Thunder Rolling

by Ripley Proserpina

  I needed them back and fast. I didn’t like not feeling them, I didn’t want to be without their energy, their very essences, running through me. “I don’t know. Where is everyone?”

  The jolt must have thrown us everywhere. I had to find all of them. Brandon got to his feet, taking my hand. “Guys? Wake up. Where are you?”

  “Fuck,” Nick called out. “What in the hell just happened?”

  We moved toward his voice, finding him leaning up against a tree. Next to him, John wasn’t moving. I dropped onto my knees, shaking him. “John. John.”

  He moaned, but his eyes opened slowly. “Whit? You okay?”

  “I am. And you are.” I could breathe a little easier. Carson, Dante, and Isaiah, I wouldn’t be entirely relieved until I found them all.

  Brandon called from a distance. “Got them. They’re over here.”

  John stumbled to his feet. I held onto his waist, taking Nick that way, too. We walked slowly. My gaze ate up everyone when we finally joined back together. They breathed. I laughed. It was such a relief. “Well… now what?”

  “Did we get him?” Isaiah’s voice was extra gruff. “Is he fried?”

  “You got him, Zero.” I used Nick’s name for him, which made him grin. “Mace is no more.”

  Dante shook his head. “We managed to unlink ourselves. Whit, if you’re not sick of all of us, we’re going to have to…” He grabbed his forehead. “Hold on.”

  “Shit.” Nick doubled over. “It’s… Dexter.”

  What? He wasn’t here. I whirled around. Nothing.

  “He’s calling to us.” Isaiah winced. “I haven’t felt him this strongly in a long time.”

  “The jolt.” Dante finally said. “It opened us way too widely. He’s trying to get in.”

  Carson put his arm around my waist. “Don’t worry, Whit. It’ll stop. He’s tried before, many times, before you came to us. He isn’t getting the six of us.”

  38

  Nick

  I had gotten used to the voices in my head. I didn’t think Whitney knew this, but she projected real loud sometimes, and when she thought about me, I heard it.

  They were the best thoughts in the world. Maybe twenty-five years from now, after she’d gotten to know me, really know me, and I bugged the shit out of her, she wouldn’t think of me so fondly. But another part of me didn’t think so. That was just Whitney. She loved me.

  So when I woke up and I couldn’t hear her, a yawning pit opened in my stomach. I smiled along with everyone else. I cheered, yay! We did it!

  I didn’t like it. I didn’t like not having her in my head.

  Anxiety filled my chest, and I took a breath. “Are you okay?”

  I’d been hit by a billion volts, lost the woman I loved, but we were alive.

  And we were going to stay that way.

  Nick. Come back. Dexter’s oily voice slid into the place where Whitney’s should have been. I’ll take care of you. It will be better.

  Fuck off. I mentally sent him two middle fingers and hoped he got it. From the chuckle that filled my head, he did.

  “Nick?” Whitney touched my arm, and I jolted back to the here and now.

  “I’m good,” I lied.

  She smiled at me, and I couldn’t help reaching for her. I took her in my arms the way I’d been wanting to for days and held her against me. Her body was warm, but not feverish, and though she felt thinner, she held me tight. “I’m good,” I said, meaning it a little more this time.

  “We’ll need to monitor our vitals,” Dante said suddenly. “I want to make sure we don’t start deteriorating.”

  I felt Whitney tremble, and she pulled away. “Deteriorate? You have heartbeats. You’re alive.”

  I put my hand over my heart. It pumped in my chest, the rhythm steady. “I’m alive.”

  “We are.” Dante put his hands out. “I’m not trying to make you panic. I just want to be aware. We don’t know what will happen without the circuit. If we’ll maintain our current state or if we’ll revert.”

  “Let’s open it again,” Whitney said. “We’re all good. Isaiah.” She twirled her finger in the air. “Light it up!”

  In the distance, thunder rumbled. “Hold on, Zero.” I said. I’d been zapped once, and I could use more than thirty seconds before I got hit again.

