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Synopsis
Full of imagination, wit, and random sh*t flying through the air, " Alias meets X-Men" in this insane new Frost Files adventure that will blow your tiny mind (Maria Lewis). Teagan Frost might be getting better at moving sh*t with her mind - but her job working as a telekinetic government operative only ever seems to get harder. That's not even talking about her car-crash of a love life . . . And things are about to get even tougher. No sooner has Teagan chased off one psychotic kid hell-bent on trashing the whole West Coast, but now she has to contend with another supernatural being who can harness devastating electrical power. And if Teagan can't stop him, the whole of Los Angeles will be facing the sh*tstorm of the century . . . “An un-put-down-able, action-packed adventure that packs an emotional punch” (Kirkus). 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
Release date: April 27, 2021
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Print pages: 496
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Eye of the Sh*t Storm
Jackson Ford
Oh please, like you’ve never wanted to drive at high speed down a Los Angeles storm drain.
Although I’m guessing your fantasy doesn’t involve being chased by a gang of outlaw bikers. Who are shooting automatic weapons at you. And I’m a hundred per cent sure you would prefer not to be in a car holding forty pounds of stolen, high-grade methamphetamine.
It doesn’t help that we don’t actually have that much room to manoeuvre. The storm drain is three hundred feet wide, but the – let’s see – six bikes chasing us make it seem a lot smaller. The sides of the drain are steeply sloped – not too steep to drive down, but a bitch to get back up – and there’s a channel of water running right down the middle, too deep to cross.
Heat from the late morning sun bakes off the concrete in shimmering waves as Africa goes foot to floor, swerving to avoid a bike that’s gotten a little too close. I flinch back, white-knuckling the edges of the van’s passenger seat.
“This was a terrible idea!” I shout.
“It was your idea!” Annie Cruz roars from the back seat.
“Bullshit! I just wanted to steal their meth. It was you two who thought it would be fun to drop into the storm drain and— Fuck!”
A bullet takes out the side mirror, inches from me. Africa reaches across and pulls me down, spitting an angry curse in French.
Another bike comes up alongside us, straddled by a thick-necked goon with bad facial tats. He’s carefully aiming a handgun the size of a prime rib roast and clearly hoping to get more than just the wing mirror this time. How the hell does he even stay on the bike with the recoil?
“Buh-bye,” I say, reaching out with my mind and jerking the gun out of his hands.
Didn’t I mention? I can move things with my mind. It’s called psychokinesis – PK for short. The rushing air whips the gun out of sight.
Technically, I’m not supposed to use my ability in public – or in ways that might reveal it to others. My scary government handler doesn’t like it. But what is this biker asshole going to do? No guys, really, she pulled it out of my hands with her mind, I swear! I totally don’t have butterfingers… Why are you laughing? Stop it!
“Teggan,” Africa’s Senegalese-inflected roar fills the car. “There’s too many. Use your dëma powers, huh?”
“I just did! Why do you think we’re not getting shot at more?”
“Stop their motorbikes. Break the engines.”
“Already tried that!”
When they first started chasing us, I used my PK to crunch the engine internals of one of the bikes, and the result was horrifying. The bike didn’t stop neatly, as I’d hoped. Instead, it wobbled and skidded and dumped its driver onto the tarmac at high speed, scraping him to a bloody, comatose pulp. And it’s not like these people stopped to put on helmets.
Sure, I’m a psychokinetic government agent, but I do not like killing people.
“You have to,” Africa snarls. “Otherwise they just chase and chase.”
“How about you drive somewhere they can’t see us, and then we’ll—”
“Watch out!” Annie screams from the back.
There’s a huge, jagged chunk of concrete jutting up from the centre of the channel, resting on a mound of black dirt. Waist-high, more enough to ruin the day for anybody who hits it at speed. The mound of dirt runs down to a long crack, the concrete split and broken, running maybe twenty feet across the storm drain.
Oh yeah. We had an earthquake two months ago. A really big one. Most of the storm drain is fine, but concrete is concrete. Shake it, it cracks.
We only just – just – manage to miss the concrete. Africa’s driving has gotten better over the past few months, his reaction times and wheel control improving. Behind us, there’s a giant, thudding crunch as one of the bikes slams into the obstacle.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Annie says. She glances at the meth, which is in an open-top plastic box on the seat next to her. Maybe forty thin Ziploc baggies filled with off-white, greasy-looking powder.
Now it’s just four bikes chasing us, and they’re a lot further back. I don’t think they’re going to be able to catch up – and it would take one hell of a lucky shot to hit us. We’re accelerating again, approaching the next bridge up – Main Street, I think, a simple four-lane job crossing the storm drain, with thick concrete supports.
“See?” I tell Africa. “We’re fine.”
He grunts a laugh. “You bloody toubab. You nearly get us ki— Wooooahshit!”
The biggest SUV I’ve ever seen is roaring down the sloped side of the storm drain, heading right for us.
It’s a black tank, with a bull bar you could use to shift an elephant. Even inside our truck, I can hear the thundering growl of its engine. It bounces as it hits the flat, heading straight for us, thirty feet away and closing fast.
“Teggan?” Africa’s voice is high and panicky, and it fucking well should be, because that bull bar is getting very large.
“On it.”
I send out my PK in a huge wave, wrapping my mind around the SUV’s engine components like you’d close your hand around a glass of water. Then I squeeze, compacting steel and wire and gasoline.
The growling engine cuts off with a giant bang. But the truck doesn’t stop. It’s simply built up too much speed.
Africa accelerates, turning the wheel to the right, trying to get us some space. Not fast enough. Behind me, Annie sucks in a breath, the kind you make if you’re trying to squeeze past someone in a crowded room.
I reach out for the truck’s wheels, the body panels, trying to slow it down. But the truck just has too much momentum. Africa twists his body away as that black bull bar fills the window.
There’s a giant, world-obliterating bang.
The truck crunches into the metal above our vehicle’s back left wheel. The spin we go into is so violent that it snaps my head around on my shoulders. Africa is bellowing, fighting with the wheel as the storm drain spins around us, a flash of black as the SUV crosses behind our car – it spun us completely one-eighty – and then it’s gone and we’re still spinning and Annie is screaming and then another dark shape looms in my window and I have just enough time to realise it’s one of the Main Street Bridge supports and—
And then I don’t really know what happens.
An eternity of darkness and silence. Punctuated by short bursts of noise and light.
Africa ducking behind the door as a gunshot shatters the driver’s window. Broken glass nicking my cheeks.
