“How?”
Paul shrugged. “You’ll find a way. I’ll be tracking down Aliyah; you think of ways to destroy their Unimancy. So whenever you think of those Unimancers’… wounds… you study these books.”
She flipped through the table of contents. She was starting to plan; good. She only relaxed when she felt useful. But her eyelids fluttered; the cortisol dampers, doing their work.
He steered her towards one of the double beds. “We have to sleep apart for now. If you bump my ribs in the night, I’ll scream. But if you wake up, come get me – I’ll talk you through it. We’ll figure this out.”
She struggled a bit to get up. Then she pulled him down to kiss him – a gentle kiss he didn’t deserve, considering Aliyah was in the hands of maniacs.
“Can I confess something?”
“Anything, sweetie.”
“…it’s not the three dead men I think about.”
“OK. What do you flash back to?”
“The fourth.” Her sleepy vengeance was terrible to behold. “The fifth. The ones I didn’t get to shoot. Is that…” She shook herself awake. “Is that bad?”
Paul smiled. “That’s… I think that’s the attitude we need.”
* * *
Only Valentine’s lover was allowed to dress her wounds.
She found the ritual comforting, even in this antiseptic hotel room – Paul had given them a place so nice it made Valentine feel out of place.
What made her feel at home was watching Robert.
He disinfected the plastic drinks tray, then laid out his paramedic equipment – the scissors, the gauze, the antibacterials. He cut her clothing from her body, neatly avoiding the places where the fabric had fused with her skin.
She’d lost her Bowser tattoo. Her long black hair was seared down to the scalp.
She heard Aliyah joking once they got her back: Oh, now I see a burned kid.
But for now, she sank into Robert’s brutal touch. He didn’t shy away from her wounds, and she loved him for that. He didn’t mutter reassurances like this is going to hurt – he trusted her to take whatever he dished out.
In turn, she trusted the pain he gave her was what she needed to make her strong again.
She sat still as he plucked at peeling blisters, debrided her sores, wiped stinging disinfectant across ragged cuts. She let him repair her like a machine, and when he fixed her up she felt like a killing machine, even if there was a part of her asking, Weren’t you supposed to be the star of the show? What happened to that production, anyway? And…
Her eyes were wet.
“Common reaction after smoke poisoning,” Robert said. He tilted her head back, dropped Visine into her eyes.
Was he making excuses? Was he disappointed?
He wasn’t. His gaze held such adoration that she had to look away. If she watched him watching her, she’d start to wonder what she’d done to deserve that look, and then she’d start cataloguing what she had done, and…
Justifying her lover’s presence would drive her crazy.
Crazier, anyway.
And when he’d trimmed away the last of her singed hair, he gave her painkillers. Valentine wished her videogame magic could heal wounds. The best she could do was produce medpacks that hid injuries until the next scene. Like videogames themselves, her magic never produced anything of lasting change.
He unbuckled his pants, removed a bright purple strap-on he’d strapped to his thigh, kneeling before holding it out in his palms for her inspection.
“What the…”
He gave her a shy grin – such a childish, beautiful grin on such a big, burly man – and retrieved a set of leather cuffs, a small paddle, a knuckle-whip.
He placed them at her feet.
“We left our shit in the car,” Valentine said, stunned. “We lost it fleeing Morehead.”
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “But I always carry something with me for you. You need to work out stress after a bad day.”
He was always so adorably embarrassed whenever his submissive side came out – a glorious secret that only Valentine ever got to witness. He unbuttoned his shirt, turned to present his magnificent backside.
“You keep a strap-on dildo on you at all times in case I need to work off steam? You’re the kinky hero that Gotham deserves,” she said.
I was Batman, once, she thought. It didn’t help.
“Look, I… appreciate what you’re doing. But tonight…”
She wanted to wipe the tears away. But she let them show, to him.
