Caged (Talented Saga) (31 page)

I could gently sift through a person’s mind without them knowing that I was there.
Digging deeper without their knowledge was a little harder, but not impossible. But from the moment I knew that Cal was lying to me, I’d wanted him to know how powerful I was. I wanted him to know that no matter how good he thought he was, I was better.

Part of me knew that I was being just as egotistical as he had
been, wanting to prove my worth to him like he’d wanted to prove his to Mac. It was silly; our Talents weren’t even similar, not comparable at all – mine were much cooler.

“You make me sick,” I whispered in a low, threatening voice.
I was so close to him that I swore I could feel a tiny woosh as the dark hairs on his arms stood at attention. Pushing back from the table, I turned and walked through the door to the observation room, clenching my hands into fists to stop them from twitching.

“Are you alright?” Captain Alvarez asked when he saw me enter the observation room.

“I will be,” I replied tightly.

His dark forehead was creased with worry, and his nearly black eyes shone with an unreadable expression.

“You have every right to be mad,” he said quietly.

“Did you know him?
When he was a Pledge?” I inquired. I hadn’t intended to ask, but suddenly I wanted to know.

“I did.
I’d been hesitant to take him. His physical abilities were decent – he did well on his combat examination, wasn’t too bad with weapons either. But I didn’t really see the point in wasting his God-given gifts. The Talent evaluation showed that he had an off-the-charts level of Higher Reasoning. I’ve only ever seen one other person test so high,” he mused.

I didn’t need to read his mind to know that he was talking about me.
I’d felt Cal’s strength the moment I walked into the room. It was partially what made me so desperate to display my own; the parallels made me uneasy.

“I’d like to speak with Jennifer now,” I said, chewing nervously on my lower lip.

“You can take a couple of minutes if you like. She isn’t going anywhere,” Captain Alvarez replied gently.

I gave him a tight smile.
“I want to get this over with.”

Jennifer had been staring nervously at the door, and when I walked in, her small eyes immediately lit up with recognition and her posture relaxed slightly.

“Hey, Jennifer.” I tried to sound pleasant.

“T-t-Talia,” she stuttered.

“Did they tell you why you were asked to come here?” I didn’t waste any time with her either.

“Captain Alvarez said that someone from the Interrogation Division needed to talk to me.
I didn’t know that you’d been reassigned.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I answered dryly, giving the two-way mirror a snarky look.
“I need to ask you some questions about the intel that you intercepted.”

“The stuff about Ian Crane?” she
guessed, her anxiousness increasing.

The claustrophobic room was making my senses even more acute than usual.
I could smell the slightest hint of body odor, could see the tiny beads of perspiration beginning to form along her hairline.

“Yes, the stuff about Ian Crane,” I replied, stiffly.
Her brain activity was all over the place, her thoughts racing over the week before my ill-fated mission.

“Was there anything off about the
intel?”

“I already answered a bunch of questions,” she squeaked.

“I know that you did,” I soothed, trying to put her at ease. “I’m just following up on some leads. Was there anything off about the intel?” I repeated, more firmly this time.

She hesitated only briefly before answering, “
Kinda.”

Her honesty gave me pause; I hadn’t expected her to admit anything without more prompting.

“What was strange about it?” I tried to stay calm. I could feel that she wanted to tell me. Jennifer was like an overinflated balloon, ready to pop with the guilt that she’d bottled up inside, so I waited. I was mentally drained. If she wanted to tell me on her own – without me having to pick it out of her head, I would wait all night. Besides, three people had already confirmed that there had indeed been something off with the intel.

“Well, the encryption was crude.
It was way too simple, nothing that you’d expect from information about President Crane’s whereabouts. Usually, anything having to do with Crane is impossible to decipher. We’re normally only able to decrypt like every third word - it never makes any sense, but this information wasn’t like that at all. It was easily identifiable,” she rambled, her pinched face contorting like she’d eaten something unpleasant.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I demanded.

“I did,” she urged. “I told Cal. I told him that we should look into it, that something was off.” Tears began to pool in her eyes.

“What did Operative Simmons say when you told him that?”
My jaw was so tight, I was surprised that the words slipped through my teeth.

“He said that it wasn’t a big deal.
He said that someone in Crane’s organization must’ve messed up and that we were lucky to intercept such valuable information. Cal said we’d be promoted,” she wailed. The tears started to flow down her cheeks, and I almost felt bad for her. Maybe if I hadn’t been shot and poisoned as a result of her mistake, I would have been more sympathetic.

