Privileged (Talented Saga Book 7)

  The overhead lights went dark, cutting her off. A spotlight appeared in the center of the stage at the front of the auditorium, followed a moment later by a tall, blonde woman.

  Murmurs spread through the audience like a game of telephone, every student wanting to know the same thing: Is she the Dame?

  “Welcome, cadets,” said the woman on stage, spreading her arms in greeting. She walked forward, almost to the edge of the raised dais, and smiled warmly. Her eyes were a clear, vibrant blue that shone more brightly than any star in the night sky. Her skin was smooth and flawless, not a wrinkle in sight, and the ends of her sleek blonde bob curled perfectly under her chin. The woman wore a calf-length navy dress, belted to show off her trim figure.

  If this is the Dame, she is much younger and much prettier than I imagined, Cressa thought.

  “For those of you I have not had the pleasure of meeting in person, allow me to introduce myself….” The woman paused, and the suspense built. “My name is Dame de Glace.”

  There was a collective intake of breath from the audience.

  “I thought she’d be older. She can’t be more than, what, twenty-five?” Cressa heard Lyla say.

  “Thirty, max,” Shyla agreed.

  “To the 1Ps who have just joined our illustrious ranks recently, welcome to the Institute,” the Dame was saying.

  Nydia shushed the twins. “Listen.”

  “To the 2Ps, congratulations on your progress,” the Dame continued. “Advancing from Phase One to Phase Two is the most trying.”

  Someone at the front of the auditorium scoffed loudly.

  The Dame’s cerulean eyes zeroed in on the individual instantly, but her smile didn’t falter.

  “I did not say the most difficult, simply the most trying. The Phase One advancement exam has the lowest passage rate of all eight phases,” she explained, not seeming the least bit cross. “But enough talk of exams. Tonight is for celebration. I received very exciting news today from one of our field operatives. I am so pleased with the work that individual has done, I want all of you to share in the reward.”

  This pronouncement was met with deafening applause. While Cressa joined in, she wasn’t entirely sure why they were all clapping. The Dame hadn’t even told them what this good news was or why this particular accomplishment was so important.

  Maybe it’s the treaty vote, Cressa realized excitedly, clapping harder.

  The Joint Nations had been scheduled to decide whether or not to renew the Coexistence Treaty just before Cressa started at the Institute, but then they’d postponed it another month. Cressa had been disappointed; she’d really wanted to know the verdict before leaving, since it would have such a large impact.

  On stage, the Dame waited for the applause to dwindle before speaking again.

  “I thought you all might like that.” She chuckled. “I believe you will like the videos you are about to see even better. Please enjoy, and thank you all for your dedication to our cause.”

  With that, the Dame vanished. Like, literally vanished.

  “I knew it!” Shyla Towers exclaimed loudly. “She was a hologram!”

  Cressa felt as brainless as a rock. She should have realized the Dame was a hologram, since no one was truly that flawless. Yet, her image had appeared utterly solid, not at all like Suzu’s transparent form from earlier.

  “Of course that was a hologram,” Daphne said. “No one even knows what the Dame looks like, do they? Her identity has to be kept a secret. Not even all of the board members have actually seen her. Gracia told me that she always appears as a hologram during meetings. It’s quite brilliant, really. This way, if any of us are captured and tortured, we won’t be able to give out information we don’t have.”

  Several of the 2Ps, Cressa included, gaped at the younger girl. Tortured?

  Why would anyone torture us? Cressa wondered.

  More to the point, how could anyone torture them? Once they were Privileged, they would be stronger, smarter, and just plain better than most everyone else in the world. And those closest to being their equals wouldn’t be players in this epic chess game much longer.

  Daphne wiggled in her seat and faced forward, seeming to not notice their reactions to her words. She pointed towards the stage. “Oh, goody, the movie is starting.”

  Still mulling over Daphne’s comments, Cressa settled into her own seat and turned her gaze to the front of the room. An enormous screen, the entire width of the stage, descended from the ceiling. Once in place, the film began without preamble.

