Unleashed

by Carolyn O'Doherty

  “Why didn’t you freeze time?” he demands. “You know mine’s useless.” He squeezes my hand again, crushing my fingers. “Come on, I’ll melt right now and you refreeze.”

  I shake my head. “We can’t.”

  Jack flings my hand away like it’s a piece of trash. Jack’s right that his freeze is not going to get us out of this mess and mine could. Two weeks ago—a couple of days after I stopped taking Aclisote—my skills changed. Now, unlike any spinner I’ve ever heard of, anything I do during frozen time stays that way after time starts again. Which means I can do lots of things without getting caught—like steal expensive electronic equipment. Or avoid getting nabbed by threatening security guards. Or give Carson Ross the opportunity to murder a defenseless man sleeping in silver-gray pajamas inside a locked house.

  “If we run away in frozen time,” I say, “everyone will see us disappear into thin air.”

  “So? You did that when you got away from Dr. Barnard.”

  “That was different. He was going to kill me. I didn’t have any other choice.”

  “And we have a choice now?” Jack points toward the semi-floating guard.

  My stomach hurtles back into place, landing in my middle with a sickening lurch.

  “We still can’t just disappear. There are too many people.” I wave my hand to include all the shoppers paused in their pursuit of new acquisitions. Normal people going about their unremarkable day. Normal people who believe spinners are lower than maggots. “Think about how much the Norms already hate us. If they find out we can change things while time is frozen, they’ll freak.”

  “Let them freak.” Jack kicks at a box of surveillance cameras, denting a hole into the cardboard. “Why should we hide what we can do?”

  “If the Norms freak,” I say, “every spinner back at the Center will be sent to the Central Office. Our photos will be broadcast on all the news channels. We’d be caught within days. And given how much Aclisote Dr. Barnard gave KJ, I don’t think we’d live very long once we got back.”

  An image of how KJ looked when I left him in Shannon’s care this morning, an image I’ve taken great pains to repress all day, flashes into the forefront of my brain: His long body stretched under a pile of blankets, skin so washed out its natural warm brown appeared gray. Even his lips hung slack. I held his hand, whispered his name, and got no more response than if he’d been a turnip. Just a few nights ago, I’d kissed him for the first time, and we’d planned a future so perfect I should have known it would never come true.

  I wrestle all my fears back into the box called denial and focus my attention on our immediate disaster. The electronics store is near the end of the mall’s central hallway. I peer past the guard through the open doorway. Statue-like shoppers stand among padded benches and ceramic planters. Stores line the space around them, their wares spread out in colorful displays—here a mannequin in artfully shredded jeans, there a basket overflowing with fruity bath gels. I chew on a thumbnail, a bad habit I’ve picked up lately. We can’t stay and get arrested. We can’t just disappear.

  “What if we run,” I say. “In real time, I mean. You let time go, we run until we find a place to hide, and then I’ll freeze and we can disappear.”

  Jack kicks a bigger hole in the box. “Where do we run to?”

  I point down the hallway. “Over there.”

  Just beyond a discount clothing store stands a furniture outlet. Its glass windows hold two large mahogany dressers and an oversized bed with so many pillows there’s no room left to lie down.

  “Fabulous Furnishings,” Jack reads off the gleaming green-and-black sign.

  “That place is jammed with stuff. It will be easy to get lost.” I lick the rough edge of my thumbnail. “The problem will be outrunning the guards.”

  Jack narrows his eyes at our twin pursuers. “We can use this.”

  He stalks over to a display rack and gives it a hefty shove. Controllers fly in all directions, bits of plastic splintering off them as they hit the ground. The rack itself smashes against the closest guard, knocking him to the floor. In the quiet of the freeze, the sound is apocalyptic. I stare down at the wreckage. This is not my first choice for an exit plan, but we’re so far from my first choice of anything at this point that I barely waver.

  “It’s worth a shot.” I take a breath. “You ready?”

