Chapter 213: The Effect
Shelter City 9 Orphanage
The mess hall was silent. Rows of children sat still, eyes glued to the large screen, watching the supernatural footage unfold like a cartoon. Except this one was painted in blood.
Limbs flew through the air. A rain of gore splattered across the drone lenses. Yet not a single child screamed. There was no fear, no horror. Only wide-eyed wonder. They watched as if witnessing their favorite idol in action, completely entranced, as if their minds were under some unseen influence, something suppressing fear and holding their instincts in unnatural stillness.
The adults, in contrast, were visibly shaken.
Faces had gone pale. Bodies were stiff. Some clutched their stomachs and turned away. A few couldn’t hold it in and vomited on the floor.
The camera feed trembled slightly. It wasn’t clear whether the drones were unstable or if their own vision had started to blur. Either way, the nausea was real.
But among the fear and disgust, something else stirred in a few. The moment the camera zoomed in and caught a clean shot of the one behind the massacre, those who recognized the face felt something far more personal.
Vivienne White was one of them.
"Selina, what kind of man have you fallen for?" She whispered, her eyes fixed on the screen, on that unmistakable face framed by rain and blood.
Since her husband’s sudden death—an event she never understood and chose not to question—her daughter had grown fixated on a boy from school.
At first, Vivienne had assumed it was teenage infatuation. Hormones, fantasy, passing emotions. That age was full of illusions. But as time went on, the way Selina kept bringing up his name, again and again, with a strange, unnatural admiration, had started to worry her.
Out of concern, Vivienne had looked into him. No surname. No background. No wealth or influence. Just an intelligent but otherwise unremarkable boy. Nothing that justified this level of devotion.