Fix (8 page)

“
You
don't always know what's right for you,” Valentine shot back. Paul cringed. Valentine had let loose a high sniper's shot that implied if Aliyah had avoided the soccer league, none of this would have happened.

“
Enough!
” Imani snapped. “So why are our safehouses falling apart, Robert?”

Robert shrugged. “Part of it's the Morehead broach sending folks into a panic. Lotta people have tolerated their crazy neighbors for years. Now the President's convinced everyone y'all are walkin' nukes, they're putting two and two together.”

“And the other part?”

“…Mr Olizewski mentioned something about the Contract going on the fritz?”

Paul slumped against a tree, overwhelmed, feeling the pain from his grinding ribs.

Of
course
the Contract's destruction would affect more than him. The Contract had been a way for wayward 'mancers nationwide to disperse their flux.

That was why SMASH was so good at hunting 'mancers. They didn't have to be supernaturally efficient – though they were – all they had to do was force 'mancers to use enough magic to generate a tide of bad luck, and their prey would drown in their own backlash.

And the 'mancers in the safehouses, mostly awkward asocials like Yoder – nobody would have told them the Contract had imploded. They would have done 'mancy same as always, then found their bad luck boomeranging back on them.

Imani rubbed his back while Paul tried to get himself under control. He tried not to think of innocent 'mancers hauled off to the Refactor, men and women with quiet hobbies like cryptography or glassblowing or stamp collecting – tortured until they lost their minds, then reprogrammed into government-friendly drones.

“We're going to lose more, aren't we?” he asked. “Before the day is over?”

“Lots,” Robert said.

Aliyah gasped; Imani buried her daughter's face in her shoulder.

“Aliyah Rebecca Tsabo-Dawson,” Paul said sternly, using the Parent Voice every dad used to command his child's attention. “Look at me.”

Aliyah turned, reluctantly.

“I won't lie, Aliyah. Your flux caused this broach. But your bravery stopped the broach from ripping Kentucky apart. If you hadn't been clever and bold, Savannah and her father would be dead. We'd
all
be dead.”

Her chest hitched. She'd always hated showing weakness. “I should have kept my flux under control.”

“It would have been better, yes. And you'll
do
better. And… we'll adapt.”

Robert cleared his throat. “Step one would be rebuilding the Contract.”

Paul sighed. “That'll take time. People have to sign it in person. And there'll be a lot less people willing to sign up now that we're officially terrorists…”

“You've got thirteen Project Mayhem folks here who'll take the hit. Start there.” He waved over at three college-aged kids troubleshooting a generator–

–
instead, an elderly black woman came running over towards them, flailing her arms. She stopped, hands on knees, catching her breath, then gasped: “The broach, sir – news says – it's expanding – they're evacuating Morehead–”

“Have you got a desk ready?” Paul asked. “Five fresh Bic pens, a stack of legal pads?”

“Sir,” Robert said proudly, “in the highly likely event that you are captured, I cannot divulge the number of American safehouses to you. But I
can
tell you each Project Mayhem safehouse comes prepared with a fresh set of bureaucromantic scrying tools.”

T
he crisp metal
desk looked absurd in the rundown shack. A handful of the Project Mayhem acolytes – there really was no better word for people who'd chosen to abandon their lives to tend to 'mancers in the Appalachian foothills – swept the dirt floor as Paul walked in.

“This'll do,” Paul said.

They straightened with pride. Then they flattened themselves against the walls, silently requesting permission to watch him work.

He still found that a pleasant change. When he'd started, the only mundanes who'd
wanted
to watch him work had been K-Dash and Quaysean. 'Mancy terrified most ordinary people, and they no sooner wanted to be in its presence than they wanted to hang around a toxic waste dump.

Paul crossed himself: he wasn't religious, but he missed K-Dash and Quaysean, and had no better way to mark their passing. And, on his more cynical days, he thought maybe their deaths had proved the ordinary people's point: hanging around 'mancy had led them to a horrible end.

After the Morehead broach, Paul wanted no distractions. He shook their hands and politely escorted them out.

Paul sat down at the desk. It seemed ridiculous, to be so calm when broaches were tearing open – but a righteous bureaucrat gathered information first.

He closed his eyes. Robert set up the desk just the way he liked it; his fingers closed around a box of Bic pens. He ripped the shrink wrap off the legal pad, feeling delightful blankness underneath his fingertips.

