AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh goodness no! This is like legit, legit,” I assure her as I try to keep an eye on that door. Deus’s hand has moved off mine, telling me that he’s waiting for someone to come through the door. If no one does, the only other option is for me to unlock it myself and hope no one notices me doing so.
“Uh-huh. Now someone got mugged and instead of calling the police, you thought you’d handle it yourself? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“Well… maybe the people who got mugged… were us,” I say.
“So you got mugged?” She breathes deeply, like she’s not prepared to take this seriously at all. “Can I see your ID?” She knows that not only will our IDs have personal information but also have details about our powers on them.
“I left mine at home,” I say. “And my buddy Craig here got his stolen by his girlfriend.”
“Sounds like a tough life,” she says.
“It is,” I say as I see someone head over to the door before going to a cubicle at the end. “Craig, tell her.”
I shift my attention over to the door and concentrate, trying to feel what I can’t see. A simple lock would be easy to flip open but an electronic one like this takes more work. I run my mind over it, touching the pieces I really don’t understand but knowing that if I break enough shit, eventually one will give.
And when I finally do manage to snap the lock on the door, I flash Deus a thumbs-up.
“And then there was a HUGE BOOM!” I shout as I fling my hands out, smacking the lady’s cup of pencils everywhere.
Everyone left in the room snaps their attention to me as Deus pulls open the door and slips inside.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so clumsy. I’m such a klutz, aren’t I, Greg?” Never did I think I’d have to use the life skills my parents taught me to do shit like this.
The officer hesitates. “I thought it wasCraig.”
Shit. Shitty shit shit. “It is. Greg is his real name. Craig is his superhero name. It’s confusing. Don’t ask me, ask him, he picked it, right, Greg-Craig?”
August stares at me, clearly having absolutely no idea how to act or bullshit or anything. He’s too used to trying to fake happiness and that is all, so then he whips out his superhero smile that makes the woman look even more suspicious of us. Hell, evenI’msuspicious of us with him smiling like that.
My phone vibrates and I see that there’s a text from Deus asking for assistance.
I look to August who gives me a nod before he turns his attention to the woman. The moment she looks down, he freezes time. He tugs me from the chair and rushes over to the door I’d broken. After he pulls me through it, we head down the hall to where the cells are. From there, we find Ned loose but with nowhere to go. According to Ellison, if he were to escape from this area into the next, he’d find a possible way out through the bathroom with a bit of guidance. All I need to do is break this door and gently stuff him into the bathroom which is past multiple guards… but in less than one minute.
We hurry down the hallway, going at a good clip to keep moving so as to not waste any extra time. That’s when August slams into something and is thrown back so hard, he trips over me, crashes over a chair, and hits the ground while I just stand there like I never once thought tocatchhim.
Suddenly, time slams back into motion as I hear a very invisible Deus go, “What the hell?”
August, realizing what’s happened, quickly stops time again as he wallows on the ground.
“You okay?” I ask.
“I ran into Deus, didn’t I?” he asks as he holds his nose while his eyes water.
I bite my lip as I try my hardest not to laugh as I turn to the door. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing with you,” I say, wishing I had time to help him up, but first I need to prioritize the door and getting back to the chair so we can pretend we didn’t justdisappear.
August starts laughing. “You can laugh. Dammit, how ridiculous. Everything’s fucked up.”
“Nope, she’s not even going to notice,” I assure him as I quickly focus on the door, letting my mind rush over it and feel around it until it finally unlocks. And then with that, we have to leave the rest in Ned’s hands.
“She most definitely is going to notice that we disappeared before reappearing,” August says as he hurries me through the doorway.
“Magic,” I say.
August and I rush back to the desk and return to our seats where we try to replicate the position we were in before we froze time.
August had told me the best way to do it was to put a hand on each leg and have my head forward when we froze time so that I could remember the position when time starts again. It would cause any slight shift that could be different to get ignored.
Time snaps back into place as the woman stares at us, then cocks her head and stares some more.
