A New Start
Prologue. A New Start
Los Angeles, 2090. Twenty million people, and nobody ever looks up.
When Ralph Dooley was twelve, something got into the walls of his building. He heard it scratching all night, and then he heard it scream.
By morning, men with no name tags had taped off the hallway, and the news was calling it a gas leak. Ralph got out with something extra. He could move things without touching them.
It's a handy gift. He knows that. But other kids dreamed of flying, or of lifting a truck over their heads. He got moving stuff.
So he uses it to steal stuff. And he doesn't go by Ralph anymore.
Chapter 1. The Watch
The Watch — Chapter 1
Downtown Los Angeles, a Friday night. The Solano Grand Hotel is hosting a charity gala for Halcyon Dynamics, and everybody in the ballroom is rich.
Almost everybody. The handsome guy by the bar is the only man in the room without a tuxedo. He's wearing a tan suede jacket, and he's eating his fourth crab cake.
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ How's it going in there, Ocean's One? You blend in yet? I told you to rent a tux.
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Tuxes are for waiters, Teddy. I'm the best looking guy in the room. That's a kind of blending.
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ That's the opposite of blending, man. Are you eating?
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ It's a crab cake. They're free. It would be rude not to.
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Big Linda and I are parked on Fifth. She says hurry up, the meter's eating her quarters.
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Tell Big Linda I love her and I'll be ten minutes.
Up on the little stage, a tall man with wavy auburn hair taps the microphone. He has the kind of smile you see on a billboard.
Brett Hollis: Friends! Thank you all for coming out tonight. I'm Brett Hollis, and at Halcyon, we believe in one simple idea. A better you.
Brett Hollis: Better arms. Better eyes. A better heart, if you need one. And tonight, every dollar you give goes to people who can't afford a better anything.
He raises his glass. On his wrist there's a watch with more diamonds on it than a jewelry store window.
[Picture: diamond watch]
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Teddy. The watch is on the stage.
[Picture: diamond watch]
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ On the stage? With the lights and the people looking at it? Abort, bro. Abort.
[Picture: diamond watch]
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Nobody's gonna be looking at the watch. They're gonna be looking at him. That's the whole trick.
[Picture: diamond watch]
Rafe picks up a glass of champagne he doesn't plan to drink, leans on the bar, and smiles at a passing waiter. His eyes flicker a faint pale blue.
[Picture: champagne]
Across the ballroom, the clasp on Brett Hollis's watch opens all by itself while he waves at the crowd.
The watch slides down his sleeve and drops. It never hits the floor. It floats low under the tablecloths, table to table, past a hundred pairs of expensive shoes.
And at the bar, still smiling at the waiter, Rafe feels it land in his cuff.
Rafe Delaney: Thanks. Great party.
Brett Hollis: So dig deep, everybody. Halcyon is matching every gift tonight, dollar for dollar!
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Did you get it? Tell me you got it. My heart is doing the thing.
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Got it. Walking out now. Nice and slow.
He doesn't get far. A woman in a sharp black suit steps into his path, holding a tablet against her chest. Her name badge says Beatrice Okonkwo, General Manager.
[Picture: character Beatrice Okonkwo neutral]
Beatrice Okonkwo: Good evening, sir. I don't believe I've seen you on the guest list.
Rafe Delaney: That's funny, because I've definitely seen you. You're the best dressed person here, and I'm including me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Beatrice Okonkwo: That's very kind. What's your name?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Rafe Delaney. With an e. Two of them, actually.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Beatrice Okonkwo: Mm. There's no Delaney on my list, with any number of e's.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I'm a plus one. My date's in the powder room. She's been in there a while. We're kind of fighting.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Beatrice Okonkwo: Mr. Delaney, I've run this hotel for nine years. I know when a man's lying, and I know when something in my ballroom moves that shouldn't.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She tips her head toward the stage. Brett Hollis is patting his wrist, still smiling, and looking under the podium.
[Picture: character Brett Hollis surprised]
Beatrice Okonkwo: I'm going to ask you to leave through the kitchen. Two of my security officers will walk with you. They'll be very polite about it.
Rafe Delaney: You know what, that sounds great. Kitchen. Love a kitchen.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Two big men in grey suits appear behind her. Rafe gives Beatrice his best smile, turns toward the kitchen, and walks straight past it into the stairwell.
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Why do I hear stairs? Rafe. Why are you going up? The van is down!
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Because they're waiting for me down! Trust the process!
Thirty floors up, the roof is all air vents and humming metal boxes. The city lights go on forever.
Behind him, heavy footsteps are coming up the stairs.
Rafe Delaney: Okay. Okay. Rooftops always have a way down. That's a rule. That's in movies.
Something on top of the nearest air conditioning unit moves. It's a cat. It stands up, and keeps standing up.
[Picture: gloomcat front]
CLASSIFIED FILE. GLOOMCAT. F rank. Used to be a stray cat. Now it has too many joints and it likes rooftops. It stalks anything alone.
[Picture: stamp F]
Rafe Delaney: Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Hi. No thank you.
The cat's legs have too many joints. They fold the wrong way, like a spider's. It steps down off the vent and follows him, without a sound.
[Picture: gloomcat side]
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ What's happening? Why'd you say nope four times?
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ There's a cat. It's bad. Its knees are wrong, Teddy. It has like nine knees.
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Cats don't have nine knees!
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Tell that to the cat!
The stairwell door bangs open. Beatrice steps out onto the roof with both security officers, and all three of them stop dead when they see what's walking toward Rafe.
[Picture: gloomcat front]
Beatrice Okonkwo: Mr. Delaney. Walk toward me, slowly. Don't run.
Rafe Delaney: Yeah, that's great advice, but I'm gonna run.
[Picture: previous speaker]
At the edge of the roof, a window washer's platform hangs from two steel arms, swaying in the wind. Rafe looks at it. He looks at the cat. He looks at the thirty floors of glass below.
Rafe Delaney: I've never done anything this big. This is so much bigger than a watch.
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Whatever you're about to do, bro, I believe in you! I don't know what it is, and I believe in you!
Rafe jumps. He lands on the window washer's platform with both feet, and the cables snap loose from the steel arms above him.
The platform should fall. It doesn't. It slides down the face of the hotel like an elevator, thirty floors of glass rushing past, with Rafe crouched in the middle of it and his eyes glowing blue.
Up on the roof, the cat stares over the edge. Beatrice stands beside it, a lot farther away, and stares too.
And down on Fifth Street, a beige minivan with wood panels on the side slides open its door.
Rafe Delaney: Oh, I'm gonna throw up. I'm gonna throw up on my good jacket.
The platform touches down on the sidewalk as gently as a feather. Rafe steps off, wobbles, and falls sideways into the van.
Teddy Ruiz: Go, go, go, Big Linda! Go, my beautiful girl!
The minivan pulls away from the curb at a steady thirty miles an hour.
Rafe Delaney: Teddy. Is she going as fast as she can go?
Teddy Ruiz: She's doing her best, man. Don't pressure her.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Nobody follows them. Three blocks later, Teddy finally breathes out, and slaps the steering wheel.
Teddy Ruiz: You rode a window cleaner down a building! Down a whole building! That's the craziest thing I've ever seen, and I did stunts for a living!
Rafe Delaney: I didn't ride it. I held it. There's a difference. My head's killing me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: Still. That was big, bro. That was like, real power stuff.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: It was one time. It's a mediocre power, Teddy. It's handy for watches. You know what's a good power? Flying. Super strength. I got the power of never needing a ladder.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He opens his hand. The diamond watch sparkles in the streetlights. Teddy whistles.
[Picture: diamond watch]
Teddy Ruiz: How much is that worth?
[Picture: diamond watch]
Rafe Delaney: Forty grand, easy. Maybe fifty if the diamonds are real. And they're real, because Brett Hollis doesn't do fake.
[Picture: diamond watch]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: Forty grand. Wow. That's so... great.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: That was a weird "great." What's wrong with you?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: Nothing! Nothing's wrong with me. I'm great. I'm a great guy having a great night.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: You're a terrible liar, you know that? I love you, man, but you're terrible.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: That's why I drive and you talk.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe leans his head back on the seat. A silver quarter floats up out of his pocket and turns slowly over his knuckles, the way it always does when he needs to calm down.
[Picture: quarter]
Rafe Delaney: One more big job, Teddy. One more, and I'm out. Beach house. Hammock. I'm gonna learn to surf.
[Picture: quarter]
Teddy Ruiz: You said that last time. And the time before that.
[Picture: quarter]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: And I meant it every time.
[Picture: quarter]
[Picture: previous speaker]
His phone buzzes in his jacket. Unknown number. He opens the text, and the quarter drops out of the air into his lap.
[Picture: text g]
Teddy Ruiz: What? What is it?
[Picture: text g]
The message is one line long. "Nice work at the gala, Mr. Dooley. Let's talk. G."
[Picture: text g]
Rafe Delaney: Somebody knows my name. My real name.
[Picture: text g]
Teddy Ruiz: Nobody knows your real name. I barely know your real name.
[Picture: text g]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Yeah. That's the problem.
[Picture: text g]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 2. The Offer
The Offer — Chapter 2
Saturday morning. Rafe's studio apartment is one room above a donut shop in Koreatown. It smells like glaze all day, every day.
Rafe is still in bed. Across the room, the coffee pot pours itself a cup, and the mug floats slowly across the apartment toward him.
[Picture: coffee mug]
Rafe Delaney: Come on. Come to papa. Easy, easy...
[Picture: coffee mug]
The mug tips. Hot coffee pours straight onto his pillow.
[Picture: coffee mug]
Rafe Delaney: Every time! Every single time!
[Picture: coffee mug]
Teddy Ruiz: You know you could just get up and walk over there, right? Like a person?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy is on the couch under a blanket that's too small for him, with his red cap pulled over his eyes.
Rafe Delaney: Walking is for people with no gifts, Teddy.
Teddy Ruiz: Your gift just made you wet the bed.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: It's coffee. It's clearly coffee.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe sits up and grabs his phone. The text from last night is still there. He reads it for the twentieth time.
Rafe Delaney: G. Who's G? I don't know any G's. I know a Greg. Greg wouldn't text like that. Greg uses emojis.
Teddy Ruiz: Maybe you should just call them.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Maybe you should tell me why you said "great" like that last night.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy is quiet for a long time. He pulls the cap off his face and stares at the ceiling.
Teddy Ruiz: Okay. So. You remember when I got fired from the studio?
