Drake pulled rope from the bag he’d retrieved from the car. He tied one end around a table leg, measured out about six feet, cut the rope, then tied the end around Andrew’s leg.
“Man, what is this?” Andrew said. “What are you doing?”
“It’s an experiment, Andrew.”
Jack began setting up lights and tripods for cameras.
“This is bogus, man. This isn’t right, Caine. It’s not right.”
“Andrew, you’re lucky I’m giving you a chance to survive the big blink,” Caine said. “Now stop sniveling.”
Drake tied Andrew’s second leg and then hopped onto the table to tie Andrew’s hands firmly behind him.
“Dude, I need my hands free for the power.”
Drake looked at Caine, who nodded. Drake untied Andrew’s hands and glanced at the chandelier above. He tossed the rope end up over the chandelier, an ornate, heavy iron thing that Coates kids joked was the tenth Nazgul.
Drake cinched the rope up around Andrew’s chest, pulled it up under his armpits, and hauled him up till his feet barely touched the table top.
“Make sure his hands can’t aim in this direction,” Caine said. “I don’t want that shock wave thing of his knocking cameras over.”
So Drake suspended each hand by the wrist, leaving Andrew looking like a boy who was trying to surrender.
Jack watched the LED viewfinder of one of the cameras. Andrew would still be able to move out of frame by swaying one way or the other. Jack didn’t want to say anything, he felt sorry for Andrew, but if the video got messed up…
“Um. He could still move left or right a little.”
Drake then ran ropes from Andrew’s neck, four of them leading to tables on four sides. Andrew could move no more than a foot in any direction.
“What’s the time, Jack?” Caine asked.
Jack checked his PDA. “Ten minutes.”
Jack busied himself with the cameras, four of them on tripods, three video, and one a motorized still camera. He had two lights on poles shining down on Andrew.
Andrew was lit up like he was some kind of movie star.
“I don’t want to die,” Andrew said.
“Me neither,” Caine agreed. “That’s why I really hope you can beat the poof.”
“I would be, like, the first, huh?” Andrew said. He sniffed. Tears were starting to flow.
“First and only,” Caine said.
“This isn’t fair,” Andrew said. Jack adjusted the lens to encompass Andrew’s entire body.
“Five minutes,” Jack said. “I’m going to go ahead and start the video running.”
“Do what you have to do, Jack, don’t announce it,” Caine said.
“Can’t you help me out, Caine?” Andrew pleaded. “You’re a four bar. Maybe you and me, if we both used our power at the same time, right?”
No one answered him.
“I’m scared, okay?” Andrew moaned, and now the tears were flowing freely. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Maybe you wake up outside the FAYZ,” Panda said, speaking for the first time.
“Maybe you wake up in hell,” Diana said. “Where you belong.”
“I should pray,” Andrew said.
“God forgive me for being a creep who starves people?” Diana suggested.
“One minute,” Jack said softly. He was nervous about when to start the still camera. No one figured Andrew’s birth certificate was exact to the minute—Benno’s had been off by weeks. He could disappear early.
“Jesus, forgive me for all the bad stuff I did and take me to my mom I miss her so bad and please let me live I’m just a kid so let me live okay? In Jesus’ name, amen.”
Jack switched on the still camera.
“Ten seconds.”
The room erupted with a sonic explosion from Andrew’s upraised hands. Waves of shattering sound began to crack the plaster ceiling.
Jack covered his ears and stared in fascination and horror.
“Time,” Jack remembered to yell over the barrage of noise. Chunks of plaster were falling from the ceiling like hail. The bulbs in the chandelier all shattered, sending down a snowfall of glass dust.
“Plus ten,” Jack yelled.
Andrew was still there, hands high, crying, sobbing, beginning to hope maybe, beginning to hope.
“Plus twenty,” Jack said.
“Keep it up, Andrew,” Caine yelled. He was on his feet now, eager, hoping it was true that the blink could be beaten.
The ceiling was cracking more deeply, and Jack wondered if it would fall.
The sonic blast ended.
Andrew stood, exhausted, but still there. Still standing.
“Oh, God,” he said. “Oh thank—”
And he was gone.
The ropes fell, suddenly released.
No one said a word.
Jack pushed rewind on one of his high-speed video cameras. He backed it up ten seconds. Then he hit play and watched it on the tiny LCD screen, frame by frame.
“Well,” Diana was saying, “so much for the theory that you don’t ditch if you have powers.”
“He stopped blasting,” Caine said. “Then he blinked out.”
“He stopped blasting and then ten seconds later, he ditched,” Diana said. “Birth certificate records are never going to be a hundred percent, precisely accurate. Some nurse writes down the time, maybe it’s five minutes one way or the other. Some are probably off by a half hour.”