Shadow Ops 3: Breach Zone

by Myke Cole

  Britton smirked. ‘I’m sorry, but you appear to be in charge of the most significant military engagement in the history of our nation. Wherever this so-called pasture is, I don’t think you’re in it.’

  Harlequin surprised himself by laughing. Some of the exhaustion fell away. ‘Okay, let’s get the cameras back in here. We’ll do another speech, this time with Swift in it. That is, if you’re willing to make a public commitment?’

  Swift nodded. ‘Two delegates. Myself and Guinevere. That or nothing. You insist on that when you get your meeting to reform the McGauer-Linden Act, and you hold the line if you don’t get it. We bleed together. We negotiate together. You try to break us off at the critical moment, and you’ll have a brand-new insurgency to deal with.’

  ‘Don’t threaten me,’ Bookbinder said, ‘I’ve acted in good faith since I came up Latent. If I say we’re honoring our commitments, then we’re honoring them.’

  The crackling sounded again, the screams drifting from the north. Stuttering gunfire as the fight was joined in earnest.

  ‘Fine,’ Harlequin said. ‘What are they going to do, fire me?’

  Britton looked to Bookbinder, who nodded silently. ‘Okay. Get the cameras back in here, and let’s go for round two.’

  Interlude Ten

  Unleashed

  When LL-14 was first developed, we were still figuring out the artificial nanostructure we used for targeted delivery. We didn’t fully understand how the active ingredient was reacting with the . . . DNA ‘box’ we were putting it in. It turns out the combination was toxic. We fixed it eventually, mostly by keeping the dosage low enough for the body to process over time. But in those early days, and in high concentrations, LL-14 damaged the prefrontal cortex, impacting the subject’s ability to interact socially, to properly judge risk.

  – Noah Weiss, Senior VP for Research, Channel Corporation

  Six Years Earlier

  They took her to the infirmary at the liaison office in the same unmarked van that had brought Morelli to Channel. The streets were closed off, but the SOC placard Crucible placed on the dashboard got them waved through.

  The street was even more pristine than usual close to the building, with the cops having cleared it of foot traffic. The thick black smoke and stench of burning plastic told Harlequin that conditions on the other side of the building were very different. Screams and wailing sirens overpowered him, the flashing colored lights setting off a splinter of a migraine behind his right eye. Crucible placed their own spinning red light on the dash, and that cleared the traffic on their route but only made the headache worse.

  Harlequin ignored the pain and focused on Grace, stretched across the center seat, the EMT kneeling beside her. Harlequin had almost wept with relief when he declared that she had no serious spinal injuries and could be moved safely, but they’d still strapped her down to a longboard, the cords holding her fast. With her pale skin, she looked like an action figure still in the box, cold and dead, and Harlequin reached out to feel her breath on the back of his hand to remind himself she was still alive.

  ‘Don’t even understand why the fuck I’m helping this bitch,’ the EMT groused.

  ‘Because I told you to,’ Crucible said behind the wheel. ‘She’s in SOC custody, and we take care of our prisoners.’

  ‘Who’s taking care of the people she just flattened?’ The EMT’s lips trembled with rage.

  ‘Your erstwhile colleagues,’ Crucible said. ‘You’re needed here.’

  The EMT looked down at Grace, his lip curling. ‘I’m not helping this . . .’

  Harlequin’s hand locked around the EMT’s throat, pushing him back until he rebounded off the far side of the van, the window vibrating. ‘If she dies, so do you.’ Harlequin’s voice was a deep growl that sounded strange to his own ears.

  The EMT struggled against his grip, desperately trying to cling to his anger, but fear won out rapidly, and he stopped fighting, eyes going wide.

  ‘Jan!’ Crucible shouted from the front seat. Slowly, Harlequin released the EMT’s neck. The man shook his head, swore, and set about bandaging Grace’s arm.

  ‘Is anything broken?’ Harlequin asked.

  The EMT ignored him.

  ‘Is anything broken!?’ Harlequin yelled.

  The EMT flinched but continued bandaging. ‘This arm, I’m pretty sure,’ he answered sullenly. ‘Her ankle’s swollen, but it’s just a sprain, I think. She might have a concussion. She’s fine, man. She’ll be okay.’ He spit out the last words.

