It took Jack a few moments to gather himself. Dust motes hung in the air and the sound of his breathing seemed echoless, lifeless. Even the taint of Nomad in his mouth seemed old and strangely lifeless. Then he crawled to the edge of the stack of three containers and scrambled carefully to the ground.
Around the corner, he saw Fleeter already running past Sparky and the others.
“Wait!” Jack called, but it was like shouting underwater. So he ran instead, only glancing at his two frozen friends as he dashed by. Jenna's eyes were half-closed in a slow, long blink, and Sparky's were turned to the left, looking right at Jack. He knows I'll be passing by, Jack thought. It was strange, feeling his friend's eyes upon him yet knowing he could not see. Of all the powers Jack had tapped into, this was the most staggering. He felt a moment of awed terror at what he was doing, and an intense, shattering certainty that all this was very, very wrong. But he could not stop now.
Everything depended on the next few moments.
Jack caught up with Fleeter as she paused by one of the Chopper vehicles. He grabbed her arm tightly, and when she looked back she was grinning, looking down at his hand with eyes wide, excited. He wondered whether she had done anything other than murder during her slowed-down existence, then shook the idea away.
“You're slow,” she said. “Come on. Not long.”
“We've got—”
“Got to be quick,” she finished for him. She nodded back at Sparky and the others. “They might only have seconds.”
“But the Choppers have dropped their weapons.” And it was true. The soldiers all looked confused and shaken, probably in the middle of wondering why they had suddenly dropped their machine guns.
“Not all of them,” Fleeter said. “Only the ones he could see.” She nodded up at the surrounding piled containers where they had seen a sniper, and where more might be hiding.
They ran. Across the rough concrete, past the Land Rovers and two vans, and as they approached the larger of the container arrangements Jack had a sudden pang of terror. What would they find inside? He hoped his mother and Emily. But he could not help fearing the worst.
Fleeter paused by a couple of wooden boxes that had been laid to form steps.
“What?” Jack asked.
“Door,” she said, pointing up. The side of the container was swathed in canvas, but a sheet of it was pinned aside, showing the gleaming bottom third of a metal doorway formed in the unit's wall. “More than meets the eye.”
“You can open it?” he asked.
“Dunno. You got a special finger-shaped-like-a-key power, Jack?”
Jack ignored her and stepped up to the door, shifting the canvas aside and searching for a handle. He found it, pushed down, and was surprised when the door clicked open.
“Oh, that's careless,” Fleeter whispered. She climbed the boxes to stand close beside him. “We won't have long. Opening the door will cause a storm inside at their speed, because the pressures will rapidly change. Then they'll just start shooting.” Fleeter's previous flippancy had vanished and now she was all seriousness. Jack should have been pleased. But the shock of what was revealed as Jack hauled the door open excluded anything else