Shadow Ops 3: Breach Zone (39 page)

Scylla shrugged off her protector and extended a hand. The helo shuddered as it came apart, the pilots slumping against the windscreen. The Selfer beside Scylla pointed at the dirty-looking gray ice patches that coated the roof. They rose into sharp gray shards, spraying out at Swift and Spur, sending the Aeromancers diving out of sight. Scylla walked back to the roof’s edge, her current intensifying. Sick yelps echoed up from the street.

Harlequin’s breath came in choked gasps, but at least it came. He leaned on his empty pistol, struggling to get his weight underneath him. A vise of agony stretched from his shoulder to his waist, cinching tighter every time he moved. His spare magazines were in his opposite leg pouch, pinned under the weight of his traitor body.

‘You don’t look so good,’ Scylla said, smiling. Harlequin looked up, trying to meet her eyes, to show her he wasn’t afraid. A strong eddy of chill air told him that at least one
Gahe
stood behind him.

‘Well, that’s not entirely fair,’ she went on. ‘You’re still a very attractive man, even with those cuts on your face. Even broken and twisted and crawling at my feet. Still attractive, physically, but broken losers lack a certain
je ne sais quois
, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Fuck you,’ Harlequin tried to say. What burbled out sounded like an infant choking. He didn’t mean it anyway.

‘Nope, can’t understand you,’ Scylla said. ‘Did you think your little hearts-and-minds campaign would work? Did you think you could pull a bait and switch with the Latent people of this country? You have no credibility, Harlequin. Your government has proved, time and time again, that it can’t be trusted. A couple of idiots rally to your banner. After we’ve broken this little counterattack, do you think they’ll stick around? You’ll rob them, just like you robbed me. I’m not just winning this thing, I’m actually promising something real once I do.’

She crouched, squatting down on strong thighs that strained the edges of her leather pants. Harlequin felt a bit stronger, some of the breath returning to his lungs, the feeling to his limbs. He was certain his shoulder was broken, some of his ribs, too, but he would live.

Until Scylla decided she was done with him. He levered himself up onto his elbow, crying out in pain as he darted his hand toward his spare magazine. Scylla rolled her eyes and gestured. The empty pistol crumbled to broken, pitted metal in his hand, dusting the roof beneath him. ‘I’ll let you keep the bullets,’ she said. ‘Maybe if you throw them hard enough . . .’ She laughed.

Harlequin smiled back at her though he knew the expression looked pained. ‘You can still surrender,’ he managed. ‘I can put in a word with the president. Ask him to go easy on you.’

Scylla laughed again, eyes widening. ‘Yes, well. I don’t think there’s much of a call for that just now.’

She nodded to her companions, and the two Selfers grabbed Harlequin’s arms, roughly dragging him to the roof’s battered edge, the street below coming into view.

They dropped him on his face, letting him see over the edge. The rotted paths Scylla had cut into Harlequin’s force were covered over once again with goblins, giants, and
Gahe
. His own people were retreating back down Wall Street’s length in poor order, firing over their shoulders as they went. The Selfers from Houston Street were nowhere to be seen. The Breach stood open and unsecured, huge as ever, enemy pouring forth.

‘And now they go all the way back to your barricade line,’ Scylla said, ‘and into the city beyond. I get New York, Harlequin. I mean, I get it again. I ruled it when we first met, in the fashion of humans, and now I’ll rule it again for Latentkind. And I will bring it what you never could: justice.

‘You do realize the irony here, right? If you’d just let me go, I’d be in Uganda right now, or Bhutan, or Gwalior, helping people. Hell, we both would have. And we would have been happy.’ Her voice went wistful.

She shook her head, chasing the thought away. ‘You reap what you sow.’

She leaned in close, the smile vanishing, her eyes blazing. ‘Do you want to ask me to let you go? We could do a little role-playing of the time you took me in. I’ll be you, and you be me.’ She put a boot down on his fingertips, grinding them into the rooftop. ‘Do it,’ she said, ‘tell me you love me. Ask me to let you go. Beg me.’

‘I do love you . . .’ Harlequin coughed, struggled to get his breath, ribs throbbing. He got up on his elbows, grunting with the effort, feeling the bones in his sides grind against one another. ‘Grace . . .’

