The Flux (11 page)

A
green HP
bar hovered over Paul’s head.

Moments ago he’d been chained to his desk by miles of questing information fingers – but now he bounced on the toes of his artificial feet, back and forth, back and forth.

He willed himself to stop bouncing, couldn’t. He was a pixelated game sprite, cycling through the same animation.

The room was transformed into a blocky recreation of his bedroom. Though the bed remained on fire, the flames no longer grew as they consumed the bed. Instead, the same two pillows cycled through identical fire animations, exuding a pillar of smoke that always dissipated as it reached the ceiling. The fragile curtains, which had been blazing away into ash, now rippled with endless flame – threatening to ignite the room, but never progressing beyond their programmed destruction.

Valentine had transformed his bedroom to be as large as a gymnasium – big enough for two teams to face off. She stood off to Paul’s left, raising her fists pugnaciously, occasionally pausing to pop a double-barreled middle finger at Rainbird.

Rainbird stood before the fire portal, cycling through his own animation – a man in an asbestos suit, snapping his fingers, generating sparks of flame. He looked supremely irked.

Paul tried to say something. His mouth refused to open. It wasn’t his turn.

Valentine’s mouth moved; no words came out. Instead, a small blocky menu unfolded over her head, her dialogue appearing one letter at a time:

Paul! We are in a Japanese RPG now! Act as master support while I draw fire!

A pause, as the window stayed long enough for Paul to read it, then unfolded itself the moment he finished the words. Then, another dialogue window appeared over Valentine’s head:

…get it? “Draw fire?”

Hee hee hee hee hee.

She snapped her fingers. A menu appeared as she scrolled through the options:

K
ick ass

Kick extreme ass

Kick extreme super-Bahamut-style ass.

She chose “Kick extreme super-Bahamut-style ass” without hesitation. Rainbird frowned as an orange diamond appeared over his head. Valentine confirmed her target with a nod, and then did a swirling dance, her diaphanous dress flowing as she summoned something huge from the earth.

Wait
, Paul thought.
When did she get a diaphanous dress?

The apartment floor burst apart as a dragon exploded out from caverns deep underneath New York.

The dragon, whiskered and silvery and baring sharklike teeth, shrugged the roof aside to soar high into the night air, whizzing across a preternaturally black New York skyline before posing next to the full moon.

But it’s a waning moon tonight
, Paul thought, before going with Valentine’s videogame logic.

“
Kiiiiick – assss!
” Valentine shouted, her words echoing across all New York’s skyscrapers. The dragon grinned as it heard her command, plunging down from untold heights to smash into Rainbird.

The dragon hit Rainbird like a nuclear bomb detonating.

The world went white.

Small numbers coalesced out of the blackness –
165,739 damage
. Paul was always disconcerted by the way Valentine’s games somehow instilled rules knowledge into his head. That damage was tremendous, an
end-game
amount, damage that would obliterate most normal bosses.

But as the light dimmed from the dragon’s nuclear fury, Rainbird was still standing.

He adjusted his collar. A dialogue box popped over his head.

My turn….

Valentine’s eyes went wide. A dialogue box appeared over her head.

…crap
.

Rainbird summoned his own menu, selected from his own list:

Conflagration

Inferno

Supernova

He selected “Supernova,” then moved the orange targeting reticule to over Valentine’s head. He breathed in, his lungs sucking in all the flame from the apartment – which was completely healed from all the dragon damage as though the Bahamut attack had never happened. Rainbird’s chest glowed an ominous blue-white, his body armored in flames, the room thrumming as Rainbird smashed a fist into the floor and opened up a channel to the Earth’s fiery heart.

He lifted his hands; a tide of magma smashed into Valentine, burning her flesh to blackened bone. Paul strained against his animation, trying to scream – but it wasn’t his turn to react.

Valentine’s body appeared from nowhere, seemingly unhurt despite having burnt to ashes a moment before. Numbers popped above her head:
888,888 damage
. The eights were little skeletal heads, crumbling to ash as Valentine wobbled unsteadily.

Then she collapsed, unconscious. A glowing red status appeared above her:
VALENTINE is down
!

Then it was Paul’s turn.

A menu appeared above Paul’s head, which somehow he could read despite it hovering over him:

Papercuts

Analyze

Item

Dammit.

Paul bounced from foot to foot – this damnable sprite form left him no choice but to bounce from artificial foot to orthotic boot, an activity both painful and pathetic. The strange little dance, the menus, all accentuated the fact that Paul wasn’t any good in a one-on-one physical confrontation. He’d hoped for an option like “Sword Swarm” or “Mantis Attack,” but no.

