Kaelen Beckett could only hear the rain.

  He couldn't hear the car skidding, or rolling across the highway. He couldn't hear the hull of the car colliding against the guardrails. He couldn't hear the sound of shattering glass. He couldn't hear his own breaths. He couldn't even hear his own screams.

  What he heard was the absence of an airbag deploying.

  What he heard was the absence of his friends' screams.

  What he heard was the absence of their breaths.

  All he heard was the rain.

  Kaelen knew they were alive. At least, he hoped. Briar did have a pulse - Kaelen had reached over Wynne to check her, and only nominally felt bad about it. Briar had a weak, fading pulse, but it was there. Blood dripped down the right side of her head, over her eye, while her left side was mostly unscathed. However, based on how Kaelen's fingers came back red when he checked his friend's wrist, he didn't want to think about what else she might have sustained.

  Of course, he did check for signs of life from Wynne after checking on Briar. The new addition of their friend group had a barely stronger pulse. The shallow breaths were definitely worrying, but that could wait.

  Kaelen looked at Jude next, in the passenger seat. His half-brother's face was decorated with blood and glass. His breaths were shuddering, pained, but he might as well have been dead. There was no life in those eyes. There was nothing.

  Kaelen knew he was calling to his brother. That he was shaking him. He couldn't hear, but it didn't matter. He got no response.

  That's when Kaelen finally looked at the driver's seat.

  Lysander was definitely awake, red-stained hands still gripping the steering wheel. He was breathing mostly normally, though the lack of an airbag definitely meant that wouldn't last. His ice-colored eyes stared forward, and Kaelen couldn't remember the last time he remembered his friend look so scared.

  Kaelen kicked the rear driver's side door and rolled out onto the pavement. He had to quickly get up and yank the door that kept Lysander from him. It fell all the way off, which was a very alarming problem for later.

  "Ly..." Kaelen felt his mouth move. He guessed he made a sound because Lysander slowly turned.

  He could finally see the canals of pale skin made through the blood by Lysander's tears.

  The first thing he heard that wasn't the rain was Lysander's voice. It was soft, like fluttering wings - but it roared louder than thunder in Kaelen's ears.

  "Did I...kill them...?"

  Kaelen shook his head. "No," he told Lysander. He could finally hear his own voice, and he wasn't sure he'd believe himself in his shoes. "We have to go," Kaelen said, more firmly this time.

  Lysander nodded, then tried to get up. It was slow, much too slow.

  Of course, the piece of metal shrapnel sticking out of his stomach definitely didn't help.

  Kaelen immediately grabbed Lysander and sat him back down. He may have been in college now, but Kaelen remembered his high school first aid course - if the shrapnel dislodged, Lysander would bleed out. He couldn't forgive himself if that happened.

  "Stay here. Don't move, okay? Don't. Move." Kaelen's voice lacked the franticness he was feeling.

  "O...okay." Lysander's face was turning even paler than it already was. They were running out of time.

  Kaelen nodded in assent, then turned. He sprinted into the highway - there was an exit nearby, wasn't there? He should be able to find help.

  He should have looked both ways.

  As Kaelen stared down the barrel of headlights, and heard another car horn, that was the last thing he thought.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I should have looked both ways.

  The rain was gone.

  Kaelen found himself in the middle of the pavement, only this time, something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

  It shouldn't be this cold in August.

  He sat up abruptly, somehow feeling life in him despite being in two car accidents back to back. Everything was covered in a thick blanket of still-falling snow. Visibility was next to none - he could barely make out the outline of his own hand in front of him. His clothes were not soaked through yet, but the flakes that were being absorbed into the fabric indicated very clearly that yet was the operative word.

  When Kaelen's eyes adjusted, he was able to see the faint outline of Lysander's car, still crushed against the edge of the highway. He was grateful that the headlights were still flickering, because it did make finding the car in this haze easier. He could worry about the snow later, all that mattered was making sure that those close to him were okay. He raced forward, adrenaline coursing through his veins and leaking out his forehead through the warm blood that still dripped.

  Kaelen grabbed the roof of the car and looked inside.

  No one was there.

  No one was there.

  Why was no one there?!

  "LY?!" Kaelen screamed. "JUDE?! BRIAR?! WYNNE?! WHERE ARE YOU?!"

  Kaelen's eyes frantically darted around the highway. There were no footprints. The door wouldn't budge. Hell, if not for the destruction and red staining the inside of the car so much it was visible through the frosted-over glass, he would have assumed that they'd never been inside the car at all.

  Panic continued to set in as Kaelen realized if they were not in the car, this meant that they were all at risk of bleeding out, or worse. Lysander definitely had shrapnel in his stomach, but he couldn't imagine that Jude, Briar, or Wynne would fare any better with how obviously injured they were.

  He had to find them.

  Kaelen picked a direction he thought the road might be in and started to run. He could feel snow soaking through his sneakers and freezing his feet. It didn't really matter, though. All that mattered was finding them before they got worse. Wind roared in his ears.

  Strange, he thought that this part of Maryland had more hills. It certainly had more trees. He didn't come across a single one though, for the first hour anyway. He knew it had been an hour from his watch, the one his mother gave him when he graduated.

  By the second hour, Kaelen had stopped running. His stamina had run out the thinner the air got, but he was still walking forward. He had to hit civilization at some point. He had to. He did stop at the first tree he found - a gnarled willow, he surmised - to catch his breath. But it was maybe five minutes, he refused to take any longer than that.

  "SOMEBODY HELP! MY FRIENDS NEED HELP! LYSANDER?! WHERE ARE YOU?!" he screamed so loudly he felt something in his throat split open.

  He quickly checked the indents that were once his footprints in order to make sure he didn't retrace his steps, before continuing.

  By the third hour, Kaelen's voice was hoarse from screaming. The air was so thick he had to swallow it. He would catch his balance on the few trees he came across, taking note of what type they were. Thank god he was taking botany right now, because the fact that he knew fir and pine from each other somehow made his journey less monotonous as he was able to mark where he was.

  Not that it mattered. He was still heading forward.

  Kaelen stopped screaming at the fourth hour.

  He stopped counting after the sixth.

  But he kept walking. Kaelen couldn't feel his legs from the knees down, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was finding help.

  He almost missed the abandoned building trying to look through both the haze and his ice-covered lashes.

  But he didn't.

  Kaelen forced himself to turn against the wind that had been against his back since he started walking and practically threw himself to the doorstep of the building. The glass door was ajar, thankfully, so he was able to push himself upright and essentially slide into the room.

  No one was inside. Of course not. The building - a convenience store, evidently - hadn't been restocked in ages. The few items still on the shelves were from some decade long past...70s? 80s? He didn't know.

  Kaelen stood shakily, using an empty shelving unit to help him up. He couldn't speak anymore, even his saliva was frozen. Maybe he could find a phone. 9-1-1 could theoretically find his location, right? Even if they got it wrong, they had to find the car on the way here.

  The aisles seemed longer than they should be.

  Kaelen pressed his hand against one of the refrigerators, or he thought so anyway. He watched himself do it, but the nerves in his fingers were likely dead at this point, so he couldn't be sure. He turned towards the frozen-from-outside refrigerator, and absently, found himself cleaning it off with his fingers.

  What looked back at him wasn't himself.

  That's when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and heat and light blasted him from all directions. "Whoa dude, are you okay?!" someone asked him, though he could barely hear it over the sound of everything buzzing to life.

  Kaelen felt his lips for the first time in hours.

  "H...help..."

  Everything went black.