Innocence and Fear Chapter 6 part 2

Chapter 6 part 2 of my Substack exclusive story.

Fabian had opted to stay at the school over Christmas break to keep mining for information on the school and God’s Chosen. He had tried to get a pass to go to the library in the nearby town but kept getting denied. He had hoped he could find some business magazines there and see if he could find out more about Patton Industries and Trimberg Collective as well. He had managed to find that the stock prices for both companies were high, and had doubled in four years. He wondered how that could be because they had done little publicly. He had asked Jamie for help to understand what had happened, and Jamie had somehow known quite a bit. He had told him that Patton Industries and, by extension, Trimberg Collective had expanded into more of a tech industry while remaining profitable with manufacturing. When Fabian had asked how Jamie knew all this, Jamie had replied,

“Me and my dad talk a lot.” Fabian now understood why Miette had wanted him on board, he did seem to have some sort of inner knowledge. But as he thought it, Jamie seemed to know what he was thinking and answered the question he had been thinking of. “Don’t worry, our little extra-curricular project is not a subject that comes up.” Fabian began to breathe, realizing he had been holding in the air. Jamie had then left the study room they had met in, but not before turning around and whispering, “I’ve found out quite a bit…next meeting I’ll talk more.” He winked at Fabian, which made Fabian scowl. “Your Welcome…” Jamie said as he walked away. Fabian hated him but knew he was a necessary evil…for now.

The school held an event the day before the kids who were going home were scheduled to leave. Posters had advertised it for a week or two before. In beautiful gold printing on an ink-black background, the fliers read:

WINTER FORMAL

Wear your Best

12/22/97

GOLDEN BALLROOM

7 pm

Fabian could not keep a laugh from escaping him. He knew from studying the schematics there was a rather large ballroom on the first floor, but he had never seen it in person. Even when his tour guide, Panav, the acting school student body president, had taken him around the school the first day he had arrived, he had only pointed in the general direction and said,

“Down there is the ballroom, used for special events.” He had been amazed that the school had, let alone needed a ballroom. He remembered how naïve he had been back then. He almost laughed at himself again. It seemed so far away to him now, but it had only been back in September, only four months before. He sometimes wished to go back to that state. Things had seemed so bright then, so easy. Now he felt tired from all-nighters plowing through files and systems and servers and disillusioned. As the weeks had passed, he had read some chilling things. He had read ghoulish reports of people “getting lost” or “getting educated”. More and more the security reports and inner communications from the God’s Chosen to Elena Patton had made him feel uneasy.

The only positive of the whole thing was he had gotten closer to Miette. He didn’t know what her true feelings for him were, but he enjoyed being around her. There were small moments when they just talked, normally, like two sixteen-year-olds would have at any other school. He had found out they liked many of the same bands, and she was a sucker for all things coffee. Her parents often sent her Coffee Crisp bars in kraft paper-wrapped boxes. He had found out she didn’t speak French because she was from Montreal. She spoke it because she had grown up in Paris. Often they spoke in French to each other, especially around the other students. Most of the other students had studied French, but none knew enough to keep track of what they were saying. He found his French improving. But there were occasional times when he messed up and said odd things like, “Yes, let’s eat him” while talking too fast about Jamie. Miette had laughed so hard and her thin hands had flown to cover her mouth, as if she had shown too much of herself.

“What?” He had said. “Wait What did I say?” She had explained to him in English and they both had a good laugh. It was little things like this that made him power through long nights and even longer days. His hands had cramped and hurt because he typed so much. Miette had seen him rubbing them once at lunch and she had gone and gotten him a heat pack from the nurse’s office. He knew she was just as stretched as he was. She, too, was not sleeping. The black circles were beginning to be a permanent feature under her deep brown eyes. She often wore a lot of eye makeup that didn’t hide her exhaustion. If anything, it made her look more hollow, more haunted. So it surprised him when she asked him to come to the library at six on the 21st, so she could talk to him. He knew where she would sit, the fourth table in the back of the small library. The camera that watched this exact place had broken. Kelvin had told them he had overheard two men who had come to the tech closet talking about it. Miette had checked the Closed-circuit live stream so quickly they would never have known she was there, and Kelvin had been correct. A dead zone. One of the few in the school.

Fabian had walked into the library after entering his pin at the door. He was worried the meeting right there might attract attention, but he told himself he was being paranoid. After all, they both maybe just needed to get a book or something, he told himself, to steady his nerves. But they will notice, we already eat lunch together and talk in class…they will notice for sure. He thought. He walked past the small wooden circulation desk, unmanned as usual after six. There were about forty bookcases filled with encyclopedias and other reference material. The only fiction in the library was the classics. The school did not encourage the students to read anything else. He passed the shelves to the back of the library where the study tables were. He saw Miette staring down at her laptop. He approached her quietly but cleared his throat when he got closer to her.

