Existentially Challenged, page 24
“Lizzie, they won’t be disproving shit,” said Anderson, with a flash of anger. “Like I said. No one seriously expects God to come down and work miracles in person. He’d lose all his mystique. All his plausible deniability. No one is gonna stop believing because of something like this. They’ll say God wouldn’t lower himself to our level. Or Barkler didn’t ask nicely enough. Or whatever else they need to get it to make sense in their own heads. Because it’s never been about proof, has it?”
Elizabeth nodded slowly. “And what about maintaining the dignity of government?”
Anderson scoffed on reflex. “You don’t spend a lot of time on social media, do you, Liz? Guess you haven’t noticed that dignity’s kinda out of fashion in politics these days.”
Elizabeth checked the time by the clock on the wall. She was late for the morning briefing, which was now going to go quite differently to how she had planned. She opted to start walking, and to her complete lack of surprise, Anderson kept pace right by her side.
“You are doing this,” he affirmed. “Figure out the details today. Date. Venue. Invitations. As much media as possible, yeah? And keep me informed. I’ll get the treasury to spare you whatever budget you need. They’re a stubborn lot, but they usually give up if I stamp on their fingers enough times.”
“Such generosity,” said Elizabeth dryly, nearing the lift.
“Yeah, well, believe it or not, DEDA’s a few points up in the polls over all this, and we’re gonna wring out as much goodwill as we can. Your boy Danvers did good, declaring neutrality. People respect the principled stance, yeah? He comes off well. Real leader-y vibes. In fact, why don’t we get him to referee?”
“And there it is,” muttered Elizabeth, stepping into the lift and pressing the button for DEDA’s main floor. “It was a brief dalliance with the concept of dignity, but I suppose you mustn’t exhaust yourself.”
Anderson smartly held out a flattened hand as the lift doors made to close, and they grumblingly returned to the open position. “I’m serious. Loop him in.”
Elizabeth unsubtly pressed the Close Door button. “Mr. Danvers is a respected asset of this department, not a celebrity judge for reality television.”
Anderson thrust his hand out again to block the doors. “So let him wear a tie! You’re behind the times, Liz. It’s not reality television anymore. It’s television reality.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to make one last attempt at getting the final word, but at that point the lift door alarm went off, and both she and Anderson jumped back like two competing bulls discovering an electric fence between them.
A FEW DAYS LATER
40
Yet another protest was rolling along the streets of London like a mass of prickly caterpillars. The early protests had had some organization: someone had been leading them, they had a specific destination in mind to march upon, and someone had taken the time to draw up a logo for the social media event page, but by this point the city was riddled with a network of small directionless protests that had all formed from the breakup of larger ones.
The protests in the city were now akin to a weather system, little scraps of cloud breaking off and swirling around the main roads, joining into clumps until they became large enough for roving squads of police riot control officers to notice. It didn’t seem to matter which protest a protester joined; there was a lot of mileage in joining an enemy protest ironically and taking pictures of the really crazy members, a significant percentage of whom were also protesting ironically.
Victor had been trying to get to a specific car park near Tottenham Court Road for close to two hours. Moving against the protesting mass was like trying to get three supermarket trolleys up a gentle slope. In the end, he had had to randomly join protests that seemed to be moving in roughly the right direction and pick his moment to tear away, like a lone kayaker in swirling rapids.
Finally, he made it to the car park. It was at full capacity. A lot of out-of-towners had come to the city center to participate in some protest tourism as a wholesome day out for the kids, and each level of the car park was a labyrinth of Range Rovers and sedans. None of which mattered to Victor; he had never learned to drive and was legally prevented from doing so. There had been an incident with a sarcastic instructor who seemed to have great difficulty grasping the idea that a perfectly competent and intelligent person might fail to notice a stop sign or two.
He took the lift to the top level, which was the roof, the last resort for late-coming vehicles parked by people who had had to adopt a philosophical attitude toward bird excrement. He took a few faltering steps into the forest of towering sports utility vehicles, as “roof of the car park” was all the direction Leslie-Ifrig had given him.
“Show yourself,” he commanded, clenching his fists.
“Hiya!” said a cheerful voice from nearby. “Victor! Over here!”
He turned a corner and saw Leslie-Ifrig at the far end of a corridor of oversized family cars, which wasn’t the most epic backdrop for a final duel to the death, but probably the best they could hope for. They were leaning on the parapet at the edge of the roof, admiring the crowds below.
“Hey, you kept me waiting,” they said, without malice. “I got to watch the protest get counterprotested, like, five times. It’s like a wave pool.”
“Shut up,” said Victor, planting his feet and letting his power glow at his fists. “This is our final battle.”
“You always say that,” complained Leslie-Ifrig, turning and leaning their elbows on the barrier. “Not every date has to be an archnemesis battle. It’s okay to just hang out.”
“Did you attack my friends?” Victor advanced slowly, glowing hands splayed out by his sides like a gunslinger ready to draw. “A pyrokinetic was hanging around the Modern Miracle sermon the other night. Was it you?”
“I only go sometimes,” said Leslie-Ifrig, emphasizing the last word playfully. They turned to watch the crowds again.
