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

by Jackson Ford

  This isn’t fair. After everything I went through, after all the fires and the explosions and death and nearly being flown off to a black site, I thought it would be different. I thought he’d want me as much as I wanted him.

  “Listen to me.” I force my voice to stay steady. I’m not letting this happen—not after I nearly died. “Why don’t we just… try? It doesn’t have to be perfect. I don’t care if it isn’t, as long as it’s you.”

  There’s a moment where I think he’s going to relent. That he’ll take me in his arms and we’ll pick up where we left off, and everything will be fine.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  He leans forward, plants a soft kiss on my cheek.

  Then he’s gone.

  I sit on the couch. Staring at nothing. After the longest time I realise that my face is wet. I don’t know when I started crying—maybe it even happened while I was speaking to Nic. This time I let the tears come, let the past two weeks, two years, two decades just pour out of me. Tears fall into my lap, the sunlight turning them to glittering jewels.

  I want to throw something. Everything. Just smash and smash and smash until this entire apartment and city and the whole fucking world is dust.

  I don’t.

  After what feels like a century, the tears finally stop. I lie down on the couch, arms wrapped around a cushion. When I wake up, the sunlight has got longer, softer, climbing up the kitchen wall.

  Nic’s words are still in my mind. His words, his face. I don’t love you. But this time the anger doesn’t come. It’s drained out of me.

  I don’t hate Nic. I want to, for what he did—for how he turned me down. I hate what he said, hate it with every atom of my being…

  But that doesn’t stop it being true.

  I could fight it. I could cry, beg, scream, tell him he’s being an asshole. But he’s not. And doing any of that… treating him like that… would be the worst thing of all.

  I’m allowed to live my life. Just like he’s allowed to live his. I can’t force him to feel something he doesn’t. And if we had slept together, it wouldn’t have changed the way he felt. In a way that might have been worse; seeing what we could have been and then having him turn away.

  His hand on my back, his lips, his skin touching mine…

  I’ve never felt so alone. Carlos betrayed me. Nic left me. There’s no one else.

  Except… that’s not true, is it?

  There’s Annie.

  And Reggie. And Paul.

  China Shop.

  I never thought of them as friends. They were people who’d been forced to work with me, all of us conscripted in a war against Tanner’s shadow enemy. But that’s changed. They’ve got my back. I’ve got theirs.

  And I have more than that. I have music, and food. I have the Batmobile. I have Los Angeles, an entire city to explore, a place that still hasn’t given up its secrets.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do about Nic leaving. He can’t cut me out of his life completely—if he wanted to, he would have said so. I’ll find a way to convince him that we can be together. He needs space and time—maybe I do too. I don’t know how I’m going to make him fall in love with me, but I’ll figure it out. And there are plenty of things to do in the meantime. Like take out bad guys. Fuck with those who deserve to be fucked with.

  As jobs go, it’s pretty good.

  But that’s for later. The evening stretches ahead of me. A baking summer night in Los Angeles, with nothing to do and nowhere to be.

  First I’m going to clean my place. Get some of the dust off. I’ll put a record on—something calming, De La Soul maybe. No, some soul. Aretha. Isaac. Earth, Wind & Fire. Then I’ll make breakfast—yes, you can have breakfast at 5 p.m. Or at least I can. I’ll have to check my food situation—I’m pretty sure whatever is in my fridge has spoiled, but I might get lucky. And if not, it’ll give me an excuse to run down to the Brooklyn Deli on Crenshaw, get a smoothie and a pastrami sandwich…

  I stand. My feet are unsteady, so unsteady that I almost sit right back down. Almost. I take a deep breath, then another.

  I’ll be fine. After all, I have superpowers. I survived a fall from the top of a skyscraper with no parachute. I can sure as hell survive this.

  As long as I have some breakfast inside me.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Harry

  The man known as Harry watches Nic Delacourt leave the house of the woman who calls herself Teagan Frost.

