Unforgettable (Talented Saga #6) (32 page)

Ignoring my less-than-congenial tone,
Henri plunged forward.

“
Kenly Baker and James
Wellington were just removed from the auction list. They aren’t
going to be sold.”

I expected Talia to jump in with a
secondary plan. Other than her initial mini-breakdown upon first
arriving at the auction, Talia was all business in there. She’d
shoved her personal feelings aside, and taken every hiccup in
stride. I was so proud of her. So when Brand, not Talia, started
doling out orders, I was more than a little surprised. And not in a
good way. Talia must have been pissed about my reaction to Anya.
Awesome. Just awesome.

“
Riley, you need to find
them. Can you do that?” Brand asked.

“
Way ahead of you, chief.”
Riley spoke just above a whisper. “I’m on the upper levels. They’ll
each be in one of the cubes. I think.”

“
Discretely,” Brand added
in a warning tone.

“
You
think
?” I demanded. “Riley, you said
you could handle this.”

Even as I uttered the words, I knew it
was unfair to rip the kid’s head off. Truth be told, he was doing a
great job. Nevertheless, this mission was going to hell in a
hand-basket.

“
Well, they should be up
here,” Riley said. “But they may have been moved if they aren’t
going up for auction. Give me ten minutes.”

“
We don’t have ten
minutes,” I groaned.

Leaning back in my seat, I let my head
fall back and my eyes close. Stress and adrenaline were causing the
synapses in my brain to fire too quickly. Coherent thought was
impossible. My head throbbed and every inch of my body ached like
I’d taken the worst beating of my life.

That’s when I saw her. Viewed her.
Whatever.

Kenly. She was sitting in a darkened
room with a guy I recognized from the last time I slipped into her
reality. They were huddled together on a platform, kissing.
Awkward. Not just because I didn’t want to watch them playing kissy
face, but because I couldn’t imagine a less romantic setting than a
Talent auction.

I focused on their surroundings to
avoid watching their make-out session. The curtains covering the
front wall of the room were slightly parted, exposing a sea of
people several stories below. A trifold wallscreen showed the
latest victim on the auction block.

“—
time to start ferrying
the captives—”

“
She’s in a room somewhere
above the auction, Riley,” I interrupted the speaker, whoever it
was. “Your friend, James, is with her. She’s high up. Maybe four or
five levels above the crowd. There is a floor-to-ceiling window in
front of them, with red curtains. Does that help you?”

“
Brilliant,” came Riley’s
succinct reply.

Over the comm units, our forces were
making plans. Penny, Frederick and the others who’d made purchases
were going to start retrieving their items. This left Talia, Henri,
Brand, and two members of Catherine’s teams to buy the remaining
Created. They’d decided to speed up the timeline in case we needed
to beat a hasty retreat once Riley found Kenly.

Few of the agents were
happy about the turn of events, since this course of action meant
more importance was being placed on Kenly’s safe rescue than that
of the remaining Created. Had it not meant that Anya would be free
from the Poachers sooner rather than later, I might have agreed.
This was personal for Talia, rescuing Kenly was her true goal.
Which didn’t quite lineup with UNITED’s. We needed
all
of the Created to
avoid disaster down the road.

“
Tals, are you sure about
this?”
I sent, fully expecting my
girlfriend to come back with some snappy retort since she was not
pleased with me.
“Kenly is one person.
This might mean abandoning a lot of Created.”

“
I know,”
she sent back.
“It’s
risky. But I can’t leave her. She’s the reason we came.”

I didn’t point out that
Kenly was the reason
Talia
came, not UNITED.

“
We don’t know why they
took her name of the auction list. What if they plan on keeping
her? That isn’t good for so many reasons and you know it. Or maybe
she angered them to the point they’re going to kill her. Maybe
that’s the encore for a party like this, I don’t know.”

Talia hesitated and I could feel the
wheels in her head spinning. I tried to see past the shroud
cloaking her deeper thoughts and feelings, but my girlfriend had
her guard up and barriers firmly in place.

Then, one emotion shot to the surface:
Fear. Talia was scared. For a moment my ego got the better of me
and I actually thought my girlfriend was scared that Anya’s
reappearance in our lives was going to drive a chasm between us,
one we’d only started to fill in recently.

“
Talia, I love you. You
know that, right?”
I asked.

“
Huh? Yeah. I love you,
too.”

She sounded distracted, not
reassured.

“
What’s wrong,
Tals?”

Now
I
was scared. There was something
she didn’t want to tell me, something she worried might be too much
for me to handle.

“
I found her,” Riley called
triumphantly over the comm unit. “She’s on the fifth level of the
auction house, on the west side.”

“
We’ll meet you up there,”
Brand replied.

“
No, I’ll come to you guys.
The elevators require a biometric scan, you won’t be able to come
up on your own. Meet me in the west archway in ten.”

“
We’ll be there.” Talia was
the one who answered this time. “Penny and Frederick are bringing
the first wave of people out now. Outside teams, be prepared for
incoming hostages. Once they’re done with that, we can go for
Kenly. We need them with us as backup.”

“
Affirmative, Agent Lyons.
We’ll put the victims on hovers out of here immediately. All teams
are in position to strike on your command,” Miles
replied.

A chorus of affirmation rang out from
the other strike team leaders.

In my head, Talia spoke
again.

“
Nothing’s wrong. I mean…I
don’t know. I’ll tell you about it as soon as we’re out of here,
okay?”

