Fix

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Something gave.

  He squeezed in through that opening, introducing the concept of “motion” back into that alien space like a virus.

  Yet introducing earthly motion into this alien space broke it, somehow; it held its own alien replacement for movement, a flicker-stutter dimensional shifting that would have sliced human bodies into cross-sections. Paul tried to override the broach’s alternative rules with his concept of speed, but the flicker-stutter was too ingrained. The best he could do was to inject clauses that also allowed for Earth-standard movement – but the two styles conflicted in a boil of contradictory physics.

  The broach deepened.

  Paul chipped away at the alien space, shoving in the Earth-needed concept of speed until it was the dominant motion.

  The best Paul could do was to make the speed of light twenty miles an hour.

  The few stragglers on Washout Field watched in awe as the darkness overhead writhed. A wavering rainbow light limned its edges as the photons overhead smashed into the violation and were slowed enough to be pulled apart into refractive indexes. Stale ozone wafts drifted down as the near-immobile gas molecules inside were pushed out by the pressure of light.

  The broach hissed as the excess energy of the light impacting the top of the violation was converted into bursts of infrared, radio waves, radiation.

  This place isn’t safe, Paul thought. The radiation will make it uninhabitable.

  Worse, it wasn’t stable. He’d tried to excise the flicker-stutter movement, but had only dampened it. A slow war for supremacy raged inside this zone, one where eventually the flicker-stutter would claw its way back out to cause another broach.

  “I can fix this,” Paul muttered, gritting his teeth – if he kept at it, he’d double that speed to forty miles an hour, then do it again, until the old hurts were erased–

  “Paul,” Valentine said. “We gotta go.”

  “I have to fix this!”

  She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, drawing Paul’s attention to the distant sirens. “The cops will shoot you on sight. And I can’t protect you.”

  She was right. The slightest whisper of ’mancy would provide that flicker-stutter the energy to grow again – and would trigger a hideous broach, worse than the last.

  Paul stared, aghast, at the messy jumble churning above him. The conflicting systems felt like a needle in his eye.

  He had to fix this.

  “Daddy.” Aliyah tugged at his sleeve. “We gotta go.”

  He looked down at his daughter, then up at the broach. This was no jumbled bookshelf; this was burning the Library of Alexandria to the ground. He could recreate the documents, given time – he’d healed a broach in Long Island, he’d sealed the broach in Payne’s office so thoroughly people still debated whether anything had broached–

  The distant flash of cop cars told him his time was up. They had no choice but to flee – and when they returned, Unimancers would guard this space. And the Unimancers had never healed a broach this far gone – all they’d done was slow the progression. Leaving would condemn America to a slow-growing cancer that would eat up Kentucky.

  Except he could fix it.

  “Paul. We have to go!” Imani said.

  They’d never leave without him. Staying would get him shot, condemn his wife to a lifetime in prison, get his daughter and his best friend brainwashed. Even then, SMASH would be more interested in torturing Paul than letting him repair his errors…

  Nothing he could do would save Morehead. They wouldn’t let him.

  Paul let his wife pull him away.

  Six

  Fellowship of Nothing

  Aliyah had never seen Daddy this distraught before. He stumbled back from the broach, his face so gaunt Aliyah worried maybe she had given him an aneurysm.

  The flux tried to latch onto that thought. She clamped it down.

  “Mrs T,” Valentine said.

  “This isn’t your fault, Paul.” Mommy had to guide Daddy to the car because Daddy refused to take his gaze off that horrible blotch. “The locals, they got scared. They stopped you when they shouldn’t have…”

  “Mrs T!”

  Mommy eased Daddy inside the van, kissed his forehead – and then slammed the door shut hard enough to make Aliyah flinch. As Mommy whirled on Valentine, Aliyah realized just how furious Mom was – at the townsfolk, at the ’mancy, at everything.

  “First off, it’s Ms Dawson.” She ticked off the things Valentine did wrong. “Not ‘Mrs T.’ Second, Paul is traumatized, so if you’d keep your voice down–”

  Valentine squeezed her eye shut, breathing in through her nose. Aliyah had never seen Aunt Valentine avoid a fight with Mommy before. “The van’s broken.”

