Hydropower Chapter 6
We catch up with Evie and Ash after the hospital
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, Jasmine has become invisible, Scott can see the future but didn’t use it to prevent his brother dying, Annabel can persuade people to do what she wants by saying it out loud, and Cairo decided to show off his super-strength on social media. Evie took Ash to the hospital to see if they could do anything about his sudden inability to talk.
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Chapter 6
Ash pushed his phone in front of Evie’s face and she read what he had written. Well, that sucked.
Evie laughed. “You’re not wrong,” she said out loud, even though he didn’t need her to. Not anymore.
That was going to take some getting used to.
“Come on,” she said, gesturing to the bus stop. “Can you handle the bus?”
Ash paused for a moment, pressed his lips together, and shook his head. Evie took him in, scanning him from head to toe. He looked tired. She was tired, too – they’d been up all night as doctors conducted test after test, only to throw them out into the cold morning with no answers – but he looked worse. He had started shivering as soon as they stepped outside, and he kept darting glances at the strangers passing by them, a steady flow into and out of the hospital.
He was hearing them, she realized. Hearing them with no respite. No wonder he looked so bad.
He held up his phone screen towards her. One word. Thanks.
She snorted. He’d heard her thinking about how awful he looked. “I wasn’t trying to pay you a compliment, stupid,” she said.
He rolled his eyes and tapped the screen again, repeating the message.
This time, Evie really laughed. “We can take a taxi,” she said. “How about that? Only one brain to listen to?”
Ash gestured wordlessly towards her.
“Okay, two brains,” she conceded. “Well?”
He thought about it for a moment, a pinched look coming over his pale face. His hair was ink-black in the stark morning light, and it set off the dark shadows under his eyes. Another person walked by them and he nodded, quickly, as if in response to pain.
Evie watched him carefully and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll book a pickup on the app. Let’s sit out of the way a bit to wait.” She guided him over to a low wall at the side of the hospital, away from most foot traffic, where they could sit. It was going to cost more than either of them really had the budget for, but they had to get home somehow.
She tapped her feet against the sidewalk in the cold, shoving her hands between her knees to keep them warm. Beside her on the wall, her phone buzzed a confirmation. Wait time: fifteen minutes.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll just wait here for a bit.”
There was a pause, and Ash slumped against her shoulder. She bent her head to look at him in alarm. He’d closed his eyes, his glasses sliding slightly down his nose as the contact against her body nudged them out of place.
He was exhausted. Maybe it would be good for him to snatch a bit of sleep. Carefully, so she didn’t disturb him, Evie grabbed her phone and opened up Tock, thinking she could scroll mindlessly a bit and keep her thoughts quiet for him.
She flicked past silenced videos of people talking to camera, artists painting, the latest dance trend. She paused at one that looked half-interesting, at least from the perspective of being able to mock it: some white dudebro who probably built his identity around which frat he’d pledged, showing off his supercar.
And then he picked it up, and Evie sat up straighter, unintentionally jostling Ash. He didn’t make a sound – of course – but she could almost hear the disgruntled moan he wanted to make.
She tried to steady herself, watching the video on repeat – three times, five times, ten times.
The comments were all the same – accusing him of faking it, somehow. In fact, most of them just wanted to know the techniques he’d used so they could try them out for themselves. But Evie couldn’t shake a feeling.
She hit the guy’s profile photo and examined his page. His name, the bio proudly declared, was Cairo Willis-Charleston, which did nothing to help her impression of him as the kind of loser she would stay sharply away from on campus, even if he was older now. He had short-cropped sandy hair and an all-American jawline, and he was the kind of person that made her feel ashamed to be white, but she couldn’t stop looking through his videos.
She felt drawn to him, somehow. She’d seen video magic before, the kind of editing that made shoes fly onto feet when an influencer kicked the direction of the screen or made a book flip into a different title. She’d seen AI and deepfakes that were so convincing you looked twice, but there was always that sense of the uncanny deep within them, the feeling that made you search and search until you found something telltale that didn’t look right. This felt…
Maybe it was the fact that she knew, now, without any doubt, that superpowers could exist. Whatever was going on here, she and Ash were proof of that.
