Chapter 4 The Funeral

The grey sky hung low offering neither rain nor sunlight. It was grey enough to make everyone look sick.

The cemetery was filled not with friends or family, but with strangers.

Rows of dark umbrellas and black suits formed a claustrophobic perimeter around the two open graves, hands folded, where Laura and Noah were to be buried. Camera crews kept to the back but they were there.

The city had covered the funeral turning a personal tragedy into a publicized spectacle of civic mourning engineered for the evening news broadcast.

Van stood in the front row, his hands resting limply at his sides. He was present in the funeral but felt entirely detached as though his mind and soul were elsewhere. The numbness hadn't left, it had just gone flat. Like a volume tuned down and left there.

The low murmur of the crowd, the rustle of leaves in the wind, the rhythmic sound of footsteps all washed over him in a flat, numb wave. He didn't cry. He didn't shake. He just stared at the polished wood of two caskets, feeling nothing but emptiness.

The mayor approached first, followed by an entourage of aides and press liaisons. He offered a practiced mournful nod, extending a hand.

He didn't look at any of their faces. Instead he watched their shoes. Polished, dry and not a single speck of dirt from the ground where the graves had been dug.

“A devastating loss for our community, Mr. Zero,” the Mayor murmured, his voice carrying a calculated register of sorrow while ensuring his profile was angled precisely toward the local news cameras stationed respectfully outside the wrought-iron gates.

Van didn't speak. He took the hand. It was soft, brief, and entirely transactional. A stiff contact that Van severed almost instantly, dropping his arm back to his side.

Next came a high-ranking state official, unfolding a piece of cardstock. He began reading a meticulously drafted letter of condolence sent directly from President Wale Scepter.

“...a tragedy that strikes at the very heart of our nation's foundational peace. Please know that the government stands with you in this dark hour, and we will not rest until we get to the root of this accident.”

Accident.

The word sounded wrong in Van's mouth. He kept his face still.

Contempt was safer when it looked like grief.

Inside the pocket of his suit, his fingers traced the edges of the shrapnel he had taken from the morgue.

The government stands with you.

The simmering irritation began to replace his numbness.

He didn't know what they did to his family. At least not yet. He was still putting together the pieces but he knew they were using the burial as a convenient photo opportunity to soothe the public.

As the endless, procession of handshakes continued, Van’s gaze drifted past the line of grieving strangers and began passively looking round the perimeter of the cemetery

He noticed her when he looked round the perimeter for the second time.

Not because she moved. Because she didn't.

She was off to the side, under the shade of a withering silk cotton tree.

She was not with the crowd nor with the press.

She just stood there alone, black dress under a trench coat. No umbrella even though it was starting to mist.

She wasn't crying. She wasn't looking at the casket either. She was looking at the crowd. At the government officials, at him.

She didn't belong here. Before he could hold her gaze for more than a second, she subtly stepped back, disappearing into the treeline.

He brushed it away. Another distraction in a room full of noise.

“It is in these moments of incomprehensible darkness that we must look forward," the minister droned, drawing Van's attention back to the funeral. The clergyman’s voice was warm and practiced. "We cannot dwell on the ashes of what was lost. We must find the strength to heal. Move forward.”

Move on. Heal.

It felt like an erasure. A quiet, polite dismissal of the violence that had torn his world apart.

It sounded wrong.

How could he move on when the circumstances surrounding their deaths didn't sit well with him?

The minister smiled at him with a soft, pitiful look designed to comfort a man who had lost everything.

Van gave no reaction. He didn't nod or bow his head. He just looked through the minister, his face a mask of stone.

Restraint felt like the only honest reaction he had left.

The service concluded with a final, muted prayer.

As the crowd finally began to disperse, moving back toward the gate and waiting cars, Van noticed it.

A repeated flashing from the high ridge overlooking the cemetery.

It wasn't the press. The press were by the gate.

This was someone else.

Van shifted his stance slightly, his eyes tracking the light. The shutter was quiet.

A man in a groundskeeper's uniform was positioned behind a large stone, holding a long-barreled camera.

He was systematically photographing the face of every person who had stopped to speak with Van.

He turned his head for a moment. By the time he looked back, the man was gone.

Van took a deliberate step toward the ridge, his muscles coiling, but a sudden whisk of movement directly beside Laura’s grave caught his eye.

A figure in a green raincoat brushed past the dispersing crowd, moving with speed and precision. The stranger didn't pause to pay respects. He simply walked past the casket, dropped a small object onto the damp ground, and vanished into the cluster of black umbrellas before Van could even pivot his body.

Van walked slowly to the edge of the grave.

Resting against the wet grass, the stranger had left a sealed black envelope perfectly centered beside his wife's headstone.