Fix (18 page)

Valentine nodded, conspicuously kicking the ring into Steeplechase's former cell. Robert pointedly walked away; Paul trotted in to fetch it for them for later.

Steeplechase had etched the same pattern into the wall time and time again – the same snarl of straight lines and curves, repeated up over the ceiling, across the floor…

Valentine pressed her palms together, then irised them open. A
Grand Theft Auto
radar map bloomed between her hands.

She smiled as a bright yellow dot winked into existence, showing them the path to Steeplechase. Then it flickered out. Valentine shook the map angrily like it was a Magic 8-Ball; the yellow dot faded, then disappeared.

“
Fuck!
” Valentine smashed the map against the floor; it shattered into dissolving pixels. “His stealth powers are cancelling my mission marker! I- I
want
to find him, but…”

Paul hunted through Steeplechase's cell for the ring, understanding. Valentine couldn't make Steeplechase appear on the map because to Valentine, Steeplechase was a stealth game personified – and in her heart of hearts, stealth targets
never
appeared on maps.

Valentine couldn't fake the game. Even if that meant losing Aliyah.

“OK.” Imani drew in a deep breath. “So we freed a maniacal hunter, we got four small town cops killed when they crashed our murder party, we maybe killed Butler, the hunter's headed towards a target so bad even
mobsters
shuddered to think of it, and we
still
don't know where Aliyah is.”

Paul frowned, looking at the cell walls. He ran his fingertip down one of the curved lines Steeplechase traced.

He's a bit of a guided missile, sir
, Butler had said.
Unable to think of anything but his target
.

“Aliyah's still lost.” Paul turned in slow circles, taking it all in. “But…”

He wouldn't have identified the walls as maps if he hadn't seen Valentine's. But now he realized Steeplechase had traced the same selection of streets over and over again…

“We've got Steeplechase's next target.”

F
irst you destroyed Morehead
, Aliyah thought.
Now you've destroyed the world
.

Rifts roared out from Aliyah's outstretched fingertip, slicing through the air like razors across eyeballs. They cut furrows through the chilled racks of gray fluid, sending waterfalls of goo down to puddle in the dirt; they lopped the wooden mess hall tables into chunks, sending 'mancers and Bastogne locals diving for cover.

She was still trapped in an exaggerated “
objection!
” pose by her 'mancy – but the rifts vacuumed up power from Aliyah's spell, devoured it. The living rifts looked like black plows made of razors, rocketing forward in sweeping curves that brushed against the oval mess tent's nylon walls. They left incisions behind, carving away Earth physics – and the air in front of the tent walls drooped down like peeling wallpaper, revealing seething chaos beyond.

The rifts had trapped everyone inside, turning the great tent into a kill zone.

The Thing in the sky roared, a triumphant subsonic bass that flowed through Aliyah's bones.
She'd
opened the doorway for It to step through.

She'd learned nothing from Morehead.

Now she'd set off the chain reaction that would unravel the world.

Having cut off escape, the razor-rifts looped back and crisscrossed the dining hall's interior, sewing up the great space so no one could flee. The arrow-making family dove behind the black iron stewpot as a trio of rifts homed in on them; the old woman with axe-blistered hands brandished a knife at an incoming rift, holding up what was left of a chair as an impromptu shield.

And one razor-rift arced back around, leaving contrails of mangled physics as it zoomed in on Aliyah.

She watched it chew up the space between them, knowing she deserved this. She'd tried to make friends at the Peregrine Institute, and had instead led a murderer to their doorstep. She'd tried to make friends at Morehead, and had wrecked the town. If she'd turned down Ruth's invitation, this would never have happened.

The rift narrowed its blades, homing in on Aliyah's left eye.

She stared it down. She'd watch her demise, and–

Numbers stepped serenely before the incoming menace, flattening his palm against his heart.

He curled his fingers into a fist.

Consensus
.

The rift imploded him at the molecular level. Alien physics reduced Numbers to a fourth-dimensional smear of tissue, splattering him like a bug against an extradimensional windshield–

With his dying breath, Numbers enfolded the rift like gift wrapping surrounding a present.

Aliyah looked around; other Unimancers lay dead in front of the Bastogne residents, having sacrificed themselves to protect the mundanes. The black woman who'd reassured her had slid apart, the friction in her body lowered until her individual cells had rolled away like marbles – but the arrow-family stood trembling, alive. The Finnish bodybuilder's veins had swollen from some unearthly pressure to the size of toy balloons, his muscles splitting open as they burst apart in gory flowers – but the old axe-woman was safe.

The rest stepped in to encircle the rifts, held their hands over their hearts, clenching their fists:

Consensus
.

Aliyah felt such a blast of love that her vision blurred before she realized she was weeping.

