by Cora Choi
Chapter 24: End Game
Chaos was everywhere—in the air, on the ground—but I didn’t care. The roar of helicopters filled the skies as they hovered over Stauros Sea, searching for Drev and Pamina. But I knew, as well as everyone else who had witnessed the two fall into the sea’s murky depths, that they were lost forever. In the courtyard around me, I continued to hear the cries and anxious murmurs of students who still could not take in what they’d just seen on the tower.
I was sitting on the ground. A rush of air and the spotlights of helicopters flying overhead didn’t disturb me in the least. I looked to either side and saw only the guards’ black boots. It was all I could see, and all I wanted to see. I didn’t want to know what was going on nearby. Nothing mattered anymore. Not until the boot of a guard kicked me did I stir.
“Up off your ass, you lazy son of a bitch,” said the guard, kicking me again. “The helicopter’s here.”
I rose slowly to my feet. As my eyes took in the scene around me, I saw that the courtyard was filled with students hugging each other—and hugging phantoms as well. Some of them were crying. Everyone looked distraught. I wanted to reach out and hug them, too, thinking that might perhaps fill the profound emptiness within me. There was a void in my heart and my head. I couldn’t even shed tears.
“Move it,” ordered a voice beside me. It was the guard with whom I had exchanged a few words earlier. I must’ve looked withered and despondent, because he didn’t even attempt to restrain me. He only gave me a quick shove forward. No command, no gun.
We started walking, and a few other guards followed. As we trudged through the crowd in the courtyard, I noticed that no one was paying attention to us. Everyone was too shaken. Then I heard a loud cry.
“The chancellor is a murderer!” I turned around to see who’d spoken. To my surprise, I saw Irving elevated on what must’ve been a soapbox, for he was a clear foot higher than the rest of the crowd. Max and J.P. were beside him, to his left and right.
“He’s a madman, and we all saw him murder a student tonight!”
I was stunned to hear him so bold.
“Arrest the chancellor!” Max yelled. When he said it again, J.P. cupped his hands over his mouth and joined in. Their words resonated through the crowd. A buzz began to spread.
“I caught the chancellor on video!” shouted a student raising his phone.
“I did, too—it’s evidence!” another student yelled.
“Arrest the chancellor!” voices began to chant in unison. The rest of the crowd caught on, and within seconds, people were clapping their hands in a rhythm and shouting for Parafron’s imprisonment.
“Keep moving,” grunted the guard to my left as he gave me a push. All the guards struggled, trying to plow through the herd of students blocking them. Having found strength in their resolution to accuse Parafron, some even began shouting at the guards to find and capture him.
“You’re taking the wrong guy!” said Irving, blocking our path. He seemed to appear out of nowhere. Max and J.P. were behind him.
“Let him go. He didn’t do anything wrong. If he confessed earlier to being the Demon of Stauros, it was only to protect . . .” Max couldn’t finish, as he began to choke up.
“It was only to protect our friend,” said J.P. “And our friend was trying to protect the girl who was thrown over the tower.”
“Get out of our way!” shouted the guard beside me. He reached out and pushed Irving to the side. Irving lost his balance and stumbled. Max and J.P. didn’t hesitate to take the opportunity to clobber the guard.
“Asshole!” J.P. shouted, as his fingers wrapped around the guard’s helmet. Max twisted the guard’s arms behind his back.
“Hugh, run!” shouted Max. I was still so dejected and numb from sadness that the scuffle didn’t register as an opportunity to escape. Then I saw Irving get back on his feet and gesture to me to follow him.
“C’mon, Hugh!”
I realized no one was looking at me. The guards were too distracted by Max and J.P. They grabbed Max, and one of them took the butt of his rifle and slammed it into J.P.
“Hey!” I shouted. Broiling anger surged through my body as I turned to the guards. Several students and phantoms who’d been heckling the guards jumped in and began wrestling with them.
“Go, Hugh! Find Parafron!” shouted J.P., clutching his stomach with one hand and pushing me toward Irving with the other.
“Two helicopters just landed in the inner courtyard gardens!” shouted Max, parrying a blow from a guard. “They might have come to bring more guards, but we’re thinking maybe Parafron’s trying to get away in one of them—and we can’t let him!”
