Talented (20 page)

The nights seemed to go on forever, alternating between vivid nightmares and harsh reality.

The days that followed passed in a blur.  I slept, I trained, and I slept.  I ate only when Henri made me but everything tasted like sand.  I spent most of my free time with Penny, but the constant look of concern and pity in her eyes was almost too much to bear.  I knew that if I read her mind it would match the look in her eyes, so I refrained.

Erik and Henri were no different.  Both went out of their way to be nice to me.  Henri made it a point to go easy on me during practices, treating me like I was fragile.  At first I was grateful – I didn’t have the energy or the desire to train – but it wasn’t long before I began to feel pathetic.  I’d always hated showing weakness, and now I was sitting back and letting everybody treat me like I was child.  Instead of getting angry with them, I became angrier at myself.  I was angry for letting Donavon have such a hold on my life that his absence nearly destroyed me, angry for letting myself be taken advantage of, angry for letting everyone coddle me.  I’d never felt so utterly worthless in my life.

After my parents’ deaths, I’d been furious.  Mac had offered me the opportunity to join McDonough School, to replace my grief with purpose and to avenge their deaths.  I’d given everything I had to training – honing my existing abilities, developing new ones, and channeling my feelings towards a goal.

At first, for the month that I had been in the Medical Ward at the school, I’d felt so alone.  I’d never spent more than a day or two away from my parents and now the only company I had was the medics that came to take my blood and check my vitals and, of course, Mac.  Unfortunately, Mac was no substitute for my parents.  My parents had been warm and caring.  Mac was straight to the point, matter of fact and, while over time he became in many ways like a surrogate father, he was impersonal and cold compared to my warm and loving parents.

When I left the Medical Ward, I met Donavon and from that day on I’d counted on him.  Until now, he had never let me down.  Donavon hadn’t replaced my parents either, but overnight he became everything to me – my best friend, my family, and eventually my boyfriend.  We shared everything, and, thanks to my mental capabilities, we even shared our inner-most secrets, thoughts and desires.  I doubted that people who spent an entire lifetime together died knowing as much about each other, or feeling as close to one another, as I’d felt to Donavon.  Or so I’d thought.

Donavon’s betrayal was made worse because it made me doubt myself, my Talents.  Before, I’d felt secure in the notion that I could tell who to trust by using my abilities.  Yet Donavon had been able to keep a monumental secret from me, and I hadn’t even guessed that something was wrong.  I felt like a fool when I thought about how many people probably knew Donavon’s secret while I, who could read his every thought, had been oblivious.

I would’ve been convinced that Erik was restraining himself from saying I told you so, but I frequently connected with his mind, and what I found was even worse – sympathy.  Outside of practices I kept my mind closed; I didn’t want to know what others thought or felt about me.

The anger and resentment built steadily in the days that followed the incident with Donavon, until one day I finally snapped during practice.  Henri had us doing two on one
sparring drills.  He was in the center of the sparring mat, blindfolded, while Erik and I took turns attacking him from different angles.  Erik barked commands into my head, but my lack of concentration made me to flounder in most of my attempts.  Erik’s frustration at my inability to focus, mixed with pity, crashed through his mental barricades and saturated my subconscious.  The haze that I’d been living in for days cleared.  My self-control shattered like a thin layer of ice.

Instead of attacking Henri, I rounded on Erik, launching myself through the air.  He was so surprised that he didn’t have time to defend himself.  I collided with him, my momentum knocking him, to the ground.  I landed on top, my legs straddling his waist.  I pulled my right fist back to hit him but I hadn’t broken the mental connection before attacking and he read the move right out of my mind.  He caught my fist in mid-air, stopping the assault.  Not missing a beat, I drew back my left and hooked him in the side of the head.  He barely noticed.  He wrapped his large
hands around my waist and hoisted me up and over his head.  I rolled neatly to my feet and turned just in time to see him crouched low, the long sinewy muscles in his arms coiled like twin snakes ready to attack.  His eyes were black and alive, two coals burning with excitement.  I felt electricity course through the connection, fueling my own desire for the fight.

“STOP!”
Henri bellowed, throwing off the blindfold, but it was too late.  I was like a lioness on a hunt; I smelled the prey and nothing could change my direction.

