Broken Read online

  At last he turned to her and said, without a trace of irritation, "Aren’t you going to ask me anything?"

  She just stared steadily at him, not blinking even once. Her eyes might dry out. Was she dead?

  "I mean," Michael continued, feeling himself start to babble and not really caring, "I mean, don’t you wonder? I came out of nowhere, with a baby, and I knew who you were. Oh, and those guys wanted to kill me. I got one with a knife." The thought made him mildly sick. He shoved it out of his mind.

  Still Broken said nothing, sitting there like a statue of some ancient goddess of stubborn-ass dumpiness. He sighed and threw his arms up in the air. "Don’t you want to know any of it? I know so much about you."

  "I don’t care," she said quietly. "You should go away."

  The baby started to wail again. Other customers gave them dirty looks; Michael tried to soothe the child by picking him up and rocking him gently. Bad idea. Something foul dripped on his pants.

  "Oh hell," he said. "Um. Look, I need to go clean him up. Wait here, okay? Please? Even if you don’t, I’ll still find you."

  She looked away. He gave up and sprinted off to the bathroom.

  * * *

  Cleaning the kid made Michael throw up this time. When he finished, the shit and pee everywhere didn’t seem quite as repulsive, but there it was nonetheless. Ugh. It wasn't until after he'd tossed the diaper in the wastebasket that he noticed the diaper pail, sighed, and dismissed it. Figured. He held the baby under the running water for a full minute, during which the kid managed to go again. Incredible. His mother must have fed him a steak before she killed herself.

  Michael cleaned up as best as he could, and left the feces-covered bathroom with a slightly cleaner baby and an empty, queasy stomach.

  Broken had gone. Surprise. He sighed again and stormed out into the cold after her.

  * * *

  She hadn’t gotten far before collapsing. He found her face down in the middle of the crowded street. A light snow had started to fall.

  "Sil—Broken?" he called softly, shaking her. "You there?"

  She moaned and shook, and then was still again. She murmured something he couldn’t make out.

  "What?"

  "H… hunnnn….rrrrr….."

  Regenerating seemed to make her ravenous. "Hungry? You need food?"

  She moaned weakly in response.

  "Okay, just wait here, I’ll see if I can get you something." He started to walk towards the hash shop, then turned and strode back to her.

  "If I do this, you have to hear me out."

  "Mmmrrr," she groaned. He took that as a yes.

  * * *

  "So whenever you regenerate yourself like that," he said as they slurped on greasy mystery sandwiches, "you get hungry. You need recharging, am I right?"

  "Mmm," she said.

  "Thought so. That must take an awful lot of energy. Does it hurt?"

  "Fuhyoo," she said, mouth full.

  "You too," he said mildly. "So, now do you want to know what’s going on?"

  She shook her head no. "M-mm."

  "Not even a little bit? Really?"

  "No!" she blared, sending bits of bread and meat spattering onto Michael’s face. He calmly wiped himself off. He’d had to deal with much worse today.

  "Well, let me tell you anyway." She rolled her eyes and huffed, but kept eating. "My name is Michael Forward."

  Broken snorted.

  "I don’t care what you think," Michael continued, miffed. "It is. Like you, I have abilities that most other people don’t have. Unlike you, mine all still work."

  She stopped chewing her food for a moment, then resumed.

  "My power is," he paused for effect, "Seeing the future."

  "Uh-huh," Broken intoned nasally.

  "It’s true," he said, glancing quickly at her and then away. Thousands of possibilities ricocheted through his mind. "I can see—I see all the ways things might turn out. I see futures that could happen for people. Don’t you want to know what I see when I look at you?"

  Broken gulped down her sandwich and stood up to go. "Bye," she said.

  "You’re important! You have to help me!" he called after her. "You have to help the baby!"

  She paid no attention to him, but walked out the door and into the cold pre-dawn darkness.

  He ran after her.

  "If you help me—" he paused. "If you help me, I see you flying through the skies of Valen!"

