I pick up the list Julie left me on a clipboard by the door. As usual, I’ll be taking kids aside so they can practice freezing and rewinding time. My day grows a little bit drearier when I see Kimmi Yoshida’s name at the top of the list. Kimmi hates time work.
“That’s right,” Julie says, “or approximately .0017% of the nation’s population under age twenty. How many spinner babies are born each year?”
Jenny raises her hand. “Miss Julie, is it true spinners used to be called witches?”
A ripple of interest passes over the slouching students. Even Julie perks up. Who doesn’t think witches sound more fun than birth rates?
“Well …” Julie only hesitates for a second. “Back in the 1700s, before Aclisote was developed, spinners were pretty unstable. They tended toward severe paranoia, and some even became violent.”
“Did they send them to the Central Office?” Emilio asks.
Julie smiles. “There was no Central Office back then. Freezing time was considered black magic, not a genetic condition. There are lots of old stories about spinners spying on people or even making things disappear.”
Emilio leans forward. “How’d they do that?”
“They didn’t really,” Julie says. “Changing things during frozen time isn’t possible. They’re just stories, like the ones about really old people being spinners. The real thing people fear about spinners is that they can sneak around and find out secrets.”
Julie talks more about the old days when spinners were chained up, or killed as soon as their powers were uncovered. The Youngers listen with rapt attention. Jenny’s bottom lip trembles a little when Julie tells them about spinners getting burned at the stake, which Julie must notice, because she switches over to talk about Aclisote and how its development has made spinner life so much better. I grip my clipboard. Aclisote has been working for three hundred years. What if the new medicine makes me go crazy like Calvin, or worse, turns me into some kind of rabid monster?
The edges of the clipboard bite into my palm. I loosen my hold and beckon to Kimmi, who pretends not to see me.
Emilio’s hand shoots up again. “Have spinners always worked with police agents?”
“Not always,” Julie says. “At first Aclisote made spinners kind of, um, slow. They couldn’t really function very well. It’s only been since the 1950s that the dosages were refined enough that spinners could control their skills and still live relatively normal lives.”
Kimmi finally acknowledges my waving and drags herself up from her table. Julie launches into a description of the first case ever solved by a rewind. I usher Kimmi into the time room, a glassed-in space at the back of the class, empty except for a couple chairs and a small cabinet. Tariq, the student sitting closest to the door, slides the lock once we enter. The Center is really strict about controlling where we can freeze time. Yolly says the staff don’t want the kids to dig through Julie’s desk and find answers for tests. Jack says they do it because they don’t trust us to run around unsupervised, which, frankly, in Jack’s case, makes sense. I might not feel it if he hit me while I was frozen, but that doesn’t mean I want him to have the opportunity.
“Hey, Kimmi.” I rub my ear, trying to clear the images created by Julie’s now muffled voice: hatred, insanity, death. “Want to try a freeze?”
“No.” Kimmi is a round-cheeked eleven-year-old with the attitude of a teenage thug. “Let’s just say we did and you let me out of here. It’s not like anyone would know.”
“Come on,” I say, doing my best to dredge up some patience, “the longer you can hold a freeze, the better assignments you’ll get as a qualified spinner. Besides, freezes can be fun.”
“Not locked in the practice room they’re not.”
I bring out my final piece of leverage. “I’ll let you eat the chocolate bar.”
Kimmi gives a huge sigh and takes my hand as if she’s doing me a favor. A slight stutter tells me she’s stopped time, an internal blip like an extra heartbeat. On the other side of the glass, Julie stands with one arm raised, in the act of pointing at one of the seven remaining students frozen in their chairs.
“Good job,” I say. “That was really smooth.”
Time hums through our linked hands like a very low electric current. As long as we’re touching, our powers mingle, a minimal drain on me, but a real support for the spinner holding the freeze. I slide my hand away from hers. There’s a momentary blur, and then time springs forward. I retake Kimmi’s hand.
“Try again. Close your eyes and picture time in your head. Can you feel it? Focus on the currents flowing around you. Now imagine pulling them taut.” The world freezes again. “That’s it. Now you hold it alone.”
