Flex (22 page)

“
W
e have
to get out of here,” Paul said. “If the cops ask questions about you–”

“I got it,” Valentine said woozily. Her hands trembled with pain as she manipulated her imaginary controller. Paul felt a surge of magic, but Valentine’s wound kept bleeding.

“Nothing happened,” Paul said, puzzled. “Is she still interfering?”

“No…” Valentine staggered to her feet to peer around the burn ward; she looked pale even by her fishbelly-white standards. “S’around here somewhere…”

Aliyah’s grip tightened around Paul’s arm. “That curtain,” she whispered. “It’s glowing, Daddy.”

“Oh, yeah. Come to Momma.” Valentine whisked open the curtains to reveal a hospital bed; resting on top of stiff sheets was a gleaming white medkit complete with red cross. She grasped it, closing her eyes in gratitude; the medkit dissolved into her, sealing her wound.

“
Daddy
!” Aliyah screamed, drawing back. Paul swallowed back anger.

“Why didn’t you do that for
her
?” he asked.

Valentine blinked owlishly. “Do what for who?”

“Do healing magic. On my
daughter
.”

“…this?” She patted her shoulder, pulled taut with new skin. “Toldja, Paul, nothing I do is permanent. This’ll last an hour or two, then the wound will break open again. This is just to get me, you know… to the end of the level.”

She swayed dangerously. “Aliyah, go help her,” he said, crawling towards his crutches.

“You’re not – you’re not bringing her along, are you?” Valentine’s face wrinkled in incredulity.

Kill a kid, you yank the parent’s heart out
, Gunza had said.

“If Anathema knows who I am, then she knows all she has to do to flush me out is kidnap my child,” Paul said, waving towards Aliyah. “We gotta think Next Level, Valentine – we can’t just
react
. We’ve gotta anticipate what Anathema will do next, then get in her way. That means removing Aliyah from the line of fire.”

“But Paul, she’s still
burned
. What about her medications, her treatments?”

I’ll kill her first
, Anathema had promised. And without Paul to guard her…

“I’ll get Aliyah her treatments,” Paul said. “Somehow. But no hospital can protect my daughter from an angry ’mancer – that’s my job. Anathema is out for her blood now, too, and – and I promised I’d never leave her. I promise, sweetie,” he said, kissing Aliyah’s forehead. “You’ll never look for Daddy in the maze again.”

She grabbed Paul’s hand, keeping her distance from Valentine.

The hospital was in chaos; between the ’mancer battle, the blackout, and the influx of patients in tattered tuxedos, nobody had time to pay attention beyond their immediate concerns. Nurses wheeled patients out on beds, navigating by flashlight and cell phones, trying to figure out which functional hospitals they could reroute the dying to.

Paul crutched his way among the crowds. Valentine staggered along; the medkit had dulled her pain, but she was still in shock from being stabbed.

They emerged in the hospital lobby. Aliyah sucked in a breath. It sounded to Paul like a childhood dying.

The lobby was filled with bleeding women in formal gowns, laid out on gurneys, countertops, any flat surface. Paramedics did CPR; nurses straddled screaming patients, trying to staunch the blood flow. Doctors waded through the mess as crying patients grabbed at their ankles, begged for painkillers.

Yet patients and medics alike moved with weary resignation. They knew exactly how many would die today, no matter what miracles they worked: two hundred and fifty-six people.

What made it surreal was the patients’ formal wear: the men in tattered tuxedoes, the women in blood-spattered gowns. They’d been ballroom dancing when Anathema’s accident struck. The out-of-place decorum lent the lobby the air of a formal gathering, like the dying of some foregone age.

That’s what she wanted
, Paul thought, shocked to numbness.
She wanted to destroy their civilization, take it from them whole
.

Aliyah stood silent, taking it all in, collecting more evidence for her growing thesis on unbearable choices.

“We gotta go back,” Valentine said.

“
Back
? You can barely walk!”

“These people will never walk again if I don’t… I gotta find the…”

Paul followed her into the darkened hallways. He called back to Aliyah, who was mesmerized by the sight of doctors attempting to resuscitate a dapper seventy year-old man in a white tuxedo, his wife weeping by his side.

He tugged her away.

Paul caught up with Valentine, leaning against a supply closet to catch her breath.

“What are you doing?” Paul asked, concerned. Aliyah flattened herself against the opposite wall, eyeing Valentine with suspicion.

