by Sophie Davis
My stomach lurched when I saw the current Talent on the auction block. His name escaped me in that moment, but I recognized his face. Sharp cheekbones, slim nose, angular face. He was tall with a deceptively slight build. I’d met him just once, in the days leading up to the battle in D.C. He’d come to the Director’s house at school to visit Donavon. They’d been in the Hunters together, teammates I thought.
Arden. His name is Arden.
The bids were reaching obscene levels, currently over one million Globes. I scanned the listed bidder numbers for 2641—Yellow Dress—and 3519—Ernest. Ernest’s was there several times, including in the top slot, meaning he was the current high bidder. I wondered why Arden was so important that Ernest was willing to pay at least a quarter million more for him than Francie.
Bidder 4513 knocked Ernest down a space with a bid of 1.2 million Globes. I scanned the list of bidders again and realized that 4513 was going back and forth with Ernest the same way that Yellow Dress had earlier.
I’d been relieved when Jaylen had cut the audio in the cube. Now, I wanted it back. I wanted to hear what the auctioneer was saying. I wanted to see who bidder 4513 was. If I recognized him or her.
Behind me, Jaylen said, “Kenly, I don’t mean to rush you—”
Bidder 4513 flashed on the wallscreen over the stage, marking him or her as the winner.
“Shut your gob, Monroe,” James snapped. “This is a big decision. You understand that going to the islands means containment for Kenly, yes? That’s a lot to ask of her.”
The camera panned the crowd, zeroing in on the victorious bidder. His pale blonde hair and delicate features were unfamiliar. He grinned and waved as those around him clapped. The camera began to zoom out.
That’s when I saw her.
A head of dark, chestnut curls floated through the crowd. Even in a long teal gown and sky-high heels, she was graceful.
Talia? Is that possible? Is it really her?
Without seeing her face I couldn’t be positive.
“You aren’t to be free either way,” Jaylen was saying. “Wouldn’t you rather be with your own kind?”
“Give me a minute,” I snapped again.
“My father will be here soon,” Jaylen insisted. “We don’t have but a minute.”
Game time, Kenly.
Take Jaylen’s offer, help Libby, and surrender.
Or risk that whatever other group is here buying Created outbids UNITED and you end up who knows where.
But what if that other group was trying to help keep Created free?
What if going with them means no containment?
How on earth was I supposed to make this decision with so many unknown variables?
“How do we know we can trust you?” I asked, turning to face Jaylen.
“Kenly, are you sure about this?” James asked me.
“No,” I admitted. “But it’s what’s best, for all of us.”
That was the truth. James would be safe this way. Coming with me when I surrendered meant he’d be assured a place on the islands, I hoped. Libby the over-privileged brat would be safe, but more than that, she would provide UNITED with enough information to takedown the Poachers. And I…well, I’d be alive and maybe even get the chance to see Alana again.
I met Jaylen’s golden gaze.
“I have one condition. This is a deal-breaker, the whole arrangement is contingent on it,” I declared. “Francine Owens. She was the first Talent sold here tonight. She comes, too. Or none of us go.”
“That might not be—”
I cut Jaylen off before I had to hear any of his weak excuses.
“Make it happen.”
Jaylen glanced at his communicator and nodded.
“Okay. Thirty minutes. That will give me enough time to get Libby and give her the doctored tea. I already have a hovercar ready and waiting outside. I will accompany you that far and then you’re on your own.”
“You’ll have Francie with you when you return?” I asked.
“I’ll do my best.”
“I don’t want your best, Jaylen. I want you to return with Francie,” I demanded.
“I will,” Jaylen promised.
“You’d better,” I said coldly as if I was the one in control, not him. “You’d better.”
“YOU DON’T HAVE to do this, Kenly,” James said, for possibly the hundredth time since Jaylen left.
I was sitting in the center of the platform, legs crossed and head in my hands. James was pacing back and forth relentlessly, as far as the chains would allow.
“Do you think he’ll come through? With Francie, I mean,” I asked, my voice muffled.
“Dunno. He’s a proper ass, but he does love his sister. For Libby, he would deal with Lucifer himself.”
“Aren’t they one and the same?” I asked derisively.
I looked up just in time to see James shoot me a wry smile.
“Is that why you did it? Francie? Why you agreed to help Libby?”
“Sort of.” I explained the whole two-groups-fighting-over-Created situation going on in the arena.
Jaylen hadn’t turned the audio back on before he left, so I followed the auction on the wallscreen over the stage as I described what I’d observed. We probably could have figured out the controls, but it was somewhat easier to distance myself from what was happening to people like me without the accompanying sound.
There was one, possibly important, detail that I left out of the story. I don’t know why, but I was reluctant to tell James about Talia. I told myself the omission was because I only thought the girl with the curly hair might be my former mentor. Truthfully, I couldn’t say why I felt the need to keep silent. Especially since James already knew all about my friendship with Talia and the sordid details of our past.
“Who do you think the other group besides UNITED is?” James asked when I finished.
“Wish I knew,” I said.
“And your instructor—Ernest was it?—do you think he’s with UNITED? Or the other guys?”
