Everything Yes

Yes. Everything Yes

Who am I? The answer to that question is both very simple and very complicated at the same time. Simple version first: I'm Shado. Or, rather, I am the woman on whom the character 'Shado' was based. Shado is not my actual name. None of the names you know from that television show are the real names. But you'll be more comfortable if I use those names, so I'll use Slade, Oliver, etc.

Obviously I am alive, but that's not the only difference. That's where it gets complicated. I want to set the record straight about a number of things, and this is how I've chosen to do it.

Imagine that you're a woman stranded on an island with two men. One of them is still wet behind the ears, barely knows the rudiments of self-defense and combat, dropped out of several colleges, has no more meat on him than you'd find at the end of a fork, and he was sleeping with his girlfriend's sister. He has never had to work a single day in his life. He can't hunt. He can't cook. He can't even clean his own kills.

Okay, he is kind of pretty and he's young, but still, he needs babysitting or he does things like eat strange berries off a bush—berries even the birds won't touch—without wondering why. He spent the night being sick in both directions, by the way, and groaning in agony. No, that didn't make it on the TV show. Wonder why not, huh? He is also firmly convinced the world revolves around him.

Then there is the other man. Granted, he is older, but he's still in his prime. He knows how to fight, how to survive, how to hunt, and he has years of experience under his belt. Ex-military, special services—so what if he never went to college? He's been too busy. His biceps are so big you couldn't get both hands around them, and his voice is like smoke and gravel.

So, which of these men would you choose, if you were to pick one? Please. The first time Slade and I grappled I made up my mind—with Oliver off to the side whining that, yeah, Slade and I were badass, now pay attention to him.

Of course, there was a downside. Slade was married, out in the Real World, and had a son with special needs. Joey is autistic, you see. But that was out there in the Real World, where Oliver was rich and I was a premed student. The island was not the world. It was Purgatory.

So for several weeks Slade and I sort of carefully skirted around our attraction to each other, while Oliver, who was kind of oblivious, tried courting me himself. Don't get me wrong, I liked him well enough, kind of like a kid brother, but nothing more than that. He wasn't in love with me, either—not really. I was just there, and I was the right age and the right shape with a pretty enough face, and he was a horny young guy who had never been denied anything he wanted before. So when he realized I had chosen Slade, he was inclined to sulk and pout. He made more out of his attraction to me than there really was.

But how did I survive that fateful moment when what's-his-face—Ivor? had a gun at my head and was telling Oliver to choose? Were you not paying attention to the fact that, hello, I am a fighter? A better fighter than Oliver, to say the least, since I helped train him. Plus I'm not exactly a wilting flower who has to be protected. I mean, at least the show established that. I kicked his legs out from under him, grappled with him for the gun, and he got shot. In the gut, as it so happens. He died of peritonitis and septicemia.

So what caused the breach between Oliver and Slade, if it wasn't my death?

I'm not going to tell you. Why not? Because you won't believe it. You'll think I'm badmouthing Oliver, making him the villain, because you know him as the hero, the good guy. And he's not a bad guy, deep down. He's not the deepest guy in the world or the smartest, and people are capable of making all sorts of decisions for all sorts of reasons. He made a decision that he didn't think through. It happened to leave Slade and me in the lurch, and Slade did not take it well. Mirakuru is real, and it does cause mood swings and irritability, but it's nothing like as bad as they made it out to be and there is no antidote for it.