The cops’ faces contorted in confusion as they trained their guns on everyone in the asylum basement.
Paul imagined how things looked from their perspective: they’d been called into a disturbance at the old asylum, found portions of the decrepit institute repaired, then walked into the basement to see a geriatric kinkster with nipple-chains holding back a one-legged accountant, and a woman fondling a bloodied hand sticking out from a cell door.
Then he saw Steeplechase reorient his fingers, his razorlike claw-tips poking into the veins on the underside of Imani’s wrist, quietly taking his wife hostage.
Paul froze: was this stray flux or honest bad luck? Maybe the cops had seen Robert pull into the asylum parking lot. Maybe this was Butler’s flux seeping out after weeks of tending to Steeplechase. Or maybe
YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DAUGHTER IN WAYS YOU NEVER IMAGINED
Maybe it was that sticky black flux. That was the problem with flux – things went wrong in ways designed to punish the ’mancer who’d created it.
Between Valentine, Butler, Paul, and Steeplechase, Paul had no idea who was being punished. He couldn’t tell what to brace for.
But if he yanked Imani free, he’d be punished with his wife’s messy death…
Then Butler held up both hands, bent down on one knee.
Calm radiated across the room.
“Officers,” Butler said – and when they spoke, the word “officers” held the solid weight of graceful authority, noble lieges to a great hierarchy. The cops relaxed, though they kept their guns raised.
“I understand this situation is confusing to the untrained eye.” Butler’s voice was as satisfying as warm syrup poured over pancakes. “But if you’ll join me for a drink, I assure you I can provide a profitable explanation of events.”
Butler gestured; over in the corner on a silver stand sat a French coffee press, an electric kettle with kukicha tea, a two-liter Dr Pepper bottle, and an ice-cold glass of milk.
Those weren’t there when we came in, Paul thought. Butler’s ’mancy had conjured the cops’ favorite drinks into existence. Paul felt Butler’s skin flushing with new flux.
Imani tried not to scream as Steeplechase pulled her closer to the cell, knowing anything might break Butler’s tenuous spell of politeness.
“Paul,” Valentine whispered. “Check what facts they’ve radioed into headquarters. We can handle the local yokels, but inbound Unimancers…?”
Paul nodded. These were local cops, but the Morehead broach had spooked everyone. They’d call in SMASH for anything odd. And if they’d alerted SMASH, then this place would be swarming with Unimancers any minute.
He could look up the dispatch records from the local station, but…
He didn’t know which department had jurisdiction here. He needed a form to chain himself deeper into the station’s bureaucracy to procure tonight’s alerts.
A badge number. He could file the right paperwork if he had a cop’s badge number.
“Paul!” Valentine hissed as Paul crept closer to the cops, who allowed Butler to approach the silver stand. All the while Butler talked, that mellifluous voice ensuring the police that of course proper procedures would be carried out, but surely a spot of tea would help settle the waters…
Paul limped, dragging his telltale artificial foot behind him, glad that Butler was so unique that for once, Paul wasn’t the most interesting thing in the room. Two officers hung back in the stairwell, listening but not quite convinced. Paul leaned in as one cop hesitated, not quite willing to put down her gun to take the proffered cup of tea.
Officer A Sharpe, Badge #379.
My wife is in danger! he thought, furious at having to spend time ensuring they weren’t in more danger.
All this slow caution might get his wife murdered.
He wanted to thrash these cops for their insolence. Butler was assuring them of course the law should investigate potential intruders in abandoned property – but Paul seethed with anger that these idiots had shown up at the wrong moment.
He tracked Sharpe’s badge number back to employment records at the Poughkeepsie station, chained into the hiring records to locate the names of the dispatchers, checked the shift records to see who was on for tonight. And though he fought to keep the details straight through the haze of painkillers, he determined that no, the last known call was four officers investigating a plateless SUV.
No SMASH alerts triggered.
Good. But he’d wasted half a minute filling out stupid forms – now he had to disable the cops’ ability to contact SMASH.
Flux smashed into Paul.
No! he thought. I’d checked the dispatch records! That was a simple request!
YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DAUGHTER IN WAYS YOU NEVER IMAGINED
He was weak, so weak–
And he’d unleashed a tide of bad luck into the room.
Butler tripped. The tea cup tumbled to the floor, shattering both the fine porcelain and Butler’s reassuring spell.
The tea flowed across the floor, directing the officers’ attention to Paul’s artificial foot.
Their eyes widened. An artificial foot and ’mancy meant one man.
Four panicked officers fired at Paul.
