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Hello readers! It's me again, Scott Kelly, the author of Frightened Boy.I'm here to beg for votes again. Why are votes important? They let potential investors know I can attract readers. Please, vote on all the chapters. A vote translates directly into money and success for me. Vote on every individual chapter of the book - I know it takes a while, but each vote counts toward my total, and that total decides my rank on Wattpad.

Thank you, seriously. Now please, enjoy the show. Shit's about to get real.

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17. Bond of Union

Escher and I arrived back at the Stranger's camp without anyone being the wiser as to what we’d accomplished—well, what he’d accomplished. I wondered if every time he disappeared he was out doing something as incredibly dangerous and exciting as what we’d just been through.

Couldn’t think about much. Couldn’t even think about Erika, even if I knew where she was. I spent an hour sitting down next to a tree in the center of the camp, my head between my knees while I tried to stop the world from spinning. What was Escher? Was he immortal? What was he capable of?

The hum of the camp was disrupted by a singular figure walking into their midst. It was clear he didn’t belong—not because of the way he looked, but by the way each of the Strangers reacted to him.

The intruder wore an old pair of sneakers, tattered blue jeans, and a gray hoodie. His face was feminine, a delicate chin, angular cheekbones, and dark brown hair with bangs down the right side of his face, covering one eye entirely. A boxy, black set of headphones covered his ears, the cord running into the backpack slung across his back.

Nothing about the man seemed too strange except for the way he carried himself. He appeared oblivious. He was just walking, either completely unafraid or completely unaware of where he was. Could have been at the bus station in Downtown Banlo Bay, or at the mall, anywhere but sauntering through a jungle into a camp of terrorists.

A Stranger, a shirtless man with two clowns tattooed on his back, approached the newcomer. “Hey, you. Stop. Seriously? You think you just get to walk through here?.”

The newcomer kept walking. The Stranger backpedaled to keep up with him; now all eyes were on the uninvited guest. A symphony of bullets sliding into chambers, of clips being pushed into guns.

Frustrated, the Stranger lifted the headphones from the newcomer’s ears.

Instantly, an ear-splitting noise burst through the air. A nauseating sickness overcame me as my vision spun like I’d been placed inside of a kaleidoscope that was aimed directly at the sun. I felt like someone was driving railroad spikes through my ear canals.

Strangers curled up into themselves, hands on their heads to escape the aural assault. It was the sound of gears grinding, of machines fucking, of aliens using power tools to perform abortions on whales.

Through the haze of my deteriorating vision, I watched Whisper move rapidly toward the newcomer, walking in her authoritative way with her high-heeled feet jutting from beneath her thick trench coat. She reached the man, who finally stopped walking and simply with a bored expression on his face, and yanked the cord from where it ran in his backpack.

There was relief. The silence was warm and inviting. All guns were immediately pointed at the newcomer.

Whisper raised her hand, signaling for them to hold. “He’s one of us. This is Lux. He’s come home.”

“Hello, Whisper,” the man said, voice bored.

Escher peeked his head out from a nearby tent. “Did I hear something?” The Red King sauntered out, apparently in the middle of sponging himself off. Pants soaked with water, bare chest shining from the sunlight that pierced the canopy of leaves above. "Lux!" he shouted. “You’re back! How was America?”

“Detroit, L.A, New York. They’re all falling apart. The scenery was excellent though.”

“You must be tired. That’s a long way to walk.”

“I get around,” he said. “The shoes fit nice.”

“So what brought you home?”

“The inevitability of destiny, I suppose. I can walk and walk and never find the answers I need. That has been made abundantly clear to me.”

“Then I’m glad you came home,” Escher said. He tried to put an arm around Lux, but he stepped away.

Escher watched the newcomer with a serious look. "I have news," he said, looking up and projecting the words into the forest. The Strangers became still, and listened.

"Tomorrow we're attacking the city. Tomorrow, Little Brother will be in Tasumec Tower. We will go there - fight our way there, if we have to - occupy the tower, and kill him. "

"How do you know that?" Lux asked, arms crossed over his chest.

"I learned it," Whisper said. "It is why that one was tapped, he worked at the tower." She pointed at me.

"Why now? Why tomorrow?" Lux's voice rose.

"Little Brother, then Rush. We were attacked twice in a week. There is a spy among us, and subterfuge is no longer an option."