I nodded and ran toward Irving. “Is Parafron still in the tower?” I asked, thinking about when I had last seen him. The students in the courtyard had flocked around us, attracted by the fight with the guards.
Irving pushed through them and explained, “We saw him stand up in the tower and then disappear. We think he descended a staircase that we couldn’t see. . . . He’s probably somewhere in Stauros Hall right now.” Irving maneuvered stealthily through clusters of students and phantoms, and I followed the path he was forging.
“Thanks for helping me back there, Irving,” I said. A strong air of confidence emanated from him, and he commanded an authority that I hadn’t seen in him before. His latent talent as a leader had risen to the surface. I marveled at his transformation. In times of distress, our hidden talents did burst through.
“Demon of Stauros or not,” Irving said, “you’re our friend—we owe you for what you did for us earlier tonight in the cemetery.” He turned to me and nodded.
I was profoundly moved. Whatever will I had lost when Drev had dived off the tower was coming back to me. For the sake of my other three roommates and the students on this island, I was determined not to let Parafron escape. He needed to be held accountable not just for what had happened to Pamina and Drev but for what had happened to all of the students who’d disappeared through the cave under the library.
“You’re right. Under no circumstances can Parafron leave. He has to answer to the students,” I declared. I said it more for myself than for anyone to hear, yet I was glad when Irving responded.
“Right,” he said, his voice low and thoughtful. “Impunity—I guess that’s what makes you destroy whatever you want, since you think you can get away with it.”
We struggled through the swarms of students who bustled around the guards, who were still fighting off the other students and phantoms. When we finally entered Stauros Hall, the stark silence that greeted us was more unnerving than the madness outside. As we crossed the foyer, we scanned around us cautiously, in case Parafron might be lurking in a dark corner.
At the far end of the empty room, we saw a door leading to a portico that framed a large garden. We exited the foyer through a back door and found ourselves outside in the portico. The garden, built in the center of the old abbey, served as an inner courtyard. It had been created to mirror the outer courtyard we had just come from. While the outside courtyard was laid with cobblestones, this inner garden was carpeted with wildflowers and tall grass that waved in the wind, glowing silver in the shimmering light of the moon. In the middle of the garden sat two large helicopters, just as Irving had said, one black and one red. Their propellers were still; not a sound came from their engines. An image of a shrike was painted on the left side of each.
I expected more armed guards to be standing around and was surprised to see only three men in business suits and one woman in a long beige trench coat. She wore a hat whose wide brim hid nearly all of her face. They stood around, talking in low voices, their hands in their pockets. The men spoke more than the woman; she seemed uninterested in what they were discussing.
“Who are they?” I asked in a whisper.
“They’re the trustees of this school,” explained Irving. “They’re the ones who can put Parafron in his place. I guess someone must have called them when th
ey saw what happened on the tower.”
To my horror, Irving began to amble toward them as if they were old friends.
“Stop!” I said, pulling him back into the shadows of the portico arches. “Don’t you see that?” I pointed to the emblem of the shrike on the two helicopters. “They’re on the same team. Parafron and the trustees—they’re all a part of the Order of the Shrike.”
“Of course they are,” said Irving, looking at me as though I had lost my mind. “The Order of the Shrike controls everything, Hugh. That’s the way it’s always been. If it isn’t the order, there’s no one else to report Parafron to.” Irving continued to stare at me. He appeared to be baffled, as if he thought I wasn’t aware of that. However, I certainly was—far too aware.
Nevertheless, I had hoped against hope that the events of the night might expose the order for what it was—evil—and that the students would take a stand against it. But I was wrong. The Order of the Shrike stood on its own as the unquestioned omnipotent governing body of this world. People had been brainwashed to accept that the Shrikes had always ruled the world and to think otherwise was out of the question. To Irving and everyone else, it was pointless to judge the Order of the Shrike as good or bad. People deferred to it as the supreme authority, one that did whatever it wanted and justified its actions any way it wanted to. As the only governing power, the Order of the Shrike mandated that people automatically had to turn to it to report a crime, even if it made no sense to report a crime of one of its own members. It would never punish one of its own.
