The Lost Voice

by V. St. Clair

  Even Topher looked mildly surprised by him raising a valid concern. Perhaps he wouldn’t be entirely useless as a Viceregal after all.

  “A good point,” Jessamine acknowledged. “We would need to make sure we screened our applicants for this division to ensure our more egalitarian people are on it. It would also be a good idea to hire some Gifted for the oversight committee as well.”

  There was an outbreak of muttering at this, and Major Andro made a face like he had smelled something unpleasant.

  “More Gifted in the government? So soon?” Freeman mumbled loudly enough for the others to hear.

  “I can hardly enact a law banning discrimination in hiring and then refuse to employee any Gifted to help enforce it. I’d have to sue myself.”

  Ground-Leader Skye’s voice was carefully measured when she said, “It aligns with the Integration Initiative and with the Vicereine’s public promises. It makes sense, as a first step, before larger obstacles can be tackled.”

  Ah, Andrea, you already see my next step…

  Lavesh seemed to sense a trap, because he said, “If that’s part one of your proposal, what in the world is part two?”

  “Well,” Jessamine smiled, though her palms were sweating. “Once we have equality in the workforce, I intend to nominate a Gifted representative to the General Assembly. Representation matters.”

  It was like a bomb went off. People jumped out of their seats, and the yelling echoed off the walls and made it sound like a hundred people were shouting all at once. Even some of the people who normally sided with her on everything looked doubtful now, and Jessamine wondered if she should have kept part-two to herself until she had made more ground as Vicereine.

  Assemblyman Lavesh actually grabbed Jessamine by the arm as though to shake some sense into her, but Topher suddenly had an ion-sword to his throat, and the room fell abruptly silent, all eyes focused on the eerie orange glow that promised death.

  “Release the Vicereine.” His voice was scarily calm, and Lavesh let go of Jessamine’s arm as though scalded. In the sudden stillness she noticed that each of her Majors had moved behind a different member of the Assembly—the ones arguing the loudest against her—and Ground-Leader Skye had shifted position in her seat and had her hand poised over her belt, prepared to draw a weapon.

  “I—I didn’t mean—” Lavesh stumbled over his words.

  “You do not touch the Vicereine without her consent,” Topher reminded the room at large, dispersing his ion-sword and returning it to his belt. Lavesh stumbled through an apology.

  “Tempers were high—I forgive you. Everyone please return to their seats.” Jessamine watched as the room collectively seemed to exhale in relief and everyone went back to their earlier positions.

  Good to know my people were prepared to take down everyone in the room if the need arose.

  Once everyone was settled Jarlais said, “There are still Gifted being murdered in the street. If your enemies are angry now, they are going to be livid when they hear of this new initiative. Is this the best time to antagonize them, before the murderer is caught?”

  Jessamine frowned.

  “Perhaps we will drive them out into the open. I refuse to hold up an entire planet in fear of one or two bad apples.” Please let it only be one or two…

  Jarlais tilted his head to concede the point.

  “I can see you all need time to digest this proposal before voting. This meeting is dismissed, and will vote on the issue in two days. Adjourned.”

  She stood and walked quickly from the room, disappointed with how poorly it had gone but knowing she was foolish to expect anything else.

  One day, she promised herself. One day we’ll be able to look back and laugh at how foolish the old days were.

  She had barely made it to the door when Shellina caught up to her and fell into step beside her.

  “Well, that was a disaster,” her sister said worriedly.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “I was worried for a moment the Majors were going to start killing Assembly members.”

  “For a moment, so was I,” Jessamine agreed. “Thankfully I don’t believe Lavesh had any intent to harm me, and I’m wearing armor so I could hardly even feel his grip. He just got carried away and forgot himself.”

  “Yes, but still.” Shellina let the statement hang in the space between them. “At least the Provo did their jobs and got things under control. Topher was scary.”

  “Indeed. What are your thoughts on my proposal?” Jessamine turned to her. “You can tell me the truth—I won’t be angry.”

  Shellina pursed her lips and said, “Well, to be honest, I’m not wild about the thought of Gifted in our upper levels of government. I mean, what you said about them being able to work normal jobs makes sense, it just seems like such a big change happening all at once.”

  Jessamine sighed.

  “I know, but every step will feel like a big change until it’s over with. I have to keep making progress or my promises will just be empty words, even if I have to replace half of the General Assembly to do it.”

  Shellina nodded.

  “Well, I won’t pretend to fully understand your push for the Gifted, but you’re the Vicereine—and my sister—so I’ll do what I can to support it. I’ll talk to Freeman and Lavesh privately and see if I can convince them to go along with it.”

  Jessamine raised her eyebrows in surprise.

  “You think it’ll work?” She didn’t technically need a unanimous vote to push her bill through, but she would prefer it.

  “I think I can make some headway with them. I have a different relationship with the General Assembly since my role has always been different than yours, so I’ll see what I can do to get their buy-in before tomorrow.”

