YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DAUGHTER IN WAYS YOU NEVER IMAGINED
“Fuck!” Paul screamed, thumping the desk; the flux flowed out of him, finding the orange juice, which tipped over to wash the ink away in a bright citrus flood.
“Chekov!” Valentine shot fingerguns at the mess. “The world’s most accurate shot.”
“I don’t even know what that means!”
Robert mopped up the soggy remains of the Contract with a towel. Valentine put her controller down, eyeing Paul.
“It means I don’t get why we’ve wasted five days with you scribbling words, keeping Imani in another room reading books.”
“Hearing you play videogames reminds her of Aliyah,” Paul snapped. “And she’s researching ways to break the Unimancers…”
“Why bother?” Valentine chucked the controller into the couch. “I’m ready, coach, put me in! Whip up your bureaucromancy to track down Aliyah–”
“–which led us into a trap last time–”
“–the principle applies! You can sift through the government’s files at will! I mean, sure, yeah, she’s off the books – but you can analyze flight records, track troop movements, snoop through internal communications! Don’t fine-tune the data, Paul – get me close enough, I’ll make Aliyah a quest item, I’ll home in on her. But I can’t start with no clues! Get me clues!”
Paul realized she was as frustrated playing Arkham Asylum as he’d been writing this stupid useless contract.
Paul put his head on the desk, which seemed like a good idea right up until he dunked his forehead in sticky paper-pulped orange.
“OK.” He ran his hands through his hair, trying to regain his dignity. “I have to tell you a secret, Valentine. But you can’t tell Imani.”
“Why not?”
“She’s overwhelmed. That’s what happens when you kill someone for the first time.”
Valentine ran her hands over her ash-smeared stubble, wincing as she realized she’d failed in her duty to Imani. “Don’t I know it.”
“She needs to focus on disrupting the Unimancer network. She can’t worry about me. So I need you to… to compensate for me.”
The difference between Valentine’s “irritated” face and her “concerned” face was almost undetectable, but Paul knew her well enough to catch the shift. She leaned forward, as if ready to catch him…
…and then scowled at Robert with an oh, you’re still there? look.
“I got this,” she snapped. Robert lowered his head in embarrassment, realizing he had been hovering, his fingers outstretched to help Valentine if she needed it.
He slunk away, closing the door behind him.
“Alright. What’s happening?” she asked.
Paul squeegeed a dribble of orange juice out of his hair. “When I saved you… back at the air base… I… did something. I did a ’mancy I shouldn’t have, and now it’s like… like I’m starting over from scratch. Before, I knew all the steps I could have taken to get that authorization and could shortcut them, but now the world is forcing me to fill out everything one step at a time. So I’m slower. And less effective. And… the flux is approaching critical.”
She tapped her fingers on the desk, trying out buttons on a controller. “So you’ve lost your mojo. Is this something you can… heal?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get my speed back. But if not, I…” He took out some of the books he’d ordered in, spread them across the floor. “If I can’t get my old strength back, then I have to find where the smallest changes make the biggest impact.”
She tapped the covers, frowning. They were 1980s era textbooks with professorial-sounding authors: Knuth, Stroustrup, Kernighan.
“…I can’t even make sense of the names of these books, Paul.” Valentine pushed aside a cryptic tome by Schneier. “It’s like a dyslexic barfed alphabet soup.”
“It’s the modern language of bureaucracy,” Paul said. “But the point is, Imani’s under strain. So I need you to compensate for my weakness. Can you cover for me?”
She exhaled through pursed lips. “…yeah. In fact, I think I might be able to fix your problem altogether. Can you gimme a second to get something for you?”
What could Valentine have to erase this flux? Paul wondered. Valentine had been a ’mancer for longer than he had; she’d taught him how to bleed off his flux. Who knew what other tricks she’d learned?
He waited patiently as Valentine left the room.
She returned with Imani.
“You can’t do ’mancy anymore?” Imani didn’t sound mad. She rushed to his side, brushing his sticky hair as if she could reveal the wound that had stolen his powers.
