Alone in her room, Milly sat at her desk, anxiously spinning her phone in her hand. The screen displayed two missed calls.

She’d forgotten to call her dad before going to bed last night.

In fairness, it had been less of a case of forgetting and more of a case of accidentally falling asleep. It had been a poor idea to ‘rest her eyes for a sec’ after she exhausted herself by taking Niki back to the dorm.

Speaking of Niki, she had already left to make arrangements with the girls in TRACE. That didn’t actually require her to leave the room; she was just being considerate by giving Milly space to make the call. They’d meet up at the restaurant later.

Milly spun the phone slower till it rested upright in her hand. She wasn’t sure how to approach the conversation. She wished she had asked Terra before Stella teleported in to pick her up. Actually, Stella had been another good person to ask. If only Milly had thought about it at the time.

Sighing, Milly looked down at her watch. The milliseconds buzzed so fast that they mostly just looked like the number eight. She appreciated the little bit of irony that the only thing that moved for her in Milly-time appeared to stand still in normal time.

The display held a new feature, a countdown.

“Come on! You only have forty minutes of normal time left. Don’t waste it on being indecisive!” Milly scolded herself. She hit the call button. The next couple of rings she had to fight herself to not back out.

At least she’d had the good sense not to make it a video call. Even if she was only slightly injured, to her dad that was kind of like being only slightly pregnant; there was no such thing.

The ringing was replaced by noisy cafe chatter and the scraping of a chair when her dad answered. “Milly? I’m so glad you called. Hold on a second!” There was a click and a slam of a door as the noise went away, being replaced by echoing footsteps like he was pacing around a tiled bathroom.

“Okay.” Odd. Milly didn’t remember any diners that were that busy back home. Actually, now that she thought about it, hadn’t there been something off about the calls to her dad lately? He was never in a place she recognized, but he brushed it off whenever she mentioned it.

“Now, what happened last night? Got your phone confiscated in class, I reckon? Such a troublemaker.” The hint of anxiety undercut the jovial tone in his voice, like he was laying out the worst thing he could stand and hoped it was either that or something more trivial.

Was it kinder to go along with this?

“I…” Milly bit her lip. “I’m sorry. The day kinda got away from me because I discovered I’ve got a power.”

“A power? No wonder then! What kind? And why do you sound like you’re chewing your bit? …Oh… I reckon it ain’t quite what you hoped for?”

Milly sighed. “Yeah. That’s one way to put it.”

“Ah… I’m sorry, sweetie. I know you must be let down, but most powers aren’t all that, well, powerful. For what it’s worth, even if you’d lucked out and gotten powers as potent as Welder, times have changed since he was active. Doubt he’d get into the game these days.” He cleared his throat. “But, hey! Least you got one, ey? Wanna tell me ‘bout it?”

The attempt at encouragement caused Milly to smile despite her nervousness. “Nah, Pa. You got it the wrong way round. It’s plenty powerful, it’s just… Okay, I’m fast, right? Like a duck on a junebug if it had a day’s notice. Only issue is I can’t seem to control it. Ya see…uhm… for me, we’ve not spoken in over a month and soon…”

Milly struggled for the words. How was she going to explain all of this when saying it out loud made her realize she’d gone so long without hearing his voice. In less than a week, she’d never hear it again at all.

Her chest ached. Which was stupid. She didn’t have time to be a baby about this. Each second she wasted gnawed away at what little she had remaining. Why did it feel like she was saying goodbye?

“Milly?” he asked, softly. “Are you okay?”

“…No,” Milly whimpered, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. She did her best to produce something coherent, but a dozen things all felt equally important.. “It’s just—no normal time, and—Sorry, I mean—It’ll be permanent. Milly-time, which—-Oh, that’s what I called the fast time, and—I’ll miss you, and—“

“Do you want some ice cream?” Her dad interrupted.

It was so out of the blue that Milly fell silent for a moment. Had he asked someone on the other side of the line? No, that was even dumber. It took a moment for her to recall that it had often been his solution when she was little and inconsolably upset. The last time had been over the passing of Trudy, the old mare she’d learned to ride on. Ice cream didn’t make it hurt any less, but the quiet moment where they ate together in the truck did help.

