Flex (6 page)

That’s what you love most
, Paul thought.
Your collection
. He filed that knowledge away, trying to reconcile “a love of videogames” with “a love of mass murder.” He peered in – were they
violent
videogames? Was he–

The crunch of tires on gravel.

A door, slamming.

Paul brought the plans to mind, hunting for another escape route. None. Stupidly, he’d holed himself up in this basement. Now he’d have to face down a more experienced ‘mancer–

–with his foot. His stupid, missing foot.

A cheerful burp. A rattle of cans, shoved into the fridge. Then footsteps, skipping down the stairs. The ’mancer whistled the Super Mario tune.

A strange sense of clarity stole over Paul. All his other options had sublimed away, leaving nothing but a bold con. If it failed, he died.

He plunged his hands into his pockets, standing as dramatically as he could in the far shadows. He was glad he’d worn his suit today – it made him more imposing.

The ’mancer hit the lights. Fluorescents flickered on.

She gazed at Paul with mascaraed eyes.

T
he girl
who burned Aliyah shouldn’t look that… sunny,
Paul thought, dazed
. Or that young.
A ’mancer in her mid-twenties indicated abundant talent.

The gamemancer’s pudgy face held a pixie-like mischief – even as she sized Paul up with storm-gray eyes. She looked like she’d stepped out of a Final Fantasy game, all black ribbons and buckles; her ironed hair had been pulled back into pigtails, emitting a playful gothiness.

She was fifty pounds overweight, but rather than hiding her figure, she displayed her ample tattooed skin in a cleavage-baring crinoline dress. It was bold, iconoclastic, appealing. Maybe even sexy, if she hadn’t been flexing her purple-nailed fingers around an imaginary controller.

The tingle of magic filled the basement, a summer storm pregnant with lightning.

“I don’t like killing,” she whispered. Which surprised him. She’d killed thirty people in calculated murders – how could she have regrets?

If Paul responded immediately, she’d set the tone for this encounter. So he matched her glare for glare, hands trembling inside his pockets.

“The problem is, you know where I operate,” she continued. Paul’s phone sizzled and popped. “I’m betting from your cheap government suit that you know what I’m doing, and I’m not in a position to relocate. That doesn’t leave us many options.” She looked mournful. “I
really
don’t like killing.”

As she moved her fingers in preset patterns, summoning gamefire down upon him, Paul said, “What if I told you that you had only ten minutes before the cops arrived?”

She paused – literally paused, thumbing an imaginary stop button. “Why would you tell me that?”

“Just enough time to get out with your videogames,” Paul continued. “Your tilt the other day – it caused a rain of frogs not two miles from here. They’re hunting for you. Hunting
hard
.”

Her eyes slid to one side, looking for an escape. He slipped in the biggest lie of all: “I came to warn you.”

“Who the hell
are
you?”

“You can ask questions. Or you can get those games out. You might make it out with your skin intact once the SMASH team arrives, but those videogames? Shot to shards.”

“How do you know?”

He flexed that muscle back at the office. It had been a lie when he started… But now, fluttering into an inbox in the Stapleton police department, was a notification of an all-points reality hazard at 672 Tompkins Avenue. He’d faxed it into the cops two hours ago.

Normally, he’d need to sign something to activate the ’mancy. But having seen this gamemancer Flex imaginary fingers, he imagined a pen in his hand, signed
symbolic
paper.

A helicopter’s rotors echoed across the rooftops.

See?
Paul thought, dizzied by the accomplishment.
She’s already teaching you
.

She ran her fingernails along the bright orange Bowser tattoo on her forearm, arm hairs raised from Paul’s ’mancy. Her wariness slackened into wonderment, that pixie-like face lighting up with a silly grin, and Paul felt the spark leap between them:
You do this, too.

Though if she was experienced enough to tell what he was doing – if other ’mancers
could
tell what other ’mancers did – then he was dead.

“Oh. My. God.” Her voice rose to a fanboy squee – a cheerful gushing that sounded nothing like a murderer. “What’s
your
obsession?”

“Questions, or safety.” Paul sounded more confident than he felt. “Choose.”