  “It wasn’t me,” Isaiah said. “And I prefer Zero to Stormy. FYI.”

  “Got it.” Shit. I made a mental note to call him Stormy more than necessary in the future. I wondered if saying his name between words would be too much.

  Probably not.

  “Let’s get moving,” Dante said. “Rest up, and then we’ll try to reconnect.”

  “What do you mean ‘try?’ ” Whitney asked. “Do you think it won’t work?”

  Dante shook his hands next to his sides before stuffing them into his pockets. “I don’t know, Whitlee. I hope it will. I think it will. We did it before.”

  She nodded, and I noticed her bottom lip quivered, but she bit down on it hard.

  Now I was hard. “I’m all for moving. The car is waiting.” I grabbed Whit’s hand, pulling her to the junk heap somehow still idling on the road. “Where should we go?”

  “Our cottage,” Whitney said quietly. “Please.”

  39

  Whitney

  I was many things, but none of them was stupid. The guys were hiding how bad this was, or trying to, since I’d seen right through it. They were terrified and in true fashion of those who had no idea what to do in situations, all I could think was to get them home.

  “We can do that. Let’s go.” Brandon took a step forward, and then he doubled over grabbing onto his head. “No.”

  I rushed to him. “Brandon? Talk to me.”

  “No. No. No.” He rocked back and forth, and Carson knelt in front of him. “No.”

  Carson put a hand on his shoulder. “Fight him back. We’ve all done it before.”

  Brandon’s whole body seized, and he fell backward onto the ground. Carson darted backward as Isaiah grabbed me, not letting me reach him. Why? Why did they stop me? I fought. Brandon needed me.

  “Isaiah,” I shouted.

  “No,” he answered. “There’s nothing you can do if he’s going under except get yourself hurt. He has to fight it off, and he’s losing.”

  No. Isaiah’s words flooded me with nothing but grief. “Brandon!” I shouted like I could save him with my voice alone.

  He raised his head, and even if I hadn’t seen more Controlled and Uncontrolled than I could have ever thought to in a lifetime, I would have known what happened. Brandon was back under Dex’s control.

  He rose to his feet, tilting his head to the side, his eyes dead. He turned left and walked away from us, his back leg dragging slightly behind him.

  Inside, I hollered. Inside, I wept. Inside, I bellowed to the fucking moon. Inside, I died. Outside, I stayed still. Surely one of them would do something. Surely one of them would stop him, like they’d done with John, grab him and bring him somewhere where we could recover him. Why didn’t they do that?

  I spun around, intending to ask Isaiah just that. But this time I didn’t manage to restrain myself from the scream. He’d just been talking to me. But now Isaiah’s eyes looked just like Brandon’s. He stepped away from me, and I couldn’t help myself. I grabbed his arms. This was Zero. The first to separate. Stormy. The controller of the lightning. No. No. No.

  He walked away from me like he didn’t see me, as though my existence didn’t matter at all.

  “Dante.” I darted from Isaiah. “Do something.”

  My scientist was dead-eyed. No. It didn’t matter how much I shouted inside my head, it didn’t stop anything.

  “No.” I shouted it loudly. “Dante, hear me.”

  For a second I wondered if he did, if there wasn’t a spark of recognition, but then nothing. He walked in a different direction than the other two. Was it all of them?

  “I’m still here.” Carson tugged me to him. “I can
hear him, but I’m clear. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Were the others? John? Nick?

  It didn’t take but a second to know the answer to that.

  They stared after their friends, their faces reflecting the same broken feeling I had. “We have to stop them.”

  John nodded. He breathed in deeply and ran after Isaiah. He grabbed his arm, and Isaiah dragged him for a moment before I heard an awful wrenching. John immediately let go, and backed away.

  “What was that?” Nick asked.

  “His arm.” John swallowed hard and shook his head. He wiped his hands on his pants like something physical was left on them. “I pulled his arm out of the socket.”

