She reached down, grabbed a fuzzy stalk with curly fronds. She snapped off a piece, rubbed it between her fingers.
Ruth knelt down before Aliyah, opened her mouth wide, fine red eyebrows raised.
Aliyah studied Ruth’s face. Ruth didn’t have many facial expressions – she’d been a Unimancer for so long, her natural reactions had atrophied to vestigial tics. All that remained was a floating bemusement that left Aliyah uncertain.
Seeing Ruth on her knees sent swirls of fire through Aliyah’s belly. Was that how Aunt Valentine felt when she saw Robert?
Ruth sat primly, hands clasped behind her back, her smooth pink tongue waiting for Aliyah to put something on it…
“Still can’t tell, can you?” Ruth taunted.
“I could read a normal person’s reactions,” Aliyah grumbled. “Most folks would flinch if I was gonna poison them.” She’d fed Ruth the wrong berries once; Ruth had swallowed them calm as candy before she spent the next two days throwing up.
Ruth had walled off her body’s reactions, leaving her “core” with the medics. For the next two days Aliyah had the unnerving experience of camping in the woods with a chunky Venezuelan man who talked like a fourteen year-old girl.
Putting berries on his tongue had been far less satisfying.
Aliyah shredded the fronds, trying to figure out if that prickly sensation in her fingertips was an allergic reaction or just Ruth. Though Ruth was her age, Aliyah knew she was more… experienced. Sorta. Ruth had never done anything, that would be gross, Ruth was fourteen for God’s sake – but Ruth had told her once she could access the Unimancers’ memories like she’d lived through them herself.
All the memories, she’d said, holding Aliyah’s gaze until Aliyah had pretended to chase a rabbit.
Still, everything felt like a test with Ruth. So Aliyah had kept things distant, dropping berries into her mouth from up high.
Maybe if she tried to do something, Ruth would laugh.
Maybe you shouldn’t be getting so friendly with the organization who tortures ’mancers, she thought. Some days she had the uneasy suspicion that Ruth’s seeming affection was the Collective, poking the weak spots in her psyche.
But she remembered Aunt Valentine explaining why she and Dad had been drawn to each other. You get lonely, in this business, Valentine had said. I spent years afraid to get close to anyone. That first friend who accepts you for who you are, well…
Valentine had pondered all the ways she and her daddy had never gotten along, and then given Aliyah a crooked smile. They change everything.
She looked into Ruth’s eyes a lot. They were like slow fireworks, shifting greens and browns.
They never jittered when she looked at Aliyah.
It had to be her, alone.
So what if it was? Ruth still wanted to brainwash Daddy and Aunt Valentine.
Except Ruth didn’t seem brainwashed. And Daddy and Aunt Valentine were–
– she tried to remember what Daddy did with the ’mancers he rescued. Left them alone, mostly. He loved ’mancy for ’mancy’s sake, clapping merrily whenever unique magics blossomed.
Whereas Ruth and the Unimancers fought for Bastogne, they fought for Europe, they battled that Thing in the sky. They made safe spaces for normal people to live in.
Aliyah wanted the people of Bastogne to stop cringing when they saw her. She wanted to curl up in the same bunk with the Unimancers, to feel their pride in protection.
She wanted to earn Ruth’s friendship. All Daddy had taught her to do was magic.
Still, Aliyah wondered what Ruth would do if Aliyah made Ruth suck the sap off her fingers.
“Well?” Ruth waggled her tongue.
Ruth’s eyes twinkled, taunting her–
Aliyah’s ears popped.
A jagged line knifed through the sky, barely visible through the leaf canopy.
“Look out!” Aliyah tackled Ruth aside as a fresh rift slithered through the forest.
The rift was a ripple in a forest bobbing with a million leaves, but Ruth had taught Aliyah what to look for when the reality shifts hit. The sky usually squirmed in some fashion – or at least it did this close to the Bastogne broach. The newer rifts further out towards France and Austria could, ironically, be more dangerous because their shifts were less obvious.
