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.”

Chapter 15Fourteen

Fourteen 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.