"Well," Gray had to sigh. "As fascinating as all this is, it doesn't tell us where all the missing adults ended up."

"Think they're the ones who did all this damage?"

Images of a bloody knife held by a disorientated father and echoes of screams danced in his mind, causing Gray to shake his head. "Maybe," he allowed, then refocused himself. "How much longer before you unlock everything."

"Heh, hours at least. More likely days."

"Can you clone the data structure at least?"

"Oh, I already did that. Its off in The Cloud."

"Then start breaking everything down. There's a stormfront coming that I don't want us to be buried by."

"That would be ironic," Benji allowed. Gray began to move off, heading towards the door that led further into the building. "Where will you be?"

"I need to look at something here," was his only offered explanation as he opened the door, unsurprised to find himself in a small, tidy apartment beyond the door.

In the city it would be called an SRO – single room occupancy – but here, in this place, it struck him more as a monk's cell deep within a remote abbey. The wardrobe, walls and carpet were the same dull hues of brown and buff, though the few bits of furniture – a couple plastic lawn chairs colored an off-blue, a card table with green tablecloth, and a basic folding cot – added a bit of color to the place, but couldn't overcome the inherent dismal atmosphere of the atheistic. It struck him more as simply a place for sleep than living: no books or other reading materials in sight, no shelves on the bare walls, nor any sign of life.

Gray frowned at the cot, noting how the precisely made sheets and covers were lightly disturbed. Given the precisely arranged state of the rest of the room, this bit of disorder cried out for attention. "You…" his voice murmured, again independent of conscious thought. "Whoever you were…you're too organized, to exact, to leave where you sleep like this. What woke you? What did you hear?"

He closed his eyes, and let the scene play out in the darkness of his mind.

Clifford Brooks awoke fully and instantly at the commotion in his office next door: a dull thud-pause-thud-pause-thud. Being the de facto 'mayor' of the development – a title he rejected but a position he was proving well-suited for – he prided himself of keeping things in his personal domain as free of discord as the development as a whole. He honestly hadn't intended to lay there for more than a few moments, but a glance at his watch found he'd been asleep for several hours. Absolutely unacceptable waste of time, especially with so many matters needing attention!

Rallying himself, Brooks lurched to his feet – slightly scandalized he was still wearing his shoes – and marched through the door leading to his workspace, instantly stopping dead at the sight that greeted him.

The only illumination in the room was the lamp on his desk, which was set low and cast long shadows throughout, but a few things were clear enough. Sitting at the side-desk was his reliable second, Mr. Cooper, whose head was a bloodied and torn lump atop his shoulders. His computer's monitor was a broken mess as well, the screen shattered and casing caved in, the whole thing covered in what looked first like blood, but which Brooks realized was more than this.

Eyes wide, Brooks realized he and Cooper weren't the only ones in the room. There was a shadowed figure standing near Cooper, though it was unclear if they were beside or behind him. What was clear was that they had Cooper's head in their hands and were ramming it into the already-damaged monitor; this had been the source of the thud-thud-thud that had wakened him. Cooper made no attempt to resist this treatment, leaving Brooks to conclude he was dead.

The attacker paused their actions, releasing their hold on Cooper (who fell forward a final time and remained still) and turning to fully face him. They took a single step forward, revealing themselves to be a young man with sandy hair and hard eyes that fairly shone in the minimal light. Brooks felt himself start to shake at realizing exactly who stood there, and the impossibility of it stealing both breath and conscious thought from him.

"It's for the good of the community," the boy sneered, his voice as familiar – and impossible – as his visage. Brooks remembered him with such perfect clarity, of all the dozen that been sent away before him, for the honest relief his departure had brought at the time.

There and then, Brooks instead felt something wet trickle down his leg.