She watched the video of him lifting the car for the twentieth time. The way he’d bent his legs, the way he flexed his arm muscles as he lifted, even the drip of water from the bottom of the car as it went into the air. Somehow it just seemed more real than all of the edits she’d ever seen.
And there was the other thing, too.
Judging by all of his videos, he was based in Crowhill Cove, just like they were. He’d been living here for at least a couple of years, which was as far back as she had the patience to scroll. And if he lived in Crowhill Cove, then by the look of the horizon behind him in some of his home clips, she knew where he was: up there, on the cliff where she had been walking to before she accidentally phased herself back to the wave.
What were the chances of someone in their vicinity also demonstrating new powers the same day that they did, and it being fake?
She glanced at the countdown clock on the app. Five minutes, and their driver would be here. So long as she was back here at this time, she could go back to the past and then explore.
Couldn’t she?
Her thoughts drifted. Almost without realizing it, she stopped time around her, freezing things in place so she had more time to think it through.
Ash was in trouble. He was so tired, and it was like the thoughts he could hear caused him physical pain. On top of that, he couldn’t even speak.
What if she could go back? Really back? What if she could undo all of this?
What if she could go back to when she chose to drop out of college? Before then, to when she really started fucking her life up?
What if she could start again and make everything better?
Even if they still got powers in the end, maybe she could help set things up. Start sign language lessons and get Ash enrolled, too, so they could talk easier when this happened. Invest in some stocks or bet on sports or whatever you were supposed to do to make money when you knew what would happen in the future. Start up a company to help people with superpowers, become the next Charles fucking Xavier or something.
She could do it, couldn’t she?
She checked the time on her screen. Five minutes from now, she would need to be here for the pick-up, if it still played out the same way.
But she could try.
She concentrated hard, trying to pick out the moment that would fix all of this. The moment she’d had her first fight with Kyle?
Their first kiss?
The day they met?
Yes – the day they met, and this time she wouldn’t ask his name or get his number. This time, she would walk away and have lunch with Ash like they’d planned on that day. This time, she wouldn’t let him snare her like a frightened rabbit.
She turned that moment in her mind, focusing hard –
Felt it, knew it was working this time, had the sensation of something crawling over her skin for just a split second –
Lightning hit the water –
And the water rose up, a rogue wave out of nowhere –
And splashed down on them, soaking them to the skin –
Evie gasped in shock, holding her arms out to the side and looking down at herself. She was soaked from head to toe, her red hair plastered down against her skull and face. Ash was not faring any better.
He stared at her and his mouth formed the word ‘what’, though no sound came out.
“Fuck!” Evie exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “No! I wanted to go back, before!”
Ash was looking at her, frozen in confusion, but she closed her eyes and tried again. That moment with Kyle. Bumping into him for the first time. That charming, cocky smile he’d worn when he looked at her, and how she had wanted him right away.
Her skin tingled.
Lightning hit the water –
And the water rose up, a rogue wave out of nowhere –
And splashed down on them, soaking them to the skin –
Evie gasped in shock, holding her arms out to the side and looking down at herself. She was soaked from head to toe, her red hair plastered down against her skull and face. Ash was not faring any better.
He stared at her and his mouth formed the word ‘what’, though no sound came out.
“Goddamnit!” Evie yelled at the sky. “No! Fuck! Okay, okay, then – the first kiss!”
She focused, closed her eyes, forced herself to remember what she didn’t want to – the silky feeling of his lips, the way his hand snaked around her waist, the way it was so soft and sweet and everything she had wanted, even if looking back now she knew different…
Her skin tingled.
Lightning hit the water –
And the water rose up, a rogue wave out of nowhere –
And splashed down on them, soaking them to the skin –
Evie gasped in shock, holding her arms out to the side and looking down at herself. She was soaked from head to toe, her red hair plastered down against her skull and face. Ash was not faring any better.
He stared at her and his mouth formed the word ‘what’, though no sound came out.
