by Ben Langdon
But Miranda was slipping away.
He released his hand, fingers not working, not getting any kind of hold on the slick metal handle. He felt the tingling crawl up his arm towards his chest, the electricity returning to the center, condensing, building upon itself. There was so little of the energy remaining in his system. Since the hotel explosion Dan had been drained and couldn’t pull new energy into his body without immense pain.
And then Sully was beside him, his hands grabbing the car and lifting it back to the surface. Dan saw the bloodied mess on the man’s arm where Luke had bitten him, but there was no sign of Luke anymore. Dan didn’t ask. The bodyguard pulled open the door and Miranda spilled out into his arms. Tabitha crawled across the handbrake and stick to the passenger side. She looked up at Dan through her ruined hair, her wide eyes showing a hint of terror. He helped her out and then stumbled into the rain.
“I wasn’t sure about that,” she said. “We almost…”
They looked at the street but there was hardly anything to show what it had been like minutes before. Birdie’s was on fire, cars were crushed and the power poles were sticking up at all kinds of angles.
“What’s going on?” Miranda asked, her voice cutting through Dan’s silent wonder as he looked around him. Sully wrapped a jacket around her shoulders but she couldn’t keep still. Her face was streaked with black, but Dan wasn’t sure if it was makeup or ash.
“We have to get you out of here,” Sully said simply. He looked at Dan and then around at the devastation. Dan had the feeling that he was being judged. “It is not a safe place.”
“I want to go home,” Miranda said. “I just want to go home, Sully.”
“They’re after you aren’t they?” Tabitha said, arms crossed, and looking at Dan. “You and the girl.”
“It happened before,” Sully added. “Do you have any enemies, Mister Galkin?”
“None that want to blow up Melbourne,” he said, although he wondered whether that was entirely true. “It’s got something to do with this.” He lifted his hand and turned it so the bracelet could be easily seen, despite the fact his skin was now streaked with ash and grease and rain.
“It’s him,” Miranda said. “It’s your grandfather, isn’t it?”
Dan shrugged.
Sully didn’t seem so sure.
“You have to get out of here,” Tabitha said. “The big guy is right. The streets are not safe – for anyone.”
She put a hand on Dan’s shoulder and smiled a little. There was kindness there. Dan felt his throat tighten. It was like everything was falling away and all he’d be left with was some kind of crying mess. He sniffed and looked away, thumping the bracelet against the car.
“You have to look after her,” Tabitha said. “You know that. I can tell.”
“He’s not looking after anyone,” Miranda called out, checking her phone, cleaning its screen.
“You know that,” Tabitha continued, ignoring Miranda. “Don’t you have someone who knows about all this crap?”
Dan nodded. “But the people I know aren’t the good guys,” he said.
Almost on cue the world shifted strangely. It was as if they had blinked and in the short time their eyes had been closed, the world had changed subtly. Tabitha was standing slightly further away from Dan than she had been before; the fires licking through the cars back at Birdie’s had leapt in intensity; and Sully was on the ground, head down and bleeding from a gash to his forehead which had dislodged his turban.
The world shifted again. Another blink.
Tabitha was covering her mouth, eyes wide as she looked at Sully. Dan had spun around and was looking away, Miranda had vanished. Sully had got to his feet again but his left arm looked useless.
A third blink, and Dan knew he was facing Grandfather Time: a drinking buddy of the Mad Russian. The man had appeared on the street, although it wasn’t really in his character to be so bold. His legs were very thin, but long, and the tuxedo he wore seemed to cling to his narrow frame. The top hat which sat above the man’s rather grey face, was tall and followed the lines of his body. He held a cane in his gloved hand and looked around the street with a casual air.
Dan felt Miranda bump into him, her hands holding onto his shirt as she kept close, keeping the chaos just out of sight. She was breathing hard, pulling on his shirt with each heave.
Sully wiped blood from his face and gave Dan a single nod of his head before turning to face the gentleman in the middle of the road. At first Dan had no idea what the nod meant, or even whether it was a nod or simply the man’s way of shaking himself back into a clear state of mind.
Then Sully threw his fist in a wide arc and nearly collected Grandfather Time’s head; but there was no chance of landing any blow on a man who could stop time. The air between the two men shimmered and Sully’s fist slowed, almost frame by frame, until Sully was suspended in a frozen position.
Grandfather Time stepped around Sully and looked him up and down slowly, taking in the bodyguard’s face and clothing. Then he stepped further past Sully and stood facing Dan and Miranda, both of his hands neatly clasping the cane.
“Good evening, Daniel,” the man said, and he raised one of his hands to gently tip the brim of his top hat. “There is a matter your grandfather wishes to discuss with you… and the young lady in your custody.”
Dan stepped back, Miranda so close that they moved together, fumbling over the broken road. He looked at Sully again, frozen and so vulnerable. Grandfather Time watched them retreat, his eyebrows raised only slightly.
“Do you expect to simply walk away from this discussion, my boy?”