Annie yelling that we have to get out. From somewhere behind me, there’s an odd crackling sound.
More darkness. I’m yanked out of it when Africa starts shaking me. The guy is seven feet tall with hands like dump truck scoops, so it’s hard to ignore him when he grabs hold of you. It also alerts me to just how much pain I’m in. My back, my shoulders, my neck… oh fuck me, my neck. That is going to suck later.
“They are coming,” he spits.
“Who’s coming?” I say. Or try to. It comes out as “Whsmngz?”
There’s something on my face. Something powdery. It’s on my skin, my teeth and tongue, up my nose. Jesus, it’s in my eyes. And it burns: searing, acrid, horrible. I sneeze, and it’s like an explosion going off inside my skull.
I sit up, blinking hard against the pain. There’s a bag of meth on the dashboard in front of me, split wide open. It must have flown right out of the box and through the gap in the seats when we crashed, smacking into the windshield. Popping like a balloon.
Oh fuck. That’s what’s on me. Burning my throat and nose and tongue. White powder fills the air around me. The bag that hit the windshield can’t be the only one split open, but it looks like it’s the only one that happened to explode right in my face. Annie and Africa must gotten some on them too, but I got most of it.
I claw at my skin in horror, hacking, spitting, trying to force the drug out. There’s no way you can get high from a face full of the stuff, right? No way. It doesn’t work like that… you’re supposed to snort it or smoke it or…
The bikers are riding up, holding very big guns and looking… I’m going to go with annoyed. It’s an image caught perfectly by the bright LA sunlight, their patched leather jackets highlighted just right.
Our ride is totalled. One side bent and smashed from when the SUV hit us, the other mangled from the impact with the bridge support. It’s staggering that we’re all still alive – if we’d hit at another angle, we might not be.
Which isn’t much comfort, because we’re on fire.
The hood has popped open, and there are flames visible at the edge. Big flames. There’s smoke, too, thick and white.
“Don’t breathe!” Annie yells. “Just hold it in.”
Africa has the presence of mind to bury his mouth and nose in his elbow, but not me. I’m too busy trying to get the awful meth powder out of my face, so I get a big lungful of the smoke. I cough and splutter, twisting my head to one side. My throat closes to a pinhole, cutting off my air. My chest is on fire, my nostrils filling with the sick, acrid tang. The meth powder and the smoke tag team to shred my sinuses to pieces.
We have to get out. We have to get out of here right fucking now. Forget the guys with the guns – we can figure that out afterwards. All I have to do is open the door, get us away from the burning car.
Right then, the bridge above us gives a deep, horrifying groan.
I may have mentioned the big earthquake. You know what big earthquakes do? Besides knocking down buildings and cracking roads and bursting gas mains? They weaken bridge supports. Many of the bridges in LA are off limits to traffic right now, for just that reason.
Apparently, that includes this one.
Africa looks up, then back at me. Above the arm covering his nose and mouth, his eyes are as big as baseballs.
“Teagan,” Annie coughs out. “You gotta hold the bridge. You—”
She doesn’t get to finish her sentence. At that moment, the support cracks, the concrete splintering in a dozen places.
I throw out my PK, all concerns about revealing my ability forgotten. But I’m not fast enough, not even close.
The bridge collapses, the weakened roadway above our heads breaking up and plummeting towards us, the noise not quite loud enough to drown out our screams.
Maybe I should start at the beginning.
Hi. I’m Teagan Frost. I’m twenty-three years old. I live in Los Angeles, and I like good food, bad movies and terrible rap music. I work for a removals company called China Shop Movers, which is actually a government-run espionage operation. My favourite colour is purple. I drive an ’03 black Jeep, which I call the Batmobile.
Believe it or not, I don’t usually spend my time getting into vehicular gunfights. Take, for example, the situation I’m in right now. On our little timeline, it’s around forty-five minutes before I ingested meth in the middle of a car chase/gun battle/bridge collapse.
We’re on the thirtieth floor of a hotel just south of Downtown. The expansive penthouse balcony, a space of marble and granite, is bordered by a chest-high, two-feet-thick wall. Normally hotels don’t have balconies, but I guess this place decided it was worth the risk. When the hotel still had paying guests, the fee for one night in the room probably covered the insurance premiums and the services of a good PR firm if someone did decide to do a perfect-ten dive onto San Pedro Street.
It’s around ten in the morning, warm for January, with the sun already baking down out of a deep blue sky above the city. Despite the heat, the breeze is warm and gentle this high up, and the view is unreal. Blue skies all the way to the horizon in the north, where dark clouds are starting to build.
The balcony table holds an iced bucket of beers, and classic rock plays from a hidden set of speakers. It’s about the nicest situation I’ve been in for a long time. Well, if you ignore the cracked walls, the messy suite behind us and the many, many men standing around with guns.
I don’t remember the name of the hotel, but after the earthquake a few months ago, it’s gone derelict. Squatters and looters. Oh, and biker gangs. In particular, the Legends Motorcycle Club, who have taken advantage of LA’s upside-down real estate market to get themselves a nice little base of operations.
They insisted on meeting us at a designated location – in this case, the parking lot of a destroyed strip club in Mission Junction – so they could blindfold us and transport us here in one of their SUVs, even though we were able to figure out where we were the second they brought us onto the balcony. Honestly.
The man across the table is called Robert. He has an enormous, sculpted beard that hangs down over his sleeveless, patched vest. Tattooed arms as thick as my thighs – and I am not skinny. His body almost overwhelms the cute director’s chair he’s sitting in, one of about ten dotted across the balcony. Bikers occupy half the chairs, all holding gigantic assault rifles. It’s a shame he’s called Robert. He’s more of a Zeke or Luther or Big Jon. Life sucks sometimes.
Robert isn’t actually in charge. He’s running the show here, for this deal, but he isn’t the President of the Legends. That’s someone called Pop, who we haven’t met yet.
The only person bigger than Robert is Africa – China Shop’s driver and muscle. He’s as thin as Robert is thick, the head on his scrawny body so big that it looks like it might roll off. Africa’s real name is Idriss Kouamé, although he’ll only answer to his nickname.
Normally, Africa’s dress sense tends towards the colourful. Purple Lakers jackets, yellow Hammer pants, buttery Timbs. I’m kind of surprised at how subdued he is today: dark suit, slightly baggy on his lanky frame, and a red shirt open at the neck.
He’s not actually very good at being muscle. I’ve watched him try and fight people, and it’s like watching a drunk try to dance the macarena. But he does an excellent job of looking scary. He’s doing it now as he stands behind Annie’s chair, scowling the scowliest scowl that anyone has ever scowled.