‘Don’t call me that!’

‘Grace. You have a real chance here.’

He felt the cold intensify on the back of his neck, beginning to burn his skin. He leaned into it, vision clearing. That was the thing about cold, it was a clarifying pain. Scylla waved to something over Harlequin’s shoulder, and he felt the pain lessen as the
Gahe
behind him drew back. The male Selfer stood a few feet behind Scylla, Suppressing him. The female now moved back to the roof’s edge, watching the street in satisfaction.

She smiled again. ‘You’re offering me a chance?’

‘Remember Swift from the No-No Crew?’

‘Not too bright, that one. Too much anger, not enough focus.’

‘He’s here, along with a lot of other Selfers. They’re fighting with us, against you. They’re fighting for the same freedom you’re promising, only in this case it’s real. We’re going to change the laws, Scylla. We’re not fighting on opposite sides anymore, we’re just pushing for the same thing from different angles.’

‘I saw your videos, Harlequin. I know all this. Do you honestly think I’d take part in your new order?’

‘Hell, no. You invaded New York City. You’ve killed thousands of people. You’ll never be welcome on this earth again.

‘But that’s not the point. You got what you wanted, Grace. You changed the conversation. You wanted an America where Latent people aren’t second-class citizens anymore. You’re getting that, and you can get it without further bloodshed. Once this is over, we’re going into negotiations. All you have to do is leave.’

Scylla snorted. ‘I can’t believe I’m actually hearing this.’

‘What is it you told me all those years ago? You wanted to do some good. You’ve done it. Things can never go back to the way they were. You’ve made your point. We’ve learned.’

He leaned forward, gritting his teeth against the rasping of his battered ribs. ‘I’ve learned.’ He looked into her eyes, trying to see past the twitching madness in the dark pupils, digging for the Grace he’d known.

‘You haven’t learned a damned thing,’ she said. ‘I’m not interested in turning the fate of magic over to some corrupt debating society that will go back on its word the moment guns are no longer at its back. You’ve already proved you can’t be trusted.’

She stood, hands on her hips, nodded to the Selfers beside her. They lifted Harlequin to his feet, dragged him forward. ‘Do you remember that ridiculous speech you gave me when we first met? About sheepdogs and sheep and wolves? God, that was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. Stereotypes like that are how stupid people break the world up into chunks small enough for them to comprehend. So, let me use small words that even you are likely to understand. Wolves don’t negotiate with sheep, Harlequin. We hunt them. We kill them. We rule them.’

She turned to the male Selfer. ‘Throw him off. Let him learn what it feels like to fall.’

Harlequin wrenched against the Selfers’ grip, but the pain of his broken bones was too much, and he finally sagged limp in their arms as the street appeared beneath him, thronging with goblins who surged down Wall Street after his own retreating force, feet sliding in the slick, purplish smears that had once been people.

He hooked his boots against a chunk of concrete. The female tried to pull him free, then cursed, punching him in the back. He screamed, and they flipped him around, dragging him the rest of the way.

Scylla watched him, no longer smiling.

A rectangle slid open behind her, washing the roof in television static. Harlequin heard the
Gahe
hiss in confusion; the Selfers turned to face the new threat.

The gate pulsed and spat out monsters.

They’d been men once. Years of living out of view of the sun had first been a curse, then a point of pride. Where their skins weren’t naturally powder white, they’d used Physiomancy to bleach them. Tattoos scrawled across their bare chests and thighs, riding on ridges raised by the same magic. Most were groupings of letters and numbers, codes that made no sense to Harlequin in his battered state. There were images, too: the head of a weeping Christ, crown of thorns ablaze.

SUR3NO$
, above two crossed pistols.

The Physiomantic artistry chilled him. The Sculptor had specialized in retooling himself as a perfect imitation of another human. These Selfers used Physiomancy to cast their humanity aside. They raced out of the gate, their features a patchwork of images out of nightmare and legend. One woman’s skin had been reworked into a snake-scale pattern, her eyes lengthened at the corners to resemble a stylized Egyptian deity. One of the men had sprouted horns, dorsal ridges marching evenly down his back. Some of them had fangs. Others, claws that could rival the
Gahe
. All were the product of expert Physiomancy, the changes permanent, their flesh molded to make them something new.

