A Lullaby For Gods Chapter XLV

Wrote and edited this in the middle of a depression funk. This felt like the most herculean task ever lmao.

XLV. Three to get ready

“What happened?” Dave asks, clearly still out of it since he’s letting Rose hold his face and nearly smush his cheeks together so closely that his mouth is pinched and what he’s saying is coming out as a mumble. He looks around, at the walls, at the lights over him – and he screws his eyes shut immediately at that because that’s a bad decision – and at the nurses still rechecking his heart monitor and his IV.  

He frowns.  

“Where are my glasses?”

Rose hesitates. “Your most recent pair broke, and they had to be swept away.”

“Mr. G gave me those glasses.”

“Do you have another pair? I can get them for you if everything is too bright for you right now.”

“Sw’one in my room,” he says, and then nods to himself. “Yeah. They were Ben Stiller’s. I fixed them when the dogs broke them. They were a gift.”

A nurse laughs lightly.

“What?”

“Do you want me to go get them?” Rose asks, calling back Dave’s attention before he gets distracted.  

“Please.”

“I’ll be back quick,” she says, finally letting him go, and he realizes then just how much his sister was squishing his face. He touches his cheeks.  

“I’m slightly glad the anesthetic didn’t hit Cecil too badly.”  

Dave turns, following the voice, and finds Loki standing by the wall, unfolding his arms as Rose goes over to him to be skywalked back to the Safehouse.

“What happened to Cecil?” he asks.

Loki blinks and turns to Rose.  

“Oh...something bad then,” Dave says, and then remembers so suddenly he thinks the shock actually sobers him up from the drugs in his system.

Cecil. Right. He’d been brought to the hospital since he was burning himself out and collapsing, and crying blood like a goddamn miraculous statue; and then after a freak blackout, he’d gotten up and he wasn’t himself.  

“He got possessed,” he says.

From the corner of his eye, he sees a nurse look at him curiously.

Loki steps forward. Dave notices his hand moving, two fingers pressed close while the others are folded in, and he turns his wrist counterclockwise. “Not exactly,” he says, and approaches the bed. Rose follows after him.

“The staff don’t know,” he says as he sits down, near-whispering. “And it’s imperative that they don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because we don’t know who this thing targets,” Loki says, “And we don’t need people going into a mass panic. We, in a way, are public figures. We are who they trust to be steady and to be their shield when there are attacks. If we are being destroyed from the inside, they might risk staying out of the Safehouse and thus risk themselves.”

“We also don’t want S.H.I.E.L.D. to find an excuse to bring us in, if it ends up that this...thing – whatever it is, targets only us. That would be an excuse for them to isolate us,” Rose says, “And aside from the loss of freedom, that’ll rob the city of its only bunker.”

Dave lets the news sink in, and damn, he really might be sober, because he actually gets it, and he thinks he shouldn’t be getting it, because he’s got tubes around him and needles under his skin.

“Alright,” he says, “Sorry.” He gestures to the nurses. “What did you do?”

“Sensory glamour,” Loki says, and then reaches up to write several runes in the air, gestures quick and well-practiced before snapping his fingers. The runes burst in green sparks. “And that’s memory modification.”

“Neat,” Dave says.

Loki snorts. “Not so much for them, but for safety’s sake, we’ll have to risk it.”

He stands, and he and Rose return back to where they were earlier. Loki snaps his fingers.

“Don’t get too high on your morphine, Strider,” he says, smiling. It looks forced.  

Dave plays along and leans back on his bed. “I don’t know, this feels hella nice.”

Rose laughs. Loki simply shakes his head and puts a hand on her shoulder, and they skywalk out the room in the next step.

Dave stares at the spot where they just were a few seconds ago. The nurses just let him space out, while they continue to check for his equipment for his vitals, and only talk to him for a moment to ask him how he feels, to which he just says he’s tired due to the drugs he’s on but he’s fine aside from that.  

When they finally walk out and close the door behind him, he  sighs, staring up at the lights for the few seconds he can before his eyes protest, light sensitivity giving him a headache.  

He shuts his eyes and brings an arm up over them to block out the light, just listening to the whirring of the machines, trying to somehow focus, because he needs to sort everything out, but he feels like he’s floating and all he can feel is where he is, what’s happening, and everything that is currently around him. He supposes this is what people say about ‘being in the moment’, but of all the times he needs this, it’s not now. He needs to remember, and he needs to know what he and everyone else might have to do.

