Suck in the Moment Ch. 02

"Darn, I was hoping it would just float there." She said, excited.

"No, gravity still works, otherwise we would just float away." I told her.

She was waving her hand and taking deep breaths, sniffing the air. "It's so strange. There really is no temperature in the air. I've never felt anything like this. I want to try something..." She ran to the breakroom, opening the freezer door, and stuck her hand in.

"This is crazy! The ice feels like the air! No temperature." She shifted to the coffee pot, and poured a little hot coffee in the palm of her hand. "I know it should be hot, but it's not." She smiled at me. "So what's the plan? We walk out the front door?"

"Yup, well, actually down the stairs and out the parking garage. After that... I don't know." I told her. "I bet I can take a whole car through into a frozen moment, and we can drive back to campus, or else we can just walk. It won't be cold outside, and no one and nothing will bother us."

Molly turned and grinned at me, her green eyes sparkling. "I think it's a lovely night for a walk." I put the FBI windbreaker over my arm, and she looped her arm through mine. I led her to the stairwell.

We passed the frozen HRT operatives, who were recovering, and several looked ready to breach the FBI office.

Molly paused, and had a mischievous grin on her face. "I want to mess with them. Is that really wrong?" She asked.

"Like what?" I asked.

"I don't know, take their guns and replace them with keyboards, switch out everyone's cell phone?"

"Oh, I already trashed all of their radios and cell phones." I told her. "I wanted our opening salvo to leave the FBI off balance. I did let agent Willis keep his cell phone, and I have Ellison's in case we want to call them." I pulled the device out, and showed it to her.

"Is it unlocked?" Molly asked. I tried the screen, and it asked for a fingerprint.

"Oh, I want to do something..." Molly let go of my arm, and turned back through the door into the office. She found a sticky note, and wrote 'your move -Molly' on it. She stuck it inside agent Ellison's badge wallet. "Promise me you won't leave me hanging when they make their next move?" She asked. I was busy unlocking Ellison's phone with his frozen finger.

"I promise." I said. Molly gave me a big smile and a kiss, and once again took my arm, letting me lead her into the stairwell again.

"Are you sure we can't mess with them a little?" She pleaded. I was busy programming my own fingerprint into the phone's memory, now that it was unlocked.

"Fine, what did you have in mind?" I asked her.

"I liked the trick where the guns suddenly had no bullets. When the HRT guys comes running in, can they find their bullets in a big pile on the floor?" She pleaded.

I exaggerated rolling my eyes, but my smile gave away that I thought it was a fine idea. "Fine. You get the guys on the stairs going up, and I'll get the guys going down." I said.

Molly laughed, and started pulling at the weapons. "How do I get them out?" She asked.

"This button right here is the magazine release." I told her. "They should also have a cartridge in the chamber, which you take out by sliding the action back, like this." I showed her how to remove the bullets from the guns and the magazines.

We made a big pile of cartridges on the floor right in front of the door, so that the HRT men would have to walk over their own bullets to secure the nearly empty office floor. Molly said that she wished that she could stay to see their reactions as they realized they were carrying empty guns, but I couldn't make it work.

I had been up for hours now, and I was exhausted. We walked down the stairwell, and out into the parking garage. There was a big HRT van parked in front of the door, and several unmarked police cars present as well, flashing lights stuck in red and blue spotlights. Frozen HRT officers sat around their radios waiting for the all clear call.

We walked past the vans and cars. The excitement and adrenaline was wearing off for me, and I felt like I could sleep for 24 straight hours. Molly was still excited, jumping up and down, and touching and looking at everything.

I was done destroying things. I doubted that we had destroyed all the videos and evidence that led to Molly, and even if we had, three pissed-off agents knew where she lived, and had her schedule. They could easily destroy her life with a phone call.

We had struck a strong first blow. We stood our ground, knowing that we were right, that we had done nothing wrong. But both of us, Molly especially, had something to lose. They could have the university expel her, put out warrants for her arrest. They could make her life very difficult, all because she had admitted to something that she didn't do, that wasn't even a crime. She had taken the burden of my secret onto her own shoulders, and I wouldn't let her carry that alone.