Rafe Delaney: For wrecking the stunt car. Yeah.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: Right. So after that, I needed money, and there was this street race in Long Beach. Five grand to the winner. And I didn't have a car, because, you know, Big Linda is a lot of things but she isn't fast.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Teddy. Whose car did you borrow?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: A guy named Bruno. He works for the Iron Cord. It was a really nice car, Rafe. It was so nice. And then it was in a canal.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: You put an Iron Cord car in a canal?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: I owe him eighty grand. It's due Friday. If I don't have it, he puts Big Linda in the crusher. And he said I'd be inside her when he does it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe doesn't say anything. He gets out of bed, walks over, and sits down on the arm of the couch.
Rafe Delaney: Hey. We'll figure it out. We always figure it out.
Teddy Ruiz: The watch is forty. That's only half.
[Picture: diamond watch]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Then I'll steal a second watch. Hollis probably has a drawer full of them.
[Picture: diamond watch]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Downstairs, the bell over the donut shop door jingles. Then a man's voice, flat and patient.
Bruno Salas: Teddy Ruiz. I know you're up there. Your van is parked outside with a hula girl in the window.
Teddy Ruiz: Oh no. That's him. That's Bruno.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Bruno Salas is sitting in a red vinyl booth with two big men from the Iron Cord. His right arm is steel, bronze plates over pistons, and it rests on the table like a tool he forgot to put away.
Bruno Salas: Sit down, Teddy. You too, friend.
Rafe Delaney: Hi! Rafe. I'm the friend. Big fan of your arm. Very shiny.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Bruno Salas: Thank you. Sit.
[Picture: previous speaker]
They sit. Bruno picks up the steel napkin holder from the table, and folds it in half with his fingers, slowly, like a piece of paper.
[Picture: napkin holder]
Bruno Salas: Friday, Teddy. Eighty thousand. I'm not a mean man. I'm a patient man. But on Friday I stop being patient.
[Picture: napkin holder]
Teddy Ruiz: I know, Bruno. I'm working on it. Rafe's helping.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Bruno Salas: Rafe's helping. That's nice. What does Rafe do?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Rafe does lots of things. Rafe is a man of many talents.
[Picture: previous speaker]
One of the big men laughs and pokes Teddy hard in the chest. Teddy's cap falls off. Rafe stops smiling.
He puts both hands in his pockets. His eyes go pale blue for just a second, and nobody at the table is looking at them.
The first Iron Cord guy's coffee jumps out of its cup and lands in his lap.
The second guy's chair slides out from under him, and he sits down hard on the checkered floor.
Bruno stands up to see what's going on, and the glass door of the pastry case swings open and slams shut on his steel arm. It sticks.
And a whole tray of sprinkle donuts slides off the top shelf and rains down on all three of their heads.
Bruno Salas: What... is happening in this shop?
Rafe Delaney: Wow. Earthquake, maybe? Little one? LA, huh?
Bruno pulls his arm out of the pastry case. The glass cracks right down the middle. He brushes a pink sprinkle off his shoulder.
Bruno Salas: Friday, Teddy.
Teddy Ruiz: Friday! Yes! Definitely Friday! Have a great day!
[Picture: previous speaker]
The three of them walk out, dripping coffee and glaze. The bell jingles behind them. Teddy turns around very slowly.
[Picture: donut]
Teddy Ruiz: That was the best thing I've ever seen. You made Bruno Salas wear donuts.
[Picture: donut]
Rafe Delaney: Yeah, and it didn't get us one dollar.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: Right. Right.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe takes out his phone and looks at the text from G again. Then he calls the number.
[Picture: text g]
Gwen Harlow: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Mr. Dooley. That was faster than I expected.
[Picture: text g]
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Who is this? And don't call me that.
[Picture: text g]
Gwen Harlow: ◉ ▂▄▆█ My name is Gwen. I find people for jobs. The Solano Grand, the penthouse. One hour. Come alone, and don't steal anything on the way up.
[Picture: text g]
When the private elevator opens on the top floor of the Solano, Beatrice Okonkwo is standing in the hallway, waiting for him.
Beatrice Okonkwo: Mr. Delaney. You're banned from this hotel.
Rafe Delaney: Yeah, that makes sense. Honestly, fair.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Beatrice Okonkwo: And the lady in the penthouse is expecting you. Go on in. Please don't take the art off the walls.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Hey. Last night on the roof. With the cat. You saw what I did.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Beatrice Okonkwo: I saw a lot of things last night I'm choosing not to remember. It's how this hotel stays open. Good luck, Mr. Delaney.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The penthouse is all glass and cream leather. A woman sits on the sofa with a silver phone in one gloved hand. Sleek platinum hair, a cream trench coat, eyes like cold water.
Gwen Harlow: Sit, Mr. Dooley. Something to drink?
Rafe Delaney: Seriously. Nobody calls me that. How do you know that name?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: Ralph Dooley. Twenty-six. Born in Van Nuys. When you were twelve, something tore through your building in the middle of the night, and by breakfast the news was calling it a gas leak. After that, some very strange things started happening to locked doors all over Los Angeles.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She sets something on the glass table. It's the diamond watch. The one he hid in his freezer this morning.
[Picture: diamond watch]
Rafe Delaney: That was in my freezer.
[Picture: diamond watch]
Gwen Harlow: Everybody uses the freezer, Mr. Dooley. Everybody.
[Picture: diamond watch]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Okay. You're scary. I get it. What do you want?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: My client saw the security video from the gala. A diamond watch floating across a ballroom, table to table, with nobody near it. My client was very impressed.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: It's really not that impressive. It's handy, sure. But if I got to pick, I'd have picked flying. Or super strength. I got the middle one.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: The middle one. Mm. Well, there are other people with gifts, Mr. Dooley. Did you know that?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe's quarter has been floating over his knuckles since he sat down. Now it stops in the air.
[Picture: quarter]
Rafe Delaney: What?
[Picture: quarter]
Gwen slides a photo across the glass table with one gloved finger. It's a closed laundromat on a dark street in Boyle Heights, rain on the windows.
The quarter hangs in the air above Rafe's hand, not moving at all, while he stares at the photo.
Gwen Harlow: There are people like you all over this city. They hide. And under this laundromat, there's a place that hides them.
Rafe Delaney: People like me. How many?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: More than you'd think. Less than there used to be.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: There's a safe in that place. In the safe, there's a small black hard drive. A data broker's backup, some very boring corporate records my client would like to own.
[Picture: laundromat photo]
Rafe Delaney: And you need me because?
[Picture: laundromat photo]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: Because they only open the door for people like them. You don't have to pretend, Mr. Dooley. You just have to show up as what you are. Someone with a gift, who needs a place to hide.
[Picture: laundromat photo]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: How much?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: Two hundred thousand. Half when you're in, half when I have the drive.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Two hundred thousand. Eighty for Bruno. The rest for a hammock and a beach. Rafe picks up the watch and puts it back in his pocket.
Rafe Delaney: Okay. I'm in.
Gwen Harlow: Wonderful. They'll be suspicious at first. Be patient. Be sweet.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He's at the elevator when she calls after him, without looking up from her phone.
Gwen Harlow: And Mr. Dooley? Be nice to the nurse.
Rafe Delaney: What nurse?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 3. Spoon
Spoon — Chapter 3
Sunday night in Boyle Heights. It's raining, which almost never happens in Los Angeles, and Rafe takes it as a personal insult.
[Picture: rain]
He stands across the street from the closed laundromat with his phone to his ear and water running down his neck.
[Picture: rain]
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Okay, run it for me again. Who are you?
[Picture: rain]
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ I'm a scared guy with a gift. I've been sleeping in my car. Some men in suits have been following me. I just need somewhere safe.
[Picture: rain]
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ You sound like a guy reading a menu, bro.
[Picture: rain]
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ I'm great at lying! I'm just bad at sad lying. Sad lying makes me feel gross.
[Picture: rain]
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Maybe be a little hurt? Hurt people get let in.
[Picture: rain]
Rafe looks at his arm. Then he takes the little can opener off his keychain, winces, and scratches a line across his forearm.
[Picture: rain]
Rafe Delaney: Ow. Ow! Okay. That's enough. That's plenty of hurt.
[Picture: rain]
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Did you just stab yourself with a can opener?
[Picture: rain]
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ I'm committed to the role, Teddy. Talk later.
[Picture: rain]
He crosses the street, holding his arm like it's broken, and knocks on the laundromat door.
[Picture: rain]
The door opens three inches, on a chain. A young woman in navy blue scrubs and a denim jacket looks out at him, holding a baseball bat.
Behind her, a teenage girl in a grey hoodie peeks around a washing machine. Every light in the laundromat is flickering.
Maya Castillo: We're closed.
Rafe Delaney: Please. I heard you help people like me. I've got nowhere else to go.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: People like what?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: People with... you know. Gifts.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She looks at him for a long time. She looks at his soaked suede jacket and his wet hair. Then she looks at his arm.
[Picture: rain]
Maya Castillo: You did that with a can opener.
[Picture: rain]
Rafe Delaney: What? No. A guy did it. A bad guy. With a knife.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: It's got little teeth marks. It's a can opener. I'm an ER nurse, buddy. I've seen every kind of dumb wound there is.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Okay. It was a can opener. But the rest is true. Mostly.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: What's your gift?
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I can move a spoon. Like, a little. On a good day.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lily Castillo: Wow. A spoon.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Lily. Go downstairs.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
The girl doesn't go downstairs. Maya looks at the rain, and at the street, and at Rafe shivering in it. Then she sighs and takes the chain off the door.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: bat]
Maya Castillo: Get in before somebody sees you. And if you're lying about anything that matters, I will hit you with this bat.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: bat]
Rafe Delaney: That's so fair. Thank you. You won't regret this.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: bat]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: I regret it a little already.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: bat]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Behind the laundromat, a narrow staircase goes down into old transit service rooms nobody has used in forty years. Somebody has made them into a home.
There are mismatched cots with bright blankets, string lights on the pipes, a big pot of beans on a hot plate. At the far end there's a heavy steel door.
Maya Castillo: House rules. No real names. No phones down here, they go in the box. No windows, so don't ask. And nobody opens that door.
[Picture: house rules]
Rafe Delaney: What's behind the door?
[Picture: house rules]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Old subway tunnels. And stuff that lives in old subway tunnels. Phone.
[Picture: house rules]
[Picture: previous speaker]
He drops his phone in a shoebox full of phones. The lights flicker again. The girl in the hoodie is sitting on a cot, watching him with her headphones around her neck.
