“Don’t worry, Donavon. I’ll be fine,” I promised.
“I know, but I can’t help but worry about you,” his voice was husky.
“Wrap it up, Tal. We gotta go,” Erik called, walking out of the cabin with his bag over one shoulder and mine over the other.
I stood on my tip-toes and reached up to kiss Donavon goodbye.
“I love you, Tal.”
“I know, Donavon,” I gave his calloused hand one last squeeze before turning to follow Erik and Henri, only allowing myself to look back once.
Chapter Fifteen
When we arrived at the hangar, it was a bustle of activity. Three black backpacks sat at the base of the steps leading up to the underbelly of a mid-sized camouflage hover plane. One of the bags was distinctly larger than the other two. Henri grabbed that one and climbed the steps into the plane. Erik and I followed suit. I took a seat in one of the oversized chairs and waited while Henri spoke to a man that, I assumed must be the pilot. My apprehension from earlier hummed behind my confident exterior.
“Move all the stuff you brought from the cabin in to the black backpack and then strap yourself in,” Henri instructed, his voice serious. I did as I was told. The atmosphere was so charged that I could nearly feel the tiny sparks of electricity. No one spoke again until we were in the air.
“The plane will drop us off in a rural area approximately fifty miles outside of Mexico City. There is a road car there that we will use to drive to safe house approximately twenty miles outside the city. The laboratory we are looking for is on the border of the actual town,” Henri explained. We had, of course, gone over all of this numerous times, but I nodded my head and listened. I knew Henri was anxious, and reciting the plan helped calm his nerves. I tried to prevent his feelings from intensifying my increasing unease. I had to stay focused, I had to sustain my composure.
The flight took several hours, most of which I slept. I was still tired from my sleepless night; and the brief respite wasn’t sufficient. We finally touched down in a small clearing in the middle of nowhere. The humidity engulfed me as soon as the craft door opened. Thankfully the Hunting suits had temperature regulators so it only took seconds for the interior of my suit to adjust, returning to a comfortable level. My hair was another matter; my dark curls absorbed the moisture in the air immediately, and expanded exponentially. I fished a bandana out of my bag and used it to contain my hair. I tightened the straps on my backpack until they fit snugly against my body, and climbed down the shiny metal steps. As soon as all three of us deplaned, the steps retracted and the plane silently rose flying off into the inky black night sky.
This was it; we were really here. I was a bundle of nervous anticipation. Breathe, focus, I reminded myself. You can do this. You can do this, I repeated over and over again in my head.
I followed Henri and Erik out of the clearing and into the surrounding woods. The trees were thick and I had no idea how Henri knew where we were going. When I opened my mind to him I could feel his senses on overdrive. We only walked for a couple of minutes before we reached the most dilapidated barn that I’d ever seen; the heavy wooden doors protested loudly when Henri pulled them open. I walked several paces behind Henri and Erik, afraid the barn would collapse once we entered. My senses were not quite as good as the boys’ – since theirs came naturally with their Talents – so it took my eyes several additional seconds to adjust to the pitch black barn interior. Once my eyes could distinguish shapes, I realized that the barn wasn’t nearly as unstable as it looked. In fact, there were large support beams holding the roof and sides up in an odd configuration which gave off the impression that the building was falling in on itself. I stared up in wonderment.
In the middle of the barn were several road vehicles. Henri selected a small rusted looking one with a layer of grime covering the windows, and got in the driver’s seat. I opened the back door and climbed in, leaving the passenger seat for Erik.
The interior and the exterior were a study in contrast. The outside looked like that of a vehicle that had been sitting in an abandoned barn for years, while the inside looked the crypto bank at Headquarters. The seats were soft, black leather and the dash and the doors were covered in buttons that lit up in a rainbow of colors when Henri powered up the car. The backs of the head rests and center console were equipped with small touchscreen computers. I stared, wide-eyed, at all the gadgets.
Henri drove out of the barn and turned down a path situated between two large trees.
