14. Fourteen

Chapter 14

Fourteen

T he moment Cym's compulsion faded, Fourteen skidded to a halt, tires squealing. The smell of burning rubber filled the air.

His heart raced like he'd torn halfway across the city on foot rather than on his bike, and sharp spikes of anger flooded through him, desperately burning away at the conditioning that riddled his mind.

God fucking damn Cym.

Torrents of pure emotion ripped through Fourteen's body, only to be stopped cold by the nothingness of his conditioning. There was a battle inside his chest, swamping him in waves. Cold, then fire. Nothingness, then pure, unadulterated rage.

How fucking dare he? After everything they–

Fourteen turned the bike around.

When he found Cym, he was going to… what?

What did Fourteen want to do?

So many fucking things. Only half involved saving Cym. The other half involved a lot more strangling than Fourteen was comfortable with, and after briefly considering them, he shoved them into the cold parts of his mind to deal with later.

Fourteen was going to have to save that sneaky little shit again. And after that he'd probably have to keep doing it again and again unless something changed drastically.

It was becoming increasingly clear to Fourteen that Cym was going to fight him every step of the way to safety. Once Fourteen had him back, he was going to take Cym somewhere safe.

He had a safehouse in Montreal with a modified basement that might hold Cym for a time. If Fourteen wore earplugs, Cym couldn't order Fourteen to let him go.

His bike darted into the morning traffic, and he ignored the indignant honking of the delivery truck he missed by an inch.

Fourteen could have gotten Cym away from his aunt. It would have been a challenge, but he could have gotten them both out if Cym had just fucking trusted him. Having a self-sacrificing handler was not something Fourteen had been programmed to deal with. Having a sexy, barely legal, self-sacrificing handler was going to get him killed.

Or the world burned down.

It was a toss-up as to which would happen first, but Fourteen knew which one he was voting for.

The stupid world really had it coming if it did end up burning.

Cym had turned Fourteen upside down and inside out mere hours after they met, turning Fourteen from a compliant drone into a man who had something to fight for.

Fourteen thought of the dream he'd shared with Cym, and the cold slipped to the edges of his consciousness. If Fourteen had had a choice in the matter, he never would have woken up.

That would have been a damned shame.

Fourteen's lips curled in a half smile as he remembered the sensation of waking up with Cym in his arms.

After their shared dream, Cym's magical effect on Fourteen seemed to have lessened a little, so touching his skin was less of an intense therapy session and more of a religious experience. The feeling of his small body nestled against Fourteen's was something he knew he could spend a lifetime studying, and the idea that he could be free enough to do so was exhilarating.

Granted, having Cym as his handler wasn't ideal. Cym's reaction when Fourteen had admitted he had to let Cym do whatever he wanted was confusing, but Fourteen was willing to work with it.

After so many years of having handlers use him like a toy robot—or worse—Cym was better than anything Fourteen could have hoped for. Cym treated him like a person instead of a thing, and if Fourteen wasn't mistaken, Cym cared for him.

If he could just get Cym to fucking trust him…

Fourteen realized he was growling and stopped. He didn't have the luxury of getting himself all worked up—he needed to be able to deal with whatever he found at the warehouse.

He tried to focus on driving.

He almost succeeded.

Fourteen made it back to the warehouse twenty minutes after he'd left. He'd shaken off Cym's order quicker than he could have hoped, but the loss of time still rankled. It could have been much worse; he could have come to his senses in Canada—or never.

Aside from the still-smoking hole on one side of the building, Fourteen could find no evidence of the fight. The mercenaries he'd dispatched on his way out had been removed without a trace—there was no blood, not even a scuff mark to show where he'd grappled with his pursuers.

Frustration mounted as he tore the place apart, looking for any sign of Cym's family, any clue that could lead Fourteen to where he'd been taken. After combing the ground floor without success, he looked at the wreckage leading up to his apartment and sighed, irritated by the idea of taking even more time to scale the wall to look for clues.

A quick search of his SUV turned up rope and a grappling hook. Fourteen managed to anchor it on the twisted remains of the railing next to the door of the apartment, but the action of throwing the hook caused him to discover a metal screw lodged in the meat of his shoulder. It must have happened when the stairs fell on him earlier.

Absently, he plucked the screw out and flicked it onto the floor, barely noticing the ping as it landed.

It was a sign of how agitated he was by the whole situation that basic self-maintenance had been forgotten. The first thing he should have done when he came back to himself was a quick self-diagnostic.

It figured that when he needed it most, his conditioning would falter. He couldn't let that happen now. Later, when he had Cym back, it could go straight to hell for all he cared.

