Fix (13 page)

“OK. What
do
you flash back to?”

“The fourth.” Her sleepy vengeance was terrible to behold. “The fifth. The ones I didn't get to shoot. Is that…” She shook herself awake. “Is that bad?”

Paul smiled. “That's… I think that's the attitude we need.”

O
nly Valentine's
lover was allowed to dress her wounds.

She found the ritual comforting, even in this antiseptic hotel room – Paul had given them a place so nice it made Valentine feel out of place.

What made her feel at home was watching Robert.

He disinfected the plastic drinks tray, then laid out his paramedic equipment – the scissors, the gauze, the antibacterials. He cut her clothing from her body, neatly avoiding the places where the fabric had fused with her skin.

She'd lost her Bowser tattoo. Her long black hair was seared down to the scalp.

She heard Aliyah joking once they got her back:
Oh, now
I
see a burned kid
.

But for now, she sank into Robert's brutal touch. He didn't shy away from her wounds, and she loved him for that. He didn't mutter reassurances like
this is going to hurt
– he trusted her to take whatever he dished out.

In turn, she trusted the pain he gave her was what she needed to make her strong again.

She sat still as he plucked at peeling blisters, debrided her sores, wiped stinging disinfectant across ragged cuts. She let him repair her like a machine, and when he fixed her up she
felt
like a killing machine, even if there was a part of her asking,
Weren't you supposed to be the star of the show? What happened to that production, anyway?
And
…

Her eyes were wet.

“Common reaction after smoke poisoning,” Robert said. He tilted her head back, dropped Visine into her eyes.

Was he making excuses? Was he disappointed?

He wasn't. His gaze held such adoration that she had to look away. If she watched him watching her, she'd start to wonder what she'd done to deserve that look, and then she'd start cataloguing what she
had
done, and…

Justifying her lover's presence would drive her crazy.

Crazier, anyway.

And when he'd trimmed away the last of her singed hair, he gave her painkillers. Valentine wished her videogame magic could heal wounds. The best she could do was produce medpacks that hid injuries until the next scene. Like videogames themselves, her magic never produced anything of lasting change.

He unbuckled his pants, removed a bright purple strap-on he'd strapped to his thigh, kneeling before holding it out in his palms for her inspection.

“What the…”

He gave her a shy grin – such a childish, beautiful grin on such a big, burly man – and retrieved a set of leather cuffs, a small paddle, a knuckle-whip.

He placed them at her feet.

“We left our shit in the car,” Valentine said, stunned. “We lost it fleeing Morehead.”

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “But I always carry something with me for you. You need to work out stress after a bad day.”

He was always so adorably embarrassed whenever his submissive side came out – a glorious secret that only Valentine ever got to witness. He unbuttoned his shirt, turned to present his magnificent backside.

“You keep a strap-on dildo on you at all times in case I need to work off steam? You're the kinky hero that Gotham deserves,” she said.

I was Batman, once
, she thought.
It didn't help
.

“Look, I… appreciate what you're doing. But tonight…”

She wanted to wipe the tears away. But she let them show, to him.

“I just need you to make love to me, OK? No whips, no clawing, no punching. Just you, with me, where I can… where we can be together. Tonight, I need something…”

“…simple?”

“Yeah.” Why was she so fucking tongue-tied? “Simple.”

“I can do simple.”

If he'd looked grim when he said it, or his eyes had welled with pity, she would have slapped him. But his face was still wreathed in that angelic halo of a smile, a smile that said he was happy to do whatever she needed him to do, and when he climbed on top of her she wondered whether that was the first time she'd ever let him on top.

Then she kissed him until she forgot herself.

L
et me save my family
, Aliyah had prayed to no one in particular,
and
I will never ask for anything again
.

She'd charged down to the airfield, Kratos' knives falling into her sweaty palms. Yes, she'd told Mom this mission was worth the risk of losing Dad. But
Mom
was there.
Valentine
was there. Her bad decision had cost
everyone
. And she–

She'd had to fight.

She came to
still
fighting, yanking on her handcuffs, an IV pinching the back of her hand, rattling the comfortable office chair she'd been manacled to.

She stared at the upholstered leather, her gaze rolling along the deep stitches like a river flowing into a valley. The leather was a burnished dark brown –

With all due respect, Mrs President
, a muffled voice snapped from beyond the walls,
Aliyah Tsabo-Dawson is not a bargaining chip. She is a burning fuse. And you are not prepared to deal with Paul Tsabo's brand of explosives
.

