Unleashed

by Carolyn O'Doherty

  The vision was so perfect, the fantasy just starting to turn into reality, when Alexandra Manning ran away and ruined everything. Ross kicks at a stick lying in the grass, sending it hurtling across the lawn. It hits a parked car with a loud thud.

  “Mr. Ross?” Yuki’s voice warbles up from the recesses of the building. “Sir? Is everything all right up there?”

  Ross wipes a hand across his face.

  “Everything is fine,” he says.

  He walks over to the window, broken glass grinding beneath his feet. Yuki peers up at him through the bushes. Her face looks pale and strained in the basement’s dim light.

  “You can let time go,” Ross tells her.

  The girl’s features relax, the world around them blurs, and the next instant, everything returns to how it was when she stopped time. Ross again stands next to Yuki, the victim’s body at his feet, and the spinner’s fingers resting on the back of his hand. The deputy completes his shiver of anticipation. Outside, the rusty pipe is back in its spot behind the dumpster, and the upper window it had shattered is now intact.

  “We’re back,” Ross tells the deputy.

  The younger man’s eyes bug out of his face.

  “Did you recognize him?” he asks. “The killer?”

  Ross hesitates for only a second.

  “The rewind was a bit blurry,” he says, “but I have a pretty good idea who did this.”

  The admiration in the deputy’s eyes soothes some of the burn in Ross’s heart. He might as well make use of the rewind. A rewound murder charge is hard to fight, and there’s no point wasting it on the dumb schmuck who actually killed her. He’s not a serious threat to public safety. Ross mentally runs through his list of known criminals, the ones who deserve to be arrested but have so far managed to avoid conviction: Mercer Lee, Fred Watson, Joseph Sully. One of them won’t have an alibi for last night. Even if the crime isn’t exactly the one they committed, putting them behind bars means one more scumbag off the streets.

  Ross takes out Yuki’s leash and reattaches it to her arm. The arrest will be a small gain, nothing like the scope of what he could accomplish if he had a personal spinner working just for him. Yuki rubs her forehead, making no effort to hide what the rewind has cost her. Ross turns away. How will he find someone new? He runs through the roster of qualified spinners still living at the Center: Raul, Angel, Aiden, Simon. Not one of them has a reputation for any particular spark, and the fifteen Youngers will take too long to train. Finding a quick replacement for Alex was always a slim hope, and this mission has crushed it.

  He heads up the stairs, Yuki trailing behind with a forlorn shuffle that grates on Ross with an irritation close to pain. Somewhere out in the city, Alex is hiding—scared, confused, and completely unprepared to survive in the real world. It’s only a matter of time before the girl does something to expose her location. When she does, the wipers—the Center’s private security team—will find her and ship her off to the Central Office. There, they will snuff out all her potential with a quick, quiet death.

  Ross’s pace quickens as he marches down the hallway. He won’t let it happen. Alex is too valuable to throw away. If the wipers can find her, then surely so can he. Ross reaches the front door and steps out into the unfiltered sunshine. Alex has spent three days cowering in fear. Ross is confident that once he finds her, he’ll be able to convince her to work with him again. After all, he knows her weaknesses. He knows everything she loves and fears. He will get her back.

  02

  THE WOMAN ON TV IS CRYING. CAMERA CREWS PRESS their lenses into her grief, soaking up her loss and confusion in the name of increased ratings. Why me? her teary eyes beg. Why him?

  I turn my head, only to be confronted with ten identical images pummeling me from an entire wall of TVs. An electronics store is not the place to go if you want to avoid seeing Portland’s hottest news story of the week: Young, pretty Emily Shea came home from a visit to her parents to find her husband in bed, alone, with his throat slashed. He’d been dead three days. The cops said the Shea’s side-door lock had been jimmied, but the burglar alarm never went off, and none of the neighbors saw anything suspicious. The one set of fingerprints the police found in the house had no records attached to them. The crime is surrounded by mystery.

