by Myke Cole
Wavesign gritted his teeth and pointed at the animal, his rainstorm lashing forward in a wild spray of ice. The ice shards hammered the bear’s flank, whipping its hindquarters around, freezing one leg solid. The bear scrambled on its free leg, dragging itself toward Salamander. Britton almost applauded Wavesign’s rare burst of focused magic, but there was no time for that.
“Hold your fire,” Salamander wheezed to the guards as he tried to struggle to his feet. “You’ll hit somebody.”
The bear wheeled on its good leg, sniffing the air where Swift had escaped, and turned toward the next threat. Salamander stumbled again, raising his head just as the bear growled and padded toward him, raising a giant paw, claws extended.
He pointed, a firebolt leaping from his hand and clipping the side of the animal’s head. Much of its skull vaporized. Streaks of flame arced down its neck. Britton could see the seared surface of its brain, just visible through the charred fur. But the bear didn’t go down. It roared, staggered back a step, and sniffed the air. It shook its head with rage, determining the smell was itself, and charged forward again.
Enrollees sprawled in the mud on either side of Salamander. The guards milled on the catwalks and around the gate, carbines leveled. Most cursed, unable to shoot through the crowd of enrollees. One squeezed off a round, thudding into the bear’s flank, making it angrier. Another bullet tore into its shoulder.
Britton focused and opened a gate. The tide of anger and panic threw him off. Without the Dampener controlling the flow, the portal opened a few feet behind the creature. The drug in his system kept the flow from overwhelming his senses, from burning his flesh as it had outside the convenience store, but he was off, and he knew it. He tried to close the gate, and it vanished momentarily, only to flicker back open closer to the creature.
The bear cuffed Salamander again, throwing the Pyromancer down in the mud. It reared up over him, roaring, its pelt burning brightly, patches slick with sizzling blood.
Salamander rolled over on his side, trying to drag himself out of the way.
Britton pushed the magical tide, extending the surge forward and letting the gate flicker shut and open again. It inched closer, appearing to slide along the ground, stutter-starting toward the creature as its huge limbs came down on Salamander’s head.
The gate cleaved through the bear, sliding onward as it did, slicing it neatly in half. The creature gave a grunt that turned into a gurgle and was cut abruptly short. Britton gave in to the Dampener, terrified that the gate would cut Salamander as well, shunting the magic away as quickly as he could.
The bear collapsed in halves, the spray of blood clearing to show Salamander, curled in the fetal position and soaked by the creatures innards but otherwise unharmed. Britton rose shakily to one knee, trembling with relief.
In the distance, he saw Swift returning to the ground, his arms gripped by two SOC Aeromancers. “Are you okay?” he called to Salamander, “I’m sorry, I j…” He was silenced by a boot in his ribs. He felt Suppression take hold, and his hands were roughly forced behind him and cuffed.
Salamander rose to his feet and made his way toward Britton. He was so covered in gore that it was impossible to tell if he was actually injured or not. “Don’t say a fucking word,” he said, trembling with rage.
“What should we do with him, sir?” one of the men holding Britton asked.
“What the fuck do you think you do with him?” Salamander rasped. “Throw this piece of shit in the hole until I can look at him without wanting to shoot him in the face.”
The inside of the pillbox smelled like sweat, musk, and old paint. Another odor rode just below the others, something high and chemical. The only light filtered in from the cracks around the door panel, illuminating an interior bare of anything except a metal bench with a bedroll resting on it and a stainless-steel toilet bolted to one wall.
Scylla had not bothered to graffiti the walls; she had made no scratched tick marks to count the days. She sat in a corner beside the bed, arms on her knees, eyes bright and smiling as if there were nowhere else she’d rather be.
“Well now,” she said. “I suppose you must have done something particularly naughty to join me here today. I thought I heard a ruckus outside my door.”
Britton felt his back fetch up against the inside of the door. She’s just a woman, he thought. She has powerful magic, and she’s done awful things, but the rest is just stage presence. She’s Suppressed. In a stand-up fight, you’d easily overpower her. There’s nothing to be afraid of.
