The Flux

by Ferrett Steinmetz

  “But I–”

  “This isn’t personal.”

  Rainbird shrieked as Valentine morphed into Sub-Zero form, grasped him, frost blossoming over his stiffening body. She lifted his ice-encased corpse over her head and brought it down over her knee, shattering Rainbird into a thousand chunks.

  That announcer’s voice boomed overhead again. “FLAWLESS VICTORY,” it said. “FATALITY.”

  Valentine sighed and kicked the pieces into the gaping hole where the atrium’s overhead window had once been. She hissed as she wrenched her broken shoulder back into place, watching as Rainbird’s remains char-broiled in the cooling lava streams.

  “I hate killing,” she said, to no one in particular, then vanished into darkness.

  Fifty-Two

  Unmask the Tyrant

  Paul pressed the silver button in Payne’s elevator. The elevator shuddered, checking with its master, and then rose.

  A good sign, Paul thought.

  He was alone, carrying nothing but a briefcase. Payne might have had his security guards escort Paul off the premises, a contingency for which Paul hadn’t planned – but having his intermediaries shoo Paul away didn’t seem Payne’s style. Payne loved gloating, disdained the impersonal touch.

  So Paul walked into Lawrence Payne’s green-tinted lobby, the eternal Samaritan Mutual logo engraved in tasteful gold. It was well after midnight, but the old man never left.

  The secretary still wore her form-revealing red dress – but whereas before she’d all but ignored Paul’s existence, now her smile was a freeze-dried mockery.

  Oh yes, Paul thought. You know I’m a ’mancer now. Everyone does.

  Paul paused by her desk. “You should leave.”

  “Mr Payne has not authorized–”

  “I realize he is your boss. Yet things are about to get quite bad in there. It would be best if you left.”

  She nodded, but her fingertip crept towards the security button.

  “Don’t you dare leave, Ms Pennywinkle,” Payne’s rich voice said. “Mr Tsabo will do no violence to you, nor anyone. It’s not his style. Though do shut the door after him; we men need our privacy.”

  Payne sat at his desk, looking joyous at the sight of Paul. His smile was so broad that for a moment, Paul thought that Rainbird wasn’t defeated, that the Institute wasn’t in smoking ruins, that Payne hadn’t just ordered his hothouse ’mancers killed.

  His wide office window looked over New York City, allotting Payne a vast view of the town he ruled.

  “You’re looking a little worse for wear these days, Paul,” Payne said, welcoming Paul in.

  “Funny; I don’t care as much about appearances as I used to.”

  “I felt you probing through my records the other day,” Payne said, pouring a glass of Scotch. “I may not be able to keep you out – but I hope you don’t think you can alter my files without me noticing.”

  “I wouldn’t. But then again, that’s your ’mancy’s nature, isn’t it?”

  A dreadful playfulness. “Why, whatever do you mean, Paul?”

  “You’re no bureaucromancer.”

  He swigged down his drink, shuddering. “Of course not. Slave to a thousand procedures. Held responsible to committees. I’d never tether myself to such frippery.”

  “Then what do you call yourself?”

  “You know who I am: the King of New York.”

  “Say your ’mancy’s name.”

  “If you must hear it, fine,” Payne snapped. “I am an authorimancer. I am the monarch of my domain. Nothing happens within Samaritan Mutual that falls beneath my notice – because I make my underlings do paperwork for me. And you, Paul, with your petty little mind – you should have been perfect to carry on my tradition!”

  “That’s not what bureaucracy is.”

  “Oh, but it is. Little functionaries never question the laws put into place by wiser men, Paul. Empires have run for centuries after their greatest leaders died, their noble policies carried on by tedious administrators. I thought I had someone who might carry on my grand work for generations, Paul. Instead, I got you.”

  “Bureaucracy isn’t how tyrants hold sway over lesser men,” Paul said. “It’s how the public holds men with too much power accountable.”

  Payne waved off Paul’s remarks. “Either of us could open up the history books to prove our point, Paul. That’s not how this works. It’s about what we believe. And I assure you, the world needs men like me.”

