After Milly fled the classroom, she only took two steps down the hallway before she promptly turned and sat down against the wall.

How far she went didn’t matter, anyway. Nobody could disturb her even if they wanted to.

It was just sinking in. Milly-time was back. So quickly. And she wasted an entire hour of her brief reprieve in biology class.

She curled up into a ball, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her forehead on them.

On paper, she should have had about ninety minutes of normal time compared to forty-five minutes of Milly-time. Twice as much. But, obviously it didn’t work that way in practice.

“I’m such an idiot,” Milly mumbled while she folded her hands over her head. “I should’ve just skipped class or something.”

Maybe she wasn’t entirely at fault. She didn’t really understand her power yet. For all she knew, maybe it only triggered twice a day, or whatever else. At least this latest bout of Milly-time confirmed her suspicion that her power seemed to oscillate on a schedule.

“This isn’t fair. I just finished the last ten days, and now I gotta do it again right away?” Milly wanted nothing less. “...Once those are done, will I only get ninety minutes again?”

The last time, Milly had focused on killing time. Like she was just trying to get through a dull week to finally enjoy the weekend, but it didn’t work like that at all. The payoff was so tiny.

The daunting reality was that, from her perspective, Milly only got to spend a fraction of time at normal speed.

How would anything work? What was the point of school if she missed half of it and the other half was so spread out that she had no chance of remembering the previous lessons? When was her next biology class? In two days? How far away was that to her?

Milly tried counting it up in her head. If a third of her life really was in Milly-time now, then two days became…

“Over five months?!”

Tears welling up, Milly struggled not to cry, but she could not imagine how she was supposed to live her life like this.

What about aging? Would she grow old and die in her nineties, before the year was out?

Would she be able to make any new friends? Actually, could she even keep the ones she had? What if she annoyed Niki by constantly forgetting things they just spoke about?

Would she forget her dad’s face and voice if she didn’t grab every opportunity to video call him?

If she got trapped in an elevator for an hour, would she just starve?

Milly trembled as one dark thought after another sent her tumbling further down into a spiral.

She needed air!

Milly ran, fleeing the building.

Once she was outside, Milly didn’t stop but broke into an all-out sprint across campus. She didn’t know where, just away. From all of it. She veered off toward the only thing in sight that wasn’t a concrete city building or an exposed open field: the path into the park.

After dashing at full tilt for longer than Milly had ever managed before, she reached the deepest part of the park forest. Although it wasn’t exactly a deep or dark forest; the sky easily peeked through the canopy.

That didn’t matter. She just wanted to go as far away as she could feasibly get.

Milly’s legs felt like they’d give out on her as she burst through the underbrush.

How far away was she?

Milly looked back. She couldn’t see the school anymore. She also didn’t see the tree.

With a tremendous bang, Milly ran full-tilt into the oak’s thick trunk and bounced off onto her back.

The whole world spun around her. The light was quickly fading, but the last thing she saw was the tree starting to crack.

Everything went dark.

————————————

Sometime later, Milly awoke to an annoying ray of sunshine that had just managed to home in on her eyes through the branches.

Groggy, she fumbled for her blanket to block out the intruder but only found grass.

Grass?

Milly sat up straight and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes while she looked around, confused that her bedroom had turned into a thicket. Before her was the splintered remains of a trunk, and long shards of wood were strewn away from her. How’d that happen?

Didn’t she hit a tree earlier? Her head was throbbing.

Right. It was coming back to her. The whole overwhelming realization.

While it was no less horrific the second time, she at least managed not to get pulled into that same vortex of panic again. The power of a good nap? In hindsight, maybe it had been a mistake to stay up through those last ten Milly-days without rest. Even if she hadn’t felt tired.

“Okay. Okay. Stay calm. Think it through,” Milly told herself. Her worst fears still plagued her. “I don’t know for sure how much trouble I’m actually in. Let's deal with that first. I can have a breakdown after.”

Was this maturity or just denial?

“After all, I’ll have plenty of time for it,” Milly said with a wry smile. Even as she played up her bravado for herself, the panic was slowly creeping back in. She grabbed her phone. “Okay! First! What time is it?”

10:02

So, she’d been out for maybe three minutes. At twelve Milly-hours, that was less a nap and more a superb Saturday-morning sleep-in.

She also had about twenty new messages.

@Niki

Niki:

Nurse let me take a day off.

If anyone asks, you are too for emotional support.

Milly:

You rock! Sorry for all this!

As soon as I’m sure I can touch someone without making them explode, you are getting all the hugs you deserve!

Leave it to Niki to come in clutch twice in a row! Milly wouldn’t know what she’d do without her. Her school attendance problem was dealt with for at least today. Which was practically an eternity. One less thing she had to worry about.

The rest of the messages were from Ruth.

