Exiled: Kenly's Story (A Talented Novel) (2 page)

So far, the only light in the bleakness of
all of this running and surviving was my daily trip to the Giraffe,
which included a big bowl of the Tugboat Stew.

I was starving.

Starving, but vigilant. As I crossed through
the pub’s entrance, I gave the area a quick sweep while barely
moving my head. The hustling people in the rain seemed no more
aware of me than they were of the individual stones beneath their
feet. I was blending. Luckily, my eyes were light brown, not any of
the obscure colors that immediately identified some as being
Talented. It would’ve made this whole flying-under-the-radar thing
much more problematic.

Tug, the owner of the Flying Giraffe, was in
his usual spot behind the bar. He raised one arthritic hand and
waved.

“
Aye, Miss Kenly,” the
elderly man called, his Irish accent lyrical and soothing. “’Tis a
wet one out there, isn’t it?”

“
Sure is, Tug,” I replied,
crossing the scuffed planking of the floor and trying not to roll
my sore eyes. So far, every day was a wet one in London. Yet,
everyone seemed to comment on the weather.

Back in western Maryland,
where my old school—The McDonough School for the Talented—was
located, the weather was hot and dry this time of year. The thought
brought a bittersweet memory to the forefront of my mind. As clear
as if she stood in front of me, I could picture Alana Stillwater,
my roommate and best friend, lifting her long dark hair with one
hand and fanning her flushed cheeks with the other.
“Ugh. It is
so
hot. I’ll have to sleep naked tonight, just to
keep from sweating to death,”
she would
say. All the boys would then get dreamy expressions as they
imagined Alana nude.

“
Will ye have the usual,
then?” Tug’s lilting accent recaptured my attention as I reached
one of the suitable tables. The usual was a heavy bowl of stew and
a chipped mug of piping hot black tea.

“
You must be reading my
mind, Tug. Thanks. Stew would be great.” I tossed a rare smile his
way. There wasn’t much for me to smile about these days, and I knew
my expression was a shadow of what it once was.

Tug disappeared into the back, leaving my
mind free to return to the past and Alana.

A knot formed in the pit of my stomach. I
had no idea where she was now. Did she survive the attack on D.C.?
If so, was she in hiding, like me? Or had our enemies caught
her?

Don’t think about that now. Your survival,
your freedom—that’s what is important.

No matter how many times I said those same
words, the heartache and worry over Alana’s fate remained. It
wasn’t even just her I was worried about. I didn’t know what had
happened to any of my friends and classmates.

I shrugged out of my navy raincoat and hung
it on a hook next to the table in the back corner of the pub, next
to a short hallway leading to the bathrooms. This was one of only
two tables that served my purposes, something I’d determined the
first time I ate here.

The Giraffe had three points of entry and
exit: one in the front, one in the kitchen, and a third—a fire
door—by the women’s restroom. From this table and the one beside
it, I could see all three, without leaving my back vulnerable.
These small details were vital to my survival and status as a free
woman. Thus far luck had been on my side and I had yet to encounter
any UNITED agents, but I wasn’t so naïve as to believe that they
were no longer hunting me. One day, they would catch up with me.
Even though I was far from helpless, I was greatly appreciative of
any assistance fate threw my way.

And not just with keeping me off of the
radar; I felt fortunate to have found this place where people were
kind and accepting, but didn’t ask too many questions. In only a
few short weeks, the Giraffe had become a second home for me. With
everything else going on, the ever-present kindness from Tug and
the break from watching my own back were the highlights of my days.
In fact, relegating it to second best probably wasn’t even
accurate; the pub felt much more like home than where I laid my
head at night.

Tug emerged from the kitchen area. “Willa’s
got the kettle goin’ now. Yer tea will be out straight away, Miss
Kenly,” he assured me, hobbling back behind the bar to resume
whatever activity my arrival had interrupted.

“
Thanks, Tug,” I called
back.

Droplets of water plinked softly on the
floorboards below where my coat was hanging. It would still be wet
when I was ready to leave if I left it on the hook. Slipping around
the table, I laid my coat on the wooden dowels stretching between
the supporting legs of one of Tug’s homemade drying racks. Taking
care to spread the fabric out completely, I left no wrinkles for
pockets of water to linger in.

Returning to my table, I
couldn’t help but consider how different my life now was from
everything I’d ever known back home. Day and night. Black and
white. Left and right. I’d never imagined that one of my greatest
challenges in life would be staying dry. After four days of soggy
sneakers, drenched sweaters, and dripping hair, I’d realized that
particular problem wasn’t going to go away. Using some of the money
I’d
borrowed
on
the hoverplane, I purchased both the coat and my ever-present rain
boots. Luckily, this area of London—known as the Slums, ever since
the Contamination drove the wealthier residents from the center of
the city—had abundant secondhand clothing stores. The items were
sorely outdated, but well-made for the most part, and cheap. With
limited funds, cheap was imperative.

I settled back in my seat. Though my mind
was already whirring, I took a deep breath and prepared for a surge
in brain activity. Bracing myself, I opened my mind and gave in to
my Talents.

YEARS OF TRAINING had taught me to account
for every eye and every ear in a room. But it was one of my Talents
that allowed me to fully analyze potential threats. As a Higher
Reasoning Talent—or a Brain as I was called back in school—my mind
processed data faster than the latest, greatest, most expensive
computers that money could buy. The McDonough School had taught me
how to use that ability.

