Without the whale’s help, control of the vessel once again fell to Everly. She summoned the waves, pushing the wooden raft forward at an unhurried pace in the morning light.
As they drew closer, the scenery along the shoreline beca clearer and clearer.
Everly and Misha had just escaped from the killing island and still had no idea what the outside world was like. Because of that, Everly did not steer the raft toward ports or beaches with heavy human traffic. Instead, she chose an empty stretch of wasteland and brought the raft ashore on a tidal flat covered with broken stones and floating debris.
Landing was only the end of a journey; there was still much to do.
After sorting through the remaining supplies on board, Everly and Misha slung their backpacks over their shoulders, tucked their weapons for self-defense at their waists, and headed into the small forest beside the deserted shore.
Based on what they had seen at sea, this stretch of wasteland was located on the outskirts of a coastal city—an abandoned, rarely visited area. After coming ashore here, they would neither be imdiately discovered nor end up so far from civilization that it would cause trouble for them.
As expected, after walking through the sparse woods for just a few minutes, the trees suddenly thinned out, revealing a wide, empty forest road ahead.
The long road stretched in both directions with no end in sight.
For safety reasons, they did not step onto the road. Instead, they stayed close to the forest edge, using the sparse trees to conceal themselves as they moved along the road in the direction they believed the city lay. Eventually, a road sign appeared in front of them.
“Sunette City, 3 kiloters from here… Have you heard of Sunette City?” Misha asked.
Everly thought for a mont, then nodded. “It seems to be a coastal city in North Naradeka State.”
Earlier, while searching for a new route to school, Everly had carefully studied the cities along the U.S. East Coast using a map. Because of that, even though Sunette was not a well-known city, she still had so impression of it.
“North Naradeka State? How did we end up all the way out here? We were still in Abazi State when we got kidnapped after we got off the plane.”
“Who knows… Anyway, three kiloters isn’t far. We’ll be entering the city soon. Let’s think about what we should do once we run into people.”
Everly rubbed her forehead in mild worry.
She still rembered the latter part of Killing Island’s plot:
The male protagonist—the man in the suit—after a series of difficult battles and losing one teammate, finally succeeded in killing the three “Judases” and unexpectedly discovered a remote control on one of them.
The protagonist was very intelligent and observant. He had already deduced early on that the neck rings on the players might be capable of monitoring and eavesdropping on their movents. Not long after the ga began, he and his teammates had deliberately wrapped their neck rings with cloth.
Because of this, the ga operators did not know that he had obtained the remote control.
After testing its function on a teammate, the protagonist developed thoughts of resistance.
He found a supply point with disabled surveillance as a base, and using the remote control as leverage, secretly contacted other survivors on the island. Together, they staged scene after scene of “performances” in front of the caras, causing all the survivors who agreed to cooperate to “die” in perfectly plausible ways.
In the end, once the 72-hour limit expired and the helicopters landed, only the three of them remained standing on the mountaintop.
Without a doubt, they were the final winners of the ga.
According to the rules, after the three survivors boarded the plane, soone would remove the neck rings from them and safely return them to land, awarding them a generous cash prize.
But that was clearly all a lie fabricated by the ga organizers.
What awaited the three survivors after boarding the helicopter was not warm, friendly staff, but rcenaries ard with loaded guns.
These rcenaries pointed their weapons at the three survivors, forcing them to sit still and informing them of the truth about their impending deaths. Then they raised caras and fild their expressions fra by fra, broadcasting the despairing footage in real ti to perverse elites and wealthy spectators.
This segnt, called the “Execution,” was extrely popular among the audience of the killing ga. So even paid specifically to purchase “execution compilations” produced by the ga operators, taking them ho as collector’s items to savor in detail.
Unfortunately, this ti, the ga operators had t a hard counter.
In a place no one noticed, a canister of sleeping gas was thrown into the helicopter.
The sedative gas quickly spread through the cramped cabin, and the rcenaries, completely unprepared, soon began to slump over and lose consciousness.
Seizing this rare opportunity, the three protagonists quickly retreated out of the helicopter and shut the hatch from the outside.
The remaining people inside quickly succumbed and passed out. At that mont, survivors who had been lying in ambush nearby rushed in, killing all the rcenaries—including the pilot—seizing their weapons, leaving the bodies behind, and then all boarding the helicopter to fly west.
—What? You’re asking how they could still fly the helicopter after killing the pilot?
Well, of course it’s because the movie’s protagonist has an absurdly overpowered “cheat ability.” He was once a special forces soldier and served for several years in the U.S. Navy SEALs, a perfectly balanced “hexagonal warrior” skilled in everything, only retiring later due to injury.
Coincidentally, among the survivors who escaped the island, there was also a hacker.
To repay the protagonist’s kindness—and to take revenge on the ga organization that abducted him and forced him into the slaughter—the hacker used electronic equipnt found on the helicopter to trace the ga operator’s server location.
The later parts of the story were not fild. After all, for a movie, reaching the point where the protagonist escapes the island was already sufficient. However, to make the narrative feel complete, the director added a segnt of subtitles at the end summarizing what happened afterward.
In simple terms, after leaving the island, the protagonist first returned to the mainland and released all those who wished to go back to ordinary lives.
Not many chose to leave.
In the past three days, all survivors had blood on their hands from killing their own kind, and so had even lost their closest loved ones within the ga.
Even if they returned to society, many of them would no longer be able to live normal lives. Because of that, their hatred for the ga organizers—and for the hidden elites who watched and enjoyed it—ran deep. They swore to kill every single person connected to the killing ga.
