17

A BREEZE BLOWS ACROSS THE CENTER’S EMPTY FRONT steps, lifting a stray leaf into the air. I watch the tiny piece of green float into the open sky before the Center’s heavy oak door swings shut and seals out the sun. Behind it, very faintly, I hear the sound of Ross’s car as it drives away. All my fears focus into a kind of surreal clarity. I rest my forehead against the bars of my prison. The hard metal drills the relentless buzzing deeper into my brain, but I don’t move. These bars are the only thing still separating me from the place I’ve fought so hard to escape.

The familiar smells from the Center’s industrial cleaning solutions sink in through my pores. I tighten my grip on the bars, waiting for the voice I know will come.

“Hello, Alexandra.” Dr. Barnard sounds out of breath. He probably ran all the way from his office in his eagerness to greet his captive. “I was hoping you’d come by for a visit.”

I study the Center’s front door. Bits of dirt darken the corners of the inset panels, ancient grime from decades past. The oak is scratched, heavy, and completely solid.

“Let me go,” I say, even though I know the plea is hopeless.

“I can’t do that.” A metallic click tells me he’s unlocked the other side of the cage. I make a feeble effort to stop time, barely even disappointed when the expected block keeps me from grabbing hold. The cage snaps shut behind Barnard. “You’re a very sick girl.”

“Liar.” I speak the words without heat.

Barnard pries one of my arms away from the bars.

“In your condition,” he says, “you’re a danger to both yourself and society.”

The leash fits snugly around my wrist, its buzz barely adding to the hum already burning my brain.

“Go to hell,” I say.

“You know we don’t allow rudeness like that here,” Barnard says. He searches my pockets, removing my phone, gloves, and lock picks. “I expect your behavior to improve once we get you back on your medication.”

I make a belated effort to pull away from him, but even with his arm in a cast, my struggles earn me nothing more than a sore shoulder.

“Let’s go.” Barnard uses his good arm to twist my hand around to the middle of my back, forcing me to turn and face the lobby. Except for the cage, it hasn’t changed. The same worn tile I’ve crossed a thousand times, the same dusty photographs, and the same grainy security feed playing in Charlie’s guard station. Charlie himself is the only person standing outside the metal bars, an expression of dull surprise crimping his round cheeks.

“Open the door,” Barnard barks. Charlie starts, fumbling with the cage’s door before managing to swing it open.

“Charlie,” I beg, “don’t let him do this. It will kill me to go back on Aclisote. It’s all a lie, what they’ve been telling you. Didn’t you see me just appear on the monitor? Everything’s a lie…”

Barnard wrenches my arm higher up my back until the pain cuts off my words.

“She’s raving,” Barnard says. Unlike me, he sounds calm, even clinical. “She’s been off Aclisote so long she’s starting to go mad.”

The endlessly repeated lies work their magic. Charlie backs away, probably expecting me to attack him at any minute. I know anything I say will only add to Barnard’s argument that I’m insane. I wonder how Barnard will explain my appearing in the Center and Jack disappearing off the doorstep. He’ll probably just delete the video footage and claim Charlie was imagining things. The front desk guard is a nice enough guy, but he’ll never be mistaken for smart.

Barnard muscles me away from the entrance. The disorienting buzz in my head lessens as we get farther from the cage. I reach out with my mind and give the blocking wall a tentative push. Time flows on. Even out of the cage, the leash on my arm keeps my skills firmly in check.

“Alex!” Yolly barrels down the stairs, her soft-soled shoes thudding on the steps in her hurry to reach me. She wears a cotton smock printed with kittens chasing balls of colorful yarn. Brown hair perches on her head in stiff curls that even her headlong rush doesn’t muss.

“Oh, thank goodness.” Yolly throws her arms around me, forcing Barnard to halt. She pulls me close, patting my back and murmuring words of reassurance as she presses my face against her well-padded chest. We always rolled our eyes about Yolly, the Center’s frumpy matron, with her kindergarten-teacher voice and misguided conviction that the Center was just a slightly unusual but happy family. Now, her vanilla perfume wafts over me and fills my eyes with unwanted tears.

