The Flux (4 page)

K
-Dash emptied
clips over the cops’ heads, keeping them at bay, while Quaysean poured a huge Thermos of sweet Dunkin’ Donuts coffee down Valentine’s throat. The quickest way to recover from a nerve-gas hangover, they’d discovered, was to boost the blood sugar.

Aliyah trailed behind Paul, no longer Fire Mario, just a scrawny scarred eight year-old kid with wild hair. She refused to let go of her daddy’s hand. Paul led her among the smoking wreckage, ensuring Lenny’s men couldn’t get a clear look at her.

“Valentine,” Paul said. “You got enough juice left to go
Grand Theft Auto
?”

“Tall order, Paul. I feel like a squadron of trolls just bukkakked in my brain.”

“What’s ‘bukkakke’, Daddy?”

“It’s like snot. They snotted in her brain.”

Valentine snorted. “Don’t
lie
to her, Paul.” She turned to Valentine. “It’s a sex thing. I probably shouldn’t have said it in front of you.”

Aliyah brightened. Aunt Valentine was a reliable source for all the secrets grown-ups wouldn’t tell her. “But what’s that
mean
?”

“A) Don’t you
dare
tell her, and B) We need to get you out of here now,” Paul snapped. “Push through the gas. Get her home. But don’t drop her back at Imani’s house by yourself; the last thing I need is more evidence for my ex-wife to think we’re shacking up.”

Valentine looked like she’d licked a cockroach. “You’re Ken-doll smooth down there as far as I’m concerned, buddy. Actually, you might be. When was the last time you had a date?”

“Just get Aliyah somewhere safe and wait for me.”

“Where you going?”

“This will be a PR fiasco. Lenny can’t cope with this mess on his own. And if Lenny goes down…”

She adjusted her eyepatch, covering the hole where SMASH had shot her eye out. “Then the creampuff local Task Force goes down, and Big Bad Federal SMASH starts patrolling town again.” Valentine groaned, getting to her feet. “I had a hot date at the swingers’ club with two firemen.
Bisexual
firemen, Paul. They told me they were good at sliding down each other’s poles. If you put that much ’mancy out again without checking with me…”

“I don’t think I’ll get the chance. Oscar’s at his limit.”

“You had to burn our Flex to save her? Jesus
fuck
, Aliyah!” Aliyah hung her head. “How many hours have I spent teaching you how to keep your shit pent? You can’t keep using your dad as some kind of fucked-up flux-diaper, you have to manage your own–”

More choppers sounded. More sirens.

“You and I
will
continue this talk in the car,” Valentine said to Aliyah, who cringed. Valentine gestured at a smoking car, which flipped over and turned into a sleek Maserati. “Get in.”

K-Dash and Quaysean leaped into the back seat. Aliyah grabbed Paul’s hand as Valentine hauled her into the vehicle. “
No!
” she cried. “I’m not leaving until Daddy’s
safe
!”

Paul looked around at the burned repair shop, the shrapneled cars, the chunks of rotors embedded deep in the asphalt. He tried to imagine how all this would look on the evening news, and realized what a total catastrophe this night had been.

“We’ll be a lot less safe unless you let Daddy clean up this wreckage,” he said sadly.

Aliyah, confused, looked to Valentine for confirmation. Valentine nodded, buckling Aliyah into the seat before pulling a pair of driver’s goggles down over her face that hadn’t been there a second ago. Aliyah spread her fingers against the window, sniffling back tears as she let Valentine’s ’mancy take her away.

The windows tinted. Valentine skidded out of the parking lot, going zero to sixty in the blink of an eye, swerving to knock over a couple of streetlamps because that’s what you
did
in these games.

Paul retreated, gouts of pain thrumming through his body. He kicked in the plywood of the abandoned convenience store next door, feeling the ache in his stump as his metal foot hit the wood, then pushed his way through sodden tiles to find the bathroom. Those were Valentine’s stupid videogame rules: you could only change back to your original skin by entering a dark room.

Why? Paul had never understood videogames. But it made sense to Valentine, and Valentine’s obsession shaped her magic.

He emerged as Paul Tsabo, his normal self – a small, neatly dressed man with a crisp tie and a power suit, an effect only slightly dampened by his metal ankle on one leg and his clunky orthotic boot on the other. His balance was wobbly to begin with, and the nerve gas’s residual effects made it even harder to walk; maybe he
should
get a cane.

No. He felt crippled enough, most days.

