Agony seared across my stomach and lower rib cage.
I gasped.
The skin of my jaw and neck stretched with my involuntary movement. A prickling flush of pain flooded through my head. White dots swam across my eyes.
I inhaled, carefully expanding only my upper ribs. Then I sank into the pain, forcing my body to acknowledge it … then to disregard it.
The pain, the injuries were insignificant.
Because I was alive.
I would heal.
The agony settled into a dull ache deep within the flesh of my belly that I was certain would flare with the tiniest of movements.
So I didn’t move. I closed my eyes, concentrating on breathing shallowly and steadily. Then I opened my mind, feeling for Tel5.
Someone else was in the room with me.
It wasn’t one of the Five.
I opened my eyes. Then, as carefully as possible, I turned my head. The skin of my neck and chest — obviously still healing from the demon’s acidic blood — protested. I paused, once again willing myself to sink into the pain, claiming it. The searing agony along my jawline dulled.
The bed I was lying in had aluminum rails. Multiple IV poles stood next to me, all of them holding bags filled with different fluids, including blood. I flicked my gaze down my arm without moving my head. I had multiple IV lines attached to my inner elbow, and a monitor on my finger.
I couldn’t feel my arm, though its skin bore no sign of damage. I couldn’t squeeze my hand to make a fist.
A woman was seated in a chair in the corner, reading a paperback with a sculpted, half-naked male on the cover. Her wavy light-brown hair fell over her brown eyes. She was slim but soft, indicating she wasn’t skilled in physical combat. In her midthirties, wearing medium-blue scrubs. A healer, by the tenor of her magic.
The fact that she was monitoring me so closely that she needed to be in the room either meant the Collective expected me to die … or they expected me to be a problem.
Which meant she was more than a caregiver. More than a healer. Though of course, any healer involved with the Collective was already something more. Someone always willing to go beyond the restrictions enforced by the regulatory bodies of Adept society.
The healer flipped a page in her book, reaching up to toy with her necklace. The silver chain was threaded through a series of carved metal amulets.
Protection spells. Though I couldn’t distinguish their specific markings from across the room.
I laughed inwardly. She could shield herself against magical assault easily enough. And maybe even against a telepath or a clairvoyant, if she was highly skilled. But she couldn’t ward herself against me, not skin to skin. And her magic worked the same as mine, requiring contact.
She should have heard me gasp. My heart rate would have spiked with the onslaught of pain when I awoke. The monitor was angled toward her.
She should have been on her feet, checking on me, sending in a report that I’d woken.
I closed my eyes, knowing that sleep — true sleep, not simply being knocked out for the pain — was what I needed to heal swiftly. If the healer knew I was awake, she’d increase the sedatives.
I was certain of that. Because the demon on the rooftop in LA had been some sort of test, and it wasn’t clear whether I’d passed or failed.
With my future in the balance, with the overseer calling for the Collective to make a ruling, keeping me sedated while I was healing was the logical thing to do.
Eventually, though, my magic would adjust to whatever was in the IV, even if it was a cocktail mixed just for me, for my metabolism. And I didn’t doubt that it was exactly that.
The Collective had made certain of my ability to gain an immunity to almost anything magical before I’d even reached maturity. Many Adepts — too many — had died under my unwilling touch before I’d learned how to take what the Collective demanded without killing. I could absorb magic, stripping it so quickly that I caused my victims’ hearts to stop, or their brains to simply cease functioning from the trauma.
Still, dying by my hands had to have been more humane than whatever the Collective did to the so-called vessels after I was done harvesting their power. But my empathy — the first power I’d stolen from the first person I’d ever murdered, just by being born — curtailed my ability to be a mass murderer on demand.
I didn’t enjoy draining Adepts to the point of killing them. Not even the euphoria of using my inherent magic could fully dampen my empathically triggered conscience.
But rationally?
Rationally, I would always do whatever it took to reach an objective.
So, yes, my healer guard could wear all the protective magic she wanted. But no amulet would protect her from her own ignorance or negligence.
I kept my breathing even — and therefore my heart rate in check — until I heard the door slide shut behind the healer. She was wearing purple scrubs today. Magic flared around the edges of the door, confirming that I was being sealed into the med bay. Assuming that I was actually being treated at the compound in the first place.
I’d been tracking the healer’s movements as regularly as possible between doses of whatever she was using to keep me unconscious. She used a syringe and the IV fluid drip, laying hands on me only in quick, nimble touches as the drug pulled me under. She would check on the progression of my healing, then switch out the bandages if their magic was spent, absorbed by me.
She took three short breaks, each one just after she dosed me, leaving the room for approximately twenty minutes. I’d counted three times to confirm. A male healer took over after twelve hours. Always the same two, rotating shifts.
Without a doubt, the two of them were specialized in the more malignant aspects of healing magic. Just in case I became a problem.
I folded the IV line between two of my fingers the moment the door slid shut, stopping the slow drip. I was becoming less and less affected by the drug, but it wasn’t going to be easy to hide my immunity for much longer. Then the healers would either change up the cocktail or transfer me to my room.