  It wasn’t like any movie Cressa had ever seen. There were no opening credits, no music, and the picture quality was somewhat lacking.

  “Low budget indie flick,” Lyla muttered, echoing Cressa’s thoughts.

  “You’d think with all our parents’ generous endowments, they could afford to rent us something from a major studio,” Shyla grumbled.

  On screen, two boys and a girl stood on a cliff, gazing down at an island not far from the coast. Wind whipped the girl’s platinum ponytail back and forth, and was the only sound coming through the speakers. The actors’ backs were to the camera, making it impossible to tell what they were looking at. Finally, after several long, painfully boring minutes where nothing happened, one of the boys spoke.

  “On my count.” His voice was thick with a Middle Eastern accent. The other boy and the girl nodded.

  “One,” he began, and all three extended their right arms so that they were parallel with the ground.

  “Two.” All three made a turning gesture with their outstretched hands, as if twisting an invisible doorknob.

  “Three!” the boy declared. Simultaneously, the trio drew their arms back sharply, as if pulling an invisible door forcefully shut by that invisible doorknob.

  Cressa had been so strangely mesmerized by the synchronization that she’d missed the bigger picture. It was only after the audience gasped, and several people around her pointed, that she saw it.

  In the background of the shot, a bridge connected the island to the mainland. A gigantic wave—much, much too large for the bay—had risen out of nowhere and was crashing over the bridge.

  “Holy moly!” Daphne exclaimed.

  “Badass,” Lyla declared.

  “Now that’s what I call power,” Ritchie muttered.

  “How’d they do that?” Shyla wanted to know.

  The wave cleared, and the bay returned to the serene calm it had been moments before. It was as though nothing had happened, with one notable exception: debris littered the water.

  It took Cressa a moment to realize the debris were actually chunks of the bridge, along with the cars and people who’d been on it. The wave had destroyed the entire structure.

  A shiver ran down her spine.

  The trio on screen calmly turned away from the destruction, as if they hadn’t just committed mass murder. Not one of them looked at the camera, which, Cressa suddenly realized, was stationary. It hadn’t moved once, not to zoom in on the bridge or follow the threesome as they walked away.

  What type of movie is this? She wondered. Is this a movie at all?

  Cressa got her answer a moment later.

  The scene abruptly switched to a crowd standing at the base of a tall, thin structure. Cressa recognized the scene from her one visit to Toronto—it was the CN Tower. From the way the picture bounced around, she assumed the video was being shot on a communicator rather than an actual camera.

  Definitely not a movie.

  “I thinks we wait a little longer, Svetna,” a strongly accented male voice proclaimed. “Until the tower is full, yes?”

  A woman, seemingly Svetna, appeared on screen. Her protuberant brown eyes filled the camera’s view, wisps of gunmetal gray hair dangling over her forehead.

  “Noon. We were told noon, Yari. It is noon. We do it now,” the girl replied. She stepped back, again out of sight.

  The person holding the communicator let it drop to his side, giving the audience a prolonged shot of
his neon green combat boots.

  “Excuse me, please,” Yari called. “You will please take video of me and my girlfriend, yes? We want to make memories of our time here.”

  “Um, sure,” an uncertain voice replied.

  The communicator transferred hands. Then, Svetna and Yari—a good-looking guy with an impressive Mohawk—came into view. They wrapped their arms around each other, as if truly posing for a romantic picture on holiday.

  “Please be sure you get the Tower in the background,” Svetna ordered the picture-taker.

  Yari laughed. “Yes, that is very good, I think. It is not something I want to forget.”

  “Yeah, okay, got it,” the picture-taker announced, zooming out.

  Svetna and Yari stared into each other’s eyes, seemingly transfixed. Slowly, they brought their foreheads together until they were touching. Above the collars of their matching leather jackets, Cressa could just make out tendrils of black ink. It reminded her of the tattoo she’d seen on Sir Tate.

  “That’s good,” the picture-taker said. “You guys look adorable.”

  “Wait for it,” Yari muttered.

  There was a loud cracking sound, like a thick tree trunk breaking.

