by Myke Cole
The long-haired man reached the flag and hauled on the thin white cord that anchored it to the pole, raising it to the top in a few moments. The soldiers clapped in unison. Applause echoed from the fence line, guard towers, and gate.
“If I could trouble you to just wait one moment, please,” Major Salamander said to Downer and Britton as he stepped forward.
He stood at the position of attention in front of the young man and raised his right hand. The young man imitated him with the earnest awkwardness Britton had seen in new recruits since he first joined the army.
“Do you swear to use magic only in service to the duly authorized government of the United States of America, abiding by the tenets of the McGauer-Linden Act?” Salamander asked.
“No!” chorused Swift and his group, pumping their fists in the air.
“I d…I do,” the young man said, his eyes locked straight forward.
“Do you agree to obey the orders of the superiors appointed over you?”
“No!” Swift’s group shouted again. The soldiers pressed forward, muzzles leveled.
“I do,” the man said.
Major Salamander shook his hand and clapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome to the SOC, son. I’m proud of you, and the army is lucky to have you. Sergeant Perelli!”
“Sir?” One of the soldiers peeled away from covering Swift’s group, trotted over, and saluted.
“If you’d be so kind as to take young master…” He looked a question at the man.
“Ruiz, sir. Everybody called me Rock Monkey,” the long-haired man said.
“Ruiz! Right! The Terramancer. I remember,” Salamander said. He turned back to the sergeant. “Please take young master Ruiz here for outprocessing and assignment to an SAOLCC Coven.”
“My great pleasure, sir,” Sergeant Perelli said, leading the man toward the same low building where Britton and Downer had signed in.
Major Salamander turned to face Britton and narrowed his eyes. “Two simple questions, with two simple answers. That’s all we ask of our enrollees here. Once they’re on the Dampener and under our expert instruction, most master the basics of keeping their magic under control in fairly short order. But their loyalty to their country and their suitability to handle magic in its service remains an open question. Takes a little time for some folks. There are always holdouts, like Swift and his No-No Crew over there, but, eventually, they always come around.”
“What happens if they don’t?” Britton asked.
Salamander only stared at him, his expression severe. “It doesn’t come to that.”
Major Salamander turned to Downer, and his face returned to its former open friendliness. “I doubt we’re going to have trouble with you, young lady, are we?”
“No, sir,” she answered enthusiastically.
“Outstanding,” Salamander said. “You two are already assigned to a Coven, so you’re not truly mine, but Chief Warrant Officer Fitzsimmons has entrusted you to my care to ensure you learn to control your magic and to purge any fool ideas out of your head. Can’t do the job if you’re not on board with the mission, right? This way, please.” He began to walk toward one of the schoolhouses, motioning to the soldiers who had drawn down on the No-No Crew as he went. The soldiers motioned with the muzzles of their carbines, herding the small group along. Swift walked proudly at their head. He genuflected in the direction of the pillbox as he passed, the rest of the group following suit. The Suppressor standing outside looked nervously over his shoulder at the rusty door.
Britton jerked his thumb at the cinder-block pillbox. “What’s that, sir?”
Salamander looked uncomfortable. “That, my good man, is the end of the road. The final consequence of recalcitrance. You don’t want to go there, and you sure as hell don’t want to have anything to do with what’s in there.”
Salamander turned away from the pillbox and led them into the schoolhouse. The interior was marked with the same temporary military utility as the exterior in classic Seabee style. The plain plywood walls were covered with posters straight out of a high-school civics class. One diagramed the meaning of the American flag, another explained the Constitution, three or four depicted the dangers of unrestrained magic use. A huge photograph of the rubble of the Lincoln Memorial dominated the room, THE BLOCH INCIDENT written in red letters beneath.
