by Jackson Ford
During the whole quake thing, he wanted me to do more, help people using my ability. When I tried to explain why I couldn’t reveal my ability, he said some… ugly things. Accused me of being selfish, said he was embarrassed for me.
Yes, I know I just threw my ability out in public today. It probably wasn’t the smartest decision, but I was high on meth at the time so shut up.
Nic apologised later. Of course he did. He’s not a bad guy. He wanted to reconnect, sent text after text after text. Problem is, I didn’t know what to say, and it became one of those problems that you just ignore and hope it goes away. I missed him, but I was also mad at him, and in the wake of Paul’s death, I didn’t want to start untangling whatever situation Nic and I had. So I ghosted him. I didn’t plan on it. It’s just that one day, I realised I hadn’t replied to his last text for a while, and I couldn’t think of anything good to say, so I just… left it. Not proud of it, but there you go.
We haven’t spoken in months.
How does Africa know him anyway? I’m sure I’ve mentioned the big guy to Nic once or twice, but they’ve never been introduced. Yeah, we’re gonna have to talk about that.
You want to know the most fucked-up thing? Nic is one of the only people in the world I can date. He knows about my ability, after all – and more importantly, he knows about what happens to it during sex. Back in the day, I managed to convince Tanner that I had the right to be with someone. Not even I can blame her for how fucked-up things got after.
So what have I been doing this whole time, where I don’t want to date and I can’t have sex? Let’s just say I’ve gotten very good at not thinking about shit. Which has been especially hard lately, let me tell you, even before the meth made me ultra-horny – a feeling which has utterly and completely vanished, by the way, swallowed by the hollowness in the pit of my stomach.
Nic isn’t the only person I’ve thought about romantically – there’s a guy called Jonas Schmidt, a German tech bro who happens to be that much-sought-after combo of insanely rich, ridiculously hot and genuine. He helped us out during the quake, and we definitely had something. Or at least, I think we did.
Jonas doesn’t know about my ability. I haven’t seen him since the quake, and that’s not going to change. All the same, over the past few months, he’s been in my thoughts more than Nic has.
“My brother!” Africa pumps Nic’s hand hard, even though Nic clearly still doesn’t know who he is. “Good to see you, huh?”
“Yeah, you too.” Nic cuts a glance at me, and my cheeks go red.
“Hey, Nic,” I say, putting as much confidence into my voice as I can. Trying to pretend I’m not still high on fucking meth. Hoping he doesn’t notice. God, what if he does? Then again, fuck him.
“Hey,” he says. The word is a balloon: bright and shiny on the outside, nothing but hollow space inside.
We fall silent. Africa, finally, picks up on the vibe. His eyes dart between us. “I was… Teggan and me, we were just eating some chicken from Ray’s. You had it too, yaaw?”
“Uh, yeah. It’s good.”
More silence.
“How have you been?” I try.
“Oh, you know. We been working out in SB still; it’s pretty crazy out there.”
“Oh yes, I have many friends in San Bernadino,” Africa says, clearly delighted to find a conversational ice floe to crawl onto in this freezing sea of awkwardness. “Very bad stuff. The buildings, they not up to code. Not like in Downtown. One of my oldest friends, Trevor, he tell me there still no power out there sometimes.”
“It’s pretty crazy,” Nic says again, hands in his back pockets.
“You’re still at the DA’s office?” I ask, eyeing the high-vis vest.
“Gave it up. I’m doing quake relief full time now.”
“For real?”
He shrugs, like he’s had this conversation before. “Aw, you know. They’re kind of running on a reduced staff at the moment anyway. They don’t really need me.”
Please. I might not have spoken to Nic much over the past couple of months, but I know him. He gets off on helping people. All the same, to quit his position… leave a promising legal career behind…
Africa nudges him, a move which actually staggers Nic. “I forget you are a lawyer! Hey, let me ask you: let us say I want to buy a property here in Los Angeles, but because of the quake the owner has just left it. If I cannot find them, must I legally pay them if I go and take the land?”
