Hey! Jackson here.
This is a scene that never made it into The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind. It was stupid fun to write, and I loved it, but it ended up not working with the story. I want to share it here.
It takes place midway through the story. Teagan has reunited with Reggie and Paul after her adventures in Skid Row, only to find that Annie and Carlos have been arrested for the murder of Steven Chase. She and the team decide to break them out of prison…
Obviously, spoilers for the book from this point on! If you haven’t read it, check it out here.
Do you know what 3.30pm in the middle of a Los Angeles heatwave feels like?
Imagine a really sweaty, hairy, overweight man going for a long jog. Then imagine someone with some seriously weird kinks collecting that man’s sweat, putting it into a bucket, and dumping it all over you. Repeatedly.
Paul and I cross the street, dressed in matching grey polyester overalls and pulling a heavy supply cart. The few people that are stupid enough to be outside in the middle of the day mostly ignore us: a homeless guy, a city worker fixing a street sign, a large woman waiting outside McDonalds, standing in the thin shadow cast by the giant M and fanning herself with a sweat-stained baseball cap.
The sun beats a drumline on the back of my neck. The air itself feels hostile. The fires might be out of sight this far south, but they’ve clogged the entire city with smoke. I keep having to sniff, fighting with my sinuses, and I can’t remember the last time my eyes weren’t crusted with grit.
Underneath the uniform, my tank is soaked. Only a little bit of it is fear sweat. Well, some of it. Definitely less than half. Maybe.
Normally, we take days to plan out our jobs, with Reggie and Paul considering every angle while Annie and Carlos and I gather intel on the ground. Everything about what we’re doing here feels slapdash. A house of cards, one that’ll collapse with the slightest breath of wind.
At least it’s a good thing we’re not going in as lawyers. The only thing worse than marching across the blacktop in this polyester one-piece would be doing it in a business suit.
The station itself is a big concrete-and-glass block designed by a very bored architectural intern. The front parking lot is a mess of civilian vehicles, cop cars stretched across multiple spaces, even a food truck - Korean, it looks like, with assorted cops standing around outside it, munching on tacos. My stomach growls.
Nobody gives us a second glance as we make our way up the entry ramps, cart in tow. As we push through the glass doors into the lobby, Paul whispers, “Follow my lead.”
“Yes Sir, boss man.”
The lobby is a cramped, low-ceilinged space, with buzzing fluorescent lights and dented plastic chairs. Almost every one of these is occupied, jammed solid with people: vagrants with bloody bandages pressed to their shoulders, lawyers in cheap suits and sweat-stained shirt-collars, women with babies. A guy in a Rams jersey with dreadlocks, rocking back and forth, quietly singing opera to himself.
The two ancient, wheezing air conditioners on either side of the room can’t fight the heat - it’s even worse here than it is outside.
Paul and I cross the lobby, weaving our cart between outstretched legs. The desk sergeant - a thick, heavyset woman with old eyes, phone wedged between her head and shoulder, is seated behind a dirty glass partition, next to a set of buzzing doors through which detectives and beat cops pass through in a steady stream. We skip the line, sidling right up to the front. Nobody protests, because like I said: service people are invisible.
Unfortunately, that also extends to the desk sergeant.
It takes Paul several tries to get her attention, earning him a grumpy look as she continues to talk into the phone, her voice made tinny by the grille in the glass. The red digits of the digital clock above the doors behind me read 15:37:20.
Eventually, the woman puts the phone down. The first dude in line is enormous: a huge Hispanic man, with arms almost black from tattoos. They ripple over his massive biceps, reminding me a little of Carlos’s ink. He’s wearing a white vest, with a black Raiders jacket slung over his arm. As he steps forward towards the glass, the woman behind it holds up a hand, eyeballing us.
Paul gives her a nervous smile. He has an earpiece, connected direct to Reggie, which looks like it’s about to fall right out.
“Help you?” The woman’s voice feels blunt, like an old knife.
“Janitorial,” Paul says, tapping the logo on his breast pocket.
