Their grip held.
So he clenched his fingers tighter around his twin’s. She was his only remaining family member, and he was going to hold on with everything he had.
But everything wasn't enough.
In a moment of dark roaring noise, whipping wind, and shuddering ground, he found his hand was empty.
26
“Wake up, man.”
Cage moaned as he was jostled about. He heard Deveron's voice through the ringing in his ears, but everything else was strangely, disturbingly silent.
“Whah?”
He didn't finish the word, couldn’t—his mouth didn’t work. As he lifted his hand to the side of his head he felt the groan and ache of sore limbs.
“Is it over?” he asked, but as he heard the sound reverberate through his thick skull, he knew he hadn't formed them correctly. Cage tried again, “Is the tornado gone?”
“That one is,” Deveron told him, the words clear and crisp in the empty air.
“Come on, Cage.” Sarah’s words came at him from the other side, and he turned his head, still not seeing her. “You’ve been out for a little bit.”
He felt her hand on the side of his face, tapping gently. He jerked back to get away, but the movement made so many things hurt. Then Cage realized he'd seen nothing because he hadn't yet opened his eyes. As he blinked himself slowly into the bright, clear light of day, he remembered getting jostled back and forth by the winds and debris bashing at them.
He’d felt as if he was drowning, unable to even breathe in the high winds. They’d grabbed and tugged and thrown them all every direction, as if by an unseen hand or a riptide. The last thing he remembered was his head smashing backward against Deveron’s. This time when he reached up to his skull, Cage felt the lump.
“I got one, too,” Deveron said. “Sarah thinks her arm is broken.”
That made Cage twist his head quickly and look. Though the light burned his retinas, he saw his friend was holding her right arm across her body as though it was in a sling, but there was nothing holding it there.
“Here,” Cage told her, reaching for the knot at his waist, trying to undo the seatbelt. Every time he'd been thrashed, it had ratcheted the knot down tighter—exactly as he’d hoped. That was what had kept him safe. But now it kept him stuck.
He felt Sarah and Deveron's hands join him, and the trio spent several minutes working on it, finally managing to get him free. Apparently, they'd both worked themselves loose before he’d come to.
Standing slowly, Cage felt aching muscles protest as if they'd gone unused for a hundred years. Bruises made themselves known as he rolled his shoulders and put weight on each foot, but none of that was surprising. He thought about stretching his arms above his head, as if he could simply yawn and welcome a new day.
But even as he thought about it, he realized— “Joule? Izzy?”
The names jumped from his lips, harsh and accusing, as Sarah and Deveron shook their heads at him.
“It got them,” was all Sarah said.
“But I had Joule!” he protested, remembering holding onto his sister's hand. He clearly remembered reaching up and locking her wrist in his firm grip.
But Sarah simply shrugged her one good shoulder. “And I had Izzy… but they're not here now.”
She’d said it almost casually, as though they were missing samples on the job site. Cage was curious if maybe she was still in shock.
He'd seen enough trauma in his life to know that that was more a probability than a possibility, and he didn't fault her lack of emotion. In fact, it was probably the better course. Emotional people did crazy things.
As he quickly shut down the worry and fear blooming in his chest, he thought once again of his father. It had been bad enough when his mother died, but his father… Hell, Cage still wondered if Nate might show up one day and say, “Here I am. I did it!” But the fact was, the twins had presumed their father dead a long time ago. And that was harder than knowing their mother had died and how.
Looking around at the ditch that now held broken tree branches, debris, another car, and even an intact section of brick from someone’s house, he braced for the horrifying thought that he might have to deal with his sister going missing, too. Never finding her might be harder than knowing she was gone.
Was he the only one left?
No, he told himself, putting a vise around the feeling and twisting it hard until it cut off. Emotion wiped clean and determination now pushed to the forefront of his thoughts, he told the others, “Let's go find them.”
“How?” Deveron asked.
“I don't know,” he admitted, but he wouldn’t let it stop his forward momentum. He couldn’t afford to think about it; he had to act. “So, let's figure out how to find them.”
“We need to find everyone we can,” Sarah pointed out. “We have no idea who else is missing. And then we'll get all the Helio Systems people together—”
All the remaining Helio Systems people, he added mentally, but kept his mouth shut.
“—and we’ll get a big search party.”
He wanted to say no, to tell her she was wrong, that he could close his eyes and psychically find his twin. But none of that was true. He didn't have that feeling in the pit of his stomach that he did with his father, the one that said she was gone. That, at least, was a benefit, but he didn’t know if that was a true connection or just pure logic. Because for all that Nate had wandered off in an emotional tizzy, Joule, just like Cage, had learned to shut it down.
If there was any chance she was alive, Joule would make logical decisions and get herself found. Their dad had wanted to get lost. Cage ignored the sharp stab that stole his breath every time he had to think about that.
But the
