Page 188 of Cerulean Truth
With a determined nod, Stephen handed it back to me. "I'll find the United Chiefs in Singapore and ask them about the Amplifier. You should get back to Cyclos this instant, figure out why anyone wanted you gone. Don’t forget to update the Maumars."
"Thanks, Stephen. Be careful out there," I said gratefully.
"You too, James. Stay safe," he replied before disappearing in another flash of light, leaving me alone with a working Nexus in hand.
Within seconds, the communication drops searched for my best friend. Jackson’s face appeared, looking extremely distressed.
“James! Finally! We’ve tried to reach you so many times. You should return right now. I’m in the Atrium, can you portal back here?”
My stomach dropped. “What happened?”
His expression through the dimensional link was grim, and without another word, I knew something had happened to Emma. I felt it in every fiber of my being—the immediate stress, the unparalleled fear that seized my every instinct.
My heartbeat raced, and without waiting for Jackson’s response, I drew a green portal, and landed at the Universitas a second later.
"Where is she?" I growled when I saw him.
"I don't know!" Jackson answered frantically.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" I spat, my rage-haze sprouting from everywhere at once.
"I mean, she left Cyclos, took the red portal to the Human World, that much we found out... but nobody seems to know when or where, and we can't find her."
"Fuck!" I bellowed, my rage now accompanied by its two best friends, anxiety and impatience. “I specifically asked you to keep an eye on her, I asked you one fucking thing!”
I raced to her dorm, my heart pounding with dread, hoping to find a clue, as I had last time. I nexed Enya, clinging to the desperate hope Emma would have confided in her. But, as she had told Jackson, Emma hadn’t shared anything.
Tearing through her room, I found absolutely nothing. Each empty drawer and bare shelf intensified my hopelessness. My angst nearly swelled into a full-blown panic attack, suffocating me with worst-case scenarios flipping through my mind.
I shot off a frantic call to the Maumars and Julian, who then rushed to the dorm, their faces plastered with raw fear.
"Did she take her Nexus with her?" Julian asked in a hurried voice.
"I don't know!" I bit off.
"All right, let's find out," he replied, strangely calm, as he worked on his own Nexus.
"What are you doing?" I asked through gritted teeth, my patience wearing thin.
"I'm tracking her," Julian explained.
"You can't track her in the Human World," Maurice reminded him.
"I'm not tracking her translation; I'm tracing her device," Julian clarified.
"How?" I furrowed my brow.
"Do you really want to get into that right now, or do you want to portal to her parents' house? Because that's apparently where she is!" he finally snapped, showing me the results of his search.
Not bothering to reply, I quickly created a portal and jumped through faster than I ever had before.
Less than a second later, I turned up before the house with Julian on my tail.
A bone-chilling breeze stirred the trees, wrapping the house in a creepy atmosphere. The air felt off; my senses were on high alert and my pulse quickened with the mounting sense of urgency. I slowly approached the house over the porch, the front door the last barrier between me and whatever was inside.
I shoved it open, and it creaked like a dying breath. The inside was pitch black, except for a sliver of moonlight casting twisted shapes on the furniture. The house was dead quiet, the only sound a faint ticking from an old clock .
I signaled Julian silently I was going up the stairs and he nodded.
