The Miranda Contract

by Ben Langdon

  “You’re okay?” he asked.

  Miranda nodded and took another drink of water, pulling her eyes away from his fresh face, those green eyes, those abs. He walked past her and gave Bree a quick hug. Miranda turned to watch them, but they pulled apart quickly, almost like brother and sister.

  “What now?” Miranda asked while Bree pulled away from Dan and leaned against the wall, a smile playing on her face. “Have you called the police?”

  “You can’t do that,” Bree said, even as Dan was about to speak. “This is out of their league, and they know it. Even if you did get them to believe you, any help they sent would be fresh meat for the likes of the Mad Russian. You’d be sending them to their deaths.”

  “Dramatic, much?” Dan murmured, grabbing his t-shirt. “We better just keep out of sight, until I can work out what’s really going on.”

  “You mean, whether you’re the one they want dead or me, right?” Miranda asked. “Why don’t you just say it? I think we’re a bit past secrets, pizza boy.”

  Dan’s face shifted from one expression to the next, as if he couldn’t find the words or the tone to respond. She’d watched him enter her life as a cynical, hard-done-by kid and then some kind of weird monster who could survive being flattened by a hotel. She wondered how he would show himself next.

  “It’s Dan there’re after,” Bree said. “There, I’ve said it. Miranda can go home.”

  The words washed over her in a mixture of relief and fear. It sounded so simple, like a rear exit from the stage. She could leave this mess, get on a plane and fly home to California. She could fade away. But she’d done that before, in Jakarta.

  She didn’t want to be that person.

  “How do you know that?” Miranda asked slowly, and she could tell that’s what Dan wanted to know too. “People have been after me as well, here and at the last few concerts overseas. A … a thing came out of my phone. How can you be so sure?”

  “Because they approached me,” Bree said. “Asked me to join the reunion tour, but I said I’d outgrown them.”

  “Who?” Dan asked, moving to her, moving back into the shared space with Bree. Suddenly Miranda wasn’t even there as far as he was concerned. “Did he come here?”

  “God no,” Bree said. “Just a man, representing a man and so on. The Russian is never that direct. Besides, I think Grim is more involved with this thing. I see you’re carrying his work.”

  Dan lifted his wrist, the silver cuff clear to the three of them.

  “This is Grim’s work?” Dan asked.

  “He was commissioned by the Russian. Having trouble with your powers lately? It’s a standard restraining device, probably calibrated especially for your DNA. I’m sure your grandfather was more than happy to oblige with a sample if Grim didn’t already have it on file.”

  “So what did they offer you?” Dan asked, dropping his hand.

  Bree laughed.

  “The usual.”

  “And you said no?”

  “Dan, I’m not going back to that world. You got out of it, so you know what I mean. But there’re loose ends and they all wind back to you. You can’t go to the police or the super heroes. They’ve been bought or scattered. Every inch of the city is under surveillance in some way or another.”

  “I’ve got people,” Miranda said. Somewhere out there Sully would be looking for her. She didn’t want to think about the man in the top hat, his gaunt face and blurring movements. Sully was unstoppable. He’d told her that the second time they’d met, and he hadn’t been wrong about anything before.

  “They’ve got your people,” Bree said.

  “That’s not true,” Miranda said, but she really had no idea. Bree ignored her.

  “The only place left to you is the secret world, right under their noses,” Bree said. “Those people are the only ones who can get you out of the city.”

  “Like you? People like you?” Dan asked.

  “I’m not getting involved in this beyond what I’ve done already,” she said. “You need to get out of the city.”

  Miranda wasn’t sure she wanted to go back outside. A quick look out the window and she realized she was in some kind of apartment complex above a spreading series of docks. Melbourne was still out there, looming behind her.

  “Can you get me to Grim’s house?” Dan asked.

  Bree shook her head and looked away.

  “Please?” he asked, voice dropping.

  Miranda felt sick, her throat tightening again, her heart rate thumping into a higher gear.

  “I’ll call you a taxi,” Bree said.

  Chapter 18

  Dan

  The ride into the city was quiet. They scored a melancholy driver who seemed more interested in two photographs lodged on his dashboard than in opening up conversation with Dan and Miranda. They were photos of two children and the driver who was wearing cricket whites and smiling widely into the camera. Dan wondered whether Miranda had family, whether her father took time out for her. She was looking out of the window, her profile lit up every now and then with the passing headlights of traffic. Sometimes he wished he could steal a happy childhood.

  But childhood really wasn’t an option anymore. He was seventeen and there was nothing out there except the cold, hard world of adults. He didn’t really have a plan, of course, but he knew he had to be proactive. If he waited then the Russian would catch him. His only chance was in getting out of the city, and for that to happen he needed help.

  “Where are we going?” Miranda asked softly. She had her knees up to her chin, resting on the seats. She didn’t look at him.

  “To a friend’s house.”

  She scoffed quietly.

  “I didn’t think you had friends,” she said.

  “A family friend.”

  It had been a very long time since he’d seen Gerhardt Eis, the man everyone called Grim. It had been just before everything fell apart, before the camping trip to the Grampians, before the unraveling. He was an uncle, of sorts. Good with machines.