She'd seen Daddy reknitting the universe after a broach, all fussiness: he believed the world should be orderly, and repaired the world like a watchmaker fitting parts.

But the Unimancers – their faces glowed with affection. They stared into the wrecked physics with the fondness that someone would look at a lover they found begging for change in an alleyway – with adoration, with hands outstretched in forgiveness.

Numbers' remains flowed outwards, taking root to provide a fulcrum for the remaining Unimancers to shovel in love to seal up this destruction. And as their gazes swept across the rifts, the chewed-up mess tent re-raveled itself, the peeled gaps closed, friction congealed to normality.

Aliyah sank to her knees; there were thousands of Unimancers, and each held a deep love for something on this earth so profound that their adoration had once powered magic. The physicists reminded broken atoms how their electrons
should
spin. The carpentrymancers' devotion rebuilt the shattered tables. A gardenmancer remembered the rift-eaten dirt with such intensity that withered plants grew back.

And yet, Aliyah thought, they held each other in restraint. Just as they had collectively assembled a 360-degree view of the mess hall, the Unimancers held a precise understanding of the Earth's limits. A lone culinomancer might have recreated some magical nourishment from the puddles of ruined gray fluid – but the group mind knew nutrition's limits, held the culinomancer back so she created normal food and nothing more.

They were each other's safety mechanism. Daddy's Contract rerouted flux, it didn't stop 'mancy from spiraling out of control.

They
sang
as they mended the broaches, repudiating the Thing in the sky, restoring the world to a place where the people of Bastogne could thrive. She felt the Unimancers' love – a love so potent, they'd sacrifice themselves joyously if it meant others could live.

No
wonder
the Bastogne villagers adored them.

Then it was over. Aliyah's hair prickled; the Unimancers had rebuilt the concept of electricity incorrectly, making her eyelids twitch.

She knelt, ready for the executioner's axe–

Sobbing.

She'd vowed never to cry in front of anyone. But now? She realized why the Unimancers hated her. She realized why they wanted to jail her, torture her, expunge her – everything her father had done to keep her safe was wrong. She
deserved
to be drugged, she
deserved
brainwashing…

“Hey.”

Ruth crooked her finger up underneath Aliyah's chin, forcing her gaze upwards.

Ruth peered at her with the love she'd rained down upon Bastogne.

Her compassion made Aliyah weak.

The Unimancers stood behind Ruth, united in their affection for Aliyah.

“We know,” Ruth said, gesturing back at her people. “We were all scared once, too. We know you can't stop it. We know this isn't a
choice
.”

Ruth grabbed Aliyah in a tight hug, holding her closer than anyone had ever held her before, holding her with the force of thousands.

“This wasn't your fault,” Ruth whispered. “
Nobody
can control this alone. And you have been
so brave
for trying–”

Aliyah broke, wailing with years of exhaustion, realizing all she'd wanted to hear was some stranger admit how hard this was, feeling like some great cyst inside had popped.

The Unimancers moved in to comfort her, a reassuring hand on her shoulder, squeezing her calf, a hug from the collective.

Aliyah lost herself in their touch.

P
aul felt
his sides twist painfully as he let the flux meld with his own self-hatred. Somewhere deep in his broken ribs, an infection was taking root – something good and painful.

He'd used his bureaucromancy to figure out the location of that knot of roads. Even that small act generated septicemia. Yet he'd figured where Steeplechase was headed, and the answer was terrifying:

An assisted living center for the elderly.

Paul had inspected their housing records: it was a small living center, for twenty-five seniors, booked up full – which meant when Steeplechase tore through them, he'd slaughter nurses and old people alike.

Valentine had
Grand Theft Auto
ed the cop car, racing through the highways – but Paul remembered Steeplechase's inhuman speed.

He'd unleashed that.

He'd gotten those four cops killed.

Remember, they fired first
, Imani had told him as she and Robert had bundled Butler into the SUV. Robert had a medical safehouse forty minutes away, but the medpack's stabilizing 'mancy would wear off before they arrived; he needed to stay in the back to look after Butler while Imani drove. So the team had separated, but not before Imani had tried to talk him out of his guilt.

It's a tragedy, Paul, but… they shot you.

His ribs throbbed with each heartbeat. He'd been gobbling Robert's antibiotics to offset his flux-inflicted damage. There wasn't time to recover, not with Aliyah in jeopardy, and the cops were what happened when he let his flux loose on someone else.

He popped another Oxycontin.

Maybe SMASH had a point about 'mancers.

He needed to talk to Valentine about morality – or maybe to beg her for a medpack. But she skidded through traffic, nobody noticing her crazy driving thanks to her
Grand Theft Auto
mancy.