  When she’d crashed into him as he rattled past her house at four in the morning, he’d thought for a horrible moment that she was going to see who he really was. She didn’t. And even though she was gone for a couple of weeks, she’s returned to the little house on Roxton Avenue, like he knew she would.

  The only person in this entire city who doesn’t look through him, who acknowledges him… and it has to be her.

  He’d been worried, early on, that someone would try to have him moved—arrested, taken to a shelter, Lord knows what else. But he smiles at everyone, doesn’t leave a trail of litter behind him and sometimes helps out by watering the jacarandas with an old paint pot he takes to a nearby public tap.

  He’s had to be so careful. He’s taken great pains to hide his face, growing the massive beard, letting his fringe hang down, always dropping his head. He changed how he walked, made sure never to speak, never looked her in the eye. He’s older. His body and face have filled out. Nobody minds him. And it certainly helps that he can come and go at odd hours, that nobody ever questions the sound of his tinkling, clattering shopping cart at three in the morning.

  After all, he doesn’t need to sleep.

  He pushes his cart down Roxton, shredded shoes smacking against the tarmac. One of them has almost disintegrated, the upper held in place by a dirty flap of duct tape. He hates it, wishes he could buy new shoes—a pair of boots, thick and strong and warm. He has plenty of money, hidden in greasy rolls in the innermost bottles in his cart. But he can’t. He is a homeless man now, that is what he is and what he does, and She wouldn’t let him anyway. There’s no point even asking.

  And he has to do what She says, even if his feet hurt, and his skin burns, and the scars on his back from the fire itch and itch and itch.

  At the corner of Roxton and Dublin there’s a school—one which the students and teachers have long since abandoned for the summer. Its brick facade bakes in the afternoon sun, the windows dusty. The man known as Harry wrestles his cart up the quiet walkway until he’s out of sight of the street, in the shade of a stone archway leading to the school’s inner courtyard. Once he’s there he digs deep inside his cart, fingers pushing through familiar territory, and pulls out a cellphone.

  It’s a special phone. A black slab, sleek and strong. It has only one number stored in it. He turns it on, waits for it to boot up, taps the lone icon in the middle of the screen.

  She answers on the second ring. “Adam.”

  “She’s back,” he says. It’s all he dares to say.

  “And does she know?”

  He must be very careful. Very, very careful. He must be sure. He thinks back to everything he’s observed, all the information he’s gathered. He cannot get this wrong, or She will be very, very angry.

  “Adam,” Chloe says, impatient.

  He finds himself glancing back in the direction of the house. The house he’s watched for over a year now.

  “No,” he hears himself say. “She doesn’t know.”

  The story continues in…

  RANDOM SH*T FLYING THROUGH THE AIR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Hey. Teagan here.

  Jackson Ford has a bunch of people to thank, and given that he’s never going to get around to writing this himself, I figured I’d do it. Let’s be honest, it’s not like he’s much of a writer anyway. Did you see what he did to me back here?

  Besides, I figure these things are like the long-ass credit lists in album liner notes. Nobody reads those things. Nobody has ever read those t
hings. So if I fuck it up, nobody will know.

  Here goes.

  The first draft of this book was a disaster. Anna Jackson helped knock it into shape, with an assist from James Long and Bradley Englert. Without them, I never get a story. Also, they did things like remove the shotgun-toting unicorn that Jackson inserted here, when he couldn’t figure out how to have us escape the cops. I mean, I like unicorns, but you can’t just drop them in when you need an escape for your heroes. You know what I mean?

  Also, big up to Ed Wilson, Jackson’s agent, who keeps J in vanilla ice cream and Celine Dion albums. Jackson once told me this story about Ed—he has a nifty pair of pants with a pattern of little dogs on them. He wears them out at publishing events, apparently.

  (Wait a second. Ed’s English, and in the UK, “pants” are actually underwear, not trousers. Did I just accuse Jackson’s literary agent of having dog-patterned underwear? Fuck it, I’m running with it. Ed, you and your dog underwear are amazing.)

