by Jackson Ford
Africa’s feed is crystal clear. “I have finished checking the park on the west side of the river,” he says. “She is not here.”
Reggie’s eyes flick to the map on one of the other screens. “We’re going to need more boots on the ground. Africa: head back to the storage unit. See if you can get the LAPD to help with the search.”
“They may not listen,” he rumbles. “They are already not trusting us.”
“Make it happen,” she snaps. “Annie: head south and check the Atwater area”
“Why Atwater?”
“She might have tried to pick up transport – she’s more likely to get a cab or an Uber there than in Silver Lake.” If the girl is even able to call an Uber. Reggie can’t get a bead on her phone. It’s that, more than anything else, that concerns her. She should have been able to trace it even with the device turned off. The only way it would go dead on her is if the battery was removed, or the phone destroyed.
“OK,” Annie says. “But I’m pretty sure—”
There’s a hiss of static, then nothing.
“Annie, come back?” Reggie says. She reboots everything yet again. No connection, to either audio or video.
Annie’s comms are dead in the water.
“Shit.” It’s said quietly, under her breath. If she makes it any louder, she won’t be able to control her temper. And if that happens, then tonight will go from bad to catastrophic.
China Shop is an experiment. A team designed to handle black bag jobs that other teams aren’t able to handle, and to do it fast and efficiently. They may not be special forces, but there’s no one better for pulling off intrusion jobs, break-ins, recon. Teagan’s ability, backed up by Annie’s contacts and Reggie’s computer skills, make them uniquely suited to what they do.
The problem is, they are not ready for the current situation.
Reggie doesn’t know why Los Angeles seems to be a magnet for individuals with abilities. The other psychokinetic, Jake, was an anomaly – a one-off, she thought. Coincidence. Matthew Schenke was not. He was sent here, directed, pointed in the right direction by… someone. Whoever runs, or ran, the mysterious School.
And now it’s happening again.
After the earthquake, Tanner should have vastly expanded the team. Added actual military personnel: trackers, snipers, demolitions experts. Operators to back China Shop up when things went south. Why the hell hasn’t Tanner gone that route?
But of course, Reggie knows why. It’s about control with Moira Tanner. It always has been. She doesn’t want more people – more people would mean she’d need to give up some autonomy. And just because China Shop is run from an off-books black budget doesn’t mean that budget is limitless – or that the people who control the purse strings don’t keep a close watch on what gets spent. Just because the budget isn’t run by a traditional senate subcommittee doesn’t mean it’s not tightly controlled.
By keeping it small, Moira Tanner keeps an iron grip on her little project. It’s very easy to see her keeping her superiors in the dark about… well, everything.
“Annie’s down,” Reggie tells Africa.
“What do you mean, down?”
“Her comms are offline.”
Africa is silent for a long moment. Then he says, “OK. Here is what we do. You must connect me with Mrs Tanner. I will keep her updated while you fix the communication with Annie, huh?”
“Excuse me?”
“If there is a technical problem, fixing it must be what you are doing. You must not have to worry about other things. I will keep Mrs Tanner informed while I keep looking.”
China Shop has always been made up of contradictory personalities. Reggie has always prided herself in being the calm voice of reason, the one who kept the team together. She has never lost her temper, never gotten angry, even when stress levels were high. Reggie may be the team’s hacker, but her real role is and always has been as peacemaker.
Which is what makes her next words so surprising.
“Let’s get one thing straight, honey,” she snaps. “This is my operation. All comms go through me, and the Rig.” The Army was a long time ago, but she hasn’t lost the steel voice of command. “You do not get to give me orders, Africa. Are we clear?”
Another long silence.
“Are we clear?”
“… Ya.”
“Good.”
She has never taken that tone with anybody in China Shop. There’s never been any need. What the hell is happening to me?
“I can’t connect you with Annie,” she says, forcing herself to focus. “There’s a technical problem on the Washington side. But it changes nothing: head back to the storage unit, and find me some more bodies to help with the search.”
