Free Blue Noon by Scott Westerfeld Page A

empty, which meant that his father’s car would be easy for his old friends in the sheriff’s department to spot. He was sure that by now, they’d recognize it from halfway across the county.
    Jonathan didn’t know what he’d do then. Get stopped for breaking curfew, maybe go to jail again, and risk Cassie Flinders disappearing forever? Or do a grand theft auto, get the cops into hot pursuit mode, and get Jessica and himself into more trouble than Beth could ever have imagined?
    Not a great choice.
    Jessica cleared her throat. “Um, I hope you’re not planning on going this fast when time freezes. Don’t want to fly through the windshield, personally.”
    “Midnight’s not for ten more minutes. Unless there’s another eclipse.”
    She pulled away, sitting straighter in her seat and checking her seat belt. “Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me. Midnight can come at any time now.”
    “Yeah. Cool, huh?”
    “Uh, no, Jonathan. Not cool. What if it keeps happening?”
    He shrugged. “Then we get to fly around more.”
    She sighed. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
    “What? More midnight? The whole world belonging to just us five? Less time in Flatland? Sure, I would.”
    “But we don’t understand what’s happening, Jonathan. On the phone Dess said something about the blue time changing completely. And today we didn’t know if the eclipse was ever going to stop. It felt like the world had ended.”
    “Yeah, right. Like that’s going to happen.” He snorted. “And anyhow, look at it this way: if the world ends, you won’t have to worry about Beth anymore.”
    Jessica just turned away, staring out the passenger window and not saying another word.
    Jonathan frowned, wondering what he’d said wrong now.

11:53 P.M.
PREY
 
    Melissa’s eyes rolled back in her head, her nose wrinkling. Rex saw a shudder pass through her body from toes to fingertips.
    “What, did they stop already?” Rex asked.
    She shook her head. “No, Flyboy’s still got his pedal all the way down. They’ll get here in time, more or less. But the flame-bringer’s not in a very good mood.”
    Dess glanced up from her GPS device and snorted. Rex shook his head. Great time for a lovers’ quarrel.
    He swept his eyes across the railroad tracks again. This place was wrapped in Focus, inhuman marks corrupting every piece of gravel in the rail bed, every blade of grass shooting up through the wooden cross-ties. Darklings and slithers had danced here. Even the steel spikes in the iron rails bore the traces of their claws and snouts and slithering bellies.
    All this Focus couldn’t have been laid down in twenty-one minutes. They must have come here before the eclipse.
    Of course, Rex thought, there were always a few midnight places on the outskirts of town. Perhaps it was only a coincidence that this weak spot had been visited before.
    He knelt to take a closer look at a slitherprint, a sinuous line that wound down the railroad tracks as far as he could see. It didn’t look especially fresh, not like a trail left only fifteen hours ago.
    But Rex frowned; his new hunter’s nerves were twitching with all the metal around him. Why would a slither travel down a railroad line that reeked of iron rails, steel bolts, and buried telegraph lines? Most darkling places on the city’s edges were open fields and empty back lots, places where little patches of the wild still clung—stands of native plants, snake holes, or small creeks not yet erased by buildings and concrete. But this iron path was an artery of the rail system, an old and powerful symbol of human cleverness and dominance. Only a hundred years ago it had represented the highest technology that humanity possessed, yet the darklings had embraced this spot. They must have come here with a purpose.
    Rex saw how far the Focus stretched up and down the track, how it trailed off into the brush and extended even to the ramshackle houses backed up against the right-of-way. He wondered how