Control Point (21 page)

“Damn it, Therese!” Salamander called after her.

“Throw me in the hole!” she answered. “Throw us all in the hole. Or you can shoot me.”

Salamander cursed and turned his back on them, saying something to Downer and Wavesign, as Therese and Britton walked off.

“That was brave of you. Thanks,” Britton said to her.

“It’s no big deal,” she said. “Salamander’s a sweetheart, actually. He’s probably the one guy in this whole nasty organization who actually wants to help Latent people. He puts on a show to keep things under control, but in the end, he’s on your side.”

“Therese, he wasn’t kidding. The gates can open anywhere, and they cut through anything.”

She nodded. “I trust you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. You seem like a good sort. Maybe it’s because you stand up to both Swift and Salamander. Maybe it’s because you tried to protect me back there. Maybe it’s because God tells me so. I’m just going with my gut.”

“Call me Oscar.”

She smiled. “I’m Therese.”

He stepped through the space between the barricades into an enclosed patch of mud roughly five feet square. “What about Swift and the No-No Crew? What does God tell you about them?”

He saw her shrug through the gap between the barriers. “They’re all good, Oscar. Swift’s just trying to cope with his loss, I guess. Pyre’s just a kid. He follows along. The anger is just so…useless is all. I know it’s a bad situation, and I know that none of us want to be here, but…fighting everything, everybody, all the time. Swift isn’t happy just taking his own stand; he wants everyone else to take it with him. The guy’s the definition of bad influence.”

Britton nodded as Therese moved out of his field of vision. “I can understand where he’s coming from. I was already in the army, and they didn’t give me a chance once I came up Latent.”

“Well, here’s your second chance,” Therese said. “If you believe Salamander.”

Britton didn’t answer, unsure if he did or didn’t.
You promised yourself you’d find a way out of here. A couple of kind words, and you’re going to forget that?

“You ready to get started? Can you hear me okay?” she called from the other side of the barricade.

“Let’s do this.”

“Have you ever Drawn magic before…?” Therese asked

Britton thought for a moment. “It comes from feelings…emotions. I know it responded to stress when I ran. It picks up when I’m angry or sad.”

“That’s right. Your emotions are the motor, but your brain is the steering wheel.”

“So how do we steer?”

“You just do,” Therese answered. “You have to feel it. Visualization helps. I picture the body whole, and the magic bends that way. Sometimes, I have to push hard, but it works. And
you also…talk to the body. Tell it to knit. I don’t how to explain it. You can always try a prayer, Oscar. God never fails me when I reach out for Him.”

Britton frowned, unsettled by her words, thinking of his father’s violent religiosity. But she seemed so different from his father, beautiful where Stanley was ugly, kind where Stanley was cruel.
Judge not,
he thought, then laughed inwardly at the biblical turn of phrase.

“You’re real religious?” Britton asked.

She nodded.

“I don’t want to go after you about it, but I don’t understand how. The church has been the biggest persecutor of us…oh, my God, I just referred to Latent people as ‘us.’”

Therese laughed. “It makes sense, I guess.”

“I hope I’m not offending you…”

“You’re not, Oscar,” she said. “A lot of people lose religion when they find magic, and I guess that makes sense. I know the church hasn’t been a big supporter. But I mean, hell, it’s not the first time that the church has been turned to work against God’s intentions. You’ve got the Inquisition, the Crusades, clinic bombings, what have you. This is no different. God knows what’s right, and so do those who really follow Him.”

“But doesn’t the very existence of magic turn some of that on its head?” Britton asked.

“Not really,” she said. “But to be honest, I don’t really think about it. I would never have gotten this far without my faith, Oscar, I think I would have given up a long time ago. It keeps me going. When you have something that important to you, sometimes it helps not to ask a lot of questions. Make sense?”

Britton was silent for a moment. It did make sense, but he didn’t like it. He knew it wouldn’t help to say that. “Sure it does,” he said instead. “So, how do we start?”

