Chevie held the gun straight-armed in a two-handed grip, staring fixedly through the green tritium contrast points of her night sight, hoping that nothing would pop up and force her to shoot.

I don’t even know what the guy looks like who might come out of the pod. If I shoot the witness, they will never let me back into California.

Chevie ran down the upper landing, sticking close to the wall. Around her, bricks grated and plaster fell in chunks.

That chunk looks like Texas, thought Chevie, because you can’t control what the mind throws up.

Emergency lighting blisters flickered on, bathing the interior in industrial yellow light.

Good, thought Chevie. I can see whatever happens, which will hopefully be nothing.

Something else occurred to her.

Agent Orange. He’s probably going to blame me for this.

Chevie rattled her gun and told herself to focus, pulling a tight turn into the stairwell. She made her way carefully down the two flights of stairs. The basement steps before her were relatively intact, but the door had buckled and the central panel seemed to have melted.

What could melt a steel door? wondered Special Agent Savano, and this unspoken question was answered when a bolt of lightning sizzled through the glowing edges of the melt hole and took a good-sized lump out of the wall.

Lightning. Okay.

Chevie realized that she had squatted on her hunkers with her weapon aimed at the door.

That’s right, Agent. You can shoot the lightning.

She gave it a few minutes, until it seemed as though the indoor lightning bolts were over and done with, then hurried down the remaining narrow steps.

There was nothing left of the basement door but its frame; the melted edges had already solidified.

In a move that would have made Cord Vallicose, her Quantico instructor, proud, Chevie dived through the frame, rolled, and came up with her gun pointed down the corridor. She would later realize that the sharp edges of the door had scraped her all down one side, but at that moment she didn’t even feel the scratches.

There was no obvious threat beyond the ruined door, just dust and devastation. The WARP pod itself had broken free of its brackets and was pointing nose-first down the basement corridor. It looked for all the world like a small spacecraft had crashed into the house.

Which would make about as much sense as what is actually happening: a big machine is sucking the juice out of central London.

Chevie swore to herself that when Orange arrived, she was going to hold him at gunpoint until he told her exactly what this 1970s-style pod had to do with witness protection.