  A mystery to everyone but me. I can tell them exactly what happened that night because those unidentified fingerprints at the Shea house are mine.

  “Alex.” Jack nudges my shoulder. “What about getting one of those?”

  Mrs. Shea’s eyes follow me when I turn away from the screen to see what he’s pointing at, making me snap at Jack with an extra dose of irritation.

  “What would we do with a giant speaker back at the squat? Victor won’t even let us have a radio.”

  Jack stares hungrily at the box. “We could plug headphones into it,” he says. “Or look at those! I heard that brand is the bomb.”

  Jack starts off toward a locked cabinet full of speakers ranging from the size of a toaster to a matchbox. I grab the back of his T-shirt.

  “We came here to get cell phones,” I whisper. “That’s it. We are not going to go around stealing a ton of stuff just for fun.”

  Jack shakes off my hold and crosses his arms. “Let me see if I understand. Taking stuff is OK if you want it, but when I want something, it’s called stealing?”

  I sigh. I couldn’t have managed the last few days without Jack, but that doesn’t mean the guy doesn’t drive me crazy. When we left the Center, I’d been exhausted and still staggering from a car crash. It was Jack who carried KJ out of the clinic, Jack who convinced Shannon to come and nurse KJ, and Jack who found us a place to live. Jack also taught me how to use the bus system, and I have to admit his company makes me less anxious on the endless errands that keep us alive. Still, if it were KJ out here, he would be helping me figure out a long-term survival plan, instead of trying to convince me that taking stuff from a faceless corporation doesn’t count as stealing. KJ would be calm and responsible. KJ would not be trying to impress that loser Victor.

  “This isn’t about stealing stuff in general,” I say, choosing my words carefully in an effort to come off as sympathetic yet firm. “It’s about how some things are necessities and others are luxuries.”

  Jack makes a disgusted noise and marches off to check out a display of something called sound bars. I glance back up at the TV screen. Mrs. Shea has been replaced by a reporter standing in front of what looks like a small lake, talking about flooding in Puerto Rico. Behind her, a tall man is herding a group of about a dozen children off a wooden rowboat. I’m about to head over to the cell phone section when I notice the words Four Spinners Found Dead scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Prickles erupt all over my skin.

  “Jack?” I call, but either he’s too far away to hear me, or else I’m whispering. It’s hard to tell because my ears feel like they’re stuffed with cotton. I step closer to the TV, straining to catch the reporter’s voice through the haze in my brain.

  “The survivors,” she says, “were removed from Puerto Rico’s only Children’s Home early this morning.”

  Children—spinner children—stagger off the boat. The prickles on my skin feel like a thousand needles stabbing me from every direction. The spinners range in age from about four to eight, too young to start work at a Crime Investigation Center, and they’re all staring at the camera with bewildered expressions.

  “Doctors,” the reporter continues, “say the deaths occurred when rising flood waters cut the Children’s Home off from critical supplies. A worker with the Red Cross said the Home had not been marked as a priority location in the city’s rescue plan.”

  Not a priority. I put a hand on some shelving to steady myself. Did the spinners starve to death? Or did the Children’s Home realize they had to ration their supplies and chose to do it through a convenient outbreak of “time sickness
”? My vision blurs. The faces on the screen morph, the young strangers transforming into the friends I left behind: Aiden, Raul, Yuki, Simon, Angel. I shudder. I have to get them out.

  The reporter says something about checking in with people’s reactions, and a shot of a bunch of protestors waving signs flashes on the screen. Angry yells burst from the speakers. The words are lost under a roar of boos and jeers, but in my head, the accusations all point out my failure: of the twenty-four spinners living at the Center, I only rescued four.

  My mind scrabbles for the scattered shreds of survival strategy I’ve managed to put together over the past few days. Phones. We need cell phones so we can communicate when we’re not together.