“I, uhm, y-yes?” She answered with a weak chuckle. It was a two-day drive to the old ice cream parlor. Even if she ran there during Milly-time, she’d probably strand herself in the desert. The idea was nice, though.

“Welp.” He slapped his knee. With the squeak of a door, the noise of the diner returned to the background, swiftly followed by the sound of another door with a bell, some heavy footsteps, and finally the slamming of a car door. “I’ll be there in five. Stay put.”

With that, the call ended.

Milly blinked. “What?”

----------------------------------------

Ten minutes later, Milly was no less befuddled as she sat across from her dad in a nearby ice cream parlor.

It really had only taken five minutes before she’d heard the familiar roar of her dad’s truck outside her dorm.

She busied herself with the Rocky Road before her. The chocolate ice cream, marshmallows, and nuts kind, not the future.

She figured out why her dad had been in strange places each time they spoke. He hadn’t been home. That much was obvious. It wasn’t even that strange when she considered there must have been lots of things he didn’t get to do while raising her; why wouldn’t he take the opportunity to take a break?

She just hadn’t expected him to be nearby enough to drive over, give her a much needed hug, and then bring her here to talk.

Milly brought a spoonful into her mouth while she looked across the table. Her dad, a ripped bear of a man, barely fit into the booth to begin with and his attempts to dig around the copious amounts of rainbow sprinkles on his sorbet to get to his prize just made it funnier.

He probably shouldn’t have chosen the Scoop-of-the-Day special without looking, but to be fair, he’d been preoccupied with her.

“So,” Milly reached over and excavated a layer of sprinkly whipped cream from him for herself, “were you just in the neighborhood or what?”

Dad gave a smile as his prize finally came into view and dug a spoon in. “Well, it ain’t like I was in any hurry. Figure I might as well see the big city sights. Did you know a lot of Bulwark Bay was built in the last fifteen years? It was mostly a reconstruction effort after the battle with Sea-More, who wrecked much of it in a bid to reclaim the land for the oceans. Got to see the statue by the docks.”

“Really? Nobody mentioned it.” Milly was reminded of how quickly the pizzeria reopened.

“Yep. Place wasn't even called Bulwark Bay at the time. They renamed it in honor of the hero who put a stop to it. The Bulwark obviously, not Bay.” He chuckled, but the smile soon dimmed. He poked at his sorbet. “…He gave his life. Folks barely recall who he was, but I’d bet his folks sure do.”

Milly quietly swallowed. She understood this wasn’t a random tangent. “Do you think The Bulwark should have let someone else take on Sea-More?”

“It ain’t ever wrong to stand for what’s right.” He sighed heavily. “But… When one has more power than most, they might feel responsible to do the right thing with it, even if it takes a toll on them. A selfless person is real quick to foot the bill for another, not realizing they may not be the only one paying.”

“That’s good advice.” Not that Milly felt it really applied here, but she understood the message. All he’d heard her say was that she had a potent power, so of course he’d try to tell her not to be reckless. “But, well… I think my problem might be in reverse, if that makes any sense? My power is taking that toll anyway, so I might as well do my best. I’ve got plenty of time to spare so I’m not giving up hobbies or homework or anything.”

“Mhm.” His brow furrowed while he pointed his spoon at her. “You mentioned something about lacking control. What’s going on exactly?”

Milly opened her mouth to answer but paused. She looked around the parlor. It was busy, and no one seemed to pay them any mind, but still. “I think we should talk somewhere else,” she said while turning to face him again.

To her surprise, he was smiling while leaning back in the booth. “Good girl. No blabbing in public. You had me worried for a spell. Now, hold on a second.”

Milly nodded and took another look around, looking for anywhere more private. “The car is probably the best spot, or… huh?”

To Milly’s surprise, Milly-time had begun. The sounds dimmed and people were frozen in place. Panicked, she checked her watch. The countdown hadn’t finished! She was even earlier?!

Then she noticed another strange thing. The clock display was not properly frozen. Normally, only the last digit of the milliseconds noticeably moved, but now the last two were moving.

“What time is it?” Her dad asked.

“Gah!” Milly nearly jumped out of her skin but found herself strangely restrained as though she was being held down. “How are you moving!?”

