Chapter 15: The Voice Returns
The first words in six days came out as broken gravel, each syllable scraping against vocal cords that had healed wrong.
"Can you hear me?"
Eugene flinched at the sound—raw, strained, nothing like the monotone voice that had become familiar over our weeks together. The damage was immediately obvious, transforming speech into something that sounded like whispers filtered through sandpaper.
Permanent scarring. Cursed Speech cost made manifest.
"Jesus, Aron." Eugene's expression cycled through relief and horror. "You sound like you've been gargling broken glass."
The medical staff had warned me during their final examination. Vocal cords torn and healed imperfectly, scar tissue that would never fully smooth out. Sustained speech would cause pain, shouting might trigger re-injury, and singing had become physically impossible.
Small price for Eugene's life.
"Will it get better?" Eugene asked the nurse.
"This is better," she replied with professional sympathy. "Three days ago he couldn't make sound at all."
Progress. Of a sort.
Wednesday observed from the corner chair where she'd maintained vigil, watching my voice test with the clinical focus of someone cataloguing weapons capabilities. When the medical staff left us alone, she produced a single sheet of paper.
"Read this," she commanded. "Single word only."
"Sit."
I focused on the wooden chair across the room, gathering intent and will and the remnants of my Cursed Speech ability. The word came out as damaged rasp, but it carried supernatural weight.
The chair shifted backward six inches.
Works. Barely.
Pain exploded through my throat like swallowing acid. I doubled over, tasting copper, while Wednesday made notes in her journal.
"Three hours recovery time for single-word command," she observed. "Your most powerful ability has been reduced to emergency-use-only status."
The irony was brutal. I'd destroyed my greatest weapon through the very act that proved its necessity.
"But it still works," Eugene said. "Damaged but functional."
Like all of us.
Wednesday assembled her case in the library like a prosecutor preparing for trial. Evidence spread across our usual table—police reports, historical documents, chemical analysis that somehow she'd acquired through channels I didn't want to know about.
"Tyler Galpin is the Hyde," she began without preamble. "Compelled through chemical manipulation by Ms. Thornhill, who is actually Laurel Gates—descendant of the outcast-hating founder family that tried to destroy Nevermore two centuries ago."
The pieces fell into place with horrible clarity. My fragmented memories finally crystallized into complete understanding, and with that understanding came crushing guilt.
I knew. Not the details, but enough to prevent this.
"The timeline correlations are overwhelming," Wednesday continued. "Tyler's work schedule aligns with every Hyde attack. Chemical compounds found in his system match historical descriptions of Jekyll-Hyde transformation serums. And most damning—Gates family genealogy confirms Thornhill's true identity."
Eugene processed this with the methodical attention he usually reserved for bee colony management. "If Tyler's being controlled, he's another victim. If Thornhill is the real enemy..."
"Then she's been planning this for months," I finished, my damaged voice making every word cost effort. "Which means she's not done."
Wednesday's smile was knife-sharp. "Precisely. Laurel Gates didn't infiltrate Nevermore just to create one Hyde. She's building toward something larger."
Crackstone. The resurrection. The final battle.
My meta-knowledge provided the conclusion with terrible certainty: "We need to warn Weems. Laurel will kill her."
"Already concluded that," Wednesday replied. "Weems has been isolated with Thornhill three times this week. If Laurel follows historical precedent, she'll eliminate institutional leadership before implementing her endgame."
We're thinking in tactical time. The plot moves in dramatic time.
We're already too late.
The realization hit like physical impact. While we'd been gathering evidence and building cases, events had been accelerating beyond our ability to control them.
"We need to find Weems now," I said.
Principal Weems' office felt wrong the moment we entered. Coffee still warm on her desk, half-written letter abandoned mid-sentence, chair pushed back like she'd left in sudden urgency.
Recent departure. Very recent.
Wednesday moved to the desk, studying the unfinished correspondence. Her hand hovered over the paper for a moment before making contact.
Psychic vision. She's seeing something.
Wednesday's expression went arctic. "The conservatory. Now."
We ran—Wednesday with predatory grace, me with grim determination, Eugene limping behind despite medical orders to avoid strenuous activity. Through corridors that suddenly felt like mausoleums, past students who couldn't comprehend that their safe haven was dissolving around them.
Too late. Always too late.
The greenhouse smelled like death disguised as flowers. Principal Weems lay collapsed between the exotic plants she'd cultivated, body contorted in final agony. Nightshade poison frothed at her lips, and her skin had taken on the waxy pallor that meant irreversible cellular shutdown.
Shapeshifter. She's transformed back to her true appearance.
Even in death, Weems looked elegant. Defeated, but elegant.
Wednesday went cold and analytical, processing the crime scene with forensic efficiency. "Aconitine poisoning. Classical assassination method. Thornhill would have needed approximately fifteen minutes to ensure lethal dosage."
Eugene sat heavily on a nearby bench, tears streaming down his face. "She was trying to protect us. All of us. And we couldn't..."
Save her.
I stared at the corpse and felt my meta-knowledge transform into crushing guilt. I'd known this would happen. Spent weeks trying to remember which teacher was the villain, fighting through fragmented memories while the answer sat in classrooms teaching botany and planning murder.
Could have prevented this. Should have trusted the fragments earlier.
Another failure. Another death I could have stopped.
Wednesday's voice cut through my self-recrimination: "Sheriff Galpin will be here within minutes. We need to coordinate our statements."
The investigation. The cover-up. The protection of Tyler despite his monstrous nature.
"What do we tell him?"
"Nothing that implicates Tyler directly. Galpin will suppress evidence to protect his son, but he'll also eliminate threats to that protection." Wednesday's expression suggested she was calculating several moves ahead. "We mourn the loss of beloved Principal Weems and provide no information that connects her death to the Hyde investigation."
Politics. Even in death, everything comes down to politics.
Sheriff Galpin arrived with deputies and crime scene tape, transforming the conservatory into an official jurisdiction battle. Nevermore versus Jericho, outcasts versus normies, Wednesday's barely concealed accusations versus his son's apparent innocence.
Through it all, I stood silent, my damaged voice having nothing useful to contribute. What could I say? That I'd known this would happen but failed to prevent it? That Tyler Galpin was a monster wearing his son's face? That we were all probably going to die in the next twenty-four hours?
Truth wouldn't help. Truth would just get us arrested or killed.
That night, I burned my "Things I'm Not Supposed to Know" notebook page by page, watching fragmented meta-knowledge transform into ash and regret. Eugene found me at three AM, didn't ask questions, just sat beside me until the last page curled and blackened.
"It's not your fault," he whispered.
My rasped response came from somewhere deeper than damaged vocal cords: "Knowing what's coming and failing to stop it—that's exactly whose fault it is."
Weems is dead. Tyler is still the Hyde. Laurel Gates is still planning whatever comes next.
And I'm still just a transmigrator playing with forces I barely understand.
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