Flex (24 page)

A
liyah’s screaming
brought Paul back to reality. Or, rather, Psycho Mantis’s reaction to it. Because when Aliyah shrieked as all the mirrors in the bathroom shattered, Psycho Mantis reacted with scorn.

Every living thing on this planet exists to mindlessly pass on their DNA
, it thought.
We’re designed that way
.

Which, Paul understood, was a quote from a game he’d never played – one sound bite pulled from a limited number of reactions, like an automated voice answering questions on a help line. It
felt
real, thanks to Valentine’s ’mancy, but feed it enough unusual situations and the illusion broke down.

You only lived long enough to provide a single boss battle and a set of cut scenes
, Paul thought, clawing back to control.
So, you don’t get to make the choices. I do
.

He yanked back on the reins just as Psycho Mantis prepared to kill everyone in the room – the one thing boss monsters could always do.

Oscar spoke louder, reassuring his men.

“I was told you were a tattooed girl.” He gestured to his guards:
Put the guns down
. “Or a one-legged man, chained to a radiator.”

Paul couldn’t decide if the riposte was foolish or bold. It was intended to remind him of the impotence he’d felt at Gunza’s hands.

“I am a videogamemancer. I can wear any skin,” Paul rasped. “I was never her, and he was never a ’mancer.”

“That is not what my brother told us.”

“Your brother took the wrong man, then deluded himself,” Paul said, struggling to get the words out past the crazed speeches Psycho Mantis wanted to spew. “He died clueless about ’mancy.”

“Why would you teach me?” Oscar spread his hands. “What could you possibly desire?”

“Hematite,” Paul said. Which was the least of the things he needed right now but what Oscar would be drawn to. “I need to make my own Flex again. Your people had sources.”

“Sources that dried up after my brother burned out,” Oscar shrugged. “Difficult enough to get mage-grade hematite when it was merely a restricted substance; now that SMASH is combing New York for creatures like you, every manufacturing plant is on the strictest of lockdowns.”

“That’s not a no.”

“Flex was not good for my brother. Nor was it kind to my dead brother Hanna, nor Uncle. My family has long been convinced ’mancers are unprofitable business.” He nodded toward his guard bleeding from a hundred deep cuts. “What I see here gives me no reason to change that.”

Psycho Mantis didn’t like that at all.

“You’re not dealing with ’mancers.” Paul tried his best to sound calm, reasonable, certainly not like some maniac was sucking the sanity out the back of his head. “You’re dealing with
suppliers
. Of Flex.
Pure
Flex.”

“My brother told us he had tamed you.”

“He was a kidnapper, and a blackmailer, and bad at both. He also needed to bend your family’s desires to his, desperate for adulation. He wanted fame. You… you simply want to do business.”

It was a shot in the dark, a measured guess. Still, Oscar froze.

“Think of what you could do with perfection, carefully dispensed,” Paul continued. “Drug runs guaranteed to work. The cops overlooking all the best evidence. You run a dangerous business. A little surety, dispensed wisely, can go a
long
way.”

Oscar’s shoulders slumped. “…it seems a little easy.”

“I’m a little desperate,” Paul acknowledged. “Anathema is breathing down my neck. I need better firepower.”

That wasn’t true. The Flex drew Anathema to him; something that he instilled in his Flex enraged her. His firepower would be Valentine.

Oscar didn’t need to know that.

“…And why should I involve myself in a mage war?”

“You don’t,” Paul said. “You give me mage-grade hematite, take your cut, and leave. This is a one-time offer.”

Oscar pursed his lips. “…you obscure the truth, ’mancer. You left a letter in my house. On my
desk
. It glowed green so I couldn’t miss it; the moment I noticed it, the world halted. Doors stuck shut. All my phones, dead. Everyone in the house repeated the same three sentences, and I realized the sun would refuse to set until I opened your damned invitation.”

Valentine’s ’mancy
, Paul thought proudly.
I put the letter there; she made it a quest item
.

“So, time.” Oscar tapped his cane upon the ground. “
Time
was a factor. What do you need so badly that you summoned me here now?”

Dammit. Paul had hoped to slide the most vital item past Oscar. But now it was on the table…

“…I need a doctor. One skilled in surgery and…” He had to make sure Oscar’s medics could take care of Aliyah. “…and severe burns. I need him today. Stocked with his own supplies.”

Oscar nodded. “I can get that.”

“So, we have a deal?”

“If you stop your whirlwind.”

Paul stopped Psycho Mantis from snapping Oscar’s neck. “What?”

