Unleashed

by Carolyn O'Doherty

  “Agent Ross?” Chief’s voice cuts through Ross’s musings. He tilts the phone against his leg to cover any telltale glare.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Agent Mullins is out on vacation the rest of the week, so I’ll need you to cover her beat in Old Town.”

  “Beat work?” Ross hates beat work. Especially in Old Town. All the crazy people hang out there. “I’m a detective, sir.”

  “A time detective,” Chief says, “for a program that is ending. I’m going to be looking at reassignments for all of you in the next couple of weeks.”

  The phone in Ross’s hand buzzes, the signal that the app has connected with the tracker. Ross presses the screen against his leg to muffle it.

  “I’ve got some active cases that need my attention.”

  “Understood,” Chief says. “I don’t expect you to be in Old Town all day; just stop by a few times so the locals see a presence, all right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jim Cannon smirks. Ross waits until Chief is occupied with an officer on the other side of the room before he lifts his hand and studies the small screen. The blue dot tells him Alex is tucked away in her hideout. Ross clicks off the phone. The Old Town assignment is an insult. He’ll do the minimum, but no more. As soon as he gets the Sully thing sorted out, he’ll go and find Alex. She’s likely to try to evade him, but she can’t run forever. He’ll just keep showing up until she’s too exhausted to freeze. By early afternoon, Alex will be his, and after that, his real future will start—a future that does not involve the Old Town beat or Officer Cannon or being told what to do by soon-to-be-ex–Police Chief Lamar Graham.

  13

  I WAKE TO THE SOUND OF RAIN, A STEADY DOWNPOUR turning the windows into gray blurs. I rub my eyes, trying to scrub away the dream that woke me—a dream filled with endless visions of faceless pursuers. “KJ’s awake,” I whisper. The words, so magical last night, fail to entirely remove the dread filling every cell of my body. I roll out of bed. Food will help. A real breakfast shared with my best friend, who will use his logical brain to help smooth out the tangles blocking our future.

  I’m smiling when I walk into the kitchen. At least I am until I see Shannon standing at the counter and humming to herself as she measures out fresh coffee.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead.” Her smile is blinding. “We were hoping you’d be up soon. Weren’t you going to go out and get us something to eat? KJ and I are starving.”

  Last night’s bliss shrivels a little bit more.

  “I’ll go ask KJ what he wants to eat,” I say.

  “Eggs.” Shannon states with annoying certainty. “And you can’t go in there right now. He’s getting dressed.” She pours water into the coffee maker and presses the Brew button. “Hey, while you’re out, do you mind picking up a few other things we need?”

  The words do your own stupid errands dance on my tongue, and I press my lips together to keep from blurting them out.

  “Sure,” I say.

  Shannon hands me a list and goes back to her happy song, either totally oblivious to my irritation or else choosing to take my gruffness for sleepiness. I put on my coat and head down into the spiked arms of the blackberries.

  The checkout guy at the mini-mart looks up when I step inside. I hurry down the nearest aisle, not sure if his attention is friendly welcome or mistrustful scrutiny. Luckily, Shannon’s list is short: ibuprofen, a loaf of bread, cream cheese, toilet paper, half-and-half, and a bag of oranges. At the counter, I add candy bars and a newspaper. KJ likes doing crossword puzzles.

  The bell over the door jangles as I’m collecting my change. I duck my head instinctively before recognizing the people standing in the doorway.

  “Jack!”

  Jack’s body shifts, only slightly, but enough that I realize I’ve startled him so much he froze time. I glance at the clerk. He’s sliding the drawer shut on the register and doesn’t seem to have noticed anything unusual.

  “Alex.” Jack rubs his forehead. “You’re up early.”

  I pick up my grocery bag and hurry over. “Have you been out all night?”

  Jack nods. Victor shakes himself, scattering raindrops all over the floor.

  “I’m getting a soda,” he announces, wandering toward the refrigerator section. Jack glances over my shoulder and I follow his gaze. The clerk is watching us.

  “Grab me a soda, too, OK?” Jack calls to Victor. He rubs his head again. “Something with caffeine in it.”

