Robert thumbed the pause button. “Did this…?”
“It’s out to the major news outlets.”
“You built up flux to cover your tracks? This close to launch?”
Paul waggled his fingers in the air, a magician demonstrating nothing was up his sleeve. “I used an IP address from a hacked server in Abu Dhabi, my packets rerouted through an anonymous TOR network. No ’mancy. Just a good old-fashioned understanding of Internet protocols.”
Robert frowned, but hit the “play” button again.
“…But a ’mancer heading up Project Mayhem distracts from our objective: gathering good, honest, nonmagical citizens to create change. My being in charge makes it easy for politicians to demonize Project Mayhem as a ’mancer conspiracy.
“So today, I’m putting Project Mayhem back into the hands of the nonmagical.”
Robert gripped the cell phone tight, as though he could strangle Paul’s speech. “Oh fuck, Paul. You didn’t.”
Paul nodded wearily: Yes.
“…don’t get me wrong,” Paul-on-video continued. “Project Mayhem will continue to protect ’mancers. But that change will be driven by people who police cannot arrest for their very existence…”
Robert shut it off. “Don’t pretend this is a gift, Paul.”
“It is a gift. Project Mayhem’s yours.” He spread his fingers. “I’ll be gone. And you’ve basically been in charge all along, Robert – SMASH forced me into a consultant’s role.”
“This…” He shook the phone at Paul. “You don’t give a shit about Project Mayhem’s future. You’re gonna unleash some super saiyan hell in Europe, and you’re cutting ties before we become associated with your war crimes.”
“I think that’s proof I’m concerned with your future.”
“Paul.” Robert hunched down, bringing his massive frame down to Paul’s eye level. “You know me. I love violence. But I never punched people to take ’em down – I did it because I wanted to show weak men they could take a fist to the face. I gave them confidence. The difference between surgery and savagery is intent.
“And I get your need for savagery. All the ’mancers I’ve brought in from the cold – Jesus, you think I haven’t made friends with some of the guys SMASH abducted? I’ve seen what they look like when they come back Unimanced. Sure, I get mad – but that’s a trap. You can’t fight a war without breaking a few eggs, but you can’t take the broken eggs personally. Or you lose yourself even if you win the war.
“I know Aliyah means a lot to you.” Robert rested his beefy hands on Paul’s shoulders. “But some things, she wouldn’t want you to sacrifice.”
Paul stood still as a statue.
“Besides,” Robert continued encouragingly. “There’s other ways to get her back! We can go to the press. They don’t know Aliyah’s been abducted. We’ll tell ’em the army’s torturing a thirteen year-old girl–”
Paul swatted away Robert’s objections. “They’ll show footage of the Morehead broach to justify it. The government’s out of control, Robert. And that’s your job – to be the rational man after I’ve swung the Overton window over towards what ’mancers could do. Spin it like they pushed me into destroying a nursing home. And after I’ve done my job… they’ll listen to you.”
“That won’t help, Paul, it–”
“It’ll get back my daughter.”
Paul’s flat gaze left Robert no room for argument.
“Look, I… I know I let my temper get the best of me,” Paul apologized. “I- I shouldn’t have done what I did at Sunset Gardens. If I had the bureaucratic power left to rehome those people, I would. It’s not their fault.”
Robert arched an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yes, Robert. SMASH flooded those poor people with anti-’mancer propaganda – they dehumanized Grayson. SMASH left the Steeplechase brothers with no place to learn how to master their ‘mancy, condemned them to choking on flux. SMASH got those cops killed, got poor Hamir killed, got Grayson killed – and Aliyah will never be safe until I–”
Paul froze. Robert looked like he was wondering if he could change Paul’s mind by punching him until all the stupid fell out of his face.
But Robert wasn’t a Fight Club-mancer anymore. So he settled for dropping Paul’s phone to the pavement.
“…I’m going to talk to Valentine.”
Robert stormed away, leaving Paul to pick up his phone.
It had broken.
Somehow, that seemed appropriate.