The first couple were just Ruth explaining that she was now receiving a copy of all the alarms that came into the Response Center. The next dozen messages were from that feed. They included nothing but a timestamp and an address in each one.

Ruth must have taken a while to write her explanation; Some alarms dated back to about ten minutes ago. Or perhaps a more likely scenario was that Ruth had asked for a backlog to make it look like she had managed it quicker than she actually did. Niki had mentioned this kind of thing should have taken a while.

“Do I even want to go through with this?” Milly wondered aloud while she scrolled through the list. “I have my own stuff I need to look into. I could just say my plan didn’t work or something, but it would be bad to let this Minutemen thing carry on… Maybe I could just tell Ruth about the spies and ACE can probably take it from there.”

That would be a nice and easy solution. Milly didn’t really need to be involved if she really didn’t want to be. Ruth could just use her mind control powers to make all the potential spies confess and deal with them. So what if that happened to require violating the minds of everyone on campus?

“Ugh. I obviously can’t let that happen.” Milly got up and paced around the little clearing. “And, I promised Orchid I’d help her get out the clutches of that Kasper and his Minutemen group. I can’t just hang her out to dry, can I?”

“It's not like I don’t have time for it.” Milly looked at her phone’s clock with a wry chuckle. “I reckon it’d be the right thing to do, anyhow.”

Resolved, Milly sent Orchid a text.

@Orchid

00:00:01:

Signal Kasper now.

Hopefully, Kasper would take the bait and trigger his standard wave of smash-and-grab crimes. It wouldn’t be too tough to catch up to him. Though, Milly wasn’t looking forward to the slow process of actually following him afterward.

“That’s a problem for future-Milly, I suppose,” Milly shrugged. There was enough for her to be concerned about in the present that didn’t involve potential school-wide spy-rackets. “...Huh. Actually, what are the odds that this Kasper guy cross-references?”

“Yeah, lemme just…”

@Ruth

Ruth:

09:56 | 9764 Jeopardy Lane

09:57 | 0001 Cemetery Lane

10:00 | 618 Gopher Road

10:02 | 2308 Maple Drive

10:02 | 20 Ingram St.

00:00:01:

Dang! That was so quick!

I also need you to get out of sight.

Fake food poisoning or something.

Just for five or ten minutes tops.

“...That’ll do.” Milly put her phone away.

Now she had some time to kill.

————————————

Pitter Pa's Pet Shop.

Milly stared up at the colorful sign out front of the store. She hadn’t heard of the place before, but it was the nearest pet shop she could find. Just a few blocks away from the campus.

“I wonder if we’re allowed pets?” Milly mused while she let herself in.

She roamed the aisles. In the front were the major attractions. Large rooms with glass walls that held adorable dogs and cats. Further in were pens with hamsters and rabbits, then further still came the tanks for fish and reptiles. Behind all that, came the rows with all kinds of toys, accessories, and food.

It was the food that she was here for.

Milly came to a stop in the reptile section. Her stomach tied itself in knots as she found her target. Live feed. The crickets here were meant as meals for the lizards. She understood all animals had to eat, and that lots of animals were killed for food, but still… that felt different.

“I’m really sorry about this.” Milly said while she opened the enclosure. One of them was sitting right by the door, staring outside. Milly lowered down to eye level with it. He looked kind of dopey compared to the rest with one antenna bend at a weird angle.

How long would it take before it even realized the door was open?

Milly wasn’t sure if it could even comprehend that, let alone English at superspeed, but she still spoke to it. “Hey there, Jiminy Cricket. Look, I swear I’m against animal testing, but… I figure I’ll make you a deal. I’m going to take you to the park and let you free, okay? I know, that sounds too good to be true, so what’s the catch, right?”

“Well, you're right. I need something from you in return. Really badly.” Nervously, she picked up the cricket and set it in her palm. “…I need you to survive this trip, okay?

Milly paused.

Jiminy could not answer her, of course. He was just a bug. It was silly to even be having this conversation. She’d probably crushed dozens like him without even realizing it just by walking around.

But, this wasn’t really about Jiminy.

“Okay,” Milly carefully covered him with her other hand then took a shaky breath. “Here we go.”

She walked out of the store.

On her way to the park, she occasionally peeked in through the cracks between her fingers to check on Jiminy. He hadn’t turned to jelly, but that was about all she could tell from a glance. That meant little.

When Milly first got her speed, she’d tapped the custodian by the front gate on the shoulder to get his attention. Initially, he’d seemed fine too, but Milly vividly recalled seeing him with an arm in a sling later.

There was no telling what damage she might do to someone internally.

She was so lost in thought that it took her a minute to notice she had arrived at her destination: the park.

“Oh!” Milly exclaimed, finally noticing that she was already halfway across the grass. “I guess this is our stop.”

At the nearest rosebush, Milly kneeled down and placed Jiminy on a stem.

