Chapter 49: Bookmark (Part 4: Finale)

"W-What?"

Though Milo’s mind had caught on, his body persisted with the search.

His palms shook over the empty space, patting the air for an outline the Bookmark no longer showed him.

Desperate, he clawed at it. A carpet that looked just like brick might reveal itself, and the only sloppy part about his plan was that he’d somehow forgotten about it.

"Maybe there’s no dead end at all."

His fingers searched for an edge to peel back.

Dust worked beneath his nails, but nothing yielded.

"It was all a fake..."

Thud!

Fine dust sprinkled down from the punch.

"Where is the room behind it?"

Thud! Thak! Whack!

"WHERE IS IT?!"

By the time he stopped, his knuckles were burning and blood had smeared the brick.

His mind had not caught on, after all.

Staying crouched beside the gap, he wrapped his wounded hands around his head, waiting to be screamed at or dragged to prison.

Depending on who arranged this, he might also just receive a hit to the head. Worse, but deserved—a hit to the head, followed by a pitch-black room lit only by the tip of Cald’s stick, heating up.

Nothing approached.

The outline of Mr. Cald’s stick moved in and out of the widow’s room, and nobody came to see what Milo had been shouting about.

He reached for the blood on the brick and tried to scrub it off.

"Shit."

He had only spread it farther.

Considering there wasn’t any future to hurry toward, there was time to make a proper job of it.

If the flail had been found by mistake, it was already in the hands of the very same officers he’d sent to the woman’s room. They could be ordering fingerprint tests right now while he rubbed more of himself into the wall.

It could always be the damn sheet, putting him inside of a simulation as his Gauge exceeded its limits.

Because what even happened when it did reach one hundred percent?

"The Gauge."

The yellowed paper snapped open over the bloodstained brick, the invisible pen’s scritch-scritch the only noise aside from his breath and his heartbeat.

[ The Gauge: 75% ] 𓂃🖋

"Wasn’t it eighty?"

"Shit. Did I misremember that too?"

"It was eighty, then eighty-one."

"Or all of that was a nightmare. And this is only the continuation."

Yet the brick had hurt exactly as brick ought to, and his knuckles went on burning.

"Hey, sheet... the Gauge represents the Calamities inside of me that want to happen... right?"

[ Correct. ] 𓂃🖋

Before Milo fainted, a cough had forced an off from him, which increased the meter.

It should have been higher, not lower.

For ten minutes, the only Calamity anyone had ever killed had been breathing out of him.

"Am I just a ticking virus bomb?"

...

Milo bolted for the dining hall, pulling shut the doors he’d slammed open on his way up. Who cared if his sentence was imminent. How many victims could the Plague take down after the guests scattered over towns? Over cities?

The hall had thinned out, but enough suits still mourned the deaths for him to disappear among them.

Where the hell was everyone else?

His vision had narrowed to a tunnel.

After emptying his lungs, he found the stick’s outline near the stage. The navy blue coats seemed to have begun their investigation at the widow’s room.

All right. Twenty-five percent to spare, likely much less before turning into an active hazard; that meant nothing if it started emptying itself before a hundred!

He didn’t even know how high it had climbed before he fainted, or whether it had anything to do with the release.

Maybe the only unusual thing about waking on the couch was that he’d thought to check.

Between one look at the page and the next, he could have been filling the Gauge and leaking the Plague, using off on people only to infect them again as soon as he passed. Andrew, James, Henry, Layla, Ollie, Roy, Paul, Maigh all over again, and Grace and—

Off.

When he tried to cross into the stage, his limbs would not follow.

"H-Huh?"

The yard was right there. All he had to do was walk into it.

"C-Come on, I can’t chicken out now!"

A backward step came easily enough, and he bumped into someone.

Milo swung around and met two blond braids.

"Rosaline? Where’s..."

Recognizing him, she only let her chin fall farther to shield her eyes, from which tears flowed.

"Rose, did they let everyone go?"

"Please leave." Rosaline sidestepped him. "Leave with everyone else."

She rounded the kitchen counter, heading for the stage.

Ugh, come on. The girl was crying and he wasn’t, so why couldn’t he manage a few more steps...?

Stretching as far as his planted feet allowed, he whispered off thrice and trusted fifty meters of reach to do the rest before running down the stairs for the main gate.

Had Mr. Thwaite sent everyone home, or only those who’d been searched?

Perhaps Rosaline had meant they should leave the hall. Milo couldn’t afford to run back and ask while students might be boarding capsules to their towns carrying the Plague.

The blur of doors, too familiar by now, spat him out at the entrance.

As the gravel around his shoes sharpened into separate stones, he recited the command for the particles in anyone within his reach to disable themselves.

"Fuck, oh... fuck!"

There gate had imprisoned over a thousand students for a week. Despite now being open, scarcely anyone was near it.

They could be waiting by the stage. Or somewhere inside for their searches. They could also be halfway home, well beyond anything he could do from here.

"How much worse can it get?"

He had to minimize the damage. The Gauge climbed with every off, and the investigators would not sleep on a dead Warden’s case.

Get home, find a way to release the Gauge safely, and run before a uniform showed up at the doorstep. Into some mountains, where perhaps he could live off what the monks gave him.

Eventually he could become one of them and spend the rest of his life somewhere nobody bothered him, and he never bothered anyone again.

However...

If the flail was found on the academy’s grounds, they would never in a million years let anyone exit. What kind of police department let over a thousand possible suspects flee?

Milo pressed the split knuckles to his mouth. A smile bloomed underneath, tacky with his own blood.

Some greedy bastard must’ve taken it for themselves. Of course they had. Why hand over a relic worth that much money on account of two people who were dead anyway?!

"Whew..."

He could leave!

After getting home, he could find a way to release the Gauge safely, then feed the Column and transfer to a Fields class. There was no reason to spend his life in the mountains when he had the ability to kill what might as well have been Gods.

With some training, he could even replace the Parish Warden.

At last, the absence of any weight both against his stomach and his back hit him.

His backpack.

He abandoned it by his classroom on Monday.

No valuables in it could warrant going back inside the building and risking another casualty.

Milo meant to shoot right out of the yard when footsteps crunched closer.

Layla was approaching with the bag in one hand.

Speak of the devil.

He reached to take it before noticing the notebook in her other hand.

"Milo..." Layla whispered, blinking down at the page. "What is a Bookmark?"

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "Dumb (Part 1)" ... ⤵︎ [!]