“Keep me with you and I’ll carry out kids frozen. Some of the Youngers are pretty small.”
I shake my head—a mistake, since the movement makes it feel like my brain is slamming against my skull. “It won’t help. I can’t bring more than two people in a freeze. If you’re one of them, it means I can only take one other spinner. Even if you carry another person, it won’t get the kids out any faster.”
“There’s got to be another leash key somewhere. What if we searched…?”
Pain spasms across my head. The invisible clock that controls my skills is ticking down.
“There’s no time,” I say. “You have to go, KJ. I’ll count out two minutes; you run as fast as you can toward the U-Haul. After that, I’m melting time and taking out the other kids.”
KJ bites his lip. He looks feverish, his pupils wide, his face flushed. “You can’t do this by yourself. You’re already feeling the strain. I can tell.”
I rub my temple. “You have a better plan?”
“We can tie up the guards. Lock them in a room. Take the kids out in real time.”
“It won’t work,” I say. “Barnard would hear us. And there’s no way we can touch him with that stupid zapper in there.”
KJ grabs my arm. “You’re not going to be able to rescue them all.”
He sounds angry, and I wonder if he, too, is thinking about Shannon.
“I’ll save as many as I can,” I say.
“It’s not fair.” KJ’s grip tightens.
No, it’s not fair. Not for Shannon. Or Shea. Or all the kids I won’t be able to save. All the deaths laid at my feet.
“Give me the key card and run, KJ.”
“No.”
“I’m counting now.” I shut my eyes. “One. Two.”
“I won’t just do nothing!”
“Three.” I raise my voice to drown him out. “You better hurry. You have to get to at least the basement in two minutes or someone will see you. Four.” KJ lets my arm go like he’s throwing it away. “Five.” He shoves the key card into my palm. “Six.” Footsteps thunder down the hall. I keep counting, hiding behind my closed lids. At one hundred twenty, I open them. Even though I heard him leave, the reality of KJ’s absence hits like a punch to the gut.
I run the short distance to the lounge and release time just long enough to open the door. Without the drag of carrying an extra person, my headache lightens a little. The two sets of keys are resting just where they’re supposed to be under the spider plant. I don’t think about Jack’s frozen body, bruised and stuffed in a closet. I don’t think about the laughing boy who helped me rob a truck. I just take the keys and walk out the door.
* * *
I start on the second floor, which is where the Youngers sleep. There’s a man I’ve never seen sitting in the hallway. He’s perched on a metal folding chair, dressed in a green uniform, with a nightstick dangling from a loop in his belt. The freeze caught him with his head tipped toward his phone, one finger tracing the screen as he outmaneuvers an electronic opponent. I walk past him and unlock the first door at the end of the hall.
Kimmi and Claire lie peacefully in their bunk beds, their eleven-year-old selves slight beneath mounds of blankets. I dig one of each girl’s hands free, stretching my arms wide so I can touch them both at the same time. The silent darkness fills my lungs. I gather myself for the task ahead and try not to think about KJ’s race toward safety.
Melt time. Freeze time.
Kimmi jerks her hand from mine and sits bolt upright, smacking her head on the underside of Claire’s bunk. Claire mumbles something incoherent and nestles deeper into her sheets.
“Who’s there?” Kimmi asks, rubbing her head and squinting into the unlit room.
“It’s me,” I say.
Claire’s bed rustles.
“Alex?” Claire’s voice is slurred with sleep.
Kimmi reaches out and clicks her bedside light. Nothing happens.
“Time’s frozen,” I say.
“They said you got sick,” Kimmi says, her dark eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“They lied. You have to get up now. We’re leaving the Center.”
“Now?” Claire blinks at a digital clock beside their beds. The glowing numbers read 11:07. How far did KJ get before I froze him?
“I’ll explain as we go, but you have to hurry.”
I step back, hoping my example will push them to their feet. It only half works. Claire yawns and slides obediently down to the floor. Kimmi, however, pulls the blankets more closely around her shoulders.
“Dr. Barnard said we were being transferred to another Center,” she says.