I wanted to press her for details,
yank the information out of her head if need be. Anything that
scared Talia terrified me. But she had her game face back on and
whatever was bothering her locked tightly away. In case we needed
to fight, I didn’t want to waste the energy we’d both inevitably
exert while wrestling over it. Beating down Talia’s resistance
would leave both of us fatigued. So, reluctantly, I agreed to wait
until later.

“
Be safe,”
I sent.

“
Always,”
she replied.

Via the drones circling Andrew’s Rock,
disguised to look like birds and squirrels, my team watched for our
fellow agents and the Created to exit the auction house.

Two and a half minutes later, Penny,
in her ridiculous yellow dress, came striding across an expansive
field in the back of the auction house with several Created in tow.
Frederick was on her heels with three more of our brethren. Three
minutes behind him, Catherine Canary, Jay Matthews, and their
respective purchases exited the same way.

It was too risky to explain the
situation to the nearly-rescued captives until they were safe on a
UNITED transport hover. Since few, if any, were likely to have
recognized Penny or Frederick, and even less likely to know the
other agents, they believed they were marching towards a future
equivalent to an animal in a zoo.

Only, not one of the new refugees
exuded fear or disdain or even defiance. Most were calm and
relaxed. Evidently, Penny was employing massive amounts of
manipulation to ease their rattled nerves and minds. Combined with
the morphing abilities she was sustaining to alter her appearance,
the girl was nothing short of incredible. And that was not a
compliment I gave out lightly. At least, no to anyone but
Talia.

Even from above, Anya was easily
identifiable. And I was relieved to find her physically unharmed.
She was the only captive that had any clue she was being rescued,
since Anya and Frederick were friends of a sort. Nervous and
twitchy, her emerald eyes darted from side to side, as if expecting
someone to grab her at any second. That gut-consuming acid in my
stomach churned as guilt ate away at my insides. I’d have to find
some way to make this up to her. Hopefully Talia would
understand.

Our undercover agents deposited their
charges into hoverlimos, all manned by UNITED guards. As soon as
the doors were closed, the engines started and they took off. I
held my breath until all three limos were airborne. The tension in
my muscles eased further when each driver reported that they were
safely off the property and headed towards the safe
house.

Once there, the plan was for the new
refugees to regroup and rest before leaving for the islands first
thing tomorrow morning. There had been a lot of debate about
whether to fly them directly to Vault for containment, bypassing
the stopover at Walburton Manor. In the end, we’d decided to take
this path to ease the transition. It was our hope that it would
make it easier for them to enter containment willingly. Personally,
I found that outcome less likely than Henri or Frederick suddenly
developing an interest in chicks. Still, it was worth a shot.
Besides, the less traumatized individuals might prove helpful in
locating other Created. Possibly even choose to help UNITED as
Talia, Penny, and I had done. Again, unlikely, but worth a
shot.

“
We’re heading up to
retrieve Kenly now,” Talia said, via the comm system.

“
Affirmative, Agent Lyons,
we have secured the purchase of one more Created. We will continue
our efforts down here,” Agent Gina Flores replied, her normally
droll tone all business.

I listened through both the comm unit
and Talia’s thoughts as my friends took the longest elevator ride
in recorded history to the fifth floor of the auction house.
Seriously, it was painful. And then, everything changed in the span
of one single heartbeat.

“’
EY,
THERE! WHAT
are yous doing up ‘ere?
This floor is strictly prohibited to buyers!” a guard
shouted.

I did a double-take, glancing from the
unassuming boy standing beside me to his doppelganger at the other
end of the hallway. Riley’s accuracy was eerily precise and
creepily impressive.

The other guards standing sentinel in
the curved hallway turned to stare at our group. Their brief
disorientation over our unexpected appearance gave us the edge.
Just as I was about to feign confusion and pretend our presence was
a silly mistake or thrill-seeking adventure for bored rich people,
Riley fired his tranquilizer gun. Pulling the trigger again and
again without hesitation, he buried darts into the nearest four
guards.

“
So much for subtly,” Brand
groaned, before launching into action.

Bullets or darts, I wasn’t certain
which, flew from the guards’ weapons. Brand used impressive evasive
maneuvers to avoid the projectiles. Producing a small handgun from
a concealed ankle holster, Angus joined Riley in returning our
attackers’ fire. Thankfully, he’d left his post as Henri’s supposed
bodyguard to join our group in anticipation of a situation just
like the one we were facing.

Having no physical weapon and limited
range of mobility in my dress, I went for the obvious: my Talents.
With a sweep of my hand, time seemed to standstill. Bullets and
tranq darts alike froze in midair. In such a confined space, and
with Brand standing so close to the opposition, I had no choice but
to let the projectiles fall harmlessly to the floor. It was
something of a waste, but better than hitting a member of my
team.

One of the guards swore and, stupidly,
turned his gun around so that the muzzle was staring him in the
face. He peered inside the barrel, eyes narrowed as if the weapon
had somehow betrayed him. Causing his weapon to fire at that
precise moment did cross my mind. Instead, I used my telekinesis to
yank not only his weapon free from his hand, but all of the guards’
weapons. Like rats in a maze, the remaining guards panicked and
began running for the exits. The elevator behind me was, of course,
blocked, but that didn’t stop them from charging forward in an
attempt to barrel through our group. These were clearly not the
brightest members of their set. A number of the guards fled in the
opposite direction, so I assumed there was another elevator at the
other end of the curved hallway.