Caged (Talented Saga) (9 page)

“Oh,” I cried out loud.
As soon as I saw the blood, a loud crack resonated in my head. Oh, no, I knew what had happened. Suddenly
I
was the one writing in the grass. My leg burned, flames shooting down my thigh to lick my toes. My pants clung to my skin, sticky with my blood. I was vaguely aware that Donavon had stopped panting, his breathing returning to normal. His eyes found mine, the blue irises swirling with accusations and fury. Donavon scrambled back, putting as much distance between us as he could manage with the all the people crowding the area.

Janet motioned a Medic closer to where I lay paralyzed with fear and agony.
He scooped me up in his arms and began running, cradling me to his chest. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to breathe through the pain. I wanted to deflect it or block it, but the last thing I needed was to transfer the pain – I certainly didn’t want the Medic to drop me.

When we arrived at the Medical building, a team was standing by.
The Medic carefully deposited me on to a stretcher waiting at the entrance. I still had my eyes shut, but I felt and heard people cutting my pants away from my thigh. I swore loudly as one peeled the sticky fabric from the wound. Terrified that the sight of my blood would send me into hysterics, I kept my eyes scrunched shut and tightly gripped the handrails of the gurney until the skin over my knuckles turned white.
Don’t cry, don’t cry
, I chanted silently.
You’ve been through worse.

The stretcher came to a stop, and I felt four simultaneous pricks several inches above my knee.
A heavy chemical feeling flowed through my veins, and my leg went numb.

I chanced a peek.
The same Medic who’d carried me from the practice field was sopping up the blood with clean towels while another prepared sterilized pads to disinfect the area. I averted my eyes; watching the needle thread stitches through my skin was the last image that I wanted burned into my mind. Unfortunately, I still felt the pull of the fiber as he threaded the stitches to close the wound. It took every ounce of my willpower not to retch.

“Good as new,” he pronounced when he was done.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, lying back on the stiff white sheets of the gurney. His footsteps retreated from my bedside.

“How are you?” Janet’s voice asked.

“Didn’t you hear him?” I replied. “Good as new.”

“You only needed ten stitches.
Dr. Remy said there was only so much blood because of the bruise,” she explained. “What happened? Why weren’t you wearing pads?”

“Please don’t lecture me,” I moaned.
I felt stupid enough as it was. I had no one to blame for this except myself, my own stubborn nature.

“I wasn’t going to lecture you,” she replied.
I peered up at her through one squinted eye. She looked exasperated; she had definitely been gearing up to lecture me.

“Did you bring me some new pants?” I asked her.

“Yes,” her lips were pursed in a disapproving grimace, but she was carrying a pair of loose-fitting navy sweatpants.

“Thanks,” I muttered, holding out my hand to take the clothing.

“Dr. Remy says that you don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to, but no physical activity for the rest of the day,” she warned.

“Did Dr. Remy say when I can do physical activity?” I assumed Dr. Remy was the unknown Medic who had stitched me up.

“Preferably not for a week, but if you promise to be careful and wear a protective suit, tomorrow should be fine.”

“Tomorrow it is,” I snapped, immediately feeling bad.
Janet was just trying to help, and she wasn’t the person I was angry with. I was angry with myself for being stubborn.

Janet helped me slide off of the stretcher and into the sweatpants, then handed me three green pills and a small plastic cup of water.

“Prevent infection,” she said as she handed them to me. I nodded my understanding and cupped the pills in my palm before throwing them in my mouth.

If I’d insisted, Janet would’ve let me mull over my stupidity in the solitude of my own room.
Somehow, I didn’t think that was a productive use of my time, and I knew that I’d feel even worse if I didn’t have something to distract me. So instead of heading back to my dorm room, I limped to Ms. Cleary’s language class.

I arrived just as her previous class was letting out.

“Ms. Lyons!” she exclaimed. “You’re early!”

“Um, yeah.
I had to visit Medical, so I left a little early from my last class.” That was mostly true. There was no way that I was explaining my refusal to wear protective padding just to prove to Donavon I was tough.

“I have plenty for you to get started on.”
She smiled, motioning me to her desk. Inwardly, I groaned. Paperwork - just what I wanted to do. Outwardly, I matched her smile and limped pathetically to sit in her chair.

