Flex, p.15
Flex, page 15
A SMASH squadron would take Gunza and company down in short order – too short. But make a small batch of Flex to get Gunza’s guard down, dump an earthquake on SMASH’s headquarters to reduce their numbers, and it’d be an even battle between the two. Which gave Paul and Valentine a chance to battle their way out in the confusion.
If Valentine was good enough.
He looked around, trying to remember where the exits were; he could see the gaping windows high above, but the ground floor view was blocked by rows of shadowed smelters and crucibles. Paul could feel the low pressure of magic in the air; the messy wash of the thugs burning his stolen ’mancy shoving up against the hard incoming curve of the SMASH team. The SMASH unit was threading their way through the maze, working as one organism, checking corners.
Raphael applauded. “This is amazing! Like fuckin’, I dunno, movies!” He looked adoringly at Valentine – the closest thing to affection Paul had seen Raphael express. Valentine missed it; she was peering into the maze, feeling the various ’mancies intersect.
She held up her hands, an invisible controller cradled between them. Paul felt her ’mancy, subtle and insidious, thread itself into the flat push of Unimancy.
“They think as one,” Valentine said. “And whoo, that helps. Follow my lead. Don’t do anything I don’t do first.”
She took off through the maze at a brisk pace, Paul following. Raphael loped behind them both, eager as a kid on his first paintball run. She turned right, left, then shoved them both against a set of supply shelves.
“What one sees, they all see,” she hissed.
Paul looked down to where the machinery formed a T-junction. A dull cone of neon green bobbed into view, followed by a SMASH agent in a gas mask and goggles. The green light-cone emanated from the end of his rifle: an infrared projector.
Wait a minute, Paul thought. Why am I certain that’s infrared?
The agent walked straight ahead, making hand gestures at no one Paul could see, focusing down the center of his field of vision. Paul gripped Valentine’s hand; if the agent glanced left, he’d see them.
The guard marched past like clockwork, remaining bizarrely, absurdly focused on the end of the hallway.
“How come I know that’s an infrared beam?” Raphael whispered. Then: “How can I see infrared?”
The guard froze, then straightened. “Who’s there?” he said in a mechanical tone, scanning from left to right and back again in clockwork rhythm. Valentine slapped her hand over Raphael’s mouth. Paul was certain the guard would investigate – but after staring befuddled for a few moments, he went back to patrolling. Paul peered out to see the guard make it to the end of the hallway, pause dramatically, then pivot on a perfect ninety-degree turn to sweep the next corridor.
Valentine released the breath she’d been holding. “Move forward. He’ll loop back around soon.”
“Wait, what’s going on?”
“We’re in a stealth game. They’re in patrol mode. Still deadly, but operating on dumber AI.”
Paul grinned. “Brilliant.”
“It could be better. Everyone here knows the rules, at least on a subconscious level, so the thugs have a chance, too. Plus, I had to expand the factory floor – it was too small for a videogame level…”
Paul realized he could no longer see the hole where the helicopter had crashed through. The factory walls had faded into blank darkness. He tried to wiggle through a gap between two pieces of machinery; an invisible barrier blocked him. Everything had coalesced into impermeable videogame hallways, an unreadable maze.
An alarm blared to their left, revealing a red glow. Paul heard gunfire, yelling, the surprised shouts of combatants – and felt the clash of magics. Then silence. Paul wasn’t sure who’d won.
“Use your portal gun,” Paul said. “Shoot across the maze and get us out.”
A look of purest incredulity. “You can’t mix videogames, Paul.”
Paul swallowed back a retort. Some other gamemancer might be able to. But if his logic didn’t make sense to Valentine, she couldn’t make it happen, no more than Paul could use his bureaucromancy to fly.
“This is – this is Metal Gear Solid, right?” Raphael asked. He looked like he’d gotten a free pass to Disneyland. “I was awesome at that game. Even better than I was at Halo.”
“This isn’t Halo,” Valentine said, freaking out. “This is game-plus difficulty.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.” He shook his head, his whole body rejecting the idea, then lifted his fists in exultation. “This is fucking unbelievable!”
Valentine grabbed his face. “They will kill you, Raph. Their guns have bullets. I have spent my life mastering videogames. Do not think you can outplay me.”
“Yeah, s’cool, whatever. Let’s find the boss monster.”
Paul frowned. “There’s no boss monster, is there?”
A pool of green light bobbed around the corner as the SMASH agent reappeared.
“Go,” Valentine said. The guard froze – “Who’s there?” – as they dashed down another corridor.
“Whatever happens, do not let them see your face,” Valentine repeated. “If one of them sees you, all of them will. It’s a Unimancer trick. Once they get your face on file, we’re Refactored for sure.”
They rounded a corner made of an old smelting pot. One of Gunza’s thugs was dragging a body out of sight, leaving a sticky trail on the ground; a second SMASH agent lay crushed nearby under collapsed machinery. The kid had slung a stolen SMASH rifle over his shoulder.
“Yo, man,” the kid said. “Hook me up with some Flex. I’m low.”
Paul held up empty palms. “Can’t. Gunza has it.”
He poked Paul with the rifle. “Well, make some, motherfucker.”
“I can’t. You saw what it took.”
“Fuck!” The kid kicked the SMASH agent so hard, the helmet popped off, revealing a face that had lost all expressivity long before death. Paul recognized the body: Death Metal.
