The Miranda Contract

by Ben Langdon

  Sully squeezed her shoulder gently and then stepped forward, his boots resting on the blocks of cement or wall, testing the resistance. He moved upward, two, then three steps. Behind them, the police muttered into radios and waited for construction trucks to arrive. Miranda blocked out their noise and focused on Sully. He crouched down, placing his palm against the almost-flat surface. And then he jack-hammered his other hand: up, then down, so fast that it was a blur.

  She stumbled back, her hands lifting to shield her eyes from the dust as Sully smashed his fists into the rock. A police woman waved her hands at Sully, looking panicked. Two more officers moved towards Miranda.

  Sully plunged both his hands into the surface, right up to the biceps on each arm. His back arched, impossible muscles pushed against the fibers of his suit. He didn’t look like an ordinary man anymore, and as he lurched upward, bringing a huge chunk of concrete with him, up over his head, Miranda remembered the way he had first been introduced to her: Suleyman the Great.

  “Oh my god,” the police woman said, and stepped back, holding Miranda’s sleeve, guiding her away as well. “That’s impossible.”

  Sully moved back down the slope of rubble and placed the solid section he carried down by the side of the road. He lay it down neatly and then took off his jacket, tossing it to the side, already forgotten. His face was only a little flushed, and he moved smoothly back up to where he had begun excavation and reached down for more collapsed walls to pile down at the roadside.

  After a half hour of digging, Sully’s body was covered in sweat and concrete dust, but he never paused, never tired. Down in the crater he carved out of the debris, Sully pressed his bare fingers into a thick sheet of metal, spreading the surface enough to gain purchase. He tore the metal apart like unwrapping a present, bending it back in jagged strips. Miranda was in the car, hidden behind the tinted windows and out of the dusty disaster zone. While the driver listened to the radio in the front seat, Miranda looked out on the silent scene, watching Sully toss the layers of metal out of his hole to crash around him. The rest of the site was untouched. She didn’t know how he knew where to dig, or why he focused on that particular place. There was a lot about the big man she didn’t know.

  And then he pulled out the boy.

  She could tell it was him because he was still wearing the same clothes he had been wearing the night before, and there was a thin shiny chain hanging from his wrist, sparkling in the sunlight. It had been attached to a suitcase but there was no sign of it now, and Miranda didn’t really care. Sully supported the boy, almost carrying him down to the edge of the rubble. Both faces were covered in grey dust. The boy’s shirt was ripped and there were red marks there, raked across his skin.

  For the first time she didn’t feel like hating him. Because of her, she realized, this boy nearly died. He was lucky, she knew, but not because of anything she’d done. The boy in Jakarta had been younger, fourteen perhaps, and he hadn’t been able to survive his brush with Miranda Brody’s celebrity.

  She opened the door and slid out before the driver could say anything in protest. Sully saw her coming but he didn’t reprimand her. He crouched down with the boy and let the paramedics come close. Miranda slid in beside Sully, his arm holding her against his reassuring body.

  The boy’s face was bruised already. There was a cut across his eyebrow and his torso was bleeding too. He winced as the paramedics removed his shirt and began stabilizing him, but no matter what they did, he remained as alert as he could after being buried under a hotel.

  “You have our thanks,” Sully said, touching the boy’s knee.

  Miranda had no idea what he meant. She wondered how getting himself blown up could be of any use to her. But her anger quickly fled. Sully was worried about the boy. It wasn’t anything to do with her this time.

  “Are you…” she asked, but her voice vanished.

  He looked at her. Green eyes, somehow still bright, surrounded by the grey dust. He squinted a little, probably in pain, and then lifted his hand to touch his shoulder. It was bruised with a dark red mark there, a dark disk.

  “Got shot,” he mumbled to her, his lips swollen with the effort.

  Miranda nodded. She couldn’t see any entry wound, just the bruise. She wondered whether it bounced off him.

  “Got buried.”