  She stopped dead.

  "Broken—Silverwyng—please! I need your help. We need your help! If you help us, you will fly again. I’ve seen it."

  Someone yelled something filthy down at him from a third-story window. Michael glanced up at him for a split second. The man was going to be hauled into jail tomorrow—all his futures said so.

  When he looked back, all he could see of Broken was the swirl of her rags as she disappeared into an alley. He shouldered the baby and gave chase, but when he arrived he found nothing.

  * * *

  Michael, examining himself in the mirror, brushed a lock of dark brown hair back, and wished he had a comb. He looked terrible. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he seemed thinner and more worn than usual. A few pimples sprouted here and there on his cheeks and jaw. If he squinted, it kind of looked like the beginnings of a beard. He stroked his chin—still too smooth.

  He tried to ignore the steady stream of possibility reflecting back at him. More than half of his futures lacked Broken, now.

  He couldn’t get the baby to Valen without her. Hell, they wouldn’t last a week without her. The thin man would find them, take the baby and kill Michael. He had no idea what he could do to stop it.

  For a moment, he considered going back to Union Tower and asking for Sky Ranger’s help. But the Reformists had claimed the Union’s leader, that much was obvious. No, Silverwyng—Broken—was the only help he could count on... unless something lay hidden in his flickering visions that he couldn’t make out. He looked at the baby and strained to see more clearly. His head started to hurt, but nothing new came to him.

  The baby started to cry again. He’d changed the boy twice in the last hour. How did the kid manage to crap himself so quickly? He’d also fed him some formula he’d picked up, but the kid spit it back up. Maybe he was hungry again. Michael sighed and made a silent vow to take the population-control fund's money and volunteer for a vasectomy if he ever got out of this.

  He wrapped the last new diaper, around the baby and got out the bottle. It was ice cold. He’d heard somewhere that babies liked their formula warm, so he ran it under the hot water for a minute. It seemed to warm up slightly.

  He glanced back in the mirror and started. Broken’s face stared back at him.

  "So," she grunted quietly, "Where are we going?"

  He gathered himself quickly. "Uh. Delmarva, first."

  She concentrated for a moment. "The spaceport. Long walk. You have money?"

  "Not much," he admitted.

  A weird grin cracked her face, then disappeared. "That ain’t a problem."

  He nodded, and risked a glance at his possibilities. Relief flooded through him. She was in all of them.

  "So," she finally asked, "What’s with the kid?"

  [CHAPTER 5]

  They walked slowly, Broken awkwardly holding the softly gurgling baby against her filthy rags. Michael rattled off the places they needed to stop.

  "Okay, first a store to buy diapers and baby food," he said. "Then some food for us. That might just about do it for my cash, though."

  "You wanted to go to Delmarva with no cash?" she asked. "You can see the future; you should plan better."

  True. But all the planning in the world couldn’t make up for not actually having ,much money to begin with. “I had some. I spent it getting here.”

  Broken looked amused. “Some fortune-teller.”

  "You shouldn’t be holding him. You’re filthy."

  "Bite it," she said, but reluctantly handed him over.
The baby mewled a bit, then seemed to fall asleep.

  "What's his name?" Broken asked suddenly, with great interest.

  Michael shrugged. "I have no idea. You want to give him one?"

  "How’d you get a baby if you don’t know his name?"

  "His mother handed him off to me before squishing herself under a subway car," Michael explained.

  "Oh," said Broken. "Why you?"

  "Fate, I guess," Michael said with an air of nonchalance that he didn’t really feel. "Also, I think there were some guys after her."

  "Like the river," Broken said, more to herself than to Michael.

  "Yeah, like them. Same sort of guys. They want the kid."

  "Why?"

  "They’ve got someone like me, I think. Maybe a little different, maybe someone who can see general possibilities. I just see possibilities for people I look at." He lowered his voice. "We’re talking about the government, here. The Reformists, and their goons, the Black Bands. They want to make him into a monster."

