Unforgettable (Talented Saga #6) (8 page)

Victoria let out a weary sigh. And
just like that, like a pregnant woman on steroids with
flip-flopping emotions, I was suddenly filled with empathy for the
councilwoman. She carried the fate of the Talented, Created
included, on her shoulders. The burden was obviously taking a toll.
Victoria was starting to show her cracks.

“
We won’t know until we
have them in containment, Ryke. It could be they were given too
much of the drug and have gone mad. They may be following orders
they were given before we disbanded TOXIC. Or, it could be as
simple as because they can. The only thing we can be certain of is
that they need to be caught. Now.”

“
We’re doing the best we
can,” the dour Gina said. “We always seem to be a step behind
them.”

“
Exactly,” Victoria
replied. “Thus far we have only been sending teams to apprehend the
Created once an incident has occurred. Starting today, we will be
responding to every tip and sighting we receive. Incidents like
this one,” she gestured to the wallscreen behind her, which was
frozen on the Eye and a blue car hurtling through open air, “will
not happen again. Do you all understand?”

The others in the room began shifting
uneasily in their seats, murmuring contrite responses to Victoria’s
rhetorical question. Victoria’s golden eyes landed on each of us in
turn, her underlings, as if she could make us understand the
severity of the situation with her gaze alone.

“
Good,” Victoria said after
several moments of tense silence.

Quiet mumblings began to move through
the room like a wave, as the group prepared for an imminent
dismissal. Even Penny looked like she was ready to spring to her
feet. Only Talia and I stayed still, save the brief worried glance
we shared. We’d both been to enough tactical meetings and had spent
enough time around Victoria to know that she had not flown out to
the islands at dawn just to show us this and issue a reprimand.
Sure, the destruction of European landmarks was a horrible tragedy.
But it wasn’t exceptional considering the state of world—similar
catastrophes had been occurring for weeks now. The newscast she’d
just shown us was an appetizer, a prelude to the main course
Victoria had come to serve up, which I was betting would be more
unappetizing than the kelp cookies the Eden natives seemed so fond
of.

“
This display of
recklessness is inexcusable. Particularly now, with the vote fast
approaching. For the first time in decades, the council is truly
concerned about the Coexistence Treaty being overturned. As you all
know, should that occur, our kind will no longer be afforded the
little protection that we have enjoyed these last seventy-five
years,” Victoria said, her voice carrying over the whispered
conversations and swooshing of beanbags.

All noise in the room ceased,
Victoria’s words hung heavy in the silence. Her golden eyes glowed
with an unreadable emotion as they traveled from one member of the
group to the next for a second time.

“
Of the seven islands that
make up the Isle of Exile, only three are residential: Eden,
Paradise, and Babylon. All of which are nearing maximum capacity.
Currently, Vault is serving a dual purpose, as both a penal island
and a containment facility. Oceanic is a research facility, it
isn’t set up to house anyone. The remaining two, Hope and Newhaven,
are currently unoccupied, and have been for some time. As we speak,
construction crews are arriving at both to begin the necessary
repair work before those islands can be fully functional. Should
the need arise, those islands will be vital to our survival as a
race. Even if we get those ready in time, only a small portion of
the world’s Talented population can fit in the space available on
the Isle.”

The Coexistence Treaty. It was
something every student at the McDonough School learned about
during their early years, and then promptly forgot as we moved on
to more interesting subjects, like weapons training and offensive
maneuvers. It was easy to forget about it when you grew up in the
US, because we’d been the most progressive nation, with a high
density of Talented. From the little I remembered, the treaty had
been drawn up not long after the first generation of talented
children reached adulthood.

Many nations had refused to grant our
kind equal rights when Talents were first discovered. They didn’t
consider us human. In some places the Talented were imprisoned
simply for being who they were, what they’d been born. And, in a
lot of cases, incarceration was the lesser of the evils. Lynch
mobs, scared of what they didn’t understand, hunted and killed
Talents. Geneticists, desperate to learn about this new breed, a
new species that possessed abilities that had previously only been
the stuff of fiction, preyed on my kind in the name of
science.

The newly-formed UNITED had proposed
the treaty as a way to ensure our safety. The treaty detailed stiff
penalties for any Talent who used his or her gifts on another
without explicit authorization from a governing body. In exchange,
all member nations who adopted the treaty agreed to grant the
Talented basic human rights.

Generous, weren’t they?

Recently, I had learned that the seven
islands that make up the Isle of Exile were originally built as a
precautionary measure, in the event the treaty wasn’t ratified.
Even after it eventually was accepted, UNITED feared that it would
not be honored for long. So they kept the islands, just in case. As
it turned out, that was a necessary safeguard. Because not all
nations had signed the original treaty. And many who did were very
liberal in their interpretations of the language. As a result, many
Talents had relocated to the islands over the ensuing years to
escape persecution. At this point, the islands were a choice. Soon,
they might be a necessity.

For a brief moment, while Victoria’s
words sunk in, there was absolute silence in the room.

And then I was assaulted.

In such a confined space, with
emotions running higher than Kilimanjaro, it was impossible to
block the barrage of disjointed thoughts and feelings of everyone
around me. Inside my head, all I heard was the frantic ramblings of
others. Their fear became my fear. Their panic became my panic.
Their fury became my fury.