Annie Cruz isn’t scowling, but she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t need a facial expression to look scary – it’s something she was born with. She’s in the director’s chair on the other side of the table from Robert, wearing a dark green camo jacket over a black T and jeans. Annie has a buzzcut – she used to have a huge set of dreads, but she shaved them all off recently. Her skin is the colour of brown butter, currently beaded with sweat from the hot sunshine. At least, I hope it’s from the sunshine.
If my ability is to move shit with my mind, Annie’s ability is moving people. It was her contacts who put us in touch with the Legends. Annie’s Army, we call them – a deep network of connects stretching across California. Janitors. Senators. Construction workers. Doctors. Movie stars. Fluffers. Probably half the Lakers. Annie’s connects go deep.
Robert keeps glancing at me, and I’m pretty sure I know why. From his perspective, I’m the odd one out. A small-ish woman with short, spiky black hair, dressed in a bright blue Xzibit Restless tank top over skinny jeans and Air Jordans. Africa’s the muscle, Annie’s in charge… but he can’t work out what I’m there for, and it’s making him uncomfortable.
Good.
“Y’all want some coffee?” Robert rumbles, addressing Annie.
She shakes her head.
“You sure? I make a real good pot of coffee.” He gestures to a French press, bumping up against the bag of meth. “Nicaraguan Roast. I let the grounds bloom – that means you pour a little water in, let it sit for a minute before you pour the rest. It really opens up the flavour. You should try some.”
There’s a gun on the table, different from the ones the bikers have. A really freaking big gun, too, with a bulging scope and a stock you could use to split someone’s head open.
The rifle is a modified Heckler and Koch 416, if I remember the mission brief. The Legends are not supposed to have modified Heckler and Koch 416s. Nobody is, except the military. So it’s really worrying that this little gang of upstart bikers has a shipment of two hundred they are trying to offload in Los Angeles.
“How much?” Annie says. She sounds distracted, as if only just remembering why we’re here. That’s not good. She’s on point for this mission, and we need her to be on her A-game.
“Ain’t you gonna test it?” Robert asks.
“Later.” Annie yawns. “We got our own shop.”
Robert ignores her, getting to his feet and hauling the rifle towards him. One of his buddies passes him a magazine, which he inserts. “This is the gun that killed Osama.”
I can’t help myself. “That one in particular? No wonder you’re charging so much.”
One of the bikers stifles a chuckle. Robert gives him a dirty look. He swings the rifle up, points it into the blue sky and pulls the trigger. Once. Twice. Three times. The shots are loud enough to set my ears ringing.
He turns around, grinning when he sees the looks on our faces. “Come on. Cops won’t do nothing. After the Big One, they’re running themselves ragged anyway. I could let off a rocket launcher up here, probably.” He pauses. “Are you interested in those, by the way? Because we could—”
“No.” Annie says. “How much?”
Robert falls silent, as if he can’t believe the disrespect we’re showing. He puts the rifle back on the table. The irony is, after the quake, government regs on guns are stricter than ever in California. Quite why the government never understands that making something illegal results in a massive black market trade is beyond me.
At last, Robert says, “Three grand per.”
Annie doesn’t hesitate. “Two.”
“Three. Best I can do, even wholesale. You can sell for four, and I got two hundred ready to go as we speak. That’s…” He frowns, glances at one of the other bikers, a short man with a really bad goatee and a beer belly, holding a rifle almost as big as he is. “Alan, what’s the profit on that?”
Alan rolls his eyes upwards, his mouth moving silently. Africa and I exchange a look.
“Two hundred large,” Alan says. His voice is nasally, monotone. Like he’s an accountant giving a presentation to the board. Hell, for all I know, that’s what he was before the quake. With what it did to LA, it wrecked a lot of lives. Maybe Alan’s was one of them.
Our mission objectives are simple. We confirm that the Legends are selling guns, and get a favour to take home from this party. We find out as much as we can about their base of operations, which is something I’m super-handy for – and we find out who their supplier is. Then we make an exit, report everything back to our handler, Moira Tanner, who then sends in a team of special forces to do the hard work while we go get a beer somewhere.
Why not just send in the special forces right away, you ask? Because America’s finest thick-necked goons don’t just go in guns blazing every time they get a whiff of something hinky. They want intel. Sometimes that means long stake-outs and planting bugs and ridiculous disguises, but it’s much easier to use your very own psychokinetic, who can case the entire building just by walking through it.
See, moving shit with my mind is only the start of my ability. To move things, I have to sense them, using my mind to track their position in space. That means I can easily build up a picture of my surroundings, even if I can’t see them.
I can feel the coins and phones in the pockets of every biker here, the shape of the rings on their fingers and the metal studs on their jackets. My ability also lets me know that there are bikers here we haven’t seen yet, other figures who will suddenly appear to tilt the odds if things do go south. I can feel the phone being held by the dude in the hotel room’s bathroom, feel it vibrate as he taps at the screen. Another two dudes in the suite’s bedroom. One of them is messing around with a pistol in a way that is probably going to get his dick shot off.
I call it echolocation, because I’m super-original and clever.
“Six hundred thousand.” Robert rolls the words out. He spreads his hands like he’s done a magic trick.
Annie drops her head, as if thinking about it. I sneak a glance at her, and what I see worries me even more. Her eyes are closed, her mouth set in a thin line. Like she’s having to gather herself.
I have a sudden urge to check in with Reggie – our boss, back at the office. She’s a former Army helicopter pilot who now runs China Shop, and is one hell of a hacker. There’s not a whole lot for her to do on this particular job, but she was still heavily involved in the planning, and she’s watching us right now. Each of us wear tiny, adhesive pinhole cameras on our shirts, undetectable by any sweeping devices. Sometimes, working for the government means cool toys.
Normally we have comms earpieces, too, but we left those at home. Hard to pretend to be gun-buying criminals when you have one of those in your ears. Anyway, the cameras have a very tiny mic, so Reggie can hear us even if she can’t talk to us.
Annie raises her chin. “OK,” she says. “Six hundred. But I am gonna run some tests, make sure these aren’t just stock.” She reaches for the gun. “Got a little setup out in Oxnard. Everything gravy, then we come back and settle up.”
Robert has the grin of a Hollywood actor: big and white and completely fake. “Hold your horses there. That little sampler doesn’t go anywhere without Pop’s say so.” Is it my imagination, or is there the very slightest waver of his smile as he says the name?