But trees cracking was a sign – some reality shifts exploded organic material, or incinerated it, or froze it till the water shattered. Or sometimes the laws of sound got eaten, so you had to keep moving your head to ensure you heard which way something wasn’t coming from–
She’d had lots of practice rift-spotting. The rifts seemed drawn to her. Ruth chalked it up to that weird flux stuck to Aliyah.
I almost killed her, Aliyah thought, panicked. I can’t–
“How did you know what side to tackle me to?”
Ruth’s voice was kindly, but stern – her mother, poking through. Class was clearly in session, which made it easy to slip her hands out from around Ruth’s slender waist.
“Instinct,” Aliyah said.
“Now deconstruct instinct into education,” Ruth instructed.
Aliyah hated it, but when she panicked, the voice in her head that calmed her down was no longer Daddy, but Ruth’s mother-voice.
She wiped her palms off – they’d tumbled into a berry patch – and looked around.
“The trees on that side of the rift,” Aliyah concluded. “They turned brown.”
Ruth nodded in approval. Green leaves curled up brown in the rift’s wake, that glorious underbrush becoming skeletal.
I almost killed you, Aliyah thought, miserable. This bad luck flux, it’s out for my life–
Ruth kipped up on her feet to stride along the new rift’s edge. Aliyah wanted to pull her back before the rift expanded. But if Aliyah hesitated, then Ruth would know she was scared, and that shiz was not happening.
So Aliyah crept up. On that side of the line, there were new rules of physics fatal to plants – but nobody knew what.
“OK, that’s an easy visual.” Ruth stooped over as she gnawed her thumb, analyzing the rift – the sure sign Ruth was channeling edumancy. Her mother’d had an arthritic back, and Ruth adopted her mother’s crooked posture whenever she spoke to her mother’s memories.
“It smells different, too,” Aliyah said. “Feel the wind? The pressure’s dropping. All the air’s rushing in. That’s why my ears popped.”
“So how would you grade this?”
Aliyah wondered, for the hundredth time, whether Ruth ever got nervous. She knew that Ruth’s edumancer mother-simulation took dominance in dangerous moments, walling Ruth’s terror out with scientific curiosity. But that hadn’t protected her before the Unimancers had arrived.
“An A-grade toxicity, fatal to human life,” Aliyah judged. “C-grade for visibility. If you weren’t paying attention to the wind and tree color, you might walk into it.”
Ruth’s eyes flared. “I’ll add it to our collective.”
As Ruth catalogued the new rift for the Unimancers, the wind swept the dead leaves away like a stage curtain fluttering away, revealing…
The Thing in the sky.
Aliyah had grown to hate the sight of it. That Thing loomed over them like some evil dungeon master. It kept reality as thin as spring ice, constantly fracturing things for the Unimancers to reknit.
(You did that in Morehead, you know, you condemned them to that)
Hated it.
(Dad thought he could control it)
Hated it.
Ruth blinked, her hazel eyes ceasing to jitter. “OK. We gotta work our way around this, get back–”
Aliyah shrugged. “That’s easy, assuming this rift is fairly straight.”
“You know where you are?” Ruth asked, bemused. “Out here, in the deep woods?”
“First skill you learn in death matches is ‘memorize the map,’” Aliyah scoffed, turning around to point. “The stream leads back to the mess tent. There’s a steep drop-off a
half mile over there. And over that rise is the tree I beat you climbing ten days ago.”
“You didn’t beat me – you shoved me off the tree!”
“I maintain that maneuver wasn’t outlawed by the rules you’d set. Speaking of beating you, on your knees, soldier.”
“Why?”
Aliyah opened her berry-smeared hands. “Because I tackled you into a blueberry bush. Chow down.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Can we get further away from the rift?”
They gathered up blueberries and curled up next to each other. Aliyah felt a little robbed when Ruth popped the berries directly into her mouth.
“I’m getting good at this,” Aliyah boasted.
“Without a scrap of magic.”
“My bow technique’s improving. I know what bad woods look like. I can mostly find food on my own.”
“You can.”
“You don’t watch yourself,” Aliyah said, chomping the last handful of berries, “I might just escape this compound.”
