“Hannah, you can’t!”
“If there’s a choice besides dying and getting arrested, I’ll take it,” she said. “I don’t want us getting separated. I don’t want to end up in some government facility or wherever they put people like us. I just want to live in a nice apartment and do musical theater. I’m sick of all the weirdness.”
Theo looked to the semblant rear doors. Gloved fingers briefly popped through the surface, testing the nonmaterial before hastily retreating. His mind fell into a jackhammer refrain. Tear gas tear gas tear gas tear gas . . .
“Tear gas,” he said. “They know the back door’s fake and they’re going to throw in tear gas.”
“What?”
“How do you know?”
“I think I just overheard it.”
He didn’t, but he was right all the same.
“We have about a minute before—”
The van was suddenly filled with a blast of heat, accelerated air molecules spreading in all directions. The Silvers winced. By the time they opened their eyes, Hannah was gone.
—
She ran into the woods at 155 miles an hour. Pebbles flew like buckshot from beneath her sneakers. The air around her was icy cold and her vision had turned almost uniformly blue. There was a fresh new ringing in her ears that, when she focused on it, sounded a little bit like music.
The actress slipped between the trees, then surveyed the road from a hidden distance. In her accelerated vision, the tempic barrier swirled with smoky gray wisps. She studied the thick metal posts of the blockade. She wasn’t sure she could break them, even at top speed.
“God, Zack. What were you think—”
“Quit squirming!”
Hannah scanned the area in a startled twirl. The words had come through a woman’s harsh whisper, but there was no one else around. She shouldn’t have been able to hear anyone in her shifted state.
She figured her nerves were playing tricks on her, with good reason. The motorcycle cops had caught her blurry dash to the trees and were now beginning a slow turn in her direction. Hannah watched their speedsuits in breathless anticipation. They didn’t light up. Oh thank God. At least Zack got that part ri—
“I mean it, Jury! Quit moving! I don’t want to rift you!”
Hannah glanced to her left and now saw a young, dark-haired couple hiding behind a nearby tree. The man was olive skinned, muscular, and exquisitely handsome. He wore a black T-shirt over jeans and grasped his companion tightly from behind. Though the woman’s face was obscured, she was built and dressed like Hannah. Her shoulder-length hair was even beginning to show its brown roots, just like Hannah’s.
The pair kept an anxious vigil on an empty patch of highway, twenty yards north of the tempic barrier. Despite their edgy posture, Hannah saw the tender way the man and woman touched each other. They were clearly intimate.
Before Hannah could speak, the brunette brushed her hair behind her ear. Now Hannah had a clear view of her face. Her face. Her own side profile, as seen in countless photos.
With a high scream, Hannah fell out of velocity and toppled to the dirt. The illusive couple disappeared in a blink. Hannah reeled in mad perplexity. She couldn’t shift. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t stop looking at the empty space where her ghostly self and lover once stood.
—
Four seconds after her sister left the van, Amanda heard her fragmented shriek from the woods. Her mind stammered in panic. Something, something, something went—
“Wrong. Something went wrong. She’s in trouble.”
Zack launched a nervous stare through the clouded glass. “She just left. Give her time.”
“No. This was a bad idea, Zack. You’re going to get her killed.”
Theo flinched in worry as Amanda moved in front of a clear window. “You shouldn’t stand there.”
David nodded. “He’s right. Please sit down.”
Amanda ignored them. Her green eyes bulged as the highway patrolmen proceeded, guns drawn, to the edge of the woods.
“No. No. No no no no . . .”
Mia kept her wary gaze on Amanda. She had one warning left from her future self, the worst one by far. Now all the alarms in her head were ringing.
“Amanda . . .”
With frantic eyes, Amanda looked to the intangible rear doors. Mia slid down the seat, speaking in a low and maternal tone. “Amanda, you can’t go out there . . .”
“She’s my sister.”
“You promised me you’d stay in the van.”
“They’re going to shoot her.”
“They’ll shoot you! If you leave this van right now, they will shoot you and you will die! It already happened! I got the note!”
The men eyed Mia with fresh apprehension. This was news to them.
“I really think you should listen to her,” Zack implored Amanda.
“Please! Please listen to me!”
Amanda’s shallow breaths slowed down to gulps. “Okay. Okay.”
Mia closed her eyes and exhaled. Thank God.
“I’m sorry, Mia . . .”
“It’s all right. You listened. It’s not—”