Flex (27 page)

K
it gripped
Paul’s shoulders hard enough to leave bruises; hard to believe the old man had that much strength in him. “Are you Anathema?”

“No!”

Kit clutched his head in anguish. “The evidence was before me all the time; I just didn’t want to see it – I overlooked something
so obvious
because you were a friend – and
you
told me it was
rats
!”

“I hated lying to you, Kit, I did, but you’d–”

“I can’t let this go, boy.
Police! We have a–
”

Things might have gone very badly if Aliyah hadn’t shown up.

“
Uncle Kit
!” she yelled, holding her still-burned arms out for Kit to pick her up. Kit glanced toward the cops; Paul could see him asking,
After all
she’s been through, dare I haul her father off in front of her
?

A little good luck to offset the bad
, Paul thought, feeling a swell of love for Aliyah.

“Kit.” Paul squeezed Kit’s shoulder. “Let’s talk.”

P
aul’s
cramped office was not meant for meetings – Kit, Aliyah, the back-in-her-own-skin Valentine, and, of course, Paul. Aliyah propped herself on Paul’s desk between keyboard and blotter, hungrily eyeing the tray of donuts Kit had brought in. Paul put his arm protectively around his daughter – and Kit flattened himself against the door, arms crossed, his rumpled tweed hat pulled down over his brow.

Valentine slumped against the filing cabinets, guzzling a Red Bull for energy.

“Whoo, this place
reeks
of ’mancy,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Look, my arm hairs are standing on end.”

“Well, it
is
my lair,” Paul demurred.

Valentine rolled her eye. “Really, Paul? Your ‘lair’? Is there a lever you pull to drop people into a shark tank? Besides, your bureaucromancy’s saturated the building. You can feel this in the lobby.”

“
When did you start
?” Kit wrung his cap in his hands as though he wished it were Paul’s throat. No wonder, Paul thought. The ’mancy had been obvious, and poor Kit felt foolish for not seeing it.

“A month or two ago.”

“Oh, Lord.” Kit massaged a vein on his forehead. “You’ve seen what ’mancers do when they get out of control. And you, you… you thought this would be okay? To just… break the world’s physics?”

Aliyah looked troubled. Paul squeezed her foot. “Not all the ’mancers I found were bad, Kit. Some wanted to create art. But people get so terrified when they see ’mancy, they push ’mancers to extremes…”

Kit sagged like he’d been punched. “You only turned in the ones you thought were harmful, didn’t you? You let them go. Did I even know you at all?”

“’Mancy’s not what you think. It’s not inherently destructive; it’s just… an alternative. A lot of it’s beautiful.”

“A leopard’s beautiful, but you don’t keep it in your apartment. Speaking of which, your apartment – was that you, too? Did you – lose control and set something aflame? Did you hurt–”

“
No!
” Aliyah edged away from Paul, Kit’s fears feeding hers. “Sweetie, have a donut. It’s okay.”

“But my nurse said–”

“Today’s special. Go nuts.” He turned to Kit again. “The fire was Anathema. And Aliyah would have–” Paul couldn’t say it out loud. “It would have been very bad if I hadn’t been a ’mancer.”

Kit craned his neck, picking up on Paul’s guilt. “But it wasn’t entirely good, either, was it? Something went wrong. You weren’t as in control as you thought you were then, and you’re not as in control as you think you are now. You need help, boychik. The flux, it always rebounds. It destroys everything you love – then you’ll chase it down further, thinking you can fix insanity by pouring more craziness into it. That’s the ’mancer’s spiral.

“No, Paul. You need to get into the Army. They’ll help you.”

“You know,” Valentine interrupted, “You’re talking to the only guy who’s stopped Anathema. Twice. I think the Army needs
Paul’s
help.”

Kit
tch
ed her. “I need no advice from a chocolate kreme donut person. Wasteful. Overloads of sweetness from the messiest donut in the pile.
This
is who you team up with, Paul? Some tattooed freak?”

“I
like
Vallumtime’s tattoos!” Aliyah yelped.

Kit ignored her. “When have ’mancers helped
anyone
, Ms DiGriz? I’ve helped track them down my whole life, and have they ever helped anyone but themselves? No! What do these maniacs care about? Cats. Antique cars. God save me from the Lucasmancers, with their stupid slicey-things. No. They don’t want to live here. If a ’mancer cared about making the world better, they wouldn’t try so hard to replace it!”

“
I
helped you,” Paul said. “Making things better is… it’s my ’mancy. And I found a way to
help
. With magic. All I’ve wanted since this started was to stop Anathema.”

