Shadow Ops 3: Breach Zone

by Myke Cole

  ‘Get back in the fight!’ he shouted to the Pyromancer. The young man saluted, and the helo spun away, as Harlequin alighted back on the tower platform. ‘Jesus. They’re everywhere.’

  Cormack held a rifle out to Bookbinder, magazine well toward him. ‘That looks hot, sir. You better get it loaded.’

  Bookbinder rammed the magazine home and Cormack rested one elbow on the concrete of the barricade, where the tower abutted it, sighting down the rifle and keeping his hand well clear of the hot metal. ‘This is hot as hell, sir. Hope it doesn’t foul the weapon.’

  ‘Just hope it works,’ Harlequin said.

  ‘It will,’ Bookbinder said. ‘At least, it did with ice-bullets back in the Source.’

  ‘Here goes.’ Cormack sighted on one of the Gahe and fired. The muzzle flash extended, and the round streaked orange flame as it left the barrel. It took the mountain god in the chest, the liquid black surface suddenly glowing with an expanding ball of bright fire. The Gahe shrieked and flashed backward, black smoke billowing from the wound, the flames doused by the creature’s freezing blood.

  But it was still wounded, and badly. Its shrieks dropped to a whine. Freezing black smoke turned the ground hard, sending the goblins scattering.

  Harlequin smiled. Cormack gave a brief shout of triumph. ‘That’ll do it, sir. Let’s get you to the ammo dump. We’re going to need a lot of this stuff.’

  ‘All right,’ Bookbinder said. ‘You want to call that Pyromancer back in?’

  Harlequin shook his head. ‘I didn’t like the way that last transition went. Those things bleed cold, too, might limit the effectiveness of Pyromantic rounds.

  ‘I’ll come with you. Let’s try it with lightning.’

  Interlude Seven

  Thus Always To Wolves

  People ask me, after I came up Latent, how I could still believe in God. Every time I look into the eyes of someone I know is walking around because of my magic, I think, how could I not?

  – Captain Seraph, SOC liaison,

  Third Medical Battallion, United States Marine Corps

  Six Years Earlier

  ‘Do it,’ Harlequin said.

  ‘What if I screw it up?’ Grace asked. They stood in the center of her living room, dark-stained hardwood flooring covered with pools of slime and dustings of desiccated metal.

  ‘You said you had it under control.’ Harlequin resisted the urge to scratch at the grease paint covering his chest. ‘Do you?’

  ‘You know that I do. But . . . even people with control screw up sometimes.’

  ‘Control means real control. I can manipulate a single molecule in a single breath of air. You should be able to rot off this paint without touching my skin.’

  She sucked in her breath. ‘What if I hurt you?’

  ‘Are we in this together or aren’t we?’

  She stared, chewed on her lip.

  ‘We’re sharing this risk, Grace. So let’s share it.’

  ‘I’ve never hurt anyone with it. It’s never slipped past me.’

  ‘Great. Then you won’t hurt me. Now, enough of the jaw jacking. Let’s get this done.’

  She stood another moment, still worrying her lower lip, arms folded across her chest. She looked so different out of the power suit. In her jeans and white tank top, she looked almost . . . normal. Sharing the secret only made him feel closer to her. No wonder she’d been so familiar, so at ease when they’d first met. She understood what it meant to be Latent.

  Most people would have panicked. They would have run, or lashed out. Harmed others, gotten themselves killed.

  But this was Grace.

  The more he thought about the lengths she’d gone to to find a way, to not give up, to bend what most would see as a disaster into an opportunity, the more it impressed him. She was an amazing woman. Singular.

  The kind he could spend his life with.

  That was worth the risk.

  ‘Do it,’ he repeated.

  He felt Grace’s current rise, coalesce out of nothing. The high concentration of Dampener gave her such complete control that the current was invisible until she called it. She should have the precision she needed.

  Still, he couldn’t keep from flinching as she Bound the magic to the thin layer of paint on his chest. He felt a tingling, gathered his own current, ready to Suppress hers if she began to harm him.