* * *
“We have to talk.”
Valentine had communicated with Robert in tiny spurts since their aborted engagement; small talk to ensure the mission was going well, check-ins to ensure her burns healed cleanly, even two bouts of lovemaking.
The lovemaking had been intense. Each time had that never-let-you-go-clutch of the last dance at the prom. But the spaces afterwards were filled with a cold, awkward silence instead of warm cuddles.
Valentine tensed.
“Paul and Imani have gone crazy,” Robert said. “You know what they’re up to, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“And you think whatever they’ve got planned is OK?”
She ran her fingers through the hair she’d grown back. “I felt low after I blew up that nursing home – but the more I thought about it, fuck those old people for watching Matlock while the mob cut off Grady’s legs. Those dumb assholes are like the dumb assholes in Kentucky who’d rather shoot Paul than let him fix the broach. The time for being nice is over.”
“And how many people will die in the transition?”
Her cheeks blushed dark red. “I don’t wanna kill anyone. But if SMASH can take me down, then no one’s safe–”
“You can’t just murder everyone who gets in your way. Paul should know that. You should know that.”
“When the hell did you become Safety Warden? You never would have worried back when you were Tyler Durden!”
“Well, I grew up, Valentine.”
If their post-lovemaking silences had been chilly, this was the life-killing cold of space.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” she whispered. “You think this–” She clicked an imaginary “start” button, and a halo of green gamefire limned her body. “You think this is just a phase.”
Robert’s hands did a defensive dance before his belly, his face melting back into the lonely man he’d been before they met. “No. No, that’s not what I meant–”
“Now you’re psychologically balanced, you think you’re too good for me. Well, congratulations, friend!” She shook his hand in a venomously exaggerated double-fist pump. “You got yourself a bona-fide diploma to adulthood! And guess what? You don’t fucking need me, so why should I stick around?”
“…Because you deserve someone to take care of you?”
“That’s not my job. I’m just the wrecking ball.”
“You’re…” He shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “Stop saying that, Valentine. I don’t love you for any of that! Christ, even if you lost your powers, I would still think you were the most amazing woman ever.”
She examined his face, hoping for sarcasm. He spread open his palms, demonstrating earnest affection.
“Yeah,” she snapped. “But I wouldn’t.”
“Come on, this isn’t–”
“No, Robert. I am the goddamned phoenix queen – great and powerful and untouchable in my game. And maybe – maybe, yeah, life would be easier in some ways if I was quote-unquote normal, and we could cuddle and watch Let’s Play videos and not worry if our crazy’ll punch a hole in the universe today, but… that’s not who I am. And your fucking ring – you tried to make me weak.”
“You’re not weak. You’re strong, so strong–”
“How can I be strong if I need protection?”
Robert stepped in to hug her.
She catapulted him away in a burst of gamefire.
He slammed into the shipping container – and Valentine stepped towards
him, fingers extended, ready to catch him–
He shook off the impact.
Her eyes narrowed.
“Yeah.” She bobbed her head once, twice, as if finding her own internal rhythm. “Yeah, Paul and Imani are out of control. But I’ll be there to catch them when they fall. Me. Because protecting is what I do. And I’m gonna whip SMASH’s ass and save the fucking world, because that’s also what I do. And if you think I needed you for one hot minute, then you were wrong.”
“I needed you in the beginning, Valentine,” Robert said mournfully. “Like a fire needed fuel. But now I just want you.”
“Yeah.” She watched a final spark of gamefire dim to nothingness on her big toe. “Well… Paul needs me.”
“Even if he’s wrong?”
She gave him a calm, cool stare. “Especially if he’s wrong. But he’s not.”
Robert brushed the dirt off his shirt. She longed for him to contradict her, to start a good fight to raze this relationship to the ground.
But his resigned look was that of a man logging off an unfair game.
Valentine flopped down on the train tracks, watching him walk away, practicing zingers she never got a chance to use.
