by Jackson Ford
Yes. Just as I thought. Big Green Storage are cheapskates. Their walls are prefab, with no insulation: just outer cladding, and a layer of concrete maybe half a foot thick.
We think of concrete as uniform. An impenetrable surface. In reality, it’s uneven, rough, filled with weak spots and pressure points where the mix wasn’t quite right – especially in cheap-ass buildings like this one. Finding those weak spots with my PK is easy, even when I’m not operating at what I’d call peak capacity.
I do a quick burst of echolocation, throwing it out as far as I can in the direction of the fence – no people on the other side of the wall, and yes, there are a couple of dumpsters close by.
“Are we gonna hide in here?” Leo stage-whispers.
“No. Hey, watch this.”
The concrete groans. Shudders. Starts to crumble inward. The air fills with thick dust – Jesus, I hope this shit isn’t toxic. Too late to worry about that now.
In seconds, there’s a big hole in the wall, a rough semicircle of about four feet, exposing the cladding behind it. Daylight floods in, sending a lance of pain right through my eyes, so sharp that I have to squeeze them shut.
I pause for a second, waiting for the sound of cops shouting – or Annie and Africa figuring out what I’m doing. Nothing.
I let out a breath, and punch through the exterior cladding. It’s synthetic, and it’s even less trouble than the concrete, splintering and snapping. Somehow, even that little move is enough to make the comedown worse, amplifying the headache.
“How about that, huh?” I say to Leo, through gritted teeth.
He just blinks back at me. Then he looks at the hole I made. “What if it was stronger?”
“Huh?”
“The wall. Could you still make a hole?”
“Of course.” I smile at him – or try to, anyway. “I’m pretty strong.”
“OK.”
“What?” I say. “I am!”
“Are we gonna be with my dad soon?”
“We… Sure, I… Yeah, yes, we are, we’re gonna find him now, come on.”
I duck through the gap, my cheeks feeling weirdly hot. Did this kid just throw shade on my ability? Does he not know that I moved an entire broken bridge only a few hours ago? I have a sudden urge to tell him, but clamp down on it. Now is not the time.
We come out between two dumpsters. Another burst of echolocation confirms there aren’t any cops near us. I can feel one – or rather, his gun – walking the perimeter over to our left, his back to us. Another two on our right, behind the corner of the building. Watching the doors, just liked I figured.
Annie and Africa don’t have firearms of their own. Wherever they are, it isn’t this side of the building. Somewhere close, there’s the whup-whup of a police chopper. I send my PK upwards, hunting for it, but even on a good day, it’d be too far away.
But I was also right about the fence. It’s no more than ten feet from the wall.
I reach out and in one movement, rip the links up from where they’re buried in the dirt, bending them outwards. Several of them snap with a loud pang, but fortunately, the chopper is still close enough to mask the sound.
The skin on my neck prickles. Suddenly, I’m dead sure that either Annie or Africa is going to step into view, demanding to know what in the fuck I’m doing.
And what the fuck am I doing? Exactly? It’s all very well to say I’m saving Leo’s life, keeping him out of Tanner’s clutches, but let’s be real. This whole plan is all sizzle, no steak.
Annie and Africa don’t appear. Nobody does.
It’s not too late. You could just find the crew. Claim you meant to do it all along.
And then I’ll never find out about where Leo came from. Or who the hell is using my parents’ research to create kids with abilities. And Leo will vanish, swallowed by the same government system that held onto me for so long.
I turn to him. “Ready?”
Before I’ve even said the words, he bolts. Sprinting towards the gap.
“Oh, fuck.” I scuttle after him. “Leo. Leo!”
He ducks his head as he shoots through the fence, heading into the scrubland beyond. I’m a little bigger than him – obviously – and when I try to go through, a broken piece of metal nearly skewers me in the eye. Another catches at my jacket collar, nearly yanking me off my feet. My stomach notices these things, and decides it wants in on the action too, lurching uncomfortably.