“I don’t expect anything,” Dan shot back, still stepping backward. They were at the street corner next to a car park. He tried to pull his mind back to the electrical world, the second world he knew so well, but there was too much going on around him. The bracelet was sending a ringing sensation through his body and into his ears, distracting him from searching the surroundings for something to draw upon. There were electricity lines everywhere, of course, but he couldn’t make a connection.
The air shimmered again.
A hand pressed down on Dan’s shoulder and he winced under the pressure as Grandfather Time appeared suddenly behind him, his fingers digging in to Dan’s skin. With a twist, the old man pulled Dan down to a kneeling position. He held Miranda around the wrist with his other gloved hand and she was pulling at him with both hands.
“It is time,” he said simply. Dan looked around and up to the man’s eyes and he saw the distinctive hourglass pupils. He had first seen them years ago and they had given him nightmares for weeks. He tried to twist himself free but the man held him fast.
And then there was a sharp crack and Grandfather Time staggered backward, his fingers lifting from Dan’s shoulder and clutching frantically at his own. A second cracking sound followed.
“Don’t just stand there!” Tabitha shouted as she leaned across her car, leveling a handgun over the roof. She fired a third shot and Dan dropped to the ground as he saw the flash, but the bullet went wide.
Grandfather Time looked at his hand, stained red from the shoulder wound. Dan had never seen the man pause for so long.
“Look after her Galkin!” Tabitha shouted and fired again, the fourth shot connecting with Grandfather Time’s leg. He collapsed to the ground, his leg snapping out to the side.
Dan reached out and took Miranda’s hand, pulling her quickly to her feet and then across the road to the car park. The two of them leapt over debris and through the boom gates, the sound of another gunshot behind them.
As he passed the second rate lighting in the car park, Dan ran a surge of energy through them, and then through the rest of the lights contained in the building; blowing them into darkness. His reserves were nearly dry. He’d never felt so hollow. They reached the stairwell and Dan pushed Miranda ahead, the heavy clank of the door closing behind them leaving them in total darkness.
Chapter 17
Miranda felt the rough edge of the wall behind her as they stopped running. It felt safe, solid. The whole world seemed to be falling apart outside, with roads being ruptured by blasts of fire and strange people throwing cars and doing impossible things all around her; but now she felt like it was a whole other world away, somewhere out there.
The darkness wasn’t absolute. As her eyes adjusted, she could see Dan’s outline, listening for pursuit. He seemed calm. Her own breathing was erratic and she concentrated on bringing it under control, but it was hopeless. Her tai chi instructor never taught her how to bring about calm in such a crazy situation. It was all about controlling emotions before a concert, about channeling the nervous energy, harnessing the adrenalin.
“We can’t stay here,” Dan said softly. She felt his breath, they were that close. She nodded, watching his lips. It was only a matter of time before she would be running again, and without Sully to stop the threats she really didn’t know what would happen to her. She was scared. Probably more than she’d ever been.
When she signed on to the international tour, her father introduced her to Sully. They knew each other, apparently, although how a family man from Riverside, California knew a Turkish adventurer, she never found out. Sully was very good at evading conversations when he wanted to, and her father was on the other side of the world. But in the first few days Sully put her at ease, being there as a stand-in parent as well as a bodyguard against the more intrusive demands of her manager and the local crews in each city.
After the protests in Los Angeles and Seattle, they made a pact to always be honest with each other, to be there no matter what the personal cost. At first Miranda thought it was more about making her feel comfortable, that the promises were really one-way. But Sully needed her too. He missed his own family: his wife, his two sons. Miranda didn’t know where they were or why he couldn’t be with them, but she soon learned that she made his life a little better just as he did for her. They went horse riding in the Rockies for three days before her tour left the United States, and during the long, anxious nights, she heard him speaking in his sleep.
His mouth twisted in pain and he shouted out to someone he couldn’t see. Miranda didn’t know Arabic but she could interpret the emotions. When he woke the next morning she made it her goal to keep him smiling as much as possible. Even through the stress of travel, the terror of Jakarta, Sully remained her keystone. But now he had been taken away, brought to his knees by a sinister man in a top hat.
“Who was that back there?” she asked as they waited.
“A bad man,” Dan said, his breath still close, like he was watching her. She touched her cheek and felt it was wet.
“And what does he want?”
Dan pulled himself up and then held out a hand for Miranda to take. She had no other choice and he pulled her up and then pressed his other hand against a door. Shafts of muted light filtered in as the door opened. They were stepping out onto one of the upper levels. She heard a helicopter in the distance, and then an explosion like three popping firecrackers, all in a row. She held her breath as the silence returned, and then she heard the helicopter again. It was safe.
“Have you got a credit card?”
He pressed her hand gently, pulling her out into the open space. She could see him clearer now. His face looked so normal, like any other boy she’d known. He didn’t look like he belonged to this kind of mess, like he’d be comfortable trading blows with supervillains, tossing cars, shooting out balls of fire. He just looked normal.
Maybe even cute.
A closer explosion rocked the building and she grabbed for his arm to steady herself. He looked towards the edge of the car park, a long way off.
“Come on,” he said. “I need to get to the phone.”