"A spy? How do you know?"

"He told you, we were attacked twice in two days," Whisper answered tersely, hands making then unmaking fists at her side.

I caused the first one, actually. But they knew that.

"You can't just attack the city! That's war." Some color reached the Lux's cheeks.

"Not the city. Just Little Brother. I am doing this so that I don't have to attack the city," Escher said. "This is like brain surgery. We go in, we fix the problem. Once Little Brother is gone, the city will heal itself. If I can't win like this, then there is no other option. If I can't kill Little Brother, I will have to kill everyone. I will be forced to destroy Banlo Bay with Epoch."

Lux stared at the Red King, jaw unhinged. None of the hundred Strangers in observance argued.

A finger looped itself gently around my hand.

“So, how did it go?” Erika’s warm face was an inch from mine, whispering wetly into my ear. Everything else was forgotten while I sneaked off with her to tell her everything I’d been through that day.

*

We spent that evening a few hundred feet from the Strangers, sitting near the sky, cradled by an oak tree.

"Escher made him...disappear?" Erika asked.

"Disappeared. Just, vanished. Popped out of existence. It was insane."

"You sure you weren't hallucinating?"

"No. No, I'm not. It felt real, though."

"Well, I'm glad you lived."

It was a beautiful night—like most in Kingwood Forest—and Erika had convinced me to climb higher into a tree that I had never climbed before. I focused on her legs climbing above me rather than the ground below me.

My stomach lurched every time I looked down, but any time we tried to talk on ground level we were watched. Instead we built a makeshift nest—a place in the tree where two wide limbs met the trunk that created a sort of Y-shaped bed in which we could lay.

Erika's hand climbed up my shirt, pressed against my bare chest. "You see the new guy?" she asked.

"I did. Lux? Who is he?"

"Get this: Whisper's ex-boyfriend. The plot thickens." She smiled.

"Of course."

I closed my eyes to think. What if Escher wasn't the only one who could change reality? It looked like Whisper could, and Sam could. What if I can bend the world to my will? It’s stupid. It’s crazy, first off. And second, it clearly doesn’t work—I mean, look at you. But I haven’t tried, I reasoned.

So, I set my mind to a task. When I open my eyes, Erika will be right in front of me, and she’ll start kissing me. When I open my eyes, Erika will be right in front of me, and she’ll start kissing me.

I forced it to be true. I pictured every detail of what I’d see when I opened my eyes. I made myself believe it was true. It had to be true, so much that my head ached from the focus.

Finally, I opened my eyes.

Erika was gone.

I looked around frantically.

“Clark, get up here!” Erika called from dozens of feet above me.

“No way,” I said, masking my disappointment.

“You have to see this,” she called down in hushed tones. “It’s… amazing.”

Swayed by the calling of her voice, I set to the task of climbing further up the tree. I used my hands to steady myself even on the tiniest steps, and I never had less than three limbs touching branches. It took me forever to climb, while Erika seemed to clamber about the trees like she was designed for it.

Finally, I reached her sneakers, climbed up her calves, her creamy white thighs, her tight abs, her full breasts, her slender neck, her cheeks, and then I was at the tip of the tree. The world was open, no longer the emerald cave of the forest. We were above it, but only by a few feet. Treetops lay out like an expanse of grass before me, and the night sky glittered with innumerable stars.

“Amazing,” I said.

“You created it all.” Erika grinned, kissing me softly on the cheek. My weight shifted for a moment, and I felt myself slipping backwards imperceptibly. My heart jumped, and I clung to the tree with all of my strength, pulling myself toward the trunk so hard my body ached from the rough bark.

I turned around to look in the other direction and a bright object seemed to eat up the skyline. Stars disappeared in a vortex around it; the constant gray haze was turned orange by the millions of lights that forever ran in Banlo Bay. Buildings rose up like crooked teeth capped in gold.

"That’s what he wants to turn off.”

“Look at it and look at the space around it. It doesn’t fit,” Erika admitted.

“It’s like a tumor."

"Would you want to destroy it?"

"So you heard Escher too? No, I wouldn't want to destroy it. It's what people wanted, for better or worse. They made that city for themselves. But you can only believe that, if you believe those are real people in there - real people who don't deserve to die."