Oscar took off his glasses, cleaned them with his tie. “You are correct about my brother, Mr Mantis. Gunza was a bully. When I heard he had died, I found myself unclenching muscles I didn’t realize I had tensed all my life. So, I am suspicious of men who use their power flagrantly and stupidly.” He glanced meaningfully over at his bodyguard, the one Paul had flung through a window. “So, I will request: stop your whirlwind. Stop trying to
frighten
me. I’ve been frightened by professionals, Mr Mantis. People who can instill more terror with a single nail file than you can with all your reality-bending. They will all tell you: I reward people who do business.”

That request gave Paul a strange kinship toward Oscar. He felt shamed. Had he become this violent lunatic? What happened to his ideals of quiet commerce?

Psycho Mantis hammered the inside of his skull, demanding blood; Paul clubbed that hatred back down. Psycho Mantis retreated sullenly, withdrawing all his granted power. Wobbling like a badly thrown Frisbee, Paul heaved himself back over the railing before the psychic storm broke, sending nails and broken glass clattering to the ground.

Then he leaned against the railing, his fake leg bending like a Styrofoam pool noodle. Valentine’s ’mancy had vanished, leaving him with just bureaucromancy to counter Oscar’s next move.

As he looked down at the three angry bodyguards hauling the injured one away, he thought:
This might be a mistake
. They put their hands on their holsters and looked to their boss.

Oscar paid them no mind. Instead, he cocked his head toward the sound of Aliyah crying hysterically in the bathroom. He nodded once, as if this confirmed his suspicions…

… then gestured for his men to leave. The gratitude that flooded through Paul’s body was nearly a carnal thing.

“My physician will arrive within an hour,” Oscar said, bowing at the waist as if they had completed a ju-jitsu session. “The hematite, tomorrow.”

Paul fought to keep his voice from trembling. “Thank you.”

“You may express your gratitude in Flex,” Oscar replied.

He left.

A
liyah sobbed
. Panicked, Paul pulled the chair out from underneath the bathroom doorknob – not a complex lock, but enough to thwart a six-year-old – and checked in on her.

She was bleeding. The glass from the mirror had cut her.

“Sweetie…” When she saw him, she
shrieked
. It was like she didn’t even know him.

Then he realized: she didn’t. He was still clad in the Mantis skin, a pallid freak in a gas mask. “It’s Daddy, Aliyah; it’s Daddy,” he said, but she scrambled back across the floor, slicing her hands.

He slammed the bathroom door shut, looking toward Valentine, who was unconscious again. He hoped the doctor would arrive soon. He hoped Oscar wouldn’t change his mind and send his thugs in to shoot them. But his daughter, cut by flying glass, that was the worst thing he could imagine–

–the flux.

There was no flux. His head was clear. He’d burned it off, breaking mirrors and terrorizing Aliyah.

Oh, my God, he was the worst parent in the whole world.

“Valentine,” he said, shaking her awake.

“Needa sleeb.”

“No, Valentine. We have a doctor on the way. You have to change skins with me. You have to be Psycho Mantis. Or else, when he gets here, he’ll know who you are.”

“…Zokay.”

“It is
not
. We need to have Oscar and crew believing the videogamemancer switches bodies. Otherwise, Kit and SMASH will come looking for you. You can’t be you any more. Not when you do ’mancy.”

Valentine roused herself. “Gemme closet…”

She took a step toward the bathroom door; Paul shoved her back. “Not there,” he said, envisioning Valentine turning the bathroom into that terrifying skin-swapping void with Aliyah still in it. “We’ll use this supply closet. Don’t forget to leave your wound open.”

The closet opened up into the void, that feeling of being reduced to component geometry. The door flew open and spat Paul out in his own skin.

He landed on his elbow. That missing foot again. Valentine leaned over to pick him up, dressed in full Psycho Mantis garb – except for her right breast and shoulder, which were now exposed. He thought the costume had been disturbing before, but one chubby, blood-soaked tit sticking out on a gaunt male frame was somehow terrifying.

He grabbed for his crutch, hobbling over to Aliyah.

She’d gone quiet, rocking back and forth in a stupor, hugging her Nintendo DS against her chest. She pushed shards of glass around with bloody toes. He had to get her shoes. There hadn’t been time to get anything since they’d fled the hospital. That had been, what, three hours ago? Four? He didn’t dare check his cell phone; Kit probably had a tracer on his phone’s GPS.

He looked at the fresh cuts on her face. He’d done that. But he couldn’t afford to have Aliyah see him cry.

“Sweetie,” he said. “It’s Daddy.
Daddy
.”

She pushed the glass shards around some more.

He brought in a broom, swept the glass away, then led her out to the office. Aliyah made a run for it, of course, but he was ready.

