Shadow Ops 3: Breach Zone

by Myke Cole

  The screen flashed away from Scylla to split images of the action unfolding in both Mescalero and New York City. ‘This isn’t what we want,’ her voice continued. ‘We have four demands. Once met, the fighting can cease, and there need be no more unnecessary bloodshed. The process of rebuilding can begin.

  ‘First, the Mountain Gods of the Apache will be reunited with their children in a sovereign territory that encompasses all the land of the Mescalero, Fort McDowell, Jicarilla, San Carlos, Fort Apache, and Camp Verde reservations, as well as designated connecting corridors between them. There are other land disputes that will need to be arbitrated, but that can be ironed out after the immediate withdrawal of all armed human forces from these lands.

  ‘Second, the five boroughs of New York City are declared a sovereign state safe for Latentkind. Magic-using persons from anywhere in the world will be welcome here, granted immediate citizenship. The Statue of Liberty will once again be a symbol of a place where the oppressed and harried can at last find rest, can build a new home where they are free to be what they truly are. In this land, our Arcania, magic will be recognized for the thing it is, a genetic evolutionary trait. We will build a new world, far better than the old, no longer prisoners of the limitations of technology and the fears of those who are chained to it.

  ‘Third, the humans will recognize that the Source is a sovereign realm already inhabited by an indigenous people. This is not some backward land to be exploited for its positional advantage and natural resources. The so-called goblin tribes will send ambassadors to negotiate future exchanges and travel on both planes, but no human will ever set foot there again without first receiving explicit authorization from the tribe whose lands they enter. You did what you did to the indigenous population of this country a long time ago, when a technology gap gave you advantages they could not possibly counter. But now, thanks to magic, the playing field is level, and your heavy hand will no longer be tolerated.

  ‘And last, you dissolve the Entertech Corporation, opening the stores of Limbic Dampener to all, free of charge. In the new state of Arcania, production will begin anew, and never again will Latent people Manifest out of control, fueling the profiteers’ arguments that magic is dangerous, that we need the protection they provide for a generous fee.’

  The screen returned to Scylla, panning back to show her full body, the business suit rounded out by a shiny pair of black leather pumps. Harlequin bit down, but the sight of her still tore at him.

  Two people stood beside her, also in suits though looking far less natural in them. One was a man with tattoos on his neck and face, scrawling script that Bookbinder couldn’t read. He looked shoehorned into his clothing, thick neck resisting the trim collar of his expensive shirt. His hands were clasped in front of his belt buckle, smoldering gently, flames flickering up between the knuckles.

  The other was a woman, her clothing invisible beneath a suit of armor, formed from overlapping plates of ice. It looked impressive, but Harlequin knew it was still ice. It would probably crack if she tried to move. Just the sort of useless drama that Selfers were known for.

  Two goblins stood beside them, wearing beaded leather robes sewn with bronze discs. Their faces were covered with fields of white-painted dots. They looked noble, scrubbed clean, heads back and eyes haughty. There were no Gahe in the frame. He was sure that was deliberate.

  ‘Make no mistake,’ Scylla said. ‘We will win this. This is what you have been waiting for all your Latent lives.

  ‘Join us and fight for it.’

  The screen cut away to a news desk, where two analysts began discussing the clip while a cutaway at the top of the screen repeated it.

  The room stood in silence.

  ‘Every time I think we’re digging out of the hole,’ Harlequin muttered, ‘we go right fucking back in it.’ He looked up at Bookbinder. ‘Those magic bullets aren’t going to go nearly as far now. Ah, hell. I should have seen this coming.’

  Cormack shrugged. ‘It’s not that bad. How many Selfers are there? And they’re spread across the country and on the run mostly, right?’

  Harlequin shook his head. ‘Have you ever heard of the Houston Street Selfer Gang?’

  Cormack nodded. ‘Sure, everyone has. But you guys smashed them right before Gate-Gate round two.’