When Africa speaks again, he sounds resigned. “What did Mrs Tanner say? When she hear about Teagan?”
“She…”
And once more, the lie is there.
Reggie knows she’s going to run with it even before the words leave her mouth. Even though she only digs herself deeper and deeper by telling it. Even though there’s no good reason to do so. She is powerless before the urge, already speaking before she can second-guess herself.
“She wasn’t pleased. But she’s as concerned as we are, and she’s doing what she can to help. Now get going.”
Inwardly, she is stunned at how easily the lie slips outs. Once again, it is not a huge lie. It’s a small one, really, almost inconsequential. Something that could be attributed later to a miscommunication. And in any case, she’s not telling the lie just because. She’s telling it to keep Africa in play. She’s telling it to buy herself time. It’s completely understandable, and nothing she can’t fix.
“Uh-huh,” Africa says, sounding unsure. “OK. Please tell me if she has anything for me, huh?”
“I… Yes, I will. Keep looking.”
EIGHTEEN
Teagan
My brain short-circuits. Every thought I have stops cold.
Jonas Schmidt isn’t here. He can’t be. This is the meth, playing games with me, making me see things again.
Except: it’s different this time. This isn’t a flicker at the edge of my vision, or the feeling of someone coming up behind me. This isn’t my paranoid, agitated, anxious brain conjuring something out of thin air.
It’s Jonas. He’s real.
Standing right in front of me, wearing a wide smile, the skin around his eyes crinkling and his perfect cheekbones standing out. The German billionaire I’ve had a crush on for the past four months, who I thought I’d only ever see again on his Instagram photos.
“It’s good to see you, Teagan,” he says.
“Wh…?” It’s more a breath than a word.
“It took me quite some time to find you.” He scratches the stubble on his jaw. “I admit, I was not expecting to have to go wading through a river.”
Leo is trying to talk to me. I don’t register his words. I’m barely aware of them.
“Jonas…” I lick my lips. “How did you…? What are you doing here?”
“We’re all waiting for you.” He gestures up river. “Africa, Annie, Regina. All of China Shop. My jet is on the tarmac at Van Nuys. We can get you out of the country.” An urgent look comes onto his face. “But only if we hurry.”
“What about Leo?” I turn to introduce him, which is when the weirdest thing happens.
I can’t turn.
Leo is behind me, standing just off to my left… but I can’t look away from Jonas.
“Oh yes.” Jonas takes a step forward. “We know all about young Mr Nguyen. He can come too.”
Why can’t I look at Leo? Why can’t I turn around?
Jonas’s smile is even wider now. “It’s all right,” he says, patting the air. “You’re safe.”
And I am. I know it in my bones. Jonas is here, which means everything is going to be fine. I can stop running. I can stop fighting the comedown and finally, finally sleep. I can stop…
The hypodermic.
It’s still there. Behind me, in motion, as if whoever is holding it is still walking. I can just sense it with my PK. There must be someone with Jonas, but why would they…?
Leo isn’t talking any more.
He’s screaming.
But it’s coming from a long way away, and it’s someone else’s problem. The thought slips away. Everything is slipping away. I’m coasting down, down, down, into a hole that is warm and dark and snuggly, and if I just let go…
“Come into my house, Teagan,” Jonas says kindly. “You will be safe there. Nothing can hurt you inside the walls.”
There’s this thing I used to do when I was a kid, and I had a nightmare. I called it the Emergency Blink. If a bad dream took me, I just had to blink. Even though I couldn’t, even though my eyes were already closed, the simple act of trying to blink in the dream would often let me escape it. I haven’t used the technique in… Jesus, almost a decade.
But something is telling me that I need to use it now.
I squeeze my eyes shut. Relax. Squeeze. Relax. I’m still in the dark place, still warm and comfy… but now I can hear Leo more clearly. Hear what he’s screaming.
