The Flux (7 page)

Valentine jerked away. “And how is it going to get better with
more
’mancers bringing their flux load crashing down on us? Hell, Aliyah goddamned near killed us all with her last trick.”

“It’s not my fault,” Aliyah protested. “They hurt Daddy! And you! Those stupid mundanes deserved to be punished!”

Paul scowled. “Where did you hear
that
term?”

“…punished?”

“
Mundanes
.”

Aliyah seemed startled by her father’s anger. “In school...”

“That,” Paul said hotly, “is a
bad word
. It makes it seem like we’re
better
than they are.”

Aliyah thrust out her lower lip. “We
are
better. Mundanes are
mean
.”

“Sweetie. I know the police are... a problem, but–”

“
Mommy’s
a problem.”

Paul exchanged a quick glance over to Valentine:
can
we put your concerns on hold to discuss the kid’s issues?
Valentine nodded and grabbed a towel, blotting the blood off her nose.

“Aliyah,” Paul warned. “Do not talk about your mother like that.”

“She wants to kill me.”

“What? Your Mommy loves you. More than anything.”

Aliyah shook her head. “She was at the table, talking with stupid
David
. And David was talking about how close he was to finding the ’mancers you couldn’t catch. They were
laughing
, Daddy! Laughing at how he was going to find us! They toasted to him finding you!”

“Sweetie, that’s–”

“And then I was so mad, I asked if I could go play my Nintendo so I didn’t start yelling, and Mommy said if I didn’t stop playing, then I’d become a videogamemancer and David would have to hunt me down.”

Oh no
, Paul thought. Imani had probably meant it as a joke. But to Aliyah, in these circumstances…

“I didn’t hurt David,” Aliyah said. “I
wanted
to. Instead, I’m moving in with you and Valentine, and never talking to mundanes as long as I live.”

“Aliyah. You must talk to your mother.”

“
No
. She
acts
nice! But I can’t
trust
her.”

This would all go so much easier
, Paul thought,
if I could tell Imani what was happening
.

Then he remembered what Valentine had said:
It’s the beginning of a slide into a deep abyss. SMASH will take one of us…

Paul wondered what that load of flux squirming away had already done to them. Yet he was strangely grateful Aliyah had generated a big load of flux; ’mancers got more bad luck whenever they felt like they broke their own personal rulesets, and Aliyah must have felt guilty indeed about running away from home.

“You’re not moving in with us full-time, Aliyah. The court order says we alternate weeks. When you’re twelve, if you feel the same way, we’ll get you a lawyer.”

Aliyah stomped her feet, and the apartment complex shuddered. “You can’t stop bullets with your stupid papermancy! This is the one thing you can do! You
fix
this!”

“I
could
change that, Aliyah. But I won’t.”

“Then you break Mommy and David up!”

Aliyah crossed her arms, braced to dismiss whatever counterargument he made. Going head to head had never worked out well.

Paul took another tack.

“Do you know what happened after Daddy lost his foot, Aliyah?”

Predictably, Aliyah softened. She craved that intimacy of being let in on grown-up talk. “…No.”

“Do you remember
how
Daddy lost it?”

“You–” Her eyes widened as she remembered. “You killed a ’mancer. But before she died, she hurt you.”

He nodded. “She hurt me in more ways than one. Because I didn’t want to kill her. I’d never seen ’mancy before, and she was an illustromancer–”

“A what?”

“A ’mancer who loved art. More specifically, this poor girl loved a painter called Titian. She had posters of all his art tacked up in an alleyway. Daddy only found her because she was selling Flex, trying to make enough money to buy Titian’s paintings. Not that she could have, poor thing. She was crazy to think she could buy paintings from the museums, like a shopping mall.

“But crazy as she was, she loved those paintings. And they came alive for her. Angels soared overhead, warriors thundered on horseback, sea serpents writhed in the oceans...”

Aliyah hugged her knees, looking troubled. “And that….”