Even before Danbury McDonough had taken me
under his wing, no matter how much information my mind was already
taking in and processing, it could always accept more. Now, after
the Director of the Agency had helped me achieve my full potential,
I had no limitations at all. Having an unconfined, boundless mind
was exhilarating. I was full of ideas, conjectures, and opinions on
everything; endless thoughts and information flowed within my mind
constantly. The only trouble was that, with data constantly gushing
in and being analyzed—even the most infinitesimal details of the
world around me were scrutinized and filed away for future
referencing—it was really hard not to live entirely within my
aching head.

The crowd was thin tonight, thank goodness.
Sometimes I could really use a mental break, but I had no idea how
to get one with my amped up capabilities.

Two men in fingerless gloves—one pair
fraying brown, the other a tattered mismatched set—were playing
chess at a table in the back. The ivory set of pieces was within
two moves of checkmate. The black team could avoid the endgame by
moving the only remaining knight to take out an ivory rook. Given
the lackadaisical body language each man exhibited, and the smell
of whiskey emanating from both, neither would see their most
advantageous move. The game would continue for some time.

Beside them, seated on stools at the bar,
two men drank pints of Guinness. Empty glasses sat between them,
ignored by Tug in his attentiveness to a soccer match playing on
the wallscreen above the bar. I’d seen the two men several times
before, and I quickly recalled my initial assessment of each, and
the combination of both together. I’d ruled them harmless then, and
still believed that to be true. As usual, they were arguing
good-naturedly, never raising their voices extensively, nor
exhibiting any telltale signs of true hostility. In the past their
squabbles had revolved around football players, teams, and games.
Tonight was no different. Even with the count of those empty pint
glasses standing at six apiece, I judged the men, once again,
harmless.

Moving on.

I studied Tug. He was leaning against the
shelf of stacked liquor bottles behind the bar, arms crossed over
his chest, an uncharacteristically serious set to his jaw, and a
tension in his shoulders that wasn’t ordinarily present. A warning
bell pinged in my head. Tug was my barometer, his mood gave me an
overall impression of the general atmosphere in the bar. When he
was tense, it usually meant there was discord among his
patrons.

A quick check of Tug’s
facial tells and the level of rigidity in his wrinkled neck and I
relaxed. The stiff stance was not one of anger or defensiveness. It
was irritation. The soccer game—nope, that wasn’t right. The
football
match was tied
at one-to-one, and a guy in a red jersey had just missed a penalty
kick.

I’d previously determined that Tug had
secrets unknown to me. No big surprise since we were more of
passing acquaintances than true friends, and therefore weren’t on a
braid-each-other’s-hair-and-spill-our-deepest-darkest-secrets
level. Still, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t curious about
the Giraffe’s owner. Besides the stew, that curiosity was what kept
me coming back in day after day.

With no further evaluation of Tug
required—multiple in depth appraisals on numerous occasions had all
concluded that he was harmless, and tonight’s appraisal had been
the same—my mind continued on its linear track to the final
patron.

Seated at the end of the bar opposite the
two bickering men was a teenage boy. The tips of his spiky blonde
hair were dyed a bright blue-green. This being a first sighting, I
was immediately wary. With his back to me, it was difficult to
ascertain much information about him, a fact that made my heart
rate increase.

A pint glass sat in front of the boy,
three-quarters full of amber-colored liquid. No hint of frothy foam
remained at the top, and the bubbles of carbonation were few and
far between. He was nursing the beer, not drinking with the speed
and regularity of a guy looking to get drunk. It appeared he was
there to hang out. His attention seemed to be on the telescreen—the
British name for wallscreens—on the game, just like the others. But
he wasn’t fooling me. There was a two second delay between when Tug
and the two men cheered and booed for the plays, and when the boy
did. Further data was needed to make a credible assessment. I’d
keep an eye on him.

The wallscreen with the game playing was
mounted above a window designed to pass things through from the
front of the pub to the kitchen and vice versa. Beyond the opening,
I could see Willa, Tug’s granddaughter, manning the grill. She was
a little older than me—twenty by my estimation—and worked nights at
the Giraffe to help out her grandfather, a fact I’d learned by
eavesdropping. Like Tug, she’d already been measured and decided
upon. Non-hazardous was my official conclusion.

Willa glanced up from the grill as if she
could feel me looking at her. A bit of sautéed onion flew from the
spatula in her hand as waved to me.

“
Hey, Kenly! Bucketing out,
isn’t? Hope the stew’s not the only reason you ventured out,” Willa
called, smearing white mush across her dark skin as she tried to
wipe away what appeared to be a glob of potato.

Not a leading statement.
Not an attempt to ascertain classified information. Idle chitchat
from a person not quite a friend but more than a passing
acquaintance
.

“
I came for the company,
too.” I winked as I said it, even though, sadly, the statement was
true.

Pathetic as it was, hiding in a foreign
country, thousands of miles away from everyone I’d ever known, was
extremely lonely. Willa and her grandfather were the closest I had
to friends in London, and seeing them on a daily basis lessened the
homesickness that gave me a constant ache in my gut. They were also
the only link I had to the world outside of my head. Luckily, Willa
and Tug treated all of the regulars like family. And in a way, I
was sort of included in that. It was clear they understood how I
felt and why I continued to show up every day; they always made an
effort to be extra kind to me.

Willa laughed while looking around, playing
at examining the company I’d supposedly come for.

“
You’ve gone mad, missy. A
bunch of sloshed wankers, they are. You’d be better off looking in
the sewers for mates.” Willa dismissed the patrons with an
over-exaggerated scowl and a wave of her hand. Yet, the fondness in
her eyes told a different story than her words.