“No!” she screamed as he dragged her back, pounding him, smearing him in her blood. “I want Mommy! You cut me!
You cut me
!”

“I didn’t cut you,” he lied. “That was the mirror.”

“You made it explode!”

“…yes.”
Didn’t you promise not to lie any more, Paul?
“I did, I did. I was trying to scare off some bad men.”

“
You’re
bad men!”

“You saw me saving Valentine. That bad ’mancer – the one who burned you? – she was trying to kill all three of us. I had to use my ’mancy to save Valentine, and – and she’s still hurt. She might die. I had to use my ’mancy to scare some men into getting a doctor who can help her. Not all the ’mancy is bad. Not all the
’mancers
are bad. But the bad ’mancer is forcing our hand…”

Aliyah huffed, hyperventilating in huge whoops that Paul knew would give her a headache later. “Why can’t you give it up, Daddy? Just stop it. Don’t be… don’t be a ’mancer. Be a Daddy. Just… be my Daddy. Be my
Daddy
!”

“Sweetie.” He dabbed the blood off her face; thankfully, the cuts were head wounds, bleeding profusely – but nothing that required stitches. “If Daddy could, he would. Being a ’mancer isn’t anything you choose to be. It just… happens.”

“You’re not Daddy! Daddy doesn’t have bug eyes! Daddy doesn’t blow up mirrors!”

“That mean woman who burned you, she’s bad. Remember when you tried to save me from her? She’ll come after you if I leave you alone, she’s vicious. I need the ’mancy to protect you–”

“I don’t care!
Daddy would give it all up
!”

“…Bedtime?” said a deep Russian voice.

Paul was confused until he realized that “bed” was “bad”, and it was not a statement but a question from the polite man who had poked his head into the room.

“No,” he said, tugging Aliyah back to his lap. “No, no, it’s not a bad time.”

Aliyah could not take her eyes off of the old man with the drooping white mustache who shuffled into the room. He wore a tweed suit with leather patches on the elbow and carried a large black bag, just like the doctors of old. He eyed the squirming child with bleary gray eyes.

“De child first, or the men in the mesk?” the doctor asked.

“The child. She’s in week seven of her burn treatment. She needs debridement–”

“
He’s not my Daddy!
” Aliyah yelled, “
He’s not my Daddy! Stranger danger! Stranger danger! He’s a Don’t-Know!
”

She flung her arms around the doctor’s legs. “
He – he touches me! He’s not my Daddy! He’s a toucher, a mean toucher, a ’mancer-toucher!
”

“S’good,” the doctor said, plucking her up and plopping her back into Paul’s lap. “S’good.” Then he waved a beefy finger at her, chiding. “We’ll fix de cuts. And look at de burns. The rest, little girl… is none of my bizness.”

He got out an iPad and, consulting it for reference, began the process of debriding Aliyah’s skin. Aliyah stared straight ahead, doll-like, impervious to the pain. She’d been shown another truth far too soon: there were men who utterly did not care what happened to her.

Paul wished with all his heart that she’d never had to witness that. But she’d doubtless see worse before this was over.

T
he doctor carried
four chilled bags of O negative blood in his satchel, two of which went into Valentine. That and a night’s rest made Valentine well enough to fetch some Dunkin’ Donuts.

She hugged her knees as she sat by the railing, looking down at the Flex-making equipment that Oscar’s associates had brought in. “Bleeding to death makes one a little forgetful,” she said. “So,
what
made making Flex for drug lords again seem like a good idea?”

“We don’t know where Anathema is,” Paul replied, flipping through an empty drawer, pulling out medical record after medical record. “And it’s a big city. The only reason I found you is because you didn’t pull up stakes after blowing a huge load of flux.”

“You wouldn’t love me if I was a
wise
drug manufacturer,” Valentine said loftily.

Paul squinted at Aliyah’s records pulled from her doctors’ files. The Russian medic had given him printed treatments for Aliyah, but Paul wouldn’t rest his daughter’s life on some sawbones. So he’d pulled up her planned schedule for the week, pieced together from various computer records and printed out in dot-matrix records, trying to decipher medicalese.

“The point is, we don’t know where she is. Nor do we know where she’ll strike next. Knowing she’s a paleomancer–”

“Really?
That’s
the word you chose to describe Captain Caveman?”

“–knowing she’s obsessed with bringing down civilization doesn’t narrow it down. Who knows what she thinks will pull us back to the Stone Age? Destroying an Apple store? Clogging the sewage system? Shorting the generators? Hell, this is New York:
every
business is devoted to demolishing the natural order.”

