Flex (12 page)

He peered in the bag. His eyes widened.

“…This is not what I think it is, is it?”

Valentine jutted her chin out, pleased to have the drop on him. “What do you think it is?”

Gunza rolled a smooth crystal between his fingers. “I
think
this is B-1 grade Flex…”

“Don’t you know for sure?” Paul asked. Valentine kicked him hard enough that a chunk of skin peeled off his titanium foot.

Gunza focused on Paul, as if really seeing him for the first time.

“…Flex ain’t exactly common.” Paul heard the effort it took for Gunza to be magnanimous. “Everyone claims they had a piece, once, but maybe one in a hundred ain’t liars. Ninety-nine percent of the shit people say is Flex is E or bath salts – people just think they’re ‘mancing. Go on. Ask me if I’ve done Flex.”

“…have you?”

“No.” That feral grin. “But I am
dying
to.”

“What do you want it for?”

Gunza scratched his chin, taking pleasure in Valentine’s distress. “If I want coke? I get what my family gives. E? They got their own labs and don’t want me involved. Not much room for expansion… but if I can rope in Flex, then I can ensure nothing breaks again.”

“So, no murders?” Paul swallowed. “Nothing… nothing stupid.”

Paul frowned into Gunza’s intense, almost palpable scrutiny. Valentine cursed underneath her breath.

“If this was N-31 grade, or even I-15,” said Gunza evenly, “I’d sell it to whoever asked. Flux is a toxin for dealers; our bad luck is good luck for cops. But if this is B-1, then is all upside, yes? We have errands that can’t afford snarls. If I’m banking Flex, I can guarantee my family’s operations. No killing needed.”

A weight lifted from Paul’s shoulders.

“Try it.” Valentine spoke loud, trying to draw attention away from Paul. “It’s the best.”

“A question.” He rested the Flex on the desk between them, steepled his fingers. “You, Valentine, are a grade-A fuckup. Date all the wrong boys. Can’t keep a job. Won’t kill. As a ’mancer, you play fuckin’ Guitar Hero twelve hours straight and forget to make Flex.”

He held the Flex up to the light. They’d brought him one single crystal, a small one, nothing compared to the coffee can back at Valentine’s apartment. Paul admired his handiwork; the Flex was flawless, like a drop of distilled water.

“So, how does little fuckup Valentine break three cribs and then devise perfect Flex on the fourth? I was gonna call myself lucky if I got G-46 outta your ass, but B-1?”

Valentine refused to show fear. “I just didn’t… didn’t want to before.”

“No. You found an ace.” Gunza flicked a glance towards Paul. “A new sweetie, perhaps?”

Valentine gripped the arms of her chair. “Does it matter?”

Gunza licked his finger, drew it down in the air before him, marking off a point in her favor. “Doesn’t.”

He crushed the crystal underneath his palm messily, spraying Flex everywhere. “But I gotta test this. So here’s the question: how can I tell if this is real? I put my brain into this question. Because if I track a source of Flex, then I am the luckiest man in New York. So I have devised a test.”

Gunza peered down at the Flex with deep gravitas, then chopped the small pile into a fine line with a razor. He chuckled, an embarrassment he chose to reveal.

“I don’t even know how much I’m supposed to take,” he said, then snorted it all.

His head rocked back in surprise, his wide nostrils blowing the remnants across the desk. Paul saw the radiant glow of Flex disappearing into Gunza’s wide nostrils and felt violated; his magic was being smothered inside a stupid drug dealer. He wanted to call it back but could feel the ’mancy knotting inside Gunza, the odds flexing to Gunza’s will.

Valentine grabbed his hand. She felt it, too.

“
Whoo!
” Gunza’s head snapped forward, glowing tears streaming from his eyes. His emerald teeth looked like they’d been lit by lasers. “
That – is–
” He shook his head from side to side like a dog shaking off water. “Is that what you feel, Valentine? Is that what you feel
all the time
?”

“When I’m lost in it,” Valentine said sadly.

“This…” He rose from his chair like a preacher addressing his congregation. “…is the
greatest thing ever
. I am the luckiest man alive to find you, Valentine DiGriz, and your new theoretical boyfriend. And if I
am
that lucky–”

He pulled out an automatic rifle, spraying bullets in an arc across the room. The TV exploded, the sheet rock disintegrated.

As the muzzle swung across Valentine’s face, the gun jammed with a dry click.