“I just need you to make love to me, OK? No whips, no clawing, no punching. Just you, with me, where I can… where we can be together. Tonight, I need something…”
“…simple?”
“Yeah.” Why was she so fucking tongue-tied? “Simple.”
“I can do simple.”
If he’d looked grim when he said it, or his eyes had welled with pity, she would have slapped him. But his face was still wreathed in that angelic halo of a smile, a smile that said he was happy to do whatever she needed him to do, and when he climbed on top of her she wondered whether that was the first time she’d ever let him on top.
Then she kissed him until she forgot herself.
Sixteen
Teachers Leave Them Kids Alone
Let me save my family, Aliyah had prayed to no one in particular, and I will never ask for anything again.
She’d charged down to the airfield, Kratos’ knives falling into her sweaty palms. Yes, she’d told Mom this mission was worth the risk of losing Dad. But Mom was there. Valentine was there. Her bad decision had cost everyone. And she–
She’d had to fight.
She came to still fighting, yanking on her handcuffs, an IV pinching the back of her hand, rattling the comfortable office chair she’d been manacled to.
She stared at the upholstered leather, her gaze rolling along the deep stitches like a river flowing into a valley. The leather was a burnished dark brown –
With all due respect, Mrs President, a muffled voice snapped from beyond the walls, Aliyah Tsabo-Dawson is not a bargaining chip. She is a burning fuse. And you are not prepared to deal with Paul Tsabo’s brand of explosives.
Aliyah’s attention snapped up to the wood-paneled walls, sliding along the grain. She frowned, then closed her eyes; even though she sat perfectly still, she felt every twitch of her neck muscles as they adjusted her balance, felt the throb of the IV in her hand, the gentle breeze of air conditioning on the nape of her neck – all as distracting as taps on the shoulder.
They’d drugged her with something to hyperfocus her attention. Which made sense. She couldn’t do ’mancy if she–
Do you remember what happened the last time someone kidnapped his daughter?
The voice was faint, but her sensitized ears picked up every syllable. She heard the floor creaking under General Kanakia’s boots as he strode back and forth – not quite screaming, but speaking with the strained tones of a man desperately trying to prevent someone he respected from being an idiot.
The last time someone kidnapped Aliyah, Mrs President, he decimated New York. And despite the fact that we had every advantage in this operation – leading him into an ambush, fifteen of my best Unimancers, with Paul’s flux-dispersing mechanisms disabled and no time to plan – he still neutralized two-thirds of the squad. We haven’t lost nine men to an unassimilated ’mancer since – oh, wait, since the last time we lost nineteen Unimancers to an unassimilated ’mancer, which was also him.
His terror felt good. She loved it when people thought her daddy was a badass.
Yet the drug chopped facts into tiny pieces, confusing her. She laid her thoughts down one brick at a time, assembling ideas like a Minecraft level:
She was a bargaining chip. That was one brick.
They were worried about Dad. Brick two.
That meant they didn’t have Dad.
Tears of relief coursed down Aliyah’s cheeks.
Brick three was – a
n absence. Something Kanakia wasn’t discussing. Mom? Or Valentine. No, Mom and Valentine. They must have gotten away, because Kanakia would have crapped his pants if he thought Dad would be coming for the whole family.
Her father was coming for her.
Aliyah wanted to applaud, but that would have been a bad idea with the IV and the handcuffs.
Her plan fell into place: escape the Unimancer prison, or endure the Refactor torture techniques until Dad arrived. As long as she held out against their brainwashing techniques, Dad would come get her before these assholes zombified her.
These drugs were only the start, though. They’d use more insidious techniques.
She needed to escape.
Kanakia talked again – SMASH has a limited number of Unimancers to cover the United States, Mrs President. It is irresponsible to fling them away on a local dispute. Yes, I do understand how much funding the United States provides to SMASH operations–
She bit her cheek again, tuning him out.
They had her in a holding cell. She had to find the escape route.
