it's not an illusion, right? you're really here with me, right?
talent.
as the ultimate archivist, ella specializes in creating detailed logs of the events she experiences in her life in a way that makes the reader feel like they were really there! her work began with her own personal website, detailing her travels around the world, and eventually grew with her contributions to the creation of archiveit.co - a popular digital media preservation site.
personality.
ella is bright, bubbly, and always seen with a smile on her face. she's a people person -- someone who enjoys making conversation and getting to know those around her. with her upbeat attitude and constant smile, she’s someone you’d consider to be an easy friend. ella wants to hope that everyone around her will treat her kindly. she is someone who wants to try and lead; she’ll try to start up group activities and get everyone together. but she fumbles, and more often than not shies away from taking a leader role, and instead lands in the position of a follower.
ella can... easily come across as someone who's airheaded or forgetful, but she's quite smart and is easily immersed in knowledge and always wanting to know more. she's curious, and loves diving into research, often losing track of time or what she's supposed to be doing in the process.
truthfully, ella andersen has been carefully put together from sentences in book and images in magazines. all the media she’s read has taught her what it means to be a friend - to be upbeat, to be kind. to not be weird so everyone would like her. so she takes these writings to heart and follows them to be the kind of friend she thinks people would want to have.
ella is lonely and scared. being a friend is more than she thought she would and she doesn’t know if she can live up to the standard she has to meet. but ella is selfish - she wants to be loved and held and connected with, so she pushes herself to be something she isn’t in order to get what she wants. friends come above all else for ella - having friends comes first. because if things aren’t okay, she can’t have friends. so that’s why everything has to be okay. her blind optimism is desperation and selfishness at the end of the day.
terror across the sea.
ella andersen opens her eyes in a cryopod, and exits it with the largest smile on her face. Because this is what she's wanted, after all. this is what she gave everything up for and hurt the only connection she had back home for -- a chance to truly make a friend.
and she does that. for the first seventeen days aboard the aurora, ella runs around trying to befriend anyone she can. but it's hollow, it's done with a fake smile and a personality she pulled from books and magazines rather than the scared, weird girl she really is.
she likes it when people tell her about themselves, because it makes her feel warm. it makes her feel like she's finally getting what she wants. so she sits and listens and talks and takes what is given to fill the hole that's been growing inside of her.
she finds friends -- she finds a best friend in one nathaniel griffin. snd it is this friendship solidified with a sleepover (her first one ever) that sends her down a spiral and reminds her of just how selfish she really is.
coella is found decaptiated, then milli dies and then muschel too. nathaniel's crimes come to light and she doesn't know what to do. because he killed two people -- two friends. three people are dead. or two, technically, because somehow muschel has come back and all ella can do is mourn the friend she once had and blame herself simultaneously. it's her fault milli is dead, and if she gets close to someone again, they'll die too. so she pulls away. she is cold and alone and wants to be anything but, yet she keeps pulling away from the hands that try to help her and the warmth they want to give her.
the fourth motive drops: sacrifical lamb. and of course, with a motive forcing the group to sacrifice someone to live, the choice is obvious: nathaniel. at least, it is obvious to everyone else. as nathaniel screams and brandishes a survival knife, ella finally tries to approach him again, to take his hand again. but she's too late and he's too far gone -- closer to being dead than being alive.
it is her and rain on his side as everyone else casts their votes and looks away. and as ella casts her vote long after everyone else, rain holds her close and shields her eyes from nathaniel's farwell. she stays by rain's side. she stays with them after ezekiel confronts them and after plum brings up their past. she stays with them through it all and wants to be their friend, because she thinks they understand what it means to be selfish.
rain becomes her friend. ella opens up to it about her uncle, about who she truly is. and they stay by her side. the motive continues, and she clings to rain as luna exits through the airlock accepting an apology that should have been better, or maybe shouldn't have had to been made in the first place if ella had been kinder. if ella hadn't been scared. if ella hadn't been selfish.
