The street lights flickered as the last employee at Forever 21 locked the front door and drove away.
The moment the car was out of sight, two girls slipped from the shadows. Both were teens, one tall and rainbow-haired while the other was short and mousy.
Rachel, the tall girl, grinned. “This’ll be great.” She squealed and had to cover her mouth to keep the noise from escaping. “I’m so excited I can barely hold it in! You ready, Ghost? Think you can pull it off?”
Ghost hesitated. “I… I think I can. I usually can, but I’ve only done it on this a handful of times.”
Rachel put a hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eyes. “Hey. I believe in you, okay? You’re gonna be just fine.”
Ghost smiled softly and nodded. “Okay. Wait for my signal.”
The quiet girl took another step into the flickering light and let out a deep breath. She raised her gaze to the cameras above the store entrance and let the world fall away, everything blurring into blackness except for that one point of reality. She reached out with one hand, concentrated, and drew on a power deep inside her.
Ghost felt the lines of energy and information flowing through the building. She felt each camera as a node within that flow, each node an access point to a network like the intersections of a web.
She could see herself through mechanical eyes but the image was indistinct, only half-there. She was already cloaked from view, hidden to the store’s synthetic nervous system by instinct.
Ghost tugged on strings of power, inserting her will into the flow of information and making subtle changes. The software wasn’t used to being talked to so directly, so informally, and it had no defenses to her tender touch. She unlocked the doors, looped the cameras, and put all the alarms to sleep.
She felt prickling on her skin as each facet of the mechanical organism folded to her desires. She heard the beeping of cameras like whispering in her ears as they looped footage. She felt the click of unlocked doors reverberating through her bones. She saw each light as it turned on, and she saw the pockets of darkness where no light was allowed to shine.
Ghost slowly pulled herself away from the network of flashing lights and whirring signals. She swayed as she came back into herself, but Rachel was right behind her, ready to hold her steady.
Rachel gave her a concerned look. “You okay?”
Ghost smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. And we’re in.”
Rachel hugged her, then bounced on her feet and sprinted for the door, laughing. She pulled on the door and it opened without complaint. She closed it, opened it again, and beamed at Ghost as the other girl approached.
“Holy shit this is so cool! They locked the door and then you unlocked it with your mind!”
Ghost pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and smiled nervously. “Um, yeah, I guess I did. But if we stay out here celebrating then someone’ll probably notice us.”
Rachel got the hint and opened the door wide, gesturing for Ghost to go in with a curtsy. “After you, my ghost in the machine.”
Ghost rolled her eyes and slipped inside.
The inside of the store looked like your average Forever 21: glam, glitz, and desperation colored in a billion different shades of white. Rachel immediately went to the nearest coat rack and started trying on different jackets. Fur, fleece, and flannel were all given attention and offered up as tribute to the gal of the hour. Ghost voted for the flannel, so Rachel picked one out in gray.
Ghost’s first destination was the cash register. She popped it open and started scooping out bills, stuffing them into her bag. Rachel came over to join, but paused.
“You don’t think any employees will get in trouble if we take this, do you? I don’t want someone getting fired ‘cause we nicked a whole day’s profits.”
Ghost blinked a few times as if the thought had never occurred to her, which it hadn’t. “Um… well, the system should show that all the alarms and locks were turned on, so they can’t hold the person that locked up responsible, can they?”
Rachel shrugged. “Maybe. Or they’ll just assume the last person to leave was the thief and hacked the system.”
“Oh.” Ghost shrank a little. “I… I guess I never thought of that the other times I did this. I’ll put it back.” She hung her head dejectedly and started putting cash back into the proper slots.
Rachel put a hand on her arm to stop her. “Hey… what if…”
She pulled a blue spray can out of her bag and pointed it at the wall behind the registers. She let loose and quickly sprayed a message:
You’ve been visited by the Phantom Thieves
Ghost gave her a look. “Phantom Thieves? Really? That’s silly on multiple levels.”
Rachel shrugged. “If it works, it works. Now finish stuffing your pockets and help me pick out more clothes.”
Ghost rolled her eyes and followed Rachel into the labyrinth of shirts and skirts and bright white tights. There wasn’t nearly enough black for Ghost, but Rachel reveled in finding the ugliest, gaudiest clothing.
A few were pretty, Ghost had to admit. Rachel picked out a new pair of sneakers and a tank top (actually a regular shirt she cut the sleeves from) with kittens on it.
Ghost preferred to just watch and comment, but Rachel refused to leave her out of the fun.
“Come on, just try on a few,” Rachel cajoled.
“You know none of this is my style. ‘Sides, I don’t like wearing stolen clothes. I’d rather steal money and buy stuff legit.”
Rachel slipped a shirt off its rack and held it out in front of Ghost. “This would look really cute on you. I think if you tried it on, your cuteness would jump by at least 30%. You might become so cute I’d have no choice but to kiss you.”
Ghost blushed beet-red and mumbled, “Fine, I’ll wear the dumb shirt.”
“What was that?”
Ghost snapped her mouth shut and snatched the shirt. She didn’t bother taking off her existing top. After a bit of wrestling with it, she layered the new shirt over her old one and gave a little twirl for Rachel to see.
Rachel giggled. “That’s not exactly what I had in mind, but it works. You make a good model.”
Ghost stuck her tongue out. “What, were you just trying to see me with my top off?”
Rachel winked, and Ghost blushed even darker this time.
