Tiger Chronicles: Exodus
Chapter III: Vox Populi
…
All Hail Bill Watterson.
…
Laura Jennings fumed: Her FUN had been interrupted.
Kyle's destruction had been a long term project of hers, and while the revelation he was innocent of the false charges she had placed against him was a setback, it was one she could overcome.
Her arrest, however, was another story.
Word of what she'd done had spread quickly, somehow- whether someone had outside information or it was just loose lips among guards was irrelevant. As soon as other women had heard what she had done, almost the entirety of the holding cell had joined in a contest to see who could brutalize her the worst.
The damage was severe. Coppery blood pooled where three teeth had been dislodged. Her right arm throbbed with pain, broken in several places. Her ribs were bruised, cracked… it was hard to tell. Only a doctor could discern the exact amount of damage.
She had been placed in a solitary cell for her own protection, and they had left her to languish.
First order of business after getting a lawyer and getting out: Sue. Put everyone here out of a job and into a cell of their own. Nothing short of absolute annihilation of every life involved was going to satisfy her.
Secondly, and she frowned as she considered this, Kyle was going to have to die. She would recruit Mallory, the man had a perverse appetite for little boys, and doubtless the idea of one last degradation would entice him. The idea of ending his life so early in her 'game' incensed her, but Jennings was no fool. The time to play and enjoy the game had long since passed.
She could almost see the smug look on the boy's face, staring her down, mocking-
She blinked.
Standing not three feet from her was Kyle. Bloody. Bruised. But smiling. He was shivering, for some reason.
"How the hell did you get in here?" she asked, disbelieving.
"I have friends." Kyle responded coldly.
At this, Jennings was disappointed. She had made it her mission to ensure Kyle had no friends, no allies, nothing but absolute hatred and disgust every which way he turned.
"Eight years." He said plainly. "Eight. Long. Years. Even before you accused me of stealing, you liked hurting me. Why?"
Clearly she was dreaming. Passed out from the pain. Odd, her arm still hurt. "I don't need to give you a reason."
Kyle shrugged. "You're going to have to give a judge a reason sooner or later. Might as well think up one now."
Her subconscious had a point. Later, she would concoct something practical, but for now…
"You want a reason? I'm older than you. I'm wiser than you. I'm stronger than you. That's how the world works, THIEF. If I want to hurt you, I will. If I want to humiliate you, I will! If I want to kill you, then by God, I am entitled to burn you alive and shit on the ashes, you arrogant little bitch!"
Kyle didn't move. "So the strong deserve to do whatever they want to the weak? That's what you believe?"
"Yes, you bitch! Yes!" Jennings snarled, and she swung with her left hand, dream be damned…
Kyle caught her hand before she could slap him. "Good."
His hand was like a vise, and she squeaked as she heard something grind in her wrist, pain shooting up her arm.
"Then this shouldn't come as a surprise." something growled from his throat.
Kyle pulled, and her arm exploded in pain at her left shoulder as he swung her, slamming her back into a wall, a rib shattered-
She screamed as he picked her up, digging a thumb into her left eye socket, and she flailed, scratching, clawing, kicking at his face, his legs, anything to stop him. Her blows were wet tissue paper, and Kyle just chuckled as she felt her left eye burst-
"HELP! SOMEONE, ANYONE, HELP!"
Kyle kicked out with his foot, stomping on her left hip, and she screamed in raw agony as bone and muscle were pulped into a blob of tendons and bone splinters.
"Go ahead." He snarled in a voice that was NOT Kyle, and though her good eye was blurred with tears, she knew he was smiling. "Call for help. Scream like I screamed. Beg like I begged. Plead like I pleaded. BLEED LIKE I BLED!"
He was Satan.
Oh God.
He was Satan.
He was Satan. She'd lied but she'd told the truth-
"Get out!" She screamed desperately. "In the name of Jesus, I command-"
Kyle lunged, grabbing her by the throat and smashing her head against the back wall of her cell-
"You rebuke me? YOU rebuke me?!" it was a voice of confusion, as if the thing didn't know whether to be offended or laugh.