The figure, who bore the face and nasty grin of Logan Agar, advanced on him, mockingly reciting the charges that had been laid against him. "He doesn't obey the rules. He breaks curfew. He assaulted a guard. He carries a hunting knife. He's disrespectful in class, asks questions without respect, corrects his instructors, hums to himself, doesn't recite the Pledge in proper time with the rest of the class…"

Brooks didn't wait to hear more, blindly stumbling back into this tidy living space and slamming the door. It took him an extra beat to remember to set the lock, which was done a mere second before the party on the other side – he steadfastly refused to even think the name attached to the face he could not have just seen – began jiggling the knob. Several swift kicks to the door followed.

It was all the prompting Brooks need to duck out the opposite door, the one leading via a narrow hallway to one of the building's many service doors. He emerged from there into the biting teeth of a hard wind and thick rain, the storm crashing overhead and making it impossible to see more than a few paces ahead. Brooks ran through it all, his private terror of getting wet sufficiently overridden that his only thought was to find one of the patrol cars and summoning as much of the guard detail as he could.

What greeted him were scenes no less insane than the one he'd just fled. He saw one of the Kinross girls getting tackled to the ground by a boy in proper day clothes, using his superior size and weight to hold her down as he made use of the meat cleaver in his hand, the girls screams quickly reduced to gurgled choking. The Carstell house was on fire, someone inside tossing out what looked like pieces of broken furniture out of the shattered front window, except Brooks quickly realized they weren't masses of wood, but of flesh. Then there was an explosion somewhere further into the development, the sky momentarily lighting yellow rather than hot-white from the lightning that flashed overhead, but Brooks could not make out where exactly this happened.

It was enough to send him running once more, this time towards the development's gateway. He managed to get within sight of it when he heard a window breaking to his left, followed by a girl's squeal and a wet, tearing sound that somehow overrode nature's cacophony. Despite himself, Brooks looked in that direction, horrified to see promising young Jenny Winslow lay impaled on the tree that had been growing0 beside her family's house. His mind noted how that wasn't the Winslow's own memorial tree for that undeserving little bitch Jenna; it had been planted by the DeCarlo family when they'd had to send their own eldest to Arcadia and had grown especially quick and strong like the boy should have.

Brooks looked up to the second-floor window that poor Jenny had fallen from, again freezing in place at the sight of the wild-haired, improperly clothed girl they'd sent away just weeks ago! She caught sight of him, and the judgmental sneer she threw at him was enough to break his momentary paralysis, his legs in motion once more.

But he was driven by panic now, rather than sound reason, and Brooks quickly found himself stumbling through the copse that bordered the development and led to the old river gorge. The lightning and thunder had abated, leaving a deeper darkness that Brooks could only stumble through, trying desperately to get his bearings before he fell into…

The ground vanished from beneath him, and Brooks found himself tumbling downwards, coming to a sudden stop amid sharp rocks and stony earth. Picking himself up, Brooks found he wasn't alone, the gorge being filled with dozens of people. The rain had diminished enough for him to recognize those closest to him as the Agars to his left, and Jules Coopes to his right. All them, including those he couldn't immediately identify, were standing stock still and looking back the way he'd just come, all with tears in their eyes.

Turning around, Brooks looked upwards and found himself likewise frozen in place, for staring down at them from the lip of the gully was another crowd of people. All of them, with one visible exception, were properly attired for Evergreen, but none of them appeared to be damp from the rain. Add to that how many looked young, some barely out of diapers, and all of them glaring down upon them with flat eyes.

They were arranged around the one person who wasn't wearing proper clothes, and some distant corner of his mind found it unsurprising that it was Miss Jenna Winslow in the center of the group, having reverted to how she'd arrived in Evergreen: a spoiled brat in terrible clothes and unkempt hair that she looked more like a heathen savage than a human girl. He'd never felt such pure satisfaction at removing one of their occasional malcontents from their community as he'd felt when she'd been packed off.

One of the others stepped forward, and Brooks' jaw fell open at the sight of Ernest DeCarlo reaching out and dropping a single black marble into the glass bowl in Jenna Winslow's hands. "He talks too much in class, arguing with his teachers and making them look weak," the teen stated flatly, then turned and walked back into the woods.