The woman doesn’t reply, looking him up and down. The monster with the tattoos mutters something that sounds like Come the fuck on, man.
Paul’s smile gets wider. “Here to make the place spick and span, officer.” I keep my expression neutral, resisting the urge to smack him around the back of the head.
“Didn’t y’all already come through today?”
The smile falters. “Uh…I don’t think so?”
She tilts her head to one side. From this angle, she looks like an angry Saint Bernard.
“Nah, you already been in. Saw you on my lunch break. You forget something?”
Lunch break. This isn’t a cop coming onto a shift change. This is someone who’s been here for a while. What the hell?
“Oh yeah,” I say. “We’ve actually had this happen before. Your union uses two companies? We’re the ones who handle the basement.”
I have no idea if the Police Union would even be responsible for this kind of thing, but it sounds right. And thanks to Reggie’s blueprints, at least I know this place has a basement.
I clear my throat, ignoring Paul’s warning look: “We usually get let in by your colleague? The guy with the…” I tap Paul on the chest. “You know, the…” waving my hand around the top half of my body, Paul staring at me in confusion.
Fortunately, the desk sergeant is quicker on the uptake, doing that thing where people fill in the blanks if you lead them far enough. “Garcia ain’t workin’ today,” she says. “They needed extra bodies in Burbank for the fires.“ She shakes her head, as if annoyed at herself for saying too much. “Anyway, I should square it with the shift commander. Take a seat.” She lifts the dirty receiver next to her, starts punching in numbers.
“Actually, that’s alright,” Paul says smoothly, stepping in front of me. “Probably just a mix-up with our office. Sorry for the trouble.”
Then he’s pulling me away, winding us through the forest of legs towards the doors.
I grip his elbow. “What are you doing?”
“Regina,” he says, his voice a harsh whisper. “This is Paul. Yellow light. Ov - “
“We are not fucking yellow lighting.” We’re just passing a teenager with a skateboard and a nasty shiner blooming around his left eye, and he gives me a strange look as we pass.
“Don’t have a choice.” He grabs the door, pulling it open, a tongue of afternoon heat licking at our exposed skin.
“So what are we going do now?”
“Back to the truck. We’ll figure out another way.”
I do a swift heel-turn and march back into the station lobby. Paul gets halfway out the door before realising I’m not with him, and has to take three quick strides across the lobby to reach me. “Teagan!” he hisses.
“I got this.”
“No, you don’t. I called a yellow light, so - “
“Look.” The words come through gritted teeth. “I am not aborting because the stupid shift change thing didn’t work out. You go back to the truck - I’ll get inside.”
“How?”
I move before he can stop me, leaving him hissing my name, gaze flicking between me and the doors like he’s watching a tennis match. He might be OK with hanging around for another few hours concocting a backup plan, but I’m not. I didn’t come this far to get fucked by a grouchy cop working a double.
The giant at the front of the line is bent over, his mouth to the speaker grille, tapping on a sheet of paper he’s holding up to the glass. He does a double take when he sees me. “Yo. Line’s over there, man.” His voice is deep, simmering with barely contained annoyance.
“Can I help you?” Now the woman behind the glass doesn’t bother to disguise her annoyance.
“Hi,” I say, the beginnings of an idea arriving. “Well, the thing is…I’d actually like to turn myself in.”
The man next to me screws up his face, like I smell bad.
The desk sergeant doesn’t move, very slowly raising her eyebrow.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Turn myself in. I committed a crime. I…” Did what? Broke into somewhere? Ran a red light? Insurance fraud? “Beat someone up,” I say, after a moment. “Yeah. Kicked his ass.”
“For real?” The man looks me up and down. “You did that shit?
He gets a finger in his face for his trouble. “I’ll kick your ass next, man. Don’t underestimate short people.” I turn back to the window. “Anyway, yeah, I beat up a guy, and I wanna turn myself in.”
“Uh-huh.” Without looking, she rummages around in a paper tray, extracting a flimsy-looking form and a pen. Then she points to a plastic dispenser on the wall, a strip of stubs protruding from its base. “Take a number, fill out your details, and come up when I call you.”