We both stare at him.
“Um,” Nic says. “I don’t really…”
“Myself and Jeannette – she is my girlfriend – we are looking to buy property. We think maybe we open a business here, on the side, you know, and we find this one place that maybe—”
My phone rings.
I am not a big talking-on-the-phone person, but I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to get a call. I don’t even care if it’s someone pretending to be the IRS, demanding I pay my taxes using Best Buy gift cards.
Fortunately, that isn’t the case. “It’s Reggie,” I tell Africa. Then, to Nic: “Sorry, man, I gotta take this.”
“OK, yeah, sure. Good to see you.”
“You too, man.”
We’re talking over each other now, both of us super-enthusiastic. “Take care.”
“Yeah absolutely, for sure.”
He leaves quickly, zigzagging back to his table. Africa gives me a confused look.
I move my thumb to answer the call, then stop. “When did you guys even meet? I never introduced you.”
“We didn’t. I find him on the Facebook.”
“Excuse me?”
“Ya, you mention your boyfriend, so I’m curious, you know?”
“OK, one, that is creepy as shit, and two—”
“Teggan.” He nods at the phone.
“We are not done talking about this, just so you know.” I hit the answer button. “’Sup?”
It takes me a good few seconds to understand what Reggie is saying. She’s talking really fast, and that cool Louisiana accent of hers is turning every second word to chowder.
“Slow down,” I tell her, trying to make sense of it all, my drug-addled brain not helping. “Wait – Reggie, no, slow down, I can’t hear… Hold up, what do you mean electrified?”
EIGHT
Reggie
The satellite photo on Reggie’s screen looks mundane, but it makes the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.
It shows a self-storage unit in Glendale – the kind of facility that has sprouted everywhere in the US, appearing near highway off-ramps and industrial areas. Big Green Storage, the company is called. The kind of outfit that offers a concrete-and-steel box with a roller door for the low, low price of $21.95 a month (First month free!!!). The building that houses these particular concrete and steel boxes is three stories high, linked by elevators and fire stairs. It is identical to hundreds of other storage units across the US.
Except for one tiny detail.
The Glendale franchise of Big Green Storage was run, as most of these places were, by one permanent employee. Reggie looked him up: Art Levinson, a forty-something man with a driver’s licence photo which made him look as if he’d just heard that a distant, half-remembered cousin had just died. Just another poor bastard working for a little over minimum wage in the great state of California.
At around eleven that morning, Art had been in what passed for the building’s office, making himself a cup of coffee, when his hand had started to vibrate. “Buzz,” he told the 911 operator on the call Reggie pulled. “Like I was holding my phone, and it started ringing, only my phone was all the way over on the desk. That kind of buzzing vibration mode, you know?”
Reggie has to play the audio back a few times before she understands the story, because by the time Art had managed to place the call, he was hysterical.
The buzzing sensation had stopped as soon as Art had taken his hand off the coffee machine. When he touched it again, the buzz was stronger.
He’d thought it was another earthquake at first, or even just a regular tremor. But nothing in the office was moving, as it would during a quake.
It was then that Art realised that his shoes were buzzing, too. He’d gripped the edge of the table the coffee machine stood on, and snatched his hand away with a yelp. “Red-hot,” he kept repeating on the call. “Like my skin was on fire. The whole damn thing was a red-hot joy buzzer.”
By then, Art’s feet had started to feel the same way, stinging and burning inside his shoes. He’d leapt for his desk, all but throwing himself onto it, his coffee mug shattering across the floor.
There was no relief on top of the desk. It hurt him just as bad.
“It was an electric shock,” he told the operator. His voice on the tape is garbled. “I’ve had them before, touched a live wire once or twice, I do DIY amps and stuff at home, and I know what it feels like. But I knew that couldn’t be true, because the desk was made of wood. You can’t run a current through wood.”
