THE BEAST ─ five hargreeves

[ 055 ] five has bad news andーno, actually he just has bad news

LV.

f i v e   h a s   b a d
n e w s   a n d — n o ,
a c t u a l l y   h e   j u s t
h a s   b a d   n e w s

—"ALL RIGHT, THEN," said Five, "let's get down to business."

It was a council of war. Five, Luther, Diego, Allison, Vanya, Klaus, and Zara were sitting in Elliot's flat. A fire burned in the grate, and outside a restless gale whistled.

Five, as usual, took the lead.

"First off, I wanted to say I'm sorry," he began. "I know I really screwed the pooch on this whole going-back-in-time-and-getting-stuck thing. But the real kick in the pants here is that we brought the end of the world back with us."

"Oh my God, again?" said Klaus. He turned around with a bottle of tequila in one hand.

The rest of them exchanged knowing glances. Klaus groaned.

"You all knew? Why am I always the last one to find out about the—" He stopped, realization sweeping his features. "Oh—My cult is gonna be so pissed. Five! I told them we had until 2019!"

"We have until Monday," said Five. "We have six days." He added, after a minute: "Have we made any progress since last time?"

Zara and Luther answered the question simultaneously.

"No," said Luther.

"Yes," said Zara.

Five looked from one of them to the other. Luther indicated gracefully that the girl should speak first.

Zara was silent a moment or two, collecting her ideas.

"We are further on," she said at last. "We are further on because we haven't found out anything useful. That sounds like nonsense but it isn't. What I mean is that we had a few vague, sketchy ideas; we know now that certain of those ideas are definitely washouts. We are more prepared now than we were in the twenty-first century."

"Process by elimination," said Five.

"That's it."

Klaus leaned forward, his long curls falling over his face.

"Is it Vanya?" he asked. Then, at stern looks from the others: "What? It's usually Vanya."

"The point is," said Zara, "what are we going to do next—actually do, I mean. Are we going to sleuth people or what? Are we going to disguise ourselves in big hats and heavy trench coats and follow them?"

"There's no one to find," said Five meditatively. "We can't fight this apocalypse. We need to get out of here before it ever happens."

"Then what—?" began Zara, but she was interrupted.

From somewhere about his person Diego produced the photograph of Reginald standing on the grassy knoll with his umbrella.

Shocked murmurs went up from the rest of the Hargreeves siblings.

"Holy shit, is that Dad?" asked Allison. She turned the image over in her hands incredulously.