Erik didn’t spare him a glance before hurdling towards me with a speed and ferocity that I was unprepared for.  I leaned to my right just in time to avoid a direct hit, but one of his corded arms caught me around the waist, slamming me onto the mat.  The air rushed from my lungs but I managed to roll on my side before he could get himself on top of me.  I was on my feet before he was, and I didn’t waste the opportunity.  I kicked him as hard as I could in his midsection.  He barely slowed his ascent.  I raised my leg to kick a second time but he was too fast.  His long fingers encircled my ankle and managed to throw me backwards across the mat using a combination of his own physical strength and my mimicked telekinesis.  I scrambled to my feet, anticipating another attack.

“Talia!  Erik!” Henri shouted, trying to get our attention.

Erik glanced side-long at him.  Then, he looked back at me.  His lips parted slightly, revealing his perfect white teeth, his canines looking sharper and pointer than I remembered.   I could feel the thrill emanating off of him in waves and my own pores soaking up his excitement.

“
That all you got, Tal?”
he taunted.  “
You know what?  I do pity you.  Your fighting skills are abysmal.”

I knew that he was mocking me, purposely provoking me now.  He knew that I would rise to his challenge.  I let out an inhumane scream, a jumble of all of the unspoken emotions ripping me
apart from the inside out, as I ran full tilt towards Erik.  I’m not sure if it was the screaming or if Erik read it out of my head, but he ran at me just as I ran towards him.  When we were still a couple of yards apart we both leapt, crashing with a thwack in flight.  We fell on to the mat, our arms and legs wrapped oddly around one another like we were doing some bizarre dance. We began to roll around, punching and kicking at any exposed area on the other.  He would use my mental powers to throw me across the room, only to have me use them to pull him back towards me to go another round.

Erik was, no doubt, the better combatant, but today I was in a rage-driven haze, and for the first time in days I felt alive.  The physical pain made me forget about the emotional battering I’d taken only days before.  The adrenaline steeled my frazzled psyche.  I was like a junkie, I
wanted more.  Erik’s desire encouraged my own, and I fed off of the thrill that the fight provoked deep within him as it bled through the connection.

Henri had given up trying to stop us and positioned himself against a wall, clucking his disapproval.

Eventually, my stamina started to weaken.  Erik pressed his advantage.  There would be more coddling from him, no mercy.  I tried to use his resilience to reinvigorate my tired and aching body but he was waning too.  He pinned me underneath him, straddling me, squeezing my ribcage with his thighs; I tried to physically fight him off, too much more mental exertion, and I’d pass out.  And I was starting to see black spots, my already-labored breathing and short arm span were doing me no favors.  I summoned all of my remaining strength, and mentally flung him off of me, since I knew that I was on the verge of unconsciousness either way.  I heard him hit the ground with a thud.  I blinked furiously at the spots dotting my vision, trying desperately to hold onto awareness.

The dots grew smaller and smaller, until I was left with a clear view of the glass ceiling, high overhead.  I was too tired to move, almost too tired to breath.  My body throbbed from being thrown and pummeled.  I knew that I would be
very
bruised tomorrow.  My breath was still coming out in labored gasps, and I didn’t hear Erik crawling his way across the padded floor until he was nearly on top of me.

“Concede,” he wheezed, flipping down beside me.

“Never,” I muttered.  Out of the corner of my eye I caught the slight upturn of his mouth as his lips curved into a smile.  We lay side-by-side trying to catch our respective breaths for several long minutes.

“Feel better?” he whispered in my ear, his voice so soft that a strong gust of wind would have taken it away had we been outside.

I turned to face him.  He had been careful not to hit me in the face, but I had not responded in-kind; the right side of his face was puffy and red from several lucky shots that I’d landed.  I reached over, lightly running my fingers over his swollen skin.

Exhaustion was weighing on my eyelids.  If I could have, I would’ve closed them right then and there, falling into a deep and satisfied slumber.  The brief determination that I’d mustered after Mac’s spiel in the cabin several
days prior returned, full force.  Now, more than ever, I knew that I was meant to be here, to be a Hunter.