  ‘It took us years to get inside that organization,’ Harlequin said, ‘and the asset we used to take them down is long gone. They had steady funding streams and a network of tunnels underneath the city that the NYPD and the SOC combined couldn’t take apart. They had safe houses aboveground, there’s no shortage of sympathizers for Selfers on the run in this country, Captain. And now they’re hunkered down in Tribeca, doing a better job than we are at keeping the Gahe out. The Limpiados are in Chinatown. I’ll bet my right arm both are watching this news show right now. And there’ll be others, from farther afield.’

  ‘This is New York, it’s the capital of the world,’ Cormack said.

  ‘I wish that were true,’ Harlequin answered, ‘but I’ve been in the Selfer-hunting business for a while now. There’s the Haudenosaunee Nation in Buffalo. There’s the Storm Lords in Charleston. There’s the Bruja Bloods and the Suicide Girls in Maryland. And that’s just the crews I know who are close to this city. You range farther afield, and you get more. In the past, we were able to keep more on top of them, but with the whole SOC siphoned off between Mescalero and here, that’s probably not the case. It’s only a five-hour flight from the West Coast to here, and even a lousy Aeromancer can match speeds with a jumbo jet.’

  Harlequin looked over at Bookbinder. Bookbinder remembered the stress test the SOC had given him at LSA Portcullis. He remembered being ripped from his family, remembered feeling his life adrift, powerless, at the whim of a bureaucracy who had no real interest in his welfare.

  And he was one of the lucky ones, inside the system. It’s okay, sir, Talon had said. You reported yourself. It’s fine.

  ‘She’s a very charismatic woman,’ Bookbinder said. ‘She makes a compelling argument.’

  ‘She’s also lying,’ Harlequin said, his voice thick. ‘I know Scylla. She’s fucking crazy, and she’s not interested in any free republic. She’s interested in killing people.’

  ‘That won’t matter,’ Bookbinder said.

  ‘You tell me, sir. Think about it. If you were a Selfer on the run, with nowhere to go and no chance of amnesty, what would you do?’

  Bookbinder frowned, thinking. Harlequin silently hoped he’d say something that would encourage them, knew he wouldn’t. ‘I’d join her,’ Bookbinder said finally. ‘I’d join her and fucking kill you.’

  Harlequin nodded. ‘You’re goddamn right you would. This is fourth-generation warfare at its finest. We’re about to have a major insurgency on our hands. And these won’t be tiny goblins or giants and rocs possessed of animal intelligence. These will be Latent people. Thinkers, planners, able to use guns and cast spells. They’ll be as much of a problem as the Gahe, if not worse.’

  ‘So what can we do?’ Bookbinder asked.

  ‘We can fucking kill them,’ Cormack said. ‘We’ve held out thus far. Now that we’ve got your . . . abilities, on our side, sir, we’re going to do better.’

  ‘We can kill them,’ Bookbinder agreed, ‘but I guess it depends on how many come.’

  ‘All of them will come,’ Harlequin said. ‘I’d bet you the first ones are on their way now. And each and every one we kill will wind up on an Internet video feed that brings more. We’re already at our limit. We can’t fight our way out of every twist and turn. We need an advantage that sticks.’

  Bookbinder thought. ‘Can we offer them amnesty? Some kind of changed legal status?’ He didn’t look like he believed his own words.

  Harlequin confirmed it out loud. ‘Our government has long since worn out its welcome with Selfers. They’ll never trust us.’


  ‘So we’re screwed,’ Bookbinder said.

  ‘Maybe not. This is message warfare. We have to counter with a message of our own,’ Harlequin said. ‘We can’t trust this to Gatanas and the idiots in DC. That will be the end before the beginning. We need to hit back right now, and we need to talk directly to them, Latent to Latent.’

  ‘Show them that they aren’t the only ones with a dog in the fight,’ Bookbinder agreed. ‘This is about how people want to live with their magic. We live inside the system. They can, too.’

