Chapter One, Part One

March 2011.

I exited the building onto the roof thirteen minutes after I’d entered via the ground floor. In that time, I had disabled all magical and mundane security, eliminated any resistance, and retrieved the package on the fifteenth floor. Now I was arriving at the extraction point, two minutes ahead of schedule.

A transport helicopter blew past, circling the building. The sound of its blades was magically dampened, but the obfuscation spell coating its black hull was doing a terrible job of obscuring it from sight. And it wasn’t going to hold in broad daylight for much longer.

Nul5 and Tek5 darted ahead. The nullifier and telekinetic systematically swept the rooftop, visually checking that the area was clear of adversaries. I could sense that it was, but relying solely on magical senses was negligent. And we were anything but inept. The black armor they wore was stark against the landscape of pale gray, blue, and white buildings that occupied the downtown core of Los Angeles. It was the same armor I wore, magically fortified and flexible, but neither of them carried the twin blades sheathed between my shoulder blades.

The sky was hazy, the temperature typical for early spring. At least that was what had been highlighted as need-to-know on the mission brief. Some spells were affected by extreme changes in temperature or an excessive amount of sunlight. 

Bristling with magic, the remainder of the extraction team flanked me, ready to protect the package at all costs. After more than two years together, we had little or no need for comms, magical or mundane. We would often move in silence, instinctively working together without the need for verbal orders. When orders were necessary, I had the final say. But I usually deferred to the commanding officer, Mark Calhoun.

We cleared the egress, hunkering down to the side of the upper stairwell to wait for a direct path to the pickup.

Jackson peeled away from the group, stepping back to the steel exterior door. She pulled a roll of red tape from the zippered pocket on her upper left thigh. Starting at the bottom right corner, she ran the tape up and then across the edges of the door, revealing a series of inked runes. Adhering the tape to the steel and concrete, she activated a barrier spell with a bluntly uttered command.

Energy flashed through the inked runes, sealing the door behind us. Sorcerer magic. Becca Jackson, aka X3, was the team’s demolitions expert, but her magic worked both ways — securing or shattering as needed.

Sunlight cut through the permanent haze that hung over the city, momentarily blinding me as it reflected off something to the west. I angled my head, clearing my sight line but sensing nothing magically amiss. Though securing the extraction point wasn’t my task. It was exceedingly unlikely that an adversary could have gotten any threat — magical or otherwise — past Cla5 or Tel5. And the clairvoyant and the telepath were monitoring the mission from the roof of a neighboring building.

The helicopter circled to set down. I reached back for the package, ready to run with him. He’d been tortured by magical means, but had made it most of the way up the stairs on his own two feet, supported between Piper and Hannigan. As a werewolf, Sasha Piper, aka X5, was the enforcer for the team — stronger, faster, and more brutal than everyone but me. The sorcerer Tom Hannigan, aka X4, was a shield specialist.

The team huddling around me were all weapon wielders, but I preferred to keep my hands free. I was more effective in close contact situations. So in corridors and stairwells, I’d lead with Nul5, who would nullify any offensive spells. But in an open area, such as the rooftop, the team would take the lead.

The package shifted closer to me. Cool fingers sought out and found the naked skin between my glove and sleeve, wrapping around my wrist. I glanced down. His own skin was medium brown, fingernails manicured into a smooth shine. A prickle of energy shifted between us — my empathy power, bringing his heightened emotions with it. I felt his lingering fear, coupled with relief. Pain and weariness. He’d been lashed to a chair, barely conscious when I’d found him.

I had drained two of his shapeshifter captors myself, taking the first before the other had even known I was in the room. The second fell while she was still staring at her partner in morbid terror as I’d incapacitated him. Or perhaps it had been specifically me who’d terrified her. Which was ironic, since she was the one who could transform into a six-and-a-half-foot-tall, razor-clawed, half-human/half-beast warrior form capable of rending someone limb from limb with minimal exertion.

In an effort to revive the sorcerer I’d been tasked to rescue, I had channeled the stolen energy from the shapeshifters into him. It wasn’t possible for a nonshifter to transform, of course. That ability was rooted in shifter DNA, in their blood. But the stolen energy was enough to get the package on his feet.

A fierce satisfaction flooded through me. It wasn’t my own emotion, though.

It was the sorcerer’s.

Touching me had been deliberate. And risky, since he’d witnessed what I could do with skin-to-skin contact. Twice.

My latent empathy picked up a smugness in his satisfaction. A possessiveness.