  A moment later, the paint began to crinkle, peeling off in layers and crumbling to dry dust that settled on his boots. His chest hair went next, turning slick, then dripping down his stomach, the now-familiar smell of rot wafting into the room. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘I was using those!’

  She laughed, shunting the magic back. ‘Not too bad.’

  ‘Not bad at all,’ he agreed, ‘though you still need to tweak it a bit, spare my chest hair.’

  ‘That was on purpose. I like you smooth.’

  He laughed at that, his blood racing with the nearness of her. That they shared magic only intensified the feeling. He grabbed her around the waist, one hand cupping one tight buttock. ‘I bet you do.’

  He kissed her hard, and she jumped up, locking her legs around his hips and carrying him back a step.

  At last they came up for air, and he floated for a moment before opening his eyes.

  And saw another runnel of blood, dripping from her nose.

  ‘Again?’ he asked, putting her down.

  ‘It happens a lot, I told you.’

  ‘Grace . . .’

  ‘It’s not the drug, Jan.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Because Weiss is the foremost pharmaceutical mind in the country, because my lab is staffed with the brightest bioengineers that money can buy. Because they have an unlimited budget for equipment and supplies. Because we have been testing this compound for years in a variety of doses, hosts, and environments, and we have never, ever, ever seen nosebleeds as a side effect. I know it makes you uncomfortable, but this really is the function of too much blow in my misspent youth. Just suck it up, okay?’

  He opened his mouth to say more, but the alarm on her watch chimed, warning her it was time to refresh her dose, and she stooped to the compartment below her sink where she kept her syringes. He watched as she pumped the Dampener into her wrist.

  Morelli sprawled on one of the leather couches in the lab’s break room, playing a video game on a tablet computer. Harlequin and Grace walked past two of Channel’s security guards on the way in, but Rampart was nowhere to be seen. Dan stood against the wall, arms folded, a smug smile on his bearded face.

  Morelli looked up and waved. She wore a comfortable-looking sweatshirt and pants, the corporation’s logo emblazoned across her chest. Her gray-streaked hair was clean and drawn back into a ponytail. She looked heavier, better rested. The couch was covered with a light dusting of crumbs, and a small table was set with the remains of a meal. ‘You two are up late,’ she said.

  Harlequin felt her current from across the room. It lacked the disciplined feeling of a trained SOC operator’s, was nowhere near Grace’s, but it was firmly in control.

  Harlequin stared in silence, in awe of the dramatic difference between the woman before him and the one he’d first taken down.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Grace asked.

  Morelli shrugged. ‘Pretty good, they’re feeding me well.’ She picked up a small dish of custard off the table and pointed at it. Harlequin could feel her magic Drawing and resisted the urge to Suppress her. The magical pulse felt erratic at first, but after a moment it buttoned down, and a short blue cone of flame stretched out from her fingertip. She smiled and waved it back and forth across the bowl until the surface crystallized, tinted a light golden brown.

  She looked up at them, smiling. ‘Crème brûlée; I used to be a hell of a cook.�
�

  Harlequin stared, glanced up at Grace long enough to see that she was watching him rather than Morelli. ‘Where’s Rampart?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s here, sir,’ came the chief warrant officer’s voice as he came in behind them. ‘Sorry. I was in the latrine.’

  Harlequin turned, folding his arms over his chest. ‘Leaving her unsupervised?’

  Rampart looked surprised. ‘Crucible authorized it days ago, sir. She’s got it locked down. I haven’t had to Suppress her since you brought her here.’

  Now it was Harlequin’s turn to look surprised. He turned back to Grace, whose look of anger had melted into smugness.

  ‘Your control is that good, huh?’ he asked Morelli.

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I’ve still got a ways to go, but Crucible says they’re going to transfer me soon.’

  ‘To where?’ Harlequin asked. The only thing he could think of was Quantico, and to the best of his knowledge, they didn’t train Selfers there. He remembered Crucible’s words. Understanding and controlling magic is one of the biggest priorities on the national defense agenda. Do you think we’re just going to let hordes of legally dead Latent people rot in prison? Or kill them?

  Obviously not.