My well-secured, impossible-to-break-out-of room.
Once I was there, they had me.
I had no idea if I needed to be concerned. Not yet. I had no concrete understanding of the passage of time. And I hadn’t felt the brush of Tel5’s thoughts since she’d relayed the conversation between the overseer and Azar.
That was unusual.
Anything unusual when dealing with the Collective was something to monitor, to assess. But I couldn’t do that effectively while drugged and confined to a bed.
I sat up carefully so I didn’t get tangled in the IV lines. Ignoring the agony screeching through my stomach and lower ribs, I reached over and turned off each of the monitors. I wasn’t certain what they tracked, but at least one of them was attached to me and might have thus been alarmed. I removed the IV lines one at a time, gently. Tugging a section of rune-marked adhesive strip from my collarbone, I placed it across my inner elbow, over the needle marks, staunching the pinpoints of blood welling there.
Removing the catheter was an experience I would never need to have again.
Shifting my legs off the edge of the bed proved difficult. And when my hair brushed against my temples, I nearly panicked. For the briefest of moments, I thought I was being attacked. I’d never had hair long enough to fall anywhere near my eyes.
Intense healing might have accelerated hair growth. But even with that factored in, I’d obviously been down for at least a couple of weeks. That was unprecedented. Especially with the power, the magic, that the Collective usually threw at any obstacle.
So was I that badly hurt?
Or had I been deliberately sidelined?
I made it to my feet, feeling the cold of the white-tiled floor. I was naked except for the wide bandage covering my stomach from the lower ribs down to my pelvic bone.
The room sloped almost imperceptibly from all its corners toward a central drain — for
hosing down blood and other secretions.
Using one of the IV poles for support, I slowly made it to the second door. The bathroom.
I flicked on the light. I knew that trying to disguise my movements was pointless. Security would eventually pick me up on the cameras, if they hadn’t already. But since I was already secured, magically sealed into a room with no weapons of any kind, the protocol would have been to leave me to my own devices unless I tried to harm myself or others.
The woman who looked back at me from the mirror was a stranger. For me, that instinctual reaction wasn’t unusual, but it lasted a lot longer than it usually did.
I turned on the tap and ran the cold water. After palming a few sips into my parched mouth, I paused, breathing through waves of pain and disorientation. Too much of the sedative was still in my system for me to move anywhere quickly. But it wasn’t enough to dampen the fiery agony that had settled into my stomach.
I’d easily lost five kilos of hard-earned muscle. My already pale skin was a shade much closer to death. My darkly hollowed emerald-green eyes appeared overly large for my face. I looked fevered, though I was starting to shiver.
But whatever damage I’d sustained to my face and neck from the demon’s acidic blood had healed completely.
My stomach started cramping in response to the rapid water consumption, so I stopped drinking even though I was still thirsty. Then I turned, angling my head and twisting my shoulders so I could catch sight in the mirror of the four blood tattoos situated at the center of my upper back. One on each of my first four thoracic vertebrae.
The tattoos glowed softly despite the harsh glare of the bathroom lights. One for each of the other four.
Designations: Nul5, Tel5, Cla5, and Tek5. Nicknamed by Cla5 before we’d all reached our third birthdays, from a series of children’s books — Fish, Bee, Knox, and Zans. I was Fox in Socks, shortened to Socks.
Nul5’s blood — Fish’s blood — was magically bound to my T1 vertebra so that he could access it by touch if necessary, even if I was wearing armor.
My blood, my magic, had been bound to the other four in that exact same spot, and for the same reason.
I hadn’t been able to access and amplify Fish’s nullifying power before we’d all been tattooed. That was the nature and purpose of his magic — to nullify any and all energy he came in contact with, including my amplification. But after he’d been linked to me through the blood tattoos, he was able to generate massive mobile shields that nullified any magical or energy-based effect thrown his way. The Collective had been thrilled at that development of our abilities.
Bee was tied to my T2 vertebra, giving the telepath unhindered access to my mind. I couldn’t block Tel5 from my thoughts even if I wanted to.
Knox’s clairvoyance was bound to my T3. Cla5 and I were most often paired together in situations that called for strategic manipulation. Clandestine missions with the clairvoyant situated offsite, whispering directions through his glimpses of my future in my ear.
Zans’s blood and power were tied to my T4 vertebra, but it was most often Tek5 who drew from my amplification abilities, rather than me drawing from her telekinesis.
Relief flooded through me at the sight of the glow that edged each tattoo. I hadn’t known, hadn’t realized how concerned I was for the others. Without Bee’s near-constant presence in the back of my mind, I’d thought that the telepath might be dead. But I was fairly certain that the tattoos would have faded if one of us ever died, because our power, our magic, our essence would vanish with us.
So whatever was dampening our connection was magical. And therefore deliberate. An intentional separation.
That didn’t necessarily indicate that the Collective had ruled against me, though. For all I knew, the other four might have been just as badly hurt as I was. The conversation that Bee had relayed between the overseer, Silver Pine, and the sorcerer we’d rescued, Kader Azar, might simply have been a random, unintentional connection. The telepath could have been in a med bay right next to mine and as heavily sedated as I was, but without my eventual immunity to such things.