  “Wait for it,” Svetna repeated, the smile lighting her features positively blissful.

  The camera shook as the earth began to rumble from somewhere deep within. Behind Svetna and Yari, people started to scream. The sound became louder, the ground rippling beneath the crowd’s feet. As the person holding the communicator fell, Cressa caught a fleeting glimpse of the CN Tower; a lightning-shaped zigzag ran all the way from the top to the bottom.

  The communicator hit the ground with a clatter. Pounding feet flew across the screen as people clamored away from the falling building. Just as Cressa was starting to wonder how they’d ever recovered the footage, someone picked up the device.

  Yari’s face filled the screen. His eyes, wide and feverish, rotated in their sockets, one clockwise and the other counterclockwise. To Cressa, he looked deranged.

  The boy stuck out his tongue, revealing two dice tattooed in the center, each with one dot—snake eyes. Cressa briefly wondered if the one on the back of his neck was a match.

  But every thought in her mind fled when Yari spoke.

  “We are the Privileged. Soon the world will bow to our command.”

  And then, the auditorium was bathed in blackness.

  The spotlight reappeared, along with the holographic representation of the Dame.

  “These are just two of the missions our field Privileged have carried out recently. The attack on the bridge was attributed to the Created, just as we had hoped. Leaving nothing to chance, the Toronto footage was sent to all media outlets, with one minor tweak.”

  The Dame pointed behind her, where Yari’s face came back on screen. This time, the image was blurred. And when he spoke, his voice sounded different, as though filtered through a modulator.

  “We are Created,” he said. “We cannot be stopped.”

  “This was the message we sent to the world,” the Dame continued. “Our existence has only remained a secret for so long because we do not claim credit for our actions. That will change in the very near future. Soon, each and every one of you that achieves Privileged status will be hailed as a leader, a champion, a hero. You will receive more than enough accolades to make up for those denied to the fallen ones who came before you.”

  All around Cressa, cadets leapt to their feet, clapping so vigorously that she was sure their hands stung from the effort. Some hooted and pumped fists in the air. Someone at the front began stomping his feet, chanting, “Privileged, privileged, privileged.” Others took up the cry, until finally the entire auditorium was stomping and chanting in unison.

  Cressa joined her peers half-heartedly. Again, she didn’t really know why everyone was so excited. The videos were disturbing. Countless people had died during those events. And for what? What was the point?

  What’s the point of any of this? A niggling voice in the back of her mind whispered.

  To become Privileged.

  The prospect made her sick to her stomach. In the last twenty-four hours, Cressa had seen more than enough to know that she’d never truly be Privileged. Sure, she might complete the program—she had to, since the only alternative was to end up a lab rat—but she would never stare into a camera lens and gloat over killing thousands of innocent people. She would never feel okay using her peers as unwilling test subjects. She would never saunter off after committing mass murder. She wasn’t like those Privileged in the videos. She wasn’t a bloodthirsty killer.

  Is everyone else here like that? Cressa wondered, her veins turning to ice as she took in the room brimming with enthusiasm.

  She peered over the heads of her classmates, to see the Dame on stage. The woman was smiling serenely, her crystalline blue eyes as calm and tranquil as the bay had been just before the trio conjured the wave. Cressa saw it as an omen.

  A storm was coming their way. And it would destroy everything in its path.

  Erik

  Eden, Isle of Exile

  Three Days Before the Vote

  “You look like hell, kid.”

  Through eyes puffy and bloodshot from lack of sleep and tears I couldn’t will back, I glared up at Miles.

  “Yeah, not sure if you recall, but my girlfriend is missing. That hour I spent in my bed didn’t involve a lot of sleeping,” I growled, voice gravelly as though I’d been chewing on pavement. Then, noting the coffee mug in Miles’s hand, I added, “You’d better have made enough for two.”

  The older agent took a long, slow sip from the mug, studying me through the wisps of steam rising from the contents within. He smiled, baiting me.

  “They pay me to protect you, not to wait on you.”

