Flex (16 page)

Raphael swept her into his arms. She sagged into him, drawing strength. In that moment, Paul could see that Raphael wasn’t capable of tenderness, exactly… but he could be someone to cling to, as long as you didn’t ask too many questions.

“Are you gonna be okay?” Raphael asked. Paul winced; it was the wrong question. She might admit some troubles to Paul, who at least understood ’mancy’s limits, but no way she’d show weakness in front of Raphael.

“Yeah.” Valentine let him go. “We’ll get out of this.”

The warehouse flickered again, shrinking to normal size; Paul saw the exit’s dim outline a hundred yards away, visible in slices through a labyrinth of glass-making equipment. SMASH agents guarded the exit. Then Valentine grunted and things solidified again, the formless darkness swallowing them. Paul felt the SMASH team unleashing their ’mancy upon the warehouse, and Valentine pushing back, and Gunza pouring in his own efforts…

A sound like tearing paper.

Something like a claw tip etched a ragged line in the air above them. The rift was colorless. Not clear, not black, but devoid of color in a visual canker sore; it made Paul’s retinas ache.

The rift squirmed in vaginal birth spasms.

Broach
, Paul thought, backing away.

The ’mancy stopped as they felt the sickness growing above them. The warehouse sprang back to normal. He could see the SMASH team, suddenly bereft of their ’mancy-fueled telepathy, communicating via hand signals.

Paul was exquisitely aware of the rawness of the air around them. Reality had been rubbed thin. It still hung together in a fragile way, like streamers after a hard party… but stray sparks of ’mancy caused a row of old, jagged pipes to smolder with remembered heat.

He stood in dry woods populated by living flamethrowers.

“In case you’re not aware, that rift is the first sign of a broach,” a voice called out – the same self-assured female voice that had spoken to them through the now-dead SMASH guard. Except her voice now quavered. “If we do not step down, we will be the incursion point for an otherdimensional breach.
Any
’mancy puts us at risk of a Europe-level catastrophe.”

Valentine quivered, trying to regain her strength.

“
She says she won’t surrender!
” Paul yelled, trying to sound as scared as a hostage tasked to negotiate with SMASH should be.

“We will stand down.” Angry groans echoed around the warehouse. “
We will stand down
,” she repeated. “I understand your frustration, but you newer agents have not lived through a broach. That is because most agents who encounter a broach get no older. The risk to this hemisphere is too large to take revenge.”

“She’s a
terrorist
!”

“We will allow you to leave if you wish,” the leader continued. “But we know ’mancy’s danger; we lived it once, like you. You will lose everything you love, sacrificed to magic. Eventually, you wind up with blowback that might as well be suicide.

“We have ways to bleed off flux without personal damage. That’s how Unimancy works. We can train you to share the strength of many. We can give you a family that understands what you need. We can give you a life you don’t have to tear apart to pay for flux.”

Valentine’s head turned towards the SMASH leader, wanting to believe her. Paul understood why; how many crappy jobs had she been fired from? How many apartments had she lost? Raphael’s sporadic fondness was the closest she dared come to a real relationship – because if she had a true love, her stray flux would seek it out…

With his ’mancy active, Aliyah would be his lightning rod for bad luck…

He pushed the thought away as Raphael tugged Valentine back. Paul wondered if Raphael was starting to understand just what Valentine had done for him. Raph spread his palms open, as if he was ready to let her go–

Valentine shook her head.

“These guys only play Call of Duty.” Then she took Raphael’s hand in hers, a gruff movement that allowed no tenderness. “Besides, I got the best fuck in New York City with me.”

She hugged Raphael, ready to move on–

A SMASH agent leapt down from the rafters, tackling them to the ground.

“–fucking lobotomancies us and thinks she’s getting
away
with it?”

Paul whirled as another female SMASH agent clubbed Raphael to the floor with a truncheon. He froze, not sure what to do; he was supposed to be the hostage. Should he help? How?
Fight
them? He was a scrawny guy facing muscular killers…

The first agent whipped off her helmet, revealing a slim, athletic redhead, face flush with anger. “No worries, ma’am!
We got her
!”

