“An understanding that it’s OK to work for murderers.”
“A really rich murderer.”
Jack’s mocking hints flash through my brain. Dr. B. likes his reputation as the world’s chronotin expert… his big research projects don’t get enough support. Barnard isn’t experimenting on us, he’s doing illegal favors to underwrite his research. I rub at a bloodstain on my shirt. No one has bothered to bring me clean clothes.
“So it’s true, then. Dr. Barnard was willing to let Sikes kill me.”
KJ puts his hand on my knee, squeezing until I look up at him.
“We don’t know what Barnard knew,” he says. “Maybe he thought they were just going to rough you up. But whatever he’s doing is not as important as what’s going on with you.”
KJ’s eyes bore into mine. Fear lurks in those dark depths, fear for me, for himself. I can feel my body tensing in response.
“Sikes may or may not hurt you,” he says. “Sky-high chronotin will. Let’s deal with the immediate threat first. Get back on Aclisote. Bring your chronotin levels back down to normal.”
Normal. I’m on my feet, pacing again. What is normal? The leash buzzes in my brain. Am I more in danger from Barnard or Sikes? The new drugs or the old? From someone else hurting me or my own body losing its fight with time?
I reach the door and by habit test the knob. It doesn’t budge.
“How would I even do it?” I ask KJ. “The medicine is all premeasured and stocked in the cabinet.”
“Amy. Tell her the truth and ask her to swap it out. This way you’ll free her, too. She could lose her job over this.”
Another person I’m putting at risk. I cross the room again, lifting the blinds to stare out at the darkening street. Do the bars protecting the glass keep out threats or just keep me trapped?
“If I stop taking Ross’s medicine, we won’t be able to catch Sikes.”
“If Ross knows who Sikes is,” KJ says, “he’ll figure out a way to arrest him.”
“Not soon enough.”
KJ’s face appears over my shoulder, reflected in the window. “Forget Sikes,” he says. “Think about yourself.”
The last time he said those words to me, he’d put himself in the equation. Look at me, he’d said. Is that really how you want to spend what little time you have left? If I could go back in time, I’d answer differently, but that kind of rewind isn’t possible, even with my new skills. Time is not a soft, flexible thing. It’s a harsh master that marches relentlessly forward. I’ve made decisions I can’t take back, found out things I can’t forget. I shake my head.
“Thinking about myself is what created this mess. Now I have to do what I can to make things better.”
KJ is standing so close to me I can feel heat radiating from his chest. I would only have to lean back a few inches to rest against him. I keep my spine stiff.
“I have to do this, KJ. Just one more mission, and then I promise I’ll give it up.”
KJ’s reflection shakes its head. The image is hazy, as insubstantial as a rewind. “Alex …”
“Please, KJ. Ask Jack to call Ross and tell him what happened. He can use Barnard’s phone.”
The outer door to the clinic opens. KJ and I spring apart. I paste on a smile to match his expression of forced cheer.
“Dinner’s here,” Yolly announces as she enters my room. KJ walks over to help her with the tray. I go to the bed and busy myself raising the arm of the bedside table.
“You’d better leave now, KJ,” Yolly says. “Alex needs her rest. I’m sure she’ll be back with the rest of you soon.”
KJ moves slowly, lingering at the door to gaze back at me. Please, I mouth, and, very slowly, he nods his head.
Yolly fusses with my tray: setting out a glass of water, unwrapping the plastic cutlery. I notice she hasn’t included a knife. When it’s ready, I climb dutifully back into bed. In two minutes they are both gone.
I pick up my fork. It’s chicken tonight. Yolly gave me drumsticks to make up for my knifeless state, along with a blob of mashed potatoes and a scattered pile of peas. I spear a bite of dinner and put it in into my mouth, forcing myself to chew and swallow. Whatever is coming, I’m going to need my strength.
At 7:30, I am lying in bed feeling as refreshed as a sponge bath, clean pajamas, and a restless nap can make me. I’m staring at a book I’m not reading when I hear the clinic door open again. Footsteps patter across the linoleum at a clip that slow-moving Yolly could never match. I jump out of bed, book tight in my hand, ready to hurl the meager weapon at whoever is rattling the doorknob.
“Alex?” Ross pokes his head into the room. My clenched hand loosens.
“How’s my best partner doing?” he asks.
His smile lights up the room. I scramble back onto the bed.
“You came! Did Jack call you?”
Ross nods. The visitor’s chair scrapes across the floor as he pulls it close.
“He didn’t say much, though. Just that someone attacked you and that Barnard locked you in the clinic.”
All the fears and questions that have been bubbling in my brain come pouring out. I tell him everything—the trophy shop, Barnard’s attempt to test my blood, Jack’s claims that he works with Sikes, the crazy-high chronotin reading. Ross sits on the edge of the chair. He looks stricken when I describe how I refused to turn on him at the trophy shop and winces when I describe Buck. When I tell him about the blood test KJ ran that revealed my chronotin levels, he drops his face in his hands.
“Alex, I am so sorry.”
A flush of guilt prickles my skin. I’d been so eager to unburden myself I didn’t consider how all this would sound to him. Ross put everything on the line to get me the new drugs, and I just blurted out that they were killing me.