“
Ha!
” Gunza shoved a .22 into Paul’s cheekbone and pulled the trigger; another misfire. He tossed both guns across the room triumphantly, pulled Paul and Valentine into a close hug. They froze like scared rabbits.

“You’re so lucky.” He wept happily, as if he hadn’t tried to murder them. “Because
I’m
so lucky. Oh, my friends, this Flex will
change our world
.”

“
I
don’t want
to go back to work,” Paul told Valentine back at the motel he’d been living at since his apartment had caught fire. He’d offered her the bed, but she’d curled up on the floor in Invader Zim pajamas, arms wrapped around the coffee can full of Flex. “I don’t want to leave you alone. But if I don’t get back there today, they’ll think something’s wrong with me. Before this, I hadn’t taken a vacation in seven years.”

“It’s not your fault, Paul.” Valentine stirred her coffee endlessly but never drank it.

“It
is
. If you hadn’t met me, you wouldn’t have had any Flex. Now he’s going to come after you to get more. He has to – to have you…”

Paul remembered the Uzi jamming just in time to save Valentine’s life. He shuddered because Gunza had seemed – well, not nice, but reasonable before then. Gunza had already shown he was willing to kill. With an unlimited supply of B-1 Flex on the hook, he’d do anything.

Thank God he’d made Valentine leave the coffee can full of Flex at her apartment. Thank God Gunza had been dumb enough to blow his tiny sample of Flex on proving its potency – though Paul’d had nightmares about the gun not jamming and Valentine’s head blowing off. If Gunza had been more conservative, more cunning, Lord knows what he might have done with a ’mancer in his grip…

“I will get you a new ID and a nice home in California.” He wrapped a hotel blanket over Valentine’s shoulders. “This evening, I will book you on a first-class flight to San Francisco, where Gunza cannot find you.”

“He’ll find me.” Valentine cuddled her Dunkin’ Donuts coffee for warmth. “He has to.”

“We’re
safe
. Gunza doesn’t know where you are or what I look like. I’ll get you out.”

He kissed her on the forehead, feeling a strange ache: the only ’mancer he’d ever known, and he was sending her away.

It took him a moment to identify this ache’s familiarity: it was similar to what he felt for Aliyah. This fierce protectiveness. This anger that anything might want to hurt her.

This pain at separation.

He charged into Samaritan Mutual, vowing to get her out of town before midnight. At least the reporters had dissipated. Which was good, because he was infuriated at making Valentine vulnerable to Gunza, at wasting time not finding Anathema. If someone had shoved a microphone in his face, he might have said something very unwise.

Paul hadn’t made it five steps in before Kit pounced on him.

“Come on, bubeleh,” Kit said, grabbing Paul’s elbow to steer him back towards the elevator. “No time to explain. Just agree with everything I say. You–” Kit pushed his porkpie hat up on his bald head, noticing how Paul’s face was covered with scratch marks. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Allergic reaction to mosquitoes.”

It had nothing to do with bugs; it had everything to do with Flex and Valentine’s reskinning.

He’d sat on the hotel bed last night while Valentine was showering, scooping up handfuls of Flex crystals and letting them rain back into the coffee can, wondering how to use this unadulterated ’mancy to help Aliyah. Then it occurred to him that he was being stupid:
wish for more wishes
, the old genie loophole. If he took some Flex and then used that artificial luck to stumble across the perfect plan to save Aliyah…

He’d popped a crystal into his mouth and crunched it like an aspirin.

His fake layer of dudebro had sloughed off.

The pain struck with no warning; Paul’s reskinned flesh had stung like a swarm of bees. He’d clawed at his face, strips of artificial skin clogging his fingernails.

He tried to summon his ’mancy for help, envisioning insurance coverage and calamine lotion – but something bright ping-ponged inside his skull, destroying his ability to concentrate, like a group of hyperactive toddlers rushing across an opera stage.

The Flex. It was desperate to find its way back home inside him, like a moth battering against a lamp, but he and Valentine had squeezed all of the personality out of it. It wasn’t a part of him any more.

He envisioned the new Flex as a shiny iPod, sleek and impersonal and dedicated to a single task. His own personal ’mancy was a hoary, 1950s-style punch card computer system, a dusty arcanum assembled by hand, with paper-punch snippets of logic stored in a hundred shoebox files stuffed underneath desks. He could retrieve the punch cards one by one, piece them together to crank out deeply personal programs that no one but he could possibly make sense of.