“No, you don’t understand, it was really bad. I put him in hospital, and I feel awful about it…”
But she’s gone back to the dude with the tattoos. Not knowing what else to do, I grab a number - 879 - then head to a free seat in the front row. Halfway there, I’m stopped by Paul. “What have you done?”
“I’m getting in there.”
“And then what? How are you gonna get back out?”
“…I’ll find a way.”
“Jesus Christ.” By now we’re both hissing at each other, loud enough to get some strange looks from the others in the lobby. “Do you even understand where you are? What do you think Tanner will do if she finds out you got arrested.”
“If I don’t get arrested, I’ll run out of time and Tanner’ll kill me anyway.”
“Run out of time?” He looks at me like I’ve gone insane. “Do you know long…gimme that.”
He doesn’t wait for me to respond, just snatches the little ticket out of my hand, glances once at it, then points to the digital counter above the desk. It reads 313.
“The average wait time to see an officer in a police station in Greater Los Angeles is two and a half hours,” he says, glowering at me. “Somehow, I don’t think this place fits the average. Now come on. We’re leaving.”
I’m not even going to ask how he just manages to have that statistic at his fingertips. He’s right. I could be in this waiting room for hours. It’s not just Tanner’s deadline; if we wait long enough, they might move Carlos or Annie over to an actual jail, rather than just a police holding cell. If that happens, we are fucked. I look around me, desperate, hoping my surroundings will spark something.
They do.
Paul is just turning to leave when I grab his arm. “Hey? Paul?”
“What?”
“I just wanted you to know: you’re a valued member of the team, and I respect you both professionally and as a person. Also: I know I’m not super easy to work with. I know I do stuff that makes your job harder - you’re not a bad guy, and I shouldn’t give you so much shit. I will try to get better at that, but right now, I just need you to know that I’m very, very sorry.”
“What are you t - “
Which is when I plant my feet, put my hands on his chest, and give him one almighty shove.
Right into the giant with the tattoos.
***
If you ever decide to start a fight in a police station, there are a few things you should bear in mind.
1. Make sure the person you start the fight with doesn’t have a bunch of his friends there to back him up. Side note: if he does have his friends there to back him up, make sure they’re smaller than he is. Not larger.
2. You are surrounded by people with badges and guns who, being upstanding officers of the law, will jump at the chance to kick the shit out of anyone and everyone. That includes you.
3. A baton to the small of the back fucking hurts.
I’m cuffed to a table in an interview room, bleeding from my nose, my lower back screaming from its encounter with the baron. A nasty bruise has bloomed on my wrist, sneaking out the cuff of my janitor uniform. I am still shaky from this morning, still hungry, still freaked-out. However, I accomplished my mission: I am now inside the Hawthorne Precinct.
Yay me.
Paul didn’t get arrested. When the brawl finally got broken up, a couple of cops tried to cuff him, only to stop when a few people in the waiting room told them that I was the one who threw the first punch. As I got frogmarched into the station by what felt like a dozen cops, including Super Suzy Sunshine from behind the counter, I caught a glimpse of an officer helping him sit down on one of the plastic chairs. Hopefully he’ll know enough to get back out to Reggie, and wait for the signal. Whatever that’s going to be.
And for the record: yes, I feel really bad about shoving him.
Two cops walk in. One of them is Super Suzy Sunshine - KESSEL, according to the gold rectangle on the right side of her uniform shirt - who is apparently relieved of desk duty for now. She leans against the wall, arms folded, somehow managing to look both satisfied and absolutely furious. The other cop - a thin, balding man with a sour face - sits across from me at the table.
“So you gonna tell us why you want in here so badly?” Sunshine says. The man with the sour face says nothing, just glowers at me. His badge says ALDRIDGE. I return the favor, keeping my mouth shut.
Sunshine doesn’t appear to be bothered by my silence. “What’s your name, anyway?”
I shrug. “Thought I had the right to remain silent. Actually…I don’t think you’ve arrested me yet. I don’t have to give you shit.”
“Oh, you’re under arrest, baby. Believe it.”