  Maybe you can go to Crucible, talk to him about Grace. Maybe she could be . . . repurposed. The thought sent his stomach into a nosedive. He wasn’t sure how his boss would react. And unless he was absolutely sure, the risk was just too great.

  Morelli shrugged. ‘Someplace nice, I’m sure. Watch this.’

  She Drew and Bound her magic, and a napkin beside the plate burst into flame. The orange peaks narrowed into a pencil-thin funnel, arcing upward and outward, scrolling through the air over the plate until they formed a crude cursive M. After a moment, the fuel was spent in a puff of smoke and a brief sprinkling of black ash. ‘Isn’t that cool?’ she asked. ‘I just figured it out yesterday.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Great,’ Morelli said. ‘I even got to talk to my kids on video-chat.’ She tapped the tablet computer. ‘They think I’m in the hospital.’

  Grace coughed and clapped a hand to her face, taking a step backward. Dan came to her side. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ Grace answered, pulling a tissue from her pocket. ‘Nosebleed. I get them all the time.’

  Dan’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded. ‘Maybe go put some ice on it.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ Grace said, heading for the exit.

  Harlequin went to join her, then paused at the doorway.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Morelli?’ Harlequin asked. ‘Do you remember when we first met? In the Bronx? When I brought you . . . in?’

  The smile faltered, and Harlequin felt her flow spike briefly, but only just. ‘I remember.’

  ‘What was going on then, Morelli? You knew what the law was, right? You knew you could call us when you came up Latent?’

  Her forehead crinkled as she thought it over. Her current remained steady. ‘Yeah,’ she said slowly. ‘I knew that.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call us? Did you think we wouldn’t help you?’

  ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘I knew you would. I knew you’d put me in the SOC or whatever.’

  ‘So, why didn’t you call? Why’d you burn that building?’

  She thought longer, her face going slack, the closest he’d seen to a return to how she’d looked when they’d first brought her in. At last, she jerked her shoulders up and smiled. ‘I was crazy,’ she said.

  She tapped the fading bruise of the injection site on the inside of her arm. ‘I’m better now.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Call To Arms

  Forcing children into military service has been the hallmark of failed states around the world, and a tragedy that the UN and a slew of NGOs has worked tirelessly to combat. In the Ivory Coast, Uganda, Rwanda, Kurdistan, the cry of outrage is heard at each new report of children forced to go to war. Except in the United States. Here, Latent children are routinely indoctrinated into the SOC in the name of national security, and the voices of outrage are suddenly silent, quietly grateful that someone is dealing with the problem.

  – Jill Vasconez

  Human Rights Watch

  Harlequin and Bookbinder double-timed it back to the ready room at Castle Clinton.

  ‘Got a few cans of 7.62mm rounds under my desk,’ Harlequin said. ‘Let’s start with those, then we can tour the ammo dumps after that.’

  ‘Why not?’ Bookbinder asked, as they stepped into the ready room.

  And froze.

  The normally bustling room was completely still. The servicemen and women stood, eyes wide, gaping at screens that normally showed the park’s perimeter, locations of supply dumps and troops, red triangles indicating where the enemy was attacking in the greatest force.

  They now showed the news, an orange-and-blue banner reading – BREAKING: LIVE beneath it.

  They were dominated by a single face. Dark, wise eyes were surrounded by skin as pale as it was smooth. Jet-black hair ended at sharp points along the jawline. The full lips were set in a smile at one corner, as if the speaker were enjoying a private joke.

  Scylla had abandoned her leather armor. Her skin tone was even, still creamy white, but showing well under the camera’s scrutiny. Since his appointment as Special Advisor to the Reawakening Commission, he’d been the SOC’s public face, and that meant lots of time on television. He was no stranger to the tricks of the trade. He could tell a professional had been at work here.

  Scylla wore a black suit, fashionable, reasonable, and probably looted from one of the upscale boutiques that her army had ransacked. A simple strand of pearls adorned her neck, matching studs in her ears. She looked presentable, professional.

  Like a politician.