He was hurt, and so was Cecil, although thankfully, he hasn’t heard anything alarming about the poor boy so far, but then again, he’s been awake for less than an hour. He can ask later when Rose and Loki have spread the news to everyone else that he’s awake – they’re probably going to stop by with everyone to tell them the news, so he might be able to do that soon unless the hospital suddenly declares visitors aren’t allowed – and from there they can all tackle the problem of what the hell just happened in the past few days.

Come to think of it, how long has he been asleep?

He hasn’t really been paying attention, and even now, his focus wavers.  

He clicks his tongue and lowers his arm, trying to reach down and feel his torso to check for injuries as the drugs aren’t making him feel much – broken ribs, maybe an open wound since he does remember being impaled on his katana – but instead, he just stills as he takes in the darkness of the room.

The lights aren’t on. He waits for a moment, as maybe the lamp above him had just finally gone out, or maybe it’s from when he’d stared straight at the light for a bit, but nothing happens.  

He feels goosebumps on his skin, and he’s suddenly cold.  

Dave sits up, trying to be as alert as he can despite all the painkillers he’s on right now. He wonders if it’s going to be worth it trying to rip out the needles from his arm, and if him being godtier is going to reverse the damage.  

Maybe not very worth it, in case it doesn’t and will just further injure himself.

He looks out of the glass window of his room. It’s dark there, and he can’t tell if it’s because it’s also dark outside or if it’s because the blinds are closed, but even then, he can’t see any light from the other side at least illuminating the side of the blinds that’s facing the hallway.  

It feels like deja vu, somehow.

“Shit,” he mutters, and tries to go through his sylladex; he’s dismayed to find his katana isn’t there, but that’s no surprise. He does find a gun he’s stored there all those months ago, and he hesitates.  

The light above him flickers, but its light is red, and as it does, Dave sees the space around him in the small span of time that the light shines onto the room. It’s still the same room, nothing is out of place, but there’s also things there that shouldn’t be there. Dark puddles on the floor that Dave has no plan on getting near. Ashes floating around him. Something dark oozing from the corners of the ceiling and slowly running down the walls.

He feels his eyes sting badly and he blinks on reflex, his body immediately trying to get rid of the irritant, but the sensation is still there, followed by something hot on his cheeks, so he reaches up to wipe at whatever’s making its way to his chin, and his fingers come away wet with something dark staining them. In the red light, it looks nearly black.

The smell of iron makes him gag.

He starts to stand, wipes his face with the backs of his hands furiously as soon as he has both feet steady on the floor, and wipes the blood onto his sheets, disgusted. He staggers, for a moment, and as he does, he hears a laugh. He snaps his head to the other end of the room. The light is still flickering, annoying and eye-searing (not that he thinks he’s going to survive crying blood) and he can see nothing there.  

The laugh is closer, and it’s behind him.

Dave turns, arm pulled back in a ready stance for a punch, and just as he swings it, he hears the door to his room open, and then his vision is blinded by the sparks of his heart monitor as his fist crashes into it.  

“What the fuck,” John Egbert says. Dave doesn’t look at him, just stares at the heart monitor he’s just smashed his hand through out of pure adrenaline. His knuckles are most likely bleeding.  

“Dave, are you – someone call the nurse,” John says. There’s footsteps after, getting close to his bed to press the button there, and a few seconds later, Dave sees Mr. G and John trying to get his hand out of the busted heart monitor. They make him sit. He does.

“What?” he asks, out loud, but to no one in particular.  

“We could...ask you the same thing,” Mr. G says, confused. “What happened?”

“Is this real?” Dave asks. He reaches up his cheeks. His hands are clean. “What?”

“Maybe they put him on too much anesthetic,” John says, looking up at Mr. G.  

“Dave, what happened?” the man asks.  

“I was...I was in my room – this room – but I don’t – I don’t think it was the hospital room.”

“What?”

“It looked different,” Dave says, “Like something out of my nightmares. Like I was still having nightmares.”

“Loki and Rose didn’t say anything about that, but I think that was probably for a more in-depth discussion in the war room, “ John says, “But you’ve been having nightmares?”

“I think they were nightmares, yeah,” Dave says.

“Maybe it really is because of the anesthetic. You were having nightmares, and I think that stuff messes with your head.”

“I don’t think they cause hallucinations,” Mr. G says. “We should probably speak to the doctor about this, though.”

