Shadow Ops 3: Breach Zone

by Myke Cole

  Until Scylla decided she was done with him. He levered himself up onto his elbow, crying out in pain as he darted his hand toward his spare magazine. Scylla rolled her eyes and gestured. The empty pistol crumbled to broken, pitted metal in his hand, dusting the roof beneath him. ‘I’ll let you keep the bullets,’ she said. ‘Maybe if you throw them hard enough . . .’ She laughed.

  Harlequin smiled back at her though he knew the expression looked pained. ‘You can still surrender,’ he managed. ‘I can put in a word with the president. Ask him to go easy on you.’

  Scylla laughed again, eyes widening. ‘Yes, well. I don’t think there’s much of a call for that just now.’

  She nodded to her companions, and the two Selfers grabbed Harlequin’s arms, roughly dragging him to the roof’s battered edge, the street below coming into view.

  They dropped him on his face, letting him see over the edge. The rotted paths Scylla had cut into Harlequin’s force were covered over once again with goblins, giants, and Gahe. His own people were retreating back down Wall Street’s length in poor order, firing over their shoulders as they went. The Selfers from Houston Street were nowhere to be seen. The Breach stood open and unsecured, huge as ever, enemy pouring forth.

  ‘And now they go all the way back to your barricade line,’ Scylla said, ‘and into the city beyond. I get New York, Harlequin. I mean, I get it again. I ruled it when we first met, in the fashion of humans, and now I’ll rule it again for Latentkind. And I will bring it what you never could: justice.

  ‘You do realize the irony here, right? If you’d just let me go, I’d be in Uganda right now, or Bhutan, or Gwalior, helping people. Hell, we both would have. And we would have been happy.’ Her voice went wistful.

  She shook her head, chasing the thought away. ‘You reap what you sow.’

  She leaned in close, the smile vanishing, her eyes blazing. ‘Do you want to ask me to let you go? We could do a little role-playing of the time you took me in. I’ll be you, and you be me.’ She put a boot down on his fingertips, grinding them into the rooftop. ‘Do it,’ she said, ‘tell me you love me. Ask me to let you go. Beg me.’

  ‘I do love you . . .’ Harlequin coughed, struggled to get his breath, ribs throbbing. He got up on his elbows, grunting with the effort, feeling the bones in his sides grind against one another. ‘Grace . . .’

  ‘Don’t call me that!’

  ‘Grace. You have a real chance here.’

  He felt the cold intensify on the back of his neck, beginning to burn his skin. He leaned into it, vision clearing. That was the thing about cold, it was a clarifying pain. Scylla waved to something over Harlequin’s shoulder, and he felt the pain lessen as the Gahe behind him drew back. The male Selfer stood a few feet behind Scylla, Suppressing him. The female now moved back to the roof’s edge, watching the street in satisfaction.

  She smiled again. ‘You’re offering me a chance?’

  ‘Remember Swift from the No-No Crew?’

  ‘Not too bright, that one. Too much anger, not enough focus.’

  ‘He’s here, along with a lot of other Selfers. They’re fighting with us, against you. They’re fighting for the same freedom you’re promising, only in this case it’s real. We’re going to change the laws, Scylla. We’re not fighting on opposite sides anymore, we’re just pushing for the same thing from different angles.’

  ‘I saw your videos, Harlequin. I know all this. Do you honestly think I’d take part in your new order?’

  ‘Hell, no. You invaded New York City. You’ve killed thousands of people. You’ll never be welcome on this earth again.

  ‘But that’s not the point. You got what you wanted, Grace. You changed the conversation. You wanted an America where Latent people aren’t second-class citizens anymore. You’re getting that, and you can get it without further bloodshed. Once this is over, we’re going into negotiations. All you have to do is leave.’

  Scylla snorted. ‘I can’t believe I’m actually hearing this.’

  ‘What is it you told me all those years ago? You wanted to do some good. You’ve done it. Things can never go back to the way they were. You’ve made your point. We’ve learned.’

