“It took you long enough,” Bee said peevishly. “I had to make Brad think I’d blown him three times. There was actual touching involved the last time. Ugh.”
I opened my eyes, finding myself surrounded by white walls. My feet felt the sensation of a polished concrete floor. A drain was barely hidden underneath the neatly made single bed. Light-gray wool blanket, white sheets.
A twin to my room in the compound.
I was wearing a gray tank top and matching sweatpants. Both were slightly too large, though not enough that they would impede my movements.
If I could move.
Which, it appeared, I couldn’t.
“Socks?” Bee asked in my mind. “Can you hear me?”
A colorful rug appeared under my feet, with matching throw pillows suddenly scattered across the bed. A black-and-white photograph of a sunflower appeared on the wall. Only the single bee captured within the image was allowed any color, its black contrasting with vibrant yellow as the insect collected pollen from the flower.
I was standing in Tel5’s room. Well, Bee’s room as it appeared in the telepath’s mind.
“Ah, there you are.”
Bee appeared, cross-legged at the center of the bed. Her yellow-blond hair was long, tucked behind her ears, brushing her shoulders. She was wearing a tunic over leggings in dark shades of green. Her light-brown eyes and naturally tanned skin were authentic, but the rest was a projection of herself. Apparently, Bee wanted long hair today, and clothing that came in colors, and a vibrant rug in the middle of her room.
The photograph on the wall might have been my own manifestation. A way for my mind to comprehend visiting a telepath in a construct of her own mind, her magic.
A tingling in my arms told me that I’d be able to move them now. I raised them before me, stretching and flexing my fingers, though the action didn’t come particularly easily.
Bee frowned. “You were hurt. Badly. They actually brought in outside healers. They’ve kept you under so deeply that I haven’t been able to establish contact firmly enough to bring you here.”
“I took care of the sedation, so the med bay might be shielded against you.” I rolled my neck, then my shoulders. Gently, carefully, I lifted one leg, then the other. The polished concrete in my mind firmed under my feet, anchoring me further into Bee’s mentally constructed space.
“Well …” Bee sneered. “That can be turned against them, can’t it?”
It was a rhetorical question. All magic could be turned against its user, whether offensive or defensive power. All of the Five were particularly capable of subverting magic. Doing so was a fundamental function of the abilities that made me more than simply a powerful amplifier. “They brought unvetted healers to the compound? Brad said he was new.”
“Not that new.” Bee waved her hand. “Before that. Before they brought you back. Although …” She tilted her head questioningly. “There was a moment, when Knox and I found you on the roof, when Calhoun was threatening …”
She didn’t finish the thought. Instead, her gaze went remote. “Ah …”
Tek5 appeared at the foot of the bed. The telekinetic’s fists were clenched, anger etched across her face. Zans was dressed similarly to me. The light-gray sweats were a deep contrast to her dark-brown skin. Her hair was clipped short, as usual.
“Stop that,” Bee said mildly.
Zans shot the telepath a look.
“You know I can’t hold you here if you fight me.”
“I’m not fighting,” Zans spat. She turned her ire on me. “I thought you were dead!”
The photograph of the sunflower and the bee above and behind Tel5 started to vibrate, then shake.
Zans disappeared.
Bee sighed. “Maybe we’ll let her cool off.”
Magic ghosted across my back as Knox stepped into the mental construct. An echo of his hand slid across my back and up my arm, cupping my neck. Taking liberties he’d never dare to in person. I touched few people, and rarely made contact with the clairvoyant. Our magic wasn’t compatible at all.
“Fox in Socks,” he whispered, curling his fingers under my chin as if he could actually touch me, could actually turn my head toward him.
I obliged him as I never did in person, turning to meet his light-gray eyes. We were almost the same height, him slightly taller than me. His white-blond hair was so short that it was just an absence of color when compared to his golden skin. He was paler than normal, dark circles under his eyes.
I looked at Bee sharply, drawing conclusions based on Cla5’s pallor. “You were hurt.”
“It was nothing,” Knox said, stepping away from me and settling on the bed beside Bee. He was wearing sweats but his feet were bare, as was usual. “Nothing compared to the injuries you sustained.”
