by Jackson Ford
“Mmm,” he says. When Annie snaps a look at him, he says, “You know, it is actually not a bad idea.”
“Are you serious?”
“We take the drugs.” I walk around the table, tapping my palm a finger. “We get out, and then we call the cops. Maybe they come, maybe they don’t, but either way we do some damage. Boom. Done. Chalk one up for the good guys. And let’s face it – we’re still no closer to finding out where those guns came from. Why not walk away with a win?”
Africa claps me on the shoulder, the sound loud in the low-ceilinged space. “You think smart, huh? Big brain inside that small body.”
I slap his hand away, but without much anger. I’ll let the condescending comment go, this once. The job’s been hairy, but it’s turning out OK. Better than OK, in fact. My bad mood from what these jackasses did to this fine kitchen has dissipated, now that I know payback is coming.
Annie pinches the bridge of her nose, looking too exhausted to argue. “And how were you planning to get the shit outta here? You can’t just walk down the street with a box of meth. Even in this city.”
In answer, I walk over to the pile of the guards’ belongings on the counter, scooping up the two sets of keys I find there. “Nobody walks in LA.”
Africa grunts a laugh. Annie just sighs. “Fine. Let’s go already.”
“Yes!” I punch the air. “You will not regret this.” I turn to grab the drugs – and my day gets even better. On a shelf nearby, there are three bags of potato chips. I actually squee as I dance over to them, jamming them into my pockets. They’re my favourite kind, too, the kind that have an ingredients list that takes up the whole back of the packet and which taste like a xenomorph barfing on your tongue. They’re the best.
Before long, the meth – all forty-or-so pounds of it – is in a big, plastic storage box. We can’t find a lid anywhere, but it doesn’t matter. Africa hefts it – yes, I could lift it with my PK, but the last thing I want is to run into somebody while walking next to a floating box. Instead, I do the real hard work of stuffing my face with radioactive chips. I figure I found the place and saved our lives with the couch stunt, so I’ve earned a snack. We leave the same way we came in, and I make sure to crunch the lock on the doors with my PK, jamming them shut. A few good kicks will probably knock them open, but why make things easy?
The employee parking lot is almost empty, a dank and muggy space littered with trash. But there are a couple of vehicles in the spots. A beat-up Prius with a big scratch down one side, and a Mercedes Sprinter. I admit, I was a little worried that the guards parked their cars in another lot somewhere, but one of the sets of keys has a big Mercedes logo, and the van opens right up.
Africa holds out the box to me, then gets behind the wheel. I climb in next to Africa, Annie scooching in on the second row of seats, bringing the meth with her. There are no shouts of alarm, no running feet.
There’s a metal gate at the top of the ramp, next to a card reader, but that’s no more barrier to me than anything else I’ve used my PK on today. As we drive up the ramp into the blazing, muggy afternoon, I wind down the window, casually lean my arm out. The chips filled a hole all right, but I’m going to need something more substantial. Fried chicken, maybe… yes, definitely fried chicken. With slaw.
And you know what? I freaking earned it. We freaking earned it. I’m still seriously pissed at whoever decided to mess with us by telling the bikers who we really were… but we turned a bad situation into a good one. We didn’t die, and we severely disrupted the Legends’ shit. And the best part? We’re getting away. They don’t even know we’re down here.
The ramp comes out onto the sidewalk, on the east side of the hotel. As we crest the top, I glance to my right, and find myself looking straight at Robert the biker.
He, Alan and half a dozen of their leather-clad friends are walking in our direction. They come to a dead halt. Eyes widening, mouths parting in stunned surprise.
Which quickly turns to blazing, barely controlled fury.
“Um,” I say. “Shit.”
“Africa, fucking drive!” Annie yells, as Robert pulls a gun from out the crack of his ass. He fires, the bullet going wide. Alan and one of his buddies bolt for a black SUV parked on the side of the road, but Africa is already reacting, spinning the wheel and jamming the gas, the Sprinter’s tires squealing as we hit the tarmac.
