Inescapable (Talented Saga #7) (13 page)

I didn’t contradict Victoria, though I
didn’t agree with her. Not claiming responsibility meant the
organization behind Erik’s assault was smart; bragging to the
digital landscape was a surefire way to be caught. The method of
attack, using a child suicide-bomber, meant they were also cold and
calculating.

A highly dangerous combination.

“
I assure you, we
will
find the culprit,”
Victoria continued. “No rat can remain underground forever. It is
only a matter of time before the mastermind behind this surfaces,
even if I have to drag him from his hole myself.”

Victoria’s pronouncement left me speechless.
More startling than her words were the emotions accompanying them.
Regret, fear, and a little sorrow rolled off of her so intensely, I
felt as though they were suffocating me.

“
Will you let me know once
the specialist has checked him out?” I asked, hating that I had to
ask the favor of her. It was yet another reminder that I’d lost all
control over my own life.

“
I will let you know if
they find any complications. Otherwise, he can tell you all about
it himself,” Victoria replied. “As soon as Erik is cleared for
travel, he will be flown directly to the islands. I do need to
debrief him, so your reunion may be delayed slightly.”

“
Will I still get to see
him tomorrow?” I pressed.

Victoria’s smile was genuine. “You should
know well enough by now that I keep all of my promises. Besides,”
she waved her hand dismissively, “advocating for the visit was no
picnic. After all of that, I would not have my efforts be for
naught.”

“
Thank you, Victoria,” I
replied simply. Though Erik’s visit was purportedly for his
benefit, Victoria had really been watching out for me lately. Three
months ago, I would have laughed at the thought of UNITED’s head
councilwoman helping me out in any way. Now, I couldn’t begin to
express the depth of my appreciation for everything she’d done for
me.

Nodding to the file folder open beside me on
the bed, Victoria changed topics. “I see you have been looking over
the information I left. What can you tell me?”

Though I wanted to talk about the attack in
greater depth, Victoria’s demeanor suggested she was short on time.
So, instead of discussing my theories and dissecting the inner
workings of a would-be mass murderer’s mind, I pushed away the
thoughts of Erik and switched gears.

“
Honestly, I’m not sure
what I’m supposed to be looking for,” I replied. “I mean, it all
seems pretty straightforward. Power outages happen. Livestock
thefts can’t be uncommon. I guess I just don’t see what is so
noteworthy about them.” I paused and, mentally cataloguing the
events I’d read about, added, “The alien abductions are
interesting, though.”

“
No one was abducted by men
from space,” the councilwoman interjected.

“
How do you know? It’s
possible. People have been claiming abduction for hundreds of
years, has to be some truth in it,” I reasoned.

“
I know because there have
been no unauthorized aircrafts within a hundred mile radius of the
Duquesne farm in the months before or after the alleged
abductions.”

“
Cloaking capabilities,” I
volleyed. “We have them, so extraterrestrials probably do,
too.”

Yocum snorted, then feigned a coughing fit
when Victoria shot him a glare that would’ve frozen the Dead
Sea.

“
Talia,” she warned,
pinching the bridge of her nose as if she might be able to squeeze
patience from her nostrils. “Please be serious.”

I might have pressed the issue, purely for
my entertainment, but I knew Victoria was already having a hell of
a day.

“
Fine,” I relented, drawing
out the syllable for good measure. “Probably not aliens. Seriously,
though, if you tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for, I might
have more luck with this. Why are these things even on your
radar?”

“
We closely monitor all of
the areas within a hundred miles of the UNITED headquarters in
Switzerland,” Victoria explained. “Particularly now, with the vote
so close and many Created still on the loose. Given the fact that
the electric company has no explanation for the power outages, we
are not ruling out a rogue electrical manipulator.”

“
But it doesn’t explain the
cattle,” I concluded.

“
Precisely. Do you see any
connection between the events listed in the reports?” Victoria
adjusted on my thin mattress so she was facing me directly,
gesturing to the papers scattered between us.

“
Um, maybe the thieves cut
the power so no one could see them stealing the cows?” I
ventured.

“
It’s possible,” she
replied, seeming doubtful.

“
But not probable,” I
finished for her, sighing. “That would likely have been
unnecessary, given that the cows were out in a field, already in
the dark.”

“
I know this is an odd set
of circumstances,” Victoria said, sensing my frustration. “But I do
believe the events are all related. I am just not sure
how
they are related. I
was hoping you might find the connection.”

“
I see,” I stalled. This
was my chance to prove my worth to UNITED, but I was coming up
empty-handed. “Nothing comes to mind, but I’ll go through the
articles and reports again. Do you think you could get me more
information? Like maybe some personal blogs from people living in
that region? Or copies of the police interviews with Franz and the
other farmers involved? For that matter, all the police reports
from this town over the last several months would be useful. It’s
possible there are other related incidents that no one has
connected with the power outages and thefts yet. If I have more
dots to connect, the pattern will come quicker.”

“
I can probably get you
much of that by this evening,” Victoria answered, already tapping
rapidly on her communicator.

Hesitating, I debated voicing the thought
that kept echoing through my mind. After a long pause, I decided
that it was time to be a team player.

“
You do know I’m not the
best person for this job, right?” I asked quietly. “I mean, I want
the opportunity to prove myself to the council, and I really
appreciate you giving me that chance. It’s just, there are
countless people within UNITED who would be more capable of
figuring this all out. One of your brains is definitely better
suited.”

Victoria averted her gaze, waging an
internal debate.

“
This is strictly
need-to-know,” she finally said. “We have leaks within UNITED. A
lot of them, it seems. Classified internal information has been
appearing online, and we have no idea how it’s getting out.” Though
Victoria started to say something else, she must have thought
better of it at the last instant, and clamped her lips
shut.

