Created (Talented Saga) (4 page)

Frederick returned fire, but apparently I wasn’t the only telekinetic in this fight.
His bullets didn’t reach their targets either. I opened my mind and latched on to the two men I could see. They both fell to their knees, clasping their ears. I knew the pain they were experiencing was horrendous. One curled into the fetal position and writhed in agony. The other met my eyes, his baby blues holding my purple gaze. He reminded me of Donavon.

A sick feeling started in my stomach, rising to my chest and gripping my lungs.
These were TOXIC operatives. I’d already sent so many to their deaths, and now I was staring into this prison guard’s eyes and torturing him. Was I really any better than Mac? Wasn’t I abusing my power as a means to an end?

A trickle of blood leaked between the blue-eyed guard’s fingers from the ears he was cupping.
I did the most merciful thing I could think of: I took over his mind and made him pass out.

The other two guards I’d felt moved into view as Frederick and I passed through the doorway.
Recognition slapped me across the face: one of the guards was Desmond.

I’d met Desmond the previous week.
Erik had introduced us. They had been friends at school. Rage consumed me. Knowing that Desmond was one of Erik’s jailers made me physically ill. I charged past Frederick as gunfire erupted in the corridor. I threw the bullets aside and let loose an inhuman scream as I launched myself through the air at Desmond.

“Tal, no!” Frederick screamed behind me.

I ignored his plea. In that moment nothing mattered but avenging the betrayal. When my hands collided with Desmond’s chest, they were actually paws. I had morphed into the wolf. Primal instincts took over, and I snapped at his face and neck. I should’ve been more concerned about the other guard, but I wasn’t.

Desmond was strong, and recovered quickly after his initial shock at seeing me morph.
He threw me off of him. My back collided with something hard, a wall, I thought. Pain shot up my spine, and stars danced across my vision. I raised a hand to my head and realized that I’d changed back to human.

Desmond advanced towards me, his gun pointed at my head.
I froze. Time seemed to stand still, silence deafened my ears. My eyes narrowed on the barrel, and suddenly I was back in the basement of Crane’s Nevada home. I couldn’t think straight. Part of me knew what I had to do, but my muscles didn’t want to work. Instead, I sat frozen as an ice sculpture.

The crack of gunpowder shattered the silence, and I screamed: a bloodcurdling, window-shattering scream.
Pain shot out in a starburst from my side. My hands flew to the wound, hoping to staunch the flow of blood. I continued screaming, despite the raw feeling in my throat.

Strong hands pulled mine away from my wound.

“You’re okay, Talia,” a voice whispered soothingly in my ear. “You’re okay.”

I looked down at my side.
The material was still intact. No blood soaked through my suit. I looked at my shaking hands. They were dry too.

“You’re okay,” Crane repeated, pulling me to my feet.

I peered over Crane’s shoulder to where Janelle, Marcel, and Jared stood. Marcel was scratched and bleeding, and had what looked like fang marks on the side of his throat. Jared had added a lot more bruises to the collection I’d given him. And Janelle was favoring her left leg. But they were still alive. I was shocked by how relieved that made me.

Frederick crossed from where he’d been kneeling next to Desmond’s body.
“He’s dead,” he said flatly.

Get a grip, Talia, I chastised myself.
That lapse in composure had nearly cost me my life. Had Crane hesitated before firing, I’d be dead. I shook off the thought. No time for what-ifs. Move forward.

Erik was so close now.
Just as I’d told Crane I would, I felt him. The overabundance of power he’d been given was calling to me.
“I’m coming, Erik,”
I sent, just in case he was listening.

“There should be a stairwell ahead on the left,” Crane said.
He had out a portable communicator and was consulting the prison’s blueprints. “Talia, can you tell whether there are more guards nearby?”

I took a deep breath and concentrated.
There was a lot of brain activity in Echo section. Most of it in the lower levels, though. Above us, there were only a handful of minds. Five, maybe six or seven. It was hard to be sure since the signals I was getting were fuzzy, like the reception was bad or my antenna needed fine-tuning. But one signal came through louder and clearer than all the rest: Erik.

My heart was so light I felt like it would float right out of my chest. He was alive.
I started to run in the direction of the stairwell Crane had indicated.

“Talia?” Crane called after me.

I didn’t slow. Erik was drawing me to him like a magnet, and I wouldn’t have been able to change direction had I wanted to. But I didn’t want to. All I wanted was to see him, touch him, hold him.

“Talia?” Crane called again.

Four sets of feet were running down the hallway after me.

“No guards,” I called over my shoulder.
“I’m pretty sure it’s only prisoners from this level up. The brain patterns feel like the people are drugged or something.”

The door to the stairwell was exactly where Crane thought it should be.
I jogged up the two flights with Crane and the others trailing close behind. The closer I got to Erik’s cell, the stronger the pull was. Exceptionally powerful talents always had this effect on me. Truthfully, they had this effect on a lot of people – talented or not. But I’d never felt a pull this strong. It was like I was a fish who’d taken the bait and was being reeled in, hook, line, and sinker.

Part of me knew this attraction to Erik wasn’t normal, and that fact should’ve scared me.
Being a Mimic, he didn’t emit an essence the way I did. It was only because Mac had injected him with so many talent signatures that he did now. I tried not to think of the implications of that.

At the landing, I reached for where the door handle should have been, and came up empty.
The door was one solid sheet of metal. No window and no handle. Next to the door, at roughly eye-level for someone of normal height, was a retinal scanner. The stairwells were designed so anyone could enter, but only authorized personnel could exit.

“Shit,” Jared swore.

“Maybe it will work for Natalia?” Marcel suggested.

“My clearance wasn’t high enough before I left.
No way that door will open for me now,” I said, trying not to sound as defeated as I felt.