Thus, the protagonist’s revenge began.
He led his “300 Warriors of Killing Island” on a long-distance strike, first blowing up the ga organization’s main base on a private island sowhere in the United States. Then, using clues found at the headquarters, they followed the trail and rooted out the wealthy backers behind it one by one, carrying out revenge against each of them.
Of course, the ga organization and those elites did not simply wait to be slaughtered. They had money—enough to hire security teams, bribe intelligence sources, and build near-impenetrable modern fortresses.
But they had made too many enemies. By the ti of the protagonist’s season, the killing ga had already run for who knows how many cycles. Countless abducted participants each left behind broken families full of grief.
From the ga’s headquarters, the protagonist obtained video archives and identity records of past participants, and successfully tracked down the families of those forr contestants.
This long subtitle segnt was quite satisfying in its storytelling. After the prolonged tension and oppression throughout the film, audiences needed this kind of emotional release, so Everly rembered the ending fairly clearly.
At present, it was the fifth day since she and Misha had left the island. By her estimate, the protagonist and his group had already departed four days earlier. She wondered whether four days had been enough for them to blow up the ga organization’s main base.
Although she personally approved of the protagonist turning the situation upside down, Everly herself had no desire to get involved. Revenge was dangerous—especially when the enemies were a group of so-called “elite rulers” with overwhelming wealth and power. The difficulty was on a completely different level.
She recalled that in the subtitles, by the ti revenge was finally achieved, most of the protagonist’s companions were already dead.
Everly preferred a quiet, stable life. That was also the reason she had hidden her phone, identification, and other personal items inside the bus.
She wanted to remove herself and Misha from all of this.
First, one thing had to be made clear: the bus that had drugged them was a one-ti-use prop and would not be taken away and destroyed by the ga organizers. In the movie, there had been an intercut scene showing police on the mainland receiving a missing persons report. They traced the bus and found it intact, with all luggage still inside—yet the passengers had vanished without a trace.
From this, it could be inferred that the ga organization’s target was only the people—they had no interest in the passengers’ belongings.
If that was the case, then what Everly needed to do was ensure that the police could not trace her and Misha’s presence on the bus. The reason was simple—like in many thriller films, the police force was not entirely clean.
Within the police system, there were informants working for the ga organization. These informants secretly sold investigation progress to the organization and helped them mislead inquiries or destroy evidence.
In fact, all of the past contestants’ identity records that the protagonist’s group had obtained from the ga organization’s headquarters had originally been sold to them by these police informants.
In other words, if the police discovered that Everly and Misha had been on the bus, it would not take long before the ga organization obtained their personal information.
Conversely, as long as the police could not confirm their true identities, their information would remain blank to the organization for a certain period of ti.
And that was exactly the “window of ti” Everly needed.
After all, once the protagonist began launching attacks on everyone behind the ga—the organizers as well as the hidden spectators—they would be overwheld and unable to spare attention for two girls who were, in theory, already dead on the island.
—Returning to the matter of identification docunts.
For ordinary people, fooling the police would be difficult. But for Everly and Misha, it was not impossible.
First, to avoid drawing attention, both their backpacks and suitcases were the most common, unremarkable types imaginable—so ordinary that, during baggage handling, they had to be carefully marked in advance, or they would inevitably get mixed up.
Second, for privacy protection purposes, there are not many surveillance caras in public spaces in the United States. In addition, Everly and Misha were staying at an airport hotel in a relatively deserted area, with low foot traffic and few shops—aning even fewer caras.
While walking, Everly had a habit of paying close attention to surveillance coverage. Based on her observation, on the day they were abducted, from the mont they left the hotel where they were staying to the mont they boarded the bus, there was not a single cara that captured her or Misha.
Likewise, the bus itself—the “instrunt of the cri”—was not equipped with a dashcam or surveillance system.
Under these circumstances, as long as Everly and Misha hid all items that could prove their identities, the police would not be able to imdiately determine who they were.
Of course, if they conducted a thorough investigation, they could still easily narrow suspicion down to the two of them through the hotel lobby surveillance footage and their departure ti.
At that point, the final layer of backup would co into play: Old John.
Before turning off her phone, Everly had sent a text ssage to Old John. Although the ssage appeared to be a simple “report of safety,” it actually contained a prearranged code aning: “assist in creating an alibi.”
After receiving the signal, if the police contacted Old John, he would help construct an alibi for Everly and Misha—such as claiming that the two had already arrived at so other location and were currently sightseeing elsewhere, and that their phones were turned off simply because they were powered off.
As long as Old John’s lies were sufficiently airtight and delivered with a firm attitude, then based on Everly’s understanding of Arican police, there was an 80–90% chance they would remove her and Misha from the list of suspects and shift their attention to other possibilities. After all, nearly thirty people had gone missing from a single bus, and the police could not possibly devote too much ti and energy to every individual.
In this way, she and Misha would be able to effectively “vanish” from both the police’s and the ga organization’s attention.
As for whether the ga organization could use facial recognition to identify Everly and Misha’s identities—setting aside the fact that AI technology in this era was not that advanced—there was also the question of whether it was even necessary.
After all, they were already “dead” on the island. There were so many dead there that the occasional unidentified victim would not matter; the ga organization would not bother investigating every single corpse in detail.
Rather than that, it would be more efficient to focus on dealing with the group of protagonists—the real threat—who were still roaming outside.
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