“Really? Funny, I don’t seem to have been read my rights.”
That shuts Sunshine up. ALDRIDGE gives her a weary look, then turns back to me. “You have the right to remain silent…”
When he’s done, I say, “I’d like a lawyer.”
He sniffs. “Why did you start the fight?”
“I’d like a lawyer.”
“Officer Kessel says you tried to turn yourself in for…” he glances at her.
“Beating up a guy,” she says.
“Yeah. That. You must have wanted in here pretty bad.”
“I’d. Like. A lawyer.”
He and Kessel say nothing, eyeing me. I can see the cogs turning. They might know that I want to be inside, for whatever reason, but they also know they can’t refuse me legal representation, or question me without someone present.
They’re also probably thinking that I’m not much of a threat. I’m in an interview room, cuffed to a table, with nothing on me. Even my shoelaces have been confiscated. Whatever I came in here for, I’m not going anywhere until they want me to.
After a long moment, ALDRIDGE gets to his feet. His knees actually creak. He gives me an extra sour look, for good luck, then jerks his head at KESSEL.
“We’ll get you a lawyer,” she says, giving me a smile with zero humour in it.
“Cool. Thanks.”
“Might be a little while though. Traffic is crazy this time of day. Just sit tight.”
I tip her a wink, which wipes the smile off her face. She slams the door, leaving me by myself.
I sit for a second, trying to think. The original idea was to sneak Annie and Carlos out quietly, which definitely isn’t going to happen now. I can figure that part out later. First job: getting out of this room. No, actually, first job is to make sure no-one can see me getting out of the room.
Which may be a problem. For obvious reasons, I didn’t discuss this plan with Reggie, on account of not actually having it until we were inside the station. I know she’s hacked into the systems, so she can probably see me now…but I need to make sure.
There’s a dome camera in the top corner of the room to my right, a tiny green light just visible behind the glass. I lift my hand - it’s tough with the cuffs, which secure me to middle of the table - then make a fist and, watching the camera, bang on the surface three times, like I’m knocking on a door.
Nothing.
I do it again. Then a third time. After a few seconds, the light in the camera blinks off, then back on. It does this three times.
I love you, Reggie.
A moment later, the light goes off for good. Whether she’s showing footage of an empty room or a loop of me sitting at a table, I don’t know, but it looks like we’re in business.
It takes a little more effort to summon my PK this time. The energy bars I slammed in Paul’s truck help, a little, along with the crappy coffee I drank at Jojo’s. Even so, a sheen of sweat pops out on my forehead as I latch onto the cuffs’ internal mechanism. Click. Open.
Massaging my wrists, I start to rise, then stop. If I got it wrong, if Reggie doesn’t have the camera system on lock, this is when KESSEL and her buddies come charging in with their batons. In which case, I can slip the cuffs back on the second I hear running footsteps.
But there aren’t any. The sound from the corridor outside doesn’t change. I stand up, wincing as my back protests. Flashing the camera a thumbs-up, I pad over to the door, listening hard. Last thing I want is to step out of the interview room, right into the path of a cop getting a soda from a vending machine or something.
No footsteps. There are sounds - ringing phones, raised voices, a peal of nasty laughter from someone who smokes a ton of cigarettes - but none of them are close by.
The door takes a few seconds longer than the cuffs - the mechanism inside is surprisingly complicated. I focus hard, reaching up to wick a dot of sweat away from my eye. You know what I would like right now? A beer. A very cold, very large beer.
The lock holds out, but not for long. I slip into the corridor, looking left and right to make sure I’m alone, and freeze.
A few feet away from me, there’s a cop, half-in and half-out of another interrogation room, leaning on the doorframe as he speaks to someone inside, his shoulder holster hanging with the butt of the gun just visible. “Nah, he’s got some IPS up in Inglewood,” the cop is saying. “Kid found a body under a dumpster. Goddamn miracle it got called in at all…”
I read somewhere that cops on TV talk like they do because the writers draw on actual LAPD slang - or maybe the LAPD talk like that because they’re copying what they see on TV. Not that I have time to hang around and confirm the theory. There’s a clipboard, hanging by the door of the room I was in. A sign-in sheet of some kind, it looks like. I snag it off the wall, quietly shutting the door in the same movement. People with clipboards don’t get stopped.