You can probably figure out the rest.
FIVE
Teagan
And now I’m trapped under a collapsed bridge, in a burning van, having just taken a faceful of meth, while a biker gang shoots at me and my friends with automatic weapons.
We’ve all been there.
The slabs of concrete crushing the van are huge, truck-sized, multiple tons each, way too heavy for me to manipulate with my PK. The only thing I can do is reinforce the roof of the van, making it stay in place as the huge weight from the collapsed bridge tries to crush it. And it’s not going to last for ever – it’s taking every bit of energy I have to hold it up, and it’s already starting to buckle.
It’s almost completely dark, with only the van’s puny interior light on. We’re all on the floor, down where the air is cleaner. Africa and I are down in the footwells, our sleeves over our mouths, Annie out of sight in the back. My throat and sinuses feel like they’ve been scoured with lye. I can’t stop coughing, and I’m lightheaded. It’s making it very, very difficult to keep the focus on the roof. And the big, blaring thought running through my terrified brain is: meth you just did meth oh shit oh shit.
“Teag—” Annie’s voice dissolves in a hail of coughing.
“Yeah, I know!”
“Wait, I will get us out.” Africa lifts a giant leg, starts kicking at the door. I help, putting some of my PK into the metal. But that takes my focus off the roof, which gives a threatening groan.
“Hang on.” Annie’s hand appears over the edge of the passenger seat, flailing, as if she’s trying to answer a question in class. “I think I can—”
A rumble from above drowns out her voice – more of the bridge collapsing, the slabs settling, putting even more weight onto the car. From somewhere in the real world, there are distant shouts. The Legends, still out there.
And in the background: the crackling hiss of flames. It would be really nice if the rubble we’re trapped under could have smothered them, but apparently there’s still air down here.
Both of you focus on that door. I’ll hold up the roof. That’s what I want to say. Those are the words in my head. In reality, I get out the word “Both—” before my lungs seize up and my throat seizes up and I dissolve in a hacking burst of coughs. The smoke is everywhere now.
I’ve been buried alive before. Literally buried alive. Matthew Schenke, the four-year-old with the power to cause earthquakes, dropped me into the ground. Somehow, I got out of that mess, my PK going into overdrive and moving organic matter for the first time. I’ve had some bad nightmares since that day, nightmares where I can’t move the soil around me no matter how hard I try and I’m stuck down there for ever. I’m feeling the same panic now – the same scrabbling, wide-eyed terror. Only this time, my PK isn’t going to do the job. There’s just too much concrete, too much weight, too much to focus on. We’re going to die in here, we’re go—
Oh.
Ooooh shi
i
i
i
i
iiiiit.
There’s a trick you see on videos where they start with a shot of someone’s face, then zoom out to show that face surrounded by other faces, then keep zooming out further and further until it turns out all those faces make up a colour-coded map of the United States.
That just happened to me.
And my psychokinesis.
I feel… everything.
The storm drain surface. The vehicles. The burning wires in the chassis of our van. The broken bridge slabs. The metal railings. The dust particles in the air. The bikers’ guns. The hip flask one of t
hem has in his pocket. Their vehicles.
Holy fuck. It’s more than that.
I can feel the bikers.
Normally, my PK only works on inorganic objects – metal, plastic, glass. It’s a limitation I’ve had my entire life. When Matthew Schenke buried me, my PK kicked into overdrive, and I managed for the first time to manipulate an organic substance – the soil I was buried in. It was the loosest grip possible, and it took every ounce of effort I had. I haven’t been able to replicate it since.
Not any more. The meth has taken a look at my PK limits, cocked an eye and blown them away.
The bikers. A bird, whirling above the storm drain. Three rats, skittering up the sloped side. The cars parked in a lot nearby. The bystanders pressed up against the chain-link fence at the edge of the storm drain, watching the chaos below with open mouths. The water – holy fuck, I think I can feel the water in the drain’s concrete channel, silky and quick and dark.
