by Jackson Ford
“Yeah. Better her than me.”
“You think they’ll go for it?”
“It’s gonna be more of an FYI than a request.”
And it is. They can’t stop me – what’s Tanner going to do, get rid of her prize black-ops asset because the asset wants to learn how to cook like a pro?
All the same, there’s asking, and there’s asking. If I want Tanner’s sign-off with minimal hassle, I need Reggie’s first. Reggie is the boss at China Shop. As well as running our little band of losers, she does all the hacking work for us: killing security cameras, opening doors, digging up dirt.
She reports to Moira Tanner, the government spook who founded China Shop. The deal Tanner and I have is that I work for her, and she keeps the government off my back. There are people who really, really want to cut me open and see if they can figure out how I do what I do, and I’d prefer that not to happen. Hence, our arrangement.
Tanner won’t exactly be thrilled with me saying I want to train as a chef. Reggie’s a sweetheart – seriously, she’s awesome – but it’s going to take one hell of a job to convince her boss to let me plan a life outside China Shop.
“Anyway, yes, I’m doing it.” I fork my paella, mixing it up some more.
“Kind of surprised you haven’t done it already.”
“What do you mean?”
“They don’t know what you do after work, right? Why not just go do… I don’t know, night school? Something like that.”
“I thought about it, but like, that’s not… It’s not sustainable. I don’t want it to just be something I’m sneaking away to do. That’s not cool.”
I’ve thought a lot about this. Just going ahead and signing up for night cooking classes was tempting, sure… but it didn’t feel right. There’s more to it than I’m willing to tell Nic.
“Sustainable,” he says with a mouthful of paella. “Look at you, with the big words.”
I kick him. “Close your mouth when you talk.”
“How am I supposed to close my mouth when I talk?” He laughs.
“When you chew. Fuck you, you know what I mean.”
He waves his fork at me, swallows. “I’m glad you’re finally asking them, though.” He gestures to his bowl. “This is really good, by the way.”
“Yeah?” I sit up a little straighter.
“There’s like a charred flavor, but I think it works? I’m not just saying that either.”
I recover quickly, like it’s no big thing. “Cool. There’s more if you want.”
The awkwardness from before is gone. Soon, we’re talking and laughing and giving each other shit like we used to do. He gets a second bowl, dishes up some for me, cracks us a couple more beers. We argue over background music, eventually settling on Lizzo. I’m a little drunk, and not nearly as nervous as I thought I’d be. This feels good. This feels… right.
How can he say no to this? To us? Being with me means dealing with a lot of strange shit, but surely it’s all worth it if we get more nights like tonight?
After the chaos with the paella, I’m glad I went simple for dessert. Salted caramel ice cream, from Carmela’s in Pasadena. I’m dishing up, my back to the couch, listening to Nic telling a story about a case he and his boss were working on. He can’t reveal specific details – attorney-client privilege and all that jazz – but he’s got some fun stories nonetheless. “… And then she realises she’s been doodling all over the brief,” he says.
“Doodling? What do you mean, doodling?”
“Like actual doodling! While they’ve been talking. Rocket ships and dinosaurs and weird squiggly letters, not even thinking about it. Just drawing while she talks.”
On the table, his phone buzzes. He ignores it.
“The Central Operations Bureau Director for the whole of LA, and now she’s got to hand this brief to the opposing—”
Unlike Nic, my phone isn’t set respectfully on silent. It bleeps very loudly, cutting him off.
“Shit, sorry,” I mutter, reaching across to the table for it.
“No worries. Anyway, then the council goes—hey, what’s wrong?”
I frown at my phone. I wanted to put it on silent, but the message on screen caught my eye.
Nic puts his bowl down. “China Shop?”
“No.” I open the message up so I can read it properly. “It’s an automated warning. Says there’s been an earthquake.”
“Oh, yeah. They send them out automatically. Probably just a six-pointer, or…”
He’s trailed off because the room has started to sway. The couch cushion underneath my butt is moving. A couple of glasses dance off the counter, shattering.
“Jesus,” I say.