[Picture: sparks]
Lily Castillo: It's not you. The lights. I mean, it's a little you. New people make me nervous.
[Picture: sparks]
Rafe Delaney: You're doing that?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lily Castillo: I do a lot of things. I'm Lily. That's not my real name. My real name is Lily.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Lily!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lily Castillo: He can move a spoon, Maya. I think we're safe.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Something moves at the edge of Rafe's eye. A young woman in a dark hooded jacket is standing by the kitchen corner. Then there are three of her, all flickering, all staring at him.
Rafe Delaney: Whoa. Okay. Hi. Hello. Which one of you do I talk to?
Echo: Me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Echo: Me.
Echo: Sorry. Me. It's me. They're just... pictures. I do it when I'm scared.
Rafe Delaney: Hey, that's pretty cool. That's way cooler than a spoon.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Echo: Thank you. Nobody ever says that. I'm Echo.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The two extra Echoes fade away like breath on a mirror. Maya sits Rafe down on a cot and opens a first aid kit.
Maya Castillo: Arm.
Rafe Delaney: It's really fine.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: You're dripping on my blanket. Arm.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She cleans the cut with something that stings like fire, and stitches it with three quick neat stitches. She's very good at this.
Rafe Delaney: So you're a nurse by day and you run a secret hideout by night. That's a lot of jobs.
Maya Castillo: I'm a nurse by night. I run a secret hideout by day. I sleep on Tuesdays.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: That's a terrible schedule. You should talk to your manager.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: I'm the manager.
[Picture: previous speaker]
It's the first time anybody's made him laugh for real in a long time. He doesn't know what to do with it.
Behind her, against the wall, there's an old dryer on its own, pulled out from the machines. Under it, the floor is solid steel with a round dial in it. A safe.
[Picture: floor safe]
Rafe Delaney: Nice place. Cozy.
[Picture: floor safe]
Maya Castillo: You're looking at my floor.
[Picture: floor safe]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I love a floor. I'm a floor guy.
[Picture: floor safe]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Later, the string lights are dimmed. Everyone's asleep except Rafe, who is lying on his cot counting the pipes.
Something scratches, somewhere under him. Then it scratches again, closer.
In the middle of the room, the round steel grate on the floor drain rattles. Two little eyes shine in the dark down there. Then twenty.
[Picture: eyes]
CLASSIFIED FILE. GNASHRAT. F rank. Used to be a sewer rat. Now it's the size of a dog and has too many teeth. They come in swarms.
[Picture: stamp F]
Rafe Delaney: Hey. Hey, everybody. Wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up!
The drain grate bursts open, and rats pour out of it. Rats as big as dogs, scabby and fat, with two rows of teeth in every mouth.
Maya is up with her bat before her feet touch the floor, swinging. A dozen Echoes scatter across the room, and the rats chase the wrong ones.
And in the back, where nobody's looking, Rafe holds out one hand. The heavy steel grate lifts off the floor, flips over, and slams down on the drain with the whole swarm under it.
Maya Castillo: Everybody back! Get behind me!
The three rats that made it out are backing away from Maya's bat, hissing. She swings once more, and they run for the tunnel door and squeeze under it.
[Picture: gnashrat front]
[Picture: gnashrat front]
[Picture: gnashrat front]
The grate stays shut. It shouldn't. It's still bouncing from the rats pushing under it, and it isn't moving at all.
Maya Castillo: How did the grate close?
Rafe Delaney: The grate? Wow. I don't know. Maybe it fell?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: It's steel. It weighs like eighty pounds.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Well, things fall. That's gravity. You're a nurse, you know about gravity.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya drags a sack of detergent over the grate and sits on it, breathing hard, bat across her knees. She doesn't see Lily, who is sitting on the stairs with her hood up, staring straight at Rafe.
Lily Castillo: Spoon, huh?
[Picture: spoon]
Rafe Delaney: Shh. Please. Please, shh.
[Picture: spoon]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lily Castillo: Your eyes went all blue. It was super obvious.
[Picture: spoon]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Okay. Okay, look. I'm a little better than a spoon. Can we keep that between us?
[Picture: spoon]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lily Castillo: Sure. I have a lot of chores, though. Like, a lot. Dishes, laundry, sweeping. You'd be surprised.
[Picture: spoon]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Are you blackmailing me?
[Picture: spoon]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lily Castillo: I'm networking. Goodnight, Spoon.
[Picture: spoon]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 4. Not a Spoon
Not a Spoon — Chapter 4
Four days go by. Rafe is supposed to be finding a way into the safe. Mostly, he's doing chores.
A stack of dishes floats out of the sink, one plate at a time, and dries itself on a towel that's hanging in the air. Lily sits on the counter with a stopwatch.
[Picture: floating plates]
Lily Castillo: Forty-one seconds. That's your best time. The towel was a little sloppy.
[Picture: floating plates]
Rafe Delaney: The towel was beautiful. You're a terrible boss.
[Picture: floating plates]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lily Castillo: I'm a great boss. You're a terrible employee. The laundry's next.
[Picture: floating plates]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I'm going to go to prison for blackmail, and I'm not even the one doing it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Across the room, the old dryer bangs, groans, and starts spinning for the first time in a year. Maya looks up from a stack of hospital forms.
Maya Castillo: How'd you fix the dryer?
Rafe Delaney: I gave it a talk. Told it I believe in it. Some machines just need to feel seen.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: You're so weird.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Thank you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: It wasn't a compliment.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: You said it with a smile, so it counts.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A little boy named Tomás arrived yesterday, and he hasn't said a word since. Rafe sits down on the floor next to his cot, and makes a silver quarter walk across the blanket on its edge, all by itself. Tomás watches. Then he laughs.
[Picture: quarter]
Maya watches the two of them for a long time, and doesn't say anything.
Two in the morning. County General's roof is quiet except for the air vents. Maya is on her break, sitting on a steel bench with her feet up on a cooler.
The stairwell door opens, and Rafe comes out holding two coffees.
[Picture: two coffees]
Maya Castillo: How did you get up here? This is staff only.
[Picture: two coffees]
Rafe Delaney: I told the guard downstairs I'm your husband. I said you forgot your coffee, and you get mean without it.
[Picture: two coffees]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: That's not a lie. I do get mean.
[Picture: two coffees]
[Picture: previous speaker]
She takes the coffee. He sits down on the other end of the bench. For a minute they just look at the city.
[Picture: two coffees]
Rafe Delaney: Can I ask you something? Why do you do all this? The house, the tunnels, a bunch of strangers. You've got a real job. A hard one.
Maya Castillo: Because of Lily.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Yeah. I figured.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: When she was eleven, our mom got sick. Lily was scared all the time, and when she's scared, lights go out. The whole hospital floor went dark twice.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Two weeks after Mom died, a man came to our door. Nice suit. A badge I'd never seen before, one you couldn't look up anywhere. He wanted to talk about Lily's "electrical problem."
Rafe Delaney: What did you do?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: I said she was at a friend's. Then I packed two bags and we left that night. We've never gone back.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: The people who come for kids like Lily don't knock, Rafe. So somebody has to keep a door they can't find.
Rafe opens his mouth. For one second, he's about to tell her everything. The job, the drive, the woman in the penthouse.
Rafe Delaney: That's... really brave, Maya.
Maya Castillo: It's really tiring, is what it is. Your turn. Where'd you get your spoon?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: A gas leak. That's what the news called it, anyway. I was twelve.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Something was scratching in the walls all night. Then men with no name tags cleared the building and told everybody it was gas. When I got out, stuff started moving around me.
Maya Castillo: A lot of people in my house had a gas leak.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Really?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Really. Funny how many gas leaks there are in this city.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Her pager goes off. She looks at it, sighs, and stands up. At the door, she turns back.
[Picture: pager]
Maya Castillo: Thanks for the coffee, husband.
[Picture: pager]
When Rafe gets back to the laundromat at dawn, Lily is waiting at the top of the stairs. Her hood is up and the lights are flickering hard.
Lily Castillo: Echo's gone. She had a nightmare, and when I woke up, her cot was empty. The tunnel door's open.
Rafe Delaney: The door nobody opens?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lily Castillo: She does that when she's scared. She hides down there. But she always comes back before it gets light, and it's light.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Lily, stay here. Lock the door behind us. Rafe, grab a flashlight.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya's still in her scrubs. She has her bat in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
Rafe Delaney: We're going in the tunnels? The tunnels with the stuff that lives in the tunnels?
Maya Castillo: You can stay if you want.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: No. No, I'm coming.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The steel door opens onto stairs, and the stairs go down a long way. At the bottom is an old maintenance tunnel under a subway line. Water drips. One yellow work light flickers.
[Picture: flashlight]
Somewhere above them, a train goes by, and the whole ceiling hums.
[Picture: flashlight]
Maya Castillo: Echo? Echo, honey, it's Maya. It's okay.
[Picture: flashlight]
Echo: Maya?
[Picture: flashlight]
[Picture: previous speaker]
There are four of her at the end of the tunnel, all huddled against the wall. Three of them fade. The real one is shaking.
[Picture: flashlight]
Echo: I'm sorry. I heard something. I thought they came for me again.
[Picture: flashlight]
Maya Castillo: Nobody's coming for you. Let's go home, okay?
[Picture: flashlight]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Echo takes one step toward them. The concrete floor under her feet cracks.
[Picture: flashlight]
CLASSIFIED FILE. TUNNELRAT. F rank. Used to be a mole. It hears footsteps through the floor and comes up under them.
[Picture: stamp F]
The floor explodes upward. A grey mole the size of a big dog bursts out of the concrete where Echo was standing, blind, huge shovel claws swinging.
Echo doesn't fall. She flies backward through the air, like somebody grabbed her by the jacket, and lands in Rafe's arms.
Nobody touched her. Rafe's eyes are glowing blue.
Echo: What... how did I...
Rafe Delaney: Adrenaline! Super strong adrenaline! Run!
The mole screams and digs back into the floor, fast. The three of them run. Maya is at the front with the flashlight, and the tunnel splits in two.
[Picture: tunnelrat side]
Maya Castillo: Left! Left is the way home!
It's the wrong way. The left tunnel goes down a slope into black water, and something big is lying in the water, very still.
Rafe Delaney: Maya. Maya, stop. That's not a pipe.
The thing in the water lifts its head. It's a snake. A python as thick as a man's leg, with red bands down its back and eyes that shine in the flashlight.
[Picture: coilfang front]
CLASSIFIED FILE. COILFANG. D rank. Used to be somebody's pet python. It feels heat and footsteps, and it doesn't let go.