I can move all of these things. I know I can. I have never been this clear, this focused. My heart is going insane in my chest, my skin bathed in sweat, my face and throat on fire… but I am as calm and clean as if I just stepped out of a hot spring.
Africa and Annie are yelling. They sound very far away. Tiny photos in the mosaic, part of a larger whole.
“It’s OK,” I hear myself say – and this time, my lungs and throat comply. “I got this.”
The people at the top of the storm drain – the onlookers. They have phones. They’ll see me. Video me. I can’t use my PK here, not in public, I—
Sure I can.
I can’t believe I never thought of it before. It’s so simple.
I reach out. Grab every single phone I can find. Thirty or so – some in pockets, some already held in clammy fingers, filming the action. My range must be half a mile now, way further than I’ve ever gone. I gently grip every phone with my mind, feeling their smooth surfaces, the texture of their power buttons, the fingerprint oil on their touchscreens…
And then I squeeze.
Dive deep into each and every phone and crush the chips.
The phones die instantly, bricked. The outsides unchanged, the internals a mess of broken silicon. There are a few security cameras on the buildings surrounding the storm drain, and I take care of those too. A thought tugs at me: our little pinhole cameras, the ones broadcasting back to Reggie. I break them, too, although it comes with a little guilty twinge. Sorry,Reggie. Can’t be too careful.
People will see what’s about to happen. They’ll swear it’s true. And maybe that might have consequences for me, somewhere down the line. But there’ll be no photos or videos, none, no evidence at all.
Africa claws at me, and I reach out and take his hand, letting him know it’s going to be OK.
Then I go to work.
I tear away the bridge slabs. Just lift them right off. Every single one, like they’re made of foam. Daylight floods the van’s interior as I move the pieces of the broken bridge to one side, out of the way. I don’t throw them, or put them in a place where someone might think, how the hell did they land up over there? I just give us a bit of space to breathe.
The slabs give out a crunching bang as they impact the surface of the storm drain. The bikers have stopped in their tracks, except for one or two who take a step back.
With a small smile, I rip the doors off our van.
All of them.
I blink – a movement that feels like it takes aeons. When I open my eyes, after a million years, Annie and Africa have exited the van, staggering away from it on the opposite side to the bikers.
I take my time. Clamber out of the van, not worried about being shot – I’ve shut down the bikers’ guns, almost as an afterthought. I stretch extravagantly, and the crick in my back feels delightful. I’m bursting with energy, raw and pure. It’s like I’ve had the best sleep ever, deep, dark, dreamless, and now I’m awake and I’m under blue sky and there’s nothing I can’t do. God, why did I think meth was bad? It’s fucking awesome.
A thought intrudes. Jeannette – Africa’s girlfriend. An image of her when we first crossed paths. A skeletal crust of a person, hunched, body stripped clean. Screeching and snarling like an animal.
But the distance between her and what I’m feeling now is immense. It’s easy to push the thought away.
I stare at the stunned, trembling biker gang, some of whom are desperately trying to shoot me. I’m barely aware. My mind is a thousand miles away.
My parents made me. And not just in the Biblical sense. They were gifted geneticists, light years ahead of anybody else, and they wanted to create a soldier who could end wars before they started. Turns out, not even they could put multiple abilities in one person, so they split them between me, and my big brother and sister. Adam didn’t need to sleep. Chloe could see in infrared, picking up heat signatures.
What would their abilities have been like on meth? I don’t know about Adam, but Chloe… her vision would be an explosion of colour. A billion shades of heat and light, dazzling, hypnotic.
Chloe and Adam are gone. Adam went insane, his mind shredded from never having slept. My parents had to lock him away, and his twin Chloe – poor, deluded Chloe – let him out. He killed them all, almost killed me too.
I miss them so much. All of them. Especially Chloe.
The thought of her brings hot, bittersweet tears to my eyes. I would have loved to share this with her. I can picture us on the ranch in Wyoming, both of us high off our fucking tits, riding horses through the forest and laughing, her seeing every colour of the universe while I move objects half a mile away. She should be here. With me. We should be doing this together.
