Web of the Weaver: Sidestory, Mysterious Death in a Gray Boy Zone! A Football Team Confronted!

When I entered the room, the football team looked nervous, the cheerleaders confused. The parents all looked confused.

Excellent. I had expected that Jackson would let his friends know that I was a Thinker and I knew… far more than I should.

Well, at least as far as a teen was concerned. If I had been interviewing adults, or experienced criminals, I wouldn’t dream of such a ham-handed approach.

I walked into the room from the back, my cane tapping on the ground.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Behind me, Agent Stimmons and Principal Winna walked. Stimmons’ expression was grim. I hadn’t asked, but he was old enough to have been in the PRT when Gray Boy rampaged across America. Principal Winna’s expression was thunderous, and she was also in her forties. None of the students here had. I hadn’t.

But the Butcher wasn’t the only person who could be angered by disrespect to the eternally suffering.

I turned and sat down facing the room, the two adults behind me. I said nothing for a moment, just putting out my fake lie detecter, letting the tension ratchet up.

I had momentary flashes, students laughing, turning my torment into entertainment…

Then I took a breath. That wasn’t the Trio, these students hadn’t even intended this outcome.

Calm. Taylor.

“Michael is dead,” I said. “I was hired by his parents to try and find some closure. You have literally no idea how unhappy I am at the kind of news I will have to give them. But, well, he did eat his fear, didn’t he, Hank. Tell me, did you find the gap in the wall before or after you came up with the idea?”

My box went amber, flashing. The flashing was that he couldn’t ignore it, the pattern drawing the eye. The Amber…

Well, he was clearly under stress and if he assumed my device knew more than it did…

“Crack?” Sheila asked.

“Well, Hank?” I tilted my head. “Soon I will have to speak to his family, who are wondering what they did wrong, how did they fail their child?”

Now I was at a decision point. He might try to bull through it. Or come clean. I had plans for both moves. I had discussed our stage play with both the principal and PRT agent.

“Just before the start of the year!” Hank burst out. “I was wandering around, some guys bet me I couldn’t go to the wall…and I saw the crack, and it was like a way to get the team together.”

“What fucking Crack!” Sheila finally burst out. Her parents moved to hush her, but she kept speaking staring at her boyfriend. “You said you had no idea why Michael was there, Jackson!”

“There was a crack in the containment wall. It allowed people to look into the zone, although they couldn’t directly observe any victims…which is why you bought the candles, a little procession, stopping places, possibly to build up your courage, or talk about what you were going to do, there in the dark.” I paused. “And then you went to the crack, to peer in, to see the flickering reflection of one of the bubbles.”

Hank was staring at me, wide-eyed.

Does he really think this is hard? He had been repeating albeit with different details, exactly what the E88 did, what any group did, little ceremonies to bind everyone to the whole.

“But you didn’t go in. Not until Michael.” I tilted my head. “What did you say to him, Hank? I would prefer to not use… my normal methods.”

His eyes got wider. He swallowed. “I just… Just told him that look, if he and Jackson couldn’t get along, I’d have to drop him. Jackson’s a lot better.”

“And then?”

“He said he’d prove to me… he’d eat his fear. So one night he came over to my house acting… Strange. He had a picture…”

Oh fuck. If Michael had taken a picture of a Gray Boy victim, we’d have to move fast. “And?”

“It was the inside of the wall.”

“Not of any of the victims.”

“No, Michael said… he didn’t want to look at them.”

“And what did you say?” Now Hank was looking around. The other football team members were looking at the ground at the wall, anywhere but at other people. The Cheerleaders looked shocked, except for Sheila who looked furious. Not the only one. A number of very angry parental gazes were being directed at the team.

“I told him to get rid of it! He was crazy and yeah, he could be back on the team. If I told anyone…he’d go to jail!”

“He might very well be in prison. Alive.” Agent Stimmons said.

“Please, Agent.” I shook my head. “But that wasn’t the end of it. He went back.”

“Y-yeah,” Hank said, glancing at my device, still flashing. “He… Started talking weird. He said he was talking to them. That he was… their prince. I told him he wasn’t making sense but he told me I didn’t… understand. That I hadn’t really eaten my fear.”

“And then he killed himself.”

“Yeah, but someone tol—“

I cut Hank off. “There was nobody else in the containment zone but him and the victims.” I glanced at Agent Stimmons. “What was the LCC for Subject 12?” The bubble Michael had died in front of.

“Four years ago. That was the last coherent communication with anyone in the zone.” Stimmons shook his head.

“LCC?” someone asked.

