Power (Book 1)

Chapter 43

Cassie and Jake came in during second period, by which point I was having some really bad thoughts.

I hadn't thought this through. I had no idea what would happen if we were all transferred back to this dimension. Now, almost everyone is gone and it's all my fault.

After taking seats on each side of me, they began to notice it, too.

Jake leaned over to whisper in my ear. "What happened to everyone?"

I shook my head, saying, "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"

"Guys, talk in your heads, please."

We looked over at Cassie across from us.

I've set up a link between the three of us so we can talk in each other's heads," she explained.

We continued to stare.

"It's a new thing," she said.

"Oh," Jake said. "Cassie, can you check these people's heads? I think there's something wrong with them."

"There's nothing wrong with them," she said after examining the minds of everyone around the room. "There's something wrong with this place. These kids don't have any powers."

I was shocked. How could they not have any powers? The teacher from first period, Ms. Sanders, had said that the only metas had existed right before the disappearance of Highland. That lined up with what Dad had said, but that didn't make any sense. If the metas had come from this world, then caused an outbreak of metas in the other one, then which one did metas really belong to?

"I think you can answer that, Jay?" Mrs. Rebel asked me.

"I'm sorry, can you repeat the question?" I asked, giving an apologetic smile.

"What is the Pythagorean Theorem?"

"The Pythagorean Theorem is represented by the equation A squared plus B squared is equal to C squared," I recited from memory.

"Correct," Mrs. Rebel wrote the expression on the board. "This formula is..."

I tried to listen to the conversation.

"...but that would mean that we wouldn't remember anything, either," Cassie was saying.

"True, but that's the best I can come up with right now," Jake thought. "We should go to Afterlight after this to see if it still exists."

"What are you talking about?" I interrupted.

"Jake has a theory that the reason no one we know is here is because they all had powers, but they left to lead normal lives without them," Cassie said. "Which doesn't really make sense. I think the universe compensated for the overload of new people by changing everything around."

"Neither of those would work. We wouldn't be having this conversation right now if either of them were true," I said.

"Hm," Cassie said.

"We'll talk about it after school," Jake said. That was the end of the conversation.

Cassie tuned us out so we couldn't hear each other's thoughts.