15. Fourteen

Chapter 15

Fourteen

F ourteen looked over his shoulder and swore—his bag was gone. That's what he got for only doing a mental inventory.

He had to remedy the problem immediately. There was no excuse for being caught flat-footed.

Shading his eyes against the early morning sun, he sought out a safe place to regroup. After finding an appropriate alley, he pulled in and checked himself from top to bottom. He had his empty SIG, but no ammo, his loaded Glock and a spare magazine, two throwing daggers, a Bowie knife, three grenades, two packets of aspirin, medical tape, a pack of crackers, and a granola bar.

It wasn't going to be enough.

The warehouse with all its gadgets and secret compartments filled with supplies was useless to him now since he didn't know enough about his shield to trust it to keep him from triggering any spells the guardians or Blaikes might set to alert them of his return.

He could restock his supplies from one of his caches around the city, but he couldn't replace his SUV. The loss made him wish he could have given Marshall's pretty face a few bruises for the trouble he was causing. It irritated Fourteen that all three guardians were completely unscathed after their fight and he was reduced to racing for his closest supply dump.

Anger returned, a white-hot reminder that Fourteen could no longer control himself. How was he supposed to function when he kept getting blindsided like this? If he didn't rein it in, would he return to the warehouse, intent on revenge?

He couldn't afford to rage out of control again. It was an enemy he had to defeat if he was going to get Cym back.

Fourteen knew from experience, the first step in killing someone was to know everything about them, so he observed the emotion as it tore its way through his chest. The anger burned brighter at the attention, but he watched it, waiting to see what it would do next. To his surprise, it flickered and weakened, almost like it could only gain power over him if he were unaware. He continued to watch the emotion until it turned into a low pulse in his chest.

He could deal with that.

As soon as he had the anger under his heel, other unfamiliar feelings burst to life inside of him. Uncomfortable as it was to do, he watched them, wary they too might try to take him over. He was interested to see that, after a short struggle, the emotions wilted under his regard just like the anger had.

Could it be so simple? Was observation the key to controlling the ridiculous inferno of emotions that kept ripping him apart? He was no stranger to vigilance; it was part of what made him a good sniper.

Unbidden, a memory came to him of being cold and dirty while lying in wait on top of a cliff. He had stayed there, barely moving for days, taking only light cat naps when he was forced to as he waited for the president of a small country to sneak off to go hunting like Fourteen's handler claimed he liked to do. After day four, Fourteen had gotten lucky and completed his mission with the simple pull of a trigger.

The president had been a good man and took care of his people. His only crime had been to stand in the way of a company that wanted invasive mining rights to a protected wildlife reservation. His death sent the country into chaos and allowed The Company to install a puppet as their new president.

And Fourteen had made it all possible for them.

Fourteen's head pounded and his vision blurred as rage stomped on him with unforgiving, steel-toed boots. The anger had returned and brought backup. He was going to kill the Colonel for what he had done. What he had made Fourteen do.

Against his better judgment, he allowed the emotion free rein and watched it as it rose and tore through him, rending parts of himself he couldn't even comprehend. When pain lanced through his temple, Fourteen was caught off guard and staggered over to brace himself against the brick wall of the alley.

All he wanted was to fight, to kill, to destroy everything and everyone in his path to vengeance.

Emotion was a monster digging its claws into his gut, gleefully tearing out whatever it found. How could anyone survive this? Fourteen felt like he was coming apart at the seams—he was a fool to think simple observation could defeat the monster raging inside him.

His brand-new, stupid, pointless emotions were going to tear him to shreds and destroy everything that made him a person, leaving nothing but a soulless killer.

Just as he reached the point of no return, the stark terror on Cym's face as he ordered Fourteen away shoved its way into the forefront of his mind. If he gave in to his need for revenge, he wouldn't be able to help Cym.

The Colonel needed to pay for what he'd done to Fourteen.

But not today.

The monster thundering through him had proven too much tackle head-on, so instead, he focused on the pain in his skull—on the physical manifestation of his anger. His attention made it flare up, and he saw double as white-hot pain throbbed in his head. He focused through the pain—it was an old friend. Abruptly, it lessened. His mind went from uncontrollable chaos to a manageable whirlwind in seconds. It was still there, but it was no longer kicking his ass.

