A Sh*tload of Crazy Powers

Book 4: The Frost Files

by Jackson Ford

Genres: Cyberpunk; Superheroes

Synopsis

Telekinetic government operative Teagan Frost is back in a new fast and furious adventure that will blow your tiny mind. 

Teagan Frost has enough sh*t to deal with, between her job as a telekinetic government operative and a certain pair of siblings who have returned from the dead to wreak havoc with their powers. But little does she know, things are about to get even more crazy . . .

Teagan might have survived the flash flood of the century, but now she's trapped in a hotel by a bunch of gun-toting maniacs. And to make matters worse, her powers have mysteriously disappeared. Faced with certain death at every turn, Teagan will need to use every resource she has to stop a plot that could destroy Los Angeles - maybe even the entire world.

“An un-put-down-able, action-packed adventure that packs an emotional punch” (Kirkus).

"A non-stop adrenaline high" (Library Journal)

For more from Jackson Ford, check out:
The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind
Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air
Eye of the Sh*t Storm
A Sh*tload of Crazy Powers

Release date: May 10, 2022

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 512

Sample

I should have learned kung-fu.

I’m a secret agent working for the US government. I should be able to knock someone out, right?

Because the thing is, people underestimate me. I’m short, not super-fit and I look like I couldn’t punch my way out of a wet paper takeout bag. How great would it be to knock someone on their ass with a wild Shaolin axe kick, or whatever they call it? Plus, it would be a tremendous backup for when my psychokinesis (read: my ability to move shit with my mind) goes on the fritz.

Hell, I probably could have gotten Tanner – the terrifying intelligence operative who happens to be my boss – to pay for it.

It definitely would have been useful at this particular moment. Do you know where I fucking am? I am stumbling around in the woods beneath Griffith Observatory, just north of Hollywood. It’s muddy, it’s cold, it’s 5 a.m. and dark as hell. I just survived an enormous car crash, and I have no idea where I’m going. I also happen to be coming down from a crystal meth high, which is a story I really don’t have time to get into right now. Oh, and men with guns and helicopters are chasing me.

I can’t actually use my psychokinesis – PK, as I call it – on them, because I’ve used a ton of it tonight already, and I can only use so much before it has to recharge. I have no choice but to run, because if I fight back, I’ll get destroyed.

And to make matters worse, my underwear has chosen this moment to ride up right into the crack of my ass.

Angry shouts split the darkness behind me. I’m not in deep forest or anything. It’s a regular California scrubland, with lengths of open ground interrupted by boulders and hillocks and sparse groves of birch and eucalyptus. There was a huge storm in Los Angeles last night, so the ground isn’t hardpack any more. It’s mud – not deep, but sticky, caking my sneakers and pants.

Uphill. That’s all I have to do right now. Just keep heading uphill. Uphill is the opposite direction from the road, from the scene of the crash. I have no idea whether it will help me actually lose the people chasing me or not, but it’s the closest thing to a goal I’ve got.

Torchlight flickers on my right, and I actually flinch away from it. That turns out to not be a good idea, because I’m still moving forward, and promptly lose my balance. With a yelp, I throw my hands out in front of me, grabbing hold of a nearby tree trunk. I spin around, going to one knee in the mud.

“Piece of fuck,” I snarl, forcing myself upright. This would be a lot easier if I didn’t have a bum knee. I actually hurt it before the crash, and it’s currently wrapped in miles of strapping, tight underneath my jeans. It’s functional – just – but it hurts like hell. My head feels as if it’s trailing three feet behind my body, like it’s filled with helium and attached to a string.

Rotor blades roar. A heavy duty searchlight beam splits the trees, sweeping past no more than six feet away. The blowback from the chopper gusts through the branches, loose leaves flying into my face. I wait, dead-still, until the searchlight moves away from me, then keep going.

The next patch of ground is so steep that I have to use my hands to clamber up it. My lungs burn with the effort, white-hot acid spreading through my torso, searing a wicked stitch in my side. I come over the top of the rise, descending into a small gully. As I do, I get a glimpse of the Observatory through the trees. A blinding-white domed palace on the hill, lit from below by spotlights. If I can just get there, I can…

Do what, exactly? How is getting to the Observatory going to help me? If I want to stay hidden, then it’s not a great idea to run towards the bright white object at the top of the hill. Problem is, I don’t have another solution. I don’t have a single clue about where else to go, so I aim myself in the direction of the Observatory, and run like hell.