and then kohaku kills kelly because he was the one that was truly alone, with not a single person in his corner. ella thinks that she should have been there, but it is too late to change the past and all she can do is honor kohaku's last words for the future. milli's notebook is found and all of it's contents are logged in the most caring way.
ella tries to push herself forward. she tries to reach out to people again, she tries to be who she truly is and not the girl that was made up to appeal to people on the first day. she stumbles through her words and exposes parts of herself that she'd kept hidden to rain, but she keeps going. she makes a promise with Katia and helps muschel learn more about herself and talks to plum about the importance of memory. things start to look up, just a bit.
and then, a new motive is unleashed. the parasite executioner. a parasite that would be placed into voyagers at random and cause them to become violent. a thought that ella feared, but never understood until it was too late. she is the first victim to the parasite, and her hands hurt all over again. it's like she's six, but instead of a knife there's a shard of glass and there's more blood this time. there's blood on her clothes and in her mouth and in her hair and it trickles out of her ear after akari hits her on the head with a crowbar.
when she wakes, she is alone. but then rain touches her bloody hands and takes her back to her dorm. it's all she ever needed in the moment, even as she shakes and thinks she'll hurt them, she clings to the little piece of warmth they give her. then rain becomes the parasite's next victim and ezekiel stays by her side, protecting her from whatever is about to break down her door. rain's limbs are broken and it is chaos and in the end, she has to break her promise and slip out of rain's hold.
ezekiel becomes her friend after that. after they let her take their hand and hold their teddy bear, he becomes a friend she's grateful to have. then Muschel is infected and ella runs with katia, hoping for it all to end somehow. three days of this and everyone is at their witt's end with no clue of what to do aside from run and hope to survive. but muschel knew what had to be done. her body is found the next morning and akari reveals the truth that she's just as scared as the rest of them before heading off to her death.
the remaining five move forward. they explore the new areas, they learn the truth about where they are: 800 feet below the ocean instead of space. and then five becomes six when akari walks into the room -- except it isn't akari at all and it's someone new. but this new person becomes a friend all the same.
light, is her name, and she fits right into the little group that is left.
whatever 'peace' the six had is cut short by minerva announcing the killing game has come to an end... because they will all be killed that night by neurotoxins. faces pale and hands tremble, but the six come together to make sure their last day has some happy memories to look back on. there's a party in the pool. there's laughter and chicken as minerva and plum join the six. for a moment, everyone forgets what is to come. for a moment, they are happy and with each other and nothing bad could happen. they make a cake and watch a movie, but they can only put off sleep for so long.
it takes them all. but that is not the end, because the next morning six people awaken where they fell asleep. And they realize that they are missing two and begin to worry. it doesn't take long for them to split up, and it takes even less time for ella to find her way to the locked room that has been opened and be greeted by plum's crushed body on the ground. there will be a trial. they have to find who took plum away after she was starting to come around. and the answer is one ella doesn't want to find, but she has to. because she can't keep running away from the truth.
the truth is this: rain douglas killed plum. rain douglas masterminded this whole game. everyone was asleep for over 1,000 years, and rain woke up three years early by accident. the truth is that rain loved them all, and didn't want them to be burdened with the knowledge that killed it from the inside out.
but the biggest truth of all is that everyone still loved rain, in the end. so when minerva calls for a vote, everyone votes for themselves. there's a six way tie and rain lives at minerva's discretion and by everyone's choice.
then, the miracle that rain had been waiting for happens. someone calls on the radio and says they can get the six out. the miracle fades for a moment, as minerva reminds them that she cannot give the greenlight. but minerva is the one to bring the light back, with a hand outstretched to rain and a smile on her face, reminding them of what they have to do.
and so rain, former ATLAS employee, takes the chip from minerva's hand and holds her as she powers down. ella takes rain's hand in her own and ezekiel holds their sleeve and together, with everyone else, the three head for the surface. to see a sun and sky and everything else they've missed after 1,000 years.
there is sand beneath their feet and water at their ankles and sun on their cheeks. and ella squeezes rain's hand in the end, reminding them that even now, she won't slip away.
together, right?
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