“Did you report it to anyone else?”

“No,” she hiccupped. “I wanted to. I really wanted to.” She was a fairly strong projector; she showed me exactly how Cal had threatened her when she’d suggested telling. Her inability to take a stand against him, her weakness, nauseated me.

“So you never reported it?” I pressed, the calm in my voice surprising me.

“No,” she cried harder. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” She hugged herself with her twig-like arms, her body racked with sobs.

I didn’t probe further into her head; there wasn’t a need to do so.
Her guilt was flooding into my mind, almost suffocating me. I needed to get out of that room, needed to get away from her before I did something that a moral person would later regret. I turned around and yanked the door open, fleeing to the observation room.

I inhaled deeply through my nose, exhaled long huffing breaths through my mouth.
My head was spinning so fast. Collapsing into one of the chairs sitting against the far wall, I wedged my head between my knees.

Why hadn’t someone said something?
Rider had cited love. Cal claimed ambition. Jennifer was just plain weak. I couldn’t decide who I wanted to throttle first.

“I know that it probably doesn’t change anything, but Cal and his team weren’t promoted,” Captain Alvarez said gently.
“In fact, now we’ll launch a full investigation into all three of them.”

Three of them?
Oh, right - Penny.

“Penny was just a Pledge.
If Jennifer couldn’t stand up to Cal, there’s no way that she could have.” I was quick to defend her even though my attempts felt lame, even to me. “Maybe she didn’t even realize what was going on.” Penny was an Elite Talent; there was no way that she hadn’t known. Even if she didn’t say something to Cal, why didn’t she say something to me? Why hadn’t she warned me that I might be walking into a trap?

“The fact that she was a Pledge might be the only thing that saves her from suspension, or worse.”

The way he said it sent fingers of fear skittering down my spine; what was the “or worse”?

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Still shaken from the interrogation sessions with Cal and Jennifer, I walked aimlessly in the general direction of guest housing.
In the past twelve hours, I’d learned more than I had in all the weeks I’d spent observing the Instructors and sifting through Operatives’ files. Unfortunately, I had no idea what any of it meant.

What did Grace cheating on her Placement Exams, Cal’s ambition, and Jennifer’s spineless nature have in common?
Why did four separate people – five if you counted Penny – lie about the same thing? Was that a coincidence?

It was late and I was exhausted, but I knew that sleep would prove impossible.
Instead of going to guest housing, I made my way to Erik. While I doubted that he’d be able to shed any light on my findings, at least I wouldn’t be alone.

When I reached his door, I leaned my forehead heavily against the wood and knocked.
There was no answer, and disappointment darkened my already black mood. I turned to leave.

“
Tals?” Erik’s melodic voice called when I’d made it halfway back to the elevator.

Calm relief washed over me and a smiled unwittingly tugged at the corners of my mouth.
I turned slowly back around. Erik hung out of his doorway, one hand gripping the frame as he leaned into the hall. His plaid pajama bottoms were slung low on his hips and his chest was bare. Despite everything else going on, I wanted to run over and throw my arms around him, feel the warm skin of his chest against my cheek.

“Hey,” I called back, my smile becoming a full-on grin when I met his eyes.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, beckoning for me to come closer.

His turquoise irises shone brightly even in the dimly lit corridor, and my heart pounded.
Why was it that no matter how many times I saw him, or how much time I spent with him, he always took my breath away?

I ran the short distance and flung myself at him.
Erik stumbled, but quickly wrapped his arms around me, pressing his lips on the top of my head. He didn’t ask me if I was okay; I think that he knew I wasn’t. With one arm still wrapped protectively around my middle, he pulled me into his room.

As soon as I walked through the doorway, I felt at home in the familiar setting.
I hadn’t spent a lot of time in Erik’s room in the brief time I’d lived in the dorms – we usually hung out in mine – yet the plush navy carpeting and plaid papered walls calmed me. There was a small blue plastic table with four blue chairs in the middle of the huge room, and his bed ran the length of a scenery window. He currently had the window set to natural, so I could see the trees and lake that were situated behind the building. The full moon bathed the grounds in an odd silvery glow.

Erik led me over to his bed.
He gently guided me to sit on the plaid comforter, and knelt on the floor next to the bed.

“What happened, Tal?” he whispered, running his hands up and down my arms to warm my cold flesh.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” I said, shaking my head.