“Talia, eat something from your pack,” he ordered after we’d been driving for a couple minutes. His tone was serious and he was in charge so I obliged without comment, even though my stomach was so knotted that I doubted any food would fit.
“I want to stop by the safe house and make sure everything is copasetic, then we’ll go locate the laboratory while it’s still dark. It’s probably about ten miles from the house to the location, and we are going on foot so make sure you have the energy,” he continued.
I found several bags of dried fruit in my pack, and started munching on them noisily. I don’t know how long it actually took us to arrive at the safe house, but it felt like forever. Every passing minute compounded to my mounting anxiety. When we finally pulled up out front I was saddened to see that it looked much like the barn on the outside – extremely run down. I don’t know what I’d expected. I knew we wouldn’t be staying at a four-star hotel, but I’d hoped the rumors of the poor living conditions on Hunts were exaggerated; they weren’t.
“Only mental communication from now on, understood?” Henri’s mental voice filled my head. Both Erik and I nodded.
“Erik, go around back. I will go in the front. Talia, stand guard outside, keep your mind as open as you can.” I nodded again, swallowing over the lump of sugary fruit lodged in my throat.
“Get your weapons ready and be on full-alert,” he continued.
I immediately rummaged in my bag and withdrew a belt with eight knives fastened to it. I threaded it through the belt loops at the waist of my suit. Next, I strapped two larger daggers to the outsides of each of my legs, blades running the length of my thighs. I could feel my heart beating in my throat. I was suddenly terrified. It wasn’t until I actually strapped the weapons belt around my waist that reality hit me. I was actually in the field, this was not practice, the weapons were real; I could really die. I started to panic.
Erik reached back and put his gloved hand over my mine, “Just stay calm, you’re going to do great. Remember your training and focus.”
I nodded, and gave him the closest thing to a smile that I could muster. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.
I waited for Henri and Erik to get out of the car, before opening my own door.
“Count of three,” Henri said once we were all standing outside of the vehicle. “One. Two. Three.”
Erik silently jogged around to the back of the house. Henri moved deftly towards the front door. I positioned myself outside of the entrance that Henri had just disappeared through. I closed my eyes and opened my mind wider. I had a strong connection with both Henri and Erik. I couldn’t feel a flutter of mental activity anywhere in the immediately vicinity, which calmed me slightly.
Several minutes passed before Henri called, “All clear.”
“Ditto,” Erik responded.
“All quiet out here,” I tried to make my mental voice calm, but it came out frantically.
I could feel both Henri and Erik moving through the house, emerging a full minute later.
“I‘ll take the lead. Erik, take the rear. Tal, stay between us.”
Henri took off at a steady jog through the woods. I focused on his back, and kept my mind as open as I possibly could; casting the net wider and wider as we ran. I couldn’t feel anything human in the woods, but I didn’t really expect to since it was the middle of the night.
Sweat drenched my hair, soaking the bandana that I’d used to tie it back from my face. The rest of my body was covered by the suit and remained, surp
risingly, nice and cool. Henri’s strides were much longer than mine, but I was surprised to find that it wasn’t that hard to keep up with him. It took us over an hour to reach the location. I felt the distinct buzz of a human brain when we were still about three miles out.
I cannot read minds that I have no established relationship with. It only takes a couple of exchanges with a person to establish a relationship that allows me to probe their mind, but if I’ve never met a person, I can’t just read his thoughts. I only get a murmur of brain activity letting me know there is a human in the vicinity.
”I can feel someone,” I announced.
”How far?” Henri inquired.
“Maybe three miles. I’m not really sure, the buzz is faint.”
“I can feel it too, but just barely,” Erik chimed in.
“Talia, take the lead,” Henri ordered. Great. Following Henri was comfortable and mindless; leading the way added a level of responsibility that I wasn’t ready for. Henri was in charge, so I silently jogged ahead of him and stretched my mental net. I honed in on the buzzing, and followed it to the edge of the woods.
