The Power(97)

There is a blonde woman behind the wheel with a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. There’s a crest on it that says ‘JetLife’.

She smiles. Her English is thickly accented. She says, ‘Roxy Monke sent me. Will be there before morning.’

She opens the back of the car. It is a sedan, roomy enough, though he’ll have to keep his knees curled against his chest. Eight hours.

She helps him climb into the trunk of the car. She is careful with him, gives him a rolled-up sweater to make a buffer between the back of his head and the metal housing. The trunk is clean, at least. As his nose meets the curled fibres of the interior carpet he smells only the floral chemical scent of shampoo. She gives him a large bottle of water.

‘When finished, can piss in bottle.’

He smiles up at her. He wants her to like him, to feel that he is a person not a cargo.

He says, ‘Travelling coach, huh? These seats get smaller every year.’

But he can’t tell if she’s understood his joke.

She pats his thigh as he settles in.

‘Trust me,’ she says as she slams the trunk closed.





From here, on the gravel path between nowhere and nothing, just around the corner of a screen of trees, Jocelyn can see a low-slung building with windows only on the upper storey. Just the corner of it. She hoists herself on to a rock and takes some pictures. It’s inconclusive. She should probably get closer. Although, that’s a stupid idea. Be sensible, Jos. Report what you’ve found and bring a unit back tomorrow. There’s definitely something there that someone’s gone to quite a lot of trouble to hide from the road. Although, what if it’s nothing; what if this ends with everyone in the base laughing at her? She takes another few pictures.

She’s intent on it.

She doesn’t notice the man until he’s almost standing next to her.

‘What the fuck do you want?’ he says in English.

She has her duty weapon by her side. She shifts position, allowing it to bang against her hip and move forward.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she says. ‘I’ve gotten turned around. I’m looking for the main highway.’

She keeps her voice very level and calm, turns her American accent up a bit without really intending to. Suzy Creamcheese. Bumbling tourist. It’s the wrong tack to take. She’s in army fatigues. Pretending at innocence just makes her look more guilty.

Darrell feels the skein pumping in his chest. It does it more when he’s afraid, twitches and fizzes.

‘What the fuck are you here for, on my land?’ he says. ‘Who sent you?’

Behind his back, he knows the women in the factory are observing the encounter with cold, dark eyes. There’ll be no doubting him after this, there’ll be no asking what he is; they’ll know what he is when they see what he can do. He’s not a man in women’s clothing. He’s one of them, as strong as them, as capable.

She tries a smile. ‘No one sent me, sir. I’m off duty. Just doing a little sightseeing. I’ll be on my way.’

She sees his eyes flick to the maps in her hand. If he sees those, he’ll know she was looking for this place and no other.

‘All right,’ says Darrell. ‘All right, let me get you back on your way.’

He doesn’t want to help her; he’s coming too close, she should call this in. Her hand twitches towards her radio.

He reaches out three fingers of his right hand and, with a single swift jolt, he kills the radio dead. She blinks. Sees him for a moment as himself: monstrous.

She tries to swing her rifle round but he has it by the butt, catches her in the chin with it, leaving her staggering, hauls the strap over her head. He considers the rifle, then tosses it into the undergrowth. He comes for her, palms crackling.

She could run. There’s her dad’s voice in her head, saying, Take care of yourself, sweetie. And there’s her mom’s voice in her head, saying, You’re a hero, act like it. This is one guy with a factory in the middle of nowhere – how hard can it be? And the girls from the base. You of all people should know how to deal with one dude with a skein. Don’t you, Jocelyn? Isn’t this your special subject, Jocelyn? She has something to prove. And he has something to prove. They are ready to begin.

They square off to each other, circling, looking for a weakness.

Darrell’s done little tests before; he gave minor burns and hurts and damage to a couple of the surgeons who worked with him, just to see if it’d work. And he’s practised alone. But he’s never used it before in a fight, not like this. It’s exciting.

He has a sense, he finds, of how much he’s got left in the tank. It’s loads. More than loads. He lunges for her, and misses, and lets an excited jolt earth through his feet, and he’s still got loads. No wonder blooming Roxy always looked so pleased with herself. She was carrying this round inside her. He’d’ve felt pleased with himself, too. He does.

Jocelyn’s skein is twitching; it’s just because she’s excited. It’s working now better than it ever has, it’s been so good since Mother Eve cured her, and now she knows why that happened, why God made that miracle for her. It was for this. To save her from this bad man, trying to kill her.

She tightens her stomach and runs for him, feinting to the left, pretending to go for his knee, and at the last moment, as he’s stooping to defend against her, she twists right, reaches up, grabs his ear and gives him a jolt to the temple. It’s smooth and easy, sweetly humming. He gets her on the thigh and it hurts like fuck, like a rusty blade scraped along the bone; the big muscles just keep bunching and releasing and the leg wants to collapse. She hauls herself upright with the right leg, dragging the left behind her. He’s got a lot of power; she can feel it crackling on his skin. The kinds of jolts he gives are muscular and iron-hard, not like Ryan’s. Not like anyone she’s fought with.