Through Her Shattered Eyes ✔

Chapter 32

As soon as I step over the threshold, pain washes over me like the sea and I fall to my knees. My hand shoots forward to the wall to steady myself, my breath short and shallow. I squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth. A creeping blackness steals into me with every breath I take. My body trembles uncontrollably. I'm where I need to be. As much as I want to stand, I can't bring myself to. The pain spreading throughout my body is too great and I start to feel weak.

That is, until a hand grasps my arm.

"Hey, are you okay?"

Suddenly, everything goes away just as quickly as it came. The tremors, the pain, the darkness. It's almost as if none of those things had even occurred. I turn to look at Nathan, who looks back at me with questioning eyes.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Just tripped," I lie.

"You sure?"

"Mm-hm."

He offers his hands to me again and helps me up. I quietly thank him and turn around to see what room we're in. I get a full view of everything and I gasp, realizing where we are.

White walls, matted beige carpet, and the absurd collection of DC Comics. The posters are taped to the wall—a huge one of Wonder Woman is attached to the ceiling—DC Comics figurines are neatly placed all around the room, even the bedding is here. Everything looks just as it does in the flash, in the exact same places. I look to my right and see a window beside the bed. I slowly edge toward it, climbing over and peeking outside. Sure enough, the layout in the parking lot is at the correct angle. It's here Erika wants me to be, the DC Comics bedroom. There's something here she wants me to find.

Holy crap.

"Is this anything like the flash you've had?" Nathan asks, his voice snapping me out of my reverie.

I nod, still keeping my gaze toward the window. "Yes. It's crazy, i-it's...unbelievable."

"Well, this is Reuben's room."

"Reuben's room?" I echo.

Nathan points to a sign nailed on the back of the door that's engraved: Property of Reuben. Funny how I hadn't noticed that.

"Did you look for anything here?"

"No. I just happened to walk in here, see this..." He gestures to the bedroom. "...and figured I should come get you since you've seen it before, in a manner of speaking."

I hop down from the bed. "Right. Erika led me here. There's something in this room she wants to me know about. I don't know what, but let's look around," I say. "You can look over there by the bed and the bookshelf. I'll look at his desk over here."

"Sounds good."

With that, we disperse to our given spots and start searching. Nathan removes books from the shelves—some of them academic textbooks or James Patterson novels—and gently flips through the pages to see if anything's wedged in between them, then places it back where it was before. He repeats the same process numerous times while I examine Reuben's desk. Not that there's much to look at, only a few things are on top of the desk. A beautiful, brushed-metal, razor thin Apple laptop sits there, along with a bottle of water that's half empty. An HP printer is set beside the computer with the little light turned on. Someone must've been using it not that long ago, probably left just before Nathan and I got here. My first instinct is to check the computer, to see what's stored there, but something stops me.