Fix

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  Aliyah stepped out.

  As he staggered towards his daughter, some great strength that had carried him all these miles broke. All the Oxycontin in the world couldn’t hold back his chest pain as he sobbed with relief, forcing his dying body to keep moving because nothing would stop him from scooping her up in the hug he’d longed to give her.

  He hugged her even though his ribs stabbed him. She was safe in his arms.

  He marveled at how strong she’d gotten – she’d grown muscular, she must have had a growth spurt while he was gone, the Unimancers had stolen that time from them. But she still clung to him as though she hoped never to let him go again, doing her old trick of burying her face in his shoulder rather than letting anyone see her cry.

  The Thing in the sky roared.

  Time to heal this place.

  “Get her out of here, Valentine.” Valentine had cruised to a halt a few steps behind him, dazed, horrified.

  Aliyah squirmed. “What?”

  His daughter’s voice sounded harsher, more clipped. He grabbed her by her shoulders:

  Her eyes jittered.

  “No,” he whispered. “No.”

  Sixty Unimancers stepped out from the ruins’ shadows, coordinated as dancers, their guns holstered, keeping a respectful distance. Paul recognized one of them: Ruth, the young one who’d set them free at Morehead, her freckled face blankly hostile.

  I will put a bullet through your windpipe, she had promised, and your kid will pull the trigger.

  “Dad, it’s not what you think!” Aliyah cried. “We’re… We’re not brainwashed! We’re alive in here!”

  She swallowed, pondering how to convince him.

  “We’re not NPCs!”

  Valentine stiffened.

  Paul’s palms itched; he was revolted to find himself holding a Unimancer. But if they were emulating her emotions, they did it skillfully enough to break his heart…

  “We need you, Dad,” Aliyah pled. “You taught me sacrifice for a good cause was noble. You’d put your life on the line for me. To save ’mancers. We give our lives to hold that back.” She jabbed a finger up at the interlaced rifts overhead, but Paul couldn’t look away from his daughter’s face.

  She grabbed his chin – she had a soldier’s strength now – and directed his gaze back to the anxious villagers.

  “We save ’mancers. We save humans. We save the world. And we need you, in here, to help us fix that. And–”

  She gritted her teeth. Ruth spasmed, her head snapping back, muscles locking as some collective willpower held her in place. Aliyah’s mouth subvocalized words:

  “Shut up, Ruth. I know what your mother does to you but we need him inside.”

  She looked so tormented. She looked so sad.

  He could never refuse her.

  “Aliyah, I–”

  Aliyah grabbed him, her eyes clear and still. “Remember Morehead, Daddy? Look at these people, Daddy, look at those villages you rode through and tell me it’s not worth it to save them.”

  “Aliyah, I’ll do it.”

  “What?”

  As a parent, there was no greater joy than seeing your daughter realize she didn’t have to argue. “I’ll become a Unimancer. If they’re… If they’re truly unique individuals in there, then you and I can show them what’s wrong. We’ve seen how they’ve broken the world. We can reforge them from the inside.”

  Even though her grateful hug sent streaks of pain up his fractured ribs, he luxuriated in her touch. He concentrated on the feel of her in his arms. This would be the last time he’d hold her.

  “All right, Valentine,” he said. “Get her back home.”

  Aliyah stiffened. “What?”

  “You’re not staying, Aliyah. Healing this will be dangerous.”

  She stepped back, the Unimancers closing ranks. “No, Dad. Bastogne is… it’s my Morehead. I’m fixing this, too.”

  “No more arguments, kid.” He ruffled her hair. “Go home.”

  “This is my home.”

  “Aliyah Rebecca Tsabo-Dawson! This is not negotiable! I didn’t kill–”

  Corpses burning men screaming Imani weeping as she shot a man in the face

  “I did not cross Europe to lose you to that Thing!”

  Aliyah’s burn scars flushed dark with rage. “That Thing needs all of us to bring it down!”

  “Not you!”

  His voice sent birds scattering from the trees.