The scrubland is a strip, maybe fifty feet wide: dirt and bushes and trash, with a rough, unpaved track cutting down the middle. Up ahead, the ground drops off abruptly. There’s a very distant peal of thunder from the north. Even now, when the heat of the day has started to drain off, the clouds are still there, hunkering on the horizon. When that storm finally breaks, it’s going to be a monster.
Hopefully we’re not around when it does.
Leo is crouched down a few feet away, squatting next to a spiky bush. I stumble over, doing everything I can to stay upright. “Dude, stop. You can’t just run off like that.”
He ignores me. I drop to my knees next to him, breathing hard.
“Where’s my dad?” he says.
“Look—”
“You,” says a voice. “Stop right there.”
THIRTEEN
Reggie
It’s been a long time since Reggie felt angry about her accident.
There have been some tough times, to be sure. Learning how to breathe again was only the start – getting out of her own head was much harder, and Reggie spent plenty of time with an Air Force-appointed psych working things out. But she got hurt serving her country, and in Regina McCormick’s book, that meant she didn’t get hurt for nothing.
She has never been angrier than she is now. She has never felt more stuck, or helpless, or frustrated. Crammed into this crappy chair in this crappy office in this crappy part of a crappy city, when an entire mission is coming to pieces and she can’t do a single thing about it.
Moira still hasn’t managed to resolve her connection issues with the team’s feeds, and is in an even more foul mood than usual. And that was before Reggie told her that Teagan had gone into the storage unit.
“She’s not here,” Africa growls over the comms. “No contact, nothing.” He and Annie are in the front parking lot now, their cameras facing towards a line of frustrated cops. Flickering red-and-blue distort the image. Reggie’s hands fly across her trackballs, her eyes darting left and right across the screens as she uses every trick she has to hone in on Teagan’s comms unit. No video, no audio. Nothing.
Teagan has dropped off the face of the planet.
At least whoever has intruded on their network hasn’t managed to torch all their comms, just a few elements. Reggie has checked and rechecked her system, looking for any evidence of intrusion. But there’s nothing. No failed logins, no port scans, no malware or trojans. No one but she and Moira have accessed any of their files. It’s the same in Washington, where they’ve been unable to find evidence of an intrusion.
It’s very possible that all of this is just poor timing. A horrible coincidence, their comms going screwy right when the team needs them the most. Except: it’s coming right after an anonymous phone call nearly torpedoed a job for them. Reggie hates coincidences.
“Electricity must be interfering,” Annie says, exhaustion edging her words.
“Have you checked the perimeter?” Reggie asks.
“Ya,” Africa replies. Annie’s turned towards him on the pinhole camera feed, and there’s no escaping how frustrated he looks. The desperate worry in his eyes. “And we are checking again. She did not come out anywhere. We not see her.”
Annie says, “Reggie: the cops are starting to ask questions. I don’t know how long we can keep this whole FBI thing going…”
“Leave that to Moira. She’ll handle it. Just find Teagan.”
“And we keep telling you,” Africa bellows. “She is—”
Abruptly, he goes silent.
Reg
gie isn’t usually one to allow someone to take that kind of tone with her. This time, she barely notices. “Check again. The whole perimeter.”
“Reggie,” Annie says. “You don’t think…”
She doesn’t finish the thought. She doesn’t have to. The horrified, hesitant note in her voice says plenty. As far as they know, touching the building won’t kill you, even if it hurts like hell. But they have no idea if it’s the same the whole way through. If Teagan got stuck, couldn’t get away from the shocks…
“I refuse to believe,” Reggie says slowly, “that someone as much of a pain in the ass as Teagan Frost is dead.”
Annie makes a sound that might, under better circumstances, be a laugh.
“She’s there all right,” Reggie continues. “She just can’t hear us. Keep—”
“Wait,” Africa says.
“What?”
“Something… it’s different now.”