  Dan ran his fingers across the metal cuff. He couldn’t sense the electrical world anymore, not in any distinct shape. There was a pressure out there, like a creature shuddering along its path, but he couldn’t see or communicate with it. The metal cuff had messed him up somehow and since Grim was its creator, Dan figured he’d be the best one to take it apart. Once he was free and back in control of his powers, then they could sneak out of Melbourne.

  As the taxi stopped at traffic lights Dan looked out and saw familiar houses and then a tacky fish and chip shop he had been to as a child. They were getting closer.

  “This’ll do,” he said, tapping the back of the driver’s seat. He passed the man some money and got out into the evening air. Miranda slid across the seat and stood up next to him on the curb. They looked at the flashing lights around the fish and chip shop and were greeted with tempting smells.

  “Smells good,” she said.

  “I promise to get you chips later,” Dan said. She shrugged and looked up and down the street. Cars sped past with the hum of engines and the spray of water from the road.

  He took her hand. He didn’t know why, but he did.

  And she let him take it.

  They walked down the street, anonymous but hunted nonetheless. At the corner they turned left and walked down a darker street.

  “It’s been a long time,” he murmured. He could see the house, sixty feet away, windows dark and the aluminum cladding in a shabby state of disrepair.

  Miranda squeezed his hand.

  The poker nights had a sense of excitement about them, and even though Dan, at the age of ten, hadn’t begun to manifest his sensitivity to the electrical world, he could almost hear a hum in the air as his grandfather scooted around his house making everything just right.

  There was no real way for Dan to know that his grandfather was a supervillain, or that his poker buddies were notorious criminals with names like Yellow Peril or Grandfather Time. To Dan, they were A
unty Pearl and Uncle Jon-Jon, and compared with the shut-up life he had with his mother, who was afraid of everything, poker nights presented Dan with a glimpse at the wider, more exciting world of grownups.

  His mother would retreat to the guest bedroom a little after seven and when the door clicked, Dan’s grandfather would change gears, increase his agitation and move around in a manic way that often had Dan laughing, although never to the old man’s face.

  Dan could tell that staying in his grandfather’s house was unnerving to his mother, but they had come to a truce especially while Dan’s father was in prison. They moved in so Dan could be watched while she recovered from her breakdown. No one was really happy about the arrangement. His mother felt like the world was collapsing in on her and didn’t seem to care enough to do anything about it, and his grandfather mostly felt embarrassed by his imprisoned son and, in his words, ‘wanted to make sure mistakes weren’t repeated’. Dan figured that meant his grandfather expected him to one day end up in prison as well.

  It was funny how things turned out.

  The poker game started after the sun disappeared, and Dan’s grandfather cackled like a sideshow magician, laughing at the evils about to be unleashed. It was never so dramatic, and apart from the regular scuffles over misplaced chips or accusations of cheating, the games were really just about a group of old people gathering around to tell tales on each other and revisit old arguments.

  After the initial excitement of the night, Dan usually ended up asleep in the door jamb between the living room and the kitchen, and the guests stepped over him to fetch refreshments, sometimes commenting on his resemblance to his father. When he was half-asleep during these times he usually heard the most interesting stories but the fusion between voices and dreams always made him uncertain about what he really heard.

  One night, though, Dan was sitting out on the back veranda listening to mosquitoes when Grim scuffled out of the back door and coughed like he was choking to death. The coughing was usually followed by sneezes which verged on barks, and Dan looked up expecting to see the red face and watery eyes of his grandfather’s German friend. The sneeze barks never came. Dan was a little disappointed.

  “Guten abend,” Grim said, sorting his handkerchief back into his pocket. He was a balding, rather round and red-faced man. Dan watched the dark hair on the back of Grim’s hands as he pulled out his packet of cigarettes and lit one up, coughing again as he drew in the smoke.

  “Are you winning?” Dan asked. It was his usual response, no matter which of his grandfather’s friends appeared next to him. They usually grunted or smiled at him, and then went away.

  “No,” the old man said slowly. It was strange how long it took for him to release the word, like it was playing on his lips, refusing to make the leap. Grim’s eyes closed and he breathed in the cigarette, his nostrils flaring a little. “No, mein freund, it is not a day for winning.”

  “Aunty Pearl said you were on a losing streak last month,” Dan said. “Said you should stay home.”

  Grim shrugged.

  “Pearl is correct,” he said. “She’s a crafty one.”

  Dan moved over to make room for Grim to sit down on the steps. He smelt of cigarettes and whiskey, and maybe wet hair. It wasn’t Dan’s ideal way to end the night, but he had been getting bored with listening for insects in the growing night.

  “The days are not for us any more,” Grim declared. “No matter what Galkin says, no matter the way the others protest. It is a certainty.”

  “It’s just a game.”

  “Not any more.”

  “You’ll be back next month. Luck changes,” Dan said, smiling in encouragement. Grim looked like a beaten dog and even though Dan didn’t particularly care one way or the other, he didn’t want to get caught on the steps with a slobbering wreck. If depression took a hold of the old man, Dan knew he wouldn’t be leaving the steps for a long time.

