He supposed he should feel lucky. The ghosts of those before him, the ones who hadn’t been so lucky, were a constant weight reminding him he had to make the most of this new freedom.
So he’d told others the truth, his heart knocking against his chest and his breaths like daggers in his lungs each time. The reactions had ranged from wide-eyed “oh”s to sage nods, as if they had known all along. Most people, like Cassie, treated him the same.
His mother hadn’t reacted at all. She’d merely sat at the kitchen table and stared at a point over Danny’s shoulder, as though she couldn’t bear to look at him directly. The space between them had grown tight and still. It was the hollow ache of air devoid of words, a breathless subtraction. He’d swallowed that air until pockets of silence sat cancerous in his bones, threatening to expand. To crack.
He knew she kept her distance for another reason. The stone that Danny could not touch. This new information was only another cog in their complicated clockwork.
Cassie gently kicked his boot. “Don’t worry, she’ll get used to it. She’ll have to, or else what’ll she say when you bring a handsome young man home?”
“Shove off.”
“Not quite what I had in mind.” She laughed and noisily kissed his cheek. “Now then, about this boiler. You got two quid on you?” He dug in his pockets for the money. “There’s a good lad. Oh, you haven’t said if there’s been any news.”
“News?”
“You know. About the Assignment?”
Danny thought back to the heaviness in the Lead’s eyes, the pity he was tired of seeing. His stomach dropped. He wanted the Assignment so badly it hurt.
“The Lead says there’s been no progress. He won’t make a decision yet.”
“I’m sorry, Dan. I know how much it means to you. It’ll probably take time, though, won’t it? Building a brand-new clock tower?”
Not just that: the first clock tower to be built in hundreds of years. The time zones of every city were firmly locked in place by the towers, which had been built to regulate time more efficiently. But the builders had destroyed all knowledge of how to create them. The idea of a new tower had first been met with scorn, but the Lead was determined to see it through.
“No one knows how to build them anymore,” Danny said. “Just how to repair them.” He dropped his voice to a bitter murmur. “Fat lot of good that does us now. If we don’t get this tower to work …”
I’ll never see Dad again.
Cassie watched him somberly. The stone inside him ached, begging to be pried free.
Cassie knew what it was like to live with guilt. Danny saw it in the way she kept glancing at the auto beside them, her fingers twitching to double-check the engine.
But he remained silent, and Cassie wrapped a hand around his arm. “It’ll all work out. At least you did good with the Enfield job, yeah?” He nodded. “Then that’s something. They’ll see you’re back in the game. Do you think you’ll have to go there again? To Enfield?”
He remembered the fear that had choked him, the sense of dread he felt just from looking at the clockwork. Maybe the Lead was right to keep him away from the new Maldon tower.
“Not if I can help it,” he said.
Fate must have taken a dislike to Danny, because he was called into the Lead’s office a couple of days later.
“Colton Tower?” Danny said. “But I was just there.”
The Lead raised his hands, just as confused. The little amount of hair he still possessed stuck out awkwardly, as if he’d run his hands through it several times.
“The maintenance crew’s phoned in with another problem.”
Danny’s heart gave an extra-hard thump. “Which is?”
“The minute hand’s gone missing.”
Fate didn’t dislike Danny. Fate despised him. He took a moment to rub a hand over his face, hoping that when he was done, the world would be a little less upsetting.
“Well, the minute hand’s not exactly missing,” the Lead continued. “They found it at the bottom of the tower, bent at a right angle.”
Danny choked on his own saliva. Bent?
“But what’s happened to the town?” he asked, not bothering to conceal the worry in his voice.
“They’re fine, so far as we know, but it’s interfering with daily life. Time is moving in quick bursts once an hour. Mayor Aldridge said it’s like tripping. In any case, we’ve commissioned a new hand to be made. As soon as it’s installed, it’ll fuse with the power of the clock tower and time should go back to normal. The hand will be ready for pickup soon. Do you think you can handle this, Daniel?”
Despite his instinct to say no, Danny told the Lead that he was more than willing. It wasn’t entirely a lie. He wanted to make sure the tower was all right. Maybe he could learn something more about the vandalism. Maybe, if he figured out what was going on, he could finally convince the Lead to put him on the Assignment.