The girl knelt on Valentine’s chest, grabbing the hypodermic at her waist: “We feel them die. You know that? We feel the bullets in our throats, the knives in our ribs. And
you
turned six of our smartest agents into dimbulbs so these fucking ghetto punks could kill them. Half our team, slaughtered.” Paul could see not just the anger, but the terror on the SMASH agent’s face: she’d been reduced to a clockwork machine until her commander fought her back to normal. “When you get to the Refactor, they’re gonna erase all the parts of you that aren’t us. All you’ll be left with is our pain. And once we’re done, the only reason you won’t kill yourself is because you know we’d experience your suicide with you…”

Valentine didn’t struggle. Paul remembered her first words to him:
I don’t like killing
.

“
No!
”

Raphael thrashed free, grabbing at the SMASH agent’s holster. He got the gun halfway out before she shoved him backward.

Raphael flailed, stumbling, then fell on the rusted pipes.

Valentine screamed as the pipes emerged from Raphael’s chest.
They can’t be that sharp
, Paul thought – then saw the residual magic glimmering through the jagged ends.

Raphael looked down, confused. He fingered the sharp rims of the pipes jutting from his chest, like a musician might fret a strange guitar. Then he looked toward Valentine, as if she might explain this to him.

“Valentine,” he whispered – a single word that could have been regret, could have been love, could have been anything. Then he slumped forward.

The first agent plunged the hypodermic towards Valentine’s neck.

Valentine caught the hypo in one hand – a hand now blue and scaly, her fingers boneless. There was a popping noise as Valentine’s helmet shattered, a flabby mockery of her face spilling out. New tentacles flopped out of fresh body cavities as she swelled to the size of a pony, then a Volkswagen, lifting the first agent in the air with octopoid limbs. She swept the boilers to one side with the strength of a boss monster.

“Bad move,” Valentine gurgled.

“
I
had
my flux under
control!
” Valentine flung the SMASH agent through the ceiling. “But you surprised me, and the worst thing I could imagine fucking
happened
!” She grabbed for the other agent, who dove out of the way; Paul felt the agent magically reconnect with her team. “
You killed him
!”

Valentine threw her head back and wailed, a lamenting sound like a foghorn:
I killed him
. Then she reached down from terrifying heights, her distorted face as big as a water tower.

The commander yelled, “
Do not Unify! We cannot risk broach!
”

A red reticle pulsed over Valentine’s left eye. A SMASH member fired, then all of them did, concentrating fire on that one vulnerable spot as the commander screamed at them to stop.

It’s a true hive mind
, Paul realized, shocked. Unimancy wasn’t one person controlling the squad; it was the squad merging into one unit. Angered by Valentine’s ’mancy, the ’mancers had ostracized their commander, choosing revenge over mission.

Valentine’s left eye punctured and sagged, slopping monstrous pus across the warehouse floor.

Our ’mancy comes with built-in weaknesses
, Paul thought.
She exploited their unison, now they’re exploiting her rules
.

“
Valentine!
” he shouted. No one heard him over the gunfire and Valentine’s bellows of anguish. He pounded her tentacles to get her attention; they were the size of oaks, rooted deep into the factory floor. “
Run!
”

The space around Valentine buckled, filling with tiny rips. A long slit unraveled the air before Paul’s nose as he pinwheeled backwards, opening a glimpse into a universe filled with that nauseating no-color. The slit slid straight through a nearby sand bucket.

Instead of sand spilling out, a horde of flylike buzz saws boiled out. They tore into the bucket with a noise like the absence of a hum. The buzzsects ate the bucket’s colors, its dimensions, its textures, gobbling its solidity and shitting out formless chaos.

Then, in one convulsing movement, the rip widened to engulf the bucket’s remains. Another inverted-hum, and the rift gave birth to a fresh cloud of colorless buzzsects.

“
Open to me!
” the commander yelled, picking her way among the rifts to get to her squadron. “
Let me in! Take my calmness!
” A rift squirmed, bisected her. The buzzsects burrowed under her flesh, her skin glimmering as they chewed the ’mancy out of her body. Then her skull burst open, unleashing a plague of new demons.

They flowed outwards, following the threads of Unimancy that had once linked the commander to her squad…

The agents panicked as the buzzsects multiplied, chewing reality away around them. Debris tumbled in random directions, no longer tethered by gravity. The air between the rifts condensed into a pinkish fluid, wobbling bubbles of uncertain physics…

Jagged rifts slid through Valentine’s massive body. She flailed at the buzzsects like she was trying to slap out a fire. All she did was accumulate more rifts, which clung to her, boring deeper. She wailed in horror, the buzzsects lapping up the pus from her destroyed eye.