Then why was he so terrified?
Britton slid to the floor with his back to the door, crossing his arms in front of him.
“Oh, you don’t have to sit so far away,” Scylla said, moving to the bed and patting the surface beside her. “I may be a miscreant and ne’er-do-well, but I do so enjoy a man’s touch.”
“Is that what you did with Swift when he was in here?”
She laughed, her eyes dancing. “Oh, I’m sure he wishes. No. Swift is nowhere near as pretty as you.”
“He’s a fucking fool, and so are you.”
“Am I? And here I was thinking I was the only person in this whole mad place who makes any kind of sense.”
“You killed twenty people.”
“Oh, far more than that, actually. It’s been a while since I did the full tally. You, my little rumor mill tells me, killed one. You might have killed more if the SOC hadn’t taken you down when they did. So, really, what’s the difference?”
“There’s a big difference. I wasn’t in control.”
“Really? What about now? What about that nastiness out there? Were you in control then?”
Britton didn’t answer.
“Why’d you do it, Oscar? Why’d you let it go, knowing in your heart of hearts the destruction and havoc it could wreak?”
Britton thought for a moment. “A lot of reasons. Because I was angry. Because I was tired of being pushed around. Because I liked how it felt to just let go for a minute, to be myself.”
Scylla nodded thoughtfully. “That’s right, Oscar. That’s why I did it. Because, frankly, I cannot imagine a life lived under someone else’s thumb just to keep him from having to be afraid. I cannot imagine having to never truly be myself again.”
“You’re always under someone’s thumb, Scylla. That’s life. You always have a boss.”
Scylla shook her head. “You’re wrong, Oscar. That’s the change magic has wrought in the world. We didn’t ask for this power, but it’s finally put us beyond the system that we’ve been yoked to since the dawn of civilization. There are no more bosses, Oscar. Not for us. Not anymore. It’s a chance for us to live as we like. It’s real freedom, the kind of freedom that only power can grant. It doesn’t have to be used for evil, but some evil may have to be wrought to take possession of it. Is it unfair that it came to us and not others? Sure. I don’t have an answer for that, but that doesn’t mean that I need to ignore it just because it makes the likes of Senator Whalen and her precious Reawakening Committee nervous. This is mine, Oscar. Mine and no other’s. I want the freedom that it promises me.”
Britton was silent. Scylla patted the bed beside her again. He shook his head.
She smiled, beautiful in the dark. “Oh, Oscar. Don’t you want to be free?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then why not open a gate and walk away? They don’t have you Suppressed half the time.”
“Because they put a bomb in my chest, Scylla. They can track my movements and tear out my heart anytime they like. Or didn’t your rumor mill tell you that?”
She smiled again, resting her tiny chin in her hands. “Well, of course it did. But are you going to let a little thing like a machine stop you? You are a being of magic, Oscar Britton. You are beyond human technology.”
“That’s a very grand statement with nothing behind it. I can be beyond whatever I like. I’ll still be just as dead the moment I walk though that gate.”
“No, Osc
ar. You won’t. Not if you deactivate it. Not if you take it out.”
Britton swallowed. “How the hell do you propose that I do that?”
“Oh, Oscar. Don’t you know how magic works?”
“Enlighten me.”
“It’s elemental. It draws on each element as its fuel, permits the Sorcerer to manipulate it. Fire for Pyromancers, earth for Terramancers, the fabric between dimensions for you.”
“That doesn’t help me.”
“But it does, Oscar. Do you know what element Negramancers manipulate?”
Britton shook his head.
“Decay, Oscar Britton. Witches are queens of rot.”
Britton’s head spun. “And?”
“And that means we can decay human flesh, or stones. We can rot the bolts out of a tank and make it fall into its component parts. We can collapse buildings into blowing piles of desiccated mortar.
“We can rot machines, Oscar. We can cause wires to fizzle, metal to break down into ore, explosive chemicals into inert elements. I can break the ATTD, Oscar. I can rot it into sludge that will filter out of your system in a few hours.