  “It is nice you say these things,” Grim said and passed Dan the cigarette. “But you are young, not part of the old days. To you we are old men and women, playing card games in the living room.”

  He sighed. Dan took a tentative tug at the cigarette and coughed once.

  “In our days we ruled the world,” Grim continued as Dan took another breath. “But the glory days are no more, the rules they have changed and never go back now.”

  Dan had heard his grandfather complaining about the world, almost every day actually, and it had become a chorus alternating between his grandfather and his mother as they cursed the present and clung to the past. Dan didn’t particularly like anything about the past. His hopes rested on the future, when he could do something and be someone, instead of the son of a blue-skinned freak-woman who didn’t allow him to do anything the other kids were allowed to do.

  “The past isn’t so great,” Dan said. He blew out the smoke slowly, enjoying the feeling of being mature.

  Grim cursed in German and spat to the side before reaching out and snagging the cigarette from between Dan’s lips. He gave Dan a look and then the cigarette, shrugged and sighed.

  “This thing with India,” he said. “It is no good when a country acts like that, in that way. The conflict is global now, not our little games, our little … personal playground.”

  Later, Dan remembered that India had annexed Pakistan a year before in a bloody and bold show of nationalism, backed by what seemed like hundreds of uberhuman agents. It had been difficult to get impartial reports from the area and somehow the whole invasion had been and gone. The fall-out was reported less and less and it seemed even the world leaders had accepted that India was within its rights to expand its territory to combat terrorism. It had been exciting for the younger Dan, in the opening stages, but when the men and women in suits took over from the elephant-headed gods and living whirlwinds, he didn’t see the big deal in any of it. Grim, on the other hand, seemed to be taking the whole thing personally.

  “India is a long way from here,” Dan said.

  “Not so far.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You miss point, Daniel. The scales are not right any more, no room for individuals like us. Everything is now on world stage, with world media and power-brokers. Grim is just old dog now, and that lot in there are finished too.”

  He looked over his shoulder and sort of rested his chin there, defeated. There were sounds coming from inside, some glassware clinking and muted conversations.

  “It’s just a game,” Dan said again.

  Grim stood up, holding on to the rail as he did so, showing his age even more. He breathed deeply and stepped up to the veranda and then back inside the house. Almost immediately the sounds inside lifted and laughter rang out. Dan stepped off into the garden and walked to the gate, closing out the smells and sounds, and seeking out the insects again.

  The gate was broken and weeds grew up through the ironwork. As Dan stood there looking at the front door he wondered whether the time had come for all of his grandfather’s friends to fade away. There hadn’t been any public news from them since the Mad Russian vanished, apart from some rumors about Pearl and her sprawling criminal empire. Probably the world had changed, like Grim predicted. The Celestial Knights were bigger than ever, but they operated in global circles, rarely coming to touch the ground in Melbourne. And the threats had become more indistinct – secret cells of terrorists or the occasional mad science experiment rampaging through a city. America still had its fair share of costumed bad guys, but the rest of the world seemed to have moved on.

  Until now.

  “This is the house?” Miranda asked. She was still holding his hand. He nodded and pushed the gate a little with his foot, the squeaking protest of the hinges making him wince.

  They weaved their way through the gate and to the front door. Grim had moved into the old house after Dan’s grandfather vanished. Theresa hadn’t wanted it, so Grim crawled in and never left. There were no lights outside or inside. It didn’t look promising. But even if the old man
wasn’t home, Dan knew there might be some way for him to break the cuff, some kind of device or instructions left behind.

  Of course, he also knew that he could be walking into a trap. With a glance back to the street he wondered whether the house was being monitored.

  Miranda rapped her knuckles on the door, giving him an annoyed look, but still she didn’t let go of his hand. After her knock, she stepped back a little, and Dan gave her a smile.

  “You’d think a pizza boy would know how to knock on a door,” she mumbled, but there was a smile on her lips too. Dan tried the door handle. It was unlocked so he turned it and pushed open the door.

  A musty smell greeted them as the door swung backwards, almost rolling out as if it’d been bottled for months. It was a mixture of swamp water and wet dog. Miranda covered her nose with her sleeve, but Dan stepped into the house with his full focus on finding out if anyone was inside.

  He ran his hands over the walls, the limited connection with the house’s electrical work drawing him to the light switch. Dan kicked the door closed as the hallway lights flickered on.

  The place was full of junk. Even in the hallway, Grim had piles of magazines rising to an impressive height, stacked on side tables and even on the floor. The first room to the right was full of boxes overflowing with papers and schematics. Disused and outdated computer monitors punctuated the boxes, their screens intact or broken, but nonetheless useless. The other front room was full of furniture, piled up like a road accident. They moved to the living area and found it had been fitted out like a workshop. Benches were crowded with machines and power tools. Working computers blinked softly in the background.

  Dan’s fingers closed over a lighter sitting on the kitchen bar. He looked at it, his thumb rubbing over the wolf logo. It had been Grim’s favorite thing, his keepsake. But it wasn’t just a lighter.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” a voice called out. Miranda had wandered to the back door in the kitchen. Dan turned around, already knowing the voice.