I won't talk about the length it took to finish this.

Welcome to the first half of the final chapter of GMSF.

'kit fucking pouliot'

"So here's what happened, ahh—" Kit's face skewers at the jabbing pain in his ribs spark as soon as he sat down, waiting until it subsided before he straightened carefully. Every bone in his body is screaming for some morphine, Xanax, anything. He really shouldn't be here, the doctor already warned him how much of a bad idea for his recovery this would be, but seeing the simmering anger that Aron Kiurtsch is struggling to keep under the mask that is cracking, the lines stretching across the posterity of casual arrogance, is enough for him to push through.

Enough for him to think the lack of morphine and the throbbing pain everywhere is worth it.

The petty act of kicking a man down into the mud is a nagging desire that Kit doesn't want to suppress.

Especially, if this was the man in question.

"Pouliot—"

Kit raises a hand at the nervousness of the detective. And he was doing so well, acting muffed and careful about all the gears working outside. But it's true— he's done his part. And he did it well. It was Kit's turn now. Kit gives him his best smile, face burning as the muscles ache underneath it.

If humans could feel like stretched jelly and cracking, crispy tiles.

"I'm fine. I'm careful. Plus, all I gotta do is talk, right? Gotta tell you— I'm a pretty good talker. Better talker than writer, and we all know I have skill."

Kit warms up his hands together, one heavily bandaged, the other wracked with thin scratches and wounds. He smirks as he deepens his voice. "Alright, so here's what happened. This is all back right after the funeral ended. My head is throbbing, been having a headache since that morning. I have migraines all the time. It's not pretty, but it happens.

"So Lorcan and I were talking about what we might have that Isla had hidden in one of the pots in the flower shop. . ."

—"

"Sunny's not following us." Lorcan stopped mid-way from the steps out of the north western exit of the cemetery. He looked around. "Where would she go?"

I stopped for a sec, roamed my eyes. It was obvious she had disappeared some time ago. Sunny's presence is important to me— despite how quiet she is, her movements are distinctive. You can always feel her presence nearby; it's a calm but jittery energy, like a bee buzzing. "Her family's still there, plus she has my phone and you have my number if you're really worried. She probably followed something or she went back to talk to her mom. We're already here anyway, might as well get what we need and meet up with her."

. . . I shouldn't have done that. One of my biggest regrets. But my head hurt and I just wanted it to be over. It made sense at the time.

Lorcan hummed and we descended the steps, crossed the street— it was quiet, no cars. There are hardly any cars and buses in our street. It's a bad idea for a business location, but my dad fell in love with the spot. Plus, it's near a cemetery. He thought lots of folks would have no choice but to buy from him. He was right, of course. We sell for the dead, not for the living should be in our calling card but my dad thought that might be too on the nose.

So we went to my dad's shop. Place was closed for the day since my dad picked up my mom from the airport. But all the plants outside were still there, and there was only one lavender pot.

"Hold the pot for me, Lor."

On the surface, it didn't look like there was anything. But I knew how my plants look, even if I hadn't been in the shop for a while. The plant was pulled, the top layer of the roots were visible. It brought chills across my arms because someone was here. My hunch was right. Gently, I tugged and sifted through the damp soil and found plastic. Lorcan heard it too and looked at me. Plastic buried in soil is a distinctive sound after all.

"Hm." So I tugged and pulled, and a small plastic bag came out.

Lorcan adjusted his glasses, one arm flexing from the pot's weight. He worked out, could see the veins popping. Good man. "What is it?"

I peered in, decided it was some kind of paper, and opened the loose tie. "It's a. . ." I took the piece of paper and made sense of what I was seeing. My eyes widened. "Holy fuck."

"What? What is it?"

My heart was racing, so quietly, I took the pot and handed the photo. I didn't know what kind of shocked person Lorcan was, so I wanted to take anything that might hurt him or me. Or the plant.

And the plant was in great danger from the way his face looked.

The horror was slow, making way first for confusion and shock. His eyes studied everything, slowly making sense of what he was seeing. "What- no, what is this? This can't be real. This-"

"

"What was it?" Detective Moore asked, urged forward by the suspense.

"I handed it over to the officer who let me in." Kit tented his fingers forward, turning to Aron. "I assumed it was the blackmail you had over Lyssian Delos Reyes?"