“Yes, Aliyah. It all went away when I killed her. But Daddy was a mundane back then. Daddy thought all magic was bad. That’s why I hunted her down. I was just as stupid as Mommy or David.” Paul sagged. “And when she saw me, all
she
saw was a mundane. Someone to be killed. So she sent her painted horses after me, and I shot her.”

Aliyah frowned, uncertain. “…so?”

Valentine gave Paul a confused look.
Yeah, Paul. What’s your moral here?

Paul felt like he’d been leading up to something. But there
wasn’t
a moral to be taken away. They
couldn’t
be honest.

“I isolated myself, Aliyah. I... I pushed your Mother away, and she never understood. Even if I... well, I
couldn’t
tell her about the ’mancy, but once I started walling that part of my life away from her, the rest of it just... well, it died.”

“David wants us all dead,” Aliyah whispered – as though shamed to say such a thing out loud. “And Mommy? Mommy
agrees
with him.”

Paul wanted to say that David was just following the polls and Imani was just going along with David, that of course Imani didn’t want all the ’mancers locked away – especially not Aliyah. But Imani
did
hate ’mancers. She’d hated them ever since the illustromancer had crippled Paul, hated them so hard that Paul couldn’t even tell Imani that he blamed himself for the accident.

That
almost
, that granule of doubt, seized his tongue for a critical second before he stammered out a “no.”

Aliyah nodded, as if that settled things.

“I love Mommy. But… we can’t trust her. So I won’t go back.”

Paul fishmouthed. He looked to Valentine for help; Valentine shrugged.

“No, Aliyah,” he said. “No. You can’t abandon–”

Someone pounded on the door.

Paul realized the portal to the Super Mario lava level was still open, filling the room with the stink of hot metal; Valentine slammed it shut, locking her personal flux-load tight so it wouldn’t seep out.

Aliyah looked at Paul as if to ask,
See how much you trust the mundanes?

The pounding continued, now accompanied by a muffled voice: “
Paul! Paul! It’s Lenny! Open up!
”

Paul gestured at Valentine to take Aliyah to her bedroom. Lenny wasn’t the brightest bulb on the marquee, but if Lenny met Paul’s friend with the videogame tattoos all over her body…

Paul unlocked the door. Lenny Pirrazzini came bounding in, excited as a puppy.

“Paul!” he cried. “You–”

He took in Paul’s uncharacteristic stubble, Paul’s blood-soaked bandage on his ever-bleeding arm, the reek of Scotch in the kitchen.

“Whoah.” Lenny wiped his sleeve across his forehead, wiping away a prickle of sweat; the apartment must have been at least a hundred degrees. “Now I see why you weren’t picking up your phone, buddy. I guess a little pity party is justified, but – whoah. Didn’t see you as a drinker.”

Paul was too tired to argue. “What’s up, Lenny?”

“I got news that’ll get you back on the case, Paul. It’s David! He had a brainstorm to find Psycho Mantis!”

“Have I….” Paul had never minded Lenny’s blatant adulation, but he’d never encouraged it, either – and Lenny seemed like a man who, once he’d broken the seal, would have dropped by at odd hours. “Did I give you my address?”

“Looked you up in the records,” Lenny said, sticking his head in Paul’s refrigerator and waving the cool into his face. “I know, I know, ‘confidentiality’ and all that happy crappy, Paul, but damn! We are on the
case
!”

Paul’s terror grew. “…You realize I’m not on that case anymore, Lenny.”

Lenny looked heartbroken, then rallied and punched Paul in the shoulder. “You kidder! Guy like you
hunts
! Even if the mayor takes you off the case for a little collateral damage, will
that
keep you away? It sure didn’t stop you when you tracked down Anathema! Nah, you’ll find these magic-slinging psychos wherever they cower! You
hate
’mancers!”

“…what’s David doing?”

“He had a brainstorm an hour ago!” Lenny held up both hands, as if framing a picture. “He told us to
follow the fake IDs
.”