“Nobody’s debating your intentions, Paul. I’m sure there were good ’mancers in World War II, but… they erred. You need to join the Army, before you lose control. They make ’mancy
safe
.”

Valentine spluttered Red Bull. “The way they made Long Island safe? When those fuckers ignited the broach Paul had to clean up?”

Kit scowled, waggling a liver-spotted finger at Valentine. “They didn’t start a broach!
You
did, refusing to be arrested for a crime you committed!”

She swatted his finger away. “Okay, yeah, the military’s the one to trust. Because World War II was the first war we mass-produced ’mancers. It’s not like the military didn’t cause the broach that ate
Europe
.”

“That was independents! Crazy ’mancers acting on their own volition!”

Paul stepped between them. “Nobody knows what caused the broach there. Nobody survived to tell. Could have been the OSS Extraphysics Detachment or the independent Aryomancers.

“But,” Paul continued, “when Europe went up, we lost
centuries
of ’mancer scholarship. Kit, you’re a man of learning – you know how little we actually understand about ’mancy. Ever since that tragedy, we’ve killed or captured every ’mancer on sight. The only people authorized to do studies are black ops SMASH psychologists, and they don’t release their findings. Isn’t it possible some ’mancers could be motivated to do good?”

Appealing to Kit’s intellect was a blatant ploy, which made it no less effective. Kit scrubbed his face with his palm. “Maybe some. That doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. Like sweating gelignite.”

“Fair,” Paul said. “But now you’ve got dynamite out there with a burning fuse. She’s killed five hundred people already. She would have killed another five hundred today. The next time, a thousand. And can you honestly tell me you could have stopped that building collapsing without Valentine and I?”

“…No. You could be useful. But it’s not just you, Paul. It’s…” Kit couldn’t bring himself to look at Aliyah, who was tucking into a Boston Kreme. “If it was just you, then maybe I’d use you and throw you away, painful as that thought is. But you’re a
father
, Paul. The flux… we both know where it’ll go.” He gestured at the fresh mirror-cuts on Aliyah’s face. “Will you tell me you can raise your daughter? The way a good man would be satisfied with?”

Paul looked to Valentine for support... and found her questioning him.

“It’d be a tough act, Paul,” she muttered. “Not much precedence for well-adjusted ’mancer parents. Most ’mancers, they’re kind of… estranged.”

“What’s ‘estranged’?” Aliyah asked, sensing the tension around her.

“Distant.” Paul felt wretched about obfuscating the truth yet again. “Weird.”

“You’re weird. Your ’mancy is weird. It’s pretty,
so
pretty, but… it hurts people. It cut me, broke that poor man’s ankle. And Uncle Kit says it hurts people, too. I know you wanna stop the bad ’mancer… but after? You need to stop, Daddy. You need to not be a ’mancer.”

The sound of Aliyah chewing her donut was the only sound in the office. Kit’s face was hooded:
If you can’t walk away from Aliyah, Paul
, his expression promised,
I’ll call SMASH.

“Let me find Anathema,” Paul pled. “Once I find her, we’ll – you’ll do what you have to. I won’t blame you.”

“You saved five hundred lives today,” Kit said, softening. “You get full credit for that, my friend. But I don’t know what our next move would be…”

“I know how to find her,” Paul said.

“
H
ow you feeling
?” Valentine asked.

Central Park’s summery dusk was packed with tourists and students, as always. Paul usually loved the rush and flow of crazy backpack-toting hipsters looking for cheap entertainment, of pudgy middle-aged couples with kids in tow, of grim joggers determined to get the last sunlight run.

Tonight, though, Paul concentrated on the vomit.

He’d thought that sick background vibration was a part of his ’mancy. But no, that was Anathema’s influence spreading across the city.

Only one of them could survive.

Focusing on her magic was like pushing his head deeper into a barf bag, but tuning into this violation was necessary. Anathema’s next trick would kill a thousand people in one shot. He had to find her before it was too late.

Besides, immersing himself in her queasy spells was better than pondering his future.

He slowed, frowning, talking half steps down different paths. Anathema’s trail was maddeningly faint; he thought of all the times he’d put his phone on vibrate and forgotten where he left it, so Imani called him while he’d wandered around the house, trying to triangulate the softest of buzzes. He and Valentine had wandered all day, wasting time on echoes and false starts, calling Kit with hourly reports that they were closer but unsure how close.

Valentine had hovered two steps behind him all day, reaching out at his every wince, treating him like a wheezing Chihuahua. He hated being treated like an invalid, always had.

“I’m fine,” Paul said, biting back irritation. “Hard to focus. Lots of people around tonight.”

