The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind (The Frost Files)

by Jackson Ford

  I try very hard to spit in his face. All that happens is that I start drooling. Burr leans down, takes the edge of the sheet, and wipes the saliva away. He’s surprisingly, horrifyingly gentle.

  “They say there was someone like you walking around up in Burbank. Same powers and everything. Maybe there was. Maybe you really didn’t kill those folks. But we searched everywhere once it was safe, and we didn’t find a damn thing.” He taps me on the nose, very gently. “Sorry, darling. This one is on you.”

  The plane begins to move. A pushback tug, taking us out onto the runway. Burr pats my cheek, then stands up and walks away.

  He didn’t get all the saliva on my cheek. It’s dried to a crust, and it’s starting to itch. Maddening, constant. And no matter how hard I try, I can’t move my head.

  Another soldier walks past me, glances down in silent contempt. Someone—the voice sounds like Burr’s grey-bearded captain—tells everyone to strap in. The command isn’t urgent. It’s bored and routine. Mission accomplished, after all.

  Suddenly it seems very important to scratch the itch on my cheek. If I can just do that, then everything will be all right.

  I’m so intent on doing it, so focused on just trying to get my stupid head to move a stupid two inches, that I don’t realise how stupid I’m being until the plane’s engines power up. That’s when my fuzz-addled brain finally wakes up. Forget the itch—if I don’t do something drastic right now, I am well and truly screwed.

  The pitch of the engines rises to a howl. The lights above me go dark for a second, then flick back on. The plane’s body shakes as it rumbles down the runway, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t move. My PK is toast.

  Come on. Come on, you motherfucker. Come on!

  Zip. Nada. Nothing.

  Tears blur my vision. A hitching half-sob squirms its way out of my chest. Hell no. I did not go through all this just to get shipped off to a government lab without even a squeak of protest. If I can’t find a clever way out of this, then I’ll find a dumb one. I’ll throw something, smash a window, bust a hole in the plane wall. Crash it, I don’t care.

  But wishing for something doesn’t make it true. And the girl who can move shit with her mind is just a girl now. They’ll keep me this way until they cut me open: a mute, trembling body that can’t fight back.

  The plane banks, the engines roaring as they take the strain. Whatever I’ve been dosed with lets me breathe, but the sobs are coming thick and fast now, my lungs burning as they too take the strain. My throat is torched, black and ruined.

  Wait. Wait, wait, wait. I’ve got something. The barest thread of feedback: a piece of metal, part of the gurney. Down by my right hand. I can just, just make out its shape with my PK. The relief that washes over me is exquisite. I concentrate as hard as I can, willing my energy to go just a little bit further…

  And instead it drains away. Like it was never there in the first place.

  I picture my friends. Nic. Annie. Paul. Reggie. As clearly and completely as I can. Nic’s smile, the smell of his skin. Annie’s eyes as she talked about her mom. Paul, standing on the edge of the pool in Sawtelle, holding his phone and wondering what he was going to tell his son—not our logistics guy then, just a dad who didn’t want to let his kid down. Reggie, refusing to quit, with no chair and no one to help her, faking a seizure so she could buy us some time.

  China Shop. Fucking China Shop.

  My people.

  It takes a few moments for me to realise that the plane is still banking. That doesn’t make sense. It’s like we’re turning in a full circle. And there are other noises too, like the sound of footsteps thundering through the plane. A low, annoyed groan. Greybeard demanding to know what the hell is going on.

  And then Burr appears. He grabs me by the chin, twists my head to face him.

  “What did you do, freak show?” he says. Saliva showers me, dots my skin. “Who did you talk to?”

  My eyes are still full of tears, and they double his face, turning him into a nightmare. What the hell is he talking about? Talk to anybody? I believe my last words before the taser and the drugs were You have got to be fucking kidding me.

  My ears pop. We’re descending. That can’t be right. We only just left LAX.

  Burr’s grip on my chin is agony. “Captain,” he barks over his shoulder, “there’s gotta be a mistake.”