The cop in the doorway doesn’t hear me, and I stride off down the corridor in the opposite direction, trying to look purposeful. The clipboard and the janitors uniform help, but even then, it’ll only take a look lasting half a second longer for someone to raise the alarm. Less, if it’s Suzy Sunshine or one of her buddies. Not sure I feel like a second go-round with a police baton.
I’m starting to wish I’d paid more attention the blueprints Paul and Reggie were looking over. I know the holding cells are on the second floor, but I can’t remember where the damn stairs are. I set off in the opposite direction to where the lobby is - last thing I want is to run into Suzy - and I’m lost almost immediately. This place is a maze, with endless identical offices filled with crappy cubicles and buzzing fluorescent lighting. There’s paper everywhere, overflowing from trash cans and stacked on desks in huge, unruly drifts.
And fuck me, there are a lot of vending machines. In some corridors, I count two, less than ten feet apart. Bet that’s something the TV writers don’t have in their shows.
Whenever I pass anyone, I make sure to be staring intently at the clipboard, flicking through the pages, head down, moving with purpose. Nobody gives me a second glance.
You know how sometimes people will tell you that their heart was pounding? I’ve never understood that. My heart doesn’t pound when I’m scared, or excited. My pulse doesn’t quicken - well, it probably does technically, but I’m not really aware of it. What I get is a little electric burst in my stomach, like two bare wires touching.
The stairs are at the back of the building, next to a giant set of battered double doors. I’m already thinking ahead. Step one: Find Annie and Carlos. Step two: spring them from their cells. Step three…not sure yet. But there’s gotta be something on the second floor I can -
“Hey.”
I freeze, one foot in midair.
The woman wears a standard LAPD uniform - navy-blue pants and short-sleeved shirt, with a white undershirt peaking out the collar, a radio clipped to her shoulder. Her dark hair is pulled back in a severe ponytail. She’s short, and her belt looks way too big for her, bulging out from her midsection, threatening to sag her pants with its weight of leather pouches and handcuffs and pepper spray. Oh, and her gun, which she’s lightly resting her hand on as she looks me up and down.
“You maintenance?” she says. Her accent is faintly Hispanic.
“Maint…yeah. Yes. I am. Yes.”
Her eyes move to my hair. My bright purple hair. I had to fight like hell with Paul and Reggie for it - they told me it would make it harder for me to blend in. It would really, really suck for them to be proved right now.
The cop frowns, then gives a light shrug. She doesn’t, however, lift her hands from the butt of her gun.
“Hot water’s out in the girl’s bathroom in C1,” she says. “We called you guys hours ago.”
“Yeah, sorry. Been kind of a busy day.”
“Where’re your tools?”
The wires in my midsection fire off another spark, a bigger one this time. For a horrible second, I draw a complete blank. Then: “Boss is getting them from the truck. I’m just going to take a look at the problem.”
I give her my biggest smile, then start heading back up the stairs.
“Uh, C1’s this way?”
If she sounded suspicious before, now she sounds downright hostile. She jerks her finger over her shoulder. “Back by the lobby.”
“Oh, yeah, I know. But the, uh…the micro-compressor for the pressure alternator is usually on the second floor in these types of buildings, so I’m just heading up to take a look.”
For a few more moments, she says nothing. Then she relaxes, dropping her hand from her gun. “
OK.” She strides towards me. “You been here before?”
I’m taken aback for a second. “Um. I don’t think so?”
She takes the stairs two at a time. “Aight. I think I know where it might be. Big closet? Lotta pipes and shit?”
I force a smile onto my face. “That’s the one.”
“I’ll show you. Let’s go.”
“That’s OK. I think I got it.”
Another glance over her shoulder. “You shouldn’t be in the cells by yourself anyway. Not the nicest guys in there, feel me?”
