The Miranda Contract

by Ben Langdon

  But they were the distraction.

  He had moved down from the sky into a government laboratory, parting the walls as if they were wax paper, and then through two floors of research rooms until he found the core chamber, bathed in a purple glow.

  “Good evening,” the scientist had said as Galkin’s feet touched lightly to the floor. “This is an important time.”

  “Perhaps the greatest,” Galkin said, bowing his head in greeting.

  The two men looked to the core which levitated in the middle of the room, held by invisible energy which seemed exotic and ever-changing to Galkin. He felt his hands rise, the fingers reaching for the mesmerizing, yet quite alien, energy.

  “It will only remain stable for a moment…” the scientist said.

  “Ah.”

  The Mad Russian was needed to stabilize the fields and he did so, shaping it with his mind, re-working its patterns and bending it back upon itself until it retained the strength enough to remain in this reality.

  “It is beautiful,” Galkin said.

  And it was.

  Five years later, Galkin watched his grandson bleed into the carpet.

  The scientist had tricked him, had played to Galkin’s arrogance, and shunted him almost out of existence. It was not death or an endless loop of stasis which stared back at him as his body was ripped inside the energy portal; it was life. A whole new world, but a different one, without allies or family. He had been betrayed by his own double-agent, almost like some fool’s pulp novel. The anger raged in him but in the different world his rage had no power, his body was no longer able to harness the devastating energies which he had been born with. And in time his body began to fall apart, to fight itself in search of those lost energies.

  The scientist had trapped him in a new world and it had nearly killed him.

  Galkin would have his revenge.

  He pressed his fist against his chest. It had taken five years to return, but now his body had weakened to such a point that even back in his own world he could feel it breaking down further every day. Like Nico, perhaps, his body was about to enter its nova-phase. Perhaps death was imminent. Perhaps it would be lingering. Whatever it was that had begun consuming him from within, Galkin knew that it was not a thing he could fight, not anymore. At one time he may have been able to, perhaps, but those days were centuries past. As the modern world had replaced the old one, the Mad Russian had been stripped of his godhood.

  Danya sat back on the chair, his eyes raised to Galkin’s. A splash of scarlet ran across the right side of his face in a violent streak.

  “This is the future,” Galkin said softly.

  Danya nodded, and Galkin felt like a change had taken place in the room. The boy’s movement could have been from weariness or defeat, but the energy swirling under the boy’s skin seemed to call out to Galkin, to reassure him that even if he was to end his reign on this world, the successor was ready, or almost ready, to take his place. The old man’s eyes flashed.

  There was a knock at the door, and through his extending senses, Galkin identified Halo and Lily on the other side, and with them was another woman. It was time for the transformation, he thought, looking back to Danya. The locks slid apart and Halo turned the handle before opening. There was hesitation there and for a flicker of a second, that bothered Galkin.

  What was the point of hesitation?

  Halo pulled Miranda Brody into the room and she stumbled, pulling against the hand that gripped hers. Lily came in last and closed the door silently behind her before turning and taking up her place against the wall. She was always keen to wait and watch. More hesitations, Galkin thought and his body surged with power.

  “Welcome, Miss Brody child,” he said, and lightning burst from his fingertips and crackled into the air leaving the smell of ozone. Halo let her wrist go and stepped back, clasping his hands in front of him, his delivery complete. “And a return greeting to you Sohail, my son who is not my son.”

  “You’ve got balls,” Miranda said, her chest rising and falling even as Galkin switched to seeing her as impulses and nerve endings. Her eyes shot to Danya, widening as she took in the blood which still marked his features.

  “Ah,” Galkin said. “Perhaps my grandson, now will show his true self.”

  “What?” Miranda asked. He could see the conflicting emotions play themselves out in her body, the contradictory messages she was receiving. Halo’s influence had soothed her perceptions, muddled her mind, but underneath she was fierce. Galkin allowed himself to watch the impulses rush around her body, the bright lights only he could see. She truly was a star.

