Busted Flush

There is again that strange snapping shift in the eyes, and Fortune’s voice rasps as he says, “You are an evil thing. Dark and—”

My lips skin back in a smile. “John, dear, do exert a little control over your senile mummy.”

Fortune seems like an inexpertly controlled marionette as Isra tries to propel him out of his chair, and he struggles to stay seated and composed. There’s something so wrong and disturbing about this symbiosis that I find myself taking a step back. Fortune was supposed to have the power of Ra, the power of the sun itself, but it was taken from him when his father cured him of the wild card. Sekhmet was to be the handmaiden of Ra. Two powers wedded to form a whole. But Fortune is just a nat, which makes them only half of what they were meant to be.

Thank God. Fortune’s self-righteousness melded to Isra’s vindictiveness would be a truly terrifying prospect.

Political Science 201

Ian Tregillis & Walton Simons

YVETTE: Fourteen days, nine hours.

YVES: Fifteen days, eighteen hours.

YECTLI: Sixteen days, two hours.

CHRISTIAN WAS OUT THE door on the way to his regular postcoital physical before the first egg appeared.

Don’t trust him, Yvette had said.

Zoë, a petite girl with a pageboy bob of strawberry-blond hair, asked, “Why not?” Not-not-not-not . . . The echoes came from every corner of the room. They made concentration difficult. A strange deuce.

Her brother Zane flashed his chromatophores into ripples of fire-truck red by way of response. He snuffled at Niobe’s palm with his tentacles.

Zoë frowned. “What does that mean?” Mean-mean-mean . . .

“It means shut the hell up,” said Zenobia, the frail and birdlike baby of the clutch.

“Mom! Zen swore at me!” Me!-me! . . . Zane recoiled, covering his earbuds. He retaliated, using a camouflage ability that extended to projecting invisibility. Zoë bumped, loudly, into an invisible nightstand.

“Ouch!” ch!-ch!-ch!-ch!-ch!

Niobe said, “Hey. Be nice, you two.”

But why would she say that about trusting people?

I’ll find out, Mom. Zenobia walked to the door, dispersed into a cloud of mist, and was gone. Niobe considered calling her back. But in the end she wanted to know what Yvette had meant, too.

Zenobia drifted through the entire medical wing and found no sign of Christian. He was nowhere to be found. It appeared he’d left the facility, until Zenobia heard laughter and muffled voices coming from a storage room.

Behind the industrial-sized cans of tomato paste and five-gallon tubs of elbow macaroni, four folding chairs were arranged around a card table. One chair sat empty, but Christian was there, chatting with two men.

Mom, I found him!

Good work, sweetie. I see him.

I don’t think he had a physical.

I know.

A fourth man hurried in. He sat across from Christian.

“What’s the good word, Pham?”

“Girl, boy, girl. Deuce, joker, ace.” The man named Pham summarized Zoë, Zane, and Zenobia for the others.

“Good work, Pham,” said Christian.

“Why can’t you just stick around to see what pops out of those eggs, Chris?”

“Would you stay any longer than you had to?”

Twin pangs of hurt and betrayal passed each other on the way up and down the bond between mother and daughter.

Smitty slapped Christian on the back. “He does the hard work. Who can blame him, wantin’ to get out of there?”

“Yeah, speakin’ of hard, how the hell can you do her, anyway? She’s disgusting.”

“Gentlemen, I just sit back and think about my bank account.” Christian grinned. “Every litter of freaks is another hefty little bonus.”

“Yeah, so’s you can afford all the child support!”

“You get paid extra to screw her?”

“Of course, retard. Would you do it for free?”

Far on the other side of the complex, Niobe cried.

“I would if she looked like Curveball. Shit, I’d pay to screw her. Yeah, I would wreck that girl. I’ll bet half the guys on the Committee are bangin’ her.”

“The way I hear it, Tom, you got no choice but to pay for it.” More laughter all around the table at this.

“This season’s better. Green chick? Talk about hot.”

“I like that acrobat, Minx. Now she’s bangable.” Tom leered. “And I’ll bet she’s freaky in the sack, too.”

Smitty laughed again. “Could you imagine Genetrix on American Hero? Fucking before each challenge? Her teammates would have to draw straws.” Pham pounded the table with his fist, laughing.

Christian took a deck of cards from the table. “Okay, so we got a deuce girl”—Christian removed the deuces of hearts and diamonds and set them in the center of the table, faceup—“a joker boy”—he added a joker to the deuces—“and an ace girl”—the aces of hearts and diamonds went into the mix. “Someone do the honors.”

Mom? What are they doing?

Niobe didn’t say anything. Even Zoë had fallen silent. Zane’s mantle faded to gray.