Unleashed

by Carolyn O'Doherty

  I clench my hands and realize I am holding something. It’s a knife, the cutting edge jagged and dark with blood. Horror rises inside me. I drop the weapon and run to Shea, placing my hands over his wound. Dream logic tells me that if I can just put the pieces back together, I can repair the damage. I try, but it doesn’t work. As soon as I get two flaps of Austin Shea’s skin together, another section falls open.

  “It’s OK,” Ross says, and I know he has always been in the room with me. He wears black pants and a shirt so crisp and white it glows like a second moon.

  “Mr. Ross,” I gasp. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I don’t know how it happened.”

  Ross gives me his most reassuring smile. “This is what you wanted. You said you’d do anything to help me catch Sikes.”

  “But he’s not Sikes.” The slice in Shea’s neck has grown wider. Warm gore, released by my awkward fumbling, covers my hands.

  “He’s one of Sikes’s helpers,” Ross says. He sounds infinitely calm. Reasonable.

  “How do you know?”

  “Trust me.” Ross’s smile widens. His teeth shine as brightly as his shirt, though his eyes stay dark. “Remember, we’re the good guys.”

  Shea’s blood-wet flesh slips under my fingers. I try again to knit his skin together, and as I do, it starts to change. The gray beard that roughened his neck vanishes. His skin, once alabaster white, deepens to a smooth brown. Terror stills my fumbling fingers. It’s no longer Austin Shea lying in this bed. The figure before me, the one whose blood soaks my hands, is KJ.

  I wake with a start, my heart pounding as if I’ve sprinted a mile. Midnight dark fills the echoing warehouse. I blink, trying to turn the shapes around me into something familiar, but the boxes and abandoned furniture seem to have moved during the night, shifting into wavering towers that threaten to collapse over my head. The fear from my dream licks the edges of my sleeping bag, creeping over me with a draft of cold air. Holding the blankets right up against my chin, I reach out and stop time.

  Safety descends with the unnatural quiet. Dust motes halt their drifting fall. The yellowish streetlight filtering through the windows dims. I loosen my grip on the sleeping bag and take deep breaths to calm my wild pulse. It was just a dream. This dank, smelly squat is the reality. I didn’t kill anyone. Carson Ross used me to freeze time so he could slit Austin Shea’s throat. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.

  Slowly, the shapes around me settle into their benign selves. The ground, hard even with the cushion of a foam pad, presses against my spine with reassuring solidity. I release my hold on time. The air around me shifts—not a breeze, exactly, but a lightening as the molecules start moving again. I close my eyes and count the sounds in the night: the unsteady rush of cars on the freeway, the far-off clack of a train, small scrabbling noises that tell me the rodents are on the prowl. When I hear a faint rustling from KJ tossing in his makeshift bed, I finally drift back to sleep.

  The next time I wake, it’s because someone is shaking my arm.

  “Alex!”

  My eyes pop open. Jack is kneeling on the floor beside me, one hand on my bare arm. I bolt upright, holding the blankets against me as if their meager presence might offer protection.

  “What happened?”

  It’s so early, pink leaks in through the grimy windows. And it’s very quiet. Frozen quiet. I push mentally against the force that holds time at bay. Nothing moves. This isn’t my freeze; I can’t melt it.

  “Check it out.” Jack beams like the Youngers do when asked if they want more dessert. A split second later, a truck engine throbs, rattling the windows as it rumbles past. Jack hasn’t returned to his pre-freeze location. Nor have I. Time is moving and I’m still awake, still sitting up and draped in blankets.

  “You can do it,” I say. “Change things in frozen time.” The lump of dread that greets me every morning tightens my stomach with an extra twist.

  “It’s just like you said!” Jack leaps to his feet, nearly dancing in his excitement. “Here. Hold on.” In an instant, he goes from standing at the foot of my bedroll to sitting cross-legged beside me, holding a cardboard tray with two cups of coffee. I twitch in surprise and the motion knocks over a pile of croissants newly heaped on my lap.

