Talent to Burn (Hidden Talent #1)

by Laura Welling

  In a way, it wasn’t surprising I’d never worked this out in all the testing and prodding of my childhood, or since. The sensation of using my Talent had been nauseatingly peculiar, like turning part of my head inside out. Dr. Jenn had talked about inverses and I finally knew what that meant.

  Had I hurt the tech? Eric still had his power to burn, so I assumed any side effects were temporary. I wanted to ask him, but I dared not. Eric was a broken man, and I couldn’t trust him not to spill the beans. I couldn’t trust anyone. I guessed this was what I deserved—the karmic price for my betrayal.

  My head spun. I wanted to get up and run but I didn’t know where to go, or if I would be allowed. My legs twitched with stir-craziness. I leaped to my feet and paced from one end of the room to the other.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. My mouth opened and a wordless cry of frustration burst out of me. Turning to the desk, I picked it up and threw it as far as I could. It barely turned over, but still spewed the few things that lay on it across the floor. I put my back against the wall and slid down until I sat on the floor.

  My gaze wandered across the floor, my impotent rage spent. The scrap of paper from Justine’s office had come to rest near my hand and I picked it up, intending to fold it into a paper plane and aim it at the trashcan.

  The numbers caught my eye and I read it again. Dates and a set of steadily increasing numbers. The dates stopped a few days ago. Two dates were underlined, one in the last week, one several weeks earlier.

  The moment when I put it together, time turned to molasses. I read the paper again, praying I was wrong. I didn’t look at a calendar much, but I was pretty darn sure I recognized those dates.

  The first date was the day the bar burned down in Vegas; the second was the day of the ambush—the day Eric had burned Miller.

  I checked my date math over and over, sure I must have missed something. If these dates marked were the days when Eric had truly lost control, then what were the numbers?

  I recalled with cold clarity Dr. Jenn making notes in my file. My evidence would never stand up in a court of law, but I knew without question that the increasing numbers on the right hand side represented dosages of the amplifying drugs.

  What the hell were Eric and Justine playing at? He’d said he was hooked on the power, psychologically addicted to the boost the Nova-22 gave him. They must have taken drugs from the Institute with them. Idiots.

  What’s more, if I’d known Eric’s loss of control was related to the drugs, I would have booked him into freakin’ rehab instead of putting all our lives in the hands of the Institute. The decision that had seemed like the only way to save his life at the time appeared worse and worse the more I learned. I’d betrayed all of us. We were trapped here, Eric and I, and what was worse, Jamie was here too, and I couldn’t imagine it was his choice.

  I had a choice now though. I could go along with the Institute, let them make me into a wonder Talent like my brother, or I could find a way to escape.

  The situation seemed hopeless. Surrounded by hundreds of Institute Talents, with Eric locked up in maximum security, and Jamie who-knew-where, but injured. I had to find a way out.

  I knew where I could get more information. Justine. She hadn’t been honest with me yet, but holy hell, she’d be honest with me now. Taking a deep breath, I got up, smoothed out the scrap of paper, and tucked it into my pocket. I’d find her, I’d find out what was going on, and I’d find Jamie. Then we—Jamie, Eric and I—were going to get the hell out of here.

  Justine’s office was empty, again, but this time it was locked. I knocked, and then jiggled the handle, wondering if she’d locked herself in there, but nobody came to the door. I paced up and down for a while.

  My righteous indignation and anger had a chance to simmer before she arrived, walking down the hallway toward me.

  “Cat,” she said, her face and voice devoid of emotion. “Come to deliver another message?”

  “Of sorts,” I said.

  She stood, waiting, a folder under her arm. Clearly she wasn’t planning on inviting me into her hovel of an office. If this conversation had to be in the hall, so be it.

  “I want to ask you about this,” I said, thrusting the paper in her face.

  “What is that?” she said. She crossed her arms over her chest, still clutching the folder.

  “I accidentally took it from your office last time,” I said.

  “Accidentally? I see.” Her mouth twisted into a non-smile. “What is it?”

  The fury came roaring back into my brain. She was dissembling. “Don’t give me that,” I hissed. “You know damn well what it is.”

  She shrugged. “It looks like I might have been making notes about something. I don’t recall what.”

  “These,” I said, jabbing my finger at the paper, “are dates, and these are drug dosages. These dates here”—and here my finger banged against the paper, flipping it almost out of my other hand—“are, respectively, the date the bar burned down in Vegas, and the date Eric burned Miller. As you might be able to see, they’re highlighted.”

  “What makes you think they’re drug dosages?”

  “Don’t bullshit me,” I said. “Why were you guys still taking the Talent amplifiers? What the hell were you thinking? Whose stupid idea was this?”

  “All right,” she said, lowering the folder. “Why don’t you come in, and I’ll explain.” She sounded tired, and she had huge dark circles under her eyes. Some of the wind went out of my sails.

  I waited as she swiped her card and opened the door. After following her in, I sat down in a chair. I wouldn’t leave until I had an explanation.

  Justine cleared a pile of papers off her desk chair, dumping them unceremoniously on the floor, and then eased herself down into the chair.