  He leaned forward, gritting his teeth against the rasping of his battered ribs. ‘I’ve learned.’ He looked into her eyes, trying to see past the twitching madness in the dark pupils, digging for the Grace he’d known.

  ‘You haven’t learned a damned thing,’ she said. ‘I’m not interested in turning the fate of magic over to some corrupt debating society that will go back on its word the moment guns are no longer at its back. You’ve already proved you can’t be trusted.’

  She stood, hands on her hips, nodded to the Selfers beside her. They lifted Harlequin to his feet, dragged him forward. ‘Do you remember that ridiculous speech you gave me when we first met? About sheepdogs and sheep and wolves? God, that was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. Stereotypes like that are how stupid people break the world up into chunks small enough for them to comprehend. So, let me use small words that even you are likely to understand. Wolves don’t negotiate with sheep, Harlequin. We hunt them. We kill them. We rule them.’

  She turned to the male Selfer. ‘Throw him off. Let him learn what it feels like to fall.’

  Harlequin wrenched against the Selfers’ grip, but the pain of his broken bones was too much, and he finally sagged limp in their arms as the street appeared beneath him, thronging with goblins who surged down Wall Street after his own retreating force, feet sliding in the slick, purplish smears that had once been people.

  He hooked his boots against a chunk of concrete. The female tried to pull him free, then cursed, punching him in the back. He screamed, and they flipped him around, dragging him the rest of the way.

  Scylla watched him, no longer smiling.

  A rectangle slid open behind her, washing the roof in television static. Harlequin heard the Gahe hiss in confusion; the Selfers turned to face the new threat.

  The gate pulsed and spat out monsters.

  They’d been men once. Years of living out of view of the sun had first been a curse, then a point of pride. Where their skins weren’t naturally powder white, they’d used Physiomancy to bleach them. Tattoos scrawled across their bare chests and thighs, riding on ridges raised by the same magic. Most were groupings of letters and numbers, codes that made no sense to Harlequin in his battered state. There were images, too: the head of a weeping Christ, crown of thorns ablaze.

  SUR3NO$, above two crossed pistols.

  The Physiomantic artistry chilled him. The Sculptor had specialized in retooling himself as a perfect imitation of another human. These Selfers used Physiomancy to cast their humanity aside. They raced out of the gate, their features a patchwork of images out of nightmare and legend. One woman’s skin had been reworked into a snake-scale pattern, her eyes lengthened at the corners to resemble a stylized Egyptian deity. One of the men had sprouted horns, dorsal ridges marching evenly down his back. Some of them had fangs. Others, claws that could rival the Gahe. All were the product of expert Physiomancy, the changes permanent, their flesh molded to make them something new.

  Their currents hit Harlequin like a tide. Not all of them were Latent, but many were, and those were strong. The non-Latent carried carbines: tricked-out military-grade hardware probably smuggled across the US border. The unarmed howled battle cries, flashing gang signs, forearms and fists together, thumbs out in a crude facsimile of devil’s horns.

  Scylla’s bodyguards dropped Harlequin, his back banging agonizingly against the rooftop, shoulders and head dangling off into empty space. He scrabbled with his hands, enough feeling returning to report the pain of his skinned palms and fingertips, and dragged himself back onto the roof. Scylla whirled, hesitated. The Houston Street Selfers, she knew. The Limpiados were something else entirely.

  One of
the Limpiados, a tall man with taller horns, unrolled a forked tongue that hung halfway down his chest. He extended a bleached hand and pointed at the female Selfer standing above Harlequin. The woman shrieked as her arm detached from her body, trailing muscle and sinew, and flew across to grip the male by the throat, flinging him off the roof. What should have been screams were only choked gurgles as he met the fate he’d intended for Harlequin.

  The Gahe shot forward, shrugging off the bullets the Limpiados pumped into it. It snatched one of them up, sinking its teeth into his shoulder before he clapped a hand to its side engulfed in flame, sending up a familiar plume of freezing black smoke. The Gahe fell back, its companions retreating with it as another Limpiado unleashed a cone of sizzling electricity after them.