  Without waiting for a response, he bends in close. His breath stinks. “You tell me right fucking now what you did. You hear me?”

  Grinning, I stick a raised middle finger right in his face.

  Well, actually, I don’t. The drugs won’t let me. But I picture myself doing it very clearly, and while I might not have the gift of telepathy, it’s clear from the look of furious disgust on his face that he knows I’m doing it. We’re going back to LA. We’re turning round. I don’t know why, but we are.

  For now, that’s enough.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Teagan

  A few months after I started working for China Shop, I found a way onto the roof of the building.

  It’s not easy to get there, or at least not easy when you’re short. To do it, you have to climb onto the big plastic trash cans at the side of the building, trying like hell to keep your balance. Then you have to use that perch to scramble up onto where the roof is slightly lower. It takes a lot of swearing and feet scrabbling at the wall, but you can do it. And it’s like that part on Mount Everest. Once you’re over the second-to-last bit, it’s just a short walk to the summit. Which, in this case, happens to be the peak of the house’s pitched roof.

  I don’t come up too often. But on a day like today, when the Cali weather seems even more perfect than normal and I can see all the way to the ocean, it feels perfect.

  I sit just below the apex of the roof, sunnies on. Soaking in the light. It helps, but only a little. There’s a lot I still have to figure out, and it’s going to take a while, no matter how bright the sun shines.

  So, yeah. Didn’t end up on the dissection table at a government black site. And the only reason it didn’t happen was because of Nic.

  Beautiful, brilliant, amazing Nic.

  He did what I said, even though it must have killed him. He took Javier Salinas and drove like hell until he found the emergency services. Then the idiot tried to turn round so he could come get me—or at least help me fight Jake in some unspecified way.

  Of course, they wouldn’t let him. By then, Burbank, Glendale and even some parts of North Hollywood were on fire. He didn’t have any choice but to wait, so he stayed with Salinas while they took him to the nearest hospital, Saint Joseph’s. And a while later, guess who gets brought in? None other than Sandy and Kelly Salinas—exhausted, suffering from smoke inhalation but otherwise OK. When they were reunited with Javier, Nic was right there.

  The first thing he does is ask them if they saw me. And they—and Javier, who by now is sort-of-mostly awake—start talking about Jake.

  Which is when Nic realised that what he had were three witnesses.

  He didn’t have any sort of agency contacts, obviously, but that didn’t stop him. He borrowed a phone from someone and called the China Shop offices. How did he get the number? Because we have a website. We have a goddamn website. The one Paul set up to present China Shop as a legitimate moving business, and which I will never give him shit for doing, ever again. It’s the greatest website of all time. Between that and his stunt with Annie and MS-13, Paul deserves a Nobel peace prize. They should carve his name on the moon.

  Nic suspected that Tanner might be listening, and he called and called and called, filling up the mailbox. For the first time in history, something good came out of the government tapping a phone line.

  Most of the blaze had been pushed back by then, thanks to LA’s airborne firefighting division. Once they knew where to look, Tanner’s people found the remains of Jake’s body, still under the truck. Most of it was burned to ash, along with the house, but there was still a little left.

&
nbsp; It was that they eventually took away on the C-17, spiriting it away to whatever black site they wanted to lock me inside.

  They still haven’t told me who or what he was, and I can’t stop thinking about how I killed him. I didn’t have a choice, not really, but it still hurts. It’s going to hurt for a long time.

  That, and the fact that they didn’t find Carlos where I left him.

  He was gone.

  I don’t know how he managed to get himself off the rebar he was impaled on. I don’t even want to think about the effort it must have taken or how much pain he must have been in. He should have died: from shock, from smoke inhalation, from blood loss. Somehow he didn’t. And they never found his body. It’s possible it got burned up too, the ash blown away or crushed by a piece of debris.

  Possible. Now there’s a fun word.

