Control Point by Myke Cole

merging with the roaring blood in Oscar’s ears. The magical tide drowned him. His skin began to burn.
Am I going nova?
he wondered. He had heard that Selfers, unable to control their magic, sometimes succumbed to its power, burning themselves to a crisp. A gate half opened above him and vanished. He saw through the window as it reappeared on the lawn, grew, and disappeared.
    “Dad! Get off! You’re hurting me!” he shouted. “I’m trying to leave!”
    “Fucker!” Spittle landed on his shaved head.
    Stanley punctuated his cursing with punches. Somewhere the buzz that wasn’t quite a scream droned on. The magic pulsed.
    “Dad!
No!
”
    Oscar lunged forward, throwing an elbow into what he hoped was his father’s chest. The blow struck Stanley’s nose with a sickening crunch. Blood sprayed from his father’s face. Stanley’s eyes crossed as he staggered backward, arms pinwheeling.
    A gate opened wide behind him.
    Oscar reached for his father’s wrist. “Dad, look out!”
    His fingers brushed the tips of Stanley’s fingers as his father half stepped, half fell into the gate, tumbling onto the grass beyond and sliding to a halt.
    Oscar watched through the portal’s static sheen as his father looked around, his eyes huge. Suddenly, they shot wide and Stanley scrambled to his feet. “Oscar…” he said.
    Oscar could hear keening voices approaching fast. “Uskar …Uskar…”
    “Oscar!” Stanley shrieked, then the gate snapped shut, and his father was gone.
    Oscar stood staring at empty air.
    Desda reached one hand to her mouth. Her other hand reached out to the empty air. “Oscar?” she whispered, “Where did he go? Where did Stanley go?”
    Britton wrestled to reopen the gate. “Come on,” he muttered. “Open, damn you.” He pried with his fingers at the empty air. Somewhere beyond it, his father was trapped, possibly dying.
    “Open!” he shrieked. “Open the fuck back up!”
    Nothing. The tide churned within him, eddying uselessly. A gate opened beside his mother, but vanished before he could turn to face it.
    “Where is he?” Desda repeated.
    Britton shook his head, choking back a sob. “I don’t know, Mom.”
    Her knees wobbled, and she sat down hard, her hands still not moving—one on her mouth, the other pointing. “You have to…you have to bring him back,” she whispered. A tear escaped from a corner of her eye. “Bring him back!”
    “I can’t.” His voice sounded flat in his own ears.
    “What do you mean?” she asked, finally lowering her hands. “Open it up and get him back!”
    He shook his head, his hands making useless circles at his sides. “I don’t know how. I can’t control it.”
    She sat in silence for a moment. Then she made a sound between a scream and a growl.
    “Mom?” he asked, kneeling and reaching for her. She blinked at the empty space where the gate had closed, her head shaking slowly, her mouth wide.
    He stood and took a step toward her. “Mom?”
    Her head jerked toward him, her expression blank. Then her eyes registered shocked recognition, and she scrambled backward, kicking out at him. “You get away from me!”
    His father had vanished. Britton couldn’t save him.
    His mother shrieked.
    The need to run overcame all else. He surrendered to it and let his legs carry him away from his mother’s accusing eyes.

CHAPTER V
FLIGHT
    …Latency presents a challenge to the American people and the world as unique and as dangerous as the atom bomb. It represents the greatest opportunity, but also the greatest threat we have faced as a nation since the first atomic weapon was tested in 1945. Like it or not—Magic is the new nuke.
    —Senator Nancy Whalen
Chairman, Senate Subcommittee on the Great Reawakening
    Oscar Britton’s bloodied feet slid inside his father’s shoes, pounding down the road toward the town where he’d grown up.
    If the army had taught him one thing, it was how to run, and he did it well despite the screaming of his wounded calf.