Papercuts
.

Without Valentine or Aliyah to back him, a mugger could take Paul down, let alone some fire-touched phoenix avatar – and Valentine was down.

He scanned the options again. No “retreat” option. No “dialogue” option, either; he wished he could tell Valentine they didn’t need to fight, that Rainbird could be negotiated with, though maybe the attack had changed Rainbird’s mind. Paul flicked back and forth through the menu, examining his three options, uncertain which to use.

Paul wasn’t sure, so he selected “Analyze.” The menu buzzed and flashed red.

Are you sure you don’t want an item?

What item could he possibly want at a time like this? He selected Analyze again. Another buzz.

Are you sure you don’t want an item, Paul?

Paul looked over at Valentine, who, though unconscious, seemed to be pointing to the items. He chose that option, which opened up a submenu with sorts of items: healing potions, speed potions, status removal effect potions, Phoenix Down….

He moved the cursor over the Phoenix Down potions. “Revives any one character,” said the description.

Hint hint, Paul
.

Paul selected the Phoenix Down; a golden feather shot out from between his palms to hover over Valentine, showering her in golden sparkles that tugged her to her feet. Her HP bar refilled itself as she steadied herself, then cracked her knuckles.

You’re one hell of a boss monster,
Valentine’s dialogue box said.
But I am the game. And you are going down
.

Rainbird struggled to speak, but it wasn’t his turn. Yet before Valentine selected from her menu, a chime of triumph sounded and someone ran into the room in a puff of smoke:

ALIYAH has joined the party!

Even in sprite form, Aliyah looked nervous. Paul knew why: all her worst moments had happened in burning rooms. Anathema had trapped her in a blazing fire, burning her horribly, and when she’d become a ’mancer she’d incinerated an apartment building in the process.

It was so brave, for Aliyah to enter the flames. She must have hesitated outside, working up the courage to fight for her father – but now Aliyah was in
real
danger.

Yet Rainbird… stopped.

The room thrummed with ’mancy – and Rainbird’s endlessly shifting sprite paused, stooping down to examine the tiny, scarred child who’d entered the battle. The sigils on his cheeks burned bright with admiration.

He took an experimental step towards her. Aliyah held her ground, her cheeks puffing out, refusing to give way to the blazing figure before her.

The flame…
Rainbird said in a dialogue box.
It has forged you, little one
.

Aliyah cocked her head, not giving him ground. Instead, she raised her Nintendo DS high, ready to strike him down with gamefire.

The apartment shuddered as Valentine tried to regain control of her game, but Rainbird broke free to bow to Aliyah. He turned, ambling away despite Valentine’s best efforts, to disappear back into the fire portal. The window, now a molten pane of glass, shattered in the cool night air.

RAINBIRD has fled!

Valentine, as scripted, did a ballerina twirl and shook her hips lasciviously before holding up an Xbox game controller in triumph. The room faded back to real life – still on fire, the flames stoked by the fresh inrush of oxygen from the shattered window.

Aliyah screamed, getting out her Nintendo DS and screaming “
ICE! ICE! ICE!
”, scribbling it on the pad as if she wanted to stab it. The flames crystallized into dripping icicles.

Valentine flopped down onto the burnt mattress, not caring that it was still smoldering.

“That guy…” She wiped the sweat from her forehead. “He fought like he didn’t know what flux was. What the hell are we gonna do against that, Paul?”

Paul looked at the shattered window, the soaked plaster, the ruined bed.

“Well, first we’re going to call in the super to clean up this mess,” he said. “Then we’ll talk to Rainbird’s boss.”

V
alentine lied
and told the superintendent that the curtains had caught fire due to a candle, and they’d thrown buckets of water at it until it had gone out. Which earned her a stinkeye, but the super got some plywood from the supply cabinet and hammered it in over the empty windowframe until they could call in a window repairman.

“You just lost your deposit,” the supervisor told Paul.

Paul thought of Rainbird’s inferno. “Coulda lost more than that,” Paul replied.

The inspections took a couple of hours, as did the paperwork, which allowed Paul and Valentine to carefully bleed off their stored flux from the fight: the elevator broke down as they took it to the super’s office, the fire inspector fined them for leaving an open flame in a hazardous area, part of the wall pulled out as the plywood was nailed in.

Once everything was fixed as well as it could be, and their flux level was nice and empty, the doorman called.

“There’s a... a limo waiting for you,” the doorman said, confused. Paul knew he was, in the doorman’s estimation, a mild up-and-comer in New York’s political field, but certainly not a limo guy.