Aliyah's attention snapped up to the wood-paneled walls, sliding along the grain. She frowned, then closed her eyes; even though she sat perfectly still, she felt every twitch of her neck muscles as they adjusted her balance, felt the throb of the IV in her hand, the gentle breeze of air conditioning on the nape of her neck – all as distracting as taps on the shoulder.

They'd drugged her with something to hyperfocus her attention. Which made sense. She couldn't do 'mancy if she–

Do you remember what happened the last time someone kidnapped his daughter?

The voice was faint, but her sensitized ears picked up every syllable. She heard the floor creaking under General Kanakia's boots as he strode back and forth – not
quite
screaming, but speaking with the strained tones of a man desperately trying to prevent someone he respected from being an idiot.

The last time someone kidnapped Aliyah, Mrs President,
he decimated New York
. And despite the fact that we had every advantage in this operation – leading him into an ambush, fifteen of my best Unimancers, with Paul's flux-dispersing mechanisms disabled and no time to plan – he
still
neutralized two-thirds of the squad. We haven't lost nine men to an unassimilated 'mancer since – oh, wait, since the last time we lost
nineteen
Unimancers to an unassimilated 'mancer,
which was also him
.

His terror felt
good
. She loved it when people thought her daddy was a badass.

Yet the drug chopped facts into tiny pieces, confusing her. She laid her thoughts down one brick at a time, assembling ideas like a Minecraft level:

She was a bargaining chip. That was one brick.

They were worried about Dad. Brick two.

That meant they
didn't
have Dad.

Tears of relief coursed down Aliyah's cheeks.

Brick three was – an absence. Something Kanakia wasn't discussing. Mom? Or Valentine. No, Mom
and
Valentine. They must have gotten away, because Kanakia would have crapped his pants if he thought Dad would be coming for the whole family.

Her father was coming for her.

Aliyah wanted to applaud, but that would have been a bad idea with the IV and the handcuffs.

Her plan fell into place: escape the Unimancer prison, or endure the Refactor torture techniques until Dad arrived. As long as she held out against their brainwashing techniques, Dad would come get her before these assholes zombified her.

These drugs were only the start, though. They'd use more insidious techniques.

She needed to escape.

Kanakia talked again –
SMASH has a limited number of Unimancers to cover the United States, Mrs President. It is irresponsible to fling them away on a local dispute. Yes, I
do
understand how much funding the United States provides to SMASH operations–

She bit her cheek again, tuning him out.

They had her in a holding cell. She had to find the escape route.

She opened her eyes, got boggled by the wood grain – no. Refocus. The drug zoomed her attention in on random fragments, like a rogue camera in a videogame. She thought the room had too many windows at first, but then she realized the “windows” were all black-and-white images.

Photos. The office had framed black-and-white photos stuck to the cheap wood paneling. Pictures of buildings. One was a beautiful castle, sticking out of the top of a wooded mountain. Another was the Eiffel Tower. One was a big blocky arch, standing uselessly in the middle of a square – what was that called? The Triumphant Arch?

Was this a prison or a travel agent's office?

Then she realized:
those don't exist anymore
. The walls were hung with famous landmarks swallowed up by the broach.

And this wasn't a prison cell, but an RV office, the kind you'd find parked outside a construction site. The floor was covered with threadbare blue carpeting, the screw-together desk made of particleboard. A chalkboard with half-erased agenda notes was propped in the corner next to a sink brimming with unwashed coffee mugs.

She jerked her attention over to the door. It was an office door with a simple lock, and when she dragged her concentration over to the hinges, they were flimsy aluminum. She could kick it down easily.

If she was a high priority target, why had they stashed her in someone's trailer?

She leaned forward, searching for something to pick her handcuffs open–

The door cracked open.

A teenaged girl snuck in.

The girl was a welter of details, dazzling Aliyah's addled consciousness – sweeping strokes of long red hair, constellations of rust-colored freckles on pale skin, the gleam of sleek Unimancer leather. She shrugged slender shoulders, seemingly apologizing for jangling Aliyah's vision.

The girl moved like well-oiled machinery, gliding noiselessly as she shut the door behind her, holding a finger to her lips to shush Aliyah. Even her sliding into the chair across from Aliyah held the air of a martial arts kata – leaning forward in a formalized bow to deposit a pink-and-white box on the desk, then leaning back to go motionless as a statue.

The new girl's immobility felt like a gift.