The cell block. OK, this is good. She can take me right in there. Then I can…well, I have no idea what I can do, but I’ll get a lot further with an escort than I would by myself.
The second floor is much the same as the first, with the same offices and grimy glass partitions. At the end of the corridor, I can see a man seated at a high, cramped desk, and beyond him, a heavy barred door.
“Don’t see a lotta women workin’ maintenance,” she says. I catch a glimpse of her name badge as she looks at me: Hernández. The badge is clipped to the pocket of her uniform shirt, polished to a mirror shine.
“Yeah, well, glass ceilings and all.”
“Heard that. You with AllCity?”
“…That’s right.”
“Krauser must be getting soft in his old age. Good for him, though. Hey, Stubbs!”
The man guarding the cell block is the polar opposite of Hernández, with a beer belly hanging out over his belt, and a stick-thin moustache below a set of circular-framed glasses. He squints at us, fingers on the keyboard of a laptop, then shifts his bulk off the stool he’s sitting on.
The space behind the desk isn’t huge, and it’s made tighter by a giant fire extinguisher bolted to the wall. There are muffled voices from the cell block, occasional frustrated shouting.
Hernández jerks a finger at me. “AllCity’s here to check the plumbing. We need to get inside for a sec.”
Stubbs frowns. “Plumbing?”
“Yeah,” I say. “For the women’s bathroom in C1. I just need a look at the alternator compressor.”
His eyes narrow. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“The alternator compressor? It’s probably on the second floor, in the main - “
“Jesus, Stubbs.” Hernández puts her hands on her hips. “Like you would know. Just let us in.”
“My old man was a plumber,” Stubbs says. “Worked for him summers when I was high school. There’s no such thing as an alternator compressor.”
I grip the clipboard. “You’re probably right. I’m still learning, so I might not have it exactly right…would you mind if I checked anyway?”
But now Stubbs is looking dangerous. As is Hernández. I see her eyes track down to the clipboard, take in the words printed at the top: HAWTHORNE PR. INTERVIEW ROOM SIGN-IN SHEET.
I sigh. “OK, look…”
Then I reach out with my PK, and grab the fire extinguisher behind Stubbs.
The pin pings off his laptop screen as I rip the hose from its brackets, aiming it at the back of Stubbs’s head. Squeezing the handle takes a little more work, but the burst of white gas instantly fills the corridor.
Hernández yelps, ripping her gun from its holster, only to get a faceful of gas as I turn the extinguisher on her. I had the presence of mind to hold my breath and squeeze my eyes to tiny slits. I duck under Hernández’s arm, elbowing Stubbs aside, sending him crashing into his stool, all the while continuing to squeeze the extinguisher. I go to work on the main door lock, springing it in seconds, the latch flipping back as an ear-splitting buzz echoes through the corridor.
“Don’t fucking move!” Hernández has her gun up, but she hasn’t fired, not willing to let off a bullet in a confined space with no visibility. Smart. I reward her intelligence with another blast of gas as I sprint through the door, slamming it shut behind me, flipping the lock.
The doors to the cells are similar to the one I’ve just come through, with windows made of thick, reinforced glass. The cells visible through them are grim concrete and tile. Many of the prisoners are standing at the windows: tattooed gangsters and men in rumpled suits and drunks with pee-stained pants, all of them yelling, staring at me in shock.
“I’m really sorry!” I shout to Hernández. Then I throw the clipboard to the floor and taking off down the block.
***
I’m not built for sprinting. Running in general. Even jogging is kind of a pain in the ass. Which is an awful shame, because right now I have to move as fast as possible.
I held onto the extinguisher for as long as I could, but it’s already out of range. As is the main cellblock door. That means that any second now, Hernández and Stubbs are going to be coming through. Not that I’m worried or anything. We’ll probably just have a nice sit down with a cup of coffee to resolve our differences.
The cellblock doglegs to the left. I take the corner at speed, lungs burning, twisting my ankle as I make the turn. “Ah! Motherf - “
Annie.
Fingers splayed on the window in her cell door, looking at me in total confusion. Her voice is muffled and dull. “Teagan?”
“Get away from the door!”
