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.
The bear cuffed Salamander again, throwing the Pyromancer down in the mud. It reared up over him, roaring, its pelt burning brightly, patches slick with sizzling blood.
Salamander rolled over on his side, trying to drag himself out of the way.
Britton pushed the magical tide, extending the surge forward and letting the gate flicker shut and open again. It inched closer, appearing to slide along the ground, stutter-starting toward the creature as its huge limbs came down on Salamander’s head.
The gate cleaved through the bear, sliding onward as it did, slicing it neatly in half. The creature gave a grunt that turned into a gurgle and was cut abruptly short. Britton gave in to the Dampener, terrified that the gate would cut Salamander as well, shunting the magic away as quickly as he could.
The bear collapsed in halves, the spray of blood clearing to show Salamander, curled in the fetal position and soaked by the creatures innards but otherwise unharmed. Britton rose shakily to one knee, trembling with relief.
In the distance, he saw Swift returning to the ground, his arms gripped by two SOC Aeromancers. “Are you okay?” he called to Salamander, “I’m sorry, I j…” He was silenced by a boot in his ribs. He felt Suppression take hold, and his hands were roughly forced behind him and cuffed.
Salamander rose to his feet and made his way toward Britton. He was so covered in gore that it was impossible to tell if he was actually injured or not. “Don’t say a fucking word,” he said, trembling with rage.
“What should we do with him, sir?” one of the men holding Britton asked.
“What the fuck do you think you do with him?” Salamander rasped. “Throw this piece of shit in the hole until I can look at him without wanting to shoot him in the face.”
The inside of the pillbox smelled like sweat, musk, and old paint. Another odor rode just below the others, something high and chemical. The only light filtered in from the cracks around the door panel, illuminating an interior bare of anything except a metal bench with a bedroll resting on it and a stainless-steel toilet bolted to one wall.
Scylla had not bothered to graffiti the walls; she had made no scratched tick marks to count the days. She sat in a corner beside the bed, arms on her knees, eyes bright and smiling as if there were nowhere else she’d rather be.
“Well now,” she said. “I suppose you must have done something particularly naughty to join me here today. I thought I heard a ruckus outside my door.”
Britton felt his back fetch up against the inside of the door.
Then why was he so terrified?
Britton slid to the floor with his back to the door, crossing his arms in front of him.
“Oh, you don’t have to sit so far away,” Scylla said, moving to the bed and patting the surface beside her. “I may be a miscreant and ne’er-do-well, but I do so enjoy a man’s touch.”
“Is that what you did with Swift when he was in here?”
She laughed, her eyes dancing. “Oh, I’m sure he wishes. No. Swift is nowhere near as pretty as you.”
“He’s a fucking fool, and so are you.”
“Am I? And here I was thinking I was the only person in this whole mad place who makes any kind of sense.”
“You killed twenty people.”
“Oh, far more than that, actually. It’s been a while since I did the full tally. You, my little rumor mill tells me, killed one. You might have killed more if the SOC hadn’t taken you down when they did. So, really, what’s the difference?”
“There’s a big difference. I wasn’t in control.”
“Really? What about now? What about that nastiness out there? Were you in control then?”
Britton didn’t answer.
“Why’d you do it, Oscar? Why’d you let it go, knowing in your heart of hearts the destruction and havoc it