  Harlequin slumped against the seat, weak with relief. She’ll be okay. Crucible put his foot down, the van picking up speed, weaving through traffic that was beginning to snarl as the news of the impact around the Channel building spread. Rampart fumbled on the radio, punching the scan button repeatedly. Static, hiss, static, ‘word of an explosion in the financial . . .’ music, static, ‘reports that a Selfer has killed several people in downtown . . .’ He switched it off.

  ‘Damn,’ Rampart said. ‘Word spreads fast.’

  Crucible nodded, the traffic finally thinning as they cleared Houston Street and headed north. ‘And doc’s not going to be the only one in a surly mood. We need to get her out of here.’

  The EMT looked up as Crucible spoke, returned to his work at a glance from Harlequin.

  The city was waiting for them as they pulled through the barbed-wire-topped chain-link fence that surrounded the SOC liaison office’s motor pool. Two men in suits stood alongside a uniformed NYPD officer. Three bronze stars glinted from his shoulders. A crowd of officers stood behind them, arms folded, faces dark.

  The crowd blocked the path to the brick building’s rear entrance. Crucible pulled the van up short and turned to Harlequin. Before he could open his mouth, Harlequin said, ‘We’re not giving her up, Rick.’

  ‘No,’ Crucible said. ‘We’re not. But we’ve also got nowhere else to take her. We’ve got to get her into that building and keep her safe until we can get a team in here to escort her out. You ready?’

  Harlequin nodded. The EMT backed away, moving to the rear of the van and fumbling with the doors. ‘Rampart,’ Crucible said. ‘You stay with her, keep her Suppressed, and nobody touches her.’

  ‘Got it, sir,’ Rampart said, drawing his pistol.

  Crucible sighed and looked at his lap as the officer with the stars on his shoulders began to pound on the door. ‘Chief Alfano! Open the damn door!’

  Crucible unlocked it as the EMT slid out the back doors of the van, leaving them open. Some of the cops raced around to them, but not before Rampart pulled them shut and slammed down the lock button.

  Crucible opened the door just wide enough to slide through, closing it behind him. ‘Chief,’ he said. ‘That was fast.’

  ‘That’s our prisoner.’ Alfano’s Staten Island accent was a B-movie caricature. A vein throbbed in his forehead, disappearing beneath the brim of his hat. His small eyes were slits in his tan face. The cops pressed forward at his back, the heat of their anger so intense, Harlequin imagined she could feel it from inside the van. They fanned out to either side of him, menacing, the line between police department and armed gang blurring.

  ‘That’s not what the law says, sir.’ Harlequin could hear the slightest tremor in Crucible’s voice. ‘Selfers are under federal jurisdiction. We’ve got her, we’ll stabilize her and get her to Quantico.’

  ‘I’ve got at least twenty dead downtown,’ Alfano raged. ‘That shifts jurisdictional lines.’

  ‘No,’ Crucible said, ‘it doesn’t. Now get your people clear so I can bring her inside.’

  ‘You feds are like seagulls.’ Alfano’s voice was a stage yell for the benefit of his mob of cops. ‘You fly in here, make a lot of noise, shit on everything, then fly away. Well, you’re not going to do it this time. No hush-hush spook stuff. This is all over t
he news already. The people know, and they want justice. SOC’s not in the justice business. That’s for the police.’

  ‘And you’re not in the lynch mob business, sir,’ Crucible yelled back. ‘We have jurisdiction over . . .’

  ‘Fuck jurisdiction!’ Alfano frothed at the mouth, and his mob of cops lost their patience, surging around him, reaching for Crucible and the doors to the van.

  Harlequin slid the door open, Drawing his magic and rising over the crowd. He Bound hard to the air around him until it sizzled with electricity, thin tongues of lightning circling his body. A dark cloud formed from nothing, haloing him against a rising wind that sent the cops’ hats flying, revealing Alfano’s badly thinning pate.

  Harlequin shimmered, a malevolent Tesla coil. ‘You’re right,’ he said, sending a jolt of forked lightning to dig a furrow in the asphalt at Alfano’s feet. ‘Fuck jurisdiction.’