[Picture: stamp D]
It moves faster than anything that big should. Before Maya can swing, it's wrapped around her, twice, three times, and pulling tight.
[Picture: coilfang front]
Maya Castillo: Rafe!
Rafe stops pretending. He holds out both hands, and his eyes blaze pale blue.
The coils around Maya start to open, one by one, pulled apart by nothing at all. The snake fights it, twisting and hissing.
Rafe's teeth are clenched and his nose is bleeding. He doesn't let go.
Maya drops free onto the wet concrete. The snake is thrown back into the black water, and it goes deep and stays there.
Maya Castillo: You...
Rafe Delaney: Later! Let's talk about it later! Go!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Back in the safe house, Lily locks the steel door and pushes two cots against it. Echo is wrapped in three blankets, drinking tea.
Maya sits down across from Rafe on the floor. She's soaking wet, and she's staring at him.
Maya Castillo: So. Not a spoon.
[Picture: spoon]
Rafe Delaney: It was a big spoon. It was like a serving spoon.
[Picture: spoon]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: You pulled a python off me with your brain.
[Picture: spoon]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I'm sorry I lied. I don't show people. I've never shown anybody, except Teddy. It's not even a cool power. It's a mediocre power.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Mediocre? Are you kidding me?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lily Castillo: He's not kidding. He wanted flying. He tells me about it every day. It's so sad.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya doesn't look mad. She laughs, tired and a little shaky, and wipes the blood off his lip with her sleeve.
Maya Castillo: Everybody lies about their gift when they first get here. Everybody. You're not special, Spoon.
Rafe Delaney: Oh no. Not you too.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Come here. I want to show you something.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She walks over to the old dryer, and pushes it aside. Under it is the steel floor safe with its round dial.
[Picture: floor safe]
Maya Castillo: There's a drive in here. It has everyone's names. Everyone this house has hidden, their real names and their new ones, where they live now. If the wrong people ever got it, they could find every one of them.
[Picture: floor safe]
Rafe Delaney: Why are you telling me this?
[Picture: floor safe]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Because you just saved two of us. And because if anything ever happens to me, somebody has to take that drive and throw it in the river. Promise me.
[Picture: floor safe]
[Picture: previous speaker]
She holds out a key on a red ribbon. The house key.
[Picture: house key]
Rafe Delaney: Maya...
[Picture: house key]
Maya Castillo: Promise me, Rafe.
[Picture: house key]
[Picture: previous speaker]
He takes the key. It weighs almost nothing. It's the heaviest thing he's ever held.
[Picture: house key]
Rafe Delaney: I promise.
[Picture: house key]
Chapter 5. The List
The List — Chapter 5
Thursday night. It's Maya's first night off in a month, and Rafe has talked her into leaving the house for three whole hours.
Big Linda is parked on a dirt pull-out high above the city, under a jacaranda tree. Teddy lent her out on one condition.
Maya Castillo: Why is there a note taped to the dashboard that says "use a coaster"?
[Picture: coaster note]
Rafe Delaney: Teddy's very protective of her. She's been through a lot.
[Picture: coaster note]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: She's a minivan.
[Picture: coaster note]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Don't let her hear you say that.
[Picture: coaster note]
[Picture: previous speaker]
They sit on Big Linda's hood with a bag of tacos from a truck on Sunset. The whole of Los Angeles is spread out below them, lights all the way to the ocean.
[Picture: tacos]
Maya Castillo: I forgot this was up here. I've lived here my whole life, and I forgot you could see all of it.
[Picture: tacos]
Rafe Delaney: I come up here when I can't sleep. It's the only place in LA that's quiet.
[Picture: tacos]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: You come up here to steal stuff from rich people's cars, don't you?
[Picture: tacos]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: That's... one of the reasons. Not tonight, though.
[Picture: tacos]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Rafe. What did you do before you came to my door? For real.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He looks at the city for a while. He could lie. He's very good at lying.
Rafe Delaney: I stole things. Watches, mostly. From people who had too many. I told myself it didn't count if they were rich.
Maya Castillo: Did it count?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I don't know. I think maybe everything counts.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya doesn't say anything for a moment. Then she bumps his shoulder with hers.
Maya Castillo: Whatever you were running from, you can stop here. You know that, right? You're one of us now.
Rafe Delaney: Yeah. Yeah, I know.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He can't look at her, so he looks at her taco instead. It lifts out of her hand and floats away.
[Picture: taco]
Maya Castillo: Hey! Give it back!
[Picture: taco]
Rafe Delaney: What taco? I don't see a taco.
[Picture: taco]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya grabs for the taco and misses. She laughs, really laughs, head back.
Then Rafe lifts his hand a little higher, and a hundred purple jacaranda petals rise up off the ground all around Big Linda. They hang in the air around the two of them, slowly turning, with the city lights behind them.
Maya Castillo: Rafe. Oh my God.
Rafe Delaney: It's dumb. It's just flowers.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: It's not dumb.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She leans in. He leans in.
Maya's pager goes off, loud, in the pocket of her denim jacket. Every petal drops at once.
[Picture: petals]
Maya Castillo: No. No, no. That's the hospital. Somebody called out sick.
Rafe Delaney: Of course they did.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Hold that thought, okay? Hold it right there. I'll be back by morning.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I'll hold it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Two in the morning. Everyone in the house is asleep. Maya is at work.
Rafe comes up the stairs from the safe house in his socks, holding his boots. He's been lying on his cot for three hours, thinking about eighty thousand dollars and a crusher and Teddy's face.
He takes out his phone. There's a text from Gwen, from yesterday. "Friday is tomorrow, Mr. Dooley. Tick tock."
[Picture: text gwen]
Rafe Delaney: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
[Picture: text gwen]
The dark laundromat. The old dryer slides across the floor on its own, without a sound.
The round dial on the steel safe turns by itself, left, right, left again, while Rafe kneels beside it with his eyes shut and glowing, listening to the lock from the inside.
The door swings open. A small black hard drive rises up out of the dark and into his open hand.
He puts the dryer back exactly where it was. He puts Maya's key on the folding table by the door, on its red ribbon.
[Picture: house key]
Then he walks out into the street, and he doesn't look back, because if he looks back he won't go.
Gwen plugs the drive into a slim silver laptop. Names scroll up the screen, too fast to read.
[Picture: hard drive]
Gwen Harlow: Wonderful. Every single one. You're very good, Mr. Dooley.
[Picture: hard drive]
Rafe Delaney: Just pay me.
[Picture: hard drive]
[Picture: previous speaker]
She slides a black duffel bag across the glass table with her foot. It's heavy. Rafe doesn't open it.
[Picture: duffel]
Gwen Harlow: You're not going to count it?
[Picture: duffel]
Rafe Delaney: If it's short, I know where you live. It's this hotel. You live in this hotel.
[Picture: duffel]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: Fair. One more thing. My client would love to meet you. Tomorrow evening, Halcyon Pacific Tower. There's a bonus in it for you. A big one.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Halcyon? Like the gala Halcyon? Like Brett Hollis Halcyon?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: He wants his watch back, of course. But mostly, he wants to shake your hand.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: What's on that drive, Gwen?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: Boring things. Names and numbers. Go home, Mr. Dooley. Get some sleep. You look terrible.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Friday morning. Bruno Salas is back in the same red booth, with the same two men, and a new napkin holder.
Rafe drops the duffel bag on the table. Bruno unzips it, looks inside, and starts counting. He counts all of it. Then he counts it again.
[Picture: duffel]
Bruno Salas: Eighty thousand. Exactly.
[Picture: duffel]
Rafe Delaney: Teddy's square. Big Linda stays out of the crusher. We're done.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Bruno Salas: We're done. Where does a guy like you get eighty thousand dollars in five days?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I'm a man of many talents, remember? Have a donut, Bruno. On me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Bruno looks at the pastry case. It still has a crack running down the middle of the glass. He looks at Rafe for a long time.
Bruno Salas: No. Thank you. I don't eat here anymore.
The bell jingles as they leave. Teddy has been hiding behind the counter the whole time. He comes out slowly, and then he grabs Rafe in a hug so hard his feet leave the floor.
Teddy Ruiz: You did it! You did it, man! Big Linda's saved! I'm saved!
Rafe Delaney: Put me down. Teddy. I can't breathe.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: I'm crying. I'm really crying. Look at this. Real tears.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I see them, buddy.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: How'd you get it so fast? What was the job?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Doesn't matter. It's done.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy looks at him. Teddy has known him since they were eleven.
Teddy Ruiz: You look like somebody died, bro.
The rest of the money is in a shoebox under the bed. One hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Enough for a hammock and a beach, and a surfboard, and lessons.
[Picture: shoebox]
Rafe lies on the bed and stares at the ceiling. The quarter turns over his knuckles, over and over.
[Picture: quarter]
His phone buzzes. It's a text from a number he doesn't know. It's the hospital's number.
[Picture: text maya]
"Where'd you go? Lily made pancakes. They're terrible. Come back. M."
[Picture: text maya]
Rafe Delaney: Yeah. I know.
[Picture: text maya]
He reads it ten times. He starts to type an answer, and deletes it. He starts again, and deletes that too.
[Picture: text maya]
He doesn't answer.
Chapter 6. The Bonus
The Bonus — Chapter 6
Saturday evening. Halcyon Pacific Tower rises out of the west side like a blade of blue glass. The plaza in front of it is spotless, and the guards don't blink.
Big Linda rolls up to the curb, looking like she took a wrong turn from a family barbecue.
Teddy Ruiz: I'll circle the block. Big Linda doesn't do parking garages.
Rafe Delaney: Why not?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: She has trauma, man. Something happened in a parking garage in 2081 and she won't talk about it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: She's a van, Teddy.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: And she has feelings! Text me when you're out.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe's phone rings as he crosses the plaza. It's the hospital's number again. He almost doesn't answer.
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Hey. Hi.
Maya Castillo: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Hi? Hi? You disappear for two days and I get a "hi"?
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Something came up. A family thing. I'm sorry, I should've called.
Maya Castillo: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Rafe, listen. Echo went out for groceries this afternoon and she never came back. Her phone was in the box. Nobody's seen her.
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ What do you mean she never came back?
Maya Castillo: ◉ ▂▄▆█ I mean she's gone. And two people from our other house stopped answering last night. Something's wrong. Where are you?
Rafe looks up at the tower. Forty floors of blue glass look back down at him.