His left arm dribbled blood. That was nothing new. He’d incurred one wound the last time he’d fought SMASH in a magical battle so intense they’d punched a collective hole through the laws of physics, allowing extradimensional buzzsects to pour through a broach in space. Paul had managed to heal the gap before it had torn itself out of his control – but the buzzsects had eaten a groove in his left forearm that could never heal, could not be stitched up.

He also had a bleeding head wound from the shattered alembic. But Paul’s extradimensional wound was a constant, oozing reminder of why he could never let SMASH have jurisdiction in New York again.

He crawled out of the convenience store, ready to ensure that would never happen.

He headed for the terrified cops holed up across the street – debating whether to approach the garage now that the ’mancers had apparently left.

Paul strode across the street. They aimed rifles at him.

Then they grinned as they recognized him.

“
Mr Tsabo!
” Lenny cried, flinging out his arms. Paul could never tell whether Lenny was genuinely grateful when Paul showed up at fiascos like this, or if Lenny was self-deluded enough to think blatant routs were somehow successes.

Then again, Paul would never have hired an
efficient
man to be the person who hunted ’mancers in Manhattan.

“What kept you?” Lenny asked as the cops well enough to walk surrounded Paul, shook his hand. “I sent you a text an hour ago. The King tipped us off again!”

“Phone broke.” Paul held up his shattered screen. “So what happened?”

“We had a little incident here.” Lenny shrugged off the rubble around him. “But... I met the King! I think he’s working with Psycho Mantis, feeding us information from the inside! Legitimate fucking intel at last!”

Paul scowled. “How many injured?”

Lenny’s mustache wilted. “Nine.”

“Any deaths?”

“No. The copter pilots broke some bones. But… I think they’ll be OK.”

“Oh, thank God.” Paul sighed in genuine relief. He’d have to visit each of the officers, make sure their insurance covered the damage. Despite Aliyah’s hatred of the police, everyone on Paul’s force were good men, dutiful, having joined to make the world better.

They’d just been convinced the world was better without ’mancy – and in that, ninety-nine percent of New York agreed with them.

If only he could tell them he was a ’mancer.

“I’m sorry, Mr Tsabo,” Lenny said. “I just... I got a tip, and you know how damn slippery Psycho Mantis is…”

“So you sent the whole team in. Without making a plan. Or scoping the territory. Just… sent them in.” Paul mentally tallied up the cost of the wrecked patrol cars, of the two helicopters, of the hospital costs of the injured cops. He glimpsed the incoming news choppers, envisioning how the blackened rubble must look from overhead.

If I could only tell them who I am
, Paul thought guiltily, looking over at the moaning men waiting for ambulances.
If Aliyah wasn’t at stake, I
would
tell them. They trusted Lenny to lead them because they trusted me…

As a drugmaker, Paul had been grateful for Lenny’s limited bag of tricks. But putting on his other hat, Paul was starting to realize the flux hadn’t just impacted his drugmaking career.

“So who got the call this time?” he asked.

“Wieczniak,” Lenny jerked his thumb in Wieczniak’s direction.

“And the trace?”

“To yet another pay phone. They’re seeing if there’s surveillance video in the area, but… there won’t be. When the King doesn’t want to be seen, he
won’t
be.”

Who was turning them in? Paul thought. He’d isolated the location this time, which meant there was a mole in Oscar’s organization. The obvious targets were now K-Dash and Quaysean – but no, he trusted them. Oscar wouldn’t set the cops on him to try to take him out, would he?

Fact was, Paul didn’t know who the King was, or what his motivations were. Unknowns always scared Paul.

“Cut the admiration, Lenny. He’s another informant. We don’t know what his motivations are.”

Lenny blushed. “Yeah. Yeah, Mr Tsabo. It’s just that… you know we’ve had a dry streak.”

The burning garage collapsed inwards, sending sparks high into the air. News vans peeled around the corner, reporters jumping out with the eagerness of men who’d found juicy footage to fill tomorrow’s broadcast.

“Time to polish this turd,” Paul muttered.

Lenny sagged. “Yes, sir.”

Paul straightened his tie. The reporters thrust their microphones out, calling out to Mr Paulos Costa Tsabo, chief of the New York Task Force For ’Mancer Control, asking for comment on this most recent fiasco. The remaining officers surrounded him, pushing the reporters back, buying Paul some dignity.

