Flex by Ferrett Steinmetz

’mancer , Paul thought. Would you kill me ?
    Then he remembered contemplating murder when he’d thought Kit might expose him, and knew the answer: yes. Yes, Kit would .
    Kit shoved a card into Paul’s breast pocket. “Here’s the address. Make this case ironclad.”
    Kit withdrew solicitously, closing the door behind him.
    “All right,” Paul said. “You can come out now.”
    The papers lifted off the desk, straightening themselves prissily into fine stacks. Then they spread apart. The Beast rose up before Paul, forming an octopoid shape, papers curling in to form crumpled tentacles.
    An elaborate dance began. The errors on each form were whited-over, erased, re-inked. But not all at once; the papers brushed by each other in a careful pattern, like commuters getting on a crowded subway. The pens didn’t always correct a flaw right away; sometimes they floated over thoughtfully enough that Paul could envision an invisible caretaker chewing their other end, contemplating the change.
    He watched it mark and erase, debating what to do next. His bureaucromancy was beautiful. For the first time since the fire, he felt a calmness pervade him.
    After weeks of running scared, he’d found the peace to think things through.
    “I can’t trust you,” he whispered.
    The Beast halted, upturning the forms so the printed-side pages faced Paul. It looked confused, a dog that wasn’t quite sure what it had done.
    “I can’t trust me ,” Paul clarified. “I barely know what I’m doing. With Aliyah’s life on the line and a crazy ’mancer out for blood, any mistake could blow up in my face. And if I hurt her again, I couldn’t live with myself. I… I need someone to show me how to do this.”
    Paul took out the card Kit had given him, held it out for the Beast to sniff. “Somewhere out there is the man who made the Flex that burned my daughter. He’s clearly experienced. Most new ’mancers either kill themselves with accidents or fall right into SMASH’s hands. He knows how to bank the flux.”
    The Beast nuzzled the card with a folded manila envelope nose. So ?
    “I’m going to make him train me in ’mancy.”
    The Beast shivered, a porcupine of straightened paperclips.
    “Yes. Yes, it’s… dangerous. But this Anathema… if I can play my cards right, I can convince him I know enough to help him. Then he’ll teach me. The only way I can save Aliyah is to get Samaritan to pay out, and the only way to do that is to master my bureaucromancy and the only way to do that is to convince Anathema that I should be his student.”
    The Beast shook its head doubtfully.
    “I know. I’m not much of an actor. Or a fighter. But I can do this. I have to. And once I’ve learned everything there is to learn… I’ll kill him.”
    The Beast formed hands from paper, flexed them nervously. Then it whispered one word:
    Revenge .

Five
Sexing Chickens
    O n August 14th at 3pm , the clouds overhead turned a pestilent green, then rained thousands of frogs down onto Father Capodanno Boulevard. The National Weather Service estimated the frogs – later determined to be square-spotted pickerels – had been catapulted high into the air by a freak tornado that had touched down in a nearby pond.
    This was not the weird part.
    The weird part was the way the frogs were deposited by the side of Father Capodanno Boulevard; they dropped into place approximately twelve inches apart from each other in a row that stretched on for half a mile, cushioned by a fluke gust of wind before they would have splattered into the glass-strewn culvert by the side of the freeway. They all faced the opposite side of the road. It was as though the frogs had been deposited by a meticulous and eccentric storm in preparation for a race.
    Which was exactly the case.
    After standing stock-still for precisely six seconds, the frogs all leapt into the rush hour traffic in an amphibian ballet. Bleary truck drivers blatted their horns in surprise, skidding to one side;