  “Murderers?”

  “People will die, Paul. The best you can hope for is a compassionate man, making the decisions for them –someone strong enough not to break. My mother, she broke. She couldn’t live, watching my sisters fall to the broach. So what did she do? She condemned her son to a living hell, abandoning him in a madhouse city overflowing with magical refugees – the ghettos a maze of ’mancer wars, packed with deadly conflicts, a war zone!”

  The old man’s pride made Paul sick. “So you took power. And cleansed the city of anyone who disagreed with you.”

  “I saved the city, Paul.” Payne spoke as though he couldn’t believe he had to make this argument. “After watching Anathema tear this town apart, I thought you of all people would understand how bad a ’mancer war would be. But no; you threw aside years’ worth of valuable experience for mere sentiment!”

  “Sentiment? We’re talking murder! You slaughtered those poor ’mancers to hide your trail!”

  Payne’s fingers tightened around his glass. “That’s a choice you backed me into, Paul. And I regret having to make that order. They were beautiful. Worthless, impotent...” He guzzled another Scotch, looking dimly sad, like a man who’d had to put his dog to sleep. “But oh, so beautiful.”

  “No. They could have been powerful. You starved them.”

  “Starved them?” Payne spluttered. “I spent millions outfitting them! There are many crimes you can lay at my door, Paul, but the ’mancers I sheltered? I encouraged those poor doomed beauties.”

  “You locked them away. You encouraged isolation. And... even now, Payne, you can’t see it? You can’t see why every obsessive nut doesn’t become a ’mancer?”

  “Do tell.”

  “People, Payne. ’Mancers are only as powerful as the people they care about. And you – you put them in a zoo, you encouraged them to pay tribute to you and not talk to each other. They dwindled into shadows…”

  Payne made a small hmpfing noise. “I thought Aliyah was the key.”

  “She was. Because they loved her. And through her, began to interact with each other.” Paul sighed. “Then you cut them short.”

  “Interesting.” Payne made a comme ci, comme ça wave with his palm. “Well, I’ll do better next time. Thanks for your advice.”

  Paul gritted his teeth. “There’ll be no next time.”

  “No, no, no,” Payne tut-tutted him. “This is corporate America, Paul. Shut down one branch, we open up another subsidiary with the same people under a different name. Rainbird didn’t kill the staffers – they got paid vacation. As soon as you’ve left town, I’ll reopen shop.”

  “Left town?”

  Payne poured himself another Scotch. “We’re at a stalemate, Paul. We can’t turn each other into SMASH; we both have too much knowledge. Sure, SMASH knows you’re a bureaucromancer… but do you want me to reveal all your weaknesses? And as for me, I don’t have the firepower left to kill you now. So seeing as you’re helpless to stop me, it’s time I help you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Don’t mock me, you little turd. My authorimancy lets me know everything I touch. I know where every ounce of hematite goes, if I care to track it down. I know my every file, and I’ll know if you change anything. I know my every employee, and they are contractually bound. Should you convince one to change sides, my risk pool will destroy them. Or did you think I kept the Institute a secret with a good dental plan?”

  “That’s monstrous.”

  He reached across the desk to pinch Paul’s che
ek. “You’re a nice little man, Paul. You have such bold notions of right and wrong, yet are too timid to make any real changes. So here’s your safe bet: I outfit you with a nice new false identity, let you slither off somewhere else to do whatever good you see fit there.”

  “And what will you do?”

  “What I’ve done before: import some other psychologically damaged enforcer from someplace where ’mancy runs a little wilder. People like Rainbird are a dime a dozen, if you know where to look. And then, once I’ve got backing, I’ll round up the ’mancers in New York again. I’ll find someone to carry on in my name.”

  “And if Valentine tears your heart out?”

  “I took a page from your paranoia, Paul. I have records on you ready to release in the event of my death. Should Valentine decide to kill me, every newspaper in the world will know all I know. Think you can keep your daughter safe from SMASH then?”

  “The alternative is leaving New York’s ’mancers as lambs for your slaughter.”

