The stroll across campus was surprisingly peaceful at five-thirty in the morning.

Milly had never considered herself much of a morning person, but Bulwark Bay city had felt like a churning sea of noise at any other hour. Perhaps she could try to make this a habit while she was here.

That wasn’t to say that absolutely no one was around. Milly could see one of the campus custodians standing near the front gate with his hands in his pockets. Presumably, he was there to unlock it for the day. He had his back turned, but she still gave him a friendly wave before she entered the dormitory.

Ascending the stone stairs, Milly had an odd sensation something was missing, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. She forgot all about it when approached her dorm room.

Milly carefully opened the door without so much as a creak and peeked inside. She found that Niki was still asleep, curled up on the top bunk. That was a relief. Milly’s nerves hadn’t recovered enough yet to speak with Niki alone. They’d talked before, of course, but with the nurse present neither of them had brought up Milly’s offer to go on a date.

Rummaging through her bag, Milly snatched up a change of clothes and snuck off to the bathroom for her shower. She hoped to stall for as long as possible and think about what to say.

Funny. Saturday had been one giant horror show but asking Niki out was the part that plagued her mind the most out of all of them. It had seemed like a good idea in the heat of the moment, but Milly had two days to cool down and it was slowly eating away at her. It felt like a dumber and more embarrassing thing to do every time she thought about it.

Milly turned on the hot water and quietly hoped Niki just wouldn’t remember.

For a start, they didn’t even know each other that well. Not to mention Niki might not even… wait, where was the water?

Milly blinked then stared up at the showerhead while she spun the shower knob left and right to no result. She gave the sink a shot but it didn’t work either.

A water outage?

Well, that was just great. If there was one thing she could wish for it was to have her first real talk with Niki while she smelled like an old gym shoe. Hey, at least that way there wasn’t any tension as to what the answer would be!

Grumbling, Milly resorted to cleaning up with a handful of shampoo and then just toweled off.

Thank goodness for deodorant sticks.

Once Milly was in a set of fresh clothes, she headed back out. Thankfully, Niki still hadn’t woken up.

Maybe the custodian knew what was going on with the water. Not that Milly was all that concerned, but she’d take any excuse to delay the inevitable.

She dug through her desk for a packet of sticky notes and jotted down a quick message before slapping it on the bathroom door.

The water’s out.

Gone to check on it.

See you at school.

-Milly

With that settled, Milly went out. Down the stairs again with that same sense of wrongness. Outside, she spotted the custodian was still by the closed gate.

Milly ran down the road toward him.

“Howdy, do you know how long the water is gonna—?” Milly stopped and reached for her throat. Her voice felt strange to her ears. It sounded the same but it came out a fraction later than she expected. That wasn’t as weird as the second voice that immediately followed, though, like a higher-pitched echo. It was almost as if she was being dubbed in a movie.

When did that start? She didn’t recall noticing it on the track but then again her heart had been pounding in her ears at the time. Maybe she should return to the medical office and tell the nurse just in case.

Meanwhile, the custodian hadn’t bothered to turn around or even respond to her. Actually, he hadn’t moved at all since she got here.

Not trusting her voice, Milly reached out to tap him on the shoulder to no effect. She walked around to get in front of him. His face was completely still as well. He didn’t even react when she waved a hand in front of his eyes. He just stood there, keys in hand.

“H-hello?” Milly tried again, experiencing that same faintly echo-like sensation.

After failing to get a response yet again, Milly looked around for any sign of something that might explain what was going on. A hidden camera crew. A living-statue convention. A villain with a paralyzation-raygun. A freak wax accident.

None immediately presented themselves. Should she just assume the worst? If someone had been behind this then the longer Milly stuck around the more likely it seemed that she'd get whammied too. In any case, she should go tell someone.

Milly pulled out her phone.

Fortunately, both Ruth and Stella had shared their number with her already. They’d know what to do… if her darn phone would work already!

Frustrated, Milly tried to swipe to unlock her phone for the third time in a row but the slider wouldn’t even twitch. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with the stupid thing, but she’d just have to go get help in person.

Milly glanced down at the keys in the man’s hand. She resolved it was probably best to take those with her and turn them in. If nothing else, it might help convince someone she was telling the truth.

With surprising ease, Milly pried the keys from his fingers and then took off running toward the school building. Someone there had to have a phone or idea of what to do. The main door was open, so she made a straight shot toward the teacher’s lounge.

There were only three teachers there and to Milly’s dismay, each of them was frozen in place as well! Like before, none of them responded when she called out to them. One was grading a pile of papers. Another had only just arrived and was hanging up her coat. The last one was pouring a cup of coffee.

It was the coffee that made Milly do a double-take.

It wasn’t just the teacher who had frozen mid-pour, but the stream of coffee as well! Milly could even see the steam rising off it hanging still in the air.

