Page 196 of The Examiner

Cameron is dead, Jem.

Jem Badhuri

What? No! He didn’t even see the installation. I’m gutted. I had no idea he was that ill.

Gela Nathaniel

He wasn’t that ill. He wasn’t ill at all. I see now.

Gela Nathaniel

Why he was suddenly on another job. Why he missed his son’s sports day.

Gela Nathaniel

Why, in the paperweight Patrick made for Cameron, the scorpion is dead.

Gela Nathaniel

But who did Patrick give the killer-scorpion to? The one poised to strike?

Gela Nathaniel

It happened when you went to Somerset, didn’t it, Jonathan, Suzie, Ludya?

Royal Hastings, University of London Multimedia Art MA *Final Project*

Candidate name: Patrick Bright

Candidate number: 0883480

As I come out the bathroom door I see Cameron. His back is towards me and his arm raised to hit Ludya. He has a hold of her other arm and she’s shouting and crying. Alyson is on the floor as if she’s already been thrown there. Jonathan is on the phone, shouting for someone. I see red. I don’t think. I grab the iron and smash Cameron over the back of his head. He falls to the floor. Ludya scrambles away and I see what Cameron was after. An old radio. Didn’t know it then, but I’d end up helping Jem tinker with it. It kept her occupied, stopped her asking questions about what happened on the trip.

We’re standing around Cameron’s body and in the silence I remember: ‘Oh no, Finny. Look, they are waiting on us. We’re done.’ They all look at each other: Jonathan, Alyson and Ludya. They look at each other and at Cameron on the floor, not at me. The only eyes on me are Cameron’s. They’re frozen, so wide open his lids have disappeared into his forehead. Jonathan takes a breath to speak, but his voice is drowned out – by something I’d heard once before.

It sounds like a thousand fingernails down a thousand blackboards. The same alarm that cut through the studio during our first assessment meeting, when Alyson burned Jonathan’s assignment. Back when we were all still putting our phones in the tray.

Ludya grabs it from Cameron’s pocket, her sleeve over her hands. The sleek, shiny screen flashes a warning. I glimpse the word ‘police’. Ludya squints sideways at it, like it’s the head of Medusa and she could very well turn to stone. I’d soon find out why.

‘Military-grade security,’ she shouts over the din, and she has a confidence that says she knows all about it. Doesn’t mean he is military, but it does mean he has access. ‘It needs to see his face! No one else’s!’ The sound is unbearable in my ears.

There’s a short tussle between Jonathan and Ludya as they try to switch the alarm off. Jonathan is adamant: ‘Cameron switched it off because Suzie switched it on that day in the studio.’ Suzie? In the fog of shock, I can’t get past this new name. ‘Suzie who?’ But they ignore me.

Ludya cries as she fumbles with the phone. Jonathan paces, covers his ears … I can only repeat the question, ‘Suzie who?’

It’s then that Alyson picks herself up off the floor, her face fixed in an expression I’ve never seen before, on anyone. She grabs the phone from Ludya and holds it in front of Cameron’s poor, dead face. Silence. A tiny click as the home screen lights up: a missed call from Angela Nathaniel and a timer in the top-right corner, shaped like a human face: five minutes and counting.

Metropolitan Police digital evidence log/Case no. 4617655/24/files retrieved 5 September 2024

AetherGen WhatsApp group members Ludya Parak, Suzie Danners and Jonathan Danners, 17 January 2024:

Ludya

It’s called ‘eco-cloth always-wipe’ or something – look in the glove box. IT DOESN’T SWITCH OFF.

Jonathan

Cameron must’ve turned it off at night, he wasn’t looking at it every five minutes. And he put it in the tray at RH. It was switched off then.