But for now, Fourteen chose to sink into the coldness inside himself and do what the waves of panic were screaming at him not to do; he stopped and centered himself. He took stock of his body, slowly and meticulously, refusing to leave anything out.

Fortunately, other than a random assortment of rapidly healing abrasions, bruises, and a perforated shoulder, he was fine. Then he checked his weapons with painstaking care, reloading his SIG and his AK-47. Once he had finished, he sat quietly, free of all thoughts, allowing the insanity of the past several days to fall away.

It was fortunate he had done so. If he had been upstairs digging through the wreckage of his apartment, he would have missed the sound of a truck pulling into his parking lot.

"It doesn't look like much. Are you sure this is the place?" A rich, baritone voice drifted through the hole in the wall.

Fourteen was on his feet, SIG in hand. Without making a sound, he crept toward the hole, his back tight against the wall.

"Samantha said her spell pinged this area as a hotspot less than thirty minutes ago." The second person was a woman with a husky, alto voice.

"Look back here, this area is as whitewashed as Stella was." The third voice, also male but deeper than the first, was only meters away from Fourteen.

Breath slow and shallow, he waited. If he could, he would wait until they were grouped together so he could take them all out quickly. His gut told him the newcomers were more dangerous than the witches he'd faced earlier.

It was hard to tell if they were part of Cym's family or not, but it was safe to assume from their words they were part of the Other. In Fourteen's mind, any community that condoned what had been done to Cym was on his shit list.

"This place has definitely seen action, Adelle, look at this." The man with the baritone voice moved close enough that Fourteen was about to lose the element of surprise.

Two out of three would have to do. He could take the woman and one of the men right away, and Fourteen trusted his speed to get him to the other male if he tried to run. If Fourteen could take him alive, he could interrogate him. Cold satisfaction spread through him at the thought.

"Jack, you stay out here and cover us while we look around inside the—" Gunfire cut him off as Fourteen emptied his SIG into the man's face.

Rather than wasting time reloading, Fourteen stowed the SIG, pulled out his AK, and fired at the woman as well.

Like during his earlier battle with Stella and Sterling, spheres sprang into being around his targets, one orange and one blue, but rather than making loud noises of protest, the shields around them shimmered and created pinpoints of light where his bullets struck. The pinpoints of light pulsed and faded as they were absorbed by the shields.

Before Fourteen had a chance to see if his attack was making any difference to their defenses, the man and woman retreated out of his line of sight, forcing Fourteen to clamber over the rubble after them.

"Holy Vis, Marshall, shut him off!"

"Gee thanks, I never thought of that, Jack. Maybe you should teach a class on stating the obvious!"

Fourteen managed to put a few more rounds into the blue shield before its owner escaped around the corner. Fourteen jogged to the edge of the building and extended his enhanced senses to see what he could pick up.

Dozens of meters away, he heard the man named Jack make a confused huh sound before saying, "Weird. It's like he's not even there. I can't find a single trace of him." Rather than sounding upset, he sounded curious.

"What's a norm doing with shielding like that?" The woman also sounded more curious than alarmed, as if safely taking half a dozen bullets at point-blank range was as normal as going to the bank.

Fourteen pulled out his phone and opened the app controlling his security cameras. He was in luck. Out of the entire system of cameras, only four had been damaged in the attack earlier. Pulling up the live feed from the front of the warehouse, he could see three areas of distortion, grouped ten meters from where he was standing, right in front of the main loading door.

Fourteen made his way stealthily back into the warehouse via the hole and got into his heavily modified SUV. While nearly a small tank, it still had a quiet engine, but he chose not to rely on the witches not being able to hear it.

The second the engine turned over, Fourteen had it in gear, put the pedal to the floor, and aimed straight for the loading door.

The SUV punched through the door like it was made of wet paper, and Fourteen had a brief impression of a blue flash when the whole vehicle bounced off something and spun across the parking lot.

The hood had popped open in the crash, and the airbags were inflated, making it impossible to see.

Fuck a fucking duck.

Fourteen's injured shoulder leaked and protested loudly as he reached behind himself and pulled out his spare AK-47, trying not to get it tangled up in the airbag as he exited the vehicle.

Fuck. He'd just leaked all over his favorite vehicle.

No.

He bled. Humans bled and machines leaked. Fourteen was fairly certain that enough of him was human to call it bleeding.

Well, whatever it was his shoulder was doing, it was destroying the upholstery. He didn't know why that bothered him more than the damage to the front of his SUV, and he didn't bother delving into it. He had magic wielding assholes to kill and/or interrogate.

As low to the ground as he could get, he crept to the edge of the car to survey the scene. A quick glance told him very little. All he could see were three glowing shields, one orange, one blue, and one that reminded him of the night sky in Norway.

Funny. He didn't remember going to Norway.