Intrigued, Milly reached out to touch the liquid. “Gah! Hot!” She flinched back and stuck her finger in her mouth. The taste was awful; it was coffee, alright. Interestingly, the stream of coffee now had a gap in it where she’d touched it and some droplets were now forming a trail where she’d pulled back.

How did that work? What could have done this? Not just to the staff but everything they were holding? What was the point?

Okay, if the staff wasn’t going to be any help, then Milly would just have to seek a consultant. Before she went any further. For all, she knew this was a city thing. Maybe a student prankster with freezing powers… that didn’t cool the coffee for some reason.

Niki would know. She’d been here ages.

Milly rushed back to the dorm. This time the sense of wrongness on the stairs suddenly clicked. These were concrete stairs in a barren stairway. They always echoed her footsteps like crazy, but there wasn’t a single peep as she ran up the steps.

She paused at the top of the stairs for a moment to see if maybe the same kind of delay was happening that had gone on with her voice. Sure enough, a second after she stood still, she heard her footsteps, then a couple of seconds later the actual echoes.

What the?

It filled Milly with a sense of foreboding as she entered their dorm room and the door once again didn’t creak, but when she milled around for a second she suddenly heard it. Whatever was happening at the gate and the teacher’s lounge, it had already affected this place too.

Niki was still asleep, a still lump on the top bunk as before. The same as the others.

Milly already knew it was useless, but she still reached out an unsteady hand to shake Niki awake. “H-hey. Quit playing possum.”

No effect.

She felt so alone.

“Alright. It’s fine. Everything’s fine,” Milly told herself while she paced back and forth in the room, biting her thumb. “Just calm down and think about this! Why is everyone affected except you? If we figure that out maybe we can undo all this. Maybe it’s because I was in the isolation ward when whatever this, whatever it was, struck?”

If that was true, then she should head back there. Milly had spoken to the nurse when she signed out of the ward. They could try to figure this out together!

Milly turned toward the door to rush out but paused and turned back toward Niki. She climbed onto the side of the bunk bed, using her bed as a step ladder. It was just enough to peek over the guardrail and get a good look.

Niki was lying curled up on her side, facing Milly. Niki was eerily still but peaceful. A little cold at most if her hunched-up shoulders were anything to go by. Whatever was going on, at least it wasn’t hurting her at all.

Even though Milly had already confirmed Niki was fine, she lingered for a moment longer. Even though she would have vastly preferred to have Niki awake, it calmed Milly down a little to see Niki sleeping peacefully.

Milly reached through the bar to pull Niki’s blanket up over her shoulder. It was all she could do for her at the moment. “I’m gonna figure this out, don’t worry,” Milly whispered before she hopped down and took off.

Hopefully, the nurse would have some answers.

————————————

At the medical office, Milly’s hopes were instantly dashed.

The nurse was frozen too, of course. She was sitting right where Milly had last spoken to her too.

“Damnit!” Milly kicked the wall out of sheer frustration. Everything she tried was a dead end! And who made walls out of freaking concrete?! Now her foot hurt!

Her whole leg ached as she drew it back and balanced on the other. She rested one hand against the wall to stabilize herself while she checked the damage she’d done.

Luckily, it wasn’t too bad. Her toes were sore and tingly from the kick, but her shoe had taken the brunt of it.

To her surprise, the same could not be said for the wall!

A small crater had formed in the concrete like someone has swung a sledgehammer into it. A small cloud of fractured paint chips had scattered in every direction and was in the middle of rapidly slowing down into that still state everything else was in. Right before her eyes.

No way.

A sudden cracking sound made Milly back away from the wall before she realized that was just the delayed sound of the impact.

Was it her? Was she doing this herself somehow?

Milly’s mind reeled at the insane possibility. She had to do her very best not to jump to the conclusion and get too excited, but her heart was already trying to drill its way out through her throat.

How could she be sure? She had to test it somehow.

Milly looked at the wall. Her foot ached in protest as she considered giving it another kick. Instead, she zeroed in on a mug on the nurse’s desk.

Making sure to aim at the wall, Milly held up the mug and finger-flicked the rim. She felt the ‘tink’ of her fingernail hitting the ceramic before she heard it. It stung a little, but she also chipped out a fingertip-sized chunk of the rim and sent it hurtling toward the wall! It shattered into smaller pieces against the concrete which then slowed to a stop again. The sound came to her a moment later.

Milly covered her mouth with her hands. It really worked! She had super strength!!

In her excitement, Milly had dropped the mug, but rather than fall it just slowly spun in the air exactly where she’d let go of it.

Milly stared at the cup then looked down at her hands.

She wasn’t sure how super strength factored into the strange phenomena. Maybe the time stop effect belonged to someone else? That was possible, but then she only moved the problem one step. How did super strength allow her to move in a time-stop?

It didn’t make sense. The only thing Milly could think of was that she must have misunderstood her power. If she was the cause of the time-stop, then of course she wasn’t affected.

