Page 30 of Broken Ties
If I focus hard enough, it’s possible to set aside the sensations overwhelming me thanks to the years of discipline and training behind me. If I can tamp down the panic and swallow the bile, I can assess what in the fuck is happening to me right now, but that only leaves me with more questions.
There are no warning signs of a Gifted here who could magnify the side effects of my ability like this… it makes no sense. Fuck, I've stood in stadiums withtensof thousands of people—yet nothing has ever felt like this before.
There’s a tugging at the hem of my standard issue Tac pants, then a hand grasps my ankle, the point of contact like a brand as a searing heat radiates up my body as Aarav’s Gift floods through me. “He’s not injured, Black; I don’t know what to tell you. Thebullet was glancing and it hit his arm. There’s no damage to his mind, not physically at least, but I can’t sense a Neuro in there either. Shore, can you hear me?”
The only Neuro in my mind is myself, but I’m clearly fucking losing it. The effort it takes me to wrest my Gift back into the confines of my control has me puking, my vision blurring as my stomach empties. The hand on my ankle drops away, shuffling feet around me, but all of my attention is on my retching.
The moment the spasms end, I force words out of my mouth, wincing at how hoarse I am, but I’m coherent enough.“There’s something—a Gifted is doing this. I don’t know… what it is.”
Aarav hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me up, dragging me over to Kieran and away from the puddle of my vomit. I can barely move to help him, all of my focus turned inward to keep a hold of my control. Though I’ve never experienced anything like this before, I’m starting to get a feel of it.
“The Gifted isn’t attacking—not like a Neuro. It’s… a magnifying glass… boosting my Gift until it’s out of control. It’s feeding it back to me. It’s—fuck, my mind is being cannibalized by itself… by my own Gift.”
Kieran’s eyebrows furrow as he glances over his shoulder, but there’s nothing but smoke to be seen. While I’ve been MIA, a Flame has clearly been hard at work and the buildings surrounding us are now nothing but ashes. Any cover we might’ve had is gone.
Meeting Kieran’s eye as he turns back to me, I give him a curt nod. “The plan?—”
I’m cut off by an explosion nearby, south-east of our position but impossible to accurately pinpoint thanks to the smoke. Joshi grunts as the Shield is hit by falling debris, but he manages to hold its form, even when a piece of concrete the size of a minivan bounces off of it. The air fills with screams of terror and wailingsirens from the vehicles close to the blast perimeter. When he turns back to meet my gaze with a firm nod, there’s blood dripping steadily from his nose, a sign that our time within the protection of his Gift is swiftly running out.
Kieran gives me a look even while he speaks slowly to me, but his tone is level enough that it’s not frustration fueling him but concern that I’ve had the sense knocked out of me. “Respectfully, the old plan is out, and we’re all in on the new plan. I’m taking command while your brain is jello, and I’ve called for an assist.”
I don’t know what my face is doing; I’m too busy trying to hold my shit together, but whatever is there, Kieran clearly doesn’t like it and shakes his head at me. “If you have any complaints, Shore, we can argue about it later, when we’re not sitting fucking ducks to a threat we had no idea existed in the first place.”
Before I can correct him, another wave of power washes over me and the pressure in my head begins to build again. The last fragment of clarity I have is one gut-wrenching realization: this Gifted is going to kill me and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Then, I know nothing but the overwhelming pressure.
I don’t know how much time passes or what my team does, whether I’m still on my feet or if Aarav sets me back down on the ground. I don’t know if I’m screaming or vomiting again, nothing exists but the violent decay of my brain matter.
Then it stops.
It stops so abruptly that I lose consciousness for a moment and then come to, as if my body has had a system reboot. Feeling detached, I register my surroundings and the movement around me, but rather than alarming me, I’m cataloging it.
The screams in the air, the inky darkness surrounding the Shield, the spray of blood over the barrier until it drips down to the ground, the rigid line of shoulders as my team watches theDraven nightmares tear the Resistance soldiers limb from limb. Seven, eight, nine, a dozen, two dozen, there are too many rabid shadows feasting for this to be North or Nox alone.
Kieran’s face suddenly appears before me, his mouth moving but the words sounding far away before he grabs my arm and Transports me home.
“The Gifted is gone—and the town was gone before we got here.”
The incessant buzzingof my phone wakes me, the rattling of the side table as it dances across the polished surface, a familiar sound that tricks me into opening my eyes without thinking the action through. The blinding light hits me like an axe between the eyes, cleaving my skull in two. Reflexively, I squeeze them shut again, but that doesn’t help much. Every inch of my brain is swollen and aching desperately, unlike anything I’ve ever felt before, and I’m almost sorry I survived the attack.
“If you’re going to vomit, try not to do it in the bed. It was difficult enough getting you back here; changing rooms will be a nightmare.”
It causes me more pain than it's worth, but a groan tears out of my chest that’s more of a pained snarl than anything else. Of all the Gifted I don't want to put up with right now, Nox is at the top of the list. He even beats out my father, who I’ve barely spoken to since he found out I was in the Draven Bond Group.
When I finally brave opening my eyes again, the pain returns, but something about knowing it’s coming helps to dull the sharpest edges of it.
Nox looks like shit.
Hungover, or maybe even drunk still, he’s barely contained right now. There’s a manic energy around him, like electricity trapped within the sneering meat casing beside me, and all it’ll take is stumbling over a single tripwire for him to detonate, taking the entire building and all the Gifted within it with him.
Watching him go after our Bond, even knowing why, it’s damaged the steadfast and careful friendship we spent a decade building. I’d never reveal his trauma, not even to Oli, but it’s hard not to resent him for lashing out at her the way he does. Especially when he involves me in it, like bringing that girl to dinner.
I’ve avoided Ashlee Mercurio for years and Nox knows it. Bringing her was a ‘fuck you’ to me just as much as it was to our Bond.
With my skull on the brink of collapse as it is, I don't have it in me to play twisted mind games or hold in my temper, not when it’s the last fucking thing I want to do. If he so much as mentions our Bond right now, I’m going to say something that will destroy what tenuous peace we still have between the Bond Group.
“Stop pouting; I have no interest in torturing you. I’m only here because Northinsisted. Apparently, you need a babysitter because he doesn’t have time to solve any more problems.”