This last was said with a kind of hysterical, desperate confusion.
Art had boogied off the desk and boogied right the hell out of the office. By then, every single surface he touched – be it wood, metal, plastic, concrete, his shoes, his clothes – felt like grabbing hold of a live wire. There was a stench by that point: seared plastic, ozone. Art flew out there, howling, barrelling out of the office door into the parking lot. Five feet out, he tripped, sprawling on the concrete surface – then leapt back up with a distraught cry when it shocked him too.
Ten feet or so out from the building, the sensation began to drop away. Art had somehow made it across the street to a warehouse, borrowed a cellphone to call 911.
The cops came, along with an ambulance. Art couldn’t tell them if there was anyone else in the building – tenants could come and go as they pleased without signing in, and the truck-sized security gates were on the other side of the building.
Art was physically fine, albeit shaken. But none of the first responders could get within ten feet of the building. It wasn’t a hard boundary, but as they approached, the concrete began to shock them.
The storage unit, and the parking lot around it, had become electrified.
Reggie makes herself focus. The how can come later – it’s the what that concerns her now. She works fast, pulling up info on the building. Owners, blueprints, current tenants. Satellite imagery. The police presence will make things tricky, especially if they call in another agency like the FBI. Moira can probably take care of that, holding the folks at the Bureau off until China Shop gets in place, but that doesn’t mean they have all night. They need to work fast.
The cameras are all down, of course – torched by the electricity coursing through the building – but she digs in deep, going through the owners’ server. It’s not difficult. Self-storage companies aren’t exactly the Pentagon when it comes to systems security.
Reggie quickly grabs the past twenty-four hours, finds the time the cameras went down – 9.58 a.m., a little over two hours ago. Reggie skips back an hour, runs it at high speed. Nobody around. Nothing out of the ordinary, in either the reception or the dimly lit corridors.
Reggie growls. Seems like the what will have to wait until China Shop get there.
Maybe this isn’t as mysterious as it seems. She knows a little about electricity, has a basic knowledge of computer systems and copper wiring. Could it just be a disconnected power cable? One of the big utility cables buried underground, perhaps…
But even cursory research shows that the biggest power cable in the world couldn’t cause what is happening at the storage unit. Electricity, when you get down to it, is nothing more than the movement of electrons between atoms. In some materials, like metal and water, those electrons move easily. In others – wood, rubber, concrete – it’s near-impossible to separate them, which is why electrical wires have rubber sheaths.
Metal and water conduct electricity, concrete and wood and rubber resist it, and not even the most powerful electrical current in the world could overcome that resistance.
Except whatever is causing this has overcome the resistance. It’s made electrons move where they shouldn’t. It’s turned resistors into conductors.
Christ – what about the air? They haven’t even thought about that yet. Whatever is doing this is able to electrify concrete and wood – who’s to say that electricity won’t affect the air as well? The oxygen and hydrogen molecules in the building?
What the hell are they dealing with here?
Reggie pulls up the satellite image of the building again, biting her bottom lip. Where is the energy actually coming from? What’s the source? And shouldn’t that amount of electricity set things on fire? Nobody’s called the fire brigade, and from what Reggie can tell, the building isn’t ablaze. A thought pops into her head, and she digs into the LA Fire Department servers. There: some alarms in the building have been tripped, which means there are at least one or two small fires inside. Whatever caused this—
Reggie lets out a frustrated huff. Whatever is causing this? Stop being a fool. There’s a person behind this – a person with abilities, like Teagan. Is it someone Teagan’s age, like Jake – the other psychokinetic they’d tangled with last year? Or was it another Matthew Schenke, a child with insane powers?
It’s easy to imagine whole streets electrified, families cooked in their apartments, city blocks turned lethal. Grass and wood and water and tarmac loaded with enough voltage to kill. A smoking, ruined city, with nothing and nobody alive. She has to remind herself that she can’t accept the electricity theory at face value. Art might be wrong, the cops might be wrong, and if…
The screens swim in front of her. She closes her eyes, leans back, makes herself take a few deep, shaking breaths. Her diaphragm protests, tightening up. Her internal thermostat, never reliable at the best of times, is going haywire. Sweat slicks her forehead and neck, although the office is cool.