  The sight evoked the Grace he had known – brilliant, hopeful, refusing to be locked down by the small minds around her. God, she was so beautiful. Looking at her made his stomach hurt. Harlequin could almost imagine that she was still Grace, that nothing had changed. That she should be reasoned with.

  But then she spoke.

  ‘. . . greatest regret over the devastation wrought by the airborne attack against the Trump Building. It was an unnecessary loss of life that underscores the carelessness with which this nation’s military has always handled its responsibilities.’

  In the lower-left-hand corner of the screen, a YouTube video clip ran on a constant loop, showing A-10s peeling off and the bronze finial atop the spire of the Trump Building slewing to one side, hanging for a moment, then finally crashing down in a cloud of sparks and smoke.

  Scylla gestured to the clip. ‘Apparently we’re not the only ones responsible for damage to this city. The free tribes of the Source do not fly attack aircraft.

  ‘I’m not surprised, of course, and neither should you be. This administration has already shown itself to be interested in just one thing: perpetuating its own power. That’s why we’re here – because if we let the new president go on doing exactly what the old one did, and he will, then the next thing he’ll conquer is the Source. The Native American tribes of the Home Plane have already experienced the American insatiable thirst for conquest, and that’s why they’re fighting, too, along with their indigenous brothers and sisters who have crossed into this plane to make sure that what happened to the Apache never happens to them.’

  The YouTube clip shifted to battle scenes from the Mescalero reservation. Giants and goblins surged around a core of Gahe, trading magical and conventional fire with barricades manned by uniformed soldiers. The magical fighting seemed to be more intense here, with bursts of lightning and flame lighting up the desert landscape. That’s because the SOC is there, Harlequin thought. There were far less Gahe to be seen, but they were more than made up for b
y squads of Apache Selfers. Many of them were painted to mimic their mountain gods, skins pitch-black, horned and grinning masks over their faces. The non-Latent Apache moved with them, firing rifles, far more accurate and disciplined than any goblin.

  ‘So, I’m speaking directly to the so-called Selfers of the United States. Is your experience really so different from what the Apache suffered when the West was supposedly won? Humans cannot stand one simple fact: that Latent people have a power over which humans have no control. The two Gate-Gate incidents have shown us something more, as did my time imprisoned at the now-no-longer-secret base in the Source: The government has no intention of making magic “safe”. They have every intention of gaining control over it. They don’t want to protect anyone; they want to empower themselves, and they want to do it on your backs.

  ‘The SOC maintains control via a drug known as Limbic Dampener, which helps control the emotional center of the brain, which conducts magic. If this drug were freely distributed, all would have control over their magic, and there would be no need for the McGauer-Linden Act. But they will never distribute it. Because their contractor, Entertech, has made so much money off its production that they can afford to buy every politician on the Armed Services Committee.

  ‘I know. I invented the drug. When I wouldn’t sell it to the SOC, they threw me in a hole to rot. These are the people who rule you. They could end the crisis tomorrow, but money and power are too important to them.’

  Bookbinder shook his head, looking at Harlequin. ‘That bitch! Do you believe this cra . . .’

  But Harlequin stared at the screen, biting back tears.

  ‘It’s true, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s all true.’ Oh, Grace. I lost you.

  ‘Your government would have you believe we are an invading army,’ Scylla went on. ‘What we are is an instrument of liberation. The United States of America ceased to be a free country the moment the McGauer-Linden Act was signed into law. Apartheid is apartheid, even when the class it seeks to oppress is a powerful one. To all the so-called Selfers watching, I say this: Against the might of the US military, you don’t have a fighting chance. But banded together, we can throw down this traitorous regime and take our rightful place as free people, lords of our own bodies and minds. Together, we can be free at long last. Anyone watching the news this past week cannot fail to find us. You know where we are, and we welcome you. The so-called Breach Zone is just the beginning. It forms the kernel of a new society built on the ashes of the old. This country was founded on a fight for freedom. It was Thomas Jefferson who reminded us that “The tree of Liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Now is the time to water. The time to sow comes after, and we will all reap the final reward together. Come, fight. And at long last, be free.’