Paul scanned Tolliver’s posts – I’m not saying I hate ’mancers, but they did destroy Europe – and marked him as a bright orange THREAT LEVEL: HIGH before breaking into Tolliver’s bank histories to list recent purchases. He sorted through endless Sam’s Club and SafeWay receipts, scanning for dangerous expenditures: tasers, guns, pepper sprays.
No weapon purchases. Nothing to elevate Braxton Tolliver to a red THREAT LEVEL: SEVERE.
By the time Paul snapped into an analysis of Eliza Tolliver, Braxton’s wife, the lemonade glass was hitting the ground. He devoured her Internet history, her phone records, her email, compiling a comprehensive profile that would have made the FBI’s best work look shoddy. He flashed his attention to the coach, to Savannah’s parents, to Bennie’s mother and the–
“Speed it up, Paul,” Valentine said. Aliyah had detonated a blazing ball into the net, which had bought her a couple of moments as people dove for cover. “I’m glad for a little action – finally – but I can’t fight them all!”
Paul suppressed a flare of irritation. Or you could just, you know, teleport us all out to safety.
That was unfair, he knew: Valentine’s magic ran according to the videogame rules she had devised, and Valentine would never play a game that allowed her to teleport away from a battle. She couldn’t retreat any more than Paul could magically drop millions into a bank account – the universe only bent to their will because they believed in an alternative system, one with different unbending rules. Paul believed paperwork made the world safer; he couldn’t conjure up money, or embezzle it.
Likewise, scrappy Valentine needed to face down her opponents one by one.
“Come on, Paul.” She bounced from foot to foot, anxious to mix it up. “Less planning, more punching.”
He finished profiling. “Ready for download.”
They touched fingertips. Their ’mancies intertwined; Paul shivered as his bureaucratic dossiers were converted into a game mod. As a videogamemancer, Valentine could gamify just about anything.
“Disable, don’t destroy,” Paul reminded her. “Remember, we brought this to them.”
“Arkham Knight it is.”
A bat-winged cape fluttered down from Valentine’s neck; she flicked her fingers out, covering them in leather gauntlets. She wasn’t quite Batman – she’d kept her thick figure, still pudgy and womanly beneath the cowl – but cloaked in shadow, she looked deadlier than anything else on the Morehead soccer field.
She leapt out towards Braxton Tolliver, grabbing him by the shoulders and burying her knee in his gut, before launching off him to leap into Mrs Darby as she fumbled out a Magiquell hypodermic from her purse. Valentine bounced around the soccer field like a pinball, her batcape flapping behind her, each successful attack adding numbers to the combo meter above her head.
Paul winced. Valentine’s takedown should have shattered Mr Sheltowee’s spine, but the videogame rules turned him into a bruiseable videogame villain. He staggered to his feet, little birds circling above his head, to rush at Valentine with a club he’d pulled from nowhere.
“You’re him,” a southern-accented voice said: Mrs Tolliver, cradling her husband’s unconscious body. “You’re that terrorist the President hates.”
“Please disperse – we’ll contain the situa–”
The flux smashed in around him, crippling migraine pressure. The universe knew the difference between information he could have dug out with a couple of Freedom of Information requests, and the sneaky hacking he’d done to ferret out private citizens’ records. This flux was the universe’s fury at being violated, wanting to rebalance the magic with gouts of bad luck–
“You hurt my husband.” She was numb with shock.
“I’m sorry.” Paul held up his hand in a mixture of apology and forbiddance. “’Mancy is a delicate operation, and–”
The flux hammered in at him: It’s a delicate operation? What could go wrong, pray tell? Let us turn your worst nightmares into reality. Paul kept his mind blank; if he worried about Mrs Tolliver’s mental health, the flux would find a way to drive her insane–
He reached into his breast pocket, pulling out the only thing that could safely disperse this flux:
The Contract With America.
The Contract was handkerchief-sized, made of rich vellum, inscribed in impossibly tiny yet calligraphically-perfect lettering. His tension eased as he ran his fingers along the Contract’s sewn edges: he would never have dared put Morehead’s population near ’mancy without his generous volunteers to reduce the danger.