“Paul!” Valentine cried, flinging up a blue videogame shield. Bullets sparked off, ricocheting around the room, trailing black streaks as Paul’s flux guided them into the most disastrous targets–
Two bullets smashed into Butler’s thigh. Butler toppled over, blood spurting into the tea.
Paul realized where the other bullets were headed – Imani, trapped by a maniac. An easy target for a stray gunshot.
Except she was encased in that thick blue barrier, shielded from every possible angle by Valentine – who’d realized Paul’s flux endangered Imani the most. Valentine’s eyes bulged as she battled Paul’s bad luck to a standstill–
The bullets rebounded into the cell door’s hinges, shattering them.
An inhuman, silent strength shoved the doorway open.
“Down!” Robert yelled, shoving Valentine and Paul to the floor as the officers whirled to fire on the gray beast erupting from the cell.
Only Officer Sharpe got off a shot.
Flicker. Steeplechase smashed his elbow into Officer Sharpe’s head, her spine shattering, grabbing her gun so quickly her severed fingers bounced off the walls–
Flicker. Steeplechase rammed his forehead through another officer’s skull, the cop’s brains exploding like fireworks as a spray of flux erupted from Steeplechase, and–
Flicker. He stood at the top of the stairwell, flinging the two remaining officers down the stairs until they smashed like eggs against the concrete floor, and–
“Hey!” Valentine cried. “Don’t you fucking leave before tracking Aliyah!”
She reached over her shoulder, grabbing a rifle from an imaginary holster – and produced a spider-like gun humming with plasma energy, so large she grimaced holding up its weight.
Flicker. Steeplechase stood framed at the bottom of the stairwell, kneeling by the two dead policemen he’d murdered, pressing his palm against their cooling chests. He still clutched the stolen gun, but the breaths he drew in were ragged. He cried silently as he looked towards the door, gesturing as though he wanted to explain himself.
Valentine pulled the trigger.
A jagged electrical arc wrapped around Steeplechase’s ankle, hoisting him into the air.
“Gravity gun?” Robert pushed Paul back towards the cell as he pulled a first-aid kit out from his trenchcoat. “Good choice.”
“It’s called the Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator!” Valentine snapped. Valentine fought for fine control – even slight movements at this distance jerked Steeplechase around at neck-snapping speeds. “Now, you fucking wendigo, you’ll–”
Even upside down and dangling and yanked at random, Steeplechase’s aim was unerring.
Blood fountained from Valentine’s forehead as two conflicting world-views collided in a magical concussion. The impact sent Paul tumbling as he scrambled to check on Imani; Valentine’s gun flew from her hands. Steeplechase smashed into the stairwell.
Being shoved onto a concrete floor had crushed his ribs; only the painkillers allowed him to keep moving. Still, he cried with relief when he saw Valentine alive.
But she crawled with flux.
In Steeplechase’s world, bullets are pure death, he thought dizzily. In Valentine’s endless shoot-’em-up games, bullets are an inconvenience. Their ’mancy just went head-to-head, and Valentine barely survived…
Imani rammed the door away with her shoulder, flipping it over Valentine’s body, using it as an impromptu shield.
“Robert, get on Butler before they bleed out!” Paul felt elated: his wife was alive and barking orders. “Paul, how’s Valentine doing?”
Valentine staggered to her knees, her eyepatch blown off, blood dribbling down into her puckered eyesocket scar.
“That fucker…” She spat pink-tinged phlegm. “He’s not… he’s not getting away…”
Of course Steeplechase had vanished.
She stumbled towards the exit.
“Are you OK?” Paul shook her shoulders, trying to get her attention.
She hyperventilated, blinking, unable to focus on Paul. “That fucker shot me. That…” She swallowed. “It hurt.” She fell to her knees, clutching the door as if she intended to cram it down Steeplechase’s throat. “I’m not gonna fucking lose twice in the same week!”
“Valentine.” Robert’s voice was cool, calm, a paramedic’s command. “I need you here. Butler needs a medpack.”
She wobbled between her lover and the escape route. Then she flicked blood off her fingers. “Sure, sure. I got a little ’mancy to spare before I give that fucker a pistol endoscopy.”
She limped past Robert, headed towards another cell – and Paul almost yelled at her get back here, before remembering Valentine couldn’t just conjure up medpacks. Like any good first-person shooter, she had to hunt for health packs.
Another cloud of flux wreathed Valentine as she silently placed medpacks, pushing her dangerously close to her limit. She can’t fight him, he thought. He believes in his weapon’s deadliness, and whenever she stops his bullets she’s taking on near-fatal levels of flux…
Imani crossed herself as she examined the impossible ruins of each cop’s body.
