The Flux (5 page)

Aliyah flung the milkshake against the television; sticky cream oozed down the blank screen. “
You’re all I have! So you – you
get along
!
”

She opened the closet door, which, with a glimmer of ’mancy, now opened into her room at her mother’s place – a large space as neat as a landlord’s showcase, a tasteful duvet spread across the bed, the vacuumed carpet, a box of
Good Housekeeping
-approved toys against the wall. A picture-perfect space for a normal little girl.

Aliyah slammed the door shut, leaving Valentine and Paul trapped in Pokespace.

Paul had the distinct feeling he’d been put into a timeout.

Neither spoke for a very long time. Then Valentine cleared her throat.

“…I just don’t wanna
lie
to her, Paul.”

“And I don’t want her to lose hope.”

Valentine nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I get that.”

“I know you do.”

The argument settled, they both relaxed. Paul was more comfortable with silence, anyway.

“I spy with my little eye,” Valentine said, “Something beginning with ‘M’…”

It was a long several hours before the Pokeball dissolved.

P
aul usually loved riding
the subway. As a man with one artificial foot and a toeless half-foot jammed into a clunky orthotic boot, people stared at him when he walked by. Yet on the subway, jammed shoulder to shoulder with the Saturday morning crowd, Paul was just another commuter.

Except on days when Paul’s face was on the front page of every newspaper.

A little old lady looked up from her knitting, starting the recognition cycle. She glanced at Paul’s face, seeing a scrawny middle-aged Greek man.

She checked his ankle: Paul’s signature black carbon ProPrio™ artificial foot.

Her eyes flew open.

Paul raised his newspaper, blocking eye contact. The local headlines had not been kind: the
New York Post
, flippant as always, had a picture of Paul at the press conference, with the smoking garage Photoshopped in behind him, along with the bold words “TSABO TSTRIKES OUT AGAIN.” The
Daily News
was slightly nicer with “PSYCHO MANTIS PSLIPS AWAY,” but they still had a goofy picture of Paul, baffled by the escape.

Paul wrinkled his nose. He hated the way the local papers treated him like a crazy superhero –
yes
, he’d lost his right foot killing an illustromancer, a handful of mundane men who’d taken down a ’mancer single-handed. And yes, he’d lost the toes on his
other
foot in a showdown with Anathema the paleomancer, which made him the greatest ’mancer-hunter alive, but…

…he didn’t
want
to hunt ’mancers.

To read the papers, you’d have thought Paul only got out of bed on the off chance he might get to strangle a ’mancer. The papers made ’mancy seem like a toxic hazard that any good American wanted eradicated from the earth.

Furthermore, the papers spoke as if punching Psycho Mantis in the face would be the greatest thing Paul could do for humanity. Paul found that idea repellent; true changes weren’t created through violence, but through thousands of tiny kindnesses and efficiencies.

Paul didn’t contradict the papers, though. In fact, he’d let the mayor’s office play up that dumb ’mancers-versus-mundanes angle… because it had helped keep his job.

And now, after years of holding his nose to court the media, the news had turned against him. Which was why he was commuting into the mayor’s office on a Saturday morning.

The subway screeched to a stop. Paul’s replacement phone rang: it was Imani, his ex-wife.

They’d been divorced for almost three years, and still his heart stuttered whenever she called.

“Paul,” she said, “We have to talk.”

Paul had never once seen Imani cry – not when she’d come to him after thirteen years of marriage asking for divorce, not when their daughter Aliyah had been so burned the doctors feared she might not survive. Imani worked at the highest tiers of corporate law; women who broke down under high pressure didn’t last long.

But her voice quavered now.

He scurried off the subway, huddled under a steel support beam to scrape up some privacy. “What’d she do this time?”

“She mouthed off to David when he told her it was bedtime – told him
he
didn’t get to tell her what to do, Daddy did. So I sent her to her room. Then I found her on her bed with milkshake all over her dress, hours later. We don’t allow processed sugar in this house, Paul. She must have snuck out again. But I don’t know
how
.”

Imani hadn’t called last night. She must have stayed up all night, deciding whether to confide in Paul.

Paul heard Valentine’s voice:
Why do you even
talk
to that frigid clamhole, Paul? She sued the courts for exclusive custody! If the judges had sided with her, you’d never have seen Aliyah again. Why don’t you just let her rot in the sewage of her own awful choices?

“…because she cares about Aliyah as much as I do,” Paul muttered.

“What?” Imani asked.

