Penny[D]: Including you? Are you a monster we paved the way for?
[Th]Blake: I don’t have a future waiting for me, and I don’t have a past, not quite, not an intact one. The only two individuals who seem to give a damn about me are a bird and a mnermaid. I more or less only exist in the moment. I can’t imagine a reality where things settled down here and I was still around.
Lea[D]: Because you think you’ll be dead, or you can’t settle down?
[Th]Blake: Can it be both?
Mags: There are options, Blake. The seal of Solomon, if you were willing, would mean giving up some control, but it helps others control your impulses.
[Th]Blake: Being destroyed sounds more appealing.
ElliePete[Th]: Mags? Can I talk? Unrestricted? I feel like I have to chime in, but I can’t do it with one line.
Chat restriction lifted for ElliePete[Th]
Owen[B]: Favoring the Thorburns a little, Mags? I know you’re friendly with them.
Mags: I’m trying to be impartial. If you have something new to say, ask, I’ll do the same.
ElliePete[Th]: Fuck you all!
Mags: …
[Th]Blake: I hear you, Mags.
ElliePete[Th]: This is a chatroom filled with teenagers? Children? Fuck you!
Mags: Keep that up and I’ll kick you.
ElliePete[Th]: I’m going somewhere with this.
ElliePete[Th]: I was there when Blake was talking to an other, making a deal with it. Telling it not to go after kids. Nobody under twenty. Being here, reading this chat and putting the pieces together, I’m more convinced than ever that this world is fucked up and upside down. And that includes you, Blake, because you think any of these people are worth a damn.
Else[B]: Thorburns, making friends and influencing people.
Mags: I’m about to revoke your privilege to chat freely, Elliepete.
ElliePete[Th]: Fuck it! Fuck your collective righteousness. You’re worse than your parents. You’re everything that’s wrong with the world, and that’s not counting the monsters and bumpkins and shit! I hope you’re ashamed. If I could make deals with Others, I’d do the opposite of what Blake did. I’d send the monsters after you, not after your parents. Your parents at least mostly admit what they are and what they’re doing. But here you are, sitting here, and you’re convincing yourselves you’re upright. Oh, you’re doing good, you’re speaking up. You’re getting a voice for yourselves. And if there’s something wrong with all this, you’re not to blame at all. It’s your *parents* fault. You’re insulated from it, because your parents are keeping you at arms length.
Mags: Jesus. I thought they were done.
Chat restriction set for ElliePete[Th] [One] message per minute.
[Th]Blake: Believe it or not, I think a lot of Penelope and several of the others here. Even with the brief censorship earlier. I wouldn’t have come here to reach out to them if I didn’t. They’re scared, they’re in a tough position, powerless but still part of the families and the bigger machinations.
Owen[B]: Why does it bother me more that he’s trying to defend us?
Dolores2[D]: It shouldn’t. I think he’s mostly right.
ElliePete[Th]: Fuck you, Blake. Scared, in a tough position? Who here isn’t? You know what I think? They’re all complicit. They know they’re complicit. They know they can change things, half of the people in this chat probably know know they should have said or done something different when people were openly discussing what to do about Molly Walker. Or acted after they heard about it. Or hate their parents because their parents kept them in the dark.
Christoff: My big brother got his throat cut. He went out like a hero, getting eaten alive. I still don’t know how he deserved it.
Penny[D]: It’s more complicated than that.
Mags: I don’t know if it is. I don’t sleep easy anymore. I haven’t since Molly died. I was there. I’m as complicit as anyone except maybe Sandra, Johannes or Laird. Laird, at least, paid for it in a roundabout way.
Owen[B]: What do you want? You want us to feel bad? I feel bad. Congratulations. I had a lot of discussions with my dad about it, and feeling bad doesn’t fix anything. We move on, we do better in the future.
[Th]Blake: I don’t think anyone here feels good about what happened to her. I do think that unless things change, it’s going to happen again. A lot of us, even me, for a time, have ignored what happened. You can’t ignore history, or it repeats itself. I told this to Penelope and a few others here, not long ago, but there’s no reason for things to change.
Penny[D]: And for that to happen, you need a list of people to murder? I can almost respect where you’re coming from. I think you said we cooperated, once? I respect that. But this isn’t a fix. I can’t say how proud I am that nobody spoke up to give you any names, after the chat was unsilenced.
[Th]Blake: I have seven names.. I got private m essages while chat was silenced
Mags: PMs.
[Th]Blake: Yeah. PMs.
Lea[D]: …
Owen[B]: What happens now?
[Th]Blake: I leave. You’re free to continue chatting with the Thorburns. Or don’t. Censor them, kick them out. But consider what that means, if you’re doing to them what you did to Molly and Callan. Keeping them at a distance, avoiding looking them in the metaphorical eye, just so it’s easier to kill them when the time comes.
Christoff[Th]: For crimes we didn’t commit.
[Th]Blake: Yeah.
Penny[D]: This was supposed to be a safe place. A place where we could come without feeling like we were surrounded by giants, always on the bottom rung.
ElliePete[Th]: Or a place where you could work on insulating yourselves, reassuring yourselves you were doing right? Says a lot that you call yourselves the Junior Council. Training to be your moms and dads.