  “They also pay you to protect others from me. Believe me, your job is going to be a hell of a lot harder, especially today, if I’m not properly caffeinated,” I grumbled, plodding through the living room and into the kitchen. “And why are you here, if not to help me out? I don’t need protection in my own apartment.”

  I smiled despite myself when I entered the kitchen. A full pot of coffee was sitting on the counter, a clean mug sitting beside it.

  “Bring me a refill, will you?” Miles called. “And this morning, I’m here as a friend. I got news for you, kid. Right now, you need friends more than a bodyguard.”

  Three short knocks sounded from the front of the apartment, followed a moment later by a set of electronic beeps and the sound of the door opening.

  “Erik? It’s me,” Penny announced, her voice reverberating throughout the apartment. I heard a noise like crinkling paper. “I brought breakfast.”

  Right, because food is going to help find Talia, I thought bitterly.

  “Oh, hey, Miles,” she said. “I didn’t expect to find you here so early.”

  Coffee pot and an extra cup in one hand, my mug in the other, I returned to the living to find Penny sitting across from Miles at the small dining table. She was pulling what looked like wrapped breakfast sandwiches from a greasy paper bag.

  “I got two for Erik, so if he doesn’t mind sharing—”

  “Take it, man,” I interrupted. “I’m not hungry.”

  Penny and Miles exchanged glances.

  “Erik, you really should—”

  I slammed the stainless steel coffee pot down on the table. The wood groaned, then cracked beneath the violet tablecloth.

  “Don’t,” I snapped. “Don’t either of you tell me what I should or shouldn’t do right now.”

  Neither of them spoke, both afraid of stoking the flames of fury burning hot and fast inside of me. Penny tried to diffuse the situation by sending calming vibes my direction. It was a tried and true method that rarely failed to help me regain control when my temper spiked. This was one of those rare exceptions.

  I did not want to calm down. I wanted an outlet for my anger. No, I needed one. And I didn’t really
care who or what it was.

  I met Penny’s terrified gaze, feeling the fear she was trying desperately to suppress.

  In the time we’d known each other, Penny had experienced a colorful array of my many moods, most of which were at the red end of the spectrum. Never once had she so much as hinted that she was scared of me. Even Miles, who was able to maintain a placid exterior in the face of my temper, had worried for his safety on occasion. But never her.

  So when I felt the first cracks in Penny’s emotional armor, the effect it had on me was more profound than anything she could have said or done.

  Carefully, I placed my coffee cup on the table and eased into a chair. Like a white flag, I pushed the extra mug I’d brought for Penny across the table to her.

  Penny sighed, her shoulders slumping as the tension building inside of her dissipated.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I know you’re just trying to help. And I know I need to eat. I know the best thing I can do for Talia now is to keep my strength up. You don’t need to remind me, Victoria has crammed all the same advice down my throat already.”

  Penny reached over and placed a hand on mine, her fingers cold and clammy against my skin. This time, the vibes she sent were sweet and syrupy and reeked of sympathy. Penny, of all people, came the closest to understanding my pain. She, too, loved Talia. And she was almost as worried about my girlfriend as I was.

  Miles unwrapped one of the breakfast sandwiches, gave it a sniff, shrugged, and took a large bite.

  “Look, I’m not gonna pretend to understand what you’re going through, kid,” he said around a mouthful of egg and cheese on a kelp biscuit. Swallowing, Miles wiped the grease from his fingers on a cloth napkin. “But I do know this: You need to keep your head. Yell and scream all you want at me and girlie over here.” Miles cocked a thumb in Penny’s direction. “Throw shit. Go a few rounds with a punching bag. Do whatever you need to do to burn off that rage.”

  Miles paused, hesitating.

  “Just remember—not everyone at UNITED is looking to bring your girl back because they miss her. Talia Lyons is dangerous.” He held up a hand when I opened my mouth to argue. “You know that’s true. She’s dangerous just like you are dangerous. You need to keep your head around everyone who’s not us, to show them that your danger can be reined in. Because, right now, your girlfriend is also an escaped convict.”