“We’ve been so worried,” Yolly croons. “Are you feeling sick? Is that why you came home? Where are the others?”

“I’m not sick.” My voice is muffled by her chest and by the tears coursing down my cheeks.

“It’s OK, dear,” Yolly says, still patting me. “We can talk once you get settled.” She pulls a tissue from her pocket and dabs at my face. “Amy is off duty today,” she tells Barnard, referring to the Center’s nurse. “I can take her up to the clinic.”

Barnard’s grip on my arm does not relax.

“I’ll take her.” He pushes me forward, shoving me out of Yolly’s embrace.

“Surely there’s no need for that,” Yolly protests.

“She’s been raving,” Barnard says. “If we don’t treat her soon, she might get violent.”

Yolly starts up the stairs in our wake. “The poor girl must be terribly ill.”

“I’m not sick,” I say again. “I’m better than I’ve ever been. I can change things in frozen time.”

Yolly winces, and I see her exchange a knowing look with Barnard.

“It’s true,” I say. Frustration makes my voice come out so high I know Yolly will mistake it for hysteria, but I can’t help myself. “Take off the leash and I’ll show you.”

We’ve reached the top of the stairs. Yolly pushes open the door to the clinic and watches me pass inside with a sorrowful expression. Empty chairs haunt the small waiting area next to the nurse’s desk. The sight of this space reawakens the panic that despair momentarily dimmed. I already know exactly how the fake leather seats feel against the backs of my legs, know the contents of the well-thumbed magazines littering the lone table. I remember the smell of alcohol and the taste of Aclisote, chemical sweet, as it hits the back of my throat.

“No,” I say, struggling to back out the door. Barnard twists my arm upward again, sending fresh jolts of pain all the way to my shoulder.

“Now, dear,” Yolly says to me. “You know we have to get you back on your meds.”

“No!” I shake my head. My struggling feet slip on the smooth tile. Behind me, Barnard blocks me like a living wall. I can no more move him than cut through the buzzing haze that blocks me from time. “He’ll kill me.”

“Come on.” Barnard pushes me forward, his greater weight moving us deeper into the room.

“Please.” I’m babbling. “Let me just show you. I won’t do anything bad, I promise.”

“Should I call Charlie?” Yolly asks.

“Get me something to put her under,” Barnard snaps.

The idea of Barnard making me unconscious horrifies me even more than taking Aclisote. He might never let me gain consciousness again. I stop flailing.

“I’ll cooperate.”

“We’ll see,” Barnard says, only slightly reducing the tension on my arm.

I force my feet to move me across the waiting area and into one of the sick rooms, then wait meekly while Barnard orders Yolly to lock us in and prepare a syringe with Aclisote. He probably doesn’t trust me to keep it down if he gives me the more typical oral dose. The dosage he orders is low, which is mildly surprising but not reassuring. He can always up the dose later on. He’s the only doctor on site. The expert.

Before she leaves, Yolly asks if he’d prefer she make up an IV drip, and Barnard says a syringe is safer. I might pull out an IV. I collapse onto the edge of the bed and wonder where Jack is and if he’s already back at the squat. I try not to picture Jack telling KJ and Shannon what happened. Poor KJ. He’s been awake for only a couple days and I’ve already ruined everything.

Barnard paces the room, twisting open the horizontal blinds and snapping them shut again before he could have done more than glimpse the street outside. Every few seconds, he checks his watch. The gold band glints in the overhead light.

“Where are the others?” Barnard asks.

I shake my head.

“Tell me where they are,” he says, abandoning all pretense now that we’re alone, “and I’ll let you live longer.”

“No.”

“That’s OK.” Barnard taps the hard surface of his cast. “One of them will probably come looking for you pretty soon.”

The rap of his restless finger blends into the buzz of the leash. I rub my forehead.

“They won’t come.”

“Why not? You kids have a fight?”