She opened her eyes, got boggled by the wood grain – no. Refocus. The drug zoomed her attention in on random fragments, like a rogue camera in a videogame. She thought the room had too many windows at first, but then she realized the “windows” were all black-and-white images.
Photos. The office had framed black-and-white photos stuck to the cheap wood paneling. Pictures of buildings. One was a beautiful castle, sticking out of the top of a wooded mountain. Another was the Eiffel Tower. One was a big blocky arch, standing uselessly in the middle of a square – what was that called? The Triumphant Arch?
Was this a prison or a travel agent’s office?
Then she realized: those don’t exist anymore. The walls were hung with famous landmarks swallowed up by the broach.
And this wasn’t a prison cell, but an RV office, the kind you’d find parked outside a construction site. The floor was covered with threadbare blue carpeting, the screw-together desk made of particleboard. A chalkboard with half-erased agenda notes was propped in the corner next to a sink brimming with unwashed coffee mugs.
She jerked her attention over to the door. It was an office door with a simple lock, and when she dragged her concentration over to the hinges, they were flimsy aluminum. She could kick it down easily.
If she was a high priority target, why had they stashed her in someone’s trailer?
She leaned forward, searching for something to pick her handcuffs open–
The door cracked open.
A teenaged girl snuck in.
The girl was a welter of details, dazzling Aliyah’s addled consciousness – sweeping strokes of long red hair, constellations of rust-colored freckles on pale skin, the gleam of sleek Unimancer leather. She shrugged slender shoulders, seemingly apologizing for jangling Aliyah’s vision.
The girl moved like well-oiled machinery, gliding noiselessly as she shut the door behind her, holding a finger to her lips to shush Aliyah. Even her sliding into the chair across from Aliyah held the air of a martial arts kata – leaning forward in a formalized bow to deposit a pink-and-white box on the desk, then leaning back to go motionless as a statue.
The new girl’s immobility felt like a gift.
Aliyah exhaled, realizing her first order of business had to be shutting off this drug. But she couldn’t yank out her IV with this teenaged stranger in the room. So instead, she leaned forward to examine the package she’d delivered:
A box of donuts.
A box of Dunkin’ Donuts.
Her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten since the Morehead Wendy’s. Those donuts laid open invitingly, a standard assortment of sprinkles and Boston Kremes.
She wondered how well the Unimancers knew her family. Her Uncle Kit was thoroughly mundane, but everyone made fun of him for his “donutmancy” – he claimed he could tell your mood by your donut choice, and so whenever they were on their way back from an adventure they called up Kit in his retirement home to tell him their selection.
These donuts transformed the room from a prison into…
…well, Aliyah didn’t know what this office was. But her concept of prison cells did not include pastry trays.
Aliyah could have taken a chocolate glazed (a solid donut, Uncle Kit would have said, the sign of a sober temperament), but instead she locked gazes with this new girl.
The girl – who couldn’t have been two years older than she – peered right back, frowning as though she was sizing up all the problems that an Aliyah in her life presented.
Her hazel eyes jittered: the mark of a Unimancer, distracted by the hivemind’s voices.
The good news, Aliyah thought, was that she had finally found a ’mancer her age.
The bad news was, the Unimancers had brainwashed her.
Seventeen
Chekov’s Orange Juice
Valentine had placed a glass carafe on the edge of Paul’s desk, then taped a sign to it that read “CHEKOV’S ORANGE JUICE.”
“What does that even mean?” Paul asked.
“You know I don’t footnote my jokes, Paul.” Valentine slouched back in her chair, playing Arkham Asylum on the hotel room’s television. She was playing as Batman, facing down massive groups of thugs; whenever she took a hit, no matter how small, she waved her hand at the screen to rewind the game in yet another attempt at a flawless match. “But trust me, that juice just spoilered the fuck out of any playwrights in this room.”
There was nobody in the hotel room except Paul, Robert, and Valentine. But Paul did not get involved in Valentine’s ever-inscrutable references.