The distrust in her tone makes my head hurt worse. I try to keep my voice calm.
“The plan changed. Please, Kimmi, I need you to get up right now.”
Kimmi’s eyes narrow. “But time’s frozen. How can we go anywhere?”
“Like this.” I grab Claire’s hand and pull her next to Kimmi’s bed so I can more easily touch them both. I melt time long enough for them to sense the difference, then freeze it again. Kimmi’s mouth falls open in a soundless oh.
Claire gasps. “How did you do that?”
“My skills changed when I stopped taking Aclisote.” I strip the blankets off Kimmi’s legs. “Yours will too.”
The two girls gape at me in stunned silence. I snap my fingers at Kimmi and she stumbles to her feet. I keep talking as I get them into their shoes and guide them out the door. When we reach the hall, I relock the dorm’s door.
The girls keep up with me as I dash down the Center steps. I tell my story simply, sticking to the basics: the Center is bad and I can get them somewhere safe. I’m not sure how much they believe me and how much they’re following me because they’re in a groggy half-sleep. As long as they come along, I don’t really care.
“Is Shannon with you?” Claire asks when we reach the bottom of the stairs. “Raul said he saw her here this morning.”
“No.” I glance across the box-cluttered lobby. Barnard’s office door is still shut and radiating menace. I hurry around the corner and start down the stairs to the basement. “I don’t know where Shannon is. We got separated.” Accurate, if not completely true.
“What about KJ and Jack?” Claire twists her head, as if hoping one of them might pop through the cafeteria doors at any moment. “They said you all got sick the same day. Have you been together all this time?”
I do my own search of the poorly lit hallway leading to the garage. KJ must have made good time. We have yet to pass him.
“KJ will meet us at the truck,” I say. The door to the garage swings open at my touch. I motion the girls outside, careful not to dislodge the sweatshirt that keeps the door from closing all the way.
Kimmi peers around the mostly empty garage. She’s fully awake now, her face taut with questions. “Where are we going?”
“I told you—somewhere safe. Someplace where you won’t have the Center telling you what to do.”
Claire moves closer to Kimmi, linking her arm through her roommate’s.
“Who will take care of us?” she asks in a voice just beginning to quaver.
I touch my forehead. The headache vibrates on the other side of my skull. I want to scream at the girls, to tell them that every second they delay might mean one less person I can rescue. I bite the words back. They’re only eleven, and this is all new to them. I force myself to smile.
“Yolly will come with us,” I say. “You’ll see. We’ll pass her on the way out.”
Yolly’s name seems to unstick the two girls. Arms still linked, they walk toward the mouth of the garage. I hurry ahead of them, scanning the space for KJ’s thin frame. Has he gotten all the way to the truck? The garage holds only cars. We start up the ramp. I should have counted the seconds after we left the dorm room to see how long this tr
ip takes.
Yolly still stands at the top of the ramp. I ease past her, barely glancing at her tense face, and duck under the still half-raised entry gate. The U-Haul truck hulks at the end of the block, a dark shadow in the frozen night. The sidewalk beside it is empty.
KJ is nowhere in sight.
26
I BREAK INTO A RUN, MY FEET HITTING THE PAVEMENT WITH uneven thumps. Yolly might have left the truck unlocked. Maybe KJ is already inside. I try the passenger door. It doesn’t budge. Nor does the roll-up door in the back.
“KJ?” I hammer my fists against the hard metal. A useless gesture, since if he is there, he’s frozen.
“What’s the matter?” Kimmi asks. “Can’t you get in?”
“It’s locked,” I say.
“Don’t you have a key?” Kimmi sounds annoyed, as if she expected this lack of planning.
I fumble in my pocket with stiff fingers. Maybe the truck wasn’t locked when he got here, but it locked when he went inside and closed the door. Somehow.
I slide the key into the handle and twist. The back panel rolls upward with a deafening rattle. Grabbing the lip of the truck bed, I hoist myself inside.
“No one’s here,” Claire says, after she and Kimmi have climbed in behind me.
