Government Static

The cops were asking questions.

Jason heard it from Dom, who heard it from his cousin who worked at the courthouse. Sheriff Travers had a whole board up with their names on it. “Drug network,” he called them. “Domestic terrorism threat.”

“Terrorism?” Katie laughed, but not like it was funny. “We’re fighting monsters, and they think we’re the threat?”

They were parked behind the Winn-Dixie again, comparing notes from the past few days. More shadow sightings. More electronics dying. More people acting wrong.

“Adults can’t see it,” Amanda said. “My mom works at the hospital. I asked her about weird patients. She just said flu season’s bad this year.”

“Or they don’t want to see it,” Jason said. “Easier to blame teenage drug dealers than admit reality’s breaking down.”

Josh’s phone buzzed. Unknown number.

“Yeah?”

“This is Agent Chen, FBI. We need to talk.”

Josh hung up. Two seconds later, it rang again.

“Hang up again and we’ll be at your door in five minutes.”

Josh looked around his garage. Vials of shadow-killer, chemistry equipment stolen from school, notebooks full of impossible equations. If the FBI searched this place, he was fucked.

“What do you want?”

“Information. About Jason Amano’s network. About what you kids are really planning for New Year’s Eve.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Nexus points. Light weapons. The extraction. Any of that ring a bell?”

Josh’s blood went cold. They were listening to everything.

“Five minutes, Mr. Morgan. Or we come to you.”

The line went dead.

Josh grabbed his bike and pedaled toward the pool hall as fast as he could. The cops thought they were terrorists. The FBI was listening to their calls. And somewhere in the shadows, real monsters were getting ready to end the world.

Adults couldn’t help them. Adults couldn’t even see the problem.

They were on their own.

“Maintain surveillance but don’t spook them. We’re mobilizing response teams, but we need to know exactly what they’re planning. Any chance you could get someone inside?”

“They’re teenagers, Agent Chen. Pretty sure they’d spot a thirty-year-old undercover trying to buy weed and talk about cosmic horror.”

“Then we watch and wait. But Sheriff, I need you to understand—these kids might think they’re fighting shadows, but they’re planning something real. Something that could hurt a lot of people.”

After Chen hung up, Travers stared at his evidence board. Teenage faces looked back, kids he’d seen around town their whole lives. Jason Amano, whose grandfather had been on the city council. Katie Corset, who’d survived more than any kid should. Josh Morgan, who’d won the science fair three years running.

Not the faces of terrorists. But then again, they never were.

Travers decided to check out one of the “incident sites” himself. Tommy Rodriguez had been specific—the old pool hall on Silver Springs Boulevard, where shadows had allegedly exploded.

The afternoon sun beat down as he pulled into Qball’s parking lot. The place looked normal enough—faded paint, neon signs, the eternal Florida mixture of decay and defiance. But something felt off. The Spanish moss hung too still. The shadows under the trees seemed deeper than they should be.

“Afternoon, Sheriff,” Pete called from the doorway. The owner had run Qball’s for fifteen years, serving beer and turning a blind eye to whatever else went on. “Checking up on us?”

“Just following up on a report, Pete. You have any trouble here a few nights ago?”

Pete’s expression didn’t change, but Travers had been reading faces too long to miss the flicker of… something. Fear? Confusion? “Trouble? Nah. Few kids playing pool, nothing unusual.”

“Tommy Rodriguez said he saw something strange. Shadows moving, some kind of explosion?”

“Tommy’s been going through a rough patch since his wife left. Probably seeing things.”

Travers nodded, playing along. But he noticed Pete’s hand trembling slightly as he lit a cigarette. Noticed the new security light installed above the door. Noticed the salt line across the threshold, like something out of a horror movie.

Inside, the pool hall was empty except for a couple of day drinkers. Normal. Except for the way they kept glancing at the corners, where shadows pooled despite the overhead lights. Except for the fresh burn mark on the floor near table three, shaped like a starburst.