  “Your death will bring him back to me,” Galkin said, baring his teeth in a too-wide smile. “Your death is the … the …”

  “Main event?” Halo offered.

  “Tonic,” Galkin said, narrowing his eyes at Halo who smirked and looked down at his feet. “Our blood is old, ancient. But too much is wrong between the boy and his grandfather.”

  He sat down in his chair.

  “I blame myself,” he continued, looking to the roof and sighing. “And the years have not been kind to him or to our family. So. So. You, Miss American Brody, will heal the poison. The boy will serve the grandfather by killing you for all world to see.”

  Danya turned his head to look at Miranda. Galkin watched the movement, savoring the slowness and the way the American’s face changed. Confidence was such a fickle liquid, drained in seconds, difficult to replace.

  He clapped his hands together suddenly and Miranda jumped. It pleased the old man, no end.

  Chapter 24

  Dan

  Dan saw the anger rush out of Miranda’s eyes, leaving her with nothing but fear and uncertainty. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, and then stood up with the help of the old man’s heavy-set desk. His back was to Miranda again, and he looked directly at his grandfather.

  “Make choice,” the Mad Russian said from the other side of his desk, fingertips coming together under his chin. Dan could feel the centering of power there at those tips, like a simple lock holding back a monstrous force, just hidden out of view.

  Dan turned his head and looked back at the others.

  Miranda looked very thin beside Halo. She was used to presenting herself to the world, forcing herself upon the paparazzi and the hordes of fans who flittered from one new pop sensation to the next, but now she just looked scared. And alone. She was the only normal person in the room and the topic of conversation was her death. Dan couldn’t help but feel a little irony in there somewhere.

  “Come on, man,” Halo said, prompting him to make that choice. “It’s not like she’ll get out of this anyway. It’s dead with you or dead with us.”

  “He is wasting time on purpose,” Lily said, not looking at Dan or Miranda.

  “Playing the game?” Halo suggested. “Not likely. Dan doesn’t make decisions. He just lets them take over, isn’t that right, mate?”

  Dan ignored Halo and leaned against the desk with his grandfather, looked the old man in the eyes. The metal clasp on his wrist throbbed but he knew he couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t muster his powers to overcome its dampening effect. Only the Mad Russian could do that.

  “Alright, grandfather,” he said softly. “I will do it, but I will do it for you, for the family. Not for the idiots you’ve got here.”

  The Mad Russian breathed in, eyes fierce but now with a new kind of light.

  “I’m not going to join the Small Gods again,” Dan said. “I’m not going to be a toy soldier, so if I do this I’m with you. You’ve got to accept me as your apprentice, your grandson. Get rid of these clowns.”

  And there it was, Dan realized. Halo, Lily and whoever else the Russian may have brought out of the obscure past was nothing, just window dressing.

  “It’ll be just us.”

  The Russian nodded.

  “What?” Halo pushed forward, demanding space next to Dan. “That’s not the deal. You said you’d tak
e me.”

  The room’s temperature dropped as Lily also showed her displeasure.

  “This is no discussion,” the Russian said, standing slowly as he thought through the new situation. Dan had seen him go through the same process dozens of times and he wondered just how much the old man was aware of his own affectations.

  Halo folded his arms and stepped back next to Miranda who was leaning heavily against the bookcase like she might collapse. She wasn’t looking at him, but he could see her body shaking, her arms wrapped around herself. The room’s temperature remained frosty, mirroring Lily’s silent glare.

  “You kill this girl, you kill this girl.”

  “Yes,” Dan said, and he turned to follow his grandfather’s movement from behind the desk. He was walking slowly with his hands behind his back, bent slightly, perhaps showing his age at last. Miranda looked at Dan with wide, disbelieving eyes and he held the gaze for a second. “I’m with you.”

  Miranda shook her head.

  “We do this tonight, now, yes,” the Russian said.

