The Amplifier Protocol (Amplifier 0)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  I made a show of awkwardly getting the straw in my mouth. Then I sipped the ice water, blinking as if not completely clearheaded.

  Which I wasn’t.

  His light-brown-eyed gaze snagged on my mouth, watching me with more than the detached reserve of a caregiver.

  Though that could have meant anything, really. It was my magic that was beguiling, not me.

  I didn’t like playing at being helpless. But I also didn’t like being strapped to the bed. It was difficult to act intimidating while tied up.

  I rested my head back on the pillow, blinking at him sleepily. “Thank you.”

  He nodded, setting down the water and angling his shoulders to check the monitors, all of which were back on.

  I twisted my wrists in the restraints, checking my own strength. I was weak. As expected.

  “Oh,” I said softly. “Did I fall?”

  “Ah …” He cleared his throat. “Yes.” He wore short-sleeved, dark-blue scrubs, no gloves. He held the bulk of his power in the palms of his hands, which made sense for a healer.

  The bare skin was a risky choice around me. Though not so much while I was restrained.

  I allowed my eyes to flutter closed, then open again. “I don’t recognize you,” I murmured.

  He leaned over me, a curl of a smile at the edges of his lips. “I’m new. The name is Brad.”

  “And my team, Brad?” I let my voice catch, as if overwhelmed. “Have they … did they?”

  “I know that you’re the only one in the hospital wing. So if anyone else was brought in with you, they’re not here now.”

  “Oh … thank you for telling me.”

  “How’s the pain?”

  Horrendous. “Manageable.”

  “Can you stomach some food?”

  Food sounded like a terrible idea. “Um, something … light. Toast?”

  “Buttered?”

  “Yes, please. But just lightly, and completely melted.”

  He chuckled as if I was adorable, crossing to the intercom by the door. “Of course.”

  He turned his back to me, placing an order for lightly buttered toast, a banana, and apple juice.

  I quickly glanced around the room, confirming that there was nothing nearby that could be used to cut through my bonds. There wasn’t even a set of drawers at hand in which something useful might have been stored. The only weapons I’d have access to in the med bay would have to be repurposed. The IV stand, if I could snap it in half. The metal legs of the chair, if I could remove them.

  If … if … if I wasn’t strapped to the bed. If I wasn’t so weak.

  If I even needed to escape.

  But the overheard conversation between the overseer and the sorcerer Azar still haunted my thoughts. I knew that it might have just been some dream, some hallucination pulled forth out of my ingrained fear of never being good enough. The newly unpleasant notion that I was expendable. But even if so, the absence of the others bothered me. If Bee was okay, then why wasn’t she in my head?

  Something was definitely going on.

  Even if I could get out of the room, though, and even if I managed to make it out of the hospital wing, there was no escaping the compound. I wouldn’t make it up or down a single level, not if the Collective didn’t want me going anywhere.

  The healer stepped to the side of the bed. “Everything okay? You look … tense.”

  “Just worried about the others.”

  He nodded, leaning over the side rail. “May I take your pulse?”

  He was asking permission to touch me — while I was awake and aware.

  That didn’t make any sense.

  “Yes.”

  The healer brushed his fingers against my bare wrist. I forced my arm to remain limp, keeping my magic tightly in check. I watched him for any twitch, any sign that he was about to try to murder me.

  He smiled, glancing at the watch on his opposite wrist. “You were right about the sedation,” he said conversationally. “You’re healing much better now.”

  He pressed something into the palm of my hand. A flat disc of metal, approximately an inch and a half in diameter.

  I curled my fingers around the disc, feeling the magic contained within it tickle my palm. I made no other reaction.

  “Good,” he said, dropping my wrist. “Solid. Steady.” He reached for the water, offering it to me again.

  I sipped it without pretense. I didn’t need to figure him out or try to play him. He’d already been recruited by one of the Five, likely Bee or Knox. Both were far better with people than I was.

  “We’ll get you something to eat,” he said. “And then I suggest you nap. Yes?”

  I nodded, understanding that the suggested nap was likely to trigger the magic in the disc I held. I took another sip of water and tried to be patient.

  Before I could figure out what the purpose of the disc was, Brad fed me. Annoyingly. He would have been under orders to not let me out of the restraints, and with the cameras on us, hand feeding me was his only choice.

  So I ate, hoping the water or the food weren’t laced with sedatives.

  They weren’t.

  Then Brad settled into the far corner of the room with his tablet, and I willed myself to sleep.

  Chapter 3

  “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 h
ealers 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.