I went to step out of the wooded cover, but Henri placed his hand on my shoulder, holding me back. The three of us crouched down in the leaves, and I pulled the focus from my mind and redirected my energy to my eyesight. It took longer than I would’ve liked, but finally the buzzing dulled and I could see a house that I recognized from the intel. I could also see the source of the buzzing – he was sitting in the dark by the front door. He looked like he was sleeping, but I knew better. Sleeping minds don’t buzz.
”How many total do you feel awake, Tal?” Henri asked.
“Just the one.”
“Can you tell how many are sleeping?”
“No, I’m sorry,” I responded regretfully, feeling as though I’d let him down.
Henri unhooked his backpack and searched inside for something. He pulled out his communicator and a heat scanner. He attached the communicator to his wrist and the scanner to his communicator. His communicator gave off a faint glow that wasn’t visible from more than a couple of feet away.
“There are ten inside,” he said.
”Ten?” Erik sounded surprised. “I thought there weren’t supposed to be more than a handful of them at any given time.”
“That’s what our intel said, but who knows. We aren’t going in tonight anyway. Hopefully, there won’t be as many tomorrow or the day after,” Henri answered him.
Henri spent the next couple of minutes collecting heat images of the house and the surrounding areas. Then he repacked the devices in his bag.
“Erik, we should morph, why don’t you give your bag to Tal,” Henri said. Erik took off his boots and all of his weapons, packed them in his bag, and then handed everything to me. I draped his long rifle across my chest and secured his backpack to my front. Henri also removed his boots and weapons and handed me his back pack.
“Tal, after we Morph, strap the extra packs to my back and then get on Erik and he’ll carry you back.”
I desperately wanted to argue with him, to tell him that I could make the run back, but the first thing that Henri had taught me was to not argue with the person in charge, it could get us all killed. Unfortunately, our minds were so connected that they both heard my mental struggle just as clear as if I’d been speaking out loud.
“Okay, Henri,” I finally agreed, ashamed that he’d heard me warring with his authority. Both boys transformed into large wolf-like dogs. The suit’s material stretched to conform to their new body shapes. I’d seen it plenty of times over the past several months, but it never ceased to amaze me. I quickly fastened the packs to Henri, before climbing on to Erik’s back and winding my hands into the fur around his neck. The boys took off at a breakneck speed into the woods. I clung to Erik as we weaved in between trees in the dark thankful Henri had chosen a wolf form when he Morphed.
Henri was a Poly Morph, like Donavon, and could therefore transform in to any animal of his choosing. Like most Poly Morphs, Henri favored one animal in particular, an extremely large bird since it made the most of his tremendous wingspan and was the fastest way for him to travel. The trouble with his bird-morph was that I had yet to master riding it. In practice we had been working on me riding on one of them while they were in bird form, but I tended to fall off more often than not, and I never would’ve been able to stay on while Erik flew through the dense trees of this forest.
Even not in in bird-form, it took considerably less time to get back. I jumped off of Erik’s back as soon as we arrived in front of the house. I unfastened the packs from Henri, and watched as the forms of both boys rematerialized in front of me.
Henri silently led the way into the house. Immediately, I noticed that, like the barn, the house was designed to look more decrepit from the outside than it in fact was. It was nowhere near luxurious on the inside, but it was clean, and all of the walls and staircases appeared more intact than I‘d guessed. I was relieved. As soon as we closed the door, I pictured all the doors and windows from the floor plans and mentally locked them. The sound of all the locks clicking simultaneously into place was faint, but both boys heard the noise. I felt safe for the first time that night.
“We’re going to sleep in shifts,” Henri announced, speaking out loud for the first time in hours. I hadn’t realized what a toll maintaining the mental connection was taking on me until it was broken. I sagged with relief at the reprieve.
“I’ll take the first watch. The bedroom is upstairs, both of you need to get some sleep. Erik, I’ll wake you up in a little while,” Henri continued.