  Jack sends one of the controllers spiraling across the store with a well-placed kick before nodding. The scene around us flickers for a second as everything we’ve moved—ourselves, the toppled display rack, the crunched-up controllers—whisks back to their prefreeze positions. I blink away the momentary blur. We’re standing together, Jack holding my hand, the display primly upright, and the guard advancing steadily in our direction.

  “…a couple of questions?” he says, finishing his sentence.

  Jack drops my hand and hurls himself at the display stand. I leap past the falling mass and take off across the store. Earnest Guy gapes at me, helpless behind his glass-topped counter. I shoot one glance over my shoulder. The guard is disentangling himself from the heavy shelving, and his partner, who started the chase at the far end of the aisle, has just reached the debris.

  I tear through the store and burst out into the mall. Jack whips ahead, faster than me, thanks to the hours he spent working out during his free time at the Center, and to the blast of pain I get from my bruised ribs every time I breathe. I dodge around mall patrons, scared that someone might try to stop me, but most people just step aside to get out of my path.

  Jack darts into Fabulous Furnishings; I hurtle through the entrance seconds behind him. The front part of the store is laid out with sample room decors, and I catch a glimpse of Jack disappearing around a pair of white leather sofas perched on a carpet that’s long enough to need mowing. I hurry after him and collide with someone in a green smock.

  “Sorry,” I say. Green Smock stumbles. She isn’t much older than I am, with frizzy hair and an apologetic smile. I duck my head and slip around her. Jack is no longer in sight.

  “Hey!” one of the guards shouts from behind me. “You.”

  I race around the white furniture set.

  No Jack.

  My heart bangs in my chest. To my right, a mock study advertises dark oak furniture. To the left is a girly bedroom set with a pink ruffled canopy. I choose the bedroom set and dive into the space between the bed and a dresser. A woven rug with a flower pattern skids as I drop my weight on it. I reach out for time, mentally grabbing the threads I imagine moving through the air all around me and yanking them to a halt just as my body collides with a thin-legged nightstand.

  Time stops, wiping out the sounds of pursuing feet, shouting voices, and even the faint hum of the abruptly weakened fluorescent lights. Only I keep moving, right into the nightstand, which tips over and crashes down onto my back. I lie still, waiting for my ragged breathing to slow. Time hangs around me, the invisible strands firmly in my control. Things aren’t just not moving, they’re stopped, frozen, immobile. Even the nightstand resting on top of me seems somehow more inert. Only I can move, only I have thoughts, and for the first time all day, I feel safe.

  I take a deep, calming breath, stand up, and check for my pursuers. The two guards are just rounding the white leather sofa. Neither of them is close enough to see me in my hiding spot.

  I set the nightstand back into place and straighten the flowered rug. Jack is about halfway through the store, legs outstretched in his race to escape. I check the area around him. A woman is standing one row over in front of a display of sheets. Her head is twisted away from the plastic packages, probably in response to the yelling elsewhere in the store. A man stands only a few steps from the far end of Jack’s aisle, one foot raised in the act of walking forward. I’ll have to work fast to keep him from seeing us.

  Steeling myself, I take a firm hold of Jack’s wrist and let time go.
The time strands slip back into their endless journey, a seamless transition without the blur of moving back to my prefreeze position. Lights brighten, the buzz of commotion fills the air, and the momentum of Jack’s reinstated dash yanks both of us forward. Clinging hard to Jack’s wrist, I refreeze time as fast as I can. Sound disappears again. Jack’s hand tears away from mine as he hurtles forward. I collapse on the floor, smashing my knees against the hard tiles. Jack trips, too, catching himself against a shelf full of pillows, which promptly tumble into a heap.

  “You could have warned me,” Jack says.

  “You could have waited for me,” I answer. My knees hurt. I should have covered the floor with the pillows before I let time start. “Where were you going, anyway?”

  “The back room.” Jack tosses a pillow back on the shelf. “I figured there must be another door out of here and the guards would think that’s how we got away.”