She flinched, then broke towards the shelves. Paul felt bad; she was panicked. He emptied out a sack of crushed hematite onto the rug, puffs of smoky green spiraling upwards, and tossed it to her. She hurled her cartridges in.

“Aww,
dammit
.” She stroked the beat-up chair as though it were a cat she had to put to sleep. “I’m gonna miss you, boy. But I can’t carry you.”

“Better than the Army,” he said. “Now run. We’ll be in touch.”
We?
he thought, amazed at his ability to manufacture bullshit.

She gave him a guarded look. Already, she hated being in his debt. Or, perhaps, for being responsible when she wanted to play.

“Your name,” she commanded. Paul chuckled, trying to preserve the mystery; she stood, Doc Martined feet planted far apart, implacable.

“I said
your name
,” she repeated.

He should have despised her. She was a terrorist. She’d hurt Aliyah. She also didn’t bullshit, didn’t try to pretend this was anything other than a Flex lab, didn’t try to pretend she hadn’t intended to murder him. She held an
honesty
.

And she loved magic. Just like him.

“…Paul,” he told her.

“You’re good, Paul.” She heaved the bag of videogames over one shoulder, the hematite bag over the other. “But you’re no Cigarette-Smoking Man.”

And she was gone.

P
aul slumped back
against the tiki bar, feeling the exhilaration shiver through his muscles. He’d done it. The first step towards saving Aliyah.

Now he just had to track that ’mancer down again, convince her there was usefulness in an alliance… and she’d teach him how to tame The Beast.

The thought had a strange eagerness he didn’t care for, a dog yanking on the leash. The training was necessary, but he also had an addictive urge to share his secret. He’d hidden his love of magic all these years, but with the girl’s company came the ability to
enthuse
.

He felt no enthusiasm now. His skull was clogged with pressure: flux.

He limped up the stairs, feeling a new hitch in his artificial foot; she’d done splash damage, frying his phone. Could
he
do ’mancy that blatant? He doubted it; bureaucromancy worked subtly and slow. Then again, he’d cleared a path through the fire…

He emerged from the basement just as a SMASH team fired tear gas in through the kitchen windows. Four canisters punched through simultaneously, spraying green smoke, fired by four separate men combined into a single Unimantic weapon.

“
I’m from Samaritan Mutual!
” Paul yelled. “
Don’t
–”

He doubled over, vomiting. Paul thought his hands had trembled before, but now they rattled like branches in a windstorm–

–
nerve agents
, he thought.
They’re taking no chances with a ’mancer
–

As Paul’s knees gave out, four gunmetal-black cylinders sailed through the shattered window, rolling on the tile floor–

–flashbangs–

–they exploded, a supernova that obliterated Paul’s thoughts.

Rough gloves grabbed his shoulders, smacked his head until his hair stopped burning. They tugged a hood over his head, bound his wrists with plastic strips.

I’m not a ’mancer
, Paul tried to say, but his words turned into fountains of puke.

They hauled him outside. Paul’s foot caught on something; they yanked so hard, Paul thought his artificial leg would pop off. They slammed him against a police car.

“
Nerf him
!” Someone jabbed a needle into his neck, and the remainder of the world spun away.

B
eing awakened
by your own projectile vomiting was not a good way to come to. A young Unimancer in a gray camo SMASH uniform tugged Paul’s head back, wiped off his chest.

“…Death Metal?” Paul asked.

The kid cocked his head in a mechanical, birdlike way, trying to recognize Paul. Paul remembered busting this kid for making a new brand of Flex called “Death Metal”. Anyone who took it got musical powers of a distinctly rocking flavor, spewing hellfire and shattering windows. It hadn’t taken Paul long to compile a list of obsessed Death Metal fans.

The kid’s long black locks had been shaved to a crew cut, his tribal neck tattoos laser-removed to pale scars.

“Do I know you, sir?” His stare was robotic.

