CCXVI: A Class Divided
For the first time in the series, all 9 members of the current main and supporting casts appear on the same page. (Despite being in different locations.) I purposely held off on gathering everyone together in one place until a dramatically appropriate time. (The only time they’ve been all in the same room thus far in the series was during the Chapter 1 fundraiser.) Phase Two built up the characters with different combinations forming small groups to deal with whatever was going on. Now that the entire school is involved, you can guess where this is headed.
As promised in the commentary for the cover to this chapter, here is a brief note about the cover visual. The depiction of Jen as a painting is an allusion to The Portrait of Dorian Gray, a novel about a man whose age is linked to a painting of himself. I went an extra step beyond the allusion and added an “underlayer” to the painting revealing decaying DNA strands so that the cover contained a more obvious hint to the theme of this chapter. Nobody reading this is expected to immediately clue into the Dorian Gray connection, though if you did, give yourself kudos.
