The Miranda Contract

You are the Small Gods,

walking amongst us.

Also by Ben Langdon

The Miranda Contract

This Mutant Life (editor)

This Mutant Life: Bad Company (editor)

THE MIRANDA CONTRACT

BOOK ONE OF THE SMALL GODS

BEN LANGDON

KALAMITY
PRESS

To grandpa who was not evil and not mad, but the greatest of role models and the kindest of men.

To Jack, Eliza and Luca,
my own heroes-in-training.

Prologue

Melbourne, five years before

D
an fumbled with
his gloves inside the shattered remains of the bookshop. He stretched them off his fingers with a snapping sound, trying not to get the blood on his bare skin. He let them drop to the ground while he rested against the wall of paperbacks. His chest heaved, the tightness threatening to cut off his breathing altogether.

He couldn’t shake the ringing in his ears. The explosion had knocked them all to the ground, flattened them like pins in a bowling alley. But it wasn’t a game, it wasn’t pretend.

There had been so much blood.

Back in the street he could hear the sirens cutting through the ringing sensation in his ears. Police were moving through the devastation, looking for survivors, hunting the killers. And his mask was torn, revealing his face, speckled with crimson blood which was not his own.

Dan Galkin was now a killer. He was twelve years old, but as he looked down at his chest, rising and falling, he saw the torn costume and the deep gash across his belly. And he knew he was dead meat. He forced his eyes shut and wiped his dirty hand across his forehead, pushing back his dark blonde hair.

“Dead meat,” he repeated audibly and started to slide down the wall.

When he hit the hardness of the floor it grounded him, somehow making everything more solid, more real. Short bursts of lightning streaked across his vision, and electricity popped from his skin and fizzed into the open air, especially around his wound. The uncontrollable discharge of energy had been happening most of the morning and he could sense it slowing, fading. The power was leaving him. Maybe he was dying, he didn’t have a clue, but the numbness was welcome. Masking pain was preferable now.

He didn’t know where the others were. He had seen Bree vanish into dust as the shockwave knocked him into the bookshop. The Small Gods had faltered, revealed as the children they were in a suddenly ruthless, adult world. Dan squeezed his eyes harder. The blue lights exploded into white, bringing back the pain. He clutched frantically to return to the numbness, but it was gone.

He replayed the explosion in his mind, the way his father’s body seemed to expand like a balloon before it ruptured into the flames which swept so terribly through the public square.

And his father was dead now; he had to be. And if he wasn’t, Dan really didn’t want to think about the possibility. Gone, even though he’d only just come back into Dan’s life. It seemed like such a waste of time, the awkward reunion and now the sudden immolation. It might have been better if his father had never walked through the kitchen door, back into Dan’s life. His sheepish grin, crooked glasses and messy beard were memories now, nothing more than road-kill.

Dead meat.

“You thought you could run?” a voice boomed at him through the open window of the shop.

Dan felt pressure against his body, like the air was heating up and ready for a second explosion. He opened his eyes, his breathing shifting further into panic.

Standing with one boot firmly planted in the bookshop’s window display was a man clad in gold and white, exuding authority and, more importantly, removing any hope of escaping this hell. The man pulled himself through what was left of the window, transforming it into heated slag as he passed. It was Castus, one of the Celestial Knights. Dark haired, but with the glowing eyes of a sun, Castus wielded the strength to topple buildings, the invulnerability to survive a free-fall to Earth from near orbit, and the obvious rage to crush the body of a scared twelve year old without a second thought.

Castus moved closer, the heat rolling off his body, curling the books scattered on the floor and still on the shelves. Dan could see the man’s face change. Rage was there still, pushing against him as a corona of churning heat, but something else as well, something darker and broken. It was like the man had lost something, like he’d lost a part of himself. And now he wanted someone to pay.

“
Tha mou kaneis t atria, dyo
…”

The voice was low. Dan scrambled to his knees and then up, grabbing for the crumbling books to steady himself as his feet slipped from under him.

“What?”