The simplified ’mancy of the Flex held a primal, salmon-like urge to return home; it thrashed around in his head, causing Paul migraines as it vainly attempted to insinuate itself back into Paul’s complex and personal mythology.

Valentine had emerged from the shower to find Paul rolling in agony next to a pile of dead skin. She’d apologized profusely: “Christ, Paul, after we went to so much trouble to yank our personalities out of this stuff, I thought it was obvious we’d turned it into a different kind of magic. If I’d known you were gonna try to tank up on it, I woulda
said
something.”

Eventually, she explained, Paul would have walked into a closet and emerged restored to his original look, as characters did in videogames. But the Flex had jangled her ’mancy, too. She didn’t know how to fix this weird transitory state.

She’d gotten him Solarcaine. It hadn’t helped.

Paul reached underneath his suit to scratch his forearms. They were bumpy, an amalgamation of tribal tattoos and Paul’s hairy Greek skin. He’d had to scrub his face with a loofah until he was recognizable enough to return to work – and even now, as Kit looked him over, Paul realized his cheeks were swollen and hived.

“Christ,” Kit spat, pushing Paul into the elevator. “This was tricky enough without you looking like Frankenstein’s monster. Anyway, keep your mouth shut and don’t contradict me.”

“What’s going on? Why are we–” Then Paul noticed which button Kit had pressed.

They were headed to the managerial floor.

“Have you been trying to get Aliyah some new treatments?” Kit whispered the question like it was a sin. “Claiming that what we’re authorizing isn’t enough for her?”

“Well, yeah. I had to–”

“They’re on the warpath now. Between that and the reporters and SMASH, they’re hunting for an excuse to fire you. But don’t worry; I’ve got a plan.”

Kit shoved him, blinking and terrified, onto the managers’ floor.

The managers’ floor wasn’t much different than Paul’s floor, but there were subtle signs of status: glass barriers between certain cubicles, pricier artwork on the walls, the secretaries wore more fashionable dresses. Unless you’d worked for Samaritan, you’d never know just how dangerous being here was.

Samaritan’s management only noticed expenses it could cut.

Kit steered Paul into a meeting room just big enough for six people to sit around a large round table. Kit’s boss, Lou, a fat toad, sat there. As did Lou’s manager, an emaciated ice queen called Rita.

Then Paul saw Mr Payne sitting in the corner and felt the same shock of fear as when Gunza had shoved the gun in his face.

Payne’s stiff white hair was cropped in a buzz cut, giving his head a bullet-like shape; his eyes were chips of glacial ice. He wore a crisp funeral director’s suit over his broad ex-Marine frame, which was appropriate; most of Payne’s meetings ended in terminations.

“Sit down, Mr Tsabo,” Lou said. Everyone knew Lou did all of Rita’s hatchet work. Plus, with Payne in the room, she didn’t dare utter one more word than necessary.

Lou and Rita both looked towards Mr Payne. He nodded.

“We’re getting questions from the government about last week’s Flex bust,” Lou said. “Reports are you were inside the building when the SMASH team neutralized the location, despite having called them in an hour earlier.”

“So?”

Lou did a little high dive with his index finger, arcing it up high in the air to land on a folder containing Paul’s employee records. “Scouting locations is outside your job description, Mr Tsabo. You are not currently, despite your past history, a policeman. Your job description states clearly that if there is any danger of harm, you are to remove yourself from the premises. So, the company is now wondering whether you’re trying to play hero on our dime.”

They were laying the groundwork for Paul as a loose cannon, preparing for a firing. Just as Paul was about to go after Anathema…

Kit cleared his throat. “If I may…” He reached underneath the table to haul out a box of donuts. “Sorry. I can’t call it a meeting unless there’s refreshments, you know?”

“Chocolate Kreme,” said Lou. “My favorite!”

“There’s also a dry cinnamon in there for Rita.” Rita took the donut daintily.

Payne shooed the donuts away with a flick of his fingers. Paul remembered Valentine’s words:
Never trust a man who doesn’t like a donut.
Reluctantly, Lou and Rita took their uneaten donuts off the table and secreted them in their laps.

“Uh, anyway,” Kit continued. “The, uh, danger you’re speaking of is nonexistent. The reason Mr Tsabo was in the Flex lab is that he’d ascertained – correctly – the ’mancer had long fled. Paul was merely looking for clues we could use to verify that the rain of frogs was connected to this lab.”

