Day 56 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 5 (1840 words)

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DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 5

Blake Hilliard was taking a walk a week later after the release of episode one and the media furore that followed it's debut on their site. The site traffic since the first episode had exploded, not only were people logging on and registering for updates, but all sorts of bots and crawlers were trying to access the servers and see if there was more to find, and if there was any extra titbits or clues available.

The FBI had threatened to take their site down and had monitors watching the office for a second disc to arrive, Jacob had noticed that he had been watched when going to and from the office and there were new tenants in the shared office space they used. All their IT services were held remotely off site and there was no advantage to being in the office technologically, but it was well known who the new people in the office space were and they stuck to their cover despite it being the worst kept secret to anyone at Facts Alone.

The week had a been a roller coaster ride as victims and relatives were tracked by the media of the first 'loser' as they were referring to Peter Rayner (AKA Father Francis) very quickly. His sister Janet had changed her name and moved to a new town to get away from the legacy of her brother's name and despite he best intentions, more than one media outlet tracked her down to try and get her angle on the bizarre circumstances of her brother's demise. The Federal investigators had questioned her about any contact she had from her brother, and they looked into her phone and internet records to see when if at all she had any communication of any kind from him.

She had stopped speaking to him long before the name change, the constant relocations, the rumours in the Parishes, she knew long ago he was molesting children. She had reported him, called the police anonymously but nothing ever came of the complaints. She had begged her brother to get help, but he denied there was a problem for years until one time, drunk and crying he desperately confessed his sins to her, and it was at once worse than and exactly what she had feared. She had to play hard, she called the papers and gave them what they needed and the public campaign began to out him and put pressure on the church. It took years, far too many for her to keep an ounce of her faith in humanity and it's more unfortunate examples.

So she changed her name, moved house and got away from him permanently and was free of his influence until the day she turned on the television and saw his face there and knew that it was all going to come back to her doorstep.

She was expecting the media first, but it was the FBI who knocked before anyone else. They knew where she was, they had a file on her brother open and active in relation to interstate actions he had allegedly taken with some children, crossing state lines amongst other transgressions and had her flagged for surveillance. They knew most of the answers to their questions already, but it was a good exercise for her to prepare for the media again. There was nothing she could offer them to help in any way, shape or form. He had turned on her when she had turned her back on him, he had accused her of persecution and abuse when they were children, she his older sister by 2 years and yet still he deflected as much of his own guilt as he could when defending or evading questions.

Once he had fled America for the Caribbean he never looked back, felt no ties and no desire to resolve any family of Congregational ties severed by his sudden and deceptive departure. Once he was gone, he was gone. He had lain low in the local village, there were no rumours or stories about him in the sleepy little town where he had been living. It was such a small place that anything too out of the ordinary would have been immediately obvious, and justice might well have been meted out with a more officious and less judicious measure than in the due process state of New York where he had first been indicted.

Now she was Elizabeth Green, for greener pastures and fresh fields she had named herself, and Elizabeth Green was a middle to late aged spinster, found of children but never having any of her own. She had found it hard to trust anyone with children, she feared the worst would happen if she had any of her own. She had a hard time believing in a God that supported someone like her brother, or maybe she believed less in one that took his time in bringing down a man like Francis, or Peter or whatever he had named himself. She understood the need for a new identity, to hide from who you are, especially when it was not anything that you could control or prevent. She was not sure if Francis was ever in control, or if he was unable to stop himself, but she knew like he did that it was true and that he understood what it was he was doing, at least some of the time. He had felt enough guilt and enough of the human being inside to let that grief and guilt explode out of him that once, show that glimmer of decency or vague sense of responsibility inside. It never made another appearance, but she knew it was there and that he was hiding behind it, or hiding from it, it did not matter which one anymore.

Seventeen children, that number weighed heavy on her. When she found out it was four that he was willing to confess to, that one time he confronted his own demons on her doorstep, but even then she suspected that the number was light and retarded by whatever struggle for meaning he had going on. If it was four, which she doubted, it was probably not the full seventeen and undoubtedly not the last time he would have tried to inflict himself on some poor trusting soul, delivered bound and gagged by tradition to a beast in holy garments.

She had tried to stop him, God knew that if he was listening but he had as little mercy for her in the way that people treated her in relation to her kin, than he had for stopping one man masquerading as a child of the church, ready to serve and taking all he could at the same instant.

The reporters came a day later, button holing her on her driveway and asking for her opinion. Had she seen the video? What did she think? Did she think it was justice? Did she think it was inhumane? Did she think he was innocent? Did she know about what he was up to? Had she heard from Darwin? Did she know about the game? Did she know who was next? Did she have any prediction as to who was next? Who did she think would win?

The questions were incessant and unhelpful, they served to make content for a hungry audience and to fill the twenty hour cycle of news. With only one tape, the suggestion of more to come and the pundits, commentators and experts all tripping over each other to be the first to predict the outcomes and the righteous or evil nature of Darwin's Game, there was so much time and space to be filled, and there was only one victim.

Within a few days Janet's life had been tipped upside down again. Her employer had been more than generous with her situation, she had told him about a year ago about her past and why she had to leave it, who she really was. He was a kind and understanding man, that could see that the person she was now was different from the person you would judge to be related to the criminal and monster that was her brother. He arranged for her to take calls from their clients at her home, until the clients themselves started asking for her and then asking anything and everything about the Game. After a few days her boss relented and put her on paid leave until the situation would die down.

Janet figured it was only a matter of days, maybe even hours now that a week had passed since the first video had been aired. A second would be on the way, hopefully soon, hopefully today and then the focus would shift to whatever damaged people the next person had left behind them. She was right, it was time for a new message to arrive, and nobody had to wait too long for the next round in Darwin's Game.

When the next video arrived and then no one wanted as much of her time, now the focus was on the next person and the ten players-in-waiting behind, there was time to reflect and process the situation.

She had watched her brother die. She had not expected that to happen. It was not like there was a court case with a death penalty to expect and build towards, there was no vigilantism based killing that she would read about after the fact, maybe be asked to identify the body. She was given a video record of her brothers execution by a man, likely less evil but equally guilty of being the bottom of the human barrel. Francis and her had grown up together and it had suited her to look at him now and look at him then and think of them as two different people. Something had changed inside of him, something had happened to him, or perhaps because of him, but a change none the less.

The man who was shot was Peter Rayner, a confessed, to her at least, paedophile and criminally irresponsible victimiser of children, the church and of himself. Peter Rayner had betrayed and murdered whatever the child Francis had ever been. Suborned that innocent youth and taken his place, and that perversion and corruption was the corpse with the bullet through the heart.

There was no body to bury, not because Darwin had not given up his dead, but because the murder of the Child Francis had happened decades ago and the was no evidence that he had ever existed except in his sisters memory. A memory she felt no need or compulsion to share. What good would that have done? A modicum of sympathy for him was unpalatable and she did not want that on her conscience, that anyone could have for a moment felt like there was a human being left inside the man that was shot.

He was long gone, and Janet had mourned his passing before the game had started.