Eye of the Sh*t Storm

by Jackson Ford

  “If she recovers?” Reggie stares at Tanner. “That is a member of your staff. She put herself directly in harm’s way—”

  “Enough.” Tanner’s voice is barely a whisper. “She is as much to blame for this as Ms Frost. But do not think that I am leaving her to fend for herself. She is receiving the finest medical care possible, but my understanding is that her injuries are severe. We have to plan for what happens if she does not survive.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “It doesn’t matter whether it bothers me or not. It is simply the situation we find ourselves in.”

  Reggie has to fight to keep her face neutral. You couldn’t argue with Moira Tanner on things like this. It would be like trying to drill a hole in a stone wall by giving it an evil look.

  “Any questions?” Tanner asks.

  Plenty, Reggie thinks. But Moira wouldn’t be able to answer a single one of them.

  “I…” Africa swallows. “Yes. I have some. But I would like to think about them, if that is all right.”

  “Very well. I will be in touch tomorrow.”

  Her gaze lingers on Reggie, as if she’s about to say something else. Then she looks away, and kills the feed.

  A silence falls over the office. Reggie can’t believe how calm she feels. And the relief – the guilty, delightful relief.

  “Reggie,” Africa says slowly. “I never wanted—”

  “It’s OK,” she says, privately amazed she can still speak.

  “This is not right. You are the boss.”

  “Not any more. You listen here, honey. You’ve got a lot of work to do, and not nearly enough time or resources to do it. The only way you keep this ship floating is if you focus on what you’re good at. Don’t—”

  The coughing comes out of nowhere, her diaphragm going taut as a snare drum.

  “I will get water.” Africa is seven feet tall, so big that he almost fills the tiny office. But at this moment it’s as if he’s shrunk to half his size.

  “I’m all…” Reggie has to fight to get the coughing under control. “I’m… hrrrrm… fine.”

  “Reggie…”

  “No, just listen. Don’t do what I did – don’t spread yourself too thin. You’ve got connections the rest of us could only dream of – hell, even Annie doesn’t know some of the people you do. Go talk to them. Find out where that woman came from, get some solid intel.” She forces herself to smile. “Prove you’re as good as Moira thinks you are.”

  After a long moment – a very long moment – he nods. “Ya. OK.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Reggie says, placing a hand on his. Truth be told, she has no idea if that’s true. But she can be one hell of an actress when she puts her mind to—

  Actress. In all of the chaos, she’d almost forgotten about the audition. She has to force herself not to start laughing. After all that agonising over it…

  “What will you do?” Africa says quietly.

  Reggie finds her voice. “I’d like to be alone for a while.” The very slightest tremor in her voice – she clamps down on it hard. “Go home, go see Jeannette, get some food. I am going to need a little help later, with getting into bed and such. Annie normally does that for me, but… well.”

  He nods. “Of course, yes. If you are sure, then I will come back. Of course I will help.”

  “Great. You can start by fixing me a cup of tea.”

  He does. And still, he leaves reluctantly, asking again if she’s all right, if she’d prefer him to stay. Reggie practically has to yell at him to get him out. But eventually, he leaves, and Reggie is alone.

  For a long time, she simply sits there, staring at nothing. Quietly amazed at just how good she feels. She’s no longer guilty about the relief – she lets it overtake her, wallowing in it, the sheer bliss of knowing that no matter what happens, she won’t have to deal with any of the shitty details. No more invoices. No more ordering equipment and uniforms. No more trying to find the right brand of coffee.

  Moira was right about one thing: Annie is getting the very best possible care. The ICU at Cedars-Sinai is one of the best in the country – the hospital took a hit after the quake, but the departments that are still running know their stuff. There’s not a lot that she can do for Annie that the doctors aren’t doing already.

  Annie has to recover. She has to. No, she will.

  God, Reggie is going to miss her. She’s going to miss all of them. She won’t miss the drudgery of running China Shop… but she will miss having Annie looking after her, the quiet conversations they’d have. She’ll miss Teagan – even though her life will probably be a lot less stressful without her. She’ll even miss Africa. She doesn’t bear him any ill will, just hopes to God he knows what he’s getting into. Moira Tanner isn’t the devil, but dealing with her does have some similarities.