Major Salamander poured himself a cup of coffee from a stained decanter on a folding table. Beside it, a Goblin contractor was hooking up a computer monitor. Salamander motioned Britton and Downer to the chairs, just as the No-No Crew shuffled in, sullenly taking their seats with a resignation born of long practice. The soldiers who had ushered them in took up positions on either side of the door. After a moment, a few more civilians straggled in, filling up the remaining chairs. The long-haired boy with the seaweed-slick skin sat a good distance away from the rest of them, puddling water around his feet that tracked on the concrete flooring to pour out the seams between floor and wall. He looked embarrassed, his eyes on his feet, but Britton could occasionally catch him casting glances toward them. Britton could feel his magical current—pulsing, wild, barely under control.
Swift slumped down in his chair beside Britton and stared at him, tapping a bitten fingernail against the corner of his mouth. Britton stared straight ahead for as long as he could stand it, then finally turned to face him.
“Nice outfit,” Swift said. “What are you doing here if you’re already in a Coven?”
“I have no idea,” Britton answered.
Downer shifted in her chair, leaning forward and putting her elbows on her knees. “You’re lucky they didn’t shoot you.”
“Oh, I’m worth way too much for them to shoot me,” Swift said. “And I suppose even fucktards like the good major here have some sense of obligation to free citizens of the United States.”
Salamander smiled, his back to him, pouring nondairy creamer into his foam cup. “Running’s a felony, Swift, you know that,” he said. “Per the McGauer-Linden Act, you don’t have a whole lot of rights anymore.
“Besides,” he said, turning to face them and stirring his coffee, “as far as folks back on the Home Plane know, you’re all dead anyway.”
“Trust me, little girl,” Swift said, his eyes hardening at Downer. “You’ll curb your enthusiasm fairly rapidly. Within a month, you’ll be wishing these fuckers had shot you.”
Britton looked at his lap. I’m the fucker that shot her.
Downer didn’t look at him; instead, she bridled, standing up and lifting her shirt to show a patch of smooth, pink flesh that slightly contrasted with the skin around it, the mark of rushed magical healing. “They did shoot me, here. They had to, but I get it now.”
“Your hip, huh?” Swift said, turning to a scrawny, pale adolescent, only barely a man, with spiky blond hair, wearing black denim jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt. His upper lip was studded with patches of peach fuzz that Britton guessed would never become a true moustache. “Looks more like they shot genius here in her head, eh, Pyre?”
“Brain’s still addled,” Pyre agreed. “She’ll get it eventually.”
“I already get it!” Downer stood, her adolescent fury showing in spite of the Dampener. “You don’t get it! Why would you want to be a fucking Selfer?”
“Selfer is a badge of honor,” Swift said. “Someday, hopefully, you’ll come to understand that. Now, sit down, little girl, and mind your elders.”
Pyre flicked Downer his middle finger, which burst into flame.
“Unauthorized,” Salamander gestured at him, his current reaching out to Suppress the Pyromancy, “and that’s yet another point added to your record. What does that put you at now? One million? Two?”
“Fuck you,” Pyre said. “And maybe fuck you, too,” he said to Downer. “Jury’s still out on that so far.”
Britton stood between them. “She’s just a kid. Leave her alone.” The Dampener kept his emotions in check, but he could feel the eddying magical currents intensifying around S
wift and Pyre.
“Now, now,” Salamander said, waggling a finger. “Swift? Pyre? Do you want to join your mommy in the hole?”
The currents died, and Swift slumped in his chair, chastened. No, Britton thought, he’s terrified.
“She’s going to get out, someday,” Swift said, “and when she does, we’re free, and you’re screwed.”
Salamander chuckled. “For your sake, I sincerely hope that day never comes to pass. Because we both know nobody is going to be free. Everybody, including you, will be dead.”
Swift sat silent in his chair, his fear palpable.
“All bark and no bite.” Salamander smiled. “Swift, Novices Britton and Downer are contractors from Umbra Coven. They’re only here to go through basic indoc and control. They’re already spoken for. You’re wasting your time.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But it sure is fun…”
The door hinges squealed again, and another woman entered. Britton caught his breath. He rifled through his mental index and quickly came to the conclusion that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She wore faded blue jeans that hugged slender thighs and rode low on gently curving hips. Her shirt blazed an image of a beatific Christ, dispensing benediction from a metallic burst of golden fire that accented her breasts. Almond-shaped eyes dominated her face. Black hair fell to her back, thick and shining.