The stitch eats into my side. Branches whip at my face, scratching at my skin. I’m breathing too fast, and somehow, still not getting enough air into my lungs. The deeper I go, the thicker the mud gets. It goes from foot-deep to ankle-deep, cold and liquid, flooding my shoes. I’m shivering with shock, and a healthy dose of exhaustion. But I have to keep moving. I don’t have any other choice. I cannot let myself get taken.

No sooner does the thought occur than my foot plunges into a shin-deep hole. I go down, and I go down hard.

I land on my side in the mud, left arm bent awkwardly underneath me, the impact sending up a horrible bark of pain. I cry out, eyes squeezed shut, agonised, frustrated tears leaking out. There’s mud everywhere now, on my face, up my nose, in my ears. I roll onto my stomach, a single thought blaring like a fire alarm in my mind. Get up get up get up.

I don’t get the chance. There are thundering footsteps, and then a knee in my back. White torchlight blinds me. A hand on my head, forcing me into the mud. The panic and anger are like rabid dogs, snarling and foaming. I have to stop him from taking me. I can’t let that happen.

It’s not hard for me to drain the tank on my PK. After everything that’s happened to me tonight, it’s not surprising that I’m out of juice. I try to grab as many objects as I can: my captor’s weapon, his torch, the zippers on his jacket. All I get back is the barest flicker of dead-static feeling in my brain. It’s worse than normal; usually, I can still feel objects around me, but now I can’t even do that. I am beyond exhausted, and my PK just isn’t listening to me any more.

“Got her!” my captor yells. “She’s down!”

The pressure comes off the back of my head. He clamps his hands around my wrists, wrenching them behind me so hard that he almost dislocates both of my shoulders. The cuffs go on with a self-satisfied click, biting deep into my skin.

The man on top of me spits, huffs an exhausted breath. “You have the right—” He breaks off, coughs, tries again. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law…”

The LAPD helicopter swoops low overhead, the sound of the rotor blades all but obliterating his voice. Not that it matters. Rights or not, I am truly and properly fucked.

And you know what the worst part of all this is?

None of it would have happened if my brother and sister hadn’t come back from the dead.

OK, look: if this story is going to make any sense, I need to explain a few things.

I promise I’ll be quick. And just so it’s worth your while, at the end I’ll tell you about a trick to cook the world’s best roast chicken. Ready? Here we go.

My parents were brilliant geneticists, and they wanted to create the ultimate soldier. The government wouldn’t let them, so they set up shop on a massive ranch in Wyoming. Turns out, it’s really hard to put a bunch of superpowers in one person, so they put them in three. Their own children. I got psychokinesis, my sister got the ability to see things in the infrared spectrum and my brother never needed to sleep.

That last one was a mistake, because he ended up going completely, homicidally insane. When I was sixteen, he burned down our house, and killed everyone in our family but me. Then the government discovered what I could do, and locked me up in a scientific facility for four years. When their studies on me hit a dead end, they told me that I had a choice: I could either work for them in LA, or they would cut me open and put my brain in a jar.

I like my brain where it is, thanks, so I went for the first option. Ended up working with a Los Angeles black-bag crew called China Shop. Our jobs involve taking down regular human bad guys, but over the past few months, we’ve had more than one person with abilities mess with us. We didn’t know much about where they were coming from, and fighting them took its toll. The latest little episode put my friend Annie in hospital, in a coma, after she got struck by lightning.

Got all that? Good. Next time you have a chicken, spatchcock it. Cut the spine out with some heavy scissors, and press it flat. Cooks in half the time, is basically impossible to dry out, and you get the world’s crispiest, tastiest skin. You’re welcome.

Now: let’s go back to around forty-five minutes before the LAPD pushes me down into the mud and reads me my rights. I’m in Annie’s room at Cedars-Sinai Hospital when my dead brother walks through the door.

I don’t recognise him at first. We’ve tangled multiple times over the past day, but he’s been running around with a bandana over his nose and mouth. No bandana now, and even as I grab a bunch of surgical instruments from a nearby tray and bring them into the air between us, my brain is starting to put it together.

When I realise who it is, all I can do is gape.

And that’s before my dead sister moves out from behind him.

I take a step back, my legs bumping into the chair behind me, sitting down hard. The instruments clatter to the floor.

Outside in the hall, the hospital PA system bleeps, a call for the doctor soaked in static.

“It’s good to see you, Emily,” my sister Chloe says. “We need to talk.”

Emily.