She doesn’t hesitate, dropping back as I focus my PK on the lock. It pops, the door flying open.
Annie is still dressed in the goddamn security guard outfit, although her tie is gone. Ditto her belt and shoelaces. “Teagan, tell me you didn’t just - “
“Yep. Sorry. “Where’s Carlos?”
I almost miss her next words, thanks to the noise of the other prisoners pounding on their cell doors. “I don’t know if he’s here! They separated us when we got brought in.”
“Shit.” I start sprinting again. Come on, man, where are you?
A harsh buzz reaches us - the main door opening, which means we have about five seconds before Hernández comes round the corner.
Got him. He’s four doors down from Annie’s cell, craning to see through the glass, his eyes going wide as he spots me. I’m already thinking ahead. If I could pop the locks on all the doors, it might create enough confusion for us to find a way out. Of course, I’ll also be releasing people who’ve been jailed for doing actual bad shit, but I can worry about that later. Or I could -
“Freeze!”
Hernández. Backed by Stubbs. Backed by two other uniformed beat cops. Stubbs’ face is bright red, and the skin around Hernández’s eyes looks puffy and sore. All of them have their guns out, all of them pointed at us. Too far away for me to touch.
And who am I kidding? I can’t reveal my PK in front of a bunch of cops. That’s the worst idea ever. Bad enough that I had to mess with the extinguisher in front of them - maybe, maybe we can explain that away later - but if start throwing shit in front of them? No. Uh-uh.
Hernández drops her voice. The extinguisher trick might have blindsided her, but she knows what she’s doing. “I want you all on the ground, on your knees. Do it, now.”
Without taking my eyes off her, I use my PK to pop the lock on Carlos’s cell door.
The other cops take up the call.
“On your knees.”
“Get on your fucking knees!”
I drop one knee, like I’m about to comply -
- Then grab Annie, and hurl us into Carlos’s cell.
We barrel into him, knocking him over as a gunshot cracks down the corridor. I keep hold of the door as we move, and the second we’re inside, I slam it shut, locking it tight. Almost immediately, there’s a cluster of cops outside, banging at the door, Hernández’s furious, confused face filling the small window.
If they decide to shoot the window out, or the lock, we’re fucked.
“What are you doing?” Carlos yells.
“What do you think? I’m getting us out of here.”
Annie looks around the cell - the one that we are now all locked inside.
“Good job,” she says.
“Shut up.” Any second now, the cops are going to come through that door. I might be able to keep the door shut if they used a master key - maybe - but if they start shooting, we haven’t got a hope in hell.
There are dozens of cables in the walls, along with water pipes and aircon lines. Bulbs in the ceiling, ready to detonate. But what do I do with them?
In the alley this morning, when I was attacked. I managed to rip that dumpster right off the ground. What if…
“Teagan?” Carlos is slowly backing away from the door.
“Hang on.”
“Te - “
“Just give me a second.”
There’s a window in the wall opposite the door: a very small one, with two layers of thick glass sandwiching rusty bars, laced with steel mesh. Could I project my PK beyond it? Grab something on the ground? We’re only two storeys up, so maybe there’s something I can use. I move to the window, shoving past Annie, leaping onto the bunk built into the wall and standing on tiptoe to look out the -
The window.
Glass, metal bars, the mesh, the concrete around it. Concrete that is cracked, pockmarked, decades old. And the metal…it’s rusty. Eaten away. A human, even a strong one, couldn’t smash their way through it without using tools - they wouldn’t be able to concentrate force in a wide enough area.
I take a step back. “Give me some room.”
“What you gonna do?” Carlos says.
I don’t answer. An absurd thought: this is the second time in twenty-four hours that Annie and I have had to escape a locked room.
The cops will see me use my PK. I can’t avoid that now. But maybe, just maybe, they’ll think I used something else, like explosives. Maybe.
I start to push on the wall. The window. It’s like trying to push a heavy car. I crouch, gritting my teeth, sweat starting to bead on my forehead.
“Teagan?” Annie says. She sounds very far away.
“Yo, let her work, man.”