Instead, he used the orange juice to wash down another Oxycontin to dull the pain in his ribs – and returned to rewriting the Contract, paragraph by paragraph.
His sides ached. But to save Aliyah, he needed to distribute his excess flux to volunteers – especially now the universe was out to get him.
Fortunately, he’d open-sourced the Contract so anyone could suggest changes. He was glad to see the remaining Project Mayhem members had devised legal workarounds to reduce liability now that signing the Contract was a jailable offense. Paul incorporated their modifications, adding automated burn-and-dump clauses that severed the Contract’s connection in case of arrest.
He dimly remembered how this had been his escape once. There had been such satisfaction in anticipating every potential snafu and walling it off with legalese, creating a wise protector to keep everyone safe…
Yet with every revision, Aliyah slipped further away.
He did not have time for this.
But the Unimancers had poisoned his magic. That black flux had not only cursed Aliyah, it had broken him so the smallest infraction drowned him in bad luck. Using a new Contract to disperse his flux was his only hope of unlocking enough magical power to track down Aliyah. He doubted many would sign it – the news had become the Morehead broach channel, claiming Project Mayhem had doomed America to become the next Europe – but even a hundred signatures would give room to maneuver.
He had to write out the Contract by hand. It would have saved so much time if he could have printed out a copy and made revisions. But that wasn’t how his ’mancy worked. His ’mancy required tedious detail.
His ’mancy didn’t care if Aliyah wound up a weaponized zombie.
“There!” He finished the Contract with a flourish, then waved Robert over. Robert had paced back and forth in this third hotel room Paul had rented as an office, calling all his connections to see who had a lead on Aliyah. He’d cursed vociferously, discovering safehouse after safehouse had gone dark.
Normally, he and Valentine would be lovey-dovey – he’d bring her a donut, she’d reward him with a kiss on the cheek – but Valentine stared at the screen, rejecting his help. Robert talked on the phone, trying not to be rattled by her diffidence, walking in circles that paced some nebulous border at the edge of her attention.
Robert looked for all the world like a confused wait
er, trying to bring someone a meal that they had once ordered but no longer wanted.
Paul sighed, spreading the Contract out across the desk. Interpersonal relationships weren’t his strong point; he’d ask Valentine what was going on later.
“Got a task for you, Robert,” he said.
Robert hung up. “What’s up, mon capitaine?”
“Our new Contract.” Paul handed Robert a fresh Bic pen. “Wanna be the first?”
“Why, Paul,” Robert said, stifling a fake blush, “I never thought you’d ask me to be your first.”
Valentine pointedly ignored his innuendo.
Robert examined the clauses. He knew most of them by heart, having gone over the signing with a thousand recruits – but like Paul, Robert took a certain satisfaction from ensuring everything was in proper working order.
He placed the pen tip against the “Sign here” at the bottom. The pen crackled with fresh magic, prickling Robert’s arm hairs. Robert inhaled deeply; his own Fight Club-o-mancy may have faded, but he still loved watching magic.
He signed the Contract with a flourish, completing the magical circuit.
The letters bunched up in a typeset seizure, then vomited black flux over Paul’s shirt.
“Did it… reject me?” Robert asked, too stunned for snarky comebacks.
Paul clawed at the bad luck crawling across his shirt, mystified – every clause is perfect! he thought, enraged.
Then he realized: the math didn’t work out anymore.
Once, the universe trusted him enough to have him trade spare flux like a commodity – he could broker the bad luck away, because what was a bureaucrat for if not to shift blame to other departments?
Yet demanding the Unimancers’ flashbangs to fail for no reason had triggered a massive tax increase in his flux-debts. The flux-cost incurred in finalizing the Contract had swollen so massive that he could no longer trade flux at a profit.
The Unimancers had stopped him from healing the broach, they’d stolen his daughter, and now they’d disabled the tool that would get her back…
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