  I study Jack’s face more carefully. Tension pinches the corners of his mouth downward, and his eyes are skipping around the room as if he’s checking the perimeter. I take his arm and usher him to a spot deeper in the store, stopping next to a rack of postcards.

  “How’d it go last night?” I ask.

  “OK. The studio was great, but then Victor wanted to get some stuff and…” Jack spins the rack of postcards. Pictures of mountains and city skylines twirl in a fuzzy whirl. “Tell me again what Ross said about the wipers?”

  A weight settles in my stomach, heavy, cold, and depressingly familiar. “Was someone following you?”

  “I don’t know.” Jack scans the store again. “Mostly I just felt weird. Victor would want me to freeze time, and I’d try to find a place we could hide and nothing seemed safe enough. And there was this one guy.” Jack shivers. The cold in my stomach spreads up to fill my chest.

  “What did he look like?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t really get a good look at him.” Jack waves his hands like he’s brushing away flies. “It was probably nothing.”

  The cooler door in the back of the store slams and I hear the clump of Victor’s boots as he stomps back toward us. I bend my head close to Jack’s.

  “Where’s Faith?”

  He shrugs. “She refuses to be in a freeze, so Victor gave her some money and she went off on her own. Buying drugs, I assume.”

  Victor’s footsteps come closer.

  “What if she tells someone about us?”

  “Victor promised she wouldn’t.”

  My chewed-up fingernail is back in my mouth, not at all comforted by a secondhand promise. Victor clomps up beside me. He smells like grimy clothes overlaid with expensive aftershave. On his back, the pack we’d bought the other day bulges.

  “You buying?” he grunts, holding up two giant bottles of soda. I want to tell him to pay for it himself since he took most of our money, but I’m afraid he’ll whip out a stack of hundreds or spill stolen loot on the counter when he opens the pack. I pull a crumpled five-dollar bill from my pocket and carry the two sodas over to the clerk. When I bring them back, Victor twists the top off his drink and takes a deep gulp. He doesn’t thank me.

  Outside, the rain still gushes. I peer through the downpour, searching through the cascade of wet for any sign of someone out there watching us.

  “This sucks,” Victor mumbles.

  “You should have picked up an umbrella while you were out,” I say.

  “I’m not wasting this shit on umbrellas.” Victor adjusts the sleeve of his jacket and I catch a glimpse of a heavy gold watch. The glittering metal looks suspiciously out of place against Victor’s tatted-up arm.

  “Can’t you just, like, freeze time and then sweep all the frozen raindrops out of your way?” Victor asks.

  “No.” I step out into the rain. The two boys follow me, Jack plodding at my heels, Victor bouncing along with his loaded pack.

  “There’s Faith,” Victor says. He sounds relieved. Faith is huddled in the plastic bus shelter. She isn’t wearing a jacket and her T-shirt clings to her skin.

  “Hey, Faith,” Victor calls, “I got you a present.”

  Faith lifts her head, eyes softening when they land on Victor. She reaches out a hand toward him, and Victor grabs it.

  “Dang, sis, you’re freezing.” Victor
rubs his meaty hands over her fingers. Jack and I squash ourselves into the shelter behind Victor. Faith’s gaze slides toward us, and her welcoming expression fades.

  “Come on.” Victor doesn’t seem to notice her change of mood. “Let’s go up to the squat and get you warm.”

  Faith shakes her head. “It’s eight o’clock. One of the Elmer’s staff just opened the shop.”

  “So?” Victor jerks a head in our direction. “These guys can get us in any time we want.”

  Faith’s attention settles on me. I’m pretty sure she’s high, because her pupils are so wide her irises appear black. Goose bumps dot her bare arms. She looks like a cat that got dunked in a bath—a pissed-off cat oozing contempt.

  “No,” Faith says. “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can,” Victor coaxes. “You don’t have to do anything. Just take Alex’s hand for a second and then…”

  “No!” Faith repeats more sharply. She’s shivering, though whether it’s from cold or fear or just distaste, I can’t tell.

