If We Were Heroes | ONC2022

chapter sixteen

chapter sixteen: If in pain, another app you gain

Who the heck was that guy? If you had shown me a picture of him, I would've sworn I had never seen him before, but now the memories pricked at my brain, like a dream you couldn't quite remember.

If you increased the heat slowly, the person won't even realise they're being boiled alive.

Was this Holden's plan? Slowly haunt me until I go mad? If it was, I could tell him it was pretty solid. So far, I was playing right along with it.

He must've been at the school, I told myself. I must've seen him a while back, which was why I couldn't remember him. That must be it.

Why else would he know my name?

Or maybe he was a friend of one of the teachers, who told him about me. But how could you recognise someone you never met?

The weight of the car crashed into me, stealing my breath, my life before my eyes. I had helped him, but it had come with a price. And like always, that price was bound to hurt tonight.

Stripe after stripe. Blow after blow until I would swear to kill myself, and get it over with.

But tomorrow it'll be gone.

Tomorrow it'll be gone, replaced by a new pain. Somewhere new I had interfered when I shouldn't have.

I glanced at the time, the hands slowly, slowly inching forwards.

The time.

The time.

I had stopped counting. I needed to call Sebastian. The man had completely thrown me off my worry. Maybe that was why Holden may or may not have sent him. To throw me off Sebastian's case.

Seventeen missed calls.

Whatever could have happened to make him call like that? To panic?

Cursing, I fumbled out my phone and called him back. Let it ring.

And ring.

Until—

'Hello Oliver.' Smooth, like a cat's purr. Soft, teasing. Immediately I felt a deep hatred for the speaker.

'You're not Sebastian.'

'No,' the person replied, half laughing. 'I most certainly am not.'

'Where is he?'

I could almost hear the person's grin, wide and loud. 'Oh,' they said. 'Haven't you heard?'

'Heard what?' I snapped.

'Kid. Sebastian's dead.'

My heart skipped a beat, stumbling over the place a rhythm should be. No.

Not yet.

'You're lying.'

'What would make you think that?'

'I don't know. Just the fact that I'm supposed to believe Sebastian's dead.'

'It's true,' they insisted.

'How did he die?'

'A problem with his shifting.'

'And how would you know that?'

The person laughed. Smiled. 'Oliver. I'm Sebastian's brother.'

I hung up.

/

Throughout the years I had figured out a way to locate a person, find out where they were.

Pain was specific. People felt pain in different ways, had different areas in their life where they felt pain. And different people had circumstances that causes them pain.