Chapter Twenty-Nine

I'm long awake before anything or anyone else. The sound of silence of the morning isn't entirely different to that of the night, except there's less of a creeping factor to it.

Paige rests quietly in my arms. One has long since gone numb but I find I have an easy solution to that so for now, I'm not worried about losing functionality or disturbing her sleep.

I'm not sure how much sleep I got, but merely judging from the fact that I walked in past midnight and had my consciousness go out the moment my head hit the pillow, well, I'd put my sleep time around five hours.

So it should be six now if I'm correct. And I think I am; the dull shuffling and scrambling sounds of the receptionist or the owner moving about the halls can easily be heard through the thin walls of our room.

But the motel isn't what my mind is on. No, rather it's Paige.

What the hell was that?

I can't help replaying my entrance last night over and over in my head. She looked…defeated.

What was she doing? What could make her look so…drained?

I'm not certain, but I'm sure the prime suspect would be the answer.

She's going to jump soon.

I don't know all the symptoms of her uncontrollable forward travel through time, so this could simply just have been her being put up by those guys from earlier.

But the fact that we don't know all her symptoms doesn't rule out the possibility either, in fact it makes it even more likely.

I didn't meet Paige with all the answers about her powers ready in her head, she was very confused, very, very confused and scared.

And over time living together, we noticed odd things about her, things like her suddenly flashing forward in time and not even having a clue about it.

But I would, because I don't move through time. I'd alert her that she'd disappeared an hour or sometimes even for a whole day and suddenly appeared right in the same spot like nothing happened.

Those were clear signs of her time travelling.

But there were other unclear ones. Dreams, sudden premonitions of things immediately happening around her as though she were experiencing Déjà vu.

All of these would start taking place and most times, if we caught it early, we had a week before her powers shot her to whatever time in the future it randomly chose.

But she's been fighting it, that's how we've gotten to live well together, she's fought back for control, for a semblance of it. So, she doesn't get catapulted decades or centuries into the future like it had.

Her battles haven't been in vain. The longest I've gone without her - a horrible period – lasted a year. She'd been thrown a year into the future.

I sigh tiredly as I hear encroaching footsteps, something tells me it's for me.

I'm probably just worried over nothing.

I decide not to worry, after all, she hasn't told me anything about experiencing symptoms yet, I'm sure everything is fine.

Pause.

I pause all time around me and gently begin to lift her head off my numbed arm, then once free I set her head back down, throw on my jacket and pick up my gun.

The new weapon fits nicely in my hand, though the weight will need some getting used to.

Not like I'll be shooting it at any range except point blank anyway, I shrug and walk out the door.

Sure enough, the receptionist, the boy with the headphones I met earlier, is with a much older man and they stand ready to deliver some knocks on the wooden door.

Nope, no one's disturbing her sleep.

Unpausing time and making sure the door is out of the reach of their knuckles I immediately draw attention to myself with a whispered greeting, "Good morning." I wave.

Startled, the two look at themselves and begin to brain fart at the fact that there's suddenly a short young man in front of them.

I shut the door and start ushering them away from it. "How can I help you?" I ask, still in a whisper.

Although, still very confused, they answer, the older man going first, "You may not know me, I'm the owner of this fine establishment."

Cheap? Sure. Fine? I don't think so.

"And?" I urge.

"Well, there's a man downstairs demanding that you, the shortest person in the building, come out."

A wave of annoyance washes over me at this, He knows my name, is he just trying to embarrass me?

"Right, I know who that is."

"Oh, thank god." The owner breathes a sigh of relief and my eyes narrow.

"Why? Did he do something to you?"

The owner doesn't answer, rather his eyes shift to my yellow band and I understand. Right.

Rey and all the others basically own this part of town, it's why he's got me threatening people to pay up.

I bid them goodbye and head down the stairs. Parked outside the broken gate from last night is a rather fine black vehicle with Austin leaning on the body.

"Finally!" He barks.

"Did you really have to come all the way here?"

He scowls at me, "You don't exactly have a band now do you? Or even a tab?"

Ah right. These days I forget I'm still a poor urchin kid off the streets.

"Get me one then."

He grunts and pulls open the front passenger seat door, "Sure, but after we get to Rey."

I blink at this. Not just because he easily agreed to get me either a tab or a band but more because we suddenly have to go meet Rey.

"Rey? Why are we heading back to him?" I say, standing in front of the door of the car with him still holding it open.

Frankly I'm a bit nervous about stepping into the car seat. If we're headed to Rey for anything sinister then I won't be able to escape in the car.

Can't use my powers in a moving car. Logic says I'll die from moving that fast into a stationary object.

But wait…what about seatbelts?

"I'm not privy to say at the moment." Is what he mutters, breaking my thoughts. "Don't worry, I don't think he's horribly mad that you blew up a lot of his owed money and put him in a state of permanent debt with Invincibill."

Uhh…kinda sounds lik-

"Get in."

And there's the serious voice. I know there's no fighting this, there'd be no point in trying to run on foot if I can't run as fast as a car.

I bite my lip and get in the car.