“They’re showing the outdoor film festival tonight. Free movies for everyone.”

“You could go, you know.” He wished she would.

She shook her head. “Movies are like a videogame cutscene that’s twenty times too long. I got the attention span of a–”

Paul looked around for what had distracted her, then frowned. “Very funny.”

“No, seriously, I went once. They showed some movie about 2001 – most boring thing ever. My boyfriend got pissed at me when I played my PSP instead of watching the fine cinematography, so I put it away to avoid a fight. I killed time, wondering how it’d be playing
God of War
on an outdoor screen a hundred feet high.”

“Was that Raphael?”

She choked, a bitter laugh. “
God,
no. He never took me anywhere. No, I used to try to have boyfriends, once. You know. Back in the day.”

“Back before…” He did a little twirling gesture that somehow signified ’mancy.

“Yeah.”

They’d had some amiable silences. This one itched like a wool shirt.

“Let’s go,” he said.

He shuffled off the path, deeper into the woods, and felt a seething loathing. The forest. The elm trees resented being shackled under asphalt paths, force-fed polluted air and insecticides, wanted to crush the city under root…

Of course she’d holed up in Central Park.

Valentine tugged him back. “Is this a good idea?”

“You got any better ones?”

“Yeah.
Not
heading into the woods to chase a crazy cannibal killer. You’re shit at fighting, and we’ve established she can shut me down. Think she’s here? Send in SMASH.”

“They didn’t find Gunza. They won’t find her.”

SMASH relied too much on their expensive opals and not enough on detective work. Opals shattered in the presence of active ’mancy but not around unused Flex or clever ’mancers who chose not to cast spells. They’d low-flown their helicopters back and forth across the city, trusting to oversensitive stones to hunt Anathema.

Still, ’mancers weren’t common, even Army ones. A hundred SMASH Unimancers – more than most states had total – had been retasked to New York. They had patrolled what they could of Central Park’s depths. He imagined a SMASH team’s brain-burned ’mancers filing through the woods, concerned with each other in their tiny, incestuous world – then shoved the thought away.

You’ll be one of them soon enough
.

“They’re slow and stupid,” Paul snapped. “I’ve got a GPS that Kit is tracking. If it vanishes, well, he can tell SMASH our last known location. Right now, only I can track her down.”

“So, your plan’s okay with you dying? That’s an acceptable risk?”

He tromped into the woods, not looking back. “I didn’t ask you to come along.”

She’d been braced for that blow but sounded gut-punched nonetheless. “I
came
,” she said angrily, “because that’s what friends
do
. And when you start thinking suicide by ’mancer is a better option than taking care of your kid, then you
need
a friend.”

“What can I do, Valentine? Keep hurting Aliyah? You’ve seen SMASH soldiers – you get reduced to a set of orders and an artificially incestuous bond. I’d be better off dead.”

“So learn to stop hurting your kid.”

“Says the woman who–” He pulled himself from the abyss. Accusing her of getting Raphael killed would accomplish nothing. “You know all my flux will hit her – that’s
abuse
, Valentine!”

“Don’t you dare educate
me
in abusive fathers, Paul. They wouldn’t give a fuck. You do.”

“Yeah, well, all my caring doesn’t mean a damn when fucking
mirrors
explode in her face!”

“So the solution is suicide or SMASH? You said it yourself, Paul – we don’t know what ’mancers can do. You’ve done shit I didn’t think
could
be done with ’mancy – clear Flex, swapping flux loads, sewing up holes in the universe. If anyone can make parenting with ’mancy work, you can.”

“But–”

“
No
. You dragged me into this, Paul. You think I accomplished anything with my ’mancy? No. Kit was right. All I did before I met you was retreat from this world so I could build a cooler one in my closet. But you, Paul – you made me wonder: ‘What
good
could I do with this power?’ I don’t have to fight Anathema, or help you, or help Aliyah – but it’s
worthwhile
. I’m melding my fantasy with reality. It makes me stronger. Don’t you rob Aliyah of that.”

“I’m not robbing her of anything!”

“You’re robbing her of all this beautiful shit that we
do
! She cried when she saw you squeeze magic into Flex! She gets it! And you’re going to let Kit convince her that this impoverished bundle of physics is all there is?”

She rolled up her sleeves as if preparing for a physical fight. Paul felt shamed, exhausted.

“…I don’t wanna fight.”

“Then don’t be a dick. And yeah. I’m gonna follow you.
I
know why you’ve spent the last twelve hours hunting down Anathema without so much as a Pepsi break: you’re trying to get your heroic blaze of glory over with. Fuck that. I’m in your way. Watch me die first, motherfucker.” She spat on the ground. “Also: you’re shit in a fight.”