The shields were completely opaque, obscuring the witches inside. Another glance told him they were heading straight for him.

They were definitely different than the shields he'd come up against earlier, but he reasoned that if he'd been able to take out Stella and Sterling's shields so easily, he could defeat these as well.

Fourteen stayed low as he got back into the SUV and dug under his seat for extra magazines. He dragged his loot back out and set himself up next to the hood, bracing himself for what was to come.

The ebb and flow of emotions had now reached a crescendo in his mind. Maim, rend, and destroy was foremost in his mind, but on the edges of the maelstrom, his conditioning said, " Watch and wait. Right action will come."

As he put round after round into the approaching spheres, the bloodlust eclipsed the calm. All he wanted now was for someone to pay for what had happened to Cym.

The spheres were almost on top of him and showed no signs of faltering under his attack. They nearly had him surrounded, and he tried to retreat. He couldn't save Cym if he were deactivated.

No.

Killed, not deactivated.

Fourteen's mind was a cluster-fuck of confusion as unfamiliar emotions and long-time conditioning fought for supremacy, and he was too preoccupied to figure out which side he was rooting for.

The orange shield darted forward impossibly fast and cut off his escape. He pulled out a knife and slashed, but the knife sank into the sphere and was held fast. Under his disbelieving gaze, the blade began to dissolve, so he released it.

Behind him, the other two spheres closed in and began to morph, each one creating a solid-looking wall to pen him in. The orange one followed suit and joined with the other two, trapping Fourteen in a colorful triangular prison.

He still had several weapons tucked in various places on his body, but with the exception of the grenades—which he knew were a bad idea—he had a feeling his entire armory would be absorbed if he tried to use them.

"So, first I just want to say that you're absolutely terrifying. If we weren't who we are, I'd need new pants right now." Jack's voice came from the shimmering, multicolored sphere.

Fourteen wanted to say Jack was an asshole. If he wanted to talk to him, that is. Fourteen didn't want to talk. He wanted to hurt someone so he didn't have to feel things .

Feeling things was horrible, and he didn't recommend it at all. It was almost as bad as not feeling anything at all.

"There's a time and a place, Jack." The unnamed man's voice came from inside the blue sphere. "Let's just give him a minute to calm down, okay?"

Fourteen's heartbeat was so rapid it was hard for him to breathe. Calming down sounded like a good idea, but he couldn't figure out how to accomplish it. If he could, he probably wouldn't have tried to kill all three of these guys the second they arrived.

Fourteen was better than this. He wouldn't have lived as long as he had if he couldn't think under pressure. He hadn't been thinking at all just now. Only reacting.

Fucking hell.

He had to get his shit together now, otherwise he was going to get taken out by a handful of asshole witches.

For lack of a better thing to do, he crouched down on the ground, a position that allowed him to rest and prepare to wreak maximum damage on all sides. He needed to get a handle on his body. If he could calm it down, he could regain control.

He closed his eyes. He'd still be able to hear the witches if they tried anything.

For the count of one hundred and thirty breaths, Fourteen listened to his heart race. His captors stayed silent, allowing him the illusion of solitude. When his heartbeat slowed, he saw past the bloodlust burning in his mind. It allowed him to start thinking again.

Fourteen's first thought was that this fight wasn't anything like his earlier battles with witches. From the moment the Blaikes arrived on the scene, they'd done nothing but throw spells, heedless of innocent bystanders. This skirmish, while brief, was nearly one-sided.

Now that Fourteen wasn't being controlled by the mess inside his head, he could see the possibility that the people he was currently up against might not be part of the Blaike family.

Everything inside of him stopped. His stomach lurched as he realized he might have just attacked innocent people. It didn't matter to him that they could easily take care of themselves. He wondered what Cym would think of him.

Without opening his eyes, he asked, "Are you Blaikes?"

An audible sigh of relief came from his left and the unnamed man said, "No, we're guardians, actually. We were brought here by a blanket spell. We had one set up over the city to let us know if another magical battle occurred. We almost didn't come, you know." Fourteen could hear amusement in the man's voice. "The spell claimed that a battle was both happening and not happening at the same time. I'm guessing that had something to do with you."

"Guardians." Fourteen opened his eyes. "That means nothing to me." Which was a lie. He remembered Cym saying something about the Guard shortly after he met him. It wasn't a stretch to assume the guardians were connected to it in some way, but he preferred to play dumb. It was his favorite method for gathering information from a potential hostile.

The blue shield went transparent, revealing the face of the man he'd tried to murder in cold blood moments earlier. Instead of anger, Fourteen saw calm in his eyes.

The man continued, saying, "We're members of the Guard, an organization that oversees the magical community. Guardians are like peacekeepers. We try to keep everyone, including norms like yourself—" His speech was interrupted by a snort from the rainbow sphere.