  I have to admit, it’s a good strategy. Briefly, I consider starting time again so we can both run for the back exit but decide the back room might just bring a whole new set of complications.

  Jack and I work together to put all the pillows back where they came from before making our way through the unmoving store. Even though they’re frozen, I give the security guards a wide berth. We decide not to return to the original electronics store and instead take two phones from a Radio Shack upstairs. When we’re done, we make our way out to the underground parking garage and hide between two cars so I can start time again without anyone seeing us.

  “That went well,” Jack says, standing up and stretching.

  I rub the ache along my ribs. It matches the dull pain throbbing in my temple. Time work causes headaches, which get worse when you have to drag someone else along.

  “You think this is fun,” I accuse him.

  Jack grins. “Don’t you?”

  “No. It’s terrible—hiding, running, stealing.”

  “We’re doing fine,” Jack says. We turn and head up the parking ramp. Even though I know the guards are all the way across the mall, I still look back over my shoulder. Rows of parked cars fill the bunker-like garage, which smells vaguely of gasoline. I search the shadows between the hulking pieces of metal and find only emptiness.

  “I don’t know why you’re so worried about everything,” Jack says. “Isn’t this a thousand times better than living at the Sick? We can do whatever we want. No one gives us a schedule, there’s no chores, no boring police missions. Plus, we’re never leashed.”

  I shudder and touch my wrist. Leashes are hard and uncomfortable, and they make this buzzing noise that sounds like a thousand bees are trapped in your skull.

  “We have nowhere permanent to live,” I say.

  “We’ll find somewhere.”

  Jack and I step out into September sunlight so bright it makes me squint. I used to love getting out of the Center, even wearing a leash, treasuring the rare day passes that allowed me to wander around downtown, just another anonymous person in the crowd. I’ve lost that feeling since our escape. Now, I walk around with an uncomfortable itch at the back of my shoulders, sure someone is watching me. I shade my eyes and move closer to Jack.

  We turn right and start the mile-long trek down a neighborhood commercial street back to the squat. Jack whistles as he walks. I tuck the bag of phones under my arm to make it less conspicuous. When a driver turns his head as he passes us, I flinch.

  “Jesus, Alex,” Jack says. “No one’s going to jump us when we’re just walking down the sidewalk.”

  “How can you be sure? We know they’re searching for us.”

  “Listen to yourself. Next, you’ll be hearing voices and wearing tinfoil hats.”

  We stop at a red light. There’s a pet shop on our right and a line of cars idling to our left. I turn my back to the traffic so the drivers can’t see my face.

  “I’m not being paranoid,” I tell Jack. “When Dr. Barnard found out what I can do, he said flat out that I was too dangerous to let run loose.”

  Jack waves a hand. “The Sick never has any money. They won’t be able to do anything but pass our photo around a police station and ask them to keep an eye out. As long as we stay out of trouble, we’re fine.”

  I must not look convinced, because he adds, “It’s only for a couple more days, anyway. Once KJ perks up, we can blow town. The Portland Sick is hardly going to chase us across the country.”

  Is Jack right? Will the CIC give us up so easily? And what if KJ doesn’t perk up? I don’t voice the questions because thinking about him makes my chest squeeze so tight it hurts. I focus instead on a jumble of kittens displayed in the pet shop’s front window. The smallest one, gray and striped, pounces on a knitted ball.

  “What about everyone else?” I ask.

  “The other spinners? What about them?”

  “We can’t just leave them there.”

  Jack gives another dismissive wave. “You don’t even like half of them.”

  “Not all the time, but it doesn’t matter. They’re our family.”

  “I guess,” Jack says, “but how is a group of twenty-four kids supposed to slip quietly out of town?”

  “So you’re OK with it?” The kitten, bored with the toy, starts sniffing the glass separating us. “You’re OK with letting Aidan and Raul die?”

  Jack faces the blinking red hand across the street.

