Paul batted away wispy memories of K-Dash and Quaysean bursting through the door, guns in hand.
Payne smiled ruefully. “Your faith in them speaks well of you, Paul. But therein lies your weakness.” He leaned in, as if revealing a dreadful secret: “You are very, very bad at understanding who your friends are.”
“Quaysean and K-Dash wouldn’t...” He remembered them burning, their bodies twitching as their muscles shrank and roasted under Rainbird’s fire. He remembered Aliyah screaming for help. They had been there, guns in hand, his shirt riddled with bulletholes.
What had he done to his daughter?
Paul began to weep.
Payne squeezed Paul’s shoulder. “I wish I could allow your grief, Paul. But though I have tried with all my strength to interpose myself between you and your unwise decisions, the psychological damage you have inflicted upon your daughter is the least of our problems.”
The ’mancers clutched his hospital bed rails, bracing for a storm.
“What else?”
“David Giabatta is no longer the Task Force chief,” Payne said. “It has been dissolved. You could have strengthened his position to keep SMASH out – but instead, you engaged in pugilism. Now the mayor has petitioned SMASH for assistance; shock troops are inbound.”
“But Valentine and Tyler–”
“Will be overwhelmed by government forces. They learned their lesson with Anathema – SMASH will send in everything to exterminate this threat. I’ve extended an offer of protection to the two of them, as I would any ’mancer, but…” Payne frowned with distaste; Paul could only imagine what Valentine had said to him. “They prefer death to dependence.”
“We have to–”
“Paul.” Payne spoke in the hushed tones of a man performing an intervention. “Have you learned no lesson? They’re not your friends. You’ve put your faith into so many poor bets, Paul. And I’d teach you… but it’s too late to learn.”
“You can’t save them?”
Payne grasped Paul’s hand in his chill fingers. “Paul,” he said, choking up. “I can’t save you.”
As Paul looked at the sad procession of ’mancers, he had the bizarre impression of attending his own wake.
“What do you mean you can’t save me?”
Payne squeezed Paul’s hand tightly enough to hurt. “Think it through, Paul. The mayor has handed the Task Force’s files to SMASH.”
Stupid. He was so stupid, to punch David instead of forging alliances. David had followed Paul’s paper trail from Galuschak’s Garage for weeks, all the way back to where Payne and Paul had buried it in SMASH’s files. David would rather let a ’mancer go than share credit with SMASH…
But now SMASH had David’s files.
They’d find out he’d assisted Psycho Mantis.
“No, please!” Paul grasped Payne’s lapels. “Sir, with your experience we can bury this deeper...”
Payne took no pleasure in peeling Paul’s hands off his suit.
“I can’t help you, Paul. If I intervene, well, I give them a trail that leads them back… well, here.” He waved at the ’mancers; Paul imagined each falling helplessly to military SMASH teams. “And even if I could suppress the information, those files are but one lead.”
“One?”
“You’ve been so tragically clumsy, Paul.” Payne’s voice was thick with sympathy. “Your... compatriot... is in love with this Tyler Durden – a man who commits suicide at the end of the film.”
“That’s not the way it ends,” Paul objected. “He abandons his Tyler Durden persona to become–”
“He shoots himself in the mouth, Paul! Only narrative foofaraw keeps his brains inside his skull! And so I assure you, they will fight to the death. And what happens when they find Valentine’s body in the battle’s aftermath? Your best friend? With her one eye and videogame tattoos?”
“But I–”
“Paul. You will get caught. You’ve made poor decisions. And… you are hurting her.”
Payne flicked on a monitor showing Aliyah, hugging her knees on her Super Mario-sheeted bed, rocking back and forth. Rainbird stood guard next to her; Aliyah shivered.
“You might keep her secret for a little while longer, Paul. But how much damage have you inflicted upon this poor child? You burned her in your apartment, Paul. You forced her to murder for your protection. You made her save you from a splattery death, Paul, and then she watched as Rainbird burned people you attempted to convince her were her friends.
