The Order of the Elements 01 - Breaking Point Read Online Free PDF Page A

still dazed and lost in thought. Slinging the book bag over her shoulder, Phoebe stepped forward to the mist to wait for Ethan. She knew he would come; he was resigned to his fate now, and a moment later he joined her.
    “You should hold hands when you go through, just in case,” Richard said in a ghost of the deep tone with which he had spoken earlier.
    Phoebe held out her hand, and Ethan took it lightly; his hands were sweating. Phoebe took one last fleeting look behind her, feeling her mother’s and father’s sadness and love one last time, and then she closed her eyes and stepped forward. She didn’t even need prodding—something was pulling her forward. It felt like half of her heart was beating on the other side of the mist, and she was going to meet up with her long forgotten past. Either that or she’d open her eyes and find she’d simply walked to the other side of the room.

3. Portal
    Phoebe couldn’t tell how far or how fast she and Ethan had traveled through the silvery mist. She didn’t even know if they had moved beyond their first step. Her eyes were still closed, so she couldn’t see anything; her head felt detached from the rest of her body, so if her legs were moving, she couldn’t tell. She didn’t know if she had gone numb or if it was just that all her attention was focused on something else. She was leaning toward option number two, although she was sure it was a mixture of both.
    Her brain—which had been iced over from the shock only moments before—was now moving at lightning speed. Phoebe connected pieces of the conversation that her previously sluggish brain had stored away until she was ready to process them. Several things seemed to connect fairly quickly. First was the fact that her father and Richard had referred to each other as “brother.” Phoebe could only think of two reasons for such a term: either they were actually bothers, or it was simply a term of endearment.
    If the two men were indeed brothers, by blood, then that meant that Ethan—whose hand was still gripping hers rather tightly—was her cousin. Phoebe wondered if that was why he had seemed so familiar and why she could feel his emotions so strongly. As they fell through the mist, his emotions ranged from shock to disbelief, mirroring her own.
    “Oh!” she exclaimed as she stopped abruptly.
    It was now clear that she had been moving, because something solid had just stopped her. That was it, end of story; she had hit the wall on the opposite side of the room, and it was time to end this game and get her parents to the nearest psych ward. Taking a deep breath, she slowly opened her eyes.
    There was nothing in front of her but the dense silvery mist. She turned to Ethan and found that he was staring straight ahead with a blank face. She then realized that she was feeling absolutely no emotion from him. Perhaps he was shocked beyond all conscious thought.
    “You okay?” Phoebe asked cautiously.
    After a few seconds, Ethan blinked and turned to her. Phoebe felt several emotions come and go quickly as he tried to decide if he was all right or not. If she hadn’t been so concerned, the look on his face would have been comical.
    “Ethan?” she tried again, wondering if he was in need of shock treatment or something.
    Finally, he let out a long breath, and his emotions settled on flustered and vulnerable. “Yeah, I’m all right…I mean, I guess. I dunno. Is this… normal? ”
    Phoebe choked on a laugh. “Not unless The Matrix was nonfiction.”
    A smile appeared on his face as he realized she was just as lost as he was. “What do we do now?”
    Phoebe turned her attention back to the situation at hand. According to everything she had ever read, portals transported instantaneously. The fact that she was even seriously considering how portals operated made her head hurt, but she finally understood why her parents had been happy and skeptical when they had found her reading science fiction and fantasy—happy