The opportunities to engage
Annalise in conversation were few and far between, so I jumped on them. Mostly, I made small talk asking about what she did in her free time and if she ever got the chance to leave campus to enjoy Baltimore or Washington. I was even so bold as to chance asking about her personal life.

“Oh, not much chance for that,” she laughed.
“My duties here at school keep me very busy.”

“But you don’t want to date?
Start a family? That’s the great thing about being a teacher, right? It’s easy to get married and settle down. I’ve even heard that if you’re married you can request to live off campus,” I pressed. Sure, I knew that the questions were indelicate, but after my morning, tact was not a priority. The sooner I found the spy, the sooner that I could get away from Donavon.

“Yes, that is true, dear...but the students here are my family.
I don’t need more than that,” she answered. Her eyes took on a faraway look and I knew that she was caught in the memory of her failed marriage. Her thoughts were sad, regretful. Annalise had truly loved her husband, and his actions had cut her deeply. But through the pain, I felt her determination to personally right the wrongs of her husband. Her inner turmoil saddened me. I couldn’t imagine living with the knowledge that someone you’d loved had betrayed you so severely. I wasn’t positive that she wasn’t a spy, but she was coming close to being a strike-through on my list of suspects.

The rest of my school day was blessedly uneventful.
I followed Cadence around, observing the students and making small suggestions on form and technique. She seemed irked at my presence, and took every opportunity to disagree with my advice. I tried to engage her in conversation several times, hoping to establish a connection so that I could delve into her mind, but she wasn’t having any part of it. She answered my inquires in a short, clipped manner that suggested she’d rather be clawing her own eyes out than talking to me. By the end of the period, I wanted to claw her eyes out for her.

I ate lunch with Ernest the Brain and actually enjoyed myself.
The previous day, he’d been so nervous around me that he’d barely been able to keep up his end of the conversation. Today, we bantered easily, and I realized that he was actually pretty funny. I felt bad that my motivations for befriending him weren’t genuine. Under different circumstances, we might’ve even become real friends.

After lunch, I made small talk with Thad while his students worked on group projects.
I subtly threw in questions about his life back in Edinburgh. He was wistful when he talked about Scotland, smiling at the memory of his childhood. I asked about his family, and he seemed hesitant to talk about them. From what I could glean from his mind, he wasn’t hiding anything, but rather felt guilty for having left to come to school here. Thad rarely went home to visit even though he missed his birthplace. I knew the feeling; rarely a day went by that I didn’t miss Capri. I hadn’t been back since my parents’ deaths.

Griffin’s class was one of two in which I would see the same Talents every day.
Mac had asked me to keep a close eye on each of them and wanted to be kept apprised of my impressions. Almost as much as being tasked with hunting down the traitor, this made me feel like I had purpose again, and not so much like I was living in limbo.

Griffin and I worked individually with each student as he or she threw a sampling of small weapons at a target.
Most of the kids were actually very good already and needed little coaching. I didn’t get a chance to speak with Griffin very much, but since he wasn’t a suspect, I wasn’t too bothered by the fact.

Ursula’s Telekinesis class was the other one where I would see the same Talents on a daily basis.
The fifteen students in the class varied greatly in ability level. Several had extremely developed Talents while others had virtually non-existent abilities. I made a mental note to ask Penny to run profiles on all the students in the class, so that I would know what I was dealing with. Ursula concentrated her efforts on the stronger gifts, leaving me to work with those less capable. I didn’t really mind. I found that I liked teaching others how to better use their powers.

As I walked, practically dragging my throbbing leg behind me, to my room to change before dinner, I mentally compiled a list of the
intel that I needed Penny to help me gather that evening. My stomach grumbled in anticipation of food, and I longed for a hot shower; the antiseptic smell of the disinfectant the Medic had used to clean the wound filled my nostrils every time I moved my leg.

“How dare you!”
Donavon’s mental voice screamed in my head just before I reached the entrance to the dorm. I stopped dead in my tracks, whipping around to face him. His cheeks were bright red with anger and his eyes were more gray than blue.

“
Me?”
I exclaimed mentally.
“I’m sorry, did I miss something? Because last time I checked, I was the one with STITCHES in her leg!”
I screamed back. As exhausted as I was from my eventful day, I wasn’t going to take his accusations lying down. I could feel a vein in my neck straining as the blood rushed to my face.

“You had no right,”
he shot back.
“You knew that you could transfer pain to me. You knew how easy it was with our connection being so strong!”