And what he’s screaming is: “Zigzag Man!”
“You aren’t real,” I tell Jonas.
It takes everything I have. I hadn’t realised until this moment how badly I wanted him to be real. To be there, in front of me, ready to whisk me away on his private jet and keep me safe.
“You…” I take a deep breath. “Aren’t. Real.”
It’s like someone snaps their fingers. I jerk, almost toppling over, righting myself just in time. Jonas vanishes. Just… poof. There one moment, gone the next.
And finally, I turn towards Leo.
He’s on the ground, pinned there by a black bear.
No – not a bear. My mind isn’t working like it should. It’s a huge man, head the size of a cannonball, straggly black hair streaked with grey. His gigantic beard is streaked with grey, too, spreading out from under a bandanna like a fungal growth. The bandanna and his clothes are black: leather jacket, cargo pants, heavy black boots caked with river dirt. He’s turned slightly away from me, a massive hand holding Leo down.
And in the other hand, the hypodermic.
“Help me!” Leo shouts, reaching out for me. “I can’t zap him, I got the wiggles, help—”
The man puts his elbow on Leo’s chest, clamps a hand over his mouth. He moves the needle towards Leo’s neck – or tries to, because at that moment I grab hold of it with my PK. I don’t have the focus to tear it away, not yet, but I stop it in its tracks.
“All right,” I say, wiping my mouth with a trembling hand. “Put the pigsticker down and back the fuck off, before I—”
“You are in my house.”
The man’s speaks quickly, the words blurring together. His voice is soft, almost gentle. He doesn’t turn around, and I can’t tell if he’s speaking to me, or Leo, or no one at all.
“My house only speaks the truth. My house has walls that go on for ever.”
“Please!” Leo screams.
The needle slips free of my grip, inches towards the boy’s neck. “My house has doors that open but never close, and it lies, oh it lies it lies. The little children will not be quiet no they will never ever ever ever be quiet, not until we make them, but they will still whisper yes they will—”
“Teagan?” Jonas says.
He’s standing on the spot where the Zigzag Man was holding Leo down – both of them have vanished. Jonas tilts his head, smiling kindly.
“You’ve been through a lot,” he says. “You can see people in the house but it grows and grows and you can never reach them. Let me help you.”
And once again, I’m falling, falling, sliding back down into the warm dark. The thoughts of Leo and the Zigzag Man are fading away, no matter how hard I try to hold onto them.
Except: it’s different this time. There’s another voice. One I haven’t heard before.
A man’s voice.
At first, the words blend into one, smearing themselves across my mind. It takes me a second to understand them. “Put it down, right now. You hear me? Get off him… Wait, what are you doing? What are you doing to me?”
I raise my head, which takes a year, a decade, a millennium. I push back the darkness – it’s like trying to push aside thick vines in a jungle.
The Zigzag Man and Leo reappear. And with them:
Nic.
He’s wearing jeans and a white Clippers jersey. And he’s down on all fours a few feet away, his body shaking. As I watch, he collapses, hugging himself, shaking like a leaf.
Jonas puts a hand on my shoulder – he got behind me somehow. “Come with me,” he whispers, and the darkness closes in.
And then second voice reaches us. Out of sight to my right, on the other side of a bamboo grove. A woman, yelling, furious, her heavy feet thundering on packed dirt.
At that moment, as the full horror of the situation slams into me, Jonas pulls me backwards. The ground and the sky change places, the whole world vanishing behind a curtain of warm darkness.
This time, I don’t welcome it. Because even as I fall, I’m aware of it: aware that something (Zigzag Man Zigzag Man) has pulled me out of reality.
What happens next happens in snatches. Bright flashes of light, penetrating the black.
Nic, up one knee, lurching to his feet.
The Zigzag Man is on his feet too, backing away from something. Arm held up, as if to shield himself. Then, a moment later: running away. Just booking it back upriver.