“Please don’t explode or anything.” Heart beating in her throat, Mily rested her chin on her knees and settled in for the long haul. Even if it would take an hour, she wasn’t taking her eyes off of him until she had her answer.

In excruciating slow-motion, Milly witnessed Jiminy roll off the stem then land upside down in the dirt, unmoving.

“No…” Milly’s heart sank.

Her speed was deadly.

Milly hadn’t even run or made any wild movements, just casually strolled down the street. Apparently, that was already too much. She didn’t want to even think about what would happen if she ran.

The frightful thing was that she could have unwittingly killed someone had she just been a little more unlucky. What if she’d tried to shake Niki awake that morning? Niki would be dead.

Tears came to her eyes just thinking about it.

In addition, this failure didn’t bode well for any of the other things she’d been quietly dreading. If the first thing she tested was this bad, then she had little confidence that testing whether she was rapidly aging would pan out well either, nor her ability to live a life ninety minutes at a time.

A bright light suddenly shone through the pocket of her jacket.

Puzzled, Milly reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. Somehow the flash light had turned itself on. Eager for any kind of distraction, she wiped her eyes clear with her free hand while she inspected the phone. The interface claimed the light was supposed to be off.

After fiddling with it for a bit. The light turned off by itself.

“Weird…”

Just what she needed. Gremlins in her phone. Just as she was gripping about it, she noticed a new message had come in.

“Oh, I get it. That’s what a flickering light looks like in Milly-time. It’s just a flashlight. Well, that’s less useful than we thought.” Milly hovered a finger over the settings, pondering whether to turn it off. Ultimately, Milly pressed the chat app instead. “Nah, I guess it still got me to look.”

Ruth had passed along another alert location. This one was only one street over and had gone off within the minute.

“That might be the Minutemen, I reckon. Let’s find out.”

It took her practically no time to walk to the address and look around. It was just a closed nightclub, not anything exciting, like a jewelry store.

Strangely, nothing seemed to be amiss. No broken windows or locks. No smoke. Not even people, really. The only living thing around as far as Milly could tell was a cat sleeping on the pool table inside.

At least the cat was cute. All fuzzy and bright orange.

“Well, isn’t that a nice, cozy spot? Right in a patch of sunlight.” Milly cooed and tapped the window to get its attention. That obviously didn't work, so she just leaned in closer to get a better look. “Don’t suppose there’s a cat burglar in there too?”

Milly didn’t see a cat burglar, but she spotted a motion sensor in the corner of the room. It was pointed almost directly at the pool table… and the cat, who was laying suspicious neatly in the middle of that sunny spot.

“…Almost as if it just laid down.” Milly reasoned while she looked back and forth between the cat and the sensor. “You set off the alarm? Well, that’s a bust.”

Milly sighed and checked her phone. No new messages had come in since. She made her way back to the park while updating Niki before texting Ruth it was a false alarm.

She soon found her way back to the rosebush.

Since she had some time to spare before either of them would finish reading, Milly decided she should give Jiminy Cricket a proper burial. In a sense, he’d help make sure she wouldn’t hurt anyone, and he deserved at least that much…

But,

“He’s gone!” Milly gasped then quickly looked around for a bird or a rat or something that had stolen him in the couple seconds she’d been gone.

She didn’t find those, but she found something else. One little cricket was just leisurely climbing up the thorny rose stem. There he was! Dopey antenna and all. “Jiminy!”

————————————

Back at the pet store, Milly held a small dog in her arms while she surveyed her now growing menagerie of pets that had each gone for a ‘walk’ with her. In chronological order, there were mice, hamsters, rabbits, lizards, cats, and now dogs.

So far, they all had shown similar behavior to Jiminy after she moved them around: stunned disorientation because of being practically teleported. The longer she moved them, the worse it was, so perhaps there was a bit of motion sickness at play too. Crucially, they all ended up fine after a moment or two.

She really could have stopped testing already, but she wasn’t going to. Milly was in the middle of enjoying her latest and greatest discovery as she gave headpats to the adorable beagle pup she was holding.

“I get to pet all these cuties and nobody can stop me? Why didn’t I think of this before!?”

Best day ever.

There was no way she was ending this experiment before she’d taken a turn with every pet around! Besides, she needed something to do in between alerts. She’d gotten three more while she was busy here.

Ruth wasn’t kidding when she warned her. All of them were false so far.

————————————

Meanwhile, back at the dorm.

Niki scrolled through her latest messages, which were just a constant stream of selfies with Milly cuddling one cute animal after another. “Are you trying to make me jealous? Because it’s working.”

Not that Milly had left Niki entirely without company.

Niki looked up from her phone over to the small tank that had materialized on her desk a minute ago. It was about the size of a bread bin and carried only one tiny inhabitant.

On the front was a sticky note that read:

This is our new pet: Jiminy!