“You’re going to…get emotional. Recall something significant from your past—an exciting event in your life, something tragic or momentous. You’re going to do your best to channel it. You know how to reach past the Dampener? Activate your emotions?”

Britton thought of his unauthorized use of a gate from just the night before. “Yeah.”

“The Dampener should keep it tight and give you the
ability to shunt it back, but if you feel yourself overwhelmed, give a yell and one of the Suppressors on the wall will roll it back for you. Ready?”

“Here goes nothing,” Britton said. He reflected on a sad memory to help trigger the magical flow, picturing his old house. The memory intensified under the influence of his heightened senses on that side of the gate, the image of his former home as vivid as if he were standing on the sunken porch steps. He could smell his mother’s baking from the kitchen window. He could feel the tide roar into him, building along with the emotion behind the Dampener’s barrier. He reached for it as he had outside the DFAC, and it flooded him with such intensity that for a moment he feared he would be unable to control it. But in the end the Dampener kept it regulated, and the gate snapped opened mere inches from his face. It flashed closed again, reopening so close that he took a step backward. He focused on the air a few feet before him and pictured the gate opening there. His muscles cramped at his effort to stem the flow, channel it, shape it to his will.
Come on, you bastard,
he thought,
you’re mine. Obey me.

The gate rolled open right where he had wanted it to.

Britton blinked. The shimmering portal had opened on his parents’ house. Startled, he gave the Dampener rein and let his emotions slide back into the compartment. The gate vanished, leaving him breathing heavily.

“You okay?” Therese’s voice came from the other side of the barrier. “How’d it go?”

“It worked,” Britton answered. “Just not like I expected.”

He cursed inwardly. That was it? It was as simple as mastering your emotions? If only he’d known when his father had crouched over him, fists pounding his chest. If only he’d had the Dampener then! It made it so easy. The thought that the SOC had it, could have just given it to him, to Downer, to anyone who was struggling with Latency, enraged him.

He focused his mind, conjuring up fresh in his mind the rooftop where he’d shot Downer. He focused on the air a few inches in front of his face, where he wanted the gate to appear. The gate opened about a foot back from that spot, but its television-static surface showed the charred remains of the school’s roof, the battered remnants of the helo still on its side.

“Holy shit,” he breathed.

“Oscar, what’s going on?” Therese asked.

“I think I know,” Britton said. “Let me try one more thing.”

He focused and thrust out his hands again. That time the gate opened on his barracks room in South Burlington. It stood empty, every drawer open, every item removed. The door had been taken off its hinges. Yellow tape reading
CRIME SCENE: KEEP OUT
stretched across the doorway.

Britton shut the gate and blew out his breath. “Holy crap. I can go anywhere I want with this. All I have to do is picture the place.”

He heard Therese suck in her breath and turned to look. She had come around from the safety of the barricade and stood in the gaps between them, watching him. “Oh my God, Oscar. That’s amazing. What’s on the other side?”

“Anywhere.” Britton grinned through the effort of keeping the gate open. “Anywhere I want.”

Therese put her hands on her hips and cocked her head at him. “So, what are you still doing here?”

Britton instinctively jerked a hand to his chest and didn’t answer.

Once he was sure of his control, Britton experimented on his own; he opened a gate on the logging trail where he’d abandoned the police car, stretched it twenty feet high, then shrank it to a one-inch box. He focused on a tiny pebble. When he opened the next gate, it split the rock precisely in half. The flow was weaker, but not by much.

Once Salamander was satisfied with Britton’s control, he was permitted to rejoin the rest of the group. Downer was animating tiny fire elementals from a lit Zippo that one of the other enrollees was holding. She grinned as the marble-sized flames danced around her feet, boiling the mud in little patches.

She smiled at Britton and Therese as they approached. “It’s amazing!” she said. “I could have practiced on my own forever
and it would never have come so quickly! The Dampener makes all the difference in the world!”