  She’s surprised to find she isn’t bitter. She’s not sure she would have done anything differently.

  The rest of her life stretches before her.

  She reaches for her trackball, pauses, half-wanting to postpone it. Wait until tomorrow, when she’s mentally ready for—

  Screw it. At the very least, she can read the script the agent said she was going to send over. She can start there.

  But there’s nothing from the agent on her personal email. She refreshes, glancing at her connection indicator, even though she knows the internet is working fine.

  Ah well. Agents are busy. Chances are that Darcy Lorenzo – that was her name, wasn’t it? – simply forgot to send it over. Not to worry. It can wait until tomorrow.

  A thought enters her mind then, one that she had before, but never actually paid attention to. How, exactly, did Darcy Lorenzo of DCA Talent get her number?

  “What does it matter?” she says, irritated with herself. She refreshes her email again, then closes the window. She’ll watch a show or two, take her mind off things. If she really can’t stop thinking about it, she can find some test scripts online, or pull up some of her old ones from the Playhouse.

  And yet, the thought won’t go away. She gives an annoyed cluck, opens her browser and locates DCA Talent’s website. She should probably read Lorenzo’s bio – it might prove useful later.

  Only: the DCA Talent site doesn’t list Darcy Lorenzo as an agent. Reggie scrolls through the list of names, mouthing them: Andy Goldstein, Larissa Schrambling, Sarah Yuan…

  The tiny drumbeat of worry in her chest kicks up a notch.

  So she’s not listed. So what? It doesn’t mean anything. They might not have updated their site. She could be new at the agency – hell, she probably is, if she’s calling up an old theatre hack like you—

  “Enough. Don’t do that,” Reggie says to herself.

  But it doesn’t stop her from calling Darcy Lorenzo’s number. Belatedly, she realises it’s a cellphone number. Wouldn’t Lorenzo have called her from an office phone? The landline at the DCA offices?

  Her earpiece is silent as the call connects. Jesus, what the hell is she going to say if Lorenzo answers? Hi, sorry to call so late, but I just wanted to see if you really are an agent?

  In her ear, there are three gloomy beeps. Then: “The number you dialled has been disconnected.”

  Reggie barely registers hanging up.

  She’s replaying everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours, running through it in her mind.

  How someone tipped off the Legends about who Teagan, Annie and Africa were.

  How their communications systems were compromised.

  How the woman who kidnapped her knew where she, Reggie, was going to be. How she must have been watching the offices, ready to follow Reggie if she left.

  “Uh-uh,” she says. Then again, more strongly: “Uh-uh. No.”

  But that doesn’t change the fact that someone has been messing with China Shop. Trying to disrupt their operations.

  What if a part of that was getting inside their heads? Splitting their focus, making it so they wouldn’t be as effecti
ve in their decision-making? So they’d be too fragmented to operate effectively?

  Reggie’s mouth is very dry. There’s no way. And yet: didn’t that call plant the seeds of doubt in her mind? Didn’t it help push her to make the choices she did? She can’t stop her mind connecting the dots, even as a sick nausea blooms in her stomach. The call from Darcy Lorenzo was probably part of a coordinated strategy, a plan to disrupt China Shop, the one group in Los Angeles who might be able to—

  Do what?

  But oh, Reggie knows. Because she’s remembering Darcy Lorenzo’s voice now. And the voice of the woman who held her hostage.

  They’re the same.

  Only China Shop could retrieve Leo Nguyen. Only they would be able to take him off the board. And so China Shop would have to be disrupted. Distracted. Split. Taken off the board themselves.

  There’s no agent. No audition.

  There never was.

  Reggie’s arm drops. Her fingers slip out of the rings on her cup handle, the vessel smashing on the floor. The sound makes her jerk in her chair, tears an awful cry out of her chest.