“Ahh, but then that doesn’t explain the super strength!” Milly clawed her fingers through her hair.

If this was her doing, she had to figure out how to stop doing it, but how was she supposed to do that if she couldn’t even figure out what her power was?

This whole thing was making her head hurt. It wasn’t strange to have a set of multiple powers, but as far as she was aware they always made sense as a set. For example, The Welder could create a flame and that came with fire resistance; Stella could teleport long-distance without ending up inside a wall.

It didn’t make any sense for super strength to relate to a time-stop.

“Unless… it’s something else?”

That gave Milly an idea. She left the medical office and headed back to the track field.

————————————

A brief rummage through the trash later, she had found her ‘broken’ stopwatch.

00:04:76

The time on the display had changed!

Four seconds wasn’t a lot, but it told Milly that time hadn’t actually stopped! She wasn’t sure how much time had passed from her perspective, but it couldn’t be more than half an hour, tops. Probably less.

“Okay! So, either I’m slowing stuff down in a radius or I’m speeding myself up… a lot.” Milly smiled. It was starting to be more fun now that she had a handle on the situation. “I know how to test this.”

One idea would be to keep walking in a straight line while periodically comparing the time on people’s phones with her own. If they were ahead, they would mean they were newly affected and she’d know the radius.

The problem was that it would only yield a result if she was slowing things down. If she was speeding herself up then she’d keep walking forever.

Fortunately, there was a nice and simple solution.

Milly picked up a rock and circled her dorm building until she ended up on the west side. In the morning sun, the building cast a long rectangular shadow. She placed the rock down right at the edge of the shadow’s corner. The plan was simple. The sun and the earth were far too big to be affected by anything, if the shadow still didn’t move then she would know the power was affecting her rather than her surroundings.

Now all she had to do was find something to busy herself with for a few minutes. That was fine, she had some games on her phone.

The Lock Screen barred her way again.

“Oh…Right.” Milly groaned and settled for just lying down in the grass and idly swiping at her screen. If she could just go slowly enough it had to register her touch at some point.

After a moment of this, Milly noticed just how quiet it was. Actually, she hadn’t heard a single sound all day that she hadn’t caused herself. Now that she was still, without even the rustle of her clothes, the absolute silence was starting to weigh on her. At least this was something she could fix.

Milly quietly hummed a tune to herself.

♫ Fastest sling in the west! ♫

————————————

Approximately ten minutes later, Milly finally managed to unlock her phone.

“Yes! In your face!” Milly leaped to her feet and triumphantly held her phone aloft. Finally, she could play some actual games to pass the time.

She tapped the icon for Salad Samurai. The game didn’t start.

“Grah!”

Milly wanted to just throw her phone into the nearest wall. Of course, the rest of her phone would be just as slow as the Lock Screen! Why had’t she thought of that immediately?

It just hadn’t been a logical thought in her head at all. She was so used to her phone just working that she’d only thought about solving the lock.

Milly wondered what else that might apply to while she glanced to the side to check on her experiment. She found that the dorm’s shadow was still directly adjacent to the rock.

“Reckon that means I’m fast then.” It felt strange to say, Milly didn’t feel fast, but she supposed that was kinda the point of relative speed and perspective. At least it was some kind of progress. “So, all I gotta do now is figure out how to slow back down. How hard could that be?”

She just had to stop moving.

Actually, she’d already tried that a second ago. It hadn’t helped. Maybe the problem was that she hadn’t kept still? Oh, or she could try running as fast as she could and then ramp back down to normal speed! Or what if she just ran till she tired herself out?

Yeah! She had tons of ideas!

————————————

After an hour, maybe two? Three? It was getting so hard to tell. Anyway, Milly had found her way back to her dorm room. She was ready to admit she had run into a snag.

Nothing worked.

How exactly could she go any slower than when she was standing still? Milly had tried everything she could think of and had bupkis to show for it, but at least she knew how much time had passed since the whole thing started thanks to the stopwatch.

00:37:26

On Niki’s desk, Milly had written a long detailed note about her situation. Milly had quietly hoped that maybe Niki would have gotten up and seen her glorified S.O.S. signal while she had been running around. So much for that. Niki hadn’t even woken up yet and wouldn’t until her alarm went off at 6 AM. in twenty-five minutes… which might as well be five years.

Milly crashed onto her bed.

Most likely, Milly wouldn’t even hear it go off. She still wasn’t sure what was going on with the sound or why superspeed came with some kind of super-strength. But those all seemed like questions that she could deal with after a nap. She’d been running herself ragged for what felt like forever, but in reality apparently only amounted to as little as half a minute.

Rolling onto her side, Milly clutched her pillow to her chest, trying her best to remain calm.

She was going to figure this out.

Deep breaths.

She couldn't be stuck like this… right?

On that final thought, Milly’s exhaustion dragged her off to sleep.