Erik leaned closer, resting his forehead against mine.
Thoughts of interrogation rooms and lying, cheating, ambitious, lovesick Operatives flew from my mind. I brought my lips to his, keeping my eyes open until the last second so that I could absorb the full impact of his emotions. Once his mouth was on mine, I reached to run my fingers through his hair. Erik caught my wrist and gently guided it, and me, back onto the mattress. Pinning my arm over my head, he hovered over me, his fingers laced with mine.

Slowly, Erik’s lips trailed down my chin, nestling in the hollow of my throat.
The more he touched me, the more I relaxed. The tension ebbed with every kiss, and it wasn’t long before I was a puddle beneath him. He ran his tongue up the side of my neck and nibbled on my earlobe.

“What happened?” he whispered.
Erik felt how upset I’d been when I first arrived, and he wanted to know why. Even though I knew that once he saw what I’d been through, he’d stop kissing me, I dropped the barriers. As I’d predicted, Erik pulled away several seconds later. Except instead of looking worried, hysterical laughter burst from his lips.

“You bit him!” he exclaimed.
“That’s awesome!”

“It’s not funny,” I retorted defensively.
But the more I thought about it, the more hilarious I found it, and soon I was laughing, too. It felt good.

“Man, I wish I’d been there to see the look on his face,” Erik sighed, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.

“I can’t believe I reacted like that. I drew blood!”

“You were scared.
He cornered you; it was instinctual,” he assured me.

“Instinctual?
Maybe for a normal person, but I’m a trained fighter. Hitting him, kicking him, even kneeing him in the balls would’ve been natural. Biting him, though? That was just crazy,” I said.

Erik’s amused expression turned thoughtful, and he shifted to take his weight off of me.
He rested on one elbow, absently twirling one of my curls around his finger as his mind churned over what I’d just said.

“What?” I demanded after he’d been silent for too long.
“You think that I’m nuts, don’t you?”

“Of course not, Tal,” he said calmly, pulling the curls straight and watching, fascinated as they sprang back.
I wanted to swat his hand away, but his kid-in-a-candy-store expression held me back.

“Then what is it?”

“Just wishing that you’d bite me,” he teased.

This time I did swat his chest, blushing from the roots of the hair that he was playing with to the tips of my sneaker-clad toes.
Erik moved so quickly that I didn’t realize what he was going to do until his jaws closed on one side of my neck. His teeth only nipped playfully at the skin, and my startled yelp quickly turned to a high-pitched giggle. Erik bit down a little harder before releasing me.

“Let’s take a walk,” he abruptly suggested.

“A walk? Erik, I’m exhausted,” I said, baffled by his ability to flip the switch on his hormones.

“
Please, Tal. Let’s take a walk to the lake,”
he sent. His eyes darted around the room, urging me to understand something – and I did. The reason that he’d wanted to talk on the ledge the other night was the same reason that he wanted to go to the lake now.

Toxic common areas and secure facilities like the Crypto Bank were constantly monitored by security cameras and audio devices.
Operatives’ private apartments weren’t on a live feed, but were randomly screened for inappropriate or illegal activity. To my knowledge, the only inappropriate behavior that took place in the bedrooms was drinking and naked sleepovers. Though neither was against the rules, depending on the circumstances, they might be heavily frowned upon.

“You’re right.
Fresh air would be good,” I finally agreed.

I wasn’t sure what Erik wanted to talk about, but I figured he must have a good reason to drag me across campus late at night.

Erik found a shirt and flip-flops, and led me from the warmth of his bed. When we reached the Hunters’ Village, I felt an immediate sense of longing. Memories flooded back as we passed the cabin where I’d lived with Erik and Henri for most of my time as a Pledge. Opening my mind, I felt a flurry of activity inside. It was late, past curfew, meaning all the Pledges were safely tucked into their homes.

“You okay?” Erik asked, squeezing my hand affectionately.

“Yeah, nostalgia and all that.” I rolled my eyes.

Erik gently tugged me toward the dark path that led to the lake.
The only sound was the crunching of rocks and twigs under our feet as we wound our way through the woods. It wasn’t long before we reached the water. Erik selected a fallen log close to the lake’s edge. He sat, pulling me down beside him.

The lake was shimmering black glass under a cloudless sky.
The moon hung ominously against the dark night, and the stars twinkled brightly above us. Cold air numbed me from the inside out. Erik seemed impervious to the temperature, but rubbed my back when he noticed me shivering. Under different circumstances, the moment would have been romantic. Long moments of silence stretched between us, Erik tracing the curve of my spine while I stared into the darkness.