  "Okay," Broken said, unaffected by this devastating news.

  "Don’t you care that your own government wants to do this?" he asked, taken aback.

  She shrugged. "Not really."

  Michael shook his head, unable to make sense of her. "Go ahead and give the kid a name if you want. We’ll never know what his mother called him."

  Broken didn’t say anything for a little while.

  "Maybe… Ian?" she suggested shyly after some thought.

  "Ian. All right, whatever."

  "Or Joey. Matt. Buddy." She happily rattled off a list of names as they walked onwards. Michael sighed quietly. Ian it was.

  * * *

  There was a park in the middle of the Bronx, near the East River, where Broken claimed she’d hidden some money once. Michael was stuck carrying Ian while Broken led the way.

  "Black Bands rally here," Broken hissed. "They come and go. It's their turf. We need to be quick." With the jerky quickness of someone who has been on the streets a long time, she darted over to a faded sign, and started fiddling around with the back.

  Michael read the sign.

  Yankee Park. The site of New Yankee Stadium, home of the American League baseball New York Yankees, 2009-2040. The Stadium was partially destroyed by bombs during the Last War 2046-7, and demolished 2056. Park dedicated by the Metropolitan Recreation Authority, 2066.

  Broken emerged from behind the sign with a brown paper bag and a smile. "Ready," she said. "What?"

  Michael was shaking his head slowly back and forth. "I thought it was still standing."

  "What?"

  "Yankee Stadium."

  Broken shrugged. "All the old stuff is destroyed around here. Manhattan used to be all skyscrapers, y’know, and Queens looked like this."

  "How do you know?"

  "Used to be a superhero," she said, turning her back on him and walking west.

  * * *

  "So we go down to Hampton Station and get on the rail, and head south to Wilmington. From there we can take ground trans to Delmarva Spaceport," Michael said, trying to keep up with her. "Okay?"

  "Then?" Her cheery mood had disappeared as fast as it had come. Now she glowered and hid her face in her thicket of silver hair.

  "Then we can get on a liner bound for Valen. Uh. One way or another."

  "No plan," she said disgustedly.

  “It's all we have,” he said.

  “Black Bands hang out at the station,” she said. “Government runs the trains. If they want him, they can take him then.”

  Michael couldn't think of anything to say to that. She was right, of course. Another flash of devastating lucidity. Maybe she was less crazy than she seemed? Broken took one more step, glanced up—

  —and pulled Michael into a doorway, flattening him as far into its recess as she could.

  "What?"

  "Saw him," she said, a mixture of elation and fear in her voice.

  * * *

  Broken had been getting bored with this game. Michael Whatshisname didn’t know what he was doing, and she didn’t like babies much. Ian stank, and he cried all the time. She wanted to get away.

  Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a hauntingly familiar shadow pass overhead.

  * * *

  Silverwyng and Sky Ranger flew high above the city.

  "Did you know Manhattan used to be all skyscrapers?" he said. "Now it’s just four-story apartments and condominiums. Queens was the low-rise part of town."

  "Isn’t that where the Tower is?"

  "Yes. Queens is filled with tall buildings, now. It was where we rebuilt after the Last War." He was so confident, he sounded like he’d been there himself.

  He chuckled quietlyf. "Progress is grand, isn’t it? Nothing ever stays the same in this city."

  Silverwyng actually found it a little depressing, but smiled at him anyway. Then, a horrifying jolt struck her.

  For a split second, she lost power and plummeted towards earth. Sky Ranger stared, open-mouthed, as she dropped through the sky…

  * * *

  Sky Ranger, Michael thought desperately. It had to be.

  "He’s looking for us," she whispered. "He’s looking for me."

  "For you?" Michael snorted. "Not likely. He wants the baby."

  "He has babies. He doesn’t need mine." She snatched Ian out of Michael’s arms and squeezed him so tight he cried out in confusion.

  Michael sucked in his breath. They said Sky Ranger could hear even the smallest sounds from far away. Broken froze, eyes wide.