  He smiled then, and the paramedics helped him to his feet. An Indian woman wearing a skirt and jacket stood just to the side, flanked by two police officers. She looked furious.

  “Is he going to live?” the woman asked.

  The boy’s smile widened and he turned his head painfully to look at her.

  “Alsana, you made it…” he mumbled.

  “All his vitals are fine,” a paramedic said. “Blood loss was a concern but it seems to have stabilized itself.”

  “Yes,” Alsana said. “Well, Danny here is a most interesting boy. If that’s all, we need him to come to the police station. Parole violation,” she said, looking at Miranda.

  “What?” Miranda asked. “How did he break parole?”

  “Hotel fell on me,” the boy said. “That’ll do it.”

  “We’ll have him back to you if he is viable, Miss Brody,” Alsana said. “In the meantime we need to make sure this isn’t all his fault.”

  “Seriously? This boy gets blown up and you think it’s his fault?”

  “Miss, you really don’t know anything about this boy. He is dangerous, even if he doesn’t look it.” Alsana made sure she didn’t actually touch Dan as he moved with the police towards the waiting patrol car.

  Miranda stood with Sully and watched. Part of her wanted to scream at the woman, but part of her wondered how much of what she alluded to was true. As Dan reached the car, one of the officers opened the front passenger door for him.

  He looked over the car’s roof towards Miranda, the smile still on his beaten face.

  “This is great,” he called out. “I’ve never been in the front seat before.” And then he was gone.

  Chapter 14

  Dan

  Being trapped under a collapsed hotel wasn’t as bad as he thought. Sure it was dark and there was a dusty, shattered cement kind of smell, but he managed to avoid being crushed to death in the explosion so he had to admit that was a bonus. As everything had fallen around him, tiles, mortar, the entire front section of the hotel; he instinctively pushed out with what was left of his stored energy and formed a magnetized shell around himself. It had worked, just like his grandfather taught him many years before. The explosives were his grandfather’s too, and Dan wondered whether the celebration of the Mad Russian’s return was supposed to serve as a warning to Dan, or an invitation for a reunion. The whole thing was choreographed, he could tell that, including the suicidal shooter; but Dan didn’t know what he was expected to do about it.

  And now he was at the police station. It was always the same one. He sat waiting for the show to begin, having already spent half an hour with Alsana arguing about insurance and indemnities. She’d received a phone call mid-sentence and decided to take it outside the interview room. And she hadn’t come back. The whole time he was with her he kept looking at the ceiling, expecting his grandfather to rip it open and snatch him into the air. His thoughts wandered and then doubled back, skirting around the growing thump of a headache. Everything around him was a blur, and the chain attached to his wrist had carved a red line around his wrist which itched and stung at the same time. Since arriving at the station Dan hadn’t been able to properly focus on anything electrical. There was still a buzz around him, but it was out of kilter, like an afterglow rather than the real thing.

  Dan sat alone in the interview room, his eyes half-closed as he watched through the glass at the uniforms rushing about in the wake of the airport hotel bombing. His head still throbbed but it was getting better. He rubbed at the cold metal bracelet around his wrist, discharging minute shocks of electricity into it, hoping to unlock the code but knowing it was unlikely. In the hours si
nce he’d woken in the unfamiliar hotel he’d tried to get rid of it but all he’d managed with his bursts of electricity was to magnetize the thing.

  He didn’t see the funny side when the bracelet snapped hard against the metal table. He pulled it across the surface and dislodged the magnetic connection just as the door opened and the familiar figure of Detective Schwarz stepped in. He stopped just inside the room to give Dan a disapproving look. His eyes moved from the bandage on Dan’s head, slowly down to the torn shirt and black burn marks.

  Dan smiled at him.

  Schwarz took a seat opposite, placing his cup of coffee on the table and grunting in greeting. With his hands free, the policeman smoothed down his moustache and sighed. Behind him came a young woman in uniform, with dark hair and a clipboard bursting with files held to her chest. He knew that clipboard: it had his name on it.

