The Lost Voice

by V. St. Clair

  Ana laughed. “Fair point. Maybe we’re more like them than I’d care to admit.”

  They sipped their drinks and watched the flow of people coming in and out of the café, enjoying each other’s company. After their second cup of coffee, Ana suggested they head back to the Academy.

  “I’m going to be wired all night if I drink any more of this stuff.”

  “Maybe you’d actually get some studying done,” Max teased.

  “I’d probably just stare at the ceiling waiting for morning. I’ll do almost anything to avoid studying.”

  Max laughed and took her hand, leading her through the café towards the back hall, where the restrooms were.

  “Need to find somewhere relatively uncrowded to make the door,” he explained, glancing around to make sure they were alone. “Alright, this is probably the best break we’ll get, so let’s go.”

  He gripped his emblem and the doorway materialized in front of them between one blink and the next. Not keen on being found by random diners who needed to use the bathroom, Ana walked through it immediately with Maxton close behind her.

  She clapped her hands over her ears as soon her foot made contact with the floor, wincing and falling to her knees as the screams surrounded her. The high, shrill sound seemed to reverberate off the stone walls all around her and echo through her brain, inescapable no matter how hard she covered her ears.

  Max also had his ears covered, face twisted in agony as his knees hit the floor. They made frantic eye contact, and Ana knew that wherever they were, Max hadn’t meant to bring them here. He uncovered one ear to grab his emblem but immediately cried out and covered them again.

  Who is screaming? Ana looked around the room, though she couldn’t see anyone else in there with them. In fact, she had absolutely no idea where they were at all. The room they were in was almost completely bare, with the exception of a pair of thick steel chains attached ominously to the wall in one spot and a wooden table on the opposite end of the room. There were things on the table, but Ana couldn’t bring herself to care enough to go over and examine them. All she wanted to do was get out of here as soon as possible, but it seemed Max was having a hard time concentrating well enough to make another doorway for them and he wasn’t able to use his emblem.

  Ana forced herself to move towards the door, which was currently closed. Maybe if she could get them far enough away from whoever was screaming, Max would be able to concentrate on getting them out of here.

  She pulled on the doorknob but it was locked from the outside. Frantically, she looked around for a biochip scanner, though she had no idea where they were and whether her credentials would let her open the door or not.

  With a thrill of horror, she realized there was no biochip reader. But everything was locked with chip readers these days; she had never encountered a door whose deadbolts couldn’t be retracted with the right chip access.

  Where in the hell are we?

  And why wasn’t the screaming stopping? It sounded like the victim—whatever was happening to them—hadn’t even paused to draw breath, shrieking loudly and continuously and somehow penetrating the stone walls and assaulting their minds directly.

  Max smacked her roughly on the arm. Ana turned and saw that he had managed to create another portal for them, though it looked to be taking every ounce of his strength to hold it open.

  Ana didn’t even care where it went. She stumbled through, fighting the urge to vomit, dropping to the floor as soon as the awful noise was gone and sobbing in relief.

  Maxton toppled over her and fell to the ground, though he didn’t seem to care, lying flat on his back and breathing deeply through his nose with his eyes shut.

  For a long time they stayed like that, just breathing and struggling to calm down from the terror of their last trip. It took Ana several minutes to realize that Max had successfully transported them back to her room in the Academy.

  Finally, Ana sat up, though it took all her strength to do so. “What in the hell was that place?”

  “I don’t know.” Max pulled himself to sit and opened his eyes, leaning against the wall for support. “I’ve never been there before, and I never want to go there again.”

  “There were no windows, and the door wasn’t locked with a biochip reader at all,” Ana recounted, darkly curious about their ordeal.

  “We weren’t supposed to ever see that room.” Max shuddered. “They were obviously torturing someone—even worse than what I got in the Augenspire, and that’s saying something. I wonder how many people know about that place.”

  “And who built it?” Ana mused. “Could it have been a prison in the Augenspire?”

  “No,” Max said with absolute certainty. “I was in the highest-level prison they have, where they do their worst, and it looked nothing like that. The dim lighting, the stone walls, the chains…none of it looked anything like the Augenspire.”

  “I wish I knew who they—whoever they are—were hurting and where. We could send someone to save the poor person.”

  Max blinked and said, “I never want to go back there again. That screaming was so loud it felt like it was inside of me, and we were surrounded by stone walls. Whoever is being hurt down there, they may be beyond saving.”

  Ana frowned, but knew he was probably right. Whatever could cause a person to scream like that wasn’t something they could just casually recover from.

  “I think I’m going to get some rest.” She stood up, nearly overbalancing and catching herself. “That was a little too much action for one day.”

  “Yes, that is the last time I use my Gift unless we are in a dire emergency,” Max vowed, walking unsteadily to the door and leaving without even saying goodbye. Ana didn’t take it personally. They would both need time to recover from the scare they’d just had.

  So when a knock on her door came several hours later, she didn’t think anything of answering it, assuming it would be Max coming back to check on her. She set down her Anatomy book—she’d decided to try studying instead of sleeping—and went to answer the door in her pajamas, pulling it open without even looking through the peephole.