  Of course it was Ruth who unlocked her taser from its holster. The rest followed, synchronized, an assembly line threat.

  “Get back there with Valentine,” Paul whispered. “I can accept you as a Unimancer. But you’ll be a Unimancer somewhere safe. I’ve been through too much to let you hurt yourself.”

  “Dad,” Aliyah said, through gritted teeth. “I need to be here. Saving people. That’s… it’s not negotiable, either. And…” She broke away, looking back at her fellow Unimancers. “We had contingency plans in case you refused.”

  “Funny,” Paul said. “So did we.”

  Things moved very fast after that.

  Thirty-Two

  War Bureaucracy

  Aliyah jabbed her hidden stun gun into her father’s solar plexus. The combatmancers flowed through her muscles, guiding her actions–

  His shoulder’s dropped, the combatmancers thought, analyzing Paul’s musculature. He went for his blow at the same time you did, it’s too late to block whatever he’s done, so immobilize him and we’ll handle the rest.

  Gratitude welled out. Her father might disable her, but her squad would finish the job.

  She squeezed the trigger–

  It clicked uselessly.

  How, she thought, we checked the batteries–

  Needles jabbed into her side. Magiquell. Her father had dosed her with anti-’mancer sedatives.

  She tumbled backwards as the other Unimancers fired their tasers. Aliyah was grateful to see Aunt Valentine backing away, ushering Mommy and General Kanakia to safety – stay back, she pled, don’t do ’mancy here, you’ll rip open rifts–

  Every taser misfired.

  She felt their confusion. They’d triple-checked their equipment. General Kanakia had assigned them each a different taser brand, so Daddy couldn’t disable a single manufacturer’s quality control and neutralize them.

  But this was different. Daddy’s ’mancy had always been whisper-quiet.

  They’d never felt him rewriting the laws of physics.

  “You dumb sacks of elephant shit!” He tugged at the unstable physics; rifts cracked open at his fingertips, unspooling across the landscape. “How much does it take for your bloated egos to realize how incompetent you are?”

  Aliyah felt the collective’s shock as they realized Daddy had weaponized the unstable physics. He’d triggered a microbroach that had changed the electrical mobility in the tasers’ lithium batteries…

  Ruth whipped out her gun, aiming for center mass. But Daddy had tugged apart Bastogne’s loose physics to destabilize nitrocellulose, turning their bullets into duds.

  The Unimancers charged at Daddy, closing the distance–

  He clenched his fists.

  Black razor-plows erupted from his hands.

  He’s cracking open the places we’ve never healed properly, Aliyah thought. If we’d sealed the broaches, he’d be helpless – but he’s turned our incompetence against us…

  The Unimancers abandoned their assault to smother those rifts before they unleashed the Thing in the sky.

  “Get out!” Daddy screamed to the villagers. They were already fleeing. “I’ll handle this!”

  “Daddy!” She fought the numbness creeping up her side. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m fixing this.” He looked so serene. “The broach has spread for years because they’ve been too incompetent to realize they can’t fix it. And they won’t let me heal it – they’ll stop me, just like they did at Morehead. I have to get rid of them and start over.”

  “You
can’t trigger a broach on purpose!” she yelled. “The demon dimensions are not a weapon!”

  “It’s how I defeated Payne.”

  Her father had gone mad.

  “It’s OK, baby,” he reassured her. “I’ll tear down this slapdash parody of our world’s rules, and once the chaos has given me some breathing space, I’ll rebuild this the way they should have back in 1945.”

  By “breathing space,” he meant “killing the Unimancers.”

  She realized why he’d dosed her with Magiquell – her father had anticipated she might be Unimanced, and so he’d done his best to cushion the blow when he killed her friends.

  “This isn’t you, Daddy!” The numbness spread to her thigh. “Is this bureaucromancy?”

  He grimaced, looking away. Then he stared up at that Thing. His eyes narrowed.

  “It’s War Bureaucracy.”

  She looked to Ruth for help – but Ruth was so busy counteracting the broach, she didn’t dare take Daddy down. Yet why weren’t the other sixty Unimancers restraining Daddy?