Paul snapped the Contract open, unfurling it to the size of a kite. On it were the names of 32,503 people who supported pro-’mancy legislation – supported it so thoroughly they’d signed the paperwork that allowed Paul to assign his bad luck to them.
Paul had learned the trick from an old enemy. Yet unlike Mr Payne, who’d buried his flux-dumping in the thousand paragraphs of a EULA agreement, Paul had open-sourced his legalese. He allowed people to refuse or accept the bad luck at will, ensuring no one person would ever be assigned fatal misfortune.
Even with all those safeguards, being caught signing a magical contract would get you a lifetime prison sentence. The fact that thousands risked imprisonment for Paul humbled him.
Those thousands allowed him to keep giving speeches despite SMASH’s best efforts – he could enact great acts of ’mancy to keep bystanders safe whenever SMASH turned peaceable rallies into war zones.
Once again, Paul closed his eyes and offered thanks.
Then he poured the flux into the Contract, assigning tiny inconveniences. With this many people, he could chop this deadly flux-load into a thousand stubbed toes–
“You’re trying to destroy Morehead – like those ’mancers destroyed Europe!”
Mrs Tolliver aimed a taser at him – but there was no record of a taser purchase anywhere in the Tollivers’ finances. How could Paul have missed that on their threat-check?
Paul cursed himself: not everyone bought their weapons legally.
“Mrs Tolliver,” Paul said. “I’m not trying to destroy Morehead. I just… I just wanted to let my little girl play soccer.”
The flux struggled to escape the Contract. It didn’t want to be broken down to be dispersed among strangers locking their keys inside their cars – it burned to wreck Paul’s life personally–
“Your girl kicked flaming death at my daughter,” Mrs Tolliver murmured. In the background, Valentine kicked the guns out of three men’s hands, oblivious to Mrs Tolliver’s threat. “Your fat friend broke my husband’s arm. The President’s right – someone needs to stop you obsessed murderers–”
Years of training stopped Paul from imagining what could go wrong. Any fear would be a lightning rod for the flux to course down.
And he did fear destroying Morehead. All it would take was one sharp jab at the thin barriers that separated this world from the demon dimensions, and deadly buzzsects would come pouring through, the buzzsects that had devoured Germany, devoured France–
Devour Morehead! the flux roared. It took all Paul’s skill to blank his fears.
A gun cocked.
“Mrs Tolliver.” Imani evinced more compassion than you could reasonably expect from a woman aiming a gun at someone’s chest. “I brought you donuts. We’re not here to hurt you.”
“Then why did you hurt my husband?”
Paul wished he had a better answer than Because your husband said mean things about ’mancers.
Who was he, to profile people?
“Because, Lizzie,” Imani said calmly, “he would have shot Paul with his stun gun.”
Oh. Right, Paul thought.
“I know things look bad, Lizzie,” Imani continued, emphasizing Mrs Tolliver’s first name. “But believe me: things will get worse if you fire that weapon. Give Paul a moment to clean up the flux, and we will leave. We will leave and never come back.”
Mrs Tolliver slowly raised the stun gun.
Imani chewed
her lip, trying to work up the gumption to pull the trigger. Robert had trained her personally, giving her paramilitary lessons since they’d gone on the run from the government. She could punch tight clusters of shots through any paper target.
Mrs Tolliver endangered everyone here – yet that was because she’d bought into the news’ anti-’mancer propaganda. Imani and Mrs Tolliver had been exchanging donut recipes a few minutes ago; switching from that to inflicting a sucking chest wound was a transformation Imani could not quite complete.
Most days, Paul would have taken pride in her hesitation.
“A broach is imminent, Mrs Tolliver.” Her sudden formality was not lost upon Mrs Tolliver, nor was her finger tightening on the trigger. “If you don’t stop, I’ll have to fire. Please.” Her voice hitched. “Do not make me.”
Mrs Tolliver’s lips moved as she tried to tally up the facts. Her husband laid next to her – unconscious, not dead. Imani could have shot her.