“Already called them,” Dave hears the pool master say.

“Thanks,” John says.

Dave just stares at his hand. Clean, bloodless. His eyes aren’t burning and there’s no blood on his face. When he lifts the sheets off his bed, they’re clean as well.

“Dave?”

He thinks he can still hear the laughter, though.  

“Are you okay?”

It’s right by his ear.

“I don’t know.”

-

Rose feels her phone buzz as her feet land inside the Safehouse’s lobby. She frowns and fishes it out. John is calling.  

“Everything alright?” Loki asks.

“It’s John,” she says, and hits the call button. Outside, she hears a car driving down the road, so she puts a bit of distance between herself and the front door, more out of habit than to make sure it’s not too loud.  

Loki gives her a small nod. “I’ll get Dave’s glasses,” he says. Rose gives him a go-ahead while he takes the call.  

“John?”

“Dave just punched out his heart monitor.”

Rose pauses. “Excuse me?”

“He just punched out his heart monitor,” John repeats. “We were just about to visit him and the first thing we saw was him punching out his heart monitor. The whole thing’s busted, his fist went right through.”

“What – what happened, why did he punch his heart monitor. Hell, why was he even standing to get to the heart monitor?”

“I don’t know. He just says he was - ” John pauses, like he’s listening to something, but Rose can’t hear it. “He says he was in this hospital room, this current one, but at the same time he wasn’t?”

She waits for him to elaborate. Thankfully, he does.  

“Everything looked the same, but it also wasn’t. The lights were flickering and they were red, and he was crying blood. He keeps staring at his hands, actually,” John says, “And he says he heard someone laughing.”

Rose stills. The human brain is unfortunately limited and it’s difficult to describe in words how a voice actually sounds like until one can hear it for themself, and since Rose had been under pressure and hasn’t been sleeping too well, she’s so fatigued that she can’t exactly remember what the person who had spoken during the attack, the one who had held a gun, sounded like. She imagines Dave probably can if he’s not too out of it.  

Not that it matters. She’s pretty sure it’s the same person.

“Maybe we should get out of the hospital,” Rose says.

“What?” John asks. “I mean – I can see the merits of it, but we have injured people. And injured people who actually need professional medical help. Cecil still needs therapy. We’re not sure if Dave’s injuries are going to decide to reopen again, we - ”

“I know, John,” she says, “But I don’t think the hospital is safe, considering...”

“What are you thinking?”

“The Safehouse is warded,” she says, “That, at least, we have.”

John pauses.  

After a few minutes, “Maybe we should ward the hospital rooms.”

“Maybe we should – I can try to talk to Loki about it, maybe set up stronger individual protection  spells,” Rose says. “I know he’s warded us for physical threats and compulsion, but – there has got to be other magic aside from that.”

She goes to find the stairs and races up them, hoping to catch Loki while John’s still on the line.  

“That’s a good idea. I can tell everyone to be at the hospital – if, I mean, if you think it’s safe.”

“I’m not sure,” she says. She races down hallways and goes up flights for a few minutes, until she runs to where Dave’s room is. Loki is just closing the door.  

“What is it?” he asks.

Rose puts the call on speaker.

“Dave busted out his heart monitor,” John repeats.

Loki blinks. “Excuse me?”

Rose waits while John relays the whole message again – Dave waking up and saying he was in someplace identical to the room he was in, but at the same time wasn’t; about the bleeding from the eyes, similar to Cecil; about how Dave had punched his heart monitor just as everyone got to his room.  

“Rose thinks we should get out of the hospital,” John says, “And if we can’t, can we at the very least upgrade what protections we already have?”

“You said you put barriers around us. What are they for and what do they do?” Rose asks, and remembers the sight of her brother being impaled onto his own sword. “And is there anything that can bypass them?”

Loki presses his lips to a thin line as he thinks. “Runes, or, well, spells in general, depending on their origin, have different sources of power. They divert that power and push it onto an intent, and that’s what people commonly call magic,” he says, “The protection I’ve put upon you is rooted in the psyche of sentience. I will admit they might be limited because things can only be adjusted in so far as there is proof of their existence and therefore they will be taken into account in the creation of a spell, but they should work for most things that are present. Unless they are completely removed from reality and thus the magic was not created with them in mind.”

“Like radio station frequencies,” John says, “The radio only tunes in and picks up the signals that it’s configured to pick up.”

