Chasing Power (Hidden Talents)

by Pearson, Genevieve

  When she arrived, the passenger window rolled down. Renée sat in the car, looking only artfully tussled, “I didn’t want to leave, since you were making such good use of my power.”

  Sam leaned on the window frame, glancing at the driver, “My dad’s in that white van over there. You should probably grab him before the police swoop in.”

  Renée nodded and relayed the information into a walkie-talkie she held, “It’s done.”

  She tried to shoo Sam away from the window, but Sam wouldn’t budge. “You guys owe me one,” she said, “A big one. Big enough, probably, to get me out of that debt you mentioned. A little more, even.”

  Renée narrowed her eyes, “Oh yeah?”

  Nodding, Sam smiled, “Don’t worry. I don’t want much.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The rumor is, your company is equipped to perform lobotomies. Is that true?”

  “That is a very interesting rumor. It is true that we sometimes help unfortunate Talents who can’t control their abilities. Lobotomy seems like such a medieval term.”

  “Right. Whatever it is you guys do, I want you to do it to my dad. I think one Talent with these abilities is enough, don’t you?”

  Smiling, Renée pulled out a notebook. She jotted something down and signed it. Ripping off the sheet, she handed it to Samantha with a business card: “There’s my half of the agreement that your father will be nullified. Made in good faith. Now, why don’t you call us when everything calms down, we’ll talk about some opportunities you might have with our company.” Sam looked at the signed note and the card and pocketed both, standing back as the window rolled up and the SUV pulled off, swerving around another stalled car.

  “She’s gone,” Al said, “You look pretty crappy. By the sound of those sirens, the police are here. Now will you go to the hospital?”

  “Just one more thing,” Sam said.

  #

  “Uh, sir?”

  Erik leaned into the office, forgetting to knock once again. The chairman frowned. Erik had the irritating tendency to think he was welcome anywhere, any time. Without waiting for an invitation, Erik came into the office, “I have some bad news.”

  “Fine,” the chairman said. What could it be now? The last report he’d had had said that the Corp had managed to secure the girl but that they were being chased by Stone.

  “Our forces report she escaped.”

  “You mean the Corp eluded our agents? Obviously.”

  “No,” Erik said, wringing his hands, “Stone... he failed.”

  “How could he fail? He had twenty men! He had the original goddamned sharer!”

  “She apparently, ah, wiped them out. Power-wise. Even her father. With some help.”

  The chairman leaned forward, groaning. This was great. Just great. He should have had her friends detained, to use as collateral against her. Now she was loose and pissed.

  “One more thing, sir.”

  “What?”

  “Everyone in headquarters is reporting computer troubles.”

  “What? Why should I possibly care?”

  “They’re having troubles accessing our database of known and suspected Talents.”

  “Oh.” The chairman wasn’t an idiot, “And you think the two issues are connected.”

  “Yes sir,” Erik said simply.

  “Then go find out, damn it!”

  Nodding, Erik backed out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him.

  “Could have saved him a trip.”

  The chairman recognized that voice. He’d heard it before, as it calmly plead for a life. Her life. A plea he’d rejected without notice. He wasn’t too surprised, to be honest, that he would hear it again right now.

  He spun his chair around. The girl—woman—stood in the corner of the room, supported slightly by an agent—his agent, dammit, Lane. Not his agent anymore, the chairman realized. There was no need to ask how they’d gotten in. She was different. Confident, assured. She’d finished transition, he could see. Which meant she had total control of her powers. God damn it. Just what they needed, another one.

  “I want you to know,” Samantha said, “that today you engineered the death of an innocent human being who had no intention of doing you harm.”

  The chairman didn’t bother to defend himself. She wouldn’t care about the greatest good for the greatest number or whatever philosophical argument he could pull out of his hat. He wouldn’t.

  “But I don’t take a personal offense at that,” she went on, “I know what it takes to get where you are and stay there. It takes ruthlessness and smarts to hold an organization like this together. And it’s not always easy. That’s why I’m giving you fair warning. Let me be, and I’ll promise not to make trouble or bother you or your little club. But if you or anyone else comes after me again, I’ll wipe you, your family, your friends, and your entire organization off the face of the planet. Understand?”

  The chairman nodded.

  Samantha smiled, “Good. Now I’m going, and when Erik comes in, you can explain to him that the computer problems are because we just finished acquiring N.T.U.’s mainframe hard drives. I’m sure you won’t mind, since you likely have backups. But now I’ll know where every significant Talent lives, what their power is, and how I can best use it. You should probably think about that before you go to bed tonight. So long.”

  And with that, she disappeared.

  EPILOGUE

  “What’s this thing doing up here?” Al, sitting in the front seat, pulled something out from underneath him.

  Leaning forward, Sam snatched the stuffed cat from his hands. “That’s mine,” she said, then, more quietly, “I’ve been looking for it.”

  Shaking his head with a bemused smile, Al turned to Harry: “I still don’t see why I can’t drive.”

  “Because you drive like a mad man. There, I said it. Happy now?” Harry sat in front of the steering wheel. They’d just pulled onto the I-5 South and he was already starting to regret the decision to let Al sit shotgun.