I still the panic threatening to choke me. “I’m going to get the rest of the kids. When they get here, tell them to be quiet, OK? I’ll be right back.”
I melt time before they can protest, then refreeze and race toward the Center. Unburdened by the two girls, the freeze feels lighter, my headache less intense. I pass under the garage gate, scanning every shadowy recess as I run. KJ must have known time was going to melt before he reached the truck and hidden himself so he wouldn’t be seen. My sneakers squeak against the smooth concrete with a noise that’s as loud as a scream. I slow enough to search the dark spaces around the cars. No one. Inside the Center, the hall lies before me, wide and empty. Same with the cafeteria. And the gym.
My legs start trembling, and I put a hand against the wall. Where did KJ go? I won’t just do nothing! he’d shouted at me. Did he mean he planned to confront Barnard? Threaten him somehow, demand he return Shannon? Pain lances my forehead. I don’t think KJ could have entered Barnard’s office without breaking my freeze, but he could wait until we leave and then face down his foe. I close my eyes and lean my cheek against the wall. I should have known KJ wouldn’t have gone to the truck. KJ is too honorable to hide while others take risks. Especially since he blames himself for Shannon’s capture. An image of KJ’s hollowed eyes as he followed me around today floats behind my closed lids. Except for that blast of anger right before I told him to leave, KJ acted like a guy with nothing left to lose.
Another painful jolt shoots through my temple. I push myself away from the wall. I don’t have the luxury of worrying about KJ. If I don’t keep moving, everything we’ve both given up will be for nothing.
I manage to get all the spinners from the second-floor dorm rooms before my skills deteriorate. By the third room, the process falls into a rhythm, and by the fifth, I’ve honed my patter to the words most likely to convince quickly. There’s one pair whose bodies are so small that I ask a couple bigger spinners to carry them downstairs still frozen. Emilio puts up a noisy protest until I tell him that every other spinner is already downstairs and he’ll be left all alone if he doesn’t hurry. Soon the back of the truck is crowded with slack-jawed children. From their perspective, new kids are appearing every few seconds, like some kind of wacky animation made real. At least their shock keeps them quiet. Or maybe it hasn’t been long enough to start up a conversation. It’s hard to tell how much real time is passing. After eight rooms, all I know is that I no longer have to duck when I get to the garage gate.
I’m stepping off the stairs onto the third floor when the dizziness starts. The third floor has four still-occupied rooms, only one of which has more than one person living in it. I start with the double. Aidan and Raul—Jack’s closest friends. My head throbs when I bring them into a freeze with me.
“We have to go,” I say into their confused faces.
“Where?” Raul asks. I recite my spiel. They’re just words now, their meaning worn out through retelling.
“Where’s Jack?” Aidan asks.
The room is starting to spin. I grab Aidan’s hand, soaking in the pulse of his skills to keep from tipping over.
“I’ll tell you everything soon, I promise, but please, if you want to be free of the Center, you have to come with me right now.”
The two boys glance at each other and then, thankfully, reach for their shoes. I let go of Aidan so he can dress, then I take both their arms as we head down the stairs. The steps stretch on forever. Time swirls around me, straining to be free. I force my feet to keep moving.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Raul says when we finally reach the garage. “If we can naturally change things in frozen time, why hasn’t anyone else been able to do it?”
The ramp from the garage must have grown steeper. Each step feels like I’m climbing a mountain. Concrete catches at the toe of my shoe. Aidan grabs me before I fall. How many more rooms are left? Three? The gate at the mouth of the tunnel blurs. I squeeze my eyes shut for a second to try to bring it back into focus. It doesn’t work. KJ is right. I’m not going to make it.
“Alex?” Raul’s face swims before me. The way he says my name, I’m pretty sure it isn’t the first time he’s called me. “You OK?”
“Yeah.” I lever myself upright again. Raul’s face is so blurry it’s like he’s underwater.
“You don’t look OK,” Aidan says.