I was the last member of the Order of the Crane to be walking this earth, and the only one who ever knew about a world that was completely free from the Order of the Shrike—free from manipulation, greed, and, most important, fear. There wasn’t even a trace of that old world in the history books, because the original Shrikes had destroyed all the old books and rewritten new ones that placed them in a flattering light.
I chose my words carefully when speaking to Irving, because I was sure he had never even considered a world without the Order of the Shrike.
“And do you think the Order of the Shrike should control everything?” I asked him.
Irving was quiet, as if he had never entertained the idea before. Finally, he said, “If they didn’t run everything, who would?”
“The people would. The people as an empowered community would be able to look after their own interests and take care of themselves. They would be free from living a life that serves only the interests of the Shrikes.”
“What?”
I saw Irving raise his eyebrow, but I continued, “The Order of the Shrike exists only to make sure power is in the hands of a small group of people—theirs. They’re interested in the general public only insofar as they serve the needs of the order. Don’t you see, Irving? Without the Order of the Shrike, this world would be free. It was always supposed to be. It was free before the Order of the Shrike took power by subduing the people with fear.”
Irving spoke: “Everyone knows that they abuse their power, but we don’t bother . . . It’s . . . well, it’s just the way it’s always been. We leave them alone and just hope for the best.”
“And by doing so, you’re letting them run your life. Ruin it, actually.”
Irving looked at the ground and was quiet. I grabbed both his shoulders and made him look me straight in the eye.
“At some point, you have to take a stand, Irving. At some point, you have to realize that they’ve lied to everyone for too long, that they’ve hurt too many people, and that they’re taking away your right—everyone’s right—to live freely, without fear.”
Irving looked at me, more distressed than confused. I realized he must have been wondering why I cared so vehemently about proving that the Order of the Shrike was evil. To make my point, I had him agree—albeit reluctantly—to eavesdrop on what the trustees were discussing.
I signaled to him to follow me, and we approached the three men and woman slowly from the side, or what was the edge of their peripheral view. The red helicopter provided the perfect obstruction to hide us from them. Our feet padded soundlessly through the grass and up to the side of the helicopter. The four trustees were huddled on the other side, sandwiched between the red and black helicopters.
As we came close to the nose of the helicopter, I was startled to see someone in the cockpit. To my relief, however, I saw that it was the pilot—and he was sleeping with his cap on top of his face. Underneath the helicopter, I could see the feet of the four trustees. They were exactly opposite where we were. Noticing that they faced the tail of the helicopter, I knew it was safe to edge around the nose—which, despite Irving’s reluctance, was what we did.
From behind, I saw that the men looked nearly identical in their black suits. Two of them had white hair, and one was bald. I figured they were all the same age, more or less. As for the woman, at first I saw only her back. But as she turned her head, I saw her profile. Only her chin and lips were visible below the line of her hat. But even seeing just those features made me stop. I had seen them a thousand times—in my dreams. I knew those lips better than my own.
“Hugh, are you all right?”
Irving’s voice pulled me out of the spell that I was falling under. I abruptly remembered the task at hand and tore my eyes from the woman. I focused on the ground. I was no longer looking at her, but she was all I could see in my mind. It couldn’t be her! She was gone—lost forever in the World of the Damned!
I shut my eyes tightly, trying to squeeze the image of the woman out of my head. For nineteen years, I had been certain she had left this world. Losing her had been unbearable—so unbearable that I had isolated myself from everyone and stayed locked in a cellar for nearly two decades. The woman standing in front of me couldn’t be her, but it most certainly was.
I opened my eyes. I had to look at her again. The bald man standing next to her must’ve made a joke, for she suddenly laughed. My knees trembled. Only her laugh could sound like that—a cadence of ha-has that ascended like an arpeggio on a harp.
I heard myself gulp loudly as I swallowed the truth that revealed itself before me—Anne-Marie had never been lost to the World of the Damned. All these years, she had been alive and well. Now she stood before me, a mature woman, a member of the trustees of the most prestigious school in the world, and, no doubt, a loyal member of the Order of the Shrike.
