After all of the day's corpses were carried up to their beds, everyone sat in their familiar positions around the dining room table. The room was quiet without Fenoglio, Oz, and Tom directing the conversation. If the table had been empty that morning, it was nothing compared to how small we were now. I think we all felt about the same- exhausted, and numb. It didn't seem like any of us had the energy to even be upset anymore.

"It's Gollum." repeated Katniss. "It has to be Gollum."

No one spoke for a long moment.

"I guess we should go look for him..." Dylan sighed. After another long pause, he stood reluctantly. "Max?"

"Why am I always the one." I said, but I joined him.

Katniss climbed out of her chair, squeaking the cushion."We'll all go. We can't leave anyone alone again." As everyone stood, Malfoy rolled his eyes, looking like he wanted to protest. Luckily for him, he held his tongue and followed us out of the room.

The house seemed much darker now, after all the deaths of the day. I resisted the urge to grab Dylan's arm for comfort as we climbed upstairs. The Hatter nearly bolted at least twice, but Dylan, Katniss, and I were able to keep a tight grip on him until we reached the top floor.

"It was this room." the huntress said, pointing at a doorway. I wondered how she could remember so clearly- they all looked the same to me. Katniss, Dylan, and I approached the room, and pulled open the door.

"Ugh, what's that smell?" Felicity huffed, waving a hand in front of her nose.

Katniss tentatively stepped forward. "It smells like something rotting."

"Wait a second, this is the same room Eowyn was in." I said, wiping at my watering eyes as Dylan and I followed her in. "It smells the same, anyways."

"Maybe she found something important, and the murderer killed her for it?" suggested Katniss.

"Well, that's a motive for one of the deaths, anyways." I muttered. "We should look for it, then."

"Feel for it." Katniss responded. I made a face.

After a few minutes, Dylan said, "I think I found something. It's down here, at my feet. I- I can't tell what it is."

I hurried over to him, and groped around- on the floor was something vaguely slimy, a long, bumpy something, tapering off into an object bony and unmistakable. "Guys, I think I just found a hand."

"What is it? Is it some sort of animal?" asked Katniss.

"I- I don't know. It's too small to be human." I sucked in a breath to keep myself calm- why had I touched so many corpses lately?- and felt my way up the short arm to a neck and what was probably a face. I nearly stuck my hand in the thing's large open mouth, dodged my way around a nose to bulbous eyeballs, and ran my fingers along what felt like long, stringy hairs. "It feels human, though. It's got the same facial structure and it has hair on its head."

"Let's get it out of here, then." said Katniss, and a moment later, the hair slid through my fingers as she picked the thing up. I wiped my hand on my shirt, wishing for some good hand sanitizer, and followed her out into the hallway. In the dim light, it was difficult to tell what exactly Katniss had cradled in her arms- all we could see was that it was human-shaped, the size of a child, and presumably dead.

"Is it some sort of doll?" Dylan asked. "Some sort of rotting doll?"

I thought I had a good idea of what it was, but I kept silent.

"Let's take it downstairs to get a better look." Katniss said, and, judging by her tense tone of voice, she knew, too.

"Oh, joy, more stairs with the lunatic." groaned Felicity. She grabbed one of his arms, I grabbed the other, and together we managed to get our party downstairs.

We were an odd group as we entered the dining room- Felicity and I force-marching the Hatter, Katniss carrying the bizarre corpse, Prim scurrying along anxiously behind her, and Malfoy looking as though he were at a particularly boring tea party, with Dylan bringing up the rear. Katniss set the body on the dining room table. It was very short, and bony, with shrunken limbs, large eyes and stringy hair, and was covered in bruises, especially around its neck.

Even the Hatter was silent, sensing the tension in the room. No one seemed to want to be the first one to say it, because we all knew, this was the end. Gollum was dead, murdered. Now we had no leads, no clues, no nothing except six other people around the table, one or two of which were murderers. We, as a group, were finished, done, complete. I sank into my seat, and the rest of the table followed.

Katniss cleared her throat. "Well, I think we need to agree on a few things."

"I think so, too." Malfoy crossed his arms. "I'm not doing your cooking or cleaning anymore."

"Not that you ever did it anyways." I muttered.

"Guys, please, we shouldn't split up." said Dylan. "Remember what Fenoglio said-"

"That was back when we thought the murderer could be someone else." said Katniss, eyeing him. "I know it's one of you, and I just want you to know, if you come after Prim or I, I will show you exactly how I survived two Hunger Games and a war."

"Same if you try and attack Dylan or I." I said. "We've fought off dozens of robots and wolf-human hybrids at once, humans don't stand a chance."

Malfoy laughed. "Oh, really, are you going to keep up that act?"

I gritted my teeth. "Malfoy, watch what you're-"

Malfoy just smirked at me, toying with the tablecloth. "I found you two with Sirius's body. You and Dylan carried it out of the pantry before running to tell the others about it."

"And you purposefully separated from me around the same time that he died." I said, leaning forward to glare at him. "What is your point?"