  “What?”

  “Check the tires.”

  The van sagged sideways, the four tires flattened. Mommy catalogued the damage, squeezing her fists into balls. “How did that happen?”

  “I bled off some flux.”

  “By crippling our getaway vehicle?”

  “I thought I’d go Grand Theft Auto and hijack us a new car!” Valentine yelled, finally losing control. “How was I supposed to know I’d wind up in a no-’mancy zone?”

  “…In a what?” Mommy was so competent, everyone forgot she had no ’mancy – how could she have known what the blotch overhead meant? She couldn’t feel the slimy softness that threatened to rip open into another broach.

  “You mean you can’t do any ’mancy at all?” Mommy spluttered, jabbing her fingers towards the sirens.

  “Ixnay on the ancy-may-ot-at-all-nay,” Valentine hissed. But Savannah and her father stood behind them – Savannah’s face smeared with mud, her daddy clutching the gun.

  He could shoot them all, and none of them could do a damn thing about it.

  What worried Aliyah was Savannah. She looked as traumatized as Daddy – and why not? Nobody in Morehead had seen ’mancy before. Now they’d witnessed the worst nightmares magic could summon.

  Her gaze demanded answers Aliyah could not provide.

  Mommy stepped forward, ready to play the host – and then hesitated. She settled for discreetly placing herself between Aliyah and the gun.

  But Savannah’s father worked his mouth as if trying to make introductions. Eventually, he nudged Savannah, who nodded as though she’d expected this.

  “Daddy says you can have our car. To escape. For saving us.” She looked up at the broach. “Or trying to.”

  Savannah’s father crept forward to drop an Ale-8-One Ginger Ale keychain into Aliyah’s palm.

  “That’s–”

  “It’s generous.” Mommy stepped in front of Valentine before she said anything stupid. “Is there any way we can repay you?”

  “Yeah.” Savannah glared at Aliyah. “Show me your face.”

  Aliyah was looking right at Savannah. What could she–

  “Your real face,” Savannah clarified.

  Oh.

  Under normal circumstances, Aliyah would have ducked into the van and changed out of her pseudoskin. Yet even that trivial ’mancy would rip open another broach here.

  She reached up with her fire-painted nails and peeled off her artificial skin.

  She uncovered the ragged widow’s peak above her forehead where the fire had melted her scalp to the bone.

  She revealed her cheeks, which had been reconstructed, but her left lip still tugged to one side where the flesh had puckered.

  She bared the glossy keloid scars on her neck.

  I’m not a burn, she had told Aunt Valentine long ago. And in truth, her scars were barely noticeable at a distance. Nothing, her father had told her, could dampen her radiant smile.

  Savannah traced Aliyah’s deformities with a combination of glacial fury and bottomless pity, examining Aliyah as if trying to understand her.

  Aliyah did not cry. Not in front of people.

  But when she ripped the pseudoflesh from her eyelids, tears spattered.

  She met Savannah’s g
aze, refusing to be ashamed, yet refusing to pretend she was normal anymore. Which hurt most of all; seeing Savannah scrutinize all the ways they were not alike, after having cherished all the things they had in common back at the Wendy’s.

  She closed her eyes, listing what they had in common: You love nail art. You love Steven Universe. You love YouTube karaoke, and–

  “You didn’t choose to be a ’mancer.” Savannah gestured towards the smoking soccer goal and the murky smear overhead. “This isn’t your fault.”

  Aliyah sagged in relief. Savannah understood. Her daddy understood. Maybe Morehead understood. If they could find a way to–

  “But you can’t ever come back.” Savannah turned away.

  Aliyah did not cry. Not when Savannah’s father whispered in her ear to “Go with God, child.” Not when Mommy turned on the car and gospel music blasted from the speakers. Not when she looked out the rear window to see Savannah standing beneath that glimmering blotch as the cop cars screeched into the soccer field.

