Chapter 58: AMPLIFIED

MARCO ROMANO - POV

Isabella is in my head.

I feel her there. Rifling through thoughts I haven't spoken. She's seeing the warehouse on Fifth Street. The emergency cache. Medical supplies in the south corner, three grand in cash behind the false panel, fake IDs in the safe I programmed myself.

Information I never gave her. Information she's taking.

"Stop." The word comes out harder than I intend.

She blinks. Those silver eyes focus on me. Through me. "Stop what?"

"Reading my mind without permission." My hands grip the wheelchair rims. Knuckles white. "You just accessed classified locations and security protocols."

Her face goes blank. Processing. "I didn't. I wasn't trying to."

"But you did it anyway." Dante's voice behind me. Strained. "I can feel you in my head too. Touching memories. Skimming thoughts. It's like having someone rifle through my desk drawers while I'm sitting right there."

Isabella looks at her hands. They're shaking. Silver light pulses under her skin with each heartbeat. "I'm not doing it on purpose. Your thoughts are just loud. Like everyone's shouting and I can't tune it out."

Through the blood bond her panic hits me. Sharp. Metallic. Then suddenly I'm feeling what she feels. Her terror at losing control. Her confusion. Her desperate need to make this stop before she hurts someone.

The emotions aren't mine but my body reacts anyway. Heart racing. Breath shortening. Fear crawling up my spine.

"You're broadcasting." I force the words out. "Through the bonds. Whatever you feel, we feel."

She stares at me. Silver tears well up. Start running down her cheeks. Actual liquid silver leaving trails on her skin.

Luca drops to one knee. Hand pressed against his chest. "Can't breathe through it. Too much."

Nico sags against a tree trunk. "Make it stop."

"I don't know how!" Isabella's voice cracks. The harmonic overtones fracture. Birds explode from nearby trees. Small animals bolt through underbrush. "The amplifier took something. Walls maybe. Limiters. Now everything is bigger and I can't control any of it."

I wheel closer. Every tactical instinct screams to maintain distance from an unstable enhanced individual. I ignore them. "Listen to me. You need to pull back from the bonds. Retract your consciousness like you learned before but stronger. More deliberate."

"I'm trying." Her hands clench into fists. Silver light leaking between her fingers. "But I don't know where I end anymore. Don't know where you all begin. It's all mixed together."

My mind races through possibilities. Marcus's injection removed her natural safeguards. The biological limiters that kept her power manageable. Now she's operating at exponentially higher capacity with zero control framework.

This is tactically catastrophic. Four brothers psychically linked to an unstable enhanced individual who could accidentally kill us through emotional feedback.

"Dante." I snap my fingers. "Use your psychological abilities. Help her build barriers."

"I tried." Dante's on his knees. Sweat on his face. "Her mind is chaos. I reach for her psyche and it's like touching a live wire. I get shocked back out."

Isabella's breathing speeds up. Panic attack building. I feel it through the bond before she shows external signs. The terror rising in her chest. The helplessness. The fear that she's becoming exactly what Vincent wanted. A weapon. Uncontrollable. Dangerous.

Then her panic becomes mine. Floods through the bonds and suddenly I'm not afraid of government forces or tactical complications. I'm terrified of the power inside me. Terrified of what I might do. Might become.

Except it's not my power. Not my terror.

It's hers.

"Isabella!" I grab her wrist. Her skin burns. Actual heat radiating. "You're projecting emotions. Pull them back. Now."

She stares at where I'm holding her. Silver tears dripping onto our joined hands.

The emotional broadcast cuts off. Sudden. Complete. The silence in my head feels like going deaf after standing next to speakers.

"I'm sorry." She wipes her face with her free hand. The silver smears across her cheek. "I didn't mean to hurt you. Any of you. I'm so sorry."

"Save apologies for later. Learn control now." I release her wrist. Turn my attention inward.

I need information. Marcus's memories are in Isabella's head. She absorbed them when she drained his life. That means somewhere in the chaos of her amplified mind is data about what the injection actually does. Side effects. Limitations. Vulnerabilities.

I reach through the bond carefully. Trying to access those memories without triggering another broadcast.

What I find freezes my blood.

"We need to move." I spin my wheelchair toward the logging road I spotted earlier. "Right now. Twenty minutes maximum before military containment arrives."

"How do you know?" Luca's on his feet. Alert. Ready.

"Because Isabella knows." I glance back at her. "She pulled information from my thoughts. Satellite coverage patterns. Enhanced response protocols. I was calculating scenarios and she saw all of it."

Isabella's face goes pale under the silver sheen. "I swear I didn't mean to invade your mind."

"Intention doesn't matter. Outcome does." My wheels catch on tree roots. I force through. "You accessed classified intelligence from Dante's network. Information that makes you a priority target. The power signature you released registered on every enhanced monitoring system in the western hemisphere. They're mobilizing extraction teams as we speak."

"Extraction or elimination?" Nico asks. His broken arm cradled against his chest. Isabella healed the worst damage but the bone is still weak.

"Both." I spot the logging road. Fifty yards through dense trees. "Depends on whether they think they can contain you. The signature you produced was equivalent to a tactical nuclear event on their sensors. They'll come prepared for war."

