Unforgettable (Talented Saga #6) (5 page)

And yes, as glamorous as international
travel sounded in theory, the reality didn’t quite live up to the
hype. Little Talia had often longed for a room she could decorate,
where she could put things away without having to pack them up
again days, weeks, or months later. She’d longed for friends she
could play with every day and make plans with, instead of the
revolving door friendships that come with life on the
road.

Despite those things, or maybe because
of them, my parents had made every effort in the world to give me
the feeling of home, if not the physical place. No matter where we
went, as long as the three of us were together, there was nothing
we couldn’t handle. As unstable as spending a childhood hopping
from place to place might sound, it was the most stable time in my
life. Six-year-old me was safe, secure, and thought that my parents
would always be there to pick me up when I fell. Six-year-old me
had never even considered the possibility of a life without
them.

I’d been naïve.

In fact, it was in one of
those hotel rooms where TOXIC—no, where
he—
had stolen my family and robbed
me of my innocence. It was in one of those hotel rooms where my
world had changed forever. Where I’d gone from the daughter of a
renowned scientist to a vengeful assassin-in-training. And where
I’d become a murderer.

The thought made me run faster,
pounding the belt of the treadmill with every ounce of fury I still
held. Those men in that hotel room had been my first victims, but
by no means the last—not by a long shot. The blood on my hands was
thick and my body count high.

Block it out. Let it go.
Don’t dwell on the past, it will just drive you crazy. Well,
crazier than you already are.

Orphaned, separated from a past that
to this day was little more than a whisper of a memory, I’d come to
think of the McDonough School as my home. Now, thoughts of the
School and its founding family only brought heartache and regret.
The happy memories I’d once known were now overshadowed by pain and
lies too great to fully comprehend.

At least Elite
Headquarters, while also a part of my time with TOXIC, didn’t hold
the same taint. The scenic plot of land with its natural springs,
vegetation that was just a little too bright, and flowers that were
a tad too vibrant, is located in the mountains of West Virginia.
Breathtaking beauty aside, the reason those mountains held a place
in my heart was simple: they were where I’d met
him.
Where I’d fallen in love
with
him
. The
only him I’d ever want or need.

Sappy and sentimental? Sure. But
meeting Erik Kelley was one of few positive things that had come
from my time with TOXIC. He was the reason, despite a million
others to the contrary, I could not regret the eight years I’d
given them. It was also why I spent the first hour of every day
running through the woods to the north of Hunters
Village.

True, the landscape was a façade, a
computer-generated facsimile of the real deal, displayed on four
walls of a glass workout cubicle, three meters below sea level.
Instead of my feet hitting the dirt as I ran through the trees,
they hit the treadmill belt stretching from one end of the cube to
the other. Sadly, I wasn’t back there, honing my senses as I cycled
through them and focused on each in turn. I was on an island refuge
in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean known as Eden. But for that one
hour, the timeline of my life was rewound two years. I was back at
Elite Headquarters, sharing a cabin with two guys—my teammates—and
falling in love with Erik all over again.

For that one hour, Donavon
McDonough was just a cheating ex-boyfriend who I simply pretended
didn’t exist. Only, there in the past, he
did
still exist. Here, in the
present, Donavon—my first boyfriend, my first love—was dead. And
his son was an orphan. Here, Alex McDonough was a rambunctious
toddler that I felt responsible for. Who I
was
responsible for. No matter how
ill-equipped I was for the task.

And just like that, my heart broke all
over again for Alex. We were kindred spirits, but not for any
reasons that were good or fair.

Even though he was blind, as a Remote
Viewer, Alex had already seen more than his fair share of tragedy.
He’d experienced more loss in his short time on earth than most
people did in a lifetime. Both of his parents were killed without a
second thought by TOXIC’s swift hand of injustice. Donavon and
Alex, and even the boy’s mother Kandice—the woman I had found in
Donavon’s bed upon returning early from a mission—deserved better
than the cards they’d been dealt. Powerful though I was, rewriting
history was beyond even my Talents. All I could do now was make
sure Alex understood what a great man his father had truly been in
the end, and honor his mother’s dying request to keep her son
safe.

It was yet another reason I spent my
mornings chasing the past. Maybe a part of me believed that if I
ran hard enough, I could catch the time in my life when I was
blissfully unaware of what was really happening. When I was
blissfully unaware of the pain and tragedy that would befall
everyone around me. For that one hour, the man who’d been like a
father to me after the death of my own wasn’t a traitor, a monster,
a murderer. As much as I hated Danbury “Mac” McDonough most of the
time, I found it impossible to separate the two halves of the man
I’d known. Mac had raised me, trained me, and treated me like a
daughter. He’d taken care of my every need, both the basic
necessities and the longing for retribution that engulfed me after
that day in the hotel room. He’d nurtured my Talents until they
flourished, help me become the woman I was today.

But he was also the monster who’d
murdered my parents, illegally experimented on children, and
destroyed his own son—all to further his own, horrific, agenda. It
was impossible to untangle those feelings, to unwind the cords of
love from the cords of rage and hatred. And so I longed for the
time when I knew nothing of it all.

Furthermore, for that one hour, the
world wasn’t in chaos. The Created weren’t running wild, using the
world as their playground as they worked out their own fear and
confusion. The panic and dread in normal humans that had nearly
forced the Talented into exile after the Great Contamination—the
global catastrophe from which my gifts were born—hadn’t been
reignited. My mere existence wasn’t enough to incite a lynch
mob.