  It took a long time to sort everything out. They kept us at LAX—turns out the government has a whole building of their own there. One with a fully equipped hospital. I was still dosed, but they got me on oxygen and gave me some drugs for my throat.

  I don’t remember much, although I do remember Burr. Staring down at me in my hospital bed, the sick grin still on his face. I couldn’t respond, could barely even blink, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “You got lucky,” he said. “But just so you know, we’re going to be watching you. You fuck up again, you do anything you’re not supposed to, and I’ll make sure that I’m the one who gets to bring you in.” He lifted his hand, swathed in bandages, and waggled the fingers that were still working. “Be seeing you, freak show.”

  I was drifting off by then. When I came back, he was gone.

  We were at the LAX facility for at least two weeks. All that time Tanner was busy. I’m guessing that the conversations about what to do with me and the team probably took up a lot of her schedule that week. But in the end I guess she decided that we were worth keeping around.

  And yes, I find it completely fucked and deeply annoying that the fate of my entire life still depended on Tanner and whoever her bosses might be coming to a consensus. That hasn’t changed, even after everything that happened.

  But once they did decide to keep me, Tanner got busy. I’m still not entirely sure how she dealt with the cops—my guess is she pulled some major strings with the commissioner’s office here in LA, got the few actual witnesses not to speak out. The DA’s office would have been trickier, but she pulled it off.

  I was the last one they let out. Last night they finally brought me out of my drugged-up haze. Realising I’d lost two weeks was… not a fun moment. Reggie, Annie and Paul had already been released, so I didn’t even have anyone to talk to—nobody except a very nervous doctor, who handled me like I was radioactive.

  They drove me back here this morning. The driver ignored me when I asked him to take me home. He dropped me off at the entrance to Brooks Court and just drove away. The burn on my leg is still healing, and the itch was coming and going in nasty, prickling waves.

  They’d found me a pair of jeans. Sneakers a little too big. An LAX employee polo shirt, the collar stiff and uncomfortable. Clean bra and panties, both also slightly too big. I walked up Brooks Court still not a-hundred-per-cent sure I wasn’t dreaming this. As I got close, I saw the same poster on the wall opposite the Boutique: the orange and green monstrosity still advertising a club night from three months ago. Same graffiti on the power box, same garbage cans. None of it had changed at all.

  The Batmobile was there—my black Jeep. Someone had retrieved him from Skid Row, parked him outside the house. I had an urge to run up to the car and wrap my arms around him, like he was a damn dog that had found his way home. I settled for resting my hand on the side, just for a second.

  They were all inside the Boutique. I hugged Reggie. Shook Paul’s hand. Nodded at Annie, who flashed me a wan smile. I thought they’d be surprised to see me, but of course Tanner had told them I was coming. Paul even had the coffee on. There was something awkward about it all, and it wasn’t hard to see why. Carlos, and what he’d done, hung over the place like a bad smell.

  It didn’t help that Paul had started talking about him almost immediately, saying they were still doing some digging, still uncovering key facts, but he never would have believed that son of a bitch would have done it, it was unconscionable. That was when I said I needed a minute and headed up to the roof.

  I can’t go forward until I’ve drawn a line under the previous two weeks. I have no idea how to do that, but it starts with just taking a breath.

  And sitting on the roof in the blazing Cali sunshine is a mighty fine place to do just that.

  I’m not OK with what happened. Any of it. I keep trying to figure out if I could have done anything differently. If I could have saved Jake, or Carlos, or stopped all this from happening in the first place.

  I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’m finding it hard to focus, and it has nothing to do with any after-effects from the drugs.

  What a fucking mess.

  “Yo.”

  I didn’t even hear Annie come up. I’m about to tell her to give me some space, but there’s no energy behind the thought.

  “Thought you were afraid of heights,” I say.

  She side-eyes me. “Bitch, please. Only someone short as you would call this high up.”

  For a minute the two of us sit in silence, saying nothing, gazing out at the ocean in the distance. From somewhere below us, Paul’s voice drifts up as he talks to Reggie. A snatch of music reaches my ears—a car, driving past on 7th, bumping Kendrick Lamar. “Mortal Man.” Definitely, with that bassline.

