Talented (11 page)

“Ready?” he asked
, without turning around.

“You’re coming?” I didn’t bother to mask my surprise.

“I’m up,” he answered simply.

We
set off at a quick pace on a trail through the woods.  We maintained the pace, without speaking, for over an hour.

As we ran, I focused my energy towards my olfactory sense.  I breathed in the intoxicatingly sweet fragrance of the small, white flowers that grew on the base of the trees, the fresh smell of dew on the leaves, and even the earthy musk of the dirt.  I could make out the heady scent of Erik’s sweat mixed with his deodorant, it was so distinctly male.  I inhaled deeper without thinking twice, taking in as much of his aroma as I could.  Suddenly, I realized what I was doing and quickly redirected my energy.

I switched my concentration to my sense of touch. The morning was cool and damp, and I could feel the tiny droplets of cold water that hung in the air on every surface of my exposed skin.  I felt the trickle of cold sweat as it traced a path from the base of my skull down my back.  I felt the tiniest pebbles as my feet pounded out a steady rhythm along the path.

I narrowed my eyes and refocused my energy to my sight, blocking the rest of my senses.  I could see the beads of condensation on the too bright leaves.  I could see the minute details in the bark of the passing trees.  When I turned my head to look at Erik, I could see his long, thick
eyelashes framing his beautiful eyes.  I lost my footing and stumbled slightly.  Erik looked down at me as I quickly strained to right myself.

“Okay?” he asked, raising his eyebrows, questioningly.  I caught a glint in his eyes and knew that he had caught me looking at him.

“Yup,” I grunted, embarrassed.

Closing my eye, I tried to regroup.  I directed my energy to my hearing.  The pounding of my feet against the dirt was almost deafening.  I could hear the thudding of my heart against my chest, just a microsecond faster than Erik’s.  A small bumblebee flew next to my ear, and the flutter of its wings filled my head.  I relaxed as my stride fell into rhythm with the steady burbling of a stream somewhere in the distance to my right.

I continued to cycle through my senses, expanding each one in turn, throughout the entire run.  Over the years, the routine had become second-nature.  The familiarity comforted me, and the anxiety that had been dampening my thoughts all week gave way to confidence.  I could do this.  I was ready for this mission.

Mac had begun teaching me to sharpen my senses six months after I came to live with his family.  I would run blindfolded to improve my hearing.  He would have me wear earplugs for entire days, to improve my eyesight.  Some days Mac would deprive me of two of my senses at once, pushing the remaining ones to their limits.  It was a gradual process, but eventually I was able to tune in to each individual sense by drawing on my mental energy, and focusing it towards one sense.

The same principle worked with my mental abilities.  Mac taught me to draw all of my energy towards my telecommunication abilities, strengthening and fine tuning my natural Talent.

Erik was right –
when we got back I was exhausted.  I showered quickly and then got back in my bed, promptly falling asleep.

Too soon,
I woke to Henri gently shaking my shoulder.

“Tal
, it’s time to get up,” he said softly.

“Hmmm,” I replied drowsily.

“You need to wake up and pack.  We’re leaving in two hours.”

The bed ro
se as his weight left.  This was it; I was finally going on my first Mission.  My confidence from earlier remained.  I was ready.

I
rolled over and stretched.  I pulled myself out of bed and began packing a small bag with only essential toiletries and several days’ worth of the most non-descript clothing that I owned.  Bags containing the weapons, tech devices, and specialized clothing that we needed for our mission would be waiting for us at the hover plane.

I had finished my packing
, and was pulling on knee high black boots over a thick black adapti-suit made of an impenetrable material that protected my skin from the elements, glancing blows and would slow down a blade and even a bullet, when I heard the knock on the door.  As soon as I heard the knock, I knew that it was Donavon. I dove for the door, but Erik got there first.

“I should’
ve guessed it would be you,” he greeted Donavon, icily, as he opened the door.