  “Eric is an addict,” she said quietly. “It’s not something I’m happy about, but that’s what it is.”

  “You mean he’s addicted to the amplifiers?”

  She nodded. “He has an addictive personality. It’s not just the amplifiers. In Vegas, it was too much cocaine, too much alcohol, not enough sleep, too many cheap cigars…and too many amplifiers.”

  “This is a list of doses, then?”

  “Yes. He wanted to keep ramping up the dose. I was frightened, so I started keeping track. It’s part of the reason I thought he should come back here. If he’s going to take the drugs, he should at least be taking them under supervision. We’ve both seen what happens without it.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me about this?”

  Justine sighed, and sat back in her chair. “Do you know much about addicts?”

  I thought of the regular drunks in the various bars I had worked in. “Some. I’ve never lived with one.”

  “My father was an alcoholic,” she said. “They live in denial. They believe they can stop whenever they want. It’s not really a problem, and they don’t drink as much as you think. That’s until you start finding bottles hidden in the closet, under the bed, in the glove box of the car.”

  “Wouldn’t Eric be better off in rehab? The amplifiers—the Nova-22—wouldn’t be available outside of here, so he’d have to get off them.”

  “I don’t want to see him go cold turkey among civilians,” she said. “This is the safest place for him.”

  She had a point.

  “Will he ever get off them?”

  “He doesn’t need to, in here. It’s not like he can have a life outside here anyway, at least not one that doesn’t involve prison.”

  The last of my righteous rage drained away. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s not my secret to share,” she said. She seemed much more relaxed for having shared it.

  I sat back, deflated, and then remembered I had something else to talk to her about. “Justine,” I said. “Have you heard from Jamie since he left the camp?”

  “Why would I have?” she said.

  “Oh, no reason,” I said, not wanting to give too much away. I still di
dn’t know if I could trust her. “I miss him.” And I know he’s somewhere here, I wanted to scream. Somewhere nearby. With this diversion out of the way, my attention zoomed in on getting Jamie out. Eric might be staying here for the foreseeable future, but Jamie had no reason to be in the Institute.

  I stood up, made some halfhearted attempt at a goodbye, and left her office. At the elevator, I considered. Where was Jamie most likely to be? It seemed like the more important something was, the deeper down in the building it was located. My escorts to Training had swiped cards to get access to the lower levels.

  I wished for a card, or some tools. Dad’s training had been more escaping than breaking in, and I suspected jamming a screwdriver into the card panel—or shooting it—only worked in the movies.

  Jamie couldn’t be here by choice, which meant he was being held. I wondered if he was in the same part of the building as Eric, or somewhere less pleasant.

  I began to come up with some plans. First, visit Eric and reconnoiter the area. Second, steal a keycard. Shouldn’t be too hard. Finally, although I was reluctant, try this Talent thing out again. If I could use the Talents of those around me, this would get a whole lot easier.

  Arriving at my room, I swung the door open, full of plans and ideas, and stopped dead when I discovered, among the detritus of my earlier tantrum, the Major sitting on my bed, waiting for me.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “I hear things didn’t go as expected.”

  The tests. He was talking about the tests. I composed myself and tried to look disappointed. I wished he’d leave so I could try some tests of my own.

  “Don’t be concerned,” he said. “We have other tricks up our sleeves. Dr. Jenn thought we should gradually increase the drug dosage, but I don’t see any point in wasting time. We’ll start with a mega-dose and work our way downward once we have ascertained that we can provoke a response.”

  A vision of the scorched stools in Vegas, only shadows left behind of the men that had sat there, floated across my mind.

  “Couldn’t that be dangerous?” I ventured.

  The Major laughed, almost mechanically. “What could possibly go wrong?” he said.

  “The kinds of things that went wrong for Eric.”

  “My dear, this is a controlled environment. That won’t happen here. I assume also that you don’t suffer from the same…lack of discipline as your brother.”

  A wave of panic swept over me. If they gave me too high a dose I might not be able to hide my Talent. I might not be able to control it enough to escape, and I might end up being stuck here, and never finding out what happened to Jamie.

  “What if I refuse?”

  The Major must have heard something in my voice, for instead of laughing at me as I half expected, he turned those laser-blue eyes on my very soul. I wondered again exactly what Talent the Major possessed and I shivered in my shoes.

  “I think we can offer you some persuasion.” He stood up, and gestured to the door.

  I stood rooted to the floor, terrified by the threat in his words.

  “Catrina,” he said, and his voice was quiet, almost peaceful and one-hundred-percent cold. “This is not a choice you want to make.”

  “I wasn’t serious,” I insisted, backing up until I came up against the wall.

  “Ah, but you were.” The Major moved toward me, stalking me like a deer. “I believe you intend on trying to evade our efforts.”

  “I’m not a prisoner here,” I said. “I haven’t broken any laws.” Or at least not many. “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “And here we get down to the heart of it,” he said.

  “You can’t make me participate in your experiments,” I said, my voice getting stronger. “You don’t own me.”

  The Major stopped, less than a foot away. “Oh, but I do, Catrina. I do.”

  He breathed out, heavily, deliberately, and I was caught in a warm breeze of wintergreen. I nearly vomited.