“Get me out from under this Suppression for five minutes, and I can free us both.”
CHAPTER XX: SMALL VICTORY
We’re not exactly certain how the “Mountain Gods” got onto the reservation, sir, but it’s apparent there’s some kind of affinity. They’re clearly cooperating with the insurgency. If the Selfers have a Portamancer, we don’t have any reporting on it. The intel staff at FOB Frontier is currently working on the possibility that they may be Source indig entities who breezed through some kind of “thin spot” in the interplanar fabric. If that is the case, it’s a serious threat, and one we’re definitely going to have to spend some resources on researching.
— Unidentified briefer to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
They let him out of the hole just as the sun was beginning to set. Salamander looked resigned, refusing to make eye contact. Two guards dragged him to the gate, where they flung him at Fitzy, who caught him in midstride, looking him over.
“You okay?”
It was the nicest thing Fitzy had ever said to him. The shock crippled his answer, and it was a long while before he could nod dumbly. “How’s everyone else?”
“They’re fine.” Fitzy looked over his shoulder and made eye contact with Salamander. “Thanks for your compliance, sir. You’ll have no more trouble from this one.”
Salamander grimaced. “Just get him the fuck out of here.”
Fitzy saluted. Salamander paused for a long while before returning it.
Fitzy’s fingertips dug into the meaty portion of Britton’s upper arm as he steered him away.
“What the hell is going on?” Britton asked. “What happened back there?”
Fitzy stopped him midstride and spun on him, chests touching. “You are fucking done asking questions, Novice. You are also done picking fights with anyone, anytime, ever. I have no idea how long that little stunt you pulled just fucked up things between SAOLCC and the SASS, but I assure you that it won’t be over quickly. You are lucky as hell that you’re needed; otherwise, I would have been happy to let you rot in there with that fucking hag. Next time, I may have no choice. Is that perfectly clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you ever stop and think that you represent a Coven here? That what you do reflects on how Downer will be treated in there?”
Britton’s stomach sank. “No, sir. I…I didn’t.”
“You’re goddamn right you didn’t. Now, do you have any other questions for me?”
“No, sir. No questions, sir.”
“Good. Now, you were so anxious to practice gating aid in combat, you’re going to get some hard practice at it.” Fitzy spun Britton and marched him back toward the P pods.
Britton went meekly, his mind overwhelmed with the thought of Scylla’s offer. Could she really get the ATTD out? She probably could. But how could he get her out of Suppression? And even if he could, what would he be unleashing on the world? She’d killed twenty people. Probably more, she claimed. She viewed her captors as cattle.
With the sun beginning to set behind the barricade walls, Fitzy took Britton to the MAC practice tent to find a SOC K-9 handler. He instructed Britton to open a gate onto the Portcullis loading bay. The dark vastness had been filled with three chain-link pens, each housing five mean-looking German shepherds.
“So you first tried Portamantic Summoning back in Shelburne,” Fitzy said. “Took a recovery team about six hours to clean up that particular mess. Now you’ve successfully screwed up whatever goodwill I had with Major Salamander thanks to your little stunt today. What you did by accident before, I now want you to do on purpose. Let’s try bringing these pooches through the gate and into the MAC tent one at a time.”
It was surprisingly simple. Britton recalled the sensation of the tendrils of magic snaking through the gate, driven by the sense of dire threat, grasping for something to assist him. He opened a gate inside one of the pens and recalled the feeling, giving the magic free rein to do its work. The shepherd popped through without complaint and crouched in the mud of the tent floor, ready to spring.
“Outstanding,” Fitzy said. “Now do it again.”
So Britton did it again and again. When the kennels had been emptied, and the dogs all stood to their hocks in the mud, Britton gated into Portcullis and practiced bringing them back. He thought of the worm, digging into his chest, hauling out the ATTD. I would trade my gates for Whispering if I could. It seemed a far lesser power, but Whispering could save him, Portamancy kept him chained there. Scylla’s offer hovered at the edges of his mind, tempting him. The worm plan had too many moving parts, hers was simple. Get her out from under Suppression for just a few minutes, and freedom.