We really had kicked the hornet's nest. We had assaulted federal agents, destroyed evidence and property, and escaped federal custody. The next shoe was going to fall, and fall soon. One small solace was that unlike the agent Margolis, we were not killers. We'd had the entire office at our mercy, and had let them live.

If we were ever given the chance to plead our case, hopefully that one fact would go far towards proving our intentions were not malevolent.

I looked up. I could feel the thread tying me to Molly, as she moved. She was still skipping around, looking in cars, touching cops and their gear. She saw my face and her own expression darkened.

"What? What's wrong?" She asked me.

I explained my fears, that their next attack would ruin Molly's life without allowing her a riposte.

"Better my life than yours." Molly said sadly, walking up to me and wrapping her arms around my neck. She kissed me, deep and full of meaning. "We already know that they are coming for me. They don't know about you. Please watch my back the best you can. Besides, we already have an advantage that they don't."

"What's that?" I asked.

"They think you just teleport things. They don't know how your power really works, that you can stop time, and move around within the moment. They're trying to figure out your limitations. It's not a big advantage, but it's something." Molly explained.

"You're right." I said, and kissed her again. "I guess we can wait for the next shoe to drop. Just please stay close. Let's go back to our life, like it's our right. I'll go to your classes with you, and you can go to my classes with me until we can be positive that you... we are safe."

"What about the media?" Molly asked. "What if we were to go public with what you can do? We could explain that the bus miracle was your doing, and that the FBI is trying to kill you."

"It might put a little spotlight on the FBI, and make it harder to cause us to disappear, but if you want your old life back, going public is going to make that impossible." I told her.

"Yeah, I was just thinking out loud." Molly said. "It's amazing that all these people know, and are just waiting around to help agent Ellison kill us." Molly gestured around at the assembled FBI Hostage rescue team.

"I'm not sure what they know." I admitted. "Maybe they are just responding to a call for backup." I said.

Molly yawned, and I could see a little of the excitement was wearing off and being replaced with exhaustion for her as it was for me.

"Come on, let's go home." I told her.

"I may actually be too tired to sleep." Molly said, holding my hand as I led her up the ramp to the parking garage's exit.

"I'm pretty tired too. We can sleep anywhere, though. In the middle of a busy intersection, out under the stars..." I stopped as the outside world came into view.

It had started snowing while we were inside. Big clumps of snowflakes hung in the air, cutting visibility to a hundred feet, and coating the ground. I had never walked through frozen snow before, and I was as mesmerized by it as Molly was.

She opened her mouth, licking a flake out of the air. "That's so weird!" She said. "It takes a moment, then it turns cold and melts in your mouth. Try it!"

I did. The big snowflake felt like powder in my mouth, until I felt it activate, turning cold, and then melting into water.

"Come on." I told her. "Let's go back to your dorm." She took my hand and we started walking, pushing through the unending curtain of suspended flakes. We walked to the nearest intersection, and looked at the street signs.

"Oh, I know where we are." Molly said confidently. "Campus is this way." She pointed to the right, and we turned, and started walking.

I took the rubber gloves off, and dropped them in the street. I could feel the invisible thread form as I walked away, knowing it would snap when time started up again.

I looked behind us, and could see a clear tunnel the width of our bodies, where the flakes had been moved. Our footprints were shallow, having compressed the snow, but not melted it as we would have if time were moving.

We walked along in silence down the middle of the street, the only two people in the whole world. There wasn't a sound, except our footfalls, and the lack of temperature was comfortable enough that I kept carrying the windbreaker over my arm.

"We could just stay here, you know." She said sadly. "Live out our lives together in this frozen moment. You and me? Together? We could start it back up again when we're 80, and our time is up anyways."

"Would you really want that?" I asked her. "I think I would flee to somewhere warm, tropical before I gave up and let this be the end."

"That does sound nice. But between staying here and being drug away and killed, I would choose staying here." We walked in silence for a minute before she said "Is that really our best option? Running away from our education? Fleeing the country? You didn't even do anything wrong. The whole FBI can't really be that stone-hearted, can they?"

