, Jade pulls the pack from her shoulders; she had withdrawn her arms from the straps while adjusting the palm-frond cover, letting it simply rest on her back. Then, she extends the straps to their full length, enough so that they can be tied together under the floating log.

Come on, I need a place where the foliage is thick, they still have cameras so I have to do this undercover... there, up ahead!

As the log drifts into a thickly overgrown bend in the stream, Jade lets herself slide off the side, out from under the palm fronds and into the water, holding only her stick. Quickly, she scrambles into a hollow in the riverbank, hiding beneath the thick grass which droops down to touch the water. The log floats serenely away downstream, along with the backpack and everything in it.

No more map, no more first-aid kit, no more water bottle, Jade thinks. It had to be done, though. There was no guarantee that the pager was the thing they were using to track me; it could have been anything. Well, probably not the map, but at this point there's no reason to keep it; I know where I have to go from here.

The noise of approaching footsteps interrupts her thoughts; Jade withdraws even further back into the hollow, holding her breath and submerging all but her eyes under the water. Human shapes appear along with the footsteps, quietly following the log as it rides the stream back toward the coast. After a moment, they're gone, and Jade raises her head above the water again.

It worked, she thinks. They'll keep following it until it's out in the open, where I wouldn't have anywhere to run and get away. I might have as much as thirty minutes before they realize I'm not there - or they might discover it at any time, if those palm fronds don't stay put. Either way, it's time to move!

Jade stands up quickly and climbs out onto the bank - no point in going slowly and carefully, if someone is watching it's in her best interest to get out of the river as soon as she can. But there doesn't seem to be anyone around. Once she's out from under the thick cover, a glance at the stars tells her which way she has to go, and a few minutes later on she comes to the top of a short rise.

"There it is," she whispers.

For the first time, except for the tiny speck in the distance which she saw from the top of the high hill, Jade can see the final goal. It's a two-story building, awash in the glow of what look to be spotlights, a flag fluttering on a staff attached to the roof. A short distance from it, Jade can see the roof of the smaller building, the one which was marked with a star on the men's map... the real final safe house. It's hard to judge the distance, but it looks to be perhaps five miles away - not very far at all, though the intervening ground is uneven and thick with trees.

The shortest distance is a straight line, Jade considers, but going straight through that jungle won't be easy, especially in the dark. Jade looks to the east, and sees the first glow of dawn on the horizon. Well, it won't be dark for long. Still, I might do better going around the other way, and then backtracking along the beach. They won't be expecting me to come from that direction. It'll take longer insofar as travel time, but I'm less likely to run into trouble.