  “Oh, did I wake you?” Vicereine Jessamine greeted her, glancing at the setting sun.

  Ana was so stunned by the sight of the Vicereine and two Majors at her doorway that she just stared at them stupidly instead of answering.

  “You sure this one is up to the job?” Major Reya asked Jessamine, leaning against the threshold and smiling at the effect they’d had on Ana. Someone was peering at her from down the hallway and Reya gave them a taunting little wave of her fingers while Topher remained serious and on alert.

  “I—what job?” Ana stammered, wondering what she could have possibly done that was bad enough to bring the ruler of the planet out of the Augenspire to deal with her personally. Despite being allies, it was her natural reflex to run away screaming at the sight of the Provo-Major.

  “May we come in?” Jessamine asked politely, though Topher had already brushed past Ana in his light armor and was checking the room for threats.

  “Okay…” Ana let the others inside, trying not to cringe at the messy state of her room as Topher began sifting through her things, checking inside of drawers and quickly scanning through her hamper of dirty laundry.

  “Is there a reason you need to search my underwear?” Ana demanded, her nerves getting the better of her and making her bold.

  Reya snickered and shut the door behind them, but Topher remained professional and efficient while he finished his search.

  “Our Talents will detect most electronic devices and potential weapons, but there are one or two things even they cannot sense.” He looked loathe to admit it.

  “Well, I don’t have any weapons hidden in my underwear.”

  Reya grinned and said, “I definitely consider what I’m hiding in my underwear to be a weapon,” in a conspiratorial voice. Ana choked on a nervous laugh.

  When the room was pronounced clear, Jessamine took a seat at
the only chair in front of Ana’s desk and motioned for her to sit as well. Reluctantly, Ana sat on the edge of her bed. Both Majors remained standing, with Topher looking out the window and Reya standing near the door.

  “What brings you here?”

  “Business,” Jessamine explained, fixing Ana with a scrutinizing look and apparently finding something of interest, because the next words out of her mouth were, “Is everything alright?”

  Even Topher turned away from the window, because it obviously wasn’t what he expected her to say.

  “I’m fine,” Ana insisted.

  “You’re running low on adrenaline and a whole host of other chemicals,” Reya commented, and Ana mentally cursed their Talents. “Your chemical profile is typical for someone who has just been very frightened. Did you have to run from an axe murderer recently or something?”

  Ana narrowed her eyebrows and said, “If I answer your question, will you answer one of mine?”

  The others looked surprised, and the Majors exchanged glances that could have meant anything. Jessamine simply said, “I may not answer a question if it will compromise classified information. That being said, I won’t lie to you.”

  It was the best she could hope for, given the audience. Ana frowned and barreled on, “Max and I went to a café downtown a few hours ago, but instead of taking the bus we used his Gift to get there.”

  Reya raised her eyebrows in interest and said, “He’s the one who can teleport places, right?”

  “It’s not exactly a teleport,” Ana began. “He always describes it as opening a door between places.”

  “I thought his Gift was unreliable,” Topher spoke now, expression neutral again. “He has a fifty-three percent failure rate for ending up at his intended destination, according to his Academy files.”

  Ana was unpleasantly surprised to learn that Topher had not only read Maxton’s file—in detail, it seemed—but had a sharp enough memory to recall facts and figures from it at will.

  There’s almost no chance he hasn’t read mine, Risa’s, and Carl’s too…

  She was tempted to ask what he had learned from her Academy file, but on reflection she really didn’t want to know the answer.

  “Yes, well, I’d only seen his Gift once, when we were running from Fox at the club after Max’s escape from the Augenspire.” For a moment the air seemed to chill between them and it occurred to Ana that these people were her bitter enemies only a few months ago, and how easy it would be for them to go back to being enemies again.

  She plowed on valiantly. “Anyway, I was pestering him about seeing his Gift again, since I didn’t get to appreciate it properly the first time, and he eventually gave in. Everything went fine on the way there, but on the way back we ended up somewhere…else.”

  “Where did you go?” Jessamine asked calmly, mimicking Topher’s neutral expression. Ana wondered if she did it consciously or had just spent enough time with him to pick up his mannerisms.

  “I don’t know. Somewhere horrible. We were in a windowless room with stone walls on all sides and chains on the wall—like an old torture chamber or jail or something. We tried to leave, but the only door was locked and there was no bio-scanner anywhere on it. Even worse, someone was screaming from outside the room, but it was so loud it felt like it was echoing around our heads even when we covered our ears, and Max could barely concentrate well enough to open a door back out for us.”

  She watched their features closely to see if they would give anything away, but the shock on all of their faces seemed genuine. Reya raised her eyebrows and said, “Why would someone have a door without a bio-scanner on it in this day and age?”

  “Never mind that,” Jessamine cut in. “Who was screaming? Did it sound like they were injured or frightened?”

  Ana shook her head and said, “Injured, I think. It sounded like whoever was screaming was in terrible pain. We wanted to help them but couldn’t get through the locked door, and since we don’t know where the place is, we can’t purposely go back whether we want to or not, unless Max’s Gift randomly sends us to the same place twice.”