“We experienced some … interference,” Bee said. “Our team was hit hard. Taken out.”
“All of them?”
Tension ran through Knox’s jaw. He nodded curtly. The clairvoyant had never lost a member of his immediate team. Ever. Not in dozens of missions, and not in any of our no-rules training sessions either.
“Another telepath?”
Knox and Bee glanced at each other, but it was Bee who answered. “We don’t know.”
That gave me pause. Each of the Five wielded unique abilities. The idea that someone, anyone, could have overcome both Cla5 and Tel5 was … well, impossible.
That was becoming a running motif. A series of disconnected observations that were adding up to a conclusion I didn’t particularly like.
Who knew the Five well enough — both individually, and as a team — that they could have compromised us so thoroughly? Including convincing one of the members of my own team to try to kill me if I appeared to be accomplishing my mission.
“Were you sleeping with X4?” I asked. “Tom Hannigan?”
“No.” Knox grinned. “But then, he never asked.”
Bee snorted, then she wagged her eyebrows at me. “I wouldn’t call it sleeping.”
I nodded grimly.
“Why, Socks?” Bee asked. “And why ask in the past tense? Is … do you think Tom was involved?”
“I know he was.”
She clenched her fists. “That’s … that’s …”
“Impossible?”
“Nothing is impossible,” Knox whispered.
“He’s dead, then?” Bee asked bluntly. “You killed him for betraying us?”
Mark Calhoun had been the one to pull the trigger, twice. But I would take any retribution Bee might be inclined to dole out. “Yes.”
She nodded, lowering her gaze to her clasped hands.
The mental construct shifted under my feet. I took a deep and steady breath, relishing the fact that my wound didn’t scream with pain as I filled my illusory lungs. I probably had Bee to thank for that. Left to my own devices, I would have brought the pain with me, as I had the ill-fitting clothing and the bandages that swathed my lower torso.
Knox moved to settle his arm across Bee’s back.
“No!” she snarled. “Hannigan was just a game anyway. He means … meant nothing to me.”
Knox dropped his arm, looking to me, looking for me to get us through the moment. As I had always done. As I would always do. That was another one of my roles, though it remained unspoken between the five of us.
“Shall we continue?” I asked, keeping my tone steady and dispassionate. The mystery of Tom Hannigan’s betrayal — and of who might be capable of creating an amulet powerful enough to fool Bee’s telepathy — wasn’t going to be solved standing around in a mental construct. “You’ve brought me here. You need something from me?”
“Yes,” Bee said. Firming her tone, she repeated, “Yes. And we’re taking too much time. Even with you anchoring it, the focal spell I had Brad give you isn’t going to last more than an hour. And, honestly, I don’t think I can stand to spend any more time in his head.”
“No more blow jobs?” Knox asked teasingly. “Poor guy.”
“Please,” Bee spat. “You know the types of healers the Collective employs. I’m surprised they can even stand to be in their own heads.”
The room settled as Bee refocused. The edges of the walls sharpened, and the concrete firmed under my feet again.
“You could have just forced him,” Knox said gently.
“No.” Bee shook her head. “It hasn’t come to that yet.”
Bee wasn’t just a powerful telepath. As with my own magic, as with the rest of the Five, she’d been bred to be Tel5 — far more than a mind reader. She could manipulate people, planting thoughts and suggestions. If she needed to, she could get deep enough into someone’s head that she could completely wipe everything that made them who they were. Every memory, every thought. She could create living, breathing zombies that did her bidding.
And each time she did, it shredded her soul. Every person she’d murdered under orders while we’d been training, whether their bodies still functioned when she was done or not.
Same as me.
Same as any of us.
And we never talked about it. Not even in this place. Not even in Bee’s mind, away from the cameras and the twenty-four-hour surveillance.
Nul5 appeared by the door, eyeing me coolly. The dark-haired nullifier was dressed in standard gray sweats, though his T-shirt stretched tightly enough across his broad shoulders that he really needed a larger size.
“Took you long enough,” he snapped at Bee, though his brown-eyed gaze remained on me. He was the only one of the Five with a hint of Asian ancestry in his features, though the physical markers weren’t distinct enough to make any actual guesses as to his heritage.