“What I set out to do.” She pulled the supply closet open, revealing an improbably large, glowing switch on the wall. It danced with blue-white fire, like a bug zapper, but Valentine grabbed it with both hands and levered it up with a grunt.

The emergency lights flickered on; Paul heard the hum of monitors rebooting. Then the sound of blood plopping onto the floor; Valentine looked surprised to find herself bleeding again.

“That soon,” she muttered, feverish. “Must be bad.” She tapped her imaginary controller, then shifted some blankets to find another medkit at the back of the shelf.

“You gonna last?”

“Have to. If I have to explain why I got stabbed by a ’mancer, with these tattoos, after what happened back at the warehouse? Might as well call SMASH myself.” She laughed, a bitter sound. “It’s funny. I don’t dare ask for help at the hospital…”

“We’ll get help.”

“Not here, we won’t.” She limped over to Aliyah. “We good, kid?”

“Are you gonna die now?” Aliyah asked.

“I might. Do you want me to?”

Aliyah held her breath, puffing her cheeks. She looked like the answer was strangling her, a complex emotional mixture no six year-old should ever endure. But here was a ’mancer: her worst enemy, her best friend.

“…no...”

“Vote… of confidence,” Valentine wheezed, offering a high five, refusing to put her arm down until Aliyah returned it. Aliyah’s response was like a girl sadly pressing her hand against a window to say goodbye.

They left through an emergency exit. Ambulances were lined up and down the block, lights flaring, policemen and firemen barking orders.

A touch of Valentine-provided Grand Theft Auto-mancy made stealing a car a cinch – though that effort required the creation of another medkit, followed by a hunt through the parking lot until they found it. “They’re never convenient,” Valentine muttered, as though it were a fact of life. “They’re hidden, to encourage you to explore.”

Paul wouldn’t let Valentine drive – her head was nodding – but he had to shuffle through his accordion folder first, finding someplace nearby, vacant, and furnished.

Aliyah switched on her Nintendo. She put in her earphones, ignoring the woozy Valentine lolling in the front seat.

Paul speed-dialed Kit.

“Paul?” Kit asked, concerned. “Something’s happening at Aliyah’s hospital, news is slim, I’m on my way over…”

“Yeah,” Paul said, pulling out of the garage. “Anathema attacked me.”

“…She attacked
you
?” Paul heard the guilt in Kit’s voice.

“Not your fault. She would have come for me anyway. She’s Caucasian, mid-thirties, five-seven, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds. Long dreadlocked hair. She’s had plastic surgery, with a button nose, but her teeth are filed.”

“Filed? Who the hell files their teeth?”

“That’s the thing, Kit: she’s not an anarchomancer. She’s a paleomancer.”

“A paleomancer? I’ve never heard of a–”

“Okay, fine, a society-hating-mancer. A primitive-mancer? Whatever. The point is, she’s been targeting the things she thinks are
fripperies
. She wants us huddled in small groups around a campfire. I was more right than I knew – she’s not out to destroy the government, she’s out to destroy
civilization
.”

“You positive?”

“I just fought the bitch. Trust me.”

“Why’d she go after you?”

Because she thinks she created me?
Paul thought.
Because our ’mancies are in opposition to each other?

“No idea,” Paul lied. “Listen, I gotta go underground. If I’m in the open, she’ll come for me again. She won’t stop until I’m dead.”

“Paul, no.” Kit sounded terrifyingly old. Paul had never thought of Kit as elderly, just well seasoned. But his voice was reedy as he begged Paul to go to the cops, promising they’d protect him.

“Kit, this isn’t up for debate. And I’m taking Aliyah.”

“…can you take care of her? In her condition?”

Paul glanced in the back seat. Aliyah in her frail hospital gown, IV needle still in her arm, focused on her Nintendo. All the cops in the world couldn’t stop Anathema from getting to her – and Anathema
would
go after his daughter, if Paul went to cover. Aliyah would be the only thing guaranteed to draw him out.

“I’ll have to.”

“You could let SMASH question you – they’ve got opal-studded safe houses–”

SMASH would love to question me
, Paul thought, racing through a gridlocked intersection.
Maybe they’d catch Anathema – but they’d definitely catch me. And Valentine
.

“We’re not negotiating, Kit. I’m telling you because you’re smart enough to track her down. I’ll be in touch. I hope.” He shut off his phone, pulling into the parking garage.