“This won’t fix Butler,” Valentine said, crouching down beneath a cart to find a glowing white box with a red cross on it. “Remember, these things last half an hour tops.”
“That’s fine.” Robert bent over Butler with surgical scissors, grimacing as he cut off their fine leather pants. “The artery’s nicked. It’ll take major surgery to close it up…”
“Temporary’s better than dead, sure, sure, got it.” She pushed the white box into Butler’s gurgling body; the wound closed shut.
She clutched her head, her flux overflowing. Seeing Valentine lose it filled him with terror – Valentine had never shit the bed on her flux…
A tiny box tumbled from Robert’s vest pocket.
His engagement ring rolled across the concrete to land at Valentine’s feet.
“Oh, no,” she muttered, recoiling in horror. “Oh, no, no, no, you didn’t…”
Robert crouched down to scoop the ring up, inadvertently kneeling before her – and Valentine tripped, falling ass-backwards. “You don’t understand,” he apologized. “I was going to…”
Tears mixed with her blood. “I know what you were going to!”
He took in her terror – then clutched his belly like he’d been punched. He rolled the ring between two fingers, squinting as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying:
“Your bad luck is me proposing?”
“No, baby.” She tensed, ready to flee. “It’s more complicated than that–”
His face contorted in exquisite betrayal. “Your bad luck is me discovering how much you don’t want to be with me?”
“No! Jesus, do you know how happy you make me, you dumb fuck? I want to be with you, you just… you can’t go where I need you to–”
“I’ll go anywhere.”
She clawed tears away. “You say that, but then you won’t come with me!”
He stood up, leaving the ring behind, pulling Valentine to her feet. “Where do you want me? I’ve always stayed a footstep behind you in case you needed me–”
“How would you know what I need, you asshole?” She stared down at her hands wrapped in his as though his fingers were the gentlest of handcuffs, trembling with shock and humiliation. “I just got shot! Maybe you should, I don’t know, paramedic or something! Because you sure can’t go punch that fucker, like you used–”
“Stop it!”
Imani’s voice boomed across the room. She looked so shaken, her weariness highlighted their argument’s extravagance.
“You can…” She wiped her bloodied hands on her skirt. “You can fix your personal issues on your time. Right now, the man who can find Aliyah is getting away.”
Robert frowned at the dead cops. “We wanna sic that on Aliyah? The living murder-tornado?”
Imani traced the claw marks on her wrist. “He… Yeah. I’m not excusing that. But he also slammed me behind a door so I wouldn’t get shot once he went for them. I think he’s sympathetic to our cause, he just can’t…”
She massaged her forehead.
“He can’t not hunt his next target. So Valentine. Find him now. Work out your marital issues on your own time.”
Valentine nodded, conspicuously kicking the ring into Steeplechase’s former cell. Robert pointedly walked away; Paul trotted in to fetch it for them for later.
Steeplechase had etched the same pattern into the wall time and time again – the same snarl of straight lines and curves, repeated up over the ceiling, across the floor…
Valentine pressed her palms together, then irised them open. A Grand Theft Auto radar map bloomed between her hands.
She smiled as a bright yellow dot winked into existence, showing them the path to Steeplechase. Then it flickered out. Valentine shook the map angrily like it was a Magic 8-Ball; the yellow dot faded, then disappeared.
“Fuck!” Valentine smashed the map against the floor; it shattered into dissolving pixels. “His stealth powers are cancelling my mission marker! I- I want to find him, but…”
Paul hunted through Steeplechase’s cell for the ring, understanding. Valentine couldn’t make Steeplechase appear on the map because to Valentine, Steeplechase was a stealth game personified – and in her heart of hearts, stealth targets never appeared on maps.
Valentine couldn’t fake the game. Even if that meant losing Aliyah.
“OK.” Imani drew in a deep breath. “So we freed a maniacal hunter, we got four small town cops killed when they crashed our murder party, we maybe killed Butler, the hunter’s headed towards a target so bad even mobsters shuddered to think of it, and we still don’t know where Aliyah is.”
Paul frowned, looking at the cell walls. He ran his fingertip down one of the curved lines Steeplechase traced.
He’s a bit of a guided missile, sir, Butler had said. Unable to think of anything but his target.
“Aliyah’s still lost.” Paul turned in slow circles, taking it all in. “But…”
He wouldn’t have identified the walls as maps if he hadn’t seen Valentine’s. But now he realized Steeplechase had traced the same selection of streets over and over again…
“We’ve got Steeplechase’s next target.”