I shrugged, palms up.
“He could be an UNITED agent,” I hedged.
“But you don’t think so,” James guessed.
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t know. And that scares me. I mean he was brain dead the last I heard. As in his brain no longer worked, at all, not even a little bit. But more than that, even if he’d had some miraculous, one-in-a-million recovery from the coma…Talia told me that when she looked in his brain…it was utterly empty.
“There was nothing in there. Not just memories, but motor skills, language, how to open your eyes, what hunger feels like, everything was gone. Now, he’s suddenly walking around, looking better than ever. Not at all like a zombie, which is what he would’ve been if he woke up at all. It doesn’t make sense.”
James finally stopped pacing and came to sit beside me.
“If you’re prepared to surrender anyhow, we can wait out the auction. UNITED will buy you and we don’t have to rely on a plan concocted by Jaylen Monroe.”
They won’t buy you, though, I thought, but couldn’t bear to say out loud to him. You’ll still be a prisoner. And who knows what demented psychopath you’ll end up with.
James pried my hands away from my face and forced me to look at him.
As if reading my mind, he said, “Don’t do this for me, Kenly. I’m not asking you to. This decision is too important to base on me or any other person. I’ll be just fine.”
I tried to smile, but the gesture was pained.
“Think it’ll work?” I asked, ignoring the concerned expression on James’s beautiful face.
Talking kept me from thinking of all the flaws in Jaylen’s plan, all of the holes that we could fall in before we made it to the hovercar. I almost wished that the neutralizing serum had worked on my Higher Reasoning abilities. Unfortunately, brains like mine didn’t have an off switch.
“I do.” His voice was barely a whisper. James leaned forward until our lips were nearly touching. “O
kay?”
I let out a shaky breath that had nothing to do with worrying about our escape.
“Okay,” I agreed, frozen in place.
James closed the nearly nonexistent space and brushed his soft lips across mine. A glass prison in the middle of a terrifying nightmare was the last place that I would have envisioned to spark romance. Yet, this kiss, like the last one and the ones before, felt so true. James’s warm hands wrapped around my waist, pulling my body against his. When our seated positions didn’t allow the desired closeness, he scooped me up into his lap. I ran trembling fingers up the back of his neck until I found his silky hair.
For those few minutes, I actually believed that a bright future was ahead of me. I was able to forget the dismal surroundings and pretend that I was a normal teenage girl sharing a kiss with a boy she liked. A wonderful, perfect, game-changing kiss.
We were both breathing hard when we broke apart. James seemed reluctant to let go of me, a sentiment I shared. Touching him really did make our situation seem less bleak. No matter what happened, where I ended up, I knew I would be okay as long as James was there, too.
It was a crazy thought to have after knowing him for such a short period of time. I was well aware of that. But it wasn’t like I was foolishly mistaking my feelings for love. Or letting the direness of our situation turn my feelings into something more than they were. I hadn’t lost sight of logic, or touch with reality. It was simply that James made me feel safe. And calm. And happy. And his presence, his wonderfully playful, kind, and caring presence, was something I wanted.
Without any idea how to vocalize my emotions, I did the only thing I could. I brought his mouth back to mine without hesitation or pretense and put all of those thoughts and feelings into the kiss.
AFTER JAMES AND I finished our brief but intense make-out session, there was nothing left to do except wait for Jaylen to return. And the wait proved agonizing. I didn’t want to watch the auction. Didn’t want to see all the people who were going leave this place as bona fide slaves. Yet, like any horrific disaster, I couldn’t look away either.
The sense of satisfaction I’d felt when demanding Francie’s freedom had quickly disappeared as I watched. Hers was an infinitesimal victory when compared to the hundreds of others that we were leaving to the will of their depraved buyers. Who was going to champion them? Who was going to stand up and say that it was enough? Or, better yet, utilize a little less talk and a lot more action? UNITED was supposed to do just that, for all Talents. Although, their sole concern was currently the Created.
Even once the Created were no longer UNITED’s main concern, I was hard-pressed to believe that Walburton and her organization was suddenly going to begin shutting down the Poachers. Although UNITED pre-dated them, if only by a few years, the Poaching families had been operating for decades without censure. It was blatantly clear that, for whatever reason, UNITED wasn’t interested in intervening or closing them down. All the while, Talents were being overlooked, treated as second-class. Many had been regarded that way for their entire lives. It was so unjust. Wrong, plain and simple.
While I was lost in my thoughts, I assumed James was also lost in his. Time was passing painfully slowly. Once I’d run out of steam mentally ranting about the injustices of the world and the organizations that ignored them, I found myself reliving every mistake that I’d made since leaving D.C. There were so many incidents, so many conversations, that I could’ve handled differently. That would’ve prevented me from ending up in this prison, being forced to turn to my enemies for help.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty.
I had to remind myself of that fact numerous times to keep from falling in to despair. Of course, now that I knew the end result, I was able to see all of the alternatives and where they would’ve led. But even if I had the ability to turn back time, would I really do anything differently?
My eyes cut to James’s profile.
Definitely not.
