Hydropower Chapter 5
Cairo, Scott, and Annabel get their powers
The story so far on Hydropower: After a freak storm, Evie and Ash found out that she can control time and he can read minds, and Jasmine has become invisible.
Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter
Chapter 5
Cairo was in a bad mood.
Maybe it was the hangover. Maybe it was the fact that he appeared to have run out of drugs, of any and all kinds, so there was nothing to patch over the hangover. Maybe it was just the fact that the party was over, and he was alone again in the big house on the cliff.
Because, really, the parties and the drugs and the alcohol were all just there to make up for the fact that he was always alone in the big house on the cliff.
He sighed and ran a hand backward through his short-cropped hair, looking at himself in the mirror. His eyes were slightly bloodshot, but other than that, he was looking good.
Should he hire a butler? Was that what rich orphans did, hire a fucking butler to stop the mansion from being so empty? Did he need an Alfred to his Bruce Wayne?
Cairo sighed and rooted around beside the bed for a clean shirt, sniff-testing it and deciding it was good to go. He had no plans to see anyone today, anyway. Today was a day for wallowing.
Yesterday’s storm had passed. Maybe he would spend some time in his pool.
He picked up his phone from the charger, noting the cracked screen – he’d probably dropped it when he was heading to bed last night; he would get it replaced tomorrow – and saw a red voicemail notification. He played it as he strolled back through the house, taking in the neatness of the living spaces: the maid had already been and gone before he’d even woken up.
“This is a message for Cairo Willis-Charleston,” the robotic voice preserved in the recording rasped out. “Your prescription is available for pick-up at your nominated pharmacy. Please collect it within no fewer than seven days.”
Cairo checked the date on the screen. Was it already another month? Time flew when you were having fun, he supposed. He’d send someone out to get it on Monday – maybe the maid.
No, wait – it was Monday. Tuesday, then.
He sniffed, pressing both sides of his nose. No damage, no nosebleed. People kept telling him he was going to start feeling it eventually, but he wasn’t suffering yet. Best to keep the party going for as long as possible.
He found a pair of sunglasses and a bucket hat discarded on the kitchen island and grabbed them, putting them on as he reached for the door to the back yard. Not that it was really a yard – the grounds included the pool, pool house, tennis court, manicured lawn that cost a fortune in a weekly groundskeeper visit, his father’s workshop, a paved walk overlooking the sea view, and his mother’s flowerbeds. He should have ripped those up a long time ago, because they cost a lot to maintain and he hated bees, but he hadn’t had the heart.
He pulled the door handle, putting the full force of his grumpiness into wrenching it open so that he could at least lounge in the heated pool and forget about everything else today –
And stopped, because that horrible crunching sound had been the door coming off its hinges, and now he was holding it in one hand.
“What the fuck?” Cairo said out loud.
Slowly, carefully, as if it was going to break his wrist if he did it wrong, he set the door down on the ground.
But the funny thing was, it didn’t even feel heavy.
Cairo looked at the door and then the frame, stepping closer to examine the hinges he’d managed to tear out of the wood. They’d been bolted in firmly – he could see that by the way the wood was torn, the way it didn’t look like one of them had just slipped out of place.
He looked out at the pool, back around at the kitchen behind him. Searching for something, though he couldn’t say what.
“What the fuck,” he said again, quietly and to himself this time, a murmur rather than a shout.
Had he done that? Really? Had that just happened, or was he still high from last night?
He walked away a short distance, then came back. The door was still on the floor.
Cairo thought for a second and then lifted it, leaning it against the broken frame. He was going to have to get someone out to fix that, too, but it wasn’t even hard to move it around. He wasn’t straining, wasn’t breaking a sweat. He could do it with one hand.
He looked outside thoughtfully for a minute, at the pool house, and then began walking decisively in that direction.
He kept a set of weights in there – a small, private gym that he used to keep in shape for his Grams and Tock followers. He strode over to them without stopping, bent, braced himself –
And picked up the heaviest weight in one hand, without pause, without effort. It swung above his head with unexpected lightness, momentum carrying it far higher than he had intended.
