by Myke Cole
She nodded. “I guess they want me to be able to make elemental fuel quickly. Most of what they’re teaching me is pyro…pyro…”
“Pyrotechnics,” Truelove finished for her.
“Yeah, how to make fire out of nothing.” She pursed her lips, looking so young that Britton’s heart went out to her. His stomach twisted with guilt. It seemed like just yesterday he’d shot her on top of a burning school.
“That’s better than what they’ve got me doing,” Richards chimed in. “I’m Whispering worms.”
Britton cocked an eyebrow.
“Big, fat purple things,” Richards continued, slurring slightly. “Like maggots on steroids, except that they prefer live flesh. They’re native here. They burrow into you, eat muscle, and lay eggs in the fibers. Well, they’ll do it anywhere, but they prefer muscle tissue. Apparently, we’ve lost a soldier or two to them.” He shuddered.
“But under Whispering,” he went on, “they’re the most effective surgeons we have. They prefer unhealthy but still-living tissue apparently. They love tumors. You just have to keep them from laying their eggs and setting up house, and you’re good to go.”
“That ain’t right,” Downer said.
“What ain’t right is your being here,” Britton said. “I mean, I know you have to be, and I know you want to be. But it sucks that we live in a world where a teenaged girl spends her adolescence in the army instead of getting drunk and running up her dad’s phone bill.”
“I ran,” she said. “That’s what happens when you run. You had to take me down.”
“Did you think I liked that?” Britton asked. “Did you think any of my team did? Hell, half of us were ready to turn around and pack it in. You’re just a kid, Sarah. You deserve better than this.”
“I’m not just a kid!” she fumed, standing. “That’s what everyone says, and it’s just BS you pull to try to make yourself feel smarter. I’m a Sorcerer!”
“Okay, okay. You’re right, Sarah. I’m sorry,” he said. He looked down at his empty tumbler. The army tore people down and built them back up with the goal of making their self-worth dependent on their success in the organization. Downer had bought that lock, stock, and barrel.
Downer plopped back onto her stool and stared moodily at her soda. “I’ve probably done just as much fighting as you have,” she muttered. Britton doubted it but let the matter drop.
“Richards isn’t even a true Probe,” Truelove stammered as he tried to break the tense silence. “He taught himself to Whisper while serving in the SOC as a Terramantic Engineer.”
“What did you expect?” Richards asked. “I spent all my time building berms and ditches. If I had to shore up one more foundation, I think I would have shot myself. Chatting with the wildlife saved my sanity.” The rat sat up and squeaked triumphantly, pumping its fist in the air.
“You told me you didn’t run, right?” Britton asked Truelove.
“I called the SOC the second I realized what was going on,” the Necromancer answered.
“And I got caught in the act and was given an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Richards finished. “Looks like you two are our runners.”
But only one of us has a bomb ticking away inside his chest.
A moment later, Marty entered to a surge of muttering from the OC patrons. A look from Britton silenced the worst of it, but a few of the officers stood to go, grumbling. Britton turned to Chris. “You going to yield the bar again?”
Chris grumbled under his breath. “Gotta serve the other customers.” But he slammed a large mug and a container of sugar down on the bar. Truelove smiled and set about preparing Marty’s drink.
The Goblin ignored the mug, making soft noises as he climbed on an empty barstool to run his fingers over Britton’s face. The rough pads of his fingers felt cool, soothing.
“Fitzy is asshole,” the creature muttered, reaching into his scrubs and producing the worn leather pouch. He took out a pair of broad leaves, licked their backs, and, despite Britton’s groans of protest, stuck them over the largest swellings, clucking admonition when Britton tried to pull away. The bruises began to feel better the moment the plant touched his face. Even his headache subsided slightly. “Damn, Marty,” he said, smiling in spite of himself. “Why do all of your remedies involve spit?”
The Goblin didn’t reply, gently pressing the leaves down to make sure they stuck.
“We’re really not supposed to be hanging out with him,” Downer groused, still moody over their confrontation.
