Myke Cole - Shadow Ops - Control Point

Britton got shakily to his feet but found he couldn’t support his own weight, and crashed down again. “They were going to carve up your brain,” he said. “They figured they weren’t getting enough for the cost of keeping you. They were going to make you like Billy. If I’d just waited a little while longer, they would have done it.”

Scylla turned to face the perimeter fence, with its open view of the plain beyond. The guard towers stacked just behind it were gone, reduced to piles of flaking crumbs, as if the wood had been ravaged by termites. She laughed, long and low.

“Well, I suppose I should thank you, then, shouldn’t I? Because their return on investment is about to go way into the red.” She turned, bent down, placed her cool fingertips under his chin. Her face was serene, beautiful in the weird light of the Source’s giant moon.

“One more chance, Oscar. Are you helping me? Or am I not going to get killed by the SOC on my own?”

For a moment, Britton’s stomach fell. Her eyes, huge and welcoming, her mouth so steady, her voice so even. She knew something he didn’t. It all made sense to her, there was no confusion, no doubt. Could she be right while the rest of the world was wrong?

But a stench curled in his nostrils, tendrils of stink, rotten, fetid. God knew how many bodies, the remains of people slowly dripping back into the earth. “Fuck you,” he said, jerking his chin away from her.

“A pity,” she said. Britton could hear shouting, boots pounding in the distance, the whine of an electric motor. “Well, I’m not going to kill you, Oscar Britton. Instead, I’m going to leave you to reap the rewards of your position. You’re of no use to me if you’re not going to open a gate, so you can keep that bomb in your chest. You clearly prefer it to freedom. I don’t have the time to give you the education you so clearly need. I’m done mothering you, Oscar. If you live, if any of you live, perhaps you’ll come to learn in time. When you do, I’d be much obliged of your company. Bye now.”

She turned back to the fence line and spread her arms. The strength of her gathering current overwhelmed him, and his stomach clenched anticipatorily, but Scylla was as good as her word, and the magic billowed outward instead.

The fence collapsed, rotting back to the mud like everything else inside the SASS. Scylla began to walk forward, her shoulders lightly dusted by swirling motes of rusted metal, disintegrating in the gentle breeze, as farther down the line, shouts erupted. Britton craned his head to one side, and his eyes widened. All along the FOB’s perimeter, outside the SASS’s boundaries, the concrete barricade walls were crumbling, the skeletal stubs of their rebar supports stuck out into the sky, briefly silhouetted against the moon before they, too, flashed into flaking rust and blew away in the wind. Machine-gun emplacements collapsed, antiair systems fell to pieces with light pops. Hundreds of men and women wailed and collapsed, before dripping into the earth, their bones laid bare in fetid clouds of what used to be their bodies.

It went on as far as Britton could see in both directions. An Apache, circling on patrol, highlighted Scylla within a bright halo of its searchlight before suddenly breaking apart, its component pieces wafting away on the breeze before they could even hit the ground, the pilots nowhere to be seen.

Britton saw a tank park off to his right vaporize, the neat rows of main battle tanks reduced to stinking hulks of desiccated ore. Buildings collapsed in rotting heaps. The wailing went on and on.

Scylla turned to Britton, winked, and waved, then turned on her heel and strode out of the FOB, disappearing in the blackness beyond.

As far as Britton could see in either direction, the FOB’s perimeter had completely vanished. The base was entirely open, near as he could tell, to the countryside. Britton knelt, paralyzed with horror. So many dead, so much destruction. All because of him, because he had let her go.

And the ATTD still nestled in his heart, mocking him, reminding him that this swath of ruin had all been for nothing.

Movements in the grass beyond, small, hunched creatures rising out of the long grasses, calling to one another in their guttural tongue. Goblin spotters, Britton knew, from the hostile Defender tribes. They called in magical strikes every night. He’d seen the forward observers they used to direct them. Magic wasn’t so different from artillery in that sense.

They stood in the saw-toothed, swaying grasses, their silhouettes betraying utter shock.

Then one of them blew a horn.

Another blast followed farther down the line, and another.

The line of destruction that Scylla had wrought was suddenly alive with clarion calls, low, rumbling blasts followed by shouts. Britton couldn’t understand the language, but he knew full well what they were saying. The defenses are down. The way is open. Come now, come now. We may never have this chance again.

Panic-fueled adrenaline fired in Britton’s heart and stomach, strength flowing back into him. He lurched to his feet, turning to the wasteland that had once been the SASS’s gate, and ran with all he had.

The notion of Prohibited or “Probe” schools is the root of the problem. What incentive do Probes have to cooperate, to turn themselves in? From the moment they Manifest, their very existence is illegal. When you relegate a class of people to pariah status, you are creating a ready-made insurgency. The problem here is that this particular one has the power to bring about a change in the regime.

— Loretta Kiwan, Vice President

Council on Latent-American Rights

Appearing on WorldSpan Networks Counterpoint

You can call it blasphemy all you want, but the timing is perfect. Jesus Christ was an unusually powerful Physiomancer during the last Reawakening cycle. Your whole system of belief is based on a fluke of history. What you do with that realization is your problem, but it sure as hell should deflate your basis for oppressing homosexuals, outlawing abortion, and prohibiting magical schools.

— Mary Copburn

Council for Ethical Atheism

With every step, Britton’s mind returned to his heart. He imagined that he could feel the ATTD bouncing, dancing in his ventricle, waiting for the signal that would tell it to end him. His feet pounded with the rhythm of his heartbeat. Pound, pulse, pound, pulse, pound. Boom? When would the boom come?

Maybe Scylla was right; maybe he was worth too much. But he wasn’t taking any chances. The cash tent loomed before him, oddly quiet considering what had just happened.

In the distance, gunfire was erupting in the near-ceaseless staccato that spoke of real engagement. Several helicopters buzzed overhead.

Britton burst through the cash flaps, charging into the trauma unit. Several orderlies stared at him, but all the MPs were gone. Probably busy guarding Marty, he thought, or gone to see what the hell is going on out there.

Therese stood in the trauma unit, chatting sympathetically with a young marine who was gingerly testing his shoulder, pressing his fingertips against one of the tent beams, then wincing in pain. “Don’t be such a baby,” she admonished. “It won’t even be sore by tomorrow.”

The marine grinned at her and opened his mouth to say something as Britton approached.

“I need to speak to you,” Britton said. His eyes bored into hers. Don’t ask, just come with me.

Her eyes lighted on his bruised neck, his skinned hands and arms. Her nose wrinkled at the rotten stink on his clothes. She held his gaze for a moment before nodding. “Follow me.”