Brick City Baby – Part 4: “The Weight”
Joy didn’t black out when she rewound time—but something inside her always stayed behind.
The more she used it, the heavier it felt. Like dragging the past through molasses. Memories twisted. Smiles turned into screams. Time fought back now, quiet but cruel.
The last time she rewound more than a few minutes, she woke up in the hallway with blood in her nose and Lily screaming in the next room.
She swore she’d stop again.
But this city didn’t let her.
—
Lily had her routines—soundtracks that soothed her, colors that didn’t. She hated when her cereal touched the milk. She needed Joy to sing the same three songs at bedtime. Not close, not almost—the same.
But the days were getting harder.
Lily was stimming more—rocking, humming, covering her ears from sounds Joy couldn’t hear. Her therapist said her brain was sensitive to change. But what if that change was happening underneath time itself?
What if Joy’s powers were bending more than just seconds—what if they were bending Lily?
She couldn’t shake it. Every time she slowed the world, it felt like Lily knew. Like her eyes tracked something invisible. Like the air changed for her too.
—
One morning, Joy rewound a moment.
Just two minutes.
She’d dropped her coffee and cursed out loud—scared Lily. So she pulled the time back, caught the cup, and kept her cool.
But Lily still covered her ears. Still rocked. Still whispered, “Again. Again. Again.”
Joy’s stomach turned.
—
She started writing things down. Every time she used her gift, no matter how small. Tracked Lily’s reactions. Her sleep. Her silence.
Patterns started to form.
And so did guilt.
—
That night, Joy stared at the ceiling. Clock frozen at 3:17. Lily asleep beside her, one hand fisted in her mother’s shirt like a tether.
Joy whispered to the dark:
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
And the dark whispered nothing back.
The call came just past midnight.
Teen girl gone missing. Fifteen. Last seen outside the corner store on 138th. Mama pacing the project courtyard in slippers, no jacket, fear thick in her throat.
“Her name’s Kiya,” the woman said. “She ain’t never just not come home.”
Joy didn’t ask for payment.
She just grabbed her coat.
—
By sunrise, she had a name.
Somebody saw Cowboy’s crew posted up by the liquor store around the time Kiya vanished. Word was, they were recruiting—aggressively. Joy didn’t need a map to know where girls like Kiya ended up.
And she didn’t need a badge to care.
But time… time could help her undo.
—
Lily was quiet that morning. Quieter than usual.
She wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t look Joy in the eye. Just sat on the couch, tapping the same spot on her thigh like a metronome. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Joy bent down. Brushed her daughter’s curls from her face.
“You okay, baby?”
Lily didn’t answer.
Just whispered: “Don’t go.”
—
Joy told herself she’d just look. Just ask around. Just gather enough to pass to someone else. No rewinds. No freezes. Just regular time, ticking forward.
But then she found Kiya’s bracelet in an alley—broken, blood at the clasp.
And time cracked open.
—
It didn’t feel like power anymore.
Slipping through seconds, Joy’s head rang like a bell. Her nose bled instantly. Her breath came shallow. But she found him—Cowboy’s lookout, leaning against the wall an hour before the girl went missing.
She watched his face. Memorized every twitch.
Then she let time snap forward again—and almost collapsed from the pain.
—
Back at the apartment, Lily was screaming.
Fists tight. Rocking violently. Sound looping from her lips: “No no no no no no no—”
Joy held her, heart breaking, the cost of power carved into her daughter’s voice.
This was no longer just a gift.
It was a curse.
And the city would make her use it again.
Brick City Baby – Part 4 (cont.): “The Weight”
Cowboy wasn’t just some corner thug. He moved like mist—everywhere and nowhere.
By the time Joy traced the bracelet back to one of his stash spots, the place was empty. No Kiya. No crew. Just a fresh cigar still burning in a coffee can by the fire escape.
And a note, folded clean on the windowsill.
“You’re burning daylight, Clockwork.”
Signed with a spade drawn in ink. No name. No threat. Just a reminder: he was watching.
—
Joy didn’t panic.
She planned.
Maps of the block. Patterns of movement. Names whispered in laundromats, in back alleys, at the bodega counter when no one else was listening. She wrote it all down, piece by piece, like building a time bomb backwards.
She didn’t have a team. Didn’t have tech. Just a beat-up burner phone, a notepad, and a city full of ghosts.
And a child who needed her home by dinner.
—
Lily was still quiet. Still unsettled. Her therapist called it a spike. Joy just called it too much.
She adjusted their routines. Calmed her with soft lights. Repeated bedtime stories until her voice cracked.
But every time she even thought about rewinding again, Lily seemed to flinch—like her soul could feel the time stretching.
So Joy stayed present. Sharp. Grounded.
Until she found the warehouse.
—
It was on the edge of the district—half-condemned, graffiti swallowing its brick face, but trucks came and went after dark.
And Cowboy?
He was there.
Leaning on the hood of a Cadillac. Laughing with two of his boys. Dressed like Sunday service and smelling like trouble.
Joy watched from the rooftop across the street, hands trembling just enough to make her grip the ledge.
She could see the door. One guard. One light. One shot.
She could do this.
She had to.
But time was already unraveling. And she could feel it in her bones.
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