  “They’ll injure themselves to get away,” Carson said. He gave a decisive nod. “That makes sense. Dexter wants them back. Dr. Karlton wants them back. They’re not going to heal if we break them. Let them go.”

  “Why not you?” I asked, looking between the three of them. “Why haven’t they gotten you, too?”

  Nick laughed. “What use am I?” He ran his hand down his face. “Brandon was your first love. That will bring you back, Whit. Dante is Dr. Karlton’s protégé. And Isaiah controls the lightning. Think of all the people they can link and unlink with his power.”

  “They don’t want me forcing them to do anything they don’t want to do,” John muttered. “They’ve seen what good that does them.”

  “But Carson knows when something is about to happen…”

  “Maybe that’s why they’re yelling for you the loudest right now,” Nick said. His gaze was sad as he met my eyes and then looked at Carson. “They’re going to work on getting you back. The last thing they want is for you to tell us when to run.”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I won’t go under. I’m in control of my own mind.”

  “But you feel them, don’t you,” Nick pressed.

  “I feel Dexter. He thinks I’m a fish on a hook and he just has to reel me in slowly.”

  Nick grabbed my arm and started to drag me toward the car. “I want to get out of here. I don’t want Dexter looking through their eyes at us. Watching us.”

  By now, the others had shuffled in the woods. I had time to see Brandon’s blond head disappear between the trees and then they were gone.

  “We know where they are going. We’ll find them. Like we did with Dante. Like we did with Brandon and John before,” I spoke aloud, but to no one in particular. I was trying to reassure myself. But it felt so wrong to leave them. I didn’t need the circuit to still be linked to them. They were mine.

  And I didn’t even care if I sounded like Dexter when I said it: they were mine.

  Nick had his hand on the car door handle when he stopped. I knew what I would see before he even turned around. But for that moment where he just stood there, I had hope.

  And my heart broke a little more.

  His balance wavered, his gaze straight ahead like he was trying to remember where he put his keys.

  “Nick,” I whispered. My voice was harsh, like I was shoving the words past my vocal cords. “Don’t go.”

  He continued to stand there, like a robot, until he finally, finally, moved. Had I wanted him to move? No. This was infinitely worse than him staring off into space.

  He was leaving me. Like Brandon and Dante and Isaiah.

  “See?” I said to him as he shuffled past me toward the forest. “They did want you.”

  Carson jogged along next to him, but I could have told him not to bother.

  “Can you get him back John?” I asked. “Maybe you could just yell at him to stay. To fight.”

  John nodded and opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  No no no. I had John. I had Carson. I lost Nick.

  I lost Nick and Dante and Brandon and Isaiah.

  And now I’d lost John.

  Unblinking, he took one step and then another. Each one of them was being led away from me.

  “Get in.” Carson’s voice was tight. He jerked the door open and slid into the driver’s seat. “Hurry.”

  Somehow I made my feet move and got into the car.

  He stared straight ahead as I shut the door and buckled in, and then he took off.

  We arrived at our little cottage not long afterward. It was nighttime, the same sort of night as the first time we’d happened upon it.

  Different flowers were blooming now. Late summer flowers. Spiderwort. Asters. I touched the purple flowers as we walked by.

  “It’s almost fall,” I whispered. I shut my eyes, letting myself feel the wind in the air. There. Just a hint of chill. There would be an Indian summer, like there was every year, but I’d bet we had only a few more weeks of heat and humidity.

  Then it would be fall. And everything would die.

  “We’ll get them back.” Carson said. “I know we can. This isn’t over. I don’t know if this will help or hurt you, but I can promise you they’re trying to resist. Inside—” He pounded on his chest. “Each of them is screaming to get back to you. They didn’t go because they wanted to. They didn’t leave because they gave up. This disease… whatever it is, whatever it does to us, how it kills us, it leaves us susceptible. That’s the only way I can understand it. It’s like… like we can’t help it.”