And it decided to laugh, a cacophony of nightmares that made her ears ring and hurt, and she just wanted to die, to make it all end…
"Jesus I know." He grabbed her hand and slammed it into the toilet bowl, and she wretched as putrid toilet water and blood filled her nose. He pulled her out, and slammed her through the sink, shards of cheap ceramic gashing her back, and she gasped in pain.
"Paul I know." Kyle's face distorted, a smile two feet wide and lined with yellowed razor teeth, his nose bulbous and red, his skin hideously pale…
Jennings had always been afraid of clowns.
Until she had left home at 19, she was convinced, that one day, when she forgot to put a bible near her closet, a pagliaccio straight from hell's bowels would erupt from her closet and rip her to shreds…
…and here it WAS.
"Aw, hell!" shrieked the now massive head, hair a fiery wig of orange and red flames, lips a dead blue and eyes acid green and purple, spitting flies and hornets that stung and swarmed her. "I even heard'a Soozy Doikens!" it boomed, its voice a horrible combination of a clownish simpleton meshed with the buzzing of the thousand hornets that churned in its cell-spanning mouth.
And Kyle, the clown from hell, ripped off her eyelids, grabbed her by the throat, lifting her to look into his unnatural eyes, portals to a place of darkness and pain eternal.
"BUT WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!"
Eventually, she told herself, as barbed worms dripping black, acid ichor from countless spines erupted from his flesh to burrow into hers, making tunnels of burning agony in her battered body, it would end.
Eventually, as he spat boiling bile, scalding her and making her gag and vomit, he would nick an artery or crush her skull, and it would all be over.
Eventually was taking a very long time.
And with her last snapping thread of sanity, it occurred to her that eventually might never come.
…
A teenager was the first responder to Calvin's request that one of the many attendees of the New Exodus give him their story. The gist of the initial text back was that before Malefideism had entered his life, it was already harsh, but the introduction of "Get with The Program!" had kicked the abuse into high gear.
A little further inquiry yielded some interesting facts. One, his father was a pastor of a small church in Pennsylvania that had taken to Malefides' teachings as the new gospel. Two, that pastor was current serving time in Newden's penitentiary for making a threat against the mayor's daughter and openly stating plans to stage an armed protest during the Verdant Junior High graduation.
Ronald Brinks wasn't exactly shedding tears over his father's plight.
"So, let's take this from the top." Calvin suggested, reclining in his seat a little. It felt wrong, doing this from the comfort of his own home, but at the same time air conditioning and having a cold drink available had its charm… "You say before your father got involved with Malefideism there was abuse?"
For a moment, the voice on the other end was silent.
"…it was always something." He said finally. It wasn't typical teenage bitterness- it was a head-shaking anger, a disappointment. "If I got good grades, it was my 'attitude'. If I said yes sir, yes ma'am, did all my chores when I got home, spent all my free time studying, it was 'being selfish'. And every sin was worth at least ten licks with a belt. Used the buckle end, too."
Jesus Christ almighty.
"You said when I contacted you that you didn't think your father actually cared whether or not you improved, right?"
"It was like…" Ronald paused. "You know how some people get hooked on something- drugs, booze, whatever? It was like that. It was like he needed to hit me. Once, he had to go out of town, and he had to stay away for like, three days longer than he'd planned. I made… I made sure everything was perfect- homework done, entire house cleaned, everything…" Ronald's voice began to waver. "The minute… the very second he walked through the door, he punched me to the floor, ripped his belt off so hard it broke two loops, and just…"
There was silence for a moment.
"…the bastard was never satisfied. Never. So yeah, I'm glad he's in jail. I hope they cut him up and feed him to the dogs. I hope they never let him see the sun again. Because that piece of shit ain't happy unless he's hurting someone."
