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Authors: Sophie Davis

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BOOK: Created (Talented Saga)
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“Let’s just focus on getting Erik back for now. Okay?”

Frederick looked like he wanted to say more, but let it go. He nodded. “Sure. Of course. That’s what’s important.”

After that we didn’t speak. I wasn’t sure whether my lips could form words. My tongue felt too thick in my mouth. One of my legs started to shake, bobbing up and down anxiously. I clasped my hands in my lap, twisting my fingers vigorously to keep them busy. Resting my head against the headrest behind me, I tried to push all thoughts of
Frederick and my parents to the back of my mind. I focused on Erik and the fight that awaited our arrival at Tramblewood.

This is really happening, I thought. I am really doing this. A confrontation with Mac was possible, likely even. I didn’t know if I was ready. Sitting here, armed with more weapons than I had fingers to count them on, I doubted I’d ever be.

Earlier, three levels below ground in the weapons room at Coalition Headquarters, Captain Brand Meadows – Crane’s second-in-command – had asked me if I was willing to kill the prison guards. I’d said yes, because it was true. Given the choice between me and them, I’d choose me every time. Mac, though? I wanted to believe there would be no hesitation on my part. I wanted to believe that I was strong enough to stare into his gray eyes and extinguish the life that burned within. Deep down, buried beneath the bravado that I wore like armor, I knew that wasn’t true. He’d raised me, been a surrogate father to me. I’d loved and trusted him. His betrayal should’ve made killing him easy, but it didn’t. I hated the part of me that mourned the loss of his presence in my life already. Could I make that loss permanent? Final? Only time would tell.

“We’re about a thirty minutes out.”

I must have fallen asleep, because his voice startled me. I rubbed my eyes with two balled up fists.

“Right, okay,” I replied sluggishly, peering up into Crane’s iridescent blue-black eyes. He returned my gaze with a blank stare. He had his game face on. “You’re leading our team, right?”

We’d already been over this, of course, but I felt the need to say something, and nothing more intelligible came to mind.

“I am,” Crane confirmed. “Brand has team two.”

Automatically, I growled at the sound of Brand’s name. Crane pretended like he hadn’t heard me, but a nearly imperceptible tightening of the skin around the corners of his mouth told me he had.

Being that Brand was so young – not even thirty yet – it had surprised me to learn how heavily Crane relied on Brand’s opinions, how much he trusted the younger man, how much power he’d given him. From the Coalition soldiers, Brand commanded respect and generally reeked of authority, which probably had a lot to do with why so many of many of them disliked me. Our brief acquaintance had begun just after I’d foolishly attacked Jared, right around the same time I landed face first on the ground. Things only went downhill from there. Brand ordered the soldiers to take me inside the cottage to some place he referred to as “the cage.” Deciding that a cage sounded a lot like a cell – exactly what it turned out to be – I started to struggle again. For my efforts, I was rewarded with a syringe full of sedatives. When I finally regained consciousness some several hours later, I was, indeed, in a cage. Brand had made good on his threat.

From there our antagonistic relationship progressed, well, antagonistically. Snarky verbal exchanges escalated to pointed barbs, which then led to physical altercations. More than once, Crane or Penny had intervened before either or both of us inflicted an injury more long-lasting than a bruise or scrape. But it was only a matter of time until one of us – me – snapped. With the creation drug coursing through my veins, infecting my bloodstream, filling me with unnatural power, I was like a live landmine, and Brand had one foot poised and ready to set me off.

Today, though, we had a truce. The rescue mission was too dangerous for the two of us to be at odds. Crane had helped to keep the peace by assigning Brand and me to different teams, different hoverplanes, and even different missions once inside Tramblewood. My team was
responsible for rescuing Erik who, according to Crane’s spies, was being held separately from the general prison population. While we were doing that, Brand’s team would be freeing the soldiers taken hostage during the Coalition’s attack on Rittenhouse. So, if all went well, our tenuous truce wouldn’t be tested.