I should go to the truck. Sit down. Rest. But there are spinners still left inside. Faces swim through my mind: Angel, Yuki, Simon, Calvin. No, not Calvin. KJ. The swirl of faces stops. How can I leave KJ?
“You can make it the rest of the way on your own,” I mumble. Moving my lips takes too much energy. “Up the ramp and to the left. You’ll see a U-Haul.”
Raul’s blurry face frowns. “Are these freezes harder than regular ones?” he asks. “It seems like they would be because…”
“Go! I’ll be there in a sec. Hurry.”
Raul opens his mouth to say something else, but Aidan grabs his arm and pulls him forward. With a worried backward glance at me, the two boys race past Yolly and out into the night. I stumble a few steps down the ramp. One more room. I can do one more. From a distance, I hear a rattle as the boys climb into the truck.
I let time slide from my grasp. The relief is so complete, I sink down onto the hard floor. I’ll just rest for a minute. Excited voices drift through the night. Someone is crying. Someone else shushes them. I can’t stay here. Concrete scrapes my palms as I claw my way up the wall to regain my feet. One more room.
I grab for time. The strands fight me, twisting like well-muscled snakes. Yolly’s roller bag rumbles out into the street. The gate rattles as it begins its descent. I fight harder, dragging time under my control. The world seems to slow before it finally stops. Night stills. I push off the wall and force myself back down the ramp and into the Center.
I can do this. One more room. I’ll get Yuki. I let her image fill my brain as I slog down the familiar halls. Dark hair swinging in a solid sheet behind her shoulders. The clack of bracelets sliding along her wrist. One more spinner. One more life.
The bannister creaks under my hand. I’m pulling against it, hauling myself up the last few stairs to the third floor. Another guard sits in the same kind of metal chair as his buddy on the floor below, except this guy holds a sports magazine in his lap instead of a phone, the pages bright with bulky men in gaudy uniforms. A few steps past him, the patrolling guard Yolly warned me about has started his rounds. I skirt both men carefully and search my pocket for the key.
Yuki lies in her bed, curled into a C beneath a pilled pink blanket. The last time I was in her room, there w
ere pictures from movie magazines stuck up all over the walls, and a stack of well-thumbed thrillers by her bed. Everything is gone now, stripped clean —the dresser bare, the gaping closet holding nothing but empty hangers. I sink to my knees beside her bed. Time slips from my control with the ease of a loosened breath. I drop my head onto Yuki’s mattress, letting the seconds tick forward.
Air drifts around me—not a breeze, just the natural softness of moving time. My eyes slowly shut. I’m so tired. It’s a good thing Yuki doesn’t have a roommate; I don’t think I could manage bringing two people with me. Without opening my eyes, I burrow one hand under Yuki’s blanket until I touch skin. Her arm feels warm and heavy. Sleep pulls at me like an ocean tide. A tiny rest. Surely there’s time for that?
Something creaks. I jerk awake, adrenaline straining my eyes wide. Did the noise come from the guard’s chair in the hall? Or was it the distant clang of a closing garage gate? A page of the guard’s magazine shuffles. I squeeze Yuki’s arm and wrestle with time until it stops. Only the adrenaline gives me the strength to manage it.
“Yuki?” I shake her. She murmurs something unintelligible. “Yuki, wake up.”
Yuki’s eyes open and almost instantly fill with tears.
“Alex!” she cries. “I thought you were dead.”
“No.” I touch my forehead. My skull is too small to contain the pain inside it. “I came to get you out.”
Yuki sits up and looks around the unnaturally still room. “Why are we frozen?”
“Get dressed,” I say. “We’re leaving the Center. I’ll explain later. I can’t hold this much longer.”
“Why not? Are you sick?”
I shake my head. Yuki gasps when I wince.
“You are sick!” she cries. “I’ll call Yolly.”
“She’s downstairs,” I manage. “And I’m fine. Or I will be, once I let time go. Please, Yuki, you have to hurry.”
Yuki scrambles out of bed and grabs her clothes. I watch the dust motes hanging in a stream of moonlight and try not to think about anything at all.
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