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ I'm gonna find out what's going on. I promise. I'll call you back.
The corner office is almost as high as the clouds. Brett Hollis comes around his long wooden desk with both hands out, like they're old friends.
Brett Hollis: There he is! The man of the hour! Rafe Delaney, it's a real pleasure, buddy. Really, truly.
Gwen is sitting on the white sofa, legs crossed, scrolling on her silver phone. She gives him a little wave.
[Picture: character Gwen Harlow smug]
Rafe Delaney: Gwen said you wanted your watch back.
[Picture: diamond watch]
He sets the diamond watch on the desk. Hollis picks it up, laughs, and tosses it in a drawer. On his wrist he's already wearing a new one, even bigger.
[Picture: diamond watch]
Brett Hollis: Keep it! I've got eleven. No, I wanted to meet you, Rafe. Because of this.
[Picture: diamond watch]
He taps the screen on his desk. It's the security video from the gala. The diamond watch drops off his own wrist and floats under the tables, all the way across the ballroom.
[Picture: gala video]
Brett Hollis: I've watched that about two hundred times. It's beautiful. It's art. Do you know what you are, Rafe?
[Picture: gala video]
Rafe Delaney: A guy who's good at watches?
[Picture: gala video]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Brett Hollis: You're a telekinetic who thinks he's second rate. You've got one of the rarest gifts on the planet, and you use it to steal jewelry. That's like using a rocket to deliver pizza.
[Picture: gala video]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: What was on the drive, Mr. Hollis?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Brett Hollis: Recruiting data. Names, faces, addresses. People like you, hiding in basements, wasting their gifts. At Halcyon, we give them a chance to be part of something. We call it the volunteer program.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Echo didn't volunteer for anything.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Hollis's smile doesn't move at all. Gwen stops scrolling.
Brett Hollis: Oh, she will. They all do, eventually. Here's the thing, Rafe. The list was a nice job. But you were always the prize.
Gwen Harlow: I told you he was sweet on the nurse, Brett. It's all over his face.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: You hired me to bring you... me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Brett Hollis: And the list! Two birds, one stone. So here's the offer. Come work for us. Great salary, great dental. Or, come volunteer. Either way, you're not leaving the building.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I'm gonna go with option three.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The office door opens behind him. A woman walks in wearing dark armored tactical gear. Close-cropped black hair. Her eyes are ringed with chrome.
[Picture: character Director Cassidy Vaughn neutral]
Director Cassidy Vaughn: Mr. Hollis.
Brett Hollis: Director Vaughn! Perfect timing. Cassidy runs security for the whole West Coast. Rafe, don't do anything silly.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe does something silly. He holds out his hand, and Hollis's enormous wooden desk tears off the floor.
The whole desk flies across the office at Cassidy Vaughn, screen and papers and all.
She catches it with one hand. She doesn't step back. She doesn't even bend her knees.
Director Cassidy Vaughn: That was a very nice desk.
She sets the desk down on its side like a suitcase. Then she crosses the office in two steps, faster than anything Rafe has ever seen.
He throws a chair. She walks through it. He throws the sofa, with Gwen still on it, and Vaughn catches that too and puts it down gently.
Gwen Harlow: Rude!
Director Cassidy Vaughn: You're strong, Mr. Delaney. But you've never had a real fight in your life. I can tell.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I've had lots of fights. I win them by running away.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Director Cassidy Vaughn: Not this one.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Her fist hits him in the stomach, and the lights go out.
When Rafe wakes up, he's lying on a cold white floor. Everything is white. The walls, the lights, the long hallway stretching away in front of him.
On both sides of the hallway there are glass cells, dozens of them. There are people in the cells. Some of them are sleeping. Some of them are pressing their hands against the glass.
Rafe Delaney: Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
In the third cell on the left, a young woman in a dark hooded jacket is curled up in the corner. When she sees him, three of her stand up at once.
[Picture: character Echo afraid]
Echo: Rafe? Rafe! Why are you here? Did they get you too?
Rafe Delaney: Echo. I'm so sorry. This is my fault.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Echo: Your fault? How is this your fault?
[Picture: previous speaker]
A big wall of screens hangs at the end of the hallway. On one of them, a list of names is scrolling, with photos and addresses. Near the top, one line is blinking red.
[Picture: list screen]
"NEXT PICKUP, TONIGHT. CASTILLO, LILY. AGE 16."
[Picture: list screen]
Rafe Delaney: Lily. They're going for Lily. Tonight.
[Picture: list screen]
Director Cassidy Vaughn: You're awake. Good. Stand up slowly, Mr. Delaney. The doctors want to meet you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She's standing at the end of the hall with four guards in grey armor. Behind them, against the wall, there's a steel cage the size of a garage. Something huge is sitting inside it.
CLASSIFIED FILE. KNUCKLEDRAG. C rank. Used to be a zoo gorilla. Now it's twice the size and made of rock. Halcyon bought it.
[Picture: stamp C]
It's a gorilla. It's twice the size a gorilla should be, and its muscles are grey and knotted like rock. It's watching the guards. It looks like it's been watching them for a long time.
Rafe Delaney: Hey, Director. Quick question. How good is the lock on that cage?
Director Cassidy Vaughn: Don't.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I'm really, really good with locks.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe flicks two fingers. The heavy padlock on the cage springs open and drops to the floor.
The door swings out, and the giant grey gorilla comes through it like a truck. It roars and swings one enormous arm, and all four guards fly across the hallway.
Cassidy Vaughn turns to face it, and for the first time all night she has to take a step back.
Rafe runs. He doesn't look back. Behind him, the gorilla and Vaughn are going through walls.
[Picture: red lights]
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Teddy! Teddy, I need you! I need you right now!
[Picture: red lights]
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ What's happening? Why does it sound like a zoo?
[Picture: red lights]
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Because it's a zoo! Get to the front of the tower!
[Picture: red lights]
Forty flights of stairs. He takes them three at a time, then he just slides down the railings. When he bursts into the lobby, there are twelve guards between him and the glass front wall, and every one of them has a gun.
[Picture: red lights]
Rafe Delaney: Oh, come on.
[Picture: red lights]
Outside, on the plaza, a set of headlights turns straight toward the building. It's going thirty miles an hour. For Big Linda, that's flat out.
[Picture: red lights]
Big Linda smashes through the tower's glass lobby wall in an explosion of glass, wood panels flying.
She skids across the marble floor, sideways, and Teddy leans out of the driver's window, grabs Rafe by the collar of his suede jacket, and hauls him in through the open side door with one arm.
Behind them, the guards are shooting. The back window of the van shatters.
Teddy Ruiz: Get in, get in, get in!
Big Linda bounces over the plaza planters, flattens a young palm tree, and makes it to the street. Something is dragging underneath her. Something else is on fire. She keeps going.
Rafe Delaney: You said she doesn't do garages!
Teddy Ruiz: That wasn't a garage! That was a lobby! She loves a lobby!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Teddy. You just saved my life.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: Yeah, well. You saved mine yesterday. That's how it works. We're even.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Boyle Heights. The laundromat. As fast as she goes.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: What's in Boyle Heights?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Everybody I just sold.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 7. Ralph
Ralph — Chapter 7
Big Linda comes off the freeway ramp into Boyle Heights just in time to see two black vans with no plates pulling away from the laundromat.
The laundromat's front window is smashed. Every light inside is out.
Rafe Delaney: That's them. Those are Halcyon vans. Teddy, follow them!
Teddy Ruiz: Hold on to something. She's got one more gear. I think. I've never tried it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Big Linda roars. It's more of a wheeze, but it's loud. The two black vans split up at the freeway on-ramp, one north, one south.
Rafe Delaney: Which one? Which one has Lily?
Teddy Ruiz: I don't know, man! Pick one!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: North! Go north!
[Picture: previous speaker]
The freeway is almost empty at this hour, five lanes of wet asphalt and orange lights. Big Linda is missing her side door now. The wind howls through the van.
The black van is fast. It pulls away. Rafe leans out of the open side door, into the wind, and holds out both hands.
Teddy Ruiz: What are you doing? Get back in the car!
Rafe Delaney: Something big!
[Picture: previous speaker]
The black armored van's back wheels leave the road.
Then the whole van lifts, turns over in the air, end over end, and comes down on its side across three lanes of freeway in a shower of sparks.
Rafe hangs out of Big Linda's missing door, both arms out, eyes blazing blue. It's the biggest thing he's ever moved on purpose.
Teddy Ruiz: You flipped a van! You flipped a van with your face!
Big Linda screeches to a stop fifty feet away. Rafe jumps out and runs to the wreck. The back doors of the van are hanging open.
Rafe Delaney: Lily! Lily, it's me! It's Spoon!
It isn't Lily. There's nobody in the back but one tall shape, standing up slowly.
[Picture: hollowman front]
CLASSIFIED FILE. HOLLOWMAN. B rank. Used to be a person. It doesn't have a face anymore, and it moves between places without crossing the space in between.
[Picture: stamp B]
It's shaped like a man, a very thin one, too tall. Its skin is grey. Its fingers are long. And it doesn't have a face. Where a face should be, there's nothing at all.
[Picture: hollowman front]
Teddy Ruiz: What is that? Rafe, what is that?
Rafe Delaney: I don't know! I don't know! Get back to the van!
[Picture: previous speaker]
The faceless thing flickers. It's by the wreck, then it's in the middle of the road, then it's right in front of Teddy, without crossing the space in between.
Teddy swings a tire iron at it with everything he has, and hits empty air where it just was.
Rafe grabs the torn-off door of the black van with his mind and slams it down on the thing, and pins it flat against the asphalt.
Rafe Delaney: Stay down! Please, just stay down!
The thing under the door twitches, and then goes still. Rafe keeps holding the door down until his hands are shaking.
Far up the freeway, the second black van's taillights are gone.
Teddy Ruiz: We picked the wrong one, man.
Rafe Delaney: I picked the wrong one.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The laundromat looks like a storm went through it. The washing machines are knocked over. Somebody tried to fight back with a bat, and it's lying broken on the floor.
[Picture: rain]
Maya is sitting against the wall in her scrubs. She has a bruise on her cheek. She's holding Lily's grey hoodie in both hands.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: hoodie]
Rafe Delaney: Maya. Maya, are you okay? Are you hurt?