There’s a box at the back of my mind where I put all the bad shit. Don’t get it twisted: it’s not like I have a box of bubbling, evil darkness threatening to take over. That’s just not me. A lot of horrible things have happened in my life, but I’ve dealt with them. I spent a long time dealing with them, thank you very much, and although I can’t get rid of them, I have found a place to put them.
When I picture it, I actually see a dusty, slightly tattered box on a high shelf in the closet. The kind you don’t really think about until you need to get something from it.
What can I say? Therapy works. Even when you’re imprisoned in a government facility.
I don’t like to pull the box down too often – it’s not a fun experience. But now, it’s as if the contents have no power over me. Like I can hold them in my hands, turning them this way and that.
My real name isn’t Teagan Frost. Back when I was still hanging with Chloe and Adam, I was plain old Emily Jameson. Em. It’s been a long time since I even thought of myself as Em, and the memory is so bittersweet that it almost makes me cry.
Almost.
One of the bikers throws his gun, hurls it away like it’s poisonous. I smile slowly at him. He makes the sign of the cross, does it again.
I’m still levitating some of the bridge slabs. I let them drop, and the bikers break. Two of them sprint right at me, eyes wide and fearful, wielding their guns like clubs.
I tilt my head, and the bikers go flying. Thrown right into the air, my PK manipulating their bodies like it was nothing. Moving organic matter used to be almost impossible, but not any more. They yell and flail their limbs, crashing into the narrow channel of water running down the centre of the storm drain.
Another biker, coming at me from the side, trying to flank me. He’s got a big-ass combat knife, seven inches of serrated steel. I stop both the knife and his arm so suddenly that his ulna breaks, and his scream of pain is sweet.
There’s music. No: humming. I’m humming, and it takes me a very long second to recognise the tune: the opening bars of “The Next Episode”, by Dre and Snoop.
More phones are in the area, the people on the surrounding streets coming to investigate the ruckus. I brick them all, reaching out and crushing them with a single thought. It’s scary how good it feels to be this powerful, scary because I kee
p thinking of Jeannette. I ignore the thoughts, grabbing hold of two of the black SUVs, sending them flying like a grenade went off underneath them, boom, just end over end, metal and glass crunching.
Holy shit. I’m actually horny.
Sex is usually off the table for me. I lose control of my PK when I come, throwing everything around me into the air. As you can imagine, that severely limits who I can sleep with. Why yes: it sucks exactly as much as you think it does. I’ve mostly dealt with it by not thinking about it, not making sexual pleasure into something I chase, and I’ve been pretty successful thus far.
I’m not a virgin. I popped my cherry with a bartender here in LA, getting him drunk and taking him into the woods to fuck, where my PK wouldn’t have any inorganic objects to grab onto. It sucked. I hated it. I stopped trying.
Now? Jesus Christ with a butt-plug, I am ready to fuck anything that moves. It’s like all the sex I could have been having these past few years has built and built and built, and now it’s all clamouring for release.
Every one of our pursuers is on the run, booking it up the sides of the channel. I raise my arms, eyes closed, grinning at the sky, and trip the bikers up. What the South Africans call an ankle tap. I don’t really want to keep them here. I just want to remind them who they’re fucking with. It distracts me from the hot, flushed feeling of need.
All at once, my legs turn to jelly. I don’t feel woozy or anything – I’ve never felt so clear. But the lower half of my body isn’t paying attention. I sit down clumsily, amid the fire and rubble and smoke, the blue sky above me, and the storm building to the north, at my back.
The van we were driving is still burning behind us, nothing more than a gutted shell now. At least we took care of the meth. I lie down, head resting on the concrete. After what I just did, I should feel drained, wiped out. But I’m still so freakin’ wired. If my legs were actually listening to me, I’d start running. Probably in the direction of the nearest human being, so we could find a hotel room somewhere and fuck each other’s brains out. I giggle, my fingers twitching.