  “I kept those poor hothouse flowers safe. You ruined them.”

  Paul’s shoulders slumped. “And the people you had Rainbird murder because they didn’t fit your standards? Did they not count?”

  Payne hunched forward. “Necessary sacrifices.”

  “You’re a madman. I thought maybe… maybe even now, we could talk it out. But there’s nothing to be done.”

  “So you’ll leave?”

  “No,” Paul said, opening the briefcase. “I’m sorry.”

  He reached in to pull out an Xbox controller. On the sides, written in paint, were four words:

  For K-Dash. For Quaysean

  Payne’s eyes flew wide open as he lunged across the desk, looking to knock the controller from Paul’s hands – but Paul thumbed the Start Button. A wave of ’mancy burst out from the controller, a signal wave that rippled the air, shoved Payne backwards – and then the window blew outwards.

  The ’mancy rippled across New York’s star-dappled darkness, radiating out across the streets in the spokes of an expanding circle. As it passed over the skyscrapers, explosions went up in its wake – a crumbling building here, a burst of flames there. Not every building:

  Just the ones Samaritan Mutual had insured against ’mancy.

  “What did you do?” Payne asked, clutching his chest. As an authorimancer, each act of destruction to Payne’s safewarded properties were a blow to his heart.

  And Paul remembered back to when he’d had Valentine fire up her “quest item” to find a stray bag of hematite buried in a long-abandoned Flex lab in Connecticut.

  He remembered driving all the way out to Pennsylvania’s woods to brew the biggest batch of Flex he’d ever made, then speeding off as the flux-dumped earthquake echoed across the Appalachians.

  Paul remembered meeting with Imani, who had pored over the insurance contracts Payne had set up with his clients. “Are you sure Payne would cover this if we blew up these buildings?” Paul had asked, and Imani had given him that shark-toothed lawyer’s grin: “If he refused to cover it, they’d sue him for every dime they could get.”

  Paul remembered meeting with Valentine, who had shown him the new game she’d created, hooking Sim City into Civilization into a war game, so she could map each of Project Mayhem’s members, coordinating their efforts to set off bombs upon Paul’s start-button command.

  He remembered meeting with the Project Mayhem members – a surprising number of ’mancy fans who longed to be in the proximity of Tyler’s beat-’em-up magic. They stood in a warehouse as Tyler handed over the reins of power. He remembered explaining the bombs themselves had to be quite mundane – but he had something to ensure this operation went off without a hitch. And Tyler’s men had applauded, loving being part of something that would make the city safer for ’mancers.

  Paul thought of what Tyler had told him:

  Only by creating change can they infuse their anonymous lives with meaning, Tyler had told him. They will die to attain relevance.

  And Paul thought, if they’ll die for reasons as dumb as Tyler’s, then there have to be men who’ll fight for good causes.

  “You thought I’d try to alter your records,” Paul said. “I’m beyond that now.”

  The debris smoke billowed out as each Project Mayhem-targeted site imploded.

  “You’re as big a monster as I am,” Payne whispered. “How many men did you just kill to get your revenge?”

  “None. Or don’t you feel the ’mancy?”

  Paul ran his finger down an imaginary line in the air; it felt like pudding slithering out of the way. The air in Payne’s office – across all of New York – had thickened in the wake of a titanic act of magic.

  I’m going to give you all Flex, Paul had told Project Mayhem. This is distilled ’mancy. You will use this to ensure nothing interferes with you setting off the bombs. But more importantly, you will use it to create incredible coincidences, ensuring no one gets hurt. You will use this Flex to guarantee that major projects get cancelled so no one is working late, that all the skeleton crews working the night shift fall ill, that all the overnight janitors are on their smoke break when the shit goes down. Are we clear?

  Yes Mr Tsabo sir! they had shouted, taking the Flex from his hands with the reverent air of men attending communion.

  “You were supposed to be a bureaucromancer!” Payne snarled. “Not a terrorist!”

  “Ask a Republican,” Paul said. “We’re practically the same thing.”

