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Giselle had left Elke, albeit reluctantly. She wanted nothing more than people helping her with figuring out what had gone on, if only because so much had gone on, and as good as she was at connecting the dots in history, she couldn't see a solution this time. Not yet.

However there was the hunger to deal with, and it had already proved to her that it wasn't just the, for lack of a better term, living that provoked it. The, for lack of a better term, dead looked pretty tasty too. And though Giselle had more than the usual amount of willpower for a girl her age, she didn't trust herself anymore. She wasn't completely in control, and without a balance between control and power, she didn't trust herself to be around other people for too long. Especially allies.

There was a figure on the horizon, and Giselle narrowed her eyes at it. Speaking of allies, was that one?

A pause.

"I thought I got rid of you when I died, but apparently fate is not so kind." Giselle said icily.

Not an ally, but she needed this. She was itching with pent up frustration, and she was damned if it didn't feel good to take it out in a verbal skirmish with Tara Kavanaugh, zombie or not.

Giselle's stomach did a flip flop, but she pushed it down. Hate. She hated Tara, and if she just let that wash over her, nothing else would matter.

"You'd think that since you dislike history so much, you'd at least keep up with current events." she retorted easily. "There was a fire, if you couldn't tell by the burnt rubble from the dormitory. You've been dead for days now." The banter felt good, helped her push down the guilt and trauma from the fire. Things were almost normal when she was bickering with Tara. They might as well have been in the cafeteria line again. "I died in the fire, as I lasted longer than you."

She paused to let this sink in. Her retorts were half-hearted at best, how could they not be when the situation was so serious? But fighting was keeping her going. The hunger was less noticeable, and her hatred of Tara might actually make her the easiest person to work with. Fighting was better than devouring, she only hoped Tara was as antsy for a skirmish as she was.

Giselle flinched at Tara's comment, remembering the smoke, the running, losing herself and then burning alive. For a moment she felt upset and insecure, but then she just felt angry. "And how did you die, Tara? Playing with genetic engineering?" she demanded. She wasn't there in the conflagration! She hadn't heard the screams!

This thought helped her recollect herself. That was right, Tara hadn't been in the fire. She was one of the early victims, one of the casualties of the so-called 'meningitis'. But here she was, in the same condition as Giselle herself, though perhaps worse for the wear. It meant that whatever had made them this way didn't have to do with just the fire victims.

So where would this lead her questioning? Did someone do something during the fire to make them like this and just applied it to the other corpses as well? Was there something in the smoke? Damn it all, there was no precedent for any of this. What good was it collecting stories if the stories she collected didn't make any sense?

Giselle's answer caught in her throat, but finally, she said "...Yes." She was good at making connections, but she had never had experience with information about, for lack of a better term, a zombie outbreak. There was nothing to make a connection to, and she could hardly say it was a hoax, since she was one of the so-called undead. She hated to admit it, but she needed help. Help from Tara, someone who was good at discovering things, and the convenient thing about working with Tara was that if she broke down and ate her, she wouldn't feel too terribly remorseful afterwards.

"But the alien theory isn't supported by the facts." Giselle added defensively, before Tara could think that she was going to run this operation. "Even assuming aliens are real, which there is no historical evidence for, what is the benefit of bringing us all to this particular school for experimentation? Why not use people who won't be missed? I don't know about you, but I have a family, and they'd notice if I came home like this, or never came home at all."

Giselle frowned. "That still doesn't explain why they would use us instead of Hillworth or Crystal Academy," she pointed out. "One could argue that Hillworth has a more controlled environment. And it's full of students that would be less likely to be missed."

If Tara was going to cling to her aliens theory, she wasn't going to be much use to Giselle after all. "Anyway, there's no historical precedent. Especially in this area, usually when something seemingly inexplicable happens it's the cause of those ridiculous Sailor Senshi. Not that this is exactly their style, but I highly doubt that they're aliens. Or that they have two braincells to rub together to make them capable of running an experiment on this scale." Wearing a fuku and tiara and shouting a lot didn't necessarily make one an idiot, but in Giselle Petrova's book, it was a pretty damning piece of evidence.

"After you... left, there were several other meningitis-related student deaths. Two gunshot wounds to the head, one partially devoured, and two unmarked bodies." Giselle had been keeping track, but only after Tara had died. After Tara had died, it had become important to do so. "The fire came out of nowhere. It seemed just like an ordinary fire, though. Tragic, but not unusual in any way. Not like the girl made of blood."

But since she had shared, there was something she needed to know. "I don't know what happened when you took leave of us, though. I need that information." This time her tone was more conciliatory, a request instead of a demand.

"Until we find evidence of aliens, I don't think we should count it as an answer. There is absolutely no historical precedent." True, there was no historical precedent for the situation they were in, either, but surely the cause would make sense, if not the effect. Because everything had roots in history. Right?

Right?

"They certainly weren't meningitis, if that counts as a pattern. The gunshot wounds were announced together."

She paused as Tara related her story.

"Elle. Her name, I believe, is Elle." she seethed, more out of instinct and habit than anything else. Giselle did not know Elle Hammel. Giselle wanted nothing to do with Elle Hammel, except perhaps to outdo her, because Giselle's name was as much her possession as her history books, and someone else having it was like someone permanently touching it. As far as Giselle was concerned, the other Giselle had tracked enough grimy fingerprints onto her name without turning into an alien and killing people. However, Giselle would not put it past her to do so.

Hearing about Tara's death from Tara's own mouth moved her less than it would have from someone who wasn't the supposed victim, but the tale she had to tell shed some disturbing light on their predicament. "The loudspeaker. Unless they had some way to use it without the school knowing, that suggests that the school was at least partially responsible for what is happening. It would explain why I haven't seen any teachers since the fire, either. But why would they go to all the cost of maintaining this first rate school just to turn us into what we are now and burn it down? And why now? I mean, Barren Pines has been here forever."

...Right?

Giselle shook her head. "No, the fire really did come out of nowhere. Besides the meningitis deaths, it was business as usual." She frowned, feeling like she was trying to solve the puzzle when she only had half the pieces. "The way the school tried to pass it off as meningitis is suspicious too, but then again, murders in a school can ruin reputations."

Pause as her stomach rumbled. The hunger was getting harder to ignore, and they were missing too much information to get anywhere fast.

"Whatever the reason, we need to find a cure." She was certain that Tara felt the hunger too. It made it harder to think, harder to focus on anything except the smell of other people, the texture of flesh, let alone to try to answer questions this big. "I doubt science knows a way to reverse what happened to us." Even if it had, it was probably too advanced for them to use. "We should investigate more. If we stay here, we know one of us is going to give in eventually. I'll be frank, Tara- You'd be easier for me to eat with a clear conscience than some people I know, and that wouldn't solve anything. We need to make use of what time we have before we give in, because we will give in eventually, as best we can."

She stared at her rival evenly, because Tara was just that- her rival, always had been, always would be. "I'll admit this because I don't know what's going to happen to us. You're good at what you do, no matter how foolishly you deny history. If we're going to solve this, the intelligent people on this campus can't go off and eat each other, because they are going to be the only hope we have left. Once we resort to infighting, it'll keep going until one remains, and more likely than not, the people behind this will crawl out of the woodwork and collect the results, whatever those may be."