The kid geared back for another kick. Paul grabbed him. “Don’t.”
“The fuck you care?”
“He is – was – a ’mancer.”
“You friends?”
“Not really.” Yet Paul felt bizarrely protective of the corpse; this poor bastard had been a ’mancer like him, with hopes and dreams and such a love for music that he’d made magic out of it. The army had wrung that strangeness out of Death Metal, remolding him into a weapon.
Paul swallowed back vomit. He thought he’d been calling in faceless SMASH soldiers to distract Gunza. But now, he realized, he’d called in brain-burned victims to be slaughtered for his convenience.
The kid turned to Valentine for support, but one grim glance from her shut him down. “You fuckin’ crazy. He’d kill you if he could.”
“That’s not him,” Valentine said. “They made him a hive mind.”
There were no alcoves to drag the kid into, so Paul and Valentine propped Death Metal up against a windowpane cutter, sat him up so he at least looked comfortable. His gray face was drained of humanity, the same as the last time Paul had talked to him.
“You know any death metal?” Paul asked Valentine.
“What?” Valentine bent to tug the helmet off the other agent. “That shit is terrible. Why would I know any of that crap?”
Paul gestured. “It’s what he did.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh. Oh.” Then: “Holy crap, you can make ’mancy out of the worst things in the world. Somewhere, there’s a fuckin’ polkamancer…”
“Yeah, well, you’re talking to the guy who turned the DMV into an art.”
“That’s just it, Paul. Magic can make the shittiest things in the world beautiful. I wish… I wish I could have seen him work.”
“He was something.”
She pushed Death Metal’s helmet over Paul’s face.
“…What the hell, Valentine?”
“It covers your face!”
Paul ripped it off. “They know I’m here. Their records show I placed a phone call. They think Gunza took me hostage after he caught me snooping around.”
“When’d you do that?”
“When I made the Flex.”
“Mastermind.” She turned to pull the helmet over Raphael’s face, tightening the straps with the care of a mother putting her infant into a baby seat.
“Like a helmet’s going to help!” The kid jabbed Paul in the ribs with the gun. “We gotta get out! They’re hunting us down!”
A flash of green light. “Who’s there?”
“Fuck!” The kid hoisted his rifle at the incoming guard. The SMASH agent’s pace loosened into a terrifying combat readiness as he reached for the taser at his belt. His green glow shifted to a coal red as an alarm began blaring.
What had you been, once? Paul wondered. What ’mancy had you commanded?
“Surrender, and you will not be harmed.” The agent was male but spoke in a reassuring feminine voice – as though someone else spoke through him. “You will be brought to the Refactor. If you’re a mundane, you have nothing to fear.”
“Fuck your Refactor!” The kid burned the last of his Flex to get off a lucky shot that punched through the SMASH agent’s bulletproof vest.
The agent plunked down face-first into the floor, dying. Valentine shouted “Run!” as the kid knelt to grab the taser.
–Flex–
A surge of magic spiraled out of nowhere, roaring past Paul towards the kid. The SMASH agent’s last dying twitches activated the taser – which malfunctioned, pumping every watt into the kid’s body. The kid’s hair caught fire as his heart seized.
Raphael took the whole thing in, horrified, extending his arms towards them. It was as though he wanted to touch the corpses, as if verifying their existence might make sense of this…
He’s never been in a fight, Paul thought dizzily. Someone’s always shielded him from the worst of what happens around him – and now he’s realizing some of his actions had a cost.
Valentine shoved Raph down an alcove just as more SMASH agents converged on their downed agent. Paul struggled to keep up on his artificial leg.
“That surge wasn’t Unimancy,” Valentine said, her voice taking on a Stormtrooper-like echo from inside the helmet.
“Gunza,” Paul wheezed, out of breath. Gunza knew any survivors would testify against him. He was hidden in the factory, sniffing Flex, ensuring once they finished their ’mancy, they would meet a horrible end…
“Fuck, he’s got a tub of that shit…”
“We can’t – can’t stop him – he’s got all my ’mancy – ”
“No. We can fucking fight him. When it was six temp-o-mancers holding Raphael hostage, no, I couldn’t get past them. But one guy? I’ll kick his ass.” She cuffed Paul, furious. “Goddammit, Paul, I told you to put the fucking flux in!”
“Should’ve,” Paul huffed apologetically. He’d only wanted to make a small batch here, just enough to lengthen the fight. He hadn’t known the factory itself would kick in to help produce – that made this battle much more dangerous…
“We can get past Gunza and these Unizombies,” she muttered. “We – shit. They’re onto me.”
The machinery around them shifted, the spaces between them expanding wide enough for a man to walk through – then slammed shut. The ceiling above flickered wildly between pitch black and an ordinary shadowed darkness, as if two realities were battling for supremacy.
“Seven of them, one of me,” Valentine grunted. “But they’re fighting on two fronts. And don’t know how to fight dirty. And want me alive.”
“You gonna be okay?”
“I’m taking a lot of flux. This is… a massive restructuring of reality, Paul.”
“Can you bleed it off?”
“I have been. All the easy stuff’s been burned off. Now my apartment’s been broken into, my electricity’s been cut off, and I’ve just contracted herpes. I don’t know how much more flux I can dump without it affecting our luck now…”
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.