That drew a hearty chuckle from him. “I ain’t. Neither are you. Look.” He lifted his hand from the table, seemingly with some effort. Yet, his hand was also still on the table.

Milly noticed the lifted hand was slightly translucent, like a ghost. When she looked at her own, straining against the pressure, she noticed they too were ghostly. “Pa, what is going on? This has to be a power, right? If it’s not mine, it’s yours?”

“Yep. I’d have told ya, but you were so little… and talkative.” Relaxing his arm, it snapped back into place on the table like it was on an elastic band. He flashed an expectant grin.. “I call it the Holden Room… or Holding Room.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Milly groaned. “Of course you would.”

While Milly never thought of him as anything but ‘Pa’ or ‘Dad’, she was perfectly aware why he was giving her that stupid grin. His actual name was ‘Holden A. Second.’

A dad joke.

He’d named his power with a dad joke.

“I guess I know where I got my terrible naming sense from. That’s only slightly worse than Milly-time.” Milly sighed. As she relaxed, she also sprung back to her original position. Some quick experimenting proved the elastic pull was stronger the further she strayed from her ‘default’ state.

She still couldn’t believe he’d kept this from her all this time. At home, he made such a big deal out of always being honest. Given how easily he told her about it after she demonstrated a modicum of common sense, his goal obviously wasn’t about keeping it a secret from her, so who was he hiding it from?

“It ain’t much of a power, if I’m honest. In the Holden Room, a second counts for a minute. I can bring guests, but nothing you do here affects the real world. Like I said, we ain’t really moving.” Her dad, Holden, slapped the sorbet off the table only for it to immediately rubberband back into place like a laggy video game. “But, it’s good when I need a second or two to think. Or a heart to heart chat. Mind, we ain’t frozen either. Our bodies will try to move to match us just as we do, just at normal speeds.”

“Oh,” Milly let herself settle back down into the original position and noticed her hands were slightly off the table now. She pressed them back down. “I see. How long can you hold this for?”

Although she tried to act calm, internally she was jumping up and down at the possibilities! Maybe she could stretch out her breaks between Milly-time from an hour to weeks! She had to know more specifics!

“An hour tops. So, about a minute in the real world. To recharge, I lose time in the real world. I just zone out for a bit to do it. Comes in handy while waiting in line, I tell you what.”

“Oh…” Hopes dashed, Milly slumped back in the booth. Weeks were right out the window, but even at an hour that recharge condition made it impossible. “All this time, I thought you were just super patient. Did mom know?”

As soon as she asked, Milly regretted it. She could see her dad deflate at the mention of her mother even as he forced a smile.

They rarely talked about her. Mom left when Milly was barely old enough to remember her face. She still didn’t know why. Dad had assured her to the moon and back that it wasn’t Milly’s fault, but she was never sure.

After a moment to collect himself, Dad nodded. “Catarina, I mean, your mom and I met in the Holden Room. She never had much time to chat otherwise.”

The answer surprised Milly. He never elaborated on questions involving her mom when a simple yes or no would suffice. If he was being more open to help her, it was a good opportunity to learn what she could, but it was obviously still not easy for him to talk about.

Milly weighed her guilt for broaching the painful topic against her curiosity. She had a thousand questions, but she also didn’t want to torment him more than strictly necessary. Anything she asked would have to be worth it.

“Pa…” Milly winced as she could see him brace himself for whatever she was about to ask. It almost made Milly reconsider, but the way he’d mentioned her mom not having a lot of time either… “Was Mom a speedster too?”

“No.” Quick, decisive, and tense. He’d expected it to be something she was curious about. That wall was back up for a moment, but then he rubbed his eyes and repeated it, quieter. “No… she could launch objects.”

Milly just nodded.

As interesting as that was, Milly was more interested in steering the topic away. “Okay! Well, uh, since you told me about your power, I guess I should tell you about mine? That’s fair, right? Right.”

“I reckon so.”

For the next… however long really passed in the Holden Room, Milly explained her conundrum. Once she began, everything flowed together. The incredible speed, the heightened perception, the distorted feeling of time, her inability to stop it, the experiments with Niki.

“And now apparently I’m being dubbed Millisecond on the internet!” She left out the details of the fire.