The sphere became transparent as Jack said, "If you think this guy is a norm, you haven't been paying attention."

"I just meant that he has no inner magic. Obviously there is something different about him, er, you." The man turned his attention back to Fourteen. "Forgive my rudeness, I'm usually better at this sort of thing. The past twenty-four hours have been… especially challenging. I'm Marshall, by the way."

The third sphere became transparent as well, but the woman inside stayed silent, her face radiating a calm presence similar to Marshall's.

Fourteen didn't know what to think of these people. He'd done everything in his power to kill them. Up til now, that had meant the target died, sometimes horribly. His captors should be raging at him, torturing him, or even attempting to kill him, but instead he was getting treated like a potential ally. Like a person.

It was… weird.

Fourteen rolled his aching shoulder and wondered if they would feel threatened if he reached into his pocket for some aspirin. Deciding not to chance it, he tucked the pain away behind a door in his mind.

"Peacekeeper Marshall, huh?"

"Guardian Marshall, actually, but yeah. We're the good guys."

"You realize that's something a bad guy would say, right?" Fourteen should know.

"Ye-es-ss," Marshall drew the word out into far more syllables than the word should be capable of, "but, for right now, let's say for the sake of argument we aren't. On the off chance that we are all on the same side, it couldn't hurt us all to talk for a moment, can it?"

"Being trapped doesn't make me feel very chatty," he said pointedly.

"And having someone try to fill me with holes doesn't make me feel very chatty, either." The woman—Adelle, he thought he'd heard her called at the beginning of their fight—was looking down at him with reproach.

Marshall gave her a hard look and said, "Can we call a truce for five minutes? You promise not to attack us, and we'll let you out. Sound fair?"

Fourteen had broken promises before because, until now, they had meant nothing to him. Only a man could be held accountable for his actions; he had been merely a tool.

Not anymore.

After meeting Cym, Fourteen had become more than a tool. He could decide what kind of man he would be. The only marker he had for being a real man was the dim memory of his father. What kind of man had his father been?

Fourteen was slammed by the memory of being swung around in the air by strong arms. He had been crying about… something. There was a warm hug.

The memory flitted away as he tried to go deeper, and within seconds, it was gone entirely, but it was enough. His father was strength and safety. If Fourteen had to, he would guess his father had been an honorable man.

"Agreed. Five minutes."

Cym had likened the Guard to norm police officers earlier when he'd tried to fill him in about his family, and Fourteen knew how to deal with cops. It was worth the risk to gain intel.

His prison fell away as his captors let their shields shrink back down to spheres. Fourteen took the opportunity to rise to his feet and position himself so he could face all three guardians at the same time. His hands itched to check his weapons, but it didn't seem to be in keeping with the spirit of the truce. He refrained, instead taking a mental inventory.

"Can you tell us what happened here?" Marshall asked.

Fourteen told them the pertinent details but left out the parts between himself and Cym. He may not understand much about being a human, but he knew those moments weren't for anyone other than himself and Cym.

"So you just let him get taken while you ran away?" Adelle's voice could have melted steel.

Fourteen didn't trust these people enough to tell them why he had no choice but to leave Cym. He didn't care what they thought, but the accusation bounced around inside his chest, burning as it hit the places that could feel.

Having an emotional landscape was crippling. How did people live like this?

"He ordered me to go!" Fourteen snapped and began to pace as he felt the bloodlust rise once more. When he saw the guardians' shields grow brighter, he realized he was growling and forced himself to stop. "There's more to this than I plan on telling you. Just know that Cym has been taken by his family, and I will get him back."

The three guardians looked at one another, frowning.

Finally Marshall stepped forward and said, "I know you don't want to hear this, but there isn't much you can do against the Blaikes." He held up his hands placatingly at Fourteen's snarl. "Don't get me wrong, I know you have some unique skills and features that have allowed you to make it much further than any other norm could have in this situation, but if you keep going, you're going to get yourself killed. Come back to the chapter house with us. You can tell us anything else you remember that you think might help. We will get him back, I promise."

Adelle's glare at Marshall told Fourteen exactly how she felt about him coming back to their base of operation.

"Seriously, we'll get him back, okay? Trust us, it's what we do." Jack gave him an easy smile that would have set anyone at ease other than Fourteen.

It just made Fourteen want to punch him.

Fourteen thought about it and decided it had been five minutes, give or take. He pulled an item out of one of his pockets, casually tossed it on the ground, then turned and strode away. As the stun grenade went off, amid the sounds of cursing behind him as he ran for his bike, he heard Jack say, "...and he's gone. Nice job, team. Excellent follow-through."