“Oh, and you think I would purposely let you kick me so hard that you broke the skin just so that I could transfer the pain to you?”
I mentally demanded, refusing to back down.

“The way you’ve been acting?
I wouldn’t put it past you,”
he retorted.

“Get over yourself, Donavon.
I wouldn’t put myself through that pain just to hurt you.”
He looked doubtful, indecision warring with ...panic. Donavon was scared of me, I thought, the realization only slightly curbing my anger.

“Do you think that I manipulated you in to kicking me so hard you drew blood, too?”
He didn’t answer.
“Oh, my god, you do.”
I blanched. Rage consumed me. Now I wanted to hit him hard enough make him bleed. I advanced on him so quickly that he barely had time to react. His eyes grew wide in alarm, his fear written like lines of text in his creased brow. The horrified expression that Donavon wore stopped me in my tracks. What was wrong with me? I was out of control. I needed to get my temper in check. He had every right to be scared of me. I was scared of me right now.

“FUCK YOU,” I screamed, a million emotions bursting out of me at once, like water from a dam.
The urge to attack Donavon was so strong that if I didn’t leave right then, I feared that I might not be able to suppress it. Turning on my heel and ignoring the throbbing in my leg, I took off at a dead sprint to my room. What was wrong with me? Sure, I was rightfully angry that he’d accused me of something so ridiculous, but I’d come within inches of assaulting him. And for what, blaming me for something that I didn’t do? Even given my usual, somewhat irrational behavior, physical violence was extreme under the circumstances. I barely made it to my room before the first tears wet my cheeks.

Chapter Nine

A quiet beeping in my ear woke me.
Disoriented and confused, I opened my eyes and jumped when I found my nose inches from bright red, glowing numbers. My neck was stiff and one of my feet tingled when I moved it. I sat in the desk chair in my dorm room, a soft light illuminating the surface of the desk. Stretching my arms over my head I looked to the left, the shade on the window was up and a sliver of moonlight shone on the rough beige carpet.

The beeping continued.
“Crap!” I exclaimed out loud when the numbers on the clock came into focus. I’d slept through dinner. Shoot, I hoped that I hadn’t missed my meeting, too; Mac was going to be pissed.

When I’d returned to my room after the confrontation with Donavon, I had a message on my communicator from Mac requesting my presence at a status meeting.
Glancing at the communicator, I realized that it was the source of the incessant beeping. Mac must have programmed the meeting into the communicator because not only was it beeping, it was also alternating between flashing “Mac” and the time.

I had ten minutes to make it across campus.
I was still dressed in a robe, my hair a wet rat’s nest on top of my head. Grabbing the first clothes that I could get my hands on and the black jacket off the back of the desk chair, I set off at a jog across campus. My leg ached worse than earlier, and falling asleep sitting at my desk hadn’t done me any favors.

The Director’s Office came into view with only two minutes to spare.
When I tried to turn the door handle, it wouldn’t budge. Frantically, I looked around, and found a key pad staring back at me. One-by-one, I pressed my fingers, starting with my thumb, to the scanner. Two high-pitched beeps assaulted my ears, and then a glowing green light washed over my skin. I waited for the light to extinguish, and entered my ten-digit personal identification code. The lock clicked open, rewarding my efforts. The main lobby of the Administration Building was empty, so I opened my mind. A flurry of mental activity greeted me from the end of one corridor. I followed the buzzing to a door marked “Conference Room # 1”. I had hoped that this meeting was for just me, Mac, and Janet. Apparently, I was wrong if we were using the conference room instead of Mac’s office.

Tentatively, I pushed the door open, cognizant of the fact that I was now officially late.

Mac spared a moment to glance up from the stack of papers that he was rifling through. “Nice of you to join us,” he said dryly.

I smiled apologetically, and scurried to take a seat.
Three people sat around a large oval table with three additional chairs; one for me, one for Mac, and one for –

“Sorry I’m late!
I got held up.” The voice was so ingrained in my brain that I didn’t need to turn around to know that it belonged to Donavon. Great. After our fight, I had promptly run home and sobbed in the shower until the water ran cold. Then, I had sat at my desk, and cried myself to sleep like a child. My eyes were swollen reminders of the earlier breakdown, and if I’d looked in a mirror, I’m sure that I would’ve seen that they were red rimmed as well. Good thing I hadn’t found a reflective surface on my way here.