“T-that’s, quite something, alright!” Her dad interjected when he managed to get a word in edgewise. “A week ain’t a lot of time to get this sorted, but I… Mhm. This might be a foolish question, but have you tried starting it early?”

Milly blinked. “Uhm, no? How would I even do that?”

It sounded absurd. Why would she try to start it when she was so glad to have a break? Still, what if that was the trick?

“I don’t rightly know,” her dad admitted. “We could think that over together. Associate it with a phrase maybe to make it easier.”

“Oh, like Stella does?” Milly hadn’t made the connection before. Using such common words as ‘Hi!’ and ‘Bye!’ felt like a bad idea, though.

“Who?”

“Ah, she’s one of the other powered kids in, uhm, an after-school club…” Milly lingered on the threshold of a lie for a moment before involuntary blurting out, “for heroes. I, uh, I’m trying it on a trial basis.”

Dad’s sigh was so deep that Milly could almost hear the fabric of his shirt stretch and cry for mercy. “Of course you would.”

Milly grinned sheepishly. Much like her dad had done. “Well, think about it. Safety in numbers, right? Besides, I’m in the investigation club, TRACE. We’re meeting up later to maybe figure out what happened at the police station. No danger involved.”

“Ahah…So, I reckon all this,” he motioned at her bandaids and scrapes, “is what passes for safe ‘round here, is it?”

Milly paled. She’d completely forgotten about them. Why hadn’t she taken that syringe of strange healing blood that Terra had brought for her. Although just thinking through that sentence instantly reminded her why.

“I, uhm, okay to be fair that happened before I joined up,” Milly meekly defended while she pulled her sleeves over her hands to try and cover up a bit more. Annoyingly, they kept slipping back just like everything else. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

He crossed his arms and gave her a stern look. “Because you weren’t trying to lie to me about it before. I’m not a fool, Milly. You think I don’t watch the news? I know they’re sending teenagers into burning buildings without a second thought. It’s anything but safe.”

“Sorry…” Milly faltered. Lying was one of the few things she knew he hated. The one rule. Even if she brought home a dead body, he’d probably help her bury it if she was honest about what happened. “I messed up, but they really did help me out of a bind. I think I could learn a lot from them to make sure I’ll be safer in the future.”

“Mhm.” He grumbled like a grizzly bear with a mouthful of peanut butter while he chewed the argument over. “...Fine. I’ve gotta have a chat with that principal of yours, but I’m glad you are making friends, at least. If they ever make you do anything dangerous, you call me, got it?”

“I will.” Milly was glad to have her dad back in her corner like this. “I doubt anything would be dangerous while my power is active, though. I guess that means that pretty soon I’ll be ‘safe’ permanently…”

Not the best ‘glass half full’ she’d ever attempted.

“Mhm.” Her dad tapped his fingers on the table as he thought it over. He took noticeably longer than he usually did to come up with an answer, which she now knew to be because he would enter the Holden Room to think it over more quickly. “Sounds like this ‘Milly-time’ of yours has some similarity to my power, but it’s on a whole other level if it lasts this long and lets you move around. Can you think of anything you might be using to fuel it? Have you been losing time? Eating a lot?”

“I don’t think so. It seems like I just keep getting more Milly-time at a set rate.” She angled the watch toward him. “Niki measured my active periods during the night and morning then did some math to figure out exactly how much it’ll shift each period. If it’s that predictable it can’t be something I’m doing.”

He stroked his beard, nodding along. “Welp, either it can be controlled or it can’t. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. For all we know your power really is like mine and you’ll run out of speed, eventually. Your stockpile might just be a lot bigger, same way yer power is a lot bigger. You’re gonna be fine, I’m sure of it.”

“Thanks, Pa.” Milly wasn’t so sure, and she knew he wasn’t either. “The best I’ve got so far is this other speedster, Calamity. Do you know anything about her? Miss Arkwright implied she’s a villain.”

“Calamity? Can’t say it rings any bells.” He shook his head. “Did you get any help from her?”

“Kind of.” Milly reached into her bag to pull out a book but it rubberbanded back. Her dad spotted the problem and a moment later the world regained its proper motion, letting Milly take the book out and lay it on the table. “It was in my room when I woke up, but neither Niki nor Terra knew where it came from.”