Their currents hit Harlequin like a tide. Not all of them were Latent, but many were, and those were strong. The non-Latent carried carbines: tricked-out military-grade hardware probably smuggled across the US border. The unarmed howled battle cries, flashing gang signs, forearms and fists together, thumbs out in a crude facsimile of devil’s horns.

Scylla’s bodyguards dropped Harlequin, his back banging agonizingly against the rooftop, shoulders and head dangling off into empty space. He scrabbled with his hands, enough feeling returning to report the pain of his skinned palms and fingertips, and dragged himself back onto the roof. Scylla whirled, hesitated. The Houston Street Selfers, she knew. The
Limpiados
were something else entirely.

One of the
Limpiados
, a tall man with taller horns, unrolled a forked tongue that hung halfway down his chest. He extended a bleached hand and pointed at the female Selfer standing above Harlequin. The woman shrieked as her arm detached from her body, trailing muscle and sinew, and flew across to grip the male by the throat, flinging him off the roof. What should have been screams were only choked gurgles as he met the fate he’d intended for Harlequin.

The
Gahe
shot forward, shrugging off the bullets the
Limpiados
pumped into it. It snatched one of them up, sinking its teeth into his shoulder before he clapped a hand to its side engulfed in flame, sending up a familiar plume of freezing black smoke. The
Gahe
fell back, its companions retreating with it as another
Limpiado
unleashed a cone of sizzling electricity after them.

Harlequin felt his magic flood black into him. He summoned a wind, which gently lifted him upright, buoying his broken ribs and steadying his damaged shoulder. The pain was enormous but bearable. He teetered for a moment on the roof’s edge before he called on the wind to blow him a step forward, long enough to see another gate flash open on the street below, soldiers moving out, renewing their attack on the Breach.

Scylla’s face compressed into an animal snarl. Harlequin could feel her tide rushing out, ripping into the ranks of the
Limpiados
on the roof. A few of them had already collapsed into pools of stinking sludge, many more had fallen to their knees, clutching their stomachs as they succumbed to rot. But a few rose under the torrent, gritting their teeth. The longtongued Selfer stood behind them, Physiomancy repairing their bodies as fast as Scylla’s sought to break them down.

Harlequin felt his arms prickle and burn as they were spattered with freezing droplets and turned to see the remaining
Gahe
falling back off the roof, magical lightning engulfing them from above as Swift returned to the fight.

Harlequin settled himself on his feet and let the magical wind go. His body protested the weight, but he managed to hold himself upright. Scylla caught him out of the corner of her eye and turned, abandoning the
Limpiados
to focus her magic on him.

Harlequin caught her eyes and her magical current, held both. Scylla was strong. He could feel the rage in her magical tide, his teeth grinding together as he sought to contain it. There was no trace of the woman who’d called him a Boy Scout, smiling sardonically as she pinched his ass while they walked in Central Park. These eyes were hard, remorseless. They no longer wanted to do good.

The eyes of a wolf.

Harlequin remembered lying at Swift’s feet, his eyes crossing as he stared down the barrel of the pistol in the Aeromancer’s hand.
Do you like me now? I’m a fucking product of your goddamned system.

As was Scylla. As was this whole conflict. The chickens of a failed policy coming home to roost.

‘I’m sorry, Grace,’ Harlequin whispered through his clenched teeth, knowing she couldn’t hear him. ‘This is my fault.’

But that didn’t change what she’d done. What he had to do.

Since he’d saved the FOB, he’d been drummed out of the only institution he’d ever called home, come up against the ire of the Hewitts of the world. It had drained him, a fight within a fight, counterpunched by the relentless pace of the events unfolding in New York. Exhaustion flooded him. He had nothing left. He’d poured too much of himself into this struggle; he’d fought too hard and too long.

Too hard and too long to lose.

Harlequin screamed as he punched his current through Scylla’s, wrapped the tendrils of his own magic around hers, and interdicted it. Her jaw went slack as she felt the Suppression take hold.

The roof went silent as Scylla backed away, the
Limpiados
crowding forward. Swift landed in front of them and waved them back as Harlequin advanced on her.