He smaller brother Julien came next, his own black marble deposited into the bowl. "He cries for his brother all the time, disrupting any gathering and the peace of the community," was the eight-year-old's declaration, delivered with all the conviction of a saint and the emotion of an unwound clock, followed by his own departure into the woods.

Their mother, still clad in the disheveled bedclothes she'd been seized in, added her marble to the bowl and said, "She cries for her children, constantly demanding their return."

No sooner had she faded from sight than her husband appeared in her place. He dropped the marble in without comment, having been sent off to Arcadia without trial or charges even being necessary. The look he raked them with was empty and pitiless.

One after another, the rest dropped their own marbles in, their names and crimes easily coming to mind: Amanda Knowlen (who deliberately sang off-key at community events), Dylann Coopes (whose anemia threatened the community's health and security), the Carter sons Kyle and Jordan (whose coordinated 'science experiments' damaged the schoolrooms), Lee Brooks (Clifford only child, who been discovered abusing the limited Internet access allowed him, risking the community's harmony), and two dozen more. Each moved silently, the gaze they gave those watching sometimes cursory, others perfunctory, some even lingering, but all were compassionless and decisive.

The crowd above them were soon down to just two remaining figures, the Wilson girl and Logan Agar, who appeared at her side from nowhere. "It's for the good of the community," the Agar boy sneered again, eyes burning as he flicked his marble into the now-filled container, then melted back into the darkness.

Left to herself and her trademark sneer, Jenna Winslow watched the people with a contempt that was as unwavering as the rest of her, which hadn't moved a hair throughout this. Brooks found his paralysis slowly lifting, but only enough to notice some odd lethargy in his legs. This was a distant realization as the girl standing over them all suddenly took action of her own, saying with the same arrogance he'd come to instantly despise:

"Fuck your community."

She raised the glass bowl she held so it was eye level, then let it drop to the ground, the plain crystal shattering upon impact.

That same instant the air, which had silent and still, erupted in the twin cacophony of renewed storm and desperate screams that surrounding Brooks. His paralysis vanished that same instant, replaced by hysterical panic at the realization he and everyone else standing there were literally sinking into the ground…ground that was no longer stony and firm but which had become loose, almost watery mud which greedily consumed their soaked feet, then their legs, torsos like a thing alive. Many of the assembled vanished from sight entirely, slipping beneath the soft earth amid screams that filled his hearing – pleas for help, prayers to God, cries for forgiveness, hysteria and desperation mixed into something incoherent and animal – which were soon joined by his own.

All too quickly, the mud was up to his neck, and quickly over it, filling his mouth and nose with the reeking scent of rot and soil.

Clifford Brooks reached upwards desperately, a final gurgled scream bubbling out of his mouth, lost in the storm that raged overhead.

Then…darkness.

Gray knelt carefully on the gully's floor, keeping a careful eye for any shifts in the seemingly solid earth underfoot. He held his smartphone out, slowly panning over the area, documenting as carefully as possible the sight there. One could be forgiven for thinking there was nothing no note there, as the many hands – several marked only by a few fingers, others by just a knuckle or two – sticking up out of the ground were dusted with grit and dried soil, rendering them nearly invisible.

A familiar voice cried out in the woods. "Hey, Gray! You out here?" It was Morris, and his sounded uncharacteristically strident.

"Here!" he called out in return, voicing carrying well enough to direct his colleague. There was the sound of something fairly crashing through the undergrowth, prompting Gray to yell "Careful! There's a drop!"

Morris, who emerged from the tree-line a moment later, managed to just stop himself from racing over the edge. "Jesus," he spat, needing an extra beat to regain his balance. Seeing Gray crouching there, Morris squinted and breathed "Holy Mary…"

"I heavily doubt she was involved here," Gray responded dryly.