Then the soccer coach’s limp body flew past Mrs Tolliver as Valentine kicked him into a Chevy truck.
“No more tricks!” Mrs Tolliver said, and fired.
Paul felt a sickly squirm of flux. His? No:
Aliyah’s.
As Paul watched in horror, the taser’s barbs embedded themselves into the Contract’s fragile paper, the electricity triggering prematurely to disintegrate this complex magical structure into a maelstrom of loose ’mancy–
Creating a sharp jab at those vital barriers that separated Morehead from the hellish otherworlds.
“No!” Paul cried.
As he was flung away, Paul heard that infernal buzzing. Swarms of buzzsects poured through a rift, each a color no human could comprehend, ready to gobble down the color of grass, the speed of light, the beat of time.
Paul fought to stay awake, knowing he was the only person within a hundred miles who could contain a broach.
The concussion hammered him into unconsciousness.
Four
All the Good Things in the Universe Burn
“Daddy, no!” Savannah screamed.
The gun didn’t worry Aliyah: no single bullet ever killed a player in the games she played. Headshots merely chipped away at your health bar. Savannah’s father couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger, but if he had shot, then Aliyah’s videogame confidence would have transformed his .45 gunshots into flesh wounds.
Aliyah was more concerned about Savannah’s daddy’s safety.
“Valentine, no!” Aliyah yelled, as Valentine dove and rolled towards Savannah’s father, her Batman-cape fluttering behind as she came up in a quick snapkick aimed at his neck.
Aliyah hooked into Aunt Valentine’s game and swelled into the Joker, intercepting Valentine’s attack with a double-block of crossed arms. Then she shrank back into a girl wearing a mud-stained soccer uniform.
The gun slipped from Savannah’s father’s fingers. As he hyperventilated, Aliyah read the emotions on his face: his need to protect his daughter, his self-loathing that he’d pointed a loaded gun at a girl he’d sung gospel songs with an hour ago, his confusion about why Aliyah would protect him after she’d tried to kill the goalie with a soccer ball…
“He’s scared,” Aliyah said, blocking Valentine as she swung again.
“Scared enough he’s practically shitting bullets in your face!” Valentine roared, her voice Batman-guttural. “Why shouldn’t I take him out?”
“Because friends don’t punch each other!” Aliyah remembered how scared she’d been the first time she saw magic. “And we’re friends. Aren’t we… aren’t we friends, Savannah?”
Savannah shivered, taking in the unconscious bodies lying around the soccer field, the black smoke rising from the burning soccer goal.
She squinted at Aliyah. “Have you…” Savannah swallowed, glancing uneasily at the curvy Valentine-Batman hybrid as it cracked its knuckles. “Do you kill people with your ’mancy?”
Aliyah shook her head. “I don’t–”
– “I said burn!” Aliyah shrieked, raining down fireballs on Anathema as she begged for mercy. “’Mancers burn! Bad people burn! All the bad things in the universe burn!” –
– A fire poured in through the doorway as K-Dash and Quaysean drew their guns to protect Aliyah, the two lovers struggling to hold hands as their fingers blistered to the bone –
“Not anymore,” Aliyah pled.
“Not anymore?” Savannah echoed.
“I didn’t ask to be this!” Aliyah yelled. “It just happened, Savannah! ’Mancy’s hard to control! And nobody–”
There was a wet noise, like the skin being pulled off a man’s back.
Aliyah whirled around, the hair on the back of her neck horripilating. That shredding sounded like it’d come from behind – but no, everyone still standing on the soccer field was turning in circles, trying to locate that horrid sound’s origin. The noise had disobeyed the laws of acoustics.
Then she heard the low buzz of hundreds of insects boiling out – and that noise swelled until they clasped their hands over their ears, hundreds ramping to thousands, thousands multiplying into millions.
The sun darkened as something sucked the tint from the sky.
Aliyah looked back towards Daddy. The space above his empty wheelchair had burst open like a blister, revealing an eye-watering glimpse of alien worlds beyond as the buzzsects chewed their way out with chelicerated jaws.