  “This is Ryan,” Schwarz said.

  The uniform was obviously new. She didn’t look at Dan, and the way she was focusing on the report meant she’d been briefed on his juvenile criminal history. Dan knew the ‘up-cycleds’ were an office joke. He had four years’ experience.

  Schwarz shifted in his seat and folded his large arms across his crinkled shirt. Dan was ready for the usual introductions.

  “Still having trouble keeping your pants on?” Schwarz said.

  Dan shrugged.

  “Killed anyone lately?”

  “No,” Dan said, looking at the table, fingers splayed in front of him. “It’s been a slow week.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “People say I’m not funny.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  Schwarz reached for his cup and smiled through his moustache. It was the same routine.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed,” he said, and it wasn’t one of the practiced lines. Dan shrugged. Schwarz was probably right.

  Ryan took the cue from her partner and retrieved a document folder from her files. Dan saw the distinctive red and blue logo of the up-cycled program and said nothing as the paperwork was slid across to him. Schwarz handed him a pen.

  “You’ll need to sign at the crosses,” Ryan said but Dan already knew. The forms were familiar to him. They covered statutory declarations on good behavior, a questionnaire about all activities since the previous form, poorly written threats dressed up as codes of conduct, and finally a waiver for any injury he may incur as being a part of the up-cycled program. Dan finished the last signature with a flourish and sat back.

  “There’s word that your grandfather is back in town,” Schwarz said slowly. Ryan reached across and collected the final sheet of signatures and declarations. “Now, I know you’re too smart to get mixed up with him again, but you’ve got to look out for yourself.”

  “He’s probably gone by now anyway,” Dan said.

  “There’s a reason they call him Mad, Danny. You can’t predict his behavior, any more than we can.”

  “He’s been gone for years. If he’s back then he’ll want to get his hands on his war machines and hook up with his Cold War buddies,” Dan said.

  Schwarz nodded and Dan couldn’t help but shake his head and smile in disbelief.

  “You think he’s going to care about me?”

  “I think you’re right about his first priorities,” Schwarz said. “And Danny, my boy, you are his primary war machine, whether you like it or not.”

  Dan didn’t like it. Ryan clearly didn’t like it either, and she gathered up her files and muttered some excuse for leaving. As the door closed Schwarz scratched his moustache and sighed. He reached forward, clicked off the recorder and sighed again. Dan hadn’t said a thing. He hadn’t even looked Schwarz in the eye.

  “I don’t say this to make you angry,” he said softly. “I say it because I care about you.”

  “I know,” Dan said. “Everyone cares about me.”

  “This thing is off, you know?” the policeman said. “You don’t have to drip the sarcasm anymore. Danny, the Celestial Knights are off-planet. If your grandfather makes a grab for you then we’ve only got conventional defenses, the good men and women of the force. If he finds out that his enemies are out of the picture then he’ll get bold, he’ll get reckless.”

  The Celestial Knights had always opposed Dan’s grandfather and other uberpowered megalomaniacs. They were the best of the best and apart from the occasional on-the-job death to prevent the destruction of a planet or an entire dimension, they were pretty much unstoppable.

  Dan had personal experience of that. He rubbed his wrist where the metal bracelet still held firm. The dullness in his mind and the familiar energy signature from the hotel at the airport seemed to coalesce.

  “He won’t be a problem.”

  Dan’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and frowned at the large crack across the screen. He wondered whether he could claim it on insurance but since the phone still worked he couldn’t be bothered.

  “Important call?” Schwarz asked.

  “It’s not the Mad Russian, if that’s what you mean,” Dan said, sliding the phone across to Schwarz. The older man squinted his eyes as he tried to read the text. Then his eyes widened and he smiled, sliding the phone back to Dan.

  “That’s some girl,” he said.

  “She probably just wants to yell at me for wrecking her day,” Dan shrugged.