“So get Pop up here,” I say.
“Naw, Pop’s got more important shit to do. I will call though.” He pulls out his own phone… and stops when another biker pushes open the sliding door to the patio. He’s missing an arm, and the other is a forest of tattoos. He’s clutching a cellphone, and as he crosses the balcony to Robert, he gives me a completely blank look.
Uh-oh.
The guy bends down and whispers in Robert’s ear, like something out of a bad James Bond movie. Robert’s expression doesn’t change. A weird thought: he enjoys this. Enjoys the whole rooftop-balcony-meeting, Nicaraguan coffee, sophisticated criminal schtick. It’s the kind of thing he’d never have gotten to do when he was just a shitty street-level biker. For him, the earthquake represented a growth opportunity.
A sudden quiet settles over the balcony. Even the wind has stopped.
“OK.” Robert claps the edge of the table, gets to his feet. “Looks like we’re all good to go here.”
“Thought you needed to call Pop,” Annie says.
“Naw, not a problem. Pop says I can do whatever I need to.” He rolls his eyes slightly at me, as if trying to say, Can you believe how difficult your partner is being?
It is very tempting to beat him to death with his own phone. But I’m a hero and a classy human, so I restrain myself.
“So we can go ahead and test this?” Annie lifts the gun as she gets to her feet.
“Sure, sure. Answer me one question, though.”
“Uh-huh?”
His smile never wavers. “What’s China Shop?”
Double uh-oh.
Annie, to her credit, gets it together – just as well, because I can’t keep the alarm off my face. “Moving company. It’s the legit part of our operation.”
Robert leans back against the thick balcony railing. “So… you don’t do any work for the government?”
Triple uh-oh, quadruple goddamn-it and all of the yikes.
We don’t get a chance to deny any of it. Three of the bikers grab hold of Africa. They kick his legs out from underneath him, grabbing him in a chokehold as he goes over backwards. Three more hit Annie, wrestling her to the table. Two of them, Alan and the one-armed guy, grab hold of me, squeezing my biceps tight. Goddammit, who the hell tipped these assholes off?
“Get the fuck off me,” Annie snarls.
I need to do something, but I’ll have to play this very carefully. I’m not supposed to reveal my ability, even in cases where the people watching are unlikely to alert the media.
What happens next happens really freaking fast.
Robert pulls the modified H&K off the table, whips it up to point at Africa. He aims carefully, centre-mass, not wanting to hit his buddies. Then without another word, he pulls the trigger.
Or tries to. I don’t let him. Trigger stays locked. He snarls, chucks the gun to the ground, snatches a rifle from one of his buddies. I lock that one down too, all the while thinking, Come on, come on, find a way out of this.
Robert gives up and drops the weapon, jerks his chin at the men holding us. My heart skitter-beats as they heft Africa like a sack of grain. He roars, tries to buck them off. But like I said, he’s lanky and skinny and utterly useless in a fight.
And before Annie and I can say anything, before I can switch my PK to the men holding Africa, they lift him onto the balcony wall, and topple him over the edge.
There is a long, horrible second where he’s looking right at me. His eyes are wide, terrified. Disbelieving.
His feet flick upwards, as if saluting the deep blue morning sky. Then Africa is gone.
You’re probably wondering why I let that happen.
After all, what’s to stop me grabbing every object on the balcony, from guns to ashtrays to those cute directors chairs, and using them to beat ten shades of shit out of our biker pals?
That was my first thought too. The problem is that it reveals my ability in a major way. Reggie is always… well, everybody is always telling me to think before I act. And in this case, I actually do. There’s a better, smarter solution here.
Of course, it has a few problems of its own. I need to keep everyone’s eyes on me. I can’t tell Annie, or Africa. And it may or may not result in us all falling to our deaths.
I go fucking nuts, twisting and yelling. Alan has to plant his feet, jerk back as I try to smash his nose in with the back of my head. One of the other goons grabs my legs, ignoring my furious, angry howls. “You cocksuckers, what the fuck? What the fuck? I’ll fucking kill you, I’ll tear your dicks off and play a drum solo with them, you – let go!”
Thinking: That’s it, keep your eyes on me, don’t you dare look over that balcony…
With a mutual grunt, Alan and his accomplice lift my screaming self onto the two-feet-thick railing. Behind me, Annie’s breathing is hot, harsh, panicked. “Teagan,” she says, and the note of desperation in her voice is terrifying. God, I wish I could tell her what I have planned, even though I’d probably leave out the part where it might kill us all.
I lock eyes with Alan. No matter what happens, I have to keep their attention “I’m going to punch a hole in your skull, you bean-counting motherf—”
His expression doesn’t change as he and his buddy roll me right off the edge of the balcony railing.
I get a split-second glimpse of Annie, staring at me in horror. Then gravity takes me, clamping onto my stomach. I go head-over-heels backwards, the bright sunlight blinding me. The terror tries to wipe my mind clean, force me to give into it…
Just as I land face-first on the floating couch.
It’s four stories below the penthouse, hovering in mid-air. It’s a two-seater, with thick, squashy foam cushions, and I hit it like a sack of concrete. It punches the air out of my lungs, almost knocks me senseless. I nearly roll right off. But there is a tiny part of my brain that would prefer not die in a stupid way, and it makes me throw out an arm and grab hold. I come to a stop with one leg dangling off the edge, one black Air Jordan waving crazily in the open air.
No time, no time. I shoot the couch back towards the building while I hang on for dear life. A snap of wind sends snarls my hair around my face, and then I’m over the balcony of the twenty-sixth floor suite. That’s my cue. I tip the couch sideways, go as loose as possible—
—and roll right onto Africa.
He’s lying on the balcony, hyperventilating. Confirmed: his bony-ass frame does not make for a soft landing. I yelp as we crash together, rebounding off him and nearly braining myself on the leg of the outside table.
“Teggan, what—?”
My voice is a high-pitched, breathless hiss. “Not now!”
I zip the couch back out into open air, thinking: Please please please let it be fast enough.
I don’t have a mental lock on Annie. I can move inorganic objects just fine – metal, plastic, whatever – but doing it with organic objects is ridiculously hard. It takes time, and even sensing their position in space takes a lot of concentration. Which means that the couch isn’t lined up right when Annie comes dropping past the twenty-sixth floor.