"I don't know. Any path we take has its risks. I vote we go back and pretend nothing happened. Let the FBI make a move, then take it as they come." My mind was tired, and I wasn't thinking as clearly as I wanted.

"Can we stop and rest?" Molly asked. "I think this is a park here."

We had been walking through a neighborhood, and stopped at a little park. There were picnic tables under shelter, and we climbed up on one of the tables.

I lay back, and felt Molly curl up on my shoulder, using it as a pillow. I rolled up the FBI windbreaker, using it as a pillow.

"Wake me when you wake up, okay?" Molly asked. "It won't be light out, will it? The world will look just like this, only you and I will change."

"Mmm." I agreed in my half-asleep state.

***

I opened my eyes to see Molly's deep green eyes looking back at me, surrounded by her mess of red hair.

"How long were we asleep?" I asked.

"I don't know." Molly grinned. "I was sleeping for a long time too. I just woke up about five minutes ago."

I felt rested, awake. My muscles felt sore, like I had run a triathalon. Moving people and stuff through a frozen moment was tiring. I tried relaxing my muscles, enjoying the sensation of Molly laying on my shoulder.

"Come on." She held her hand out for me, and we started walking again, pushing through the snow flakes.

What had been a ten-minute drive in a car was over an hour of walking. Molly had been correct, and before long, we found ourselves once again walking onto campus. We walked in through the front doors of her dorm, shaking the suspended snow out of our hair, and off our clothes. Molly led me down the hall to her dorm room, where she unlocked the door, and jumped on her bed.

"Crap! I forgot that it's not soft when time is frozen. That's going to leave a bruise." She said, rubbing her butt.

"Come here." I said, waving my finger. "Here's the real test."

Molly's eyes went wide as I wrapped my arms around her. I could feel the string connecting us tightly as I tapped the switch, and time restarted with a rush of sound and air. The sweet scent of Molly and Candace's natural body scents came to me as the air of the dorm room filled my nostrils with warm, humid air.

"Wow! That was amazing." Molly exclaimed.

We were both awake now, despite the time being after midnight. We had rested plenty at the park. We pulled the curtains tightly shut, and put a Netflix show on Molly's computer. I had recovered my phone, and I pulled out agent Ellison's phone from my pocket, plugging it in to charge it. I powered my phone off, and took out the battery.

I had heard once that phones could be tracked and activated to transmit like bugs. If the FBI could track the phones in Molly's dorm room, I only wanted them to find hers and Agent Ellison's, leaving my name off their records as long as possible. I also had her put a post-it note over the laptop's webcam so that no one could hack the camera and watch us.

We watched an entire season of a show that we'd never seen before. I realized at some point that Molly had fallen asleep on my shoulder, curled up on her bed. I had my arm around her, and let her sleep while I exited Netflix, and started researching the FBI.

I found out plenty, about their agents, facilities, training and mission. Ironically one of their missions was to protect civil rights, and I laughed bitterly, thinking about how the 3 agents had just attempted to violate Molly's and my rights.

***

Sunrise came several hours later. Molly had drifted down, and was sleeping with her head in my lap. I had cast the computer aside, and was stroking her red hair, marveling at the color and softness of it.

I was replaying the evening's excitement in my head. I wondered if there was anything I could have done differently. From the moment I saved the people off the bus, I was on the FBI's radar. I didn't regret that. If I had to do it over again, I might have covered my tracks better, but I didn't regret saving those lives.

I pulled the laptop back open, and started looking up the roster of the people I had pulled off the bus. They were mostly students, but I saw the transcript of an interview with the woman with the baby. I recognized her picture, with the little infant on her lap.

The text of the interview brought tears to my eyes. She was a single mother, working a full-time job and going to school at the same time. She talked about her problems, and how difficult her life was with no family, no money and a young baby. Her boyfriend had run when she took her pregnancy test.

She had come to believe that the only one who cared about her was her. When the miracle happened, she had seen the car speeding into the bus. She had held her little girl tight, and prepared for pain, terrified not for her own life, but for the life of her baby.

In the next instant, she was laying on a park bench. At first she thought that she had been thrown from the bus, but when she realized that she was uninjured, and her baby hadn't even woken up, she knew that something amazing had happened.