  “Careful.” Jack laughs. He picks up the fallen pastries and sets them on top of the paper bag they came in.

  I stare at the stack of golden-crusted treats. The dread is spreading. “That’s too many.”

  Jack plucks one of the coffees from the holder and holds it out to me. “We’ll share with Shannon.”

  “No, I mean you took too many from the store. They’ll notice that they’re gone.” My face feels taut, like the skin somehow shrank during the night. Jack is so irresponsible. He’ll never be careful enough with this kind of power. “And how will you explain to Victor where you got those? They’d have heard you if you’d left the squat in real time.”

  “Who cares?” Jack’s smile fades. He smacks the cup he’d offered me down on the ground. “Can’t I have fun for one minute before you start hassling me?”

  I pick up the cup and put my lips against the lid, steadying myself with a long swallow. When my skills first changed, I’d shared Jack’s jubilation. I’d wanted to play tricks on people or sneak around at night and run free. When KJ freaked out and warned me about the risks, I, too, initially felt crushed. I sip more coffee. Jack has even remembered to add cream and sugar.

  “I’m sorry.” I raise the cup to toast him. “And thanks for this.”

  Jack settles himself on the floor, apparently too excited to hold a grudge. “I’m not a total idiot, you know. I took the croissants from the back bin instead of the counter display.”

  “There aren’t that many pastries,” I concede. “If Victor asks, you can say you picked them up last night.”

  I taste one of the croissants and discover that, even though we occasionally got baked goods at the Center, what we’d called croissants were only distantly related to the buttery, flaky deliciousness I now hold in my hands. I scoot my bedroll back so I can prop myself against the wall and savor my treat more comfortably. Jack is equally intent on his own breakfast, leaning against an old trunk and chewing happily. A full five minutes passes before either of us speaks.

  “So.” Jack licks the remains of his third croissant off his fingers. “I’ve been thinking about how we’ll get the money.”

  “Right.” The pleasure in my breakfast dims in the face of the day’s unpleasant prospect. “I think it’s best to take just a little bit of money from a bunch of different places. That way, it’ll be less noticeable.”

  “Nah, that would take too long. We just have to find a place that can handle the loss.”

  “Like what?”

  “Video poker? A drug dealer? Or what about going straight to the source and robbing a bank?”

  A hundred protests crowd my mouth. I make a conscious effort to hold them back. I’ve already pissed off Jack once this morning, and I don’t want to push him so far he goes running into the city alone with his new skills.

  “If we take a bunch of money from a teller,” I say, trying very hard to sound conversational, rather than like an annoying party pooper, “don’t you think the teller would notice and think it was weird? It would be better if we could make it look like a normal robbery.”

  Jack wipes his hands on his jeans and picks up his coffee. “So let’s not take it from a teller. We’ll wait in the lobby of a big bank until we see someone head back to open the safe. Then we freeze time and take whatever we need.”

  I nibble on a bite of croissant.

  “What?” Jack swirls his coffee. “Don’t you think it will work?”

  “No, it should work fine. I was just thinking that it’s ironic. A week ago, my main goal in life was to arrest people who had broken the law, and now, I’m the one plotting crimes.”

>   Jack laughs, apparently thinking I’m making a joke. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could steal as much as Sikes? The guy’s stolen, what—forty million dollars’ worth of stuff?”

  “Fifty,” I say. “At least.”

  “Fifty million dollars.” Jack repeats the words like they’re holy. “And here we are sweating over a few hundred.”

  “It’s not something to admire.”

  “Sure it is! Everyone wants to be rich.”

  “Not like that!” All the apprehension I’d felt when Jack showed me that his skills had changed comes back with a rush. “Fear that we’re insane criminals is why Norms hate us. If we start stealing huge sums and someone figures out we’re getting away with it because we’re spinners, they’ll believe they’re justified in killing us off. Or at least locking us up.”

  Jack starts in on yet another croissant. “No one’s ever caught Sikes.”

