Shadow Ops 3: Breach Zone Read Online Free PDF Page A

screen showed a breaking news clip, Oscar Britton holding court, another guerrilla press conference of his own, held in some deserted field. Britton would stay only long enough to make his point, then go back to the Source long before anyone could get close enough to apprehend him. Not that the SOC would ever do that on camera. After FOB Frontier, Britton was a bigger public hero than Harlequin.
    ‘All right!’ Britton shouted. ‘Shut the hell up if you want me to talk.’
    Britton’s time on the run had made him leaner, harder-looking. He still kept his head shaved so close it shone in the sun. He still looked like he could bend cold iron with his bare hands. Beside him stood Therese Del Aqua, the Physiomancer who had escaped with him and returned to help save the people who’d held her prisoner. Her long brown hair hung nearly to her waist now, ragged, in need of a cut. It did little to diminish her fierce beauty.
    The buzz subsided, and Britton had to lean back as a half dozen microphones were thrust in his face. ‘I’ve heard that President Porter has recommitted himself to the misguided principles of the McGauer-Linden Act. He doesn’t get it, and if you support him, neither do you. Latent people are still people. We are citizens of this country, and we have the same rights as everyone else.
    ‘The problem is a government that traffics in the same practices it prohibits. The problem is a law that makes it illegal for a class of people to simply exist. The people who are so hard over keeping Latent people second-class citizens are the same people who were willing to let thirty thousand people die to keep a secret.
    ‘Well, I’m done with secrets. This law needs to change, and it needs to change now. You hear me Porter? I’m talking to you. A fancy suit and an office you weren’t even elected to doesn’t give you the right to put your boot on my neck. The only crime I ever committed was to Manifest a power I never asked for.
    ‘The government uses a drug called Limbic Dampener to help the SOC control the emotional center of the brain, which conducts magic. If it were freely distributed, we wouldn’t need a damn McGauer-Linden Act. Nobody would go nova. Nobody would ever have to go Selfer. It’s expensive, but so is the cost of enforcing the current laws. And it doesn’t have to be so expensive. The price is kept high, so Entertech and its subsidiaries can profit off the drug. The distribution is kept controlled, so the SOC can have a monopoly on magical power. You want to do some investigative reporting? Investigate that.’
    Therese moved up and jostled Britton aside, looking into the camera. ‘He’s right. I may not be a Probe, but I’m a criminal, too. And for what? Let me show you something.’ She pointed, and the camera swung to cover a boom-mic operator, a young man in his early twenties with a thin scrabble of beard and much thicker glasses.
    She moved toward him, and he dropped the boom, backing up, raising his hands. ‘Sir,’ she said. ‘It’s all right, I’m not going to hurt you. Let me do this.’
    The cameraman and one of the reporters began yelling at the boom operator to let her, and he acquiesced reluctantly, closing his eyes and leaning away as she placed her hands over his face. A moment later, she pulled her hand back, taking his glasses. The boom operator stood blinking, a smile spreading across his face.
    ‘How’s your vision?’ she asked.
    He blinked, blushing. ‘Perfect. It’s perfect.’
    She tossed his glasses over her shoulder and turned back to the camera. ‘He won’t be needing these anymore. That’s my great crime? A gun owner can shoot people, but they’re still allowed to own guns. Sure, I can use my magic to hurt people, but I don’t . We have free will, and with Limbic Dampener, we’d have control, too.’
    Britton overrode the chorus of questions. ‘I beg you to look past your fear. Latent people want the same things you do. Running them into the