“How long, Paul?” Payne clasped his hands together, imploring Paul. “How long will you torment this girl before you recognize you are bad for her?”
The guilt was so great, the tears crystallized inside him.
“What...”
A ’mancer handed Paul a glass of water. It was a kind gesture, the first he’d seen them make. Aliyah’s influence, her sociableness, had made them better – then he realized what he’d done to Aliyah, and the water turned to dust in his throat.
“What would you have me do? Kill myself to hide your secrets?”
Payne drew back the curtains, revealing the body on the steel mortician’s table. The skull was bullet-shattered, the face an unthinkable ruin.
But the bare stump on the right leg, the amputated toes on the left – those were clear markers.
“In a sense, Paul,” Payne whispered. “In a sense, yes.”
* * *
Paul was grateful Rainbird had left. He didn’t need more of Rainbird’s sneering judgment.
Aliyah’s suffering was judgment enough.
She hugged her knees on the bed, the burn scars on her face darker. Aliyah’s once-bright eyes had dimmed, her gaze hollowed out.
Her Nintendo DS sat dead by her side, which scared Paul more than anything; Aliyah was so deep in shock that not even Mario could not soothe her.
Paul wanted to scoop her up in his arms, but Aliyah was all tension, a trap ready to spring.
He’d done this. Him, and his foolish trust.
It was better this way.
“Aliyah.” He squeezed her ankle. He’d always squeezed her ankle. It had been the only part of her he could touch during her skin grafts.
She didn’t answer.
“Sweetie. I…” He swallowed. “Daddy has to go away.”
He thought of the body the ’mancers had shown him. This is what Aliyah does for them, Payne had said. Mrs Vinere could only do masks before. But with Aliyah’s support, she grows stronger.
And so Mrs Vinere had copied Paul’s body. To be discovered. To all the world, Paul would be dead – and even when SMASH unearthed him, they’d think Valentine was the ’mancer. Who would suspect two videogamemancers, let alone a girl who was almost nine?
But the body… It had been like seeing his own future. His stump scars. His scrawny belly, unbreathing. His wet lump of brain, nestled like a lopsided egg yolk inside his shattered skull.
He’d thought this is what Aliyah saw.
That was when he had vowed to leave.
“I have to fake my own death,” he said. “It’s... it’s complicated. Mr Payne will explain it to you. And I don’t want to say that so soon after you saw what you did, sweetie, I know it was terrible, but…”
The words curdled in his throat. “Terrible” was what you said when someone lost their job. What did you say when a girl in third grade saw her daddy shot to death, then had to do awful magics to save him?
“I don’t... I don’t want to leave,” Paul tried again. “But they’ll find you if I stay. They’ll... they’ll hurt you, Aliyah. And Mr Payne has promised to look after you. Mommy will keep you at the Institute, I know she will. She will never leave you, no matter what. And…”
Aliyah kept staring into space.
“You’ll be safe here,” he continued. “That’s all I ever wanted for you, Aliyah. Just… a place where you can grow up. And be…”
Paul stopped, frozen by revelation. Whatever she would be, he’d never see that. He realized she’d never been jus
t a child to him – she’d been an arc soaring out into time and space, a point on a long line stretching out beyond adulthood. Never Aliyah the eight year-old, but Aliyah the nine year-old, Aliyah the fashion-conscious teenager, Aliyah the arrogant twenty year-old ready to conquer the world, all those potentials Aliyahs wrapped up in one unspooling truth.
Now he would never see any of that.
He would never hear her tell him about this boy she met, and know before she knew that she loved him.
He would never be there to hug her when her first boyfriend didn’t work out.
He would never get to see her cleverness be tempered with wisdom, never get to see what wild and worldbreaking ’mancy she would accomplish.
He would never get to see what she packed with her to take to college, and what she left behind at her house as childish things.
He would never get to see her fall in true love, as he had with her mother, never hold her arm as he walked her down the aisle, never watch her sneak a drink before she was twenty-one, never get to argue politics with her, and never never never and Paul was dying.