  She tuned into the collective:

  Maybe he’s right

  He’s triggered microbroaches he’s turned our shoddy work against us

  WHAT DOES HE KNOW THAT WE DON’T

  Her father’s new powers inspired spasms of insecurity. The Unimancers examined years of constant broach-caused retreats, knowing that at best they’d run a holding pattern. A rebellious sect seriously considered whether letting Paul kill them and take over was a good idea.

  He has to be stopped! she thought. But the drugs dissolved her concentration. She thought of Ruth dying, Bastogne dying, tried to grant the Unimancers her certainty of Daddy is wrong–

  The Magiquell fuzzed her connection. She staggered towards him, her limbs heavy; Aunt Valentine charged back out of the woods, dragging a heavy tree branch behind her.

  “I’m not leaving.” she told Daddy, her voice slurring. “You’ll have to risk killing me.”

  He shook his head. “No. I won’t. Valentine, take her away.”

  Valentine whacked him with the branch.

  Thirty-Three

  The Ol’ Kali Ma Excavation

  If Valentine had channeled her videogamemancy, Paul realized, her hit would have knocked him out.

  But this close to the broach, she didn’t dare break out her magical brutalities. Lacking that, she was a chubby middle-aged woman with no combat training, wielding a stout branch.

  It clouted him behind the left ear, pine needles raking bloody trails across his scalp.

  Paul danced away, batting at his face. “Valentine! What are you doing?”

  She huffed as she lifted the ersatz club over her head. “I’ve stepped over a lot of lines for you. But when the kid says she doesn’t want to leave, I stop stepping.”

  “Valentine!” Paul triggered more broaches, forcing the incoming Unimancers to back off. “Stop fucking around and get Aliyah to safety!”

  She swung again. Paul scrambled backwards.

  They could have been kids tussling on a school yard. Stripped of their ’mancy, both were shit in hand-to-hand combat.

  “No, Paul. You came here to get the kid to safety. I came here to rescue her. If she tells me the Unimancers aren’t NPCs, then she’s found her friends. I fought my way here to save her from kidnappers, not to become one.”

  “That’s Stockholm Syndrome! We’ll–”

  “Jesus weeping fuck! You shoddy pile of ignorant neuroses!” She swung hard enough that the branch snapped when she missed. “You think your kid’s risking her life to piss you off?! Look at her! You spent your whole life teaching her to fight for a cause, and now you’ll lock her away because she found one?!”

  Valentine screamed, leaving the club behind, chasing Paul. The villagers took heart from her rebellion. A couple raised their bows, squinting as they decided whether they could hit Paul without perforating the chunky tattooed woman who appeared to be on their side.

  Paul held out his palms, seeking a truce. “Valentine. You know Imani came up with this plan to sweep the Unimancers aside. You know this is our best chance to heal the broach. And you’re stopping me?”

  She snorted, bemused. “You gotta save the world for the right reasons, Paul.”

  “Don’t you start! That’s what Robert said!”

  Her rage bunched incoherently in her throat before she went after him with her nails.

  “Goddammit, Valentine!” He backed away as she bore down upon him. He waggled his fingers, radiating microbroaches. “I could rip you to shreds!”

  “Then do it!”

  Valentine spread her arms out, making herself an easy target.

  Paul froze, his hands halfway to destruction.

  Valentine pounded her chest. “Go on! You’re gonna smother your daughter with a pillow of fatherly love – show her how deep the rabbit hole goes! You blew up some old people’s houses! You killed those fuckin’ Unimancers! Now you’re gonna wipe out this refugee camp! What am I, then? Just one more step!”

  She ripped her shirt down, thumped her heart.

  “Come on! Do the old Kali Ma excavation, Paul! Banish me to the demon dimensions! Dig deep to get those sacrifices!”

  Paul’s hands dropped. “Valentine… I’m not… you know I can’t…”

  “Then step down, Paul.”