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: hoodie]
Maya Castillo: They took her. Four men and something else, something with no face. They knew where the door was, Rafe. Nobody knows where the door is.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: hoodie]
[Picture: previous speaker]
She looks past him, at the old dryer. It's pulled out from the wall. The steel safe in the floor is open, and it's empty.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: empty safe]
Maya Castillo: The drive's gone. The safe was locked. Nobody knows the combination except me.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: empty safe]
The dark laundromat. Maya stands up slowly, holding the empty drawer from the safe, the red ribbon of the house key hanging from her other hand.
Rafe stands in the broken doorway, soaked from the rain. Teddy is behind him, and he steps back out of the way.
Maya Castillo: Rafe. Tell me it wasn't you.
Rafe Delaney: It was me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
For the first time in his whole life, he doesn't lie. He tells her all of it. The gala. Gwen. The two hundred thousand dollars. The white floor and the glass cells and Lily's name blinking red on a screen.
[Picture: rain]
Maya listens to every word. She doesn't cry. That's worse.
[Picture: rain]
Maya Castillo: Who even are you? Is Rafe even your name?
[Picture: rain]
Rafe Delaney: No. My name's Ralph. Ralph Dooley.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: I don't know you, Ralph.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Maya, I'm gonna get her back. I swear. I'm gonna get all of them back.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: You don't get to swear anything. Not to me. Not anymore.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
She walks past him, out of the laundromat, into the rain, with her sister's hoodie in her hands. She doesn't look back.
[Picture: rain]
Teddy Ruiz: Bro...
[Picture: rain]
Rafe Delaney: Yeah. I know.
[Picture: rain]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Across the street, a grey sedan that's been parked there for an hour flashes its headlights, twice. A heavyset man in a rumpled brown suit gets out holding a paper coffee cup.
Agent Howard Kimball: Mr. Dooley. Finally. Do you have any idea how hard you are to follow? You drive a minivan.
Teddy Ruiz: Hey! Don't talk about her like that!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Dawn. A little park next to a brick library in a quiet neighborhood. The sprinklers are running. Nobody is here but a jogger and her dog.
The man in the suit sits down on a park bench like it's his office, and pats the seat next to him.
Agent Howard Kimball: Howard Kimball. I'm with the city. Water and Power.
[Picture: kimball card]
He hands Rafe a business card. It says the same thing.
[Picture: kimball card]
Rafe Delaney: You're not with Water and Power.
[Picture: kimball card]
Agent Howard Kimball: No. But it's a great cover. Nobody ever wants to talk to the water guy. I'm with SABLE. Shepherd Division.
[Picture: kimball card]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I don't know what any of those words mean.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: Yeah. That's kind of the point of us.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: Okay. Short version. Every so often, something living just changes. A rat, a cat, a snake, sometimes a person. It gets bigger, meaner, wrong. We call it an Outbreak.
Agent Howard Kimball: SABLE is the people who clean it up. We fight them, we bury them, and then we tell the news it was a gas leak, or a chemical spill, or a brush fire. The world stays normal. That's the whole job.
Rafe Delaney: The men with no name tags. My gas leak. That was you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: That was us. A stray cat got into the walls on the fourth floor and came out the size of a dog. Our file says every tenant got out fine. It doesn't say one of them got out with a gift.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: You've known about me since I was twelve?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: No. I've known about you for eleven months. A burglar whose locks open from the inside. I've been one step behind you the whole time. Last week I was one minute behind you. That was a big week for me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: So what happens now? You arrest me?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: People like you get three choices. Join us, and live with a handler watching everything you do. Hide, and hope we never find you. Or fight, and get hunted. Those are the rules.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Those are terrible rules.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: Yeah. They are.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Halcyon has forty people in glass boxes. The thing on the freeway, the thing with no face. That used to be a person, didn't it?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: We call them Hollowmen. And yeah. Most of them used to be people.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Then why aren't you stopping it? You're the monster police!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Kimball looks down at his coffee for a long time.
[Picture: coffee cup]
Agent Howard Kimball: Because Halcyon builds our armor. Our guns, our trucks, our radios. I've sent my bosses four reports about that tower in a year. They buried every one. I'm not proud of my employer today, son.
[Picture: coffee cup]
Rafe Delaney: So nobody's coming.
[Picture: coffee cup]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: Let me tell you a story. There's a woman in Moscow. Yeva. Twenty years ago an apartment tower started coming down with three hundred people in it. She put it back. Set it down so gently, the people inside thought the earthquake just changed its mind.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: She moved a building?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: She does what you do, Mr. Dooley. Exactly what you do.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I move watches.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: Your power isn't small, son. You've been small with it. There's a difference.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The quarter floating over Rafe's knuckles stops. He closes his hand around it.
[Picture: quarter]
Rafe Delaney: Okay. Then I'm going back in. I'm getting all of them out.
[Picture: quarter]
Agent Howard Kimball: I can't help you do that. Officially.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: And unofficially?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: Unofficially, Halcyon ships the ones they want most out of Pier 47. By sea. Tonight. And a strong young girl who can shut off a city block would be the first one on the boat.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Then that's where we're going.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe turns around. Maya is standing behind the bench, arms crossed, with Lily's hoodie tied around her waist. She followed Kimball's car.
[Picture: hoodie]
Rafe Delaney: Maya.
[Picture: hoodie]
Maya Castillo: I'm not here for you. I'm here for her. Don't talk to me unless it's about getting her back.
[Picture: hoodie]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Okay. Then let's go get her back.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 8. Pier 47
Pier 47 — Chapter 8
Midnight at the Port of Los Angeles. Pier 47 has been closed for two years because of a chemical spill. That's what the signs say.
[Picture: spill sign]
The gate is chained. Behind it, an armored truck sits with its floodlight on, and a squad in olive armor is standing guard. Their captain is a broad-shouldered woman with a riot shield and auburn hair.
[Picture: padlock]
Agent Howard Kimball: Marlene! Hey. How's the knee?
[Picture: padlock]
Captain Marlene Voss: Howard. What are you doing at my fence at midnight with a van full of civilians?
[Picture: padlock]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: Just passing through. Ten minutes. You won't even know we're here.
[Picture: padlock]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Captain Marlene Voss: I know you're here right now. I'm looking at you. And a minivan. With no door.
[Picture: padlock]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: She's had a rough week, ma'am.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: Halcyon's loading a ship at the far berth tonight. They've got kids on it, Marlene. The Enhanced kind. You know what that tower does. You've read my reports.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Captain Voss looks at the far end of the pier for a long moment. Past the cranes, there's a cargo ship with its lights on.
Captain Marlene Voss: I've read your reports. So have the bosses. They told me to guard this gate and not look at ships.
Captain Marlene Voss: Okay. I'm going to turn around and look at this fence for ten minutes. It's a very interesting fence. I'm forty-five. My eyes are going. I don't see anything.
Agent Howard Kimball: You're a saint.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Captain Marlene Voss: I'm an idiot. And I'm following you, because you're all going to die down there. The lower dock is full of things.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The lower dock is half under the water. Rusted steel walkways run between stacks of shipping containers, and the water between them is black and oily and still.
[Picture: flashlight]
Maya walks at the front, with a flashlight. She hasn't said a word to Rafe since the park.
[Picture: flashlight]
Rafe Delaney: Maya. Can I say one thing?
[Picture: flashlight]
Maya Castillo: Is it about Lily?
[Picture: flashlight]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: It's about me being sorry.
[Picture: flashlight]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Then no.
[Picture: flashlight]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Okay. That's fair.
[Picture: flashlight]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: She's warming up to you, bro. I can tell.
[Picture: flashlight]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Something clicks in the dark. Then something else clicks. All along the edge of the walkway, things are climbing up out of the water.
[Picture: brineclaw front]
[Picture: brineclaw front]
[Picture: brineclaw front]
[Picture: brineclaw front]
SABLE FILE. BRINECLAW. F rank. Used to be a crab. They nest on Pier 47's flooded docks, where the public was told there was a chemical spill.
[Picture: stamp F]
Crabs. Crabs the size of dogs, green and spiky, each with one enormous claw that snaps like a bear trap.
[Picture: brineclaw front]
[Picture: brineclaw front]
[Picture: brineclaw front]
[Picture: brineclaw front]
Captain Marlene Voss: Told you. Everybody behind me!
Rafe Delaney: Nah. I got this one.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A crab lunges at Maya's legs. Rafe flicks his wrist, and it flies off the walkway, bounces off a container like a pinball, and splashes down into the bay.
[Picture: brineclaw side]
He flicks again, and again. Crabs go flying in every direction, off the rails, off the cranes, into the water.
Teddy Ruiz: It's like a pinball machine! Do the big one! Get the big one!
One crab gets past him and clamps its big claw onto Teddy's tire iron. Teddy pulls. The crab pulls harder, and runs into the water with it.
[Picture: tire iron]
Teddy Ruiz: My tire iron! That was my lucky tire iron!
[Picture: tire iron]
Captain Marlene Voss: Kimball. Who is that guy?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: That's my recruit.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Captain Marlene Voss: He's not your recruit.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: He will be.
[Picture: previous speaker]
At the end of the walkway, the dock opens up. The cargo ship is right there, huge and rusty, with a crane lowering a shipping container into its open hold. Men in grey Halcyon armor are working the ropes.
Maya Castillo: She's on there. She's in one of those containers, I know it.
Rafe Delaney: Then we go now, before they close the hold.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya takes one step out onto the open dock. The black water beside her starts to move.
Rafe Delaney: Maya, get back!
SABLE FILE. TIDEWRATH. B rank. Used to be a saltwater crocodile off a smuggler's boat. Now it's longer than a bus, and it owns Pier 47.
[Picture: stamp B]
A crocodile longer than a bus comes up out of the black water beside the dock, armored ridges streaming water, its jaws opening wide enough to swallow a car.
It comes straight at Maya. And its jaws stop, wide open, a foot away from her.
Rafe stands on the dock behind her with both hands up and his eyes blazing blue, holding those jaws open in the air.
Rafe Delaney: Go! Go under it! Now!
Maya and Teddy run right under its teeth, across the dock to the ship.
The crocodile thrashes. Its tail smashes a stack of containers. Rafe's nose starts to bleed.
[Picture: tidewrath side]
Rafe Delaney: No! You don't get her! Nobody gets her!
He turns, and turns, and throws. The whole crocodile goes spinning out over the water like a log off a truck, and hits the bay fifty yards out with a splash that soaks the entire dock.
It doesn't come back up.
Captain Marlene Voss: He threw it. Howard, he threw a Tidewrath.
Agent Howard Kimball: I know. I'm so glad I didn't arrest him.
[Picture: previous speaker]
On the ship, the Halcyon men are shouting. The crane drops its last container into the hold. The ship's engines roar, and it starts pulling away from the dock.