I wanted to scream. The voices inside
of my head, the ones that weren’t mine, were like hundreds of tiny
bombs exploding in unison, blasting holes in my mental shields. The
invisible barriers I’d built and reinforced regularly to keep Talia
from my darkest thoughts wavered.

She must have guessed. Or maybe I was
physically slapping at my skull to get rid of the voices. Either
way, Talia’s fingers were dry and cool as they skimmed my wrist, up
over the base of my palm, before sliding home between
mine.

She didn’t speak inside my head, but
her physical presence was enough to quiet the others. She alone
understood, to some degree, what I was going through.

Unfortunately, my balm
morphed into yet another symptom.
Every
reaction was amplified by the
drug. Including the effect she had on me. Her touch caused my heart
rate to reach near painful speeds, and my thoughts instantly turned
indecent. Images of her chestnut curls wreathing her delicate face
as she stared up at me through those long, black lashes, only the
tiniest hint of vibrant plum peeking out from beneath the lids,
made me abruptly pull my hand away. As pleasant and preferable as
thoughts of my girlfriend were, the uber-serious briefing was
neither the time nor the place to be fantasizing.

I felt her questioning gaze on me, but
didn’t turn. Had I done so, mental barriers or not, she would’ve
known my mind was no longer in the theater, but back in our
bedroom. Or the shower. Hell, even the elevator was sounding good
right then.

“
And you really think that
is going to happen?” Janelle called out, her voice shattering the
silence as effectively as a hammer taken to glass. “Like, the
Treaty might really be overturned?”

“
Yes, Agent Longpre, I do
believe that is a very real possibility,” Victoria
replied.

“
Why don’t we just kill all
of the Created and be done with it? They’re the problem, after
all,” a male agent lounging near our table muttered, punctuating
his opinion with a snort. “Or let the mobs take care of them.
Vigilante justice—nothing wrong with that.”

“
Agent Olenginski,”
Victoria addressed him, turning a deceptively friendly smile on the
guy. “You might think that having vigilantes, as you call them,
doing your job for you is a good thing.” Her smile disappeared. “I
do
not
. Ordinary
men hunting and killing Created is only one step removed from
ordinary men hunting and killing Talented. People who are
frightened are not reasonable. They will not take the time to
discern between the two, to somehow recognize which are the
Created. And even if they do, they may not care. So, tell me, Agent
Olenginski, is that what you want? To have the added worry of being
shot on sight the instant you set foot on one of the
continents?”

The agent was short, only three or
four inches taller than Talia, and the way he folded into himself
at Victoria’s rebuke made him look like a child.

“
No, Ma’am,” Olenginski
said meekly. “I was merely suggesting….”

His voice trailed off, eyes bugged as
he searched for something that would pacify Victoria.

Lucky for him, Olenginski was saved
further scrutiny by Penny. She raised her hand before speaking,
like this was a classroom. Welcome to Hunting the Created
101.

“
How will the council
decide who gets to come to the islands?”

Beside me, Talia nodded and her
adorable button nose wrinkled in disgust. Had my mind been open,
I’d probably have been involved in the mental conversation
obviously taking place between my girlfriend and her best friend.
Penny may have asked the question, but the look on Talia’s face
told me that she’d been the one to think it.

Annoyance flashed in Victoria’s gaze,
causing her eyes to appear more feline than human. This was
evidently something she didn’t want to discuss.

“
A lottery system, Agent
Crane. The council has decided to use a lottery system to raffle
off the remaining slots.”

“
What about the tens of
thousands of people who aren’t selected?” Talia blurted.

She was now sitting ramrod straight,
hanging on Victoria’s every word for the first time in their
acquaintance.

Victoria met Talia’s challenging
gaze.

“
Agent Lyons, if you—if all
of you—” Victoria made a sweeping gesture with one arm meant to
encompass the entire theater, “do your job, and apprehend the
Created, then that may not be an issue.”

“
That’s not an answer,”
Talia snapped.

So attuned to my girlfriend’s moods,
her own dramatic up-and-down swings, I felt the horror and rage
warring within her just as strongly as if the emotions were my own.
Talia was a heartbeat away from a tirade like I’d never seen or
heard. Which was saying something, since neither Talia nor I were
exactly known for our impulse control.

I understood why she was so upset. For
the same reason my stomach was tied in knots and I suddenly wanted
to break something.

What Victoria was refusing
to say, but every single agent in the room knew, was that those
Talented, the
unchosen
ones, would be left to fend for themselves. That they’d be as
good as dead. Or worse.

Yes, there were fates
worse—
much
worse—than death. I had firsthand knowledge of that. There
were times when I’d craved death, just to escape the hell I’d been
living.

Victoria refused to take Talia’s bait.
Refused to give voice to what we all already knew. Naturally, my
feisty girlfriend repeated herself.

“
That’s not an answer,”
Talia hissed through clenched teeth. “What about the people who
aren’t
selected
?”

Victoria leveled her gaze on first
Talia, and then me. She shrugged, clearly at a loss for an answer.
Because there wasn’t one.

“
Heaven help them, Agent
Lyons. Heaven help them.”