“Do you trust me, Anya?”
“Yeah, of course, but—”
“Tell me where the entrance is. I can get us down.”
Without waiting for her to send a reply, I read the answer from Anya’s thoughts. A bathroom. On the med level, UNITED kept their hidden entrance to the escape hatch in a bathroom.
Luckily, we weren’t far from it. Reading the directions from Anya’s mind, we scurried along the vent as if we had dozens of prison guards hunting us.
Only two minutes later, we dropped through the ceiling tile and into the single occupant restroom. I saw a toilet, a sink, and full-length mirror on one wall. Besides the door, there was nothing that so much as hinted at an exit.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked, frustrated.
“It’s possible it’s in the outer room. I can’t be positive. But I’m sure the entrance is in this area.”
We both frantically scanned the room, but nothing was out of place.
“The mirror,” Anya suddenly sent. “I bet it conceals the door.”
She didn’t feel nearly as confident as she’d have me believe, but we were quickly running out of options.
Placing one hand on either side of the mirror, I yanked it free from the wall. Cool air rushed out from the rectangular hole left in its place. Anya and I exchanged wide-eyed looks of disbelief. I recovered first, sticking my head through the opening and into the black abyss. The air inside the chute was thick with moisture, the cold breeze refreshing on my sweaty skin.
I heard the guards’ thoughts long before I heard their footfalls. Wrapping my arm around Anya’s waist, I pulled her to the edge of the chute.
“You said you trusted me, right? Hold on.”
I leapt through the opening, pulling her with me.
Anya’s scream was so shrill that it could have peeled paint. The shriek continued as we plummeted down the chute. Even if I’d somehow been able to replace the mirror over the opening as we jumped, her scream would’ve been heard on every floor we passed on our downward flight.
Adrenaline coursed through my veins, sending my senses into overdrive. I embraced the fall, relishing the feel of wind whipping through my tangled curls and wailing in my ears. As quickly as we dropped, I had to fight the urge to close my eyes. Tears blurred my vision, but I didn’t need to see much—just the light at the end of the tunnel.
In truth, my plan was not exactly what you might call a sure thing. Anya, with her ability to perform complex mathematical equations in her head faster than I could spell ‘complex mathematical equations,’ was actually better suited for calculating the amount of opposing force I needed to stop our decent. All I had were my instincts.
Trusting in them, as I had so many times before, I used my powers to slow our falling bodies when the blackness gave way to light. Arms still wrapped around each other, Anya and I came to a stop mere inches from the ground.
The abrupt halt cut off Anya’s scream. She began gasping for breath. Slowly, I lowered us the rest of the way down. When I released Anya, she fell to her knees and vomited. Nurturing was not in my nature, so I just watched for several long, uncomfortable moments. Then, since her current condition was my fault, I reached over to rub her back and muttered, “You’re okay, you’re okay. Just get it all out.”
While Anya lost her dinner, I stared around the cavernous room, awestruck. The chute had deposited us in the center of a long, narrow dock. Water lapped the edges, coming up over the sides and soaking the cuffs of my pants. By my estimation, about twenty pods were docked on either side of the watery walkway—forty in total. They varied in size, some one-man crafts. Others meant to hold ten to twelve people.
Anya stumbled to her feet, using my arm for leverage. Her skin had a sickly green hue to it, and her eyes were bloodshot and unfocused.
“Any particular one we need to take?” I asked gently.
“That one.” She pointed to the closest pod, a small four-person craft with two seats in front and two in back.
I half-carried, half-dragged Anya over to the sub, popped the hood, and deposited her into the front passenger seat. By the time I rounded the front end again and climbed in the driver’s side, she was fumbling with her communicator.
The top slid closed above us. Water began to bubble around the craft like jets in a hot tub, the sound deafening. The craft sank into the bubbles.
We were almost fully submerged when the first of the guards landed on the lowermost level of Vault, a black parachute billowing down around him like giant cape.