  Aliyah did not cry. She peeled away the remaining strips of pseudoflesh, feeling the rashes grow as she ripped them off like Band-Aids, relishing the pain as she uncovered herself inch by inch.

  She bled until she felt nothing at all.

  Seven

  Smiling Weapons

  Imani was a patient woman. She had tolerated a decade of Paul’s withdrawn silence before filing for divorce. (All it had taken was Paul’s death, Aliyah’s enslavement, and a war that imploded several skyscrapers to get them married again.) She had endured three years of Aliyah’s inexplicable outbursts before Paul had let her in on the deadly secret that their daughter was a videogamemancer. Imani, in fact, prided herself on her forbearance: her mother had taught her to be ladylike above all things.

  But if Valentine planned to play “I Spy” for the next two hours, she was going to strangle that bitch.

  “I spy, with my little eye,” Valentine said – and here, she always tapped her right cheekbone merrily to accentuate the fact she had one eye – “Sooooomething beginning with ‘R’.”

  Nobody answered. Nobody had answered, ever since they’d fled Morehead an hour ago. Paul sat stricken in the SUV’s passenger seat, wheezing and clutching his broken ribs. Aliyah slumped against the window, hugging a soccer ball to her chest.

  Imani cruised down the freeway, glad Valentine had stolen a trick from Grand Theft Auto and pulled their stolen car into an empty garage, then backed out an instant later with a different paint job, tinted windows, and a magical field that shielded them from cops.

  That stabilized their situation as they headed for a safehouse in the Appalachians. She’d memorized the route to the closest ’mancer-friendly harbor before heading to Morehead – a decision that seemed positively prescient after they’d channeled away Paul’s excess flux by shorting out the GPS. She’d get them somewhere to plan their next move.

  But Paul and Aliyah were imploding here, in this stolen SUV, and Imani didn’t know how to help them.

  The back roads here wound around mountains; some of the signs had been shot off their posts. Still, she kept glancing at Aliyah in the rear view mirror: Aliyah never lifted her eyes from the car’s floor, examining dried McDonald’s French fries with dull disinterest.

  She squeezed Paul’s hand; he returned Imani’s affection reflexively, but his other hand drew on an imaginary whiteboard, trying to map out what had gone wrong at Morehead.

  This would have been easier if they weren’t ’mancers, Imani thought.

  Paul and Aliyah had always held this bizarre delusion that perfect efforts equaled perfect results. God forbid Aliyah lost, as she’d scour the replays of her videogames, hunting for the frame where she’d input the wrong command.

  Imani had worked in corporate law for too long to hold onto such fragile illusions. Sometimes, you laid out a perfect case, and your company panicked and settled out of court. Sometimes your star expert had a fatal heart attack. Sometimes your legal documentation was flawless, but the opposition found a sneaky way to buy the judge a vacation villa.

  Sometimes, no matter how smart you were, you lost.

  Yet Paul and Aliyah’s ’mancy ran on certainty. Imani found videogames so distasteful simply because they promised consistent results: play long enough, and eventually you’d beat the big boss.

  And yet… her daughter’s delusions fueled potent magic.

  Aliyah’s ’mancy allowed her to face down armies because she could not comprehend losing. Just as Paul could not comprehend a world where filing legal documents would not produce justice. Their ’mancy was, in a weird way, a magical incarnation of the American Dream: hard work guaranteed rewards.

  Now Aliyah had lost her friend despite her best efforts, and she was crumpling inside. Just as Paul was freaking out because there was a Broach he wasn’t allowed to heal, and–

  “…No?” Valentine peered around eagerly, as though anyone had answered. “Well, just so you know, the answer was ‘road.’ And why, yes,” she said, straightening with magnanimous pride, “I did give you an easy one.” She thumped the seat. “But this next ‘I Spy’ will test your vocabulary to its limits!”

  Valentine had no phone to play games on, Imani knew; she and Aliyah had shorted their handheld devices to pay down their flux loads.

  Still, Imani wondered whether Valentine could fit a dead cell phone into her mouth.