“No, they’re just…” I am about to say they aren’t stupid enough to duplicate my mistake when I realize that Barnard might not know Jack was with me. He probably thought I’d followed a real delivery guy in. By the time Barnard reached me, the door had shut, so he wouldn’t have seen Jack disappear.

“What was in the lobby?” I ask instead. “The thing that broke my freeze?”

Barnard’s face brightens. “Pretty effective, isn’t it?”

“What is it?”

Barnard studies me for a moment, then shrugs, presumably deciding that now that I’m in his clutches, bragging about his new toy hardly counts as a risk.

“It’s called a chromoelectronegator. It emits an electronic pulse that interferes with specific brain patterns—in this case, the ones you use to freeze time.”

“Like a leash.”

“Sort of.” He chuckles, as if I might find something funny about this vile technology. “Except the chromoelectronegator offers a kind of bubble of protection. If you’re anywhere within its range, the pulse keeps you from being able to freeze time.”

“So if time is already frozen…?”

Barnard says nothing, which doesn’t really matter. I already know what happens if you walk into a chromo-whatever.

Barnard checks his watch again. “Why did you come back, anyway?”

I say the first thing that comes into my head. “I wanted to get my stuff.”

Barnard nods as if this is reasonable, as if I might really want the hand-me-down crap they dole out to us. A coil of hatred twists through me. The fact that he can be so calm when he has every intention of killing me makes me want to dive across the room and strangle him. The only thing stopping me is the knowledge that he would sedate me. I try instead to focus my hatred like they do in movies, blasting it through my eyes in a laser point to roast the flesh off his bones. It doesn’t work.

“How long do I have?” I ask him.

“I’m afraid you’re no longer a viable research candidate.” Barnard tilts his head, considering. “So it won’t be long.”

Research? I shudder.

“You didn’t give me very much Aclisote. At least not enough to kill me.”

“An article in a recent science journal showed that extreme swings in Aclisote dosages can cause a bad reaction.”

“You don’t care.”

He shrugs again. “I don’t. Unfortunately, Yolanda read the article too, so I have to at least pretend to be cautious. It’s just for a couple days. Your time skills should normalize over the next forty-eight hours. By Thursday, I can transfer you to the Central Office.”

Sweat tickles the edges of my hairline. I picture a sterile room with spinners locked in cages like rats in a lab. The sweat drips along the edge of my cheek. Days. I will probably only live a few more days.

A rattling at the door announces Yolly’s return. She carries a tray lined with a clean paper towel in one hand. Neatly, in the center, beside a packet holding an alcohol swab, lies a syringe.

The sight of the needle sucks all the moisture from my mouth. I slide up higher on the bed, pushing myself as far away from the gleaming needle as I can.

“Do you want me to do the injection, doctor?” Yolly asks.

“Please.”

Barnard steps to one side of my bed, ready to hold me down if I protest. Yolly sets the tray on the bedside table and pulls on a pair of blue latex gloves.

“You’ll feel much better after this, Alex,” Yolly says. “Everything will go back to being just the way it was.” Her voice holds a pleading note, and I realize that despite her optimistic words, Yolly doubts I’ll ever regain what she considers my sanity.

“He’s sending me to the Central Office,” I say.

Yolly pauses in the act of rolling up my sleeve.

“I said we might have to,” Barnard lies smoothly, “if the treatment here doesn’t go well.”

Yolly finishes my sleeve and turns back to the tray. When she rips open the swab, I see her hands are shaking. The sharp tang of alcohol leaches into the room. I flinch when Barnard places a hand on my shoulder. Yolly might delude herself that his gesture is meant to be reassuring; I recognize the weight of a jailer’s touch.

The alcohol swab leaves my arm cold.

“Yolly,” I say, keeping my voice as calm and rational as I can manage, “I know I’ve been a pain sometimes, but I do appreciate how you always do your best to care for us. You were the one person I missed while I was gone.”

Yolly’s lip trembles just a tiny bit. “Thank you, Alex. That means a lot to me.”

She picks up the syringe.

“Shannon misses you, too,” I say.

The syringe wavers.

