Scorpion Shards by Neal Shusterman Page B

what he already knew. The cloth was the exact same color as the scraggly boy’s eyes. Impossibly deep—impossibly blue! This was the connection!
    Michael grabbed the cloth and looked at Winston, suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. Michael felt the urge to say It’s good to see you again, even though he knew he had never met this small black kid before.
    Tory approached, staring at Lourdes, and rather than being repulsed, she felt somehow comforted by her large presence. It made Tory want to peel back her scarf, to reveal her own awful face, suddenly not ashamed of it in front of the present company.
    â€œMy God!” said Lourdes, as Tory revealed her face, and Lourdes smiled with a look of wonder instead of disgust. Still holding onto Michael, Lourdes reached out to touch Tory, who still had a hand on Winston’s shoulder; Winston had put his small palm up against Michael’s large one, closing a circuit of the four of them . . . and the instant the circuit was closed, something happened.
    Their skin felt on fire, their bones felt like ice. They could not move.
    Then an image exploded through their minds with such power and intensity, it seemed to burn the world around them away. It was a vision before sight, a tale before words. It wasa memory—for it was so terrifyingly familiar to all of them it could only be a memory—not of something seen or heard but of something felt:
    Bright Light! Sharp Pain! One screaming voice becoming six screaming voices. Six! There are six of us!
    As the vision filled them, the clouds above began to boil and separate, as a powerful wind blew through the ghostly steel rainbow and the wet earth was finally drenched by blinding rays of sun.

6. THE UNRAVELING
----
    A T THAT SAME MOMENT, ABOUT FOUR HUNDRED MILES away, Dillon Cole doubled over in a pain even more intense than the wrecking-hunger. He burst into a men’s room in the small bus depot in Big Springs, Nebraska, stumbled into a stall, and collapsed to the tile floor. At first he thought this must have been God striking him down for the sheer magnitude of his sins—but then as the world around him seemed to burn away, he knew it was something else. The vision—the memory then burst upon his mind. It was both glorious and awful at once, and so intense that he thought it would kill him.
    Awful Awful Awful
    Blinding fire
    Tearing
    Shattering
    Unbearable pain
    Shard of light
    Piercing
    Screaming through the void
    Then silence . . .
    And a beat.
    And silence . . .
    A heartbeat.
    And warmth
    And comfort
    And the soft safety
    Of flesh and blood.
    It was the vision of a cataclysmic death . . . followed by life. His own life. Something died . . . and he was born . . . but not just him. Others. The Others.
    The convulsions that racked his body subsided as the vision faded, and he felt the grip of reality once more. He picked himself up and staggered back into the waiting area.
    â€œDeanna?” He found her still doubled over on a bench. Her head was in her hands and she was quietly crying. She had shared this earth-shattering vision as well.
    â€œYou okay?” asked Dillon, still shaking from the experience.
    â€œWhat was it?” Deanna got her tears under control. “I was so scared . . . what’s happening to us?”
    â€œThe Others are together,” said Dillon, just realizing it himself. The fact struck him in the face, leaving him stunned—and unsure of how to feel about it.
    It was all beginning to make sense to him now. There were six of them in the vision, all screaming discordant notes.
    They were all here, together, for fifteen years. Maybe thousands of miles apart by human standards, but from the perspective of an immense universe, they were right beside one another . . . and moving closer. The thought of it began to make Dillon get angry, and he didn’t know why . . . and then he realized