  “Still, she was worried about you at the site, and her man managed to pull you out of there faster than we could have managed.”

  “Yeah, I guess she’s a little bit awesome.”

  Schwarz laughed and stood up. He held his hand out to Dan and helped him up, giving him a firm, close handshake at the door. They’d known each other for years and suddenly Dan felt like just hugging the man, not letting go.

  “Look after yourself, Danny.”

  And in the end that’s what he had to do.

  The text message practically ordered Dan to meet Miranda at another hotel, although not her own one, he noticed. It was near Birdie’s and since he’d left his stuff in the boss’s office, he agreed to meet her, although he didn’t really have a choice.

  As he walked through the city he pushed out with his powers, trying to manipulate the world one little energy spike at a time. Changing the traffic lights was easy but pushing his mind into more subtle systems like the telephone networks was beyond him. Whenever he tried there was a grey fog, a dullness that pushed against him, and now he knew it was coming from the bracelet.

  Ever since the hotel explosion he hadn’t been able to hear the world around him. He had been locked out of surveillance, phone and internet networks. The subtlety was gone. And it was somehow connected to his grandfather.

  Dan slammed the bracelet into a pole as he stepped up onto the footpath, swinging wide and bringing it in hard and fast. There was a clanging sound and he felt the jarring shudder up his arm, but the bracelet itself was unchanged, no dent, no marks at all.

  Nothing changed.

  But it did start to rain.

  The entourage relaxed into the lobby, folding itself on strategically placed sofas and against pillars of marble. Dan’s eyes took in their positions from over the top of the newspaper, but he didn’t move from his chair, and tried to look as unimpressed as possible. He counted eight of them, boys and girls, but all wearing designer clothes and attitude. The camera crew was absent.

  Miranda Brody sauntered towards him with her hips jutting out like she did on stage. Dan turned the page.

  “You nearly got me killed,” Brody said. Her arms were on those hips, the red carpet pose.

  “I was going to say the same thing,” Dan said, folding the paper. He was over-acting, but at the same time he knew she deserved some return-fire attitude for abandoning him. And since Alsana was now missing again, having stormed out at the station, Miranda was the only target. “But I didn’t see you come in.”

  She narrowed her eyes into deadly slits.

&
nbsp; “You – nearly – got – me – killed,” she said again, slowly, like he was one of her lackeys.

  “You’re the mega-star,” he said. “You’re the target.”

  “I know about your grandfather.”

  Dan was shocked. He ran his fingers back over his forehead, pressing his head a little where he had been bleeding. He felt sick.

  Miranda sat down opposite him. She reached out a hand, nearly touching his knee, but then she pulled back.

  “It wasn’t me,” Dan said, lifting his arm so that the chain which had been attached to the briefcase was visible. “I think it was this.”

  Her gaze briefly fell across the broken chain but Dan could tell she didn’t know why it was important either. Her people kept their distance.

  “What are you talking about?” she said softly.

  “It’s doing something to me. Making me a bit off, you know.”

  She shook her head. He managed a smile.

  “It’s messing with my powers.” There was that word again: powers. Dan took a breath and sat up, calming himself while knowing that Miranda was probably right. Everyone knew the Mad Russian was involved, and everyone knew that Dan was always going to be a loose end to be tied up, one way or another.

  “So why does he want to kill you?” Miranda asked. “Your grandfather.”

  Dan shrugged.

  “You have no idea?” she asked, still keeping her voice low.

  He met her eyes and she didn’t look away. God, she was gorgeous.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But you were attacked too. Someone wants you hurt, or worse.”

  It was Miranda’s turn to shrug and she crossed her legs.

  “We’re the odd couple, aren’t we?” she asked. “Still, we can’t just sit around and wait for the next building to fall on your head.”

  She stood up and called to her people. They moved towards the exit, but she stopped before she disappeared.

  “You’re fired, by the way. It’s too dangerous for us to be together.”

  Dan sank back into his chair.