I let go. Time wavers for an instant, before Kimmi catches it and pulls it tight.
“There,” I say, “you did it.”
Despite herself, Kimmi looks pleased. I mentally push against her hold. It’s her freeze, so I can’t break it, but I can gauge the strength. The flow of time hangs around us like a sheet of gauze, fragile but unmoving.
I open the cabinet and take out the chocolate bar the kids have been eating in frozen time all week.
“Here.”
Kimmi rips open the wrapper and takes a bite. I watch her eating. In the frozen silence her chewing sounds loud. I touch my ear again. If I plug it, I can hear the thump of my pulse. I think about chronotin, a slow poison taking a second of my life with every beat of my heart. I drop my hand.
“Do you want to try a rewind? It’s more exciting than just standing here.”
“How about we go out there?” Kimmi gestures at the frozen world outside the glass. “That’s more exciting than just standing here too.”
“We can’t,” I say, “the door is …”
The words drift into the quiet air. A flash of brilliance has just hit me, and I suddenly know a way to get the information I want about my chronotin levels. I rock on my heels. I’ll be breaking every rule in the book, but if it works, I don’t see how I can get caught. I give Kimmi a huge smile.
“Let time go,” I say. “We’re done.”
Kimmi is so taken aback by my sudden capitulation she forgets to finish the chocolate bar. She releases time immediately, whirling us back to our prefreeze, chocolateless positions. Vaulting to the door, she starts banging on the glass so Tariq will let her out, presumably worried I might change my mind. The classroom noises surge when the door opens: voices, shuffling feet, and the scratch of a pencil. The freeze monitor, however, remains quiet. Monitors are blocked in the practice room since it’s one of the few places we’re supposed to use our power. I wrap my arms around my body, hugging myself to keep from jumping up and down with impatience. Emilio shuffles from his seat to take Kimmi’s place. The instant the door closes again I freeze time.
Peace settles around me and I relax into it. Ten-year-old Emilio’s body is easy to pick up and move out of my way. Tariq falls over when I shove the door open. He hasn’t had time to lock it. I pause to settle him more comfortably on the floor. Even if he won’t remember it later, it seems rude to leave him collapsed over a chair.
Walking through the Center is eerie. I’ve never wandered around here in a freeze before. The rooms have a dreamlike quality, familiar and also strange. My footsteps send out a lonely echo as I walk up the stairs.
The clinic takes up half of the second floor. Beige wallpaper stamped with pale sailboats covers the walls. There’s a waiting area with a couple of padded chairs, separated by a half wall from Amy’s office. Closed doors mark two sickrooms, a half bath, and an exam room. The air smells like disinfectant. Amy must not have come on duty yet because the whole place is empty.
The filing cabinet I’ve come to search stands behind Amy’s desk. It’s beige with four neatly labeled drawers. I skip the administrative one on top and reach for the one labeled Records. It’s locked.
The headache lurking in my skull since yesterday pulses. I massage the taut muscles in the back of my neck, sending the
m calming thoughts. They don’t listen. I find the key in the second place I look, casually tossed in the top right drawer of Amy’s desk between a tin of mints and a crumpled tissue. I unlock the cabinet with sweaty hands. The folder labeled Manning, Alexandra is stuffed near the middle.
My file isn’t particularly thick. I plop on the ground so I can spread the pages across my lap. The information I want jumps out immediately, scribbled on a stack of papers clipped to the left side of the file. One column shows the date, the next, my chronotin reading, then the tester’s initials (primarily Amy’s), followed by another notation showing my Aclisote dosage, this time initialed by Dr. Barnard. I focus on the last few entries:
I frown. My chronotin levels have not spiked. In fact, with all the Aclisote I’m taking now, my levels are probably even lower than they were when they tested me two weeks ago. So why did Dr. Barnard raise my Aclisote not once, but twice? I rub my neck again. Is 172 some kind of warning threshold? Or are there other signs of imminent time sickness besides chronotin readings? I wipe my palms against the front of my sweatshirt and dig into the file. The pages on the right side hold records of my physicals since I moved to the Center, notations of height, weight, blood pressure, a time I’d taken antibiotics for strep throat. There is no mention at all of time sickness.