Aliyah exhaled, realizing her first order of business had to be shutting off this drug. But she couldn't yank out her IV with this teenaged stranger in the room. So instead, she leaned forward to examine the package she'd delivered:

A box of donuts.

A box of
Dunkin'
Donuts.

Her stomach rumbled. She hadn't eaten since the Morehead Wendy's. Those donuts laid open invitingly, a standard assortment of sprinkles and Boston Kremes.

She wondered how well the Unimancers knew her family. Her Uncle Kit was thoroughly mundane, but everyone made fun of him for his “donutmancy” – he claimed he could tell your mood by your donut choice, and so whenever they were on their way back from an adventure they called up Kit in his retirement home to tell him their selection.

These donuts transformed the room from a prison into…

…well, Aliyah didn't know
what
this office was. But her concept of prison cells did not include pastry trays.

Aliyah could have taken a chocolate glazed (
a solid donut
, Uncle Kit would have said,
the sign of a sober temperament
), but instead she locked gazes with this new girl.

The girl – who couldn't have been two years older than she – peered right back, frowning as though she was sizing up all the problems that an Aliyah in her life presented.

Her hazel eyes jittered: the mark of a Unimancer, distracted by the hivemind's voices.

The good news, Aliyah thought, was that she had finally found a 'mancer her age.

The bad news was, the Unimancers had brainwashed her.

V
alentine had placed
a glass carafe on the edge of Paul's desk, then taped a sign to it that read “CHEKOV'S ORANGE JUICE.”

“What does that even mean?” Paul asked.

“You know I don't footnote my jokes, Paul.” Valentine slouched back in her chair, playing
Arkham Asylum
on the hotel room's television. She was playing as Batman, facing down massive groups of thugs; whenever she took a hit, no matter how small, she waved her hand at the screen to rewind the game in yet another attempt at a flawless match. “But trust me, that juice just spoilered the fuck out of any playwrights in this room.”

There was nobody in the hotel room except Paul, Robert, and Valentine. But Paul did not get involved in Valentine's ever-inscrutable references.

Instead, he used the orange juice to wash down another Oxycontin to dull the pain in his ribs – and returned to rewriting the Contract, paragraph by paragraph.

His sides ached. But to save Aliyah, he needed to distribute his excess flux to volunteers – especially now the universe was out to get him.

Fortunately, he'd open-sourced the Contract so anyone could suggest changes. He was glad to see the remaining Project Mayhem members had devised legal workarounds to reduce liability now that signing the Contract was a jailable offense. Paul incorporated their modifications, adding automated burn-and-dump clauses that severed the Contract's connection in case of arrest.

He dimly remembered how this had been his escape once. There had been such satisfaction in anticipating every potential snafu and walling it off with legalese, creating a wise protector to keep everyone safe…

Yet with every revision, Aliyah slipped further away.

He did not have
time
for this.

But the Unimancers had poisoned his magic. That black flux had not only cursed Aliyah, it had broken him so the smallest infraction drowned him in bad luck. Using a new Contract to disperse his flux was his only hope of unlocking enough magical power to track down Aliyah. He doubted many would sign it – the news had become the Morehead broach channel, claiming Project Mayhem had doomed America to become the next Europe – but even a hundred signatures would give room to maneuver.

He had to write out the Contract by hand. It would have saved so much time if he could have printed out a copy and made revisions. But that wasn't how his 'mancy worked. His 'mancy required tedious detail.

His 'mancy didn't care if Aliyah wound up a weaponized zombie.

“There!” He finished the Contract with a flourish, then waved Robert over. Robert had paced back and forth in this third hotel room Paul had rented as an office, calling all his connections to see who had a lead on Aliyah. He'd cursed vociferously, discovering safehouse after safehouse had gone dark.

Normally, he and Valentine would be lovey-dovey – he'd bring her a donut, she'd reward him with a kiss on the cheek – but Valentine stared at the screen, rejecting his help. Robert talked on the phone, trying not to be rattled by her diffidence, walking in circles that paced some nebulous border at the edge of her attention.

Robert looked for all the world like a confused waiter, trying to bring someone a meal that they had once ordered but no longer wanted.

Paul sighed, spreading the Contract out across the desk. Interpersonal relationships weren't his strong point; he'd ask Valentine what was going on later.

“Got a task for you, Robert,” he said.

Robert hung up. “What's up,
mon capitaine
?”

“Our new Contract.” Paul handed Robert a fresh Bic pen. “Wanna be the first?”

