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.”
Chapter 15Fourteen