He clicked the pen. And wrote the mantra every form began with:

First name. Last name. Address. Address 2. City, Street, Zip…

The key, Paul thought, was the Unimancers' records of the Morehead broach. They'd need to commit the data somewhere, to compare the broach's energy outputs to how it had looked an hour ago – and they'd need to send that data to other scientists, to make requests for comparisons to the European broach's data, to compile summaries to send to their superiors.

Someone had to have access to those records.

Bureaucracy was about getting proper access.

Paul could recreate a Freedom of Information Request without blinking, had committed to memory all the forms private investigators used to get information on recalcitrant clients, knew the FBI's clearance levels by heart.

This wasn't hacking, oh no; hacking would have had Paul hunting for weaknesses in the system.

Paul was attempting to convince the system he needed proper access. And who needed to know what was happening at the Morehead broach than a man who could seal broaches singlehandedly?

Once he'd gotten the information, he'd demonstrate his expertise, then broker a peace long enough to band together to solve the problem. Because bureaucracy triumphed when petty politics failed.

The legal pad expanded outwards, the edges sagging off the desk, Paul's fussy handwriting condensing into neat Helvetica fonts as the legal pads folded themselves into stacks. He bootstrapped up the info, using the most arcane methods – reaching forward into the future to file Freedom of Information Acts from two decades from now, certifying himself as a scientist with the proper credentials, using layers of forged identities to ensure no one could track him back to this address in Kentucky.

He chipped away the government's record-keeping layers, skirting their alarm systems. The more secure facilities had opals that cracked in the presence of 'mancy – a precaution that couldn't keep a 'mancer out, but would alert the authorities when someone had rifled through their files. Yet Paul's 'mancy was no louder than a paper dropped into a file. Only the most expensive opals might track his presence, and those would have shattered near the Morehead broach.

Most 'mancy was a vulgar assault on reality, like Valentine's summoned guns: Paul's 'mancy was what an insanely determined man with infinite time could have accomplished.

Paul's pen stopped writing in flowing lines, started hammering spots into the legal pad in even rows: the stuttering recreation of an old-fashioned dot-matrix printer, spooling off sheets of classified data.

Paul held up the two accounts, comparing them: the Morehead broach's readings when the SMASH emergency intercept team had set up their first equipment at 12:17 pm today, and the latest readings filed fifteen minutes ago.

He squinted.

Paul ran his thumb down the numbers. He was no scientist, but the readings didn't appear to fluctuate wildly. He triggered a search, requesting comparisons: the broach's size, its radiation emanations, snapshots.

All identical except for minor variations.

So why would they claim the broach was expanding? Yes, that would make Project Mayhem look even worse, but it would throw America into a panic. Yet America was already
in
a panic. The President was getting everything she'd wanted.

What could the government accomplish by lying about an expanding broach that they couldn't do with a stable one?

– they're evacuating Morehead –

“Daddy says you can have our car.”

Paul dropped his pen.

There'd been at least two hundred people on those soccer fields, and SMASH would debrief every last one to see what they knew about Paul and Aliyah. SMASH must have known the broach precluded 'mancy – and thus, some mundane local had assisted their escape.

This could be their way of spiriting away people for more brutal interrogations.

Yet even black-ops agencies had to track their prisoners. Paul shifted gears – he had long ago passed the bar in every state he needed to, had a terrifyingly comprehensive understanding of how to pressure the legal system. Finding secret prisoners would be trickier, as he'd have to escalate up the chain, but–

The data plopped obligingly into his hands, addressed to him.

Paul hesitated, the paper greasy to the touch. He wondered if this was a magical trap. But no, the trade-off of turning a 'mancer's unique passion into the gray slurry of Unimancy was they couldn't do anything other than share data across the hivemind.

Yet the names of the people allowed to access this file were clear: the President, her cabinet, some high-ranking United Nations members… and Mr Paulos Costa Tsabo, leader of Project Mayhem.

He read it.

After preliminary interviews where it was confirmed that Aliyah Tsabo-Dawson, also known as [PROJECT HOTPLATE], was attempting to befriend several of the girls on the field, our conclusion is that the Morehead broach was no accident. [PROJECT HOTPLATE] is the youngest known 'mancer to evince powers, and the generally accepted version of events is that she was accelerated into premature 'mancy by the terrorist acts of [PROJECT BLACKBURN].

We believe this broach was not in fact intended to be a broach, but in fact was a clumsy attempt to accelerate the creation of 'mancers of [PROJECT HOTPLATE]'s age. Psychological profiles indicate that [PROJECT HOTPLATE] is undergoing adolescent trauma caused by a lack of age-appropriate socialization.