Detective Moore frowned. "Blackm-"

"It was a reminder," Aron cut him off, vein twitching despite the firm way his smirk had curled in his mouth. "That it wasn't just us who were there that night. Lyssian has always been high up his ass. He's egotistical, and it needs to be rubbed so he purrs like a bitch in heat. But then he started forgetting what he got up to when he was in the city- he's always been like that, too high off his fucking horse and make everyone feel like utter shit. But even guilt eats the best and brightest. So I thought it was my appointed duty to send him reminders whenever he looked like he was about to find some moral right in his bones."

The detective's mouth curled. "And he still thinks of you as a friend?"

"Sorta." Aron's smirk was sharp. Arrogant. But Kit noticed the tremble in his fingers as he hid them when he crossed his arms, acting aloof by leaning back. "He thinks he's calming a raging tiger, dealing with me. As long as he pretends to be my friend, he thinks he's safe."

"Ahh," Kit muses. All heads turn to him as the puzzles in his head start clicking, reaching hands and forming pictures. "And you think you're on a higher pedestal, smarter than the smartest, having to play the raging tiger when you're really a god in disguise."

"I wouldn't go so far as to go there. . ." But Aron's smirk said otherwise. The recognition eased him.

Detective Moore turned back to Kit. "And so what happened?"

"What else? Lorcan started freaking out."

"

"You don't understand, Pouliot," he snarled. "This is my brother burying a dead fucking body."

I took the picture from him because he was shaking. It was subtle but it was panic, shock, anguish- it was a lot of emotions all at once, and he started walking around to absorb some of it. I wanted to help, but I needed to study the picture better. To make sense of it, to be the clearer judgement.

It was Lyssian holding a shovel, caked in dirt and shit with his hair in a messy ponytail, in a blurry movement to throw more dirt into a shallow grave. Inside it was a woman, pale- all red hair and opened eyes. Mouth slackened. She was wearing a white shirt and shorts, I think. It was dirty and torn, and even from the shot's blurry and weird angle, you could see she was bruised blue and purple in parts of her. Around her legs. Across her neck.

You could see them so well because she was so pale she was practically luminescent.

Anyone would recognise Lyssian's face, the photo having been more angled to capture him in the act of burying a dead body. But in the corner, just beside the grave close to the head of the unnamed girl, was another man. He sat on his knees almost like he was in a prayer, body bowed as he reached out to the girl, doing something to her hair. On his foot, glinting against the photo, was scissors. You couldn't see his face, but it didn't matter.

The picture did its duty, damning the person it needed to damn.

It really was Lorcan Delos Reyes' brother burying a dead fucking body.

"Let's not freak out first," I said, a good quarter to myself. My head was pounding, thoughts running so fast, nothing was making sense.

Lorcan's head whipped, angry scowl as he grinded his teeth. "How the fuck am I not supposed to freak out? Did you see what I saw? That's my brother, Pouliot. My brother."

"Burying a dead body, I fucking know." I looked up. The sky was darkening too fast for the time; the clouds were moving for a storm. With Lorcan breaking, angry and scared, and Sunny missing, I needed to get everything together. My own head wasn't helping him. "We need to get Sunny first. Let's go back to the cemetery and get our shit together."

Lorcan inhaled through his nose, attempting the same calm as I was. "I texted her a while ago, both on your phone and hers, she-" He rifled for his phone, breathing through, fast and deep like a bull trying to calm down or surge forward and pierce some matadors. Then he frowned. "She saw my texts from your phone but isn't replying."

"

Kit exhaled haggardly, pins and needles in his system at every little movement was not the best form he thought he was going to tell his final chapter, but here we were.

"At that point my stomach dropped. It's very rare for Sunny not to reply. And that's only if her phone died, but she had my phone. And my phone was almost at 100% last time I checked, and my password has always been the same. Her birthday and mine."

He inhaled. The feeling of fear at that moment was a slow, sinking body into the sea. Sunny, his Sunny, was in danger. He had felt it- the wrongness of everything. The world's axis, a little crooked, a little bent. Kit looked up again, at this strange collection of people- a detective from America and a guy with a solid God Complex it was dripping black and tainted ichor. And him. Just another writer. A friend.

"So we went back, walking faster. Almost running. Lorcan was a little confused, I think he could see it in my face. There was a settling panic as I kept looking at the picture, getting better light. Lyssian was one thing, the dead girl was another, but it was the second guy I was more concerned with." Kit turned to Aron, busted lip set flat. "Your other friend, right? I recognised him when he visited the shop. Looking to buy flowers."