The moment her life changed was when she looked at the ground at her feet. She had spent the last of her paycheck on the groceries, and once she knew her daughter was okay, she started crying, believing that they would be hungry that week. She looked down to see a bag of apples spilling out of a paper bag full of her groceries, and knew right then that a higher power was looking out for her; that she mattered to someone besides herself.

The interview was on the Ellen DeGeneres show, and Ellen gave her a car with a car seat, a scholarship, and enough money to quit her job and focus on school. She was three semesters away from graduating with a degree in marketing, and had already received an offer for a paid internship.

None of the other stories were quite so inspiring, but they left me feeling very good about myself. That the FBI would look at the bus accident and see a person capable of so much evil was their problem. My dream as a child was to be a superhero; I wanted to help people. For that brief moment, I had lived my dream. I wasn't the monster that needed to be feared.

All of the movement on her bed with the computer woke Molly, who slowly sat up, rubbing her eyes.

"I need a shower, and then coffee." She said in a sleepy voice. "Will you join me for both?"

"I'm not sure I'll be welcome in the girl's bathroom." I told her.

"They'll never know you're in there, if you just..." She paused and grinned. "We have a big communal shower."

I had used my gift, frozen time, dozens of times in the last 12 hours. That didn't mean that I was willing to ignore the last five years of caution. There was an excited lust in Molly's eyes at the thought of sex in a public shower.

"Molly, I don't know. What if..."

"Don't worry about the shower or being seen. Just freeze time for both of us, and let's go fuck in the bathroom. If we're lucky, there might even be someone in there!" Molly was breathing heavy, and I could smell a change in her aroma, a scent that could only be described as arousal.

She gave me a huge grin. "In calculus this morning, I want you to eat me out on Professor Hill's desk while the class is in session."

"I'm not sure how to carry both of us if we're not touching, but I think I can make it work if we're late to class." I told her.

I could see an excited flush run through Molly's pale cheeks as she visualized me between her thighs while the whole class watched with frozen eyes, and the waves of arousal wafting up to my nose increased.

The scent hit my brain and caused a hostile takeover. I felt my resistance flag as my erection rose. Molly must have seen the change in my face, since she got a big grin on her face, and began kissing me.

"Do it!" She panted between kisses.

I felt for the thread, the one that would tie Molly to me, bring her through, and awake in the frozen moment. Once I was sure of it, I reached for the switch. The air grew thick and scentless, and there was no sound. Molly grinned huge, thrilled by the feeling.

"Let's go!" She said, standing and stripping off her clothes. She pulled me to my feet, and helped me to strip naked.

She opened the door slowly, and looked into the hall. I followed, seeing two young women walking together, frozen in conversation. They had backpacks and looked like they were headed for an early morning class.

Molly pulled me by my hand and typed in the code for the bathroom. Nothing happened.

"Crap, I forgot about the stupid safety lock. Back to my room!" And Molly pushed me back into her room, where she found a robe for herself. "Unfreeze things, so I can go unlock the door."

I wrapped Molly up in my arms, holding her thread carefully. I tapped the switch, and felt the world start up again. I could hear the voices of the two women in the hall as they passed the door. Molly picked up a shoe and slipped outside. She was back in seconds, untying her robe.

"Can we try this again?" She asked, swaying her hips sexily as her robe slipped down her body to the floor. "Oh, almost forgot..." She reached into her purse and grabbed a condom. "Now you can do it."

I opened my arms, and once again got a hold on her thread as I froze time. This time the hall was empty, and Molly led me into the women's bathroom. It looked just like the men's bathroom I had seen the previous night, except that there were no urinals.

Moly led me around the bend and to the shower room, where six shower heads were mounted on three walls. Partial walls separated the shower stalls from each other, but provided almost no privacy. Three women were already in the bathroom, showering naked. I took in their wet, naked forms as we passed through the open door and entered the tiled shower.

All three women looked beautiful, soaking wet. Two faced the showerhead, and one was frozen facing out. Her ample breasts on display, clothed only in a thin sheen of water and shampoo, which she was rinsing out of her hair.