“Not much longer now,” he mumbled, more to himself than me.
“Nervous?” I asked.
“Petrified,” he said and grinned. “That’s best right? Fear makes you alert or some such nonsense.”
“Some such nonsense,” I agreed. “James, can I ask you a delicate question?”
“Of course.”
I chose my next words carefully, not wanting to bring up painful memories but curious all the same.
“Your family, are they here?”
“Don’t know,” James said without pause. “Haven’t seen them.” He laughed bitterly. “My father is a proper cad, so, honestly, I reckon he’d have made a point to stop in for a gloat.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I wish I knew what to say—”
My apology was cut short by the sound of the door opening behind us.
Show time.
Only when the door burst open—literally burst open—Jaylen Monroe was nowhere in sight. The first person through the door was a guard, nearly identical to the one who’d accompanied Jaylen earlier. Except…there was something familiar in his nondescript brown eyes.
Really, Kenly? That’s two people now that you have a feeling about. Are you sure those drugs didn’t do something to your brain?
“Got it right this time, didn’t I?” the guard exclaimed in a voice I knew well.
Against all logic and reason, Riley was standing inside the cube.
And he wasn’t alone.
The attractive man from the arena, the one who’d been with Yellow Dress, was right behind Riley, an irritated scowl marring his features. Next to him, standing over a head shorter, purple eyes blazing, wild curly hair framing her small face, was Talia.
“What…” I breathed, climbing to my feet. Even if anyone had been able to hear me, I was incapable of finishing the thought.
“You wanker!” James laughed, really laughed.
“What? Expected me to just leave you in here, did you? Not a chance!” Riley’s excitement was palpable. So much so that he was oblivious to the fact that my stunned expression had nothing to do with him.
“You did it! Infiltrated an auction! Must be like a dream come true,” James seemed to be more proud of his friend’s accomplishment than he was relieved to be rescued. And he was visibly relieved.
“Right, oh!” Riley exclaimed.
He was already striding across the cube towards us.
“Let’s save the congratulatory pats on the back until we’re out of here,” the tuxedo-wearing man said. He turned to me, fixing me with his piercing green eyes. “Subtlety is not in your friend’s vocabulary.”
Only half listening to the banter, I locked my gaze on Talia.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I finally said in a quiet voice. “The Poachers are looking for you.”
The thought had been repeating over and over in my head since she walked in the room.
Talia’s button of a nose wrinkled prettily in confusion, but she shook it off.
“Neither should you, Kenly. And you won’t be for much longer. We’re going a little off script here, but we’re still going to get you out.” She turned to the tuxedo man. “Unchain them, Brand.”
Brand rolled his eyes, obviously annoyed to be taking orders from Talia and clearly not her biggest fan. Nevertheless, he complied.
A commotion in the hallway drew Talia’s attention. She ducked her head out the door, swearing loudly when she popped back in.
“Hurry, we have company,” she snapped.
Sure enough shouts, followed by rapid gunfire let me know our escape was about to get a whole lot more complicated. Talia stepped into the hallway as Brand finished removing James’s restraints.
Outside the door, I heard someone scream. Seconds later, a barrage of weapons came tumbling through the air over Talia’s head, landing with a clatter behind her.
“What’s going on out there, Lyons?” Brand called in an irritated tone.
It appeared to be par for the course with him. Which is why I was surpr
ised when his voice was gentle when directed towards me.
“Are you okay, sweetheart? Can you walk alright?”
I nodded.
“She shouldn’t be here, though,” I added, gesturing towards the spot where Talia stood in the hallway.
Is this really happening? Or is it a dream? Am I going to wake up and find myself back in this display box prison? Or maybe it’s a Vision? Did I somehow slip into a Vision without being aware of it?
“Kenly, right?” Brand asked, ignoring my warnings about Talia, just as the girl herself had done.
I nodded again.
“I’m Brand Meadows. We’re here to rescue you. Do you understand?”
If I hadn’t been so shell-shocked, I would have found his tone patronizing. But my current inability to string words together—save my repeated warnings about Talia—probably warranted his opinion that I was messed up in the head. So I nodded.
“She’s okay,” James interjected. “Aren’t you, Kenly?”
Again, I nodded. Apparently, I was now a mute.
James threaded his fingers through mine as Riley pushed Brand aside and gave me a quick hug and peck on the cheek. Just as I moved to return the hug, he stepped back. Clearly my timing was way off. Somehow it felt like I was way off. I just couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that Talia had come to my rescue. After…everything.
“Willa and Honora are already at the safe house. They’re hella worried about you, love,” Riley said, looking like they weren’t the only ones. He moved in close again to whisper in my ear. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now.”
“Safe,” I parroted while nodding again, unsure of whether I’d actually spoken aloud or just in my head.
Through the propped-open doorway, I saw the woman in the yellow dress. She appeared in the hall beside Talia, along with a burly, red-haired guy. I didn’t recognize him, but he was dressed identically to the Poacher guards. A wide-eyed Jaylen Monroe stood between the newcomers.
“Should we take him for leverage?” Yellow Dress asked Talia. “In case this turns ugly?”