The release of so much pent up aggression gave me hope that I would, in fact, be able to get past Donavon’s betrayal.  The anger and hurt were still there, just not as intense.  While I was still having trouble catching my breath, the iceberg in my chest was starting to thaw, just a little.  My stomach even grumbled, and I realized that I was actually hungry.  I had no idea how long this adrenaline high would last, but I was willing to do just about anything to hold on to it.

“Thanks, Erik,” I finally whispered back.

“If you two are done killing each other, can we please get back to practice?” Henri said, his tall body looming over us.  He tried to sound irritated at the interruption to our practice, but I could feel his elation at finally seeing me focus my energy on something productive, even if that was attacking my own teammate.

Chapter Twenty-Three

A week after the incident, as I was now referring to my destruction of Donavon’s cabin, we finally left for our next mission.  I busied myself with the preparations:  memorizing floor plans and city maps, reviewing how to use all of the crypto gadgets and even spending a full day shadowing Dr. Daid.

Henri was worried that I wasn’t ready.  He thought that I was too distracted, and a distracted teammate wasn’t a risk worth taking; I’m sure that my impromptu death match with Erik hadn’t actually helped my cause.  At the time he’d been relieved to see that I had ability to focus on a task, but he wasn’t impressed with my impulse control.  If Erik hadn’t convinced him to let me go, I don’t think that he would have.  He trusted Erik’s judgment, and Erik thought that the best thing for me was to get back to, or as close to, a normal life again.

I knew all of this because Henri was a terrible blocker, and a great projector.  When our minds were connected for practice, his thoughts flowed easily from his head to my own without a filter.  I frequently caught glimpses of the hushed conversations, on the topic of my “readiness” between Erik and Henri while we were practicing.  I wanted to reassure Henri, but I didn’t want him to realize how exposed his mind really was.

Erik was much better at blocking me from the parts of his mind that he didn’t want me to see and I tried not to push.  He was one the only person who seemed to believe in me, and I didn’t want to find out if that wasn’t really true.

We left for the Mission in the middle of the night.  After packing my small bag with the necessary clothing from my cabin, I sat on my bed, taking in every minute detail for the last time.  When I first arrived at Headquarters and saw the cabin, I’d been devastated.  Donavon had been at Headquarters for a year and had told me about his cabin, even showed me pictures, so I thought that I was prepared for the bare-essential-living associated with the Hunters’ Village.  I’d thought wrong.  Donavon’s warnings had not prepared me for the small wooden structure that smelled faintly of pine and damp earth.

The main room was just large enough for three beds, three night stands, and a small wooden table that sat three people.  The room contained no closets, but had shelving alcoves built-in the walls next to each of the beds.  The bathroom had three small closets for towels, toiletries and after-shower clothing.  The room had none of the techno gadgets I’d grown accustomed to; in the beginning I’d thought I would never get used to turning off and on the lights manually, let alone using five blankets to get warm instead of setting the temperature-regulator on my mattress.

Now that I knew I was looking at my cabin, my home for the last several months, for the last time, I knew that I was going to miss living here.  The next morning day-laborers from the city, who came in during the day to perform odd jobs around Headquarters, would be here to pack our things and move them into our new rooms.

“Sure is going to be nice to come back and have a great big bed to crash in,” Erik commented, when he caught my gaze wandering over the wooden walls.

“Yeah, I guess,” I gave him a small smile.

When I walked out of the cabin, I stopped and looked to my right, at the ruins of Donavon’s cabin.  My stomach clenched uncomfortably.  Every time I entered or exited my
cabin, I couldn’t help but stare at the destruction.  I should feel bad, maybe even regret what I’d done, but I didn’t; Donavon deserved it.  Actually, he deserved worse – way worse.  Arden and Harris probably thought that I was crazy, but their opinions were of little significance to me anymore.  If they did think I was nuts, I’m sure that they weren’t the only ones.

Workers had already cleaned out the inside and replaced the windows and door; I felt slightly abashed at the thought somebody else was cleaning up my mess.  By the time I returned from my mission, the cabin should be finished.  I knew from Penny that Donavon, Harris and Arden were staying in a suite in guest housing until the cabin was rebuilt.

