Chapter VIII (Part I)

The blackboard flickered.

"There will also be a review session next Thursday to go over the practice midterm. I strongly recommend you go through it by then."

The professor went on, but my interest was long gone. My heavy eyes glared at the mechanical wall clock, a clunky last-century piece obviously out of place in the white, modern lecture hall.

Two minutes.

After this, I was off to International Relations, which thankfully would reunite me with my friends. And Jet.

Calculus was the one class where I was totally alone. Despite it being a core course for most freshman, Jess, Lex, and even Jet had tested out of it. Those of us stuck taking the class were rewarded with the world's most soporific professor, and although many others have probably made the same claim, I was, at this moment, positive of my correctness.

90 seconds.

My resentment at being stuck in the class engendered a fierce determination to excel despite my abhorring all aspects of Calculus. Right now, however, my A in the course proved to be little consolation. I could stand to trade a little achievement for a bit of enjoyment. My friends would definitely blow off a class like this. I don't think Jess cracked fifty percent attendance in any of her classes. Alex and Jet were much the same. Skipping a class with them was one thing, but I wasn't yet to the point where I was blowing off classes without their bad influence.

45 seconds. Please hell, open up, and swallow me.

I thumbed the exam study notes, perusing them absentmindedly, not really taking in anything on the pages. Attached at the end was the practice mid term. Polar coordinates problems. My eyes flickered across the pages without comprehension.

What was the point of all this?

I had recently watched a crazy girl butcher a roomful of people and the only people with either the interest or capability of doing a thing about it were my boyfriend and his best friend, and also, the girl's brother, a boy who gave me the same creepy sadist vibes as his sister. And somehow still worse was that this was all connected potentially to the nightmare of a man that was Vincent Crow, who despite being dead, and me having watched his death, continued to haunt me with increasing frequency these days.

Oh, and I've been singing a pretty annoying Clash song to my roommate every night, constantly disappointed that my singing doesn't trigger in her some sort of supernatural temporary blindness.

"... and we'll pick up on Monday. Enjoy your weekends, but not too much, and don't forget the TA session on Saturday."

My peers and I groggily stumbled out of our seats transforming from Lethargians back into boys and girls. I shook my head as if to shake out the sleepiness. It seemed to work and I found myself quickly across campus and seated in IR, excited to reunite with my friends.

Jess waved as she entered, her face fixed in a bored scowl as she plopped down first her books and bag, and then herself next to me.

Pointing to the thick pile of textbooks between us now busy scattering the empty floor into tiny pockets of exposed carpet, she whined, "Remind me why we still use these?"

I chirped, "Tradition," and she surrendered her bitterness without much of a fight. She offered me a small smile, before giving the distant doorway a not-so furtive longing glance.

"You're kind of flush, Jess."

She turned two shades redder. Her hair was still damp from a recent shower. She must had gone running without me.

She sighed, "Yeah, you missed another run." Damn.

"I had class." Did I care? No. Would I still guilt Jess? Yes.

"I know, sorry. I wanted to do a fast run today."

I mocked indignation, "Woah, are you insinuating that I slow you down?"

She grinned. "Minus the insinuating and pretty much just flat-out without any subtlety whatsoever telling. To your face."

The professor dove right into his lecture. "We left off discussing the European Union's recently passed Prosperity Act. In last night's reading, the Clover piece argued such legislation would inevitably proliferate relatively more lower income births. Just as --"

Where were Jet and Alex? It was like them to be late, but not this late. The seats the pair typically occupied had been claimed by two overachiever girls whispering heatedly to one another, arguing about the day's lecture. After four years of bickering, the Prosperity Act, a redefinition of the age of adulthood in Europe to sixteen, along with a ton of educational reforms to leave graduating high school seniors two years younger, finally passed. Despite the population drought being less severe relatively in Europe than Africa or Asia, the anxiety seemed highest in Europe. Anyways, the general idea was to get women out of school at an earlier age and thus have more "adult" years for potential childbearing. Politics really aren't my thing.

Finally!

Alex first, with Jet lagging a few steps behind, stumbled sleepily into class, the heavy classroom door slamming like a thunderclap behind them. Heads turned and the professor paused, I winced in embarrassment on Jet's behalf, but the status quo quickly resumed as the two groggily found seats. Sadly, seats not close to me. They looked dead exhausted.

Jess also noticed, "Your idiot boyfriend has finally sleptwalk his way here."

"Yeah, I wonder what's up." I paused, shrugged, and continued with, "Well, Alex also looks about as dead tired as my idiot boyfriend."

Jess laughed. "After another half hour on this Prosperity Act nonsense, I'll look the same. Just you wait."

"Getting political on me?"

"Just ready for a new topic."

Jess was right. I used to love this class, but we'd spent the whole week debating the potential downstream economic effects of the Act. Truthfully, it didn't seem like any of the "experts" had a clue what the long term effects would be. Not that I was terribly cynical about it, but ever since the night where I first was introduced to Mania, it felt like there was a lot to the world that we didn't cover in our university classes.