I shout Leo’s name. Or try to. My mouth is so dry that I quite literally can’t speak.
Footsteps, behind me. Hands under my arms, pulling me up, setting me on my feet. My brain is still trying to get out from under the warm dark, and all the blood leaves my head at once. The hands hold me up, keeping me steady as my body stabilises. I’m shaking, jerking my head left and right, terrified I’ll see Jonas Schmidt again.
Behind me, Nic coughs as he gets to his feet. Which brings the oddest thought. If he’s still down, then who’s holding me?
“Teagan, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
The hands turn me around, and I’m looking up at Annie Cruz.
NINETEEN
Teagan
So you know that call between me and Nic? Where I asked him to come help us? Pretty awkward, right?
Take that awkwardness. Triple it. Quadruple it. Imagine it as nuclear-level awkward emitting from an awkward-class star in the Totes Awks constellation.
That’s what the next few minutes are like, after the Zigzag Man escapes.
Annie stands off to one side of the bamboo grove, her back to us, arms folded. She’s so angry she can’t actually speak to me.
I don’t know how she and Nic knew to find us down in the river – we never made it up to the gym, which is where he told us to wait. I don’t know what she’s doing here, how she knew where we were, where Africa is, whether or not she’s still in communication with Reggie, who must be going out of her mind right now.
I have no idea why the Zigzag Man could affect me and Nic, but couldn’t affect her. Why he bolted when she showed up. When Nic told her what happened – that he made us see things – she looked at him like he’d gone crazy.
Leo is close by, crouched at the edge of the river, idly scratching at the dirt. One of the first things I did when I could actually move again was to rush over to check on him, but he just told me he was fine. His voice was as flat and featureless as a prairie.
“I’m gonna need you to explain to me what the hell just happened back there,” Nic says to me, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.
“What do you want me to tell you?” I don’t mean to sound so sharp. I was so convinced that Jonas Schmidt was there. It felt so real… but in hindsight, it also made no sense at all. In the aftermath of the attack, the exhaustion has returned, the numb limbs and leaden stomach.
“We come find you and him �
��” Nic nods at Leo “ – and there’s some… some guy who makes you see—”
His mouth snaps shut, and he looks away.
“What did you see?” I ask quietly.
“Doesn’t matter. Look, who was he?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why didn’t his powers work on Annie? Or on… Leo, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please. Another person with powers, and you’re just—”
“What do you want from me, man? We don’t have a WhatsApp group. I have no idea who that was, or how his ability works.”
“The Zigzag Man,” Leo says. He’s still scratching at the dirt.
Nic tilts his head. “The who?” He’s actually shivering, his shoulders shaking. Christ, what the hell did he see?
“The Zigzag Man. He was chasing me and my dad.”
“Why’s he called the Zigzag Man?”
“It’s just what he’s called.”
I have to bite down on the urge to tell Leo that isn’t good enough. God, I keep forgetting how young he is.
Annie makes a disgusted sound. “Oh, y’all got cute names now?”
“It’s just his name,” Leo says to the dirt.
“I don’t care what he’s called, what you’re called, whatever the hell you’re trying to do. You’re lucky I don’t just—”
“Annie.” I step between her and Leo. “Fall back. Right now.”
She bares her teeth – something I get the feeling she does without meaning to – then turns away.
I don’t care how angry she is. Leo is not the one who killed Paul. I’m guessing that particular argument wouldn’t fly with her right now. All the same, she does not get to be angry at a scared little boy.
Nic starts towards Leo, but I pull him back. “Hold on. Just wait a second.” I point at Annie. “How did—?”
“What, Annie? I called her. Before I came to get you.”
“You… why?”
“Oh, yeah, sure, I’m gonna walk into a Teagan situation by my damn self. Why the f—?” He glances at Leo. “Why wouldn’t I call her? She told me where she was, and I picked her up.”