Into the Depths

Chapter 12

It's deliberate, there's no other way these deliveries could be delayed constantly without it purposefully being deliberate, Ben thought.

"Mom, Chip...are you guys finding delays in your reports too?" Ben asked, his voice soft.

"Yep," Chip nodded, his voice hard.

"Unfortunately," Belle sighed. "Granted I can't say it's *all* of the reports since I haven't gone through the whole box yet but there's enough there that a pattern is obvious."

"Gods this is sick," Chip muttered as he continued to pour through his own section of the research. "These are people. I know they're villains but they're still people. No matter how long the delays have been, it's inexcusable. Now all I can think is how many people, how many kids have died because of this?"

"Any number higher than zero is way too high," Ben sighed, trying not think of a young Mal, Evie, Jay and Carlos battling hunger while he had been sitting in his castle. "How did Auradon not notice this? It's not like it's just started—Mal said in the first viewing that the deliveries had been like this since she was born and Uma said in the last viewing that they were twenty years into a garbage strike."

"Yeah well, considering what Uma did to you in that viewing from what I heard—"

"Chip, she hasn't done it and that's not relevant," Ben said. "This has been going on for the life of the Isle."

"Maybe not the whole life," Belle said. "I think my box has the early years of the Isle deliveries—the first six months that the Isle existed, the deliveries were going on time."

"So whoever was causing the delays wanted to wait because they thought they might get caught?" Ben asked.

"Quite possibly."

"The question still stands though, how did Auradon miss this, mom?" Ben asked with a small sigh. "The same issue has been logged in the same area of the engine every month. It should have been investigated or at the very least we should have traded ships after the third month of delays!"

Gods did dad know? Ben thought with a growing sense of dread. Did he know about the delays and just decided to ignore them?

"I don't think your dad was involved Ben," Chip said softly, unknowingly answering Ben's internal ramblings. "I have the records where we're about four years into the Isle deliveries. Look. The time period of the delays starts off small but they really pick up speed when your mom was pregnant with you—and your dad never left her side."

"So whoever it is used the fact that mom was pregnant and dad was totally distracted to be more careless about it?" Ben asked and Chip nodded. "But then this could be anyone! Mom's pregnancy with me was announced throughout the kingdom!"

"I don't think it's just anyone," Belle said, speaking up. "Whoever this is has to be pretty highly ranked to be able to continually delay the ship. I'm speculating that they're potentially bribing the crew of the ship so they'd have to be able to do that and keep doing it for nineteen years."

"Well we know there's a group of about thirteen high ranking Auradonians who have the ability to keep people from seeing the full manifests," Chip pointed out. "They would also know exactly when Adam was distracted by your pregnancy Belle."

"Chip, are you saying you suspect someone on the council?" Ben asked. But then Ben remembered the letters Conner, Akiho and Emir had told him about; letters Auradon citizens with less than shiny pasts received threatening to send them to the Isle that were just signed 'the council'.

Clearly there was someone out there capable of that...and possibly worse.

"Ben, there's only three people on the council who dislike the idea of the Isle enough to do something like this."