No time.
“Marty!” Britton bellowed. His lungs flexed with the effort, and the balloon of pain swamped him. He stumbled against Therese, and Truelove raced to help her hold him up.
Boom. Boom. Thup. Thup. Thup. Three MPs listened to their squawking radios, then took off, running for the cash entrance.
Marty looked up, eyes widening as he noticed Britton. He began to shout.
The Goblins around him surged, throwing themselves at the MPs. The ring widened in reaction, the linguist scrambling backward, snatching up his laptop. The crowd of onlookers stumbled backward, and the tent shook.
“I see him!” Marty shouted. “I see friend!”
The MP officer, a pale-faced lieutenant who looked almost as young as Downer, pulled out his pistol, leveling it at Marty. “Calm down! Now just calm the hell down!”
But Marty would not calm down. He called for Britton as the Goblin contractors clawed at the MPs, a few of whom began to flail with the butts of their carbines.
Britton managed to raise his head. “This is getting out of control, Lieutenant. I’d put that gun down if I were you. You take a shot in here, and you’re going to hit a friendly anyway.”
The lieutenant snatched his pistol backward as one of the Goblin contractors lunged at it, and cursed.
“Damn it, let him through!” he called to the MP in front of Britton.
A boom sounded. Closer that time. Had the ATTD gone off? No, it wasn’t that close.
Yet.
The crowd of Goblins immediately calmed, stepping back and surrounding Marty again as the MP stepped aside, allowing Therese and Truelove to help Britton into the ring.
He shrugged off their grip, kneeling before Marty. The Goblin placed his hands on Britton’s shoulders — huge eyes looking into his. The white spots of his face were smeared, his breath sour. “You hurt.”
Britton rested his head on Marty’s narrow shoulder and whispered in his ear. “Yeah, but it’s going to be okay. We have to go now.”
The lieutenant looked on nervously, and the ring of MPs began to tighten.
Another boom shook the cash this time. The MPs looked around nervously. The lieutenant shouted into his radio. “Shovel, this is six. What the hell is going on?”
When Britton raised his head, Marty looked at him, eyes wide and uncomprehending.
Downer was still outside the ring. Britton turned to Truelove. “We’re leaving. Come with us.”
Truelove took a step back, slowly shaking his head.
“What are you doing?” the lieutenant shouted, turning away from his radio. “Pick him up,” he called to one of his men.
They were out of time. “I’ll come back for you,” Britton said, and extended a hand. A gate opened behind Marty. Beyond it, he could see a bowl of rose moss where he’d gone on his first camping trip in the mountains of Vermont’s largest state park. The current of his magic soothed the pain in his heart but brought a dizziness that nearly knocked him out.
He pushed Marty through the gate with one hand and swung Therese into it with the other. Then he pitched forward, falling halfway into the portal, his face down in the soft plants, his nostrils filling with the scent of frostbitten red clover.
“Come on,” he whispered to Truelove, knowing the Necromancer couldn’t hear him.
He felt Therese’s hands dragging him the rest of the way through the gate, turning him over.
The other side was a maelstrom of yelling soldiers surging toward the gate. The Goblins flung themselves against them, blocking their progress. Truelove stood still, mouth open and head shaking. Downer was behind him, arm draped across his chest and holding him back, her face contorted and screaming. The lieutenant raised his pistol and fired a shot into the gate. It dug a trench in the frozen ground beside him, sparking off a rock.
Britton yanked his knees to his chest and shut the gate.
He lay still for a moment, letting the biting cold chase the fog from his mind, leaving only the pain in his chest.
The silence was overwhelming. He had forgotten how strong the sense of constant magical current was in the Source. Back on the Home Plane, he felt barren, his own current lonely and isolated. The wind picked up, sending a scattering of dead leaves in a rasping dance somewhere nearby. Marty let out a low sigh of amazement, gawping at his surroundings.
Therese broke the quiet, digging furiously in her pocket. “Oh my God, Oscar, they’ll blow it up. I left it in the cash.” He had no idea how powerful the explosive was, but it wouldn’t need to be too strong to do a lot of damage in such tight quarters.
And Britton knew the cash was about to be overwhelmed with work.
He fought to his knees. “I’ll take care of it.”
He swallowed hard, dug deep inside himself for the energy to open another gate, staggering to his feet and lurched back into the room where Therese had extracted it. He snatched the blinking device off the cot, then jogged down familiar pathways, until he stumbled into air as cold as the bowl of rose moss where Therese and Marty awaited him.
He dropped the ATTD in front of the stainless-steel surface of the industrial chiller. He swept his eyes past the Goblin corpses in their various states of dissection and his eyes alighted on a rack of winter parkas bolted to one of the tent-support rods that held up the cold chamber. He snatched three and pushed himself back through the gate, collapsing beside Therese again.
He managed to lift his head and shut the gate.
But not before the flash of orange shocked his eyes and the low growl of the explosive shock wave whispered faintly in his ears, the tremors sending him off into peaceful blackness.
He gave up the fight and surrendered to it.
Because he had escaped FOB Frontier.
Because, at long last, he was free.
CHAPTER XXXI: LAST STOP
—“Render,” Houston St. Selfers
Recorded “Message for SOC Sorcerers” distributed
on the Internet and the streets of New York City
They lay in silence for a few minutes before Britton shook himself and stumbled to his feet. He shrugged the parka over his shoulders and tossed one to Therese. She helped Marty into his, draping it over his oversized head so he looked like a small child bundled up for the cold. He winced at the touch of the ground, lifting the splayed toes of his thickly callused feet, but there was nothing to be done.
Therese placed her hand on Britton’s chest and he could feel the magic beginning to do its work again. “Just let me double-check…” she said.
After a moment, she raised her hands to his shoulders. “Oscar, you’ve got to send me back.”
He shrugged off his exhaustion, pushed through the pain. “What? I just got us out of there.”
Therese shook her head. “There are sick people, hurt people. I have to help. You’re safe now, but I’m not going to run with you. They need me there, Oscar.”
