Created (Talented Saga) (8 page)

“How did they find us?” I asked, practically screaming to be heard over the cacophony of blasts and shouts.

“They put a tracker in Erik,” Crane yelled back. “Medics did a body scan on the plane and didn’t see one. TOXIC masked it well. Dr. Eicher found it during surgery. The attack began minutes later.”

A tracker? Damn it, why hadn’t I thought of that? Mac had anticipated my rescue attempt. Of course he had, that was Mac – his contingency plans had contingency plans. Even if he’d been 99.9 percent sure I’d fail, he’d have wanted a backup plan. Implanting Erik with a tracker had been that backup plan.

Fortunately I had little time to dwell on my own naivety.

Ten feet in front of me, the earth opened up, sending a cloud of dirt and chemicals flying. In favor of freeing my hands to hold the weapon, I no longer had the makeshift mask of my scrub top secured over my mouth and nose. Immediately my eyes began to sting, and my lungs burned liked I’d swallowed hot coals. I doubled over to retch at the same time the wind was knocked out of me from behind. Those spiky blades of grass I’d noticed earlier sliced my cheeks and arms, impaling me like hundreds of tiny swords.

For a second time in as many seconds, the air raced out of my lungs as something heavy landed on top of me.

“You’re a walking bullseye,”
Crane sent.

I had no time for a smartass comeback. No sooner had I started breathing again, Crane had me on my feet and on the move. My knees ached, and my lungs felt like they were going to burst free from my chest. I covered my mouth and nose with the bottom of the scrub top, using it to filter the acrid air once again. Squinting, I tried to get my bearings in the haze of chemical smoke

“Do you know where we’re going?”
I sent Crane.

“Keep your eyes shut and trust me,”
he sent back.

A zipping sound from above caught my attention. I looked up just as more black-clad operatives dropped from the sky in front of us. My stomach roiled when I realized we were about to be surrounded. I gripped Crane’s hand tighter as a black circle formed around us. Slowly, the circle began to shrink. Like they’d choreographed the routine, the operatives moved inwards as one.

“Calm,”
Crane sent. It was a warning of sorts, maybe more of reminder. Crane was reminding me not to lose my cool.

“Always,”
I sent back. Grace under pressure was in my skillset, even if I rarely used it.

All around us, muffled voices commanded us to “stop,” “drop your weapons,” and “surrender.” Neither of us moved.

Three large figures materialized directly in front of us as if they’d been conjured by some invisible sorcerer. Crane did move now. He moved his finger to the trigger of his gun and pulled. The operatives’ protective gear bore the brunt of the attack, but Crane was an excellent shot. Three well-placed bullets in their throats had our assailants immobilized, permanently.

I sucked in a sharp breath.

“It’s us or them, Talia,” Crane shouted and charged towards the three-man-wide hole in the circle.

I followed without thinking, trusting Ian Crane to lead the way to safety. I had to jump over the dead operatives. Nausea swept through me, and I covered my mouth with my hand and gagged. Thick, blonde hair was sticking out from beneath one of the helmets. No, please not
Donavon, I prayed. I crouched to pull the helmet free, but Crane yanked my arm so hard I thought it might dislodge from the socket.

“No time,”
he hissed in my head.

Regretfully, I glanced over my shoulder. Not Donavon, I assured myself. Just like with Erik, my mental connection to Donavon was solid. If he was here, I’d feel him. If he were dead, I’d know.

The air was less contaminated in the mini forest of trees. I could see more clearly, and what I saw was a beautiful sight: an operative-free path to escape crafts. I exhaled with relief. The odds of survival just tipped in our favor. Operatives were pursuing us from behind, but the trees afforded us some cover. A rag-tag group of men and women were stationed at the gangplank of the hoverplane, increasing our chances of making it out of this alive by firing on our would-be attackers. None of them were as good a shot as Crane, but their efforts were slowing Mac’s operatives. I could feel the gap between us and them widening.

Fifty feet until we reached the hovercraft. Hope of making it out of this nightmare alive made my feet move faster. Forty feet. Screams of the dying assaulted my ears, and, as guilty as it made
me feel, I prayed the pleas were coming from the lips of TOXIC operatives. Thirty feet. I heard the soft hum of a hovercraft overhead, and I braced myself for another earth-moving explosion. Twenty feet. I stumbled forward, fighting gravity to remain on my feet.

“Get on the plane!”
Crane screamed.

I glanced to my right, where Crane had been running alongside me, and realized he was no longer there. He’d stopped, and was now taking aim at the newest wave of operatives repelling from above.