“Thanks, Maurice,” Paul said, pleased to bollix expectations. “We’ll be down shortly.”

Valentine scratched the backs of her hands, a boxer preparing for her next fight. “So that’s…”

“Payne. I’m sure of it. Once Rainbird saw I was a ’mancer, his whole demeanor changed. I think they’ve been working to protect ’mancers the whole time.”

“If you’re right,
Payne
is the King of New York! If he’s so protective of ’mancers, why’d he call the cops on us?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s going to explain once we get into that car.”

“Yeah, and I’m sure the limo has FREE CANDY stenciled on the side. I’m questioning the wisdom of locking ourselves inside a limo with, you know, a crazy pyromancer.”

“And a bureaucromancer – I mean,
another
bureaucromancer.”

“Oooh!” Valentine bugged her eyes out. “Maybe he’ll revoke my W-2s!”

“You can’t revoke a tax form, you can only–”

She flicked gloved fingers at him. “Whatever. I’m a little more worried about the guy who can
barbecue my bones
, Paul.”

Paul should have bristled at how Valentine shrugged his ’mancy off – but instead, he felt lessened. He hadn’t had time to fathom what Payne’s existence meant, but…. Until now, he’d been the master of his own unique magic.

After seeing the immense complexity of Payne’s spells, Paul realized he was a second-rate bureaucromancer in his own city. Worse, he couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe he’d somehow inherited his powers from Payne – he hadn’t become a ’mancer until he’d worked at Samaritan Mutual for years. Had he absorbed something from Samaritan’s atmosphere?

Paul felt a mild depression coming on. He shook it off. Now was not the time for an identity crisis.

“We have to talk to Payne,” Paul said. “Would you rather chat with New York’s oldest bureaucromancer at his office? Surrounded by his forms and typewriters?”

“All right, yeah, yeah, we can’t exactly negotiate our safety through text messages. Especially when Payne’s got a guy who can teleport through fires. But…”

She glanced over at Aliyah, who stood halfway behind a door, making only a token effort to pretend not to listen.

Paul knelt down to grasp her shoulders. “You understand coming with us is dangerous, right, honey?”

Aliyah trembled, but her face was grim. “I protect my Daddy.”

“If I told you to stay home,” Paul asked, “Would you listen?”

“If I told
you
to stay home, would
you
?”

Valentine laughed. “OK, points for Gryffindor.”

“I think we should take her. It’s not safe, but… I don’t even know what safe
is
any more. I suspect Payne has access to a lot more ’mancers than just Rainbird. If Payne
is
out to get us, then leaving Aliyah at home might make him send a couple of, I dunno, ninjamancers after her. At least this way we know where she is…”

Valentine brushed her hair back angrily. “This is
just
like the
Walking Dead
game. Reams of shitty options packed with risk, none good.”

“So we bring her?” Paul technically had the last word on all matters Aliyah, but he never felt right unless Valentine agreed.

“I think if things go tits-up, it’s the call I can most live with. And…” She knelt down, got the Xbox controller she wore on the bandolier around her waist. “It’s not like my girl didn’t, you know, take down an entire squadron of cops by herself the last time someone pissed her off.”

Aliyah raised her Nintendo DS somberly and bumped controllers with Valentine.

They all changed clothes – Paul always felt more authoritative in a crisp blue power suit, and Valentine’s dress had been ruined in the fight. She showed up in a Bad Religion newsprint T-shirt with a ragged cut-off plunging neckline, and faded skin-tight jeans with fluffy claw marks showing patches of pale skin all up and down her thighs.

Aliyah, however, dressed in her best school uniform – a bright burgundy shirt, a plaid skirt, sneakers, her Nintendo DS strapped into her backpack. It was, Paul realized, the closest Aliyah had to business wear.

“All right,” Paul said. “Let’s go.”

They walked down to the lobby, holding hands the whole way, where Maurice the doorman looked anxious. They followed his gaze to the obscenely long black limo on the street. Such cars were common out by the UN, but a rare sight in this district.

The car’s silver trim gleamed, familiar to Paul for no reason he could name. It looked imposing and old-fashioned, a classic build; the window whirred down to reveal Payne’s sour soldier’s face looking out at them.

Then a sunny smile broke over the old man’s face, a smile that Paul would never have guessed hid inside those old, crusty features.

“
Paul!
” he yelled, opening the door to wave them in, thrilled as a kid at Christmas. “
You clever bastard! You rooked me! You completely rooked me!
”