It’s been a long time since I used that name. A long time since I went by anything but Teagan. Hearing it makes a cold sweat spring out on my palms.

Seven years since I saw either of them. Seven years since Adam, my brother, broke Chloe’s leg and left her to crawl across the floor while he set our home on fire. Seven years they’ve been alive, and I had no idea.

There’s no way. I don’t believe it.

But I’m already noticing the details. It starts with the eyes. The Chloe in front of me is older, the willowy teenage figure I remember turned wiry and hard, but she has the same eyes. Deep blue, cold as the Pacific. Seared into my memory. Her hair, which used to blow free around her head, is tied back in a ponytail. The same blonde colour I remember. Faded acne scars pit her skin. She wears a dark green puffer vest over a sleeveless tank and jeans, polished black boots on her feet.

And Adam…

He was always big. Huge shoulders, barrel chest, straining at his thick black sweater. He’s grown his hair out, a straggly grey-black mane around his head to go with his tangled beard. But like Chloe, his eyes haven’t changed. They couldn’t belong to anyone else. If Chloe’s eyes are the cold, blue surface of the ocean, Adam’s are the water a thousand feet down. Blank and empty, filled with monsters you can’t see. They are eyes that have never known a second of sleep. That have spent twenty-six years awake, that have been driven somewhere beyond madness.

I open my mouth. Close it again. To my left, Annie lies silent, cocooned in tubes and beeping machines.

She’s here because of Adam and Chloe. Because one of their projects escaped: a little kid who could control electricity. Annie got in the way. My friend is in a coma, only barely holding on… because of them.

Chloe has the good grace to look slightly uncomfortable. She takes a hesitant step towards me. “I know it’s been a while—”

I let out a sound that is somewhere between a moan and a sob. My feet skitter on the shiny hospital floor, pushing the chair back, bumping it against the wall.

“Emily—” Chloe says.

“Don’t call me that.” My voice barely makes it out of my throat.

“Please just listen…”

“Stay the fuck away from me!”

Chloe puts her hands up. Her palms are grimy, damp from the rain. I have a sudden urge to tell her to go clean herself up. Doesn’t she know she’s in a hospital?

“Emily,” Chloe says again. She speaks slowly and carefully. Politely, even. “You’re in danger. You need to come with us. Right now.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“There’s a lot I have to tell you. I should never have let it go on this long. Please, please, just come with me. I’ll explain everything.”

“Stay back!” Cold sweat slicks my skin. My tongue feels like it’s twice its normal size.

A strange expression crosses Chloe’s face then. Frustration, mixed with the slightest touch of sadness. “I’m sorry about this next part. But we just don’t have time.”

The icy sweat makes me shiver. Except: the shiver is way too powerful. I’m not just cold: I’m freezing, as if my internal organs have frozen solid, blocks of ice around my lungs and heart and stomach.

What the hell?

The shiver is so violent that I almost collapse. I hug myself, my teeth chattering. Chloe tilts her head, and the cold surges. My entire body goes numb. I slip forward off the chair, then collapse forward onto my knees. I roll drunkenly onto my side, my body jackhammering.

And somehow, through the impossible, terrifying cold, I understand.

Our abilities have evolved over the years. Adam can make people dream. I can lift much heavier objects and organic matter, which I never used to be able to move. It’s a lot harder, but I can do it. Chloe was always able to see infrared light, which meant she could detect body heat. Apparently, she’s learned to manipulate that heat as well. Raise and lower internal temperatures.

If you hadn’t figured it out already, Chloe and Adam are bad news. They’ve been creating more genetically modified kids, like the one that put Annie in a hospital bed. They’ve killed people, a lot of people – maybe not directly, but through letting those kids loose in the world.

Whatever they want from me, it can’t be good.

I hunch into myself, desperate to control the shivering. I can barely move, let alone focus enough to use my PK. The cold is like a living thing, clawing at the inside of my ribcage. Eyes squeezed shut, throat a parched wasteland. I keep thinking that alarms will start to ring, that security guards will come thundering down the corridor. But outside the room, the hospital is silent.

Soft footsteps. Chloe crouches over me, breathing hard. When she speaks, her voice is a little ragged, like she’s just run a wind sprint. “Once we’re safe, I’ll tell you everything, I promise. Just hold on for me.”

She gives my shoulder an affectionate squeeze. A sisterly one.

I hunch even deeper, curling into a foetal position, my back to her. Desperately trying to move. To think. I’m numb, burning, shaking so hard that I’m sure my teeth are going to shatter.