The blonde aristocrat shrugged. "You and Dylan were also upstairs when Eowyn was killed, when Dylan was supposed to be downstairs, I might add-"

"And you were unaccounted for for a good period of that time." I snapped. "I didn't see you come into the room, Dylan didn't see you in the hallway. It would've been easy to go in the hall door, kill Eowyn, then slip through the other door to the room where I was. And anyways, you were the one that knew she was dead in the first place. Dylan and I were talking about something completely different, and you asked where she was-"

"Call it a gut feeling." Malfoy said, smirk disappearing. "Because every time I've found you two alone, someone has died. Let's not forget Glinda was killed in your room."

"Yeah, Dylan, you were the one who found Mortola, weren't you?" Felicity asked, eyes narrowed. "And the Queen, and Sirius, and Oz..."

"And they threatened me to keep me quiet after I found them with Sirius." said Malfoy.

Felicity looked wildly around at the rest of the table. "And all that nonsense the Hatter keeps saying about angels and time...aren't you two the ones with wings? Maybe they've got some killing instinct programmed into them by the scientists who made them. Didn't you say the scientists were evil?"

"Yes- but- we aren't evil!" I cried. It was hard to believe I'd had such a civil conversation with Felicity and Eowyn this morning. "And what about you? You found Fenoglio! It was pitch black!"

Felicity snorted. "It wasn't that dark. Someone else would've seen it if I hadn't."

"They have a point." Katniss said, watching Dylan and I carefully. "You two have been nearby almost all of the crime scenes at the time of death. You've both had a history of fighting and killing, as you just told us, and you're genetically engineered to be good at it, and you're likely to be working together."

"That is not true!" I said. "One, we were nowhere near Tom or Fenoglio-"

"We don't know when they were killed." the huntress interjected.

"-and -and two, we were engineered to fly and have other powers, and we were given them for tests, not for killing-"

Katniss just gave me a piercing stare, tapping her fingers against the table. "Really? And your lab never made any killing machines? Or experiments that turned out to be killing machines?"

I faltered. "Well-"

"I knew it." Felicity sneered. "Even if they weren't trained to be killers, they're probably unstable anyways. They're mutants."

I pounded my fist on the table. "I'm not a killer! I'm a human being, just like all of you!"

"Except you have wings and a short temper." said Malfoy, raising an eyebrow.

"And you are a wizard and a criminal!" I said. "And Katniss has killed plenty of people-"

The huntress's fingers clenched dangerously. "I did it to save my family."

"And I only killed to save mine." I said. "I know you might not believe it because they all ditched me here, but the other kids I arrived with are my family. Everything I did was to keep them alive. I wouldn't kill just for killing's sake, and neither would Dylan. We aren't the murderers."

"Then who is?" asked Felicity.

"We don't know." said Dylan, sitting with his head hung. "It could be two of you, or all of you for all we know. All of the murders could be done by separate people for completely different reasons. We don't know anything about it." He looked up, something desperate in his eyes. "Look, we all have reasons that we might be the murderer. Katniss, you are the most capable of it, and Prim is the least suspicious one here so you two make a good team. You two also caused two diversions that allowed people to die today, by starting the search for Gollum and and finding the weapons under Oz's bed."

Before Katniss could interupt, Dylan turned to the rest of the table. "Malfoy, you hate everyone here, and I really don't think you would care if we all died. We also know you have a bad history, and that you've been at or around several bodies. Felicity, you seem to care so little about the situation right now, it's like you don't think you're in danger at all. You never seem worried about being able to protect yourself, even though you claim to not know how. The Hatter has been alone the most of all of us, and he's definitely unstable, but he also seems the most scared."

He paused, sighing. "And then there's Max and I. You've made several good points about that, but we're good people, and we would not kill for fun-"

"We can't take your word for that." snapped Felicity.

"And we can't take your word either." said Dylan calmly. "Which is why I've changed my mind. We should split up."

"Good." Katniss leaned back. "Then we're agreed to all stay out of each other's ways. No more eating schedule, or cooking groups, or dining room discussions."

Malfoy stood almost immediately. "Great, finally. I don't have to deal with you all anymore."

"The feeling is mutual." I muttered. "Come on, Dylan, let's go." As I grabbed him and left, I could hear the others doing the same, but I didn't look back.

I was not a freak, or a murderer, just because I had been tortured from birth by the School- how could they even think that? It wasn't my fault that I was born a test tube baby, that I'd never had a normal child because I was too busy going through painful tests and experiments and living in a cage, that I'd killed monsters and wolf robots to protect the only family I had in the world and to stay alive! If I could have been born a one hundred percent human to a loving mother and sister without being either captured or on the run my whole life...well, I still wouldn't want to give up the Flock, despite all their flaws and sudden ditching syndrome, but other than, I would totally be normal and boring and not a "mutant freak".

Bastards. Bastards with a prejudice against avian-Americans. Some horrible part of me hoped they would all die, and some worse, horribler part of me wanted to make it happen.