After a few more minutes of running around the store and pilfering expensive adornment they both ended up on the floor, lying parallel and inverse on a bed of dresses and fur coats.
They were murmuring to each other, trading meaningless words and empty sounds, just enjoying their shared presence, when Rachel turned to Ghost and asked, “How long have you been able to do stuff like this?”
“Stuff like…”
“You know what I mean. The locks, the lights. You’re like… psychic. Or psionic, I guess? A technopath! That’s the word I was looking for.”
“…You read too many comics.”
“And you don’t read enough comics. So spill: where’d you learn how to control machines with your mind? Gimme the whole story.”
Ghost was quiet for a long time, thinking it over in her head.
Slowly, she asked, “The whole story? All of it?”
Rachel sat up a bit and nodded. “Yeah. I wanna know how Ghost, elite technopath, got her start. I’ll be your secret keeper, like Lois Lane for Superman, but gayer.”
For once, Ghost didn’t snicker. “Okay. But it’s not really a happy story.”
Rachel leaned over and grabbed Ghost’s hand. There was a new earnestness in her expression. “I still want to hear it. And I’m here if you need me.”
“Okay. I guess… I guess I’ve always had these powers, in one form or another. When I was little I made the lamp in my room flicker every time I sneezed. When I got my first cellphone, I accidentally used it to read the text messages of a girl I had a crush on. As long as I can remember, I’ve been… weird.”
“Weird is cool. I like weird.”
Ghost sighed. “Yeah, but I grew up in a shitty little town in the middle of nowhere. People in the middle of nowhere don’t say ‘cool’ when you accidentally turn off all the lights in the house. They say ‘call the exorcist’ and ‘what did you do with our daughter.’”
Rachel looked crestfallen. “Oh.”
“I didn’t have anyone to teach me. I didn’t have anyone to say it was okay. I just had something weird inside me that felt more like a curse than a gift. I wanted… I wanted to be normal. I tried to be normal.”
Rachel didn’t say anything, but the question was in her eyes: how did that turn out?
Ghost laughed, a bitter sound. “Being normal sucks. So I finished high school a year early and fucked off to live with my cousin here. Started… started actually trying to use my power. I learned how to control it, how to make it do what I want rather than the other way around. And I stole. It’s how I paid rent.”
Ghost brushed some hair out of her face and looked away from Rachel. It felt weird sharing this stuff. Like she was giving up something precious, shining a light on something that had been perfectly comfortable to stay buried in darkness forever.
But… it was nice, too. It was nice feeling Rachel’s warmth through intertwined hands, and it was nice to be able to admit she stole things without getting looks of pity or disgust.
“Well… I think you’re pretty cool, Ghost. Crimes are also cool, for the record, but you’d be cool even if you didn’t commit crimes. I’m glad I met you.”
Ghost smiled and closed her eyes. Without meaning to she drifted off, comfortable atop her bed of stolen clothing.
Ghost woke to the sound of an alarm.
She panicked and skittered to her feet. She looked around wildly, searching for Rachel. She saw her running out of a side room with an equally panicked look on her face.
“What happened?!” Ghost darted to Rachel’s side and questioned her.
“I don’t know! I was just going to the bathroom and when I walked out everything went haywire!” Rachel clutched at Ghost’s arm, eyes wide.
Ghost buried her face in her hands. “Of course, it must be on a different part of the system since they don’t use cameras in the bathrooms. Maybe a timed lock? Dammit, I should have checked.”
Rachel glanced around nervously. “What do we do? Why is everything else freaking out?”
Ghost shook her head and grabbed at her own hair. “Just- Just give me a second.” She reached out for the electrical web of the store, but her control was shaky.
The whole store was lighting up, alarms going off, cameras swiveling. Somehow tripping the bathroom alarm was like a wake-up call to the rest of the system that was undoing Ghost’s meddling. Every alarm was on and active, every camera was recording their presence, every light was flashing.
She could sense the store’s hatred for her, its resentment of her power. She could hear it whispering inside her bones, she could feel its eyes glaring at her. Every nerve resisted her, every strand of the web fought her presence. Too many synapses firing, too many crossed signals, too many things at once, too many-
Ghost screamed, and everything electrical in the building went dead.
Silence. Ghost stared at her hands as they shook and slowly stilled. She lost control. She did it again. Just like all those times before, all those bad memories. What was she doing? What would Rachel think-
“That was so cool!”
…Same Rachel as always. Ghost had to laugh, and slowly her panic melted away. “C’mon, nerd. Let’s get out of here before the cops show up.”
Rachel nabbed a few more articles of clothing, then followed Ghost out into the parking lot. Together they raced away from Forever 21, giggling and clutching their ill-gotten gains.
They ran and ran until they couldn’t see the store or the street it was on. They ran through a precious night, the stars above hidden by industrialism, the street lights their only source of illumination. They saw a few people, rarely, but this late at night nobody was really around.
They came to a stop, breathless but ecstatic. When Ghost could talk without gasping, she asked, “Hey, wanna see something cool?” and gave Rachel a wink.
Rachel nodded eagerly, and Ghost raised her hand and swept it like a conductor’s wand at all the lights on the street. One-by-one they went out until only the light above them stayed lit. They were illuminated, highlighted, the starry crown of the street.
Rachel smiled. “You’re such a romantic… I like it.” She drew Ghost in for a kiss, and then another, and then they disappeared into the night already plotting their next adventure.