The air around the rip stretched sickeningly, sagged like too much garbage tossed into a bag, burst open to birth more buzzsects.
“Aunt Valentine,” Aliyah whispered, unable to look away. “Is that a broach?”
Valentine didn’t answer.
Her silence terrified Aliyah. Aunt Valentine had walked straight into a serial killer pyromancer’s lair to save Aliyah, had charged head-first into SMASH teams to buy them time to escape. Nothing scared Aunt Valentine, except maybe commitment.
Yet Valentine had taken off her sunglasses to stare straight into the abyss. Her remaining eye was filled with despair.
Aliyah remembered something Daddy had told her once: If there’s a broach, get me. You can’t seal a broach. No ’mancer can. The only people who’ve ever done it are me, or Unimancers – everyone else has died.
Then she realized: the broach had opened above Daddy’s wheelchair.
Daddy might be dead.
She reached out to the Contract, checking for signal, got a blank line.
Daddy was dead.
You killed him with your flux you killed everyone now no one can stop the broach
Panic flooded through her; she squashed it. Aliyah had too much experience in combat to let fear jumble her thoughts. She contemplated a retreat; if she called in the Unimancers, they might – might – arrive before the incursion swelled to obliterate Kentucky. If Daddy was dead – and some screaming part of her was already weeping at Daddy’s funeral – then her best bet for survival was flight.
“What is that?” Savannah shrieked. Her father crouched down to press her face into his shoulder, shielding her as best he could.
The buzzsects surged out from over the wheelchair; the grass wilted purple as they flowed across it, chewing the photosynthesis from the plants and excreting their own universe’s rules. They chewed the wave-forms from the sunlight’s photons, leaving strange radiations sizzling in their wake.
They expanded outwards, headed for the people.
“I love you, princess.” Savannah’s dad shut his eyes. The buzzsects flowed towards the unconscious bodies on the field, ready to consume the rules that kept humans’ hearts beating.
“Ha-douken!”
The Street Fighter fireball surged out of Aliyah’s palms before she’d even thought it through. Yet as the blue flame sailed towards the broach, she felt the correctness: she could not leave these people to die. She’d brought this upon them.
Who’s to say she couldn’t seal the broach?
The buzzing noise dropped in pitch as they sensed Aliyah’s ’manc
y. They swirled around in great arcs, converging on Aliyah’s fireball–
And snapped it up like the fireball was the most delicious morsel ever, poured back down the trail back to Aliyah, homing in on the source of this delicious ’mancy.
Well, at least I distracted them, Aliyah thought, running backwards to draw the buzzsects away from Savannah and her father. Savannah’s father looked baffled as Aliyah pulled the buzzsects away, squinting as if he couldn’t quite understand why she’d rescued him.
She pulled up a menu in mid-air, white text against blue; the world paused helpfully while she flicked the cursor down the available options. The soccer players’ mouths hung petrified in mid-shriek, the smoke from the burning soccer net freezing in place like a snapshot. The buzzsects cruised to a stop, caught like flies in amber.
If anyone’s left standing after your best shot, Aliyah thought, then find a bigger gun.
She flicked through her selections:
Attack
Magic
Summon
Item
Aliyah selected “Summon,” then browsed the submenu:
Anima
Zodiark
Eden
Nova
“When in doubt, go with the classics,” she muttered, moving the pointer down to “Nova.” But as she made her choice, she realized in horror:
The buzzsects had started moving.
The rest of the world had paused, but the buzzsects ignored her ’mancy.
Above her, the dim sky turned midnight-black, the now-bright stars sweeping overhead as the heavens glimmered with mathematical formulae. A distant star glimmered into existence, swelled, producing blinding explosions as it smashed through meteors and small moons alike, hurtling inexorably across the solar system.
The buzzsects moved in counterpoint to the impending destruction, sluggishly headed towards Aliyah.
Come on, come on, Aliyah thought, trapped in the animation cycle. She’d chosen the most powerful effect at her disposal, a videogame finisher so overwhelming it took almost two minutes for it to land – but in the game she’d stolen the Nova Summon from, everyone waited patiently for their next turn.
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