Time Spent (13 page)

She released him, and his body sagged to the
floor.

"My God...what was that? What did you
do?"

"It's okay, it'll pass. You exhausted
yourself fighting. They all do."

He looked up at her, and his face was filled
with terror. "They...ALL?"

"I don't mean all," Becca said, "I just
mean...the other times I've done this. It happens."

He staggered to his feet. "Get away from
me," he said. He ran out the door and into the hall.

"Wait!" Becca called.

"STAY AWAY FROM ME!" he shouted, and
ran.

The following day, Becca returned to his
office to find it locked. Shep was nowhere to be found. She stepped
down the hall to one of the other academy instructor's offices.

"Excuse me," she said.

A small woman with clipped-back black hair
looked up from her desk. "Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for Shep - Agent Shepherd? Have
you seen him?"

The woman's face paled. "Oh. You didn't
hear? Sit down."

"Hear what?" Becca's brow furrowed.

He's dead,
the woman thought. "Sit
down, dear."

Becca did not sit. "Dead? He's fucking dead?
How?"

"Oh. Yes, he died last night. A heart attack
they said."

Becca raised her hands to her head. "No, no,
no, this can't be happening..."

"Sit down, please," the woman said. "I'll
get you some water."

Becca's eyes snapped toward her.
YYOU
FUCKING SIT DOWNN

The woman planted herself in her chair hard,
her arms gripping the armrests.

NNOW, I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHINGG

______________________

The faceless woman stepped down as if
walking down a flight of stairs, only there were no stairs. Her
legs moved gracefully downward until it stood on the roof.

She approached Becca, and looked at her for
a moment, as if considering what to do about her.

The faceless woman's voice spoke in her
mind: WWHYY BE A PRINCESSS...

...WHENNN YOU CAN BE A QUEENNN?

She withdrew a blade, and with one smooth
motion, drove its point through Becca's faceless father's
heart.

Becca screamed then. Screamed and screamed
and screamed.

The faceless woman reached forward and
touched Becca's forehead. Red light exploded in her mind, and she
lost consciousness.

______________________

She sat in the front row, black dress,
struggling to hold back tears.
Don't you cry. Don't you dare
fucking cry when you caused this.

The memorial service was quiet, just family,
friends, and a few colleagues from the bureau in attendance. Becca
thought she must be the only student there. She didn't recognize
any others there.

"I understand one of Hal's students would
like to speak? Miss Miller?"

Becca stood and walked to the podium. She
stood there, gripping the wood of the lectern for a moment, and
tried to keep her voice from shaking.

"Hal Shepherd...sounds strange to me...I
never called him by his first name." There was soft sympathetic
laughter at this. "Mr. Shepherd, he wanted to be called Shep.
That's how I knew him: Shep. He was the first person in a long time
to really take an interest in me. To...try to make me a better
person. Make me, I don't even know. Something I was supposed to me,
meant to be, but never really was." She paused, her eyes searching
the ceiling.

"And I thanked him by killing him for
it."

Murmurs in the audience.

"I just wanted to talk to someone, you know?
When you can do the things I can do, there's no one you can talk
to...no one who understands. Shep was like...he was like a...I
thought I could talk to him. Tell him the truth. And it killed
him."

A man in the front row stood. "Okay, I think
that's-"

SSHUT UP AND SIT THE FUCK DOWNN

The man's mouth clapped shut. He teetered
over the chair and let himself plop back down into it. Becca
reached out with her mind and seized the others in the audience,
the pastor, the people in the back offices of the church,
everyone.

EEVERYONE JUST SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET UNTIL
I'M FINISHEDD

"There. Good. Now you know what happened
first hand. Why Shep was so freaked out. Why he had his heart
attack. Because of me. Because of ME! Why? Because I can't stop
being some walking cliché? Like Tyler said? I latch on to the
first...first father figure that comes along and I think my life is
going to be different because of HIM? Because I can't do it on my
own? Well fuck that." The tears began to spill down her cheeks.
"FUCK THAT. From now on, I don't make that mistake."