  “You and Paul, huh?” My voice still sounds like Scarlett Johansson shaking off the worst cold in history.

  “Yeah, well.” Annie tilts her head up to the sun, eyes closed.

  “Didn’t exactly strike me as your type.”

  “Like you know my type, Frost.” But there’s a very slight smile on her face. “Nah, he’s… I mean, I know he’s a pain in the ass sometimes, but…”

  “Sometimes?”

  “Well. I told him we gotta work on that. But honestly, he’s a good guy. Better than most. A lot of dudes will construct this… like, idea of what they think you want. Paul is straight down the line. And one on one, he’s kind of a sweetheart.”

  “You kept it under wraps. I’ll give you that much.”

  “I know. I was planning on telling you guys everything after we figured out your shit. That, and the whole deal with them MS-13 boys. What you said about… you know, with the whole cheese sandwich, and Nic. You were right about something for once.”

  “So why not tell us then?”

  She shrugs. “Me and Paul and MS-13… it didn’t feel relevant then. You know what I mean? I thought it would complicate things too much. Although I swear to God I was gonna come clean about all of it when things settled down a little.” A guilty look crosses her face. “My bad. I didn’t expect them to just pop up like that, get all up in our shit.”

  “It’s OK. Hey, is your… like, your mom, is she…”

  “We’ll be fine for a while. They gave me half up front, so that’ll cover some of the treatment.”

  Some. But for how long? “You could always ask Tanner. She—”

  “Thought you might wanna know about Carlos,” she says.

  The abrupt change of subject knocks me sideways a little. “Sure. I mean, if you—”

  “You ever hear of a place called El Agujero?”

  Carlos, impaled. Blood slicking his hands. Look up El Agujero. Look up microfibres in the water. They deserved what was coming to them.

  “Little town near Puerto Vallarta, in Jalisco. Beautiful beaches, good tequila. Also a massive factory that made synthetic fabrics for clothes. Carlos—only he wasn’t called Carlos, by the way, name was Angel Campos—he ever tell you he had a brother?”

  I’m having a hell of time trying to keep up with her. “No. Never.”

  “Well, he did. Rigoberto. Floor boss at this facto
ry. And Rigoberto, he finds out that the clothes they’re making got a problem. Sounds small, but like Mo-Mo said, it’s some genuinely scary shit.”

  “When did you dig this up? How?”

  “You think we been sitting on our asses while you been gone? Just listen. See, the problem was that this fabric, whenever it got turned into clothing and washed, would shoot these synthetic microfibres into the water supply. Billions of them. And that wasn’t even talking about the shit this factory was dumping direct into the ocean. This stuff, Teagan…” She shakes her head. “It’s making its way into the food chain, killing sea life across the whole planet. It’s this massive thing, and nobody even knows about it. Or if they do, they don’t care.”

  “Carlos cared.” Even the feel of his name in my mouth sounds wrong.

  “Be nice if he was that noble. But he only cared because of what happened after. He and Rigoberto got the workers organised. God knows how the fuck he pulled that off—these people didn’t have a lot, and they needed their jobs. But they did it. Started striking, protesting, the whole nine. Until the cops came along.

  “Mexican cops don’t play. They never report that shit on the news here, maybe not even over there, but it was a massacre. Fifty people dead, including Rigoberto Campos.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. Thing is, cops in that part of the world don’t do shit ’less they get paid for it. And as it turns out, the chief in El Agujero received one motherfucker of a wire transfer, just before. Reggie traced it back.”

  “To Ultra.” It’s all starting to fall into place.

  “Bingo. They were the factory’s biggest client, and they couldn’t afford for any of this to get out. Steven Chase probably didn’t think the massacre would happen, but he must have had some idea of what he was buying.”

  “What about Hayden and Salinas? I thought Hayden worked for an ocean charity? Wouldn’t he have wanted to stop this?”