"Are those the…er…"

"Our missing residents? Very likely, although we'd need at least fingerprints for comparison." Gray straightened and looked up at him. "Not that we have time for that, do we?"

"Huh?" Morris shook himself, then added "Oh, yeah. Uh, Wilson and his people have pulled out, and the Staties are pulling back as well. We're the last ones here…"

Gray nodded and headed towards a narrow incline that allowed him to reach the tree-line. He couldn't help but glance back several times, unnerved by the vision this place invoked. Morris misinterpreted this as his having difficulty reaching the top and crouched down to assist. Gray accepted the help without comment or complaint, noticing a folded sheet of paper in the engineer's hand.

"What's that?" Morris handed it to him quickly.

"This? Toxicology breakdown from Wilson. Made me swear you'd see it as soon as I found you." The larger man took a breath and said in a rush "Look, that storm is gonna hit this whole county in a couple hours, and I don't wanna be buried under twenty feet of snow…"

Gray nodded, hearing the words though his attention upon the paper. "You read this?"

"No. Are you listening to me? We've…"

"We've got to get out of here," Gray affirmed, handing the sheet to him. "Look at this."

Morris opened his mouth to argue, only for it to snap shut at the notations and figures listed. "What…wait. Was this in the soil?"

"No, it's from the bodies they autopsied."

"Mercury…lead content at…traces of…what the hell?" Morris looked up his worries of the weather momentarily forgotten. "What were they doing here? Drinking industrial sludge smoothies?"

"Maybe their fertilizer wasn't as pure or organic as they thought," was Gray's suggestion as he looked back down at the gully floor. "Maybe exposure built up over time and just hit critical mass recently."

"You think that's what happened?" Morris knew his colleague well enough to hear things were left unsaid. "What did you see out here?"

Gray was silent for a beat, then shook his head. "Justice, of a sort. Whether it was real or all in their heads, who knows." He pointed to the paper and added "With those toxin levels in their blood and brains, God only knows what these idiots thought they were seeing or doing when they…while they did…whatever it was…" He swallowed and forced that thought away. "It does explain why there's been no predation on the bodies that were found. Scavengers know better than feed on poisoned meat."

"So we're going to report that the adults here collectively went nuts because the fertilizer they've been making and using for their lawns and food are chuck-full of toxic chemicals, which led them to butcher their children like they were suckling pigs, and finished with them all walking out here and letting themselves get buried alive by a magical mudslide?"

"There's evidence of significant soil displacement here, so maybe that stormfront hit harder than originally thought. And if there was a sinkhole here that no-one knew about before…"

"Come on! You seriously think that's possible?" Morris's voice took the strident tone of a man silently begging for assurance his clear eyes were lying to him. Gray, however, could offer nothing of the sort, and the two men stood in unsettled silence for a moment.

"Which would you prefer we write up," Gray asked next. "That they were accidentally poisoning themselves to the extent they let themselves get buried in a sinkhole, or that they were chased out here by ghosts of the children and neighbors they turned into mulch?"

"Er, what?"

"I'll tell you later," Gray waved it off, eyes on the gully once more. "We'll call it an environmental disaster site and leave it there. That should be enough to convince the higher-ups to leave it alone."

"Oh, crap," Morris breathed, noticing a lone snowflake fluttering down from the hazy sky overhead. "We gotta get moving. You coming?" He turned and headed away, not waiting for a response. Gray moved to follow but paused at the faint crunch that sounded under his boot. He bent down to pick up of the odd debris at his foot, frowning. "Gray!" Morris's shout pulled his attention back.

"Coming," he called, tipping his hand to allow a few black marbles to fall from his palm and back the ground. He walked on, refusing to look back, his steady gait offering no hint at whatever inner turmoil might have been alight in his mind and heart as he departed the site.

Behind him, the marbles came to rest among the curved, broken pieces of what might have once been a glass bowl, a silent testament to the judgment of the dead over the living.