  “I don’t want her to touch me,” Faith says. “They’re…unnatural.”

  Water drips down the neck of my shirt. The rain is cold. My head hurts. The grocery bag is straining against my arms.

  “I know they’re weird,” Victor says. “But they won’t hurt you. I won’t let them.”

  “They’re cursed.” Faith’s voice grows hysterical. “I don’t want to be part of their…mutation.” She pulls her hand out of Victor’s. “How can you trust them?”

  I squeeze the wet bag of groceries against my chest. Faith’s face is twisted into an ugly scowl, any prettiness wiped away by her disgust. Her words hang in the air between us—familiar words that have been flung at me my whole life—mutation, unnatural, cursed.

  “Take these up,” I say, shoving my bag into Jack’s arms. “I’m going to get Shannon and KJ some breakfast.”

  * * *

  I hear the whispers as soon as I melt time. Standing alone in the squat’s morning light, I pause, the bag of take-out breakfast balanced awkwardly in my arms. The words are soft, but this time I recognize the voices at once.

  “…so you don’t think we should go back?”

  Shannon, of course. She’s the only person I know who can nail wounded innocence quite so perfectly.

  “No way,” KJ says. “This is a dream come true. Think of all the things we can do now that we’re on our own.”

  I grip the bag in my arms so hard I hear the Styrofoam containers inside it squeak. Of course, KJ has always dreamed of leaving the Sick, but I thought his dream included being with me.

  Shannon gives a pathetic sniff. “But how can you be sure that Aclisote is bad?”

  “I guess we won’t be completely sure until none of us gets sick again,” KJ says.

  An edge of Styrofoam jabs the inside of my elbow. Is KJ not convinced that Aclisote is killing us? With a sinking feeling, I wonder again how much KJ remembers about the days before he got sick.

  “Spinners help people,” Shannon says. “We solve crimes. Why would the Center want to kill us?”

  “Because we’re powerful,” KJ says. “Our time skills scare them.”

  Shannon drops her voice. “They scare me, too.” There’s a rustling sound like blankets being shifted. I picture KJ holding Shannon’s hand, or worse, the two of them snuggled up together under a blanket. I massage my temple. I’ve been stopping time so much lately, even a short hold ignites a headache.

  “Have you tried freezing since you stopped taking Aclisote?” KJ asks.

  “Once,” Shannon says, “nothing changed, though. It was like freezing always is for me. The way it’s supposed to work.”

  KJ says something else, too softly for me to hear. I hold my breath, straining to catch what they’re saying, before I realize I’m blatantly eavesdropping. I rattle the bag in my hand and take a step forward, a loud one that makes the floors creak.

  “Hello?” I call out, pretending I’ve just arrived. “You guys up?”

  “Over here,” KJ answers.

  I walk around the armoire. Streaks of watery sunlight filter through the opaque windows, casting soft bars across KJ’s blankets. Shannon is scooting over, but a dent by KJ’s side makes clear where she’s been sitting. She’s washed up since I left this morning and wears one of the clean shirts I brought her. Instead of a bedraggled braid, her hair falls in damp waves down to her waist. She’s practically shining with prettiness.

  I push a stray bit of my own hair in the general direction of my ponytail. Unlike Shannon’s becoming locks, my wet strands cling to my neck like seaweed.

  “Breakfast,” I announce.

  KJ smiles up at me, a wide grin that crinkles the top of his nose and makes me feel suddenly out of breath. He does remember. I’m sure of it.

  “Thanks,” he says.

  Shannon straightens the blankets over KJ’s legs. I sit down on the floor across from her, passing around Styrofoam boxes filled with scrambled eggs, muffins, and sausage, along with to-go cups of chocolate milkshake. I figure KJ can use the extra calories.

  “Where’s Jack?” KJ asks.

  “Didn’t you see him when he came in?” I ask. They both shake their heads. “Must have gone straight to sleep then. He and Victor were out all night.”

  KJ attacks his food with enthusiasm. For a while, the only sounds are the scrape of plastic forks and the coos from the pigeons outside.