Curious
, I thought, probing Victoria’s mind to test her resistance.
Apparently she’d been expecting the attempt, because her mental
barriers were firmly in place. Naturally, this only made me more
interested in finding out what she was holding back.

“
Spies?” I
suggested.

“
Oh, we definitely have
spies. But we know who most of them are.”

“
And you let them stay?” I
asked, confused.

“
Keep your enemies close,”
Victoria replied, with the faintest trace of a smile. “We just
don’t let them anywhere near the truly confidential data. Those
that we’ve tagged as spies don’t have access to the files that have
been disseminated online. One item in particular that showed up
isn’t even available to all of the councilmembers.”

“
So if it’s not someone on
the inside, maybe hackers are getting in to the UNITED data system?
Someone did breach my communicator during the auction,” I reminded
her. In London, when my team and I infiltrated the Poachers’
auction to rescue Kenly, someone had been sending creepy messages
to my UNITED-issued communicator.

The source had been listed as
“Unknown”—something that shouldn’t have been possible on the UNITED
comm system—but I was pretty sure I knew who’d messaged me: Ernest
Tate, a former acquaintance of mine from the McDonough School. What
I didn’t know was why, much less how he’d been able to access the
UNITED frequencies. The last time I’d seen Ernest before the
auction, he was a drooling mess that needed help sitting up. The
man at the auction house had been walking, talking, and bidding on
Created. That whole situation was a mystery I very much wanted to
solve.

“
Yes, but the person who
messaged you during the auction left a digital footprint,” Victoria
reasoned. “It merely lead to a comm line that was only used during
the auction, but the cryptos were able to locate the source. With
these data leaks, we cannot find any trace of someone infiltrating
the UNITED networks.”

“
You mean Ernest,” I
interjected. “Henri saw him there. I saw him there. It
was
Ernest Tate. He was
the one sending me messages at the auction.”

Victoria sighed. This was not the first time
I’d pushed the subject, and she was clearly wary to start back down
this particular path.

“
Talia, I looked into it
after the auction. UNITED’s cryptos recovered TOXIC’s records of
your psychic interrogation session with Mr. Tate; his mind was
blank when you were finished. He is literally comatose, lacking all
brain functions.” Victoria put her hand up to halt my forthcoming
protests. “I do not know where Mr. Tate ended up, or if he is even
still alive, but, by your own account, the man you knew as Ernest
Tate no longer exists.”

I looked down at my hands, feeling immensely
guilty. Everything she’d said was true, and it was all my fault.
While searching through his head for information about a spy within
TOXIC, I had inadvertently wiped Ernest’s mind, stolen his
memories, and left him a vegetable.

“
Memory re-implantation is
possible,” I said quietly.

“
Possible,” Victoria agreed
with a nod. “But unless there is something you’re not telling me,
it is highly unlikely in this case. Re-implantation has only been
successful when the person who originally wiped the memories
restores them. Even then, I’ve only heard of a single case in which
it worked, back in the alpha generation. Did you happen to do
that?”

“
No,” I
confirmed.

“
I thought as much.”
Victoria clasped her hands in her lap. “I have considered that the
man you saw in London—someone who
looks
like Ernest Tate—is the source
of our current leaks, since he was able to infiltrate UNITED’s comm
system. However, our cryptos have found no breaches to the data
system. Very few hackers in the world are proficient enough to
access it at all, let alone do so without leaving any evidence of
the intrusion.”

“
Aliens,” I decided. “Alien
technology far surpasses our own. Those big-headed green guys could
definitely get in and out without leaving a trace.”

Victoria sighed impatiently. “We were not
hacked by aliens, Talia. Aliens did not abduct the French farmer.
No government on this planet has evidence to prove that aliens even
exist. And before you suggest it, an alien did not attack
Erik.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, I
had to stifle a giggle at her exasperation. Though I considered
pushing the subject, again purely for my own amusement, Yocum
caught my eye and gave a discreet shake of his head, as if to say
“Stop antagonizing the woman who holds the keys to your
freedom.”

He knew me so well.

“
The fact is, we do not
know how the information is getting out,” Victoria continued.
“Therefore, until we discover the source of the leaks, only
trusted, vetted individuals are being given access to classified
intel. That is why I have brought this to you, instead of handing
it off to the cryptos.”

“
You think a bovine theft
warrants top-level security?” Yocum interjected, raising his brows.
My guard had been silent up to this point, but seemed unable to
contain the comment any longer. Realizing he’d stepped out of line,
Yocum quickly added, “Ma’am.”

“
More importantly,” I said,
dismissing his question with a wave of my hand, “the council
considers
me
a
trusted individual? If so, it’s high time they let me out of this
cell.”

“
I
consider you a trusted individual. The council considers you
to be disobedient, impulsive, and impossible to control,” Victoria
stated flatly.

“
That’s so sweet. I knew
you liked me, I just knew it,” I quipped.

“
Nonetheless, you have been
incarcerated for the past month with no access to the comm system,
data systems, or the web,” Victoria replied, pointedly ignoring my
comment. “It is simply impossible for you to be the source of our
leaks.”

I glanced guiltily at Yocum’s communicator
hidden beneath my thigh.

Victoria paused before continuing, drawing
in her breath for so long that it felt as though she’d swallowed
all of the oxygen in the room.

“
I will be honest with you,
Talia,” she said finally. “The other council members need to see
you as more than a liability. Not at some point in the future, but
right now. With everything going on, it is absolutely imperative
for you to show them that UNITED needs you. Solving this problem
for us will ensure your….” Victoria hesitated, as though searching
for the right word. “Freedom,” she finally finished.