Britton couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm, but his stomach twisted in anger.
If they’d just made that drug available, publicly, there wouldn’t be any reason for anyone ever to go Selfer.

Wavesign stood against the line of barricades along with the rest of the No-No Crew, his arms folded across his chest. He looked ridiculous to Britton, trying so earnestly to fit in with a group who wouldn’t even stand next to him for fear of getting soaked.

Tsunami approached him. Britton guessed she was a Hydromancer, as the moisture wicked away from her as soon as it touched her. She spoke to Wavesign in low tones, but he pointedly ignored her, doing his best to look aloof for the No-No Crew. Eventually, she shrugged and walked off.

“What’s his deal?” Britton asked Therese, gesturing at Wavesign.

“Severe control issues,” she said. “Salamander says it happens sometimes. Even with the Dampener, that’s the best he can do. I feel bad for him, but he makes it worse for himself by hanging with that crowd.”

“Ted!” she called to the young Hydromancer. “Come on! You need this training more than anyone. The only way out is through. Come on and work with me.”

Wavesign first tried to ignore her, then when she called him again, looked askance at the rest of the No-No Crew, who ignored him. Finally, he shook his head and walked over.

“Therese, just stop. Leave me alone, okay?” he said.

“Ted, you keep hanging around with that crowd, and you’re never going to get a handle on this.”

“As soon as I do, they’ll just jump on me to raise the flag,” he said, deliberately pitching his voice loudly enough for the crew behind him to overhear.

“Nobody can make you do that,” she said. “Being in control of your magic is one step closer to being in control of your life. Let me help you.”

“It’s not that hard,” Britton offered. “If I can figure it out, anybody can.” He opened a gate in front of them, expanded it, shrank it, then closed it again.

Wavesign’s face set, and he looked at his feet again. Britton swore internally at his mistake. This kid had been in the SASS for God knows how long and still hadn’t mastered basic control of his magic. Britton had figured it out in a couple of hours. “I’ll help, too,” he said, trying to recover, but the damage was already done. The vapor cloud surrounding the boy intensified.

Over his shoulder, the No-No Crew whispered to one another, pointing.

Therese pointed at a small patch of wet mud. “Dry it out.”

Wavesign shrugged and gestured. The mud splattered everywhere, as if it had been kicked.

“Come on,” Therese said. “You’re not even trying. Don’t show off for their sake.”

Pyre opened his mouth to shout something, but Salamander shook his head, and the young Pyromancer kept quiet.

“Therese, this doesn’t work for me,” Wavesign said. “We’ve been through this.”

“Then let’s go through it again.

“Here, look,” she said, taking his hand. “Can you feel my current? It always starts off intense. I used to try to haul the magic back, but now I realize that all I have to do is let it go.” She let out a deep breath for emphasis. “Can you feel my current change? That’s the Dampener at work. You just let the tension go. Remember, it’s emotions you’re dealing with, so try to center yourself.”

Britton marveled at the clarity of the explanation. It was exactly how he’d been managing the magic, but he’d never put words to it before.

“I can’t,” Wavesign said. “I don’t know how to explain it…”

“Is something bugging you?” Britton asked.

Wavesign jerked to look at him, glowering in silence. “I’m just saying”—Britton patted the air with his palms—“it’s emotions that cause the problem here, so if you’ve got something on your mind, that could be the root of the issue.”

“Whatever,” Wavesign said, folding his arms and returning to the No-No Crew. “This is stupid.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Tsunami said, trotting over. “It’s nice of you, but I’ve tried with him before. He’s completely committed to throwing his lot in with those idiots. I
thought, because we were both Water Sorcerers, that I could get through to him, but he’s young. He’d rather be cool than competent.”

“I don’t know about that,” Britton said, cocking an eyebrow. “Kids can go either way. He just needs a nudge in the right direction.”