Because our genetic materials had never mattered. Only the combination of power signatures that came with them.
“You know I couldn’t pull you in until you fell asleep, Fish,” Bee huffed.
It was my turn to frown. That wasn’t right. I might have been behind some sort of ward meant to block telepathy, hence my need for the focal amulet. But the Five were tied together through the blood tattoos. Tel5 didn’t even need physical contact to talk to more than one of us at a time. She’d successfully contacted me from over forty kilometers away in field tests. The Collective had yet to find a need to push her any farther than that, so we had no idea of her true range.
“They’ve separated you? Secured your rooms? You’re under lockdown?”
“Yeah,” Fish spat. “They’ve separated us. No contact with each other. And our movements are being restricted. Just in case you wondered why you haven’t had any visitors.”
“I hadn’t been.”
He snarled. “Of course you haven’t. Because you expect nothing of us. Because none of us measures up to you, oh empath.”
“Actually, I haven’t been conscious long enough to have visitors.”
Knox laughed quietly to himself.
“Where’s Tek5?” Fish growled, turning away from me resolutely. “Let’s get this over with.”
“She got too angry,” Bee said. “Probably woke herself up.”
Fish, aka Nul5, scrubbed his hands over his face and shaved head. “How much does Amp5 know?”
The trio turned to look at me, which wasn’t unusual. I was the center pin of the Five. At some point in each of our missions, in each of our training exercises, they all had to defer to me. They just didn’t have to enjoy it. Fish was older than me by six months, so my position, which was due to my magical abilities, had bothered him since we’d been children.
We weren’t children now, though.
And honestly, in that moment, it grated on me to hear him call me ‘Amp5.’ I wasn’t much a fan of simply being a designation, and I could tolerate the nicknames Knox had given us all when we were only toddlers. But I’d never understood why remaining nameless made me more malleable in my handlers’ minds. Was it supposed to be easier to strip people of their magic, to amplify others with that stolen magic, to maim and murder, without a name?
Who had decided that?
“It’s too soon,” Knox said quietly, his light-gray eyes searching my face. “Socks is still healing.”
“Well, there’s an easy fix to that, isn’t there?” Fish muttered caustically.
This was one of those moments, those moments that I would never really figure out until after it had passed. Until I saw the behavior reflected by those who moved around us, or in a book or a movie we watched or read when we were away from the compound. In the rare instance we were at the edge of the Collective’s reach.
I was supposed to offer comfort. I was supposed to soothe Fish. I was supposed to apologize, to make everything better.
But why that task fell to me, I didn’t know. In fact, I was fairly certain that it was my empathy that had everyone all riled up. So why they demanded that I use that same capacity to soothe them was a mystery.
Still, time was short. “Did you project the conversation between the overseer and the sorcerer Azar?” I asked Bee.
She nodded. “I didn’t know if you picked it up.”
“Some, at least. Did the overseer enforce the curfew and lockdown before or after that?”
“After.” Fish started pacing. If we hadn’t been in Bee’s mental space, his magic would have been creeping across the floor, chilling my feet, numbing me.
Faced with that possibility, I came to a sudden realization.
I didn’t want to be numbed. Not anymore.
“Has the Collective convened?”
“We don’t know,” Bee said.
“We don’t care,” Knox added.
I eyed each of them in turn, already knowing what they wanted from me. And I’d been wrong. It wasn’t to be soothed.
I glanced down at my hands, at my bare arms, pressing my palms lightly against my stomach. “How hurt was I? How long have I been bedridden?”
“Hurt enough that you have to ask,” Fish said angrily.
But he wasn’t angry at me. It had taken me some time to work that out. They were all angry, but not at me.
“Sixty-seven days,” Bee said.
I closed my eyes. Sixty-seven days. With all the magic at the Collective’s disposal? With all the stolen magic in my veins, embedded in my tissue, skewered through my heart and soul? No wonder they were concerned for me. And for their own lives. “That was one hell of a demon,” I whispered.