"He's not-"

"-I don't care," Kit finished. "I told you, it's my turn. You've been talking for a week with these people and you've barely docked ship, not with all your spins and fucking turns. I know it's exciting to be telling people about your brilliance, but I'm a narcissistic asshole too, asshole, and I think it's my turn."

Kit breathed in, everything in him heavy and aching. "So where was I? Right. I recognised the professor. Not at first. I was focused on what the photograph wanted to tell- Lyssian Delos Reyes, the shovel and the dead body, sure. But the other guy was important too." He smiled at Aron again, this time scathing. Loathsome. Burdened. "And the fact that someone had to take that photograph meant one other person with a motivation for taking it."

"

So we picked up the pace. Because I saw him. The professor. Benjamin. I saw him at the funeral and I told Lorcan that, pointing at the guy in the photograph.

"What about my brother?" Lorcan asked. "Do you think-" He swallowed, unable to finish the words that had the same thought shared between us.

"I don't think your brother did this. Not full murder, I don't think," I replied, honest. "Or did anything to Sunny. Sunny's fine. Send her a photo of this." I gave him the photo as we reached the cemetery's bottom, my eyes sweeping across every glade and every movement.

People were almost gone, the incoming storm having made their dispersing more rapid. There were three to four cars left, but I sprinted past them, running back around the graves. But there were no more people, and my stomach was sinking deeper and deeper. It was graves and graves before hitting dark trees swaying with the wind.

Have you ever seen big trees sway to a wind that bowed to a storm? They were wild. Frantic. They looked like how I felt.

I swept through the stones, but got nothing, so I went to the parking lot, thinking through where I last saw Sunny. We were all coming down from the set of graves to the parking lot, I could still hear her at that point. So I started scanning everything. Lorcan was still on his phone.

Something happened to Sunny, I thought. No, that's impossible. Shut up. Sunny's fine. Sunny's fine. Sunny's fine.

But I was lying to myself. Sunny's family wasn't in the parking lot anymore, and she wouldn't have left without me. She wouldn't. Not without telling me.

And Lorcan was still on his goddamn phone when I found hers.

Her phone, Sunny's yellow phone, on the ground, half tossed in gravel.

I picked it up when Lorcan said, "She saw it, from your phone, but she's not... replying."

That could mean two things.

The person who took her was seeing the messages, probably finding out later that she has another phone on her when he tossed her actual phone the first time. The person could've hurt her, if he had taken her in panic and if Sasha Kiurtsch's closed casket was anything to go by.

Or the second, which is likelier, because Sunny's phone was still pristine if not a little gashed by the drop. She left it as evidence knowing she still had my phone on her to use.

And Sunny was smart. So I had to believe in the latter. I had to. If only to keep sane and know that wherever she is, she was going to be okay. Because Sunny panicked resorted to Sunny picking up habits from people she thought were strong.

If she had my phone, she would be recording.

For evidence, I had told her once. And straight evidence from the mouth of the perpetrator is stronger than anything else.

It would be her beacon and her best story yet.

"Give me your phone," I said, "I'm putting in my account so we can track my phone."

I showed him her phone, and he stopped dead. "Is she going to be-"

"Don't finish that sentence, Delos Reyes." I smiled at him and he nervously swallowed. It might've been a mean little look, but I couldn't have the words in the air. "Sunny's fine. She's cleverer than both of us combined. If anything, she's probably recording the person who took her. There."

The account logged in and I studied the little red dot.

Lorcan leaned over. "She's... she's not that far from the cemetery. We can walk it."

"Hold on."

Proximity is tricky, especially when what you're facing is an eternal mass. I didn't know what Sunny saw, not until the recording of course, I just didn't want to be late. But we had to be smart about it.

I tossed Lorcan back his phone, a mental image of the little red dot and the black dot that signaled where I was, versus where my best friend was, imprinted in my head. I kept it like I was holding a photograph.

"Send another photo. This time to your brother."

I started for the cemetery. If we cut through the forest here, we'd reach the red dot in minutes. Faster, if we ran. The red dot burned through the back of my eyelids as I pushed my eyesight past the swallowing greenery and the thickening darkness.

My head was pounding, and my breathing was heavier. I heard the whoosh sound of the photograph being sent along with Lorcan's panting. Time felt so fast and slow, as I pulled back a little opening in the chain-link fence that some teenagers had done back in the day. The chain link fence was the only resort difference that told you you were entering King's Land. Barnabas King's private properly, appropriately and unironically named. But the chain link fence was also to warn you of the wildlife that lived inside. Bears were frequently seen in the cemetery right after hibernation, like pests for the season.