Paul dodged as the rifts swelled and gave birth, trying to find a safe space. A squad member yelled: “
The commander was right! We have to unite!
”

Rifts boiled out past the warehouse, threading through the parking lot, headed for town…

It’s all about bureaucracy
, Paul thought, flattening himself against the floor to summon the Beast. He tugged some hazardous waste forms from his pocket. Maybe he could relocate the broaches far over the ocean, where they might burn themselves out – or at least buy the national ’mancy teams time to rein them in–

As he pondered the immensity of his task, the rips converged on him, thin lines curving towards fresh magic. Come on, Paul thought, what sort of bureaucratic hazard does a reality incursion create? There would be reports, filled out by surviving SMASH agents, and the papers under his pen changed to top secret documents.

Paul didn’t know how to write the report of how SMASH defeated the incursion. How did you defeat demons? He knew it involved sealing rifts, but only Unimancers knew to do it…

The buzzsects gnawed the form out from underneath his pen tip. His ’mancy dispersed – they fed on ’mancy, they
were
’mancy. The Beast wanted to nudge reality toward more convenient directions, but the buzzsects – they wanted to erase the known laws of physics, replace them with a more chaotic environment filled with toxic predators…

His ’mancy weakened reality. It made their job easier.

The buzzsects finished off the form, then devoured his artificial leg. “Hey, now…” he muttered, waving at them feebly.

They moved in, plucking at Paul’s skin, summoning glimmers of magic to the surface. Lights rippled along Paul’s arm; he was filled with ’mancy. Tasty, tasty ’mancy.

They circled, savoring the moment. Then one darted down to excise a chunk from Paul’s forearm – leaving no blood, no meat, just a pencil-sized furrow of nothingness. A window to the bone underneath.

Paul looked down, thinking:
That shouldn’t happen
.

There were rules. When you cut someone’s skin, they
bled
. That was the way things
worked
.

That was the way physics worked. Physics led to chemistry, which led to biology, which led to millions of consistent interactions that kept Paul alive. The smallest atoms followed rules, banded together into molecules, played fair with forces. They all followed the law.

It was like you never,
ever
submitted a Claims Form F-14 without getting it signed off on by your manager.

Or how affidavits weren’t acceptable as evidence in court without a notary stamp.

Or the magnificence of requiring two pieces of ID, with photo, to minimize the risk of forgery.

Paul glared at the hole in his arm, recognizing his existence was nothing more than a vast set of interlocking rules, many of which seemed crazy. But taken as a whole, they provided a reliable, understandable, productive environment.

“
My arm is supposed to bleed
,” he said in a stern voice that would have caused any customer service representative to tremble. It was the voice of the irrational customer – the one who knew that he had a receipt, that the gift was still in its protective cellophane wrapping, that the refund policies are posted right on the wall, and he would not leave until the $38.69 he had paid was refunded to his credit card
in full
.

The world, realizing its inadequacy, listened. Chemistry fell back into line, mass rebalanced itself, atoms spun in the right direction. Blood spurted in great gouts from Paul Tsabo’s arm.

The buzzsects withdrew.

“That,” Paul said, pointing at a deliquescing fog, “should be a bucket of sand.” It coalesced into a tin bucket apologetically.

“That,” Paul said, focusing his willpower on the floating pinkish bobbles, “should be nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, with trace elements.” It puffed back into wisps of air.

“You,” Paul said to the buzzsects, “are not aerodynamic.” They dropped from the air, twitching helplessness.

Paul turned his attention to the rifts. They were
offensive
. This was not how you created a world that filled out forms. Something greater shifted into place behind him – the universe, perhaps? A larger body of physics and complexity that offered to use Paul as a doorway to step through and reassert itself.

He sat down in a half-lotus position, crossing one leg awkwardly over his stump. His arm pulsed blood, squirting it with each heartbeat onto the concrete floor, but that was good. Blood was proof of commitment.

Paul stitched up the rifts. It took an exhausting amount of energy, but it was as satisfying as completing jigsaw puzzles. He found the blank spaces the rifts had annihilated, investigated until he deduced what law of thermodynamics had been removed, and replaced it. He pulled the rifts towards him in a content daze, analyzing to determine exactly where physics had become knotted, then plucked each knot apart with nimble fingers.

He was unpacking his books. He was filing his forms.

He was in heaven.

By the time he tied off the last knot, the floor was slick with blood and his heart struggled to beat. The remaining SMASH agents called to each other, trying to figure out what was happening, but Paul could not speak.

He fell backward. Someone caught him.

A man with emerald teeth.