  “Yeah, he’s a great role model.” All that remains of my croissant is a pile of crumbs dusting my sleeping bag. I must have crushed the last bit without noticing. This conversation is bringing back the uncomfortable burn I felt when Ross revealed that Sikes had killed again. If I know who Sikes really is, shouldn’t I report that to someone? No. I brush the crumbs away, for once not worrying about the rats. It’s ridiculous to worry about Norms when they care so little about me.

  “Jack, we have to be careful when we’re out there.”

  “Duh.” Jack offers me an exasperated glare from under raised eyebrows. “Except it’s not really that risky.” He stretches his arms over his head. “With skills like these…” Jack’s arms are suddenly no longer raised. Instead, he’s holding them out toward me, the final croissant resting on his palm like an offering. “We are invincible.”

  A sweet, buttery smell wafts into my nose. I shake my head. The three croissants I already gobbled up are making me feel a little nauseated.

  “Your loss,” Jack says, sinking his teeth into the pastry.

  I pick up my coffee, then put it down without drinking any. Caffeine jangles my nerves. Right and wrong—concepts that used to be so clear to me—have become confused. To Jack, this is all an adventure—running away, camping out in the squat, stealing money. The other day, he called us godlike. If we really are invincible, shouldn’t we be using our powers for something grander than thievery and blackmail? KJ would certainly say so. But if we quit stealing, how will we live? If we don’t find a way to put pressure on Barnard, how can we protect our friends?

  I shoo Jack out of my space, so I can get dressed. Searching Barnard’s home was justified because it might have helped save our friends. Stealing things is necessary as long as the Norms make it impossible for us to live in the open. I pull on a short-sleeved T-shirt, then layer on a clean sweater—stolen, like everything I own. This one is wool and kind of itchy. Where will all this end, though? Will my guilt fall away once I free the other spinners? Or would that success one day turn sour, just like the too-rich breakfast that’s making me feel ever so slightly sick?

  08

  THE STREETS ARE VERY QUIET. IT’S 6:30 A.M. CARS RUMBLE past only occasionally, and there’s a lone woman yawning in the bus shelter. I hunch deeper into my sweater as we pass the mini-mart where we stole food yesterday. An aproned clerk stands on the sidewalk, setting out a display rack piled with fruit. Just glancing at the bananas and shiny apples makes me jumpy.

  “No bank will be open before nine,” I say. “I guess we can just walk around or something until then.”

  “Or something,” Jack echoes. I open my mouth to ask him what he means when he suddenly moves from walking right next to me to walking a half step behind me.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Shoot, you caught me.” He holds out a bunch of bananas. “I was going to surprise you.”

  I spin around to check the mini-mart. The clerk has gone back inside, but the piled fruit lists rather obviously to one side.

  “You can’t just freeze time whenever you feel like it,” I say. “Someone will notice.”

  The bananas in Jack’s hands disappear. “Pretty cool, huh? Do I look like a magician?”

  “No,” I lie, hoping to discourage him. “And pick those up.”

  Jack bends to recover the bananas he’d tipped onto the pavement in frozen time, his enthusiasm apparently undimmed by my disapproval. We’ve only walked a few more steps before he stops time again. This time, he does a better job of matching his prefreeze location and his body just sort of shifts.

  “Jack!” A banana lies on the sidewalk right where I am about to put my foot. I manage a little hop to avoid squishing it. When I regain my balance, I see a second banana perched on a fire hydrant.

  “Stop it.” A third banana appears, spliced onto the top edge of a No PARKING sign. A woman in a green Beetle turns her head as she drives past. She blinks at the yellow fruit, then shakes her head as if brushing off an odd fancy. A nervous flutter beats in my throat.

  “Give those to me.” I hold out my hand.

  Jack evaporates from his position to one just beyond my reach. When he reappears, he’s laughing.

  “You should see your face,” he chortles. “You look like Yolly does when Kimmi Yoshida mouths off.”

  “It’s not funny, Jack.” I look around, sure that someone has noticed bananas appearing and Jack teleporting around the sidewalk.