Paul tried to think of something noble to say to put a good face on today’s rout. There wasn’t much. So instead, he went on a clichéd defensive – the usual stew of “setbacks will happen” and “’mancers are a danger that can surprise even trained professionals” and “I promise you, we are closer than ever to catching Psycho Mantis.”

Which was a lie. His best friend was Valentine DiGriz, aka Psycho Mantis. They’d hidden in plain sight for almost two years, Paul abusing his privilege to steer investigations away from his door – which had all gone perfectly until the King of New York started dropping anonymous tips that led Paul’s forces straight to every brew site.

As Paul watched the reporters practically get into fistfights over who got to ask the first question, he realized this latest flux might have shattered his life more than any arrest.

B
y the time
Paul finished handling the press conference – which did not go well, and would lead the eleven o’clock news – he was ready to collapse.

But first, he had to return Aliyah to Imani’s custody.

He didn’t dare have Valentine bring her back – Imani loved her daughter deeply, but she’d had a plan laid out for Aliyah from the moment of Aliyah’s birth. That plan began with getting her daughter into the right preschools and ended with a
summa cum laude
Yale graduation as a lawyer. (Not coincidentally, Imani was a Yale alumnus and a high-powered corporate lawyer.) Imani saw videogames as time-wasting pursuits that siphoned precious hours away from Aliyah’s inevitable climb to respectability.

Imani had managed to keep Aliyah free of videogames’ taint until Aliyah was six, when Anathema had roasted Aliyah. Valentine had met Aliyah in the hospital and, sensing a wounded child in need of distraction, handed Aliyah a Nintendo DS.

Aliyah had most sincerely strayed from Imani’s plans since then. So whenever Imani spoke Valentine’s name, it was with the chill malice of a parent about to reopen up her court case for sole custody.

Imani wasn’t a threat to Paul – his beloved paperwork would never let Imani take Aliyah away from him – but she
did
make him feel eternally guilty. Imani and he both wanted the best for Aliyah; they just disagreed on how to make that happen. And maybe Imani was prone to looking for people to blame whenever something bad happened, but….

Paul had once loved Imani, and even now he would not hurt her.

If he was lucky, maybe Imani hadn’t realized Aliyah had slipped out again. Imani nervously joked that her little girl was part ninja, not realizing Aliyah had ’mancied into Sly Cooper stealth mode to sneak past her.

So Paul took the subway back to his apartment complex, then let himself into Valentine’s place. He’d used his bureaucromancy to get them side-by-side apartments, wanting his best friend next door to him – but not too close.

He could accept living next door to Valentine’s sloppy black hole of an apartment, but not
in
it.

The door opened partway, bouncing off a trashbag packed full of Valentine’s endless supplies of second-hand clothing. Paul picked his way among the discarded Subway wrappers and flattened videogame packages and dried condoms that festooned the kitchen floor.

What he heard in the living room was not Valentine and Aliyah playing videogames, as he’d expected, but Valentine talking to Aliyah. Paul could just peer around the corner to see them in the living room, sitting cross-legged, side by side on a broken futon.

Paul paused.

He should have announced his entrance. But Valentine and Aliyah had created their own dynamic: they made playdates with each other, laughed at in-jokes they didn’t bother to explain to Paul, ate sloppy fast-food meals together. Imani would have had a heart attack, had she known her precious daughter was eating processed sugar. Even now, Paul saw the crumpled Shake Shack bag where Valentine had treated Aliyah to an extra-large peanut butter milkshake.

Their bond didn’t make Paul jealous. Aliyah needed friends, and Valentine always relayed the important details back to Paul.

But… Valentine related what
Valentine
thought was important.

As he looked at the old skirts Valentine had tossed to hide the used sex toys on the kitchen table, Paul wondered whether Valentine understood what a normal parent needed to know.

He hated himself for eavesdropping. But if Aliyah was telling Valentine something – particularly after Aliyah had nearly gotten herself killed tonight – then didn’t he deserve to know? As a father?

He couldn’t help himself.

“No!” Aliyah squealed, giggling. “I told you to dip the fries in the
shake
!”

“…nod pud them ub my dose?”

Aliyah let out a disgusted squeal. “You are
inhuman
.”

Valentine plucked two fries out of her nose, wiped her face with the back of her hand. “It’s salt and fat: two of the best things in the universe. They’re delicious no matter what orifice you put them in. And what else could make a French fry better but sugar?”

“…bacon?” Aliyah suggested.