I have no idea how Chloe and Adam survived. I have only the barest idea of what’s happening here. But I do know this: they aren’t the same people I once knew. Deep down, I know – no, I understand – that if they take me, they’ll never let me go.

Worse than that: what if Annie wakes up… and I’m gone?

I don’t just mean gone from here. I mean, gone for good. Because if Chloe and Adam take me, I’ll vanish. Annie will think I abandoned her. Just plain walked out.

I can’t do that to her. I won’t.

“Adam,” Chloe says.

Back in Wyoming, nobody could control Adam. My mom and dad had to lock him away. That’s changed, because he obeys his sister without question. Heavy footfalls approach, a shadow falling over me.

Adam bends down, and gets his gigantic arms underneath my body, forcing them under my shoulders and hips.

No!

But I can’t move. Can’t speak.

And there’s no one coming to save me.

As Adam lifts me up (my brother, he’s here, this is him, it really is) I twist sideways. There’s a moment where I’m hanging half in and half out of his arms, where it looks like he’s going to be able to pull me back. Then I wrench my shoulders away, and fall. I land hard, banging my jaw, teeth clacking together, still paralysed with cold.

Not my finest escape attempt.

“Help me,” I say. It’s barely a whisper. I don’t even know who I’m asking for help. Annie, or the doctors, or God, or the fucking flying spaghetti monster. Not that it matters. No one comes. There’s no sound but the beeping of the machines, the distant hum of the hospital.

Where the fuck is everyone? I know it’s after 4 a.m., but this is a hospital. There must be some nurses on the graveyard shift, some junior doc doing the rounds…

“We have to move,” Chloe tells Adam. He scoops me up, and this time, I’m incapable of resisting.

They hustle me into the corridor, looking left and right to check that it’s empty. Adam is breathing hard. His breath smells rank, like something crawled into his throat and died. I want to tell him to brush his teeth, but I’m still on the edge of freezing to death.

Jesus, can Chloe actually cause hypothermia? If she lowers my core temperature enough, will my organs shut down? The crazy thing is, she doesn’t even have to be that powerful to do it. Raise or lower body temperature by even a few degrees, and things start going wrong real fast.

Once again, the disbelief – the sheer unreality of the situation – crashes down on me. Chloe and Adam can’t be alive. It’s not possible.

“Here,” Chloe says, from out of my line of sight. There’s the rumble of wheels on vinyl flooring, and then I’m lowered into a chair. A wheelchair. The lights in the corridor are way too bright, and I can’t even squeeze my eyes shut to block them out.

I’m shivering so hard that I can barely stay in the chair. I’m pretty sure one of my limbs has fallen off, along with my nose and lips. My head tilts backwards, giving me a glimpse of Chloe. She looks exhausted now, drained. It must be taking a real effort for her to maintain this, the same way it takes it out of me when I push my PK too far. Why doesn’t she just let Adam put me in a dream world? Pacify me that way?

It’s worked before. Less than twenty-four hours ago, in fact. China Shop had encountered another individual with abilities: a little boy named Leo Nguyen, who could control electricity. He wasn’t a bad kid, just scared – and there was no way I was handing him over to Tanner. She would have done the same to him that she did to me: locked him in a facility, alone, to study him. I only had four years of it; Leo would have been in there for a decade. More. No way I was letting that happen.

I dropped off the grid, helping this kid get down the LA River to where his family might be. Annie came to help. So did Nic Delacourt, who may or may not be my boyfriend – it’s complicated. Nic made it out OK, but Annie…

I don’t want to think about Annie now.

Adam chased us, trying to get Leo back. I didn’t recognise him; amazingly, when a horrifying, mind-melting bad guy comes after me, my first thought isn’t: Holy crap, it’s my long-lost brother.

So how do I know this isn’t a dream?

Because whenever he trapped me in one of his illusions, it was never him I saw. It was other people in my life, twisted, changed in horrifying ways. The fact that I can still see him means that this is real.

Chloe bends down, and then she does the damnedest thing. There’s a blanket in her arms – she must have taken it from Annie’s room – and as I shiver uncontrollably, she tucks it around me. Then she leans forward and rests her forehead against mine.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she says. She speaks quickly, like she can’t wait to get this out. “But that’s all going to change. From now on, it’s all going to be better.” I can’t tell if she’s trying to reassure me, or herself. “You should see what we’ve been building, Em. I’m creating a place for us, a world for us – people like us, I mean. Where we don’t have to be scared, or hide, or try to fit in. A place where you’ll be safe.”