"…what about your mother?" Calvin asked.
Mirthless laughter from the other end. "Oh, she's always making excuses. 'He means well.' 'He had a bad day.' 'He's hard on you so you'll grow up to be a mighty man of God.' And I'm like… bitch… bitch please. If he keeps this up, I'm not gonna grow up period."
Calvin paused as he jotted down notes. "…what are you going to do when this is over? The Exodus thing, I mean."
"I dunno." He said sadly. "If I go back home, if dad ever gets out, if he gets out and he finds out I ran away… I'm a dead man. I can't go back. My teachers wouldn't listen. The police wouldn't listen. The way I see it, alive and hungry on the streets is better than waiting to die back home."
That was one confirmation of his assumptions. The book, as he had suspected, wasn't some unholy tome that had the power to transform good parents into R.A.W. candidates. All it did was provide closet abusers- or those who already were openly abusive- with another excuse.
Ideally, he wouldn't be asking people about the worst experiences in their lives. He'd be looking for R.A.W. compounds, evacuating hostages, then nuking them-
Focus.
The hero impulse was still there. But now there was also a sort of rational thought, the realization that his luck could only be pushed so far.
"Hey, listen-" Ronald said. "Bunch of other people wanna talk to you, if you're interested."
There were names for him. The Destroyer. Toughest Kid in Ohio. "OhDearGodNo".
Part of him felt there was something very, very wrong about using fame brought about from killing to achieve his goals. The other part of him reminded him that his enemies had no such reservations.
…
There were rumors about the kid from Ohio- Calvin Halgins.
That he was trained from birth as an assassin. That he was a metahuman. That he could kill someone just by thinking about it. That the Newden nuclear threat was done entirely to get rid of him. That R.A.W., an organization he claimed was devoted solely to killing and torturing kids, considered him enough of a threat that nuclear obliteration was deemed an appropriate response.
There was also one particular fact that stood out.
Calvin was who you spoke to if you were a minor, had been wronged by the insanity of R.A.W. or Malefideism, and wanted your story told.
People had tried to silence him. Through intimidation. Through force. Through sabotage. They were all dead or in prison, now.
When you told your story to Calvin Halgins, you told it to the world.
…
Gathered around one of many, many campfires, three teenagers wound down the first day of their 'independence'.
Jeremy Duncan shifted a little. His ribs still hurt- being punched to the ground and kicked repeatedly by your own father had that effect. The latest text from his father was a pleading one, saying that multiple patients had dropped him as a dentist over the whole mess. Ordinarily, his father being out of a job would have been disastrous for him, but he'd already resigned himself to the fact he can't go home again.
April Patterson took a long drink from a can of soda. She was offered a beer, but she knew in the back of her mind the last thing she needed is to be drunk here. She was assaulted once while sober, God only knew what would happen if she was drunk…
Ronald Brinks just stared at the stars. He'd told his story, for what little that would do in the long run. He'd been playing to run away since five, right after his father smashed all his action figures and beat him for an hour over spilling a glass of milk.
"So how'd the interview with The Destroyer go?" Jeremy asked, breaking the silence.
"Pretty short, pretty simple. He's a down to earth kinda guy." Ronald responded.
April looked up. "…Destroyer?"
"That kid making all the news in Ohio. That's what some people call him. He's interviewing people here, says it's to show how Malefideism fucks up families."
"His family buy into it?"
"No." Ronald said. "That's the strange thing. From what he says he's got a great mom and dad."
"So what's his stake in this?" asked April.
"He's pissed." Ronald answered simply. "He says he saw a lot of kids die during the Grindstone raid."
Jeremy thought for a moment. "…is it true what they say? That he's a meta?"
"I dunno. Hasn't said anything one way or the other. All I know is, you go through a death camp and come out okay, you have a crazy goddamn judge cult go after you and come out okay, then someone tries to nuke your city and fails?" Ronald gave a short laugh. "You got more than luck on your side."