Britton’s anger sparked. The Dampener shunted it to the side, but he gave it rein. After all Marty had done for him, after all the patient kindness he had never hesitated to show in spite of how the humans there treated him, he deserved better. Zealots, especially the newly converted, sometimes gave way when you applied a little pressure.
“You know, these people don’t love you,” he said. “Why do you think we’re contractors? If we’re the good guys, why doesn’t the army acknowledge us?”
“Because we’re Probes…” she said.
Take it easy, Oscar, he told himself, she’s just a kid.
“And they’re willing to destroy our lives because of it,” he went on. “We’re the same, Sarah.”
“No, we’re not the same,” she said. “I know that I did something wrong. I want to make it right. I want to serve my country.”
“What did you do wrong?” Britton asked. “You woke up one morning with a power you didn’t ask for. You decided that you might want to take a second to play with it before someone else stepped in and told you how to run your life. That’s your big crime?”
Scylla’s words echoed in his mind. We are a new race, better adapted to our environment than the old. The humans can imprison us for a time, but, sooner or later, we will rule them as surely as they rule dogs and cows. Her words were crude, but he couldn’t deny the truth in them. The thought of them being accused of crimes at all burned him.
“I killed people! I damaged property!” Downer shouted, and the OC began to empty again.
“That’s Harlequin talking,” Britton said. “I might as well gate over to his office and have him lecture me.”
“You leave him alone!” she yelled. “He took care of me. He gave me a second chance!”
“Oh, come off it. Your magic gave you a second chance,” Britton said. “You’re here for the same reason I am; the SOC wants your magic. If either of us had gone Selfer in a more common school, we’d probably be dead. Now we get to be government slaves instead.”
“I’m not a slave! I’m a Sorcerer!” Downer’s face was red.
Truelove let out a nervous, honking laugh and stepped between them. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said. “We’re all in the same Coven.”
Downer ignored him and held Britton’s eyes. The SOC can force me to work for them, he thought, but they can’t stop me from making her grow up.
But not tonight. He had nothing left to give. “I’m going to hit the rack. Lots of studying to do for tomorrow.”
He stepped out into the chill air and looked up at the night sky. The huge stars winked back at him. Therese can’t help. Who knows when she’ll be able to? You’re out of choices, Oscar, they seemed to say. They’ve got you.
He shook his head and started toward P block. A hand touched his elbow. He looked down into Marty’s black eyes, surrounded with painted dots. Britton reached out to touch the creature’s head, then jerked back his hand. Would Marty take it as patronizing? What was it he had seen them do? Britton closed his eyes and bowed, tapping the lids. Marty smiled broadly, then repeated the gesture, murmuring in his own language.
“You important,” Marty said, sketching a doorway in the air with his fingers. “Special.”
Britton sighed. “Yeah, people keep telling me that. It’s not helping any.”
Marty looked at him, uncomprehending. Britton sighed. “God, what a fucked-up life this has turned out to…” He paused, then looked back down at the creature. His eyes widenin
g.
“Holy shit,” he breathed.
Because he suddenly realized that there might be a way out of this after all.
Marty stared back at him, the blue surgical mask dangling from one ear, flapping in the wind.
Britton knelt to Marty’s height. “Have you ever heard of a flesh-eating worm?”
Marty turned pensive. “…wurm?”
“It’s a worm from here. It eats muscle.” Britton thumped his chest.
Recognition dawned across Marty’s face. He corkscrewed one finger over his sternum. “Worm! I know! I know! Worm very…few. Very…important. Some in srreach room. Cold room with Doctor Captain, remember?” The research tent where they’d met Captain Hayes. Britton remembered.
He sagged with relief, sitting on the ground.
“Why?” Marty asked.
“Marty, there’s a bomb in my heart. You understand a bomb?”
Marty nodded gravely. “You”—he searched for the word—“captured.”
Britton nodded.
“Worm very…hurt you. Kill you.”