He was already dead. He’d seen himself on the slab. But now he saw the futures he walked away from, and it killed him all over again.
“I don’t want to go. But do you... do you understand how much I love you? That if I could give anything else up, I would?”
“They died for you.”
The words were a whisper. “…what?”
Aliyah whirled on him, from blank to furious in no time at all. “They died because of you! They died because of me! And you made me... you made me...”
“Sweetie, I made you what?”
“Get away!” She launched herself at him, clawing at him, kicking. “Get away from me! You’re weak! You’re a bad man! You make me do bad things!”
“Please don’t. Please.” But she scratched him hard enough to draw blood – no ’mancy, just a child’s wordless fury, and before Paul could say anything the orderlies came in, whispering apologies as they escorted Paul from the room.
The last Paul saw of his daughter was Aliyah, kicking at the orderlies, as Rainbird shoved them aside to imprison her in a hug.
* * *
Payne was kind enough to give Paul a limousine ride back to Westchester.
“You know what you have to do, Paul,” Payne said. “I don’t envy you. But I do admire you, for what it’s worth.”
“I’ll miss her.”
“Of course you will.” He patted Paul’s leg affectionately. “I’m glad to see you’re finally able to make the hard choices, Paul. Few fathers would be willing to sacrifice themselves so. But a good leader shields those they’ve vowed to protect.”
I’m shielding her, he thought. Not leaving. Shielding.
“We’ll take good care of her. Don’t you worry about that.”
“I won’t.” He should worry, Paul knew. But he didn’t. He felt the numbness of stumbling up before the firing squad, realizing all his options had evaporated.
Get away from me, Aliyah had said. She didn’t mean it. She’d miss him. She’d come to regret those words, in time. He wished he could help her.
But he couldn’t stay.
The limousine pulled up before an alleyway squeezed between an Italian joint and a diner. Seeing that alley again dug up an old ache – the walls were bare brick now, the once-dry alleyway plumed with dishwashing-machine steam. But there were plenty of trashbags heaped high for Paul to slither in.
“The body should be discovered soon,” Payne told him. “And then… well, I wish you luck.”
Paul stumbled out, drunk with despair. It was late, and the night would get colder; the autumn air had the chill scent of dead leaves, a frosty bite that nipped chunks from his lungs. He crawled into the bags, his artificial foot snagging on the plastic, making as quiet a bed as he could among the garbage.
One ’mancer had died here already.
Come morning, it would be two.
And Paul tuned in as the changes started to cascade across the bureaucratic web. That first police report of a dead body. Matching Paul’s wallet to his body’s distinguishing marks. The first identification of Paulos Costa Tsabo as the deceased.
Payne had been kind. To keep Aliyah’s secret hidden, to keep her safe, Paul had to die. Yet Paul could kill himself for real – or he could take Payne’s offer, sever all ties by annihilating any connection he had to this world.
He hated leaving Aliyah. If he didn’t go, SMASH would brainwash her, annihilate everything he loved about her. And Payne would protect her. He had the resources, so much more wisdom….
The moon fled the sky as Paul watched the death certificate file. He reached out to accelerate the process. He sent tendrils of bureaucratic magic out, finding his tax records, his social security records, his SMASH files, marking them all: dead, dead, dead.
Paul shrank as his body decayed – not his physical form, but the body of records Paul viewed as himself. Automated routines recategorized Paul Tsabo, shifted him from “living” to “dead”; interest rates stopped accumulating for him, billing routines shut down.
He had not thought of himself as a man in years. He was a collection of records.
Paul filed a thousand graves to bury himself.
His tether to his beloved bureaucromancy ebbed away. This was right, this was correct; if he did any ’mancy SMASH would find him, if he left any trail then Aliyah would find him.
He bore down, one last burst of ’mancy. And as he annihilated his magic, he thought maybe Payne hadn’t been kind. It would have been easier to chew his wrists open: he watched himself evaporate into nothingness, insisting to his beloved system that he was no one.