  “God,” she says, and then she’s sobbing, raising her hands to her face. Her body shakes with hurt and embarrassment – no, not just embarrassment.

  Humiliation.

  For a few hours, she thought she could do it. She had an opportunity, golden and bright, and she meant to take it. But it was never there. Of course it was never there. How could she have ever thought that someone like her would get to… to…

  She has always been the calm centre of the storm. The peacemaker. The professional, the one who gets the job done. The one who holds everyone together. Her job was to lead a team: to be the quiet, still ground that everyone around her could stand on.

  No longer. In her pain, in the very depths of her misery, alone in an office she is no longer allowed to work in, Regina McCormick finds something else.

  Anger.

  Rage.

  Slowly, oh so slowly, it dries up her tears. It tightens her chest and shoulders and kills the nausea in her stomach and leaves her light-headed, breathing in and out, focusing on one thing. The face of her captor. The woman who did this cruel, monstrous, hateful thing.

  Reggie may not work for China Shop any more. She may be on the outside. But Moira Tanner cannot take her knowledge. She cannot take away the fact that Reggie is one of the most competent hackers on the planet. Someone who can cut through systems security like a katana through paper. Someone with the power to end worlds.

  It doesn’t matter whether she helps Teagan and Africa, or does it by herself. She’s not done. She’ll never be done.

  Reggie makes herself picture the woman in even more detail. Her face, her voice. And she makes a solemn, calm, quiet promise.

  I’m coming for you.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Teagan

  I’m supposed to be back at home. Or what passes for home these days – my tiny-ass temporary apartment in Pasadena.

  I should be sleeping. The deepest, darkest, cousin-of-death sleep, after this unbelievable, monstrous hellstorm of a day.

  And at first, that’s what happened. Physically I’m OK – I think. They strapped my knee in a million miles of athletic tape, but the doc who looked it over said there wouldn’t be any permanent damage. Then he looked me up and down, sniffed and told me to get some Adderall from the pharmacy downstairs. Then he gave me a pamphlet for a drug counselling service.

  Awesome.

  But by the time Reggie and Africa dropped me outside my front door, the meth comedown was back, and it was the entire world. There wasn’t a single part of me that wasn’t in agony. I had no stomach left – it had been sucked into a black hole. Iron railway spikes had been driven into the base of my skull. I was shaking, hyperventilating, doing everything I could not to vomit all over the China Shop van.

  I have no idea how I managed to get inside. Africa helped me, kept asking if I was all right, even wandered around tidying the place. Like it would help, somehow. It took a lot of energy I didn’t have to assure him that I’d be fine, to get him to do the one thing I really wanted: to be left alone.

  When he finally left, I crawled into bed, not even changing into my PJs, just kicking my shoes off. Not caring. Fuck the world. Fuck everything. Just let me die.

  I slept. For about ten minutes. And then I was wide awake, horribly alert, twitching and grinding my teeth. Every nerve in my body vibrating with electricity. All I wanted to do was sleep… and I couldn’t.

  I don’t care if it jacks my ability. Meth is the fucking worst.

  I didn’t have my phone any more, but I did have Minnie’s. So I called Nic. Hoping he’d distract me, clear my head. He was at his parents’ place – God knows what he told them. He was also hopped up on mucho painkillers.

  We didn’t talk for long. I had to bite down on my nervous energy. “I’ll call you tomorrow, OK? Promise.”

  “You’d better.” He was practically slurring his words. “Glad you’re OK.”

  I shake my head, still not sure that’s true. “You too.”

  “Love you.”

  I don’t think he meant love you love you. Like I said: high as fuck. But it didn’t stop a strange, queasy feeling from rolling through my body.

  Sleep was out of the question, so I did what I always do when I need to calm myself down. I started cooking.

  Initially, I think I just planned to cook myself dinner, but it kind of sort of got out of hand. A quick tomato sauce for pasta became a ragu, which became a lot of ragu. I made a huge salad to go with it, clearing out my fridge, throwing in every little odd thing I could find: anchovies, a bag of half-finished croutons, a hastily made vinaigrette. I realised that I didn’t want to eat any of it, couldn’t even imagine eating any of it. I just needed to occupy my fritzing, tortured body.