But freedom to do what? There was nowhere in the world he could hide from the SOC. It would be freedom to run, forever a fugitive. And what had the SOC really done to him? They had captured him, they controlled him, but they were training him. He was beginning to master his ability. He had dispatched that bear as easily as he’d gated him in. If he ran, if he escaped, all that training would be lost to him, forever. But did that make them worth serving? They lied about so many things. They had faked Downer’s death, hidden the truth about the Source, kept Limbic Dampener away from the public. They were so obsessed with controlling magic that they failed to do real good with it. Britton could never serve such masters. He had to find a way out. There were Selfers out there who evaded capture. There were entire Indian reservations that boiled in active insurgency. If they could do it, then so could he.
At night, Britton sat on the steps to his hooch and looked up at the sky, trying to make sense of the spray of stars that gleamed so much brighter than back in the world he had simply begun thinking of as “home.”
The attacks continued nightly. He became so used to the pattern of arcing flames or low-sweeping clouds that dispensed columns of lightning that he no longer flinched as the sirens wailed or the Apaches leapt airborne, droning over the barricades like angry hornets in search of an assailant already long since melted into the darkness. Once or twice, Britton could make out shadows in the sky and recognized the broad wingspan of Rocs. Other nights, he thought he saw leathern wings of smaller shapes and heard shrill cries he couldn’t identify, but it wouldn’t be long before the antiair systems would open up, funneling twenty-millimeter rounds in a shining white pillar, until the things flew off or were cut to a shrieking mist.
A shape jogged by in the darkness as Britton sat on the steps. He strained his eyes as the shape materialized into Richards.
“Hey,” Britton said nervously. “Where you headed?”
Richards jumped, startled. “Heading to the latrine,”
Britton felt a fool. The man had to piss, so it was not a good time to bother him. But his stomach was in knots. Scylla’s offer had given the idea of the worm added immediacy. If there was another way, he had to
use it. Richards could Whisper, Britton had to know if he could help him.
He started to speak, then said nothing.
Richards shifted from one foot to the other.
“Forget it,” Britton said. “It’s nothing. Go drain the vein.”
“Well, now I can’t,” Richards said. “It’ll crawl back up because I’ll be wondering what you were going to say.”
Britton chuckled, grateful for the humor. “I just…we don’t talk much at the OC. I can’t sleep, and I wanted to shoot the breeze. I wanted to know if you’re happy here.” Clumsy, he thought. Don’t be so damned obvious.
Richards’s voice went hard. “I’m very happy here, Keystone. You should be, too.”
Britton was silent. Damn it. You knew he wouldn’t help you. Why did you even risk asking him? You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t tell Fitzy.
Richards’s voice was more sympathetic as he said, “I know the girl pisses you off, and she can be a little overbearing, but she’s young. Cut her some slack. She’s right about one thing, you’ll come around, eventually. This won’t suck like this forever.”
That’s what I’m afraid of. “Yeah,” Britton replied. “You’re right.”
Richards laughed. “I feel like we’ve both grown from this conversation. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to break this romantic moment before I wet myself.”
He jogged on to the latrine while Britton mounted the steps to his hooch, cursing his stupidity. He dozed with cries and explosions of FOB Frontier’s night in his ears, drifting into half sleep. There had been so many explosions, so much screaming in the past months. Such sounds had come to define his life, and Britton didn’t realize how at home he’d come to feel among them.
Therese didn’t come back to the SASS. Salamander didn’t mention the incident with the bear and gave Britton a wide berth. Swift avoided him as well, catching a sharp look from Salamander whenever he appeared as if he would talk to Britton. Britton continued to work closely with Wavesign, his only link to the memory of Therese, but the boy made little improvement even when Britton could convince him to practice his magic. The glimmer of control Wavesign had exhibited during the bear attack didn’t repeat itself, and the young Hydromancer’s magic remained as wild and unpredictable as ever. “Guess it was a one-time thing,” he said, shrugging when Britton complimented him.