  Paul shook his head – not refuting her, just uncertain. “This has gone too far, Val. I don’t know if I–”

  He realized Valentine was not making herself a target to appeal to his conscience.

  She was doing it to distract him.

  Aliyah hit him at a low angle, grabbing at his right calf. Paul wondered why she hit him there instead of his ribs – until he heard the soft click of Aliyah releasing his pin-lock system.

  When she was young, she’d made a game of unfastening his prosthesis when he fell asleep – punishing him for being inattentive.

  Once again, Paul Tsabo discovered his thirteen year-old daughter had stolen his right foot.

  “Imani came up with that plan, too,” Valentine said. Paul realized they’d conspired against him the instant Aliyah had spoken for herself.

  He pinwheeled backwards, hitting the ground. His still-cracked ribs paralyzed him with agony.

  “Sorry, Daddy.” Aliyah’s fingers pressed into his throat, shutting off the flow of blood.

  Valentine and Aliyah looked down at him sadly.

  His chest stirred with a strange pride: only my family could stop me, he thought.

  Then everything went dark.

  Thirty-Four

  Why She Didn’t Kill Him

  Aliyah had fallen unconscious by the time Ruth arrived. Paul’s eyes fluttered – compressing the carotid was a quick off, but it was also a quick on – so Ruth jabbed him with a Magiquell insta-shot.

  That wouldn’t put him down quick enough, though. She kissed Aliyah on the forehead before rolling her off her asshole of a father, then carefully strangled Paul back into oblivion.

  Valentine kicked her – not hard enough to hurt through the armor.

  “You kill him,” she said, flexing her fingers around an imaginary controller, “and you’ll answer to me.”

  Ruth had considered executing Paul. Behind her, the Unimancers mopped up the broaches, doing their best to stanch that fucker’s damage before the Thing got loose. The villagers were damn near readying their pitchforks.

  Still, she felt the sickening unrest thrumming through the collective:

  How did he trigger those broaches he was healing them almost as fast as he created them

  He said we’d done it wrong

  We have to know what we can do

  Ruth stood strongly in the “disagreement” camp. A rebellion coalesced around her sentiment that Paul Tsabo held no special wisdom. Preserving Paul Tsabo’s reckless techniques struck her like trying to save a bear chewing your neck open on the off-hand chance you might teach it to dance.

  Ruth wondered if Aliyah could forgive Ruth for ki
lling her father.

  So glad you asked, Ruthie! Mom-construct interjected. All the signs I’ve collected indicates your new friend is very very attached to her daddy. Almost as much as you are to me, sweetiekins! Though since you asked, I’ve assembled head-doctor techniques you could use to weaken her bond…

  Fuck off, Mom, Ruth snapped, then tuned out Mom’s usual canned response on how good girls didn’t need profanity.

  She didn’t want to fuck with Aliyah’s mind; that was what Paul did. No, Ruth simply wanted Paul Tsabo gone. But too many in the collective were convinced they needed him. Killing him without consensus might create a permanent schism.

  Which puzzled her. He’d murdered them in a maniacal bid to protect his daughter – and like Mom, he’d never bothered to see whether this new world he’d created would make her happy.

  She’d told Aliyah he’d never let her go. Tsabo was just another version of the mother-construct – jailing his child and convincing himself it was for her own good.

  She could crush his larynx. She could save Aliyah. She could rid the world of danger.

  Except Aliyah would never forgive her.

  “I would,” Ruth growled. “But he’s too valuable.”

  “Then let’s plan our next move,” Valentine said.

  Part Three

  Games Without Frontiers

  Thirty-Five

  A Particular Set of Skills She Has Acquired Over a Very Long Career

  “May I come in?”

  Imani knocked on General Kanakia’s door. He had no guards posted. There were only two threats in Bastogne: the first was Paul. He’d been placed into a coma while his ribs healed and the Unimancers decided what to do with him. The other was that cracked sky, dangerously fragmented after Paul’s assault.

  The Unimancers didn’t consider a mundane a threat – a fact which Imani was grateful for.

  She did her best work when people overlooked her.