Jackson Ford - The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind

“The what now?”

“The fibre hub. Every floor has one. It’s where the cables from each office go. We’ll be able to find the right one a lot faster from there.”

The interior of the elevator is clean and new, with a touchscreen interface to select your floor. A taped sign next to it says that floors 50–80 are currently off limits while refurbishment and additional construction is completed, thank you for your patience, management. I remember seeing that when we rolled up: a big chunk of the building covered in scaffolding, with temporary elevators attached to the outside, and a giant crane in a vacant lot across the street.

When the elevator opens on the 30th floor, there’s someone standing in front of it. There’s a horrible moment where I think it’s Steven Chase himself. But I’ve seen pictures of Chase, who looks like an actor in an AD for haemorrhoid cream—running on the beach, tanned and glowing, stoked that his rectum is finally itch-free. This guy is… not that. He has lawyer written all over him: two-tone shirt, two-tone hair, one-tone orange skin. Tie knot as big as my fist. Probably a few haemorrhoid issues of his own.

He eyes us. “Going down?”

“We’re stepping off here, sir,” Annie says, doing just that.

He moves into the elevator, mouth twisted in a disapproving frown as his eyes pass over me. Probably not used to seeing someone my age working security in a building like this. I have to resist the urge to wink at him.

I haven’t seen inside any of the offices yet, but whoever built this place obviously didn’t have any budget leftover for the hallways. There’s a foot-high strip of what looks like marble-textured plastic running along at chest height. There are buzzing fluorescent lights in the ceiling, and the floor is covered with that weird, flat, fuzzy carpet which always has little lint balls dotted over it.

“Jesus, who picked out the paint?” The wall above the plastic marble is a shade of purple that’s probably called something like Executive Mojo.

“Who cares?” Annie says. “Damn building shouldn’t even be here.”

I sigh. This again.

She taps the fake marble. “You know they displaced a bunch of historical buildings for this? They just moved in and forced a purchase.”

I sigh. Annie’s always had a real hard-on for the city’s history. “Yeah, I know. You told me before.”

“And you saw that notice in the elevator. They just built this place. They already having to fix it up again. And the spots they bought out—mom-and-pop places. Historical buildings. City didn’t give a fuck.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’m just saying. It’s messed up, man.”

“Can we get this done before the heat death of the universe? Please?”

It doesn’t take us long to find the right office. Paul helps, using the blueprints he’s pulled up to guide us along, occasionally telling Annie that this isn’t a good idea and that she needs to hurry. I pop the lock, just like before—it’s even easier this time—and we step inside.

There’s no Executive Mojo here. It’s a basic space, with a desk and terminal for a technician and a big, clearly marked access panel on the wall. By the desk, someone has left a toolbox full of computer paraphernalia, overflowing with wires and connectors. Maybe the same dickhead who left the half-eaten sandwich in the server room. I should leave a note telling him to clean up his shit.

The access panel is off to one side, slightly raised from the surface of the wall. Annie pops it, revealing a nest of thin cables. She attaches the coupler, which looks like a bulldog clip from the future, then checks her phone, reading the data that comes off it. With a grunt, she moves the coupler to the second cable. We have to get the correct one, and the only way to do that is to identify Chase from his traffic.

There are floor-to-ceiling windows on my left, and the view over the glittering city takes my breath away. We’re only on the 30th floor, not even close to the top of the building, but I can still see a hell of long way. A police helicopter hovers in the distance, too far for us to hear, its blinking tail lights just visible. The view looks north, out towards Burbank and Glendale, and on the horizon, there’s the telltale orange glow of wildfires.

The sight pulls up some bad memories. Of all the cities Tanner had to put me, it had to be the one where things burn.

It’s bad this year. Usually, it’s some kid with fireworks or a tourist dropping a cigarette that starts it up, but this time the grass was so dry that it caught on its own. Every TV in the last couple of days has had big breaking news alerts flashing on them. The ones tuned to Fox News—you get a few, even in California—have given it a nickname. HELLSTORM. Because of course they have.

This year’s fire has been creeping towards Burbank and Glendale, chewing through Wildwood Canyon and the Verdugo Hills. The flames have made LA even smoggier than usual. A fire chief on one of the TVs—a guy who managed to look both calm and mightily pissed off at the same time—said that they didn’t think the fires would reach the city.

“Teagan.”

“Huh?”

“You got your voodoo, right?” She nods to the coupler. “Float it up into the wall.”

“Oh. Yeah. Good idea.”

The panel is wide enough for me to lean in, craning my head back. The space is dusty, a small shower of fine grit nearly making me sneeze. Annie shines a torch, but I don’t need it. She’s got the correct cable pinched between thumb and forefinger. It’s the work of a few seconds for me to find it with my voodoo and pull it slightly outwards from its buddies, float the coupler across and clamp it on. Annie flicks the torch off, and the coupler is swallowed by the shadows.

What can I say? I’m handy.

“Aight,” Annie says, snapping the panel shut. “Paul? We’re good. Over.”

“Copy that. We’re getting traffic already. Skedaddle on out of there. Over.”

Skedaddle ? I mouth the word at Annie, who ignores me. She replaces the panel, slotting it back into place, then turns to go.

As we step out of the tech’s office, a voice reaches us from the other end of the hallway: “Hey.”

Two security guards. No, three. Real ones. Walking in close formation, heading right for us. The one in the centre is a big white guy with a huge chest-length beard, peak pulled down over his eyes. He’s scary, but it’s the other two I’m worried about. They’re young, with wide eyes and hands already on their holsters, fingers twitching.

Ah, shit .

Getting caught would be very, very bad.

Tanner would disavow all knowledge of our existence, like Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible . Difference being, Tom is a movie star with a squillion dollars and a hot wife (I assume—I’m not big on celebrity gossip). He gets to go home afterwards. If our mission ends, Annie and the others go to jail, and Tanner stops protecting me from the people in the U.S. government who want to cut me open and take a look inside.

That was our deal. I work for her; she keeps me away from the people with scalpels and surgical masks.

But we shouldn’t have been caught. It doesn’t make sense. Building security isn’t even supposed to know we’re here. Reggie fixed the cameras in this part of the building, made it so they’d show empty corridors on a loop. How did this jack-off know we—

Ah. The lawyer. Probably something innocent too, an idle comment to the security chief as he passed him in the lobby. Didn’t know you hired out of kindergarten, Bob . Bob, or whatever the hell is name his, going Pardon me ? And the lawyer says One of your crew, up on the 30th… looks like she’s still in diapers .