Flea

Chapter Sixty Six

Hawks selected the first video and the room filled with static. While he investigated how to reduce the display to only one screen, a grainy film crackled in the darkness. There were nine mirrors of the same child, dressed in rags that had once been a hello kitty t-shirt, hair in matts, whose eyes darted everywhere except the camera. She was clutching a pair of yellow goggles to her chest like the cameraman might try to snatch them off her.

"Is it alright if I ask you a few questions, Maeve?" A soothing male voice asked, off camera. The little girl flinched, and Hawks noticed the movements of her hands were odd. She kept them palm down at all times, and only touched the straps of the goggle with her fingertips.

"Yes," the creature answered softly, barely speaking. Even with the awful quality of film, her pupils were clearly dilated with terror. She'd practically curled into herself to form an animalistic ball; Hawks realised she was on a stool in a police interrogation room.

"How old are you?"

"Five."

"I have a little girl who's four. She just started elementary school."

The child stared off screen blankly. Her expression was utterly dead, and Hawks felt a chill.

"Maeve, I know you've had a very hard night. I'm sorry that you were put in a scary position, but you're safe now. We all want to make sure you're okay."

"You shouldn't. I should never have betrayed her," the girl choked, body physically seizing up with panic. The fear in her face was indescribable, yet he knew in his core. He knew.

"Talking to Eraserhead was the right thing to do. What she's been doing to you is wrong, and we care about that. We care about you."

Maeve shook her head, sobbing silently.

"Please don't say that, please, the people who care about me get hurt," she gasped through tears, using the goggles to cover her small face.

"Your mother can't hurt anyone else. You're safe."

"No, that's what she wants you to think. Your daughter - keep an eye on her, please," the little girl commanded, with such specific purpose the man went quiet.

"The things you told Eraser Head helped us to lock her up. If you wanted to make sure nobody else gets hurt by her group ever again, anything you know about her main bases would be incredibly helpful. But if you don't want to, that's also fine, Maeve."

The video continued, with Recovery Girl steadily descending into such distress she ended up crying out for Eraser Head, who Hawks assumed was the dark haired youth ushered in soon after. He knelt beside the girl, and she looked at the grunge of a man through her tears like someone seeing sunlight for the first time. Eraserhead held out his hand. She handed him the goggles, and he grasped her hands by the fingers, as if afraid to properly hold them.

"I told you I'd come back for these. I'm not going anywhere," the emo kid said quietly, indicating the goggles, and Hawks wondered how old he was. Younger than the winged hero was currently, most likely.

The video crackled into static again. Hawks sat quietly in the darkness, with a hand over his mouth, for an age. The next files, photos, appeared mirrored in screens after a while. They contained forensic images of hands, palm facing the camera. Tiny fingers and wafer thin wrists indicated those of a child. He had seen horrible, horrible things in his line of work, yet still clenched and relaxed his fists in response to grotesque wounds twisting the skin of her palms beyond recognition.

Then a clip of the toddler's hollowed collarbone, which was so red and swollen it practically looked like a tumour. She was huddled on a hospital bed covering her skeletal torso. Even though her dark hair was brushed and she looked cleaner there was still a haunted, wild look in her eyes that reminded him of trapped animals.