  Somewhere along the way, I baked chocolate chip cookies, burning through the last of my expensive sea salt as garnish. The tiny-ass kitchen with its wonky oven didn’t even phase me. My apartment filled with warring smells, my sink vanishing under a growing pile of pots. I used practically every perishable item in my fridge, every can in my cupboards, and I was still fizzing with energy. My thoughts wouldn’t stay off Nic, and increasingly, they wouldn’t stay off Annie.

  Which is how I ended up driving back to the hospital.

  Back to Annie’s room.

  Thank fuck she’s not in the burns unit. There were some burns, sure, most of them on her torso, but apparently not enough to put her in isolation. Just the regular ICU. Like that’s any comfort. Apparently, what happened to her is known as splash damage, where a bolt of lightning hits the ground and travels outwards from the point of impact, going through someone on the way. If she’d been hit directly…

  As it is, her heart stopped twice after she got to the ER. She has a ruptured eardrum. Burst blood vessels. She’s in a coma.

  I can’t get over how small she looks. Annie is tall – six feet, easy. But under the snaking network of tubes that criss-cross her chest and cover her face, under the strips of medical tape and the wristbands and the bleached hospital sheet, she looks tiny. She’s in critical condition. I don’t remember much of the conversation we had with the doctors, but…

  There’s not a single thing I can do to help my friend. I can’t even offer her one of the cookies I baked.

  Friend.

  Is that what she is?

  I’m not supposed to be here – it’s way outside visiting hours. But the advantage of turning up at a hospital with snacks is that you can bribe the nurses. And besides, I don’t think an Army could have kept me away. A couple of nurses gave me the stink-eye, but so far, no one’s moved me – maybe due to Tanner’s influence, I don’t know.

  Tanner. Christ. I haven’t even thought about how I’m going to deal with her. With everything. It’s all a problem for tomorrow.

  Right now, I just want to sit in this chair, in this private hospital room, and be with Annie.

  It’s
all I can do.

  Drawn curtains. Dark, silent TV. The lights are up, but there’s no sound other than the gentle beeping of the machines keeping Annie alive. The chair I’m in is on the window side of the bed, pushed up against the corner of the room. It’s old, but comfy. I’m half expecting to fall asleep, because surely it has to happen at some point. But the meth has plugged my body into a nuclear reactor. There’s too much energy, and nowhere for it to go. My teeth feel electrified, like they’re actually vibrating in their sockets.

  The very last of the meth is still in my pocket. A tiny pile of it, no bigger than the hole between finger and thumb when you make the OK sign. It’s kind of amazing that the little baggie survived… Well, everything. But it did. I was adamant that I was going to throw it away, or leave it at home. I didn’t.

  I don’t plan on taking this goddamn drug ever again. That’s the truth.

  It has to be.

  “Whooooo,” I say, tilting my head back, stretching my arms overhead. “What a day, man. What a fucking day.”

  Yes, I am talking to myself. You try being on the run for twelve hours and then snorting half a bag of meth. The horrible comedown seems to have bottomed out now – I can hold a thought in my head, at least.

  “I have to hand it to you, Annie,” I say. “You had me worried. I thought you were…”

  I sniff hard. Look away. I will not say the word dead. I will not put that awful, fucked-up nonsense into the universe.

  “You know,” I say, turning back, speaking without really meaning to, “apparently people in a coma can actually hear what’s going on around them. Maybe you can actually hear me right now. Who knows?” I clear my throat. “It’s 5 a.m., and this is your local news bulletin for the Greater Los Angeles area. A surprise flash flood was stopped in its tracks today by a masked superhero, saving hundreds of lives. Well, she wasn’t masked, but whatever. Also, a boy with electricity powers was stolen by a lunatic who can make you see things that aren’t there. The world may be ending, but sources tell us that local psychokinetic Teagan Frost still makes the best chocolate chip cookies.”