“I said Aliyah loves you.”

“A little girl! Eight!”

“ – almost nine – ”

“A
nine
-year-old on the streets! On her own!” Imani cried. “Where anyone could…
take
her. All because I gave her a timeout for swearing at my husband.”

Paul hated hearing Imani talk about her husband, as though they’d never been married. He also hated himself for not being used to that by now.

“You did nothing wrong,” Paul reassured her. “A timeout is – it’s pretty generous if she used the F-word.”

“She used the MF-word.”

“Oh Lord.” It was increasingly difficult to raise Aliyah, even with Paul and Valentine’s ’mancy to keep her in line. Teenagers started rebelling once they got a taste of power – growing large physically, getting jobs, finally gaining alternatives to circumvent their parents’ punishments. But Aliyah, not quite nine, had almost infinite magic power at her disposal.

She was rebelling early. Way early.

Poor Imani had no clue what was about to hit her.

“I tried to get her to open up when she got back, Paul. I talked about how inappropriate she’d been, like the psychologist suggested. I asked her what David had said that angered her; she said nothing.”

That was the flip side to Aliyah, Paul thought. A normal little girl wouldn’t have been able to keep a secret like “Being a ’mancer” for long – but Aliyah had locked her emotions deep inside long before her ’mancy. That secrecy kept her safe from the world.

But when Paul wanted her to open up about killing Anathema, Aliyah’s stubborn refusal to share slammed shut like a door.

“I asked her where she went,” Imani said, “
Still
she said nothing. Not a word. I hugged her, and begged her, and did the active feedback thing, and… and…” She pulled back with a dispassionate sniff.

Paul could imagine her now, in a crisp corporate attorney’s outfit designed to complement her dark brown skin, sitting regally with ruler-straight posture at the edge of the bed, brushing off the hem of her dress rather than allowing tears to ruin her makeup’s subtle enhancements.

“It was like talking to a doll,” Imani continued. “I made an emergency therapist appointment this morning: she sat silent for a full forty-five minutes!”

“You know our girl, Imani: she’ll talk on her time.” That was the theory, anyway.

“And I have done
everything
to keep her safe. I moved to a new apartment with no windows. I set burglar alarms. David and I, when she’s home, we…” She swallowed, as if debating divulging this information to her ex-husband. “We take shifts. Watching. So she can’t slip past us. And still she
got out
. David said it must have been something I’d done. Then he stormed out. And…” She swallowed. “I don’t know what to do, Paul.”

“David will be back,” Paul reassured her, wanting her to feel better, wondering,
when did I sign up to support my ex-wife’s relationship with the man she cheated on me with?
“Even if he hated you,” Paul joked, “He wouldn’t risk the headlines of a bad divorce. You’ve got friends in the court and the press. You’d make his life hell.”

“Very funny.” The suppressed bemusement in her voice made him smile.

“And Aliyah’s bold, but she’s not stupid. If she’s out on the streets…” Paul winced, hating to tell Imani even a half-truth. “I’m sure she’s playing it safe. Some mothers even let their kids take the subway at this age.”

“But how do I stop her from getting
out
? How do I get her to
talk
?”

“I don’t know, Imani. She doesn’t do that at our house.”

“That’s because you give her those damn videogames. As a pacifier.”

“No, we play them together. They could be quite a social activity, if only you’d–”

“Can you honestly tell me,” Imani shot back, her voice glacial once again, “That you think videogames are
improving
her life?”

It’s not the videogames. It’s the ’mancy
.
And she can’t stop doing that.

Paul rolled the words on his tongue, wanting to say them as he had so many times before. If he could just tell Imani, then everything would be easier. He hated watching Imani’s leonine confidence eroded. And Imani loved Aliyah, would almost certainly help Aliyah in ways he and Valentine could not…

Then Paul’s eyes settled on today’s
Times
op-ed: “Why Reprocess ’Mancers When We Could Execute Them?”

Paul remembered the dead eyes of the Unimancers he’d fought. They had all been ’mancers like him once, each obsessed with model trains or baseball or death metal – and someone had reported them. SMASH had rounded them up, shipped them off to the Refactor out in Arizona, brainwashed them until they all thought the exact same way as their commander.

They could use magic only if the group hivemind allowed it. Their individual needs: erased.

They barely remembered their names.

