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 What had originally made it perfect for his purposes ended up making it unusable now.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.