He pressed his face against the cool brick and breathed a sigh of relief. Cautiously, he poked at the anger, making sure it would stay in formation. It flickered defiantly but had none of the bite from a moment ago. When he was certain he was in control, he peeled his body away from the wall.

This was going to work. He wasn't sure if this was how civilians dealt with emotions, but it was how he was going to do it.

Shaking fingers pulled out a packet of aspirin and tore it open, tapped the pills onto his tongue, and he dry-swallowed them. He considered the hole in the back of his shoulder—he could rig a makeshift bandage using medical tape and his shirt, but reaching it was going to be a challenge. He rolled his shoulder, testing it for impaired performance, and found it to be satisfactory. Blood flow was minimal.

Conclusion: it could be ignored with few repercussions.

Fourteen swung a leg over his bike, hit the ignition, and pulled in the clutch. With now-steady hands and a mind—temporarily—under his control, he let out the clutch while rolling back the throttle and darted into traffic. Outraged honks and shouting faded swiftly as he gained speed.

Would Cym like his Suzuki Hayabusa as much as he did? He had a feeling the freedom it offered would appeal to him and made a mental note to take Cym for a ride after he got him back.

The first place he went to resupply was a bust. The abandoned gas station had deteriorated so badly the ceiling had caved in, burying the floorboard he needed to access under tons of rubble. What had originally made it perfect for his purposes ended up making it unusable now.

Fourteen had been banking on the gas station to resupply. The Company had no knowledge of this spot, so they wouldn't think to come here looking for him. And they would be looking for him by now—it had been forty-eight hours since he had last checked in. Protocol dictated checking in once a mission was complete.

After twenty-four hours passed with no sign of him or his handlers, they would send out a team to find out what had happened. The only reason they hadn't found him yet was because they knew nothing about his warehouse. The other supply caches in town were a different matter. They were in place for any operative to use, so they were known to every agent in The Company.

Fuck his luck to hell and back again. Why hadn't he made a second backup stash? He was paranoid enough to do so, but it was nearly impossible for him to hide anything from The Company.

He hadn't been trying to hide the gas station; both it and the warehouse had been outfitted hastily out of need. Otherwise one of his handlers would have discovered them. The gas station had been from a mission five years earlier. He'd abandoned weapons there to keep from being incriminated in case he'd been caught after an assassination gone south. He'd ended up in New York before he'd managed an extraction, so he'd never bothered to go back for them.

The warehouse had been for a mission requiring him to pose as an antiques dealer, but the mission had been scrubbed before he had done more than set up his identity. The same day he had been pulled from the mission, he'd been given another and had been wiped of anything regarding the abandoned mission. He only learned about the warehouse's existence after discovering mission notes and paperwork for it in a pocket of his equipment bag.

It had been common for him to find random things he had no memory of, so it hadn't fazed him. The fact that he kept it a secret from The Company, rather than sharing it upon discovery, made him feel proud. At the height of their control over him, he had still managed to rebel.

If only he had managed to rebel a little more. With one more secret stash, he would be ignoring the stupid plan forming in his mind rather than feeding it.

The Company had made sure each of its operatives was kept up to date on the location of the resupply stations that dotted every major city on the planet. To the best of his knowledge, there were ten caches in this city alone, but all of them were under some form of observation.

After deliberation, he chose the one on West Broadway—it was out in the open and—he squinted at the angle of the sun cresting over the buildings— at this time in the morning, there would likely be enough people on the street that he shouldn't have to worry about an open attack.

He did a lap around the block to make sure it was free of surveillance then pulled his bike right up to the huge drop box on the curb. He could make a quick escape if he needed to.

The donation box had been a good choice on the part of whoever had been in charge of disguising the stash. It was waterproof and not likely to be moved.

A quick search of a side pocket turned up the key he needed to open it. He swore as a cascade of worn-out clothing assaulted him. Rooting through all of it to get to the secret compartment at the bottom was going to cost him more time than he was comfortable with.

Rather than waste time lamenting, he dug through the heap, throwing aside a pair of battered purple cowboy boots and a bag of hand-knit doilies. When his hand rested on a small, pink hoodie with a cat embroidered on one sleeve, he paused, thinking about the thin tank top Cym had been wearing and how ineffective it would be against the fickle temperatures of a New England spring day.