Paul had drawn up endless pros-and-cons lists, crunched numbers: he gave it a ninety percent chance that Imani would accept the news that her daughter was a ’mancer with compassion. He’d seen Imani go to great lengths for charity – after she’d canvassed her neighborhood to help get Aliyah her reconstructive surgery, Imani hadn’t stopped after Aliyah’s face was rebuilt to the best standards that modern medicine could provide. Imani turned those initial donations into a full-on foundation, managing fundraiser events that helped get other burned kids their necessary treatments. Imani might see Aliyah’s videogamemancy as just another special need, and adapt to it. Aliyah had picked up her stubbornness straight from her mother; if any non-’mancer could get Aliyah to master her flux, it was Imani.

But that ten percent chance....

We don’t allow processed sugar in this house
, Imani had said.
I moved to a new apartment with no windows
.

As much as Paul wanted to give his ex-wife the benefit of the doubt, it was also possible Imani would react to the news by instituting
greater
control. Imani had always believed in outside help – sneering at the parents who suggested Aliyah might benefit from home schooling, sending Aliyah to endless battalions of psychiatrists and pediatric trauma experts despite Aliyah’s shrieking protests, interrogating teachers to get their recommendations.

And the federal troops were the only experts. By law.

He tried to push the image away, but it kept recurring: Imani, picking up the phone to call 1-800-SMASHEM. Aliyah, tear-gassed and hooded. Aliyah, out in the Arizona desert, tortured until her spunky rebellion leaked away.

Paul mouthed the words, figuring out how to tell Imani what was really happening. And as always, he imagined a doctor holding up a hypodermic needle that contained an experimental cure:

We think this treatment has a ninety percent chance of curing Aliyah’s psychological problems
, the imaginary doctor told him gravely.
But if we’re wrong, this shot will destroy your daughter’s brain beyond repair.

Are you ready to risk that?

His phone alarm buzzed. It wouldn’t do to be late to the mayor’s office when he was being called on the carpet.

“I have to go,” Paul said. “I promise I will call you later.”

“All right.” She breathed in through her nose, regaining composure. “Thank you, Paul. It’s not fair to dump this on you, I know. And… you’re a good man. I just wish we could have…”

Paul hung up before she could finish that sentence. He stormed off to the mayor’s office, swallowing back frustration. Paul hated lying. He hated
liars
. Yet Imani had divorced him because he’d had to lie about his love of ’mancy to her.

And now, to save his daughter, he had to layer falsehoods on top of falsehoods….

Paul’s tension rose as the mayor’s office came into view. All the paperwork flowed through City Hall, New York’s beating heart, where things got catalogued and approved.

Politicians, Paul thought, were fatty clumps sticking to the walls of an aorta – clogging the flow from time to time. But the strength of bureaucracy and good records kept New York City functioning. Paul had read histories of the time before building codes, when cheap landlords built wooden fireplaces and uninspected meat markets had sold horrific surprises…

Bureaucracy was the best tool humanity had to fight dishonest men.

But aren’t you dishonest, Paul?
a voice at the back of his head whispered.
They’d lock you away if they knew what you really were. You don’t try to fight City Hall, you slither in and subvert it…

He’d do anything to protect Aliyah.

A secretary escorted Paul to a small meeting room. No one was there, but he’d expected that; Paul had learned that in City Hall, some people waited for you to arrive, and others you waited for.

The meeting room was furnished in a way Paul could only describe as “stately”: leather upholstery on polished wood chairs, gilded frames with oil paintings of New York’s turn-of-the-century skyscrapers, a cut-glass pitcher of ice water waiting for him. A cozy place, designed to impress.

Paul closed his eyes, summoning up the strength to face down the mayor himself.

The door opened.

“…David?” Paul spluttered as his ex-wife’s new husband, David Giabatta, entered the room.

“I
am
a senior member of the mayor’s cabinet, Paul,” David said coldly. That chilly tone was unusual for David. He turned everything into a joke, that politician’s trick to transform vindictive insults into jocular ribbings. Paul couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t seen David smiling that salesman’s grin.

David was not smiling.

Well
, Paul thought,
at least I know why he’s not at home with Imani
. The mayor had summoned his hatchetman to talk to Paul.

David sat down across from Paul, as far across the table as he could get. He straightened his tie – Imani had once confided in Paul that David had his tailor cut his suit specifically to display his muscular form. He looked presidential, solemn, disappointed.

He lowered his face into his hands.

“You could have had it all, Paul.” His palms muffled his voice. “You could have made this office look magnificent. Instead, you pissed it away.”

“It’s a setback, David,” Paul said.