Paul’s heart was a blender, mixing prickly annoyance and loving gratitude. He spoke gruffly – not the yell he wanted to drive her away, not the embrace he wanted to wrap her in.

“Let’s go,” he said, feeling better, pushing deeper into the forest’s hateful sickness.

W
hen Paul couldn’t stop
dry-heaving, he knew he’d found Anathema’s lair.

“A cave?” Valentine asked, hands on hips in disbelief. “In Central Park?”

“She duh–” Paul retched again. This cave was the most isolated place he could imagine. In the city, he felt surrounded by bureaucracy’s support network – the roads that paperwork built, the houses that paperwork bought, the repairmen and road workers and trash collectors that paperwork employed.

Inside that cave was a howling emptiness.

There were no grain silos to get through a harsh winter, no medical books to help the sick – just scrawny Neanderthals chasing deer, killing if they felt like it, no court of appeals except for a knife in the night.

He sensed how Anathema viewed it – men living by cunning alone, men who could make a spear, build a fire, dress a boar, weave a loincloth. A thousand skills civilization had obsoleted. To Anathema, these savages were well-rounded. The people in the skyscrapers were specialized insects living in tiny boxes.

Anathema’s humanity involved copious amounts of death. So much so, the stomach acid boiled out of his throat.

He checked the GPS, his phone; no reception. Of course.

Valentine tiptoed around the brush-covered cave opening. “Should we go in?”

“She’s not here,” Paul said. “I’d feel her presence.”

“What are you, Darth Vader?”

“If our GPS signal drops for too long, Kit calls SMASH in to our last known location.”

“A fine plan. I like waiting.”

“But maybe she’s got an alarm, twigs to our intrusion, and destroys the evidence. We should look while we still can.”

She sniffed. “It smells like the zoo. Shit and dead meat.” She hugged herself, shivering. “I got into videogames because I hated going outdoors, Paul. For me, the sun is this inconvenience I endure while dashing between air-conditioned boxes. This smells like a summer camp where kids kill.”

The cave entrance pulsed a dim green, like the aurora borealis. “I’ll understand if you want to back out.”

“Things glowing is comforting. In my world, things glow to guide you.”

“So you wanna go first?”

“Want to? No. But I have yet to see you throw a successful punch, Carter, so I guess Vasquez takes point.”

They pushed aside some shrubbery and clambered into the cave entrance, which was just big enough to squeeze through.

“…Now
this
is a lair,” Valentine whispered, coming to a halt.

Paul nudged Valentine aside to get a better look, then stood frozen himself. The cave was bigger on the inside than it could have been, should have been – a cavernous ceiling hanging over an amphitheater-sized ring of rock. The ceiling was lost in a night sky – a bold sky free of light pollution, the Milky Way a starry swirl against a stark and engulfing blackness.

“…the flux load,” Valentine asked. “How does she live with it? This dimension-warping is vulgar. It should be collapsing – I’ve tried making my own palaces; they melt like cotton candy in rain…”

Paul crept around the perimeter, afraid to go near the center, where a single bonfire crackled. A small creek trickled through the veldt, providing enough water to live on. This place stank of predators, of death to the unwary… and yet there was something compelling here.

A leopard’s beautiful, but you don’t keep it in your apartment
, Kit had said. He was right. Yet the leopard’s devotion to death made its feline grace no less compelling.

This echoing cave was Anathema’s idea of beauty.

Yet there was more light than just the bonfire and stars. Chunks of amber crystal were embedded in the stone walls, poking up like weeds, glowing yellowish green.

The crystals had tiny hairs in them, twitching like insects.

–
her Flex
, he thought.
Of course. She wouldn’t use processed hematite; she grows her drugs from the earth
.

“There’s so
much
,” Valentine said breathlessly. “But it’s cloudy, full of flux. And – see that empty chunk over there?”

Paul did, a vast semicircle of shadow in the glowing stone, hinting at a harvest. Something had been left in its place: white-and-brown smudges smeared across the wall.

Cave paintings.

They wriggled, pinned to the wall.

Valentine trotted over, squinting. “That’s…” She shook her head. “That’s a cave painting of a little girl in a tennis dress. And a tennis court, in front of a mansion. How do I know that’s a tennis court, Paul? How can I–”

The paintings shivered and expanded, flowing across the stone to seep into the night sky. He was already tumbling into the paintings, the stick figures and chalk houses growing to swallow him as he was sucked into the story these figures so desperately needed to tell.