“Not with magic, Marty. Not with someone to Whisper it. Maybe it can break the bomb.” More than likely it would set the ATTD off, but that was a chance Britton was willing to take. He remembered Rampart’s words to him in the helo as they left the LZ. They live in the Source all their lives and come up Latent at around twice the rate we do.
“Do you have a Goblin buddy who can Whisper, Marty? Please tell me you do.”
Marty grinned. “I know. I important. I bring friend with magic for worm. Talk worm no kill you. Eat bomb.”
Britton grinned in spite of himself, nodding so hard his neck hurt.
“Can you help me?”
Marty was silent for a moment, then looked back up to Britton and nodded. “Secret.”
Britton grinned. “Can you get a worm? Do you have someone to Whisper it?”
Marty’s face went serious. “Difficult.”
Britton considered what he was asking. The little Goblin was not well liked on the FOB as it was. If he were caught stealing from a SOC facility…he batted it away. He had to try. He couldn’t stay there. It couldn’t be his life.
“Can you get one for me?”
Marty was silent for a moment before nodding. “You important.”
Britton smiled, then tapped his lids again. Marty repeated the gesture, then pointed to the leaves plastered to his face. “Keep on. When you no feel, take off. Keep on to sleep is okay.” He waved and trotted back inside the OC.
CHAPTER XIX
IN THE HOLE
The potential of combat Necromancy is staggering. Your buddy goes down next to you, then five seconds later, you’re fighting his corpse. But you know what? Blinding lasers also provide combat overmatch. So do bioweapons. Just because a system provides a force multiplier doesn’t mean we ignore the ethical ramifications of employing that system. We’re the good guys. The second we forget that, we cease to be a nation we can be proud to fight for.
—LTG Amelia Dernwood, Deputy Commanding General
US Army Materiel Command, Fifth Annual Conference
on Magic and Military Ethics, Geneva, Switzerland
Therese was missing from the knot of SASS enrollees gathered around the schoolhouse as Britton entered the next morning. He strolled toward them, noting the pillbox’s closed door and Scylla’s absence from the yard. They exercised her at random intervals, different times each day, and while Britton couldn’t be sure why, he guessed it was as a security measure. The group of enrollees stood easier, though even the No-No Crew cast nervous glances toward the pillbox door and its patina of rust.
“Where’s Therese?” Britton asked Downer as he joined them. As with every morning, she was at the SASS long before he arrived. She shrugged her shoulders, and Britton turned to Wavesign. “Did she raise the flag?”
Wavesign shook his head. “A couple of soldiers came and got her this morning. No idea where she went, and Salamander won’t tell us.”
Britton’s stomach turned over. He was surprised at how deeply her absence affected him, how it worried him. He looked up at Swift as they were being ushered into the schoolhouse, and the pale man shook his head.
Britton couldn’t concentrate on the morning’s video, a longish civics lesson extolling the virtues of the US Constitution. He thought of Therese’s kindness to both him and Wavesign. Where had they taken her? Had she done something wrong? His stomach suddenly tightened into a ball. Had someone somehow overheard their conversation about the ATTD? Was that why they’d taken her? Why would they punish her and not him? As soon as the video ended, and they turned to head outside, he approached Salamander.
“Sir, where’s Therese?”
“You’re about the tenth person to ask me that question today, Novice. She’s an awfully popular gal around here. I recommend that you attend to your training and think a little less about dating. You can always chat with Scylla the next time she does her rounds of the exercise yard. I’ve noticed you two like to chew the fat.”
“Sir, I’m…concerned. Therese is a friend,” Britton said, his powerlessness making him clench his teeth and forcing him to lean on the Dampener to shunt the magic back.
“Are you, now?” Salamander asked. “Are you concerned? Well isn’t that just touching. I suppose now I’ll just tell you whatever you want to know in an effort to allay your concerns about your friend?”
“Sir, please,” Britton stammered, knowing where this was going.