Erik
Eden, Isle of Exile
Three Days Before the Vote
“This is your fault, Victoria!” I punctuated the accusation with a punch to the wall, right between two paintings by Michaela Molins, the councilwoman’s favorite Techno Era artist.
The sleek chrome frames rattled from the impact. One, some abstract piece meant to resemble a circuit board, slid from its hook. I grabbed the painting midair, my grip so tight that the glass splintered.
“I take full responsibility for what happened on Vault,” Victoria replied, perfectly calm in the face of my outrage.
This only fueled my fury. I squeezed the painting more forcefully, a shard of glass penetrated my palm.
“Shit!” I swore, throwing the damned artwork against the wall. Glass exploded, raining down around me in sparkling drops.
“Careful, kid. That thing’s worth more than a spanking new rec hover,” Miles said mildly. He was standing near the door to Victoria’s office, optimally located out of my direct firing range while still being perfectly positioned to grab me, if necessary.
“Put it on my tab,” I growled.
From behind her office desk, Victoria rose slowly. She pushed a button on her intercom.
“Hank, fetch the first aid supplies. It seems Agent Kelley has had an accident.”
“I don’t need first aid supplies!” I shouted. “I need my girlfriend!”
It was late—or early, depending how you looked at it—and Talia had gone rogue nearly an hour before. I’d spoken with her briefly before she’d disappeared, but was forced to cut the conversation short due to a stupid meeting about heightened security measures at my final rally.
Why didn’t you demand they reschedule the stupid freaking meeting?
If I‘d thrown my weight around and insisted we move the meeting, I would have been talking to Talia when she learned the news that made her decide escape was her only option. Instead, I’d returned to my apartment, opened my mind, and found my girlfriend careening down an airshaft. Her adrenaline was high and her emotions erratic.
By the time I received Victoria’s message, summoning me to her office, I was already pounding on the door.
Hank, Victoria’s current errand boy and personal assistant, opened the office door just wide enough to peek his head inside. Taking in the scene, he thrust a med kit through the opening, waving it like a white flag. Miles took the kit, then shooed the assistant back with a flick of his hand. The other man was only too happy to comply, undoubtedly relieved to keep a barrier between himself and my wrath.
Gonna need more than some drywall to protect you, you coward, I thought angrily.
“Erik,” Miles began, tone sharp as an executioner’s blade, “you need to calm down, kid.”
I spun to face him, ready to unleash my next round of aggression on him. But one look at his tired, hollow expression tempered my rage. Miles looked as though he’d aged ten years in the last ten hours. He didn’t know Talia personally, but he did know how much she meant to me and how devastating her disappearance was.
“Sit down, let me at your hand.” Miles nodded to the two chairs in front of Victoria’s desk.
With a grunt, I sat.
“Come on, kid. Let me see.” He took the other chair, and then gestured towards my balled-up fist.
Blood leaked over my white knuckles, trailing crimson streams down my forearm. I unclenched my hand. The glass was embedded so deeply, it was a won
der it hadn’t poked out the other side.
“You aren’t careful, you’ll have more stitches than Frankenstein’s monster soon,” Miles remarked.
I turned away from the gory sight, ashamed by my own behavior. Though I knew this would not be my last outburst before Talia was found—my temper was too quick, my emotions too volatile—I didn’t like feeling out of control.
“We will find her, Erik,” Victoria said. She’d taken her seat behind the desk once more, and was watching me through amber eyes that were more feline than human. “You may not believe this, but I too care about Talia.”
I’d only managed a brief glimpse inside Talia’s head while she tore through the endless maze of corridors on Vault, just enough to tell me that she was furious. More furious than I’d ever seen her, in fact. Which was saying something. It hadn’t taken me long to dig the source of that fury out of her head.
The thought brought a fresh wave of outrage, sending my temper to all new heights.
“Right, of course you care,” I spat venomously at Victoria. “You care so much that you sanctioned her execution.”
