The Amplifier Protocol (Amplifier 0)

by Meghan Ciana Doidge

  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.

  Chapter 4

  They’re coming. Socks! Wake up! They’re coming for you.

  Adrenaline, triggered by the terror that flooded through Bee’s abrupt telepathic wake-up call, washed through my system. I woke, gasping and rearing forward in the bed.

  I was still shackled to the railings. The female healer was hovering beside me, a needle in one hand.

  She laughed, nervous and trying to hide it. “Bad dream?”

  I raised my forearms, testing my strength and the range of the shackles. I had about five inches of play, but I hadn’t regained enough strength to wrench open the clasps or tear the straps.

  “Everything okay?” the healer asked. Her gaze flicked to my tethered arms in concern.

  Everything was fine. She should have limited my range even more.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. My voice was thick with emotion not wholly my own. Residual from Bee.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your name?” I growled, my eyes settling on the needle in her hand. “If you’re going to try to kill me, I deserve your name, don’t I?”

  She laughed again, the sound stuttering out. “You had a bad dream, Amp5. This is simply a broad-spectrum antibiotic. I’m worried about your wound —”

  “It’s been over two months. If an infection was going to set in, it would have done so.”

  “Oh, you’re a doctor now? I didn’t realize that you gained universal knowledge along with the superpowers they gave you.”

  I pinned her with my gaze. “It’s going to be difficult to prick me with that tiny needle when I’m awake.”

  “Now you’re just being silly.” She made a show of lifting her hands before her, then turning to place the needle in a rolling metal tray beside the bed. Three more capped syringes were neatly lined in a row on the tray. All of that was new.

  Three more syringes. Four in total. They weren’t sure how difficult it was going to be to kill me. Good to know.

  “Are you operating on directives from the Collective?” I asked, slowly twisting my wrists in the restraints.

  “Of course,” the healer huffed.

  “Verbal orders or sealed paper?”

  She snapped her mouth closed, crossing her arms.

  I laughed. “A kill order always comes magically sealed, signed by a quorum.”

  She turned away, glancing up toward the camera behind the vent in the corner. Yeah, it was probably time to implement plan B. Which meant I needed to move.

  I gathered my legs underneath me, awkwardly pulling them out from under the tightly tucked covers.

  “You’re going to reopen your wounds,” the healer said peevishly.

  “Yes,” I said calmly. “Most likely. But don’t worry, it’ll heal quickly. And this would all go much more smoothly if you told me your name.”

  “Right. If I tell you my name, then you’ll let me take care of you properly?”

  I laughed harshly. “No. If you tell me your name, I might feel badly about killing you. I might even remember killing you.”

  “You’re just as bad as the rest of them,” she snarled.

  The intercom beside the door flashed. She crossed toward it, turning her back to palm the button. “Yes?”

  Idiot.

  Pulling my knee tightly to my chest and angling my upper body as far away as I could, I slammed my foot into the left-side railing of the bed.

  She spun back, eyes wide.

  A second kick and a harsh yank freed my left arm.

  A voice came over the intercom. “Your presence is required in room C.”

  The healer dove for the tray beside the bed, going for the needles.

  I kicked her in the stomach, tumbling half off the bed as I did so. My right arm was still bound to the other railing.

  She doubled over, stumbling into the tray and sending it spiraling across the room. All four syringes scattered across the white tile.

  Pain raked through my guts. I hung from the bed, panting.

  The healer stumbled away from me, eyeing the nearest syringe but going for the door. She passed her hand over the door lock’s palm reader. The lock blinked red.

  She tried again. Red.

  Again. Red.

  I laughed, sliding back up onto the bed so I could reach across and loosen the other restraint. “Now would be a really good time to tell me your name. Whoever you’ve got in security monitoring us isn’t going to let you out. In fact, I’m guessing they’re going up the line for the okay to gas us both.”

  She turned to look at me. Angry, not scared.

  I made it to my feet, stumbling. I caught myself on the bed.

  “Please,” she said with a sneer, skirtin
g the wall toward the nearest syringe. “You’re half starved. You’ve been in that bed for over two months. If you were something to be afraid of, you would have acted by now.”

  I rested, allowing her the time to get her hands on the syringe. She crouched, picking it up. She stepped toward me.

  “You’re going to need more than one,” I said, nodding toward the next nearest syringe. It had rolled under the chair in the far corner.

  More anger flitted across her face, but she stepped back and collected the syringe, then gathered the last two from near the bathroom door. She tucked three needles in her pocket, uncapping the fourth.

  “Why the needles?” I asked conversationally, pressing my hand against the slash wounds across my stomach. I hadn’t reopened them yet, but they hurt. “I would have thought you were one of those healers who kill with just a touch. Otherwise they wouldn’t have put you in here … with someone like me.”

  “It’s a sedative. I do plan on killing you myself. I was thinking a heart attack or a brain aneurism. But now I think I’ll torture you for a bit.”

  I laughed. “While I’m sedated? That will be terribly ineffective.”

  She snarled, crossing toward me with purpose.

  “You should be wearing more clothing,” I said.

  Her step hitched. “What?”

  “Nothing. I only need an inch or so anyway. So it really doesn’t matter.”

  She raised her hand, needle at the ready.

  I waited, slumped on the bed.

  She lunged.

  I straightened, spun around her outstretched hand, reached up and grabbed a fistful of her hair at the back of her head.

  She shrieked indignantly.

  I pressed her against me, pinning her arm, then twisting her wrist sharply.

  She dropped the needle at her feet.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “No time to sedate you.”

  “Macy,” she cried. Her terror zinged through me, picked up by my frequently maligned empathy. “My name … my name …”

  I tore her magic from her fiercely, channeling it into myself.

  She sucked in a pained breath, sagging against me.

  I took more. I took it all. All of the healing power that resided in every cell of her body, that flowed through her veins. I already had the ability to kill by touch, but I wasn’t trying to cast with her magic. I couldn’t actually wield stolen power, not without keeping in contact with the vessel.