“No,” Paul whispered. “That's ridiculous, we never would have–”

As such, we have been authorized to a) incarcerate the eighty-four potential 'mancers who were present on or near the field at the time of the broach, along with their custodians, b) remove them to a secure facility, and c) monitor them for an unspecified time period until such a time as we can ensure no one there will threaten American interests.

Unfortunately, as it is well known that [PROJECT MONGOOSE], [PROJECT HOTPLATE]'s father, has the ability to access secure records of any sort, General Saagar Anil Kanakia has requested that no records be kept in any form as to who is being relocated, or as to where they are located, or as to the former residents of Morehead's current conditions.

The President has authorized this request.

We acknowledge this regrettable lack of record-keeping means it is possible we may lose track of who was incarcerated, or when. Without access to medical records, we will not know which of them have conditions that may prove to be fatal in captivity. Furthermore, with no ability to delegate responsibility, we acknowledge this lack of institutional memory may lose sight of these poor souls, condemning them to a lifetime of imprisonment for reasons no one guarding them can remember.

The only way to ensure these people get the proper treatment they deserve is for the only man who can stop this security breach to turn himself in to SMASH forces immediately.

Your move, Paul.

Sincerely,

General Saagar Anil Kanakia, Commander, United Nations Broach Suppressions Unit

T
he green kite
hung high in the blue sky, darting back and forth like a combatant. Birds flew nervously past it.

Aliyah couldn't see the kite's owner yet, though a quivering taut string led down to what Uncle Robert explained was the glade where Hamir practiced. Uncle Robert kept up a steady stream of talk to distract her, telling her how difficult it'd been convincing Hamir to switch to a camouflaged kite so his 'mancy wouldn't show up on aerial surveillance.

Sadly, only Daddy could keep her memories at bay.

She was vaguely curious to see this new 'mancer's kite-magic. But without Daddy to hold her hand, she kept thinking back to poor Idena, who'd shyly folded paper until her creations unfurled into beautiful origamimancy blossoms. She remembered Mrs Vinere, the masqueromancer, who'd fitted ceramic masks to your face that let you roar like a lion. She remembered Wayne the plushiemancer and his hammock of pink kitten dolls.

She remembered the comfort she'd felt back at the Institute, where Mrs Vinere and Wayne and Idena had lived. She remembered the triumph as she'd raised her sword and called out to the sixteen 'mancers who lived in Mr Payne's luxury apartments: “
My name is Aliyah!
I am almost nine years old!
Who wants to play with me?
”

She'd thought happiness would keep them safe.

The birds squawked as they circled around the kite. A hawk high above darted down, sensing easy prey, a reddish-brown blur thrumming from above–

The kite thrashed once, twice, three times.

Its string trisected the hawk – first lopping off one wing, then mercifully slicing through the torso in a piñata of gore.

Now that Aliyah looked closer, the string glinted in the sun, covered in ground glass.

“He's a sweetheart, he really is,” Uncle Robert assured her. “But I'm the best kite flyer in the camp, and I make Charlie Brown look like Ray Bethell.”

Like Aunt Valentine, Uncle Robert made a lot of references that nobody quite got. You learned to skip past these little ignorances, like thumbing past a cutscene.

“Anyway, Hamir needs to compete. It took me weeks to convince him the locals hunted birds, so he could too.”

She heard the
smack
as the hawk's body hit a rock. It sounded like Rainbird slapping her.

You killed once, in self-defense
, Rainbird had told her.
Now it's time you murdered
. And
that
memory cascaded into flashbacks of Rainbird slaughtering everyone at the Institute to cover up their trail. Aliyah had done too much 'mancy, Rainbird had said, and he had to guarantee SMASH wouldn't track them down.

She remembered how Rainbird had burned Wayne's stuffed animal friends as they'd waddled in to rescue him. He'd cried the whole time, and then Rainbird had pushed him into the pyre. She remembered Idena, wrapped in her own origami and set alight…

“…Uncle Robert?”

“Yeah?”

“I don't want to see 'mancers.”

That was the nice thing about Uncle Robert; Mom, Daddy, Aunt Valentine, none of them knew how to relax. Robert understood the need for downtime.

“We got a guest cabin you can kip out in, if you need to stare at the walls a while,” he offered.

“That'd be good.”

He led her back to the main area. She trailed behind, wishing she could hold Dad's hand and not feel quite so lonely.

Dad hated what Rainbird had done – but when he spoke of the incident, it was with pride: Rainbird, he told people, had proven Aliyah wasn't a killer. And… yeah. After watching what killing had done to Rainbird, what Rainbird had wanted to do with
her
, Aliyah had vowed never to kill anyone ever again.