Lenny grabbed a stunned Paul and shook him.

“Don’t’cha get it?” Lenny cried. “We’ve got all four fake IDs on record from the Lark Street bust! Someone put a
lot
of money into getting all the right certificates filed, to create the illusion of a working garage!”

“But Psycho Mantis, he’s... he’s a videogamemancer…”

“A videogamemancer with
backing
. Someone’s doing his grunt work. David, that prick, he’s hired a team of analysts –” And here, Lenny beamed, acting as though he’d handed Paul the greatest of gifts “–but who’s better suited to track down white-collar crime than you, the Master of Paperwork?”

Paul sagged against the counter as Lenny rummaged around in Paul’s fridge. He understood something Lenny did not:

Bureaucromancy did not conjure up certifications and fake IDs out of nowhere; it was more like a supercharged form of money laundering. Everything Paul did was on record. He could bury the request underneath a trail, he could masquerade behind a series of faked IDs, but if someone was determined enough then Paul’s name would turn up
somewhere
downstream.

“We
got
the bastard, Paul!” Lenny cried, thrusting a celebratory beer into Paul’s hands. “And we’ll pitch in – the guys on the force know who had our backs when the press wanted our heads! You point us at this cocksucker, and we’ll do the rest!”

Paul eyed the beer blearily, then swigged it down in one gulp.
At least I know where the flux went
, he thought.

I
t’s just an insurance company
, Paul told himself.
You worked there, you got a better job, you quit. It’s not like they’re mad at you or anything
.

But still, Paul felt powerless standing before Samaritan Mutual’s great glass tower. He’d have to walk back in there and ask for his old job.

He needed that job – not just for the money, but for the ability to request forms. His bureaucromancy, he’d discovered last night, was hampered. Back when he’d been an insurance agent, he’d had the legal ability to request police dossiers, which he could chain upwards into phenomenal requests. When he’d been the New York Task Force leader, he’d had almost unlimited access.

But Paul Tsabo, unemployed civilian?

As a man with no particular legal standing, his power was much, much lessened. He could file requests for information, but no one was obligated to grant them – and though his bureaucromancy could still force people’s hands, it also increased his flux load dramatically. In obfuscating his paper trail last night, what had once cost him a stubbed toe now required the theft of a credit card.

Paul frowned. The credit card had been stolen at Paul’s favorite diner, where they’d taken Aliyah out for a late-night supper. She’d refused to place her order with the mundane waiter, instead pointing to the items on the menu.

In an ideal world, his daughter’s decision to move in with them would be his first priority – followed closely by tracking down the King – but the government was hot on his tail.

Fortunately, Imani had been understanding when he’d told her Aliyah wanted to stay at his place for a few days. He’d heard David yelling in the background as Imani shushed him, bellowing she had every legal right to demand her daughter back…

But Imani had simply asked, “Is this what she needs, Paul?”

Paul hadn’t been sure. But he also wasn’t sure how to keep his videogamemancer daughter at her mother’s house if she didn’t want to stay. So he’d said, “Give her a couple of days, Imani. Let me see if I can talk some sense into her.”

“I know I should make her an appointment for a psychiatrist – she’s young for medications, but…” Imani sighed. “I just… I don’t know how to talk to her anymore.”

Neither do I
, Paul had thought. But Paul knew of no psychologists qualified to rein in daughters with unlimited cosmic power – and if they did exist, then SMASH employed them.

He took the elevator up to the Samaritan Mutual offices, twitching with reluctance. He had to fix things before Aliyah’s next flux-load complicated things. He’d considered setting himself up as a private investigator, but the licensing process would have taken weeks. He could certify himself in seconds, but with David poking around, Paul didn’t want people asking how he’d punched through the paperwork with supernatural speed.

No. Paul needed instant access, in order to cover his trail against David Giabatta. His old job as an insurance claims investigator would get him there. He could make requests in Samaritan’s name; they’d grant him temporary access until his official paperwork came through.