“Points for plotting,” Valentine acknowledged, biting into a Croissan’wich. “Still doesn’t get me to why we’re brewing again.”

“Because the last time I lived next to a big supply of my Flex, she sent in a guy to kill me. He was juiced with something that felt like cockroaches were crawling in my veins – and when she stood next to me, it felt like wolves vomiting in my throat…”

“Whoa!” Valentine said, almost spitting her coffee. “Can you restrain the purple prose until after I fill myself with nutrients?”

“Croissandwiches aren’t nutrients, Valentine. They’re fat and salt.”

“As am I.”

“Anyway, when she went after me yesterday, she was screaming I ‘take the cost away.’ That’s my Flex, pure, without blowback. Refined, pure ’mancy like mine is – well, it’s like waving a red flag. Get a stockpile, she’ll have to come after me.”

“Does she know you know that?”

“I don’t think it’d matter if she did. She’s insane.”

Valentine fingered her stitches, wincing. “And fucking dangerous, Paul. She killed two hundred and fifty-six people with her last stunt. I came close to being one of them. Her next attack will kill half a thousand. I’m all for the good fight, but… Can we get help?”

Paul wished he could talk to Kit. Kit would make sense of this. But he could stop Anathema; when she showed, he’d backdate warrants to have a hundred cops surrounding her.

It’d have to be cops. No SMASH. He couldn’t risk another broach, as he had a feeling Anathema would happily flood New York with buzzsects. Which meant maybe they’d have to lend a hand…

“There’s a risk we might get outed as ’mancers,” Paul said. “But if we asked–”

The doorbell rang.

“That’s not the cops, is it?” Valentine asked.

“That’d be my foot. Would you mind getting it?”

Valentine signed for it, dropping it into his lap with a perplexed expression. “It’s a big box. Which they shipped
four days ago
. How did you…”

“I backdated the invoice.”

“You can order backwards in
time
?”

“We all have our specialties,” Paul shrugged. He unwrapped the box to lift out an artificial leg. The top-of-the-line model he’d had before the buzzsects chewed his old one up. It had cost him as much as a luxury car, draining the last of his savings – but he didn’t dare put this claim through Samaritan Mutual, or Kit would track him down. And if he’d lowered the cost, the flux load would have endangered Aliyah.

Getting a leg he
could
have afforded? Minimal ’mancy. Minimal danger.

He plugged it into the wall to charge. “Look, Aliyah. Daddy’s got his leg back.” He waggled it as if she might move to steal it again.

Aliyah ignored him. She was playing her DS again, as she had since the doctor left.

Was she trying to find her mother in the maze? He shoved the thought away.

“Here’s where I need your ’mancy,” Paul said. “Normally, fitting a prosthetic leg is a long process. But in videogames, they–”

Valentine snapped her fingers. When Paul shoved his stump into the transtibial cup, there was a drill-like “whrr”, a clockwork spasm, and the leg popped on as easily as putting on powered armor in a videogame.

“Three cheers for cross-pollination.” She tilted her head to admire the fit. “I wouldn’t have thought to do that.”

“I wouldn’t have thought to revoke my Flex.” Paul stood up and almost wept with joy. It shouldn’t be
that
big a deal to be ambulatory again. But it was. He felt more competent, more confident, more himself.

He tapped his metal foot on the floor, baiting Aliyah’s attention. She didn’t look up.

“Okay, Paul,” Valentine whispered, hunkering down next to him. “Final Jeopardy time. The answer is, ‘What small child should be in the path of a spear-o-mancer?’ Remember, all answers must come in the form of a responsible parent.”

Paul massaged the bridge of his nose, ignoring the way she mangled the rules of
Jeopardy
. “I know, I know. But if I put Aliyah back in the hospital, Anathema would track her down.”

“You’re making this sound personal, Paul. She’s not–”

“It
is
personal, Valentine. That’s the
point
. Do you know why I spent hours filling out every box on every last Samaritan Mutual form? Because if that paperwork wasn’t perfect, some vindictive little penny-pincher would use the imperfection as an excuse to refuse the claim. Some poor bastard lost his wife in a car accident, and one incomplete form meant he never got the money. So I dotted all the i’s and crossed the t’s. For them.”

“Paul…”

“Except that was a step
up
from my old job! Back on the force, I’d seen murderers walk because some cop filed the evidence wrong. I didn’t get obsessed with paperwork because it was fun, Valentine – I did it because getting it right meant the right people
lived
. Paperwork is how we bend bad organizations to our will. Paperwork is how we twist arms to squeeze assistance from dead-eyed politicians. Humanity stopped being animals once a law became more important than a sword.”

