The Henhouse

June

"What are you talking about?" Jonah folded her arms.

"It just opened," Dany insisted. "Come see for yourself."

Justin and Jonah did as the others stood in a daze. Rounding the corner, Justin found less of a door and more of a hole in the wall, a neat hole - clean-cut rectangle exposing a metal flight of stairs leading into a swath of black. It looked like it'd been concealed by a seamless panel in the wall.

"Who'd've thought," Jonah breathed. She shook her head. "This whole place is so ass-backwards."

She skipped toward the others eagerly. "It's here. Time to move."

Ella slowly unstuck herself from the floor and walked towards the hidden stairwell. Artie had appeared somewhere in the chaos, and followed close behind her- but not without a glance at Peter, who stood frozen. Ivy stayed underneath him.

Peter bowed his head, letting the cord dig further into his neck. Relief?

"Peter?" Ivy called. Her voice was quiet. "You did it. Let's go."

For reasons he wasn't too sure of, Justin walked forward. He sensed no one else at his side.

"Peter? Are you okay?"

Justin stopped beside Ivy, at the height of Peter's knees, and looked up. Peter was breathing heavy, eyes staring into nowhere. For the first time Justin noticed patches of sweat wetting his tee, and closer to Peter's face than ever, he now noticed the bags under his eyes that belied too few good nights of sleep. The fingers of Peter's good arm reached up and stroked the cable under his chin absent-mindedly.

"Casper could die," he finally said. His voice was low and strangled. "Couldn't he?"

"No," Ivy answered. "No! You rearranged the terms of the deal, you- you fixed it--!"

"It wouldn't be your fault," Justin told him.

Peter laughed, the same sad laugh he'd heard several nights ago.

"The hell it wouldn't." He frowned, then tried to gulp, but the noose didn't make it easy; instead he made a sort of gurgling noise that made Justin feel queasy. Peter slowly took his head out from the loop, and sat down on the table. As he did so Justin heard a faint whistle, like an air current, coming from the pillar – surely from the basement. Looking down, Justin noticed the microphone on the ground where Ivy had dropped it while rushing for a chair; it still blinked with a tiny red light. He rolled a foot on top of it. It cracked as it broke, light extinguished.

"Alright," Ivy put a hand to his shoulder, "let's go-"

"It wasn't him, you know," Peter murmured. "It was just.... I knew...." He rubbed his eyes, then chuckled.

"That really is all I'm good for. Huh?"

No one knew what to say.

"You know," he continued, "when I grew up, I wanted to be a doctor." Peter laughed. "Crazy, right? A doctor-"

Jonah stepped forward. "Ok, is this really the time-?"

Justin silenced her with an outstretched hand.

"Why?" he asked.

Peter shrugged. "I- I guess I thought I'd be good at it. I really liked Operation and stuff. I wanted to help people. ...Then I started boxing when I was 6. Sort of a contradiction, I guess. But I was little, you know? I just liked- I dunno, beating the crap out of things." He sighed. "I used to feel bad about punching people, though. But my family, they loved it, you know? They'd come to all my matches. They were so proud. And the metals were cool-looking. Eventually, punching people instead of things didn't feel so bad anymore. We had these big gloves, after all. And I knew they'd get better. And I was getting punched out, too, you know? So...."