I reach for the pitcher Yolly left by my bed and pour out a glass of water so I don’t have to look at the drooping curve of his shoulders.
“It’s not your fault,” I say. “I knew what I was getting into.”
“You’re wrong.” Ross’s voice is tight with emotion. “All of this is my fault. Those monsters attacked you because they thought they could use you to get at me.” He raises his head. “But I can fix this. I promise I will make you safe.”
“I know you will.” I sip some water. “As soon as we can get enough evidence to arrest Sikes and Shea—”
“No.” Ross slams a fist onto the chair’s arm. “That won’t be enough. There’s still Dr. Barnard. If he knows what you can do, he’s never going to let you out of this room. There’s only one way to make this right. You have to leave the Center.”
The glass in my hand slips, splattering water down the front of my sweatshirt.
“What?”
Ross takes the cup from me and sets it on the table. He leans forward, eyes burning into mine so intensely it’s hard for me to look at him.
“It was stupid to give you a new medication without tracking your chronotin more closely. I should have taken you away from Barnard right away so you could get proper medical care. Dr. Kroger says he’s eager to have you as an official patient. We’ll find a way to tweak the dosage, or get you back on Aclisote if that’s the best decision. Either way, we can get you the treatment you need to stay alive.”
The walls, so recently a prison, suddenly feel expansive—their bare white no longer a screaming emptiness but a blank canvas waiting to be filled in.
“How could we do it?” I ask.
The edges of Ross’s eyes crinkle as he smiles. “They think you’re suicidal, right? I’ll get you out of here, then we’ll cut out your tracker and throw it in the river. It won’t be the first drowning where the body never turns up. Meanwhile, I’ll find you an apartment, someplace far out of town. You lay low for a bit, buy new clothes, maybe change your hair. I’ll get you some ID. You could go to school, live a normal life for as long as you have left.”
The future Ross’s words paint is more than I can take in. I pull my legs up, hugging them against my ch
est. The hard point where my arm squeezes my shinbone feels like the only real thing in this room.
“I’m still a teenager,” I say. “No one would rent me an apartment.”
“I’ll rent it,” Ross says. “I’ll tell them you’re my niece.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, then open them again. Ross is still there, sitting a foot away from me, the gentle smile still crinkling the corners of his eyes.
“You’d do that for me?”
“Of course I would. I owe it to you after all this. We could even still work together. If you want to.”
If I want to? Technicolor images explode in my head: the two of us running around the city like secret superhero vigilantes, laughing over a meal at a restaurant, Sikes jailed, Ross being made chief of police while I applaud from the shadows, a hat artfully tipped to shield my identity.
A blot mars the perfection of my dreams. It’s KJ’s face, his mouth open in horror as Barnard tells him that I’m gone. That I committed suicide. I dab at the wet spot on my shirt. KJ will get time sick himself before too long. How can I accept a way out when he’s still doomed to die? When all of them are?
“What about the others?” I say. “We have to help them, too.”
Ross clasps his hands together. “We will. We are. By testing these new meds, you may be finding a way to help every spinner in the world live longer.”
I twist a strand of hair around my finger so tightly I can feel it cutting off my circulation.
“Can I at least tell KJ what’s going on?”
“Not yet. He has to be as shocked as everyone else when you leave, or else Barnard won’t believe it. We can’t have anyone out there looking for you. Once you’re settled, we’ll find a way to let KJ know you’re OK.”
A tear slides down my cheek. I turn my head toward the windows, not wanting Ross to see me wipe it away. The blinds are drawn again, but I can see the darkness between their narrow slats. Who hides out there in the sheltering night? What plots are being laid while I wait here in this locked room? I hug my legs more tightly. Ross is right. Leaving KJ may be hard, but staying here is not an option.
I turn back to him and release my knees. “When can we go?”
Ross dips his head once, a mute approval of my decision.
“Tomorrow,” he says. “I need to get a place lined up where you can stay, and I don’t want you to disappear on a day when they know I was in the building. We can’t have anyone suspect we’re in this together.”
I nod. I’m actually kind of relieved. As much as I understand this is my best option, I’m not quite ready to walk out the door of the only place I know to call home.
“There’s one thing we have to do first.” Ross sounds serious. I wipe my nose on the edge of the sheet and do my best to look prepared. “We have to deal with Austin Shea. You won’t be safe out there if he’s free, and it’s better if we do this while you are known to be locked in the Center. You up for a mission tonight?”
“Right now?”
Ross shakes his head. “Officially I’m here because there’s an agents’ meeting.” He glances at his watch. “Which I’m already late for. We can leave when it’s over.”
I point at the door, using the arm encircled by the leash. “How do I get out?”
“With this.” Ross digs in his pocket and pulls out a lockpick. “One of your very own. Think you can learn to unlock that door in the next three hours?”
I nod. Ross takes my arm and works his magic on the leash. Clarity fills my head as the awful buzzing drops away.
“I’ll leave the building at exactly ten thirty,” Ross says. “You get out of your room just before then and hide somewhere where you can see the front door. At the point when I am outside, but the door hasn’t shut yet, freeze time.”