Without turning to look at Donavon, I squeezed into the empty chair between Janet and the Agency’s Deputy Director, Mitch Rice.
Mitch was older than Mac by at least ten years. He’d chosen the dignified route and shaved his head when he’d begun to bald. Since forsaking his Operative status, and becoming a Toxic figurehead, he’d let himself go. He was now quite rotund and jolly-looking. He offered me a warm smile that I returned, grateful to have another friendly face at the table.

To my surprise, and relief, the third person was Penny.
She, too, shot me a huge grin.

“No, problem, Donavon.
Take a seat so that we can get started,” Mac directed his son.

Donavon scanned the group, pointedly skipping me.
His face was an unreadable mask, but he was projecting his thoughts so hard that he might as well have spoken them aloud.

The PG version?
He still believed that I had coerced him into hurting me, so that I could, in turn, project the pain on to him. As if that weren’t enough, after my earlier display of nonsensical rage, he thought that I was coming unhinged. His condemnation invoked my earlier feelings of shame and anger. The anger won out, and before I could think it through, I forced his gaze to meet mine. I concentrated on the noise that bees make – an insistent buzzing. Slowly as though turning the dial on a radio, I cranked the volume louder. Donavon’s right eye began to twitch involuntarily and he tried to break the connection, but I was too focused. He wanted manipulation? I would show him manipulation.

“Talia!”
The tone of Mac’s voice indicated that it wasn’t the first time he’d said my name.

I reluctantly severed the tie to Donavon’s mind and turned to face Mac.
“Sorry, I’m ready to start whenever you are.” I smiled, doing my best imitation of innocence.

Several minds pressed on mine, but I blocked them, not needing the mental chastising to know that I was being childish.

One did break through my walls.
“Jesus, Talia, act your age.”
Trying to keep Donavon out was like trying to run between raindrops without getting wet – impossible. Yup, he definitely thought that I was losing it.

Mac’s gray eyes narrowed, but didn’t comment on my silent torture of his son.
Instead, he started briefing our small group on his current theories. He began by reiterating the theories that he’d expressed to me several days prior; he believed that we had a spy on account of Crane knowing that I was coming and knowing my identity. Mac explained that I was likely targeted because my mission involved Crane directly, keeping his speculation that the reason was more personal to himself.

“What about the
Cryptos who intercepted the original intel?” I interrupted, glancing side-long at Penny. She’d been one of the Cryptos who had intercepted the intel. Her face remained impassive. I almost felt bad about asking, but they would naturally be the first people I’d investigate if I were him.

Mac gave me a hard look, annoyed at my disruption.
“The Crypto team in question consisted of two Operatives and a Pledge. As you are well aware, Natalia, Ms. Latimore was that Pledge. She and the two Operatives have been questioned extensively by a member of our Psychic Interrogation Division. I was present during the interrogations as was Captain Alvarez. After an exhaustive investigation, we’ve determined that they were not involved. That is why I have asked Ms. Latimore to help with this inquiry. Does that satisfy you, Natalia?”

“Just asking,” I muttered, appropriately abashed.
He made it sound as though I was accusing him of not doing his job, but I wasn’t. I was just curious for goodness sake, trying to be thorough.

Mac continued, effectively dismissing me.
“As you are all aware, we have two Crypto facilities. One is located here, and the other at Elite Headquarters. The information about Natalia’s mission would have been logged in to our system, and only someone extremely adept with computers would have been able to access it.” He paused, meeting each of our eyes in turn before continuing. “Naturally, I have had Raj Anderson, Head of the Crypto Division, identify any of his personnel that accessed Natalia’s file. We have come up empty-handed thus far, but we are still pursuing that avenue. In light of our lack of progress, I have decided to take more aggressive measures and launch a full investigation of every person at both locations. Operative Latimore is combing the network to determine if the data was hacked while also aiding Natalia in identifying suspicious individuals. Janet identified several Instructors here at the School that have family members that are known associates of the Coalition.” Mac paused to take a breath, and I jumped at the opportunity to interrupt asking another question that had been plaguing me.

“Why is Donavon here?” I blurted out.

Janet coughed into her hand, but when I glanced in her direction, I saw that she was trying to suppress a snicker. Mitch shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Donavon gave me an exasperated look. Only Mac looked unfazed by my question; I think that he’d been expecting it. To my surprise, Donavon was the one who answered.