April for her part took all these stories with a grain of salt, her own situation notwithstanding. The rumors said the Ohio boy was capable of everything from espionage and gun combat to calling down lightning on his enemies. That everyone who had ever wronged him was dead or wishing they were.
Staring into the flames as the two traded stories of how they'd heard this wunderkind had exploded a car or raided a city, she wondered if he took requests…
…
"She's safe."
Those two words seemed to make Eileen exhale some breathe she'd been holding for who knew how long, and she relaxed slightly. "Did she say when she was coming back?"
Jason shook his head. "No. From what she told me, this on top of the grief people gave her over her father's bullshit? She doesn't want to come back."
He was going to need to kill some people to make it clear he was serious about his ultimatum, that much was certain…
Eileen was silent for a bit. "How have you been doing?"
Jason shrugged. "Insurance and the lawsuits helped a lot. We're looking for a home, Paige and Mom went shopping to replace all her clothes-"
"I meant how are you doing?" Eileen interrupted.
Oh.
How, exactly, did he tell her?
Tell her that it didn't bother him anymore, that he had excised that redundant shard of guilt?
He was viewing the world through a very different lens; that much he was aware of. To end the life of someone who was trying to kill you in the name of a Not Human thing was no longer murder- it was the elimination of a cancerous cell with the human species as the body, something to be done as much as possible and without wasting time considering the morality of defending one's self against a devoted murderer- in a shorter answer, justice.
But Jason knew that this explanation was the sort of thing found in manifestos and documents used by lawyers to prove their clients were so far gone, so insane, that they could not be held responsible for their actions-
Is that what I am?
"I'm…"
Am I so fucked up that it doesn't bother me at all?
"…managing."
A nice way of circumventing telling her that while Marcus was still waking up screaming, he had discarded his own last shreds of needless guilt. An evolution, like a pokemon- suddenly the cute little tortoise had two massive cannons, the little yellow fox was a psychic god of death, and hundreds of other examples of innocent, cute little creatures growing into walking weapons.
Eileen was smart enough to know that kind of short response meant he either wasn't ready or wasn't willing to talk about it- he could see it in her face- and so she let it drop.
Sometimes, the kindest thing to say was nothing at all.
…
Scott Mallory, unlike many other child predators, knew he deserved to be arrested.
Just not for the reasons one would think.
He had berated himself as he was placed in a police car. He should have scrubbed his hard drive. He should have destroyed the videos he'd taken. It might have helped a little.
Or maybe it wouldn't have helped at all, he thought as he lay in a cell, praying that the musclebound biker on the bed adjacent didn't know what he was in for. He turned, his neck hurting as he did, tension killing him…
Sound asleep. Had been ever since lights out. From the lack of noise, everyone else was too… He had gotten a little rest, then woken up with a pain in the back of his neck- these stiff cots did not agree with him.
Maybe it had been posting on those websites. Uploading his "punishment sessions" with Kyle for the enjoyment of others like him.
Maybe despite the hush money, his parents squawked after all.
So very many stupid mistakes. But he was drunk on the high of Kyle's pain, and when Jennings accused him of stealing and he could have a punishment session in public at any time he wanted…
He rubbed the back of his neck- ow. He'd tweaked something, and rubbing made it worse. Oh well, it wasn't like he was going to be able to sleep anyway…
No one would have guessed he was a child molester from the looks of him. He was well built, short brown hair, a face that screamed "single male, ladies inquire", and truth be told he had taken very good care of himself physically… present condition notwithstanding.
The judge in charge of deciding whether or not he could post bail had taken one look at the stack of evidence seized in the raid on his house, gave him a look of utter disgust, and denied bail then and there.
He remembered vaguely after one particular brutal punishment he'd given Kyle, oh-so-satisfying for him, that the boy, bleeding all over and hoarse from crying, looked up with pure hate in his five-year old eyes…
"I will kill you for this."