Nic rolls his eyes. “It’ll pass. That’s California for you.”
“Wait – do you hear that?”
“What?”
A rumble. Slow, steady, building. Like a distant train approaching.
I haven’t been in LA for all that long – just a couple of years – but I know what a six-point quake feels like. Six points sounds violent, but it really isn’t all that bad. This is different. This sounds different. And the room is starting to sway a lot.
On the coffee table, my beer bottle begins to dance. It tips over, gushing amber. The pans in the kitchen start to rattle. The whole house is shaking now, the rumble getting louder and louder. One of my speakers tips over, wires ripping out of it.
I meet Nic’s eyes – and then the rumbling turns up to eleven. It hurls me off the couch – hurls both of us. A shower of paella splatters across me.
“Under the table!” Nic doesn’t wait for me to follow instructions. He grabs me, pulls me close to him. The table is way too low to the ground to lie under, but Nic’s got some strength to him. He shoves it upwards, pulls us both underneath, holding on tight to the table so it forms a shield over us. I can’t help – it’s made of wood, and I can hardly get a fix on anything with my PK anyway. The whole apartment is going crazy.
When I’m in danger, and those wonderful fight-or-flight chemicals start rocketing around my brain, my PK goes supercharged. I’m able to lift much heavier objects, and more of them, than I can normally. My range gets larger. It’s definitely happening now – I can feel all the way out to the cars on the street, which are bouncing and rocking on their wheels. But there’s nothing I can do with it. It doesn’t matter how strong I am; I can’t stop an earthquake.
The Big One. It’s been talked about for years – the quake to end all quakes, stored up in the San Andreas fault. I don’t know if this is it, but if it isn’t, then I’m going to move state. Maybe country. This is… insane.
Nic pulls me in tight to him, his big body folding around mine. I don’t mind very much. Because of course, I’m having romantic thoughts in the middle of a terrifying earthquake.
It’s amazing I can think at all. The noise just gets worse and worse, like a freight train roaring past outside my window. Something in my apartment falls over – the fridge, I think – and Nic grunts, as if it came down right on top of us. There’s a smaller crash on the other side of the coffee table, directly over our heads – the ceiling fan coming down.
Nic pulls me closer, holds on tight…
FIVE
Teagan
If I’m being real, the shaking only lasts about twenty seconds. But that twenty seconds is enough to completely destroy everything in my apartment.
Smashed glass and furniture. Toppled speakers. Scattered food. I blink, and it seems to take as long as the quake did. My ears are ringing.
I try to wiggle out, and Nic squeezes me tight. “Don’t. There might be aftershocks.”
The world is still. Slowly, the ringing in my ears fades, replaced by distant shouts, sirens, running feet.
Nic makes us wait five minutes before we crawl out. The damage is worse than I thought. My fridge is on its side, food and beer disgorged across my carpet. Every cabinet in the kitchen has spilled its guts. My speakers, my records, my books… it looks like a giant toddler had
a temper tantrum. Worst of all is the crack. It zig-zags up my living room wall, winds its way across the ceiling.
The blood rushes to my head. Nic has to put out a hand to steady me. “Easy.” He’s got a haunted look in his eyes, and his hands are shaking ever so slightly. “Where’s your gas?”
“My… what?”
“Your gas. We have to turn it off. Fire.”
“I don’t have gas.” Is that true? I think so – my stove burners are electric. But what if… Fuck, I don’t know. This is going to make one hell of an insurance claim. Shit – insurance. Did I even get renter’s insurance? I can’t remember…
Nic accepts my gas explanation with a distracted nod. For a long moment, we both stand in my wrecked living room, looking around. Outside, the noise has gotten worse.
“Let’s go look,” I say, heading for the door. It’s still an effort to put one foot in front of the other.
My apartment is at the back of an existing property, the street reached through a short passageway. My landlord and his family are on vacation, but they’re going to have to cut it short. The outer walls of their house are cracked, like the inside of mine. A lawnmower lies overturned in the back yard, blade still turning, and pots lie smashed, bleeding soil. Fat, icy drops of rain speckle my shoulders – the drizzle has picked up, a cold wind whipping it back and forth.