“I’ll trip the monitors.”
“It will be after lights out, the monitors will be off. Even if someone does notice, by the time they come to check on you, you’ll be back here, sound asleep, and firmly leashed.”
I nod again. Ross presses the pick into my hand. The edge is sharp, the metal warm from Ross’s touch. I close my hand around it. This is my future: comfort and pain and the promise of escape.
17
IT TAKES AN HOUR BEFORE I CAN CONSISTENTLY manage to pick the door lock. The following two hours last forever. Every time I check the clock it seems like the hands have moved backward. Twice I go into a panic, thinking that I’ve somehow frozen time by accident. At 9:30, Yolly comes to check on me, carrying clean clothes for the morning. I lie in bed with the leash unlatched around my arm. She’s gone by 9:40. At 10:20, I dress and kneel down one last time to unlock the door. At 10:25, I open it and creep downstairs.
The Center’s halls are deserted. I float ghostlike through the passages until I reach the main staircase. Ross stands in the lobby, under a clock reading 10:28. He seems in no hurry to leave, entertaining Charlie with a long-winded story that makes them both laugh. I hide behind a pillar and chew my thumbnail. Finally, Ross saunters toward the exit. Charlie presses the code that unlocks the front door, and Ross steps out into the night. The instant the darkness swallows him, I freeze time.
Released from my impatient crouch, I hurry down the stairs. Charlie’s hand hovers motionless over the keypad, the remains of a smile curving the edges of his lips. I run past him and out the half-closed front door.
Cool air greets me. It’s a clear night, though it must be windy because the trees are all leaning to one side, leaves hovering around them like large brown snowflakes. Ross stands just outside the door, one hand on the outer knob, his head turned toward the shadowy corners of the front entrance, presumably searching for me. He wears jeans, the nice kind that don’t show up in donation boxes. He’s zipped a leather jacket over them and added a scarf and gloves to balance the cold. Over one shoulder he carries a messenger bag.
I slip behind the door, out of reach of the security camera’s electronic eye, and touch the bare skin on his wrist. Time barely pulses forward before I pull it to a stop again.
“Alex.” Ross smiles at me. “It’s amazing. Even when I’m expecting it.”
For a moment I let myself relax into the pleasure of his presence, then I straighten my shoulders and tuck a stray hair behind my ear.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
Ross bends down to wedge a wad of paper under the door. He releases the handle slowly, making sure the heavy wood doesn’t shift positions before letting go completely.
“We’re heading up into the west hills.” He straightens. “We’ll have to bike there, think you can manage it?”
“I’ve never ridden a bike.”
“I figured,” Ross says. “I stashed a tandem one around the corner. We’ll ride together.”
I grin. “You think of everything.”
Ross tilts his head, considering me.
“You actually don’t need to come. It’s kind of a long way and if the bike ride will tire you too much, you can always wait here holding time until I get back.”
My smile fades. Under the shadows of the Center’s awning, it’s hard to make out his expression.
“I thought we were a team,” I say, unable to hide the hurt in my voice.
“Of course we are.” Ross puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s just that it might be a long night and I know you’re tired. We’ll be in big trouble if you lose control of time while we’re out there.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’ve had plenty of time to rest since this afternoon. I won’t let you down.”
Ross gives my shoulder a quick squeeze before letting go. I follow him down the concrete steps. I’ve rarely been outside the Center at night. The streetlights shine with a mustard glow that makes everything kind of mono-colored. Fallen leaves crunch under my feet. I scurry to catch up with Ross so I can walk by his side.
Balancing on the bike turns out to be easy with Ross steadying it from up front. Within a few blocks I feel reasonably stable. Wind whips my hair and cuts through my clo
thes as we ride. The only jacket in my room was a thin CIC raincoat, and it doesn’t provide much protection, but since we very quickly start pedaling uphill, I’m warm enough to break a sweat by the time Ross pulls over to stop.
I lean on the handlebar, panting. We’re in a residential area a few miles west of downtown. Unlike most of the city grid, the streets here curve in lazy bends. There are no sidewalks, but there are lots of basketball hoops and plastic swings dangling from tree limbs.
“Hop off,” Ross says.
I climb from the bike, which he wheels over to lean against a tree.
Away from the city lights, the moon shines clear silver, illuminating the house before us. It sits on a weed-free lawn, edged with beds of carefully selected plants. There’s a neat brick path leading from the driveway to a lighted front porch, and on one side, a huge oak tree towers like a sentinel. It’s the kind of house I used to dream of when I was little. A perfect house. A home. I picture Ross and me living in a place like this after I leave the Center. He’d come in and I’d be doing homework behind one of those curtained windows, my chores done, eager to tell him about my day.
“You ready?” Ross asks.
His voice is clipped. I’m reminded that we’re on a mission—the mission—the one that will finally stop Sikes. I pull myself from my reverie as we head to the side of the house.
Ross opens the locked door with a few efficient twists of his pick. We step into a utility room with a cherry-red washer-dryer on the right. The smell of laundry detergent hangs in the air. High on one wall, the lights of a burglar alarm shine uselessly.
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