He’d used his bureaucromancy to figure out the location of that knot of roads. Even that small act generated septicemia. Yet he’d figured where Steeplechase was headed, and the answer was terrifying:
An assisted living center for the elderly.
Paul had inspected their housing records: it was a small living center, for twenty-five seniors, booked up full – which meant when Steeplechase tore through them, he’d slaughter nurses and old people alike.
Valentine had Grand Theft Autoed the cop car, racing through the highways – but Paul remembered Steeplechase’s inhuman speed.
He’d unleashed that.
He’d gotten those four cops killed.
Remember, they fired first, Imani had told him as she and Robert had bundled Butler into the SUV. Robert had a medical safehouse forty minutes away, but the medpack’s stabilizing ’mancy would wear off before they arrived; he needed to stay in the back to look after Butler while Imani drove. So the team had separated, but not before Imani had tried to talk him out of his guilt.
It’s a tragedy, Paul, but… they shot you.
His ribs throbbed with each heartbeat. He’d been gobbling Robert’s antibiotics to offset his flux-inflicted damage. There wasn’t time to recover, not with Aliyah in jeopardy, and the cops were what happened when he let his flux loose on someone else.
He popped another Oxycontin.
Maybe SMASH had a point about ’mancers.
He needed to talk to Valentine about morality – or maybe to beg her for a medpack. But she skidded through traffic, nobody noticing her crazy driving thanks to her Grand Theft Automancy.
She was deep in concentration, still rattled by her argument with Robert. Paul fingered the ring in his pocket, wondering what to do with it. He didn’t dare ask. She carried a heavy flux load, and distracting her would rain havoc down on them.
Normally, he took comfort in her videogamemancy. He loved to watch different ’mancies – kiteomancers and rock-balance-mancers and servimancers producing ineffable beauty.
Or they produced mangled bodies on an asylum floor.
He’d forgotten something about the huntomancer – he hadn’t been on that case. But the one time the NYPD had unofficially teamed up with the mob to stop a serial killer had been the scuttlebutt of the station. There was some salient fact he couldn’t dredge up from his memory – but between the panic and the painkillers, recalling facts was like trying to organize a filing cabinet in a hurricane.
He sighed in relief when Valentine skidded to a stop before the Sunset Gardens Assisted Living Facility. The hand-carved sign out front was surrounded by bright flowers blooming on a warm summer night. The facility itself was imposingly institutional, but the staff had tried to brighten it up with windowsills full of more flowers, and the windows had grandchildren’s crayon drawings taped over them.
Paul knew this because the building’s lights were on.
His stomach sank. You didn’t turn on all the lights in an assisted living home unless something had gone terribly, terribly wrong…
As Paul and Valentine got out of the cop car, a stern Italian nurse charged out to meet them, her white uniform spattered with blood.
“We didn’t call no cops!” she cried. “No cops! Why are you–”
Then she saw Valentine’s eyepatch and videogame controller.
She saw Paul’s bloodied suit and artificial foot.
“Crap.” She backed into the facility, holding up her hands in surrender –
“We’re here to help,” Paul assured her. “Where is he? Is he still here?”
She nodded, eyes widening, glancing around to plot escape routes.
“All right,” Paul said. “We’ll take care of this. We’re… We’re sorry…”
She bolted off, running into the humid night.
Valentine swallowed. “You braced for what’s inside?”
Paul straightened his tie. He wasn’t sure what they would do. She still burned with flux, and any ’mancy he could scrape up now came with titanic consequences.
But a killer was loose in this old-age home.
A killer who held their only chance at finding his daughter.
Maybe he’d surrender to SMASH. But not before he fixed this.
* * *
The hallways of the Sunset Gardens Assisted Living Center were dingy, laced with the faint scent of piss. The residents, old but not yet decrepit, had wheeled themselves out to their doors, peered out through cracks to watch them pass. The seniors’ rooms were packed tight with threadbare furniture taken from the homes they’d lived in, and Paul was glad to see the tiny refuges they’d been forced to retreat to had gone untouched.