I’d been completely unprepared to face such an opponent. And judging by the way I’d been cut off from the others, that had been the entire point. I was supposed to have died in LA. The mission was meant to have failed. But whether that was because of me specifically or if the Five had gotten caught up in some plot against the sorcerer Azar, I had no idea and no way of figuring out.
Except now we were experiencing ongoing repercussions. Separating us even more than we were usually kept apart. Drugging me, bringing in healers I didn’t recognize. Hindering any chance that I’d develop any sort of personal connection with my caregivers.
All of that felt a lot like a target on my forehead.
But why wait? Why bring me back to the compound at all? Factions within factions? Was there a schism happening among the Collective? And if so, who was on which side? The overseer pitted against the sorcerer Azar? Was the kidnapping tied to the demon on the roof, or had the demon simply been an extra test for me?
There was no way to know, no way to collect enough information. And knowing anything for certain wouldn’t actually change the situation anyway. It wouldn’t change my reaction, or the results of any action I might need to take.
I opened my eyes. “Get Zans.”
Bee nodded, closing her own eyes even though she was just a projection of her physical self.
“We have time,” Knox said.
“Time enough that you haven’t seen what happens?” I asked. “No hints? No glimmers?”
He shook his head.
Typically, Knox’s clairvoyance gave him glimpses into the immediate future, but occasionally he saw more. Forty-six hours was the longest we’d tracked. Dampening his magic was obviously possible. But he would feel and recognize the effects, even those of a subtle spell. Because his magic always simmered, constantly tapping into future echoes that he’d learned to ignore. And we had all felt the psychic assault on the rooftop.
Zans appeared on the rug in front of me. She was cross-legged, attempting to meditate. She opened her eyes, glancing around, then nodding. “Where are we at?”
“We were just explaining to Amp5 that she needs to get out of that damn bed and break us out,” Fish said.
His request settled across my shoulders like a weighted blanket. I brushed off the sensation as a side effect of being in Bee’s mind construct. Words, requests, didn’t carry weight.
Zans rolled to her feet, pacing around me. Assessing me. “She’s still healing.”
“And we have things to plan.” Bee unfolded her legs, stepping forward so that she stood in the center, ringed by all of us. “Things that need to be put in place.”
“Plan?” Fish echoed. “While locked in our rooms?”
“Try to not be a continual idiot, Nul5,” Zans snapped. “We get plenty of time out, just not at the same time. As far as Bee has picked up, the Collective hasn’t even convened.”
“You … you really think they’re done with us?” I whispered. A dread that I wanted to deny but couldn’t shake seeped into my chest. “Done with the entire fifth generation?”
“You showed your true colors in LA, Amp5.” Fish crossed his arms.
“I’ve done the same many, many times. Getting my team off the roof was a rational decision.”
“If you’d been backed by one or more of us, then yes,” Knox said quietly. “But with only your immediate team, faced with a greater demon, you should have … sacrificed them. Harvested their magic and dealt with the demon yourself.”
“Murdered them,” I said. “Let’s be clear. You wanted me to murder people who have fought at our sides, protected us with their lives, for years, just to pass some sort of test?”
“Yes,” Nul5 spat.
Bee raised her hand, silencing Fish. “What do you mean ‘a test’?”
“That’s what it was, wasn’t it? What did the sorcerer say? An unsanctioned test?”
“No. He didn’t. He used the word unsanctioned when talking about … eliminating you.”
I frowned.
“It was a test,” Tek5 said. Her tone was hollow, as if she was just putting everything together. “One we all failed.”
They all turned to me again. Concerned. Confused.
“We wait,” I said. “Trying to break out of the compound would be ridiculous. If we’re still concerned, we abort the next mission.”
“That could be months from now,” Fish said.
“We’ve got time —”
“Socks!” Fish snarled. He attempted to punch a hole in the concrete wall. A wall that didn’t actually exist.
“Ow,” Bee said, pouting playfully. Though Fish’s nullifying magic might have actually hurt her even within her own construct. We Five were tied together that tightly.
“You put us here.” Fish stepped up to me, standing too close. “You forced this point. Without including us in your decisions.” His lips lined up with my nose.
I didn’t step back. I never did. And I wasn’t going to start now.
