Unforgettable (Talented Saga #6) (24 page)

Following my lead and ignoring the
fact she’d just seen more of me than either of us was comfortable
with, Victoria’s response was professional.

“
You received it then? Very
good. Thus far we have been lucky, no one has spotted the drones.
They will remain in place throughout the day to allow the council
to keep an eye on things. That way, should you need reinforcements,
we will know immediately.

“
I need Agent Kelley and
Agent Longpre in the conference room in one hour for a briefing
with the strike teams. There are five groups, each comprised of ten
agents, ready to leave for Andrew’s Rock on my word. Departing from
Bern on their hovercrafts, it will take approximately nineteen
minutes to reach you. Please keep that in mind. We will try to have
one team in position nearby, but we cannot raise alarms by being
too close.”

“
Do you want me to pass all
of that along?” I asked, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

Erik was lying on his back in the
middle of the bed, one arm thrown over his face to shield his eyes
from the small lamp I’d turned on. The other was reaching out
blindly in my general direction. Taking Erik’s hand, I climbed back
onto the bed and let him pull me close.

“
No need, I have sent
everyone their orders and the relevant information,” Victoria
replied.

“
Okay,” I said, steeling
myself for the councilwoman’s next words. No way had she called me
at four in the morning just to make sure I’d received the
surveillance footage.

Silence from the other end of the
communicator had me double-checking the connection. Still
intact.

“
Is there anything else?” I
finally prompted.

Victoria’s sigh was long and tired,
and I wondered whether she’d been to bed yet. Suddenly, my three
hours of sleep seemed indulgent.

“
Talia…,” she began, and my
ears perked up.

Victoria rarely used my first name.
Sometimes, when she was particularly pissed, she’d use ‘Natalia’.
It was always spoken in a patronizing tone that set my teeth on
edge. But just then, the councilwoman’s tone lacked any trace of
condescension. It was more beseeching, like she was about to ask a
favor that I was unlikely to grant.

Despite his moans and groans, Erik was
awake. And listening to our conversation. Hearing my first name
from Victoria caused Erik to stiffen, as well. Like me, he knew
whatever she had to say was serious and probably not
good.

“
Um, yes?” I replied
hesitantly.

“
The council has received
credible intel. From our undercover agents inside many of the
foreign governments.”

“
Okay….”

Erik and I exchanged an uneasy glance.
His hand tightened reflexively on my waist, calloused fingers
squeezing the skin just above my hipbone.

“
As of right now, a
majority of the Joint Nations representatives plan to vote against
renewing the Treaty.”

A spasm of pain lanced through my
core. It was one thing to discuss the Treaty being overturned in
the abstract. But knowing that our supporters were officially in
the minority was a different beast altogether.

“
This isn’t really
possible, right?”
I asked Erik, my
thoughts rushing on before he could answer.
“I mean, they can’t really make being Talented illegal,
right? They can’t really send all of the Talents to the island.
They
know
there
isn’t enough room. They know that, so they can’t really say
everyone has to go there. Right? Right?”

Erik didn’t answer me, his brain was
whizzing through the progression of events in the world and trying
to come to grips with it logically. Understandably, with the
Created making headlines from Tokyo to Manhattan, everyone was
scared. The non-Talented were scared of the Talented. UNITED was
scared of the vigilante justice those scared individuals were
seeking. The members of the Joint Nations were scared of the chaos
devolving into war. To them, peaceful coexistence of our races
probably seemed like a relic from the good old days. So UNITED’s
preemptive measures—preparing the islands for additional refugees,
recruiting Erik to be the face of the Created—made sense. Ignorance
wasn’t bliss in this situation. Ignoring the probability that our
kind was doomed for exile was naïve.

Until Victoria uttered the words, I’d
evidently been naïve, myself. Until that moment, a part of me truly
believed that UNITED was being overly pessimistic. That once a
decade every Talented-based organization lamented over the possibly
of our kind being condemned to life on the islands. Only eight
years old during the last Treaty vote, I barely remembered my
parents discussing it at all, let alone worrying about whether it
would pass. In hindsight, I should have been aware that all the
news reports and conversation about the vote were abnormal. Sure,
my parents were not likely to have shared their concerns with a
child. But my Talents had been strong, even then, and I hadn’t yet
learned boundaries when it came to reading minds. I’d known every
worry that crossed the minds of my parents, even though I’d been
too young to appreciate what most of them meant.

“
So, what’s your plan,
Victoria?” Erik demanded, shocking me back to the present. “Or is
UNITED just throwing in the towel now? Have you already announced
the lottery?”

“
No, Erik,” Victoria said
quickly, unfazed to discover our conversation had a third-party.
“We are going to fight this until the end. But we need to be
prepared and we need to be smart. It is imperative that you get
every last Created out of that auction house. We want the Talented,
but we
need
the
Created. If we are indeed exiled, they will become more valuable
than you can imagine. And more dangerous than anyone can appreciate
right now.

“
Should the Treaty indeed
be revoked, the Talented and Created will become extremely rare and
therefore valuable. Groups like the Poachers will become more
common because Talent trafficking will be, technically speaking,
legal. Their only hindrance will then be a shortage of supply to
fill the immense demand.”

“
Right, I understand all of
that,” I said, though not really sure I did.

Victoria had already said all of those
things to us, and she did not waste time repeating herself. So what
was so important that Victoria felt the need to reiterate the
information?

Sensing I was missing the bigger
picture, Erik spoke up.

“
What do you do when you
don’t have enough of something, Tals?”

His voice was low and eerily calm.
Erik only used that tone when he was battling his temper for
control, and close to losing the fight.

I shook my head. Between the hour, my
lack of sleep, and the eight billion thoughts running through my
head, I was being painfully slow on the uptake.