  “So.” KJ swallows a bite of muffin. “Sounds like I missed out on a lot while I was sick.” He uses the back of his hand as the napkin I forgot to get. The gesture removes some crumbs but doesn’t erase the grease smearing his lower lip. “Want to fill me in?”

  The shimmery spot on KJ’s lip makes it hard to keep my eyes off his mouth. For the first time, I understand why girls wear lip gloss. I focus on my eggs while telling KJ how we’d gotten out of the Center and into the squat. KJ listens attentively, and even though I leave out the more graphic details, he still expresses comforting dismay when I talk about the car accident and the unpleasantness of Victor and Faith. Shannon adds nothing, eating her food in small, neat bites.

  “Wow,” KJ says, when I’m done. “That’s amazing.”

  KJ’s words warm me more than the hot food resting on my lap. I pick up my milkshake to give my hands something to do.

  “I don’t know if everything she’s done is amazing.” Shannon’s eyes flick between me and KJ, her mouth pinched so tight the edges could be stapled. “What about all the stuff you and Jack have been stealing?”

  KJ raises his eyebrows. “What’d you guys steal?”

  “Everything—food, clothes.” I gesture at his bedding. “It’s not like we had any money.”

  “You do now.” Shannon shifts her position, so she’s sitting shoulder to shoulder with KJ. “A whole backpack full. I saw it.”

  “You have a backpack full of cash?” KJ asks. “Where’d you get that?”

  “We took it.” I glare at Shannon. “From an armored truck, in frozen time.”

  KJ nearly drops his plate.

  “We needed cash to pay off Victor and Faith,” I explain. “They were threatening to throw us out.”

  Shannon sniffs. “I think you and Jack caved in to Victor’s demands way too easily. I doubt they really would have turned you in. They’re not exactly the deal-with-authority type.”

  “You think we should have negotiated with them?” I stab my fork into the bottom of the Styrofoam tray, snapping two of the tines. “Have you talked to Victor?”

  KJ starts at the venom in my voice. “Whoa, Alex. Chill.”

  My head whips in his direction. “She has no right to criticize our choices. Jack and I were doing everything we could to survive. All she did was sit here and whine about missing the Center.”

  Shannon’s cheeks flush pink. “I took care of KJ. You were ha
rdly ever here.”

  The unfairness of her accusation momentarily stills my tongue. I pick up my cup, squeezing the paper container so roughly that chocolate shake oozes out over my hand.

  “No one has to worry about me being sick anymore,” KJ says, scooping up more eggs. “Now we’re all free and safe. Everything from here on will be easy.”

  A blast of wind rattles the windows over our heads. I know KJ well enough to understand that the lightness of his comment is an effort to heal this obvious rift, but the words still rankle. I put the shake down on the ground.

  “Actually,” I say. “We’re not safe.”

  KJ looks up.

  “Alex.” Shannon’s voice holds warning. “There’s no need to share all your theories right now.”

  The battering wind has forced rain through the cracks of the ill-fitting glass. Water slides through the opening, fingers of wet encroaching into the room.

  “They aren’t theories,” I say. “We need to leave Portland as soon as possible. All the spinners do. If we don’t…”

  What am I doing? KJ looks so happy right now, and the things I have to tell him will turn that joy into the anxious gnawing that keeps my stomach feeling like it’s filled with battery acid.

  KJ’s fork hovers over his plate, a forgotten hunk of egg impaled on its tip. “If we don’t, then what?”

  My eyes meet his across the empty space between us. All the worries from the last few days swarm around my lips, begging to be let out, but he looks so frail, the fork hanging from his hand in a way that suggests even holding such a slight weight takes effort. Do I want to tell him everything because he needs to understand the truth? Or do I want to tell him because the burden is too much for me to carry alone?

  “Alex,” KJ says, “what aren’t you telling me?”

  I take a very deep breath. KJ does need to know. He just doesn’t need to know everything yet.

  “The Center is going to be closed at the end of the month. All the kids will be relocated, and some are going to the Central Office.”