He had written it off as the last act of defiance from a boy he had taken great care in breaking. But now…
Dwelling on his situation only served to reinforce how many exits could have been secured beforehand, if only he had taken more precautions. There was no way out of this, aside from some miracle of getting through prison alive. Even if he did, he'd be a marked man. The bank he was with had already washed their hands of him. His friends on the websites he'd gone to would refuse to associate with him out of fear of being caught.
"It's not nice being all alone, is it?" came a familiar voice.
Scott looked up, startled.
Where the burly, muscled biker should have been, there was now Kyle, smiling happily.
Scott Mallory was aware enough of what was and was not possible, even in his despair, to know that this was a very, very bad thing.
"Oh, wow, you catch on quickly." laughed Kyle, the laugh echoing off the-
…empty cells, there was no one else, he looked out of the bars for a guard or another inmate but there was NO ONE…
"…a pain in your neck. You can't breathe for a moment. You look over at the big, bad motherfucker you were sure was going to beat the shit out of you, and he's still asleep. Miraculous, isn't it? Unless…"
Unless he was waiting for me to fall asleep.
"They say there's no honor among thieves. Well, they're wrong. There's business, and then there's what you do, and what you've done gets you rewarded with a shank to the throat. So that just leaves one question: if you're not in prison, and you're not dreaming, gosh oh gee, wherever could you be?" Kyle put his hands over his mouth in mock surprise.
Even though he knew it was futile, he banged on the door of his cell, trying to get the attention of someone, anyone…
…and the door flew open.
"You remember the games we played? Like 'bend Kyle's finger until he says Uncle', or 'Punch Kyle if he doesn't strip'? Good times. Good times." Kyle mused. "Well, now… I have a game I'd like to play. It's a bit of a classic. You may have played it before…"
The floor at the back edge of his cell suddenly began to glow red hot, then burst in a bubble of red-gray liquid rock, blasting him with a scalding sulfurous stench.
"…the floor is now lava."
And without so much as a pop, Kyle was gone.
He scrambled out of the cell, looking frantically for an escape, but all ahead of him was an infinite corridor of jail cells, some of which began to glow with the ominous sickly orange-red glow of lava…
As he ran, stumbling, he could see the flood of molten rock beginning to build behind him, like some sort of hellish blob monster it advanced, searing heat at his back.
A spiraling staircase, rusted and dilapidated, was his salvation, and he scurried up as fast as he could, running up away from…
The staircase terminated abruptly, leading to a blank, grey ceiling, illuminated only by the orange molten hell below…
The room was boiling, making him dizzy. The stairwell groaned and swayed as the rising lava melted it, and then Mallory understood.
All the games he had played with Kyle were games that Kyle was meant to lose, and lose badly, so he could engage in whatever punishment amused him the most at that time. There was never a 'win' condition for the boy, and he was certain during their last sessions together that Kyle knew the games were all so much a farce for Mallory's more depraved wants.
His soles melted, scalding his feet, and he clung futilely to the rusty metal pillar as the lava continued to rise.
There was no escape. No platform to jump to, no mercy. In a moment of panic, he had made the ridiculous assumption Kyle would have allowed him a win condition…
The pillar creaked.
"No." he pleaded to the sea of boiling orange death.
The pillar groaned and his pants ignited from the shear heat.
"No." he begged again, as the pillar tilted inexorably backward, lowering him to a fiery baptism…
Liquid pain sheared away everything. Sun-bright inferno filled his eyes. His screams were cut off as lava burned through his throat.
He could hear Kyle laughing.
…
Barry Wilkins did appreciate Malefides. He really did.
It was obvious that Malefides' team was going to be the winning team, and whether or not R.A.W. would still be relevant in his plans was yet to be seen. The important thing, now, was to make sure he remained 'useful' to Malefides.
He just wished he wouldn't stare off into space and smile, like that. It was creepy.