“Last Coherent Communication. The last time they were able to make words, make sentences. Before that they were at least able to coherently beg for release.” I looked at Hank. “Did you think your game was safe? Did you consider why the PRT walls those zones off and puts guards among them, and the guards are rotated and psychologically tested, why even families are not allowed contact with the victims after a certain point? Michael needed nobody to speak to him. The mere sight, the mere sounds of that nightmare were enough to make him seek solace in madness. I faced Leviathan; the PRT refuses to let me even look at photos of what goes on inside that zone.” I took a deep breath and under the structure bugs started tearing themselves apart. Because I was thinking of Michael’s dog, looking for him, a little girl convinced she’d played a role in her brother’s death and for it to just be for… “But it falls to me to explain to you just what horror you used as a centerpiece for a team exercise. You and all of your teammates.” I started tapping one finger on the desk, one tap a second.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“The victims in that zone, are dying. Over and over again. While they were sane…”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“The agony passes. The loop resets. “

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“But it does not bring solace. Because the pain will soon come again.”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“So they wait, those seconds or minutes counting down until they will be hurt, over and over and over again. They beg for death, they can pray for it, but it will always be denied. And a thirty-second loop? Twice a minute, two thousand, eight hundred and eighty times a day. A day. And they have been dying, over and over again, for years.”

“A good woman goes there every Sunday to pray for their solace. She knows the zone as the “Lugar de los santos atormentados” or “Place of the tormented saints.” She believes that on the Last Day Christ will end their suffering and raise them up. You bought your candles from her. How do you think she will take your utter desecration of their very—“

“Investigator,” Agent Stimmons said. “No need to go ‘I’m going to destroy Kaiser’ on them.”

I glanced up. Hank was staring at me, face slack hands trembling. A couple of the football team members were looking down at the floor. Some were crying. Some of the cheerleaders were also crying… Sheila wasn’t, but her eyes were brimming and her hands were clenched so tightly they were white.

“My apologies. It has been a difficult case, and at times my temper… can prove to be a character flaw.” I sighed. “But see the issue here is normally there might be legal cases, charges…but that would publicize this and we come to the second problem. If you think I have a temper, you have never studied the Butcher. The Butcher who may have as many as four family members and more friends who were looped by Gray Boy. The Butcher who has proclaimed himself the guardian of Gray Boy victims from… disrespect.”

“And you have been very disrespectful indeed,” Principal Winna bit out.

“And of course last night Accord contacted me.” The room went still, the students, even those not part of the team looking at me with wide eyes. Accord was known in Boston, after all, not so much for gangs of thugs, as Kaiser had been but for… quieter, but no less final methods of dealing with those who angered him. “He mentioned that he would work to forestall any vengeance the Butcher might unleash, by using his own methods.”

“I—but you’re going to protect them!” A parent burst out.

I nodded. “The PRT does have methods but… keep in mind how many PRT agents and Protectorate capes knew Gray Boy victims. They will protect you but…”

“The PRT Witness Protection Program can move people. I believe Fairbanks, Alaska and some rural settlements in New Mexico are in the program,” Stimmons said.

I let everyone take in that information before I spoke again.

“But there is another way. Accord can assure the Butcher that the miscreants have been punished, and there is no public spectacle to set him off. Furthermore, I see no reason to reopen the wounds of the family and friends of the victims by a juicy criminal case.”

“Every one of you. Every last one of you,” Principal Winna bit out. “Are off the team. We’ll come up with something to explain it, but your athletic careers are over, period. Any extracurricular activities are ended, you won’t walk for graduation, and the only reason you’re getting off this lightly is because I don’t want to wake up and find out that the Butcher demolished the school or murdered one of you idiots, because the court case hit the newspaper.”

“Maybe you should include us,” Sheila said. “I mean, everyone knows that cheerleaders and football team, so nobody will ask if you like, I dunno, talk about locker room—“

“No.” Principal Winna shook her head. “Doing this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’m not adding to it by letting innocent people take a fall. Also, Ms. Daley, after this, you, I, and your parents will be talking about some very concerning issues.”

“And in addition to the Butcher, keep in mind that there is no statute of limitations for violating a containment zone.” Agent Stimmons said.

I didn’t bother to mention that was usually reserved for Simurgh Containment zones, given you never knew if a breach was part of a Simurgh plan. It would hopefully keep every member of the team, their parents, and there friends quiet. In truth, after about a year the Butcher would probably consider it “old news” so unless someone did something so suicidally stupid as to try and make money from it…

Is this just? Michael was dead. His family was in mourning and yet…

Hank barely responded as his father furiously whispered into his ear. The rest of the team…

Varying degrees of shock, horror. Awakening to just how serious their game had been.

Stupidity.

Not Malice.

Nobody knew, or believed it would end up like this. It was just a silly game…

But unfortunately the universe had little mercy for stupidity.

“Before I leave, Hank.” He looked up at me. “You never dreamed this would end as it did. Neither did some college students who created a silly club worshipping the Endbringers as a joke. Today, they’re known as the Fallen. If you take nothing else from this take that caution…” I sighed. Stupidity. Not Malice, so I couldn’t even stay furious at him. “Because one day, you may be in a position to save someone like Michael, because you remember what happened to Michael and the role you played in it.”

I stood. “With that, I will leave you to your parents and Principal Winna.”

Walking out, Agent Stimmons paced me. “Kinda went off on ‘em there. “

“Yes.” I shook my head. “It was so… needless. That seems to be about 90 percent of the problems I run into.”

“Yeah. Now what?”

“The other reason I lost my temper. I get to tell Michael's family how their son died and why.”

And I was not looking forward to it.