Read Flux for Free Online

counter, fumbling and snatching at anything within reach. With a hiss, Nellie raked her fingernails across the back of her double’s hand. As it withdrew, she began ramming bills and coins into her pockets. The fact that her double had seen her was of little concern. This often happened when she traveled the levels, but her doubles were usually so stunned by the experience that they did little more than gawk. This double was moreactive than most, but the person Nellie figured she had to keep an eye on was the clerk, who was moaning loudly and plucking cans out of the dengleberry tarts. If she turned around, the molecular field would really start jumping. Lifting the cash drawer, Nellie scrabbled for coins that might have slipped underneath.
    “Hand it over, all of it,” hissed a voice, and suddenly a knife appeared beneath Nellie’s nose. Startled, she glanced up to see her double leaned toward her, reaching for the money she hadn’t yet shoved into a pocket. As usual they were mirror images, dressed in the same T-shirt and jeans, their blond hair pulled back into the same short ponytail and glaring at each other with the same unusually slanted gray eyes. But the knife dancing beneath Nellie’s nose was definitely out of sync with the mirror image. Just as she’d thought, this store was in flux. That was the intriguing thing about flux—you could never predict the way it would reveal itself.
    And then before Nellie’s eyes, her double began to shapeshift. Openmouthed, Nellie stood fixed in her human form, watching her double rotate rapid-fire through a variety of threatening forms— ghoul, vampire, gargoyle, demon. But how was that possible? Nellie could feel no flux in the air, no quirk in the molecular field. Her double seemed to be manipulating her own physical reality entirely at will.
    Returning to human form, the double glowered at Nellie. “I don’t know who you are or where you come from,” she said grimly, “but this is my store. Everything in it’s mine.”
    There was no need to panic—shapeshifting and a knife were mere technicalities against a gate to another level. Jabbing a finger in the direction of the clerk, Nellie shouted, “Look out!” Then, as her double whirled to see what was behind her, Nellie darted around the counter toward the gate. Stepping into the gap, she drew the two halves of the gate together and sealed them, then synchronized her vibratory rate with her home level’s. Gradually she brought the surrounding molecular field back into time. Dust motes began to drift and the fly buzzed away from the clerk’s nose.On the wall the clock dragged itself through one second, then another. Slowly the clerk took a deep shuddering breath.
    “I need a coffee break,” she muttered, one hand pressed to her heart as if to make sure it was still beating. “That’ll be fifteen dollars and ninety-four cents.”
    Pulling a crumpled bill from her pocket, Nellie handed it over. Without hesitation the clerk gave her the change and packed her purchases into a bag.
    “Thanks.” Untroubled by guilt, Nellie headed for the exit. Perception created reality and as far as her home level was concerned, she’d left everyone well-paid and satisfied. If this clerk remembered anything out of the ordinary, she would dismiss it as a wild dream, and if a fourteen-year-old girl in the next level was fired due to money that had gone missing on her shift, it was none of Nellie’s concern. Flux upended everyone’s life, whether or not you clued into its existence. This time it had left her with the task of figuring out how her double had been able to shapeshift when there was no sign of flux in the vicinity. Once she’d solved that question, Nellie would also be able to shapeshift whenever she wanted.
    Whistling, she leapt off the store’s front porch and swaggered down the street, munching contentedly on a bread roll.

Chapter 4
    S HE HAD ONE MORE GOAL for the day—to buy a metal canister for food