  ‘We’ll have to offer them something,’ Harlequin mused.

  ‘Why would they trust anything we offered them? We’re wearing uniforms,’ Bookbinder said.

  ‘Scylla is playing to be the spokesperson for the Selfer movement, to be their new hero. But they already have one.

  ‘Any offer we present to them has to come from someone they trust more than her.’

  ‘Oscar Britton,’ Bookbinder said.

  Harlequin smiled at the irony. ‘Oscar Britton.

  ‘Again.’

  Interlude Eight

  Takedown

  Why the military? The world has an interest in magic’s being applied in a hundred more important causes. Hydromancers could single-handedly restore dwindling polar ice caps. Aeromancers could clear the smog in Beijing overnight. Terramancers could feed starving populations the world over. We have been handed the power to fix this world, and what do we do? We use it as a weapon.

  – Loretta Kiwan

  Council on Latent-American Rights

  Six Years Earlier

  Harlequin walked Grace back to her office on the building’s top floor. She burned with excitement, practically skipping into the room. ‘It works, Jan. It really works. This is going to be amazing.’

  ‘Grace,’ Harlequin said.

  ‘I mean, not just the magic, but her mind, Jan! She’s a completely different person! I wish I’d thought to have a psychopathological assessment done before we got her so we could track the improvement. I was so focused on the magic . . .’

  ‘Grace!’

  She stopped in midsentence, hands clasped together in front of her skirt. Her face froze, the smile slowly fading.

  Harlequin sighed. ‘You can’t hide this forever.’

  She looked down. ‘I . . .’

  ‘What’s your plan, Grace? Do you honestly think you can go your entire life keeping something like this a secret?’

  ‘I’ve done fine so far.’

  ‘So far. Do you plan to dose yourself on Limbic Dampener three times a day for the rest of your life? Sooner or later, you’re going to slip up. You’ll make a mistake, or someone will find out somehow. When that happens, you’ll have no protection.’

  ‘Jan, this drug works . . .’

  ‘So what? That doesn’t change the law. It doesn’t change what they’ll do to you if they find out.’

  ‘What will they do, Jan? You saw what they did with Morelli. There’s the law, and there’s reality.’

  ‘Morelli’s different. Pyromancy is a legal school.’

  ‘And that’s it for Probes? They just kill us?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never taken down a Probe before. You’re the only thing rarer than coming up Latent in the first place.’

  She sat down in her office chair, webbing contouring to her slim back and buttocks, the individual threads ingeniously made to look like stainless steel.

  ‘I just thought that . . . I thought that, if Latent people could demonstrate control. If we could show people that we’re not a threat, then . . . maybe then the law will change.’

  Harlequin considered this. ‘Maybe,’ he said slowly, ‘but it’ll take time, and during that time, you’re . . . exposed.’

  ‘What do you suggest I do?’

  ‘America has the most restrictive magic legislation outside of Saudi Arabia. You’ve got unlimited resources, Grace. Take a vacation. Go somewhere you can be safe. Run your project in Ligoua.’

  ‘And what about Channel? What about everything I’ve built here? I’m not letting Entertech take it!’

  ‘Entertech’s not taking anything. You don’t need to be in New York to run Channel. You can do it over video teleconference. And with the project moving to a pilot phase, it’s going to be as much in our hands as it is in yours.’

  She looked at her hands for a long time. Then she looked up, her eyes wide. ‘And us? Do you want to get rid of me so badly?’

  His heart surged, tears pricked at the corners of his eyes as he knelt before the chair, taking her hands. ‘The opposite. I want to protect you.’

  ‘I can protect myself.’

  ‘From anything else in the world, yes. But not from us, Grace. Not from the SOC.’

  ‘You were with me for days, Jan. Intimately. Sleeping beside me. You never knew.’

  ‘Until I did. Life works like that. Sooner or later, things come out.’

