We sprint across my back lawn. My perfect, emerald-green, freshly aerated back lawn, which is currently absorbing more water per square foot than its drainage grade is designed to handle, and I can't think about that right now because thinking about standing water will slow me down.
The side door to the garage. I keep it unlocked because this is a good neighborhood and my tools deserve easy access. I wrench the handle open, and shove Junia through ahead of me. Duck inside. Pull the door shut against the wind.
Darkness. Complete.
The overhead LEDs don't activate. The motion sensor doesn't trigger. The backup strip lighting along the baseboards, which I installed myself with marine-grade waterproof connectors, stays dead.
"Power's out."
"I can see that. Well. Can't see that. Can't see anything."
The grid blew. The whole subdivision runs on a shared magical power relay that Valerius insisted on installing three years ago because it was "aesthetically superior to those brutish transformer boxes." One good lightning strike on the relay tower and every house in the neighborhood goes dark. I told the board this would happen. I submitted a twelve-page analysis with graphs. They voted to table the discussion.
I reach for the wall panel to trigger the manual release on the heavy electronic garage door. My fingers find the housing. Flip the override switch.
Nothing.
I flip it again. Push the manual engage button. Pull the emergency cord.
The motor housing clicks. Whines. The door shifts half an inch, then locks with a heavy magnetic clunk. The electromagnetic failsafe. When the power relay dies mid-cycle, the door defaults to locked position. Anti-theft protocol. Another feature Valerius mandated.
"The door's jammed."
"Jammed how?"
"Electromagnetic lock. Engages when the power drops. Can't override it manually." I yank the emergency cord harder. The mechanism doesn't budge. "I'd need to physically disconnect the mag-lock housing from the track assembly, which requires a number four hex driver and a headlamp, both of which are on my workbench six feet to the left, except I can't see my workbench because we have no power."
"So we're trapped."
"Temporarily secured."
"In your garage."
"In my very well-organized garage, yes."
Silence. Rain hammering the roof. The garage is insulated and sealed, so the sound is muffled, a constant low roar like being inside a drum. The air is full of motor oil, cedar shavings, and the faint chemical bite of the wood stain I used on the fence last Tuesday.
And something else. Warm. Organic. The smell of wet earth and crushed flower petals and the particular sweetness of someone who spends her life elbow-deep in living things.
Junia shifts in the dark. Her shoulder brushes my arm. The wet fabric of her overalls presses cold against my bare skin where my shirt is torn.
"Flynn?"
"What."
"How organized are we talking?"
I reach past her. My fingers find the shelf bracket on the far wall, trail down to the third hook, and close around the handle of the five-pound sledgehammer I keep next to the post-hole driver.
"Move left."
She shuffles. I feel the air shift where she was standing. I square up to the garage door, find the seam where the bottom panel meets the concrete pad, and wedge the sledgehammer head into the gap. One sharp upward thrust. The electromagnetic housing groans. I shift my grip, lever the hammer sideways, and the bottom panel bows outward three inches with a screech of stressed aluminum.
Cold wet air rushes through. Rain mist, carrying the green smell of my lawn and the ozone bite of spent lightning.
"That's your idea of forcing it open?"
"Three inches is sufficient for airflow. Any more and I compromise the structural track alignment, which means a four-hundred-dollar repair call from a certified installer who's booked out six weeks."