Erik gently grabbed my arm and steered me towards the plane.  Erik and Henri spoke in hushed voices the entire way to the hangar.  I remained silent unless asked a direct question.  Once on board, I curled in to a ball in my seat and fell asleep almost immediately.

Our mission was in Topeka, Kansas.  Kansas, like the other states that bordered the Coalition’s territory, was of particular interest to the Agency.  The Coalition movement had been building steadily, spreading like a fungus, infecting states one city at a time, since the Succession of the Western States.  Colorado was the latest state to succumb to Ian Crane’s rule and the Agency worried that the Coalition had a footholds in parts of Kansas as a result.  Our government wasn’t naïve enough to believe that Crane didn’t have some supporters in every state:  he did.  The concern with border-states was that they were more susceptible to Crane’s influence, because the Agency didn’t have a great presence in those regions.

In recent years uprisings in the border-states had become more and more prevalent.  Toxic worried that if these rebel factions weren’t quashed we would be faced with a full-on revolt, much like the one that Crane had staged when he originally gained control of the handful of states that he currently controlled.  While his rebellion had ultimately proved only mildly successful (in school they taught us that he was unsuccessful, but I personally thought that gaining control of seven states was not exactly unsuccessful) the Agency that knew the more states he gained, the harder it would be to defeat him the second time around.

Kansas was one of the few border-states that
had yet to come under Martial Law.  One of our Crypto teams had learned of a large gathering of supporters taking place in Topeka and we were going to apprehend the leaders before the meeting could take place.  If we were able to take the organizers into custody and prevent the rally, we could, hopefully, prevent a reoccurrence of Mobile, five years earlier.

In Mobile, almost a hundred citizens died when Toxic had tried to break-up a similar gathering.  Since the incident in Mobile, Hunting teams were frequently dispatched to arrest the leaders, in advance.  Toxic found that the rebel factions frequently disbanded in the absence of leadership.

Honestly, I wasn’t really gung-ho on the whole idea of preventing free speech and all that.  (In The United States v. Brighton the Supreme Court had ruled that Talents were a protected class of individual, and therefore the First Amendment didn’t protect salacious speech).   Most days, I wasn’t even sure that I was completely on-board with the Mandatory Testing Act.  I mean,
forcing
children to be tested seemed a little extreme.  Imprisoning violators, parents who refused to submit their offspring, definitely seemed harsh.  Despite that, going to the McDonough School had proved beneficial for me.  Prior to meeting other Talented kids, I’d really believed there was something shameful about my abilities.  My parents, bless them, had discouraged me from exploring my powers.  They’d made it clear that I should hide them.  Now, I understood that they were probably just scared that untalented people would treat me like a freak, and they didn’t want me subjected to taunting and teasing.  That same sentiment was likely what drove parents here to risk jail time by violating the Act.  I’ve always wondered if my parents would’ve submitted me for testing if I’d been born here.  I believe that they would.  My father had been friends with Mac, so he would’ve known that I’d be taken care of.

What I was sure of, without a shadow of a doubt, was that anyone who supported Ian Crane was inherently bad.  Any man who ordered the deaths of innocent people was evil.  Anybody who supported such an agenda was, by association, evil.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t the only member of our team that didn’t completely back the Mandatory Testing Act; Erik worked hard to keep his thoughts about it to himself, but sometimes they leaked out.  I never pressed the issue.  Speaking openly against the Act was only a couple of steps removed from treason.  Normal citizens were given a little more leeway, not much, obviously, but a Toxic Operative speaking against the Act would lead to traitorous accusations.  I’d heard of too-vocal Agency Operatives being charged with spying for the Coalition.  The thought of Erik standing trial for spying shook me to my very core.

Like our previous missions this one went off without a hitch.  The misguided leaders of the Coalition rally were a husband and wife.  We’d purposely raided their home in the middle of the night, in hoping to prevent a speckle.  However, the stealth proved unnecessary, as they came without protest.  I’d been shocked when we arrived at their modest, yet well-maintained home.  It was in one of those cookie-cutter neighborhoods, where even the hover cars in the driveways matched.  I wondered how many of their neighbors would be surprised to learn that they’d been living amongst rebel supporters.  I wondered how many of the neighbors
were
rebel-supporters.