Her mind was filled with the sound of
panicked mental screams.

SSTOP YOUR WHINING. EVERYTHING'S GOING TO BE
FINE. I'M GOING TO DO TO YOU WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE TO HAL
SHEPHERDD

She stepped down from the podium and walked
down the aisle.

NNONE OF YOU ARE GOING TO REMEMBER I WAS
EVER HEREE

Becca took a long pull off the bottle and
set it down on the floor next to her: a 20 year old scotch the
clerk at the liquor store had handed her for free, just before she
made him erase his store's security tape and erased his memory
herself. She had paused for a moment, considering making others in
the store shop for her, carry her things, give her their
money...she had come so close to enslaving them all.

In the end, she had clutched the bottle to
her chest and walked out, fast.

She held up her Blackberry and dialed
Tyler's apartment number.

His smooth voice spoke in her ear:
"Hey,
I can't blame you for trying to get in touch with me, but I'm out
having fun, which is where you should be! Leave a message."
BEEP!

"God, I hate your fucking message, you sound
like a total douche." Becca wiped tears away from her face and
tried to sniff quietly so he wouldn't hear. "Listen, Tyler...I've
tried calling your cell. Please call me back. Please. I think I'm
in trouble here. I really think I'm in trouble. I need help, and
you're the only one-" A beep on the other end signaled that the
machine had cut her off.

Becca put the Blackberry down on the floor,
and lifted the bottle to her lips.

CHAPTER FIVE

His head hurt. So badly. Hurt.

He heard the pounding on the door through
the pounding inside his skull. At first, he didn't realize it was a
real sound inside the house, so lost was he in the throbbing of his
head. One eye opened, then two.

The door to house came open with a crash,
sending fragments of wood from the doorjamb showering down.

"This is the police. Mr. Zebinsky?"

Footsteps. He tried to lift his head but
couldn't. He was so weak, and thirsty, oh so thirsty. His mouth
lolled open and his dry tongue rolled out onto the cage floor. He
tasted his own urine there but was too weak to lift his head away
from it. He couldn't see them through the lattice of the cage, but
they were walking toward him, booted feet on the carpet.

"Mr. Zebinsky, if you're here, let us know.
We have a warrant to enter your home."

"He's here," said another voice. A man
leaned down over his Master, who was lying face down on the floor
outside his cage. The man reached down a hand to touch his Master's
neck. "He's dead. Poor old guy, died all alone."

"I'll call it in."

Max tried to bark but his throat was so dry.
All he could manage was a squeak of a whine.

The man in the dark uniform leaned down and
peered into the cage. "Got a dog here. In a cage. It's okay, boy.
We're gonna get you out of there."

"They said he had a seeing eye dog."

One of them lifted the latch and opened the
cage door. Max's tail wagged weakly. He tried to stand but was too
weak.

"It's okay, boy. You're okay." The man
reached in and slid Max out of the cage. "Let's get him some water.
Where's your food, huh?"

Max tried to lick the man's face but
couldn't reach.

"Poor guy looks like he hasn't eaten in
days."

One of them put a bowl of water in front of
him and Max lapped it up. The water felt so good on his throat and
tongue. So, so good.

Max opened his eyes. He had dreamed of the
cage again, the cage where he had been forgotten and alone. For a
moment, he didn't know where he was. He lifted his head and looked
around. He saw the lab tables, the computer consoles. The sound of
alarms filled the air.

Of course, it came back to him now. He was
in the computer lab on the military base, where they had been
trying to get answers to what happened on the bus. When Kevin had
vanished with the bus driver, Mia had lashed out with her energy,
striking him. He had passed out. The cage, his old Master lying
dead, that had been in the before time...before the school bus
changed him, before he was given to...

Tyler. Where was Tyler?

Max felt the familiar buzzing sensation of
his power inside his head. He jumped up and turned in the direction
it was leading him.

He passed through walls, corridors and other
rooms on his way outside the building. Military personnel were
running everywhere. He emerged into an area between the main
building and a hangar on the other side of the compound. There he
found Tyler and Becca, facing...