  Dan shrugged, still keeping his eyes on Miranda who had covered her ears with her hands and was shaking her head silently. He could see the wetness on her face and he wanted to shunt everything else away, all the messed-up people in the room, to protect her, to make amends.

  “Sure,” he said. “But not in the city, not here.”

  “Maybe the Federation Square, yes?” the Russian said, smiling and not listening. “Full circle. Or the bridge.”

  “How will he do it?” Halo asked suddenly. “He can’t even open an automatic door tonight. Hey, maybe he should go old school and just strangle her.”

  “Enough.” Without even moving his hands, the Russian lifted Halo off the ground and then hard against the wall of books, shoving him against the shelving twice before letting him stumble to the floor, clutching his throat. “You shall speak no more on this, Sohail.”

  The Russian looked at Lily and she averted her gaze, head down in subservience as usual. He didn’t even bother to look in Miranda’s direction, but his gaze came to rest again on Dan.

  “Outside,” Dan said. “It needs an audience.”

  “You are certain about this?”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “We go up,” the Russian said. “And you, Sohail Pirzada, shall follow. Bring the girl.”

  The door swung open at the Russian’s command and, with his grandfather’s hand on his shoulder, Dan was moved back into the stairwell which had seemed so constricting the last time he had been in it. Now it just seemed like a dream.

  He’d woken suddenly, with panic in his chest, heaving for breath in the darkness of the tent. He couldn’t breathe. His eyes widened in desperation, his hands clutched at his neck, trying to unwrap the invisible hands he felt there.

  “Da,” his grandfather had said, his face half lit by the moonlight as he knelt at the tent’s entrance. “Remember this feeling, Danya.”

  And then he had vanished and the grip had loosened.

  Dan had been nine years old.

  For three weeks, Dan had laid awake for hours in his bed, afraid of another visitation. His grandfather never spoke of the night in the tent, but Dan could feel him watching him closely whenever he was at home. Those hawk-like eyes, bright under thick brows, followed him from the breakfast rituals until he left for school each day. And when Dan returned home, usually late on purpose, the grandfather waited in his arm chair, the eyes watching, waiting for something.

  It turned out the old man wanted to jump start Dan’s powers. He knew the pedigree was strong, that power was there, ready to blossom. With his father in prison and his mother crumbling into insanity, the old man was restless for results.

  “Fear is good teacher,” he had said later, as Dan’s world exploded with possibilities, his mind suddenly connected with the electrical world around him. Thoughts of the bogeyman strangling him in his sleep vanished as his grandfather taught him to control and manipulate the circuits.

  They grew closer like co-conspirators, leaving Theresa to wander the house like a ghost. From bogeyman to teacher and mentor.

  Dan couldn’t believe how much he had been played, but manipulation had always been an intrinsic part of the Galkins’ genetic makeup.

  The desperate, conniving old man was still there in his thoughts, though: dark shapes in the night, just waiting for the moment to screw him up more. Dan knew that everything came a distant second to what the Mad Russian wanted.

  “You told me once that fear was a good teacher,” Dan said, as they left the basement club and re-entered Chinatown. He didn’t know where they were going or how much time he had left before he and Miranda would have to face the Russian’s wrath.

  “That is good,” the Russian said. “Remember the old times.”

  And forget the mistakes, Dan added silently. In his own eyes, the old man must have thought he was right, that there could be no other course of action, no other possibility. And that had to be a flaw.

  The air around them shimmered and Dan felt his feet and body pulled up from the ground. The Russian lifted the four of them into the night, right in the middle of the crowds. Cameras flashed, people scuttled away in different directions, but the Russian paid them no attention. Dan looked sideways at Miranda and wondered how she felt, which was worse: the terror of flying for the first time, or knowing that she was going to be executed. Her head was against Halo’s chest, his arms holding her steady. Dan turned away again, eyes to the front so his grandfather would see the little soldier in him, not the heartsick teenager.

