AGENT 23 BLACKOUT (Agent 23 Book 1)

CHAPTER 24

When the gas rendered me unconscious, I didn't experience any dreams or sensations. Nothing. The lights went out, plunging me into a world of pure and utter darkness. I might as well have been dead, but thankfully, life crept back into me, prodding me to open my eyes.

The first thing I notice—besides the fact there's not much light in the room—is that my right arm aches from my shoulder up to my wrist. My hand tingles with numbness, locked in place high above my head. A wave of nausea sweeps through my stomach, but I fight it off, only to battle a bout of dizziness for a few intense seconds. That passes too, but leaves me with swelling nasal passages and a split lip, courtesy of Agent 24's fist.

Yes, I remember the fight at the old fort, and the van ride to this unknown locale. It's all coming back to me.

As I struggle to grasp where I am, the surrounding room amplifies my grunts and groans like an amphitheater. In the darkness, the sounds echo in a cavernous space, filling in the blanks in my mind, telling me what I need to know about my general location and my predicament.

I raise my head and look into the gloom, sweeping my eyes in a hundred and eighty-degree arc. Rectangle windows line two long sides of the massive space, set high on both walls. From outside, insufficient light filters in through the windows, likely from streetlights. The dim setting comes more into view as my pupils adjust to the dark. But I can only see vague shadows and outlines of the walls and ceiling. With the meager light, I piece together the clues and determine I'm inside a huge, empty warehouse.

Support poles litter the room, spaced out fifty feet apart, like black arrow shafts rising from the concrete floor and piercing the roof.

Handcuffs secure my right arm to the pole in the center of the warehouse, attached to a steel ring welded to the metal about four feet off the ground. That's why my arm hurts. There's no telling how long I've been unconscious and in this position.

The most alarming discovery is that I'm alone. Kayla and my dad are somewhere else. Her father and Officer Tate are nowhere to be found, either.

I hope all of them are still alive.

I shift on the hard floor and reach up to feel where the cuff squeezes my wrist. By raising my shoulder, I ease some of the pressure digging into my skin. Blood flow increases, waking up my sleepy hand and intensifying the tingling in my fingers. The more I maneuver, the better it feels until it stings where the cuff clamps around my wrist. At least the pain lets me know I'm alive.

Alert and more aware of my surroundings, I shake my hand against the cuff, but to no avail. I pull my wrist toward me. The pain flares up and radiates down my forearm. I swear under my breath, wishing I knew how my dad escaped from handcuffs in the past. I'm sure he would've told me how he did it, but then the gas piped into the van and knocked us out.

An image flashes through my mind.

I see myself latching onto my thumb and dislocating it with a gruesome snap. Then, fighting the intense pain, I fold my dangling appendage over my palm and slip my hand free from the cuff. Thinking about it makes me want to puke.

I clamp my eyes shut and shake my head. I'm not that desperate yet.

As I sit up and lean against the pole, a door at the front of the warehouse screeches open. Light spills into the gigantic space from a hallway, framing the shadowy figure of a tall and bulky man. I know this man. Agent 24.

The assassin saunters across the concrete floor, his muscular body eclipsing most of the light behind him as he draws near. As he approaches, my heart stammers in my chest, my breath catching in my throat, unable to reach my lungs. I remember how he held me in the air with one arm, rearing back, ready to hit me. But he didn't. Thankfully.

I wonder if he's come to finish me. Maybe his leader, the person he calls Zero, has given him the green light to smash my face into a bloody pulp? Maybe he's already killed my dad and Kayla, and now he's coming for me?

Agent 24 squats before me, a few feet away.

"Good morning, sunshine." He grins smugly. "Sleep well?"

When I'm silent, he says, "Zero wants to see you, but first, I had to make sure the cuffs still secured you to the pole. I can't have you causing any problems. I need you to be on your best behavior. Do you understand?"

I stare at him, my mouth twisting, my heart thumping.

"Do you comprehend what I'm saying?" He thrusts his hand forward and grabs my collar, yanks me toward him. "Do. You. Understand?"

I nod as the contempt I feel toward him calms my anxiety, even with him right in my face.

"Good." He stands and adjusts his sleeves. "I'll be back. Don't go anywhere."

As he waltzes away and disappears into the illuminated hallway, I try to imagine what this person called Zero looks like, the person who controls my fate. Of course, to me, Zero must be a man of keen intelligence and unspeakable power. He's orchestrated everything from the beginning: my headaches, my visions, and my skills required to be an agent. He followed that up with the mayor's abduction and subsequent mind control, including Officer Tate. Then he capped it off with our eventual capture and transport to this unknown location in God-knows-where.

I sigh a disgusted breath. The disappearance of my dad and Kayla, the people I care about, zaps my energy and will power.

The more I think about the person named Zero, the more I hate him. He has to be the vilest person alive, someone who created a brainwave technology capable of mind control, who has the depravity to call it the Mind Bender.

To control people's minds! That violates the most personable space a person has. How can anyone conceive of such a thing?

Then I recall that Zero had created the Mind Bender as a D.A.R.P.A. project.

D.A.R.P.A. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Then the government set aside Zero and the Mind Bender as a top-secret agency. A stand-alone group, funded by congress, until it faded into obscurity. My dad had explained it all. Then he became the first assassin, Agent 1. Now they had him in their clutches once again. I can only wonder what The Collective has in store for us.

I may be about to find out.

With the secretive world of government espionage and the deplorable organization known as The Collective zipping through my brain, a dark figure appears in the doorway at the end of the warehouse. It's not Agent 24. The silhouette is slender and mysterious as this person slinks into the cavernous space. The closer the person gets, the more I realize that I have a grave misconception about the person named Zero.

The figure strolls toward me, shoes clacking across the concrete floor.

When Zero finally stands before me, I realize this person is not a man at all, but a woman.

The woman wears a dark green blouse, black leather pants, and a pair of black block-heeled shoes. She squats before me and in the limited light from the top windows and the illuminated hallway behind her, her face comes into view. Her caramel hair, cut short, doesn't touch her shoulders. Her slender nose and facial features send me scurrying into the past... three years ago, to be exact.

I behold the woman that Agent 24 calls Zero. The fine creases at the corners of her eyes puts her in the proper age bracket... about twenty years older than me.

As my head spins from the whirlwind revelation, I address her with the shocking and unbelievable name that I've known her by all my life.

"Mom?" I say with a gasp.