He knew me.

I met his dark-eyed gaze. The wind picked up from the helicopter landing on the roof, lifting the sorcerer’s dark-brown hair from his high forehead. It was silvered at the temples. Strong, straight nose. Narrow chin. The fine lines around his dark, defiant eyes had been exacerbated by dehydration and sleep deprivation.

I didn’t recognize him.

He twisted his lips into a proud sneer. His accent was lilting and precise. “You are as magnificent as I always intended you to be, amplifier.”

Shock slammed through me. My own emotion this time, triggered by a burst of adrenaline. I twisted my wrist in his grasp, breaking his hold. Even if he hadn’t been magically drained, he couldn’t have held me. Not with physical force.

Few people could hold me, even with my magic at normal levels. And despite what I’d shared with the sorcerer, the act of draining two shapeshifters of their magic had let me momentarily harness their innate strength on top of my own permanently stolen power. Power that amplifiers didn’t simply inherit. At least not other amplifiers, even as rare as they might be among those who possessed magic. The Adept.

I wasn’t just an amplifier, though. I’d been genetically constructed. I was the result of over a century of magical and scientific experiments. And over the past twenty-one years, I’d been forced to siphon magic from others. Forced to claim strength, heightened healing, and other abilities for my own — and often killing those I plundered in the process. 

The empathy I’d inadvertently stolen from my birth mother — my first victim — never allowed me to become fully numb to the process.

I focused on the present situation. The sorcerer knew me.

He claimed responsibility for me.

So he was one of the Collective.

I’d been sent to rescue a nameless asset, though obviously one of high value. And I had wound up retrieving one of the architects of my conception — the Collective who had begot the Five.

A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the warmth of the day, and everything to do with the disconcertion of meeting — 

Incoming! Tel5 screamed through the telepathic connection that bound the core team together.

A deafening roar accompanied by a bright wash of light — some sort of magical, mental backlash — assaulted all my senses, sending me face first toward the concrete roof. Tel5’s near-constant presence in my mind was wiped away, leaving me mentally shaken in a way I’d never felt before.

“Calhoun!” I barked. I managed to hold myself upright, but just barely. “Do you have comms?”

Mark Calhoun, situated to my left and slightly ahead, flicked his hazel eyes my way briefly, shaking his head sharply. The commanding officer’s automatic weapon remained raised and ready, scanning the rooftop. “We’ve been cut off,” he said, referring to the electronic comms he and most other members of the team carried. None of them were mentally linked and bound to the telepath as Nul5, Tek5, and I were through our blood tattoos.

Like the weapons the others carried, Calhoun’s was modified to shoot magically imbued silver rounds. The extraction team had been well briefed about what and who we’d be facing. We had armed ourselves accordingly. Unfortunately, there was a new adversary on the field. An Adept who was capable of knocking out magical and electronic communication with equal ease. Or perhaps more than one Adept.

The exterior door blew open, taking Jackson with it and nearly decapitating the members of the extraction team on my right.

Shapeshifters in warrior form swarmed the roof. Six-and-a-half-foot-tall half-human/half-beasts with three-inch-long claws and deadly sharp teeth. Physically stronger and faster than over two-thirds of my team, and with an innate resistance to magical assault. Thankfully, the specialty rounds we were carrying would even the odds.

Flynn and Hannigan raised their weapons, taking the first three shifters down with headshots.

I grabbed the package, heaving him across my shoulders, and ran toward the helicopter. Leaving Jackson to fend for herself, the core of the extraction team moved with me, systematically taking down any targets that attempted to impede our progress.

Sasha Piper was ripped away into a swarm of claws and teeth on my right. Even magically muffled, the gunfire was compromising my hearing. But I didn’t need to be able to hear to reach my objective.

As I moved, I felt the magic of the sorcerer across my back collecting, coalescing as he readied some massive spell with the last vestiges of his power.

Tek5 stood with her back to the open side of the helicopter, its rotor blades whirling overhead. She flung her hands out, stretching toward a rooftop ventilation unit to my left. Her dark-brown skin glistened, glints of her telekinesis seen in the sheen of sweat that slicked her face from having stood in the sun for too long.

Nul5 was down, sprawled at the telekinetic’s feet, but shaking his head. The psychic blast had apparently hit the nullifier much harder than it had me or Tek5.

That was unexpected.

The ventilation unit ripped free from its bolted base, metal twisting, denting. With a flick of her hands, Tek5 launched the unit across my path, slamming it into and clearing any combatants that had gotten ahead of my charge.