  Anger can override reason, make a man brave. But reason is a persistent thing sometimes. Alfano’s courage faded as quickly as the EMT’s had. He stepped backward, mouth open, one arm stretched across the man beside him, his wrist waving back, back, back.

  The crowd of police slowly parted, the path to the narrow metal door clearing. Crucible raced into the van and silently helped Rampart wrestle the longboard out, moving as quickly as they could toward the door. The crowd of cops leaned in as they passed but moved away just as quickly as Harlequin descended, still wreathed in lightning. He landed in front of the door and reached for the handle.

  Locked.

  ‘Really, guys?’ he asked the crowd. A quick burst of lightning blew the handle off. He kicked it open and held Alfano’s gaze while Crucible and Rampart moved Grace inside.

  ‘Anybody tries anything . . .’ Harlequin said softly. The gray cloud thundered menacingly. He shut the door behind him and welded it shut with a short, focused burst of lightning. It wouldn’t hold for long, but it was something. He followed Crucible and Rampart into the same ready room where Morelli had signed the papers. The station was deserted, eerily silent.

  ‘Morelli,’ Harlequin said. ‘We need to secure her, too.’

  ‘Yes,’ Crucible grunted as he set the longboard down. ‘Yes, we do.’

  Grace had begun to moan, thrashing against the restraints. Harlequin felt her current pulse as she slowly became aware of the pain she was in. The Dampener must have been wearing off, her current came stronger with each passing minute. He knelt over her, nudging Crucible out of the way and undoing the restraints. It should be his face she saw first.

  ‘Hey, babe,’ she said. ‘You look like shit.’

  He laughed, tears escaping before he could control them, kissed her forehead. She moved to push him away, winced at her wounded arm. She looked around, taking in Crucible, Rampart. ‘I guess I didn’t get away.’

  ‘Grace Lyons,’ Crucible said. ‘Under the authority of the McGauer-Linden Act, I place you in military custody for unlawful magic use and practices proscribed under section 8.A.2.’

  He lifted his cell phone to his ear. ‘Now, keep it down so I can get us out of here before that mob gets over the scare your boyfriend gave them.’

  ‘Mob?’ she asked.

  ‘Some people got hurt,’ Harlequin said. ‘The wall you took down . . . it wrecked part of the building.’

  ‘How many?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know . . . a lot.’

  Crucible was talking quickly into the phone, but his words were a background buzz as Harlequin focused on Grace.

  ‘What happens to me now, Jan?’ she asked. ‘That fucker Hicks gets my company? I go to jail? What happens to me?’

  Harlequin dug for something reassuring to say, delving in his guts for an honest way to tell her everything would be all right. He came up empty. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m a Probe,’ she said. ‘They’re going to kill me, aren’t they?’

  ‘No . . . Grace. I don’t know that.’

  ‘What do they do with Probes, Jan?’ Her voice became shrill.

  ‘I don’t know!’

  She propped herself up on her elbows, ignoring the agony the motion must have caused her. ‘Why the fuck don’t you know? This is your job!’

  He tried to ease her shoulders, gentle her back down. ‘I don’t know!’ he repeated. ‘I never . . . I’m not . . .’

  She settled back down on the board, shut her eyes, gritted her teeth. ‘I’m fucking dead. They kill Probes, Jan. Everything I’ve built. The company. The drug. Entertech gets it all. Those fuckers.’

  Harlequin started as a rock slammed against the reinforced glass of the window. The shouts from outside the building were louder now, an angry chorus that spoke of a huge crowd. The NYPD had more discipline, no matter how pissed off they were. The location of the SOC LNO office was public knowledge, and it hadn’t taken the enraged citizens of the city long to figure out where the perpetrator of the destruction downtown had been taken.

  Crucible put his phone back in his pocket and moved to Harlequin’s side. Through the crosshatching of the reinforced glass, Harlequin could see a huge crowd of civilians. Alfano’s force had put aside their anger for now, were doing their best to keep them away, waving batons and shouting. But they lacked the helmets, shields, and training necessary for riot duty. As Harlequin watched, one of the cops was blindsided by a punch, sank to his knees. A man, purple-faced with rage, leapt over him before being clotheslined to the ground by another policeman.