Castus reached out and grabbed Dan’s neck, cutting off his words, the heat burning into his bare skin. The man shoved Dan back up the shelves, ramming his head into each new ledge until he started to kick out at the air, unable to touch the floor. Castus was well over six feet tall, maybe even pushing seven, Dan thought, horrified. His own hands clawed at Castus’ grip, strands of pathetic blue lightning running harmlessly down the man’s arm.

Dan couldn’t breathe. The heat marked his skin, blisters forming around the hold. He managed a cough, but that only made Castus tighten his hand, and lean in closer.

“You will meet your creator,” the hero whispered, his olive skin so very close to Dan’s clammy cheek. “No escape this time.”

But instead of death, a blast of gritty sand suddenly filled the shop, rushing in from outside and then packing together in such a concentrated burst that Dan knew it must have been Bree. He felt the grip around his neck fade. In fact he felt his entire body fade away, pushed back into the shelves and then impossibly through the wall. He became part of the swirling sandstorm, transformed and protected.

Dan clutched for her but his body was gone and he held his breath as the sand blasted its way through shop after shop until the darkness of the interiors was replaced by the brightness of the day outside. His body reformed, piece by piece, and Dan looked out to the glowing ruins of the square. Everything was twisted away from the epicenter of his father’s explosion: a tram buckled on its side; slow-moving people, hobbling and smeared black like beggars; the acrid smells from the fires reaching across to him where he stood with Bree.

“What’d we do?” he asked.

Bree’s face was covered with a black scarf, leaving only her eyes visible. She watched him, taking him in, checking to see if he was injured. Dan reflexively touched the gash in his belly again.

“You have to run,” she said.

“What?”

Her eyes flickered with annoyance but then softened just as quickly. She looked down the strip of broken shops.

“If you stay, you go to prison, Dan,” she said. “It’s that simple.”

Bree was like Dan, a kid who could do things that ordinary kids couldn’t, or shouldn’t, do. While Dan could muster up sparks of lightning and command electrical appliances on a good day, Bree could dissolve herself into granules of sand and then reform herself at will. Under the tutelage of Dan’s grandfather, Bree learned how to change other things too, like her clothes, furniture, or even other people. She was the best of them all, the teacher’s pet, and Dan knew she had just saved his life.

And then she was gone. Like dust.

He stumbled into the square, tossing his mask to the ground as he scanned the area for anyone he knew. There were bodies in places but he didn’t stop to look closer. They were obviously shoppers; their torn and burned everyday clothes marked them as bystanders. His friends were wearing costumes, playing the roles they’d been given by his grandfather. They had been promised a fun day out, a chance to strut their powers in public and maybe even become famous. He called them the Small Gods.

His grandfather’s words still echoed in his mind, but the promises were losing their innocence as he stumbled through the haze. Sirens seemed to surround him on all sides but he couldn’t work out where the police were. His hand against his belly, pressing as hard as he could, Dan made his way towards the tram. The lightning in his body managed to stem the flow of blood and it did feel a bit better, but even Dan knew he’d need a hospital soon.

Behind him, columns of concrete exploded outward. Chunks scattered past him, knocking his legs and skittering ahead of him. He kept running, pushing himself, leaping over the larger chunks and looking ahead for the policemen. He could see a group of them at the end of the square, huddled cautiously near a burning car. There were helicopters in the sky too, but they were all too far away. Behind him, Castus stormed out into the open. The air was still hazy, almost grainy with the after-effects of the explosion. Part of Dan hated to think about the possibility of the air being polluted with the atoms of his exploded father, but it was something he just couldn’t keep out of his mind.

A wave of heat slammed into his back as he ran, smashing him to the ground face first and rupturing his belly wound again. He pulled himself forward, reaching out for the twisted metal of a bench, knowing that Castus was capable of unleashing more than a concussive heat wave. Last year, Dan had watched a television report featuring Castus and the other Knights laying waste to an entire fortress somewhere in northern Africa. Now he knew Castus was playing a game. The darkness he’d seen in the hero’s face wanted something more than an arrest. Fear plagued Dan’s body and he clutched for the sundered bench, not wanting to be found helpless and alone out in the square. His nose was bleeding, gushing out, but he couldn’t stop it. He pulled himself along the bench, catching sight of Castus as he stepped closer, glowing so white it hurt to look.