She held up her hands, sensing his ’mancy rising up around him. “Yo, chief, I believe you, I–”

“And
she
. People don’t matter to her – Anathema kills hundreds just to make a
point
. She wants to whittle us back down to a ‘simpler’ time, when women died in childbirth and men died from gangrene!

“So, yeah, Valentine. It’s personal. I started my ’mancy to bend the world to make people better. She’s using hers to make it worse. Our ’mancies are fire and water – we can’t both survive. And she’ll go for Aliyah, because hell, you think a born-again
caveman
is bound by a moral code against killing kids?”

“I get that, Paul,” Valentine said softly. “I do. But are we the ones to protect her?”

“Who else? The cops haven’t stopped her, SMASH hasn’t stopped her, Samaritan Mutual hasn’t – the only thing that’s ever thwarted Anathema is sitting in this room.”

Valentine raised an eyebrow over her good eye. “…Me?”

“I stabbed her in the leg. I believe that would make it an ‘us.’”

She gave him a slacker’s “Yeah, buddy” grin, then held out her hand for a bro-slap. He returned it, with emphasis.

“All right,” she said, tucking into a donut. “You’ve dragged me into your grand life of adventure, Paul. Make the Flex, attract the crazy, save the child.”

Paul sighed, looking over at Aliyah. “I wish the child would talk to me.”

“…She hasn’t?”

“Not since I told her about me.”

Valentine held up a “wait there” finger and hunkered down next to Aliyah.

“Hey.” Aliyah reacted to Valentine’s presence with a full-body wriggle, inching backward, but kept her gaze on the Nintendo.

Valentine yanked it from Aliyah’s hands.

“Hey!” Aliyah yelled, infuriated. “Give it back!”

“Why would you want it?” Valentine bank-shot the Nintendo into the trashcan. “A filthy, nasty ’
mancer
gave you that toy. Why would you want a gift from an ugly, horrible person? Why would you want it from someone you wish was
dead
?”

The look of betrayal on Aliyah’s face was the same as when the doctor refused her help.

“You are a selfish,
awful
little girl,” Valentine continued in a hateful tone. “I told you how pretty you were when you were scared about looking burned. I brought you games when you feared for your Daddy’s life. I snuck past nurses to stay up late with you, sat by your bed until you fell asleep. Then you find out I’m a ’mancer, and none of that matters?”

Aliyah’s lip puffed out, sullenly approaching the point of no return. Beating Aliyah up emotionally only backed her into a corner, and once you backed a stubborn kid like Aliyah up,
nothing
got her out.

“Valentine–”

She whirled to face him, her face so furious, Paul flinched into silence.

“Lemme tell you how it is, kid,” Valentine continued. “’Mancy? Is like getting burned. You don’t become a ’mancer because you want to; you become a ’mancer because the world hurt you badly enough that you had nowhere to go but out the other side. You become a ’mancer because somebody else broke all your happiness, and so you retreat to this fantasy world, and it ought to be great that it’s real…

“…but it turns out magic can kill you. And if you don’t die, then your mother calls you a freak and says she wishes you’d never been born. Then little girls who you would have given your freaking
life
for tell you they want you dead.”

Valentine backed Aliyah against the wall. Aliyah quivered.

“But hey! Maybe I should be dead. Your Daddy? He didn’t ask to be a ’mancer, either. But he’s done more with that than any other ’mancer I heard of. He’s risked his life to save people from the woman who burned you. He’s going to do it again, even though most of those people would lock him up if they knew who he was. He’s doing it even though his selfish little daughter is having a hissy fit because her Daddy can’t help being a ’mancer any more than she can help having seared skin.

“So, yeah. You don’t deserve my Nintendo. You don’t deserve my friendship. And you especially don’t deserve your Daddy.”

Valentine pushed herself off the floor, grim-faced. She stepped away as Aliyah burst into tears.

Valentine thumped Paul on the shoulder.

“Bad cop: accomplished,” she said. “Go get ’er, good cop.”

Paul was about to scream at Valentine for saying such cruel things, when Aliyah held up her arms and begged Daddy for forgiveness, she didn’t mean it, she didn’t know about ’mancers, please, Daddy, please.

And there was nothing to do but sweep Aliyah up into his arms and comfort her like the father he desperately wanted to be, telling her it was okay, he loved her, he always
would
love her, and nothing would ever change that. And she clung to him, weeping so violently that he was afraid she might throw up, all those weeks of emotion surging out in one torrent of tears.

As he patted Aliyah’s back, trying to soothe her, he saw Valentine, legs hanging over the balcony, lost in thought.

He wondered how much of that speech had been calculation.

He wondered how much he could forgive her.