Not three seconds in and Lorcan's phone started ringing for a call. He pressed for speaker.

"Lorcan." Lyssian's voice reminded me of still water. Crisp and cool.

Lorcan seemed to have hated it.

"

"That's because it's annoying," Aron interjected, the smile barely hiding the way his teeth grinded. "Lorcan would understand this. Lyssian has this way of talking to you like you were beneath him. In any situation, he was calm and collected, and it was annoying."

Kit blinked at him. "Sure. . . Can I continue or are we going to keep this song and dance? If you talk one more goddamn time, I'm going to punch you."

Aron smirked. "With a cracked fist?"

Kit's returning smile was just as deadly. "You won on a technicality last time, pussy. You used Sunny against me. There's no one you can use now for me to bash your fucking head in." Kit turned to Moore with a more boyish look. "No offense, Detective."

"None taken, but no one is going to throw punches in here or we're stopping this now." He raised an eyebrow. He knew how to deal with narcissists. "Behave, boys."

"Fine," Aron said.

"I'll try." Kit grinned. "Now back to my story that you keep wonderfully interrupting."

"You're welcome."

"That's enough." Detective Moore sighed. "Kit, continue please."

"

As I was saying, Lyssian picked up. And he sounded as if we didn't just send him a damning picture of himself and a dead girl.

And Lorcan hated that.

"What the fuck do you mean hello, kuya? Did you see what we just sent you?"

"Watch your language, Lorcan. Don't talk to that way to me." It was so authorative that even I raised my eyebrow and motioned for the phone, because Lorcan looked like he was about to hurl it as far away from him as possible or eat it.

"Hi, yeah, it's Kit. I would like to call back on the more pressing situation with a what the fuck of my own. We don't have enough time, Lys. Sunny's missing."

That was meant with a three second silence. I laughed sharply, pulling Lorcan to the left as we continued to hunt through the force. "Keep your eyes open for anything," I told him. "Anything." And to his brother, "You still there? 'Cos we don't really have a lot of fucking time, so best to talk now with anything that-"

"He wouldn't have taken her," Lyssian said, still cool but there was a wavered edge. A still water with a forefinger that tapped it. A ripple. "It's too much of a hassle so he only takes one a time for him."

Both our bodies ran cold, but I marched on, hauling Lorcan with me to stop him from stilling.

"Who the fuck is he and him?" I asked as politely as possible.

"Aron Kiurtsch and Benjamin Schuster. They have Isla."

That, we actually had to stop because I felt everything in Lorcan crash and burn. That was the final snap.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" he shouted at the phone, at the world. Crows squaked and flew overhead at the disturbance. Rain started to splatter. "What the hell do you mean they have Isla? What have you done?"

"I'm trying to save her is what I'm doing," Lyssian said through the crackle. His voice was determined. Solid. Even I believed him. "Aron informed me at the funeral, he approached me. He said Isla caught Benjamin with Sasha, but then that she had found the photo and took it. He told me he worried who would see it, as he had been using it against me to keep quiet. For all I knew about Madelyn, for our time back in Toronto."

"You're fucking sick," Lorcan whispered, heaving through the dark, the rain. "You're making me fucking sick."

"We should move," I told him, gripping Lorcan by the shoulder and pulling him by his dress suit. We were still dressed for the funeral. That felt like a lifetime ago. "They still have Sunny. She found something, found out something, that's why they have her. Aron or Bejamin, I don't care. They have her."

"Then Aron has him," Lyssian said. "He's smart. That's why he plays me like a fiddle. Benjamin is a little messed up in the head, he's the one who does it. All the experiments. I... I got along for the ride. I didn't know how messed up we were doing, not until we had Madelyn in my dorm. Tied with a knife mark on her neck."

We fought through the rain, the dark. Lorcan had those small flashlights that barely lit anything, but it was better than the bright one his phone offered or the darkness that swallowed everything. We didn't want to be seen by either murderer or bear. Except for winds whipping or the groan and whisper of the forest, we were the only beasts we could see and hear. Lyssian's voice crackled through, every word sharp enunciated.

"I... I didn't know what really happened. Aron has always been a good talker."

Lorcan hauled on my dad's jacket, motioning to open Sunny's open. Once I did, her password changed from her parents' anniversary, my birthday, or her uncles birthdays, he tapped through and got the location on my phone again. The little red dot was getting closer and we were only a little off ways to the right of it.

