Parking in the darkness, away from the security lights that lined the building, Chris and the others moved quietly through the trees and underbrush to the old clinic. In the lead, Buck kept low and hurried through the lighted area. Reaching the corner of the building, he waited as the others gathered in behind him. When they'd all arrived, Chris gave the signal to move on.

"Wait." Buck held his hand against the side of the building. His eyes darted back and forth and his breathing quickened.

"Buck?"

He turned to Chris. "Empath. He's got an empath." Something he'd never felt before flowed through him. He'd worked with other empaths before, but had never experienced this strong feeling of connection. Certain the empath inside the building felt his presence too, Buck kept still and allowed some of the discomfort the other suffered to melt into him.

Buck leaned forward and touched his head to the building. Chris grasped his arm, anchoring him. "Can you tell if he's working with Evans or not?"

Vin spoke before Buck could answer. "He'd not."

They all turned to look at Vin. Vin held himself stiffly, his eyes focused on something distant.

"Evans is testing him, forcing him to -- read different objects he'd handing him. Doesn't sound like the boy is handling it very well but Evans keeps pushing him, isn't allowing him time to, uh --"

"Cleanse himself of the first reading."

"Yeah." Vin nodded at Buck. "The boy says everything's overlapping in his mind and mixing together too fast for him to separate, but Evans isn't slowing down."

"Boy?"

Vin looked at Chris. "His voice sounds young to me. He could be 40 for all I know."

"Let's find out." Nathan pushed in between the others. He carefully gripped Buck's shoulder, perhaps lending some of his skills to the troubled empath.

Chris ordered, "Vin, you lead the way. Josiah, stay here, wait for us. If we're not out in thirty minutes, you know what to do."

The strong man nodded, determination set in his eyes.

Vin worked his way around them and entered the building first. Voices mumbled low and indistinguishable from deep inside the old clinic, but they were far enough away and he didn't try to focus on them. Instead, he tuned his hearing to a finer point and swept the halls closer to them. The only voices he could hear were Evans and the kid. Machinery thrummed steadily against his hearing, which Vin easily ignored. Glancing over his shoulder, he motioned for his friends to follow, then carefully hurried inside.

He listened, infuriated, as Evans apparently handed the empath one item after another. Vin heard the trembling in the kid's voice as he struggled to identify who it belonged to.

Even from this distance he could sense changes in the boy's body. Temperature spiked, heart racing, his voice weakening, then becoming slightly muffled, as if he'd dropped his head to his chest and wasn't looking up.

After the entranceway, Vin led them down a long corridor. Small alcoves that probably used to be nurses' stations and waiting areas opened in regular intervals along the hall. When they came to a juncture, he stopped and waited for the others to gather around him.

"The kid and Evans are two doors down on your right. No one's there but them, and the boy needs help. Now." He pointed with his eyes in another direction. "I'm picking up a heartbeat from farther down this hall, sounds like someone else in trouble. It's isolated, no one's near him, so I'm going to check it out."

With a quick nod, Chris assented. "Be careful. We'll meet you back where we started in fifteen minutes. If you're not there we're coming to look for you."

"I'll be there." He refocused on Evans and heard the kid's voice, small and strained, "Too fast . . . " Evans answered him briskly, unfeelingly, "It's part of the test." Vin shook his head. "You need to get going." He turned to leave.

Chris watched him go, then shifted to face Buck and wrap one hand around his arm. "I want you to check this out, Buck. See exactly what we're walking into, see if you can find out what kind of condition the kid's in, and where he is."

He watched Buck open the connection. Immediately, shock folded lines around Buck's mouth and eyes. Evidently, this was worse than even Vin knew.

"They're both on the other side of the room, away from the door. I think Evans has his back to us, and the kid is facing him."

Ready to confront Evans, Chris indicated for Nathan to go. Under his hand, Buck's arm suddenly hardened as his muscles flexed.

