Ripple Effect

Chapter Eight: ...gone nuclear.

Stevie

4:01 PM

Rivulets of rain raced down the window panes in Russell Jackson's office, accompanied by the regular gush and splurge as the gutters overflowed and spewed their contents in a stream against the glass. Every thirty seconds or so, Stevie took a sip from the bottle of water, the declining volume a measure of time passing: how long since she had found out, how long until she would know more. Maybe if she gulped the bottle down, the news would come quicker and then—one way or the other—she would know. But the problem wasn't knowing: it was how to deal with what she knew.

When Jason was little, he used to think that their mother had superpowers—and not just spy-craft, but real, physics-defying superpowers. At the time, Stevie had teased her baby brother, had thought him so innocent and gullible, but now—in her own way—she was guilty of holding such beliefs too, only she didn't have the excuse of being six years old.

When her mother had first taken the job as secretary of state, intrusive thoughts had plagued her. At night, she would lie awake and stare at the ceiling in her dorm and play out all the ways someone might harm her mother. During the day, she would sit in lectures and imagine where she would be when the Secret Service agents arrived and how they would tell her that her mother had been injured, that her mother had died. She had rehearsed her emotions a thousand times, had lived through them more than once too—the coup in Iran, that first panic attack. But then something happened—her mother survived—and the thoughts subsided, because again and again her mother survived. And over time, even when doubt niggled at her, she knew more than anything, that her mother would survive. So yes, her mother did have superpowers, because despite everything, she pulled through, she grew stronger, she survived.

Only in all those thoughts, she never imagined that she would find out like this, being pulled aside one day whilst working as an intern for the White House Chief of Staff. A lot had changed since then, she had changed too, yet surely there was one thing that would always remain the same.

"She has to survive."

The words fell from her lips with such certainty, but her sips from the plastic bottle slowed to once a minute—to preserve the volume of water, to protect the sanctity of that limbo.

At the creak of the door behind her, Stevie rose up from the armchair. One hand clung to the back of the cushion, her fingernails buried in the supple leather, whilst the other clutched the water bottle until the plastic crackled.

"This had better be good." Alison dumped her cerise canvas tote down onto the table in the middle of the room. "I was in the middle of Construction when those guys stormed in and practically dragged me away." She rolled her eyes, and dug through the bag. "It was so embarrassing."

"We've probably just gone nuclear again." Jason chucked his backpack down at the foot of one of the armchairs in the corner, next to the grandfather clock. He knelt down beside it and rooted through the clutter of workbooks and crumpled sheets of paper.

"If we'd gone nuclear, we'd be dead by now." Alison fished out her headphones and a sketchpad, and then pulled up a seat at the table. She hung the headphones around her neck and scrolled down the screen of her iPod.

Jason shot her a look over his shoulder. "Uh, not with the de-alerting."

Alison swivelled around in her seat and arched her eyebrows at him. "So, you really think that Russia are loading up their ICBMs and rather than taking us to some kind of nuclear bunker, they thought it best to leave us in Russell Jackson's office?"

Jason shrugged. "Well, maybe they're not using ICBMs, maybe they're using submarines to annihilate the west coast." He unearthed a half-eaten sandwich from the bottom of his bag, and then sank down into one of the cerulean armchairs and propped his feet up on the coffee table.

Alison snorted. "What? You think they mixed up Washington state and Washington DC?"

"Guys?" Stevie said.

But neither Alison nor Jason so much as blinked at her.

"The whole world doesn't revolve around DC." Jason spoke through a mouthful of sandwich.

"Guys?" Stevie tried again, a little louder this time.

Alison gave another eye roll, emphasised by the heavy frame of her eyeliner. "Uh, it kinda does." She turned her back on Jason and continued to scroll down the screen of her iPod.

Jason bunched the clingfilm from his sandwich into a tight ball and lobbed it at Alison. It hit her in the back of the head, causing her to flinch, and he let out a burst of laughter.

Alison jumped up from her chair and stormed towards Jason. "You're so dead."

Jason grabbed his backpack and shielded himself with it as Alison pummelled him. But each blow missed, and Jason's grin only widened. "Well, someone's definitely gone nuclear."

"Right, that's it."

"Guys," Stevie shouted.

Jason looked up, Alison spun around, and in unison, they shouted back, "What?"

"Mom collapsed," Stevie said. "She's in hospital, and Russell said they don't know what happened to her or if she's even alive."

Alison's fists fell to her sides, Jason's backpack to the floor, and the silence that rushed in felt like a nuclear winter.