  “I’m not a bad driver.” Al looked positively wounded; he turned to the back seats for support, “Am I a bad driver?”

  Lane coughed, looking down at his hands. Sam wisely kept her mouth shut. It was Tess, sitting in the far back, who didn’t know any better, “Not that bad!”

  Al turned to Harry triumphantly, “See! I should drive, too.”

  Lane leaned forward, “Don’t worry man, it’s a long drive. I’m sure you’ll get your turn.” Leaning back, he added softly, under his breath, “When hell freezes over.”

  Sam bit her lip to keep from laughing and gave Lane a teasing shove, “Don’t be so mean!”

  “Me? Mean? You’re one to talk. You melted a man!”

  “Oh, he had it coming.”

  Lane turned serious for a moment, “Sam, I saw Renée give you the card.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re not really going to take a job with the Corp, are you?”

  Sam shrugged, “You were wrong about N.T.U.; you could be wrong about other things, too.”

  “It’s a long trip. We’ll have time to talk about it,” Lane said.

  “Oh, talk talk talk.” Sam rolled her eyes, “All you ever want to do is talk.”

  “No, I do other things, too.” Lane leaned forward, smiling, and kissed her.

  “Good thing it’s a long drive back to LA,” Sam said when she came up for air, “This time we might actually get to enjoy it.”

  GLOSSARY

  The Corp – pronounced “core,” short for “Corporation.”

  dualie – a Talent with both pathic and kinetic abilities.

  elemental – any mental abilities pertaining to affecting raw elements that exist primarily in the form of energy: fire, electricity, etc.

  empath – a Talent with the ability to sense or “read” true emotions of others.

  jinx – a Talent with no conscious control over their abilities.

  kinetic – any mental abilities
pertaining to affecting physical objects – primarily telekinetic. The spectrum has a wide range. Some people can move small objects with great accuracy, others can create telekinetic blasts (really, blasts of air) to affect their environment, others can control mechanical objects, etc.

  N.T.U. – North American Talents United. Governing body for the Talents.

  Talent – a person with special mental abilities.

  talent – a person’s specific special ability.

  pathic – any mental abilities pertaining to feelings or thoughts: telepathic, empathic, etc. The spectrum ranges from what could be called uncommonly good instinct (the ability to sense a lie or danger) to mind-reading to the ability to directly affect another person’s thoughts.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Growing up on comic-books and adventure movies, Genevieve always had a thirst for adventure. However, she also had a healthy sense of self-preservation. As a result, she experiences her thirst for excitement vicariously through her characters.

  She currently lives in Southern California with her husband and action figures.

  Connect with Me Online:

  Facebook

  Smashwords

  My website

  A Special Sneak Preview of

  Revelations – Song of the Silvertongue 1

  By Genevieve Pearson

  Prologue

  The man leaned against the Plexiglas, trying to get a better look at the infants within. Blue and pink construction paper storks adorned the large viewing window, baby names written on them in sharpie. “Welcome to the world ________,” they read. Redundant, since the names were also on the plastic bassinets, and on the little tags round their wrists. Did they worry that the infant might forget, seeing as they had been on the planet such a short period of time?

  The paper blocking his view didn’t please him. He pulled off some of the storks and shoved them in his pocket to get a better look.

  “Aren’t they all so adorable?” the old woman next to him cooed. He did not agree. There was a freshness of life, a charm to all of them, true. But even at this age, differences were forming. One child in the front, for example, had protuberant ears that some may find appealing and he, personally, did not. He never chose forms with those stick-out ears. They did not seem streamlined. Another had a squished red face, and an expression that suggested a perpetually irritable temperament. That child’s parents were not going to have an easy time of it.

  “Come to witness my failure for yourself?”

  A friendly voice, soft and gentle, from a woman who’d appeared, suddenly, on his right. The scrubs, the face mask around her neck, the white lab coat all gave her the appearance of being a doctor. The ID tag hanging from the pocket even read, “Dr. Engle.” But a closer look revealed that the ID tag didn’t even belong to this hospital, but a St. Mary’s in Chicago. And anyone who thought to look her up wouldn’t find Dr. Engle on the duty roster. But no one would ever think to look her up, of course.

  The man took a step back from the doctor, turning his full attention to her. She ignored him in favor of the infants inside the viewing room.

  “They make it look easy, this procreation. The stupidest among them can complete the act,” she said. “Even you can do it. But mine? Mine comes out with lungs ‘not yet fully formed.’”

  “The mother?” he asked.

  “Bled out, of course.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Dead like the rest. Two more weeks. She couldn’t last two more weeks. Pathetic.”

  Within his limited capacity, he felt sympathy for her. They were brothers, in a way. While he wouldn’t mourn her bad luck, he could regret the necessity of it. Just as he regretted the necessity of what he’d have to do had the child survived.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You will be. Turnabout’s fair play and all that.” Her bland smile masked the threat.