I met the councilwoman’s intense stare, hoping she was absorbing every measure of my contempt.
“What is it, Victoria?” I demanded. “What is it about Talia that made you think you needed to kill her? Worried she might go rogue if you grant her freedom? Is that how UNITED views her—as a weapon? One that might fall into enemy hands? I know you don’t like her, but seriously? You’d rather see her dead than find a way to deal with your differences?”
Victoria’s gaze morphed to pure gold. Anger, both hers and mine, sizzled and popped in the still air like live wires. When the councilwoman spoke again, her voice was hoarse and guttural.
“The situation is more complicated than that, Erik.”
“Complicated?” I yelled.
The glass on the unbroken paintings splintered in response to my anger, the power fighting to be unleashed in a storm of destruction. No one, least of all me, seemed to care.
“Just answer one question, Victoria,” I demanded. “Did you or did you not vote to kill her?”
The friction in the office was nearly unbearable as Victoria and I locked gazes, neither of us willing to blink first.
A part of my brain registered a quiet knock on the door, followed by the faintest creak of hinges. But I refused to concede to Victoria in this battle of wills, and I certainly didn’t care enough to look over my shoulder to see who’d joined our very tense party. Never taking her eyes off of me, Victoria gave a small nod of greeting to the newcomer.
This time, when the councilwoman finally spoke, her words were clipped and measured.
“I do not wish Talia dead, Erik. She and I will always have our differences. That much is true. We will never agree on certain aspects of this profession. Nonetheless, I do respect her. I do care about her a great deal—as much, much more than an asset or an agent.” Pausing briefly, a note of something akin to sadness or regret crept into her eyes. “But I cannot say the same for the rest of the council.”
Miles chose that precise moment to yank the shard of glass from my palm. The pain barely registered, though I flinched when he poured disinfectant over the wound.
“What the hell does that even mean?” I demanded through gritted teeth. “Cut the political speak, and just tell me what the hell is going on.”
Victoria eased back in her chair, her face carefully wiped of all emotion. More than anything she could have said or done, that expression infused a healthy dose of fear into my rage; whatever she had to say, Victoria knew I wasn’t going to like it.
“This morning, the UNITED council passed a highly-unorthodox proposition….” Victoria paused, as if not wanting to continue, and took a deep breath. “Should the Joint Nations fail to ratify the treaty, the council has approved the executions of all prisoners on Levels Four and Five.”
That was all I heard. My brain shut off, willing the words away.
The councilwoman continued talking, but I was no longer listening. Nothing Victoria said mattered. It felt as though my blood was no longer pumping, my organs no longer functioning, save one.
Invisible scissors bisected my heart straight down the middle. Then, for good measure, the shears continued masticating every shred of Talia’s home within my body. The pain did not lessen, but rather grew more intense with each new cut.
This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. How the fuck could Victoria have let this happen?
Without a doubt, Talia genuinely believed she was scheduled to die. Even my tempestuous, impulsive girlfriend wouldn’t have risked trying to escape from Vault if she didn’t truly believe it was the only means of survival.
But a part of me had been hoping this whole time that Konterra, that spiteful guard, had invented the whole nightmare to screw with Talia. From the brief interaction I’d witnessed between the two, the guard hated my girlfriend with a passion that rivaled the way I felt about the council just then.
With Victoria’s confirmation of the truth, that hope died a swift, devastating death.
“How could you?” I hissed, interrupting whatever Victoria was saying mid-sentence. “How could you let them do that to her? She saved your life, Victoria. Doesn’t that count for anything? Talia trusted you. She might not like you, but she did trust you. Do you have any clue how difficult it is for her to trust anybody after the way Mac used her? The way he forced his own damned son to use her? Why do you think Penny and I killed him? It wasn’t just because of what he did to us. When it came to Danbury McDonough and all the messed up shit he did, Talia paid the highest price of all.”
My blood was running so hot. I thought it might boil me alive. As if Victoria’s betrayal and the council’s screwed up ruling weren’t bad enough, now I had thoughts of the greatest traitor of all swimming through my mind.