“Yes,” he says, “So if it’s not anything the spell has any ground to affect, it won’t affect it at all.”

“When you say take into account the psyche of sentience, you mean it can detect ill will, right?” Rose asks, “Unless – unless it’s a completely new thing that the spell doesn’t know how to detect and so it just gets past.”

Loki doesn’t answer right away. After a while, he nods.  

Rose grits her teeth.  

“God damn it,” John hisses, although softly. Rose isn’t sure if he meant for them to hear that. He does immediately follow up with, “How many things can there be that people – what do people who make spells and magic call themselves – how many things can there be that they didn’t know existed that they couldn’t fine-tune their magic to detect and deal with them?”

“Even I know there are a lot of things out there that we do not truly know yet,” Loki says, “And that there are things that can be done to get around seiðr.”

“You didn’t know about horrorterrors,” Rose says. Her palms are damp. “How much do you know about seiðr and its uses?”

“I’d like to think nearly everything given my diligence in studying it.”

“You didn’t know about Skaia,” John says. “Maybe – maybe Skaia wasn’t even a part of this universe at all and we just brought it with us when we came here. Of course there would be no way to prepare for it.”

“The horrorterrors were livid at whatever was possessing Cecil,” Rose says, “Safe to say that whatever it was, it’s tangled with them before.”

“Just what we needed,” John says, “More game related bullshit.”

Rose says nothing. Neither does Loki. John isn’t usually like this, they both know, but – perhaps the stress of everything and finally finding peace only to have it ripped away from you again makes people bare their teeth and finally fight for what they are owed instead of repressing everything. Maybe this has been long overdue.  

No, Rose knows this is long overdue.  

“Even if it’s not, if all of Loki’s seiðr training can’t deal with it, it’s safe to say we don’t have any form of protection against it unless we can identify the source of this and build up the protection from there,” Rose says.

“Our nearest link to that appears to be your brother,” Loki says.

Rose nearly crushes the phone in her hand.  

She takes in a deep breath and lets it out.  

“I know,” she says. “And it’s going to be a bitch to deal with, but if it gets whatever is in his head to leave him alone – then fuck it, we’re going to deal with it.”

-

“You okay?”

“John’s not picking up,” Jade says. She leans back in her seat, ears flat on her head, disappointed. Maybe he’s busy. She’s been trying to call his line for minutes now, but he’s not answering.

Steve, at the front seat, tries to give her an encouraging smile.  

It works, at least, but that’s probably because she’s still riding the high of knowing that there’s more people from the game that are on earth than she initially thought there were.  

Davesprite, on her shoulder, floats near her phone screen.

“You know what would be funny,” he says, “Is if he’s been trying to call you for hours and it just happened that you were trying to call him too and that’s why the line is dead.”

Jade groans.  

“That’s just the universe making everything harder for us,” the troll – Eridan was his name, Jade thinks – says.  

“It always does,” Karkat says. “Can you text him?”

“I can try. It’s going to be less exciting, though,” Jade says.

“I think we can skip out on exciting for this one,” Kanaya says. She sounds nervous. Jade glances up at her, but as Kanaya’s back is to her, she doesn’t see her expression. Maybe she’s trying not to hope too much in case she’ll be disappointed.

“Maybe I should just call Rose,” she mumbles.  

Kanaya’s ears flick up, though, and she turns to Jade, eyes bright, although still a little wary.  

She hopes they all can hope and hope happily and freely soon. She knows what it’s like to constantly think everything’s going to be okay and to be fucked over not even a second later. She knows how exhausting it is. They’re owed small joys, at least.  

She starts to hunt for Rose’s number in her contacts when her phone buzzes and she gets a notification on top of the screen.

“Oh, look at that,” Davesprite says.

“What is it?” Karkat asks.

“It’s a text from John,” Jade says. She sees Roxy turning in her seat and trying to lean over to see the text, so she taps the notif to open the message. She reads the whole thing silently, and then nearly screams and drops the phone.  

Hope.  

Hope without any strings attached. She wants it so badly to be that.  

Even Karkat is turning around to try and see what she’s gotten since she’s silent. “Jade?”

The message reads:

“get to the hospital quick.

dave’s awake.”

“Dave’s awake,” Roxy breathes out, and then, louder, “Dave’s awake!”

