Shadow Ops: Control Point

But there was no time to ponder it. Scylla was the known quantity. Therese wasn’t sure. Truelove’s words echoed in his mind. They’re going to fire him. He’s as good as dead.

There was no time. If he was going to save Marty, he had to do this now.

Britton burst from the cash tent, making for the SASS.

Night was the SASS’s slow time. The enrollees were all in their bunks beneath the corrugated-metal domes of the Quonset huts. The guards lazed in the parapets and towers, casting half-lidded gazes out into the semidarkness. Britton forced himself to measure his stride, to walk casually toward the gate, hands in his pockets. He briefly considered trying to whistle and abandoned the idea. The knot of panic passing between his stomach and throat wouldn’t permit it.

It felt like it took an eternity to walk all the way to the gate at that maddeningly casual pace. Every step was a delay during which Marty’s captors could push him outside the wire, thank him for his service, and leave him to die. He couldn’t let that happen.

But neither could he hurry, not if his plan was to work.

One of the gate guards squinted in the darkness, began to salute, then dropped his arm when he realized that Britton was a contractor. “Good evening, sir,” he said.

“Evening,” Britton said, doing his utmost to keep his voice even, unconcerned. “What’s going on?” It came out as a rasping croak, his words quaking. Oh God, they’ll know. They’ll know something’s wrong.

“’Nother day, ’nother dollar,” the guard drawled, unconcerned. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Keystone, Umbra Coven. I used to be an enrollee here.” Britton’s confidence grew.

“I recognize you, sir. What’s going on?”

“Chief Warrant Officer Fitzsimmons wanted me to drop something off with Major Salamander. Just take a second,” he said, flashing his badge.

He had nothing to drop off. What if the guard asked to see whatever it was? He would say it was a message. But what message? His mind spun as he tried to think of something, but the guard was already nodding and sliding the barrier out of the way.

Britton swallowed and trotted through, trying to look unhurried as he made his way toward the Quonset huts. The pillbox hung in his peripheral vision, two Suppressors on duty, one seated on a camp chair just outside the door.

Britton risked a look over his shoulder. The gate guards were already out of view. The guards in the towers barely spared him a glance, their bored eyes cast outward.

Britton broke off and veered to his right, moving toward the pillbox. One Suppressor stood in the darkness, his face illuminated by the tip of his cigarette. The other leaned against the wall, camp chair tilted back. He rocked it forward so it stood straight and waved distractedly. “Hey.”

“Hey, guy,” Britton said, forcing himself to slow down. “Life in the fast lane, eh?”

“No doubt,” the Suppressor said, “what’s going o…”

But Britton had crossed the last few steps between them and snapped open a gate behind him. The Suppressor began to turn, seeing the static shimmer of the light in his peripheral vision, as Britton planted a boot in his chest and kicked him through, sending him to sprawl on the floor of Portcullis’s loading bay.

The other Suppressor had only begun to turn toward him as Britton pivoted on his leg, rocketing his foot up and over to send it crashing into his temple. The Suppressor crumpled, unconscious, the lit cigarette going dark in the mud. Britton looked back at the Suppressor he’d kicked through the gate. “I’m sorry,” he said. The Suppressor only gawked at him, jaw gaping, from the other side of the gate, propped up on one elbow on the concrete floor.

Then Britton shut the gate, and the man was gone.

“Sir? Hello?” A call came from one of the towers beside the gatehouse, quickly followed by “Oh, Christ!” A searchlight lit, the beam dancing crazily across the ground before him. Voices began to call out.

Britton turned and pounded on the rusted door. “Damn it, Scylla! Wake the hell up!”

Her voice came from the other side, as calm and poised as if she had been awake, standing there the entire time. “I’m awake, Oscar. Thanks for coming.”