“Start at the beginning and tell me everything that happened in Nevada,” he finally said.

I turned to meet his insistent turquoise eyes. We were sitting in the shadows of ancient trees and the moon provided little light, but my heightened sense of sight could make out every detail of his smooth features. There were small lines around his clenched jaw, and his eyes scrunched at the corners, scrutinizing my own face. His expression was both tense and concerned.

I heaved a huge sigh before launching into a detailed account of my mission, starting from when I jumped from the hover plane outside of Las Vegas.
I told him about meeting Kyle, gaining his confidence, probing him for information, and using him to gain access to the house where Crane was staying. I retraced my journey through Crane’s compound – breaking into his office, downloading the information from his computer, the decision to invade the basement, and the odd resistance that I encountered at the door leading into the bowels of the building. I didn’t pause when I described being caught and waking up strapped to a bed, hesitating only when I recounted the conversation with Crane when he intimated that he’d known my father.

Throughout all of it, Erik traced small circles at the base of my skull with his thumb, soothing me as I spoke.
His fingers went rigid against my skin when I described the bullet hitting my back, and I knew that he felt the pain as acutely as if the memory had been his own. The fingers gripping my neck tightened painfully, and anger radiated off of him. I ended my story at the point when I’d released Crane’s mind from the pain that I’d been projecting – my own pain. When I finished, my eyes remained on the pebble that I was kicking back and forth with the toe of my tennis shoe. Erik took deep, calming breaths to quiet his outrage. He wanted to kill the man who’d shot me, and it wasn’t just an idle thought; when I’d been injured on our very first Hunting Mission together, Erik hadn’t even hesitated before plunging a knife into the throat of the man who stabbed me.

“So Crane recognized you in the pub, you think?” he asked when his breathing was finally under control.

“I don’t think he recognized me. It was more like he felt me, like he knew that I was Talented,” I said, shuddering at the memory of our eyes briefly locked.

“But he knew your name when you woke up after being caught?”

“Yeah, he called me by it. He called me Talia.”

Erik sat looking pensive for several long minutes.
He picked up a handful of pebbles with his free hand, skimming them across the lake’s surface. Tiny ripples appeared on the otherwise placid water as the stones bumped along before sinking to the bottom.

“Do you believe him about your father?” Erik finally asked.

“I don’t know. It was weird. His mind was blocked – it wasn’t until after I’d been shot that I broke down his defenses. Even then, I think that maybe he let me, like he wanted to take the pain away.”

I hugged myself.
I hadn’t admitted that to anyone. The connection that I’d formed with Crane had been absolute, our minds woven together like a quilt. I’d been too focused on projecting to read his thoughts, but he would have had access to every memory of mine, every detail of my life. I hoped that the pain had been too intense for him to look.

“Did you see anything in his head, anything at all that could tell us who sold you out?” Erik asked, pulling me closer to him.

“No, but I didn’t look either. I just wanted to get out of there. I barely remember anything that happened between getting shot and waking up in the hospital. Mac told me most of what I just told you; he pieced it together from the extraction team’s reports.”

Erik grew quiet again.
He leaned his head against mine and dulled my emotions. While I appreciated his efforts, I didn’t want to lose the anger and frustration that I’d been holding on to. I wanted to hate Crane for what he’d done to me; I wanted to hate him for killing my parents. It was the hatred that had gotten me through the years following their deaths, and it was what drove me still.

“You didn’t ask Penny about the encryption when you saw her?”
The question was rhetorical; Erik already knew that I hadn’t, but I felt the need to answer anyway.

“She was agitated.
I didn’t want to bring it up.”

Erik rubbed the space between his eyes with the heel of his palm, but didn’t comment.

“She would’ve told me if she knew, right?” I asked in a small voice. I needed his assurance to quash my own doubt.

“She’s your best friend, Tal.
I’m sure that if she knew she would have told you,” he said. “She probably didn’t realize how simplistic the encryption was. She was just a Pledge, and pretty new at decrypting intel.” He was giving her the benefit of the doubt, but I could tell that he didn’t really believe she was so naïve.

“I’ve spent every day of the past few weeks with her, and we talked about the mission – I would have known if she wasn’t telling me something,” I replied confidently, trying to dispel our mutual skepticism.