There has to be somebody who can help me. If the docs and nurses are AWOL, then maybe someone else will come. Where are the rest of China Shop when you need them? Reggie, our hacker – she could see us on the security cams. I could get her to kill the lights, turn on the fire suppression system. Africa, our wheelman, all seven feet of him. Nic… he’s not part of the team, but he’s as close to me as anyone. He should be here. He should—

My sister kisses me on the forehead, then straightens up, nodding to Adam. The three of us proceed down the hallway to the elevator at the far end. Somewhere, very distant, there is the sound of a clanking pipe, catching just at the edge of my hearing. The cold is bone-deep now.

Into an elevator. Chloe’s hand on my shoulder, squeezing, Adam hulking just behind me. He reaches over with a meaty arm, hits the button and the doors close smoothly on Annie’s floor.

Chloe keeps talking, her voice straining with the effort. “I should have come for you a long time ago. I only found out you were alive after you got to LA, and I wasn’t… I didn’t know if you’d want to see us. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t regret that. But I’m going to do better. I’m going to show you what we’ve made.”

Annie’s voice in my head: Use your voodoo.

But I can’t. It’s not going to work this time.

My PK is there, cooking in my veins. But I can’t harness it. Whatever Chloe is doing to me has walled it off.

The elevator dings, and the doors slide open. We’re in one of the basement parking garages, a dimly lit concrete space with vehicles dotted here and there. An ambulance sits against the wall at the far end, side-on to us, maybe fifty feet away. The rear doors are open, and there’s a stretcher parked by the cab. No paramedics that I can see.

“Quickly.” Chloe sounds like she’s about to pass out. “There’s a kit… in the truck.”

A kit. They must be planning on dosing me with something, knocking me out. Quite why they didn’t bring it up to Annie’s hospital room, I don’t know. Maybe Chloe didn’t anticipate that keeping me locked down would be this difficult.

We head towards the ambulance – Chloe and Adam must be parked nearby, in whatever Evil Villain Mobile they arrived in. It’s such an odd thought: that these two drove here, that they had to take a ticket and find an open parking spot, that they’ll probably have to pay at a machine before they leave—at least, if they want to escape unnoticed. If I wasn’t the one they were kidnapping, I’d actually laugh. All these amazing abilities, and you still gotta find parking.

As we reach the end of the line of cars, turning right past the ambulance, Adam comes to an abrupt halt. The wheels on my chair squeak against the concrete as he does so.

He giggles. Out of nowhere: this childlike, horrifying little noise. “What will we do about the children?” he whispers. “They’re inside the house and its walls go on for ever…” He starts laughing again, getting louder and louder.

I know his voice. It’s been twisted by the years, mutated. But it’s him. It’s my big brother. The same one I went ATVing with in the backwoods of our parents’ ranch. The brother who put his arm around me when our cat died, held me while I sobbed. The one who would laugh at me when I tried to stay up all night like he could, cackling as the yawns overtook me. The one who always put a blanket over me when I finally fell asleep.

The one who lost his mind.

“Program,” Chloe grunts. “Captain. Alpha. Disorder. Zigzag. Zigzag. Zigzag.”

Adam’s giggle snaps off, silenced.

Control words. Somehow, Chloe has learned how to command him. Pretty sure she didn’t know that trick back in Wyoming.

My brother pushes me down the line of cars, and it’s then that I realise that one of them is mine. My black Jeep, the Batmobile, is just visible off to the left. The keys are still in my hoodie pouch.

The car may as well be a million miles away.

As we turn right past the ambulance, a voice says “’Scuse me. Hey.”

Adam and Chloe stop. They don’t turn my chair around, so I can’t see the speaker. The voice is male, and sounds like it belongs to someone with a pack-a-day habit. “If she’s been discharged, you have to check the chair back into the nurses’ station. You can’t leave it down here.”

“I know,” Chloe says. Her words come out in a choked gasp, like she’s struggling for air. “I’ll bring it… back inside in a second.”

“You OK?” the man says. “You don’t look so hot.”

I’m desperate to see over my shoulder, to somehow communicate to whoever this person is that I could use an assist. I’m still locked down by Chloe’s ability… but even as the thought occurs, I realise that her ability isn’t as strong as before. I can actually feel my fingers and toes. As if…

As if Chloe is losing her grip.

Behind me, Adam shifts. This time, Chloe all but spits the words out “Program. Captain. Alpha. Disorder. Zigzag. Zigzag. Zigzag.”