  I nodded. That made an unfortunate amount of sense. “Carson, in that case, I think you shouldn’t be driving. If you go under… we’ll go straight off the road.”

  He grimaced. “I’m totally in control. I can hear him, but I have no inclination to go. That being said. I don’t think John or Nick did either. I’ll pull over. You drive.”

  In a world where nothing made sense, that at least seemed logical.

  Maybe. How was I to know anymore?

  40

  Dante

  In my wildest dreams, I didn’t imagine being back here. I could hardly remember being Controlled when I was Uncontrolled but now I could remember it all. I could remember every second of this torture.

  I walked. Not because I wanted to but because somehow Dr. Karlton had gotten Dex to send me to him. That was all I could hear. Dex telling me to go to Dr. Karlton. I’d do anything to stop this. I wasn’t even in control of turning my head. It was the worst kind of hell.

  Dex was like Whitney, but there was no love reaching me in our connection, no warmth, no growth. There were only orders. And pain.

  I walked because I had no choice, because I was dead and this was hell. Dex was the devil.

  For the briefest of time, I’d known heaven in Whitney’s arms.

  But loving me harmed her. She’d never been sick before me, never injured until she loved me with her body. I’d forgotten that the dead didn’t have lovers, the dead didn’t have sweet, unforgettable moments. The dead were dead. Period. I’d never believed, not like Carson, in some afterlife. This was it. And as if to prove it, we hadn’t even been allowed to go when we were done.

  We stayed here to endure more.

  Forever. A tear slipped from my eye, and it startled me. That was probably the last thing I’d ever do of my own volition.

  Goodbye, Whitlee. I loved you, and I am sorry I left you harmed.

  41

  Isaiah

  I was pretty sure my arm was dislocated and I was pretty sure it was John who’d done it. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure because this fucking sucked, but I was mostly certain that had just happened. I screamed but no sound came out. I remembered this well. How had I ever forgotten how awful being manipulated physically by an evil son of a bitch was? How had I ever blacked this out?

  42

  John

  You will let me go.

  You will let me go.

  All I got back was laughter. Dex thought I was hilarious. I walked over rocks and through streams. I lost my shoe a way back, but that wasn’t what bothered me.

  What bothered me was that I couldn’t remember losing it. I couldn’t remember the direction I’d been given.

  Keep walking, jackass. Dexter was in my head, remind
ing me, pushing me. Urging more forward. Time passed, and suddenly it was morning. When had it become morning?

  I supposed that was a small gift—blacking out. I didn’t have to remember every single moment of being dead and Controlled. I stumbled, falling to my knees and something broke. I didn’t feel it, but I heard it.

  Another small gift.

  Get up.

  It was hard to get to my feet. My hands didn’t work right. I pushed against the ground, but I fell over and groaned.

  Someone shuffled by me. I thought I recognized the boots, but they were gone a second later.

  Get up.

  43

  Nick

  John fell. It looked like it hurt. Maybe it hurt as much as the limb poking into my side. Did I have more than one kidney? I hoped so.

  Every so often, I was able to shut my mind to Dexter’s incessant commands, and the blissful silence following was matched only by the physical pain that overwhelmed me.

  It sucked. Awareness and self-control meant feeling pain.

  But I would take it. It was slowing me down and keeping me closer to Whitney. The longer it took me to go where I was going…

  I blinked and realized I stood outside the waterpark. I’d walked ten miles and had no memory of it.

  Pain, blinding hot, rolled over me. It brought me to my knees.

  Stop whining. Dexter was a mother fucker and when I…

  I will see them again.

  Whitney? I could barely concentrate through the pain, but I forced myself to stay open to her. I’m here. Can you hear me?

  She didn’t answer me. Of course not, she couldn’t hear me. We weren’t connected anymore. But the receiver in me could still find her voice in the universe if I concentrated, which was way harder to fucking do than it should have been.