Page 14 of So Lethal

“So you didn’t hear any noise at all?” Faith asked. “Nothing like a low rumbling?”

Barbara’s brow furrowed. “A rumbling? No. Why? Is that important?”

Faith and Michael shared a look. “We’re not sure yet. It looks like it might not be.” She pulled a card from her pocket and set it on the coffee table. “If you think of anything else, please call me. And please don’t be alone. I know it’s hard to see other people right now, but if you have family or close friends you can be with, please do so. It helps.”

Barbara nodded. “Thank you. I will.” Her face hardened, and there was steel in her eyes when she met Faith’s gaze. “You find them. Whoever did this, you find them, and you make them suffer.”

Faith couldn’t promise to make someone suffer, even if it was a vicious killer, but she decided it was better not to point that out to Barbara. “We’ll find the killer,” she replied.

Barbara nodded again. “I hope you won’t think me rude if I don’t walk you to the door. I think I’ll just rest here for a while.”

“Of course,” Michael said.

The three agents left the house. The brilliant sunshine outside was almost offensive after what they’d heard.

They were silent as they entered their car and began the return journey to their hotel, but all three of them wore the same determined look. They would find justice for their victims and for the loved ones each had left behind.

And while Faith couldn’t promise anything, she hoped very much that the killer would suffer.

CHAPTER SIX

All of life was suffering now. The killer could hear no music, no laughter. The killer could no longer enjoy the background of traffic or the chime of cell phones. Closed captioning and subtitles made television accessible, but reading the words on the screen instead of hearing them made them seem impersonal, like records of a dream.

That suffering was made bearable only by the knowledge that the killer could spare others that suffering. The killer pondered this while consulting the information needed to select the next person to be liberated.

That’s what this was. This was liberation. Sound was such a critical part of the human experience. To think that the killer’s mission had once been to design a weapon to destroy people’s hearing.

Hence this punishment. The killer had tried to take hearing from others. Instead, it was the killer’s hearing that had been lost.

Now, the killer was tasked with liberating those innocents who didn't deserve to suffer the cruelty of living in a world without sound. Much like the man in this movie who killed those who had lost all joy in life, the killer liberated those whose handicap prevented them from truly enjoying life.

The killer sipped water and swirled the liquid around. The sensation of jaw muscles working and liquid swirling was the closest thing to sound the killer could experience. That and the deep rumble his machine made when in contact with the ground.

The killer knew that some deaf people claimed to be able to hear music through their feet. Their bones could allegedly pick up vibrations that the brain would interpret as sound. The killer had found out the hard way that claim was bullshit. The faint throbbing one experienced was hardly sound. But the machine worked for the killer’s purposes. It brought the chosen closer so that the killer could liberate them.

The killer looked over at the machine, which sat against the wall next to a pair of slip-resistant boots that the killer wore when liberating to ensure surefootedness. That was critical. The world wouldn’t understand that the killer was liberating people. They thought the killer was just murdering people. The killer hoped this would change in time, but the world’s perspective was so skewed.

People refused to see pain. They stopped their ears, closed their eyes, and insisted that pain was just another form of pleasure. People who suffered were "blessed" to have some unique struggle and "brave" for existing in spite of that struggle. Normal people, whole people, loved to talk about how fortunate handicapped people were, as though having two working ears were some sort of hassle and they would be so much better off if they lacked some part of themselves.

Arrogant fools. Stupid, arrogant fools. The killer had first decided to avenge the sufferers by killing those arrogant fools, but that wouldn’t do anything to help the deaf. They would still be unable to hear.

No, the right thing to do was to liberate them. There was just no point in living when one couldn’t hear anymore.

Maybe the killer would be liberated one day. Maybe after enough undeserving sufferers had been freed, the killer would have achieved what was expected and could join them in freedom.

But not yet. So much more work remained to be done.

The killer switched off the television to avoid distraction. Not that it could distract much when the killer had to stare at it to understand anything that was happening.

The killer had several options for the next person to be freed, but the most deserving one was a recent sufferer. The first two had never known what it was like to hear. That was a tragedy, of course, but it could be said that they, at least, didn’t know what they were missing.

Sarah Martinez knew what she was missing. She had been able to hear up until sixteen months ago, but a severe inner ear infection had taken that from her. The killer had seen her a few times at the support group she attended. It was clear she was not coping well, and who could blame her?

“I’ll fix it for you,” the killer said.

At least, that’s what the killer hoped. All the killer was aware of was the movement of lips and tongue. For all the killer knew, gibberish had just come out. Another thing lost to the killer’s affliction.

There would be no fixing that. Not until the killer was ready to join the others in the next life.

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