"I swear, if I'm dying tonight because of you, I'm gonna haunt your ass so hard, Harrington!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah! I'm gonna go full Poltergeist and shit!"
"Then bring it, Graveswood."
"Challenge accepted."
***
In which after years of suppressing their...
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Chapter One-Hundred-And-Seventy: The Beginning Of The End
(The Piggyback, Pt. 10)
***
Pain.
That was all Rowan was feeling, the only thing that she was feeling, incinerating her grief and leaving nothing behind but this pain, slicing and serrating her apart and making her electricity writhe and shriek in utter agony as something not right collided over and over with it, trying to attack or mesh with her, Rowan didn't know, all that she knew was it, this frequency, was so goddamned excruciatingly painful, a discordant frequency that was so painful and broken and wrong.
And... familiar.
Rowan's eyes widened, as horror now bled through the pain. No.
As if her horrified realisation had flipped a switch, the broken frequency snapped, leaving only the faint traces of pain, of its wrongness, behind, but Rowan could still feel it. A frequency she'd feel anywhere, even when it had barrelled into her in a way so painful it made everything in her short-circuit with agony. A frequency that was colliding with the frequency she was naturally attuned to, that was trying to combine with it, in a way it never should.
A frequency that shouldn't be here, that shouldn't combine with the frequency of this world.
"Kid, are you okay? Kid?" Rowan heard, and that was when she registered Wayne's voice, coming in through underwater as her ears rang with the force of that distorted, terrifying frequency, her body still buzzing with it and the pain it brought, electricity jumping and spiking in her veins in scrambled waves as it tried to settle within her, but Rowan didn't know if it could because she could still feel that frequency, feel it grow stronger as horror chilled her and she needed to get to a window, she had to look outside.
A hand grabbed her arm, rough and calloused, and Wayne said in concern, "Kid, your nose."
That was when Rowan registered the warmth pouring from her nose—from both nostrils.
She wiped the blood away as the world blurred back into focus, as she saw Wayne looking at her in concern, Dustin doing the same, Steve hurrying to her, the faces of confusion and mandatory concern on those around her.
But Rowan didn't care about that. She had to get to a window, she had to see what was happening, she had to look outside.
Tearing her arm free of Wayne's grip and sending as much of an apologetic look as she could back to him, Rowan all but sprinted to one of the gym's windows, nearly slamming into it as she stared outside, barely registering Steve coming up behind her, Robin and Valerie and Vickie doing the same, Steve's hand on her shoulder as he asked, "Hey, are you okay? Rowan, what happened? Rowan?"