That wasn't what Rainbird had taught her, though.

They walked up to the cabins – which weren't cabins. They were raised off the ground on white oak boxes, which was weird–

–
but what was even weirder was the cabins' outward-facing walls were
shelves
.

In fact, now that she paid attention, the cabins had been assembled from identical, waist-high bookcases mortared together. Each bookcase had two shelves, glued into slots in the side, with a flat board on the top and bottom. Each seemed competently made, but not flashy.

The boxes on the bottom of the cabin, Aliyah realized, were bookshelves facing downwards, their backs pointed up. The walls were yard-high bookcases pushed together, stacked on 2x4s to separate them, and then the gaps plugged up with clay to keep the wind out.

Even the roof was bookcases slanted at an angle, the shelves facing downwards into the room so the rain wouldn't catch in them, stacked onto beams and strapped in with nylon tie-downs.

“That's… a lot of effort to build a cabin,” Aliyah said.

“Oh. Yeah.” Robert did a brief double-take, as if this bizarre sight had become so ordinary it had ceased to register. “Thaaaaat'd be Mr Oliszewski's handiwork. He's… Well, it's a matter of debate around the camp what his 'mancy is. You could ask him yourself, if you don't need responses. Quiet man. Like a walking marshmallow.”

She stepped up into the bookcase-cabin, squeezing through an entryway that was precisely the width of one narrow bookcase. The floor sunk under her weight. There was no door, aside from a heavy plywood sheet to slide in front of the entry gap. They'd put a wobbly rocking chair in there.

“Did he make the rocking chair?” Aliyah asked.

Robert snorted. “Oh, no. No, no, no. At 8:15 every morning, Mr Oliszewski rises. He bathes, dresses, at 9:25 he makes himself an egg-white omelet with low-fat Swiss cheese – he is
very
particular about his brand of Swiss cheese – and at 10:15, he starts cutting the boards for the day's bookcase. At 11:10, he begins sanding. At 12:30, lunch – a ham sandwich with salad. At 1:15, he routs the dadoes for the shelves before dry-fitting the carcase at 2:05–”

“
–
I get the point–”

“–and come 4:30, he has glued together a bookcase. A very
sturdy
bookcase. Mr Oliszewski has been doing this ever since his retirement eighteen years ago. The exact same bookcase. Every time.”

“So why not tear them apart?”

Robert gave her a knowing grin. “You could
try
. We did. We have the reverse-Excalibur challenge – we bought an industrial-grade axe, and whoever makes a dent in one of Mr Oliszewski's bookshelves gets to be King of Appalachia. Thus far? Not a
scratch
. Fire doesn't touch 'em, we've thrown 'em at bears, dropped them off cliffs–”

Aliyah repressed a giggle. This was what her father loved about 'mancy – its unpredictability. Who would have guessed some reclusive hermit would produce unbreakable bookshelves?

She wanted to share this with him. He was so good at making magic seem like some marvelous gift. That's why she always took him to see the 'mancers – Daddy would have found some way to make that dead hawk seem beautiful.

“So you built cabins out of them?”

“Mr Oliszewski makes one a day, rain or shine. They had them stacked into a pile we used to call Bookshelf Mountain, but that got to be visible from the air. So… they made cabins.” He thumped the side affectionately. “One day we'll find a libriomancer and these guys will get on like a
house
on fire.”

She laughed – and then remembered what happened the last time she'd made friends with 'mancers, Rainbird had murdered them.

“Get out.”

Uncle Robert bowed and backed away respectfully.

She shouldered the heavy plywood in to block the entryway. The darkness felt good. Laughter was an addiction she needed to purge herself of.

Instead, she sat in a musty room, acclimating herself to the taste of no one.

Dad thought Rainbird had taught her not to kill. What Rainbird had
actually
taught her was that her friendship was a curse. She'd spent months telling herself she'd trained in 'mancy, it was safe to hang around people, she wouldn't rain down unfathomable catastrophes on anyone she called a friend.

Aliyah bit her fingernails, felt the paint chip in her mouth.

She opened her backpack, set out the nail files and sponges she'd rescued from Morehead field. She scraped the old polish off, decided she was bored with these colors, mixed her own hues until she was satisfied. She sponged on a quick fade – a gradient from dark green at the cuticles, shading to pale white at the tips.

Boring. She'd
done
fade ombres before.