With the first wave knocked off the field, the shapeshifters tearing at the edges of the extraction team changed tactics. Moving as if they were also telepathically linked, they swarmed to intercept Tek5 and the helicopter. They instinctively perceived her to be the biggest threat.

And they weren’t wrong.

They were simply ignorant, placing themselves between me and my goal. It was always foolish to get between me and an objective.

I ripped my left glove off with my teeth, reaching over my shoulder to press my hand to the sorcerer’s face. He wrapped both of his hands around mine, giving me permission just by touching me.

Just by knowing what I could do.

That thought, that development, would have to wait to be explored until I had the package safely on the helicopter and my team back at base.

Flynn fell, leaving an opening at my left flank that Calhoun immediately filled. The commanding officer’s shift of position opened me up to a frontal attack. But whatever I faced directly would always go down, so guarding my rear was the priority.

I took the sorcerer’s magic. I took the spell he murmured against my ear. I harnessed the power he’d called forth, conducting it as it willed. I thrust my free hand forward. A spiral of darkly tinted energy flowed down my arm.

“Your left!” I screamed. Then I pumped my own power into the sorcerer’s casting to double it … to triple it in strength.

Ahead, Tek5 and Nul5 dropped to the concrete, each rolling to their left.

I released the spell. A spell I had no actual ability to call, command, or control. Dark energy streamed from my splayed fingers, hitting the five nearest shapeshifters. They dropped, writhing and howling in pain.

Calhoun and Hannigan eliminated the last two shifters between the helicopter and our charge. But there were still a half-dozen or more behind us. Shifter magic was difficult to distinguish when they were grouped together, and I couldn’t take my focus off my objective to glance back.

Nul5 darted around the helicopter, wrenching open the pilot’s door and yanking him out of his seat. A prudent decision. We’d been telepathically cut off from Tel5 and Cla5, as well as from the comms. That was a feat I would have declared impossible — if I ever entertained the notion of impossibilities. Which I didn’t.

There was no way of knowing who was loyal, except for the Five. And two of us were already unaccounted for. Not knowing what had happened to Cla5 and Tel5 meant that everything and everyone but the package was expendable.

But that had always been the case.

It would always be the case.

The Five were an arm, a weapon, of the Collective. We went where we were ordered, did what we were told to do. And the team of specialists backing us was even more expendable than we were.

The pilot rolled to his feet, palming a weapon and firing at the nearest shifter as he ran toward us. Also a prudent move. Even if he wasn’t a regular team member, there was strength in numbers. And the extraction team was the second-largest grouping on the roof.

Tek5 appeared out of nowhere, perched suddenly on the edge of the helicopter’s side door. She had triggered her short-range teleportation ability to move into place swiftly. She kept her gaze glued to me, ready to grab the package.

The space between us was clear of adversaries.

To my immediate right and without any warning, Hannigan turned his automatic weapon on me. 

Tom Hannigan. Shield specialist. He’d been with us for two years.

Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t fast enough to both aim and pull the trigger. Not even at point-blank range.

Still running, still carrying the sorcerer, I grabbed the weapon, smashing it back into Hannigan’s face and dropping him. The harsh double bark of a weapon behind me informed me that Calhoun had finished off the would-be traitor without even pausing.

Steps away from Tek5, I shifted the sorcerer from across my shoulders. The telekinetic grabbed his arm, hauling him up into the helicopter.

I followed, getting the sorcerer settled in a seat and belting him in as quickly as I could without hurting him.

Calhoun and the pilot stayed on the roof, guarding our backs.

“Took you long enough, Socks,” Nul5 shouted from the pilot’s seat. His hands were flying over the controls, double-checking everything. A sensible precaution, since some sort of betrayal was apparently in the process of unfolding.

Tek5 laughed wickedly, flush with energy and magic as she tugged on a headset.

I ignored them both.

The sorcerer’s fingers ghosted my cheek.

I met his dark-eyed gaze.

Tek5 caught the exchange. A deep frown instantly replaced her former playfulness.

The sorcerer held a headset in his other hand, having already put on another pair. I took it from him and put it on.

“Socks?” The sorcerer’s tone was weary but amused, even through the headset speakers. He touched my face again. “Is that your name, amplifier? I’m Kader Azar. I would have you know me.”

“I have no name, Sorcerer Azar. I am simply a designation. Amp5. As you well know.”

He dropped his hand, but not before I’d felt a spark of his anger.

***

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