The first bullet whined over his shoulder to tear a chunk from the concrete wall. Britton threw open a gate and crouched behind it as an alarm sounded. Bullets whistled toward him, whisking through the gate and out over the star-dappled field where he’d sheltered in Nelson’s barn what felt like an eternity ago. Boots thudded in the mud, coming toward him. More shouting.

He tried to sneak a look around the gate to see what he faced, but was driven quickly back by the increasing hail of bullets around him. What the hell was taking Scylla so long? Maybe she had lied. Maybe she couldn’t help him. Maybe she was cowering inside her concrete prison and waiting for him to die.

The boots thudded closer, almost on top of him by then. He could see the doors to the Quonset huts off to his left slamming open. Swift stood there, Peapod, Tsunami, and some of the other enrollees behind him, gaping. Major Salamander emerged from another door, his body already wreathed in bright orange flame. Britton felt a current reach out, snaking into his own, rolling it back, snapping the gate shut.

He crouched in the mud, eyes closed, waiting for the bullets to tear him apart.

And then the pillbox disintegrated.

One moment, Britton had crouched between his gate and the firmness of the concrete wall. The next, his back was coated in blowing concrete dust, and the rusted scraps of pitted metal that had once been the pillbox door. Scylla stood in the midst of the ruin, her pale mouth stretched in a vulpine smile. Her current was wild, intense. Britton felt it surging all around him, nearly suffocating in its enormity. The boots stopped pounding, the steady thrum of the bullets ceased. Britton’s magic flooded back into him as the Suppression dropped. He stood and looked around.

The first thing he saw was Salamander, sprawling in the mud, clutching at his stomach, his flame out. A company of guards writhed in the dirt before him, also grasping their abdomens, shrieking. “My, oh my.” Scylla smiled. “I have been waiting for this for a very, very long time.”

Swift turned, pushed back against his fellow inmates, and retreated inside the hut, slamming the door behind him.

“Scylla,” Britton cried. “Please. I kept my part of the bargain. Take this thing out of my chest.”

She looked at him, her eyes distant, distracted, as if noticing him for the first time. “Indubitably. But first, let a girl stretch her legs.”

The SASS collapsed. The chain-link fencing shuddered, the polyurethane coating bubbling and cracking off, the metal first rusting, then melting, then blowing apart. The wooden towers sagged, wet-looking, and finally collapsed into black sludge that pooled in stinking bogs. The schoolhouse collapsed with the wet sound of a smashed cantaloupe. The guards writhed, then stopped screaming, their flesh turning transparent, then black, then fluid, seeping into the ground to leave purple skeletons, which soon followed suit, dissipating into a runny yellowish slime the color of turned egg yolks. A few fell from the heights of the parapets, silent, rotting as they went, splattering on the hard ground in sulfurous puffs. Britton tried to count the dead. Had they said she’d killed twenty? There must have been fifty gone at a stroke. The Suppressor he’d kicked into unconsciousness was reduced to a puddle of human sludge. Not a guard was alive as far as he could see. Britton’s stomach spasmed in horror.

You did this, he said to himself. You let her go.

The Quonset huts, with the enrollees inside, so far as Britton could tell, were untouched.

Scylla strode toward Salamander, still whole and vomiting on the ground, clawing at his belly.

“I told you,” she crooned to him. “I told you, didn’t I? I told you that this was coming.”

“Oh, God,” the major managed, his feet kicking out. He vomited again, all blood this time.

“Scylla!” Britton shouted. “Stop it! Jesus! This wasn’t the deal! You were supposed to take the bomb out!”

“And I will,” Scylla said. “Just as soon as I’m finished here.

“I’m going to leave you alive,” she said to Salamander. “Do you know that? First, I’m going to mix up your guts so that no Healer can ever fix them quite right, then I’m going to waltz out of here right in front of your face, so you can see what comes of trying to hold your betters.”

Salamander’s mouth worked, he was trying to speak, but nothing came out save for the thick liquid, black now, leaking from the corner of his mouth.