"No. He can't -- " Buck twisted to face Chris, his eyes wide with fear. "We need to get to him."

"All right, let's go." Chris moved, taking his friends with him.

Hurrying into the room, Chris quickly took note of the exits, and where Evans stood. The only other person in the room besides Evans was a boy: on his knees, his back bent, one arm bracing him from falling, shoulder-length dark hair hiding his face. From what Chris could see, he was young. Very young, and probably far too inexperienced to manage whatever hell Evans was putting him through.

"This ends now."

Evans lifted his chin, and his eyes narrowed in anger and recognition at Chris. Chris reached to intercept the object, he now recognized as a swatch of fabric, Evans held, but the researcher pressed the item into the boy's hand before Chris could reach him. With a wailing cry, the young empath wrapped one arm around his body and shielded his head with his other arm, then collapsed to his side on the floor. His entire body quaked. Before Chris could move, Buck gathered the boy in his arms.

Chris rushed to them and wrenched the fabric from the kid's fist. As soon as he held it, he recognized it as part of a uniform.

Buck drew the huddled empath into his arms as easily as if he'd known him all his life. He glared at the Evans and barked his accusation. "You know what this is doing to him." The kid pressed his forehead into Buck's stomach, burrowing into the offered shelter. Memories, both distant and new, cascaded into Buck's mind. "It's bad enough he's got to live with his own pain and heartache, but you're making him carry other people's, too. Why the hell are you pushing him so hard, Evans?"

"Because we need to know if he will crumble in the field." Evans moved slowly, shifting behind the small table that held the objects. "But I don't believe he'll ever be a true empath."

Abruptly, Buck felt something change in the boy. He couldn't tell if the emotional spike was the young empath's pain or a culmination of everything he'd absorbed in the last fifteen minutes. But the kid was suddenly struggling to breathe.

"Nathan!" Buck called, only to find the healer at his shoulder already.

Only the knowledge that it would be beyond Travis' abilities to cover the mess of murder kept Chris from killing the bastard where he stood. Only Evans would deliberately torture an empath. Mad as hell, he knew better than to lose his temper, or lose his control.

Evans leaned over to glare at the boy, still huddled between Buck and Nathan. "Look at him," he said with disgust. "He's useless."

The moment the words were out of Evans' mouth, Chris closed the distance between them. Shoving the table aside, he lifted Evans and pushed him to a wall, then shoved him against it hard.

"The only useless thing I see is right in front of me." Chris lowered his voice, even though he felt like bellowing. He knew enough about his own anger, and the power he felt building through his limbs, drawing strength from the energy around him, that he needed to keep everything under tight control.

Evans raised a hand to his throat and clawed at Chris' fingers, but he spoke evenly. "You'll never get out of here."

"We'll leave as easily as we came."

"You can't kill me. It would raise too many questions, cause too many problems for even that traitor Travis to fix."

Unwilling to let Evans know how close to the truth he was, Chris shook him. He held out the little square of fabric that had devastated the boy. "What is this?"

"It's just a piece of cloth . . . "

"From . . ." Chris prompted.

"I don't know. It's a blind study, I'd have to consult my files."

A Southern drawl wafted from behind them. "I don't think so."

Chris glanced back over his shoulder to see Vin and a stranger looking over Evans' scattered papers. The man's words became crisper.

"It says here: 'Item number 14: Firefighter, killed 7 October, 2001 in collapse of industrial building. Cause of death -- indeterminable due to extent of injuries, likely crushing injury, burns over . . . 80% of the body, lungs filled with smoke."

Chris fought the rage that surged with renewed vigor. He viciously shook Evans again. The man's teeth rattled against each other. "You just put him through that."

Evans squirmed awkwardly in his grip. "That's ridiculous. Mr. Dunne is just giving you the reaction you expect."

"JD Dunne." Nathan moved aside and Buck stood, pulling the boy up with him. He held his arm protectively around the kid, obviously supporting him when the young empath couldn't stand on his own. "Evans told him he'd train him to join the Agency."