  Jessamine nodded and said, “Thank you, Shellina. You’re becoming such an important asset. I’ve been really impressed with you recently, even when you don’t agree with what I’m doing.”

  Shellina gave her a small smile and said, “What are sisters for?” In the next breath she said, “I’m going to go find Topher and ask him on a date. Wish me luck!”

  Jessamine felt a stab of guilt. She had told Shellina there was nothing going on between her and Topher and that she was welcome to pursue him. She had lied.

  “Good luck,” she said with a forced smile, knowing that sometime soon she would need to find a way to break the news to Shellina and see the hurt and betrayal in her eyes. It wouldn’t be fair to put Topher in the position of doing it, as much as she didn’t want to be the one to break her sister’s heart.

  What are sisters for? She reflected glumly as Shellina bounced away from her.

  22

  Ana Crumb

  Ana wasn’t aware of any newcomers to the Academy, but somehow the campus had never felt busier. Perhaps it was all of the classes being held after hours to help people draft resumes and practice interviewing, or the extra sessions on advanced topics within business, engineering, and medical fields to give people a boost to their qualifications.

  Six weeks had passed since the Vicereine announced her passage of a law making it illegal for employers to discriminate against the Gifted, and even though it would take months for Jessamine to form the oversight committee and get enough clout to start enforcing the policy, every Gifted in the Academy was scrambling to prepare for a shot at reentering the real world to work.

  According to the news reports, the vote from the General Assembly had been unanimous in favor of the new law, though Ana thought she knew enough about the government by now to guess how many arms Jessamine had to twist to get the others to vote ‘yes.’

  Well, no one can say she doesn’t lives up to her promises, Ana mused, leafing through a brochure on being a biohazards specialist. Even in the face of assassins, she is nervy as hell.

  Though the job market would soon be flooded with Gifted who were tired of going to school and eager to join the workforce, Ana hadn’t even begun drafting her resume yet. She hadn�
�t attended any supplemental classes, nor did she hang out in the foyer of Building-9 chatting with the others in her dorm about how she was going to go out into the world and make a name for herself. She hadn’t really done much of anything yet.

  The plain and simple truth was that with the whole world suddenly opening up to her, Ana had no idea what she wanted to do.

  She’d taken almost enough classes in biology, anatomy and math to do something in the medical field, but she had no idea if it would actually make her happy to do so. Most Gifted stayed enrolled in school taking whatever classes interested them because the government would pay for their room and board as long as they were students. Everyone knew they would be the last pick for an actual job in most fields, so there was no incentive to ever leave and be forced into a low-paying service profession.

  What do I actually enjoy doing? Ana wondered, leaning back against her pillows in bed and flipping through pamphlets about different career fields.

  Well, she enjoyed being a part of the resistance movement for Hera, but she doubted there was much of a career in that. She liked being in the thick of things when Jessamine was temporarily staying with Hera and the two of them gave her jobs like making sure everyone at the Academy was at the clock-tower with almost no advanced notice.

  Great, I’ll just ask Jessamine if she has any need of someone who does odd jobs on the fly when she’s on the run from her own people.

  At least the salary would probably be good.

  She sighed and set the papers aside, flopping onto her back and closing her eyes. No sooner had she begun to relax than she heard a knock on the door.

  “Who is it?” she called out, trying to decide if it was someone worth standing up for.

  “It’s me, your humble boyfriend,” Max’s voice answered through the closed door.

  “It can’t be,” Ana retorted loudly enough for him to hear. “The last time I saw my boyfriend he arrogantly claimed he could beat me at Word Stacks right before I crushed him.”

  Max opened the door with a grin.

  “Hence why I’m so humble now.” He came into the room and shut the door behind him. “Do you ever tidy up in here?”

  “Not unless I have to.” Ana shrugged and sat up again. “Anyway, what brings you here in the middle of the afternoon? I thought you were going to some machining seminar.”

  “It got delayed until tomorrow. I thought I’d see what you were up to.” He took a seat on the edge of her bed and looked at the brochures on it. “Still trying to figure out what you want to be when you grow up?”

  “Very funny.” Ana made a face at him. “Though yes, I suppose I am.”

  “You don’t have to decide anything right now. Hell, so many people are going to be applying for jobs soon there might not be room for all of us to actually be employed—or Jessamine will have to give us permission to move off of campus so we can go to other cities for work.”

  “Just think, I could move back to Giana at last.” Ana gave him a sideways look and grinned at the expression on his face.

  “Dear God, no. You’ll get that ghastly accent back within a week and I’ll never be able to see you again,” he said with mock horror.

  “Maybe you’ll learn to like it. I bet we could have you talking like a true Gianan within a few months if you want to come with me.”

  Maxton shuddered at the thought.

  “Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with staying enrolled here and taking more classes until you figure things out. I know everyone is scrambling to prepare like they’ve got an interview tomorrow, but it’s going to take time for the new oversight committee to hit their stride and let everyone know that Jessamine is serious about this new initiative.”

