“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.
And Goblins, everywhere Goblins. The desecration of their corpses shouted the central message of the Special Projects tent: just another animal. Source fauna.
Britton’s lip curled at the sight. He had to get out of there. He cast about, looking for a flat surface on which to leave the tissue sample. The only flat surface proved to be a folding aluminum writing desk strewn with files. He placed the meat on the clearest portion. A stack of files had toppled over sometime ago, spreading each one out in a stepped path, the titles stamped in antiquated font theatrically stereotypical for the military. AMPHISBAENA, read one, SPITTING SERPENT. Another read UNICORN, HORNED EQUINE. Britton began to leaf through them, eyebrows rising at the identities of the corpses laid out around him.
Then he froze.
SCYLLA, one read. HUMAN NEGRAMANCER. Someone had written UNCOOPERATIVERECAL across the front in red marker. Britton took a glance over his shoulder, then peeled back the cover and began to read.
…remains steadfast in her refusal to act in her own self-interest. While it is impossible to be certain if Andrews’s theory is correct regarding the elemental foundation of her magic, I see no harm in obliging him. We certainly lose nothing by trying, and, frankly, right now she is little more than a drain on the taxpayer resources necessary to house and guard her. We’ve had outstanding success in prefrontral cortex intervention with other subjects, and I don’t think I’m overstating the case when I say that it has handed this army a functional Portamancer where we’d otherwise have had a serious problem. In this case, the use of the Orbitoclast rendered the subject particularly vulnerable to the influence of his mother, who, fortunately, is cooperative and patriotic. While there is no such influence in “Scylla’s” life, I respectfully request that a hard time limit be set to allow the PSYOPS team to finish their work. If IO isn’t the answer here, then surgery certainly can’t hurt us. We should set a deadline for prefrontal cortex interception and see where that takes us…
Footsteps. Britton slammed the folder shut and stood back from the table, his mind swamped with images of Billy drooling, his mother draping her pale arms around his neck, crooning in his ear.
Hayes stepped through the flap and squeaked at the sight of Britton, his jowls shaking. He took a step back and nearly tripped over himself. “What the hell are you doing here!?”
Britton pointed at the chunk of meat on the desk, and croaked “Tissue sample, sir. Fitzy said you’d want it.”
And then he shouldered past the captain without another word, not trusting anything he might say.
Billy, drooling, compliant, opening and closing gates at their will.
They’d do the same to Scylla.
If she didn’t play ball, they’d do the same to her.
Fitzy took Britton’s report stone-faced. He nodded curtly and sat Britton in front of a laptop, where he typed out in meticulous detail all the events he had just recounted. It took Britton over an hour to ensure he’d captured it all, Fitzy making low conversation into a radio while Britton typed.
Eventually, Britton stopped typing and turned, looking at the chief warrant officer while he paced the trailer. “What’s your problem?” Fitzy asked eventually.
“It’s Rampart, sir. I just…I’m sorry.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Britton was silent.
Fitzy paced forward, his shoulders bunching. “Rampart was SOC in his bones. That man had more steel in his dick than you do in your entire body. He doesn’t need your sorry.”
Britton was used to Fitzy’s posturing by then, and after what he’d just been through, it failed to impress. He shrugged. “Will there be a funeral?”
“There might be, but not for you. Rampart didn’t know you and didn’t want to know you. For you there’s work, and that starts tomorrow at 0600 sharp.”
And 0600 turned out to be more MAC practice. When Britton arrived, Truelove stood beside a wooden pallet covered with a blue plastic tarp. Ashen toes and pointed ears poked out from beneath it.
Truelove looked embarrassed. “Hi.”
“You okay?”
