“If you value your life, hang up! Hang up right now and get rid of your phone!”
With a panicked yell, Mia hurled her phone. It sailed over a chain-link fence and disappeared into bramble.
Soon the other Silvers returned to find David and Mia embracing at the side of the van. Hannah was convinced the needle had finally swung all the way into romance until she saw the girl’s shattered expression. Mia fixed her frantic eyes on Zack.
“I think I told Rebel where we are.”
—
They fled the Power Boy with an 88 percent battery charge, and didn’t stop until they were halfway into Missouri. Mia was the last to unclench her fingers from the seat rests. The theoretical danger had theoretically passed. They were as safe from Rebel as they always weren’t.
The group ate dinner at a highway truck stop, their first experience in a bona fide speedery. Each booth and table was encased within a large glass cube. The place looked more like a human aquarium than a greasy spoon diner.
Theo was the first to spot the peculiar dial on the table, right above a sticker advising pregnant women and epileptics to avoid using it. After confirming that nobody in the booth suffered either condition, he turned the knob to 10. Suddenly the door to their enclosure locked, the glass lit up with a crosshatch of bright lines, and the outside world became ten times slower. Waitresses creaked their way between tables. Coffee poured like syrup from tilted pots.
As she casually perused her salad options, Hannah welcomed the others to her world.
Theo watched through the kitchen window in awe as a flipped burger rose and fell in slow motion.
“I just bent the fabric of time at a roadside grill. With a knob that sits next to the napkin holder.”
Amanda suffered a tense flashback to the fuel truck that dawdled over the Massachusetts Turnpike, seventeen years ago. She hid her bother behind a glib smirk.
“Great. A way to make the service even slower.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not meant to be used until after you get your food,” David said.
“Yes, thank you. I’d worked that out already.”
“So this is what you see every time you shift?” Mia asked Hannah. “It goes all blue like this?”
“Yeah. The faster I go, the bluer it gets. And colder. Sometimes I see my own breath.”
And sometimes she saw more. Hannah thought back to the hallucination she’d suffered on Monday—the handsome Jury Curado, embracing a second Hannah from behind. He adored you, I assure you, but he always died before you. :(
Mia pressed a finger to the glass. “You think this would work if the walls weren’t here?”
“The enclosure’s just for safety,” David explained. “If you put your hand beyond the field, it would exist at a different speed than the rest of your body. According to the book I’m reading, that’s called rifting, and it’s not a pleasant experience.”
Amanda checked Zack’s stony expression, still fixed on his menu. He’d been morbidly quiet since they’d fled the chargery. This wasn’t the best time to learn the term for what he did to Rebel.
Hannah looked to David with sudden concern. “Wait. I don’t have glass around me when I shift. I don’t have a suit. Am I in danger of rifting myself every time I speed up?”
“I imagine if you were, it would have happened already,” he mused. “I’d guess you’re more a danger to others. I certainly wouldn’t suggest touching anyone in your accelerated state.”
Czerny had told Hannah the exact same thing, some weeks ago. She’d assumed he was just worried about high-speed bruising and breakage. Apparently there were worse dangers.
David turned to Zack. “Come to think of it, you also create an open temporic field. I imagine you’d be just as much of a risk as—”
“I know.”
“He knows,” said Amanda, at the same time.
Zack closed his menu and twisted the knob back to 1. Life outside the glass returned to normal.
“Let’s just pick what we want and order.”
—
That night, they rented three rooms at a quaint little inn on the outskirts of Jefferson City. Though the Silvers had forsaken fleabag motels in the wake of their new riches, Zack urged sensible restraint. “This isn’t just travel money,” he’d told them. “It’s build-a-life-in-Brooklyn money.”
All the same, Zack readily caved when David asked for his own room. The boy made a prickly bedfellow, and became downright surly when he didn’t get his personal space.
Amanda stepped out of the shower at ten o’clock to find she had the women’s suite to herself. She saw Hannah outside the window, lounging poolside with Theo. She could only guess that Mia was reading in David’s room, her new evening ritual.
Edgy in solitude, she texted Zack on her phone.
<What’s going on with you? You’ve been grim all evening.>