He stuffed it down the front of his jacket and added a pair of white yoga pants that looked like they might fit Cym as well. Fourteen had no idea what shape Cym would be in when he found him and knew it couldn't hurt to be prepared.

When he reached the false bottom of the box, he ran his fingers around the edges until he found the catch that would expose the compartment below. With a quiet click, he released the catch and eased open the lid. Inside he found a dark duffle bag that could've fit a large body inside it. Instead of wasting time searching for what he needed, as was proper procedure, he hefted the whole thing out and turned to get back to his bike.

Before he took a step, a voice from the bottom of the box said, "Activate Protocol Seven."

The command washed through him, finding all the cold, numb spaces inside and filling them with ice, causing them to expand. As his body sprang to attention, the areas of his mind that kept plaguing him with emotions stirred angrily, unwilling to succumb to the cold. Instead of becoming a mindless puppet as the command was designed for, his mind remained active, but he was incapable of affecting his body.

He was a fool for allowing his desperation to lead him into a trap. Fourteen had only a handful of seconds before someone arrived in person to collect him, and there was nothing he could do about it. Trapped inside his unresponsive body, he raged at his inability to stop himself from being picked up from the side of the road like a bag of trash and carted to the closest facility.

The first thing they would do would be to find out why he went AWOL. With the right commands, they could get him to spill everything that had happened.

Everything about Cym.

He couldn't let that happen. The Company would love nothing more than to get their hands on an asset like Cym. God, what they would do to him… Fourteen's entire being blazed from the inside out.

Fourteen's hand twitched.

Footsteps approached from his right. "Agent Fourteen, I had a feeling I'd be the one to find you."

Harper. It didn't surprise Fourteen that The Company would send their most diverse agent to bring him in. The man was known for being able to drop into any environment flawlessly, without previous knowledge of the situation. He wondered what Harper would have done if he had been in Fourteen's shoes for the past two days.

"At ease, Agent Fourteen." Now that he had triggered Protocol Seven, Harper was Fourteen's temporary handler until he got him back to the base. The only person who could override him would be his original handler, but since Protocol Seven was usually enacted after the death of a handler, it didn't come up much.

Fourteen relaxed at the command. He was no longer stuck at attention, but he could do nothing of his own volition other than talk until Harper told him otherwise. For lack of any other options, Fourteen turned to the one thing he had left at his disposal—his mind. He observed his opponent closely, searching for anything, any weakness he might be able to exploit.

Harper hadn't changed since Fourteen had seen him last. His sandy-blond hair was close-cropped on the sides, much like Fourteen's—The Company was big on conformity—but Harper's hair was straight where Fourteen's was wavy. His navy blue peacoat and worn jeans made him look like he could be a grad student going out for coffee before class. They were close in height, but where Fourteen was densely muscled, Harper was lean. Visually, it looked as though Harper would crumble under a solid hit, but Fourteen knew better from years of sparring in the practice hall. The man was fast and seemed to flow like water when he was hit.

"The Company must not think much of me if all they sent to fetch me was you." Fourteen kept his voice monotone, doing his best not to show how much he had changed.

Harper smiled broadly. "There may be one or two others running around looking for you. You do have the most kills, after all, but I'm not too worried about you. The Colonel has you bound much tighter than the rest of us. With a leash around your neck, you're about as troublesome as an old Labrador Retriever. Now, if you were Rust, I would have brought back up."

Fourteen kept his expression bland as he explored his inner landscape. He could feel the constraints Protocol Seven had placed on him, but it was like he was watching its effects from the outside, rather than being trapped within.

Even so, Harper's command wove around any action he considered taking, locking him down and preventing him from executing it.

It was beyond infuriating.

"Now, I'm not supposed to ask you why you failed to report in. The Colonel gave specific orders to bring you to directly to him for debriefing, but if you feel like volunteering the information, well, I wouldn't be averse to hearing about it." Harper's affected southern drawl grated on Fourteen's nerves. He knew for a fact that the man had been born and raised in Romania and had yet to set foot in the South. He also knew Harper could have easily affected a convincing Boston accent if he'd wanted and was doing it specifically to be annoying. Considering that Fourteen was known for being unflappable, it was probably a test.

"Negative." As Fourteen was also known for being taciturn, it felt like a safe response.