  “It is too funny,” Jack says. “It’s hilarious.” He’s laughing so hard now that he manages only the feeblest protest when I snatch the remaining bananas away from him. I shove the fruit into a garbage can, scanning the traffic as I do. Cars slide by, their drivers all staring blandly forward as they thread their way through the early-morning commute.

  “Jack,” I lecture, “you can’t let the Norms see you.”

  “I know, I know.” Jack wipes away tears of laughter. “It’s just so fun. How can you resist playing with it?”

  I shrug, both irritated at Jack for risking exposure and jealous of the way he’s enjoying his new skills. I’ve been able to change things for weeks, and except for about fifteen minutes when I first discovered what I could do, I’ve never gotten to play.

  “Come on,” I say sourly. “We don’t have time for this. We have to focus on finding a bank to rob.”

  Jack dissolves into giggles again. I turn away and march down the sidewalk without waiting for him to recover.

  By the time we hike the three miles into downtown, it’s almost eight, and traffic has thickened to a steady flow. Streams of people hurry past us, balancing coffee cups while tapping on cell phones as they funnel into glass-fronted office buildings. We’re nearing a big, fancy-looking bank when Jack nudges me with his elbow.

  “Alex, check that out.”

  I turn. Parked against the curb by a pair of ATMs stands a big, white armored truck. A man sits behind the wheel of the idling vehicle, watching as a second man pushes some kind of trolley stacked with hard-plastic boxes over to the ATM. Both men wear blue uniforms. The one on the sidewalk has a gun prominently displayed on his right hip.

  “That will be even easier than a bank,” Jack says. He reaches out to take my hand.

  “Wait,” I say. The man across the street does something to the machine, and the face of it swings open. From what I can see around the bulk of his body, the man is taking out sealed trays and replacing them with identical ones off the trolley. “We can’t get that money. It’s all locked up in those boxes.”

  “What about the truck?”

  I chew on a fingernail. If we are going to try to pull off a robbery, an armored truck does seem as good a choice as any.

  “OK, but we can’t freeze here. Even if we come back, we won’t get our positions right and someone might notice.” I scan the area. Ahead of us is a three-story parking structure. At the corner, a semi-enclosed staircase spirals its way down to the sidewalk. I pull on
Jack’s sleeve. “Come on.”

  We hurry to the parking garage and trot up two flights of stairs until we’re well above the sight line for prying eyes. The steps are concrete and smell like urine. I stop at a bend and lean out the opening overlooking the street, my heart pumping much harder than the minimal exercise merits. Armored Truck Guy has finished loading the ATM and is heading toward his partner.

  “Can you see the back of the truck?” Jack asks.

  I shake my head. “We’ll just have to guess when he opens it.” Armored Truck Guy disappears between the building and the side of the idling truck.

  “I’ll count to five,” Jack says, his voice bright with excitement. “One.” I step into the corner of the stairway, pulling Jack with me so no one can see us if they happen to look up. “Two. Three.” Jack links his hand with mine. “Four.” I take a deep breath, focusing on a candy wrapper being pushed around by a breeze. “Five.”

  Jack stops time before I do. I don’t realize it matters to me until it happens. This freeze feels foreign, as if I’m not quite welcome in it. I reach out with my mind and touch the unmoving strands. When I freeze time, the invisible threads feel like a sheet of fabric, taut yet pliable. In this freeze, the threads are like a solid wall.

  “Let’s go get ourselves some money.” Jack drops my hand and bounds down the stairs. I hold my position for a second, checking to make sure no one can see us. The only thing besides me on the concrete steps is the candy wrapper, which now hangs a few inches above the ground.

  Slipping between some unmoving cars, I follow Jack across the street. The security guard stands at the back of the truck, his head tipped downward as he checks the time on his watch. The truck itself is locked up tight.

  “Are we too late?” I ask.

  Jack points with his chin. The trolley leans against the truck’s bumper. We aren’t late. We’re early.

  “Let’s go back,” I say. “We’ll count to five again.”

  “Nah, let’s just hide around here somewhere. Then we can see what’s going on.”