Sable Book 1 of Chaos Time (Chaos Time Series) by Marie Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

again.” She spit, her stomach still queasy.
    “It gets easier. You’ll get used to it.”
    “Ugh, yeah. Don’t think so.”
    He grinned, the type of smile that said clearly: you just wait and see.
    She huffed and turned her back to him, walking away. But each step made her more and more confused because everything was familiar and yet nothing was the same. She stopped, turning in circles. The land, the flat grass she’d seen it all before. But there wasn’t a building. No chaos of bodies and charred remains from a supposedly large tremor.
    There weren’t even any exposed beams or siding. A large, deep crevice where Fairfield should have been was the only thing that lent any sort of credibility to his story.
    In fact, strange to say, but the place was oddly peaceful. A brook—gurgling and chirping with life—trickled merrily by a few yards off from where she stood. Jays and robins glided gracefully past.
    It looked like someone had made anything man made...vanish.
    “So do you believe now?” he asked from right behind her.
    She turned on him. “What is this? Where have you brought me?”
    He circled around her back, standing next to her and spread his arm. “This is Fairfield, about a week from when I took you.”
    “Wait.” She held up her hand. That was impossible. Right? Right. Impossible But her mind was too messed up to really comprehend what she was seeing. Because, while it looked real, she’d cracked before. “Oh my god,” she breathed. “They gave me too much. I’m still strapped to that gurney. None of this is real.”
    Her hands shook as primal liquid fear flooded her insides, made her knees weak. Disassociation, that’s what her doctor had called it. Squeezing her eyes shut she willed her mind to wake up, to stop this now.
    “Sable,” Hunter growled, “you weren’t this obstinate before.”
    “No!” She took two steps back. “You shut up. This isn’t real. And neither are you. I will not lose it.” She clenched her fists. She’d always feared this day would come. The day her mind would completely breakaway from reality. The day she really did go crazy. “Wake up, Sable. Wake up.”
    “What do I have to do to convince you that I am who I say I am and this is really real?” And just as he finished saying it, she saw something in his eyes click into place. He bit his lip and she knew that whatever he’d just thought of, she wasn’t going to like it.
    She squeezed her fists over her ears, drowning him out with her repetitious chant, “ wakeupwakeupwakeup !”
    Strong hands grabbed her, forcing her to look into a calm glacial stare. He wrapped her up and she was once again hurtling through time at a dizzying speed. The lights. The movement. It confused her mind. Scrambled her wiring and made her body forget to do its most basic thing. Breathe. Then they were out and she was hunched over and gagging, sucking in air like a woman starved.
    It took two seconds to realize where they were at. The view from this side was strange and she couldn’t speak. For years all she’d ever dreamed about was this. It didn’t matter that rain pelted her face, that lightning struck dangerously close to where they stood, or that she could smell the sulfur reek of it in the air.
    She was outside staring in.
    Fairfield was a gray and morose structure standing boxy and imposing on the top of the hill before them. He stepped to the side of her. She swallowed the lump in her throat.
    “What is this, Hunter?”
    “If words fail to convince, then maybe seeing really is believing.”
    She would have asked him to explain but then the ground rumbled. Her eyes grew and she jumped back. It was like someone had breathed life into the Earth. Deep fissures started to skate across dirt as the land separated from itself. Glass shattered and then the screaming started.
    Hunter grabbed her, and she didn’t fight him. They were back in his tunnel, her hands clamped tight to his skull, desperate that he not let her go.