“Mind if I look around?”

“Free country,” Pete said, but his voice was tight.

Travers examined the burn mark. Not from fire—he’d seen enough arson to know. This looked more like… like what? Electrical discharge? But there were no outlets nearby, no signs of wiring problems.

His shadow fell across the mark and for just a second, he could have sworn it moved independently, sliding sideways while he stood still.

He blinked. Stress and suggestion, that’s all. Spending too much time thinking about teenage ghost stories.

But he took photos anyway. Evidence of something, even if he wasn’t sure what.

“Pete,” he said on his way out, “if those kids come back, you call me. Whatever they’re planning, I want to stop it before someone gets hurt.”

Pete nodded, but his eyes said he wasn’t worried about the kids. He was worried about something else. Something that made him put salt lines across his door and install new lights.

Travers drove back to the station, shadow reports crumpled in his pocket. Kids with EMPs, he told himself. That’s all. Scientific terrorism, not supernatural nonsense.

But he found himself checking his rearview mirror more than usual, watching the shadows between the trees.

By 4 PM, Travers had made his decision. The office was buzzing with activity—deputies plotting locations, phones ringing with tips, fax machine churning out FBI bulletins about potential Y2K threats.

“Listen up,” he called, and the room quieted. “I know some of you have heard the weird reports. Shadows, cosmic horror, all that X-Files bullshit. I want to be clear—we’re dealing with disturbed teenagers who’ve convinced themselves they’re living in a horror movie. Our job is to stop them before their fantasy becomes our reality.”

Deputy Martinez raised a hand. “What about the electronic interference? My cousin at the courthouse says their computers have been acting possessed.”

“EMPs,” Travers said firmly. “Electromagnetic pulse devices. These kids are smarter than we gave them credit for. They’re testing weapons, using supernatural nonsense as cover.”

“But Tommy Rodriguez—”

“Is traumatized by his nephew going off the deep end. Look, I get it. These reports are weird. But weird doesn’t mean supernatural. It means we’re dealing with a new kind of threat. Tech-savvy kids who’ve weaponized their angst.”

He pointed to the map of Ocala, red pins marking reported incidents. “New Year’s Eve is in five days. Every available officer works that night. Establish perimeters around key infrastructure—power stations, water treatment, telecommunications. If these kids think they’re fighting cosmic horror, they’ll target what they think are ‘nexus points.’”

“Rules of engagement?” Deputy Collins asked.

“They’re American teenagers, not enemy combatants. Non-lethal force only unless lives are in immediate danger. We take them alive, figure out what they’ve really built, and shut down their network before it spreads.”

The room dispersed to assignments, but Martinez lingered. “Sheriff, what if… what if there’s something to the supernatural reports?”

Travers looked at her hard. Martinez was young, impressionable. Exactly the kind who might buy into millennial panic. “Deputy, in my experience, the only monsters are human. Whatever’s happening, teenagers are doing it. Not shadows, not cosmic entities. Kids with too much time, too many drugs, and too much internet access.”

She nodded, but doubt lingered in her eyes.

After she left, Travers sat alone in his office. The afternoon sun slanted through the blinds, casting bars of light and shadow across his desk. He watched the shadows, waiting for them to move wrong.

They didn’t. Because shadows were just the absence of light, and teenagers were just confused kids, and Y2K was just a computer glitch that everyone was overreacting to.

He picked up the phone to call his wife, let her know he’d be working late all week. As he dialed, the lights flickered again. In the darkness between, he thought he heard something whisper in a language that predated human speech.

Then the lights came back, and he heard only the dial tone.

“Gonna be a long New Year’s Eve,” he muttered, and got back to work protecting Ocala from its own children.

Outside his window, the shadows lengthened with the approaching evening. Some of them lengthened in directions that didn’t match the sun’s position.

But Sheriff Hank Travers didn’t notice. He had real threats to deal with.