The remaining staff, three nurses and a janitorial crew, holed up in the central station, too terrified to move.
Two nurses lay sprawled dead before them, heads blown apart, guns still in their hands.
…guns? Paul thought.
“Don’t you fucking move,” Valentine ordered the remaining staff. She knelt down to examine one of the guns. The two dead nurses looked like they’d lifted refrigerators in their spare time.
Their guns had been fired. Not that it had done them any good.
Who felt comfortable starting gunfights in a nursing home?
She peered over at the three nurses, who were older, their uniforms well-worn; to Paul, always sensitive to chains of command, they had the feel of long-time trusted staff. “Where is he?” she snapped.
“…Room 105.”
“Do not move,” she repeated.
A trail of blood, growing heavier, led down the hallway. As Paul and Valentine got nearer to Room 105, they heard a muffled sobbing. An old man, weeping behind a shut door.
Strategically, Paul knew they should kick in the door, take the people inside by surprise. But a glance showed Valentine also wanted to respect this stranger’s grief.
They pushed open the door.
Compared to the other lushly-furnished rooms in the Sunset, this one was stark as a prison: no paintings, no comfortable couches, just a metal hospital bed.
The crying man was old, hair unkempt, dressed in a filthy sweatshirt; he stroked the dying Steeplechase, who slumped against his wheelchair. He wailed, tugging on his handcuffs – though they’d chained him to the wheelchair, he fought to hug Steeplechase.
Steeplechase bled out from multiple gunshots.
The handcuffs were both unimaginably cruel and completely unnecessary: Paul realized the crying man’s legs had been amputated below the knee.
Steeplechase was almost too weak to move, but reached up to stroke the crying man’s cheek, his mute face begging forgiveness.
“You shouldn’t have come, Grayson,” the crying man told him. “You shouldn’t have risked it. I never wanted to…”
Steeplechase turned to see Paul and Valentine. He squinted, vision almost too dimmed to recognize them – but when he saw them standing in the doorway, his mouth curled up in a smile. He spent his final breath laughing silently, merrily patting the man in the wheelchair to get him to look at the new arrivals.
The crying man, confused, refused to look away. But Paul noted the resemblance on their faces.
The mob had two huntomancers, he remembered. Twins.
Steeplechase had been trying to rescue his brother.
Twenty-Four
Love is Not Enough
Eight ’mancers were to be honored at today’s memorial service: two dead of old age, one by accident, five sacrificed sealing broaches.
Everyone agreed Numbers would have been pleased to see his death take place on a statistically average day.
Aliyah hadn’t wanted to go to the memorial service, but it would have felt disrespectful to stay away. She was raw after breaking down in the Unimancers’ arms yesterday.
She’d always been her family’s anchor. Here, she’d become someone who relied on people.
Why couldn’t she rely on the people who’d raised her?
The Unimancers, for their pa
rts, had kept a respectful distance, like waiters standing in a restaurant’s corner. The people of Bastogne had taken their lead from the Unimancers, refusing to condemn her.
She longed for someone to yell at her, to give her something to fight against…
But Aliyah’s only human contact had been Ruth, come to top off her euclidosuppressants. She craved that drug now. She wanted her ’mancy locked away.
Getting to the mess tent involved dodging messy smears where light boiled inside like tea in a kettle – the scars from yesterday’s rift. The Unimancers acknowledged Aliyah with encouraging smiles. How could they? She’d killed three people. Yet though she scoured their expressions for traces of disgust, not a one of them blamed her.
She thirsted for their forgiveness. Worse, knew they’d give it.
That opened up doors she wasn’t ready to step through.
Today’s ceremony was overseen by a pot-bellied, dark-skinned man in a crisp military uniform. He stood at the head of the mess tent, looking somber; his nametag, drowning in a chest full of medals, read KANAKIA.
Aliyah stared. This man had beaten her? With his balding fringe of gray hair and his bulbous nose, General Kanakia looked like a store clerk, not a warrior.