  ‘They’re inbound,’ Crucible breathed. ‘It’s going to take thirty minutes or so.’

  ‘We don’t have that long,’ Harlequin said.

  ‘No, we don’t,’ Crucible agreed. ‘Let’s go for the van.’

  ‘They’re not going to let it through, sir,’ Rampart said.

  ‘They’ll move, or we drive over them,’ Crucible answered. ‘They’re not getting her.’

  They bent and helped Grace to her feet. She cried out in pain, hopping on one leg, the opposite ankle swollen to grapefruit size, the skin mottled purple.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Crucible jerked his chin toward the door.

  ‘Sir, I don’t . . .’ Rampart began.

  ‘Now!’ Crucible shouted.

  Rampart ran to the door and opened it, scanning with his pistol as he led the way to the van. Grace hobbled along with them, her weight dragging on Harlequin’s shoulder, hissing and wincing as each step jarred her wounded arm. Blood soaked through the bandage. Harlequin felt the warm moisture on his shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘We’ll get you out of here.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘So you can kill me yourself? Just leave me here. I’d rather have a public stoning than a private hanging.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Crucible said. ‘Hop faster.’

  The crowd was mostly concentrated on the building’s front entrance. As the van drew closer, Harlequin dared to hope they might make it. The shouting grew slightly fainter as they moved away from the building. The steady patter of thrown rocks and bottles against the building’s side increased.

  ‘This is your fault,’ Grace said to Crucible. ‘Whoever died when that building came down. That’s on you. If you’d just fucking leave Latent people alone, we wouldn’t have situations like this. You left me no choice.’

  ‘There’s always a choice,’ Crucible grunted. The van was steps away.

  ‘They’re here! They’re here!’ a voice shouted. Harlequin sawed his head to the right as an obese woman threw herself against the chain-link fence ringing the parking lot. It vibrated under her weight, adding a chiming protest to her shouting, calling to her comrades. ‘Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon!’

  A man joined her, then another, the fence bowed inward. Rampart pointed his weapon at them. ‘Get back! Get back right now!’

  His trembling voice belied the empty threat of his gun. More bodies pr
essed against the fence. A screeching of metal reverberated along its length. A bottle arced through the air, shattered next to Rampart’s feet.

  ‘Come on!’ Crucible said, as they cleared the remaining distance and hauled the van’s back doors open.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Harlequin could see dark blue flashes: Alfano’s men lunging in the crowd, trying to haul the people back.

  Failing miserably.

  A gunshot. Then another. The hum of voices now so loud that Harlequin could no longer hear Crucible’s shouted directions. He shoved Grace in the van, heedless of how it must hurt her. The crowd surged, the shouting rising until it drowned out all other noise. Crucible shouted silently, Grace screamed silently. Rampart pointed his gun in the air and fired it silently.

  The fence gave a final groan of protest and collapsed silently.

  Harlequin had never seen people move so fast. Before he could blink, Rampart had disappeared beneath a bellowing tide of humanity, a single protean creature composed of waving fists, pinched faces, and flailing legs. It spilled over him and flowed to the edge of the building before turning to face the van.

  They’d never get the van started and moving in time. ‘We gotta go right now!’ Harlequin shouted to Crucible, Binding his magic and going airborne. He hadn’t carried two people in flight since training, but he’d figure it out. He grabbed Grace’s ankle, began pulling her out of the van.

  Something hit the side of Harlequin’s head, sent him spinning, his vision going gray. He dropped to one knee, raised a hand to touch the wound, a harsh ringing rising in his ears. ‘Grace . . .’ he mumbled, stumbling drunkenly to his feet. The horizon slid sideways, threatening to spill out of his vision and send him into blackness. He fought against vertigo, turned, got himself steady.

  ‘Grace,’ he could hear his voice. The yelling had stopped.

  Harlequin blinked as he recovered his wits and took in the eerie silence.

  Crucible lay by the driver’s side door, the fragments of a bottle littered around his head. Rampart lay crumpled against the far side of the fence, four people sprawled across him, staring in horror.