“Because up until very recently,
Talia
, you’ve been indisposed, and my father needed someone who could pose as an Instructor to keep his ears open for any rumblings that would lead us to the spy.” Donavon enunciated my name, his voice like a razor. The only word that I really heard in his rant was “indisposed”.

“Indisposed?” I shrieked, swinging my chair around to face him for the first time since he’d entered the room.
“I was shot, you ass. I almost died. I had to relearn to walk. Sorry that my torture inconvenienced you.” My temper rose with each word, like mercury in boiling water. Donavon at least had the decency to flush and shrink back slightly in his seat at the venom in my voice.

“Your personal conflicts aside,” Mac started to say, but I interrupted him again.

“We don’t have personal conflicts,” I spat, my palms slapping the top of the conference table.

Janet couldn’t suppress her snort of laughter this time.
Mac shot her a warning look, but Janet just shook her head as if to say, “I told you so.”

“Fine.
The reason that Donavon is here is because I knew that he wasn’t the spy. Vetting another Operative to come in and play Instructor would’ve taken too much time, and time is not something that I want to waste. We need to find the leak before another Operative is hurt or killed,” Mac said shortly. His tone had a note of finality and his eyes blazed, warning me that he had nothing further to say on the topic. I wasn’t ready to let it go.

“What about Erik or Henri?” I insisted.
“I’m sure that you’ve vetted both of them since they knew about my mission?” I met Mac’s eyes dead on, daring him to contradict me even though I regretted the words the moment they left my lips. Taunting Mac was kind of like baiting a hungry tiger – never a good idea.

Donavon scoffed and shook his head.
“Really, Talia? Erik? He’d just sleep with all of the students. We’d never find the spy if he went undercover.” Donavon sneered. His words were meant to hurt me, and they did. I bit my lip, fighting the stinging in the corners of my eyes at the thought of Erik with another girl.

“Enough!” Mac shouted, banging his fist on the pile of papers in front of him.
“Natalia, yes, both Mr. Kelley and Mr. Reich have been vetted. I am confident that neither of them is the spy. While it is not any of your business why I chose Donavon, I’ll tell you. He is my son, making him the Operative who would draw the least amount of suspicion here. Satisfied?” I flinched as Mac fixed me with his cold stare, his eyes boring holes in my head. I sat up straight and nodded my head that I was indeed satisfied with his explanation. In truth, I was. It actually made perfect sense; Mac was nothing if not logical.

“And Donavon,” Mac continued, training his hard gaze on his son.
“Stop baiting her. You two could at least act like professionals instead of petty children.”

“Sorry, Dad,” Donavon muttered, embarrassed by his father’s reproach.

If I were a bigger person, I might’ve felt badly for him since, after all, I was actually the one being petty and baiting Donavon. His comment about Erik was a low blow, but it paled in comparison to some of antics I’d pulled in the last couple of days. Despite admitting the truth to myself, I wasn’t the bigger person, and Mac’s admonishment of his son gave me a perverse sense of satisfaction.

“Now that we are all on the same page, let’s get back to what is important.
Natalia, it is imperative that you are keeping your mind open. I want you looking in to the head of every person that you come in contact with. I want to know the minute that you feel something is off. I don’t care if you just have an inkling; I want to know. Are we clear?” he asked me. I swallowed hard and nodded, afraid to speak again.

“Penelope, I want you to do everything in your power to determine whether the system has been hacked.
I want you and Natalia to look through every Operative’s file, and if you find anything that seems off, I want to know.” Penny nodded, her eyes wide. She also appeared to be too afraid of Mac to speak.

“Donavon, continue to become friends with as many of the other Instructors as you can.
Keep your ears open and let me know if you hear anything that needs further investigation.”

“Yes, sir,” Donavon replied quietly.

“Janet, Mitch, and I will continue to follow up on some leads. I want daily reports, and we will have weekly status meetings. I want this matter to be taken care of as quickly and quietly as possible. Are we all clear?” We all nodded. Then, mercifully, Mac dismissed us, not a moment too soon. The tension between me and Donavon was palpable, and the conference room had quickly become too small to hold us both.

Donavon made a run for the door as soon as Mac dismissed us.
I remained firmly planted in my chair until I was sure that he was out of the building. I didn’t have the energy to go another round with him.

“You look like death warmed over,” Penny said, leaning towards me.

“I’ve had better days,” I replied softly.