“You want to go over the plan one more time?” Frederick asked, drawing me back to the present.

I shook my head no. Brand had repeated it in our last meeting, over dinner the previous night, and again on the ride to the hover hangar. During the meeting, he even called upon a male soldier to repeat parts of it when Brand caught him playing with his communicator. The guy was more anal than my teachers at school. And, thanks to his unrequited crush on Penny, my limited down time at Coalition Headquarters was spent in Brand’s company. Spending time with my best friend also meant spending time with the biggest pain in my ass.

The fighter jets would be the first wave of attack. Once they took out the four guard towers that ringed the prison’s perimeter, the transport planes would be clear to fly in. Both teams were to repel onto the bridge that separated Echo section – the auxiliary building where Erik was housed – from the main facility. At that point our team would head towards Echo section and Erik, while Brand’s team would go in search of the Coalition’s imprisoned soldiers.

While only twenty people, twenty-three if you included Crane, Brand, and I, had been in the tactical meeting, over thirty soldiers had boarded the two transport hoverplanes. Not all of them were going to be part of the ground attack, though. Each transport hoverplane had a five-person medical team in place and ready to tend to the injured.

“Come up front with me.” Crane gestured to the cockpit.

I pressed a large green button in the center of the safety harness. Simultaneously all of the buckles sprang open and I was free to wiggle my way out of the contraption. With Crane already on his way to the cockpit, I shoved the harness upward and hurried after him.

The aerodynamics on the plane were amazing, the flight smooth, and navigating the walkway between the metal benches was easy. Lucky for me since my legs were like hot rubber and even the slightest bit of turbulence would’ve sent me sprawling.

The cockpit was a gleaming silver mobile command center with enough blinking lights in red, blue, green, and yellow to give me a headache. Two chairs, one for the pilot and one for the co-pilot, were in the very front behind a semicircular dash and rounded plexiglass windshield. The dash was enormous and fitted with a barrage of screens and electronic dials and gauges. I recognized the navigation system and the radar, but had no idea what the other gadgets or screens were for.

On both the far left and far right sides of the cabin were four seats – two facing forward directly across from two facing backward – with a square table in the center. All were empty. In the very center of the cabin were two swivel chairs and a flat screen monitor.

Crane slid into one of the swivel chairs and tapped the center of the screen. I stood next to him, peering over his shoulder. The monitor hummed to life, a blue background with two white boxes appeared on screen. Crane pressed both of his index fingers to the white boxes, holding them firmly in place for a three count. “Authorized” blinked white on the blue background before quickly being replaced by a blueprint of Tramblewood. Crane tapped the screen twice, and a holographic image of the prison shot towards us. This one was a little different than the one Brand had shown us in our strategy meetings. It had pulsing red dots crawling all over the place like fire ants.

“Heat signatures,” Crane explained. “Each dot indicates one person.”

“We’re still like 200 miles away!” I exclaimed. TOXIC had similar technology, but nothing with quite so far a range.

“See how some of the dots are brighter than others?” Crane asked. He pointed to one blindingly bright dot that nearly burned my retinas, it was so intense.

“Yeah,” I said uneasily.

“The software searches for talent-related power surges. The stronger the Talent, the brighter the signal. It’s able to locate exceptionally strong Talents from hundreds of miles away. This area is sparsely populated with very little interference, so even weak Talents register on here.”

“This one,” he continued, tapping that insanely bright dot again, “is most likely Erik.”

I swallowed hard. Right. Erik’s dot was glowing like a damned supernova because he, like Penny, had been injected with multiple talent signatures. His power dwarfed that of those around him. I prayed he’d be able to control that power, instead of letting it control him.

When I awoke, locked in that stupid cage, the accommodations had been irrelevant because I’d heard
her
voice. Penny. My best friend, and the person I’d condemned to death. Only her execution, the sentence she received for spying for the Coalition, was never carried out.