The two video feeds turn to look towards the storage unit.
Reggie has to suppress the urge to raise her voice. “Different how? Talk to me.”
It’s Annie who answers. “The hum’s stopped. There was this, like… buzzing sound coming from the building. Subsonic. I don’t know if you could hear it on the comms – like from an electric fence, you know? It’s not there any more.”
“Ya, I feel it too,” Africa says. “You don’t think maybe…?”
“Shit, one of the cops has figured it out.” Annie’s camera swings towards the police line, where a uniformed officer is approaching – the same one who briefed them when they arrived, it looks like. Annie’s voice rises to a yell. “Hey! Step away from the scene, right now!” She mutes her connection, presumably so she can shouts at the cops without deafening everyone on the channel.
“Hold on,” Africa says. “I have an idea. Boss Paul – did he keep a volt measure machine in the van?”
It takes Reggie a second to work out what he’s saying. “A… what, like a voltmeter?”
“Ya.”
“Should be in the middle tool drawer,” Annie says, breaking off from scolding one of the officers. Africa moves towards the van, his camera feed bouncing as he runs.
Reggie tries to raise Teagan again, knowing it won’t do any good but doing it anyway. Nothing. The woman has gone completely dark.
Dark. Not dead. Not a chance, not Teagan Frost, not after all she’s been through.
If she was dead, Reggie thinks, there’d be no more China Shop. I wouldn’t work for the government any more. I’d be free.
The thought is so horrifying that Reggie physically recoils, grunting and turning her head away, as if she’d just bitten into something rotten.
“OK, got it.” Africa’s voice snaps her out of it. He’s in the van, the feed showing a messy tool drawer. In his huge hand is the voltmeter, a device used for measuring live electrical connections. Reggie cannot for the life of her fathom why Paul would have had one in the first place, but then again, Paul treated all equipment like condoms. Better to have and not need, than need and not have.
A bittersweet pang at the thought. Paul would have gone bright red if you’d said the word condom to him.
“Good thinking,” Reggie says. And it is. He can hold the voltmeter out ahead of him, letting the two wires trail along the ground. He’ll be able to see straightaway if the current in the concrete starts increasing. “Hurry.”
“Nothing,” Africa says. He’s looking down at the voltmeter’s twin wires, now brushing the concrete surface of the parking lot. “Still nothing… getting closer to the building now.”
“All right, I got the cops to hold off for a minute,” Annie cuts in. “But Reggie, sooner or later, this shit is gonna blow up in our—”
The wires touch the concrete lip of the storage unit’s loading dock. The audio distorts – Africa letting out a held breath. “Nothing. Voltmeter is quiet.”
“Teagan,” Annie says. “Teagan, do you copy? Come back.” Then, as if she’s forgotten she’s on an open line: “Come on, gordita, say something.”
Reggie licks her lips, looking between the windows on her monitors, trying to find anything that might help – building blueprints, the feeds from Annie and Africa. Tanner said she’s getting live satellite imagery up, but it’s not quite ready yet. That has nothing to do with whoever is disrupting their communications; just good old orbital physics, not playing ball. Not even the US government has satellites watching everywhere all the time.
They are not in control of this situation. Not even close. She, Reggie, is not in control of this situation.
“OK,” Annie says. “I’m going in.”
Reggie’s eyes go wide. “Like hell you are.”
“It’s not electrified any more, Reggie.”
“And if it suddenly dials up again while you’re inside? Did you think of that?”
“Of course I’m thinking of that. But what other choice do we have? Teagan’s in there—”
“And she’s probably still hovering above the floor.”
“No, no, no, listen.” Africa pauses, as if getting his thoughts in order. “Annie is right. I don’t think it’s gonna go electric again. I think it’s finished.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“OK, so maybe whoever has the power is trying to lure people in. They want us to think it’s safe, and then we come in, and bang! More people dead. But what I am thinking is, that does not make sense. They only kill a few people that way, and then Mrs Tanner decides to destroy the whole building anyway – even if they don’t know who she is, they must know someone will fire a missile or drop a bomb, huh? It is not worth it for them.”