The singing voice emerged from the general ringing in his ears, revealing itself gently at first, even as his heart beat faster and faster. When he did finally recognize it, the humming and the rising and falling tune, his body relaxed. He took a breath. A simple breath. He unclenched his fists and let the song wash over him.

Castus kept walking, closing the gap.

Dan followed the song with his mind, smiling now that he could sense it so close. And there it was, just a little further past the broken bench. He propped himself up and looked away from Castus and towards the source. He saw the ruptured electricity box and instantly felt his awareness shoot off in a million directions as he traced the pathways of electricity – scattering through the scorched high-rises lining the square, further afield into the traffic lights and surveillance systems of the city, and at the outermost points he felt himself drift into the homes of families: nice, normal families who had, as yet, no knowledge of the disaster which had befallen their city.

But this was no time for sightseeing. Dan pulled at the myriad lines of power; he tugged them back into himself, drawing them from their mundane duties so that he could protect himself from the sun god bearing down on him. Traffic lights were extinguished, whole computer networks were shut down, and the electricity burst through the damaged box into the open air, arcing upward like an inverted lightning bolt. Dan called it all into him, never before having dared to play with so much power.

He turned to Castus, so close now.

Instead of the approaching heat, all Dan could feel was a coolness spreading through his body. He looked down at himself, floating a little above the ground, his body blue-white and infused with the power of the city.

He managed a smile.

Nothing hurt anymore. His wounds were swallowed up in the light, blinded out of existence, stitched back together as his entire body moved from a tangible state to something more electric.

He was evolving.

This was what it was all about, he thought. This was what it felt like being a god.

Chapter 1

Dan

Melbourne, Present day

E
very time the
doors slid back, Dan Galkin looked up expecting to see his mother, but all he got was a wintery blast of June air and the half-surprised look of customers stumbling into the shop. He waited for their orders, smiled in the right places, and took the money. The guys in the back were having all the fun, as usual; listening to music while they slipped burgers into microwaves, cracking jokes and exchanging tales at the deep fryer. And Dan was stuck at the front of shop, exposed to the public and their appetites – the ‘smile until you die’ job – and because he was late to work, again, he didn’t know whether the others had rigged the roster or whether the world just hated him.

And then there was the thing with his mother. She’d called him that morning, all half-construed, panicked sentences and pauses that moved uncomfortably into one-sided small talk. She hadn’t spoken to him in three years and Dan hated having to forget all of that to fill the gaps in their phone conversation. He hated her, or he wanted to. Then she said she would come to the city and see him, and he didn’t know whether it was just the easiest thing to say at the time, or whether she did plan to track him down to Birdie’s and play the role of attentive mother over a plate of spicy chicken and a coke.

She hadn’t wished him a happy birthday, probably hadn’t remembered. Seventeen years old wasn’t really an important one, he figured. Nothing to phone home about. Apparently.

There was a tapping at the front doors, followed by a gentle shuddering as the new kid tried to jimmy them open. He’d locked himself out of the shop again, flipping the automatic sensors off as he sprayed and cleaned the glass panels on the outside. He’d managed to get himself locked out three times in the past week which wasn’t exactly a glowing recommendation. Sure, the criteria for working at Birdie’s Chicken and Pizza wasn’t too extensive, but the new kid seemed hopeless. Dan wanted to tell him to just walk away, to hang up the little cap, slide back the name badge and go home. It wasn’t too late for him. He was barely fifteen, went to the local school, had a future in some other non-fast food industry. But the kid gave him an apologetic shrug from behind the glass and Dan shook his head, secretly channeling the faintest of surges through the air and into the electronic doors which leapt back into life, parting and allowing the kid inside.

