Privileged (Talented Saga Book 7)

  Compared to Talia, both Frederick and I had gotten off far too easily.

  Climbing over the back of the seat, Frederick plopped down beside me.

  “It’s good to see you, man,” he said. “I’ve been watching you on the wallscreen. Pretty powerful stuff, those rallies.”

  “Think they’ve actually made a difference?” Miles asked.

  Frederick smiled wryly. “We’ll know soon, won’t we?”

  Truthfully, I no longer cared at all which way the vote went. Despite knowing the thoughts were bordering on traitorous, sometimes I even wondered if it wouldn’t be better if the treaty’s renewal failed to pass.

  I’d been out there at every rally, facing the hatred and fear head-on. Before becoming UNITED’s poster boy, I’d never really appreciated how unwelcome Talents were in most of the world. So many norms didn’t want us to be part of their society any longer, maybe we should just grant that wish. Maybe it would be better for us to live in our own Talented communities, free of the persecution and contempt.

  The only problem was that the Isle of Exile wasn’t large enough to accommodate the number of refugees who would need to immediately flee from their home countries if the vote failed. In a perfect world, the Talented wouldn’t have to live all huddled up on a remote strip of islands, but could instead build communities in countries that welcomed us. It would take time, though, and the Isle was needed in the interim. Before finding out that UNITED intended to solve that problem, at least in part, by offing my girlfriend, I’d felt horrible that only the lottery winners would be relocated.

  Not so much anymore. All that mattered to me was Talia.

  “Have you seen her, Frederick?” I asked, careful to keep my voice barely above a whisper. “I mean, you know her so well, you should be able to view her, right?”

  Frederick looked torn, and I felt his warring internal conflict.

  Like me, he wanted to find her. He knew his gifts should allow him to do that. But he felt like using his abilities to help UNITED capture and re-imprison Talia was a betrayal to her. A quick swipe of his thoughts told me that he didn’t know about the proposition the council had passed the previous morning. That was a situation I would remedy as soon as we were alone.

  “I haven’t,” Frederick replied. “I’m so sorry, Erik.”

  “But have you tried?” I demanded, still speaking in a low voice that wouldn’t carry. “Like, really tried?”

  His presence had brought me renewed hoped, something I desperately needed in that moment. Though Talia could block me from her mind, there was no way to block Frederick’s talents.

  Frederick’s gaze darted around the auditorium, as though concerned about being overheard. The other agents were all busy being briefed on their individual assignments by their team leaders. No one was paying a bit of attention to our group.

  Frederick leaned closer to me. On cue, Penny and Miles leaned in as well.

  “I have,” Frederick confided. “And I saw her.”

  Penny squealed excitedly, echoing the thrill that tugged at my heart. Frederick held one scolding finger to his lips in warning. I didn’t need to ask whether he’d divulged this very pertinent bit of information to Victoria or the rest of the council; the acrid odor of fear emanating from him clearly indicated that he had not.

  “Before you throw a party, I don’t think what I saw will be particularly helpful. Honestly, I’m not even sure that what I saw was…real. The vision—it doesn’t make any sense.”

  Frederick shook his head from side to side, as if the action would bring clarity.

  “Do you often have fake visions?” I asked, confused. “I’ve only viewed a couple of times, but I’m pretty sure my visions are always accurate. At least, as far as I know, anyhow.”

  An image of a roiling sea filled my head. A jolt of pain shot up my arm.

  I’d experienced the storm through Talia’s eyes, not using remote viewing. Still, I had been uncertain whether the out-of-body experience was real.

  I mean, it definitely felt real. But was it? Had Talia actually been flying across the ocean several hours before? If so, where was Anya? Why had they separated?

  “Mine, too,” Penny agreed, drawing me back to the present.

  “Have either of you been able to contact her, then?” Frederick asked, again checking the immediately vicinity for eavesdroppers.

  “I had a weird flash,” I said. At the same time, Penny said, “Nope.”

