A tornado of accidents barreled down from above, slipping out from underneath the Thing’s contorted limbs and into Daddy. Dreadful permutations poured into him, the pressure growing until Daddy’s bones creaked…
The contract glowed a cathode-ray green.
The flux erupted from her father, fountaining from his body into the legal paper.
Keep your minds blank, she told the Unimancers. Here it comes…
The flux smashed into Aliyah like a freight train, sending her flying backwards as Daddy screamed–
The flux raked her skin, demanding to know what she loved, interrogating her with physical blows as it tried to rattle loose anything Aliyah feared, a tempest of hatred determined to destroy something…
Daddy has this, she thought, ignoring the pain as she tumbled across the rocky soil. I buy him time, he fixes this, we win.
Yet the flux was too much. An ocean of anger poured into her. Blood gushed from her nose; flux stomped her into Bastogne’s soil, her bones flexing…
A small woman in China absorbed the flux for her.
The flux slapped Aliyah’s cheeks, howling, furious – Valentine had tricked the universe for ten days straight, someone had to pay, the payment had to be personal, and Aliyah’s hands quivered as the universe demanded to know why she had such faith in her father, and…
A burly man in Mozambique took her pain away.
The vehement cyclone roared down into her – but time after time, just as Aliyah was sure she’d burst, someone else in the Unimancers stepped in to fill themselves with stolen flux – a transgender man in Mexico, a polyamorous triad in Iowa, a Yemen soldier…
The Unimancers distributed this catastrophic tide among them, each man teeming to capacity with more flux than anyone in history had generated. Unimancers across the globe spasmed as tattered black clouds leapt across continents to flow into them.
A flicker of doubt would unleash this planet-shattering power loose in Mozambique or Mexico or Madagascar. But the Unimancers tuned into Aliyah’s twin faiths:
She believed in her father.
She believed in her Unimancer sisters.
All the rage in the world would not budge her from that serene grace, and the Unimancers held fast to her certainty.
Seven thousand strong joined up to share in the universe’s savage anger at what Valentine had done. Even the neglected ones had come back to the hivemind – she felt Yoder, promising Aliyah he would be strong as stone.
Aliyah thought they might overflow – but Ruth stepped in to take the last of it, her eyes burning black, thousands of ’mancers straining to contain the unthinkable.
Aliyah we can’t hold this forever
We can’t redirect flux that’s what your father does
What are we supposed to do?
Aliyah blinked away blood. She took in the Thing as it roared disapproval, scratched open sundered broaches to make room to step through.
Her gaze was clear and unafraid.
I want you to listen to me.