Twenty-Eight
Kiss the Apocalypse
The black broach chased them, spiraling in great circles around them, relishing their fear. Aliyah was certain: that Thing in the sky had noticed her.
What had that black flux done?
Yet they ran together, holding hands, united. They both triangulated Bastogne’s location, then headed in the opposite direction, drawing fire. Aliyah saw Ruth counting off klicks as they raced through the woods, calculating how much distance they’d bought the locals.
She felt Ruth’s fingers entwined with hers, remembering how Ruth had wanted to kiss her. Even if they hadn’t kissed yet, that feeling of being bonded was not at all a bad feeling to go out on.
“Use your Unimancy!” Aliyah yelled, as they ran into a blackened grove of trees. “Call in the others to stabilize it!”
“Don’t you think I’m trying?” Ruth reached out with her free hand towards the horizon, clutching empty air. “I can’t connect! Something’s gone wrong with the Unimancer network!”
The broach dropped eye-watering coils of otherdimensional colors around them, cutting off escape. The sky peeled into tatters, revealing a hellish empty white that threatened to consume them. “So reboot it!”
Ruth stopped, acknowledging the futility of retreat. “The network doesn’t fail, Aliyah. Something… Something really bad just happened.”
Aliyah waved at the buzzsect-clouds gnawing photosynthesis from the forest. “This isn’t bad enough?”
Her mother radiated calm analysis. “That’s not even related, I don’t think. The broach, it’s… it’s never cut off our connection. Something hit us hard…”
Ruth shivered. So much of her competence flowed from the collective. It must have been like losing a limb.
No, she thought; it was like seeing everyone on Facebook knocked offline, and wondering what disaster could silence everyone at once.
Do you remember what happened the last time someone kidnapped his daughter? General Kanakia had asked.
Had Daddy done this?
She shivered, certain her father had done something unspeakable to the Unimancer network. She just didn’t know what.
Aliyah grabbed an imaginary Nintendo DS, her fingers twitching as she pondered which game-magic might drive back this broach. Then she remembered how feeding her ’mancy to the Morehead buzzsects had accelerated them into hideous pregnancies.
“Ruth.” She shook Ruth out of her mother’s clinical analysis. “Whatever you do to heal broaches… try it.”
“By myself?” Ruth looked like Aliyah had asked her to play a co-op deathmatch solo.
Aliyah waved at the trees as they crumpled into toothpicks, the spaces between the atoms chewed up. “Got a better idea?”
“God dammit.” Ruth knelt down on the ground, squeezed soil between her fingers to remind herself of the feel of good clean earth. She looked up at the horizon-to-horizon sweep of destruction…
“It’s no good,” she said. “I remember parts of things. I can’t remember Jose’s memories of the sky, Ndego’s love of grass, Aileen’s sense of space…”
“Hook up with me.”
Ruth did a double-take.
“Not like that,” she clarified, blushing. “We’ll do ’mancy together. We’ll… share memories. We don’t need to change the whole area, just create a bubble to hide in until this blows over…”
Ruth’s hazel eyes widened. “Aliyah, no!”
“…No?”
“That’s…” She slapped herself. “I know it’s a secret, Mom, I know she’s not supposed to know, I don’t have a choice…”
“Not supposed to know what?”
Ruth clasped Aliyah’s hands, pressing them against her chest in an anguished promise-you-won’t-ever-tell gesture. “…There’s no torture.”
“What?”
“There’s no torture. We don’t brainwash anyone. Unimancy isn’t a… government program.” She hung her head low. “It’s more like a virus. You do ’mancy together, you catch the hivemind.”
“That’s… ridiculous, Ruth. You abduct ’mancers to break them…”
An angry crease appeared between Ruth’s eyes. “Yeah, that’s what we tell governments! You think we’d be so happily integrated if we’d been beaten into it?” Ruth’s eyes jittered briefly, looking to her fellow Unimancers for support, then her pupils dilated in terror as she realized nobody was answering. “The governments feel way more comfortable handing ’mancers over to torturers. We do the zombie-walk whenever we’re around mundanes, act like someone’s beaten the identity out of us, and the presidents and prime ministers are happy to let us steal their ’mancers away!”