She bounces sideways. She must have hit it just right – or wrong. Her legs and arms flail, her scream piercing the air. There’s a horrible, nauseating half-second where I’m sure that I’m not going to make it, that I can’t move the couch fast enough…
Then I do. I zip the couch underneath her, catching Annie on the downward arc of her bounce. Before anything else horrible can happen, I pull her and the couch towards us, not even letting it clear the railing before I dump her onto the balcony.
She rolls, bounces again, throws out her arms like a bouncer doing crowd control. Her face comes to a stop a foot from mine. Her mouth is slightly open, all the colour chased from her caramel skin, forehead shiny with sweat and eyes dr
Although I’m guessing your fantasy doesn’t involve being chased by a gang of outlaw bikers. Who are shooting automatic weapons at you. And I’m a hundred per cent sure you would prefer not to be in a car holding forty pounds of stolen, high-grade methamphetamine.
It doesn’t help that we don’t actually have that much room to manoeuvre. The storm drain is three hundred feet wide, but the – let’s see – six bikes chasing us make it seem a lot smaller. The sides of the drain are steeply sloped – not too steep to drive down, but a bitch to get back up – and there’s a channel of water running right down the middle, too deep to cross.
Heat from the late morning sun bakes off the concrete in shimmering waves as Africa goes foot to floor, swerving to avoid a bike that’s gotten a little too close. I flinch back, white-knuckling the edges of the van’s passenger seat.
“This was a terrible idea!” I shout.
“It was your idea!” Annie Cruz roars from the back seat.
“Bullshit! I just wanted to steal their meth. It was you two who thought it would be fun to drop into the storm drain and— Fuck!”
A bullet takes out the side mirror, inches from me. Africa reaches across and pulls me down, spitting an angry curse in French.
Another bike comes up alongside us, straddled by a thick-necked goon with bad facial tats. He’s carefully aiming a handgun the size of a prime rib roast and clearly hoping to get more than just the wing mirror this time. How the hell does he even stay on the bike with the recoil?
“Buh-bye,” I say, reaching out with my mind and jerking the gun out of his hands.
Didn’t I mention? I can move things with my mind. It’s called psychokinesis – PK for short. The rushing air whips the gun out of sight.
Technically, I’m not supposed to use my ability in public – or in ways that might reveal it to others. My scary government handler doesn’t like it. But what is this biker asshole going to do? No guys, really, she pulled it out of my hands with her mind, I swear! I totally don’t have butterfingers… Why are you laughing? Stop it!
“Teggan,” Africa’s Senegalese-inflected roar fills the car. “There’s too many. Use your dëma powers, huh?”
“I just did! Why do you think we’re not getting shot at more?”
“Stop their motorbikes. Break the engines.”
“Already tried that!”
When they first started chasing us, I used my PK to crunch the engine internals of one of the bikes, and the result was horrifying. The bike didn’t stop neatly, as I’d hoped. Instead, it wobbled and skidded and dumped its driver onto the tarmac at high speed, scraping him to a bloody, comatose pulp. And it’s not like these people stopped to put on helmets.
Sure, I’m a psychokinetic government agent, but I do not like killing people.
“You have to,” Africa snarls. “Otherwise they just chase and chase.”
“How about you drive somewhere they can’t see us, and then we’ll—”
“Watch out!” Annie screams from the back.
There’s a huge, jagged chunk of concrete jutting up from the centre of the channel, resting on a mound of black dirt. Waist-high, more enough to ruin the day for anybody who hits it at speed. The mound of dirt runs down to a long crack, the concrete split and broken, running maybe twenty feet across the storm drain.
Oh yeah. We had an earthquake two months ago. A really big one. Most of the storm drain is fine, but concrete is concrete. Shake it, it cracks.
We only just – just – manage to miss the concrete. Africa’s driving has gotten better over the past few months, his reaction times and wheel control improving. Behind us, there’s a giant, thudding crunch as one of the bikes slams into the obstacle.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Annie says. She glances at the meth, which is in an open-top plastic box on the seat next to her. Maybe forty thin Ziploc baggies filled with off-white, greasy-looking powder.
Now it’s just four bikes chasing us, and they’re a lot further back. I don’t think they’re going to be able to catch up – and it would take one hell of a lucky shot to hit us. We’re accelerating again, approaching the next bridge up – Main Street, I think, a simple four-lane job crossing the storm drain, with thick concrete supports.
“See?” I tell Africa. “We’re fine.”
He grunts a laugh. “You bloody toubab. You nearly get us ki— Wooooahshit!”
The biggest SUV I’ve ever seen is roaring down the sloped side of the storm drain, heading right for us.
It’s a black tank, with a bull bar you could use to shift an elephant. Even inside our truck, I can hear the thundering growl of its engine. It bounces as it hits the flat, heading straight for us, thirty feet away and closing fast.
“Teggan?” Africa’s voice is high and panicky, and it fucking well should be, because that bull bar is getting very large.
“On it.”
I send out my PK in a huge wave, wrapping my mind around the SUV’s engine components like you’d close your hand around a glass of water. Then I squeeze, compacting steel and wire and gasoline.
The growling engine cuts off with a giant bang. But the truck doesn’t stop. It’s simply built up too much speed.
Africa accelerates, turning the wheel to the right, trying to get us some space. Not fast enough. Behind me, Annie sucks in a breath, the kind you make if you’re trying to squeeze past someone in a crowded room.
I reach out for the truck’s wheels, the body panels, trying to slow it down. But the truck just has too much momentum. Africa twists his body away as that black bull bar fills the window.
There’s a giant, world-obliterating bang.
The truck crunches into the metal above our vehicle’s back left wheel. The spin we go into is so violent that it snaps my head around on my shoulders. Africa is bellowing, fighting with the wheel as the storm drain spins around us, a flash of black as the SUV crosses behind our car – it spun us completely one-eighty – and then it’s gone and we’re still spinning and Annie is screaming and then another dark shape looms in my window and I have just enough time to realise it’s one of the Main Street Bridge supports and—
And then I don’t really know what happens.
An eternity of darkness and silence. Punctuated by short bursts of noise and light.
Africa ducking behind the door as a gunshot shatters the driver’s window. Broken glass nicking my cheeks.
Annie yelling that we have to get out. From somewhere behind me, there’s an odd crackling sound.
More darkness. I’m yanked out of it when Africa starts shaking me. The guy is seven feet tall with hands like dump truck scoops, so it’s hard to ignore him when he grabs hold of you. It also alerts me to just how much pain I’m in. My back, my shoulders, my neck… oh fuck me, my neck. That is going to suck later.
“They are coming,” he spits.
“Who’s coming?” I say. Or try to. It comes out as “Whsmngz?”