Paul remembered Death’s Metal’s Flex as chaotic energy, mostly harmless – whereas actual death metal was guttural, horrific growls, Death Metal’s Flex was cartoonish. People who used Death Metal’s drugs filled the air with wild fountains of goggle-eyed skulls and skeleton guitars and gyrating groupies…

“You…” Death Metal offered him water, which Paul drank gratefully. Two people screamed at each other, their arguments cutting into Paul’s ears like buzz saws. “I tracked you down. For making Flex. In Duff’s Bar in Brooklyn? In the pit?”

Death Metal blinked, as if that was a long time ago. Except it hadn’t been; it’d been maybe a year since Paul had pointed SMASH at him. Now all of that glorious ’mancy had been squashed out of him, reduced to a sad telepathy so he could join the military hive mind.

“Do you still rock out?”

Death Metal’s impassive face hitched in a half smile, but then became distracted by something Paul could not see: his Unimanced allies. Two other soldiers placed a loving palm on each of his shoulders.

“No, sir,” Death Metal said, shaking off the memory. “I think as one, now.”

Then the three soldiers looked, their faces wrinkling with simultaneous concern, over at the argument between a beat cop and their commander.

“…
I’m
overriding your authority!” That voice grated on Paul in familiar ways. “You think Paul Tsabo – the guy who’s put away more ’mancers than anyone else – is a ’mancer? No. You’re not taking him to the Refactor.”

The Refactor?
Paul thought muzzily, legs twitching.
They can’t bring me to the Refactor;
I barely survived police training…

“Procedure is to bring every suspect captured within a non-Euclidean zone back for testing,” a stern female voice replied. “’Mancers have no look. I personally Refactored each man on this team; they all looked ordinary when they arrived. That’s why we leave detection to the
professionals
.”

The three Unimancers kept their gazes on their mundane commander, muttering her words as she spoke them, nakedly adoring her.

“The man’s a cop,” insisted the grating voice.

“He’s an insurance claims agent.”

“You never stop wearing the badge. He stays.”

Paul rubbed his eyes. There were four other SMASH members in black armor, shotguns slung across their backs, each wearing prominent white opals on their left shoulder: expensive, precise ’mancy detectors. They stood obediently behind a slim woman with a curt buzz cut and a bulldog face.

The woman glared at the ten Stapleton cops who had surrounded Paul. She shifted stances, ready to fight all ten at once… but she had the wariness of a woman who no longer relished kicking ass.

Paul could see she was tempted, though. Anyone would be. The guy standing before her was almost as scrawny as Paul, but he carried himself with a bodybuilder’s world-taunting swagger. A wispy mustache floated over an annoying smirk, a pube-style mustache you had to have either an insane amount of self-confidence or an insane amount of self-denial to think was at all attractive.

Lenny Pirrazzini, unfortunately, had both.

Lenny was a man of firm habits: you put in your shift, you went to the bar for a beer, then tucked your kids into bed. Where Paul saw beauty in the way ’mancy changed the rules, Lenny saw threats to tradition.

Still, he’d idolized Paul for all the wrong reasons, and so Paul was never more grateful to see him. He stood before the SMASH team leader, thumping his chest with both hands, detailing the many and varied reasons he didn’t have to hand
shit
over to you brainwashed Gandalfs.

The Unimancy leader eyed the cops again. They were doughy officers but steadfast in their resolve: no one hauled away an ex-cop on their watch.

“Your bosses asked us along on this milk run to educate you,” the woman said, sneering. “Mr Tsabo has
been
bagged, he’s gonna
get
tagged, and that’s the end of it.”

One cop stepped between the SMASH agents surrounding Paul to put a protective hand on Paul’s shoulder – an unconscious echo of the Unimancers protecting their own. Paul was glad – he’d seen what happened to mundanes who’d been shipped to the Refactor. The government ran tests for weeks, stressing you both physically and psychologically until you broke and retreated to using ’mancy. But if you weren’t a ’mancer, sometimes you just broke…

Paul couldn’t hide his power there. And when they found out, they’d brainwash him into Unimancy.

“So hand him over,” the SMASH team leader snapped. “Or this cooperative exercise is ended.”

“Hey, we
got
this.” Lenny flicked her the finger. “Tear gas, flashbangs, boom. Fuckin’ ’mancers collapse like every other dumbass criminal when you bushwhack ’em. Big surprise! Call
me
in! I’ll do your job for you, fishtits!”