“You could.”
Something in Ruth’s sudden silence gave Aliyah pause.
“I could run off,” Aliyah ventured. “Take this bow and find my way home.”
“You could.” Ruth angled her head northeast. “Nearest refugee station’s seventy miles that way. There’s no paperwork out here. A refugee can give any name she wanted – they’d ship her to a new land.” Ruth squeezed her eyes shut, sighing regretfully. “Girl like that would probably become an Olympic bowman. Or something world-class. Former ’mancers never lose their obsession, they just… redirect it to healthier channels. We’ve got training facilities for ’mancers who want to gear down to normal. But…”
Ruth wiped blueberry juice off her lips, hesitating.
“You don’t need them,” she said. “You’re learning to leave magic behind. You could take a new identity, if you wanted… as an ordinary girl.”
Aliyah’s heart stopped.
What was Ruth saying?
“No,” Aliyah whispered. “That’s impossible. People don’t leave ’mancy behind.”
Ruth gave a bemused snort. “Tell that to your Uncle Robert. Sometimes, the need fades.”
Aliyah tried to imagine being an ordinary girl, painting nails in… well, not in America, they were full up on refugees, they’d ship her off to China or Australia.
She’d been happy in the woods, with Ruth, but… could she be happy in some foreign land, bouncing between foster homes?
Could she live with herself, knowing Europe was crumbling into nothingness? Knowing she’d given up her best tool to fight that evil?
“But I…” Aliyah swallowed. “How can you suggest that?”
Ruth tapped her temple. “It’s our dirty little secret. We don’t absorb everyone into the collective – because we above all know ’mancy’s terrible cost. It’s a burden, Aliyah. If you can give it up, you should.”
“It’s not a burden.” Aliyah glared at the freshly-dead wilderness. “Our magic heals the world.”
Ruth constructed a smile for her; Aliyah realized how hard Ruth had mimicked the right facial expressions to make her feel at home. But this one was new – muscle by muscle, Ruth constructed a rueful grin to gift to her friend.
“Your magic doesn’t heal things. It can’t. Maybe you’d be safe if we could Unimance you, Aliyah, but… we need your father in here. He’s got his own way of closing broaches. Kanakia says we need him.”
“So get us all in! Dad, me, Valentine–”
Aliyah clapped her hands over her mouth. Was she crazy? Wanting her dad to be caught?
Ruth’s shock was for different reasons.
“You,” Ruth said slowly, “do not want your father in here with you.”
Aliyah surrendered. Ruth pressed forward, relentless.
“Do you want to remember how good it felt when he fucked your mother? Do you want to feel how often he bites back disappointment in you? There’s a lot of good reasons you don’t want to be hooked into your parents’ memories, Aliyah, and I know all of them.”
“All right. All right.”
“And you can’t stay.” Ruth shook Aliyah as if waking her up from a dream. “Once he comes here, he’ll never let you go. He’s destroyed cities to find you, Aliyah – you’re right, he’s coming here, and the general has a plan to catch him. But after he’s ours…
“He won’t let you go. The general won’t let you go, because he knows your dad freaks out when you’re gone. The President won’t let you go. The United Nations won’t let you go. They’ll keep you shoulder-to-shoulder with ’mancy until you die. You have to escape before we know what happened – it’s your only chance at an ordinary life.”
“What if I don’t want ordinary?”
Ruth dropped her hands, sagging.
“We’re not gonna…” Ruth’s chest hitched. “We’re not gonna talk about this. You learn your bow, and you leave your magic behind, and you leave me behind. You pay me back by living the life I couldn’t have.”
Ruth cracked her neck, looked over towards Bastogne, stepped back towards the collective.
“Leave ‘you’ behind’?” Aliyah asked. “Not leave ‘us’ behind?”
Ruth halted.
“I know you’ve got friends in there,” Aliyah said. “You snicker at their jokes. They love you like family.”
“Don’t.”
“But you and I are the only people in the world who did magic before we learned long division. When I joke with you, your eyeballs are still. You don’t want to share me with them.”