  She paused, and then asked the real question. “We wondered if it was somewhere in the Augenspire. Max thought he was in the worst prison you all have, but I thought maybe there was somewhere else you took people…maybe to experiment on them or something?”

  Jessamine frowned and said, “No, that doesn’t sound like anywhere in the Augenspire. We do have biolabs, and I won’t pretend there is no level of experimentation that occurs in them, but they certainly aren’t walled in stone. Plus, they all have biochip access at the doors. Maxton was in the highest-level prison I have, and the place you’re describing doesn’t sound like anything I’ve seen in any of our government facilities.”

  “This wouldn’t have been high up. It almost seemed underground, like a basement.”

  Reya said, “Despite the rumors, there are no basements in the Augenspire. Our predecessors put the rumor out there ages ago to keep people from guessing where we actually keep our prisons, in case a resistance group ever attempted a jailbreak.”

  Ana exhaled a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, believing Jessamine and Reya. She had been desperately hoping the people she was allying herself with weren’t torturing people in a secret dungeon like monsters.

  Though they’re certainly not innocent…

  It was so easy to forget all of the bad things they had done to the Gifted over the years when they were here in front of her. It was a dangerous thing to forget.

  “Anyway, you said you were here for business?” Ana prompted, forcing her mind away from the dark subject of how fragile their alliance was and how much of it rested entirely upon the current Vicereine. These same Majors could be assigned to murder her if Jessamine or her sister was having an off-day.

  “Yes.” Jessamine seemed to abruptly refocus. “I wanted to ask if you would be interested in a job.”

  Ana had no idea what she was expecting, but it wasn’t this. Her mouth began to get dry before she realized it was hanging open.

  “A what?”

  “A job. Do you want one?” Jessamine asked again. “I know you are still enrolled in your studies here, and I don’t know what your long-term career plans are, now that you’re able to legally work in almost any field of your choosing, but I have a position open I think you’d be good for if you’re willing to consider it.”

  “What position?” Ana asked warily. Usually when the government wanted Gifted to apply for a position it involved spying on their peers and turning them in for horrible punishments.

  “I am still trying to staff up my new Employer Oversight Committee, and I need more Gifted involved.”

  Ana was stunned. “You want me to work for the government?”

  “I need people I can trust in key roles, and I need Gifted representation to demonstrate my commitment to these initiatives,” Jessamine explained. “You are well-suited to heading up a division of the oversight committee, as the unique and little-known nature of your Gift will allow you to tell who is being honest during your interviews with employers. This initiative will fall flat if we have people bucking the system or exploiting loopholes, and I need this initiative to be successful. Will you help me?”

  “Well I can hardly say ‘no’ when you’re trying to make things better for people like me after two-hundred years of being second-class citizens.” The thought of using her Gift frightened her more than it intrigued her, because people would begin to wonder how she could possibly be so good at knowing when people were lying to her. She would have to work hard to find a way to conceal the true nature of her Gift. Even so, she could earn a reputation for cracking down on belligerent employers, which might put a target on her back; there was still at least one murderer out there looking for Gifted to kill…

  “Not quite the level of enthusiasm I was hoping for,” Jessamine admitted, frowning.

  “I’m still digesting it,” Ana said truthfully. “It certainly will
keep me busy, and it could be rewarding work, but I might also wind up dead in a dark alley one day.”

  And here I was thinking I’d never find a thrilling, high-risk career to keep me entertained.

  “That could be the case whether or not you take the job,” Topher pointed out as casually as informing them about the weather. Ana had no idea if he was threatening her if she refused or making a general comment about no one being guaranteed to live a long and fruitful life in this day and age.

  Jessamine shot Topher a glance and he opened his mouth, perhaps to clarify, but Ana said, “You’re right. I’ll do it, though I have no idea what the job entails or if I’m even qualified for it.”

  Jessamine smiled and stood up.

  “It will be new to all of us, though there are some resources I can offer to help you get up to speed. I’ll send you something soon.”

  She extended her hand, and Ana shook it, wondering what she had gotten herself into and thinking she would have gotten more sleep last night if she knew how exhausting today was going to be.

  “Welcome aboard, Ana. Keep an eye out for other people who might be well-suited to this kind of work. Once our skeleton crew of staff have a chance to meet and get started, we’ll need to recruit heavily.”

  Ana nodded and said, “I’ll see who I can lure with the promise of a good government salary.” Come to think of it, she had no idea how much they were paying her for this.

  “Ha!” Reya grinned. “Nice to see the old rumor about the government paying well is still alive. I mooched off of my family fortunes until I became a Major, and I’m pretty sure Topher worked for ham sandwiches for his first few years here.”

  Topher vented a quiet laugh but said nothing to refute her claim.

  Jessamine made an exasperated face at them both and turned back to Ana.

  “The healthcare is excellent. I’ll see if I can help out with your salary a little.” And with that, the three of them left.

  23

  Topher Augen

  ~

  You should have said goodbye.

  You should not have trusted her.