So he, and the others in the White Room discussed what to do concerning this Exodus, and did their best to ignore Malefides' occasional laughter at some private joke only he got.
…
Jeremy Duncan faced the laptop, sipped a coke.
He could have a beer. It would be rebellious, and when you learned that obedience counted for jack shit, you had every right to be rebellious…
…but it's what his parents would expect.
So fuck them.
"Mom was always…" he paused. He tried to find a civil word, then realized he had no obligation to be civil…
"…fucking crazy. Lied about me constantly. Said I parked the car on the garage. That I was ungrateful. That I cheated on school papers. Big stuff, small stuff."
"Any idea why?" asked the so-called Destroyer.
He didn't look like much. Spiky blonde hair. Younger than him. But if the rumors were to be believed, this boy had caused more death than most soldiers did in their entire careers…
"I think it was attention." He answered honestly. "My mom needed to feel like she was a martyr, or being unfairly punished. I tried to be nice, be helpful, be…" he sighed, dammit, he would not cry here… "…be what she wanted, but it was never enough."
"Was your dad like that?"
"No," Jeremy shook his head. "Dad was either out to lunch or yelling at me about something, but he didn't go the martyr route."
"They ever talk about Malefideism before this? Or 'external parenting', anything like that?"
"No." Jeremy answered in the negative again. "At least, not within earshot of me."
"I always knew they were disappointed in me. I wasn't a super-athlete or a math prodigy. I didn't come up with the cure for cancer when I was fifteen. I knew when I graduated High School, that'd be it. I'd be out on the street." He took another sip. "But they never talked of Malefi-whatever until after I'd been arrested."
"What about Ms. Butcher, the teacher who lied about you?" Calvin asked.
"Oh, her." Jeremy groaned. Where the hell to begin? "I don't know what the hell I did to piss her off, but she's had a serious hate-on for me since 9th grade, and it only got worse after I got out of her class. Mostly it would be lying about petty shit- I was ditching class, or I was starting a fight- never thought she'd stoop to lying about rape, though."
Calvin's face was calm, but there was something in his eyes… something… off. "…so this was the latest and most severe attack in her 'campaign' against you, as it were."
A campaign against him? Jesus. It… made more sense when you looked at it that way. "Yeah."
"Did she said she was sorry at all-"
Jeremy doubled over laughing, involuntarily spraying grape soda in a burst of guffawing. When he could breathe and see again, Calvin had a poker face. "…aaaaaaah I'm gonna take that as a no."
"The bitch…" Jeremy caught his breath. "…the bitch laughed when she saw how beat up I was, during a meeting where these fuckers who lied about me tried to get me to say I was in on it all along. Then when I told them 'fuck you', she said she'd do it again later."
"Seriously?" Calvin asked, disgust evident in his voice.
Jeremy nodded.
"What… what the fuck did your parents have to say about all this?" Calvin asked, the mask of professionalism breaking a little under the sheer idiocy of it all- good. That vindicated him, even here, in a mass of the rejected, abused, and disowned, the voice of his people wasn't so jaded as to not even blink when he heard the story…
"My dad said it was necessary and if I was truly a man, I'd go along with it and wouldn't hold it against them. My mom quoted the Malefuck's book and did that dance-"
"…sorry, the dance?" Calvin asked.
"There's this… I'm not going to do it here, too fucking embarrassing, but they jump around, throwing their arms in the air, clasping their faces, singing how wise and wonderful they are…"
"The Celebrant Dance." Calvin sighed. "It's typically done after punishing someone or whenever they feel upset. Some just do it for the hell of it."
"It's like…" Jeremy ran a hand through his hair. "…they were always off. Mom exaggerated. Dad was out of touch. Super-strict. But I always thought… I always thought they had a limit. A point where they'd say no."
Smiling sadly, he shrugged. "Well, now we can all be disappointed with each other."
…
No one questioned Kyle's presence in the camp. To the others, he was just another kid, a little younger, who had been on the bad end of Malefideism or something like it.
