Chapter 318
At first, Bill couldn’t fully process what he was looking at. Aaron’s body was a mangled, bloody mess, his features entirely masked by the crimson stains. But as his eyes focused and the realization hit him, he froze right where he stood.
"What... what happened?" Bill stammered, his throat tightening. He took a step forward to inspect the body closer, his fingers trembling uncontrollably.
"Aaron..." Bill became incoherent. The sheer shock of Aaron’s death was too much to process all at once.
Seeing his brother unravel, Elijah felt his own fragile composure shatter again, his eyes welling up with tears. He still couldn’t accept the suddenness of it all. The raw grief he had fought so hard to suppress flared right back up the moment he saw his brother’s reaction.
"A gunshot wound... how did this happen?" Bill asked, his voice raw.
The onlookers watched the scene unfold, a heavy weight sinking into everyone’s chests.
"Let’s get inside first," Leonard said quietly.
Bill took a deep breath and stepped aside, signaling them to move into the stairwell.
They didn’t head upstairs immediately. Once everyone was safely inside the building and shielded from the howling blizzard, Bill couldn’t hold back any longer. "What the hell happened? How is Aaron dead?"
It was just too sudden. When had they ever crossed paths with someone who wanted them dead?
Elijah glanced in Suzy’s direction but remained silent. Instead, Leonard stepped up to explain the gist of what had transpired.
Bill’s immediate gut reaction was denial. He refused to believe Aaron would ever attack Suzy, let alone be the culprit who dragged Noah out of the house. The Aaron he knew wasn’t that kind of person; he was a good kid.
"Could there be some mistake?" Bill muttered, his voice hollow and weak. He desperately wanted to doubt it, but as his eyes drifted to the tormented expressions of Lucas and Elijah, a wave of helplessness washed over him. Clearly, the facts had already been verified.
"I didn’t think he was that kind of person either," Suzy said softly, repeating what she had told the others moments earlier. "Do you believe in body possession?"
"Possession?" Bill repeated blankly. He knew what the term meant—another soul hijacking a physical body. "You’re saying Aaron was possessed?" he asked, his voice shaking.
"I suspect so. The Aaron I faced out there was a complete stranger compared to the person we knew. Either that, or did he have a history of mental illness?" Suzy asked tentatively. If Aaron had a split personality, everything would suddenly make sense.
"Aaron was perfectly healthy. He didn’t have any mental illness, I can promise you that. A split personality? No way. He didn’t have one; he was always just himself," Bill countered firmly. Having known Aaron for so long, how could he not know if the boy was sick? Aaron might have been on the quiet side, but he was absolutely stable. A split personality was out of the question—completely impossible.
"I see..." Suzy murmured under her breath.
But just then, something seemed to spark in Bill’s memory. His expression grew incredibly complex, tinged with a strange realization.
Beside him, Elijah had been watching his brother closely and caught the subtle shift in his face. "Bro, what are you thinking?" He knew his brother well; Bill wouldn’t look like that unless he had thought of something specific.
"I..." Bill glanced down at Aaron’s body, his tone thick with conflict. "Actually, lately, I did think Aaron was acting a bit strange."
For a while now, Bill had felt like something was off with the boy. When did it start? Probably around the time the gray snow first began to fall.
Bill spent the most time with Aaron, even more than Elijah did. He knew the boy inside out, and even the slightest shift in his demeanor couldn’t escape his notice.
Granted, Bill hadn’t read too much into it at the time, since Aaron hadn’t actually done anything out of line. The only behavior that had struck him as odd was the way Aaron kept watching Suzy.
No, it wasn’t a constant stare—it was a frequent, calculated glance. Bill had picked up on it early on; whenever he happened to look over at Aaron, he would almost always catch him watching Suzy.
At the time, he had simply assumed it was a young man’s first crush—that Aaron fancied Suzy and just couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
After all, at Aaron’s age, it was only natural to have a crush. Besides, Suzy was beautiful and had even saved his life. When Aaron had first returned back then, he had wept hysterically; it wouldn’t have been at all surprising if he had fallen for her.
But now, learning that Aaron had actually tried to murder her, Bill suddenly realized how drastically he had misread the situation.
So it wasn’t affection at all. He was studying her.
Come to think of it, the way Aaron used to look at Suzy carried absolutely no warmth. The more Bill scrutinized his memories, the more unsettled he became. Suzy’s possession theory began to take firm root in his mind. He had felt back then like Aaron had become a completely different person, and it turned out it hadn’t been his imagination after all.
Aaron really had been possessed. But why him? And why did whoever it was want to kill Suzy? A barrage of unanswered questions swirled in Bill’s head, leaving him feeling suffocated.
The atmosphere in the stairwell grew exceptionally heavy. After a long silence, Bill opened up about the anomalies he had observed in Aaron.
Once he finished, everyone’s expressions turned incredibly complex.
"So... he really was possessed?" Lucas’s voice floated uncertainty as he looked to Bill for confirmation.
No one answered. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to, but rather that they didn’t know how.
"...I don’t know either," Bill sighed. But there were undeniably times when he felt the boy was a total stranger.
Lucas and Elijah exchanged a look, a quiet understanding passing between them as they both let out a heavy sigh. If that really was the case, they no longer had any right to blame Suzy.
It took the Edison family some time to process everything. Afterward, the group went back out together to bury Aaron’s body. By the time they finished, the blizzard outside had grown fierce.
"Let’s go back."
They had set up a small marker for Aaron, and the group stood gathered before it. The one who spoke was Bill, who finally seemed to have reached a grim acceptance. While he couldn’t exactly be happy that Suzy had killed Aaron, there was simply no logical way to hold a grudge over it under these bizarre circumstances.
With a heavy sigh, Bill turned and headed back toward the building.
Suzy stared fixedly at the small marker, remaining silent until Derek gently tapped her shoulder. Snapping out of her daze, she gave him a quiet nod.
"Let’s go," she whispered, turning back toward Building 8.
But having stood out there for so long, coupled with her utter physical exhaustion, the world suddenly began to spin violently before her eyes.
"Suzy!"
Amidst the panicked cries of the group, Suzy blacked out completely.
When Suzy finally came to, she found herself lying in a bedroom. The space was empty and completely still. The room was perfectly warm, and a faint, familiar fragrance drifted through the air. She was back in her safe house.
Suzy blinked against the dim light. Before passing out, she had still retained a sliver of awareness. She remembered collapsing in the snow with Thomas and the others right beside her, so they must have carried her back.
But... where was everyone? Where did they go?
Just as confusion began to mount in her mind, a familiar, mechanical voice echoed inside her head:
[Host, I have returned.]