  All of Jackson’s hilarious spelling mistakes and continuity errors were corrected by Hugh Davis, who did a really good job. Mostly. Because… OK, look, dude, seriously, correcting the word “dumpster” to “skip” so it “doesn’t confuse British audiences” is ridiculous. Like I give a shit! (I kid—thanks, man.)

  Emily Courdelle and Steve Panton nailed the cover—I mean, look at it. Frame it. Put it on a billboard (no, seriously, put it on a billboard, somebody, we need the sales).

  This book was published by Orbit, and some pretty rad human beings work there. Way more talented than Jackson. Tim Holman, Joanna Kramer, Madeleine Hall and the tireless Ellen Wright all deserve special mention. Nazia Khatun deserves special special mention, because if I don’t give it to her she’ll kill both me and Jackson. She’s vicious, people.

  In the process of writing this book, Jackson consulted a couple of accomplished geneticists: Prof. Marcia MacDonald, and Prof. Simon Warby. They gave him great information, and he proceeded to fuck it up beyond all recognition. He assures me that it was on purpose, for the story, but I just think he’s an idiot. Anyway, Marcia and Simon were a huge help, and none of the many, many errors in this book are their fault.

  The incredible Alisha Grauso fact-checked Jackson’s Los Angeles. She knows way more than he does. I’m not even sure Jackson could find LA on a map.

  Perry Lo helped out with information on fibre networks and IT systems. He also made the mistake of teaching Jackson to play mahjong, with the result that J spent all of his book advance money in a gambling hall somewhere. Perry’s a great teacher but J’s a shitty student.

  And big up to Nicole Simpson, George Kelly, Chris Ellis, Dane Taylor, Rayne Taylor, Ida Horwitz, Ryan Beyer, Werner Schutz, Taryn Arentsen Schutz and Kristine Kalnina. They read the early drafts, and gave some great feedback. Jackson ignored most of it, because of course he did.

  Pretty sure I forgot some people. Whatever. I’m not even getting paid for this. I’m out.

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  extras

  meet the author

  Jackson Ford has written sixteen bestselling novels, all of which have been translated into multiple languages. Apparently this made him think he could write a book about Los Angeles, despite the fact that he has never been there, and had to rely on other people to fill in the gaps. Then again, what did you expect from a guy who thinks Celine Dion actually made good music, and genuinely enjoys plain vanilla ice cream? He is the creator of the Frost Files, and the character of Teagan Frost—who, by the way, absolutely did not write this bio, and anybody who says she did is a liar.

  Find out more about Jackson Ford and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.

  If you enjoyed

  THE GIRL WHO COULD MOVE SH*T WITH HER MIND

  look out for

  VELOCITY WEAPON

  The Protectorate: Book One

  by

  Megan E. O’Keefe

  Dazzling space battles, intergalactic politics, and rogue AI collide in Velocity Weapon, the first book in this epic space opera by award-winning author Megan O’Keefe.

  Sanda and Biran Greeve were siblings destined for greatness. A high-flying sergeant, Sanda has the skills to take down any enemy combatant. Biran is a savvy politician who aims to use his new political position to prevent conflict from escalating to total destruction.

  However, on a routine maneuver, Sanda loses consciousness when her gunship is blown out of the sky. Instead of finding herself in friendly hands, she awakens 230 years later on a deserted enemy warship controlled by an AI who calls himself Bero. The war is lost. The star system is dead. Ada Prime and its rival Icarion have wiped each other from the universe.

  Now, separated by time and space, Sanda and Biran must fight to put things right.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE AFTERMATH OF THE BATTLE OF DRALEE

  The first thing Sanda did after being resuscitated was vomit all over herself. The second thing she did was to vomit all over again. Her body shook, trembling with the remembered deceleration of her gunship breaking apart around her, stomach roiling as the preservation foam had encased her, shoved itself down her throat and nose and any other ready orifice. Her teeth jarred together, her fingers fumbled with temporary palsy against the foam stuck to her face.