“Goddammit, your genius means we’re gonna have to haul our ass back to Shake Shack and swirl some bacon all up in this shiz. All the deadly flavors, swing-dancing in my heart. I won’t last a minute.”

“Don’t worry,” Aliyah said. “We’ll stock up on medi-packs.”

Aliyah munched her fries – a silence that lasted so long, Paul almost gave up and walked in. Then Valentine sighed.

“So why’d you bust in on us, kiddo?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“OK.”

Paul would have pointed out how Aliyah had been battering at Valentine’s shields for hours, highlighted just how unlikely it was that Aliyah would have
happened
to wind up at their exact address at the exact time they were brewing by
accident
, a chain of events that indicated clear intent. Paul would have dissected her excuses, a lawyer flensing lies on the witness stand, until Aliyah was forced to admit the truth.

That was what Paul always hoped would happen, anyway. In practice, when Aliyah was presented with facts that contradicted her story, she denied the facts. Then she fell silent, and no force Paul had discovered could get her to open up again.

Yet Paul was fascinated: here, Valentine went silent. Her casual agreement was the discussion’s end: Aliyah had told her it was an accident, Valentine accepted that, which left nothing more to say.

Aliyah pushed a fry around in her shake, making patterns in the ice cream.

“…I don’t like staying at Mom’s place.”

“Of course not,” Valentine snapped. “Your Mom makes GlaDOS look like a well-adjusted human being.”

Paul didn’t get the reference; he assumed, as with most of Valentine’s non sequiturs, that it somehow related to videogames. Aliyah clearly got the reference, looking shamed and uncomfortable at Valentine’s insult.

Which warmed Paul’s heart; Aliyah shouldn’t hate her mother.

“Sorry,” Valentine apologized. “What don’t you like about being there?”

“I’m a freak.”

“You’re not a freak. Would a freak beat my best time on
Mario Kart
?”

“Mom doesn’t let
Mario Kart
in the house. There’s… books. Mom has a library for me. She picked them out to read to me, and… they’re
good
, Valentine. They’re such wonderful stories. They’re about girls who live in the woods and have happy families and date boys and do chores, and...”

“And?”

Aliyah went silent again. Valentine matched her silence. Paul stayed hidden in the hallway, shifting from foot to foot; Aliyah’s quiet times always made him nervous.

“…I’m never having that,” Aliyah whispered.

“So you snuck in to watch us do ’mancy, so you could feel normal.”

Paul winced at Valentine’s bluntness. He’d always been careful to let Aliyah come to her own conclusions, afraid parroting back interpretations of her feelings would just create some sad, rubber-stamp version of himself.

Valentine, however, ricocheted through a life based upon snap judgments. And gauging from Aliyah’s reluctant nod, Valentine had summed up Aliyah’s feelings.

She clasped her milkshake to her chest. “Dad said there would be other ’mancers to talk to!
Tons
of them!”

“That’s… what Anathema told him,” Valentine allowed. “And she was kiiiinda crazy.”

Aliyah’s face went grim. “I know.”

Aliyah had never spoken of the day she’d burned Anathema alive, though Paul and Valentine had done everything they could to get her to open up. Aliyah had committed murder for all the right reasons: Anathema was a psychotically focused ’mancer who’d already killed hundreds, and had in fact had just severed Paul’s toes with a spear when Aliyah had come to his defense. And Aliyah had never done ’mancy before, had no control over what happened aside from her literally incandescent rage.

But Aliyah had never expressed remorse over the killing.

That flinty unwillingness unnerved Paul.

“I know Anathema said she’d seeded New York with ’mancers…” Valentine began.

“She said there’d be hundreds!” Aliyah interrupted. “And it took two months for her to... to get
me
started, so where
are
all my ’mancer friends? Who’s going to protect us?”

“Trust me, kid, you don’t want them to show up,” Valentine said. “’Mancers, well… they’re like ice and fire. We believe, and believe
hard
, that the universe works a certain way. Usually when we meet, we kill each other.”

Aliyah gasped. “But you and Daddy…”

“We get along. But if it wasn’t for our love of magic, we’d never be friends.”

Paul wanted to debate that – then looked at the fuzzy mold of rice deliquescing in Valentine’s sink, and thought of the scalding hot decontamination showers he always took after spending the evening at Valentine’s place.

“Maybe I can make friends at school,” Aliyah said. “This one girl liked
Mario Kart
…”

Valentine grabbed Aliyah’s shoulder. “Kid, you’re a ’mancer. Your dreams bleed out of your head and turn into reality. That means
you will spend your life alone
.”