“Sorry, Paul,” Valentine shrugged. “If you’d told me you were jerking off to teddy bear porn, well, maybe I woulda kept your secret. This shit could get us killed.”
“You–”
Valentine batted his objection away. “Did you learn nothing from Payne locking away Aliyah, Paul? You keep secrets from your wife, you handicap yourself.”
“You’re not trying to protect me,” Imani told him. “You’re ashamed. Or you would have told Valentine right away.”
“It’s like ’mancer erectile dysfunction!” Valentine said.
“Not helping, Valentine. The point is, Paul, you hate looking weak. After you lost your foot, you let me divorce you before you’d admit how miserable you were. And now? Well…” Imani shrugged. “At least you’re smart enough to tell a friend who’ll tell me.”
It was true. He was already so broken, after letting down Morehead, his head buzzing with painkillers, humiliated by SMASH – losing the only thing that had made him special was almost too much to bear.
But Valentine had been right.
He couldn’t conceal this.
Paul squeezed back tears. “I’m sorry. With this much at stake, I…”
“You need to be honest about your capacity. You’re strong and smart regardless of your magical potential. It’s why I married your ass. But remember: I am this group’s goddamned Batman–”
“–let us not tussle for the Batman position here–” Valentine interrupted.
“ –and if there’s a flaw I need to account for when I’m destroying the Unimancers, you need to tell me.” She grabbed his cheeks. “I know you hate being weak, Paul. But whenever someone breaks you, you grow more powerful.”
Paul grinned. Terrible as it felt to have his magic sabotaged, he had family to lift him up.
“I won’t lie again,” he promised.
Imani thumped him in the chest. “I am a lawyer. That is a verbal contract. The one thing you have to respect, my idiot husband, is contracts.”
“…the fuck?”
Everyone turned to see Robert, his eyes bugged out in disbelief.
“So you’re forgiving him?” Robert spluttered. “We’ve spent five days in a public hotel! May I remind you Paul set off a magical suitcase nuke? There’s a hotline with thousands of bucks in rewards for anyone who wants to play the ‘Let’s Snitch On Paul Tsabo’ game! I bribed the maids because I thought Paul’s ’mancy was covering us – but if Paul’s fuse is blown, I had much better positioned safehouses!”
Imani held up a finger. “OK. Granted, hunkering down in an insecure public space was not the wisest move Paul’s made – but creating the Contract to compensate for Paul’s increased flux loads was worth trying. Besides, the time it’s given me to study hiveminds has… well… I think I have a way to shut the Unimancers down. But it’s going to be bloody.”
Valentine cracked her knuckles. “When it comes to Unimancers, the only flavor I want is ‘bloody’.”
“And if I know my husband’s detail-obsessed brain, he had contingency plans on the back burner. Or am I in error, sweetie?”
“I’ve got a backup plan,” Paul admitted. “You won’t like it.”
Valentine arched one plucked eyebrow. “Anything that gets us closer to Aliyah will make me happy.”
“Robert.” Paul straightened his tie. �
��Policy is, you don’t clue me in on Project Mayhem’s details so SMASH can’t get the information out of me. But… a month or so back, I heard a rumor about a huntomancer?”
Robert held his hands up in a whoa, let’s not get crazy here gesture. “You mean the guy so obsessed with moving silently that he slit his own throat so he’d never make a sound?”
“Yeah.”
“You mean the maniac we lost three good ’mancers capturing before he murdered his way to yet another mob hit?”
“Yeah.”
“You mean the psycho we keep caged up because a) we’re not quite sure how to kill him, and b) we don’t dare let the Unimancers incorporate this maniac’s tracking powers?”
Paul held Robert’s gaze. “That was the rumor, yes.”
Robert approached Paul with the air of a man sneaking up on a lion. “Paul. We’re all worried about Aliyah. But I’ve got leads, good leads, from people working overtime to track her down. The huntomancer, he’s… he’s not an option I’d recommend. Especially when we’re negotiating for Aliyah’s release. They won’t touch her until talks collapse…”
Imani spluttered. “What fresh bullshit, Robert! We’re negotiating, and still calling in all our chits to break Aliyah out of prison – you think they’ve stopped torturing her because we’re negotiating?”