Sadly, in reality, it was as if
society had devolved back to the time when Talents were first
discovered. Fear of the unknown does wild things to the hearts of
people, even those with good intentions. And the Created weren’t
even attempting to pacify the unease. So we’d reached a place where
that hatred, for what the public did not understand, was once again
threatening to destroy the peaceful coexistence our races had
enjoyed for the last seventy-five years.

“
I’ll never understand the
point of running in place.”

She slipped into the workout cubicle
with such quiet stealth that I was impressed. After I recovered
from the heart attack she’d given me, of course.

“
Pause program,” I ordered.
Bright white light replaced the soft green and gold glow as the
West Virginia woods disappeared from the wallscreens. The conveyor
belt built into the floor slowed before coming to a complete
stop.

“
Custom workout paused,”
the computer confirmed in a tinny mechanical whine.

“
That’s because you don’t
believe in working out,” I told my best friend as I wiped sweat
from my forehead with the back of my even sweatier hand.

Penny Crane stood with her back
against the sliding glass doors to the hallway, her red-orange hair
in a wet knot on top of her head. Dressed in tight black pants,
sky-high wedges with a rainbow fish suspended in the heels, and a
silky top a shade darker than her lime-green eyes, she looked
surprisingly mature. Gone was the wild, carefree girl I’d met at
TOXIC two years ago—one of the other good things to come of my time
there.

A suit jacket was draped over her
shoulder, hanging from one bony, white finger. Penny had always
been thin, but since her brief but torturous imprisonment, she was
downright skeletal. Collarbones protruded over the top of her
blouse, straining against her alabaster skin and driving a deeper
crack in my heart every single time I saw her.

She was still beautiful in a way that
was all her own, that had not changed. But Penny’s eyes no longer
held the mischievous spark they once had. Permanent creases lined
her forehead, and her once-constant smile rarely made an appearance
anymore. Even the infectious laughter that never failed to lighten
my mood was marred by the unspeakable acts she’d
endured.

What had happened to
Penny—arrest, incarceration, torture, a stint as a human guinea
pig—was my fault. I’d turned in my best friend, exposed her as spy
for the Coalition, TOXIC’s sworn enemy. It didn’t matter that she
was actually guilty of the charges levied against her. Nor did it
matter that I hadn’t understood the reasons behind her actions or
known the truth about TOXIC and Mac at the time. What mattered is
that I knew Penny, knew who she was at the very heart of it all.
Regardless of the fact I had no idea what was going on, no idea who
were the good guys and who were the bad guys, I should have trusted
that
her
intentions were good. If I lived to be a hundred, or even a
thousand, I would never forgive myself for betraying
Penny.

The towel Penny threw at me was an
inch in front of my face before it appeared on my radar. Thanks to
my cat-like reflexes, I was able to snatch it from the air just in
time to prevent a mouthful of terrycloth.

I patted my sweaty cheeks and neck,
then wiped down my arms and bare stomach.

“
To what do I owe the
pleasure?” I asked. “It’s awfully early for you to be awake, let
alone dressed.” I nodded at her business attire. “What’s the
occasion?”

“
Victoria’s on her way
here, she called an emergency meeting. She said she sent you a
comm, but you didn’t answer. I figured you were down
here.”

Unable to help myself, I groaned in
annoyance at the thought of a day with my boss. Victoria Walburton
was the head of UNITED, the United Nations International Talent
Education Department, the organization I was now a part of. She was
a formidable woman and not my biggest fan. That probably had
something to do with my lack of a filter between my brain and my
mouth. Regardless, she was smart and knew that she needed my help,
so she kept her animosity towards me to a minimum.

Victoria’s most pressing concern at
the moment was to “contain” the Created before they caused an
international incident. Unfortunately, it was a little late for
that. The news was full of reports of their escapades, a fact she
reminded me of every time we spoke. As if it were solely my fault
we hadn’t apprehended them all yet. I’d agreed to be part of a
special taskforce, to hunt down every last Created, because I knew
what their actions meant for the rest of us. I understood the need
to alleviate the fears of the general population. But so far we
weren’t doing a great job. More often than not, when we got a tip
about the location of a Created Talent, the individual was gone by
the time we arrived. More often than not, there was some degree of
destruction, from minor property damage to disaster-relief-worthy
devastation, in their wake.

“
Did her highness say what
this meeting was about?” I asked, pulling a gray tee with UNITED
printed across the chest over my head. Working out sans shirt was
one thing, walking around a bunch of strangers half-naked wasn’t
going to happen. The stares and whispers I drew from the residents
of Eden were bad enough when I was fully clothed.

Penny shrugged.

“
Didn’t ask. I figure she’s
either going to give us a pep talk or yell at us about the lack of
progress we’re making. Depends what kind of mood she’s
in.”

Victoria didn’t have a warm and fuzzy
personality, and coddling wasn’t in her repertoire, so the
impromptu morning meeting was likely going to be an hour-long bitch
session. Especially after the latest disaster caused by a Created—a
tsunami off the coast of Miami. My team had not been dispatched to
the States for that one, since the guy responsible for the stunt
surrendered immediately, along with his buddies who’d been watching
the show. And so they were the newest residents of Vault, UNITED’s
island penitentiary turned Created containment facility.

I walked to the control panel on the
wall and logged out of the workout session, then followed Penny
into the hallway.

Eden had ten sublevels that stretched
deep into the Atlantic Ocean below the main level, which was above
sea level like any natural island. For security reasons, all of the
living quarters were located below, under several thick layers of
reinforced steel meant to protect us in case of an
airstrike.

Sublevel four was the women’s
dormitory. All single women over the age of eighteen were given
their own sleeping quarters with a kitchenette. Twenty communal
bathrooms were provided for the residents on each floor. The men’s
dormitory on sublevel five had an identical setup.