I flip the chronotin chart back a few pages. Amy’s initials are replaced by her predecessor, Jessica’s, and then someone called TR whose face I can’t remember. When I first came to the Center, my chronotin level was 126. Over the years, my readings have crept steadily upwards, interspersed with occasional crashes when Dr. Barnard raised my Aclisote prescription. Not surprising. Not helpful.
The cabinet drawer creaks as I reach in and yank out more files. KJ’s readings for the last year range from 163 to 165, Shannon’s from 152 to 155, Aidan’s from 158 to 160. Their Aclisote levels seem to line up more closely to their age and weight than their readings, which backs up Shannon’s statement that everyone has their own version of normal. I open Jack’s file. Before he got sick, his levels climbed to 162. Barnard raised his Aclisote to six cc’s and his chronotin dropped down to 155. It’s been slowly climbing ever since. His last test put him back up at 159. Is 162 his critical number? The point where he’ll get sick again? I look for a file from someone who died but they’ve all been cleared out.
The last file I pull is Calvin’s. He’s getting eight cc’s of Aclisote. His last chronotin reading was 150. I flip back to a year ago, then move through the sheets so I can read his report chronologically. Before he got sick, Calvin’s levels hovered between 169 and 171. I turn the pages. I know he got his first attack in January because it was only a few days after KJ’s eighteenth birthday.
My finger hovers over the words subject admitted. Calvin’s chronotin readings hadn’t changed, so what triggered the attack? Stress? I dig through the sheets on the right-hand side of the file. Calvin’s admittance paperwork is a jumble of acronyms and numbers. The only part I can decipher indicates that he had a fever of 103. Was the high temperature a symptom of the sickness, or did he get the sickness because he was weakened by a fever? I flip the pages forward and back, searching for any kind of additional notations, but I don’t find anything. If Barnard keeps more detailed case notes, he doesn’t store them here.
I turn back to the sheets tracking Calvin’s chronotin levels. In February, they started to rise again but his dosage remained the same until May, the month of his second attack, when his chronotin was back up near 165 and his Aclisote dosage increased to eight cc’s. Why did Barnard wait so long to raise it? Why did he reduce it in the first place? If there were side effects to high doses of Aclisote, I’d never felt them.
I lean back against the metal cabinet. Files litter the floor around me, reams of information adding very little to my knowledge. I pitch Calvin’s file in among the others with so much force the pages spring loose from the clasp. Paper scatters everywhere, numbers and sheets hopelessly tangled. I pick up a random piece of paper and crumple it. More than anything, I wish KJ was with me so we could think through everything together. Things always seem clearer when I talk to KJ.
Pain twinges inside my temple. I need to let time go. I fish out my file one more time and read the numbers out loud, committing them to memory. At least that information will be helpful. If I can get it to Ross. The sheet in my hand rips as the chart slides off my lap. How long will it be before Ross needs me for another mission? Our missions are based on crimes, events completely out of both of our control.
Time squirms in my grasp, seemingly as impatient for release as I am. I let it go. One swirling instant of dizziness, and I am back in the freeze room listening to an untoppled Tariq click the lock on the door. Emilio is watching me expectantly. I rub my temple with one hand and hold out the other to the little boy.
“Want to eat some chocolate?” I ask.
I’m taking a break after my fifth Younger when Dr. Barnard pokes his head into the classroom.
“Excuse me, Julie,” he says. “I need to claim Alexandra.”
I flinch, immediately convinced Barnard somehow knows about my illicit trip to the clinic. I trail him from the classroom as slowly as I dare. Except for his soft spot for Jack, the Center’s director is never lenient about infractions.
Barnard speaks without preamble.
“Mr. Ross just called to ask for you to come on a mission. It seems the police found a body.”
I lift my head.
“Great,” I say.
Barnard raises one eyebrow. A blush burns my face.
“I mean, a body, that’s awful.”
I wipe my flushed cheeks, pausing to rub the spot on my temple where a time headache still flickers. Barnard catches the gesture.
“You’re not worn out from yesterday’s mission, are you?”