Erik remained steel-faced through the short endeavor, yet I could tell that he wasn’t comfortable.  He performed every detail of the mission with the same precision and thoroughness that he did everything, but his mood was heavy, very un-Erik-like.  I tried not to dwell on it too much.

After taking the offending duo into custody, we escorted them to one of Toxic’s interrogation facilities, just outside of D.C.’s overcrowded beltway.  My first real twinges of unease came when we handed our captives over to the guards at the base.  Psychic interrogation was not fun, for anybody involved.  The prisoner’s minds would be poked, prodded, and searched, every memory examined, every detail of their lives exposed to determine exactly how far their involvement with the Coalition went.

I shuddered at the thought.  Secretly, I hoped that their interrogator wasn’t very strong.  True, they were in league with the man who’d ordered my parents’ deaths, but they might really just be people against mandatory testing, not in support of Crane’s more radical agendas.  Not everyone who underwent intense mental interrogation, made it out unscathed; sometimes the interrogator went too deep or broke the person’s will.  I
really
hoped that the interrogator wasn’t that strong.  I assured myself that it was unlikely they would be.  According to Mac, I was the only Mind Manipulator currently with Toxic who was that strong.

After depositing the violators, we headed back to Elite Headquarters.  We were only there long enough to research our next Hunt before setting out again.  This quickly became a trend, but I didn’t mind; the more time that I spent away from Headquarters, the less chance that I would run into Donavon.

Once there, I headed straight for my new room.  I’d expected it to look like Penny’s, which it did, except instead of white the room was decorated in shades of purple.  The carpet was the same plush carpeting that covered Penny’s floors, but it was a deep royal purple color.  The walls were bare but had been painted lavender with white trim.  My new bed was covered in a violet and white floral patterned bedspread with matching purple pillows.  The plastic chair and table set was somewhere in between the deep purple of the carpet and the lavender on the walls.  My meager clothing hung pathetically in the humongous closet, making me think that I might actually take Penny up on her offer to help me buy some new clothes, even though I would likely never wear them.  I had a ton of clothes, but I’d left them at Mac’s house; there wasn’t really a need for my more extravagant outfits here.

My bathroom had a white tiled floor and white ceramic sink, toilet and soaking tub, just like Penny’s.  But instead of white walls, my bathroom was lined with purple glass tiles, alternating frosted and clear, from floor to ceiling.

I fell in love with my room the moment that I walked in, but I didn’t have much time to enjoy its luxuries before I was back at training and gearing up for my next Hunt.

Thankfully, the hours in between waking and sleeping were packed full and I rarely had time to think about anything except the task at hand.  I‘d begged Erik to convince his Medic friend, Zach, to sneak me pills that induced a dreamless sleep.  He caved, so it was only twice a day that thoughts of Donavon invaded my mind, threatening to pull me back in to the darkness and depression that I was still clawing my way out of.

Our missions took us all over Coalition and Agency territory.  One day we were in a small town without running water, in a Coalition state, where they tended to be poor since they no longer received any kind of government funding, the next in a huge city with techie stores on every corner.  Even though I was spending all of my time with Erik and Henri I felt more alone than ever.  All of the previous confusion over my feelings for Erik seemed trivial.  I no longer felt anything.  My internal numbness wasn’t reserved specifically for Erik; I felt indifferent, at best, towards everything except Donavon.  I hated, Donavon.  Nothing excited me anymore, and nothing shocked me anymore, but nothing hurt me anymore either.

During our actual Hunts, I let my teammates’ emotions become my own.  I fed on the thrill and excitement that coursed through them, using it to propel my own senses in to overdrive.  The surge of adrenaline that accompanied the moment before we entered a building, the heart stopping pandemonium associated with every fight, the ecstasy of victory when we succeeded, and filled the void left by Donavon’s absence.  I soon became addicted to the Hunt.

On the rare occasion that we were at Headquarters long enough to do anything besides get ready for the next mission, I spent my time with Penny.  Mac arranged for us to be allowed to go into the city on our days off, as long as we were back before dark.  Unfortunately he balked at authorizing hover lessons for either of us, so we had to rely on the good graces of Henri and Erik, but that wasn’t usually a problem.