  “And?” Frederick asked me, making an out-with-it gesture.

  “I was in Victoria’s office last night,” I started. “I wasn’t actively trying to contact Tals, but it was almost like she reached for me. She was in the ocean, being pulled under the waves. Then, she started flying. But she was struck by lightning, I think. I don’t know. It happened so fast. And Talia booted me out of her mind before I could ask her any questions.”

  “What time was that? Do you remember?” Frederick asked.

  I shook my head. “Not sure. Two in the morning? Three, maybe? I tried reaching out to her when I got back to my apartment, but she was blocking me. I also tried to view her, since she can’t prevent that. But that didn’t work either.”

  “I also couldn’t get to her,” Penny added morosely. “I’ve tried both mental communication and viewing, too. Nothing either way—just a blank space.”

  Frederick nodded, as though he’d expected as much.

  “It took me a couple of tries,” he said. “I finally saw her about an hour ago, just before the meeting. I wasn’t even trying, either. It was sort of like she reached out to me, too. I was just sitting in Victoria’s office, listening to Warden Cali explain that his people hadn’t made any progress with their search and bam.” Frederick clapped his hands together once, miming a collision. “Out of nowhere, I’m staring at a girl’s dirty face under a fur-lined hood. She said something like, ‘Oy, you’re awake,’ and then everything went black again.”

  “Okay, so Talia is somewhere cold,” Penny reasoned.

  I could practically see the wheels in Penny’s head turning as she calculated the distance Talia could have traveled between the time she’d been missing and the top speed of the pods. With unprecedented speed, Penny made a mental list of all the possible places Talia could be. Then, she crossed off the ones with an average temperature above freezing this time of year and was left with only five options.

  The process was so dizzying, I regretted reading her thoughts while she did it.

  “Why do you think the vision might be fake?” I asked Frederick.

  “I don’t know, exactly,” he admitted. “It was hazy, for one. Almost like it was out-of-focus. And it wasn’t at all what I was expecting from Talia, given her current situation. But, in general, it just seemed…off.” Frederick shrugged, his expression apologetic.

  “Maybe she’s been drugged?” Penny suggested.

  “I guess that might explain it,” Frederick replied. “It would also explain why I couldn’t view her earlier—sometimes it’s difficult to view drugged or sleeping people.”

  “When, though?” Miles asked, confused. “She had enough control to escape. She also took down two guards inside her cell. They both claim she used her powers on them, though I’m guessing that’s just their excuse for screwing up. Regardless, when exactly would she have been drugged?”

  Penny shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The guilty expression that momentarily darted across her features spoke volumes to me. Penny had a theory. One she wasn’t ready to voice aloud.

  I poked Penny’s mental shields, testing for vulnerable spots. No dice.

  Just as I was about to take a mental sledgehammer to Penny’s defenses, I noticed that Frederick also suddenly appeared uneasy.

  “Spill,” I barked at him, deciding to first take the path of least resistance.

  “Talia definitely has use of her talents,” Frederick confirmed. “As you all can imagine, Warden Cali is incredibly pissed about that. He wants to know how this happened. He’s
accused everyone and anyone who’s had contact with Talia in the last thirty days of wrongdoing. Even Victoria. The councilwoman denied any knowledge of it, of course.”

  He paused, and I pounced on the opening to demand that Frederick get to the point.

  “What does Talia having her powers have to do with her being drugged?” I snapped.

  It was Penny who answered.

  “That escape was elaborate. I mean, extremely elaborate. It wasn’t simply that the opportunity arose and she took it. At least, not entirely. Whoever orchestrated Talia’s jailbreak would’ve needed a lot of time to devise the plan, then even more to put all of the pieces in place. What’s more, Talia would have needed access to her talents for it to work.” She stared at me pointedly, imploring me to connect the dots.

  Unfortunately, I understood exactly what she was getting at.

  “You think someone was behind Talia’s escape,” I stated. “Someone who wanted her out of jail and alive, but not necessarily conscious. Someone who lured her out, then drugged her once she was free.”