When I reach the sidewalk, I come to a dead stop.
“Definitely not a six-pointer,” I murmur.
It’s like a street party for the end of the world. Everyone is out: standing in small groups, sitting cross-legged on the pavement. The road surface is a wreck – not just cracked, but shattered, like glass. Parts of it have been forced upward, as if tree roots were pushing from underneath.
Roxton Avenue used to be lined with jacaranda trees every few feet; several of them have toppled, their roots ripped up. Harry, a homeless guy I know from around the neighbourhood, is on the far curb. Wide, shocked eyes over an unkempt beard. His cart with its cans and black bags lies scattered across the tarmac.
Amazingly, the houses are still standing. Or not so amazingly – they’re made of wood, and I think I read somewhere once that wood does better in a quake. It bends, instead of breaking. But they’re in bad shape, several leaning to one side. One is actually on fire, spewing dark smoke into the sky. The groups of people trying to fight the flames don’t appear to know what do, yelling confused instructions at each other and frantically tapping at their phones. All across the street, power lines are down – there’s a ripped wire fifty yards away from us. It’s not jumping, like you see in the movies, but every few seconds it emits a flash of blue sparks.
“Are the cops coming?” someone shouts from behind us. They’re gone before we turn around, racing down the street.
I feel sick. Because it’s not just Leimert Park, my neighbourhood, that got hit. There’s distant smoke on the horizon, everywhere I look.
Nic points. “Oh, shit.”
A hundred yards away, a grey Prius has plowed right into a jacaranda tree. The hood has been bent in two by the trunk, smoke gushing from the engine. The wheels are cocked at odd angles, bowed outward; the high-beams are still on. Other cars have stopped at random on the street, as if they too swerved to a halt once the quake hit.
Nic starts running towards the wrecked car. “Wait!” I yell after him.
He ignores me. And he’s got long legs, so it takes me a minute to catch up with him. He’s at the edge of the wreckage, pulling at the door, his shirt starting to soak through from the drizzle. My stomach gives a sick wrench – there are two people inside the car. An unconscious man, slumped over the steering wheel, blood matting his long black hair. And a kid. A teenage boy, thirteen or fourteen, blinking out from the passenger seat.
Nic can’t get the door open. The impact has crunched it shut. It’s the same thing on the other side, where two people – a burly guy who looks like a construction worker, and a woman in a business suit – are trying to haul it open. The black smoke from the ruined engine is getting worse, and there’s the very first flicker of flame.
An ambulance shoots past the intersection, siren wailing, swerving to avoid a rucked-up section of the road. It doesn’t slow, not even when the construction worker sprints off to flag it down.
“Teagan.”
Nic has stepped away from the car. He puts his hands on his knees, hangs his head for a second. But when he looks back up, there’s steel in his eyes. He wipes his mouth, then spits, dirty saliva arcing through the air. “I need your help. We gotta take the door off.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s jammed shut. Can you lift it? I’m going to need you to… Teagan, look at me. We have to get them out, right now.”
I can’t move.
It’s not just the shock of the quake. It’s what he’s asking.
He’s asking me to use my ability in front of other people.
It’s the one thing I am absolutely not supposed to do. Not ever. It’s Tanner’s big golden rule, part of the deal I have with her. Break it, and she steps aside, letting the government have me. It’s a rule I’ve had to break before, and it’s only through sheer dumb luck and circumstance that I survived the first time. Doing it here, in front of all these people…
But hang on. Hang on one goddamn second. I don’t have to make it obvious. I don’t have to float shit through the air. All I have to do is snap the hinges. Tweak the frame a little, so the door can pop out. It’s nothing. I can do it in about three seconds.
Except…
What if I mess it up?
What if someone sees? Or figures it out? If that happens, China Shop goes away. I’ll lose everything. The life I’ve created here – gone.
“Teagan, are you hearing me?” Nic grabs my shoulder. “You gotta help us.”