Was someone playing a prank on him, maybe? He dropped it on the ground, careful to avoid his feet, and the heavy double thud the drop and bounce made convinced him otherwise. The weights were still heavy.
It was him who was different.
Cairo caught sight of himself in the mirrored wall opposite and flexed one of his biceps. It didn’t exactly look any bigger than it had yesterday, but it was still impressive.
Something had happened.
He remembered that weird moment last night, the flash of lightning in the sky and the way the water had boiled. He’d put it down to being high at the time, put it down to a drunk memory this morning, but… it had been real, hadn’t it?
Something had happened last night, and he was strong – really strong. Stronger than he could imagine.
A grin spread across his face.
His followers were going to love this.
Annabel looked at herself in the mirror, using a finger to carefully flick up her eyelashes into a more appealing configuration and then leaning back to assess the overall effect.
Last night had been quite a revelation, but today, there was more to do.
She flounced her hair over her shoulder one more time, enjoying the gloss and shine of her blonde locks, then turned and strode right out of the ladies’ room and into the studio. The photographer had arrived, and his gaze swung to her as if magnetized – as if he knew by instinct she was there for him.
“You must be Annabel!” he exclaimed, rushing towards her with a hand held out for a limp-wristed handshake that left her wanting to wipe her palm on her dress. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
A gracious smile curved her gorgeous mouth. She knew. She’d waited in the bathroom on purpose, making herself just a touch late, enough to make them crave her and not enough to lose the job. “I’m delighted to meet you,” she said, a slight giggle following her words to endear herself to him even more. “I hear we’re shooting the spring line today?”
“Right,” he said, flashing her a smile, no doubt pleased that she was all business – even if a little disappointed she wouldn’t stop and flirt with him a little more overtly. “Come over here. We have a whole line of minidresses and skirts that are going to look divine on those long legs of yours.”
Annabel accepted the compliment with another careless giggle, letting it flow off her as so many others would during the course of the shoot. They had a job to do, after all, and if she was to stop and respond to every nice thing someone said to her, it would take all day.
“This is Jade,” the photographer said, pointing towards another leggy model – a brunette. Annabel frowned slightly. She had no intention of sharing the spotlight with anyone, and she definitely didn’t want to work with Jade; the girl had been a bitch with a capital B the last time their paths had crossed.
Now was as good a time as any to test it out.
“On reflection, everyone feels this photoshoot would be better with just one model,” Annabel said, concentrating on the words, on the echoey feeling they made inside her head when everything was working properly. “Annabel can model the clothes on her own.”
There was a pause, a shift in the room.
“You know,” the photographer said slowly, as if it was just occurring to him. “I don’t know if we’re going to need another model, actually. Annabel, you might be able to pull all this off on your own.”
The photographer’s assistant was already nodding emphatically, and the stylist seemed to drop her shoulders in relief. “That’s great, because all of these are Annabel’s size,” she said. “The styling will work so much better with her coloring.”
Jade shot Annabel a nasty look, but Annabel only smiled sweetly. Jade wasn’t going to put up too much of a fight. She’d said everyone, after all.
Cairo had a lot of practice with setting up the camera so he could film himself with his car – it was one of his favorite flexes: show off the muscles and the muscle car. That part was no problem at all.
He set it recording, stood back, and then waited a second to relax his facial muscles before turning to grin and wave at the camera. He pointed at the car with an exaggerated expression, turned it into a quizzical face and a shrug, and then casually hooked one of his hands behind the wheel, bending down to reach. The pose was awkward, keeping himself angled forwards for the camera while his hand was under the car, but it wasn’t a problem – he only needed one hand for this.
Slowly, pretending that it was more effort than it was, he lifted the car into the air – until it was hooked against his shoulder, like a toy only so much larger. He looked up at the rattle of things moving around inside, double-checking the passenger side window was closed and nothing was going to fall out and hit him in the face.