  He acted quickly, reflexively, the way all parents react when their child is threatened. Grabbing the doctor, he slammed her against the window, lifting her up, pinning her. Next to him, the old lady, the cooer, screamed, running away—probably to get help. It would come too late. In this form, he was stronger. He could snap her neck with ease. Not that it would solve anything.

  “There are rules,” he said, gritting through his teeth. “You know this.”

  “And you know how I feel about ‘the rules,’” the doctor said, smiling down at him, unfazed by the fact that her toes were dangling more than a foot off of the ground.

  “I did nothing.”

  “What is it they say about intentions?” she mused. “I think it has something to do with me.”

  He dropped her. There was nothing he could do. He was bound by the rules in a way his sibling was not, and she knew that. Her smile widened and she gave him a little wave as she turned away. “See you next time.”

  Chapter 1

  “Hello, welcome to Smiley’s. Our deals are guaranteed to put a smile on your face!” They’re not, actually. Thank god no one has tried to take Mr. Smiley up on that promise, or else this store would be more in the red than it already is. Still, making this ill-advised statement is just one small part of my very enriching and fulfilling career as store greeter at Smiley’s Mart.

  Did you catch that? Faking genuine enthusiasm, another part of my job as a greeter. I’m good at it. This career, believe it or not, is neither fulfilling nor enriching. But, as a seventeen-year-old (as of two years ago) with few qualifications, my options were Smiley’s, the new Wal-Mart across the street, or fast food. I don’t much enjoy scraping cooking grease off myself every night, so fast food was out. I picked Smiley’s because I liked the color of the vests better, and because my mom knows the real Mr. Smiley and so I had an in over the other two hundred seniors looking for jobs in this town.

  This town being Midessa, Texas. We’re kinda near the panhandle, West Texas. What’s the difference between West Texas and the rest of the state? The rest of Texas has landforms. Ha-ha.

  People only live here if they are connected to the oil business, or if they were born here and can’t imagine living somewhere else. Most of my generation forms the latter group. That’s why I coined my first lifetime resolution: never get involved with a boy from Midessa (again). A relationship with one of these guys, whose grandest aspiration is to manage a pump jack, is the surest and best way to get your feet stuck in this tar pit of a town. Which naturally leads to my second resolution: to go to school somewhere Not Texas. Preferably near an ocean. With a good science program. And proper seasons.

  I have to admit, I’m doing a lot better on the first resolution than the second. A minimum wage job means slow going on saving for college, especially when you have Ivy League aspirations. But there are worse jobs than standing in a doorway, spouting mangled aphorisms (like, “A smile a day keeps the doctor away, especially with Smiley’s great deals on pharmaceuticals!”) at unreceptive customers and keeping a close eye on those leaving.

  Which was how I spotted the two young shoplifters as they giggled behind their hands, heading toward the doors. This wasn’t unusual. Most stores had to contend with their fair share of shop-lifting, and it was, in fact, exactly why I was stationed where I was. I started out as a stock girl, but Mr. Smiley soon caught on to the fact that I had, as he termed it, “an uncommonly good human instinct.” He placed me as a greeter so that if and when I spotted the dishonest, I was in a position to do something about it. This way, I earned my keep not only by helping customers, but by helping with “merchandise retention.”

  The girls were thirteen, fourteen maybe. The overuse of eyeliner was classic junior high. I got the biggest twinge from the shorter girl, with carefully blown straight hair, the one with real diamond studs in her ears carrying the Coach purse. That didn’t surprise me; rich or poor, doesn’t matter, stealing is rarely about actual money and more about a sense that the world owed you something. But they both had stolen something: the short one looked smug, secure in her ability to do what she wanted. T
he taller girl looked more nervous, guilty.

  I glanced over at Clyde, the security guard. I was supposed to let him know when I spotted shoplifters, but sometimes I preferred to take things in to my own hands. I stepped in front of the girls. Since I was an employee, and therefore invisible, they promptly stepped around me. Gritting my teeth, I stepped in front of them again, making eye contact with the tall girl. “Hi!” I said, “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  She froze, still as a statue, whites of her eyes showing. Oh yeah, I was so right about this one.

  “What’s up?” Shorty, sensing her friend was about to break, took over.

  “Today is a special, um, learn about Mr. Smiley’s day. I thought you might be interested in some facts about the store. You know, Mr. Smiley inherited this store from his father. His daughter, a girl much like you,” except that she was actually forty-four, “is going to inherit. That is, if they can hold on through this year.”

  The short one was already bored, staring in to space, but Tall Girl took the bait. “Why wouldn’t they hold on this year?”

  “Well, it’s just shrinking margins, increases in costs. Smiley’s is going under. Even little things, like mascara, lipstick, scarves—” Bing, bing, bing! Tall Girl blushed bright red. They must have each shoved a scarf in their purses, “—add up. Right now, the big chain stores can swallow these costs, but a business on the brink, like this one, it can’t. And pretty soon, family owned businesses like Smiley’s are going to go extinct.”

  “So?” the short girl said. “My daddy says that’s capitalism. C’mon Madison, let’s go!” Grabbing her friend’s hand, she yanked the guilty girl towards the door. Darn. That strategy bombed big time.