My whole life stretches in front of me. Nic. Cooking school. Los Angeles. China Shop.
No. Fuck that. Fuck it right in the ass. I’m not just going to stand by when I could help.
But that’s exactly what I do. I don’t move. I stare at the car, my breath coming way too fast. The more I tell myself not to be ridiculous, that I can help out without revealing my ability, the harder it becomes to do it.
“What’s wrong with you?” Nic says, desperation edging his voice.
At that moment, the teenager groans – a horrifying, agonised sound. Nic shakes his head, staring at me in disbelief, then turns to help. There are more people now, at least six. They surround the car, Nic directing operations, telling them where to grab hold. He doesn’t look at me. The smoke is gushing now, swamping the body of the car, flames licking at the paintwork. Nic and the others have to step away, coughing, yanking clothing over their mouths before plunging back in. The boy is hammering on the windows.
And while all this is going on, I stand frozen, terrified, unable to move a goddamn muscle.
Finally, after what seems like hours, I kick myself into gear. Exposure be damned. There are people in that car, and if I don’t start helping, they’re dead.
But as I refocus my PK, getting ready to lift, they manage to move the door. It comes loose with a grinding squeal of metal, so suddenly that Nic actually stumbles backwards. Hands reach into the gap, dragging the man and the boy out. The kid’s left leg is a bloody ruin, the man unconscious.
“I can help,” I say. Nobody hears me.
Then we’re being hustled away from the burning car, stumbling across the wrecked street. I lose track of the injured man and his kid, spinning in place, hunting for something I can lift, burning with shame and wanting to fix it.
But all the other buildings are wood, and they’ve managed to stay upright. There are downed power lines, but nobody’s trapped underneath them. I don’t see any more burning cars.
I sit down heavily on the curb, my head swimming. The oddest thought: You didn’t put enough liquid in your rice. That’s why the paella burned.
I don’t know how long I sit there for. When I look up, Nic is h
uddled with another group of people, clustered around a phone. The man who owns it flicks his finger rapidly, scrolling. The woman on his right is the one in the business suit, the one from before who was helping Nic out with the car. She’s wearing a lone red stiletto, and is staring in horror at the phone screen, hand over her mouth.
Nic stands with his arms folded, a grim expression on his face. When I make my way over to him, he gives me an utterly blank look. Like he doesn’t know who I am.
“Nic?”
“What?”
“What is it? Is everything…?”
The rain has picked up even more – I hadn’t realised it, but I’m soaked through, my hands patterned with grime.
“San Bernardino,” Nic says. It’s a spot to the east of LA, near Riverside. Around here they call that area the Inland Empire, although I don’t know why.
“I don’t understand…”
“It’s gone.” His voice is as dull as his gaze. “Wiped out.”
SIX
Teagan
Nobody can make any calls. The lines are jammed. Amazingly, some of the networks still have data – slow-as-shit data, but it’s working. It’s how we found out about San Bernardino.
A man I don’t know – a dude wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a ponytail who looks about a thousand years old – explains to anyone who will listen that every time a quake increases by a single point, it releases thirty-two times as much energy as before. It’s from him that we find out the quake was actually a 7.1.
“Seismic events this big are actually quite rare,” he says. He sounds like the preachers you sometimes get outside malls. “You might only get twenty a year worldwide. We had one in Ridgecrest last year, but that wasn’t nearly as bad as Northridge in ’94. Hoo-ee! That was a bad one. Although there was a 3.3 in 2014 where one person died…”
His eyes shine as he talks about orders of magnitude and Richter scales and seismic events. After a while, he goes off to talk to someone else.
There’s surprisingly little to do. If the quake had happened during fire season in October, with the Santa Ana winds kicking up, we would be well and truly fucked. But it’s the middle of winter now – or what passes for winter in LA, anyway. The rain keeps the few fires on my street under control, and after an ambulance finally arrives to treat the two people from the car, we all end up just standing around. The streetlights don’t come on – power is down across the city, apparently – but people turn their headlights on, bathing the street in a yellow, rain-flecked glow.