"And Benjamin was curious about the human body. Especially through the process of distress. How far can you break down a person before they become nothing more than a shell? I didn't have a hand in anything but taking her and... as the photo suggested, burying her. But that's it. That's all there ever was. And Aron promised to keep silent, as long as I don't do anything or tell anyone about what they did."

Close. We were getting closer, but there was nothing but the storm and the green tinted inky black. At one point I tripped, swore and was helped to stand again. The rain beat harder against our backs and the mud did not help, but we pushed on. My eye always on the little red dot.

"Then I went home, back to Phryne where everything still felt normal. Aron came back not half a year later, being housed and then soon adopted by his aunt. He had managed to talk himself into it. He's like a whispering snake, another voice in your head once he's attached himself to you. Then he poisons you from the inside out. Slowly, always so slowly. The only way you could calm him was when you obeyed.

That's what I did when he sent the first photograph, via a burner phone, almost every month. A picture he had taken of Bejamin and I that night. I didn't even know he had a phone that night, because we all promised to keep them in the dorm. A sign of trust. You could never trust Aron Kiurtsch."

"And so that continued," I said, raising my voice a little to be heard against the roaring rain. "To keep you at bay. To keep you silent."

"For your years," he agreed. "I didn't know they had started again, not until Sasha's death. Not until he pulled me right after the funeral and told me he had picked up Isla because she was nosey. He said I should start trying to find the photograph, then he would start thinking he could trust me again. I think he thought I sent Isla to steal the photo, but why the hell would I put my sister through that?"

Lorcan snorted derisively.

Kit kept at the red dot. "No. I think the 'doctor' dear Marigold was sent to, and that Isla had heard of was your friend Benjamin. Discreet and had knowledge of the human body. Someone Isla knew could be Aron. Or someone who knew him. He hung out too much with people younger than him."

"

Aron glared daggers at Kit.

Kit winked.

"

"What? Marigold Duplin?"

"Huh. You don't know that." I laughed in a way that lacked luster. It sounded like half a bark with a tone of despise. "I'm just testing you, but he's playing you, Aron. He knows Isla was never sent by you. Isla found out a different way, most likely a carelessness they're trying to redeem. And then my best friend just had to-"

We both stopped dead. There was light in the brief beyond. I checked the dot again. By hair's breath. I put a finger to my lips to signal everyone to shut the fuck up, turning the speaker off and putting the phone to my ear.

"What?" Lyssian asked. "What's going on?"

Lorcan started to move before I could plan what we were doing, so I cursed silently, "Shut the fuck up, Lys. We found something. Hold on."

Quite the contrarian, smartasses, already asking, "Where are you two? What happened to Sunny?"

We neared and found ourselves frowning at a halfway sunken, yellow schoolbus. It's end door, the emergency one at the back, open and illuminating light.

"Get to the cemetery," I whispered. "Five notches east. Keep east until you find the schoolbus. Lorcan!" I hissed, ending the call, but he continued forward, pushing his mop of curly brown hair off his eyes and pocketing his glasses. I don't know how blind his ass is without it, but he seemed to the traverse pretty well solo.

He was at the very lip of the bus when he shouted something that went deaf with the roar of the rain. Before I could ask him what or to shut up, he jumped.

"Mother of fuck- Get here! Now!" I shouted before I ran after him. As I got closer, I heard them first before I saw them.

Lorcan helping a battered and bruised, but fairly alive Isla Delos Reyes.

With tender eyes and her brother that kept prodding and checking her body for worse bruises, I threw him a Swiss pocket knife. Isla looked up, the rain hitting her eyesight.

"Where's Sunny?"

"Ran," she choked out. "I got his legs. Told her to run. He ran after her- Aron. He's-he's the mastermind. All of it. Lyssian-" Tears started from her eyes, turning to her younger brother.

Lorcan took her in his arms, trying to calm him. I had half a mind to tell him he was wet from the rain, but who was I to ruin a sibling's reunion? "I know, I know everything, shhh."

I looked upwards, calculating where Sunny would've ran in the darkness, swearing. "Your brother's coming. Or police is, but he'll probably come with them. Stay here."

Isla scrambled halfway, her hands now free from the zip ties, but she couldn't get far. Not with injuries that made her groan and wince. "Kit, no! He has a gun!"

Lorcan frowned at her. "Stay still, you're wounded."

"He has a shotgun." I remembered the article piece on Sasha. "A shotgun is loud. Sunny-"

And there it was. The ringing sound of a shotgun going off. The siblings screamed as I ran to the sound, into the rain and darkness again.

But I didn't care. Because I heard Sunny scream.