Yet when he turned his calm gaze upon her, she felt like a virus under a microscope. Aliyah bristled; that gaze spoke of hours studying videotapes of her, implied nothing she could do would surprise him. Occasionally he bent down to whisper a question to Ruth, and Ruth always nodded as if to confirm the truth of whatever he’d surmised.
They spoke – Ruth arguing strenuously, the general reluctant – and came to a conclusion.
Ruth thanked him and came over to get Aliyah.
“The general says Numbers’ memorial service will have classified information you’re not cleared for.” Ruth cracked open a storage case, strapped a bow and quiver over her shoulder. “Come on, let’s go for a walk.”
“I killed them,” Aliyah said. “I can’t walk away–”
“If you truly honor them, then you won’t make this memorial about you.”
Aliyah couldn’t have blushed faster if she’d been slapped.
“That’s not fair,” she protested. “You’ve got all those salesmancers and psychomancers and marketingmancers inside you. Are you manipulating me into doing… doing whatever you want?”
Ruth nodded. “Check my eyes, Aliyah.”
Her eyes were a speckled hazel, kind enough that Aliyah wanted to trust her–
–they weren’t jittering.
They hadn’t jittered during this whole conversation.
Had Ruth severed herself from the collective?
“That’s all…” Aliyah wasn’t sure how to say it. “That’s all you?”
The freckles on her cheeks darkened before she turned away. “It’s always me, Aliyah. Just sometimes I have help.”
Aliyah remembered being enfolded in the Unimancers’ embrace the other day, cresting high on their love…
“Look,” Ruth said. “If we were bringing you into the collective, sure, we’d use every trick to charm you. But you’re off-limits. The general’s made it quite clear that if I ever interfere with his attempts to capture your father again, he will have me shot. But…”
Ruth sighed, uncertain whether she should talk. “I don’t have to channel salesmancers to know how you’re feeling. You think you killed people. You’re cringing with guilt. But we told you this wasn’t your fault – and it isn’t.”
“Bullshit. I triggered the broach.”
“And I triggered you.” Ruth dug her fingernails into her ribs, her body curling inwards in shame. “I carry… I’ve got too much influence over the collective at times. They feel guilty over how I got in. They don’t want to countermand me unless it’s necessary. And when I picked a fight with you, they rode my anger when they should have quashed it, and I goaded you. Until you broke.”
Was Ruth crying? Shit, Ruth was crying. Crying hard.
Aliyah didn’t know Unimancers could cry.
Aliyah moved to embrace Ruth – then stopped. She didn’t know Ruth, hugging her might have been what Aunt Valentine called a consent violation.
In the end, she didn’t hug Ruth. Mainly because she remembered how good it had felt when Ruth had hugged her yesterday, and how much she craved those soft embraces again, and Ruth’s stinging don’t make this about you felt far too applicable.
“Did you know I could… do that?” Aliyah asked instead, feeling like she should interrupt these waterworks somehow.
“…do what?”
“Broach if you pushed me?”
Ruth laughed. “Shit, no. I thought you’d just cry. As it turns out – Jesus, you’re strong. Smashed past a dosage that would have incapacitated anyone else.”
Aliyah flashed back to Morehead: This is playing the game on expert, she’d thought. These kids don’t have to like you.
Your enemy’s compliment was the most addictive drug.
“I’m that good, huh?”
Ruth frowned, realizing she’d conceded a point. “Could have also been a bad dosage. There’s some weird flux haloing you. Maybe from your dad, maybe from someone else.”
Aliyah felt better about that, too. Any excuse to feel like she hadn’t doomed mankind.
“So somebody else’s bad luck fueled yesterday’s raging clusterfuck?”
Ruth scrubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. The thought clearly made her feel better, too. “Maybe.”
“So the world is suicidal, and it’s using us as the razor to slit its wrists?”
Ruth blinked – then gave Aliyah the goofiest grin. “Who the hell talks like that?”