  “Look, it’s great you’re so altruistic and all, but I’m not going to risk getting caught again. Besides, they don’t know they could live past their teens if they got off Aclisote, so they don’t know what they’re missing.”

  The light changes and Jack hops off the curb. The kitten’s mouth opens in a mew. Although it’s impossible for me to hear through the glass, the cry looks plaintive. I turn away and scurry after Jack.

  “It just doesn’t seem fair,” I say. “That we’re free and they’re still facing a death sentence.”

  “Yeah, well, life isn’t fair.”

  I chew on my thumbnail again. Jack is right. There are lots of ways life isn’t fair, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about abandoning the other spinners. We are the only family any of us will ever have. If we don’t stick up for each other, who will?

  A breeze sends a chill through the uneven weave of my sweater. I wrap my arms around myself in an effort to generate some warmth. When KJ and I talked about running away from the Center, I’d imagined escape as a one-time thing: you run, you leave, you’re gone. But gone is turning out to be a very unstable place. It means second thoughts and hiding and always checking over your shoulder. Running away doesn’t happen just once. Unless something changes, we’re going to be running away for the rest of our lives.

  03

  WE STOP AT A MINI-MART FOR SOME FOOD ON THE WAY back, so by the time we near the squat, it’s late afternoon. The squat is the third story of a brick building, the main floor of which houses a store called Elmer’s Wonder Shoppe. The only wonder to me is that anyone makes a living out of a place that screams “tired and shabby.” Curved green awnings, their tops dark with rain-induced mold, droop over ground-floor picture windows. Inside, out-of-date furniture too young to be antique shares space with bins of comic books and plastic samurai swords. Exterior bricks shed peels of white paint, and the upper stories’ rusty metal windows sport cracked panes that are nearly opaque with grime. The top two floors were abandoned years ago, and Elmer’s staff members never venture up there. No one does, except for us and a few hungry rats.

  My feet slow as we get closer. Clouds have rolled in to cover the afternoon sun, giving the day a grayish cast, and the dreary sky matches my mood. The freeze I’d done so that we could steal food intensified my headache, which now keeps a steady beat behind my eyeballs. I hate the squat. I hate how exposed I feel hiding so close to the city center. Most of all, I hate seeing KJ lying there, an enchanted sleeper struck down by an
evil spell that I have no idea how to break.

  Jack gestures toward a bus shelter on the corner, half a block from Elmer’s front door.

  “There’s Faith,” he says.

  My bad mood plummets even lower. Faith and Victor are street kids—brother and sister—that Jack met when he was out on a day pass while we still lived at the Center, and it’s at their invitation that we’re allowed to stay at the squat at all. Victor made it clear when we moved in that, because of the risk of being seen, we’re not allowed to go into or out of the squat while the Elmer’s staff are onsite, which most days means staying out on the street between eight in the morning and at least six at night. Jack and I have been ignoring this rule and freezing time to go in and out, a trick that will be hard to pull off with Victor’s sister as witness. I glance at my watch: 5:15. The Elmer’s staff won’t leave for another forty-five minutes.

  “Let’s cross the street and double back,” I mutter to Jack. “Before she sees us.”

  The words have barely left my mouth when Faith turns her head in our direction and nods vaguely.

  “Oh.” I do a poor job of sounding surprised. “Hi.”

  We walk toward her. The bus shelter is the kind with three plastic sides and a couple of rubber-topped benches. I’ve seen Faith only a few times, either in the shadowy squat or so early in the morning the sky is still mostly dark. I’ve been thinking of her as a thin teenager with a hygiene problem. In the clear light of afternoon, “unwashed” changes to “unhealthy.” Lank hair hangs around her face like pieces of pale string. Arms verging on skeletal poke through the sleeves of her blouse. Faith’s eyes are very red, and she’s propped against the bus shelter as if she needs the support.

  “You all right?” I ask her.

  Faith studies me before answering. I used to see girls like her a lot when I did police work. Their stories were never good.

  “I’m OK,” she says, finally. “Just waiting for Vic.”