A whirring noise filled my head, overwhelming every other sound in the room. Then, just as quickly as it had come, it was gone, only to return an instant later. A cacophony of sharp cracks and dull thuds punctuated the brief respites.
Without conscious thought, my abilities were manifesting the desperate, chaotic, and destructive thoughts swimming through my mind. The air around me was no longer still, instead swirling with the sizzling power emanating from me. Crashing gusts of wind twisted throughout the room, leaving a trail of wreckage where Victoria’s random bric-a-brac had been. The few pictures still hanging on the walls slammed to the floor. Papers sailed through the air as if lifted by a tornado. A vase, two dove paperweights, and a candy dish all zoomed past me at top speed.
And I was just getting started.
When I sent the cup of sharpened pencils whizzing towards Victoria’s head, I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Erik? Son? Can you hear me? I’m here. Come back to me, son.”
All twenty of the pencils lodged in the wall behind Victoria, forming a perfect outline of her skull. To her credit, the councilwoman remained impossibly composed, as though irate agents routinely stopped by to angrily redecorate her office.
The hand on my shoulder squeezed just slightly, applying gentle pressure, and a calming energy settled over me. Except, it wasn’t at all like when Talia forced calm emotions into me; it wasn’t the usage of a talent, no preternatural ability.
Instead, it was the familiarity of the man’s touch that allowed me to regain control. It made me feel safe and sheltered, like nothing bad could happen. At the same time, I also felt like the same naughty little boy I’d been at ten, when I shaved our family dog because he kept panting in my face.
His voice—one I hadn’t realized I needed to hear so badly—broke through the opaque red smog that was clogging my brain.
“I know this is hard, but you need to listen to Victoria.”
I looked up and blinked, shocked to find my father’s face hovering above me. Evidently, he was the person who’d entered the room during my stare-down with Victoria.
“Dad? What are you d
oing here?” I asked, confused. Then, just to be sure I wasn’t hallucinating, I squeezed the hand resting on my shoulder, testing its existence.
My father winced at the tight grip, and I relaxed. He was definitely real.
“I wanted to be with you when you got the news, son. Victoria thought you might need me.” He smiled sheepishly. “I know, I know. You’re a grown man. You don’t need your father’s shoulder to cry on. But, well, I’m here anyway. Just in case.”
His words brought a lump to my throat, and I took several deep breaths. I actually did want to cry on his shoulder, to find a brief respite from the overpowering emotions. And, honestly, I didn’t care if that made me look weak or pathetic. The thought of Talia, so strong, so stoic in the face of adversity, even as wave after wave pulled her farther under the turbulent sea—
Wait, what? Where did that come from? Tals?
Was Talia swimming in the ocean? Finally, I seemed to be connecting with her, drawn to her frequency by my girlfriend’s feelings of desperation.
Experiencing that particular emotion from Tals was terrifying.
I closed my eyes, blocking out everything and everyone in Victoria’s office, and concentrated on Talia. Lightning streaked across the night sky, illuminating the roiling black seascape. Pain shot up my arm and my muscles tensed. Then, the image in my head vanished. My girlfriend was simply gone again.
“Does Talia know?”
Blinking my eyes open, I found Victoria’s golden gaze staring back at me expectantly. In the chair beside mine, Miles was still tending to my injured hand. Behind me, my father was still patting my shoulder reassuringly. Not one of the three had noticed my temporary detour into Talia’s mind.
“What?” I asked. I kept my mind wide open, in case I was able to connect with Tals again, but returned my attention to the conversation happening around me.
“Does Talia know about the outcome of the council’s vote this morning?” Victoria repeated slowly. “About the possible executions?”
“Yeah, she obviously knows about the council’s decision.” I shook my head indignantly, shooting Victoria an incredulous look. “Why do you think she decided to escape now? Talia might be impulsive, but she’s not stupid.”