“The government claims he’s interfering.”

“The government was two hours late,” Kit riposted. “The records show Paul called in the ’mancer’s location at 10.08am that morning. Google Maps” – he slid a paper across the table toward them – “shows a car was in the driveway at the time Paul reported it. The government responded too slowly – they know it, you know it, and now they’re making a big stink about Paul to distract people from the fact that they let Anathema slip through their fingers.”

Lou coughed, uncomfortable. “There’s still the matter of Mr Tsabo entering the ’mancer’s den – a violation of company policy – ”

“That’s instincts.” Kit leaned forward. “Look, the reason Paul and I are your top claims investigators is because we leave no angle unturned. I’ll be honest: I’ve walked into my share of ’mancer dens.”

Oh, God, Kit
, Paul thought.
You’re putting your job on the line for me
. Kit had just dared Payne to fire them both, leaving the New York branch without a ’mancy investigative unit during an outbreak of ’mancer terrorism.

“That’s against
policy
,” Lou said.

“Is that the official line?” Kit asked. Lou and Rita exchanged discomforted glances; they sensed the trap but didn’t know how to avoid springing it. And they wanted no surprises in front of Payne.

“…It is.”

“Then I guess you don’t want this.” Kit tossed a Ziploc bag onto the table. Paul recognized it:

His Flex.

“That breach of policy right there,” Kit said, “just saved you a
million
in claims from every house within Buffalo’s tremor range. I sent Paul up there myself, asking him to investigate on his day off because he was closer.” Lou and Rita were focused on the Flex, so only Paul noticed the sly wink Kit threw him.

Kit. Kit had driven six hours on a hunch.

The man was relentless.

“The local yokels had checked a cabin near the epicenter,” Kit said. “Predictably, they found nothing. But Paul found this lodged in a ventilator grille.”

Paul’s arms itched, but he didn’t dare scratch. Payne plucked the baggie from Lou’s hands, then examined the crystal with the concentration of a pawn shop owner appraising a diamond.

“This is B-1 grade Flex.” Payne’s voice sounded like a cockroach’s legs rubbing together. “Nobody’s made anything of this quality since the 1950s.”

“What this means, my friends, is we have a new Flex manufacturer. Someone who causes
earthquakes
when he dumps his flux.” Kit crossed his arms. “Now. Do you want someone like Paul on the case, or the cops who overlooked the key piece of evidence? Because if you value procedure, then I guess you can pay out those claims. And pay the next batch when this guy starts knocking down buildings. But, hey,
you’re
the ones who answer to our stockholders…”

Payne scowled at the bag, then scowled at Kit. “Are you telling us you’ve assigned Mr Tsabo to head up this investigation?”

“I’m telling you Paul here is your best chance at corralling Anathema.”

“
M
y God
, Kit. You risked your job for me? You have the bills from your wife’s funeral, Kit – a pension–”

–a best friend who’s brewing Flex–

“You have a daughter,” Kit replied. “Look, Payne wants you gone. But put away a terrorist and they don’t dare fire you. That’s why I’m putting you in charge. I can’t promise our bosses will pay for Aliyah, but I can damn well give you cover.”

“Kit…”

“You hate calling in markers, Paul. But I’d be a terrible, donutless human being if I didn’t help you out.” Kit patted Paul’s shoulder. “Now get some calamine lotion.”

Paul felt plastic, artificial, trapped in Valentine’s reskin, lying to his friends, having to track down
himself
to save his daughter.

He locked the bathroom door behind him, tugged up his sleeve. His forearm was still sheathed in a fake layer of tattooed muscle.

He wanted out.

He clawed at the pseudoskin, desperate to obliterate the snakelike loops of ink that wound around his wrist. Paul didn’t hear the toilet flushing behind him. Nor did he see the ugly man stepping out of the stall with a serene grace, nostrils flecked with Flex.

He glanced over at Paul with the incurious calmness of a man who expected the universe to provide him with what he needed. He noted the artificial skin clogging the sink drain.

Paul, focused on scrubbing, leaned forward; Valentine’s driver’s license tumbled from his breast pocket, falling onto the tile floor. Cursing, Paul knelt to pick it up.

The man covered the license with the tip of his snakeskin boot. As Paul looked up, Gunza bared glittering emerald teeth.