  “The pieces fit,” Penny responded quietly. “It makes sense.”

  I realized that she’d been thinking the same thing from the moment we considered that Talia might’ve been drugged.

  “Now, the real question is, who wants Talia badly enough to go through so much trouble to get her?” Penny continued.

  My mind turned immediately to Nightshade and the list of targets. Someone was willing to pay a great deal for her capture.

  Out of nowhere, another memory surfaced on the heels of that one—the text communications Talia received at the auction. An unknown number had sent her several messages. The last one had said: I’ll be seeing you soon.

  I wanted to kick myself for not remembering sooner. Or put my fist through a wall.

  “Did anything more ever come of those text communications?” I asked, interrupting Penny as she started to say something about Anya.

  Frederick stared at me blankly.

  “The ones from the auction,” I clarified.

  Victoria had contacted me while I was off doing the peace rally circuit to tell me the cryptos had been able to trace the messages back to the sender, but the communicator was no longer in use. It had been ditched shortly after the auction.

  “Oh, no. At least, not that I know of. But you can ask Victoria in a minute. That’s actually why I came over—she wants a private word with both of you.” Frederick nodded towards me then Penny. He turned to Miles. “She didn’t specify whether you were to come along.”

  “I’m the kid’s personal bodyguard. Where he goes, I go,” Miles replied.

  Frederick’s blond eyebrows jumped halfway up his forehead.

  “Bodyguard?” he asked incredulously. “Erik is the last person who needs a bodyguard. Especially on the islands.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s more that he’s supposed to guard other people from me. You know, in case I go mental.”

  “Fair enough.” Frederick wasn’t nearly as surprised by this admission as I’d have liked. “Look, we can talk about all of this with Victoria. We’d better go. You know how she hates to be kept waiting.”

  The four of us stood. Victoria was still at the front of the auditorium speaking with the warden and several other council members. She didn’t seem to see us, but then two words screamed inside my head: My office. One look at Penny told me that she’d heard them, too.

  “I thought she hated mental communication,” I said.

  Frederick smiled knowingly. “She’s gotten pretty used to it while you two were gone. It’s the only way she and Talia could talk during their daily visits.”

  The fact that Victoria had been visiting Talia shocked me more than hearing the councilwoman’s voice inside my head.

  Talia

  The Atlantic Ocean

  Three Days Before the Vote

  The pod broke the surface nearly one hundred miles west of the Isle of Exile. Anya was explaining about a small town where friends of her family had a château in the French countryside. I’d stopped paying attention to her constant nervous rambling not long after we’d zoomed at top speed away from Vault, more interested in the plan forming in my own mind.

  I’d told the council that I had no idea as to the whereabouts of my wayward mentee. Technically, that was true. Sort of. Kenly never told me where she planned on going after leaving Walburton Manor, and I had never asked. But prison provided me without a lot of downtime, long stretches where I had nothing but time to contemplate the many wonders of the messed up world I currently lived in. One of the many things I’d pondered was where Kenly might have gone. I’d narrowed the infinite number of possibilities to a mere handful.

  Well, actually just one, to be precise.

  All roads lead to London, I thought.

  Dead set on taking down the Poachers, Kenly and her merry band of cohorts would have wanted to locate themselves in the center of the action. From Victoria’s mind, I knew James, Kenly’s boyfriend, was from a Poaching family and had contacts in London. Most notably, this included his older sister Bryn, who had been feeding UNITED information on the despicable organization for several months. Prior to gatecrashing the Poachers auction, I’d read background intel on the group and knew that many of the major players owned and operated nightclubs in London.

  UNITED had the same information that I did. I attributed their inability to find Kenly to her superior cloak-and-dagger skills, as opposed to the possibility that she may not have gone to London after leaving Walburton Manor.

  She’s there, I told myself. It was a fact I felt deep in my bones, because it was where I’d have gone in her shoes.

