The Next Generation (FIRST DRAFT)

Chapter 28

“Talon!”

    Talon looked up to face Dawson as he ran in the room. When Talon and Jenna had found the group of lifeboats with the guards in the middle of the ocean, the two boys had offered to let them stay with them for the time being. After a couple weeks, Jenna was reunited with her family and had been living with them with some precautions, Talon checking in on her every couple of days. Meanwhile, Talon would rather his family continue to think he was dead, knowing the emotional burden it would cause his family if they had to relive his death all over again if he was to get in another accident. Because of this, Talon signed up for college and had been living with Dawson and Brayden ever since. 

    Currently, Talon was sitting on the couch of their apartment doing homework. 

    “What is it?” Talon asked, confused at Dawson’s sudden display. 

    “It’s Ben,” Dawson replied. 

    Talon shot out of his seat. “What?!”

    “He’s back.”

    “How?!”

    “I don’t know! A picture of him with some random English girl and her classmates went viral online. Matthew’s in the background too.”

    “So he’s in England?”

    “No, he’s in Croatia. They’re visiting there as a class.”

    “Let me see the post.”

    Talon took the phone from Dawson. On it, Dawson had a social media website pulled up. In the trending section of the site, there was a picture of Ben, albeit looking very scruffy, with a group of teenagers about his same age. He was smiling big as he stood with the arm of a larger dark haired guy around his shoulder and a strawberry blonde girl taking the picture. The caption read, “We found metal man!”

    Talon was in shock. By the looks of it, Lucy had never gone and rescued the two boys from the island they had been left at. Now it seemed that the class had rescued Ben and Matthew from the island on a boat tour or something similar. 

    “I swear I’m going to slap that girl into tomorrow,” Talon mumbled. 

    “What?!” Dawson asked. 

    “She forgot about them.”

    “Can you please explain?”

    “The person that made the plan specifically told Lucy not to forget about Matthew and Ben or else she would regret it. Well, she did forget.”

    “Well then she’s going to regret it, will she not? Let it go then.”

    “But what if I’m the one that’s supposed to make her regret it?”

    “Then you do what you feel is right, but don’t forget about the life you have here.”

    Talon groaned and put his head in his hands. He was torn. While he wanted to go help Ben, but he had obligations, a new life, now. 

    “You better decided quickly,” Dawson added. “You have an English lecture in twenty minutes, right?”

    “Fine,” Talon said suddenly. “I’ll go find him on Saturday when I don’t have any classes.”

    “That’s smart,” Dawson replied. “You might want to get going if your lecture is that soon though. You know how bad traffic can get this time of day.”

    “Sure thing.”

    “Hey, really quickly, when you go visit Jenna after class today, can you give her this?” Dawson asked, handing an envelope to Talon.