The best place he’d been able to afford was a half-built office – one that had paused in mid-construction while the builders negotiated for additional city permits. Even that expenditure sucked wind from his savings account.

He wished he could conjure money. There was a word for that:
embezzlement
. Someone would track back that trail to him. His bureaucromancy was strong leverage for great deals, but free cash would drop a load of flux he could not afford. This place had electricity, running water, locks on the doors. Good enough.

“Valentine,” he said, nudging her. “Get
up
, Valentine.”

He wondered what he’d do if she didn’t – he only had one leg, and Aliyah was too small. Thankfully, Valentine roused herself with the formality of a drunk coming off a bender, as if she was not moving her body but instead conducting it from a distance.

“I don’t know what is up,” she in a slurred voice. “Normally, those medkits are like five-hour energy drinks…”

Aliyah tagged along behind, never looking up from her Nintendo. Paul reached in his pocket, feeling the flux squeeze tighter, and pulled out the key to this place. He’d rented it for a month. He hoped no one would investigate; if any of the bosses who supposedly signed the rent agreement showed up, this would be tough to explain.

The office itself was under construction, smelling of sawdust; it was halfway to becoming an Art Nouveau workspace, with that clean, white, empty Apple store feel to it. The unfinished ceiling held racks of spotlights to flood the brushed-metal space with glare.

There were completed offices in the back, past a set of stairs that led up to a second floor with a narrow walkway – where, presumably, management would emerge from high-powered meetings to stroll along the rail and look down over the pit of white-collar peons who worked for them. But the peons hadn’t arrived yet.

Fortunately, the presidential office was furnished – complete with lush carpeting, a private bathroom, a mahogany bar. The office’s premature completion indicated a vanity project where some pointy-headed boss sat above, watching the construction workers assemble his dream… but whatever. It gave Paul a base of operations.

He laid Valentine across the wide executive desk, where she passed out again. He probed her injured shoulder, feeling rubbery pseudo-skin, the kind he’d been wrapped in when he’d pretended to be Valentine’s boyfriend. The skin was fever-hot, signaling an abscessing wound.

Aliyah stood solemnly behind him, scrutinizing Valentine. Paul collapsed in a high-tech Aeron chair and patted his lap; Aliyah scrambled up obediently.

“She’s gonna die.” Aliyah didn’t look at Paul, or Valentine, but off to one side, as if Valentine was a blazing summer sun that could not be stared at directly.

“We’ll fix Valentine, sweetie. Promise.”

She whirled. “You should let her die! It’d be nicer.”

“Nicer? Than what?”

The tears flowed, Aliyah’s seal broken at last. “Than you shooting her.”

“Why would I shoot her?”

“She’s a ’mancer. A stupid, stinking ’mancer.” She hugged the Nintendo Valentine had given her, clutching it as though she was begging forgiveness from Mario himself. “You gotta kill her, Daddy. You gotta. But you can’t make it hurt. It’s like Jennifer’s cat – they had to kill her cause of cat cancer, but they did it so it didn’t hurt. So, please. Don’t shoot.”

“I’m not going to shoot her, Aliyah.”

“I don’t know
how
you kill them!” she shrieked. “I know you kill them! I know it’s right! She’s gonna broach and burn little girls! So, you… you kill her, Daddy. But you can’t let her suffer.”

Paul didn’t think she knew words like
suffer
. Then again, with the way Aliyah’s life had gone lately, the word fit exquisitely.

He laughed, feeling shitty for laughing. “Sweetie, I’m not going to kill Valentine.”

Confusion. “She’s… unstable. Mommy says they’re all unstable. That’s why you take them down. Sooner or later, every ’mancer hurts somebody.”

Like I hurt you
, Paul thought, remembering the fire.

“’Mancers are misunderstood, sweetie. They…”

“’Mancers. Hurt. Me.” Aliyah scratched at her scalp, where there were only stubbled runnels. “Mommy says I got lucky.
We
got lucky. A lot of people got worse than burned.”

“’Mancers aren’t all bad, sweetie,” he assured her. “Valentine’s been your friend, hasn’t she?”

“…I guess.”

That friendship wasn’t enough. How could it be? When her own mother hated ’mancers, when a ’mancer had kidnapped her father, when a ’mancer had taken her father’s leg, when a ’mancer had burned her?