— Lee Thomson, host of WQXR Radio’s
Britton jarred awake, his back thudding on metal runners. He blinked his eyes, trying to clear the darkness from them, but blackness clung to him. He tensed his muscles until he was sure by feel that his lids were open, then he felt his breath, sour and close, reflected by cloth against his face. He was hooded. He tried to raise a hand to lift the hood and felt the sharp bite of plastic zip cuffs against his wrists. His chest still throbbed as if a hammer had struck it, and his breathing felt wet and shallow. But a curious warmth was spreading through him, moving across his chest. It dampened the pain, radiating outward, soothing his strained muscles. He felt the surface of his skin tingling, the delicious heat erasing the irritating burn of the field of abrasions there. The feeling spread to his calf, calming the pain there as well.
Even through the hood, Britton could make out familiar smells — lubricating oil, old boots, dried mud. He heard people clambering around him, doors slamming. The runners pitched beneath him as a motor revved somewhere under him.
“Whatha…” Britton tried his voice. His lips felt thick. He turned his head, trying to shake the hood loose, but it was useless.
“I’m sure you know this next part, Oscar,” came Harlequin’s voice. “Just like in the movies.”
A hand wrenched his sleeve roughly up, followed by the stab of a needle. Inside the hood, Britton’s vision began to shift from black to white. Then all went black again, his thoughts dissolving into spinning stars.
When he opened his eyes, the hood was off and he was sitting upright. He blinked, his vision blurry and his head aching. Apart from the headache, he felt no pain at all. He was breathing normally, and the sore muscles and scratched skin no longer troubled him.
A larger motor hummed, the throaty growl of a bus or big rig. He sat on a bench that ran the length of the vehicle, up to metal bars through which he could see a driver in army camouflage. Just before the gate stood a bank of computers with a young SOC sergeant first class seated before it, her hair in a neat blond bun. Another bench stood across from him, lined with lockers — each faced with a wire-mesh door that screened an armory that would make a gun collector drool. He recognized the vehicle as a mobile command center.
He shook his head, groggy, working his tongue against the roof of a mouth that felt stuffed with dirt. Harlequin sat on the bench across from him, beside an Asian man in a charcoal gray suit, his buzz-cut hair graying at the temples, his face stern and lined. A small black woman sat beside him, her head shaved as bald as Britton’s. Her eyes were large and sympathetic. Captain’s bars were stitched in black thread across the center of her digital camouflage blouse. Her lapel bore the stylized cross-within-a-heart that marked SOC Physiomancers. The remainder of the bench was taken up by enlisted men, all wary. Submachine guns rested in their laps, barrels pointing at Britton.
“How are you feeling?” Harlequin asked, handing him a water bottle. “Sorry about the dry mouth. Unfortunate side effect.”
Britton reached out for the magical current instinctively, already knowing the result — blocked by another flow. He slewed his head drunkenly to the left and saw a SOC Suppressor, his lapel pin featuring their badge of the armored fist clutching a cluster of lightning bolts. The man waved and smiled.
Britton tried to drink, coughing and dribbling water down his chin.
“Go easy,” Harlequin said. “Your head will clear, but it takes a little time.”
He was already feeling a little more clearheaded, but the words still came through a fog. He raised a hand and found he wasn’t cuffed. He was wearing a one-piece orange jumpsuit, his feet chilly in white tube socks. His skin was pristine, as if the events of the previous days had never occurred. He rolled his shoulders experimentally. The joints slid seamlessly against one another. There was no pain at all. Apart from the fog and the dull throb in his head, he was whole.
“Where are you taking me?” he croaked.
“That depends on you,” Harlequin said. “You have some choices to make, and you have to make them right now.”
Britton leaned back, closed his eyes, and gulped more water until the spinning eased. When he opened them again, the Physiomancer regarded him evenly. Her shaved head and square jaw spoiled what otherwise would have been a very pretty face.
“You fix me up?” he asked her.
“You’re lucky that gun was loaded with shot,” the woman said, her voice low and sweet. “If he’d loaded slugs, you’d probably have died before I got to you. I’m sure it hurt plenty, but it would have taken you a long time to bleed out. You’re young, and your flesh responded well to magic. You’re good as new.”
“A Physiomancer,” Britton said to Harlequin. “For me? I must be more important than I thought.”
Harlequin smiled and leaned forward, holding up a small metal cylinder, scarcely bigger than an eraser’s head. A light pulsed within. “Captain Bloodbreaker did more than heal you, Oscar. She inserted this device right next to the pulmonary valve of your heart. It’s an ATTD — Asset Tracking and Termination Device. It tells us where you are. It also doubles as a bomb. We’ll always be able to find you. We can always take you out on either side of a gate. The captain here is one of our best Physiomancers, but even with her skill, the procedure would have been extremely painful, far beyond what your actual wounds were causing you. Much better for you to be out during the process.”
Britton could almost feel the tiny metal ball embedded in his heart. His mind reeled, working backward over the successive explosions of the past few hours, dispersing the remaining effects of the drug.
“Why did you save me?” Britton asked. “I ran. I’m a Probe. I’ve attacked government agents. Per ROE, I should be dead. That’s what you do, isn’t it? You kill Probes.”
Harlequin shrugged. “Sometimes. I’ve killed a lot of people, Oscar. I sleep like a baby. Do you know why?”
Britton didn’t answer.
“I sleep at night because, unlike you, every life I take is authorized,” Harlequin continued. “There are some people who weren’t killed to protect anyone. Their deaths weren’t justified by any ordinance, civil or military. Those people include your father and a Shelburne sheriff’s deputy. You know what crime that deputy committed, Oscar? He did his job. Your father was just trying to protect his wife.”
“I’m not going to explain myself to you,” Britton rasped. “You use stupid and arbitrary rules as an excuse to kill people. You may sleep easy at night, but it’s not because what you do is right. Charlie Manson slept well at night. So did Hitler. Right and wrong aren’t about laws.”
Harlequin grinned. “That may work for you smart guys. Now, me? I’m just a dumb-ass public servant. I’m like Adam before he bit the apple. I don’t know right from wrong. Left to my own devices, I might do some very bad things. But God in his wisdom gave us the Constitution and qualified men and women who we elect to interpret it. To this he added the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the New Testament. Between those, I’m able to muddle by without making too much of a mess of things. But I must say, Oscar, I envy you the brilliance that allows a man to make those calls for himself.”
Britton read the surety on Harlequin’s face. “Get me my JAG. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
Harlequin shook his head, chuckling. “Those aren’t the rules, Oscar! You don’t get a damned lawyer! You sure as hell don’t get a trial.” He raised a hand, ticking off on his fingers. “You Manifested in a prohibited school. You ran. You employed your illicit power to bring about the death or wounding of at least one civilian and two police officers. Rare and valuable school or no, I have the authority to execute you right here and now.”
“So?” Britton said. “Shoot me like you shot that Probe girl on the roof of that school. ROE is clear, you said. Probes who attack government agents are dog food.”
“Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it,” the Aeromancer said, leaning back and folding his arms across his chest. “What you don’t realize is that I don’t enjoy killing people, Oscar. Despite this bad turn, you used to be a good soldier. Your team spoke highly of you. Your warrant officer practically begged me not to hurt you. He said you loved being in the military.”