“Adam said they attacked,” said Victor, still advancing. “He said they were guarding something. What was it?”
Leslie-Ifrig clicked their tongue. The mutated half of it emitted sparks like a flint being bashed against metal. “How should I know? When there’s a service they ask on the forum for volunteers to guard behind the house. It’s sensible. People get weird. Someone threw a Bible once.”
“So you expect me to believe you were guarding their house, from the woods,” growled Victor.
“Yeah,” said Leslie-Ifrig, kicking the parapet with the back of one foot. “They don’t want people coming into their house. All their stuff is in it. Underpants and . . . stuff.”
“I’m done playing nice with you.” Victor took a particularly ominous step forward. “You took everything from me. It’s time to end this.”
Leslie-Ifrig sighed with boredom, propping up their chin on one fist. “I don’t remember taking anything from you. I remember giving you stuff. I gave you fire powers.”
“How about my job?!” snapped Victor, sparks forming in the air in front of his face. “I don’t have that anymore! They kicked me out because of this!”
Leslie-Ifrig finally turned around again, intrigue flashing in their good eye. “They kicked you out?”
Victor hesitated. “I kicked myself out. They were just about to.”
“I can’t believe they kicked you out. Haven’t you worked there for, like, ever?”
“Yes! So let’s add it to the list!” He counted off his fingers, sending a fresh burst of sparks each time one of his fingers touched another. “School. Family. Every aspect of normal life. And now my job, the only thing having fire powers actually made me better at. You’ve taken everything. I’ve got nothing left.”
Leslie-Ifrig had turned to watch the crowd again halfway through Victor’s speech. When he was finished, they suddenly straightened up and pointed across the street. “I think I’m going to see how this looks from that roof over there.”
“What?” asked Victor, hands poised to begin dueling.
With a single effortless hop, Leslie-Ifrig was standing on the parapet, one foot still in the air, arms out to maintain balance. Then, still staring at the opposite building, they hopped again, into thin air.
Victor ran to the spot where Leslie-Ifrig had been standing just in time to see them arrest their fall with a blast of fiery energy directly below them. They splayed out their skinny arms and legs like a flying squirrel and bounced prettily off a spreading translucent mushroom cloud.
They made their way across the expanse of the street that way, by throwing out their arms and generating another puff of fiery air to fling them skywards every time gravity appeared to be taking hold. A portion of the crowd below stopped midchant and glanced up to watch the unfolding fireworks.
Leslie-Ifrig made one last extra-large fireball and cleared the department store opposite by a good six feet before landing face first on the roof with eye-watering force. Victor watched, baffled, as they shakily rose back into view and waved their arms happily.
“. . .” called Leslie-Ifrig.
“what?!” replied Victor. Some of the gawkers below turned to look at him, and he instinctively backed away from the roof’s edge, out of view. “i can’t hear you! obviously!”
Leslie-Ifrig pouted. The demonic half of their face looked for a moment as if it was trying to eat its own nose. Then they dived off their new roof without a moment’s hesitation and boost jumped back across the street, tucking their knees up to their chin at the apex of each bounce like a platforming video game character. On the last jump, they pulled off a little somersault at the top of the bounce before, again, crashing face first down onto the tarmac next to Victor.
“What did you say?” asked Leslie-Ifrig, after they had peeled their face off the ground.
“I said, I couldn’t hear you,” said Victor, feeling stupid.
Leslie-Ifrig stood up and dusted themselves off. “Why didn’t you come closer then?”
“Because . . .” Victor rubbed his forehead in frustration, sending little sparks running along each of his hairs like the wires coming out of cartoon dynamite. “I can see what you’re trying to do.”
“What am I trying to do?” asked Leslie-Ifrig, smiling innocently through the several pieces of grit now embedded in the cracks of their face.
“I’ve tried to do the hover thing, but it takes loads of power to keep going. And if I . . .” Victor stopped himself.
“If you use too much power at once, what happens?” prompted Leslie-Ifrig.
“You know what happens!” Victor scowled. “It makes me open to being possessed again.”
“The only one who can possess you is me. Is Ifrig,” pointed out Leslie-Ifrig. “What if I told you I have absolutely no interest in possessing you?”
“I’d . . . completely not believe you,” said Victor, folding his arms obstinately. “Because Ifrig trying to possess me was, like, the background noise of my entire teens.”
“That was before I’d gotten to know you,” said Leslie-Ifrig, leaning forward, clasping their hands behind their back and batting one set of eyelashes at Victor, like an affectionate cat trying to solicit pets from a marble statue. “Maybe I prefer you from the outside. Come on. Don’t you want to fly?”
“I want to start this fight to the death,” said Victor, returning his hands to the gunslinger pose and conjuring two palm-sized fireballs.
Leslie-Ifrig stared at them sadly, then promptly hopped back onto the parapet with a single twitch of one leg. As always, they moved as if they weighed less than a birthday card. “Then it sounds like you’re going to have to chase me!”
