“Your brother?” Giselle says.
Ron grabs the metal band and tries to tug it off.
“Ow!” Noah says, holding the band. “Stop that! The cord is in my head. Disconnect it from the laptop.”
Ron gets up and goes to the table. She inspects the cord.
“What do you mean your brother?” Giselle says.
“Carl! My brother Carl!” the man yells. “Haven’t you noticed I look exactly like him? We’re twins!”
“Carl never said anything about having a brother.”
It irks Ron that Giselle is just standing there holding the flashlight—not even making an effort to point it over here so Ron can see better—instead of trying to help him.
Ron leans close to the side of the laptop. The cord goes into the HDMI port. Besides the fact that it goes into Noah’s head, it looks like a normal HDMI cord. Ron pulls it out.
Noah falls down on the mattress, disturbingly still. Ron drops the cord and rushes to him. She puts a finger under his nose.
“Oh my god, he isn’t breathing,” Ron says, looking to Giselle, who’s still just standing there with wide eyes.
Ron gets up and plugs back in the cord. Noah’s chest starts rising and falling again.
“H-how is that possible?” Giselle says.
“I don’t know but maybe we can get him out of here if we unplug the laptop and take it with us,” Ron says. “We should probably take the power cord too, I guess, so the battery doesn’t run out later.”
The laptop’s power cord trails to the shelves, but she doesn’t see where it’s plug into from here. She follows the cord.
“Don’t bother with that,” Giselle says. “Let’s get out of here now.”
“We have to take him with us.”
“No! Carl is coming back soon. We should just put him back how we found him and get out of here.”
She searches the shelves but still doesn’t see an outlet. “I’m just going to unplug the cord and—”
“Ron, listen!” Giselle points to the window.
In the silence, she can hear the faint sound of a motorcycle.
“We have to go!” Giselle says.
Ron’s heart pounding, she rushes back to Noah. She lays Noah down as he was and puts the sheet back over his head while Giselle runs to the table and closes the laptop and rests the headphones back in front of it.
They run up the stairs, the motorcycle sound getting louder. Ron unhooks the latch door and shuts it.
“You go out the door,” Giselle says quickly. “I have to lock it from the inside.”
Ron nods and rushes out. Giselle closes the door. A bolt snaps in place.
Ron considers just running into the forest but she doesn’t. She waits by the window, bouncing nervously, as Giselle wiggles through.
When Giselle’s feet hit the ground, she looks at Ron, stunned, as if she can’t believe Ron is still here. “Come on, hurry!”
They run into the forest, back to the diagonal road.
Chapter 22
Chrys,
I wish I had more to tell you but I didn’t really get to find out if that guy is gifted or not. But he was DEFINITELY a hostage. Turns out one of the giftists is keeping his twin brother knocked out in his basement with a cord attached through his skull, plugged into a laptop.
The laptop also seems to be keeping him alive. I tried to free him, but he has to stay plugged in or it’s like… taking the batteries out of a robot or something. He just goes dead.
Anyway, that man has to be gifted. Why else would his brother keep him like that?
This giftist has technology. He claims he has a scanner that can detect who’s gifted or not. I don’t know if it really works, but after seeing the stuff in his basement, I’m inclined to think it does.
I know you like reading and researching and stuff so if you want to look into it, he has hundreds of posts under the name Normal-C in the normalnews.net forums (giftist newspaper website). His real name is Carl and his brother’s name is Noah. Middle-aged white dudes with dirty blond hair and green eyes. Beyond that, I don’t really know anything about them.
Link to his post about the scanner: normalnews.net/forums/t=154
I’m safe now but I’m gonna find a way to free that guy.
Please update soon.
Ron
Chapter 23
I open my eyes.
I’m laying on the rug in the cabin in front of the board game, Ana Maria curled up against me.
When I sit up, my body feels sore. I rub my neck and the side of the hip I was laying on.
Looking at my watch, I stand up slowly. I don’t remember falling back asleep but a couple hours have passed since coming back from Cabin 9. It’s still very early in the morning. Dim sunshine lights up the cabin.
I head to Remington’s bunk right near me and climb up the ladder a little bit. He’s not in his bed but from here, I can see Hunter laying on his back in his own bed, chest rising and falling slowly.
When I climb back down, Ana Maria stirs and then sits up. She stretches while yawning loudly.
I step around her and the board game to go to my wardrobe. I change into some sort of black band T-shirt and tight jeans shorts that end at my knees with the cuffs rolled up.
“Where are you going?” Ana Maria says, her voice soft from sleep.
“I’m going to check on Valeria,” I say.
She stands up, stumbling a bit. “I want to come.”
“Just go get some more sleep.”
“I’m coming.”
I sigh. “Fine, do what you want.”
She follows me to the door wearing her pink pajama shirt and shorts, which hang off of her frame, much too large. We put on our shoes and go outside.
The grass is damp from the rain, which has slowed to just a drizzle now.
As we start to walk across the field, Ana Maria says, “I don’t understand why she doesn’t want to be healed. I should just do it, right? She’ll thank me later when she’s not in pain anymore.”
“Ana Maria, I don’t think that’s a