“What the hell does that mean?” the man says. “That some kind of gang thing?”

Footsteps. Then a face appears above me. It’s a paramedic, in a short-sleeved white shirt and blue work pants. He’s middle-aged, with an untidy splash of stubble. Streaky grey hair hangs down to his shoulders. Despite the early hour, he has a pair of sunglasses, pushed up onto his head.

He frowns at me, then looks up at Chloe. “They discharged her? She looks like she’s in shock.”

“Voluntary discharge.” Chloe has to hiss the words through gritted teeth.

“Bad idea. She should be back inside. Look at her: she’s shaking.”

He sounds genuinely concerned, which is sweet. But right now, this man is in danger. He is putting himself squarely in harm’s way, and he doesn’t even realise it. I try to tell him this with my eyes, force words out through my numb lips. But nothing comes.

Still looking at me, the man reaches for his belt, pulls out a walkie. “Donnie, it’s Gabe. Can you come back down here for a sec, with the duty nurse? We’ve got someone—”

Which is when Adam takes two strides towards him, and delivers a crushing blow to his throat.

It happens fast. One moment, the paramedic is upright, and the next, he’s flat on his back. His walkie clatters off the concrete as he clutches at his throat, his larynx crushed, his face drained of blood.

Chloe tries to grab her brother, and stumbles. She goes to one knee, breathing in hot, ragged gasps. I have the strangest urge to wrap my arms around her, pull her to her feet.

My fingers flood with pins and needles, a horrible aching sensation that is the best thing I’ve felt all day. Guess my dear sister finally ran out of gas.

Which means…

I slowly stand, shucking the blanket, pushing the chair away. I’m maybe ten feet from the front of the ambulance. I turn around slowly; they don’t notice right away, their attention on the downed paramedic. But the chair wheels squeak against the concrete floor, and Chloe and Adam finally look at me.

I’m wobbly, exhausted, strung out. Last night, I had to ingest crystal meth to stop a flash flood from killing a bunch of people in an LA River storm drain. The drug supercharged my ability, enough to actually grab hold of a tidal wave of debris and rainwater, and push it back. But it utterly wiped me out. By all rights, I should be toast.

Thing is, I am pissed.

I don’t know what you’re supposed to do when your brother and sister come back from the dead, and it turns out they’ve been the ones fucking with your life and your people for years. Maybe I should be talking to them. Trying to understand. But right now, there’s only one emotion I feel, and that’s pure, righteous anger.

I have to dig deep to get to my PK. You might think I’d hold back—that I’d never use my PK against my own family. But you know what? No. That shit’s not gonna happen.

They may be my brother and sister. But they are also the reason Annie is in a coma. They caused the death of her lover, Paul, buried alive by one of their psycho kids. They kidnapped Reggie, used her against us. They put my friends and my city in danger.

And they abandoned me. They were alive, and they knew I was alive, and they did nothing.

I don’t know how they survived. I don’t know what they’re planning. I don’t know why they built up the programme that we’ve heard called the School, and I don’t know why they’ve used our parents’ research to develop kids with abilities. I don’t know why they decided to reveal themselves to me now, why they want me to come with them. I don’t really know how Chloe’s ability works, or why Adam isn’t using his. I don’t have the faintest clue about how I’m going to put my life back together after tonight. But I do know one thing.

An ambulance stretcher to the face will ruin your fucking day.

It’s at the front the ambulance, parked near the driver’s-side door. I snap my PK out, grab it and send it rocketing through the air towards them. Adam ducks. Pulls his sister – our sister – behind the back of the ambulance, around the rear door. He swings it closed behind him as the two of them take cover inside.

The stretcher bounces off the concrete floor, but I’ve already forgotten it. I grab the ambulance door with my PK, ripping it out of Adam’s hands, then off its hinges, sending it boomeranging out and back. I tear off wing mirrors, rip chunks of concrete out of the ground and ceiling, snap light fixtures to pieces, a whirlwind of glass and masonry and metal, sending it all flying at them. The ambulance rocks on its suspension as my projectiles slam into it.

Take me? Show me what you’ve built? Let me show you what I’ve built, fuckers.

Enough with this wild PK temper tantrum shit. Why am I bothering to throw things at them from the outside? There are plenty of objects inside that ambulance that are both pointy and heavy. I send my PK out, reaching it inside the vehicle…

And then all at once, the world is burning.

Fire. Everywhere. The concrete a