Maya Castillo: No! No, no, no! Rafe, it's leaving!
Rafe Delaney: Which one? Maya, which container?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: I don't know!
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe closes his eyes and listens, the way he listens to the inside of a lock. Somewhere in the hold, there's a steady buzzing hum. Like electricity.
Rafe Delaney: I know which one.
The cargo ship is thirty feet from the dock and moving. Rafe stands right at the edge with both arms raised, and one shipping container rises up out of the hold.
It floats across the open water, slow and steady, and sets down on the dock with a boom that shakes the whole pier.
Voss's squad stands behind him, their rifles lowered, just staring.
Rafe drops to his knees. Teddy grabs a crowbar and pries the container doors open.
Inside, eight people are sitting against the walls, blinking at the floodlights. A young woman in a hooded jacket, doubled three times. And a teenage girl in a white lab gown, with every light on the dock flickering around her.
Lily Castillo: Maya?
[Picture: sparks]
Maya Castillo: Lily!
[Picture: sparks]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya runs into the container and grabs her sister so hard they both fall over. Neither of them lets go.
[Picture: sparks]
Echo: Rafe! You came! You actually came!
Rafe Delaney: Hey, Echo. Of course I came.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A few minutes later, the rescued people are wrapped in Response blankets on the tailgate of the armored truck. Voss is on her radio, arguing with somebody, and losing.
Maya comes and stands next to Rafe. She's looking out at the water, not at him.
Maya Castillo: You came back.
Rafe Delaney: I was always coming back. I just didn't know it yet.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: I'm still so mad at you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I know. You should be.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: I'm also really glad you're here. And I hate that. Just so you know.
[Picture: previous speaker]
It isn't forgiveness. But it's the start of something that could turn into it.
Lily Castillo: Spoon. Hey. It's not over.
Rafe Delaney: What do you mean?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Lily Castillo: They only put the strong ones on the boat. There's still like forty people back at the tower. And I heard the doctors talking. Mr. Hollis wants the floor "cleaned" tomorrow.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Cleaned. What does that mean?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: It means there won't be any evidence left.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Everyone is quiet. Rafe stands up. His knees are shaking, his nose is still bleeding, and his head feels like it's full of broken glass.
Rafe Delaney: Then we go tonight.
Maya Castillo: We.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: What?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Not you. We go tonight. I'm not letting you do anything alone ever again, Ralph.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Chapter 9. Going Up
Going Up — Chapter 9
Three in the morning. Big Linda is parked two blocks from Halcyon Pacific Tower with no side door, no back window, and a new crack across the windshield.
Everybody is crammed inside her. Lily is back in her grey hoodie. Echo is sitting on the floor. Kimball is in the passenger seat, with a fresh coffee.
Agent Howard Kimball: Okay. The tower's got cameras on every floor. Every hallway, every stairwell, every elevator. The second they see you, the whole building locks down.
Rafe Delaney: So we need the cameras gone.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: We need the cameras lying. Hang on. I know a lady.
[Picture: previous speaker]
He dials. A dry, amused woman's voice answers on the first ring.
Agent Coral Devine: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Howard. It's three in the morning. Either somebody died, or you want a favor.
Agent Howard Kimball: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Coral, my favorite film editor. I need Halcyon Pacific Tower's cameras to play yesterday's footage for twelve minutes.
Agent Coral Devine: ◉ ▂▄▆█ That's our main supplier's building. If anyone finds out Curtain did that, I lose my job and you lose your pension.
Agent Howard Kimball: ◉ ▂▄▆█ They've got forty people up there, Coral. They're going to clean the floor in the morning.
There's a long silence on the line.
Agent Coral Devine: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Twelve minutes. Starting when you say go. And Howard? Break something expensive for me.
Agent Howard Kimball: ◉ ▂▄▆█ You're a saint.
Agent Coral Devine: ◉ ▂▄▆█ I'm an editor. It's worse.
Rafe Delaney: Okay. Here's the rest. Maya goes in through the staff entrance as a Halcyon nurse. The floor has doctors, so it has nurses.
Maya Castillo: I don't have a Halcyon badge.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe holds one up. It's a white plastic badge on a Halcyon lanyard with a smiling woman's photo on it.
[Picture: nurse badge]
Rafe Delaney: There was a nurse at the all-night coffee cart outside the tower. She'll get a new one tomorrow. I left her a fifty.
[Picture: nurse badge]
Maya Castillo: That's the first thing you've ever stolen for me.
[Picture: nurse badge]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: It won't be the last.
[Picture: nurse badge]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Don't push it.
[Picture: nurse badge]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Lily kills the power on the floor. Echo makes a lot of Echoes. I open the doors. Teddy waits on the plaza with the engine running.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: How do you get up there? Forty floors, and the elevators are locked.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Same way I came down at the gala.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Teddy Ruiz: Oh no.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Oh yes.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Coral. Go.
Agent Coral Devine: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Twelve minutes. Clock's running.
High on the side of the tower, a window washer's platform hangs off the glass, fifty floors up. Rafe looks at it, and the platform starts to slide down the building toward him, all on its own.
Maya walks out of the staff entrance in a borrowed Halcyon coat, and hurries to him across the dark plaza.
Maya Castillo: The guard let me through. He didn't even look at the photo. He said "long night?" and I said "they're all long."
Rafe Delaney: Wait. Why are you out here? You were going up inside.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: The staff elevator only goes to thirty. I'm coming with you.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: On the platform? It's really high. I threw up last time.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Then don't throw up on me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
The window washer's platform rises up the blue glass tower in the dark, floor after floor, the city lights falling away below.
Rafe stands in the middle of it with one hand raised, holding it steady with his mind. Maya holds onto the rail in her Halcyon coat, looking down at the whole of Los Angeles.
Maya Castillo: Okay. This is a little romantic. Don't let it go to your head.
Rafe Delaney: Everything goes to my head. It's my best feature.
[Picture: previous speaker]
A window on the fortieth floor slides open from the inside, because Rafe asked the latch nicely. They climb through into the white hallway.
There are guards at both ends of it. And between the guards, three tall grey shapes with no faces, standing perfectly still.
[Picture: hollowman front]
[Picture: hollowman front]
[Picture: hollowman front]
Maya Castillo: Rafe. Those are the things. The faceless things.
Rafe Delaney: Hollowmen. Kimball says they used to be people. They used to be volunteers.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Oh God. From this floor.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Yeah. So we don't hurt them if we don't have to.
[Picture: previous speaker]
In the glass cells on both sides, people are waking up and looking at them. Nobody says a word.
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Lily and Echo are on thirty-nine. The freight elevator. Ready when you are.
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Lily. Lights out.
Every light on the fortieth floor dies at once, in a storm of blue sparks from every screen and panel on the walls.
In the dark, a dozen Echoes come running up out of the freight elevator in every direction, flickering, and the faceless guards chase after the wrong ones.
Lily stands in the elevator doorway in her grey hoodie with both hands out, crackling with light, and grinning.
Lily Castillo: That's for the white gown.
The guards are shouting. Somebody's flashlight goes by, chasing an Echo into a supply closet. Real Echo slips in behind Lily and gives Rafe a thumbs up.
Echo: They can't tell which one is me! Nobody can ever tell which one is me!
Rafe Delaney: That's amazing, Echo. Keep doing it.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe walks to the middle of the long white hallway. On both sides, the glass cells go on and on. Every door has its own heavy lock.
Maya Castillo: How many locks is that?
Rafe Delaney: Forty-two.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Can you do forty-two at once?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I've never done more than one. But I've never done a lot of stuff this week.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe stands in the dark in the middle of the lab floor, arms spread wide, his eyes blazing pale blue.
Every lock on every glass cell turns at the same time. Forty-two doors swing open down both walls, one long wave of glass.
And forty-two people step out into the hallway, blinking, afraid, free.
Maya Castillo: Everybody this way! To the freight elevator! Quiet and quick, come on!
She's good at this. She's done this a hundred times in a laundromat, and she does it now, calm and fast, and people follow her.
The emergency lights come on. Red. Everything turns red. A voice comes over the speakers in the ceiling, bright and friendly.
[Picture: red lights]
Brett Hollis: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Rafe, buddy! You came back! I'm so touched. I'm watching you on the backup cameras right now. The ones Curtain doesn't know about.
[Picture: red lights]
Rafe Delaney: Hollis!
[Picture: red lights]
Brett Hollis: ◉ ▂▄▆█ I'm locking the floor down. And I'm moving up the cleaning to right now. Cassidy, would you mind?
[Picture: red lights]
The freight elevator doors are closing, with Lily and the last group of people inside. Maya is still in the hallway, waving the last two volunteers in.
[Picture: red lights]
A hand in an armored glove grabs Maya by the arm and pulls her back.
[Picture: red lights]
Director Cassidy Vaughn: Good evening, Nurse.
[Picture: red lights]
Maya Castillo: Let go of me!
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Hey! Let her go!
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Cassidy Vaughn looks down the red hallway at him. There's a bandage on her cheek from the gorilla. Her chrome eyes don't blink.
[Picture: red lights]
Director Cassidy Vaughn: Mr. Delaney. Round two.
[Picture: red lights]
Chapter 10. A New Start
A New Start — Chapter 10
The red emergency lights turn the white floor the color of a warning. Cassidy Vaughn stands in the middle of the hallway with one hand on Maya's arm.
[Picture: red lights]
Director Cassidy Vaughn: Last time, you threw a desk at me. What have you got this time?
[Picture: red lights]
Rafe Delaney: Honestly? No idea. I'm kind of making this up as I go.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Rafe, go! Get to the elevator! Don't be stupid!
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Too late. I've been stupid all week. Let's finish strong.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
He throws a steel medical cart. Vaughn knocks it aside without looking. He throws a whole glass cell door. She catches it and snaps it in half.
[Picture: red lights]
She lets go of Maya and comes for him. Her first punch misses by an inch and goes through the wall.
[Picture: red lights]
Director Cassidy Vaughn: You're still fighting like a thief. Throwing things and running.
[Picture: red lights]
Rafe Delaney: Yeah, well, you're still fighting like a fridge!
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Her second punch doesn't miss. He hits the far wall hard, slides down it, and tastes blood.
[Picture: red lights]
Maya Castillo: Rafe!