There’s something on my face. Something powdery. It’s on my skin, my teeth and tongue, up my nose. Jesus, it’s in my eyes. And it burns: searing, acrid, horrible. I sneeze, and it’s like an explosion going off inside my skull.
I sit up, blinking hard against the pain. There’s a bag of meth on the dashboard in front of me, split wide open. It must have flown right out of the box and through the gap in the seats when we crashed, smacking into the windshield. Popping like a balloon.
Oh fuck. That’s what’s on me. Burning my throat and nose and tongue. White powder fills the air around me. The bag that hit the windshield can’t be the only one split open, but it looks like it’s the only one that happened to explode right in my face. Annie and Africa must gotten some on them too, but I got most of it.
I claw at my skin in horror, hacking, spitting, trying to force the drug out. There’s no way you can get high from a face full of the stuff, right? No way. It doesn’t work like that… you’re supposed to snort it or smoke it or…
The bikers are riding up, holding very big guns and looking… I’m going to go with annoyed. It’s an image caught perfectly by the bright LA sunlight, their patched leather jackets highlighted just right.
Our ride is totalled. One side bent and smashed from when the SUV hit us, the other mangled from the impact with the bridge support. It’s staggering that we’re all still alive – if we’d hit at another angle, we might not be.
Which isn’t much comfort, because we’re on fire.
The hood has popped open, and there are flames visible at the edge. Big flames. There’s smoke, too, thick and white.
“Don’t breathe!” Annie yells. “Just hold it in.”
Africa has the presence of mind to bury his mouth and nose in his elbow, but not me. I’m too busy trying to get the awful meth powder out of my face, so I get a big lungful of the smoke. I cough and splutter, twisting my head to one side. My throat closes to a pinhole, cutting off my air. My chest is on fire, my nostrils filling with the sick, acrid tang. The meth powder and the smoke tag team to shred my sinuses to pieces.
We have to get out. We have to get out of here right fucking now. Forget the guys with the guns – we can figure that out afterwards. All I have to do is open the door, get us away from the burning car.
Right then, the bridge above us gives a deep, horrifying groan.
I may have mentioned the big earthquake. You know what big earthquakes do? Besides knocking down buildings and cracking roads and bursting gas mains? They weaken bridge supports. Many of the bridges in LA are off limits to traffic right now, for just that reason.
Apparently, that includes this one.
Africa looks up, then back at me. Above the arm covering his nose and mouth, his eyes are as big as baseballs.
“Teagan,” Annie coughs out. “You gotta hold the bridge. You—”
She doesn’t get to finish her sentence. At that moment, the support cracks, the concrete splintering in a dozen places.
I throw out my PK, all concerns about revealing my ability forgotten. But I’m not fast enough, not even close.
The bridge collapses, the weakened roadway above our heads breaking up and plummeting towards us, the noise not quite loud enough to drown out our screams.
Maybe I should start at the beginning.
Hi. I’m Teagan Frost. I’m twenty-three years old. I live in Los Angeles, and I like good food, bad movies and terrible rap music. I work for a removals company called China Shop Movers, which is actually a government-run espionage operation. My favourite colour is purple. I drive an ’03 black Jeep, which I call the Batmobile.
Believe it or not, I don’t usually spend my time getting into vehicular gunfights. Take, for example, the situation I’m in right now. On our little timeline, it’s around forty-five minutes before I ingested meth in the middle of a car chase/gun battle/bridge collapse.
We’re on the thirtieth floor of a hotel just south of Downtown. The expansive penthouse balcony, a space of marble and granite, is bordered by a chest-high, two-feet-thick wall. Normally hotels don’t have balconies, but I guess this place decided it was worth the risk. When the hotel still had paying guests, the fee for one night in the room probably covered the insurance premiums and the services of a good PR firm if someone did decide to do a perfect-ten dive onto San Pedro Street.
It’s around ten in the morning, warm for January, with the sun already baking down out of a deep blue sky above the city. Despite the heat, the breeze is warm and gentle this high up, and the view is unreal. Blue skies all the way to the horizon in the north, where dark clouds are starting to build.
The balcony table holds an iced bucket of beers, and classic rock plays from a hidden set of speakers. It’s about the nicest situation I’ve been in for a long time. Well, if you ignore the cracked walls, the messy suite behind us and the many, many men standing around with guns.
I don’t remember the name of the hotel, but after the earthquake a few months ago, it’s gone derelict. Squatters and looters. Oh, and biker gangs. In particular, the Legends Motorcycle Club, who have taken advantage of LA’s upside-down real estate market to get themselves a nice little base of operations.
They insisted on meeting us at a designated location – in this case, the parking lot of a destroyed strip club in Mission Junction – so they could blindfold us and transport us here in one of their SUVs, even though we were able to figure out where we were the second they brought us onto the balcony. Honestly.
The man across the table is called Robert. He has an enormous, sculpted beard that hangs down over his sleeveless, patched vest. Tattooed arms as thick as my thighs – and I am not skinny. His body almost overwhelms the cute director’s chair he’s sitting in, one of about ten dotted across the balcony. Bikers occupy half the chairs, all holding gigantic assault rifles. It’s a shame he’s called Robert. He’s more of a Zeke or Luther or Big Jon. Life sucks sometimes.
Robert isn’t actually in charge. He’s running the show here, for this deal, but he isn’t the President of the Legends. That’s someone called Pop, who we haven’t met yet.
The only person bigger than Robert is Africa – China Shop’s driver and muscle. He’s as thin as Robert is thick, the head on his scrawny body so big that it looks like it might roll off. Africa’s real name is Idriss Kouamé, although he’ll only answer to his nickname.
Normally, Africa’s dress sense tends towards the colourful. Purple Lakers jackets, yellow Hammer pants, buttery Timbs. I’m kind of surprised at how subdued he is today: dark suit, slightly baggy on his lanky frame, and a red shirt open at the neck.
He’s not actually very good at being muscle. I’ve watched him try and fight people, and it’s like watching a drunk try to dance the macarena. But he does an excellent job of looking scary. He’s doing it now as he stands behind Annie’s chair, scowling the scowliest scowl that anyone has ever scowled.
Annie Cruz isn’t scowling, but she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t need a facial expression to look scary – it’s something she was born with. She’s in the director’s chair on the other side of the table from Robert, wearing a dark green camo jacket over a black T and jeans. Annie has a buzzcut – she used to have a huge set of dreads, but she shaved them all off recently. Her skin is the colour of brown butter, currently beaded with sweat from the hot sunshine. At least, I hope it’s from the sunshine.