"How much time?" Dante's already moving. Covering our tracks without being asked.

"Thirty minutes if we're lucky. Twenty if they scrambled fast." I'm running calculations. Trajectories. Resources. Exit strategies. "We need transportation. The warehouse on Fifth has supplies but we can't go there directly. Too obvious."

"You were thinking about a logging road." Isabella says it before I finish the thought. "And a vehicle we could steal. An old pickup truck about half a mile east."

I stop wheeling. Turn to look at her. "Stay out of my head."

"I'm not trying to be in it!" Her voice rises. Harmonic overtones strengthening. "Your thoughts are just there. Like someone turned a radio to full volume and broke the dial."

Dante catches up. "If she can read us, she can accidentally broadcast to any enhanced individual monitoring psychic frequencies. We're basically a beacon."

Tactically accurate. Strategically disastrous.

"We'll address shielding protocols later." I point toward the logging road. "Luca, acquire transport. Anything functional. Dante, eliminate our trail. Nico, scout ahead. Isabella stays with me."

They disperse. Efficient. Practiced. Years of operations together.

Isabella sinks to the ground beside my wheelchair. Her silver eyes unfocused. Distant. "I can feel them. The government teams. Their minds are like spotlights. Harsh. Focused. They're not coming to negotiate. They're coming to neutralize the threat."

"How many personnel?"

"Two helicopters. Four ground units. Roughly forty people total." She blinks. More silver tears. "I'm hearing their radio communications. Orders are to secure the enhanced target. Lethal force authorized if containment fails."

My chest tightens. She's not just reading nearby minds. She's intercepting military transmissions. Scanning hostile forces miles away. The amplifier transformed her into a living intelligence network.

Invaluable tactical asset. Impossibly dangerous liability.

"Can you influence them?" I ask. "Project false information? Make them search wrong locations?"

"I don't know." She looks at her trembling hands. "I don't know what I can do anymore. Everything feels wrong. Foreign. Like I'm wearing someone else's body."

Luca returns driving a rust colored pickup. Engine knocking but running. "Owner left keys in it. We have maybe an hour before it's reported."

"Load up." I transfer from wheelchair to passenger seat. My legs dead weight but my arms compensate. "Dante drives. Luca and Nico in back with Isabella. Stay low. Move fast but don't attract attention."

We pile in. The truck smells like motor oil and old cigarettes. Dante turns us onto the logging road. Accelerates.

Isabella sits in the truck bed between Luca and Nico. Wind whipping her hair. Those silver eyes distant. I feel through the bond that she's scanning. Monitoring multiple frequencies. Tracking threats I can't see.

I dive back into Marcus's memories. The ones Isabella carries. Searching for details about the amplifier formula. Weaknesses. Sustainability. Anything useful.

Then I find it. Buried in the chemical breakdown.

A degradation compound. The amplified DNA isn't stable without regular reinforcement. Weekly injections of a stabilizing agent. Without it, the enhanced sequences collapse. Burn too hot. Consume neural tissue.

Three months. That's what Isabella has. Ninety days before her amplified abilities destroy her brain from the inside.

And Marcus is dead. The only person who knew where the booster supply is hidden.

"Marco." Isabella's voice from the truck bed. Carried on wind. "I hear your thoughts. What did you find?"

I turn. Look through the rear window. Meet those glowing silver eyes.

"You're dying." The words stick in my throat. "The amplifier needs weekly boosters to remain stable. Without them, your enhanced DNA degrades. Catastrophically. Three months until complete neural collapse."

Her face goes blank. Processing.

"Marcus is dead." She says it quiet. Factual. "So we don't know where he stored the boosters."

"No." I face forward. Start calculating scenarios. Resources. Possibilities. All of them bad. "We don't."

Through the bond her despair crashes over me. Black. Suffocating. She killed her father. Took the amplifier. Saved us all.

And she's dying anyway. Just slower than before.

"There has to be a trail." Nico's desperate. "Records. Notes. Something."

I search Marcus's memories again. Looking for any reference to storage. Safe houses. Research facilities. Hidden caches.

Nothing clear. Either he deliberately kept the information compartmentalized or Isabella didn't absorb those specific memories.

"Wait." Isabella's voice cuts through engine noise. "I have his memories. Everything he knew. Let me search."

"Can you access them voluntarily?" I ask. "Sort through specific information?"

"I don't know. Never tried."

Through the rear window I watch her close her eyes. Silver light pulses faster under her skin. The blood bonds flare hot. Painful.

Then she screams. Raw. Horrified.

Her eyes snap open. Glowing brighter. Pure silver.

"He hid them." Her voice shakes. Multiple harmonics layering. "Marcus stored the boosters somewhere protected by biometric security. Keyed to his DNA specifically."

My mind sees the tactical problem immediately. "Which means we can't access them without Marcus."

"There's another way." Isabella's face drains of color. Silver tears streaming. "A contingency Marcus built. In case he died before the project completed."

"What contingency?"

She meets my eyes through the window. I feel her terror through the bond. Raw. Primal.

"He made another one." Her whisper barely audible over engine noise. "Years before me. Another enhanced individual with my genetic template. My exact abilities." She swallows hard. "I have a twin sister. And Marcus programmed her to kill me if I ever became too powerful to control."