“Just wanted to say goodbye to Tal,” he held up his hands
, indicating that he didn’t want trouble.

I walked over, grabbed his hand
, and ushered him out the door.  I slammed it shut behind me.

“Sorry about that,” I said to him.

“I don’t want to talk about him,” Donavon leaned down and kissed me.  “Seriously, though Natalia, be careful.”

“Don’t wo
rry, Donavon.  I’ll be fine,” I promised.

“I know
, but I can’t help but worry about you,” his voice was husky.

“Wrap
it up, Tal. We gotta go,” Erik called, walking out of the cabin with his bag over one shoulder and mine over the other.

I stood on my tip
-toes and reached up to kiss Donavon goodbye.

“
I love you, Tal.”

“I know
, Donavon,”
I gave his calloused hand one last squeeze before turning to follow Erik and Henri, only allowing myself to look back once.

Chapter Fifteen

When we arrived at the
hangar, it was a bustle of activity.  Three black backpacks sat at the base of the steps leading up to the underbelly of a mid-sized camouflage hover plane.  One of the bags was distinctly larger than the other two.  Henri grabbed that one and climbed the steps into the plane.  Erik and I followed suit.  I took a seat in one of the oversized chairs and waited while Henri spoke to a man that, I assumed must be the pilot.  My apprehension from earlier hummed behind my confident exterior.

“Move
all the stuff you brought from the cabin in to the black backpack and then strap yourself in,” Henri instructed, his voice serious.  I did as I was told.  The atmosphere was so charged that I could nearly feel the tiny sparks of electricity.  No one spoke again until we were in the air.

“The plane will
drop us off in a rural area approximately fifty miles outside of Mexico City.  There is a road car there that we will use to drive to safe house approximately twenty miles outside the city.  The laboratory we are looking for is on the border of the actual town,” Henri explained.  We had, of course, gone over all of this numerous times, but I nodded my head and listened.  I knew Henri was anxious, and reciting the plan helped calm his nerves.  I tried to prevent his feelings from intensifying my increasing unease.  I had to stay focused, I had to sustain my composure.

The flight took several hours
, most of which I slept.  I was still tired from my sleepless night; and the brief respite wasn’t sufficient.  We finally touched down in a small clearing in the middle of nowhere.  The humidity engulfed me as soon as the craft door opened.  Thankfully the Hunting suits had temperature regulators so it only took seconds for the interior of my suit to adjust, returning to a comfortable level.  My hair was another matter; my dark curls absorbed the moisture in the air immediately, and expanded exponentially.  I fished a bandana out of my bag and used it to contain my hair.  I tightened the straps on my backpack until they fit snugly against my body, and climbed down the shiny metal steps.  As soon as all three of us deplaned, the steps retracted and the plane silently rose flying off into the inky black night sky.

This was it; we were really here.  I was a bundle of nervous anticipation.  Breathe, focus, I reminded myself.  You can do this.  You
can
do this, I repeated over and over again in my head.

I followed Henri and Erik out of the clearing and into the surrounding woods.  The trees were thick
and I had no idea how Henri knew where we were going.  When I opened my mind to him I could feel his senses on overdrive.  We only walked for a couple of minutes before we reached the most dilapidated barn that I’d ever seen; the heavy wooden doors protested loudly when Henri pulled them open.  I walked several paces behind Henri and Erik, afraid the barn would collapse once we entered.  My senses were not quite as good as the boys’ – since theirs came naturally with their Talents – so it took my eyes several additional seconds to adjust to the pitch black barn interior.  Once my eyes could distinguish shapes, I realized that the barn wasn’t nearly as unstable as it looked.  In fact, there were large support beams holding the roof and sides up in an odd configuration which gave off the impression that the building was falling in on itself.  I stared up in wonderment.

In the middle o
f the barn were several road vehicles.  Henri selected a small rusted looking one with a layer of grime covering the windows, and got in the driver’s seat.  I opened the back door and climbed in, leaving the passenger seat for Erik.