Dan wasn’t like any other fast food service employee. He was uberhuman, born with a twist to his genetic code giving him the potential to develop strange and seemingly impossible gifts. In his case, Dan discovered in his eleventh year that he could change the channels on his television without using the remote. This ability grew over time so that he could eventually ‘hear’ the electrical world around him and in most cases he could exert some control over it.

But it wasn’t like anyone knew that Dan could tell the appliances what to do, or command the doors to open and close at will. In the past he had been a bit more forthcoming, but it never ended well. People were all very understanding and accepting at first, but eventually the charade crumbled and people realized he was just a freak, albeit a useful freak. Demands were made; little things like coaxing the slot machines or just topping up bank accounts until the next pay day. Friends dropped away when the favors ended.

There were lots of other ubers though, spread across the world doing all sorts of useful things. Websites tracked their deeds, bloggers and social commentators ranked and re-ranked them, and all the while, life sort of went to crap for Dan. He was working at a place that couldn’t seem to decide whether it was a pizza shop or a fried and spicy chicken place. He dropped out of school a year before, somewhere between Year 11 and 12, and was semi-squatting in an apartment with people he didn’t even really know.

“Thanks, man,” the new kid said, panting slightly as he stashed the cleaning stuff in the cupboard and tied on a new apron. “Won’t happen again.”

Dan nodded. Not convinced.

Out in the back someone laughed at a joke and he could hear the delivery drivers arriving for the afternoon debriefing with the day manager. It was depressing, but Dan wondered whether one day he might make it as a manager. At least there was the possibility of incentive payments in management rather than minimum tips doing deliveries or the base level wage he scored at the counter.

Customers floated in, but Dan ignored them to let the new kid practice his ‘smile while slowly dying inside’ skills. He made himself look busy by fiddling with the drink machine, hoping the hours would suddenly melt away like the slushed ice pouring out over his hands. Instead, his phone chirped twice, vibrating in his pocket, and calling him away from sorting through the syrup dispenser. He wiped his hands dry on his apron and pulled the phone out, but it wasn’t ringing. He flipped it closed again and felt the vibrations still coming from his pocket.

It was his other phone, the small black one. It wasn’t the ‘happy phone’, that was for sure. He looked at the screen and read the caller ID: Owens. The message was simple: Office midnight.

Dan wondered whether he should just delete it.

“Dan?” the new kid nudged him and he quickly slipped the phone back into his pocket, wiping his hands again on his apron. “You’ve got a … a customer,” the new kid said, looking confused.

The woman wasn’t a customer. She wore a stretchy black and red striped long sleeve top which almost covered her hands, and a straw hat and shades which almost covered her face. After nodding in a vague way, she turned and found a seat at one of the booths commonly used by school girls to discuss the day’s events and complain about their friends and family. Dan wondered whether he could sneak out the back and disappear into the streets, but the new kid blocked his way, the confused smile still playing on his face.

“Man, she’s got like…” he said softly, looking down at his hands with wide eyes. “You think she’s here for the Human Tour?”

“What?” Dan pulled his eyes away from the woman.

“Miranda Brody’s concert, you know? The Human Tour.”

He moved past the kid and walked towards the booth, noticing how she hadn’t really changed much in the years he’d been in the city. Her hair was a little drier than usual, and her arms were bony, but he couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t thin and brittle. Handle with care, they always used to say.

Dan sat down but kept his hands in his lap.

“I didn’t think you were really coming,” he said.

She smiled, awkwardly, and looked down at her hands, rubbing each finger, easing the aches. The flecked blue skin was dry, like her wiry hair and chipped nails. When she noticed Dan watching her, she pulled her sleeves even longer and cupped the hands away out of sight. Her body seemed to shrink from the harsh lights, the straw hat giving her some refuge from stares and open-mouthed looks. Over at the counter, the new kid took orders in between glances at the freakish blue-skinned woman.

“I’m your mother,” she said in a raspy voice. “Of course I would come.”

“Seriously?” Dan said.

She pulled her hands out of sight into her own lap, her shoulders dropping. She turned her head and looked out of the window, which gave Dan a glimpse of her profile. Hawkish nose, old tortoise-shell shades, cracked lips.