He bombarded his constraints with random ideas, hoping something would get around the barricade encompassing his mind, but it remained impenetrable. Panic crept up his spine, and his reptile brain kicked in, scrabbling wildly at the edges of his prison desperate for escape.

Agent Fourteen, retreat!

Startled, Fourteen almost jerked his head around to look for Cym before he realized he was only hearing a memory. He turned his attention back to his mental prison, and to his surprise, he found the tattered remnants of Cym's last order to him entwined with Harper's command.

…He could work with that.

Harper gave a sigh, followed by another grin. "Ah well." The southern accent was gone, and in its place was the neutral one all agents used when out of the field. "Okay, Agent, in the interests of keeping a low profile, you clear up this mess, and I'll reset the cache. Be quick about it—the street is getting busier, and I'd rather not have to answer a lot of questions. This was supposed to be a quick stop, and hanging around here is going to look suspicious."

Harper's eyes moved casually over their surroundings, taking in a woman in her fifties carrying a box of doughnuts. He gave her a polite nod.

Fourteen bent to the task, efficiently and methodically clearing the clothing away from the front of the box, making sure that the pull-down door was unobscured. When asked, he handed the bag he had removed from the box to Harper so he could put it back inside.

"Can't clear the place out, you know. It's in the rulebook, man. Something in your head really must have gone off for you to forget that." Harper said as he closed the false bottom and reset the latch.

Fourteen gave him his best dead-eyed expression and kicked Harper in the solar plexus, knocking him inside the box. With his other foot, he kicked the door closed and braced himself against it, sliding the lock into place.

Leaning against the box, he said in a conversational tone, "So… got a minute?"

"Let me get this straight. You've come up against a new kind of tech, and you want my help?" Harper couldn't keep the skepticism off his face.

Fourteen had taken Harper to a coffee shop across town. He thought it would be a good idea to get some distance from the charity drop box. Too many people had noticed their interaction, and it was only a matter of time before someone called the police. Neither of them wanted that complication, so it hadn't been difficult to negotiate a ceasefire.

Fourteen leaned his chair back until it touched the wall—he had point-blank refused to sit with his back to the door, something Harper had grudgingly conceded to him—and asked, "I'll admit it sounds unlikely, but do you think we'd be sitting here now if I didn't need you for something?"

Harper's eyes lost their customary spark of humor. "I have a feeling I'd be nothing more than an unpleasant surprise for the person who empties the donation box."

If Fourteen had been running on his old OS, Harper would have been correct in his assumption, but having more control over his own actions meant he could choose less lethal options now. However, Fourteen felt no need to correct the man. It suited his purposes for Harper to have a healthy fear of him, so he only smiled, making sure to show plenty of teeth.

Harper didn't conceal the shudder it provoked. "Okay, so you need me for something, I'll accept that much. What's so terrible that you of all people need help?"

Here came the tricky part. Fourteen had no desire to spend the rest of the day convincing someone that magic was real, so he'd have to improvise. "Like I said, there's a new company making experimental weapons for the American government. It's unlike anything either of us have ever come up against."

"And you want to, what? Steal it?" Harper asked, a glint of avarice flaring in his eyes. "If what you're telling me is true, the Colonel would welcome you back with open arms. The loss of Steve and Frank would be nothing compared to this. That's why you ran, isn't it? You wanted to make up for bungling your last mission before coming back."

It would have been smart for Fourteen to agree. He could have made that story work for him until it was time to bail, but the wash of red over his eyes at the mention of the Colonel made it impossible.

Fourteen's hand tightened around his cup, causing the coffee to spill over the edges, ruining the fancy heart the barista had drawn in the foam. "I'm not coming back. I'll see you all dead before that happens." His voice was a low growl.

Harper didn't flinch this time; instead, his eyebrows came together in irritation. "Come on, man. It's not that bad. We all volunteered for this gig, after all."

Fourteen was ready for the anger this time and had taken his hands well away from his abused coffee cup and braced them on the table. "Volunteer? None of what was done to me was my choice. I didn't even know how old I was until—" An audible crack sounded through the small cafe as the edge of the wooden table broke off in his hands.

"What the hell is wrong with you, man?" Harper looked around the shop anxiously. Fortunately, the place was empty of customers, and the barista had gone into the back. "How could your training have degraded so quickly? Your file said you were fine a week ago."

