FutureImperfect by Stefan Petrucha

Author:Stefan Petrucha
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2007-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

But death wasn’t the only consequence of time.

As Harry Keller fell on purpose, he felt a pang, as if he were betraying his father by embracing a last-minute wildness. But he’d had not so much an idea as an intuition: The Quirk says I have to fall, but it doesn’t say how I have to fall.

It was a crazy thought, logically impossible given the height of the building, but because Harry could see what would happen before it did, he also knew it could work.

So, as he tumbled by the eighth floor, he twisted his back just enough to make it slam into the side of the building.

Omph!

The impact felt like it had crushed his rib cage, but it did what he’d hoped; slowed his fall and changed his direction just enough for him to do a belly flop onto the sixth-floor flagpole. The pole had more give than the stone, but it stung like crazy all along his body in a long thick line that started at his navel and ended on his nose.

Ungh!

With the pole flipping him sideways, at least now he wasn’t headed straight down. He was moving at an angle, away from the side of the building that faced the crowd, toward a huge, wide awning that hung over a fifth-floor balcony. It must be covering some sort of open-air restaurant he figured.

Anght!

He hit the cloth hard. Its thick canvas burned and bruised his bare skin as he slid along it. Thick though it was, the awning tore as he rolled, sending him off into the air again. He was in a wild spin now, out above a side street where a huge Thanksgiving banner stretched across the avenue. The next part would be tricky, especially with everything turning around and around.

He slammed into the banner.

YEOW!!

His still-spinning form stretched the thinner cloth on impact, suspending him against it briefly in midair, until gravity took effect and he started to fall again. With a second to spare, one of his flailing arms hooked the banner’s edge. He grabbed the top of the banner in both hands and held on tight.

Urngk!

The strain felt like it would rip his arms out, but instead the weight of his body tore the banner off the steel cable that held it. Holding the cloth as it tore, Harry swung across the street, lower and lower. He was only thirty feet up now, still high enough to die.

As he made the Batman-like swing, he thought that if the crowd gathered at the front of the building could see him, they’d probably applaud. As it was, with everyone stuck in a mob at the main entrance of the Valis building, the only person who could see him was an old woman pushing a shopping cart, and she didn’t seem to notice the ruckus going on right above the gray hairs of her head.

The swinging banner slammed him into a brick wall.

Ack!

Barely conscious, he lost his grip and tumbled, hit another awning, this one above a street-level pizza shop.

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