  Dios, she hoped the shaking was temporary. They told you this kind of thing happened in training, that the trembling would subside and the “explosive evacuation” cease. But it was a whole hell of a lot different to be shaking yourself senseless while emptying every drop of liquid from your body than to be looking at a cartoonish diagram with friendly letters claiming Mild Gastrointestinal Discomfort.

  It wasn’t foam covering her. She scrubbed, mind numb from coldsleep, struggling to figure out what encased her. It was slimy and goopy and—oh no. Sanda cracked a hesitant eyelid and peeked at her fingers. Thick, clear jelly with a slight bluish tinge coated her hands. The stuff was cold, making her trembling worse, and with a sinking gut she realized what it was. She’d joked about the stuff, in training with her fellow gunshippers. Snail snot. Gelatinous splooge. But its real name was MedAssist Incubatory NutriBath, and you only got dunked in it if you needed intensive care with a capital I.

  “Fuck,” she tried to say, but her throat rasped on unfamiliar air. How long had she been in here? Sanda opened both eyes, ignoring the cold gel running into them. She lay in a white enameled cocoon, the lid removed to reveal a matching white ceiling inset with true-white bulbs. The brightness made her blink.

  The NutriBath was draining, and now that her chest was exposed to air, the shaking redoubled. Gritting her teeth against the spasms, she felt around the cocoon, searching for a handhold.

  “Hey, medis,” she called, then hacked up a lump of gel. “Got a live one in here!”

  No response. Assholes were probably waiting to see if she could get out under her own power. Could she? She didn’t remember being injured in the battle. But the medis didn’t stick you in a bath for a laugh. She gave up her search for handholds and fumbled trembling hands over her body, seeking scars. The baths were good, but they wouldn’t have left a gunnery sergeant like her in the tub long enough to fix cosmetic damage. The gunk was only slightly less expensive than training a new gunner.

  Her face felt whole, chest and shoulders smaller than she remembered but otherwise unharmed. She tried to crane her neck to see down her body, but the unused muscles screamed in protest.

  “Can I get some help over here?” she called out, voice firmer now she’d cleared it of the gel. Still no answer. Sucking down a few sharp breaths to steel herself against the ache, she groaned and lifted her torso up on her elbows until she sat straight, legs splayed out before her.

  Most of her legs, anyway.

  Sanda stared, trying to make her coldsleep-dragging brain catch up with wh
at she saw. Her left leg was whole, if covered in disturbing wrinkles, but her right… That ended just above the place where her knee should have been. Tentatively, she reached down, brushed her shaking fingers over the thick lump of flesh at the end of her leg.

  She remembered. A coil fired by an Icarion railgun had smashed through the pilot’s deck, slamming a nav panel straight into her legs. The evac pod chair she’d been strapped into had immediately deployed preserving foam—encasing her, and her smashed leg, for Ada Prime scoopers to pluck out of space after the chaos of the Battle of Dralee faded. She picked at her puckered skin, stunned. Remembered pain vibrated through her body and she clenched her jaw. Some of that cold she’d felt upon awakening must have been leftover shock from the injury, her body frozen in a moment of panic.

  Any second now, she expected the pain of the incident to mount, to catch up with her and punish her for putting it off so long. It didn’t. The NutriBath had done a better job than she’d thought possible. Only mild tremors shook her.

  “Hey,” she said, no longer caring that her voice cracked. She gripped either side of her open cocoon. “Can I get some fucking help?”

  Silence answered. Choking down a stream of expletives that would have gotten her court-martialed, Sanda scraped some of the gunk on her hands off on the edges of the cocoon’s walls and adjusted her grip. Screaming with the effort, she heaved herself to standing within the bath, balancing precariously on her single leg, arms trembling under her weight.

  The medibay was empty.

  “Seriously?” she asked the empty room.

  The rest of the medibay was just as stark white as her cocoon and the ceiling, its walls pocked with panels blinking all sorts of readouts she didn’t understand the half of. Everything in the bay was stowed, the drawers latched shut, the gurneys folded down and strapped to the walls. It looked ready for storage, except for her cocoon sitting in the center of the room, dripping NutriBath and vomit all over the floor.