Had Valentine really
said
that? Paul froze. Aliyah trembled in Valentine’s grip.

“I’m sorry,” Valentine continued, emphasizing her words by shaking Aliyah. “But you need to understand. What you have now? Me and your dad to talk to? This is the most social support you’ll ever
get
. Your dad’s absorbing your flux for you, so you don’t understand. But… the bad luck goes after whatever you fear losing the most. So even if you
found
someone who somehow wasn’t ’mancy-terrified to confide in, you’d…”

Valentine slumped back in the futon. “I had a boyfriend. I liked him. I liked him
too much
, Aliyah. And when I singlehandedly fended off a battalion of SMASH agents, which is
exactly
as exciting as it sounds, the flux got away from me, and… it asked, ‘What would reach into Valentine’s chest like Kano’s hand to tear her beating heart right the fuck out?’ And bam. Poor Raphael got skewered.

“So I’m not gonna lie. I
can’t
lie. You need to embrace loneliness, because your magic’s going to kill all your friends.”

Aliyah set down her milkshake, sickened. “Even Daddy?”

“Maybe.” Valentine sighed. “Look, kid, SMASH and the Task Force, they’re... they’re out to get us. And… you’ve got to be
prepared
, Aliyah.”

Aliyah stared at the blank television screen, eyes flinty. “I
am
prepared.”

Paul thought back to that counsellor’s report:

Aliyah’s mother has stated she has no friends and never initiates social interactions with other children…

Now Paul knew why.

“That is
bullshit
.”

He stepped forward, swept Aliyah into his arms; Valentine froze like she’d been caught raiding the cookie jar. Aliyah looked up, beaming, at her father.

“Daddy,” she said, delighted. “You swore!”

“I’ll swear whenever Valentine is that wrong.” He released Aliyah, whirled on Valentine. “Just how many ’mancers had you met before we started working together, Valentine?”

Valentine glowered. “Enough.”

“Two! You met two! That whole speech, Aliyah, was based on Valentine’s experience with two ’mancers. Imagine if you’d met two Chinese people and extrapolated behavior based on that sample size!”

“Paul,” Valentine warned him. “We don’t have to have this discussion in front of her.”

“There’s no discussion to be
had
, Valentine. You and I have forged a great friendship. Who’s to say we couldn’t join forces with other ’mancers?”

Valentine raised one plucked eyebrow. “…all the dead people in Europe?”

“That was in World War II,” Paul said, undeterred. “And that accident happened when the whole
world
was at war.”

“Thank you for clarifying that, professor.”

“And yes, warring ’mancers ripped open broaches to the demon dimensions, but the Allied ’mancers – a volunteer squadron! – worked together quite efficiently until then.”

“That’s like saying the
Titanic
sailed beautifully until it hit an iceberg, Paul.”

“I’m not saying things can’t go wrong, Valentine. I’m saying that if we can find the new ’mancers Anathema promised, well… maybe some of them could help us.”

“And some could be new Anathemas.”

Aliyah clutched her milkshake to her chest as though it were a teddy bear. Paul gave Valentine an icy glare. “Can we talk in the kitchen?”

“What, you mean that conversation I
told
you we shouldn’t have in front of her suddenly seems like a bad idea?”

“
I
don’t conceal the things I say to her from
you
!”

Valentine rose from the futon, hands grasping imaginary game controllers. “And maybe
you
should think before you promise her–”

“
STOP IT
!”

Aliyah flung something at them; Paul heard a whoosh and a triumphant
ching!
, then the world condensed around him, turning tight blue and spherical. He struggled for freedom as he lifted off the ground, floating into a glimmering icicle sphere that held him tight. Valentine wriggled for freedom next to him as they were bound back to back.

“...Did that bitch just throw a
Pokeball
at us?” Valentine asked, her voice rising in admiration – before the ball dropped to the ground and rolled under the futon, carrying a now-shrunken Paul and Valentine with it.

“You do
not
fight!” Aliyah cried. Paul saw her crouching down to look under the couch, brandishing her milkshake at them as their Pokeball jail rolled back to bump against the wall. “It’s bad enough when Mommy and David fight! We all have to be friends! So you–”

In her anger, Aliyah forgot her training. The flux took her by surprise. Her milkshake cup sagged; ice cream spattered all over Aliyah’s shoes.

“
Fuck!
” Aliyah screamed.

Paul felt Valentine’s shoulders tense apologetically against his.