So why was he so nervous?

The elevator doors creaked open. Paul ambled in, looked over Samaritan Mutual’s offices – as ever, a strangely antiquated workplace. Lawrence Payne, Samaritan’s CEO, infamously despised computers. He didn’t mind data analysis, but thought the “frippery” of email led to needless miscommunications, wasted time spending fifteen minutes writing memos that a two-minute conversation could handle. Emails weren’t
dis
allowed, certainly, as many customers expected them, but… if you sent emails to your superiors, your promotion chances sank.

So the phones always rang at Samaritan. People bustled from cubicle to cubicle, tugging each other aside for impromptu meetings. Everyone was in open-air offices, so the managers had nowhere to hide when Payne stormed through. There were typewriters, honest-to-God
typewriters
, where underpaid secretaries read information off computer screens and typed claims onto paper forms, all because Mr Payne didn’t trust printouts.

Paul had taken to typing up his own forms directly, just in case Mr Payne needed them – an inefficiency his co-workers thought crazy, until they saw how many of Paul’s claims went through.

Reflexively, Paul scanned the offices for Mr Payne’s presence. You learned to watch out for the old man – the gray Marine buzzcut, the squared shoulders, the old sour face, striding through the office as people practically flung themselves out of his way. Payne still walked with a soldier’s vigor, though he was pushing eighty.

Mr Payne dropping by your office was like a military invasion. He ensured no claims were paid unless they hewed perfectly to the paperwork he himself had designed. If he showed up, it meant you had approved an imperfectly filed claim and cost him money.

People who cost Lawrence Payne money got fired.

Paul tightened his tie. Already, he felt the tension returning.

Yet it wasn’t tension that made his hands tremble.

He looked at the beleaguered secretaries, hammering keys into paper on antique machines, all so Mr Payne could find a way to refuse more claims. And Paul put a name to this feeling:

Guilt.

Paul had discovered his skills as a bureaucromancer at Samaritan – fixing forms for claimants so Samaritan’s stingy claims department couldn’t deny them. Hell, Old Man Payne had denied Aliyah’s plastic surgery claims, sniffing that reconstructive facial surgery wasn’t life-threatening…

Mr Payne had only hired him because he was good at tracking down evidence of ’mancy, and ’mancy was cause for refusal on cheaper insurance plans. Paul’s entire
job
had been to find ways to negate claims, which he’d counteracted by staying late and filling out forms to ensure others would
get
their money, and…

His leaving had hurt people.

Samaritan’s forms were needlessly specific and baroque; there were forms to handle damages caused by meteor showers, forms if you slipped in the shower, different forms if you slipped at a pool. Yet that paperwork had felt like a living organism to Paul, each form serving a specific and perfect purpose…

And Paul had been its heart.

When he’d left, he’d taken Samaritan Mutual’s kindness with him. People who didn’t know the difference between the
wasp
hive injury form and the
bee
hive injury form might as well have had no insurance at all. That challenge was fair on some objective level – if you had the time to devote to navigating their thousands of forms, eventually Samaritan Mutual had to pay out. But who had the time?

Paul had, once. If he just filled out the right forms, he’d save people.

He’d saved people so often, it had become magic.

And in taking the job at the Task Force, Paul had abandoned his duty.

Nobody at Samaritan blamed him, he realized; he was mad at
himself
, for allowing a cold company to freeze into permafrost. Mr Payne had always run a skinflint operation, but Paul’s absence had allowed Mr Payne to rip even more people off.

Now he had to kiss the old man’s muscled ass until the skinflint gave him the information he needed….

“Mr Tsabo?”

Paul didn’t recognize the cheery voice – but as the Mundane Who Killed ’Mancers, strangers often greeted him enthusiastically.