Dad picked the book up and paged through it. “Meditation and Mindfulness? Makes a certain kind of sense, I suppose. Never was much for that new-age malarkey, but any port in a storm will do. Can’t hurt to try… Huh, it’s annotated.”

“It is?” Milly leaned over as her dad spun the book back her way. She noticed the red pen marks, underlining some words and drawing arrows to pictures. It even had a short message in cursive.

Start here.

The technique on the page had to do with recognizing self-destructive spirals and some methods of ‘re-centering one's self’. It was just some self-help instructions for mental health, nothing really to do with understanding her power any better.

Milly felt nauseous. It did not strike her as a good omen that the first thing Calamity wanted her to learn was how to cope with a bad situation rather than anything about how to prevent it in the first place.

She really really hoped there was more to it than that. Like one of those old kung-fu movies where a student is tasked with sweeping the floor for months only to learn it somehow made them a master at the bo-staff.

…A girl could dream.

“Actually,” Milly stuffed the book back into her bag like she was stuffing it down Calamity’s throat. “I’ll have time to read later. There’s something else I want to try. Can we still go to ‘the room’?”

“Yep. This is a good time to demonstrate that thing about connecting the activation to a phrase. The words aren’t required, they’re just something you’ve conditioned yourself to invoke the right mindset.” He held up his spoon as though it were a magic wand and gave it a wave. “Hold on a second.”

As before, the room slowed to a snail’s pace. Not as slow as it was when she did it, but she had to really look to notice the difference. Most importantly, Milly did her best to remember the sensation of shifting in and out of the Holden Room. There was a chance she might be able to replicate it for Milly-time, or maybe recognize the feeling if she was looking out for it.

“Can we do this a few more times?” she asked.

He nodded.

The following stops and starts were no longer accompanied by the words, to avoid drawing attention by just repeating the same phrase over and over in the half full ice cream shop. He really was used to keeping his power hidden. Milly felt annoyed at herself for noticing something like that rather than anything immediately useful.

“How come we can talk, anyway? I’m not hearing the delayed echo I usually do when I talk in Milly-time.” She asked when another round began.

“That echo is a property of physics. That doesn’t really apply in the Holden Room. It’s more about…” He tapped his finger on the table, which did create a tapping noise. “I guess I could call it a mental representation of intention? We ain't moving, but our bodies try to catch up to where we are ‘cause that’s how we move, by intention. Sure, mechanically, there’s a whole lot more to it, but when you go for a stroll, you ain’t thinking about bending your knees, balancing your foot, and whatnot. You just intend to walk. Here, we just intend to talk.”

“It feels like I should be able to do something with that. I think my power also has a big ‘intention’ component to it, I wonder how Milly-time interacts with Holden Room…” she mused then checked her watch. For the first time, she felt a little disappointed that it wasn’t nearly Milly-time yet. It was time for something else, though. “I’ve got to get going, but I really liked getting to talk like this.”

The world returned to normal as her dad reached over and ruffled her hair. “Me too. Don’t you worry. We’ll get this sorted out. In the meantime, what say I give you a ride?”

Milly made a token effort to escape the ruffle, but she couldn’t help smiling. “That’d be great. You know the burned police station nearby?”

“I reckon I can just follow the smoke.” He chuckled and led the way out of the ice cream parlor.

Milly followed him. As she passed by a corner table, her attention was drawn to an eerily familiar sight. A woman and a young girl sat across from each other, each with their own ice cream, but neither of them looked thrilled. This was the kind of ice cream to soothe a hurt, like Milly and her dad did.

The girl’s ice cream was only halfway gone, but her attention was fully on a crayon drawing. It looked like a big cracked egg with a bunch of little stick figures with hammer heads for hands dancing on it.

It made Milly smile to think art was as good of a distraction for the girl as the ice cream. If she could be that absorbed into creating, maybe Milly should give that another go as well. The comic had been a fun project, but she really was thinking too small. There had to be so many sights her power could let her see that would make fantastic sketches.

Once she worked out the kinks in vertical wall-running, she could find the tallest building and sketch the entire city if she wanted.

“Milly, you coming?” Her dad asked, holding the door open.

“Yep!”