“When did that start?” Rebecca asked as her grandparents emerged from the front bench seat. Her grandmother followed her gaze.
“Oh. A few days ago. After the paper ran that story about cryptids being responsible for the reaping.”
“But there was no proof of that,” her grandfather added as he closed the driver’s door. “This will blow over, sugar.”
“The hell it will!” Grandma Janice snapped, and Rebecca glanced at her in surprise. She’d never heard her grandmother curse before. “Cryptidswerebehind this. Or do you really think your daughter acted on her own free will?”
“Of course not.” Grandpa Frank stomped toward the building, his cane accenting every step. “But we ought not to draw conclusions without seeing any evidence, Janice.”
Inside the building, signs taped to the wall directed them toward the Community Involvement room at the end of the hall, where they found several dozen folding metal chairs set up to face a small podium holding a microphone on a stand. About half of the chairs were occupied, and several people had gathered at the back of the room near a water dispenser and a stack of paper cups.
Rebecca noticed as she glanced over the occupants that most of them were senior citizens.
“Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll all take a seat, we can get started.” The microphone squealed, and Rebecca flinched as she followed her grandfather toward some open chairs three rows back, near the aisle. “Now just to be clear, this is the official information night for families affected by the removal of a child from their custody, following the August 24 tragedy, which those reporting on it have started calling ‘the reaping.’ If you didn’t get a letter in the mail from the Federal Bureau of Investigation asking you to be here, you’re in the wrong place. Just step out into the hall, and someone will help you find whatever room you’re supposed to be in.”
When no one left, the lady at the microphone nodded to a man in a suit standing by the double doors, and he closed them.
“Okay, thank you for coming,” the woman said as Rebecca settled into a chair between her grandparents. They’d been arguing a lot since the day the cops had come for Erica, and she’d been putting herself between them, both physically and conversationally, as much as she could.
Becca had already lost one family. She wasn’t about to let this new one splinter.
“Where’s my nephew?” a voice called out from behind Rebecca, and she turned to see a fortysomething man in a button-down shirt and jeans standing, while his wife tugged on his hand, clearly trying to get him to sit back down.
“Sir, if you’ll take a seat, we’ll get to that. There are a couple of gentlemen here from the FBI waiting to answer your questions. All of your questions,” she amended with a glance around the room, which was two-thirds full. Then she turned to the two human men in black suits who stood at the end of the podium. “Gentlemen, if you’re ready?”
The man in front nodded curtly as they both took center stage. He took the microphone from its stand, and feedback squealed across the room. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. First, let me thank you for coming in today. I—”
“Where’s my nephew?” The man at the back of the room stood again, and this time he was joined by a woman to Rebecca’s left.
“And my grandson?” she demanded.
“Tell us what’s going on!” a second woman demanded, standing two rows in front of Rebecca and her grandparents.
“All right, then, we’ll get straight to it. I’m Agent Mendoza, and this is Agent Burton, and we’ve been dispatched to you from the FBI field office in Memphis to expand upon the information mailed to you last week and explain what’s happening with the children who were taken out of your custody by the US government last month.” Agent Mendoza cleared his throat, then leveled the room with a frank look. “Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no easy way for me to say this. So here goes. Chances are very good that the children who were removed from your care last week weren’t human.”
A long, confused silence hung over the crowd. Then the man still standing at the back of the room spoke up again. “What are you talking about? I met my nephew when he was five minutes old. Of course he’s human.”
“Sir, did your nephew’s parents kill his siblings in the early hours of August 24 of this year?”
“That’s what the police say, but I don’t believe it. I know my sister. She wouldn’t—”
“And what about your nephew?” Agent Burton called out, without the aid of a microphone. “Did he see what happened? Has he said anything about what he saw?”
The man at the back of the room fell silent, and Rebecca watched him for a moment. His frustration and denial seemed echoed in expressions all over the room, and deep in her own heart.
“Sir, I personally addressed the letters that went out to all of you last week,” Agent Mendoza said into the microphone. “Before that, I read each one of the case files involving the children who were removed from your custody. Which is why I can tell you that your story is just like hers.” He pointed to the woman who’d asked about her grandson. “And hers.” He pointed to the woman who’d stood up in front of Rebecca. “Everyone in this room lost one or more nieces, nephews or grandchildren six weeks ago. Each of those poor children was killed by one or more parents. And in every single one of those families, a six-year-old—or the odd set of six-year-old twins—witnessed the slaughter, yet survived unscathed.”
“When the FBI discovered that pattern, they started collecting data.” Agent Burton picked up where his partner had left off, without need of the microphone. “And it turns out that every single one of those surviving six-year-olds was born in March of 1980. Even stranger, there isn’t asinglechild born during March of 1980 in the continental United States whose parents didn’t kill his or her siblings on August 24 of this year.”
“The FBI doesn’t believe in coincidences,” Agent Mendoza said to a room that had gone silent in shock. “And even if we did, three hundred thousand six-year-old surviving witnesses of a coordinated attack on siblings by their parents? That more than strains credulity. So we ordered blood tests on a random sample of those six-year-olds.”
“Without our permission?” a man on the left demanded, still sitting.
“We had a warrant granted by a federal judge. And you might be interested to know, sir, that one hundred percent of those samples came back labeled ‘cryptid of indeterminate species.’ So we ordered another round of tests, both of those same kids, plus fifty others, randomly chosen. The results were the same.”
The man at the back of the room cleared his throat, and Rebecca turned to see him staring at the FBI agents, his forehead deeply furrowed. “So what you’re telling us is that the kids we thought had survived this tragedy...they’re not really related to us? They’re not even human?”
Agent Burton took the microphone. “We haven’t tested all of the children yet, sir. At this point we’re only about a quarter of the way through, but so far, all of the results have been the same, and we have no reason to believe that will change with those who’re as yet untested.”
