End of the Beginning [Five]

Three

What fictional world would you like to visit?



The rest of the journal was easier to decipher when Emery came to accept that whatever version of himself was here before him had obviously made some breakthrough in his research and had found a way out.

The thought was nearly stifling as Emery returned home that evening, long after everyone had gone to bed. His family was used to him being gone at all hours. They knew vaguely of his studies- that he'd been granted special permission to pursue what he was doing. But they knew nothing of his broken abilities. They blamed the flickering light bulbs in the hall as he passed by as simply being old and due for a change.

Emery almost hated how supportive they were. It had taken him years to stop tiptoeing around them, convinced that at any point the spell would break and his sister would die and he'd have to figuratively move the wasp nest again.

He poured over the journal under a small light in the kitchen, eyes tracing those same initials that had been ingrained into his head all those years ago. There were diagrams around it, roughly and poorly sketched but there was no denying what they represented.

It was the entrance to a train station of sorts, a tube or a subway. One with a slanted roof and black railings that curled into shapes at the end. It was hazy, covered by a light scratch across the page in faded pencil, as if giving the illusion that the train entrance was covered in a fog of sorts, just out of sight and obscured.

As he flipped toward the second half of the journal, the jotted notes lost any conceivable meaning. They had to do with light, no doubt, of extracting something from the very atom, of harnessing it and stripping it into isolation beyond the body.

A single word jumped out at him through the mess of information though. One that rang so startlingly clear amongst the chaos of the rest that Emery paused to re-read the entry. Grabbing a coat and nudging the back door open without tearing his eyes off the page.

Sloane's name was hastily scrawled and underlined, followed by a series of lines and dots, one starred boldly in the corner of the circle. The end of the other line disappeared off the page as if it went on further but ran out of room. It didn't go on to the next page as he had reached the end of the journal.

Emery racked his mind for something that he could relate the sketch to but came up empty.

The mystery of Sloane often plagued him. He wondered if she walked out with the others or if she had been separated too. And of Lila. She wasn't strictly a Hargreeves either yet. He knew they planned to get married on the off chance that they all actually survived Oblivian.

Adele, the shady Briard puppy nudged at his ankles, disturbing his thoughts as she whined, nearly scaring Emery to death when he noticed the dog.

"How on God's green earth did you find me?" Emery cursed, covering his thundering heart. He didn't remember seeing the dog when he'd slipped out of the house, thinking she'd been soundly asleep on the foot of his sister's bed when he went.

He was outside now, and had taken the back routes of the city, retracing his steps back to that clearing outside of the old buildings walls. He'd visited the place many times since being dumped here, staring and looking for clues for hours on end. But no matter how much time had passed, he'd never found anything.

But Adele had found him.

Emery forgot how bad the dogs separation anxiety had been, how she had seemed to glue herself to his hip every time he was in the same general vicinity as her.

He chewed his lip and tried to send her home, but she wouldn't leave his side. He thought about going back, carrying her and locking her in the house before leaving again but the sun was already up and Emery felt like he could use the company.