“How is she doing?” Yolly asks. “Is she sick yet?”

“She’s fine. We were hoping you’d do us a favor.” I feel only slightly guilty lying about the “we” part.

“Of course, dear.”

Yolly prods the inside of my elbow for a vein. When the needle pricks my skin, it’s so quick it barely hurts.

“Pull all our medical files,” I say.

“Alex.” Barnard’s voice holds warning.

Yolly depresses the plunger. I keep talking, quickly now, racing the liquid that’s flooding into my bloodstream. Counting down the seconds until Barnard can make Yolly leave.

“Look carefully at the dates and dosages. People with low dosages of Aclisote never get sick, and everyone who dies is getting high dosages. Aclisote doesn’t treat the sickness; Aclisote causes it. Dr. Barnard knows this. Check his private correspondence, there has to be something…”

“That’s enough, Alex.” Barnard’s fingers dig into my shoulder bones. “Aclisote dosages are based on chronotin readings, not on whether someone is sick or not. Yolanda knows that as well as you do.”

Yolly removes the spent syringe and dabs my arm with a cotton swab. She has her lips squashed together like she’s trying not to cry. My flare of hope dwindles. Yolly doesn’t believe me.

“I think it’s best if we leave you alone,” Barnard says. “Your talk has upset Yolanda.”

Yolly nods her thanks at this false show of concern. I watch as the two of them leave the room, Barnard murmuring reassuring lies as he pats Yolly’s broad back. The lock clicks when they shut the door.

I lie back on the bed. Beams of sunlight leak through the almost-closed blinds of the room’s two windows, casting narrow bands along the ceiling. No one comes into the clinic. The clock on the wall across from me says it’s only a little past noon, which means most kids will be downstairs eating lunch, though some of the Youngers might be running around in the gym. I picture Simon and Aidan arguing over their favorite football team, Yuki flicking back her long dark hair before she picks the tomatoes out of her sandwich, Calvin barely glancing up from his book as he…I shake my head. No, not Calvin. Calvin won’t be there. Calvin died from Aclisote poisoning a week before I left the Center.

The wail of a siren screams below my barred windows. I roll onto my stomach and hang my head over the edge of the bed. Hair falls across my face, chopping my view of the floor into alternating lines of light and dark. Do the others talk about us, the four missing spinners? Probably not. We never talk about kids once they’re gone. Four is a lot to lose at once, though. Wouldn’t there be rumors? Aidan was in the room when I took Jack the day we escaped. He might have seen me appear for a second, and he certainly saw Jack disappear. Wouldn’t he have told someone? Or has Barnard wiped out that possibility by making him sick?

Prickles slither over my skin. Maybe Aidan is gone, another victim of the supposed “time sickness.” And it’s all my fault.

Seconds tick forward, the dwindling moments of my life irretrievably slipping away. I study the muted swirls on the floor tiles. I’ve been gone from the Center just a week. What did I accomplish with my brief freedom? The empty room mocks me. I should have warned the other spinners right away, before the Center had time to set up new traps. I should never have gotten sidetracked by trying to blackmail Barnard and warning Sikes and worrying about every random bump in the night.

A dust mote whispers across the floor tiles, carried by an invisible puff of wind. I watch the insubstantial speck until it melts into the surrounding air. Now that the worst has happened, the terrors that have kept me in knots are fading, and the path I should have taken is painfully clear. Life is what matters. Friends matter.

An image of KJ’s face swims into my mind, his black hair and happy grin as clear as if he stood before me. I reach out a hand. Air washes between my fingers, leaving them as empty as the hole opening inside my chest. I will never see KJ again. I’ll never get to apologize for my anger and jealousy. I’ll never get to tell him how much I love him.

I curl up into a ball in the center of the bed. My head aches from the buzzing of the leash. Or maybe it’s the Aclisote. Maybe even that small dose is enough to bring back the sickness. Hot tears burn my eyes, then drip down my face as my breaths turn into sobs. Aclisote is back in my veins, and this time, the poison is here to stay.