Fourteen was grateful the table had given out before he had a chance to reveal more than he'd wanted to. He forced himself to watch the anger until it settled back into place before replying. "It's not your concern anymore."

"It's my concern if you're asking me to partner with you. Getting a chance to work with you in the field is one thing, but I'm not insane. I'm not going anywhere with you if you're unstable."

"Just don't mention the Colonel, and I'll be fine." Harper looked unconvinced, so Fourteen elaborated. "Trust me, what I'm offering you is worth the risk."

"I'm listening."

"The people creating this new tech took something from me that I want back. There are enough of them that I'll need every advantage I have to get it."

"So you aren't after this weapon?"

"I don't give two shits about their weapons, I just want my… property back." He imagined what Cym would say about being referred to as property and smiled.

Again, Harper looked unsettled by whatever expression Fourteen had actually managed to produce on his face. "What's in it for me?" His eyes darted toward the door like he was about to bolt.

"I have armor that stops their weapons cold, and I happen to have a spare set I'm willing to give to you if you help me get inside."

Harper's body language shifted subtly; until now, he had given Fourteen the impression he was about to flip the table and run at the first sign of trouble. Now he looked conflicted. All Fourteen needed to do was emphasize the reward enough to override the man's sense of self-preservation.

"Think about this: a new player shows up on the scene with weapons no one knows what to do with—they can bring WMDs anywhere and go undetected, they have cloaking technology"—Fourteen was wildly speculating at this point, but Astin had done something like cloaking when he was inside that weird hole of his—"the Colonel would kill to get his hands on. The entire world would be in an uproar, and then you show up with a set of armor that negates those weapons…" he trailed off, allowing Harper's imagination to take it from there.

"How… how do I know you aren't lying to get me to let you go?"

Fourteen narrowed his eyes. "Do you really think I'm worried about you taking me in?" He considered giving Harper a detailed analysis of the odds on it, but didn't think humiliating the man would get him to help.

Harper rolled his eyes and didn't take the bait.

Fourteen decided to stop being an asshole. Harper had completely abandoned looking for escape routes and seemed like he was moments from succumbing to his own greed. All he needed was one more push, and Fourteen was happy to oblige.

Fourteen pulled out his phone, opened his security app, and found the video he wanted. "This was taken two hours ago."

Harper watched the security feed of the fight inside the warehouse. There was a lot of distortion, but the footage showed Stella creating something in her hands and throwing it at Fourteen and Cym. It also showed the something bouncing away at the last second and pulverizing the wall beside them. It was more than Fourteen wanted The Company to know about Cym, but his face was small and fuzzy in the shot, so it was an acceptable risk.

Fourteen pulled his phone away from Harper's grabby hands, though, because he refused to give Harper the chance to see enough of Cym to be able to recognize him in the future. If he played it right, Harper would never even see Cym, but he'd rather not tempt fate.

"This could be faked."

"True. But if it isn't, you'll be kicking yourself for not taking the chance. Come with me, and I'll prove it. If I'm lying, you can abandon the mission. All I need is a distraction. Once it's done, we can part ways and pretend we never saw one another."

"If anyone finds out about this, I'm a dead man." Harper's words didn't match the excitement on his face.

"I wouldn't be asking you to help if I didn't think you were good enough to keep this a secret." Fourteen wasn't lying—he'd known Harper long enough to respect him as an agent, and he knew he was lucky Harper was the one who found him. He had the skills necessary to get the job done, and unlike most of the other agents, he'd never treated Fourteen as an object.

A shadow crossed Harper's face. "You really didn't know how old you are?"

"No," Fourteen said shortly, making sure his voice didn't invite further conversation on the subject.

"Well, I reckon a man has the right to decide his own fate," Harper drawled irritatingly. "As much as I have the right to take a chance on helping you."

"You're a true humanitarian."

"Soon to be a very rich one, I hope."

Fourteen nodded. It was possible Fourteen's spare set of armor would help Harper climb the ladder in The Company. Even if the magical community didn't clash with The Company in the future, his armor was still better than anything any of the other operatives had.

He just had to hope they could evade Company detection long enough to retrieve his armor from the warehouse. They were going to have to try. His plan wouldn't work without it.