The officers think I can't hear their mutters carrying through the balmy air.

'A tenner says it was an inside job.'

'That security guard must have been on a big bounty for this.'

'It's that band of immigrants who protested in Trafalgar Square last month.'

'They were hiding refugees—their uncles—in that pallet and that's why they had to blow it sky high when the alarms blared.'

I heard them back at Pimlico, in a station so muggy a hurricane couldn't stir the stagnancy. Conspiracy theories blaming foreign governments, cartels, neo-suffragettes, the mafia, the antiabortion brigade, you name it. Everything but my version of events.

Long days, punctuated by the clip of thickened soles and rattling of keys, offered little more than their loose words served up with trays of gruel. Perhaps that's part of their mind games? Another way to break you.

Recently, they've been talking of greater repercussions; Prime Minister—Christopher Seaford—suspended international travel. Closing the borders won't help. That casement is long gone.

Father Glendor offers something of a smile though I must be delusional to expect any compassion at this funeral. I realise his attention was at the gravedigger behind me when a stout man, in thigh-high green Wellington boots, comes forth from the cobbled pathway I climbed and drops into the pit to receive the coffin.

Muffled sobs rise to cloud the silence as the casket is wheeled through. Lorraine. Clive. Pauline. My mother. Grandparents. All those I held close, come to the front, though in their grief they can't even look at me. Most police officers dip their chins as it passes, all but the detective, though she wavers as she steps back from the grave and falls in line beside my mother.

This is the part that woke me in a sleep paralysis, bathed in sweat, but today the coffin is sealed. My father's eyes, wide and terrified, will be closed, too, inches beneath the casket lid.

Blood trickling over his eyelashes.

I bite my lip.

His body slumped against the conveyor belt, arms out wide, flashes before me. I resist the urge to wipe at my face and instead let the tears roll down my cheeks and my unkempt hair fall into my eyes.

'The wife's not talking,' one of the police officers whispers behind me. How dare he bring her up. I want to turn and punch him, to draw his chest—by his uniform buttons—up to my shoulder height and watch the blood drain from his smug face. The threads of conversation I pick up thereafter are worse, with 'retard' and 'breakdown' being the most painful. What did I expect when she won't even speak?

Lowering the coffin stings like gravel in my eyes. Jaw clamped, I grind my teeth, praying for it to end.

It's real.

I did this.

Detective Pike has been watching me since the service began. In fact, she's been at it since she picked me up running like a scared beggar on the Dover cliffs, gun in hand, and charged me with first-degree murder, since a dozen officers pounced on me, squeezing my neck into the dirt, and twisting my hands behind my back until I was sure they'd break. She's judging my remorse, but like every other aspect she's evaluated, she's wrong.

I don't know who they were nor why they stole the case of Zaconoph-A, and I sure as hell don't know where they took it. What would terrorists want with a fertility drug, anyway?

But four guards died. And that's only counting physical injuries. My mother—she's a victim too—in many senses.

Detective Pike is a giraffe of a woman next to my mother, in her tight navy suit, scraped back hair and a stare so callous, it could bruise. She doesn't comfort the frail, tawny-haired women nor notice the vacant expression in her eyes as she stares at the standard-issue pine coffin, as the attendants shovel dirt with tarnished spades into the well, as the clouds soak up the sunlight, sealing the humidity in until we are pickles in an unsavoury jar.

Please Mum, look at me. She does, but her once illuminated expression is gone. When our eyes meet, no unspoken words pass between us, though so much is unsaid.

I want to shout, 'I did it for you, I did it for you.' She must see me—her son—not the monster she recognises now. The others turn. Their stares burn, and the shame uproots a surge of anger that makes my fists curl, but still the expression on my mother's face remains unchanged.

She must understand, I did it for her.

The shackles pull tight and I realise I'm moving. Being moved. Restrained. My throat is not just dry, it's hoarse. Only when they push me back into the patrol car, do I hear the shouting—my cries—echoing off the roof.

'Tell them, Mum! Tell them I did it for you!'

They need not shelter me from her response. She won't reply. I've been her son for eighteen years, but it's taken me sixteen days to realise she doesn't have a son anymore.

The coffin ought to have taken two bodies. For David Azure is dead. Now there's only Blue.

Thanks for reading Chapter Three of Sever. If you enjoyed this chapter or paragraphs within it please hit like, vote or comment - I'd love to hear from you. Press to follow Sever for updates when new chapters go live. Here's a recap of the cast list so far. Meantime, the next chapter is now live and it's an explosive one, so go ahead, take a read...

CAST LIST (so far)

Jade Lively - Lilly Collins (the protagonist)

Adrian Lively - Alex Pettyfer (Jade's husband)

Blue - Liam Hemsworth (the protagonist / anti-hero and Jade's ex-boyfriend)

Mikey Drosner - Jack Black (Blue's lawyer)

Detective Pike - Viola Davis (Blue's prosecutor)

Prime Minister Christopher Seaford - Gary Oldman