“Go!”

I hesitated. I was so close to the escape hover. Ten feet now and I’d be at the gangplank. No, I decided, no way I was leaving him behind. I turned to join Crane.

“Natalia Lyons.” The sound of my name reverberated through the air with physical force, drowning out all other noise.

I stopped dead in my tracks. Slowly, I raised my face to see the TOXIC attack plane looming over me like an alien ship ready to beam me aboard.

“On your knees, Operative Lyons,” the same voice boomed through the loudspeaker. A spotlight snared me in its beam and I fought to breathe.

“We have you surrounded. Surrender now and we will let the others go,” the voice said.

Suddenly images of tents aflame with blue-green fire and bloody civilians pleading for their lives at the feet of uncaring operatives filled my head. Innocents are dying, I thought. I saw a line of men, women, and children lying on their stomachs as an executioner claimed one victim after the next. Guilt twisted my intestines into a pretzel. My fault, I thought, this is my fault.

“Only you can end this,” the voice told me, only I wasn’t sure whether the voice was in my head.

“Fight it, Talia,”
a second voice commanded. This one was definitely in my head, and it was definitely Crane’s.
“You’re stronger.”

Stronger than what? I thought, as, slowly, I lowered the gun I still held in my hands to the ground in front of my toes. Feet, I now realized, that were sticky with my blood. I almost laughed. I’d forgotten to remind myself not to run around barefoot.

I raised my hands, palms out. Images that I’d seen in Alex’s visions invaded my head. Except they were slightly different than before – maybe from a different vantage point?

“Talia, don’t!”
Crane again. He sounded angry. No, not angry, I corrected myself, scared.

I was too numb to be scared. Would Mac torture me the same way he’d tortured Erik? Would I become his newest test subject? None of that mattered. Only I could end this standoff. My freedom for countless innocent lives. Seemed like a fair price.

I opened my mouth to say the words,
I surrender.

Chapter Five

Before breath passed my lips, there was an explosion that sounded like cymbals crashing – inside my head. Then, it felt like fingers were digging into my skull, down through bone and muscle to rip my brain in two. Flashes of bright golden lights collided with one another behind my eyeballs, and spilled sparks across my vision.

Cradling my head between my palms, I fought the excruciating pain threatening to consume me. Wave after wave washed over me, and I pushed back harder and harder with each one. More golden lights popped and fizzled behind my eyes. I shoved with all of my will, finally expelling both the pain, and the cause of it, from my head.

I blinked, relieved to find the blinding lights were gone, but alarmed to find myself standing in the middle of a dense, white cloud. I blinked again, and the world started to come into focus.

There was no sea of death or hordes of operatives claiming victims right and left, as I’d expected. Gone were the trees, the hoverplanes, and Crane, replaced by a large sterile room that reminded me of the cafeteria at school.

Young, wide-eyed children, clothed in hospital gowns and strange paper booties, formed row after row of perfect lines in front of ten evenly-spaced tables. One by one, the children were called forward and directed to insert their arms into plastic tubes similar to the one Cadence had around her arm.

Instinctively I knew that they were being injected with the creation drug. Not just one injection either. The tubes were lined with needles, each attached to a vial containing a different talent signature. After the injection, each child was escorted from the room by an armed guard. A skinny girl with milk chocolate skin and eyes the color of sunflowers passed in front of me with her guard. When our gazes met, hers began to glow. Her nose and lips appeared to melt before my eyes, and her square teeth became jagged points. Only her head morphed, which alone was odd and unnatural. But the truly disturbing part was that the animal-form was unrecognizable. She had reptilian eyes over an avian beak and her skin was leathery and gray like an elephant. She snarled and spit in my direction, and then vomited yellow goo.

I was nearly knocked off of my feet by the fist of agony that struck the interior of my skull.

Only you can save them. TOXIC will let them go once we have you. Surrender now. Join us.

“Talia!”

My name ripped through me, tearing me from the vision of the children and blotting out the silky voice urging me to capitulate.

I felt the intrusion immediately. Someone was in my head. Someone was scrambling my brain like an egg. Someone was manipulating my emotions, playing on my vulnerabilities. I wasn’t the only Mind Manipulator alive today, but I was the only one with enough power to control another Manipulator. Or so I’d been led to believe.

I slammed my mental walls into place, evicting the interloper from my head. Now, more than anything, I was furious. TOXIC had just tried to beat me at my own game.

“You have until the count of ten,” the disembodied voice informed me. This time the message was definitely not in my head.