“If it does, we’re walking into a trap,” Janelle pointed out.

I glanced over my shoulder and met Crane’s dark gaze. Contemplative was the only way to describe his expression. Curious, I swiped his mind. He was mulling over our limited options. He dismissed one idea, discarding it into the improbable pile. I, however, thought it was genius, and wanted to make an attempt.

“I can do it,”
I sent him confidently.

Crane’s thoughts were doubtful, which irritated me until I realized why.
In his eyes, I was still the little girl who’d witnessed her parents’ murders. My irritation dimmed a little.

“Ian, I can do it,”
I repeated, more forcefully this time. I also didn’t give him the opportunity to disagree.

Exhaling, I plucked an image from my mental database – one I knew as well as my own reflection.
Eyes the color of the sky on a cloudless day filled my mind. I concentrated all of my energy on duplicating those baby blue eyes – Donavon’s eyes – down to the minutest detail. The morph was small, so slight that only a faint pressure in my eye sockets told me it was taking place.

I stood on tiptoes in front of the retinal scanner, and tried not to blink while a thin, red beam scanned from left to right and back again across my eyeball.
At first, nothing happened. My heart sank. God, I really sucked at this morphing thing. Then, to my astonishment, the airlock released and the door swung outward.

“Impressive,” Janelle whistled when I turned to grin stupidly at the group.
The victory was small, but outsmarting Mac felt empowering. And Janelle was right. The morph might have been small, but it was impressive, particularly since the talent was new to me. Human to human morphs were, for whatever reason, extremely difficult for most Morphers. In fact, I didn’t personally know any who’d managed it.

I blinked three times in rapid succession, and the pressure returned for a split second while my irises darkened to their normal deep purple.

Strangely, there was no one standing on the opposite side of the door. No guards. No Mac. Their notable absence sent shivers down my spine. Did I dare hope we’d gotten lucky?

The room beyond the door was small and circular.
Five doors lined the walls, and yet another hallway branched off at an angle. Immediately Frederick ran to one of the doors.

“He’s in here,” he said excitedly, tugging on the handle.

This one didn’t budge either. But there were no biometric security measures in place here. It was an old-fashioned lock and key door. Of course, we didn’t have a key, but that was not necessary.

I stepped forward to join Frederick and concentrated my energy.
Within seconds the door exploded. Splinters of wood rained down on me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t hesitate. I burst into the small stone room. I recognized it immediately; it was the same room I’d seen in the drawing Alex had made while we were at the Underground station in D.C. My eyes darted around the darkened space, seeking out Erik’s dark hair. A strangled yelp that sounded much like a dying animal, escaped my lips when my gaze landed on a small cot pushed against the back wall. Equal parts relief, joy, and fury filled me.

Erik was lying with an arm flung over his head, the visible skin dark with a mixture of filth and bruises.
Dirty hair hung in clumps over his face, shielding it from view. He didn’t so much as stir at the onslaught of light and visitors to his cell. Intuitively, I knew he was alive. I felt him, felt his off-the-charts brain activity. Yet, it wasn’t until his finger twitched that I truly believed I wasn’t staring at his corpse. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I didn’t wipe them away. I didn’t care if Crane or whoever else saw me crying and thought me weak. I’d never been so happy in my life.

No one had followed me inside.
Whether this was out of respect or they worried I’d lose it if he was dead and didn’t want to be in such confined quarters with me should that happen, I didn’t know or care. I heard the opening and closing of doors and muffled grunts from the circular room, and paid no attention. Whatever was happening out there no longer concerned me.

Slowly I approached the bed so as not to startle him.
I knelt beside it. Gently as possible, I brushed the matted black hair back from his forehead. I nearly swallowed my tongue when I saw his face. A jagged cut ran the length of his brow. One eye was so swollen that it looked like a golf ball protruded from the socket. His bottom lip was torn completely through.

Tears poured down my cheeks, blurring the battered face that was still beautiful, if only to me.
I ran my fingertips over his cheek, pressing my lips to his temple. I stroked his hair and moaned his name. The wounds will heal, I reminded myself. At least, these physical ones would.

“Am I dreaming?
Because if so, this is the worst dream yet. Usually you’re naked.”

“Erik!” I exclaimed, pulling back to look at him.
His better eye opened, a slit of turquoise peeking out from under the swollen lid.

“
Shhh, don’t talk, Tals. The good ones never last long,” he mumbled, managing a grotesque imitation of a smile. He put an arm around me and weakly tried pulling me onto the bed with him.

“Erik, you need to get up!” I yelled.
“We have to go.”

“Just let me touch hold,” he begged.
“I never get to hold you.”

He thought I was a dream, or a vision, or a hallucination.
I had to make him understand. I needed to get him out of here. Had his face been in better shape, I might have slapped him into consciousness. As it was, I worried that would only injure him further.

“Erik, look at me,”
I demanded, taking control of his mind now that he was fully awake. He obeyed, staring at me with one unfocused eye.
“I’m here to get you, but I can’t carry you. Can you walk?”
I didn’t need for him to answer; I already knew he couldn’t. Somewhere in his head he knew that at least one of his legs was broken.

“Frederick!” I screamed.
I needed help. Erik couldn’t walk, and I couldn’t support his weight alone. “Ian! Jared!” Honestly, I didn’t care who came to my aid as long as someone did.

“I’m here, Tal,” Frederick called from the ruined doorway.

“Help me!”

I heard footsteps, and then hands pulled me away from Erik.
I looked up: Crane.

“We’ll get him.
Go help the others,” Crane told me.

Frederick and Crane grabbed Erik under the armpits.
I arranged Erik’s arms around their shoulders. His eyes had closed again, but he mumbled something incoherently. I put my ear close to his mouth.