Silent Key

[Cactus]

"Henry?"

Nobody answered. No matter how many times Morgan said the name out loud or called for some sort of confirmation, nobody would be on the other end of the walkie; the hiss seemed louder inside of the Commissary than it probably was in actuality. The volume was within his own mind, drowning out the awful truth that was creeping its way in. The thunder couldn't have been that, it must have been something else, and Henry wasn't speaking because—

Aurelien shoved by him, intently exiting the building. Judging by the look on his face, Morgan knew that he was only seeking confirmation of what he already knew. Sighing, he clipped the walkie onto his belt and followed after. The dread that sat in his stomach only got larger as he followed behind. Figuring out where the impact had come from wasn't overly complicated, there was still a faint wisp of smoke coming from somewhere ahead of them. Aurelien wasn't wasting any time investigating, and when he stopped suddenly, Morgan knew that he'd found something horrible.

Something awful.

Something inevitable.

After ten days of barely eating and getting by on the meagre rations that they'd been able to scrounge up, it was amazing that he had anything to vomit out onto the ground, but his knees weakened and he upended the contents of his stomach onto the grass. It wasn't the violence that was the thing, it was the boots. For some reason, he knew what Henry's boots looked like, they stuck out back in school.

They surely stuck out now, too.

"Jesus, Henry— no," he muttered as he wiped the remnants of digested crackers and bile from his lips. His throat burned, his eyes watered, and he tried to stuff every emotion he had over the loss of yet another friend down into his now-empty belly.

It would never stop hurting. This was reality now, he would never stop feeling the pain of loss for as long as he lived. Michael had been on to something, trying to disassociate himself from all of it. They should never have tried to find him, should they? It had cost them Lizzie's life, and now Henry. Doomed, all of them.

Pulling himself to his feet, he looked at the viscera that stained the area around what was left of Henry Sparks. The explosion had rendered sifting through the remains a moot point, anything worth having would be stained with Henry's internal organs and that wasn't a line he was about to cross. This wasn't just some body of a person he'd gone to school with, either. This was a friend, a comrade, someone that he'd stared hell in the face with and lived to run as fast as he could the other way.

This was someone whose last words had been to him; for him.

Staggered by the force of that realization, Morgan grunted, stepped back a moment as though he were about to lose himself once more. Looking up, he saw Aurelien stare back at him.

He didn't recognize him. There was a hardness about him, a violence that had brought itself to the surface. Aurelien would no longer wait, he would go searching out those responsible for the violence and issue them a receipt. It was a path that would undoubtedly cause him pain, suffering and likely a violent death. There was every reason in the world not to follow when the boy ran from the scene.

Yet still, Morgan followed.

((Morgan Dragosavich continued in "Listen, there's a moment when everything—"))