If my ability is to move shit with my mind, Annie’s ability is moving people. It was her contacts who put us in touch with the Legends. Annie’s Army, we call them – a deep network of connects stretching across California. Janitors. Senators. Construction workers. Doctors. Movie stars. Fluffers. Probably half the Lakers. Annie’s connects go deep.
Robert keeps glancing at me, and I’m pretty sure I know why. From his perspective, I’m the odd one out. A small-ish woman with short, spiky black hair, dressed in a bright blue Xzibit Restless tank top over skinny jeans and Air Jordans. Africa’s the muscle, Annie’s in charge… but he can’t work out what I’m there for, and it’s making him uncomfortable.
Good.
“Y’all want some coffee?” Robert rumbles, addressing Annie.
She shakes her head.
“You sure? I make a real good pot of coffee.” He gestures to a French press, bumping up against the bag of meth. “Nicaraguan Roast. I let the grounds bloom – that means you pour a little water in, let it sit for a minute before you pour the rest. It really opens up the flavour. You should try some.”
There’s a gun on the table, different from the ones the bikers have. A really freaking big gun, too, with a bulging scope and a stock you could use to split someone’s head open.
The rifle is a modified Heckler and Koch 416, if I remember the mission brief. The Legends are not supposed to have modified Heckler and Koch 416s. Nobody is, except the military. So it’s really worrying that this little gang of upstart bikers has a shipment of two hundred they are trying to offload in Los Angeles.
“How much?” Annie says. She sounds distracted, as if only just remembering why we’re here. That’s not good. She’s on point for this mission, and we need her to be on her A-game.
“Ain’t you gonna test it?” Robert asks.
“Later.” Annie yawns. “We got our own shop.”
Robert ignores her, getting to his feet and hauling the rifle towards him. One of his buddies passes him a magazine, which he inserts. “This is the gun that killed Osama.”
I can’t help myself. “That one in particular? No wonder you’re charging so much.”
One of the bikers stifles a chuckle. Robert gives him a dirty look. He swings the rifle up, points it into the blue sky and pulls the trigger. Once. Twice. Three times. The shots are loud enough to set my ears ringing.
He turns around, grinning when he sees the looks on our faces. “Come on. Cops won’t do nothing. After the Big One, they’re running themselves ragged anyway. I could let off a rocket launcher up here, probably.” He pauses. “Are you interested in those, by the way? Because we could—”
“No.” Annie says. “How much?”
Robert falls silent, as if he can’t believe the disrespect we’re showing. He puts the rifle back on the table. The irony is, after the quake, government regs on guns are stricter than ever in California. Quite why the government never understands that making something illegal results in a massive black market trade is beyond me.
At last, Robert says, “Three grand per.”
Annie doesn’t hesitate. “Two.”
“Three. Best I can do, even wholesale. You can sell for four, and I got two hundred ready to go as we speak. That’s…” He frowns, glances at one of the other bikers, a short man with a really bad goatee and a beer belly, holding a rifle almost as big as he is. “Alan, what’s the profit on that?”
Alan rolls his eyes upwards, his mouth moving silently. Africa and I exchange a look.
“Two hundred large,” Alan says. His voice is nasally, monotone. Like he’s an accountant giving a presentation to the board. Hell, for all I know, that’s what he was before the quake. With what it did to LA, it wrecked a lot of lives. Maybe Alan’s was one of them.
Our mission objectives are simple. We confirm that the Legends are selling guns, and get a favour to take home from this party. We find out as much as we can about their base of operations, which is something I’m super-handy for – and we find out who their supplier is. Then we make an exit, report everything back to our handler, Moira Tanner, who then sends in a team of special forces to do the hard work while we go get a beer somewhere.
Why not just send in the special forces right away, you ask? Because America’s finest thick-necked goons don’t just go in guns blazing every time they get a whiff of something hinky. They want intel. Sometimes that means long stake-outs and planting bugs and ridiculous disguises, but it’s much easier to use your very own psychokinetic, who can case the entire building just by walking through it.
See, moving shit with my mind is only the start of my ability. To move things, I have to sense them, using my mind to track their position in space. That means I can easily build up a picture of my surroundings, even if I can’t see them.
I can feel the coins and phones in the pockets of every biker here, the shape of the rings on their fingers and the metal studs on their jackets. My ability also lets me know that there are bikers here we haven’t seen yet, other figures who will suddenly appear to tilt the odds if things do go south. I can feel the phone being held by the dude in the hotel room’s bathroom, feel it vibrate as he taps at the screen. Another two dudes in the suite’s bedroom. One of them is messing around with a pistol in a way that is probably going to get his dick shot off.
I call it echolocation, because I’m super-original and clever.
“Six hundred thousand.” Robert rolls the words out. He spreads his hands like he’s done a magic trick.
Annie drops her head, as if thinking about it. I sneak a glance at her, and what I see worries me even more. Her eyes are closed, her mouth set in a thin line. Like she’s having to gather herself.
I have a sudden urge to check in with Reggie – our boss, back at the office. She’s a former Army helicopter pilot who now runs China Shop, and is one hell of a hacker. There’s not a whole lot for her to do on this particular job, but she was still heavily involved in the planning, and she’s watching us right now. Each of us wear tiny, adhesive pinhole cameras on our shirts, undetectable by any sweeping devices. Sometimes, working for the government means cool toys.
Normally we have comms earpieces, too, but we left those at home. Hard to pretend to be gun-buying criminals when you have one of those in your ears. Anyway, the cameras have a very tiny mic, so Reggie can hear us even if she can’t talk to us.
Annie raises her chin. “OK,” she says. “Six hundred. But I am gonna run some tests, make sure these aren’t just stock.” She reaches for the gun. “Got a little setup out in Oxnard. Everything gravy, then we come back and settle up.”
Robert has the grin of a Hollywood actor: big and white and completely fake. “Hold your horses there. That little sampler doesn’t go anywhere without Pop’s say so.” Is it my imagination, or is there the very slightest waver of his smile as he says the name?
“So get Pop up here,” I say.
“Naw, Pop’s got more important shit to do. I will call though.” He pulls out his own phone… and stops when another biker pushes open the sliding door to the patio. He’s missing an arm, and the other is a forest of tattoos. He’s clutching a cellphone, and as he crosses the balcony to Robert, he gives me a completely blank look.
Uh-oh.