Flanked by her uncle, Crane, and the omnipresent Brand, Penny had explained how even before she’d been sentenced, Mac decided she was too valuable to kill. Mimics were rare, and he didn’t want to waste the opportunity to experiment on one.

TOXIC’s medical research team, under Mac’s orders, had been trying to improve the creation drug – a highly unstable, illegal drug that allowed the non-talented to become talented. Or, in Penny’s case – in my case – the talented to become
more
talented. The problem with the drug was that it wore off too quickly. According to what Mac told Penny, usually it was only a matter of days before the talents started to fade, and within a week they’d be gone completely. Some recipients displayed a low level of talent for months, and in rare cases years, after the initial injection. But in general, frequent injections were necessary for the recipient to remain talented.

Apparently having a Mimic, who had the natural ability to replicate other’s talents, at his disposal, gave Mac the brilliant idea to inject her with the creation drug. Unfortunately, the idea was brilliant and Penny’s created abilities didn’t fade. Even now, two months after the original injection, her created talents were exceptionally strong. That was when Mac decided the real problem with the creation drug was that it was missing an ingredient – Mimic blood.

Losing Penny as a guinea pig and blood donor must have been a huge blow to Mac’s pet project, until Erik fell into his lap. Erik and I “kidnapping” Alex had provided Mac with cause to arrest us, and he’d done just that to Erik. Now, Erik served as Mac’s number one test subject and donor. Beating my whereabouts out of Erik was just a bonus for Mac and his cronies.

Crane’s near certainty that Mac was using this new version of the creation drug was part of the reason he’d agreed to rescue Erik. The sooner we removed Erik, and his Mimic blood, from the equation, the fewer people Mac could inject. I found the practicality of his motivations reassuring. Had Crane claimed altruism, I’d have been suspicious. I both understood and appreciated his pragmatism.

“For now, he’s exactly where my inside man said he’d be. It’s possible the guards will try and move him after the attack begins, but let’s hope not. If they do, we might have a difficult time locating him again. With Frederick the task will be easier.”

Crane’s words broke into my mental musings.

“I’ll be able to track him,” I said firmly. “Our connection is strong. I’ll feel him the moment we land.” At least our connection used to be strong. Would all those chemicals pumping through his veins change that?

Crane gave me an appraising look, his eyes zeroing in on mine. He looked as though he wanted to say something, maybe ask me a question, but wasn’t sure if now was the right time. I forced my breathing to remain even. Without reading his mind, I knew what he wanted to ask. Crane wanted to know if I could track him.

After one of his men shot me, I’d transferred the pain to Crane. Our minds had become so intertwined that a strong connection was inevitable. He was extremely vulnerable where I was concerned. It worked both ways, though. I might have an all-access pass to his thoughts, but he also had one to mine.

“Good,” Crane said finally. “Between you and Frederick, we’ll be covered.”

Crane paused and a ghost of a smile crossed his lips. I waited patiently to see what powerful thought had finally cracked his stone-faced expression.

“Since you arrived at my cottage, I’ve tasked several of my people on this side of the border with calling in ‘Talia sightings’,” he said.

“Talia sightings?” I repeated weakly. I did
not
like the sound of that.

Facing forward in his chair, he said, “Director McDonough is offering an attractive reward for information leading to your capture and return to TOXIC.” Crane tapped an icon on the lower left side of the screen, and a news bulletin replaced the image of Tramblewood. “ALERT” was printed across the top with a picture of me underneath. “The way I figure, the farther he thinks you are from Tramblewood, the more likely he’ll be to let his guard down. Don’t misunderstand; he’s prepared for a rescue attempt. But not one of this magnitude. He’s arrogant. Even now that he’s lost you, he hasn’t anticipated you coming to me for help.”

Crane’s words barely registered. I was too busy gaping at the wanted poster on the screen.

Below my picture were the words, “Rogue Talent. Believed to be highly dangerous and possibly unstable. Do Not Approach. Contact TOXIC Director Danbury McDonough if seen.”

BOOK: Created (Talented Saga)
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