“Novice, military decorum isn’t going to save you from an ass chewing if you continually overstep your bounds. Now, I take my position as administrator of this facility with a large grain of salt. That is to say, I don’t act the jailer any more than I absolutely have to. My goal here is to convince you all of the value of raising the flag out there and to ensure that you have a modicum of control over your abilities by the time you do. Other than that, I try to give you a free hand. But it has to go both ways. If you start trying to ride me about every decision the army makes, you may jog my memory that I am a fucking jailer, and that might just remind me that I have the authority to have you clapped in fucking restraints if I so choose. Am I being perfectly clear here, Novice?”
Britton had been dressed down before. He had felt helpless in the hands of authority many times since he’d joined the army. But this was the first time he’d felt it over someone who mattered to him. Since he’d come up Latent, she was the first person other than Marty to show him an ounce of kindness. And something had happened to her, but there was nothing he could do about it. The tide of his anger gathered, building behind the wall of Dampener.
“Crystal clear, sir,” Britton answered through clenched teeth.
They gathered, heading toward the magical-control range. The panel on the pillbox door slid aside as he passed. “Pretty Oscar,” Scylla crooned from behind the door. “They took your lady away. Why do you let them?”
“Shut up!” one of the Suppressors on guard said, punching the door. Scylla muttered something low through the panel, and the guard blanched, taking a step back.
“Why do you let them?” Scylla repeated. “Why, Oscar? They’re roaches. They’re not holding you. You’re holding them. You’re sparing them.”
I have a fucking bomb in my chest! Britton’s anger addled mind howled. He didn’t need her manipulative bullshit. Not now. Not when he was so worried and angry. He took a step toward the door. The guard was terrified of Scylla, but not of him and stepped forward to intercept, one hand on his pepper-spray canister. Britton halted, and growled, “You talk pretty tough, Scylla, for a girl in a box.”
“Silly boy,” Scylla replied. “This box is the only thing that keeps them safe.”
“Shut up!” the guard said, this time mustering enough courage to slide the panel shut. “You best be moving, sir,” he said to Britton, tapping the canister of pepper spray. “This stuff cuts something awful.”
The fury beat against the Dampener, scarcely contained. For
a moment, he thought he understood what Wavesign was facing. “Yeah?” Britton asked, letting a gate roll open over his shoulder. “Well, so does this stuff.”
The guard blanched for a second time, taking a step backward, his mouth working silently. Britton closed the gate, turned, and stormed off toward the rest of the enrollees, shame and a sense of power mingling in his gut. For a moment, he understood what Scylla meant. The guard, for all his Suppressive ability, for all his kit and belonging to the institutional power of the army, had been terrified. But at the same time, Britton was glad that the Witch hadn’t seen him. He wasn’t a murderer, and people weren’t cattle. He didn’t want to be the SOC’s toy, but whatever it was that Scylla had let her magic make her, he didn’t want to be that either.
Britton tromped back into the line of enrollees just as Salamander was starting to break up the groups into their practice pairs. If Salamander had seen Britton open the gate, he wasn’t mentioning it. He didn’t doubt that the guard would file a report of unauthorized magic use, but he couldn’t worry about it. Therese was gone, and Wavesign milled around uncertainly on his own. The No-No Crew was back against the wall of the Quonset hut, refusing to help as usual. Britton nodded to Downer, but the young girl was already busy with another enrollee, who stood in the mud, kicking up clods of dirt that she animated. Wavesign’s misery was palpable. The boy wasn’t raising the flag and joining the SOC, which suited Britton fine; but sticking with the No-No Crew was simply aggravating the boy’s lack of control, and by extension, his misery. Britton couldn’t just stand by and watch that happen. He sighed and stepped forward.
“Come on, Wavesign. Let’s work together. I’ve got the basics down now.”
Wavesign looked up, embarrassed and a little frightened. Britton realized too late how much of the anger he’d let manifest in his voice. “I’m fine, Wavesign, really. I’m just worried about Therese. Let me help you.”
Wavesign shrugged, sidestepping closer to the No-No Crew, who stepped away at the touch of his vapor cloud. “It’s fine. I’m good.”