“Ah,” Swift said. “Our lady of perpetual, nagging guilt. Nice of you to join us.”
“Hi, Ted,” the woman said, ignoring Swift and addressing the soaking boy in the corner, smiling warmly. He mumbled a greeting, shooting a fearful glance at Swift, who stared daggers at him.
“Don’t talk to her, Wavesign,” he said. “She’s so keen to raise the flag, you can feel it. That crap’s contagious.”
“Shut the hell up, Swift,” another woman said. She was pale and raven-haired, lean like Swift but with a gentler look. “He can do what he wants.”
“Aren’t we all here for instruction, Tsunami?” Swift said to her, cocking an eyebrow. “I’m instructing.” He turned back to the new arrival, unfazed by her beauty. “Besides,” he said, “somebody’s got to counter the bullshit this one can’t seem to stop spewing.”
The beautiful woman ignored him, smiling at Britton.
“Welcome, Therese,” Salamander said. “Better late than never, please take a seat.” Therese pulled up a chair behind Britton, who was facing forward but could feel her presence behind him, like a heat on his shoulders.
If Swift’s attitude cowed her, Therese didn’t show it. “Hey, man.” She engaged Wavesign again. “What’s going on?”
Swift growled, but Wavesign only glanced uncomfortably at him for a moment before turning back to her. “Steak night.” He chuckled.
Therese chuckled with him. “Everybody loves steak night.”
Swift and Pyre scowled at the conversation, but Wavesign seemed to be taking courage from Therese’s presence and pretended not to see.
Britton seized the opportunity and leaned into them. “What’s steak night?”
“We get second round off the main chow hall’s supply. They have steak night on Tuesday, we get it on Wednesday,” Wavesign explained.
“What’s wrong with that?” Britton asked. “Steak doesn’t go bad in a day.”
“This steak was never good,” Wavesign said. “Therese found one of the flattened boxes in the Dumpster before they carted it off.”
“Grade B: for military or prison consumption only,” she said.
Britton smiled. “That’s no surprise. You learn to get used to that when you’re in the military. It may be new to you folks, but I’ve been eating that crap since I signed up.”
“You were army?” Swift asked, taken aback.
Britton nodded.
Swift was silent at that, brooding, but Pyre laughed out loud. “Man! That sucks. You’re in the army, and your punishment for coming up Latent is that you have to join the army!”
A few of the No-No Crew chuckled at this.
“That is truly special,” Tsunami said.
“All right, all right,” Salamander said. “If we’re all done getting to know one another, let’s get started. As you can see, we have two new enrollees here, Oscar Britton and Sarah Downer from Umbra Coven. They are already assigned and billeted elsewhere. I certainly hope you’ll give them a genuine SASS welcome and be extra nice. The rest of you are here either because you’re new to the SASS or we feel that your loyalty to the United States is questionable.
“But you all have one thing in common. You all ran from the SOC and violated the McGauer-Linden Act. We had to track you down. We had to bring you to justice. You are publicly dead. You belong to us. You may not be grateful for the gift of your lives, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a gift your government has graciously given you.
“The SASS is a second chance for all of you. The smart ones will realize that, like it or not, your Latency has changed your place in the world. You have the option of trying futilely to buck a system that, for all its flaws, was established for everyone’s improvement and safety”—he gestured to Swift and the No-No Crew—“or you can do the smart thing and realize that the only way to use your magic productively and rejoin society is attached to that flagpole out there. There are two questions, and I’m sure you know them by heart now. The only acceptable answer to both is ‘yes.’ You must mean it, and you must adhere to that oath for the rest of your lives.