  They curved over the city, moving south towards the bay. Within a minute they saw the Westgate Bridge with its streams of car head lights coming across and leaving in equal numbers. It would be the bridge then, Dan thought.

  The air was cold and rain fell from the dark clouds somewhere high above, but no water touched them. It was deflected by an invisible bubble as the Russian pushed his way towards the two barriers separating the incoming and outgoing traffic. The four of them set their feet down and the air shimmered with a light as the field dropped.

  The rain and wind immediately whipped their faces and drenched their clothes.

  Miranda stood with her arms wrapped around her body, her hair blowing away from her, leaving her face clear and white. Halo stood beside her, holding her arm. And that left Dan and the Russian together, the old man still touching Dan’s shoulder in an act of tenderness or ownership. It was difficult to measure.

  Cars slowed or swerved on both sides of the bridge. Across the city, images would already be zipping through social media sites and phones. He had asked for an audience, and now he had one.

  “You with me now, Danya,” the Russian said, releasing Dan’s shoulder and pushing him gently into the rain. Dan moved forward two stumbling steps. “You with me now.”

  Miranda let out a choking sound and her body half-collapsed only to be yanked upward by Halo. Dan hadn’t seen her so terrified, so violated by circumstances beyond her control. She pleaded with him, shook her head against the future and sobbed loudly. The Mad Russian grinned widely, his arms crossed together in anticipation. Dan’s hand slipped into his jeans’ pocket and closed over the lighter he’d picked up from Grim’s house. He could feel the embossed wolf’s head with his thumb.

  “What did you do to Grim?” Dan asked, turning back to his grandfather, his own hair plastered to his face.

  The Mad Russian looked surprised. The rain wasn’t affecting him at all, locked away in another protective field. His face contorted, shifting to show confusion.

  “What do you say?”

  “I said, what did you do to Uncle Grim?” Dan repeated, turning fully around and pulling out the lighter so his grandfather could see it.

  Dan knew he was already being too reckless, allowing himself to ask the question in the first place. He flicked the metal wheel and pressed the smooth embossed wolf’s head. Instead of a lick of flame there was a solid pulse, punching
outward towards the Russian.

  The energy hit him and shattered the field into sparkling shards, coursing through and collecting the old man in the chest. He fell backward, arms flailing as he lost his footing and crashed against a pillar.

  Dan held the lighter out in front of him and stepped after his grandfather, flicking his hair out of his eyes as he struggled to gauge the Russian’s remaining power.

  “Is it gone?” he asked. “Is it all gone away now, you think?”

  The Russian looked up at him, surprise and anger etched on his face. The rain had soaked him already and his expensive clothes clung to his body making him look like an old man, an old scarecrow.

  “I thought you made sure he didn’t keep any of these,” Dan said, standing over him, waving the lighter in his face. “I thought you kept him on a leash.”

  The man shook his head.

  “I guess you missed one.” Dan wondered whether Grim knew what was coming to him, and whether this was his only way to take a final shot at his old comrade. It probably didn’t matter now anyway, he knew. The dampener had hit the Russian and robbed him of his powers, at least for a short time. Monsters like his grandfather never stayed down or dead for long. Dan knew that from experience.

  “You say you with me, you make the promise,” the Russian said, although it was difficult to hear him through the rain and emotion. There was confusion there, utter disbelief, pain, abandonment. Dan had seen those changes in his mother’s face as well. And probably his own. “Why? Why you do this?”

  “I’m a liar,” Dan said, and he stepped back a little. “It’s in my blood.”

  The traffic was still crawling past, although there was less of it on the outbound lanes. With little time remaining, Dan jumped onto the road and held his hands up to the oncoming traffic.

  “Jesus,” Halo called from behind. “Are you nuts?”

  Dan waved the lighter back at Halo and then stepped out of the way of a sedan. The third car to pass was unlucky, and Dan got a hold of its door handle and pulled it open. The driver was a woman in her early twenties, eyes wide behind fashion spectacles.