Free Web NovelChapter 16: Call Help!
Kira took the pill case from me with both hands.
She held it for a moment like she didn’t quite trust it was real, then tipped the pill into her palm.
She leaned forward, slid one hand behind her brother’s neck to lift his head off the pillow, and pressed the pill past his lips.
The pill dissolved immediately once it entered his mouth.
His breathing didn’t change immediately. The monitor by the bed kept tracing the same uneven blue line.
Kira watched the screen for a few seconds. Then she set the empty case on the bedside table and exhaled, long and slow, like she’d been holding that breath for an hour.
"Based on what I know," I said, "a pill like that takes a few hours to fully work. Keep an eye on what the hospital says. Also, are you planning to stay here?"
Kira nodded.
"I’ll wait in the visitors’ area. A few hours. See how he does." She didn’t take her eyes off her brother. "Thank you, again."
I walked over to her chair. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
I rested my hand on the top of her head. Her hair was soft under my palm, like pure silk. I gave her a light pat, the kind you’d give a kid who’d just done something brave, and her eyes met up with mine in a quiet startle.
"Alright. Take care."
I pulled my hand back.
"I’ll see you tomorrow. Also, you should smile a little more. You’re more beautiful when you smile."
Her face went red. She opened her mouth, then closed it. She turned her face back toward her brother before the flush could reach her ears, and her hair fell forward in a dark curtain to hide what was left of her expression.
She didn’t say anything.
I chuckled and left the room.
I started walking toward the taxi I ordered.
I hadn’t made it to Hart’s infirmary after class. That was a missed visit and a missed opportunity, and the look she was going to give me tomorrow morning when I walked through her door was already forming somewhere in the back of my mind. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
I’d make it up to her to tomorrow.
The taxi had been on a main road five blocks from my house when he suddenly slammed his foot down hard, enough to throw me forward against my seatbelt. The tires screamed across the pavement. The car shuddered, fishtailed, and stopped at an angle in the middle of the lane with the engine still running.
"What happened." My hand was braced against the back of the front seat. "What was that?"
The driver didn’t answer.
He was staring out the windshield with his mouth half-open, his hands locked on the wheel, his knuckles gone white under his skin. He stuttered something I couldn’t make out, then jerked his chin forward.
"L-Look. Look. Ahead."
The air thirty meters down the road was warping.
A vertical tear stood in the middle of the street, jagged at the edges, the inside of it the deep blue. It was the size of a one-story house.
The streetlights on either side of it had blown out, glass pebbled across the road. A woman on the sidewalk to the right had dropped a paper bag of groceries, a look of fear on her face.
Cars on the other side of the gate had already piled up. The sound of someone screaming began to spread in the street.
[CHOICE A: Enter the E-Rank Gate and clear it. Reward: +10 to all attributes.]
[CHOICE B: Stall the outbreak until association response arrives. Reward: +1 Mana.]
[CHOICE C: Escape with your life. Reward: -10 to all attributes.]
Had this gate appeared before my core evolved to C-Rank. I would have immediately rejected the idea. But after becoming a C-Ranker, and gaining Buddha’s Palm Skill, I was more confident in my strength at tackling this gate.
I pulled out my wallet and dropped a folded bill into the front seat.
"Keep the change."
I opened the door.
"Young, young man, what are you doing? Get back in. Get back in the car, please, we can reverse, we can—"
"Drive away. Go."
I shut the door and stepped out onto the pavement.
The woman with the groceries was still standing in her spilled fruit, shaking. A man on the sidewalk was filming with his phone as he moved away.
I started walking toward the gate.
"Hey! Hey, kid, what are you doing! Get back, get back, get away from there!"
"Someone call the association!" the woman with the groceries shouted, finally finding her voice. "Call them, call them now, oh god, somebody—"
"Kid, don’t act like a hero!" the driver yelled out the window of the taxi, which had not yet moved. "It’s not worth it! It’s not worth it!"
A wave of nausea hit me the second I entered the gate.
It was the kind of dizziness that came with a stomach drop on a bad roller coaster but tripled.
My vision tunneled. My ears popped. For half a second I couldn’t tell which way was up, and the bottom of my throat tightened in the warning everybody knows.
Then it vanished.
The teleportation feeling was new. I steadied myself, took two breaths, and the world rolled back into focus.
I looked around.