He laughed and grinned at the camera, then slowly put the car down – walked around the outside – got in the driver’s seat – and drove it off with a wave at the camera, just to prove it was a real car and not a model.
It took him maybe twenty minutes to edit it up and post it with a cheesy soundtrack. That done, Cairo sat back, waiting for the likes and comments to flood in – wondering who might be open to having a party tonight, after all.
Scott sat back on the pile of crates, leaning against the fence, kicking his heels.
“They’ll be here soon, right?” his brother asked, kicking a rock against the bare stretch of what had once been grassy ground next to the tarmac.
Scott checked his watch again. The strap was broken, held together by elastic bands. “Yeah,” he said, slow and lazy. “Like, any minute.”
Don snorted exasperation through his nose and kicked another rock. “I’m bored,” he said. “Who they think they are, these guys, making us wait?”
Scott sighed. They were in the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse, and since they didn’t have a car anymore, it had been a lot of hassle to get here. Twenty minutes on the train, then a bus, then a walk through a bad neighborhood – not that Scott minded bad neighborhoods. The Buckem brothers had made a lot of good money in bad neighborhoods.
“It’ll be a minute,” he said, but he hadn’t needed to, because the screech of wheels indicated that someone was coming already.
The car did not skid to a stop in front of them as he had expected. Instead, it wheeled right on past, and the driver yelled something, and the next thing he knew there was a pop – pop – pop and Don was clutching at his chest, stumbling back, and instinct told Scott to run and take cover, crawling behind the fallen crates, waiting for the wheels to screech away again as a distant siren started up.
“They’ll be here soon, right?” Don asked, and Scott blinked.
What the fuck had he just seen?
He checked his watch, distracted. “Yeah,” he said. “Like, any minute.”
What the fuck was this?
Scott looked up at his brother. He saw again the way he’d fallen in his mind’s eye, red blood spreading around his body.
“What’s up?” Don asked.
We need to hide, Scott wanted to say. I don’t know how I know it, but they’re going to kill you, and we need to get out of here. We need to go now because they’re right around the corner and in a second, they’ll be able to see us.
“Nothing,” he said, instead. “Just happy we’re finally getting this deal done.”
“I’m bored,” Don said, kicking another rock. “Who they think they are, these guys, making us wait?”
And the car screeched around the corner, and Scott hit the deck and crawled behind the crates, and when he looked up to the sound of tires screaming away…
Don was bleeding on the floor beside him, his eyes already blank and vacant, a perfect red hole right in the center of his forehead, and all Scott could think was to wonder why he had lied.
In the end, Cairo didn’t organize any party. Things hadn’t gone like he’d hoped. There were fewer shares than he’d expected, and most of the comments were either sarcastic eye rolls or people asking how he’d achieved the special effects.
No one seemed to think it was real.
On the plus side, he’d gotten a few new direct messages from people who wanted to party solo with him, and he was down for that, so maybe the night wasn’t a total loss. He waited to see which of them would flirt the hardest and win the keys to the kingdom – though, maybe tonight, he didn’t have to limit himself to just one.
The doorbell rang. Cairo opened the doorcam app on his phone from the sofa and squinted at the screen. A couple of kids – they looked like teenagers, and he didn’t recognize either of them.
But, hell, he had no other plans as yet.
He swiped open the microphone. “What do you want?” he demanded, watching their gazes snap up towards the camera, wondering if this was going to be some kind of fucked-up adventure or just more worthless scammers coming after his money.
Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter
Remember to like and comment on this post if you’re enjoying the ride - every push of a button helps me to grow my audience and shows your appreciation! What do you think is coming up next? No prediction is too wild!
And by the way - if you see me making any glaring mistakes that do not sound American (remember, I’m British) - please tell me off in the comments so I can correct it and avoid the same mistake in the future!
For every $50 or £50 I earn from Substack alone, I will release a new chapter early.
Current progress:
$92.67/$100
£5.76/£50
Books
Okay, you've read the Substack posts (and maybe you're a little bit confused if that's where you started). Wondering who all of these characters are? Thinking you need a refresher on past books?