“
You make more,” Victoria
supplied softly.

The metaphorical lightbulb over my
head turned on, then overloaded and shattered.

“
Can they do that?” I
demanded angrily, confounded that I hadn’t caught on sooner. “I
mean, I know they can theoretically, with the Creation drug. But
they’d have to find it first. And then make it. UNITED has the only
remaining vials of the drug, right? And the formula? It took TOXIC
scientists years to perfect it, even having like ninety-nine
percent of the research done for them already.”

By my father,
I added silently, the admission too painful to
say aloud. I didn’t like to think about my father and the role he
played in the Creation Project. He’d been the one to develop the
idea and the formulation. Even though I knew he’d had nothing but
the best intentions, a tiny, sick part of me blamed him for
unleashing this plague onto the world. I hated that part of
me.

Focus, Talia,
I chastised myself, shaking my head to clear the
traitorous thoughts.

“
Anyhow,” I continued.
“They can’t just make more, they don’t have what they need. It’s
not like we’re going to send gift-wrapped bottles of the drug to
the Poachers, so…shit. Shit, I am so stupid.”

Neither Erik nor Victoria spoke,
giving me time to grasp how truly perilous the situation
was.

The Poachers didn’t need the formula,
or UNITED’s stash of the drug. A simple blood transfusion was
sufficient to transmit both the drug and a talent signature, the
distinguishing mark in our DNA that identified us as Talented. Back
when I’d been given Donavon’s blood, I’d needed to be given a daily
shot of the drug, to keep everything stabilized. Since then, the
drug had been improved and it was no longer necessary. The last
shots they’d given me, of the new formula, proved that. All anyone
needed to make more Created were Created. Which the Poachers had,
locked in cells underneath their house of horrors.

Erik rubbed my side
soothingly.

“
Don’t be so hard on
yourself, Tals. It’s early, you’re still half asleep.”

“
Not anymore,” I muttered.
The epiphany I’d just had was more effective at waking my senses
than a shot of pure adrenaline.

Even Victoria seemed to pity my
witlessness. Her voice carried sympathy when she spoke next. I’d
never heard that tone from her. It was almost worse than her
condescension, even though she didn’t mean it to be.

“
Yes, Talia. The drug flows
through every Created’s veins. Just as Donavon McDonough
inadvertently infected you, the Poachers will be able to
purposefully infect others.”

Donavon’s name was already a knife in
my heart. The reminder that it was his blood that made me Created
was another twist of the blade. Just like with my father, I
despised the part of me that hated Donavon for infecting me. Every
time my mood spiraled or my temper flared to all new heights or I
began to question my sanity, I cursed Donavon in one breath. And in
the next, told myself that I wouldn’t be feeling anything at all
without his actions. I would be dead, no question about
it.

Even on my best days, I questioned
whether the tradeoff was worth the price I’d one day pay. I was
living on borrowed time. Just because the drug had yet to eat holes
in my brain, the outcome was inevitable. Or so UNITED’s big fancy
research scientists believed.

Once, during an interrogation, I’d
gone too far, used too much power in my haste to prove the accused
innocent. As a result, Ernest Tate, a friend and colleague at the
McDonough School, was left brain-dead. Instead of only searching
his memories for answers, I’d stolen his past and robbed him of a
future. Of all the horrible things I’d done in the line of duty,
mentally crippling Ernest, one of the most intelligent guys I’d
ever met, was the one I’d never forgive myself for.

Though technically still alive, Ernest
was more zombie than human. Terrified as I was of the same thing
happening to me, in a way, it seemed oddly fitting that I might one
day share his fate. Unless those big-brained scientists developed a
cure, and fast.

“
Talia, stop,” Erik said
shortly. I looked at him helplessly. He laced our fingers together
and squeezed before continuing. “Victoria, what is your point? What
is the point of us hashing through all of this right
now?”

“
Because I need for you to
understand why the Poacher’s Talented victims are not a priority,”
Victoria said plainly. “You both disagree with this decision, I
know. And, believe it or not, I do value your opinions. However,
this matter is not up for debate. I need you to see the bigger
picture, to appreciate why it is we’re giving you these orders, so
that you will follow them to a tee. No going off mission. No
breaking the rules. No making up your own rules as you go. Am I
clear? I know you want to do something that will save all of the
Talents at the auction, but I need you to go in, get the Created,
and get the hell out of there.”

Instead of her usual annoyance with my
rogue nature, Victoria’s tone was unusually kind. At a complete
loss for what to say, I didn’t answer her immediately.

Even with Victoria’s sound
logic and terrifying conclusions, I wasn’t sure that I could just
ignore the plight of the Poacher’s Talented victims. To say I
“disagreed” with the council’s decision was like saying the
Poachers were “not nice people.” It was an understatement of gross
proportions. Plain and simple, I wanted to save all of them. I
abhorred the idea of leaving behind the Talented, leaving them to
be
owned
by the
morally bankrupt people who were going to
buy
them. It was impossible to keep
those words from breaking my heart every time I thought them. The
council might as well have said to leave my compassion and
integrity at coat-check on the way into the auction house, because
their orders went against everything I stood for. Hell, the orders
went against everything UNITED allegedly stood for.

Indignant on behalf of my fellow
Talents, I looked to Erik for support. And found none. His
expression was sympathetic, but not likeminded. Erik’s mind was
wide open after last night’s therapeutic screaming match and
subsequent makeup shenanigans, so I was able to feel his turmoil
over the matter. Just like me, Erik disagreed with the council’s
decision on principle. Unfortunately, he also believed that leaving
the Talented behind was the necessary course of action, if the
mission was to remain covert.