It was more than that though. I had said to Alex that it felt like the world was changing. Sterility around the globe, the hype and disappointment surrounding Stutter, patterns that could sicken you, songs that could blind you, monsters like Crow and Mania -- why did we go along with --

"Allie," Jess nudged me impatiently. "You're spacing."

I growled back stupidly, "Shut up, you're spacing."

Ignoring my reply completely, "When did you get back in yesterday? I thought it was early."

"Yeah, like midnight."

I assumed she was trying to puzzle out the boys' exhaustion, but I was certainly not the culprit. I looked over at the two. Alex stared at the professor vacantly, head propped up on his arm, eyes glazed. Jet slept upon folded arms across his desk. I couldn't see actual drool from across the room.

"Allie, you look furious."

Much more loudly than appropriate for a quiet lecture hall and mustering more repressed ire than I intended, "Why even come if he's going to sleep?!"

Jess giggled before giving me a quick, the professor is watching us be idiots, glance that transformed me back into studious good girl.

After a few minutes of pretending to listen to the lecture, my gaze flickered back to Alex just in time to witness his exhaustion replaced with shock and panic. He spun around in his seat to shake Jet, completely oblivious, or indifferent, to the scene he was starting to create.

Alex's phone lay open on his desk. Something he saw. Some news? The displays built into the desks were generally much better for web surfing -- I saw no news scrolling by.

Alex yanked on the arms supporting Jet's head sending skull to desk with a hollow thud. Jet barked curses at Alex but before he could get more than few choice words out, he was silenced by whatever he saw on Alex's screen. Something was very wrong.

The boys' faces were gray. Jess spun to me, but I shrugged cluelessness before she could ask.

Alex stood up and the gravity of his face silenced first the room and then the professor, "I'm sorry to interrupt sir. Something terrible has happened."

Our professor, along with all 140 students in the room, turned to Alex with rapt attention. Seconds passed with Alex's expression keeping the room in absolute silence. Jet stood and fidgeted. He was anxious to get out. To do something. What had happened?

Alex opened his mouth to explain, but it proved unnecessary. Alert messages flooded our tabletops. The blackboard faded, the scribblings of our professor replaced by a television news feed. The professor backed away from the board, stunned, equally as in shock as us by what he saw.

A cute, female anchor spoke, voice uneven as she narrated, her words, sadly imparting no additional understanding of the scene behind her.

Times Square, Broadway and Seventh.

Beneath the cobweb of billboards and monitors and beneath the towering retail sanctuaries, bodies littered the intersection, mangled and dismantled, recognizable as human more by what was once their clothing than what remained of their human flesh, their bodies splattered like bugs ground into the pavement. Young and old, ground to a thick uneven paste, smeared against the black asphalt.

I tried to listen to the anchor's words, "Our associates are confirming that this same carnage has been witnessed in seven other cities around the world. Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Rome, Edinburgh, Aix en Provence, Lima, and Victoria have all reported similar incidents. At this juncture, it's too early to say with authority that this list is exhaustive, but --"

I tuned out sensing the change in the air, the subdued heat and scent of Jet's proximity. I looked up at him, but couldn't really read his expression. Did the anchor really use the word 'carnage'?

I looked down to avoid the scene on the blackboard only to realize the same video flooded my desk's display. I started to feel sick. I was vaguely aware of gasps and exclamations around the room, but before worrying about them or my own stupid weak stomach, my hand stretched out to find Jess's as she turned to me.

Jess and I stared, transfixed, as the anchor continued, "... estimates are on the order of a few hundred at each site. At this time, it's believed --"

I felt Jet's hot breath on my ear, but it was Alex who spoke first, "We should get out of here."

Jess looked at me, shaking her head no. I had to agree with her. Where would we even go?

"-- all recording devices and remote imaging of the sites seems to have been somehow disabled. No group has, as of yet, claimed responsibility for the attacks, nor do we have--"

Jess, her face suddenly exasperated, frustrated by something in the report, tabbed over to a broadcast covering the massacre at Tel Aviv. The area looked like an upscale shopping district, maybe a park, a place called Kikar Hamedina. She panned out the display as much as she could and suddenly I saw what she saw.

The bodies were not littered about the park randomly -- they were arranged to spell a word. CROSS.

Alex and Jet's fascination mirrored our own own. They didn't need to ask. Jess was already tabbed to Tokyo, the incident at Shibuya Crossing, looking to see if she could get an aerial view.

SATSUMA.

The word, the name, meant nothing to any of us. We sat silently as Jess repeated looking for overhead shots of the other cities. After Tel Aviv's CROSS and Tokyo's SATSUMA, there was a large double question mark, ??, etched in blood and bodies in Edinburgh's Princes Square. In Rome, CIRCE. In Victoria, DEAD. Aix en Provence, FELL.

My body stiffened automatically as the shape in Victoria grew clear. CROW.

In Lima's Plaza de Armas, carved with bodies into the stone and earth, MANIA.

Jess' eyes and my own lit up on the mention of Mania, I turned to Jet, "Did she?"

Alex and Jet answered with a simultaneous no. Jet continued, "She's here in Chicago. We saw her last night."