She knows what it is, of course. It’s the feeling she gets when she’s trapped. When she can’t see a way out.
It’s the feeling of Nemila.
When the CIA put her in the field, they sent her to Bosnia. Her cover was as a peacekeeper with NATO. Her real mission was different. She was to destabilise the Serbs from the inside, disrupt their operations, using her official cover as a shield.
It was how she met Moira Tanner. Reggie fell into being a spook; Moira became one because there was never anything else she wanted to do.
They worked surprisingly well together. The polished daughter of a New England brahmin, and the scrappy recruit from the worst town in Louisiana. It was when they ran solo that there was trouble. Reggie was good at a lot of things, but never quite got the hang of deep cover operations. Her biggest success – acquiring a list of people the Serbs wanted to take out in Sarajevo – turned to ash. The Serbs found out. Took her to a farmhouse outside Nemila. And they…
Well. Moira got there before it got really bad. Which doesn’t stop Reggie remembering the house, the room they put her in: empty of furniture (save for the chair they tied her to) with a child’s crayon drawing of flowers still on the wall. She remembers the jumper cables, the batteries. The fists and feet.
And she remembers the sweet, cloying taste. The taste of fear. Of being trapped, with absolutely nowhere to go.
She’s felt it plenty of times since then. After her accident in Afghanistan, when she woke up in the hospital. The long nights that followed. The therapy sessions. Somehow, she found a way through all of those – found a way out the trap. But now…
It’s not just the appearance of another person with abilities that scares her. She’s dealt with plenty of those – hell, one of them bought her a tea-maker for her birthday. So why does she feel like she’s standing in the presence of something much bigger than she is? Why does she feel like she is under-equipped to deal with it, like she has been drained of her energy and her decision-making ability by the sheer, solid reality of running China Shop?
&
nbsp; Darcy Lorenzo’s voice, running through her head: I’ve come across a role you’d be perfect in.
She grunts. What is she doing? Whatever fantasy role might be on offer somewhere, whatever life might or might not be waiting for her after she sends in her audition, it doesn’t matter. She has a job to do. Regina McCormick has never stepped back from a job in her life, and she is sure as hell not going to start now.
All the same, the thoughts won’t go away. They play at the back of her mind, bright and quick, like fireflies.
Her phone buzzes, startling her. “Answer call,” she says. “Speaker.”
“I’ve talked to my contact at the FBI,” Moira says. She’s walking – actually it sounds like she’s jogging, her voice harsh and hot. “He’s going to get his LA field team to hold off until we’ve had a look, and he’ll let us use their cover.”
“Roger that. There are windbreakers and ID in the van – I’ll tell Annie to get ready.”
“Not her.” Tanner breaks off to spit an order, hissing at someone else to hurry. “I want Mr Kouamé on point for this operation.”
Africa.
The command catches Reggie off guard. “May I ask why?”
“I also want to be patched directly into the team feed,” Tanner says, ignoring the question. “Do it now.”
Reggie complies, manipulating the oversized trackball, pulling up the team’s comm channel. The system the team uses is a step up from the military’s old Warfighter Information Network Tactical programme, and it’s a marvel. From her Rig, Reggie has access to as much data as she can handle, as well as crystal-clear audio and video. The team still has their earpieces, and there are spare pinhole cameras in the van…
Moira is perfectly within her rights to oversee things… but she has never requested access to the system during an op before. Not once. It makes Reggie deeply uneasy.
When the Join request from Washington doesn’t come through. Reggie waits a beat, then says, “Moira, I’m not getting anything this end. Did you—?”
She’s cut off when Tanner barks, “What do you mean, there’s no connection? Fix it!”