“The essential challenge that we’re trying to overcome”—Salamander paused to sip at his coffee—“is that some of you still harbor dumb-ass notions of who the bad guys are. The video you’re about to see should put paid to that notion. In case it doesn’t, you’ll be pleased to know it’s the first in a series that will continue throughout your training.
“You hear a lot about the Mescalero insurgency. Most of what you hear is filtered through sympathetic media outlets. The poor Indians are having their culture squashed. Magic is their birthright. It’s the big, bad white man oppressing them all over again. What you don’t see is what these bastards do to their own.”
The screen flickered to life, showing a clip of Apache Selfers, stripped to the waist and brightly painted, gathering a string of other Apaches, mostly old men, into a line. Their mouths moved silently, screaming. The men were forced to their knees, their hands bound. Britton could make out a few women among them.
“You can guess what’s going to happen,” Salamander said. “You should know that the crime these people committed was ‘collaborating with the enemy.’ That’s us. That’s the United States government, it’s every American.”
One of the Selfers stepped forward sweeping his hands upward. Scorpions boiled out of the sandy earth around the prisoners, enveloping half the line. They covered the prisoners until no flesh could be seen, only a surging mass of the stinging arthropods. They scattered at a gesture from the Selfer, leaving a pile of discolored, swollen bodies, some still twitching in their death throes.
Britton’s stomach heaved. Downer gasped in horror. Therese shifted behind them both. The No-No Crew’s faces were deadpan. Swift rolled his eyes.
“Oh, it gets better,” Salamander said, indicating the prisoners that remained.
One of the Selfers gestured to something offscreen.
The screen flickered as something black leapt into view, vaguely man-shaped and impossibly fast. It gibbered, slavering among the remaining prisoners, who leapt to their feet and tried to flee. One of the Selfers conjured a wind that blew them back into the black creature’s path. Britton saw flying gore. He imagined the screams in his ears despite the film’s silence.
The thing spun long enough for Britton to make out teeth as long as daggers before the video cut out.
Britton shivered. He remembered a very similar creature dancing through the Goblin ranks as he’d flown in a helicopter toward FOB Frontier when he’d first arrived in the Source. If that thing was an ally of the Goblins, then what the hell was it doin
g among the Mescalero?
“The Mescalero call them their ‘Mountain Gods.’ We call them monsters,” Salamander said into the appalled silence. “We’re pretty sure they come from here, and we’re still trying to work out how the Apache got ahold of them. Eventually, that’s what you’re going to be fighting. That’s the alternative to what you are. Remember that.”
“It’s all bullshit,” Swift said to Britton, as they headed outside toward the flat expanse on the other side of the blast barricades from the Quonset huts where the SASS enrollees made their homes. “That’s only one side of the story. Who knows what they’re not showing us?”
Therese walked beside them, talking in low tones with Ted, the young man wrapped in his vapor cloud, whom Swift had called Wavesign. He spoke with her in quiet tones, keeping his eyes down, clearly terrified that Swift would notice.
“Yeah, right,” Downer said. “You saw what they did.”
“Tapes can be faked,” Swift said. “I don’t understand what your sudden loyalty to the SOC is about. Presumably you were a Selfer at some point yourself, or else you wouldn’t be here.”
“I changed my mind,” Downer fumed. “I can do that.”
“She’s young,” Britton offered by way of explanation.
“Shut up!” Downer yelled. “I’m old enough to know right from wrong.”
“Most folks far older than you don’t know that.” Swift laughed.
“What kind of a name is Swift anyway?” Britton asked.
“His name is Andrew.” Therese spoke up for the first time. “Everybody in the No-No Crew makes up their own names. It’s ridiculous.”
“Our real names died when they kidnapped us,” Pyre said. “The SOC gives themselves call signs; so do we.”
Therese shook her head. “You’re still who you are. Why would you want to be more like them anyway? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“My, my, Mother Teresa,” Swift said. “Is your Christian charity waning?”
“My name is Therese Del Aqua,” she answered.