My legs started shaking. I sat on the toilet, catching my breath. Then I willed myself to pass some urine so I could check it for blood. Urinating stung, but the water in the bowl remained practically clear.
So I was well hydrated.
Still perched on the toilet, I ran my fingers over the rune-covered bandages mummifying me from just below my breasts to an inch from my pubic bone, finding their edges. The magic peeled away with a warm prickle, exposing three large puffy red slashes across my body from my lower left rib to my upper right hip. The wounds had been stitched together.
Stitched. With thick black thread.
Stitches.
I’d never needed anything so mundane to aid in my healing.
The demon had eaten magic. Literally. So perhaps its claws functioned similarly?
I remembered it tearing into me, over and over until it had finally punctured armor that had been created to impede any spell, blade, or bullet. So had it destroyed or consumed my magic as well?
I was going to scar. Rather dramatically. The idea was disconcerting on a completely irrational, emotional level.
My soul was already in tatters.
Why shouldn’t my body reflect it?
But I was alive.
For now.
I rewrapped the bandages, though the adhesive didn’t stick as well the second time. The magic threaded through the wrappings eased some of the burning sensation that had flared when I uncovered the claw wounds.
I ran my shaking fingers through my hair. It was silky, soft. A deep-red color that looked fake.
But it was me. Mine.
The Collective would make me shave my head before my next mission. An order would be issued, handed down, before I was released back to my room. One of the healers would do it while I sat quietly, obediently.
And in response to that thought, an idea that wouldn’t be quashed, wouldn’t be brushed away, bloomed in the back of my mind.
What gave the Collective the right?
Other than breeding, housing, training, and feeding me?
I laughed, a quiet sound. But it stirred up enough residual pain from my wounds to take my breath away.
I was theirs. That was what gave them the right. The Collective owned me, body and soul. And if they decided that I was expendable, as the overheard conversation between the overseer and the sorcerer Azar suggested? Well … that idea was preposterous, actually. I was a valued asset, as were the others. I would heal, and the Collective would … recondition me if they deemed any action necessary. And then we’d be as we always were.
Highly skilled, highly trained servants of destruction.
I ran my hand through my hair again, playing with it. It was silly to attach such importance to a few inches of hair. Completely illogical.
But again, I couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling. The instinctual need to … what? Fight back? Demand that I not be shorn? Withhold my services?
I still had too many drugs in my system. They were affecting my judgement, muddying my rational, logical assessment of the situation.
The door swooshing open in the main room announced the return of the healer.
I used the edge of the sink to get to my feet, holding myself aloft and steadily meeting her dark-eyed gaze as she stepped into the doorway. Naked and half-dead or not, I’d be on my feet to meet her.
I was someone to be feared. It was best she knew that.
It was harder to try to kill someone who terrified you. In theory.
Dark-blond streaks that looked artificial were threaded through her light-brown hair. She stood five inches shorter than my five-foot-ten.
“You’ve been playing possum,” she said. Her tone was neutral, lightly accented American. “And you thought I didn’t know.”
“I have no need of the sedatives,” I said. “They impede my healing.”
A flash of anger marred her plea
sant features. Then she smoothed the emotion away. “The level of pain you must be experiencing impedes your healing.”
I softened my tone, offering her a touch of a smile. “You’ve done admirably.”
She looked pleased for a moment. Then she narrowed her eyes.
“No more sedatives,” I said, not bothering with playing nice. I didn’t have the energy or the temperament to pull it off.
“Vitamins —”
“Orally will be fine. There’s no need for the IV … or the catheter.” I stepped forward, crowding her until she shifted back. “Take it up the line.” Propping myself up in the doorframe, I scanned the room, making eye contact with the nearest air vent and hoping that one of my team members was on duty. However many of them were left. “No more sedatives. This is a formal request. Take it all the way up the line.”
“I heard you the first time,” the healer said from behind me.
Ignoring her, I slowly made my way back to the bed. Then I ruined all my posturing by collapsing, slamming my chin with the full force of my weight on the side railing, and falling onto the tiled floor.
The healer stepped closer, peering down smugly. “If your goal was to reopen the wounds, you’ve achieved it.”
I didn’t manage a comeback. Possibly because it felt as though I might have broken my jaw. But I tried to hold off the blackness edging my vision until she touched me. I didn’t need words to wipe the superior look off her face.
Unfortunately, the blackness won.
The next time I woke, I was strapped to the bed, though there was no IV stuck in my arm. So I’d conquered one hurdle only to find myself hampered by another. Bothersome. But not unexpected.
Since there was no point in pretending to be asleep anymore, I scanned the room. A slight, dark-skinned male was tapping on a tablet in the corner chair. The second healer. His ears were pierced, four amulets in each, laced with protection spells.
“Water, please.”
He started, then immediately rose to cross over to me, picking up and offering me a white plastic cup with a straw.
The Amplifier Protocol (Amplifier 0) Page 4