  ‘I’ll be more careful.’

  ‘And fill yourself up with that drug? What is it doing to you? What if it’s hurting you?’

  ‘It’s not hurting me. I’m fine.’

  ‘What about the nosebleed?’

  ‘What about it? I told you that was from mistakes I made when I was young and stupid.’

  ‘Bullshit. You haven’t tested the effects of such large doses on yourself, have you? How the hell could you without letting everyone else at the company know you were on it?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Grace, just consider . . .’ Harlequin’s smartphone vibrated, and his hand shot into his cargo pocket instinctively. A text from Crucible flashed across the screen. MEET ME OUT FRONT OF CHANNEL. A little red flag indicated the message was sent with high importance.

  ‘Crap, I’ll be right back,’ he said, racing out the double doors, past the guard on duty. ‘The boss wants to talk to me.’

  He took the elevator down the thirty-nine floors, the ride so smooth and silent that he had to watch the digital readout to ensure he was moving. There was no doubting Grace’s control, and the truth was that apart from a slipup, he would never have found out. But what if she had another slipup? What if she was stuck in an elevator and couldn’t get to her supply of Dampener? What if she was in a meeting with Crucible that ran long?

  The car slid to a stop at the lobby, and the stainless-steel doors slid open with a ringing of chimes.

  He stepped out into the atrium, boots thumping on the marble floor. He swallowed his worry. He had time. There was no imminent danger of Grace’s being discovered, no emergency. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Think it through, come up with a plan. Maybe they could . . .

  Harlequin froze midstride.

  Crucible was entering the lobby from the front entrance, kitted out for war. Rampart came with him, along with another man in a bulky suit that poorly disguised the body armor he wore beneath. Harlequin recognized his buzz cut, his square chin, his arrogant aviator glasses.

  Hicks.

  ‘What’s going . . .’

  ‘Where’s Grace?’ Crucible cut him off.

  ‘Grace? Why do you . . .’

  ‘No time,’ Crucible said. ‘She’s Latent, Jan. We’re sealing the building off now.’

  Harlequin’s stomach fell, ice made its way up his spine. He fell in beside Crucible, trailing him to the elevator, ignoring Hicks’s smug expression. ‘That’s . . . that can’t be right.’

  ‘It is,’ Crucible said. He gestured to Hicks, who gave no indication of their past meeting. ‘This is Tom Hicks, one of our customer-relations officers at Entertech. He has some relationships with Channel employees, who brought it to his attention.’

  ‘Corporate spies?’ Harlequin spit out the words.

  ‘That’s what the bad guys call us
,’ Hicks answered, as they got into the elevator, ‘but I must admit I’m surprised to hear it coming from you.’ How much does he know? But neither Crucible’s expression nor his tone held any accusation. Hicks stared at him suspiciously, but he didn’t know the man well enough to tell if that was unusual for him or not.

  ‘It’s impossible, sir,’ Harlequin said, as the elevator climbed, his panic rising with it. ‘I would have known. We’ve been . . .’

  ‘I know you’re fucking her, Jan,’ Crucible said. ‘Christ, I practically ordered you to do it.’

  ‘Then let me go up there first and talk to her.’ Maybe I can find some way to let her escape. Ridiculous. Even without her magic, she was half his size and had no military training.

  Crucible shook his head. ‘Between us four, I don’t think we need to negotiate. We’ve got the jump on her, too.’

  ‘If she were Latent, I would have felt the current,’ Harlequin said.

  ‘She’s been funneling her own experimental drug,’ Hicks said. ‘Massively overdosing on the stuff. One of her researchers has noticed certain symptoms that are consistent with an overdose. It’s slowly giving her brain damage.’

  ‘What, you mean . . .’ I almost said ‘the nosebleeds’. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We also got a hit on her current,’ Hicks finished.

  ‘A hit on her . . .’ He turned to Crucible. ‘Does Entertech have . . .’