So he made himself fit in.
He didn't need to embellish as he told the sad tale of his childhood.
The older boys winced when he told them about being beaten with a fireplace poker. The girls cried when he told them about Mr. Mallory's games. All were outraged when he told them of his six years as a pariah over a pittance of cash he'd never touched.
He did, however, leave out certain… recent events. No one needed to know about his mid-night visit to Jennings. Or that Mr. Mallory was trying to bargain with any deity whatsoever as he stumbled and ran away from a rising flood of magma.
Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew the power that granted him the ability to see and do these things wasn't coming from some holy angel of vengeance. Or anything holy, for that matter.
But Gee-Oh-Dee had six years in which to show him that he gave a flying fuck about his being stomped into the ground by his loyal servants, and in his mind the statute of limitations had long expired.
"Man, it's like that in a lot of religious homes." One boy said, shaking his head. "Christian, Muslim, Mormon, Buddhist, whatever… they got verses and parables for punishing you over and over, and others for why you need to forgive them even before you're done bleedin'."
This was almost too easy. Oh well. He could use a breather exercise.
"It's not just religion." Kyle said, gaining some listeners. "It's this deeply ingrained belief that someone that happens to be older than you is always somehow justified doing things that would never be excusable for people like us. I mean, for example- if you get suspended because a teacher… oh, I don't know-"
The voice spoke to him…
"-said you threatened to bring a gun to school and shoot up everyone, and they did it because you made a good counterpoint to their outdated, misinformed argument- well, so what? You're a kid. Even if… Even if you are punished for something that never happened, it's still justified, because, oh, 'life isn't fair', or 'well I felt threatened', or 'you need to learn to be more respectful'. So many excuses, and none of them justify it."
The boy, a wiry hipster type, stared back. "How the fuck did you know that?!"
Oops.
The power made a suggestion…
"Lucky guess?" Kyle shrugged carelessly. "I mean, you hear all the stories here, the unfairness, the kicks in the teeth, you start to get a feel for this."
The hipster relaxed.
"But yeah," Kyle agreed. "It's worse with religion. They smack you for something you didn't do, you point out you didn't do it, and according to Jezebadiah 32:13 section b, it's a test from God, and you failed by getting angry, so you need to make it up to them and pray to God for forgiveness and understanding." He made a noise of disgust. "Spoiler alert. I prayed for six years. It didn't work."
Cynical laughter rumbled around them and some of those raised in religious homes shook their heads knowingly.
"Man, at the rate things are going, fuck praying to Jesus or Buddha, I'm praying to Calvin. Offer him a twenty, see if he can do to my old man what he did to Highweller…"
Pray to Calvin. Of all the insipid…
…
Somewhere else, in a small, darkened room, Malefides heard the sarcastic suggestion as well.
The power processed this information. It considered how these disenfranchised youths viewed the spiked-haired bastard.
As a hero.
As a champion.
As a savior.
A plan came to Malefides, unfolding like a fractal masterpiece, and for a moment, he trembled in awe of the possibilities.
And in mirth darker and colder than the farthest reaches of the cosmos, he laughed.
Two rooms to the left, Montgomery Charles, a ten-year veteran breaker for R.A.W. considered dead to all stimuli except a child's screams, sprang awake and began alternating between vomiting and begging his dead children for forgiveness.
Rebecca Umbridge, three rooms to the right and recently promoted to her long coveted position of chief financial supervisor, calmly retrieved her standard issue cyanide-round pistol and decided tonight she would end her life.
In total, fifteen people in varying distances from Malefides' room suddenly suffered from what R.A.W.'s Psych Evaluators were forced to conclude was a sudden and inexplicable event of mass insanity, the results of which included incoherent babbling, nausea, self-injury, and in five cases, suicide. None of the afflicted had any history that would suggest attacks of conscience or mental defects.
Barry Wilkins, however, chuckled, rolled over, and went back to sleep.