  Laying low with Kenly and her friends for a couple of days would buy me a few days to think of a better, long-term hidey-hole. It was risky for everyone involved. And had there been another option for me, I wouldn’t have even considered putting Kenly and the others in jeopardy.

  Maybe this is a bad idea, I thought, not for the first time. I hated the idea of leading UNITED directly to Kenly’s doorstep. She’s a big girl. Let her decide, I told myself. Once I contacted Kenly, I would explain the situation, including all of the dangers involved with harboring a fugitive, and then she and the others could talk it over. If they decided I was too big a liability—well, that was a problem for later.

  UNITED wanted Kenly, but she wasn’t a high priority target currently. With the treaty vote nearly upon us, the Created as a whole had moved down the list. An escape convict, however, was a top priority. UNITED would spare no expense and no amount of manpower locating me.

  Oddly, that knowledge brought about a fair amount of guilt. Another tidbit I’d gleaned from Victoria’s mind was the chaotic state of the world. Each dawn brought with it a dozen new attacks, norms assaulting Talented, Created, and anyone and everyone they so much as suspected fell in either category. The reverse was true as well. The animosity between the two races had never been higher, at least not in Victoria’s memory. UNITED agents were working with local governments to keep the peace until the vote. My escape would draw those agents away from their posts so that they could search for me.

  “My family has a lot of friends in that region, they’ll help hide us,” Anya was saying for the umpteenth time.

  I was sitting in the driver’s seat, even though the pod was programmed on autopilot. Scanning the control panel, I located the release switch for the glass hood.

  “Good. That’s very good,” I mumbled absently in response to Anya’s comment.

  I began shedding my prisoner garb, until only my cotton undergarments remained.

  “I’ll find a way to get word to E that we’re safe. He won’t be able to meet up with us right away, but he’ll come soon. I’m sure of it. Wait, Talia, what are you doing?”

  Anya had finally noticed that I was practically naked.

  “Oh, right. Sorry. Of course, you’ll want to change. That prisoner number is a dead giveaway. I bet there is a UNITED uniform in here somewhere,??
? she said, answering her own question.

  Anya turned to look behind her. I put my hand on her shoulder to draw her attention back to me.

  “Look, Anya, I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your help. I know I screwed up with Konterra. That woman hates me, and I shouldn’t have let her get to me. It’s just, after she told me about Victoria voting to execute me, I lost it. If you hadn’t already been planning this escape, well, I don’t know what would have happened to me. Using my talents in front of two guards sort of sealed the deal. Not that it matters, since UNITED was already hell-bent on offing me.” Anya’s rambling must have been contagious, now I was doing it. I took a deep breath to regroup. “I can’t let you get in any more trouble on my account. Go to your family friends. Let them hide you until this all blows over. If the vote goes our way, and if you want to, go back to UNITED and tell them I compelled you. Otherwise, stay in hiding. If the treaty isn’t renewed, well, I guess do the same thing. Or maybe it’s better if you stay in hiding. I don’t really know. The islands can’t accommodate all of our kind, so maybe it’s better if you stay with your friends.”

  “No. No, that’s not how this works. I knew the consequences from the beginning. Please, come with me. It will be safer for you. For both of us.”

  I swallowed my guilt. In a way, Anya was right. She wasn’t a fighter. If she encountered trouble in the form of UNITED agents, she’d be easy prey. But they wouldn’t hunt her the way they would me. I truly believed that.

  “No, Anya.” I smiled sadly. “The safest place for you is as far away from me as possible.” Another pang of guilt over what I was about to ask Kenly to do made my stomach cramp. “As soon as I can, I’ll contact Victoria and tell her that I forced you to help me. It won’t matter that Konterra and Les say differently. Once Victoria learns we aren’t together, UNITED will stop looking for you.”

  I flipped the release switch.

  Anya’s protests were drowned out by the wind and rain suddenly whipping about the small cabin. I stood on the seat. Anya’s fingers wrapped around my wrist, attempting to pull me back down.