Talented (21 page)

Every time we went into the city Penny urged me to buy decorations for my room, but I never felt like it.  I spent so little time there that it seemed silly to hang pictures only the cleaning staff would see.  I did let her talk me into buying clothes and shoes to fill my closet.  That also seemed silly, but it made Penny happy, and seeing Penny happy made me feel . . . something.

The best thing about spending time with Penny was not being in her head.  It was nice to sit with her and pretend that I was normal.  I had no choice with Erik and Henri since I had to connect with their minds for our missions, and, no matter how hard they both tried to keep it from me, thoughts of Donavon and the incident in his cabin came to the forefront while we were practicing.  With Penny, I never had to know what she was thinking.  When I asked her a question, I waited for her response.  I took her answers at face-value, because I didn’t have a reason to suspect otherwise.

I hadn’t actually seen Donavon since our break-up.  Not living in the Hunters’ Village reduced the risk of me running in to him by accident.  I was careful to avoid the cafes that I knew he frequented, and choosing to order my meals from the kitchen downstairs instead.  When I went into the city, I didn’t have to worry about running into him at the kind of places Penny liked to shop.  My practice gym was far enough away from his that, if I took certain pathways, I knew I was unlikely to see him.  Also, I had a feeling that Mac and Captain Alvarez were arranging our missions to ensure that one of us was almost always away from Headquarters, and that suited me just fine.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Before long, our missions became more dangerous and more complex.  I knew that this was unusual for a team as young as ours, but Mac insisted that our track record spoke for itself.  We received our first Kill Mission just before I was due to formally graduate, and I had conflicting emotions about the assignment.  I knew that Kill Missions came with the job, but they were few and far between.  They were even less common when one of the teammates was still a Pledge.  It wasn’t like we escaped every mission without taking some casualties.  Our very first mission had been proof of that.  But a Hunt where the hunted was another human life, the knowledge that for us to succeed, somebody had to die?  I couldn’t stomach the thought.

The week before we were schedule
d to leave was more hectic and intense than usual.  Henri programmed the simulator in our training arena for Kill Scenarios, setting the rubric for situations similar to the one we’d likely face on our mission.  The holographic images were incredibly life-like, and when one landed a blow, a jolt of electricity ran through my body.  Our trainings were more somber, more serious than usual.  The collective mood of our team weighed heavily on me since I absorbed the feelings of both boys.

Henr
i and Erik had been on several Kill Missions in their time with the Hunters, and neither was eager to repeat the process.  Henri tried to treat the assignment like any other, but he couldn’t keep the darkness from his mind.  Erik, usually so good at pulling off a nonchalant, carefree attitude, tried to keep the sickness that he felt tucked away the in corners of his mind, but sometimes it slipped out.

For my part, I was secretl
y glad to have something all-consuming take over my thoughts.  The more that I thought about what we were about to do, the less that I thought about Donavon and anything that kept my mind off of Donavon was a good thing.

Henri
painstakingly walked me through every detail of the laboratory where we would carry out our mission.  He explained that the target worked late, alone in his lab, and we should be able to get in, complete the mission, and get out and be on our way before anybody discovered his body.  Henri had a complete bio on the target, but I couldn’t bring myself to read it. I told myself that he was a threat to Toxic, and most likely a Crane supporter.  He must be a very bad man.  That was all that I needed to know.

Henri spent the
night before we left in D.C. with Frederick.  His mind had been distracted all day with thoughts of mortality and the prospect of never seeing Frederick again. I kept seeing flashes of past Kill Missions, some that had gone right and some that hadn’t.  I realized for the first time how close Henri had come to being captured on more than one occasion.  Of course, I had heard of horribly botched missions and near misses, but feeling Henri’s fear, as if it was my own, unnerved me.  I finally understood the enormity of the situation.  Any initial relief over the distraction quickly dissipated.

I wasn’t the only one feeling it; Erik also felt
Henri’s past experiences mingled with his own.  He radiated desire to feel alive, and connected with a person outside of Toxic, a person who had no idea what he did or who he was.  When he got ready to leave for the city that night, I wanted to beg him to stay with me, but I knew I had no right.  It would be selfish and unfair of me to deny him the opportunity to find what he was so desperately craving, particularly when I knew that Henri’s thoughts and feelings were not the only ones that he was absorbing.