Karkat quickly snatches the phone out of Jade’s hand and stares at the screen, squinting at it. “I can’t fucking read this very well, and the fonts on this thing are fucking small,” he mutters, and then after several minutes, “Oh, thank fuck.”

“Dave’s awake?” Steve asks.

“Yes!” Roxy says, punching the roof of the car and actually hitting it. She winces as she pulls back her hand and tries to shake the pain away. She sighs, leaning forwards on the top of the backrest of her seat, folding her arms and hiding her face, even with Hal’s glasses digging into her skin. She sounds like she’s about to cry, exhaustion finally catching up with her relief. “Thank god.”

The car is silent for a moment, Jade just letting the news sink into her mind, Roxy trying not to cry, Karkat trying to figure out how to type together coherent English words and everyone else giving them space to feel relief.  

Kanaya puts a hand on Roxy’s shoulder and squeezes.

“He’s a strong kid,” she says.

Roxy nods, still not lifting her head. “I know,” she says, “I’m just – fuck.”

“Text back that we’ve got guests coming, maybe,” Tony suggests. “We’re close, and we might as well let the good news train keep rolling.”

“I already did,” Karkat says, a little proudly. He hands the phone back to Jade, who only laughs and switches the screen off and puts it back in her sylladex.  

“I hope he’s okay,” Jade says, “What with the morphine and all.”

“I think he’ll be fine,” Davesprite says, “It won’t be his first time.”

Tony mutters something that sounds like, “Damn,” from the driver’s seat.  

Jade laughs again. “Yeah,” she says, “He’s a strong kid.”

“Let’s just hope that we can get inside the hospital without any problems,” Steve says, “We’re going to have to sneak in, more or less.”

“Or we can have Roxy and Jade go up to the hospital rooms first and tell everyone we’re coming,” Eridan says.

“We still have to sneak Karkat in if the Cecil kid still hasn’t been released,” Roxy says, “That’s how hospitals work, right?”

Jade frowns. “Wait, why?” she asks, “Why is that important – why does Karkat have to get to Cecil?”

The car is silent.  

Jade feels her stomach drop, but tries desperately to quiet her mind as no one says anything. They’re just trying to string their words together. They’re just trying to explain something really difficult. They’re just waiting for someone to talk. It can’t necessarily be a bad thing.

Right?

“Right,” Karkat says, “We – we forgot to tell you in all the excitement, but uh.”

Jade closes her eyes. So much for hope with no strings attached.

“Your friend’s sick,” Karkat says. She looks up and he meets her with a pitying look. “Very, very sick.”

-

Dave isn’t responding to the doctor. He’s just staring blankly at the floor, not even listening to the doctor as he calls his name.  

John sighs and looks down at his phone, which is still trying to call Jade, but with no luck. Of course they would have to deal with this. Of course. There’s never really anything that ends up good without something awful wrapped up with it for them these days. He should have expected this.  

It gets old fast though. Very fast. He thinks if he doesn’t get out of this room soon, he’s going to snap but for Dave’s sake, he’s staying.  

Mrs. H is holding his hand, sitting beside him, silent. He thinks if it weren’t for her, he probably would have done something he’d regret by now. Bless her kind heart.  

He sighs and exits out the dial screen to shoot Jade a text. If she’s busy , she’ll get that, at least.

“Mr. Strider?” the doctor asks again.

Dave takes so long to answer that the man looks like he’s about to give up and get out the room.

“If this was fake and all in my head and a game to get me to think this was real, you would have gotten really annoyed by now, right?” Dave asks.

John looks up, slowly, frowning in confusion. The doctor looks just as bewildered as he is.

“I imagine so, Mr. Strider, but I have a duty to my patients,” the doctor says, “It’s good to see you are responsive and not catatonic, though.”

“What’s your name?”

The doctor pauses.  

“Dr. Timothy Mendel,” he says.

“Right,” Dave says. He looks up and pauses, staring at the doctor. John doesn’t know if his squinting is from the light or from concentration. Whatever he was squinting about is over after a few minutes and he nods to himself. “Right, thank you, Dr. Mendel. Do you guys happen to have any protective eyewear – I have photosensitivity.”

“Of course, Mr. Strider,” the doctor says, and gestures to a nurse. He nods and goes out the room. “Do you want to talk about what happened, Mr. Strider?”

Dave looks like he’s weighing his answers. “The hallucination?”

“Do you think it was a hallucination?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t trust that you aren’t right now, doctor,” he says.

