Jackson Ford - Eye of the Sh*t Storm

Art was physically fine, albeit shaken. But none of the first responders could get within ten feet of the building. It wasn’t a hard boundary, but as they approached, the concrete began to shock them.

The storage unit, and the parking lot around it, had become electrified.

Reggie makes herself focus. The how can come later – it’s the what that concerns her now. She works fast, pulling up info on the building. Owners, blueprints, current tenants. Satellite imagery. The police presence will make things tricky, especially if they call in another agency like the FBI. Moira can probably take care of that, holding the folks at the Bureau off until China Shop gets in place, but that doesn’t mean they have all night. They need to work fast.

The cameras are all down, of course – torched by the electricity coursing through the building – but she digs in deep, going through the owners’ server. It’s not difficult. Self-storage companies aren’t exactly the Pentagon when it comes to systems security.

Reggie quickly grabs the past twenty-four hours, finds the time the cameras went down – 9.58 a.m., a little over two hours ago. Reggie skips back an hour, runs it at high speed. Nobody around. Nothing out of the ordinary, in either the reception or the dimly lit corridors.

Reggie growls. Seems like the what will have to wait until China Shop get there.

Maybe this isn’t as mysterious as it seems. She knows a little about electricity, has a basic knowledge of computer systems and copper wiring. Could it just be a disconnected power cable? One of the big utility cables buried underground, perhaps…

But even cursory research shows that the biggest power cable in the world couldn’t cause what is happening at the storage unit. Electricity, when you get down to it, is nothing more than the movement of electrons between atoms. In some materials, like metal and water, those electrons move easily. In others – wood, rubber, concrete – it’s near-impossible to separate them, which is why electrical wires have rubber sheaths.

Metal and water conduct electricity, concrete and wood and rubber resist it, and not even the most powerful electrical current in the world could overcome that resistance.

Except whatever is causing this has overcome the resistance. It’s made electrons move where they shouldn’t. It’s turned resistors into conductors.

Christ – what about the air ? They haven’t even thought about that yet. Whatever is doing this is able to electrify concrete and wood – who’s to say that electricity won’t affect the air as well? The oxygen and hydrogen molecules in the building?

What the hell are they dealing with here?

Reggie pulls up the satellite image of the building again, biting her bottom lip. Where is the energy actually coming from? What’s the source? And shouldn’t that amount of electricity set things on fire? Nobody’s called the fire brigade, and from what Reggie can tell, the building isn’t ablaze. A thought pops into her head, and she digs into the LA Fire Department servers. There: some alarms in the building have been tripped, which means there are at least one or two small fires inside. Whatever caused this—

Reggie lets out a frustrated huff. Whatever is causing this? Stop being a fool . There’s a person behind this – a person with abilities, like Teagan. Is it someone Teagan’s age, like Jake – the other psychokinetic they’d tangled with last year? Or was it another Matthew Schenke, a child with insane powers?

It’s easy to imagine whole streets electrified, families cooked in their apartments, city blocks turned lethal. Grass and wood and water and tarmac loaded with enough voltage to kill. A smoking, ruined city, with nothing and nobody alive. She has to remind herself that she can’t accept the electricity theory at face value. Art might be wrong, the cops might be wrong, and if…

The screens swim in front of her. She closes her eyes, leans back, makes herself take a few deep, shaking breaths. Her diaphragm protests, tightening up. Her internal thermostat, never reliable at the best of times, is going haywire. Sweat slicks her forehead and neck, although the office is cool.

She knows what it is, of course. It’s the feeling she gets when she’s trapped. When she can’t see a way out.

It’s the feeling of Nemila.

When the CIA put her in the field, they sent her to Bosnia. Her cover was as a peacekeeper with NATO. Her real mission was different. She was to destabilise the Serbs from the inside, disrupt their operations, using her official cover as a shield.

It was how she met Moira Tanner. Reggie fell into being a spook; Moira became one because there was never anything else she wanted to do.

They worked surprisingly well together. The polished daughter of a New England brahmin, and the scrappy recruit from the worst town in Louisiana. It was when they ran solo that there was trouble. Reggie was good at a lot of things, but never quite got the hang of deep cover operations. Her biggest success – acquiring a list of people the Serbs wanted to take out in Sarajevo – turned to ash. The Serbs found out. Took her to a farmhouse outside Nemila. And they…

Well. Moira got there before it got really bad. Which doesn’t stop Reggie remembering the house, the room they put her in: empty of furniture (save for the chair they tied her to) with a child’s crayon drawing of flowers still on the wall. She remembers the jumper cables, the batteries. The fists and feet.

And she remembers the sweet, cloying taste. The taste of fear. Of being trapped, with absolutely nowhere to go.

She’s felt it plenty of times since then. After her accident in Afghanistan, when she woke up in the hospital. The long nights that followed. The therapy sessions. Somehow, she found a way through all of those – found a way out the trap. But now…

It’s not just the appearance of another person with abilities that scares her. She’s dealt with plenty of those – hell, one of them bought her a tea-maker for her birthday. So why does she feel like she’s standing in the presence of something much bigger than she is? Why does she feel like she is under-equipped to deal with it, like she has been drained of her energy and her decision-making ability by the sheer, solid reality of running China Shop?

Darcy Lorenzo’s voice, running through her head: I’ve come across a role you’d be perfect in .

She grunts. What is she doing? Whatever fantasy role might be on offer somewhere, whatever life might or might not be waiting for her after she sends in her audition, it doesn’t matter. She has a job to do. Regina McCormick has never stepped back from a job in her life, and she is sure as hell not going to start now.

All the same, the thoughts won’t go away. They play at the back of her mind, bright and quick, like fireflies.

Her phone buzzes, startling her. “Answer call,” she says. “Speaker.”

“I’ve talked to my contact at the FBI,” Moira says. She’s walking – actually it sounds like she’s jogging, her voice harsh and hot. “He’s going to get his LA field team to hold off until we’ve had a look, and he’ll let us use their cover.”

“Roger that. There are windbreakers and ID in the van – I’ll tell Annie to get ready.”

“Not her.” Tanner breaks off to spit an order, hissing at someone else to hurry. “I want Mr Kouamé on point for this operation.”

Africa .

The command catches Reggie off guard. “May I ask why?”

“I also want to be patched directly into the team feed,” Tanner says, ignoring the question. “Do it now.”

Reggie complies, manipulating the oversized trackball, pulling up the team’s comm channel. The system the team uses is a step up from the military’s old Warfighter Information Network Tactical programme, and it’s a marvel. From her Rig, Reggie has access to as much data as she can handle, as well as crystal-clear audio and video. The team still has their earpieces, and there are spare pinhole cameras in the van…