I’
d noticed in practices when, in my weaker moments, my fear and trepidation over the task reached a boiling point and spilled over, that Erik’s mood would plummet even further.  I tried to keep my thoughts to myself.  I knew firsthand that shouldering the burden of others emotions, especially when compounded by your own, was exhausting, but sometimes my feelings were just too intense to contain and they would burst free into the only outlet that I had –Erik.

That night, I didn’t want to be alone.  N
o matter how many times I told myself that what we were doing was necessary, I couldn’t shake the leaden feeling that was making my insides heavy.  This man probably had a family or friends, somebody that would miss him.  What was his crime, anyway?  What could he have done that was so horrible that he deserved to die?

After tossing and turning
for half the night, I got up, having decided to knock on Penny’s door.  I only made it as far as my own before I heard a soft knock.  I paused, not trusting my ears, and waited to see if the knock came a second time.  It did.  I opened my mind – Erik.  I slowly opened the door with my powers.  He was leaning against the door frame, his dark hair hanging in his bloodshot eyes, now looking more blue than green, with his shirt half un-tucked from his jeans.  I drank in his disheveled appearance and thought that he had never looked better.

“You’re awake,” he slurred, his eyes lighting up.

“You’re drunk,” I replied, matter-of-factly.

He grinned, “Can I come in?”

I swept my arm in a welcoming gesture and Erik stumbled in, headed straight for my bed.  He flopped down on the comforter, leaving his feet dangling off of the side.  I stood uncomfortably in the middle of the room.  Since moving to the apartments, we’d had little social interaction.  I saw him every day, and even spent most of my waking-hours with him, but we hadn’t been alone, just the two of us, since everything had happened with Donavon.

“It’s very purple in here,” he observed.

“It’s my favorite color,” I replied lamely.

“Makes sense.”
  I failed to see how any of this situation made sense.

“Erik, what are you doing here?” I asked bluntly.

He raised himself up on one elbow and tried to tuck the too-long strands of his hair behind his ear, but didn’t respond.  I nervously chewed the inside of my lower lip and willed him to say something, anything.

“Don’t want to be alone,” he finally said, in a low voice.

“You could’ve stayed in the city if you didn’t want to be alone,” I tried to keep my tone light.

“True,” Erik conceded, “but I didn’t want to pretend that I was having a good time and that tomorrow was just like every other day.”  All of his normal bravado was gone.  His eyes were unguarded, making him look uncharacteristically vulnerable.

I nodded, “Okay.”

“If you’d rather I leave . . .” he started to get up.

“No, no, don’t leave,” I said too quickly, making a move towards my bed.

“I don’t want to be alone either,” I added quietly.

“I know,” he answered.

I really didn’t want for him to leave.  Any feelings that I may have had for Erik in the past aside, I really wanted to be near somebody, anybody.

I moved slowly towards my bed and sat on the edge, careful not to touch Erik.  I could feel my heart beating in my throat, and hoped that Erik was too drunk to notice.  He was still propped up on his elbow, and he reached out with his free hand and took mine.

“Thanks, Tal,” he whispered.  I smiled nervously, not meeting his eyes. His vulnerability stirred something inside of me.  I was seized by the desire to comfort him, but I refrained.

He released my hand and reached behind him, grabbing two of my pillows and throwing them to the opposite end of the bed.  He kicked off his shoes and flipped his body around, so that his head lay at the end of the bed where my feet usually went.  I crawled up to my end of the bed and curled up so that my toes wouldn’t be too close to his face, even though his much-larger feet were resting on a pillow near my head.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax.  On the one hand, having Erik there satisfied my need to be close to somebody, easing my tension.  On the other hand, having Erik there elicited feelings that I thought no longer existed, creating more anxiety.

Something tickled the sole of my foot, and I instinctively kicked out.  Thankfully Erik’s drunken reflexes were still much faster than most normal people’s sober ones, and he grabbed my foot before it made contact with his more sensitive areas.

“Tal, it’s your bed, stretch out,” he mumbled.  “Besides you’re only half a person, so you barely take up any room,” he laughed at his own not-funny joke.

I gave another small kick, but he still had a hold of my foot so it didn’t really achieve anything.  I stretched my legs and, even though my bed was plenty big enough for both of us, without the need to touch, Erik held on.  Erik cuddling with my feet had an oddly comforting quality, and I fell asleep almost instantly.