Without another word, they fell backwards into the street, catching themselves with a daringly low blast of firepower that made an entire regiment of protesters instinctively duck and shield themselves with their placards. It looked as if everyone down below had given up on the idea of protesting and had paused to watch the impromptu magic display, although a couple of minor arguments were breaking out over which side of the debate must have organized it.
Leslie-Ifrig performed a spectacular backflip and swan dive with each bounce, each time delaying the boost as long as possible to make the crowd gasp, which juxtaposed nicely against their usual extremely clumsy landing on the opposite roof. This time they landed on their back and ended up lying there twitching with all four limbs in the air like a dead cockroach.
Victor leaned forward slowly to peer down into the street again, just to make sure it hadn’t lost a story or two since he’d last checked. Some people in the crowd were applauding Leslie-Ifrig’s performance, but a few had noticed Victor and were now watching in open-mouthed excitement to see what this next performer was going to do.
Victor retreated from the edge and began to walk away. He was either making enough distance for a decent run-up or making his way back to the lift in order to go home. Victor himself didn’t know; he hadn’t decided. The time to decide would be the point when he had reached the maximum necessary run-up distance.
He reached it. He stopped.
Well, said a little voice in the back of Victor’s mind, which Victor couldn’t help notice sounded a lot like the voice of his dad. This will probably shoot right to the top of your list of terrible decisions in life. It might even eclipse that moment when you were twelve and wanted to see if it was possible to boil an egg without using water.
Victor slowly turned around and planted his feet. He stared up into the cloudy sky with half-closed eyes and let the little voice make its point and fade away.
Of course he knew how to use his powers to project himself, bodily, with blasts of hot air. He’d done it before, back when he was experimenting, right after his powers had first manifested. That was probably the last time he’d been truly happy, spending his summer holiday playfully flying off the cheap swings in the back garden of his family home.
But that was before he’d started hearing the voice of Ifrig, and before the men from the Ministry had come to tell him exactly what would happen if he listened to that voice and didn’t exercise his power with the proper restraint. How he would end up . . .
. . . well, like Leslie-Ifrig. Being erased as a person and replaced with some monstrous clash between humanity and Ancient. Victor had never been entirely sold on the inherent worth of humanity, not since his teens, so he could only imagine what kind of monster Victor-Ifrig would be. Human Leslie must have had the disposition of a cartoon teddy bear to keep Ifrig’s impulses in check.
The point was, he already knew how to use his powers to fly. He’d been a lot lighter back then, of course, and had mostly only been exploding monsters in the intervening time, so he was out of practice with the more delicate stuff.
Experimentally, he jumped straight upwards and summoned a blast directly beneath his feet, boosting his jump by a good eight or nine feet. As he rose, he felt a sensation like his head was bursting through a pink layer of bliss, but the feeling disappeared when he glanced down and saw the tarmac of the car park roof rushing up to reacquaint itself with him.
He fired off a gentler blast to slow his descent but stumbled awkwardly on landing. When he had regained his balance, his heart was pounding in his ears.
He took another look at the abyss that was the street. Leslie-Ifrig was visible in the distance, watching him with head cocked. Could this really be some sinister plan on Ifrig’s part to get Victor to use too much power and open up his mind to possession? It seemed as if Leslie-Ifrig would have had plenty of opportunity to do that during the fiery magical duels that had taken up most of their previous “dates.”
Victor winced, kicking the tarmac like a bull contemplating a charge. Could an Ancient possess more than one person at a time? It felt likely that they could. There were only a certain number of Ancients, and in Victor’s professional experience, there was never any shortage of possessed buggers to deal with.
So I get possessed, said another little voice in Victor’s head. So what? What else was I going to do, now I’m unemployed? Sit around in the apartment and wait for my savings to run out? It’d at least be funny to see the landlord’s face if he showed up and it was Victor-Ifrig to meet him.
And besides, imagine how much it would tick Adam off.
Victor judged that he had sufficiently distracted himself. He broke into a sprint and leapt off the roof before his mind could register a misgiving.
He outdid himself with the first launch. An almost perfectly spherical blossom of magical heat sent him flying forward and upward, one leg back and one knee thrust forward, like a gothic Peter Pan. The wind rushing through his hair was as cold and refreshing as water.
He launched himself again when he reached the apex of the first jump, having no intention of dropping as low as Leslie-Ifrig had. He climbed higher and higher, alternately kicking his legs forward as if leaping up a giant, invisible staircase. Before long, he had ascended to double the car park’s height.
He was already feeling the hot sensation in his head that told him he was using too much magic in too short a time, but he didn’t care. Against the cold rush of air against his face, it was like the spark of a lighter with no gas. Dreamily he allowed himself to spin around, to see how far he had come, and he heard the crowd “ooh” in appreciation of his pirouette. His coat spread out around him like the petals of a flower.
He was past the halfway point. The roof of the opposite building, and Leslie-Ifrig, were practically below him. It was time to come down. He held his legs together and dropped his arms by his sides, and let himself drop like a melting icicle from the edge of a roof. His coat flew up around his ears and pulled on his armpits.
Leslie-Ifrig was gazing up at him, head still cocked and with a faint smile of admiration. Then they held out an arm as if inviting a high-five, and the air directly beneath Victor exploded into flame.