I met Crane’s dark gaze as he took down another of his opponents. I didn’t need to hear his order; the communication came through loud and clear in his expression: Run.

“Ten. Nine. Eight …”

Indecision glued my feet firmly in place. Not because I was still considering surrender, but because I didn’t want to leave Crane.

“Talia!” a male voice screamed a second time.

I swiveled around. A tall figure was charging towards me from behind the escape hovercraft. Henri. One of the operatives surrounding Crane turned his attention on Henri, following his movements with the barrel of his gun. Terror ripped through me, shattering the one-dimensional world that I’d been living in since I heard my name. Henri appeared blind to the threats as he sprinted to reach me, and I knew that even if I called a warning it would be too late.

Without thinking, I summoned the gun from where it lay at my feet. My finger found the trigger as if pulled there by a magnet. I leveled it at the operative about to shoot Henri, and fired. I was too late. Henri jerked wildly as the bullet lodged into his shoulder, and he fell to the ground.

“NO!!” I shrieked. My feet moved of their own volition. My only thought was reaching Henri. I pulled the trigger over and over again, emptying the clip into the man who had just shot my friend. The fury that I’d felt moments earlier was replaced by a blinding rage. Wind whipped my hair free from its ponytail as I knelt down beside Henri. Gusts of air swirled around where I sat, tearing nearby operatives’ weapons from their vice-like grips. The closest operative stumbled back, throwing his arm across his face like a shield. He wasn’t the only one, either. Crane’s attackers were caught in my windstorm.

Henri had his hand pressed against the wound, blood seeping through his splayed fingers. I gently pulled his hand free to assess the damage. I gasped when I saw the jagged edges of the bullet hole. His shoulder was a bloody, fleshy mess. I wanted to look away from the grotesque sight, but I didn’t. I swallowed the rising bile, and pressed my hand to Henri’s shoulder.

“You’re going to be okay,” I promised him, nodding vigorously as if that would somehow make the statement more true.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” Henri replied through gritted teeth. His face was ashen in the floodlights of the plane overhead. The winds spiraling around us were keeping any further attacks at bay, cocooning us in a torrent of flying dirt and rocks.

“We need to get you to the plane,” I told him, helping him to his feet.

Henri placed the hand of his good arm on my shoulder and pushed himself to a stand. I kept us safely ensconced in the funnel cloud as we moved towards the belly of the waiting hover. When we were only a couple of feet away, I let go of the winds. Henri stumbled forward as several people moved to help him aboard. I knew that I should go too, but I also knew that the disembodied voice from the plane overhead was right. We were outnumbered and outgunned. The likelihood of escape was diminishing by the heartbeat.

Invigorated by the blood still boiling in my veins, I focused on Crane’s attackers. I latched onto their minds, bending and manipulating their wills to mine. The reaction was almost instantaneous. All three dropped to their knees, then crumpled to ground like robots whose plugs have been pulled.

“Ian, come on!” I called to Crane.

He hesitated, and I thought for a minute that he might take the opportunity to kill the operatives in cold blood. But he didn’t. He ran to join me instead.

“Operative Lyons, we will be forced to shoot the hovercraft down if you board it,” the disembodied voice declared. I didn’t know whether they would follow through with that threat, but I wasn’t willing to gamble with so many innocent lives.

“Come on, Talia,” Crane said, trying to drag me the last several feet to the gangplank.

“Get on the plane, Ian,” I replied calmly.

“Whatever you’re considering doing, don’t.”

“Get on the plane,” I repeated. When he still appeared hesitant, I added, “I have no intention of surrendering.” Dread bubbled up inside of me at what I was about to do. Us or them, I reminded myself. Definitely us.

I summoned the images of Erik battered and bleeding; Erik being tortured; the horrible wound in Henri’s shoulder; Cadence lying on the cot; Randy Choi’s emaciated body. I thought about Penny and the flashbacks she’d been experiencing. Mac had damaged her mind. And then he’d taken the fragments and smashed them for good measure. All the psychological glue in the world might not make Penny’s mind whole again.

I didn’t try to control my emotions. I let the anger and hatred engulf me, turning my emotions into physical beings.

Fat raindrops pelted my face, plastering my hair into a helmet on my head. The wind gusts were deafening, blocking out the final countdown from above. Energy coursed through my veins until the power became too much and it broke through my skin and the suit to form a pulsing aura outlining my body. I felt wild and alive and invincible. In that instant I truly understand why Gretchen had warned me against abusing my talents. The power was addicting.