When I woke up the next morning, I was immediately aware of Erik’s absence, and for some reason it made me feel even more alone than I had before he’d shown up the night before.  I quickly packed my mission bag and headed for the hover
hangar, my whole body a rope of tightly-kinked knots.

Erik and Henri were both waiting when I got there.  The tension in the air was palpable.  Nobody spoke.  Erik’s vulnerability from last night was long gone, replaced by a confident mask that concealed his strained psyche.

Henri was all business.  His demeanor lacked Erik’s confidence, but contained none of his nerves either.  He was cool and collected, and he had cleared his mind of the slideshow of fears that had been playing there all week.

I curled up in my seat and closed my eyes, concentrating on turning off my mental abilities.  I managed to reach a meditative-like state, with all of my energy focused on my sense of touch.  My fingers traced the contours of the quilted seat cushion, counting the thread.  If Erik or Henri thought my behavior was weird, they didn’t let on.  I didn’t really care either way; I couldn’t handle their feelings on top of my own, it was easier to block it all.

All three of us changed in to our adapti-suits on the plane, and strapped on our weapons, since there would be no time to waste once we deplaned.  Erik smudged adapti paint on my face, to make my skin blend in with my suit.  It provided my entire body the ability to meld with the surroundings.

We needed to complete this mission very quickly.  Once we were on the ground we’d have two hours to jog the ten miles to the village, do a quick check to verify our
intel, complete the mission and get out.  Kill Missions were too risky to linger in the vicinity for very long.

We landed in a small clearing like usual, and deplaned in silence.  I immediately opened my mind up to establish our mental connection and we took off at a jog into the surrounding woods.  I could feel both boys’ minds buzzing with concentration.  The suit regulated my body temperature so that my body didn’t sweat, but that same couldn’t be said for my face.  I had to resist the urge to wipe at the moisture dripping down, so I wouldn’t rub off any of the
adapti-paint.

The jog was not strenuous, but the physical activity helped to take the edge off.  Or at least it did, until the village came into view.  Once the surroundings became familiar from the surveillance footage provided by Crypto my case of nerves returned two-fold.  I pulled at the neck of my suddenly too-small suit and gulped air, never seeming to get enough in my lungs.

“
Talia, I need you to focus.  The sooner we get in there the sooner we get out.  Okay?”
Henri’s voice was not unkind, but contained an edge telling me that I needed to get myself under control, immediately.  He was right; I needed to control myself.  I gritted my teeth and concentrated on slowing my breathing.   Erik placed one gloved hand on the nape of my neck and applied just a shadow of pressure.

“
Be strong, Tal.  You’ve got this,”
he encouraged.

I took one last deep breath, “
I’m ready.”

The laboratory was on the edge of a small village just over the border, in Coalition territory. On our jog we’d passed several solitary homes, but our best shot at finding the target alone was at work in his laboratory.  The lab happened to be in the heavily-populated main village.  We didn’t even have the luxury of waiting until dark, since we needed to catch him before he left for the evening.  Our suits and face paint allowed us to blend easily into our surroundings; unless somebody was fairly close, or looked really hard, they wouldn’t notice our presence, but I still felt exposed as we moved through the village.

The laboratory was a long sprawling one-floor cement square building.  We took cover behind a dumpster that wasn’t visible from the street.  Henri worked quickly getting the imaging devices out of his bag and taking heat images of the cement building.  Erik and I crouched over his shoulder, watching, as the images appeared on the tiny display screen.  The concrete was thicker than we’d imagined but we were still able to pull faint images and confirm that the target was inside.

“
Ready?”
Henri asked.

“
Ready,”
Erik confirmed.

“
Ready,”
I echoed, not feeling ready at all.  Erik’s words rang in my head, “
Be strong.”  Be strong, be strong, be strong
, I chanted to myself. 
You’ve got this
.

I followed Henri and Erik up to the front gate, and held my breath while Erik punched in a ten digit code.  The lock on the gate soundlessly disengaged and Henri pushed it open, just enough for us to squeeze through.  He took the lead and we flanked his sides.  I reminded myself to breath, as I jogged silently up to the main entrance.  We navigated the maze of hallways, back to where the target was supposed to be.  The interior walls were the same thick concrete as the outside of the building, and I suddenly realized that there were probably more people in the building than we’d seen on the imager.