Evie sighed, covering her face with her hands for a moment. Ash reached out and touched her shoulder, clearly concerned.
Evie dropped her hands and looked at him. “Sorry,” she said. “This is all really confusing for you right now, but it makes sense later. I take you to the hospital to see if we can do anything about your voice. I tried to go back before this happened and make it all different, but apparently I can’t go back before the wave. So, plan B. I’m just going to head out and see if I can find Cairo. I’ll be back – I mean, this version of me will be back – tomorrow morning in front of the hospital. So, I’ll see you there.”
Ash gaped at her, clearly not understanding a word she was saying.
“There won’t be another wave, but we’d better get up anyway so that man with his dog can laugh at us,” she said, demonstrating for him right away.
She faced the hill. She didn’t want to look back to see what happened next – if she would split into two, or if the other version of her would just be there as she walked away. She dimly remembered from time travel shows and movies that you weren’t supposed to see yourself in another timeline, for some reason, so she kept her eyes forward and walked away, up the hill, aiming for the cliff.
It took almost the whole night before she saw him.
She walked under the house where she’d seen the boy flying, but she’d walked here in real time, not with everything paused – so either he’d gone home already, or he was out there flying around, and she didn’t see him again. The man with the shifting face, thankfully, wasn’t where she had left him, either.
The homeless man was in the alley, but he looked asleep, so she walked on by.
Keeping time flowing seemed like the best way to do things, this time. She wanted to be able to make an impact. She did not want to accidentally unfreeze time and find herself right back on the shorefront, like yesterday – or, whenever it had been, considering that she was now back in yesterday, and…
Thinking about it made her head hurt.
Then it was a long slog up to the cliff, and a longer slog of peering through private wrought-iron gates and trying to spot a familiar car or the pool Cairo often posted from. She kept flicking through his videos on her phone, comparing them.
Finally, she found it.
She looked up at the sky and frowned at the oncoming dawn. She had his address, now, but it was almost time for them to leave the hospital, and she was a long way away.
With a regretful look back at the gates, she turned back – walking back into town to rejoin the right timeline, where at least Ash could come with her to find the man who seemed to have super-strength.
Ash was there outside the hospital, but he was alone, and she wasn’t sitting on the wall next to him. Had her other self phased out of existence when her current self had appeared, or how did it work?
When Ash caught sight of her, though, he didn’t look confused or happy to see her. Instead, he looked angry.
Furious.
He started typing rapidly on his phone, and hers buzzed in her hand as she came to a stop in front of him. She read the message he’d sent: Where the fuck were you? You left me to go to hospital on my own!
Evie looked at him in shock. “I wasn’t here?” she asked.
He shook his head no, a wild look in his eyes that suggested he was incredulous she could even ask the question. But then the look cooled, because of course it did, because he could hear what she was thinking. And right now, she was thinking about how she’d thought there would be two of her, she’d thought she was being smart about time, she’d thought he would be looked after.
“Oh, god,” she said. “I’m really sorry, Ash.”
He accepted her words, his eyes softening, but he still tossed his head in an angry way and looked away from her.
“I’ll fix it,” she told him. “Just… wait here. Or don’t. I mean, I’ll see you in a second.”
She closed her eyes and concentrated.
She was never going to get used to the drenching cold of that wave.
But she knew what she had to do.
Repeat every step, just the same way she had last time.
Make it perfect.
Be there for Ash.
And so, a long night of sitting in a hospital ward with her best friend later, she put the phone down next to her on the wall and roused Ash from her shoulder, pointing to the car pulling up beside them.
“Our ride’s here,” she said. “But I don’t think we should go home.”
He looked at her, his eyes a question.
She showed him the address she had programmed into the app for their journey. “We’re going here,” she said. “To find another guy with powers.”
And he nodded, because he still trusted his best friend who had stayed with him all night long, and because he could read her mind and knew everything she was thinking, and there was no need for her to explain at all.
“Let’s go see this Cairo guy,” she muttered, getting up and reaching for the car door.
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