“Oh, Hi! English today, what I have to say is nuanced and I’m afraid you won’t understand if we speak French.” She seemed nervous as she spoke. Her enormous eyes looked all around the room. He sat down at the table next to her. He knew they had to keep close and talk so their voices wouldn’t carry too much. The room had no echo, but they had learned to always be cautious.

“What’s going on?” Her nervous energy was rubbing off on him. She had taken off the school jacket and hung it over the chair she was sitting in. She smiled at him, but it wasn’t the type of smile he liked to see, it was that smile that showed too many of her teeth. It was her nervous tick, smiling falsely. He felt himself start to sweat. He knew it. They had been caught, someone had found out what they were doing. He continued to stare at her, waiting for the terrible news.

“I think,” she started. She paused. “I think we should go to this formal thing together.” He could see a pink blush breaking over her skin. He didn’t know what to say. He had assumed the group would all watch and see what happened.

“Umm..” his face felt odd. “Ok.” Miette nodded over and over as he spoke. She took a deep breath in.

“See, I’m pretty sure they know we are friends, and I know they probably haven’t realized why.” She stopped again and bit at her lip for a moment until it turned white under the pressure of her front teeth.

“Do you think they will realize something if we keep hanging out?” His heart sank. He felt like she was about to tell him they needed to be around each other less. He was certain she could see his face change. He couldn't contain it.

“No, I mean,” she said frustrated, “Yes, well… I think we should distract them, or uh, fool them?” her voice raising high. He was accustomed to her being a measured person, and this behavior seemed unusual to him.

“Fool them?” He repeated. He felt confused.

“What if they think we are just like, dating or whatever?” She was staring down at the table. After a moment, she turned and looked at him. “If they see us like, hanging out that way…I think it would look more natural, and less like we are up to something?” She looked like she might cry. He felt even more confused, but he did like her idea. He told himself, this doesn’t mean she is actually into you dummy, she just wants to lead them away from what you guys are up to.

“Yeah, I mean, if you think that would help?” He felt like he was floating overhead. This idea excited him.

“We’ll have to make it look convincing though,” her words a little more steady. “We should go to the Formal as a couple, but we’ll be looking out for weird stuff, too. Jamie told me that some people from the club might be there.”

“How does he know that?” Fabian asked. He didn’t know how he was speaking at all. All he could think about was what she had said. We’ll have to make it convincing, though. He smiled like an idiot. He couldn’t hide his happiness.

“Who the fuck knows?” Miette rocked on her heels for a moment. “We should go soon, but I’ll meet you in the hall before the thing starts.” She said. “I guess this is why they told us to bring some formal clothes.” She said, beginning to pack up her computer. He nodded, still high from the ideas of even “fake” dating her. When she finished packing her things up, she motioned for him to come with her. She took his hand in hers when he stood up next to her. Her hand felt so smooth, his long fingers wrapped around hers. He felt the touch like an electrical shock. There seemed to be an energy flowing between them like a circuit had been completed. They walked hand in hand to the exit of the library and a little way down the hallway together. They rode the large elevator up to the second floor together. He started to let her hand go once they were bound to head towards their respective dorms on opposite ends of the building. To his surprise, she pulled him close to her, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed him on the cheek. He knew they were watching, he knew several cameras could see them, and Miriam was walking by as well. But he didn’t care about any of it. It was like the peck of a bird, but her lips were so close to his he stood so still all that moved was his heart. Then, just like that, it was over and she waved goodbye to him.

“See you later,” she said, this time her genuine smile spread across her face.

“Later…” he managed to say. As he stood alone in the hallway, he noticed Miriam had almost stopped walking and was trying to stare at him without being noticed. He turned to head to his room. He felt more like he was flying. It was as if his feet struggled to stay grounded. The memory of her smile kept him awake and energized that night as he delved even further into a clue where God’s Chosen’s main clubhouse was. He tried to keep his mind on his work, but he was excited about seeing her again. He then noticed what he had accomplished.

It had been tricky, but he had gotten onto the God’s Chosen main server. He had figured out the day before where it was, that the servers and machines he had just gotten into were in Boston, but over the lines, it had not been that far. He poked around for a few minutes, and he laughed a little.

Those stupid shits, why would they put this on this server…it’s too easy to find? He asked himself. He looked at the document for over an hour in disbelief. He allowed himself to believe what he had found…a roster. A roster of every member of God’s Chosen. It had been a little hard, but he felt nervous…he knew a document like this should not have been as easy to find as it was. For days, he had been attempting to find a way into the systems of God’s Chosen after uncovering that one of Trimberg’s emails originated from a server in Boston. They had everything locked down tight. There was more in his way, more security than any other thing he had ever tried to hack into. Without more information, he was certain he would never get in. But then he had just walked in. They had left a roster for every club member on a fucking FTP server. He began to sweat.