…fishtits?
Paul thought.

She smirked. “You’ve got a terrorist in your midst, and you’re throwing away valuable training?”

Lenny’s grin wilted. But he never changed his mind, once he made a decision.

The SMASH team gathered up their equipment and tromped into the onyx-black helicopter with the gold logo emblazoned on the side: Special ’Mancer Apprehension, Suppression, and Hauling. The words ringed around a hand closed into a single fist, each finger from a different person: one black, one white, one painted female nail, one yellow, one red.

The cops watched the SMASH team evacuate, ringing around Paul protectively until the helicopter’s flashing red lights vanished over the horizon.

Then Lenny punched Paul in the shoulder.

“The man is
back
!” Lenny gave Paul a horse-toothed grin. “Of
course
you wanna pop that daughter-burning sonuvabitch yourself!”

Well, I guess New York’s Finest know about Aliyah
, Paul thought.

“Got a little eager,” Paul demurred. Lenny leaned down to sponge the vomit from Paul’s tie. “Didn’t think you’d ever transfer out of Manhattan, Lenny. You loved the street…”

“They needed a sergeant here to show ’em how it’s done. But what the fuck are
you
doing, huh?” He rapped his knuckles against Paul’s artificial foot. “This means you can’t just run in and shoot bitches. You gotta get wise.
Sneaky
.” He cuffed Paul in the head.

“I wanted to see his lair,” Paul lied. “See how he thinks…”

“Yeah, well, their infrared picked up your body heat, and wham, you’re puking up next week’s lunch. You almost got carted to fuckin’ Nevada.”

Paul hung his head. An experienced SMASH team had taken him down easily. All his ’mancy hadn’t helped.

“Get him up, get him up.” Two officers pulled Paul to his feet. Paul groaned as he saw the Channel 5 news crew filming eagerly. Of
course
the press was here. This was a PR exercise. And Paul had just made the nightly news.

The cops intercepted the reporters, but the flashbulbs dazzled Paul’s nerve-gas-addled eyes. Lenny escorted Paul over to the police car, whispering in Paul’s ear.

“Look, I know you wanna kill after what happened to your kid.” He thumped Paul on the shoulder. “The government can wipe those freaks’ brains, put us normal folks in command of ’em, but still… one day, that shit will backlash and bam! New York’s the next Europe.

“Still,” he continued. “You can’t fuck with those guys head-on. Work underground, my friend. They bring us ordinaries to the Refactor to make sure we’re out of the
way
, man. Remember, we’re all in this together.”

Then Lenny thumped the hood of the car; a thumpy man was Lenny Pirrazzini. “Hey, Freddy, get our hero home safe, a’ight? Because we need at least
one
competent sonuvabitch to take down this Anathema bastard. Paul, visit me; we’ll go hunting. Like old times.”

We never hunted before
, Paul thought – then the car drove away. Paul lolled back. The nerve gas made his vision wander helplessly towards every movement.

“There’s a Thermos under the seat,” the driver – Freddy – said. Paul unscrewed the cap, grateful for a swig of milky Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Easy on the stomach. He felt a little more like a cop with each sip.

Today was a bad beat. Not all bad; he’d found his ’mancer. But SMASH now had suspicions. And the reporters…

…he remembered how he’d made the front page after killing the illustromancer. People had sent shredded Titian prints, sent long emails detailing the bloody tortures Paul should have inflicted upon her before she died, held his most shameful moment up as exemplary. The press overlooked him as Aliyah’s father because as a child, she’d been kept out of the reports – but now?

The headlines would reflect Lenny Pirazzinni’s interpretation of events: Paul Tsabo, ’mancer killer, was on the hunt.

As the cop car zoomed back towards Manhattan’s bright towers, Paul wondered: had the SMASH team even been involved before he’d altered the flow of time? Would they have even shown up if he had called it in from his cell phone?

He knew so little about magic. His hands trembled from the nerve agent, his eyes dry as raisins. Yet that strange stuffiness had lifted. Were tonight’s events flux or ordinary bad luck?

The gamemancer. The gamemancer would teach him how to master flux.

She had to.