Consoulia Chronicles: Booting Up [~ read description]

Chapter 11: The Day After

Agent Dolphin simply stared at the team and walked away, but not before throwing the same patch at Zerrin that Spire did at the beginning of their fight. This healed Zerrin instantly. When she woke up, she saw the figure walk away. "L.. Lar..? Oww.." she muttered. 

"Easy, Zerrin. You took a pretty good beating back there," Spire warned. 
"Yeah, take it easy," Iris joined. "Come back home with us. You'll be safer there now that your base was discovered." 

"Getting real tired of not getting a say in who stays with us and who doesn't," Zander lamented, only getting a sympathetic hand on the shoulder from Iris. "Let's get a move on, shall we?" 




Later that night, Zander's body tossed and turned, sweat beaded up and rolled down his forehead, and his muscles were stiffened as he grunted during his slumber. He remembered playing a hard level of Mugsy 3D, but it was only hard because of the scuffed game design. He and Clover were laughing the glitches that were happening, only to be interrupted by the home phone. Remembering why they were anxiously awaiting a phone call, their blood ran cold with nervousness. 

He took the home phone off of its charger and sat down with it with Clover. "Is this the Primrose residence?" an older voice asked the young teenagers. 

"Yeah," Zander said. "Why?" 

"It's about your parents." The older man sighed, disappointed. "They're gone. I'm sorry." 

He woke up in a sweat the next morning and with tears in his eyes. It had been ten years since then, but the dreams make it feel so fresh every time. He'd run through the same anger and sadness every time he had one of those dreams. Why wasn't their dad more responsible? Why couldn't their mom be the driver? Why did he have to become the new caretaker even for people not in his family now? 

He trudged down the stairs. Maybe some cereal will adjust his attitude. 

"Feeling better, Zerrin?" Iris's asked in the living room that was lit by a lamp on the other side of the room, in which the lighting set a calm atmosphere in great contrast to yesterday evening's scuffle. Now that she can walk again, she can help out around the house more. No more crutches for her at least, and that was enough to cheer Zander up. 

"Yeah, thanks. I can't believe you all found me." She spoke up as her cheek was rubbed with the warm washcloth used to aid in healing her topical wounds, such as cleaning the blood from her cuts or alleviating the aches that accompanied her bruises that the patch neglected to heal. It was never 100% effective 100% of the time, unfortunately. 

"If it wasn't for Spire, we wouldn't have. I can't help but feel like this fight was in some way my fault. Maybe if we all minded our business, you would've been fine." She blamed herself.

 "Iris, please don't think like that. Had you not found me, we'd be even further away from our goal and Satara would've eventually found me anyway. Do you remember what our goal is?" Zerrin reminded.

"To protect lives endangered by Corporate Greed."
"That's right, and we can't do that unless everyone's together." 

 Just as everyone was starting their day, Clover was outside on her porch rocking back and forth on one of the chairs. She was mesmerized by the multiple colors overtaking the sky and the reddish clouds that blanketed the horizon. She grasped a mug from the table beside her and raised it to her lips.

She heard the front door click and creak open; once the screen door opened as well, Zander's figure revealed itself. "Good morning, sis." He greeted.

"Morning, bro." She said halfheartedly. Zander looked down at his sister whilst she drank from her mug. If he had to be honest with himself, he knew she had something on her mind and couldn't bear to see her like this any longer.

Her brother sat back in the other rocking chair and gazed out into the sky and had begun to relax, but that was until his sister let out a sigh with an air of worry. "What's the matter, Clover? Something's on your mind." He questioned her with evident and sincere concern.

"It's about yesterday." She began. "I felt powerless watching everything happen and I just have so many questions. Zerrin sustained multiple injuries from her fight. I should've done something - a-anything to help!" Clover cried out. "I'm nothing but a weak fool that just gets in the way."