“They don’t know Paul’s lost his power!” he snapped, waving his arms around at an imaginary Congress. “They’re politicians! They have got to be scared shitless that Paul’s digging through their files for embarrassing revelations! A little bureaucromancy can unleash scandals that make Watergate look like an overdue library book!”
Paul blinked. Why hadn’t he thought to do that, back when he’d had the power?
The answer came ringing back, sounding hollowly naïve: because you don’t use paperwork to blackmail people.
But what if it made for a better world? Why hadn’t he been unearthing scandals to cleanse the government of bad politicians?
“That blackmail potential is why I think they’ll move quicker to neutralize him,” Imani replied. “If they can brainwash Aliyah now, they’ll have a permanent hold on him.”
“Of course we have to hurry,” Robert agreed. “But… let’s explore other options before the huntomancer…”
“Other nonmagical options?” Valentine’s cynical voice cut through the tension. “Last time I negotiated with the Unimancers, it cost me this eye and my last boyfriend.”
“And unleashing a magical killer on the world is good strategy?”
“Oh, come on!” She slugged his arm, dodging around him, throwing shadow punches. “What happened to your sense of adventure? When the hell did Tyler ‘You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs’ Durden become some dickless accountant?”
Robert snatched her fist out of mid-air – and then brought it to his lips, kissed her knuckles.
“I didn’t need Tyler,” he whispered, “once I found what made me happy.”
She flicked her hand like she was shaking off dog drool. “Oh, no. No, no, no, Robert. Don’t you dare go there–”
“Stop,” Paul said. “I know this is dangerous, Robert. But – your other safehouses with ’mancers who might help us have been captured, right?”
He hunched down, defensive. “We’ve still got ’mancers on tap. But the skillsets that could locate Aliyah are narrow…”
“So what’s your odds on our mundane connections getting us a bead on Aliyah’s location? Especially now that Project Mayhem’s an illicit operation?”
“It’s… possible.” The way he said it didn’t give Paul much hope.
“And how long does it take for the Unimancers to torture someone over to their side?”
Robert studied his shoetips. As Valentine elbowed him, Paul realized with a shock: He didn’t want me to know how bad things could get.
“It… varies. They have to retrain them physically up to military standards. But we’ve seen some old allies reappear on the other side in as little as a month.”
“So what do we do when someone’s abducted?”
“Standard policy is to eradicate all evidence they had access to within ten days.”
Paul couldn’t breathe: in the worst case scenario, they had five days left to rescue her.
“Look,” Robert urged. “I know it’s bad. But trust to negotiation. Trust to procedure. Just… trust the organization you’ve built will find her.”
YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DAUGHTER IN WAYS YOU NEVER IMAGINED
“Robert?” Paul asked.
“Yes?”
“Take me to the huntomancer.”
Eighteen
Welcome to the Jungle
“You should taste them,” the Unimancer teenager said to Aliyah, sweeping her gloved hand across the box of donuts. “We don’t have a… Dunkis out here, but we have some people who worked at Dunkins. We tried our best to recreate the donuts in our mess hall.”
Aliyah got a clear vision of Unimancers working together in a kitchen – one whipping up frosting, one dropping donuts into a fryer, moving in that gymnastic synchronization so they never bumped elbows.
She shook it off. She had to escape.
Though she was hungry.
And not eating when she had the opportunity seemed foolish.
Especially when the opportunity was donuts.
She leaned over and almost toppled over, the drugs messing with her balance. But the teenaged Unimancer – the word RUTH was embroidered in white thread on a leather shoulder-patch – did not move to help her. Ruth studied her with the seriousness of a doctor diagnosing a patient.
Yet when Aliyah’s fingers closed around the chocolate glazed, Ruth’s expression softened into something Aliyah recognized – that hopeful look Aliyah had back at the Wendy’s, that half-grin of someone searching for someone to smile back at her.
Well, Aliyah had to eat the donut now.