Too easy, too easy, too easy, he repeated in his mind. He had the document now, but he wondered if he had just fallen into a trap. He looked over the list over and over. Hundreds of names. He tallied up the cities listed on a notepad and when he was through; he counted 40 all together. He tried to remember the primary names closer to the top of the list. He blew a breath out hard and wondered how to best cover his tracks. The machine sang to him as it always did, but he was typing so fast and thinking so far ahead that it turned into a strained, shrill song. He worked until he couldn’t stand it anymore. His ears ached and his mind felt hot.

*****

Carina looked down at the small box. She knew she shouldn’t bother the bones unless it was an emergency. She opened the small blue paper box that had contained a bracelet at some point. The tiny pile of bones lay there light yellow and silent. She remembered the day she had found the baby bird in the yard. It was lying in the grass peeping softly, but obviously dying. She looked up at the tree above them. She saw the nest, but it was so high, so very high, and she was so small back then. She tried to look around for worms. She knew birds ate worms. Her foster father would have told her to just leave the thing alone. He cared little for animals unless he was hunting and killing them. She hated her third set of foster parents and she hated living in Mariposa. She didn’t want the bird to die, so she dug into the earth with her hands until she found a worm. She carefully scooped up the tiny creature and carried it over to some bushes under the tall tree. She laid the worm next to it and said a tiny poem to the bird.

“Lovely and tiny

Small and sweet

Please take this worm to eat.”

Just then, the wretch of a stepmother she had at the time called out to her.

“Carrie, where the hell are you? I told you not to go outside. It’s time for dinner.” Frida’s ugly voice clawed into her ears. She felt a shiver run through her when she imagined what would happen if John came to find her. She felt ill, ill about it all, the baby bird, her foster parents, the cruel older boy who lived with them. Despite the blood rushing into her ears, Frida kept on screaming. She ran inside for dinner and ate the cheap flavorless food. She said nothing to anyone. All she could think about was if the bird would find its mother again.

“Carrie,” Frida had refused to call her by her real name. She had said it sounded too “ethnic” for her taste. “Clean up all the dishes and remember to take out the garbage. Carina nodded. She didn’t want John’s fists on her again. The smallest thing could send him into a spitting rage, even something as small as not answering Frida quickly. She looked over at him. His bulbous nose was red, and his eyes too. He was fat and sweaty, pig-like.

“What the hell are you looking at? Don’t look at me unless I’m talking to you.” He said. Carina completed her chores that night, did her homework, and then her parents sent her straight to bed. She hoped the older boy wouldn’t come. She wondered if the bird was still blind and screaming for its mother as she crashed into sleep.

The next day, she had gone to check on the bird before she left for school. To her horror, it was dead and covered in a mountain of ants. She didn’t know what to do. She tried to brush away the ants, but there were too many of them. She left the bird where it lay.

Every day for two seasons after that, she came to visit her poor little dead friend. Skin melted away, then the pink muscle, then the tiny body seemed to combust, and after a long time, there were only bones left. Carina had gathered the bones put them into a Ziploc bag, and brought them inside. She took them with her, always hidden, to the next two foster homes. She always made sure her tiny friend was near her. She knew they belonged together.

When she was fourteen, they sent her to a new foster home with a wealthy white couple named Peggy and Drake. To her surprise, they had been decent people, maybe even loving towards her. She couldn’t be sure because she had no frame of reference for love. The tiny bird bones were still with her, yellowed with age. She had washed them a few times in secret, and they were now shiny from the washing and the times Carina would turn them in her hands. When she had arrived, Peggy had gifted her a small bracelet in a blue paper box. The silver trinkets on the thin chain fascinated her, but she also found the box to be beautiful. She wasn’t used to beautiful things. She had transferred the bird bones to the box.

When she turned fifteen, she had heard the bones. They whispered to her from the drawer when she was trying to go to sleep, but sometimes they were so loud she could hear them at school.

“We can show you.” They said over and over again. It wasn’t an external voice though, it came from her mind. She marveled at her own power. One day, she took the small box out of the nightstand and dropped the bones into a cupped hand. She didn’t know why she did it, but she threw them with a soft sound onto the surface of the nightstand. She looked at them in amazement. The bones had spoken. Not with audible sounds, but in the shape they lay in front of her. They told her she was in a safe place.

Now in her room at Patton Academy, she needed them to speak again. She cleared a spot on her desk next to her computer. She tossed the tiny bones. They hit the wood table with a small clicking clatter. She looked down. The bones had one message.

Danger. They said she was in danger. She rolled the bones again, asking if Miette would be OK or if she too was in danger. She studied the pattern. You are all in danger. All she could do was gasp. She had the urge to cry, but she was determined not to. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried. She gathered the bones up and put them back in the fancy paper box. She had felt it inside herself since she had found out about the under dealings and peculiarities of the school, but now she was certain. Somebody here wanted to hurt her, someone wanted to hurt Miette, Kelvin, Fabian…someone wanted to hurt them all.

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