On Cameron’s left side, just above the hip, was an oval brand, about two and a half inches wide. A belt buckle frame, seared into skin in a clean, terrible outline. The tissue was wet, already weeping. The edges were angry red. The center looked pale and damaged in a way that made Marshall’s stomach go cold.
It would scar. Permanently.
Marshall breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. He had trained himself for years to process horror without displaying it. A sniper’s requirement. Flinch at the wrong time and people die. He used that training now, not because he didn’t feel it, but because Cameron was watching his face like a drowning person watching the shoreline.
“Who,” Marshall said, as calmly as he could manage, “did this?”
Cameron’s lips trembled.
“Five seniors,” he whispered. “Carl Keller. Stanley Harden. Doug Hutchinson. Jerry Cruz. Barry Ellis.”
Marshall repeated the names in his head, not like a threat, but like coordinates.
“Where?”
“Bathroom near the gym,” Cameron said. “Lunch.”
“What happened?”
Cameron stared at the sidewalk, as if looking at Marshall might make it too real.
“They held me,” he said, voice thin. “Three of them. And… and the other two heated it. With a lighter. They—” He swallowed hard. “They laughed.”
That was the part that stayed with Marshall. Not just the injury. The laughter. The casualness. The certainty that they could do it and walk away.
Marshall stepped closer. He didn’t touch the burn yet. Touching would hurt.
“You’re coming with me,” he said. “We’re going to the hospital.”
Cameron’s eyes widened, fear flickering. “Please don’t—”
“Not about them,” Marshall said, cutting off the worry before it could grow. “About you.”
He guided Cameron into the truck with a steady hand on his shoulder. He drove to the ER in silence, but inside his mind, something old and precise had already started to move.
He’d spent fifteen years learning how systems worked. How people protected themselves. How power hid behind procedure.
He had not come home to let his son be branded like livestock.
The ER lights were harsh and white. A nurse with a soft voice and tired eyes—her badge read Melody North—led them into a room and asked Cameron to lift his shirt again.
Melody’s expression didn’t change much when she saw it, but something in her posture stiffened, like she’d stepped into familiar ground.
“I’m going to take photos,” she said gently. “For the record.”
Marshall watched her hands. She didn’t rush. She documented everything with the careful precision of someone who had filled out these forms before.
While Cameron clenched his jaw as the wound was cleaned, Melody leaned toward Marshall and lowered her voice.
“You should know,” she said, “this is the fourth time I’ve seen a burn like that from Dunmore High in three years.”
Marshall stared at her.