The interior and t
he exterior were a study in contrast.  The outside looked like that of a vehicle that had been sitting in an abandoned barn for years, while the inside looked the crypto bank at Headquarters.  The seats were soft, black leather and the dash and the doors were covered in buttons that lit up in a rainbow of colors when Henri powered up the car.  The backs of the head rests and center console were equipped with small touchscreen computers.  I stared, wide-eyed, at all the gadgets.

Henri drove out of the barn and
turned down a path situated between two large trees.

“T
alia, eat something from your pack,” he ordered after we’d been driving for a couple minutes.  His tone was serious and he was in charge so I obliged without comment, even though my stomach was so knotted that I doubted any food would fit.

“I want to stop by the safe house and make sure everything is copasetic
, then we’ll go locate the laboratory while it’s still dark.  It’s probably about ten miles from the house to the location, and we are going on foot so make sure you have the energy,” he continued.

I found sever
al bags of dried fruit in my pack, and started munching on them noisily.  I don’t know how long it actually took us to arrive at the safe house, but it felt like forever.  Every passing minute compounded to my mounting anxiety.  When we finally pulled up out front I was saddened to see that it looked much like the barn on the outside – extremely run down.  I don’t know what I’d expected.  I knew we wouldn’t be staying at a four-star hotel, but I’d hoped the rumors of the poor living conditions on Hunts were exaggerated; they weren’t.

“
Only mental communication from now on, understood?”
  Henri’s mental voice filled my head.   Both Erik and I nodded.

“Erik, go around back. 
I will go in the front.  Talia, stand guard outside, keep your mind as open as you can.” 
I nodded again, swallowing over the lump of sugary fruit lodged in my throat.

“
Get your weapons ready and be on full-alert,”
he continued.

I immediately rummaged in my bag and withdrew a belt with eight knives fastened to it.  I threaded it through the belt loops
at the waist of my suit. Next, I strapped two larger daggers to the outsides of each of my legs, blades running the length of my thighs.  I could feel my heart beating in my throat.  I was suddenly terrified.  It wasn’t until I actually strapped the weapons belt around my waist that reality hit me.  I was actually in the field, this was
not
practice, the weapons were real; I could really die.  I started to panic.

Erik reached back and put his gloved hand over my mine, “
Just stay calm, you’re going to do great.  Remember your training and focus.”

I nodded, and gave him the closest thing to a smile that I could muster.  Inhale. Exhale.  Repeat.

I waited for Henri and Erik to get out of the car, before opening my own door.

“
Count of three,
” Henri said once we were all standing outside of the vehicle.  “
One. Two.  Three.”

Erik silently jogged around
to the back of the house.  Henri moved deftly towards the front door.  I positioned myself outside of the entrance that Henri had just disappeared through.  I closed my eyes and opened my mind wider.  I had a strong connection with both Henri and Erik.  I couldn’t feel a flutter of mental activity anywhere in the immediately vicinity, which calmed me slightly.

Several minutes passed
before Henri called, “
All clear.”

“Ditto,”
Erik responded.

“
All quiet out here,”
I tried to make my mental voice calm, but it came out frantically.

I could feel both Henri an
d Erik moving through the house, emerging a full minute later.

“
I‘ll take the lead.  Erik, take the rear. Tal, stay between us.”

Henri took off at a steady jog throu
gh the woods.  I focused on his back, and kept my mind as open as I possibly could; casting the net wider and wider as we ran.  I couldn’t feel anything human in the woods, but I didn’t really expect to since it was the middle of the night.

Sweat drenched m
y hair, soaking the bandana that I’d used to tie it back from my face.  The rest of my body was covered by the suit and remained, surprisingly, nice and cool.  Henri’s strides were much longer than mine, but I was surprised to find that it wasn’t that hard to keep up with him.  It took us over an hour to reach the location.  I felt the distinct buzz of a human brain when we were still about three miles out.