"And you told him what the Agency was, of course?" The stranger stepped closer to Evans, his handsome face twisted into a sneer. "Lies, deceit, nothing but pain and humiliation as you suffer through test after test, only to discover there is no Agency, no brave group of specialist training to help make the world a better place. It's all a cover for a group of demented scientist who like to play with other people's minds and emotions."

He reached to pull Evans from Chris, both hands fisted into the researcher's lapels. "I think it's about time you endured some research of our own, Dr. Evans."

Gunfire exploded suddenly, taking them all by surprise. Chris dove for cover, steeling a glance around the room first to check the location of his men. Vin's cry of pain nearly brought his head up again, but he stayed behind the cabinets and hurried along its long length to the other end.

"Peek, Sanderson, keep them here." Evans' orders snapped through the room. "Don't let them escape." Running footsteps that moved to the hall and faded into the distance reached Chris' ears. Evans was gone. That left whoever had come in without him seeing them, and the newcomers were armed. Fortunately, so were they. Despite the advantages of having these gifts, it was always wise to come prepared with normal weapons. He slid his gun free from where he'd tucked it in the back of his belt.

Pressing his shoulders against the cabinet, Chris cautiously peered around the edge. A wide space separated him from another set of cabinets and counters, with Nathan hiding behind those. Taking a moment to catch his breath, Chris gathered himself and dove, twisting through the air and aiming with deadly accuracy toward the group of men standing foolishly in the middle of the room. Instead of shooting back, they scattered, crying out and covering their heads uselessly from the deadly barrage.

He landed safely beside Nathan. Checking his ammo, Chris asked breathlessly, "You all right?"

The healer nodded. "Vin's hit."

"Where is he?"

"There, behind that stack of old machinery." Nathan pointed and Chris nodded.

"You see how bad?"

"Looked like he took it in the leg, but I'm not sure. I need to get to him, Chris."

"I'll get you there. What about Buck and the kid?"

"They ended up diving in different directions." He indicated with his head. "Buck's behind those tables there and the boy scrambled for the old machinery. He's with Vin."

"Can he help him?"

Nathan shook his head. "I don't know. He's an empath, so he should be able to, but after what Evans' has put him through tonight, I just don't know."

The air rippled weirdly and abruptly, the stranger who Vin had brought with him appeared beside them. Chris reacted instantly, grabbing the man around the throat and pulling him in against him, his gun pressed to his temple. "Where the hell did you come from? Talk fast, I'm in no mood to be patient."

Gasping, the stranger held his hands shoulder high. "I'm a -- shapeshifter. Evans held me -- against my will like the young man you -- rescued tonight. I just want -- to help."

Ignoring a sudden burst of gunfire, probably in answer to his earlier stunt, Chris squeezed tighter and felt the man arch against him. "How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"You -- don't. But I could have -- taken you down as easily as -- offering my help."

Conceding to that truth, Chris loosened his grip. He pushed the man away and shoved him against the cabinets, holding him there with a hand on his chest. "Name."

"Ezra Standish." Hands still held up to indicate surrender, the shapeshifter wheezed breathlessly.

"All right, Ezra Standish. Let's see how helpful you can be." Chris pointed with his gun toward the other side of the room. "I've got a man down behind that stack of junk over there. The kid, the empath, is with him. You go do your Houdini act and see if they need help. We'll join you as soon as we can."

Ezra nodded and moved, but Chris didn't remove his hand. The shapeshifter stilled, pressing hard into the cabinets at his back when Chris brought his gun up to point at his chest.

"You hurt that man, or do anything to make me believe you're not with us on this, and I won't hesitate to make you disappear for good. Comprende´?"

"Completely."

"Good." Releasing him, Chris watched as the shapeshifter quickly disappeared. He shook his head. Once they got out of this, if they could convince Mr. Standish to join them, they'd add a distinct advantage to their ranks.

Part V