Myke Cole - Shadow Ops - Control Point

“I’ve got it!” she mumbled weakly, her legs untangling beneath Therese’s ministrations, flesh coalescing, bones straight-ening.

Pyre’s head rocked to the side and snapped back, his eyes narrowing. Britton ducked as the flame erupted from his chest, pushing over his shoulder and through the gate. It passed into the sewer and over Downer, who screamed with the effort of shaping it. Britton followed, shutting the portal behind him, not looking to see the reaction in the SASS.

Downer’s work was done by the time his boots hit the catwalk. Five elementals had sprung from the blaze, hunched humanoids with flat heads on flickering shoulders. They leapt across the water, pounding the Selfer with burning fists, igniting patches of greasy skin with every blow. The Selfer screamed in earnest, pain howling from a dozen mouths opening for that express purpose, the teeth glowing and popping like gunshots as the elementals covered it. The corridor was quickly choked with greasy smoke. The stink of cooking meat sent the remaining cops to their knees, retching through their balaclavas.

Britton could feel the current of the Selfer’s magic turn inward, focusing on reconstructing her own flesh. He glimpsed the bubbles of healing flesh through the smoke. The elementals strained, their bodies stretching as they spread their fire across her.

Britton glanced at Downer, the blood unpooling around her, leeching back into her knitting skin. Therese nodded at him. “I’ve got this!”

Britton lurched forward, grabbing one of the cops by his shoulder and hauling him upright. He slapped the bottom of his gun, sending the barrel up to smack his chin. The cop turned to Britton, his eyes wide. Britton shook him, pointing at the Selfer’s burning bulk. “Pour it on! Now! We don’t get another chance!”

The cop shook himself, raised his weapon, and pulled the trigger. The echo of gunfire competed with the roar of the flames. It galvanized the remaining cops, who turned and knelt, adding their own fire to the din. The bullets passed through the flame bodies of the elementals, ripping into the Selfer’s solid flesh as it shrank beneath the flames. A low moaning erupted from the smoke, which began to overtake the corridor, until Britton could see no flesh at all. Britton pushed his flow deep into the thick wall of smoke and opened a gate. He couldn’t see it beyond the tiniest flickering line in the smoke, and from that he worked it up and down, moving it like a cleaver, chopping into whatever remained of the burning bulk of the Selfer.

Her current waned. The smoke began to dissipate, the burning brighter. The conflagration shrank as the elementals consumed what fuel remained, smaller, smaller, until at last a misshapen lump smoked in the center of the shallow water, immobile, stinking.

There was no indication at all that it had ever been human.

Britton felt the magic current gone and rushed to Downer’s side. The girl was sitting up, gingerly moving her legs. “Sarah! Are you okay?”

Downer nodded, her lower lip trembling, eyes going wet. “Oh God, it hurt so bad…” She looked at Therese, who leaned forward, gathering the girl into an embrace.

“No,” Downer said, breaking free, sniffing up her tears. “I’m fine. I should secure the area.” She got to her feet, shaky and wobbling, and limped off, heading toward nothing in particular. The elementals winked out, dispersing into the remaining tendrils of smoke.

Therese made to follow her, but Britton stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t.”

Therese looked at him and nodded. “I know. It’s just that, for a moment there, she was her own age.”

Britton nodded back. “Magic makes you grow up fast. Nobody can fix that.”

Britton turned to Rampart’s corpse, then back to Therese. “There’s nothing you can—”

“Nothing,” she cut him off. “He’s dead.”

“He saved me when I first got to the Source. Saw me through a firefight and got me to the FOB.”

Therese nodded. “It was his job, Oscar. He knew what he signed up for.”

The NYPD captain moved among his remaining men, blubbering. Of the twenty ESU officers who had set out, four remained. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered, his eyes raw and red-rimmed, from the smoke or the tears Britton couldn’t tell. He knelt by one of his men, scarcely more than a pile of cloth and flesh scraps. He reached out a trembling hand, jerked it back, reached it out again.

“What the fuh, fuh…” he huffed, turning his dazed expression toward Britton. “What the fuck did you do? What happened to my men?”

Britton shook his head, heading toward what remained of the Selfer’s corpse.

“Where are you going?” the NYPD captain shrieked, waving his gun. “What about my men?”

“Sir,” one of the remaining cops said, reaching out.

“Get the fuck off me!” The captain slapped his hand away. “You!” he shouted at Britton, raising his weapon.

“He’s off his rock,” Britton said. “Somebody secure him.”

“Got it,” Richards said, gesturing. An outcropping of natural rock rose out of the water, flowing like liquid concrete into a fist around the captain’s torso, holding him fast. “Fuck off me!” the captain shrieked. “The fuck off me! Sergeant Torres! Shoot that man!”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Britton said, but the cops didn’t appear to need the warning. They were busy clustering around their captain, talking in soothing voices.

Britton turned back to his task. “To the captain’s original question,” Richards said, “where are you going?”

“Hayes wants tissue samples, right?” He slopped down into the water beside the hulk of smoldering flesh. Up close, Britton could make out the remains of severed vessels, half-formed organs. He conjured a small gate and cut out a brick-sized sample, thick flesh marbled through with half-formed remnants of Lord knew what. There was at least one cooked eye and something that Britton swore was a flexed elbow. The stench was overpowering.

He climbed back onto the catwalk and opened a gate back on Trailer B-6. “Downer!” he called down the catwalk. “Can you walk?”

The Elementalist turned, took a few steps, shaky but surer than before. “I’m fine,” she said.

“All right, everyone back through. Tell ’em the job’s done and to get a cleanup crew down here. I’ll give a report to Fitzy.”

Richards and Truelove stepped right through without any hesitation, responding to the natural tone of command in Britton’s voice. Therese hesitated at the threshold. “What about you?”

Britton hefted the chunk of meat. “Tissue sample. I’ll be along once I deliver it. Promise. Thanks for everything, Therese.”

Therese nodded and stepped through, but Downer paused, facing him, eyes narrowed. “Who the hell put you in charge? Fitzy’s the Coven Commander.” Britton could see the whirl of emotions competing across her face, scarcely under control even with the Dampener’s help.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “You were very brave, Sarah. Hell, you pretty much saved us all. I’ll make sure Fitzy knows it. I’m proud to serve with you.”

Britton could tell it wasn’t what she had expected, but her face was stone otherwise. After a long silence, she turned and walked through the gate. Beyond the static shimmer, Britton could see medics and Goblin orderlies fussing over the team. Certain that they were safe, he shut the gate and opened a new one, stepped through.

The cold hunched his shoulders, and he wrinkled his nose at the chemical-preservative smell. Behind him, the plastic curtain rippled, gently ruffled by the currents of the giant chiller in the center of the room. All around him, corpses lay on tables in various states of dissection, a macabre review of the bestiaries he had marveled at as a child. The fauna of the Source spread out before him: giant eagles, horned lions, small dragons, double-headed serpents. Here was a leopard with a human face, its tail hacked off, the flesh avulsed to reveal the articulation of the bones. There was a unicorn of storybook legend, the skin around the horn flayed back to show the attachment to the skull. Colored dye had been injected into the major veins running beneath the surface.