  But the whoosh of air and the swirl of the hero’s cape never came. When they dared to sneak out again, he had gone. Broken stared off to the east, where the distant spire of Union Tower peeked above the nearby buildings.

  "That was stupid," Michael snarled. "He could have come. He could have taken him then."

  "He’s not one of them," Broken said. "He’s no Black Band."

  "Yes, he is!" Michael hissed. "How could you have missed that? He campaigned for Peltan last year, don’t you remember?"

  She shook her head stubbornly.

  * * *

  She fell, but did not scream. Sky Ranger receded. She reached a hand out to him. He could fly so fast, surely she would be saved.

  He didn’t move.

  Suddenly, she felt whatever it was that kept her aloft return, and she powered back to where he was. Belatedly, he sped toward her. "Are you all right? You scared me."

  "Oh," said Silverwyng. "I’m fine. Sorry."

  He wouldn’t look her in the eye. They both knew.

  * * *

  "He’s good," Broken insisted. "I knew him."

  * * *

  Patrols combed the streets, endlessly searching—word of a double murder spread quickly. Police regulars and Black Bands guarded all the subway stations. A gauntlet lay between them and Hampton Station in Manhattan.

  They’d spent most of the rest of the fleeting daylight hours running from one safe place to the next. At last, night fell and they could move more freely.

  Broken was drunk. When they’d bought more baby food and diapers for Ian, she’d picked up ten tiny, plastic bottles of vodka, and had started downing them as soon as they’d managed to find a place to crash for the night.

  This time it was one of the many abandoned buildings along the riverfront. They didn’t dare turn on Michael’s small flashlight, so the only light they had came from the silvery moon, far overhead, and the reflected glow of streetlights.

  He heard her open another bottle. Was she crying? He checked on Ian; the baby slept peacefully. At least they had some money. It wasn't much, but it might get them to Delmarva Spaceport—if only they could get out of New York. How had she come by the money?

  Better not to ask. He wasn’t entirely sure she’d paid for all of those bottles of booze.

  He read some of the graffiti on the walls, and tried to think about what to do next. He had Broken and the baby. That fulfilled part of the vision, and it was a huge
achievement. But the rest…it seemed impossible. Broken wasn’t fit for travel; he hadn’t counted on that. When he’d tried to talk her out of drinking, she’d pretended he wasn’t there. When he tried to take the bottles away, she almost bit his arm off. He rubbed the red marks absently.

  So what now? How could he get to Delmarva with her?

  He knew he couldn’t get there without her. He glanced over at her.

  —She knocked the pistol out of the man’s hand.

  —She watched over Ian and Michael while they slept.

  —She let the Black Band beat her while Michael and Ian escaped.

  Possibilities. She would make a difference. She had to; otherwise he would die before he ever saw Delmarva, and Ian would become a monster.

  * * *

  Too tired and worried to sleep, he distracted himself by looking around at the dilapidated old heap they were hiding in. The graffiti on the walls betrayed the building’s age.

  "God save us from China," read one.

  "Fuck the bombs," read another.

  "Nuke Beijing again!" read a third.

  "Victory," prayed yet another. None of these things had come to pass; the people who had scrawled their desperate hopes on the walls had lost their war sixty years ago. He knew history. The million futures staring him in the face often drove him to the past, which was safely linear, and didn’t fragment with each new development. What had happened stayed happened. Done was done.

  As the possibilities approached the present, they became fewer and fewer, until, at the moment of passing, only one was left. Then it moved safely into the past, where he could remember and read about it, but never again see it unbidden whenever he looked at a face or glanced in the mirror.

  He sighed. He hated the future.

  From the first moment he’d looked in his mirror and seen not his reflection but the horrifying confluence of a million futures, this thread had enthralled him the most. He’d clung to it for all of his short life. Joe had done what he could to get Michael ready...and then the letter from Val Altrera had arrived, not long after Joe had died, and Michael had left his home to chase after a thin thread of hope in the form of a little orphan baby.