[Picture: red lights]
Rafe sits there for a second, breathing. He looks at Vaughn's armor. Plates on her shoulders, plates on her chest, plates on her arms and legs. And every plate is held on with little steel bolts.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: bolts]
Hundreds of little steel bolts.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: bolts]
Rafe Delaney: Huh. Locks, watches, bolts. It's all just little stuff.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: bolts]
Director Cassidy Vaughn: What are you smiling about?
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: bolts]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I'm really, really good with little stuff.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: bolts]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe stands up, bleeding and grinning, and holds out one hand.
Every bolt in Cassidy Vaughn's armor turns at once. They spin out of their holes, hundreds of them, and hang in the air all around her like a cloud of steel rain.
Her armor plates fall off her one by one and clang on the floor. Under the armor, she's just a woman in a grey undersuit, looking down at herself.
Director Cassidy Vaughn: That's... not possible.
Without the armor, her grafts don't have power. She tries to take a step and her leg won't move. She sits down hard on the floor.
[Picture: red lights]
Director Cassidy Vaughn: Twenty years. I've never lost. Not once.
[Picture: red lights]
Rafe Delaney: You didn't lose to a guy. You lost to a spoon.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Director Cassidy Vaughn: They'll never let me leave the building now. They own every part of me. They never let me leave.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Hey. The door's open. It's been open for about four minutes. Nobody's gonna stop you.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Cassidy Vaughn looks at the open window, and the city, like she's never seen it before.
[Picture: red lights]
Brett Hollis: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Cassidy? Cassidy, get up! You're costing me a fortune!
[Picture: red lights]
There's a screech of metal from the freight elevator shaft. Then a bang. The lights on the elevator panel go from green to red.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: sparks]
Brett Hollis: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Oops. That's the cable. Sorry, Rafe. I did say we were cleaning the floor.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: sparks]
Maya Castillo: Lily's in there! Lily and eighteen people!
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: sparks]
The freight elevator car drops down the dark shaft, sparks pouring off its sides, the snapped cable whipping after it.
Rafe throws himself at the open elevator doors, and leans out into the shaft with both arms out, eyes blazing so bright the whole shaft lights up blue.
Thirty floors down, the elevator car stops dead in midair. Inside, eighteen people and a teenage girl in a grey hoodie float an inch off the floor, and then settle gently back down.
Rafe Delaney: Got you. I've got you. Nobody's falling.
He holds it. His nose is bleeding. His whole body is shaking. He holds it anyway, and slowly, very slowly, he lowers it all the way down to the lobby, floor after floor.
[Picture: red lights]
Teddy Ruiz: ◉ ▂▄▆█ The elevator just came down super slow! The doors are open! Everybody's out! Lily says hi!
[Picture: red lights]
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Tell her hi back.
[Picture: red lights]
He falls back onto the floor. Maya is on her knees beside him, holding his face in both her hands.
[Picture: red lights]
Maya Castillo: Are you okay? Talk to me. Say something.
[Picture: red lights]
Rafe Delaney: That was the biggest thing I've ever moved. I didn't even throw up.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: You're an idiot.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Yeah. But I'm your idiot?
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: We'll see.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Somebody coughs behind them. Gwen Harlow is standing in the doorway of a supply closet, her cream coat torn and her silver phone dead in her hand.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: character Gwen Harlow sad]
Gwen Harlow: He left me. Brett locked this floor with me on it. Four years I found people for him, and he left me here to get "cleaned" with everyone else.
[Picture: red lights]
Rafe Delaney: Yeah. He does that.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: There's one more copy of the list, Mr. Dooley. He keeps it on him. In his new watch. He's going to the roof. He has a helicopter.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: gold watch]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Why are you telling us?
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: gold watch]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Gwen Harlow: Because you came back for strangers. And I want to see his face.
[Picture: red lights]
[Picture: gold watch]
[Picture: previous speaker]
The roof of Halcyon Pacific Tower is windy and dark. A sleek black helicopter sits on the pad with its rotors already spinning. Brett Hollis is running for it with a briefcase.
Rafe Delaney: Hey, buddy! Leaving so soon? Great party!
Brett Hollis: Go! Go, go, take off! Take off now!
[Picture: previous speaker]
The helicopter's engine screams. Its rotors spin faster and faster. It doesn't leave the ground.
The black helicopter strains against the helipad, rotors screaming, and it can't lift off. Something is holding it down.
Rafe stands in the rotor wind with one hand raised, his suede jacket whipping around him, perfectly calm.
And in the cockpit, the clasp of Brett Hollis's shiny new watch opens all by itself. The watch floats off his wrist, out the open door, across the whole helipad, and lands in Rafe's other hand.
Rafe Delaney: That's two for two, buddy.
Search lights sweep over the roof. Three helicopters in dark olive come up over the edge of the tower, and people in armor jump down onto the helipad. At the front, with her riot shield, is Captain Marlene Voss. Behind her, holding a coffee, is Kimball.
Captain Marlene Voss: SABLE Response! Everybody on the ground! Hollis, that means you, too!
Brett Hollis: Captain! Thank God. This man is a criminal, he broke into my building...
[Picture: previous speaker]
Captain Marlene Voss: Save it. Curtain's watching every camera you've got, Brett. Including the backup ones.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: Sorry I'm late, Mr. Dooley. Traffic.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: You're always one minute late, Kimball.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: Yeah. And now the bosses want everybody. Every person off that floor. Every Enhanced person in this building gets enlisted, or gets hunted. That's the rule.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: No. No way. They're not trading one cage for another.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Kimball. How bad do your bosses want me?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: You just held an elevator full of people with one hand and a helicopter with the other. They want you really, really bad.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Then here's the deal. I join. I'm yours. Badge, handler, the whole thing. And in return, every copy of that list gets burned. Every name. Every person off that floor goes free, and SABLE never goes looking for them.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Howard Kimball: They'll never agree to that.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe doesn't let go of the helicopter. He lifts it, a little, a foot off the helipad, with Brett Hollis still inside it screaming.
Rafe Delaney: Ask them nicely.
Kimball looks at the helicopter. He looks at Voss. Voss shrugs. Kimball takes out his phone.
Agent Howard Kimball: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Hi, yes. It's Kimball. I'm gonna need to talk to somebody important.
Four days later. Under an old film archive in Hollywood, behind a vault full of film reels, there's a room full of screens that most of Los Angeles doesn't know exists.
On every screen, the news is running the same story. A gas leak at a tower on the west side. Everyone evacuated safely. Halcyon's stock is down eleven percent.
[Picture: news phone]
Agent Coral Devine: Gas leak. Classic. I wrote that one in eight minutes. I'm very proud of it.
[Picture: news phone]
Rafe Delaney: It's a good one. I've been in a gas leak. Very realistic.
[Picture: news phone]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Coral Devine hands him a small black leather wallet. Inside, there's a badge and an ID card with his photo on it. The name on it says Rafe Delaney.
[Picture: sable badge]
Rafe Delaney: You used Rafe.
[Picture: sable badge]
Agent Coral Devine: Kimball said you'd whine if we used the other one.
[Picture: sable badge]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Kimball's a good man.
[Picture: sable badge]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Agent Coral Devine: He's a sweet man who's always late. Your rank test is waiting for you. Try not to break the building.
[Picture: previous speaker]
At the far end of the room, a tall woman with a long silver braid is sitting on a steel desk. A cup of tea floats beside her, all by itself.
[Picture: teacup]
Yeva Morozova: You're Delaney. The one with the watches.
Rafe Delaney: And you're the one with the building. In Moscow. Kimball told me.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Yeva Morozova: Kimball tells everyone. Lift something for me. Anything you like.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe looks around. There are twenty tall steel shelves full of film reels along the wall. He lifts all twenty of them at once, a foot off the floor, and puts them down without spilling a single reel.
Yeva Morozova: Hm. A.
[Picture: rank a]
Rafe Delaney: Is that good? Is A good?
[Picture: rank a]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Yeva Morozova: For now. When I was your age, I was a B. I learned on spoons too, Delaney. Everybody learns on spoons.
[Picture: rank a]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Everybody learns on spoons. I love that.
[Picture: rank a]
[Picture: previous speaker]
A sunny morning. The same little park, the same bench, the same sprinklers. But it's warm now, and there are kids on the grass.
Maya is sitting on the bench in her denim jacket, with her red hair tie around her wrist. She doesn't look up when he sits down next to her.
[Picture: hair tie]
Maya Castillo: So you're one of them now. The people I hide from.
[Picture: hair tie]
Rafe Delaney: Yeah. I'm one of them now.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Kimball says the list is gone. Every copy. Echo's got a new name and a job at a bakery. Lily's not on any list anywhere. For the first time in five years.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: That's the whole point.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: You gave up everything for that. Your beach. Your hammock. The whole thing.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: I couldn't surf anyway. I tried once. It was bad.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Still wish you could fly?
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Nah. Flying's overrated. You can't pick a lock with flying.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya finally turns and looks at him. She's smiling, just a little.
Maya Castillo: Hi. I'm Maya Castillo. That's my real name. Who are you?
He laughs. He holds out his hand, like they're meeting for the first time.
Rafe Delaney: Ralph Dooley. Nice to meet you.
Maya Castillo: Ralph. I'm keeping it. I'm calling you Ralph forever.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe Delaney: Please don't.
[Picture: previous speaker]
Maya Castillo: Forever, Ralph.
[Picture: previous speaker]
She kisses him. A hundred jacaranda petals rise up off the grass around the bench, and neither of them notices.
[Picture: petals]
Out on the street, a beige minivan with a brand new side door honks its horn three times. A girl in a grey hoodie leans out of the window.
[Picture: big linda]
Lily Castillo: Spoon! Get a room! We're gonna be late for pancakes!
[Picture: big linda]
Teddy Ruiz: Big Linda's so happy for you guys! She's crying! That's just the radiator, but still!
[Picture: big linda]
[Picture: previous speaker]
Rafe's phone buzzes in his pocket. It's Kimball.
Agent Howard Kimball: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Morning, Agent Delaney. Hope I'm not interrupting. Your first assignment just came in. Something in the hills is eating fire trucks.
Rafe Delaney: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Right now? I'm on a date, Kimball.
Agent Howard Kimball: ◉ ▂▄▆█ I'll be there in an hour. So, knowing me, an hour and one minute.
Rafe looks at Maya. Maya rolls her eyes, and pushes him off the bench.
Maya Castillo: Go. Go be a hero, Ralph. Pancakes are at nine.
The silver quarter floats up over his knuckles, and spins, and catches the sun.
[Picture: quarter]
Rafe Delaney: Yeah. Okay. I'm in.
[Picture: quarter]