“But that’s crazy…” The broach tightened around them; they stood on a shrinking island of Earthlike physics. Everything else had fallen into the demon dimensions.
“It’s the truth, OK?” Ruth’s cheeks were flushed with humiliation and anger. “To do ’mancy together, you have to share magic. And once you share magic, you get networked whether you want to be or not! We don’t torture anybody! We’re just nice to ’mancers until they cast spells with us! And then…”
She flicked her fingers towards the incoming maelstrom.
“Once they see our memories of what’s at stake, most are eager to help. They’ve got new friends, a purpose in life, seven thousand ’mancers to wick their flux away. There’s no insidious plan here, Aliyah – and now you know our greatest secret!” She hung her head. “Not that it’s gonna help.”
Aliyah frowned.
Ruth genuinely seemed to believe this bullshit.
“Ruth…” She spoke as gently as possible, given the apocalypse bore down upon them. “I’ve done ’mancy with Aunt Valentine, and we didn’t coalesce into Unimancy. I’ve done spells with Dad! And with… with all the ’mancers at Payne’s institute! You can join up to cast spells without welding your brains…”
“Sure.” Ruth’s sarcasm was cutting, but Aunt Valentine had taught Aliyah snark meant love. “The combined experience of seven thousand ’mancers is just lying, Aliyah! Or maybe you guys have cornered the market on craaaazy ’mancy – your dad can heal broaches without having other people help him remember what the world is like, and now you team up to do ’mancy without fusing?” She genuflected. “All hail the bureaucromancy messiah!”
“I’m not fucking arguing with you!” The broach erased the grove’s edges; Aliyah lurched as the soil beneath them spilled into nothingness. “Link up with me!”
“It’s you or your dad!” Ruth pounded her skull. “Hell, I’m half-crazy because my mom’s in here! I’ve seen why General Kanakia needs your dad’s skills – we’re losing, Aliyah.” She pointed at the crumbling sky. “We’re dying too fast, and that is growing too quickly.”
“So?”
&n
bsp; “Better we die, and someone else gets your dad in. Because he’s…” She swallowed; the gravity around slackened as they rose up into that unearthly whiteness. “His skills are more important than our lives.”
Aliyah felt such an outpouring of respect, her chest hurt. Ruth didn’t know if her fellow Unimancers had been wiped out – and still she was willing to sacrifice herself and the woman she loved, just in case someone else might find a solution to the broach.
“At least we drew this rift away from Bastogne,” Ruth said sadly. “I don’t think it’ll touch the town.”
This was, Aliyah reflected, a terrible time to fall in love.
But she would not die without a first kiss.
“Mission accomplished.” She grabbed Ruth’s chin, and wondered Is this how Valentine feels? before pressing her lips against Ruth’s.
god she’s so soft
Kissing was awesome, but awkward. Her kissing fantasies hadn’t included the hard pressure of teeth behind the lips. She felt Ruth’s breath on hers, so close, all these things she’d never considered…
Ruth taught you to appreciate the real world. Ruth snaked her arms around Aliyah’s back – those lean muscles so strong against her, and–
Ruth opened her mouth, offering her tongue’s soft wetness, and joy coursed through Aliyah’s body.
Berries she tastes like berries, Aliyah thought, of course she tasted like berries.
I just ate berries
An electric spark leapt across their tongues, a tingling magic flowing between them.
That’s us Ruth
Oh my God Aliyah that’s us
And Aliyah sank into the kiss as she realized this was their magic, Ruth’s Unimancy and her obsession intertwining like two lovers slipping their fingers together, and she felt Ruth’s fear and Ruth felt Aliyah’s uncertainty and pulled her closer.
Like this Aliyah
I want to feel you like this
That first kiss’s awkwardness disappeared as they melded into each other, their kiss swelling into a chapel of adoration built with roaming hands and soft lips–
A beauty that staved off the apocalypse.
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