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.