  The guy at the phone counter sports a neatly trimmed beard and an earnest expression behind his square plastic glasses. I fiddle with a few of the fancy models on display, pushing random buttons as if I have a clue how the things work. Earnest Guy keeps pace with me from the other side of the counter as I move along the row.

  “How’s your day going?” he asks.

  “Fine.” My palms are sweating, but I’m afraid I’ll look suspicious if I wipe them off. This turns out to be a bad call since the next time I pick up a phone, it promptly slips out of my hand.

  “Oops,” I mumble. The phone, attached to the display case by a thin wire, bounces against my knees.

  Earnest Guy places his hands on the counter. “Can I help you find something?”

  “Yeah, um…” I glance over at Jack. I’m regretting that I annoyed him so much he’s ignoring me. Jack is good at talking to salespeople. “I want a phone…two phones, actually…but not a contract. Isn’t there a way to just get a temporary one…I mean, aren’t there…?”

  My voice trails off. I can feel the heat of a blush spreading up my cheeks. Am I making him suspicious? Any normal sixteen-year-old would know all about cell phones. Earnest Guy cocks his head. My heart starts beating so hard he can probably see it throbbing beneath my sweater.

  “You mean a pay-as-you-go model?” he asks.

  “Yeah.” I offer him a weak smile. “That’s what I meant. I just forgot the word.” Maybe he’ll just think I’m scatterbrained.

  Earnest Guy reaches under the counter and pulls out a phone nestled in a plastic box. He starts rattling on about buying minutes and programming the phone. I nod as if concepts like texting and web surfing are things I know about in any context besides TV. It doesn’t help my concentration that the whole time he talks, Earnest Guy’s eyes keep sliding around my face. I try to picture what he sees: a girl with straight brown hair dressed in jeans and a plain blue sweater. Nothing to justify any heightened interest. OK, except maybe the two Band-Aids my bangs don’t do a very good job of covering up and the fading bruises decorating one cheek. I smooth my hair down over the back of my neck—no sense in letting him see the larger bandage hidden there.

  “Thanks,” I say, when he finally finishes. “I’ll think about it.”

  I start backing away. The sales guy puts out a hand to stop me.

  “Hey,” he says, “is everything OK?”

  The enormity of the question leaves me momentarily mute. Is everything OK? The institution I’d called home turned out to be poisoning me with Aclisote, a drug I’d always been told was the only thing that kept me from going insane. My best friend, KJ, was given so much Aclisote he’s now semicomatose. We are living illegally in a warehouse. And, oh, yeah, I watched Carson Ross, the person I admired most, murder Austin Shea three days ago and then threaten to frame me for the crime unless I promised to work for him. So, no, nothing about my life at the moment is what you’d call OK.

  Not that I can tell Earnest Guy any of that. I force myself to smile. “Yeah, sure.”

  The guy frowns. He seems nice enough. Maybe he has a sister who’s my age. Or a kid. He glances toward the TV section, then leans toward me.

  “That guy you’re with,” he says. “Your boyfriend? I saw you arguing.” His gaze flickers over my bruises again. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  He is so completely off base, I almost laugh. Jack might be annoying, but he’s also a spinner. We spinners stick together. We have no reason to hurt each other. The rest of the world takes care of that.

  I shake my head, point toward my face, and tell him the truth. “I was in a car accident. I’m fine now.”

  Earnest Guy looks like he wants to say more, and when I walk away, I can feel him watching me. Great. Here I am trying to be anonymous, and some goody-goody helpful dude decides to take an interest. I search three aisles before I find Jack in the place I should have checked first. He’s back in the music section, standing in front of a bin of CDs, headphones draped over his dark hair, sampling tracks from an album called Greatest Hits of 2010.

  I wave a hand in front of his face. “We’ve gotta go.”

  Jack starts singing a flawless imitation of Bruno Mars’s song “Billionaire.” A pretty girl in a red hoodie, the only other person flipping through the CDs, lifts her head to watch him.