Max stopped cold.

He recognized the black metal-enhanced human
that had once been Brock Kenney, the huge football player from
Tyler's school, but what he had become was beyond Max's
understanding. And others, soldiers whose faces were covered by an
intricate weave of circuits, accompanied him.

"facialrecignitionengaged. Ooo BeccaLICIOUS!
targetacquired."

"You have got to be kidding me," said
Tyler.

"My God," Becca said, "that's Brock
Kenney!"

"What?" Tyler asked.

"It's Brock. From school."

"But Brock wasn't on the bus," Tyler said.
"Was he?"

Max moved between Tyler and Brock and went
into a protective stance, growling at the strange half-metal
man.

The tiny antennae in Brock's eyes whirled.
"threatdetected. Well, WELL, if it ain't OL' STINKY, stinkin' up
the PLACE. countermeasureinitiated."

Two metal prongs popped up on Brock's chest
with a
whisshh
of released air. They then sprang free and
hit the ground, sprouting tiny legs. They scrabbled towards Max. He
backed off, but they continued to head in his direction. They were
giving off some kind of electric tingle that made his fur stand on
end.

One of them aimed a protrusion at Max and a
beam emerged. Max jumped backward, and the beam sliced through the
air, scorching the wall of the building. It did not entirely miss,
however, and where it passed over Max's fur it left singed hair in
its wake.

Max turned and ran, passing through the
wall.

He could hear the things scrabbling behind
him.

______________________

"This is getting us nowhere!" Simon said in
his gravelly voice. He slammed one fist into the wall. "We're no
closer to knowing what's going on than we were when we got
here!"

"Now hold on," Brandon said.

"No, YOU hold on!" Simon reached out with
the invisible hand and shoved Brandon back into the hospital
bed.

Mia raised her right hand in front of
Simon's face. It crackled with yellow energy. "Don't make me hurt
you," she said.

Simon growled.

Becca glanced at Heather, who was staring
away into space, still holding General Stearnes pinned to the wall
with one metal hand.
WWHY DON'T YOU SAY SOMETHING? HE'LL LISTEN
TO YOUU

Heather seemed to hear her; she glanced
around as if noticing the rest of them for the first time. "What?
What did you..." she drifted away again.

TTHE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOUU?

"None of this is helping. We all saw the
exact same thing," Simon said. "We all saw this woman, but no one
knows who she is or what we're supposed to do about it." He wrapped
the invisible hand around Mia, and the yellow energy poured out
from her eyes to envelop them.

Max had had just about enough of this. He
leapt up on top of the hospital bed and unleashed his loudest bark,
concentrating.

Everyone clapped their hands to their ears
in surprise. The sound reverberated from the walls.

"Max?" Tyler said. "When did you learn to do
that?"

"He can do a lot of things, if you'd pay
attention to anyone but yourself you might know that," Becca
said.

Max yipped at her; this wasn't the time.

"Fine," Becca said. "Max didn't see the same
thing as everyone else."

"He told you that?" Brandon asked.

Becca gave him a weary look. "Yes."

"Well what did you see, boy?" Tyler
asked.

"He's going to show us," Becca said.

Max concentrated, hard. Slowly he faded into
visibility, standing on the hospital bed. Still, he focused.
Gradually, a red outline began to appear around his neck.

"What is that?" Brandon said.

The outline shifted and clarified until it
became a stiff red collar around Max's neck. The collar glowed and
pulsed with energy. At the back of the collar, a chain of red
energy formed, trailing into the air above him. It disappeared near
the ceiling.

"Stop!" Simon shouted.

The others turned toward him. A similar
collar had formed around his neck, the red chain rising into the
air to join Max's. One by one, each of them looked down to find one
forming around their own neck, the red chains all trailing into the
same point in space above them all. Only Stearnes and Higgins were
free.

"Max, are you doing this?" Tyler asked,
grasping at his collar, his fingers passing through it. "What is
this?"