“I’ve got a phone,” she said, instinctively pulling it out of her jacket pocket. She pressed her thumb to the side and the screen jumped to life. Dan’s eyes widened and she felt a vibration in her phone. There was a bearded man on her screen looking furtively from left to right, his eyes digitized specks of light. The face pushed forward against the screen and it was suddenly a three dimensional image.
Dan grabbed the phone from her and turned it off.
Her hands were shaking, but he pressed the phone back into her palm and closed her fingers around it.
“Better put it away,” he said. Then he tilted his chin towards a pay phone. “Needs to be … anonymous.”
She nodded. Her eyes blinked back tears as she dropped her phone back into her bag. There was a second explosion, closer, and she clamped her hands over her ears. The ringing was so intense, and the image of the holographic man seemed to yell at her even though it was gone. Dan mouthed something at her, pointing to the purse she had pulled out with her phone.
“Credit card!”
She heard him the first time but it didn’t seem like it was important considering the amount of danger they were in.
“Why?”
“I need to use it.”
Dan pulled the handset from the phone booth and listened for a dial tone. He pumped the cradle twice and then started dialing a number.
“If you’re ordering pizza…”
She heard her own words, amazed at the way she sounded confident, flippant even, despite her heart racing against her chest.
“Have you got the card?”
She passed him the platinum piece of plastic and huddled down next to the wall, her hands over her ears but still watching him. He shifted the phone to his other ear and then lifted the card, squinting at the number.
“Bree, it’s me,” he said. Miranda let her hands slip from her ears. “I’ve got a problem.”
He rolled his eyes and nodded, once, then again.
“Need an evac, not a lecture. Yes, there’s a card here. It’s good to go. I’m punching the number in now.”
He looked quickly down at Miranda as she sat still beside him.
“No, it’s not stolen.”
Dan pulled out his own mobile and was entering numbers into it while cradling the other phone with his neck and pressing the credit card against the glass to help everything stay balanced. It was funny, or would have been, in a different situation.
“It’s in,” he said. “GPS co-ordinates too. We’re on the third floor. Can you get us out now?”
He hung up the phone and stepped away from the wall, handing back the credit card and slipping his mobile back into his pocket.
“I thought you lost your phone,” she said. “At the airport.”
“This is my other phone.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s the secret one. For superhero business.”
“Since when are you a superhero?”
Dan looked around the semi-darkness, anxious.
“I was being sarcastic,” he said. “She should be here by now.”
Miranda stood up again. Her jeans were torn, her hair a mess. She needed to get back to Sully and then to an airport. Dan started to chew his fingernail as he paced the lot. She smiled, despite herself, and realized just how much younger he was. As she pulled her hair back into a ponytail she turned around and saw a woman standing just behind her.
“I’m Bree,” the woman said. “Your credit card checked out. I won’t be able to give you a receipt though. The machine’s down.”
Dan pushed past Miranda, grabbed her hand in his and then held his other hand out to Bree. The new woman smiled at him and gave him a slow look from his trainers to his cut-up face.
“You’ve been having fun.”
“Can we talk about this later?” he asked.
“Sure.” She took his hand and Miranda watched in horror as first Dan, and then Miranda herself, began to dissolve into grains of sand. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing came. She lifted her hand but it was nothing but sand. And then everything was gone and she had the feeling of being whisked up twenty floors in an elevator.
There was a gritty feeling in her
mouth and a tightness in her throat. She found herself on a polished timber floor, her legs splayed to the side and her hands rubbing her neck.
“It’s psychological,” a voice said. “There’s nothing in your mouth. You’re as I found you in the car park.”
Miranda looked over her shoulder and saw the girl from before. She stood with a bottle of water in her hand and when Miranda’s eyes locked on to it, the girl smiled and tossed it to her. Miranda caught it with two hands and hurried to open the lid, scarping down the water to ease the soreness.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You’re the paying customer, I presume,” the girl said. “Dan’s not the kind of boy who goes around waving exclusive credit cards.”
Miranda took another drink and then helped herself off the floor, taking the time to look around her new environment. The space was obviously a loft of some kind, and there was a view which included an ocean, the lights of ships red, green and white. It reminded her of Christmas parades back home.
“I’m Bree,” the girl said. “Your boyfriend’s fixing his face.”
“Miranda.”
“I know,” Bree said. “You’re on the telly.”
Miranda was impressed with the Spartan décor: wide spaces, minimalist style. She had the impression that it wasn’t a room that was lived in. Bree gave a similar impression: practical, transient. She was Middle Eastern, or North African. Her hair was tightly braided in short stumps. Miranda felt for her own hair which was falling over her shoulders. There were times, she admitted to herself, where a team of stylists was a blessing, but she knew any contact with her tour team would likely end in more explosions, more blood and more clashes with things that were better off left to the imagination.
“What do you mean, fixing his face?” she asked, processing Bree’s earlier words. The other girl smiled, but then Dan appeared through a door: shirtless with a towel over his shoulders, his hair partly wet after being hurriedly dried. There was a gash across his forehead, another wound he’d collected in her service.