She was deep in concentration, still rattled by her argument with Robert. Paul fingered the ring in his pocket, wondering what to do with it. He didn't dare ask. She carried a heavy flux load, and distracting her would rain havoc down on them.

Normally, he took comfort in her videogamemancy. He loved to watch different 'mancies – kiteomancers and rock-balance-mancers and servimancers producing ineffable beauty.

Or they produced mangled bodies on an asylum floor.

He'd forgotten something about the huntomancer – he hadn't been on that case. But the one time the NYPD had unofficially teamed up with the mob to stop a serial killer had been the scuttlebutt of the station. There was some salient fact he couldn't dredge up from his memory – but between the panic and the painkillers, recalling facts was like trying to organize a filing cabinet in a hurricane.

He sighed in relief when Valentine skidded to a stop before the Sunset Gardens Assisted Living Facility. The hand-carved sign out front was surrounded by bright flowers blooming on a warm summer night. The facility itself was imposingly institutional, but the staff had tried to brighten it up with windowsills full of more flowers, and the windows had grandchildren's crayon drawings taped over them.

Paul knew this because the building's lights were on.

His stomach sank. You didn't turn on all the lights in an assisted living home unless something had gone terribly, terribly wrong…

As Paul and Valentine got out of the cop car, a stern Italian nurse charged out to meet them, her white uniform spattered with blood.

“
We didn't call no cops!
” she cried.
“No cops! Why are you–”

Then she saw Valentine's eyepatch and videogame controller.

She saw Paul's bloodied suit and artificial foot.

“Crap.” She backed into the facility, holding up her hands in surrender –

“We're here to help,” Paul assured her. “Where is he? Is he still here?”

She nodded, eyes widening, glancing around to plot escape routes.

“All right,” Paul said. “We'll take care of this. We're… We're sorry…”

She bolted off, running into the humid night.

Valentine swallowed. “You braced for what's inside?”

Paul straightened his tie. He wasn't sure what they would do. She still burned with flux, and any 'mancy he could scrape up now came with titanic consequences.

But a killer was loose in this old-age home.

A killer who held their only chance at finding his daughter.

Maybe he'd surrender to SMASH. But not before he fixed this.

T
he hallways
of the Sunset Gardens Assisted Living Center were dingy, laced with the faint scent of piss. The residents, old but not yet decrepit, had wheeled themselves out to their doors, peered out through cracks to watch them pass. The seniors' rooms were packed tight with threadbare furniture taken from the homes they'd lived in, and Paul was glad to see the tiny refuges they'd been forced to retreat to had gone untouched.

The remaining staff, three nurses and a janitorial crew, holed up in the central station, too terrified to move.

Two nurses lay sprawled dead before them, heads blown apart, guns still in their hands.

…guns?
Paul thought.

“Don't you fucking move,” Valentine ordered the remaining staff. She knelt down to examine one of the guns. The two dead nurses looked like they'd lifted refrigerators in their spare time.

Their guns had been fired. Not that it had done them any good.

Who felt comfortable starting gunfights in a nursing home?

She peered over at the three nurses, who were older, their uniforms well-worn; to Paul, always sensitive to chains of command, they had the feel of long-time trusted staff. “Where is he?” she snapped.

“…Room 105.”

“Do
not
move,” she repeated.

A trail of blood, growing heavier, led down the hallway. As Paul and Valentine got nearer to Room 105, they heard a muffled sobbing. An old man, weeping behind a shut door.

Strategically, Paul knew they should kick in the door, take the people inside by surprise. But a glance showed Valentine also wanted to respect this stranger's grief.

They pushed open the door.

Compared to the other lushly-furnished rooms in the Sunset, this one was stark as a prison: no paintings, no comfortable couches, just a metal hospital bed.

The crying man was old, hair unkempt, dressed in a filthy sweatshirt; he stroked the dying Steeplechase, who slumped against his wheelchair. He wailed, tugging on his handcuffs – though they'd chained him to the wheelchair, he fought to hug Steeplechase.

Steeplechase bled out from multiple gunshots.

The handcuffs were both unimaginably cruel and completely unnecessary: Paul realized the crying man's legs had been amputated below the knee.

Steeplechase was almost too weak to move, but reached up to stroke the crying man's cheek, his mute face begging forgiveness.

“You shouldn't have come, Grayson,” the crying man told him. “You shouldn't have risked it. I never wanted to…”

Steeplechase turned to see Paul and Valentine. He squinted, vision almost too dimmed to recognize them – but when he saw them standing in the doorway, his mouth curled up in a smile. He spent his final breath laughing silently, merrily patting the man in the wheelchair to get him to look at the new arrivals.

The crying man, confused, refused to look away. But Paul noted the resemblance on their faces.

The mob had
two
huntomancers
, he remembered.
Twins
.

Steeplechase had been trying to rescue his brother
.