  Harlequin felt his magic flood black into him. He summoned a wind, which gently lifted him upright, buoying his broken ribs and steadying his damaged shoulder. The pain was enormous but bearable. He teetered for a moment on the roof’s edge before he called on the wind to blow him a step forward, long enough to see another gate flash open on the street below, soldiers moving out, renewing their attack on the Breach.

  Scylla’s face compressed into an animal snarl. Harlequin could feel her tide rushing out, ripping into the ranks of the Limpiados on the roof. A few of them had already collapsed into pools of stinking sludge, many more had fallen to their knees, clutching their stomachs as they succumbed to rot. But a few rose under the torrent, gritting their teeth. The longtongued Selfer stood behind them, Physiomancy repairing their bodies as fast as Scylla’s sought to break them down.

  Harlequin felt his arms prickle and burn as they were spattered with freezing droplets and turned to see the remaining Gahe falling back off the roof, magical lightning engulfing them from above as Swift returned to the fight.

  Harlequin settled himself on his feet and let the magical wind go. His body protested the weight, but he managed to hold himself upright. Scylla caught him out of the corner of her eye and turned, abandoning the Limpiados to focus her magic on him.

  Harlequin caught her eyes and her magical current, held both. Scylla was strong. He could feel the rage in her magical tide, his teeth grinding together as he sought to contain it. There was no trace of the woman who’d called him a Boy Scout, smiling sardonically as she pinched his ass while they walked in Central Park. These eyes were hard, remorseless. They no longer wanted to do good.

  The eyes of a wolf.

  Harlequin remembered lying at Swift’s feet, his eyes crossing as he stared down the barrel of the pistol in the Aeromancer’s hand. Do you like me now? I’m a fucking product of your goddamned system.

  As was Scylla. As was this whole conflict. The chickens of a failed policy coming home to roost.

  ‘I’m sorry, Grace,’ Harlequin whispered through his clenched teeth, knowing she couldn’t hear him. ‘This is my fault.’

  But that didn’t change what she’d done. What he had to do.

  Since he’d saved the FOB, he’d been drummed out of the only institution he’d ever called home, come up against the ire of the Hewitts of the world. It had drained him, a fight within a fight, counterpunched by the relentless pace of the events unfolding in New York. Exhaustion flooded him. He had nothing left. He’d poured too much of himself into this struggle; he’d fought too hard and too long.

  Too hard and too long to lose.

  Harlequin screamed as he punched his current through Scylla’s, wrapped the tendrils of his own magic around hers, and interdicted it. Her jaw went slack as she felt the Suppression take hold.

  The roof went silent as Scylla backed away, the Limpiados crowding forward. Swift landed in front of them and waved them back as Harlequin advanced on her.

  His lips felt numb, his mouth too tired to form words, but he dug deep again and found a way. ‘Grace Lyons. Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head. I place you in military custody for unlawful magic use and practices proscribed under section 8.A.2.’

  The hard eyes shot left and right. She was still a wolf, but a panicked one. Her hips and thighs tensed, poised to break and run, but there was nowhere to go. Below her, crackling gunshots were followed by sizzling pops as Harlequin’s troops used Bookbinder’s magical ammunition to push the enemy back into the Breach.

  Regs said to bring her in alive. Fuck regs. Regs created this mess in the first place.

  But there was still justice.

  And something more, the wrenching in his gut that reminded him that, despite all she’d done, he loved this woman, couldn’t bear to see her die. Even now, even after everything.

  A low growl started in her throat, rising to her jaw to erupt into a bass scream. Her eyes narrowed to slits, cords standing out on her neck, her fingers hooked. Harlequin’s eyes widened as he saw tears stream down her face. The scream gradually shifted to sobs, then to words.

  ‘Why, damn it? Fucking why? Why would you help them? They’re the fucking sheep! You hated them, and you were right to! They’re beneath you.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Harlequin said. ‘I was wrong. They are me, and I’m them.

  ‘That’s the thing you never understood. You think a couple of differences, even big differences, makes us another species?’