  They were headed for safer territory… or so Imani hoped. Without cell phones, they couldn’t be sure the Appalachian safehouse hadn’t been busted. SMASH had contributed to ripping open a broach during a battle with Paul – and that error had been so unforgiveable, New York had barred them from operating within state boundaries for two years.

  That was what they did to good guys who ripped open a broach that had been healed. Whereas the four of them had scurried away, leaving a wavering tear in reality, hovering ominously over a beautiful Kentucky lake.

  Imani shuddered, thinking how that must look on the news.

  She squeezed his hand again; no answer. He looked over at Aliyah, trying to coax a smile out of her. Except the grim expression he bore would never produce any cheer.

  Ordinarily, he’d haul out the stuff he’d packed to cheer her up – a fresh box of Dunkin’ Donuts to check in with Uncle Kit, a new videogame. But they’d lost everything back at Morehead.

  Valentine harrumphed, then craned her neck around, looking for the next target.

  “Got it! I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with ‘B’.”

  Valentine paused before arcing her index finger up, then planting it firmly on Aliyah’s head.

  “‘Burned Kid,’” Valentine said. “I see a burned kid.”

  Had she fucking said that?

  Imani’s head snapped up, ready to chew Valentine’s face off. Paul whipped around then groaned in anguish, clutching his ribs.

  Yet Valentine held their gaze coolly in the rear view mirror – an arch look that said Trust me, I know what I’m doing.

  The thing of it was, Imani did trust Valentine – even if she hated her for needing that trust. Paul had often remarked how Valentine and Aliyah spoke their own language; part of it was they were both videogamemancers, of course.

  But Aliyah had always been wilder than Imani had meant her to be. And so was Valentine.

  Aliyah’s eyes narrowed. “What did you call me?”

  “I spied something beginning with ‘B,’” Valentine shot back. “You did not answer. So I saw a Burned Kid.”

  “I am not a burned kid! And you have never made fun of my scars–”

  “Then what do you see when you look at you?”

  “I see a badass who’s gonna kick your ass in–”

  “–language–” Imani said.

  “I,” Aliyah said stiffly, “am a badass. Which is… It’s not a bad word, Mom, they use it in Borderlands. It means a big boss.”

  “Then why not say ‘Big Boss’, Aliyah?”

  “Because it’s… it’s not as
badass.”

  Imani decided the moral lesson wasn’t worth the energy of arguing. “Fine. Badass.”

  Aliyah jabbed her finger into Valentine’s belly. “I see a badass who will shred you if you ever – ever – make fun of me that way again.”

  “Fine,” Valentine said. “Your turn.”

  Aliyah scowled, sensing a trick – but she still wanted to know what happened next. “Fine. I spy, with my two little eyes–” and here, she poked her fingers underneath both of them “–something beginning with ‘I’.”

  Valentine spread her fingers across her cleavage in a dainty motion. “’Ignoramus’? ‘Imbecile’? ‘Idiot’?”

  A sly grin crept across Aliyah’s face. “I was thinking more ‘Irritating Player of I-Spy.’ That game’s for six year-olds.”

  “Fine. What do you want to play next?”

  “I don’t want to play anyt… Ooh! Punch buggy!”

  Valentine grabbed her injured bicep. “There was no buggy! You just wanted to punch me!”

  “It was super fast. I guess you didn’t see it out of your right eye… oh, sorry, your only eye.”

  “My single eye sees just fine when it whips your ass at Destiny, kid.”

  Aliyah bopped her with a soccer ball. Imani would have guessed they were about to brawl, if it wasn’t for Aliyah’s goofy grin.

  “You kids play careful! I will pull over the car!” Imani barely got the words out through her laughter. She shot a grin over at Paul, hoping the tickle fight in the back seat would draw him out of his funk…

  Paul had fished out a pair of earphones from underneath his seat, and had plugged them into the car’s headphone jack.

  “Turn on the radio,” he whispered.

  Imani knew Paul could have turned on the radio by himself. He was seeking permission – like an injured junkie asking someone he trusted whether it was OK to take this Oxycontin.

  “Paul, you can’t listen to the news now,” she whispered. “Give yourself a while to heal before you pour that poison into your ear.”