“Me,” Aliyah said proudly. “Fuckin’ flux.”
Ruth spat on the ground. “Motherfuckin’ flux.”
Aliyah realized she hadn’t braced herself for a “language” from Mom or Dad. She’d let the fucks fly freely.
She should miss her family. But it felt nice having nobody looking over her shoulder.
Somebody different looking, anyway.
“A whole flux-fucking family!” Aliyah said experimentally. Ruth giggled. Aliyah worried maybe she was disrupting the ’mancer memorial service – but the Unimancers had unobtrusively filed out of the mess hall.
Sheepdogs, Aliyah thought.
“Come on.” Ruth jerked her thumb towards the woods. “Let’s move, before the general drugs your ass into incoherency.”
“You can try. Maybe the flux would fuck that up, too.”
“Seriously? The flux wants you awake? You wanna argue the best luck I can have today is beating you unconscious?”
Aliyah followed Ruth into the underbrush without conceding the point.
Twenty yards into the woods, Aliyah realized how easily she could get lost. The Appalachians had given her a taste of deep nature, but hikers and homeowners still wandered through there. Everything here was buried beneath decades of growth, unchecked by any serious human habitation – wildlife rustled beneath each leaf.
Ruth led them down mossy creek banks, tiptoed across the rocks. Aliyah struggled to follow.
Do not think of this as a videogame challenge, she thought.
“OK,” Ruth said cautiously. “I think we both agree talking shit about your father is off-limits.”
Aliyah’s cheeks burned with anger. “Goddamned straight.”
“So I’ll start with a compliment: You saw how we had to work together to stave off that broach. If your dad can do that solo – if – then he’s working some powerful juju.”
Aliyah matched Ruth’s politeness. “He’s one of the smartest men in the world.”
Ruth skipped from stone to stone, looking down as if she was far more comfortable traversing treacherous streams than she was talking to someone her own age. “I don’t… OK, sure. But let’s say your dad was the best guy in the world, you know, my mother, she was so good, and yet she…”
Ruth reached back to grab Aliyah’s wrist before Aliyah toppled backwards.
She pulled Aliyah up onto the far shore, and Aliyah felt shamed; the creek had been maybe ten feet across, and she’d still needed help.
“Parents do things to you, Aliyah. Even with the best of intentions, they can fuck you up hard. And seeing you worshipping your dad, it got me mad.”
“I wasn’t worshipping him.”
She waved Aliyah’s objections away, too weary to fight, heading into the woods. “Whatever. I sure as fuck worshipped my mom. She made the best pancakes, and she made living in a van fun, and when she got brain cancer she distracted me by teaching me about cell growth and chemotherapy.”
Aliyah almost apologized. Then she realized if Ruth was anything like her, she’d sucked down too much sympathy already.
“How old were you?”
Ruth shouldered tree branches aside. “Seven.”
A year older than I was when I got burned, Aliyah almost said, but mentioning that felt like riding on Ruth’s coattails. “That’s young.”
Aliyah winced. That pity had squirted out. Ruth shrugged, rolling Aliyah’s sympathy off.
“Mom sure as hell thought so,” Ruth agreed. “We’d had so many adventures. She was an educamancer – a super-teacher.”
Now that was a killer ’mancy. You could teach people languages, teach them skills, teach them coping techniques – you’d be a living videogame tutorial and psychotherapist. “That’s… potent.”
“You think so?” The trees opened up into a great grassy field, so high the grass stalks tickled their underarms. “Most people think ‘magical teaching’ is kinda weaksauce, but… you have a dad who’s fetishized the IRS.”
“So we have parents who rocked subtle ’mancy.”
“Yeah,” Ruth nodded. “We travelled from town to town. She’d find down-and-out people and train them. We’d come in, fix someone’s life, get out before SMASH arrived. It was Teacher, She Wrote.”
Ruth paused, waiting for laughter.
“I never heard of that show,” Aliyah admitted.
“Then how’d you know it was a show?”
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