  Ana shrugged.

  “I know. I’ll eventually figure something out. For now, let’s talk about something other than my lack of ambition.”

  Max immediately complied and said, “If you’re feeling risky, we could take a trip.”

  “Oh?” Ana abruptly focused on him. She had been pestering him for weeks to let her see his Gift in action, but he had been reluctant. The time she was flying through a door to the unknown to escape Major Fox before he could murder them didn’t count as a proper introduction. “Where did you have in mind?”

  “Well, if this works properly, I thought we could go get some coffee downtown.”

  Ana raised an eyebrow.

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “We could end up literally anywhere,” Maxton admitted bluntly. “I don’t like using my Gift if I can avoid it, because I’ve ended up in some really unpleasant places before, and there’s a fifty-fifty chance of me taking us to the wrong location.”

  “I live for risk, so let’s do it.” Ana hopped out of bed cheerfully, pulling on her shoes and trying to decide whether to bring anything else with her. Max could see her looking around the room and said, “You might want to bring a knife, if you have one.”

  “Expecting trouble at the coffee shop?” Ana asked curiously.

  “You never know, these days.” He shrugged. “There’s still a killer on the loose, and if we end up somewhere unexpected it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared.”

  She could hardly argue with his logic, so she rummaged around for the small carving knife she’d had for years and tucked it into her pocket. She had been itching to do something reckless for weeks, but now that the moment was here, she began to grow nervous about traveling through a magical threshold to a possibly unknown location.

  “Alright.” The tension was visible in Max’s body as he clapped his hands together once and closed his eyes. “Here goes nothing.”

  He grabbed his emblem with one hand and silently mouthed the name of the bakery three times in a row. Between one blink of Ana’s eyes and the next, the air warped in front of them into the approximate size and shape of a door.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the sight of that,” she remarked in awe, stepping carefully around it and examining it from both sides. There was little to see, really, other than Max’s distorted image when she positioned the threshold between them. It was hard to believe it was a doorway at all.

  “Imagine how I felt at thirteen when I made one of these the first time and fell through it with no idea of what it did or where it went.”

  Ana grimaced at the thought.

  “I don’t suppose you have any way of knowing whether it’s going to the right place before you step inside?”

  “No, it always looks the same from this end. I tried sticking my head in when I was younger to see if I could look around, but somehow it always made me tip forward and fall through face first, so I stopped trying to game the system after a while.”

  Ana had just been about to suggest that very thing, but she abruptly changed her mind.

  “Well, let’s at least walk through together,” she suggested instead.

  “Agreed.” Max took her hand and they positioned themselves squarely in front of the doorway, took a last look at each other, and stepped through.

  Ana exhaled a sigh of relief when she smelled coffee beans all around her, trying to adjust to the sudden shift in location. The café was so crowded that she wasn’t even sure her sudden arrival in the middle of the room was noticed. Max was visibly surprised at having brought them to the correct location on the first try, and grinned at her.

  “Seems like my luck is changing for the better.”

  “And here I had my heart set on walking right into an active volcano,” Ana feigned disappointment, moving into line to get some coffee. “Think of all the travel time you could save by just teleporting to places all around the globe.”

  “There’s a downside to being able to go anywhere in the world at the blink of an eye,” he looked grim, though Ana couldn’t fathom why being free to go wherever she wanted would have a downside.

  “Oh?”

  “If I get unlucky and end up in a place that gets me killed, no one will ever know what happened to me. Where would people even begin sea
rching when I could be anywhere on the planet? I’d just…disappear.”

  That was a sobering thought. Ana could tell he had spent many hours contemplating the various ways his Gift could kill him.

  “Sorry, that was dark,” Max apologized quickly.

  “No, don’t be. I always used to lie awake and think about ways my Gift could go badly for me as well—I wonder if maybe we all do.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Especially lately, once I started running into the Provo-Major everywhere I went.”

  They ordered their drinks and retreated to find a table.

  “They’re not exactly how I thought they’d be,” Ana continued on her earlier thought. “You grow up seeing films of the Great War and hearing all the stories about what stone-cold monsters they are, but meeting them makes them seem more human.”

  “We’ve had very different introductions to the Provo-Major,” Max snorted, and Ana suddenly remembered that his first introduction to the Majors had been Fox torturing him for weeks in the top of the Augenspire.

  “Well, yes, some of them are horrible,” she amended. “Fox was a sadistic bastard from what you tell me, and deserved worse than what happened to him for it. Hell, Topher terrifies me during most of our conversations, and he’s one of the ‘good’ ones.”

  “I know what you’re saying, though, about them being less horrifying than the legends paint them,” Max allowed. “Maybe that’s why they work so hard to put out the stories, so we don’t realize they’re as human as we are.”

  Ana made a face and said, “I wouldn’t go that far. They’ve still got elarium circuits wired through their brains so they can pop in chips for superhuman powers.”

  Max raised an eyebrow and said, “I just transported us here with magic.”