  “This won’t work,” Payne said, increasingly frantic. “I’ll deny the claims because they’re ’mancy–”

  “Funny thing is, after Anathema attacked the town, your biggest customers decided they needed magical coverage after all.”

  “I have insurance against this! Bankruptcy insurance! I’ll–”

  “You didn’t own those claims,” Paul said, feeling the thrill of walling off Payne’s objections. “So I doubt you noticed when those agreements vanished from the files of the people protecting you.”

  “I’ll refuse to pay!”

  “You might,” Paul said, locking the final piece into place. “But you are an authorimancer, Mr Payne. Your kingly powers derive from protection. The ’mancers gave you nothing but adoration, so you cut them short. But your clients – why, you’ve made written agreements to look after them. And truly – what kind of a king can’t repay what he’s promised to protect?”

  Payne dropped his Scotch. It warbled a bit as it plunged through an air congealing with ’mancy, buzzsects pushing through.

  Payne’s Scotch tumbler shattering was music to Paul.

  “I suppose you’ve thought of the business owners who’ll go bankrupt as a result of this? All the people thrown out of work? All those people you, as a compassionate bureaucromancer, are supposed to care about?”

  “Better than you starting another murder cult.”

  “Well played, Paul.” Payne gave him one single, cold bow. “I guess you have learned to make the tough decisions.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’ll take years for this to wind its way through the courts, of course. I’ll have to devote all my energy to fighting this. I wouldn’t have the time to start another Institute, not with as few years as I have left–”

  “Well, you’re pushing eighty, I’m sure you’ll die before perpetuating further evil– ”

  “–but there’s another way.”

  Paul gave Payne a raised eyebrow, feigning surprise. “Oh?”

  Payne’s eyes flared a cerulean blue. A glimmering crown of pure ’mancy arced across his brow. Payne’s wrinkles pulled tight as he straightened to reveal his true archetype of the Deathless King.

  “I’ve learned some tricks from you, Mr Tsabo.” Payne’s voice acquired a theatrical boom that would have driven most men to their knees. “You backdate. You can rewrite history with your forms to change the past.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Paul said, cheerily conversational. “I really wouldn’t.”

 
The air flexed around Payne as he drew upon the power he’d stored throughout the offices of Samaritan Mutual. Filing cabinets exploded. Cubicles imploded as Payne sucked the energy of years of unhappy wage-slaves doing his bidding.

  Payne’s secretary, quite reasonably, fled.

  “And so I will steal your trick to undo you,” Payne said. “I’ll go back in time to send the police to the Appalachians – they’ll shoot your pathetic Flex lab full of holes…”

  Paul poured himself Payne’s scotch, ignoring the light show. “I didn’t tell you I set up shop in the Appalachians,” Paul said, with the air of a man making small talk. “How’d you know?”

  “I know everything in my building!” Payne swelled into a bronze muscular sculpture of a man, shrugging through the ceiling. “Anyone who sets foot in my domain now reveals all their secrets!”

  “Then you see what’s about to happen?”

  The air convulsed, physics stretched to its limits by competing versions of reality – and Payne looked down at it, his mouth wide in silent horror, as a slit tugged open in the air before him, ripping open a portal to a darker universe.

  Flylike buzzsaws boiled out.

  “Broach!” Payne yelled, stumbling back, his once-deep voice distorted to a trembling wail. “Broach! Broach! Broooooaaaaaccch!”

  The buzzsects ignored Paul, homing in on the man enwebbed in spells.

  Payne screamed, squeezing bolts of pure ’mancy from the air – which had all the effectiveness of waving meat in the face of hungry wolves. The buzzsects swarmed in around the bolts, devoured them, gulping up the ’mancy and shitting out empty space – not blank space, empty space, the absence of a void, as they chewed up Payne’s ’mancy and excreted their home dimension, building bridges to this place…

  “No!” Payne cried, swatting at them; with each swat, they gnawed trails through his arms, devouring the color of his skin, devouring the integrity of his muscles, devouring the texture of his bones. “Lisa! Anna! Mother!”