Frowning, she got out the cat-tail brush, deciding what to put on her nails. She threaded black throughout before realizing these were
Minecraft
colors, so she drew tiny creepers in the woods and diamond swords and pixelated Steve faces…

The creepers on her thumbs moved.

The diamond swords on her pinkies gleamed.

Aliyah screamed, snapping the brush in half.

She put her head in her hands, realizing yesterday's nails had popped into flame when she'd concentrated on them. She just hadn't thought anything unusual about it at the time.

It wasn't videogamemancy she'd done, but fingernailmancy.

Anything
she focused on enough would spark magic.

Kid, you're a 'mancer
, Aunt Valentine had told her once.
Your dreams bleed out of your head and turn into reality. That means you will spend your life alone.

Even if she'd gotten her nail party with Savannah, she would have ruined it. She'd have gotten bored doing French manicures and tried something crazy, and concentrating on a new nail art would have sparked magic.

She flung the nail bottles at the wall, shrieking as they shattered. She clawed at the paint
–

She'd destroyed a town full of good people for something that
wouldn't have even made her happy
.

Worse, even with all that, she knew she'd try again. After a couple of years of loneliness, she'd get desperate enough to risk someone else's life.

She hugged her knees, curling up in a corner. If she only had the strength to live alone. But family wasn't the same as friendship, she was starved for friendship–

The plywood entryway splintered into pieces.

Aliyah screamed. Had SMASH found them at last? She felt relief – her struggles were over, someone would punish her
–

Aunt Valentine stepped inside with smoking hands, biting her lip with embarrassment. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I panicked when I heard you yell. But your father – he's summoning a War Table.”

“
T
his is
the most secure location you have?” Dad clutched a manila file folder to his chest as they approached a log cabin.

“It's so secure you'll need special glasses to visit Mawmaw,” Uncle Robert assured him, handing out black plastic horn-rimmed glasses. “Mawmaw's sweet as sugar, but do
not
take these visors off or it's
Petrificus totalus
time.”

They were prescription lenses that turned Aliyah's vision into painful blurs. Valentine squinted out of one eye, fumbling her way ahead with outstretched hands towards the cabin, which seemed covered in dilapidated spiderwebs.

A pair of white-tailed deer stood before the cabin, staring mindlessly at the walls. They didn't move as Imani crept towards them; the deers' attention was focused entirely upon the fluttering white webs tacked to the cabin's side.

“Sometimes I pretend this is a really good movie they came to watch,” Robert said. “You know, like one where Bambi goes on a roaring rampage of revenge against all the hunters.”

Uncle Robert slapped the deer on the flank – they looked startled, then fled.

“The cabin catches rabbits, raccoons, squirrels – they even found a bear hypnotized out here once. Waking Miss Grizzly up was some good times, I'm told.”

“Is this some
Kiss of the Spider-Woman
bullshit?” Valentine asked. “You
know
I'm not good with spiders. The best part of any dungeon crawl is reducing those chitinous fuckers to stains.”

Robert rubbed her shoulders affectionately, like a ringman readying a boxer. “Mawmaw wouldn't hurt a fly. Come on, you'll love her sweet tea.”

Mawmaw, as it turned out, was a sweet sun-wrinkled grandmother who apologized for not having more ice for her sweet tea, the electricity kept going out here, but all the boys and girls were absolutely lovely. She was far too old to walk around, these fine people had taken her from the nursing home, but they'd put her up in this
lovely
well-kept cabin and have you seen my doilies? Goodness, I couldn't get by without my lace. The boys, they put them up on the walls for me.

Mawmaw sat in her rocking chair, surrounded by wafting lace circles, a ball of thread sitting by her gnarled feet, her knitting needles never ceasing as she leaned forward to ask Aliyah how old she was.

Aliyah tried her best to answer, but the elaborate lace patterns on the doilies distracted her. They spiraled into tight Mandelbrot loops, impossibly complex patterns that kept revealing more patterns. Following their corkscrew arches with her eyes had the pleasure of chasing a man down a busy street – she trailed a thin thread through a complex intersection, then navigated her way to the anchor-point of the next knot.

Mawmaw had been talking for minutes. Aliyah couldn't tell you what she'd said.

She reached up to take off these damned glasses to get a better look…

“Hang on, kid,” Robert warned her, grabbing Aliyah's shoulder. “She's almost asleep…”

Sure enough, Mawmaw slid into slumber. Yet even though she snored like a frail spinster, her knitting needles clicked on in her sleep.

Aliyah felt light-headed, despite the monstrous headache shooting through her temples from the glasses. She needed to follow the patterns to the center…