“No, that can’t be—”
“Reggie,” Annie says. “Either we’re gonna go inside the unit, or someone else is. Cops, the real FBI, NSA, whoever decides to leapfrog Tanner on the chain of command.”
“You’re putting yourselves in danger.”
Annie makes a sound that might be a laugh. “Won’t be the first time that bitch almost cost me my life.” She doesn’t say if she’s referring to Tanner, or Teagan.
“None of us have any infiltration training. They drill special forces for months on that alone—”
“Teagan went in, didn’t she?”
“And she has extranormal abilities. You don’t.”
It’s a feeble argument. Truth is, China Shop has been involved in some pretty hairy ops over the years. They may not have traditional training, but they can handle themselves.
“If we wait for the cavalry,” Annie says, “whoever’s messing with us will be in the wind. We have to go in now.”
“We sweep floor by floor,” Africa says, speaking as if the matter is settled. “Front to back. Check all the storage doors – Teagan may be inside one.”
“Africa,” Reggie says. “Stand down.”
“Sorry, Reggie,” Annie replies. “I’m with the big guy. This is happening.”
Reggie opens her mouth to protest, but it turns out she has absolutely no idea what to say. Because Annie and Africa are right. If they don’t go in, this whole situation is going to end up even more FUBAR than it is already.
Oh, Lord.
Reggie sits in the office in Torrance, watching as Annie and Africa make their way inside. Africa, grunting as he hefts the heavy roller door on the loading dock. Annie, ducking through. Africa has already passed her a pair of chunky night vision goggles, is wearing some himself. They make him look like an alien invader, a beanstalk-thin body with a huge pair of protruding eyes.
Reggie’s feeds go to low-light mode, bathing the building’s interior in green. She watches, neck muscles taut as steel cables, as Annie and Africa slowly clear the floor. They ignore the units with padlocks on them, but even then, progress takes an age.
There’s hardly any sound. Just their breathing, and the occasional “Clear”. They might not be special forces, might be exhausted and still coming down off a meth high, but they’re not doing a bad job. Despite her nerves, Reggie is
proud of her team.
It’s a feeling that gets pushed into the background the more they explore the complex. There’s at least one body – an employee, it looks like – but nothing else. No Teagan. No individual with electricity powers. Nothing.
“There’s nobody here,” Africa says eventually. His video feed shows him staring at a brick wall, then turning to look at Annie. Her expression is unreadable.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Reggie says. “Are you sure—?”
“We’ve checked the whole place,” Annie replies.
“Check again.”
“She isn’t here. And she’s still not answering comms.”
“I said, check it – oh, hell.”
Her phone is buzzing. Tanner, wanting another update.
“Just keep looking,” Reggie says. “She has to be there.”
But even as she answers Tanner’s call, she knows that’s not true. She saw how thorough Annie and Africa were. Unless there are secret doors not shown on the blueprints, her most important team member has vanished into thin air.
“Report,” Tanner says.
Reggie opens her mouth to tell Tanner that Teagan is missing – and stops.
“Ms McCormick?” There’s a cold edge in Tanner’s voice now. “I said, report.”
On screen, Africa and Annie are caught in each other’s camera feeds. Green ghosts, haunting an empty building.
“Ms McCor— Oh Christ, of all the times for the cell towers to—”
“We’re still looking,” Reggie says.
The lie slips out before she can stop it. It’s as if it was there all along, just waiting for its chance.
“Say again?”
“Teagan is… she’s still in the building, going floor by floor. Nothing yet.”
Tanner lets out a frustrated sigh. “Tell Ms Frost to pick up the pace. I have my director breathing down my neck, and half the FBI demanding my head on a platter.”
“… Copy that.”
Tanner ends the call.