  “Come on.” I reach for the headphones. Jack dances out of my reach. He starts singing more loudly, his hips gyrating to the rhythm. Hoodie Girl nods her approval.

  “Jack!” I lunge again. The headphones reach the end of their tether, and I manage to snatch them off his head.

  “OK, OK.” Jack holds his hands up in surrender, laughing as he backs away.

  “We don’t want to draw so much attention,” I mutter, as I put the headphones back on their hook.

  “Speak for yourself.” Jack winks at Hoodie Girl, who grins.

  I clench my jaw so hard my teeth creak. Jack is medium height, well muscled, with a smile that’s charming, but not quite trustworthy. Yesterday, he buzzed his hair so short it sticks up all over his head. I think it makes him look like he’s trying really hard to be cool, though clearly Hoodie Girl doesn’t agree with me.

  “Do you have any sense at all?” I hiss at Jack. “We’re going to rob this place, so it’s better if no one remembers we were here. Not to mention that we’re fugitives.”

  “Always with the melodrama,” Jack whispers back. “It doesn’t matter if people notice us. We won’t be here when the stuff disappears. And we’re not fugitives. The Sick hasn’t announced we’re gone.”

  I grip Jack’s arm and yank him toward the exit, not bothering to argue. Of course the Sick—what we call the Crime Investigation Center, or CIC—hasn’t publicly announced that we ran away. To do that, Dr. Barnard would have to admit that four of his spinners are freely mingling with the public, a fact likely to cause nationwide panic, given how much Norms fear us.

  “Chill out.” Jack tries to pull his arm out of my grasp. “You’re going to rip my arm off.”

  A muscle in my neck spasms. I let go of Jack’s arm and massage the sore spot with two fingers. Not that it helps. Ever since we left the Center, I’ve felt like I’m a string pulled so taut that I can practically feel myself vibrating.

  We head for the store’s main entrance, passing by Earnest Guy, who is watching us from behind the phone counter, a frown creasing his brow. I smile at him. He doesn’t smile back. I pick up my pace. We’re just normal teenagers, I tell myself, shopping on a Thursday afternoon. My hand creeps up to touch the bandage at the back of my neck, a twin of the one Jack wears. The slice where Shannon cut out the trackers the Center used to monitor us is still tender. I drop my hand back down to my side. Normal teenagers, I think again, just normal teenagers.

  We’re nearly at the exit, when two men step into the store. They’re walking in tandem and sporting predatory glares that mark them as security. Their eyes sweep across the busy space and lock onto me and Jack.

  We both stop. We’re standing at the lip of an aisle, hemmed in by racks of home security systems. The guards separate. The first moves toward us, while the other circles around toward the back, clearly intent on preventing our esca
pe. My chest tightens so much that blood no longer reaches my brain, forcing my thoughts into a single terrified loop: If the guards catch us, they’ll take us back to the Center. If we go to the Center, Dr. Barnard will put us back on Aclisote. If we go back on Aclisote, we’ll die.

  Jack grabs my hand. “Come on, Alex. Do it.”

  I watch the guard walk toward us, paralyzed. He’s five feet away. Four. He opens his mouth.

  “Excuse me. Can I ask you…?”

  Jack’s hand tightens around mine and everything freezes. The man’s words stop mid-sentence, leaving a silence so absolute my heart thuds like a drumroll. The guard behind us hovers with one foot off the ground, the other barely touching it, so he balances on an impossibly small piece of his instep. Near the entrance, two cart-wielding shoppers stand perfectly still, their pasty faces stuck in expressions of disapproving curiosity. No one stirs in the entire store. Nobody—except me and Jack—so much as breathes.

  I slump against a piece of shelving. The threat of capture has turned me shaky and hollow, like my stomach decided to take a vacation to visit my feet. Jack glares at me with a decided lack of sympathy.