Paul didn’t know the woman – a Samaritan Mutual secretary, to judge from her prim, 1960s-style dress – but the tray of Dunkin’ Donuts this cheerful Asian woman carried was all too familiar.

“A gift from an old friend,” she said. She grinned as she handed Paul the donuts, the excited smile of someone happy to be in on the gag.

Inside the lid, on a Post-It Note: “CALL ME, YOU YUTZ.”

“Tell the old rascal we miss him,” said the secretary. “The company’s just not as interesting without his stories.”

“Will do.” Paul dialed his old friend Kit’s number, holding the phone away from his ear so he wouldn’t be deafened.

“
Boychik!
” Kit’s voice was scratchy but boisterous, an old Jewish man who’d worn his throat raw extolling various pleasures. “
Finally
you call! What, is the toll call to Florida too expensive for your unemployed ass?”

“Kit, who the hell talks about ‘toll calls’ anymore? You’re going senile in retirement.”

“I am going mad with boredom in retirement. No magical cases to investigate. The beach is nice, but it’s not the same as being on the hunt.”

“So you gossip.”

“It’s what old men do. And Valentine, she likes to blab once in a while. Good kid. A little low on the self-control, a little too into the Vanilla Kremes – speaking of which, what’s your choice?”

Paul looked down at the donuts, plucked out a chocolate glazed. “I’m taking a glazed today. Do you ever stop with the donut psychoanalysis?”

Kit grunted, displeased. “Chocolate glazed isn’t your style, bubbie. You changed to a Boston Kreme, after Anathema. From sweet and gooey to crisp and chocolatey. And a man switches donuts when he’s on the cusp of a major change.”

“My donuts have nothing to do with my state of mind.”

“Really?” Paul practically heard Kit raise an eyebrow. “So with the firefight and the firing and the fights with your daughter, you deny you’re on the cusp of a major change?”

Paul swallowed his donut.

“As I thought,” Kit concluded. “You’re running hot. And you’re going to blow this interview unless you listen to your old friend Kit.”

“I’ll just kiss that rat bastard’s ass until my lips turn brown.”

Kit sighed. “He knows you hate him, boychik. He’ll push your buttons to see where your loyalties lie.”

“My loyalties? What about
his
loyalties!? He–”

Kit clucked his tongue in loud mock sympathy. With a shock of shame, Paul realized he was practically shouting into the phone.

Maybe Kit had a point about him running hot.

“Yes, he refused the surgeries to repair Aliyah’s face after she got burned,” Kit said sympathetically. “Yes, he tried to fire you when you started making waves. But… that’s not personal to him.”

“Not
personal
?” He cupped his hand over the phone. “He would have left Aliyah
scarred
! For God’s sake, Kit, it sounds like you
admire
the bastard!”

“Admire? No. But I respect him. Because he lets me live in Florida.”

“‘Lets’ you? Are you under Samaritan Mutual House arrest?”

Kit laughed. “No, silly. But I have a nice pension. It’s pricey, living on the coast. How many companies do you know that haven’t tapped into their pension funds these days? Not Payne, though. He wouldn’t allow it.”

“That’s sweet, Kit, but... he was going to let Aliyah die.”

“Die? No. He paid for Aliyah’s hospital bills to keep her alive – he just wouldn’t foot the bill for her to be pretty again.”

“So you’re saying Payne is…” Paul swallowed. “
Good people
?”

“I’m saying the man has his own morality. You think he owes you for the hell he put you through – but Payne won’t see it that way. Payne won’t hire you for your old job. Payne doesn’t need
me
, and
I
was your manager.”

Paul grabbed a cruller. This was becoming a two-donut day. “So what do I do?”

“Offer him something he needs. Something he can’t get anywhere else. Something profitable.”

Paul wished he could hug Kit over the phone. The old man had always been good at refocusing him when he got too angry. “But what if what Payne needs is more than I’m willing to give?”

“Then give it to him. Because I gotta tell you… even from here, I can tell Aliyah needs some help, and fast.”