  “As you know, we have your brother. He has two possible lives: in here, with us, or outside, being tried for murder. Nevada happens to have the death penalty. Of course, I’m sure he wouldn’t live that long. Criminals who endanger the lives of police have a way of dying young.

  “However,” he continued, “I like insurance. I have something to show you. Follow me.”

  He turned away and to the door. I glanced around, wishing I had something heavy to smash over the back of his head. My plans were defeated when the door opened, revealing a pair of his aides, large, uniformed and implacable. This had been planned. They knew I was going to resist.

  Had someone read my mind? Or did they know me, my inability to play along with authority? Since they’d apparently been watching me my entire life, anything was possible.

  The aides fell in, one on either side of me. They didn’t touch me, but then, they didn’t have to. We entered the secure elevator, and the Major swiped his card and pressed the lowest button on the panel. We were going to the dungeon, the deepest bowels of the Grey Institute. I had a fair idea who awaited us, but not what they had done to him, and my stomach sank as we descended.

  Emerging from the elevator, the walls were stark white, with no navigation color stripe on them. We passed a guard station, brightly lit, with thick glass windows. The man within nodded at the Major. The door buzzed open, allowing us entry into an air lock. One of the aides closed it after we passed, and then another buzzer sounded and the inner door opened.

  On the far side, the walls continued, bright white and interrupted by silver steel doors at regular intervals. Each door had a small window at eye height, and beside each entrance was a swipe card reader.

  “This is our maximum security area,” the Major said. “It’s where those Talents unfortunate enough to be unable to control their abilities are kept. We file paperwork with the government to have them classified as dangerous, and then they are ours for life.”

  “How come I’ve never heard of this?”

  “The very existence of Talent is, as I’m sure you’re aware, not widely known among the general public. It’s safer that way. Don’t you think the idea of a whole ward, filled with insanely dangerous super-powered men and women might cause mass hysteria? Not to mention the bleeding hearts who would want to let them out and rehabilitate them.”

  “How many people do you have down here?”

  The Major gave me another of his cold smiles. “That, my dear, is classified information. The presence of this ward is a secret known only to a few of the Institute’s most trusted staff, and of course our government advisors.”

  I shuddered. This place represented a true oubliette, and my worst nightmare. “If all these people have powerful Talents, why don’t they escape?”

  “Ah. See, this is where the true genius of the place comes in. Are you familiar with the idea of a Faraday cage?”

  I shrugged. “No. As I’m sure you’re aware, I didn’t spend a lot of time in school.” Perhaps it was unwise of me to mock his words, but bravado was all I had.

  “It’s a shield that blocks electromagnetic radiation. We have developed a similar concept to block Talent. Here,” he said, pausing by one of the doors. “See this?” He indicated the window.

  I looked through it. An emaciated woman lay on a mattress on the floor. She wore a paper gown. The only other thing in the room was a metal, seatless toilet. Her eyes were closed, and she could have been dead. She may as well have been.

  Horror filled me at the idea of a lifetime consisting of nothing but isolation in a featureless room. “Does she ever get to come out?”

  “I’m not showing you the inmate,” he said sharply. “Look at the window.”

  I tore my gaze away from the woman and focused closer, on the window. Inside the thick glass was a silvery tracing of wires.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s part of the Talent shield. Each cell is a wholly contained unit. No Talent will work inside it, and no Talent can penet
rate it from the outside.”

  I crossed my arms against the cold. The woman in the paper gown must be freezing. I felt sick way down in my stomach at what I knew was coming.

  “Now then, I’ll stop showing off the facilities—we must keep some secrets, after all—and show you what I brought you down here to see.”

  I followed the Major slowly to the end of the corridor, knowing what we would find, both desperate to see Jamie, and frightened of what they might have done to him. We came to a halt at the last door. The room beyond the tiny window was dark. The Major swiped his card and flung the door open, and the lights came on.

  “Wake up, Murphy, you’ve got a visitor.”

  One of the aides took me by the arm and roughly flung me into the room. I landed on my knees, and the door clanged shut behind me.

  Jamie, too, lay on a mattress on the floor. He had one arm flung up over his eyes to block the sudden glare of the overhead light. He wore no shirt, but still had his beaten-up jeans on, with bare feet protruding from the ends. His aura hung ragged around him. I got the impression of bruises and cuts all over him, and then I threw myself on him.

  “Jamie, Jamie,” I gasped, my eyes blinded by tears.

  “Cat,” he rasped, and his arms came around me. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  I turned my face to kiss his jaw, grizzled with stubble and covered in lumps. Pulling back, I took a good look at him and felt sick. One eye was blackened, the bridge of his nose broken and bloodied. He’d clearly been the recipient of a good beating, more than one I’d guess by the different layers and colors of bruises on his body.

  I opened my mouth to say something and he pressed one long finger to my lips. “They can see us, and hear every word we say. It’s good for you to know that.”

  “Oh Jamie,” I said, and buried my face, as gently as I could, in the side of his neck, smelling his skin, inhaling his scent mingled with the tang of old sweat and fear. I didn’t care. He was still Jamie.