“You will do whatever is necessary to get us out,” he snarled.
I angled my head, meeting his eyes. After a moment, he grimaced, looking away from me, then back again.
“I have always done whatever is necessary.” I spoke quietly, pointedly. “But I refuse to be hasty. To make decisions based on suppositions.”
“You’ll know when they come for us,” Fish said, matching my cool tone. “They’ll wait until we’re locked in. And none of us is immune to whatever they’ll choose to pump in. Not even me. Not even you.” Fish gestured to a vent in the corner of the illusory room. It wasn’t just there for air circulation.
We’d been locked in our separate rooms numerous times growing up. Usually when one of us was being punished, or they were making adjustments to our training regimens.
But the last time they’d sedated us with gas had been over six years before. I’d been a couple of weeks shy of fifteen when I’d started menstruating, later than both Bee and Zans. The Collective had been waiting for me to reach maturity in order to harvest my blood. Not that I’d known that at the time.
When I’d woken up back in my bed, the only evidence I had of anything happening at all was the four blood tattoos along my spine. Tattoos we’d all woken up with, inked in each other’s blood, anchoring our magic to each other. That was what allowed us to gather in Bee’s mind, or for me to reach through and past Fish’s ability to nullify magic. That was what directed Knox’s visions, firmly focusing them on the Five.
“Socks,” Fish snapped. “We can’t get out of our rooms on our own. If they gas us, we’re done.”
“That’ll never happen,” I said evenly. “We’re valuable resources. If they have a problem with me, they’ll come for me. And me alone.”
“And what?” Zans asked. “Add a new amplifier to the group?”
“Yes. Or other team members. You would adapt, be retrained. Same as what would happen if one of us died on mission.”
“Please,” she spat. “One of us, maybe. Not you.”
“Procedure dictates —”
“Socks! That’s never going to happen. If they come for you, they’ll come for all of us.”
One rotten apple ruins the bunch.
I shook my head, denying the echo of the overseer’s words and Zans’s assertion at the same time. “The sorcerer Azar said that he’d have me know him. If the demon and compromising the team was a test, he wasn’t involved.”
Fish laughed nastily. “Just because he wants to fuck you doesn’t mean he’ll stand against the Collective. Hell, it was probably all bullshit. What are the chances a sorcerer of any power could have been taken by a bunch of rogue shapeshifters?”
“Rogue shifters backed by a black witch of immense power,” Knox said mildly. “To have the ability to call a greater demon.”
“In the daylight,” Bee added.
“Kader Azar.” I glanced over at Bee. “That was who was conversing with Silver Pine. Was it a phone call you overheard?”
She nodded.
“I recognized his voice.”
“And she named him,” Bee said. “How many members of the Collective does that make now? Five? And the names we know? Silver Pine —”
“Not important,” Zans interrupted. “We have plans to make.” She turned to look at me. “We have to be ready. That means healing, Socks. Quickly.”
I nodded, ignoring the chill that ran up my arms over what she was asking me to do. “If it becomes necessary.”
A fierce smile spread across Zans’s face. “We aren’t going quietly,” she said. Almost conversationally.
“I doubt that will be an option.”
“You know what I mean,” she snarled. “I’m taking it all down, Socks. And you four are going to help me do it.”
I opened my mouth to answer but Zans disappeared with an audible pop.
Bee sighed heavily. “She keeps waking herself. Having you all in my head is no party. I’m getting a serious migraine.”
“We need a plan,” I said, feeling the mental construct waver and shift. “We’ll need transportation, passports, money. If we get out.”
“Just wake the fuck up, Socks,” Fish said. “Come for us. We’ll sort everything else out.”
I opened my mouth to argue. I wasn’t going to make a hasty escape. I wasn’t going to rush into —
Fish disappeared, then Knox, then Bee.
I opened my eyes. I was back in my hospital bed. Still shackled. Pain seared across my stomach, radiating through my torso, chest, and limbs. And for a moment, it took my breath, my resolve, with it.
I lay there, suffering silently.
Trapped.
My agony was a physical manifestation of what I’d always endured.
Caged.
As I’d always been. Just much, much more obviously now.