The first bolt of lightning struck the tail of the overhead craft, and a chunk fell to earth in a smoldering heap of twisted metal. I could envision the pilot fighting for control of the spinning hoverplane. The second bolt struck the nose, and the floodlights winked out of existence like a giant beast closing his eyes. The plane dipped dangerously low on the left side until it was ninety degrees off center.

I felt Crane’s physical presence behind me. He was smart enough not to try to force his way into my mind. His light touch on my arm barely registered through the suit, but the nervous tension he was projecting came through like a national news broadcast alert. The lives of the TOXIC operatives on the hovercraft that was plummeting at record speed were inconsequential to Crane. He preferred causalities. They sent a message: the Coalition was serious. What worried Ian Crane was how their deaths would affect me, particularly since I’d be the one responsible. After I came down from my power high, he believed I’d regret crashing the plane.

I didn’t want to kill the operatives aboard. Well, maybe the one who’d made my head his playground, but not the others. Guilt was already starting to eat away at my gut. So many people had died in the last twenty-four hours. There was no need to add to the death total.

“They won’t be able to chase us,” Crane said. “Let’s go before reinforcements show up.”

The TOXIC plane sank lower and lower as I finally followed Crane up the gangplank.

The doors were closing as we passed through, and without warning, the hoverplane launched skyward. I flew backwards into the metal doors, spine first. The sharp burst of pain made me instantly more alert. The main bay of the hoverplane came into focus. Pained whimpers and frightened ramblings met my ears. Fire and smoke, chemicals and gunpowder, blood and sickness, clogged my nostrils and I fought the bile pushing its way up my esophagus. Everywhere I looked, soldiers and civilians alike were patching bullet wounds, splinting broken limbs, and applying cooling creams to varying degrees of burns.

“Come on, Talia,” Crane said gently as he gestured towards the front of the hoverplane.

The craft was older than the ones I’d flown on while with TOXIC and far shabbier than the hoverplane that had brought us to Gatlinburg. Time and exposure to the elements had allowed the metal walls to rust in places, and a grayish putty-like substance had been used to plug the holes. Loops of cracked leather served as handholds to help navigate the wide aisle between two rows of scratched benches. Many of the safety harnesses were frayed or torn and some were missing altogether.

Turbulence and poorly-maintained equipment made the flight bumpy. Being so short, I couldn’t reach the handholds and had to use Crane to steady myself and keep from falling on the other passengers littering the aisle.

As the anger and fury died down, I started to feel weak and shaky and in desperate need of juice to up my blood sugar. Expending more power than I had to give had exhausted me. Black spots dotted my vision, and I blinked them away.

Just a couple more hours, I promised myself. Once we make it to the cottage, you’ll be able to rest.

Near the cockpit I noticed Henri wedged into the small corner between the end of the bench and the wall separating the two areas of the hoverplane. His eyes were closed and his face was a sickly shade of green.

“Get me a first aid kit,” I said to Crane. He nodded and left to find one without comment.

I sank down on my knees in front of Henri, and smoothed his sweat-dampened hair back from his forehead. “How ya doing?” I asked, even though I knew it was a stupid question. Talking was always a good distraction.

A ghost of a smile flitted across his dry, cracked lips, but he didn’t speak. The hand he was using to apply pressure to his wound was streaked brown and red with blood and dirt. I feared an infection was in his future. I looked down at my own hands, which were also caked with grime. Better not add to the risk, I thought. Instead, I summoned energy from my nearly-tapped reserves and absorbed as much of Henri’s pain as I could bear.

“Did they get Erik out?” he asked, his lips barely parting as he spoke.

“He was one of the first people evacuated,” I replied and relaxed a little with the knowledge. At least Erik was safe, unless of course that plane had been shot down. I didn’t let myself dwell on the thought; I had to remain optimistic – the only thing keeping me together was the belief that at least Erik was out of TOXIC’s reach.

“Good,” Henri whispered.

“Have you seen Frederick?” I asked tentatively. I glanced around the plane’s cargo bay, but I couldn’t find Frederick’s angelic face among the crowd.

Henri went rigid and I instantly regretted asking. He was a strong Projector anyway, but his resistance to my talents was further weakened by his physical condition, and I read the remorse etched in his mind. Henri hadn’t seen Frederick since their fight earlier. He had just resolved to go talk to him when the attacked started.

Crane cleared his throat behind me. When I looked up, he held out a small white box with a red cross painted on the top. “The medical supplies on the plane are limited, but there should be stuff in here to get him cleaned up.”