She nodded. “I trust you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You seem like a good sort. Maybe it’s because you stand up to both Swift and Salamander. Maybe it’s because you tried to protect me back there. Maybe it’s because God tells me so. I’m just going with my gut.”
“Call me Oscar.”
She smiled. “I’m Therese.”
He stepped through the space between the barricades into an enclosed patch of mud roughly five feet square. “What about Swift and the No-No Crew? What does God tell you about them?”
He saw her shrug through the gap between the barriers. “They’re all good, Oscar. Swift’s just trying to cope with his loss, I guess. Pyre’s just a kid. He follows along. The anger is just so…useless is all. I know it’s a bad situation, and I know that none of us want to be here, but…fighting everything, everybody, all the time. Swift isn’t happy just taking his own stand; he wants everyone else to take it with him. The guy’s the definition of bad influence.”
Britton nodded as Therese moved out of his field of vision. “I can understand where he’s coming from. I was already in the army, and they didn’t give me a chance once I came up Latent.”
“Well, here’s your second chance,” Therese said. “If you believe Salamander.”
Britton didn’t answer, unsure if he did or didn’t.
“You ready to get started? Can you hear me okay?” she called from the other side of the barricade.
“Let’s do this.”
“Have you ever Drawn magic before…?” Therese asked
Britton thought for a moment. “It comes from feelings…emotions. I know it responded to stress when I ran. It picks up when I’m angry or sad.”
“That’s right. Your emotions are the motor, but your brain is the steering wheel.”
“So how do we steer?”
“You just do,” Therese answered. “You have to feel it. Visualization helps. I picture the body whole, and the magic bends that way. Sometimes, I have to push hard, but it works. And you also…talk to the body. Tell it to knit. I don’t how to explain it. You can always try a prayer, Oscar. God never fails me when I reach out for Him.”
Britton frowned, unsettled by her words, thinking of his father’s violent religiosity. But she seemed so different from his father, beautiful where Stanley was ugly, kind where Stanley was cruel.
“You’re real religious?” Britton asked.
She nodded.
“I don’t want to go after you about it, but I don’t understand how. The church has been the biggest persecutor of us…oh, my God, I just referred to Latent people as ‘us.’”
Therese laughed. “It makes sense, I guess.”
“I hope I’m not offending you…”
“You’re not, Oscar,” she said. “A lot of people lose religion when they find magic, and I guess that makes sense. I know the church hasn’t been a big supporter. But I mean, hell, it’s not the first time that the church has been turned to work against God’s intentions. You’ve got the Inquisition, the Crusades, clinic bombings, what have you. This is no different. God knows what’s right, and so do those who really follow Him.”
“But doesn’t the very existence of magic turn some of that on its head?” Britton asked.
“Not really,” she said. “But to be honest, I don’t really think about it. I would never have gotten this far without my faith, Oscar, I think I would have given up a long time ago. It keeps me going. When you have something that important to you, sometimes it helps not to ask a lot of questions. Make sense?”
Britton was silent for a moment. It did make sense, but he didn’t like it. He knew it wouldn’t help to say that. “Sure it does,” he said instead. “So, how do we start?”
“You’re going to…get emotional. Recall something significant from your past — an exciting event in your life, something tragic or momentous. You’re going to do your best to channel it. You know how to reach past the Dampener? Activate your emotions?”
Britton thought of his unauthorized use of a gate from just the night before. “Yeah.”
“The Dampener should keep it tight and give you the ability to shunt it back, but if you feel yourself overwhelmed, give a yell and one of the Suppressors on the wall will roll it back for you. Ready?”
“Here goes nothing,” Britton said. He reflected on a sad memory to help trigger the magical flow, picturing his old house. The memory intensified under the influence of his heightened senses on that side of the gate, the image of his former home as vivid as if he were standing on the sunken porch steps. He could smell his mother’s baking from the kitchen window. He could feel the tide roar into him, building along with the emotion behind the Dampener’s barrier. He reached for it as he had outside the DFAC, and it flooded him with such intensity that for a moment he feared he would be unable to control it. But in the end the Dampener kept it regulated, and the gate snapped opened mere inches from his face. It flashed closed again, reopening so close that he took a step backward. He focused on the air a few feet before him and pictured the gate opening there. His muscles cramped at his effort to stem the flow, channel it, shape it to his will.
The gate rolled open right where he had wanted it to.
Britton blinked. The shimmering portal had opened on his parents’ house. Startled, he gave the Dampener rein and let his emotions slide back into the compartment. The gate vanished, leaving him breathing heavily.
“You okay?” Therese’s voice came from the other side of the barrier. “How’d it go?”
“It worked,” Britton answered. “Just not like I expected.”
He cursed inwardly. That was it? It was as simple as mastering your emotions? If only he’d known when his father had crouched over him, fists pounding his chest. If only he’d had the Dampener then! It made it so easy. The thought that the SOC had it, could have just given it to him, to Downer, to anyone who was struggling with Latency, enraged him.
He focused his mind, conjuring up fresh in his mind the rooftop where he’d shot Downer. He focused on the air a few inches in front of his face, where he wanted the gate to appear. The gate opened about a foot back from that spot, but its television-static surface showed the charred remains of the school’s roof, the battered remnants of the helo still on its side.
“Holy shit,” he breathed.
“Oscar, what’s going on?” Therese asked.
“I think I know,” Britton said. “Let me try one more thing.”
He focused and thrust out his hands again. That time the gate opened on his barracks room in South Burlington. It stood empty, every drawer open, every item removed. The door had been taken off its hinges. Yellow tape reading CRIME SCENE: KEEP OUT stretched across the doorway.
Britton shut the gate and blew out his breath. “Holy crap. I can go anywhere I want with this. All I have to do is picture the place.”
He heard Therese suck in her breath and turned to look. She had come around from the safety of the barricade and stood in the gaps between them, watching him. “Oh my God, Oscar. That’s amazing. What’s on the other side?”
“Anywhere.” Britton grinned through the effort of keeping the gate open. “Anywhere I want.”
Therese put her hands on her hips and cocked her head at him. “So, what are you still doing here?”
Britton instinctively jerked a hand to his chest and didn’t answer.
CHAPTER XV: PRACTICE
