Control Point (27 page)

“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.

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.”

Britton’s anger doubled. It was so senseless. “You’re not fine, and you’re not good, and anyone with eyes can see it. You need this training more than anyone. Just because you get control doesn’t mean you have to raise the flag.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Then what’s this?” Britton asked, reaching into the mist cloud and shaking the droplets off his hand.

“That’s none of your business,” Swift said, and stepped forward. “He doesn’t want to be a soldier boy. Unlike you, he’s showing some fucking balls.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Britton asked. His next words came out in a rush. “He’s a kid who wants to belong to something. Unfortunately, he’s chosen your rancid company, as opposed to the army, which would at least help him come to some productive use.” He shocked himself with his own words. Was he actually defending the SOC? Advocating for Wavesign to serve it?
What’s happening to me?

“Doing what?” Pyre asked, his face reddening. “Running down and murdering his own people?”

“No, he’s better off with your crew, engaging in civil disobedience for…well, for no reason really. You’re not Gandhi, chucklehead. You don’t have a TV audience. You’re not changing anyone’s minds but your own. And, meanwhile, you’re convincing this poor kid to live under a rain cloud when the people who could help him get out from under it are standing three feet away.”

“Fuck you!” Swift seethed. “Bomb in your chest, my ass. You work for those fuckers, and everybody knows it. You could get yourself and everyone out of here tomorrow if you chose, but you won’t. You don’t want to.” Peapod nodded agreement, her thick arms folded across her chest.

“What? You dumb fuck. Even if that were the case, which it’s not, that would be my choice. Being free means being free, Swift. It means belonging to myself. Not to the SOC or to you. You’re not interested in freedom, just replacing one tyranny with another. You’re a fucking wannabe despot.”

“Better that than a killer,” Peapod said.

“Yeah, he’s really into nonviolence,” Britton fumed, the concern and anger coalescing on Swift. “Therese isn’t here for you to hit. You want to take a shot at me again?”

“Stand down!” Salamander shouted, as the crowd started to back away from the two of them. Wavesign’s vapor cloud coalesced into solid rain as he moved with them.

Swift took a step forward, cocking his fist. The magic surged along the tide of Britton’s adrenaline, and, angered past caring, he let it come. The gate snapped open between them,
facing Swift. The flow was heady and strong, and Britton rode on the sense of immortality that the singing current imbued in him. God, but Scylla was right. He was powerful, and it felt so good to be that way. The tendrils of magic snaked back to the Home Plane, seeking something to protect him from the threat of Swift, ignoring the fact that he was backpedaling, using his own magic to leap into the air, to fly to safety.

Salamander was shouting, running forward, but the anger released, freed from the confines of the Dampener, felt far too good to let go. Britton rode it for another moment, knowing that he would have to shunt it back in a moment and face Salamander’s wrath.

Another moment was all it took.

The magic found aid and hauled it through the gate, rolling shut as its work was done.

The biggest black bear Britton had ever seen, its prehibernation coat thick and shaggy, reared to its full height, howling in rage and terror. Britton guessed it weighed over five hundred pounds.

Britton felt his magic roll back as Salamander Suppressed him, but the Suppression broke a moment later as the huge animal turned and swatted Salamander across the chest with a massive paw, sending the Pyromancer sprawling in the mud. A bullet thudded in the dirt, inches from Wavesign’s foot, as one of the guards took aim at the bear, which flailed among the packed enrollees, just beginning to scatter. Swift soared skyward. Two Aeromancer guards hurtled after him, leaping from one of the guard towers. “Down!” they shouted. “Fucking down right now, or we will fucking fry you!”

Wavesign gritted his teeth and pointed at the animal, his rainstorm lashing forward in a wild spray of ice. The ice shards hammered the bear’s flank, whipping its hindquarters around, freezing one leg solid. The bear scrambled on its free leg, dragging itself toward Salamander. Britton almost applauded Wavesign’s rare burst of focused magic, but there was no time for that.

“Hold your fire,” Salamander wheezed to the guards as he tried to struggle to his feet. “You’ll hit somebody.”

The bear wheeled on its good leg, sniffing the air where Swift had escaped, and turned toward the next threat.
Salamander stumbled again, raising his head just as the bear growled and padded toward him, raising a giant paw, claws extended.

He pointed, a firebolt leaping from his hand and clipping the side of the animal’s head. Much of its skull vaporized. Streaks of flame arced down its neck. Britton could see the seared surface of its brain, just visible through the charred fur. But the bear didn’t go down. It roared, staggered back a step, and sniffed the air. It shook its head with rage, determining the smell was itself, and charged forward again.

Enrollees sprawled in the mud on either side of Salamander. The guards milled on the catwalks and around the gate, carbines leveled. Most cursed, unable to shoot through the crowd of enrollees. One squeezed off a round, thudding into the bear’s flank, making it angrier. Another bullet tore into its shoulder.

Britton focused and opened a gate. The tide of anger and panic threw him off. Without the Dampener controlling the flow, the portal opened a few feet behind the creature. The drug in his system kept the flow from overwhelming his senses, from burning his flesh as it had outside the convenience store, but he was off, and he knew it. He tried to close the gate, and it vanished momentarily, only to flicker back open closer to the creature.