She took a bite. Sweet sugar glaze crackled under her teeth, her mouth filling with sticky chocolate. She crammed the rest into her mouth, wishing for a glass of milk to wash it down.
“Oh good,” Ruth sighed. “I was worried we’d gone to all that trouble for nothing.”
The singular pronoun shocked Aliyah. “I?”
Ruth’s contented smile was whisked away as neatly as a magician whipping a tablecloth out from under a dining set. “Yeah.” She thumped her chest. “I. I snuck in here, I’ll get in trouble if Kanakia catches me, I broke consensus to see you. So yeah. I.”
Aliyah didn’t know why she felt sorry when she’d been beaten, drugged, and hauled to a new location – but Ruth’s angry reaction held the reflexive hurt of someone constantly misunderstood. Aliyah couldn’t erase someone’s unique identity, especially the only other teenaged ’mancer she’d ever heard of.
But she wouldn’t apologize, either.
“Well, I don’t know that,” she shot back. “All I’ve ever seen is you guys trying to kidnap us – and you finally did. Good for you. But don’t make it sound like I should have known you had hobbies when you’re not shanghaiing defenseless doilymancers.”
“Ha!” Ruth leaned back in her chair, impressed. “Oh, that polled well.”
Aliyah felt she should have understood what Ruth meant, but the drugs clogged her thoughts.
“OK,” Ruth whistled, impressed. “You’re fearless. I can see how you survived with nothing to back you up.”
“I had plenty to back me up. I had my daddy’s Contract, and Valentine’s expertise, and Mom’s–”
Ruth waved her off. “The fact that you think that’s ‘plenty’ tells me you don’t know what we work with. By our standards, what you did was like climbing Mount Everest in a diaper.”
“I suppose being a Unimancer is like flying to the top in a helicopter?”
Ruth’s eyes flicked to one side, consulting with someone else. “You’d crash. The air’s too thin up there for helicopters.” She stared over Aliyah’s shoulder, her voice mutating into a deeper male voice
’s recitation. “The 2005 altitude record used a specialized copter with the weight stripped off…”
Ruth shook away the information.
“No. The Unimancers are… they’re a Sherpa team. The saggiest, softest millionaire can show up at the base, and their expertise can haul anyone’s ass up the mountain.”
“Yeah.” Aliyah yanked at the handcuff contemptuously, as though she’d break it off any moment. “That’s not happening.”
“No.” Ruth looked pensive. “It won’t.”
Aliyah did a double-take, which fuzzed into a triple-take as she almost fainted from the movement. Stupid drugs.
Ruth blotted the sweat from Aliyah’s forehead. “General Kanakia is furious at me for letting your father get away. He’s the one we want inside the collective – well, the one the general wants, anyway.”
“Why?”
“He’s got some off-the-charts talents for sealing broaches – the reports from Long Island were chaotic, but eventually we concluded Paul healed a broach without Unimancer backup. Rumor is, he later purposely triggered a broach to kill his enemy Payne, then sealed it up so thoroughly we couldn’t find a trace of the disruption.”
Aliyah kept a poker face, neither confirming nor denying the rumors. Even though, she thought with pride, they were true.
“So you’re out,” Ruth said. “If we Unimance you, we can’t bring Paul’s talents in. We can’t have a father and a daughter inside the hivemind at the same time.”
Maybe she could goad Ruth into giving up intel. “Why? Because your stupid SMASH torture techniques can’t break a father’s love for his daughter?”
“What? There’s no–”
Ruth’s fingers popped open in surprise. Her eyes darted back and forth like ping-pong balls, trying to follow some internal roar of debate that Aliyah’s words had generated. Aliyah watched as Ruth’s face morphed into a hundred different people, each hotly arguing – some angry, others earnest, some begging for peace – Ruth’s skin tones shifting up and down the pigmentation spectrum.
But those morphing facial features all held an unmistakable core of Ruth. Yet with each physiognomic transformation, Ruth’s certainty wavered. Eventually, she brought her fingers into a fist over her heart – the symbol of the SMASH logo.
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