I cannot read minds
that I have no established relationship with.  It only takes a couple of exchanges with a person to establish a relationship that allows me to probe their mind, but if I’ve never met a person, I can’t just read his thoughts.  I only get a murmur of brain activity letting me know there is a human in the vicinity.

”
I can feel someone,”
I announced.

”
How far?”
Henri inquired.

“
Maybe three miles.  I’m not really sure, the buzz is faint.”

“I can feel it too,
but just barely
,” Erik chimed in.

“
Talia, take the lead,”
Henri ordered.  Great.  Following Henri was comfortable and mindless; leading the way added a level of responsibility that I wasn’t ready for.  Henri was in charge, so I silently jogged ahead of him and stretched my mental net.  I honed in on the buzzing, and followed it to the edge of the woods.

I went
to step out of the wooded cover, but Henri placed his hand on my shoulder, holding me back.  The three of us crouched down in the leaves, and I pulled the focus from my mind and redirected my energy to my eyesight.  It took longer than I would’ve liked, but finally the buzzing dulled and I could see a house that I recognized from the intel.  I could also see the source of the buzzing – he was sitting in the dark by the front door.  He looked like he was sleeping, but I knew better.  Sleeping minds don’t buzz.

”
How many total do you feel awake, Tal?”
Henri asked.

“
Just the one.”

“Can you tell how many are sleeping?”

“No, I’m sorry,”
I responded regretfully, feeling as though I’d let him down.

Henri unhooked his backpack and searched inside for something.  He pulled out his communicator and a heat scanner.  He attached the communicator to his wrist and the scanner to
his communicator.  His communicator gave off a faint glow that wasn’t visible from more than a couple of feet away.

“
There are ten inside,”
he said.

”
Ten?”
Erik sounded surprised. “
I thought there weren’t supposed to be more than a handful of them at any given time.”

“That’s what our
intel said, but who knows.  We aren’t going in tonight anyway.  Hopefully, there won’t be as many tomorrow or the day after,”
Henri answered him.

Henri spent the next couple
of minutes collecting heat images of the house and the surrounding areas.  Then he repacked the devices in his bag.

“
Erik, we should morph, why don’t you give your bag to Tal,”
Henri said.  Erik took off his boots and all of his weapons, packed them in his bag, and then handed everything to me.  I draped his long rifle across my chest and secured his backpack to my front.  Henri also removed his boots and weapons and handed me his back pack.

“
Tal, after we Morph, strap the extra packs to my back and then get on Erik and he’ll carry you back.”

I desperate
ly wanted to argue with him, to tell him that I could make the run back, but the first thing that Henri had taught me was to not argue with the person in charge, it could get us all killed.  Unfortunately, our minds were so connected that they both heard my mental struggle just as clear as if I’d been speaking out loud.

“
Okay, Henri,”
I finally agreed, ashamed that he’d heard me warring with his authority.  Both boys transformed into large wolf-like dogs.  The suit’s material stretched to conform to their new body shapes.  I’d seen it plenty of times over the past several months, but it never ceased to amaze me.  I quickly fastened the packs to Henri, before climbing on to Erik’s back and winding my hands into the fur around his neck.  The boys took off at a breakneck speed into the woods.  I clung to Erik as we weaved in between trees in the dark thankful Henri had chosen a wolf form when he Morphed.

Henri was a Poly Morph, like Donavon, and could therefore transform in to any animal of his choosing.  Like most Poly Morphs, Henri favored one animal in particular,
an extremely large bird since it made the most of his tremendous wingspan and was the fastest way for him to travel.  The trouble with his bird-morph was that I had yet to master riding it. In practice we had been working on me riding on one of them while they were in bird form, but I tended to fall off more often than not, and I never would’ve been able to stay on while Erik flew through the dense trees of this forest.

Even not in in bird-form, it took
considerably less time to get back.  I jumped off of Erik’s back as soon as we arrived in front of the house.  I unfastened the packs from Henri, and watched as the forms of both boys rematerialized in front of me.