“I see,” Dr. Mendel says, “Could you describe to me what you saw, or heard, or perhaps felt?”

“Why?”

“I want to help you, Mr. Strider,” the doctor says.  

John looks at Dave, watches the way his fingers twitch, watches him look at the doctor like he’s making sure he’s going to see it when the man strikes so he can block. John is no combat genius, but he’s been in enough fights to be able to get a good guess if someone is going to swing. Dr. Mendel is relaxed. In fact, if he even tried to hit Dave, John’s sure Dave could easily block and dislocate his arm in less time.  

Dave still shakes his head. He brings his feet up to the bed and starts moving away, so he could lie down and try to get some sleep, or at least, shut out whoever is going to try and talk to him while he’s still confused and wary of everything and everyone.

John can understand.

He just wishes this wasn’t happening.

Dave was supposed to wake up, and nothing else. He was supposed to recover. Everyone was supposed to go back to the Safehouse, deal with everything that they have to deal with, and then go back to assisting the city. When they have recovered enough to feel like they can take chances here in this reality, they could go to high school, maybe college, maybe get a degree and a job and just try to pretend to be normal human beings as best as they can with the shitty cards they already have.

Dave wasn’t supposed to be dealing with what was probably hallucinations, and they weren’t supposed to deal with mounting paranoia over everything again.

John blinks, realizing that his vision is blurry due to the tears building up at the edges of his eyes. He shuts his phone screen off so he can pocket his phone and wipe his cheeks with his free hand.  

Mrs. H squeezes his other hand. On his other side, he feels the pool master’s best friend put a hand on his shoulder in comfort.

He’s so tired.  

Which is saying something, since he usually just tries to forget everything and be happy all the time, because if you fake it enough, you make it until smiling and laughing at every single fucked up thing that’s ever been laid on your path is a kneejerk reaction and a coping mechanism.

But he’s so tired, and just once – just for once, he wants the world to give them what they’re due. If not a childhood, if not a chance to reunite with their dead families, if not a chance to reunite with their friends, then maybe another shot at happiness.  

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, to Mrs. H, to the pool master’s best friend, to everyone he’s ever known in his life. “I think I need some fresh air.”

Mrs. H gives his hand one last comforting squeeze before letting him go as he stands. She says nothing, and John is thankful for it. He doesn’t think he’d be able to keep it together if she does.

He gets out of Dave’s room silently, not even looking back to see if Dave watched him go. He goes to the stairs instead of the elevator and he looks at his feet as he walks step after step, until he reaches the top floor and disperses into wind, rushing down towards the stairs for the roof.  

As soon as he’s at the top, he lets himself solidify and reform. He sits, knees close to his chest, and cries.  

He stays like that for a while, the wind around him picking up, and he can feel his hair wildly whipping around him the more upset he gets, but he doesn’t quite care. After he’s cried his eyes out, he knows there will be quite a mess in the streets, there will be weather reports of freak wind storms, but for now he’s angry and upset and he doesn’t know how to fix anything, least of all how he’s feeling, so he just lets it be.

His pocket buzzes. There’s a text. He’s not really in the mood to check that, so he just waits, until he nearly forgets.  

He cries until his eyes can’t anymore, and his nose is clogged, and his eyes are hot, and he thinks his cheeks have puffed up from all the sobbing. He feels his phone buzz again, and he ignores it, only for it to buzz four consecutive times three minutes later, so he does take it out.

It’s all texts from Kevin, asking if he wants anything to eat, followed by a few texts of reassurance, and he can’t even find himself to be upset at those, because he knows that Kevin’s had it pretty rough too. He texts back that he’s not really hungry, but – at the very least, he doesn’t feel as awful as he started.

He’s about to pocket his phone when he notices there’s still one notification for a message he hasn’t read. He clicks it.

And frowns, because it’s mostly gibberish, although it’s from Jade’s number.

It reads:

we4r vp,<,omtto yhe jpsptslll YJODOD lstls5 b Y yhJ WAY

“Did she accidentally butt dial me?” He tries to look at the incoherent message again, to see if it’s a code of some sort, but it doesn’t look like anything he knows. He forwards it to everyone save Jade, with the message: do any of you know if this is a code or something? jade might have just butt dialed me but i’m not sure.

He turns the screen off after he hits send, pockets his phone and looks up at the sky, leaning back on his hands. The wind around him is still raging.

He hopes something good happens soon.