The End - Blackbird book 7

2. shut a cup

**picture: Macy's Boston

The second video opened with the same black screen with red capital letters, the same voice yelling the words.

It started from the passenger seat of an old car, loud music saturating the audio. The car seemed to be driving down a downtown avenue. The boy holding the phone turned on the passenger seat to show Kyle, the boy with the gun, sprawled on the backseat and looking out.

"Are you ready, my man?"

"Yeah!" Kyle replied right away.

"ARE YOU READY!?"

"YEAH!!"

The three of them yelled together, "YEAH!!"

There was a smash cut and the video showed the car parked at a narrow street, around the corner from the main access to a department store downtown. The boy behind the wheel turned the music even louder. Kyle leaned forward between the front seats. The three boys yelled and clapped to the music.

The boy with the phone yelled, "GO! GO! GO!"

Kyle stepped out of the car, tugging his hoodie down. He breathed deep a couple of times and strode around the corner to the store gates.

"There he goes!" cried the boy with phone. "That's our man! C'mon, Kyle! Give us some...!"

"ACTION!" shouted the boy behind the wheel.

"YEAH!"

As they kept yelling, the boy geared in and screeched around the corner, to pull over roughly across the street from the store access. The boy with the phone leaned to his window, to get a clear shot of Kyle brushing past people. The camera made a close-up on the back of a brunette woman standing by the curb.

"There she is!" the boy cried. "That's the star of today's episode of Shut A Cup!"

As Kyle approached the woman, she turned to look his way and waved her hand high at somebody coming from the corner behind the boy.

"C'mon, Kyle!" whispered the boy with the phone, excited. "Shut the bitch! Shut a cup!"

The boy behind the wheel repeated, like chanting, "Shut a cup. Shut a cup. Shut a cup!"

Kyle stopped right in front of the woman and shouted at her, "YO, BITCH!" His voice was distant and muffled, but still understandable.

The boys in the car went crazy.

"YEAH!! THAT'S OUR MAN!"

"THAT'S HOW YOU TALK TO'EM!"

The woman ignored Kyle, who stepped closer to her. "LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YA, BITCH!"

The boys in the car cried out of excitement as, in one single motion, Kyle pulled the twenty-two from his waist, stretched out his arm straight to the woman's chest and pulled the trigger.

"HELL YEAH!!"

The woman looked down, as if she didn't understand what had just happened to her, and crumbled down slowly among the people coming in and out of the store. As soon as he shot, Kyle sprinted to the car and dived into the backseat.

"GO! GO! GO!"

The boy behind the wheel geared in and floored it, swerving away from the curb, and they skidded away down the street. The boy with the phone turned around to capture one last shot of the people gathering around the fallen woman. A tall boy shoved them out of the way as he desperately cried, "MOM? MOM!"

The boy with the phone sat straight again and turned the camera to his face, showing the narrow visible strip of his face between a baseball cap and a black bandana.

His blue eyes shone with joy as he mockingly said, "And that, my friends, is how you shut a cup. See you soon!" And he turned off the camera.

At the team's office, all of them were frozen with wide eyes on the screen. Kurt was the first to react and played again the last seconds of the video, stopping the image at the last moment on the store access. He zoomed in and ran a quick filter to enhance the image.

Aldana covered her mouth with her hand and grabbed Tanya's desk for support. The girl let out a suffocated cry, eyes full of tears.

Ron moved up a shaky hand to point at the screen. "That's... That's..." he stuttered, and trailed off.

Fred spun around and strode out of the office as Hank tried to speak and failed.