The guy bends down and whispers in Robert’s ear, like something out of a bad James Bond movie. Robert’s expression doesn’t change. A weird thought: he enjoys this. Enjoys the whole rooftop-balcony-meeting, Nicaraguan coffee, sophisticated criminal schtick. It’s the kind of thing he’d never have gotten to do when he was just a shitty street-level biker. For him, the earthquake represented a growth opportunity.
A sudden quiet settles over the balcony. Even the wind has stopped.
“OK.” Robert claps the edge of the table, gets to his feet. “Looks like we’re all good to go here.”
“Thought you needed to call Pop,” Annie says.
“Naw, not a problem. Pop says I can do whatever I need to.” He rolls his eyes slightly at me, as if trying to say, Can you believe how difficult your partner is being?
It is very tempting to beat him to death with his own phone. But I’m a hero and a classy human, so I restrain myself.
“So we can go ahead and test this?” Annie lifts the gun as she gets to her feet.
“Sure, sure. Answer me one question, though.”
“Uh-huh?”
His smile never wavers. “What’s China Shop?”
Double uh-oh.
Annie, to her credit, gets it together – just as well, because I can’t keep the alarm off my face. “Moving company. It’s the legit part of our operation.”
Robert leans back against the thick balcony railing. “So… you don’t do any work for the government?”
Triple uh-oh, quadruple goddamn-it and all of the yikes.
We don’t get a chance to deny any of it. Three of the bikers grab hold of Africa. They kick his legs out from underneath him, grabbing him in a chokehold as he goes over backwards. Three more hit Annie, wrestling her to the table. Two of them, Alan and the one-armed guy, grab hold of me, squeezing my biceps tight. Goddammit, who the hell tipped these assholes off?
“Get the fuck off me,” Annie snarls.
I need to do something, but I’ll have to play this very carefully. I’m not supposed to reveal my ability, even in cases where the people watching are unlikely to alert the media.
What happens next happens really freaking fast.
Robert pulls the modified H&K off the table, whips it up to point at Africa. He aims carefully, centre-mass, not wanting to hit his buddies. Then without another word, he pulls the trigger.
Or tries to. I don’t let him. Trigger stays locked. He snarls, chucks the gun to the ground, snatches a rifle from one of his buddies. I lock that one down too, all the while thinking, Come on, come on, find a way out of this.
Robert gives up and drops the weapon, jerks his chin at the men holding us. My heart skitter-beats as they heft Africa like a sack of grain. He roars, tries to buck them off. But like I said, he’s lanky and skinny and utterly useless in a fight.
And before Annie and I can say anything, before I can switch my PK to the men holding Africa, they lift him onto the balcony wall, and topple him over the edge.
There is a long, horrible second where he’s looking right at me. His eyes are wide, terrified. Disbelieving.
His feet flick upwards, as if saluting the deep blue morning sky. Then Africa is gone.
You’re probably wondering why I let that happen.
After all, what’s to stop me grabbing every object on the balcony, from guns to ashtrays to those cute directors chairs, and using them to beat ten shades of shit out of our biker pals?
That was my first thought too. The problem is that it reveals my ability in a major way. Reggie is always… well, everybody is always telling me to think before I act. And in this case, I actually do. There’s a better, smarter solution here.
Of course, it has a few problems of its own. I need to keep everyone’s eyes on me. I can’t tell Annie, or Africa. And it may or may not result in us all falling to our deaths.
I go fucking nuts, twisting and yelling. Alan has to plant his feet, jerk back as I try to smash his nose in with the back of my head. One of the other goons grabs my legs, ignoring my furious, angry howls. “You cocksuckers, what the fuck? What the fuck? I’ll fucking kill you, I’ll tear your dicks off and play a drum solo with them, you – let go!”
Thinking: That’s it, keep your eyes on me, don’t you dare look over that balcony…
With a mutual grunt, Alan and his accomplice lift my screaming self onto the two-feet-thick railing. Behind me, Annie’s breathing is hot, harsh, panicked. “Teagan,” she says, and the note of desperation in her voice is terrifying. God, I wish I could tell her what I have planned, even though I’d probably leave out the part where it might kill us all.
I lock eyes with Alan. No matter what happens, I have to keep their attention “I’m going to punch a hole in your skull, you bean-counting motherf—”
His expression doesn’t change as he and his buddy roll me right off the edge of the balcony railing.
I get a split-second glimpse of Annie, staring at me in horror. Then gravity takes me, clamping onto my stomach. I go head-over-heels backwards, the bright sunlight blinding me. The terror tries to wipe my mind clean, force me to give into it…
Just as I land face-first on the floating couch.
It’s four stories below the penthouse, hovering in mid-air. It’s a two-seater, with thick, squashy foam cushions, and I hit it like a sack of concrete. It punches the air out of my lungs, almost knocks me senseless. I nearly roll right off. But there is a tiny part of my brain that would prefer not die in a stupid way, and it makes me throw out an arm and grab hold. I come to a stop with one leg dangling off the edge, one black Air Jordan waving crazily in the open air.
No time, no time. I shoot the couch back towards the building while I hang on for dear life. A snap of wind sends snarls my hair around my face, and then I’m over the balcony of the twenty-sixth floor suite. That’s my cue. I tip the couch sideways, go as loose as possible—
—and roll right onto Africa.
He’s lying on the balcony, hyperventilating. Confirmed: his bony-ass frame does not make for a soft landing. I yelp as we crash together, rebounding off him and nearly braining myself on the leg of the outside table.
“Teggan, what—?”
My voice is a high-pitched, breathless hiss. “Not now!”
I zip the couch back out into open air, thinking: Please please please let it be fast enough.
I don’t have a mental lock on Annie. I can move inorganic objects just fine – metal, plastic, whatever – but doing it with organic objects is ridiculously hard. It takes time, and even sensing their position in space takes a lot of concentration. Which means that the couch isn’t lined up right when Annie comes dropping past the twenty-sixth floor.
She bounces sideways. She must have hit it just right – or wrong. Her legs and arms flail, her scream piercing the air. There’s a horrible, nauseating half-second where I’m sure that I’m not going to make it, that I can’t move the couch fast enough…
Then I do. I zip the couch underneath her, catching Annie on the downward arc of her bounce. Before anything else horrible can happen, I pull her and the couch towards us, not even letting it clear the railing before I dump her onto the balcony.
She rolls, bounces again, throws out her arms like a bouncer doing crowd control. Her face comes to a stop a foot from mine. Her mouth is slightly open, all the colour chased from her caramel skin, forehead shiny with sweat and eyes dr
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Eye of the Sh*t Storm
Jackson Ford
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