December 22nd, 2012

Morning

Totally ignorant of the events of the night before, William was surprised to see only his brothers sitting at the table at breakfast. Neither of them looked as though they had slept at all and their eyes were haunted.

Sliding onto the bench, William asked, "Where are Mom and Dad?" For a very fleeting moment he was glad that he remembered to call Scully mom, but the worried looks on his brothers' faces soon made him forget his gladness.

"They took them away." Owen said listlessly.

"What do you mean?" William demanded.

Benji elaborated a little bit. "We were sleeping, and people came in and they dragged them away. Dad tried to get away so they shot him with this thing."

"They shot him?!"

"Not with a gun, but I don't know electricity or something. There was flash of light and he stopped moving. But he was breathing and stuff." Benji added quickly.

"A taser, like the police have?"

"Yeah, probably." Benji said burying his spoon in the bowl of oatmeal that sat in front of him. He made no move to bring the spoon to his mouth.

"Where they now?" William wanted to know.

Neither of his brothers said a word. But Emanuel did. "I had them removed from the premises. You don't seem to be taking this matter very seriously. I decided that they were a distraction."

"Are they all right?!"

"For now. I'll have them brought back here... after you've lit the beacon."

Before William could say anything, two large men approached the table and pulled Benji and Owen out of their seats.

"Hey, what are you doing?" William protested. He was already worried about his parents, and he didn't want his brothers taken away too. "Don't take them away!"

"I wasn't planning on that, William. Your brothers will be accompanying us." That said, the men began prodding the younger boys towards the room while William rushed to keep up with Emanuel's long strides towards the room with the beacon.

Once they got there, William was lead to stand in front of the beacon. He gave it a hateful stare. Whines of protest made him turn his head, and he saw that Benji and Owen were being restrained, much in the way that they had been the day they'd tried to help him break free from their captors at the tree lot. This made William turn his hateful look on Emanuel instead; all of this was his doing, and William wished he was dead.

Brightened by the idea, he decided to see if he could move living objects, like organs, like a heart, but was disappointed that he couldn't feel inside of people the way he could feel inside of machines. It was too bad, because he gladly would have stopped the man's heart if he could, the consequences be damned.

The man seemed to have no idea that he'd just be sized up for murder." Light the beacon, William." Emanuel demanded.