“Why, Paul,” Robert said, stifling a fake blush, “I never thought you'd ask me to be your first.”

Valentine pointedly ignored his innuendo.

Robert examined the clauses. He knew most of them by heart, having gone over the signing with a thousand recruits – but like Paul, Robert took a certain satisfaction from ensuring everything was in proper working order.

He placed the pen tip against the “Sign here” at the bottom. The pen crackled with fresh magic, prickling Robert's arm hairs. Robert inhaled deeply; his own
Fight Club
-o-mancy may have faded, but he still loved watching magic.

He signed the Contract with a flourish, completing the magical circuit.

The letters bunched up in a typeset seizure, then vomited black flux over Paul's shirt.

“Did it… reject me?” Robert asked, too stunned for snarky comebacks.

Paul clawed at the bad luck crawling across his shirt, mystified –
every clause is perfect!
he thought, enraged.

Then he realized: the math didn't work out anymore.

Once, the universe trusted him enough to have him trade spare flux like a commodity – he could broker the bad luck away, because what was a bureaucrat for if not to shift blame to other departments?

Yet demanding the Unimancers' flashbangs to fail for no reason had triggered a massive tax increase in his flux-debts. The flux-cost incurred in finalizing the Contract had swollen so massive that he could no longer trade flux at a profit.

The Unimancers had stopped him from healing the broach, they'd stolen his daughter, and now they'd disabled the tool that would get her back…

YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DAUGHTER IN WAYS YOU NEVER IMAGINED

“
Fuck!
” Paul screamed, thumping the desk; the flux flowed out of him, finding the orange juice, which tipped over to wash the ink away in a bright citrus flood.

“Chekov!” Valentine shot fingerguns at the mess. “The world's most accurate shot.”

“I don't even know what that
means
!”

Robert mopped up the soggy remains of the Contract with a towel. Valentine put her controller down, eyeing Paul.

“It means I don't get why we've wasted five days with you scribbling
words
, keeping Imani in another room reading
books
.”

“Hearing you play videogames reminds her of Aliyah,” Paul snapped. “And she's researching ways to break the Unimancers…”

“Why
bother
?” Valentine chucked the controller into the couch. “I'm ready, coach, put me in! Whip up your bureaucromancy to track down Aliyah–”

“–which led us into a trap last time–”

“–the principle applies! You can sift through the government's files at will! I mean, sure, yeah, she's off the books – but you can analyze flight records, track troop movements, snoop through internal communications! Don't fine-tune the data, Paul – get me close enough, I'll make Aliyah a quest item, I'll home in on her. But I can't start with no clues!
Get me clues
!”

Paul realized she was as frustrated playing
Arkham Asylum
as he'd been writing this stupid useless contract.

Paul put his head on the desk, which seemed like a good idea right up until he dunked his forehead in sticky paper-pulped orange.

“OK.” He ran his hands through his hair, trying to regain his dignity. “I have to tell you a secret, Valentine. But you can't tell Imani.”

“Why not?”

“She's overwhelmed. That's what happens when you kill someone for the first time.”

Valentine ran her hands over her ash-smeared stubble, wincing as she realized she'd failed in her duty to Imani. “Don't I know it.”

“She needs to focus on disrupting the Unimancer network. She can't worry about me. So I need you to… to compensate for me.”

The difference between Valentine's “irritated” face and her “concerned” face was almost undetectable, but Paul knew her well enough to catch the shift. She leaned forward, as if ready to catch him…

…and then scowled at Robert with an
oh, you're still there?
look.

“I
got
this,” she snapped. Robert lowered his head in embarrassment, realizing he
had
been hovering, his fingers outstretched to help Valentine if she needed it.

He slunk away, closing the door behind him.

“Alright. What's happening?” she asked.

Paul squeegeed a dribble of orange juice out of his hair. “When I saved you… back at the air base… I…
did
something. I did a 'mancy I shouldn't have, and now it's like… like I'm starting over from scratch. Before, I knew all the steps I could have taken to get that authorization and could shortcut them, but now the world is forcing me to fill out everything one step at a time. So I'm slower. And less effective. And… the flux is approaching critical.”

She tapped her fingers on the desk, trying out buttons on a controller. “So you've lost your mojo. Is this something you can… heal?”

“I don't know. Maybe I'll get my speed back. But if not, I…” He took out some of the books he'd ordered in, spread them across the floor. “If I can't get my old strength back, then I have to find where the smallest changes make the biggest impact.”