“I said don’t.”
“You think I can swap friends out like a Nintendo cartridge? Like some kid in China would step in and take your place? Shit, you’ve got thousands of friends in the collective, and yet…”
Aliyah traced the callouses on Ruth’s fingers, held up their hands as if to demonstrate how strong they were when they were intertwined.
“This is special, isn’t it?” Aliyah asked.
Ruth blinked away tears, holding Aliyah’s gaze long enough to confirm Aliyah was serious – and Aliyah realized that Ruth’s cold test-personality was how she hid her affection; she’d been dying to kiss Aliyah but terrified Aliyah would laugh.
“It is,” Ruth said. “But what we do – there’s so much sacrifice–”
“I don’t get a life without sacrifice,” Aliyah said. “I’m a ’mancer. And I…”
She swallowed.
“I choose you, Ruth. I choose Bastogne.”
Something shifted in the sky overhead.
Something slick and dark peeled off her – that mysterious flux, lifting away, having found a target at last.
Black flux spiralled high into the sky, bursting like ichorous fireworks, ripping open as something gigantic forced its way through the gap–
“A rift.” Aliyah had never heard Ruth so clinical before – which was terrifying.
The worse things got, the more clinical Ruth became.
“Run.”
Twenty-Seven
Wrecking Ball
It took Grady Steeplechase two weeks to find Aliyah’s trail. Finding where Aliyah’s Snow White Special rocket had landed had pushed Grady to his limit.
“I’m sorry it took me so long, sir,” he said.
Paul needed no apologies; he’d seen how hard it was for him to track in a wheelchair. Robert had strained his back pushing Grady through rocky soil.
“She’s in Europe,” Grady said. “I’m sure of it.”
Imani bit back curses. Getting to Europe was all but impossible via plane these days, at least for ’mancers. Some major cities still had air routes – mostly the countries firewalled from the broach by the sea.
But every flight was staffed with Unimancers to prevent unauthorized ’mancers. Paul’s limp, visible through any disguise, would be a dead giveaway.
And despite Robert’s assurances that Project Mayhem could deliver, all their other leads had come in dead. Though, Robert argued, some lea
ds had gone dead because Paul had blown up a goddamned nursing home.
“Boat it is, then.” Paul cursed the time – four weeks, smuggled in a shipping crate on a cargo ship. Each passing day brought Aliyah closer to being brainwashed.
But Imani had a plan to shut the Unimancers down.
“I’ll find her for you,” Grady said. He seemed stronger since his brother had died – rescuing Paul’s daughter had given him a sense of purpose. “I’ll make your wife’s phone call. But… when the time comes, sir… You know what I ask. Please don’t refuse me.”
Paul knelt. Their histories were dark reflections.
“Never,” he promised.
* * *
The day they left America, Paul thanked Robert.
“Everything set up to the letter,” Paul said proudly – from the outside, the corrugated shipping container looked like a thousand other battered containers.
The inside, however, had been transformed – a living space with enough food supplies for four people, ventilation to ensure an air supply, oil lamps and a library Paul needed to study on the trip over.
“The guys at the docks still love me,” Robert demurred. He’d thrown himself into work, now that Valentine had refused to talk to him – strengthening Project Mayhem as best he could. His safehouses, he assured Paul, were safer than ever.
Paul leaned heavily on a cane – his ribs had gotten worse. Something resistant to antibiotics had settled in. Robert had stockpiled enough medical supplies to ensure the infection probably wouldn’t become fatal, but breathing felt like his lungs were trapped in a vise.
Which was a shame, as he had a lot to say to Robert.
“Here.”
He handed Robert his smartphone. Robert stared at it, confused.
“A reward for your hard work,” Paul encouraged him. “Hit play.”
A video started up. Paul sat in front of a white bedsheet hung from the ceiling – providing no details for SMASH analysts to track him. “I’m proud of the work Project Mayhem has done. Individual ’mancers may commit crimes, yes – but so do individual humans, and we don’t outlaw them for being human. I stand fast by my assertion that SMASH is an unconstitutional travesty.”
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