“It’s been…” she stalled.

“Three years,” Dan finished for her.

“Difficult,” she said, not looking back. “When your … father died, I … well, I didn’t cope very well, Danny.”

She hadn’t coped very well her entire life. At sixteen her skin blistered and peeled, revealing a bluish hue underneath that never washed away no matter how hard she scrubbed, no matter how many lotions she applied. Dan’s father, the less than impressive Nico, knocked her up in the first few weeks of courting and then managed to get himself arrested for a half-assed bank robbery. So, no, Theresa Galkin hadn’t coped very well at all with life.

“I guess not,” Dan said.

“You are doing well,” she said softly. He couldn’t tell whether it was a question or an opinion. He pulled off his Birdie’s cap and tossed it on the table. His mother’s head turned back from the window and looked at the cap.

“I’m not dead, I guess,” he said.

She swallowed, her neck bird-like as she tried to compose herself.

“It’s been difficult,” she said again, rehearsing her lines.

A group of school kids took up a second booth near Dan and he heard them chattering about their lives, about music and boys and girls and homework and holidays.

“Your grandfather is back,” she said.

Dan watched her lips. They were pressed tightly together, not quite hiding the hate she must have been tasting.

His grandfather had returned. From the dead.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t believe what she said. People like his grandfather never really took death seriously. Dan just didn’t know how he felt about the development. Five years before, his grandfather had been everything to him. He had been the stand-in father when the real one was locked in prison. He had been the only calm influence the night Dan’s body started sucking up all the electricity in the house. He had become the confidant, the teacher. And eventually the betrayer.

“Great,” Dan said, grabbing his cap and standing up. “Can’t wait for the happy reunion.”

He walked back to the counter, blinking hard against the flashes of light in his eyes. Sometimes when he was stressed, the electrical charges his body generated would try to burst out of him, to unleash themselves on the world and cause havoc and destruction. Sometimes his body wanted to become the weapon his grandfather trained him for. But Dan didn’t have to do what anyone said anymore. He wasn’t a pawn in the old man’s game; it had already been played out. And Dan had lost.

“Next?” he asked, a little too fiercely, as he checked into the console next to the new kid.

A couple slipped into line and started to discuss the menu. Dan felt the console humming beneath his fingertips. He followed the couple’s discussion, bringing up their orders, revising them, adding all sorts of extras as they casually changed their minds. His fingers didn’t move but the orders entered directly from minuscule surges from his mind.

“Take your time,” Dan said, forcing a smile. They didn’t even hear him.

And suddenly Dan’s mother was at the counter again, her bony blue fingers splayed against the shiny white plastic surface. She wasn’t tall, but she leaned across so that she was directly in Dan’s space. Her eyes were bare now, the shades discarded. The whites were yellowish, bloodshot.

“You have a choice,” she hissed. Her breath was stale. How long had she been locked up inside, he wondered; his thoughts leaving the console and harking back to when he lived with her in the beach house. “You don’t have to live like me.”

She turned on the young couple, whipping her hat off and tossing it away to her right. She leered at them, her frizzy dead hair and her flaky blue face too much to ignore. In a second she swept her head towards the school kids and snarled at them, her dark blue lips pulled back to reveal the jagged yellow teeth. She played the wicked witch, the crazy blue skinned woman, the insane uberhuman freak.

Dan stepped back, away from the whirling confrontation. The people in lines scuttled to each side and his mother swayed a little more before retreating to the sliding doors. She looked back at him, teeth still bared, but there was sadness there in her eyes. She pointed a finger at him.

“You have been chosen,” she said. “You can be more… so much more.”

And then she was gone, pushing through the automatic doors when they didn’t open quickly enough, and out into the street.

“Man,” the new kid said. “That is weird shit.”

Dan just shrugged.

Customers shook themselves back into line and some of the workers from out the back came into the front wondering what the crazy customer had done. The manager was on a cigarette break, but later she would curse herself for missing the action. Not much exciting ever happened at Birdie’s.