She tapped the covers, frowning. They were 1980s era textbooks with professorial-sounding authors: Knuth, Stroustrup, Kernighan.

“…I can't even make sense of the
names
of these books, Paul.” Valentine pushed aside a cryptic tome by Schneier. “It's like a dyslexic barfed alphabet soup.”

“It's the modern language of bureaucracy,” Paul said. “But the point is, Imani's under strain. So I need you to compensate for my weakness. Can you cover for me?”

She exhaled through pursed lips. “…yeah. In fact, I think I might be able to fix your problem altogether. Can you gimme a second to get something for you?”

What could Valentine have to erase this flux?
Paul wondered. Valentine had been a 'mancer for longer than he had; she'd taught him how to bleed off his flux. Who knew what other tricks she'd learned?

He waited patiently as Valentine left the room.

She returned with Imani.

“You can't do 'mancy anymore?” Imani didn't sound mad. She rushed to his side, brushing his sticky hair as if she could reveal the wound that had stolen his powers.

“Sorry, Paul,” Valentine shrugged. “If you'd told me you were jerking off to teddy bear porn, well, maybe I woulda kept your secret. This shit could get us killed.”

“You–”

Valentine batted his objection away. “Did you learn
nothing
from Payne locking away Aliyah, Paul? You keep secrets from your wife, you handicap yourself.”

“You're not trying to protect me,” Imani told him. “You're
ashamed
. Or you would have told Valentine right away.”

“It's like 'mancer erectile dysfunction!” Valentine said.

“Not helping, Valentine. The point is, Paul, you hate looking weak. After you lost your foot, you let me divorce you before you'd admit how miserable you were. And now? Well…” Imani shrugged. “At least you're smart enough to tell a friend who'll tell me.”

It was true. He was already so broken, after letting down Morehead, his head buzzing with painkillers, humiliated by SMASH – losing the only thing that had made him special was almost too much to bear.

But Valentine had been right.

He couldn't conceal this.

Paul squeezed back tears. “I'm sorry. With this much at stake, I…”

“You need to be honest about your capacity. You're strong and smart regardless of your magical potential. It's why I married your ass. But remember: I am this group's goddamned Batman–”

“–let us not tussle for the Batman position here–” Valentine interrupted.

“ –and if there's a flaw I need to account for when I'm destroying the Unimancers, you need to tell me.” She grabbed his cheeks. “I know you hate being weak, Paul. But whenever someone breaks you, you grow more powerful.”

Paul grinned. Terrible as it felt to have his magic sabotaged, he had family to lift him up.

“I won't lie again,” he promised.

Imani thumped him in the chest. “I am a lawyer. That is a
verbal contract
. The one thing you
have
to respect, my idiot husband, is contracts.”

“…the
fuck?
”

Everyone turned to see Robert, his eyes bugged out in disbelief.

“So you're
forgiving
him?” Robert spluttered. “We've spent five days in a
public hotel
! May I remind you Paul set off a magical suitcase nuke? There's a hotline with thousands of bucks in rewards for anyone who wants to play the ‘Let's Snitch On Paul Tsabo' game! I bribed the maids because I thought Paul's 'mancy was covering us – but if Paul's fuse is blown, I had
much
better positioned safehouses!”

Imani held up a finger. “OK. Granted, hunkering down in an insecure public space was not the wisest move Paul's made – but creating the Contract to compensate for Paul's increased flux loads was worth trying. Besides, the time it's given me to study hiveminds has… well… I think I have a way to shut the Unimancers down. But it's going to be bloody.”

Valentine cracked her knuckles. “When it comes to Unimancers, the only flavor I want is ‘bloody'.”

“And if I know my husband's detail-obsessed brain, he had contingency plans on the back burner. Or am I in error, sweetie?”

“I've got a backup plan,” Paul admitted. “You won't like it.”

Valentine arched one plucked eyebrow. “Anything that gets us closer to Aliyah will make me happy.”

“Robert.” Paul straightened his tie. “Policy is, you don't clue me in on Project Mayhem's details so SMASH can't get the information out of me. But… a month or so back, I heard a rumor about a huntomancer?”

Robert held his hands up in a
whoa, let's not get crazy here
gesture. “You mean the guy so obsessed with moving silently that he slit his own throat so he'd never make a sound?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean the maniac we lost three good 'mancers capturing before he murdered his way to
yet another
mob hit?”