“Of course not.” I drop my hand. The opportunity to spend the day with Ross is worth a pounding headache.
“Good. Mr. Ross was very insistent that you be assigned to this case.”
I straighten my shoulders, doing my best to look like the qualified professional I am.
“Who died?”
“A woman found the body this morning.” Barnard adjusts the faultless edge of his cuff, a gesture that somehow implies disapproval. “It’s Jason Torino, the bomber you saw yesterday. It seems he was murdered.”
07
MY EAGERNESS TO GO ON A MISSION OVERCOMES even the dull buzz of the leash. Ross seems equally hyped up, tapping his foot while Charlie goes through the process of signing me out: logging the mission number and who I left with, clearing me to freeze time without setting off the monitor, and handing Ross the key to my leash. When the Center doors lock behind us, Ross jumps the stairs three at a time in his rush to reach the waiting car. I scramble after him, barely getting my seat belt clicked before he guns the engine.
“I think this is it, partner,” he says, zooming around a truck with enough acceleration to pin me against my seat. “The case that will change everything.”
Adrenaline shoots through me, though whether it’s from Ross’s driving or the upcoming case, it’s hard to say.
“Did Sikes kill Jason Torino?” I ask. “To keep him from talking to the police?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out. It makes sense, though, doesn’t it? If he thought Jason was going to spill, Sikes would want to shut him up.”
We drive around a corner so fast, Ross’s tires squeal.
“Did anyone get a chance to talk to Jason before he died?” I ask.
Ross shakes his head. “Jason never contacted the police.”
“But that means …” The speed at which we’re driving is making it kind of hard to breathe evenly. I wrap one hand around my seat belt. “That means that by asking the question, that reporter basically caused his death.”
“The reporter was just doing his job,” Ross says. “It’s Sikes who acted. He’s the one who bears the blame.”
“I guess.” I shift in my seat. “Ma
ybe Jason didn’t even know anything about Sikes or dirty cops. He might have died for nothing.”
Ross barely slows the car before running a red light.
“You feeling better today?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say, though this isn’t strictly true. The headache from my earlier freeze still hasn’t faded.
“Actually, Dr. Barnard raised my Aclisote.” I tell Ross everything I discovered since we last talked, including my illicit trip to the clinic.
“All of which makes the sickness even more confusing,” I conclude. “It seems like it’s not just triggered by high chronotin. Jack got sick and his level never rose above 162. Calvin’s level dropped to 150 after his first attack and he still suffered a second.”
“Those are questions only Dr. Barnard could answer.” Ross points to a notepad tucked in the well between the seats. “You should write down your readings before you forget them. And I have to say, I’m impressed with your initiative. Freezing in the practice room was a clever trick.”
I smile into the pad as I scribble down the numbers I’ve memorized. It’s a struggle to write them legibly in the moving car.
“Have you heard anything from Dr. Kroger?” I ask.
“He overnighted the medicine to me last night,” Ross says. “I’m just finalizing my plan to get it into the Center.”
The pen slips from my fingers. Everything is moving so fast. The worries that plagued me this morning about side effects and quality of life crawl back up to nibble on the edges of my excitement. Before I can frame my concerns, Ross cuts the wheel, skidding to a stop in the parking lot of a brick-red one-story building.
The lot is empty except for three cop cars. Ross springs out onto the pavement. I wobble after him, my legs welcoming the solid ground. A big red-and-white sign announces the place as Franz Meats. Blinds cover the store windows, and a note saying Closed for Labor Day Weekend is taped to the glass. Ross ducks under a strip of yellow police tape and opens the door.
Jason Torino’s body lies on the floor ten feet from the entrance, face down in a pool of congealed blood. Nausea rises in the back of my throat. As much as we’d talked about Jason’s death, I’d managed to avoid thinking about his actual corpse. He seems even younger than he did in the rewind, his body slight and vulnerable splayed out on the cold floor. One arm is flung up over his head, the other lies twisted awkwardly beneath him. At the side of his neck, a deep gash shows the source of all the blood. The edges of the slash curl back like a pair of obscenely pursed lips.
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