The Mystery Of Eastbrooks High

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Golden Thread

AUSTIN MARVELLED AT THE WAY HE HELD HIMSELF TOGETHER throughout the entire car ride without losing his shit. His clothes were dirty, his face was covered in dust and mud, his hair disarray. The car stopped, and Austin could hear the wet sound of tires squelching. He felt numb and distant from the world. Only the hope was keeping him tethered to the world. If he lost three people in one day...

The police accompanying him gently nudged him to get out of the car, and he found his dad waiting for him outside the car with a worried expression on his face. Austin might've felt better that his parents were finally giving a fuck about his safety, but Austin didn't give a fuck anymore. If it took them four people to die to realize their son's life was in jeopardy, not taking him seriously till then, then it didn't matter anymore.

His mother was waiting a few paces behind, her face tight. Austin's dad put an arm around his son's shoulders as he gently pulled him towards the door, the two officers shadowing their every move. "What exactly happened?" he heard his mother ask the officers, and distantly heard as they replied back.

The past hour took a toll on him. Just thinking about it made him shudder.

The parents had just been escorted to their houses, and the members were being dispersed one by one after their interview. They let the Westbrooks people out first, then planned on driving the Eastbrooks people to their houses. But apparently, there was a delay in the arrival of their personal security, so they made the members from Eastbrooks stay in the holding cells, waiting for the security. Since the Westbrooks batch already started their travel, there would be other arrangements made for them.

Now that he glanced back about it, the entire thing seemed fishy and suspicious. They'd sat in the holding cells for two minutes, all of them alone and separate this time. But one of the member– Austin didn't know which one, felt suffocated and anxious in the holding cells, so they had been let out. All of them sat in separate cars with the doors and windows open, with two officers sitting in front of them and with the car parked in the police station's parking lot.

There had been a small meeting going on inside– they were discussing if it would be safe for the members to be escorted with two officers and have them wait in the houses until security arrived, or to make the members stay in the police station, surrounded by everyone until the security came.

Austin had been sitting in the car with his feet folded, staring blankly into space. He had heard faint chattering from behind; the voices weren't clear, so he wasn't sure who it was. Austin was pretty sure it was Cole and Aiden, they usually stick together in times of duress while others preferred to stay alone. One moment, everything was fine. The next moment, there was a boom. Austin had seen a flash of red and gold, a deafening boom accompanying the flash. The next moment, everything was had been silent, and then chaos followed.

Austin had gotten down instinctively, his heart seizing with fear and adrenaline. His mind caught up with the facts. Somebody planted a bomb in the police station, which exploded.

The two officers sitting in the car with him rushed towards the police station to make sure everything was alright, and though everything in Austin screamed to run away, he had followed the officers near the station, listening to their rough, hurried command that they threw his way. That was where everyone else had gone wrong: only Nazeera, Kazuo, Aliyah and Emmanuel had followed the officers. Everyone else had run away with pure fear, their legs pumped up on the adrenaline. Austin had spotted Sabrina running in another direction too, and he'd grabbed her, shouting out at others to come back while he dragged her back. "Austin, we gotta go, this is our warning, we'll be killed," she'd hissed at him then.

"Nobody will hurt you in front of everyone, Brina. This might've been their goal, isolating us before killing us. And we are walking right into their trap."