Maybe he deserved this eternal half-life for placing Aliyah in such danger.
His magic dwindled. His sense of self dwindled. He nestled deeper into the garbage, feeling things crawl across him, realizing the nameless held no power, the nameless had no existence.
Forty-Four
Come morning
Come morning, he was no one.
Part III
Mr Kamikaze / Mr DNA
Forty-Five
Every Piece Sacrificed
When Aliyah felt hungry enough to get some food, she discovered they had taken her Nintendo.
She uncurled her legs; fierce cramps shot up her thighs. Her recent memories were slurred – people had asked her questions, but parsing words into thoughts seemed like too much trouble, so she’d let the sounds slide through her brain. She remembered yelling at Daddy, remembered seeing K-Dash and Quaysean sizzle like hamburgers on a grill, remembered…
Rainbird had killed K-Dash and Quaysean.
She’d saved Daddy.
She needed to hold Daddy for a while. She’d been angry at him, and it was OK to be angry, but now she needed to tell Daddy why she was sad.
She hopped off the bed, wincing – her stomach hurt, how long had it been since she’d eaten? – and wandered over to get a sandwich.
Rainbird knocked on her door. “Mr Payne has a mission for you.”
“Where’s Daddy?”
Rainbird drew in a luxurious puff on his cigar, bolstering himself for a fight. “Your father left.”
A vague memory floated to the top: yelling at Daddy for him to get out.
He wouldn’t really leave her, though.
But as she pulled at the memory, trying to recall what had happened, Daddy looked serious. More serious than she’d ever seen him. Daddy was…
…he hadn’t cried, had he?
Her stomach cramped up. Daddy didn’t cry.
“Where’s Daddy?”
“I told you, girl. He left. He’s not coming back. We have an important task.”
“Where’s Daddy!?”
Rainbird clucked his tongue. “Don’t change your mind, girl. I heard you wailing at him to get out. You wanted me to teach you how to have no regrets? Start here.”
She punched him in the groin, where he’d taught her to. Rainbird sque
ezed his cigar so hard the ember popped off; with a glance, he got it smoking again.
“I’m warning you, Aliyah. Mr Payne needs your services, and needs them now. Time is of the essence.”
“I don’t care about stupid Mr Payne!”
Aliyah’s head rebounded off the shelves of cartridges before she realized what happened. He’d hit her just hard enough to get her attention; that exactness of how much pain he had doled out scared Aliyah.
He kneeled before her. “Mr Payne has safeguarded you, and you will not disrespect him. Your father has abandoned you. You will never see him again. And without this–” He waggled her Nintendo DS in the air “–you are an ordinary child.”
“Give it!” Aliyah lunged for her Nintendo, like Rainbird had taught her.
He slapped her backwards.
“This is no game, Aliyah.” The embers in his cheeks glowed, a banked fury. “You will apologize to Mr Payne.”
“I won’t!”
Rainbird rolled up his sleeves, preparing for an extensive beating. Fear shot down Aliyah’s spine. “I am not your father, Aliyah. I am here to teach you how this world works. And when you are standing in his seat of power… you will show Mr Payne His due respect.”
Aliyah thrust her chin forwards, as if to say something. Rainbird shifted, ready to meet insolence with violence.
It burned, not saying “no.” But Aliyah had to play nice until she got her Nintendo DS. Then she would show Rainbird who deserved respect.
“…I’m sorry.”
He tossed a risk control badge at her. “Say it the way He wants you to.”
Aliyah wanted to throw the badge in his face, but that would get her another beating. She clasped it to her chest, the thick silver ridges feeling like blades against her skin.
“…Thank you,” she said through gritted teeth. “…King.”
The badge grew warm, pulsating, sucking vital energy. She dropped it with revulsion – but Rainbird caught the badge before it hit the ground, shoved her back against the hard wire racks, brought his fiery cigar so close to her eye that her eyelashes sizzled.
The Flux Page 29