  He swept his hand in a wide arc, taking in the Limpiados and Swift on the roof, the soldiers and police officers below. Selfer and soldier, Latent and non-Latent, surging around her, fighting to get the Breach secured. ‘So, we’re different. That’s what it means to be human. A couple of folks, even a lot of folks, hurting you doesn’t change that. It doesn’t make them sheep. It never did.’

  He took a step toward her, ignoring the burning in his fingers as they followed the familiar course, pulling out a pair of zip cuffs, the kind he’d never ceased to carry in his cargo pocket. ‘Get on your knees. Hands behind your head.’

  Helo rotors beat the sky above, and he heard ropes slap the roof behind him, followed by the whirring of reinforced leather palms against braided nylon as soldiers fast-roped down. Scylla crouched farther away, eyes flicking back and forth, desperately seeking a way out.

  She looked back to Harlequin, her composure returning. The corner of her mouth quirked, and she stood, looking as if her capture had been part of the plan all along.

  ‘You’ll reap what you sow,’ she said. ‘They won’t negotiate, and they won’t amend anything. They’ll bicker and lie and put their boots right back on your neck. The only way to ever get them to treat you fairly is to crush them. Nothing you’ve done here changes that. You may move from the fields to the house, but you’re still a slave.’

  Harlequin looked over the fighting in the street below, saw one of the Fornax Coven Novices standing alongside a Selfer in a billowing red dress, pouring their flames together to ignite a crescent of ground around one corner of the Breach, the Gahe drawing back inside the portal as the flames rose.

  I’m sorry, he thought. Oh, Grace. I’m so sorry. But, ‘We’ll see,’ was what he said. ‘We’ll both see. The difference is that I’ll be at the negotiating table, and you’ll be locked up and awaiting judgment.’

  Scylla laughed aloud at that, tossing her head. Her careless look was belied by the surge in her current, struggling to break through the Suppression. Struggling and failing. ‘Silly boy,’ she said, ‘nobody can judge me.’

  And then she threw up her hands, pushed off with her heels, arced her back as gracefully as a diver, and leapt backward off the roof.

  Harlequin cursed and raced forward, dropping the Suppression to get himself airborne, following her passage. But he was injured, slow. The wet slap of her body against the pavement below had sounded before he’d cleared the edge, offering him enough of a glance to make him turn away in horror.

  Currents swirled around him, coming from Swift, the Selfers, and the Sorcerers fighting on the street below. But he knew Scylla’
s, had come over the years to be able to recognize it like the smell of his father’s pipe smoke.

  It was gone.

  A gate flashed open beside him, bringing Britton, Bookbinder, and Downer onto the roof. They came up short at the stunned looks of the assembled people there. Looked around, back to Harlequin.

  ‘What happened?’ Bookbinder asked.

  ‘Where is she?’ Britton added.

  ‘She’s gone,’ Harlequin said, trying to keep the sadness from his voice. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘No.’ Swift didn’t sound sad at all. ‘It’s just getting started.’

  Epilogue

  Horse Trading

  Sudden, explosive change never sticks around. It’s the slow, thematic shifts that last.

  – Professor Barbara Quinn, Political Science Department,

  New York University

  Oscar Britton looked ridiculous in a suit.

  Uncomfortable for starters. The shirt collar was too tight, his bull neck spilling over the sides, muscle looking more like fat. With his bald head and lantern jaw, Britton looked like some kind of mob enforcer hauled in for a criminal trial. It didn’t help that his tie was skewed off to one side, and he kept making it worse by tugging at the collar, trying to get himself some much-needed air.

  Harlequin had only ever seen the man in three sets of clothes: a military uniform, a prison jumpsuit, and now this. We’ve really come full circle, friend. Haven’t we?

  The breakout room in the basement of the US Capitol was well guarded, both inside and out. Armed police lined the curving walls of the chamber in their dress uniforms, but the tailored jackets didn’t hide the bulky body armor beneath. The shining, patent-leather holsters held guns with operational loads, unsnapped and ready to go.

  Not that it would help if it came to a fight. Half the people in the room were Latent.