Exhaustion was beginning to set in, as I followed Erik up the stairs. There were three rooms on the upper floor; one was a bedroom and one was a bathroom, while the third room looked like a command center. There were touchscreens lining the walls, and panels decorated with buttons and switches. I walked directly to the bathroom and took off my suit, replacing it with my pajamas. My skin was immediately thankful to be free of the constricting material and allowed to breathe. I quickly brushed my teeth to erase the fuzzy film. Sleep couldn’t come fast enough.
Erik was standing awkwardly in the bedroom in his pajamas when I walked in.
“There’s only one bed. If you want me to sleep on the floor I will,” he offered.
“The floor is wood, not exactly comfortable,” I observed. “Haven’t you ever been on a Hunting team with a girl?”
“Yeah, Henri and I had a girl as a floater before he asked to have you permanently assigned to us,” Erik confirmed.
“Did you sleep in the same bed with those girls?” I asked.
“It never came up.”
“Just don’t grope me in my sleep and I think we’ll be okay,” I replied dryly.
“I don’t plan on it, but I make no promises,” Erik’s eyes twinkled mischievously in the darkness.
I rolled my eyes and climbed into bed. Erik headed towards the bathroom. I was vaguely aware of him climbing into the bed a couple minutes later, but I didn’t have the energy to speak.
There were no windows in the bedroom, so I had no concept of time when I woke up. I was lying on my side facing the wall and I could feel a hand on my hip. The sheer size of the hand indicated to me it belonged to Henri. I gently removed his appendage and slid down to the end of the bed, to go in search of Erik. I didn’t have to go far. I found him in the command center watching surveillance of the perimeter surrounding the safe house. He was sitting in one chair with his feet propped up on a second. He was eating something from a bag that looked disturbingly like dehydrated meat.
“Hey. What time is it? Why didn’t you wake me?”
“It’s not that late. I was going to let you sleep for another couple hours.” He looked over his shoulder at me. The light pouring in the window caught his eyes causing the turquoise color to look even more unnatural, and gorgeous, than normal.
“You don’t have to coddle me,” I retorted, snappier than I meant. My awareness of
him when we were in close proximity irritated me and I irrationally blamed him, like he could help being ridiculously good-looking.
“I’m not coddling you. You’re expending a lot more energy than either me or Henri, and it’s your mental powers that we are counting on to keep us connected when we go inside that house. You have to be at your strongest.” His reasonable response irked me further.
“I’m not really tired anymore. I’m really hungry though,” I said changing the subject.
“There’s some stuff in the kitchen cabinets. None of it’s expired or anything, but a lot of it is less-than-appetizing. It’s smart to conserve the stuff in your pack, in case we have to hide in the woods somewhere.”
I made my way downstairs and rummaged through the kitchen cabinets. Erik was right, nothing in there looked edible. I finally settled on mixed nuts and canned peaches. Taking my meal back upstairs, I sat with Erik, and let him explain how all the buttons and switches on the panel, worked.
“Did you guys get enough sleep?” Henri asked when he finally wandered in a couple of hours later. Erik and I both nodded. “Good. I want to scout out the town, so go get dressed – suits, just regular clothes.”
I nodded and headed to the bathroom to do as I was told. I choose tight fitting jeans and strapped a knife to each of my calves, covering them with knee high black boots. I secured the knife belt around my waist, and covered it with a loose fitting white cotton shirt. I strapped on my backpack and wrapped myself in a light-weight jacket to hide the pack from view. When I was ready, I walked downstairs to find Henri and Erik both dressed in loose-fitting dark jeans and black shirts with their jackets covering their packs as well.
We piled into the road car and followed a very roundabout set of dirt roads that eventually led us to the town. There were several blocks of white stone buildings, no more than four or five stories tall. All of the structures were completely open-air with no doors or windows. I wondered how they kept the rain out. One look at the cloudless sky had me doubting there was much precipitation here. The streets running through the city were narrow, barely wide enough for one vehicle. The walkways were the same white stone as the buildings, and the streets were a mix of gray, black and white stones. I assumed the white buildings and walkways were to keep the city as cool as possible in account of the extreme temperatures.