More. I need more. I focus as much energy as I can on the area around the window, where I can feel the concrete is at its weakest. It starts to come apart, first in thin streams, then in little chunky hailstorms. The metal bars begin to creak.
It’s going to take every ounce of energy I have to make this work. The muscles in my neck stand out in rock-hard cords, and my upper and lower jaw feel like they’re about to pulverise each other. A headache throbs at the base of my skull. Harder.
But it doesn’t come. I can’t make it. Whatever I did this morning, it -
And it’s like a fault line in the concrete is breached. Like I’ve hit a pocket of potential energy, releasing it all at once. The wall detonates, the noise a huge thud, the building’s foundations shaking. The entire window - bars, glass, mesh, a corona of concrete - whirls away, skipping across the street opposite the station, burying itself in a metal shop shutter. Late afternoon sunlight pours inside the cell, filtering through the clouds of dust.
Abruptly, the energy is gone. What’s left is a howling void in my abdomen, so huge that I’m amazed I don’t just implode, sucking into myself like a black hole. I clutch my stomach, bent over.
I can’t pass out. Can’t let it happen. An explosion? At a cop shop in LA? They’re not just going to send every cop in the city; they’ll probably nuke the site from orbit, just to be sure.
Hands on my shoulders, gripping tight. Carlos. His lips are moving, but I can’t hear a goddamn thing. Impossible to miss the look on his face though: the stunned, almost horrified awe.
I gesture to the giant hole in the wall, my hand flapping, barely in control. “Go.”
His voice makes its way into my skull. “Teagan, what…”
“Just go.”
“Not without you.” He grabs me around the waist, takes my weight. “Annie, ayuadame!”
“What?” she yells. Her voice sounds both right next to my ear, and a million miles away.
“Help me! Come on.”
Another set of arms on my midsection, then we’re on the edge, looking out onto El Segundo Boulevard. The tarmac feels as high as the Edmonds Building, even though we’re only on the second floor. There’s no fence around the station: we’re right above the sidewalk.
“Teagan,” Carlos is saying. “We’re gonna jump, OK? Annie, go!”
“Oh, this is some bullshit.” But with a terrified howl, Annie jumps, flying through the air and thumping onto the concrete and rolling into the road. At least this time, I only made her jump from fifteen feet up, not fifteen hundred.
“Hold me tight, OK?” Carlos bellows in my ear. Before I can respond, he and I are airborne.
The sky and the ground go blurry, and then I land so hard that I get what little wind I have left knocked out of me. I roll, coming up coughing, little dots of light flickering in my vision. Carlos is already up, Annie staggering in our direction.
The street is a mess. Chunks of concrete everywhere, one of which has crushed a newspaper stand, spilling old copies of the LA Times out onto the tarmac. The traffic has screeched to a halt, cars turned sideways, drivers gawking at us from behind windscreens. I can hear sirens, shockingly close now, and someone yelling that it’s terrorists, a terrorist attack, it’s like 9/11.
Annie’s face is inches from my own. “Teagan. What’s the plan?”
I stare up at her, trying to make sense of her words.
“Oh, don’t do this to me,” she says, giving me a little shake. “Tell me you got a way out from here.”
Carlos. “Annie, necesito vamos. Rapido, ahora, ahora!”
“Where the fuck we gon’ go?” she yells back at him. “We got cops comin’ with - “
Hooting. Coming in big, dull blarps. And then a giant, black Ford screeches to a halt next to us, Paul hanging out the window, screaming at us to move. Reggie in the passenger seat, good hand gripping the handle above the door, staring at us in shock.
Carlos bundles me into the backseat, followed by Annie, just as the first cop comes tearing round the corner, gun out, sprinting towards us. Paul guns it even before Carlos slams the door closed, tagging one of the other cars with a crunching bang, scraping paint off the side off the his truck, Annie yelling at him to floor it, Reggie white as a sheet.
And as we head East down El Segundo, running a red light with six cop cars chasing us and horns going off in all directions as other cars swerve to avoid us, I lean out the window, and throw up all over the side of Paul’s truck.