A week after the incident, as I was now referring to my destruction of Donavon’s cabin, we were finally getting ready to leave on our next mission. I busied myself with the preparations: memorizing floor plans and city maps, reviewing how to use all of the Crypto gadgets, and even spending a full day shadowing Dr. Daid.
Henri was worried that I wasn’t ready. He thought I was too distracted, and a distracted teammate wasn’t a risk worth taking. I’m sure that my impromptu death match with Erik hadn’t actually helped my cause. At the time, he’d been relieved to see that I had the ability to focus on a task, but he wasn’t impressed with my impulse control. If Erik hadn’t convinced him to let me go, I doubt he would have. He trusted Erik’s judgment, and Erik thought that the best thing for me was to get back to as normal of a routine as possible.
I knew all of this because Henri was a terrible blocker but a great projector. When our minds were connected for practice, his thoughts flowed easily from his head into my own without a filter. I frequently caught glimpses of Erik and Henri’s hushed conversations on the topic of my “readiness” while we were practicing. I wanted to reassure Henri, but I didn’t want him to realize how exposed his mind actually was.
Erik was much better at blocking me from the parts of his mind that he didn’t want me to see, and I tried not to push. He was the only person who seemed to believe in me, and I was in no hurry to find out that wasn’t true.
We left for the mission in the middle of the night. After packing my small bag, I sat on my bed in the cabin, taking in every minute detail for the last time. When I first arrived at Headquarters and saw the cabin, I’d been devastated. Donavon had told me about his cabin, even showed me pictures, so I thought that I was prepared for the bare-essential living associated with Hunters Village. I’d thought wrong. Donavon’s warnings had not prepared me for the small wooden structure that smelled faintly of pine and damp earth. The room had none of the techno gadgets I’d grown accustomed to; in the beginning, I’d thought I would never get used to turning off and on the lights manually, let alone using five blankets to get warm instead of setting the temperature regulator on my mattress.
Now that I knew I was looking at my cabin, my home for the last several months, for the last time, I knew that I was going to miss living here. The next morning, day laborers from the city, who came in during the day to perform odd jobs around Headquarters, would be here to pack our things and move them into our new apartments.
“Sure is going to be nice to come back and have a great big bed to crash in,” Erik commented when he caught my gaze wandering over the wooden walls.
“Yeah, I guess.” I gave him a small smile.
When I walked out of the cabin, I stopped and looked to my right, at the ruins of Donavon’s cabin. My stomach clenched uncomfortably. Every time I entered or exited my cabin, I couldn’t help but stare at the destruction. I should feel bad, maybe even regret what I’d done, but I didn’t; Donavon deserved it. Actually, he deserved worse—way worse. Arden and Harris probably thought that I was crazy, but their opinions were of little significance to me anymore. If they did think I was nuts, they weren’t the only ones.
Workers had already cleaned out the inside and replaced the windows and door. I felt slightly abashed at the thought that somebody else was cleaning up my mess. By the time I returned from my mission, the cabin should be finished. I knew from Penny that Donavon, Harris, and Arden were staying in a suite in guest housing until the cabin was rebuilt.
Erik gently grabbed my arm and steered me toward the plane. Erik and Henri spoke in hushed voices the entire way to the hangar. I remained silent unless asked a direct question. Once on board, I curled into a ball in my seat and fell asleep almost immediately.
Our mission was in Topeka, Kansas. Like the other states that bordered The Coalition’s territory, Kansas was of particular interest to The Agency. The Coalition movement had been building steadily; spreading like a fungus, infecting states one city at a time since the Secession of the Western States. Colorado was the latest state to succumb to Ian Crane’s rule and The Agency worried that The Coalition had a foothold in parts of Kansas as a result. Our government wasn’t naïve enough to believe that Crane didn’t have some supporters in every state; he did. The concern with border states was that they were more susceptible to Crane’s influence because The Agency didn’t have a great presence in those regions.
In recent years, uprisings in the border states had become more and more prevalent. TOXIC worried that if these rebel factions weren’t squashed, we would be faced with a full-on revolt, much like the one that Crane had staged when he originally took over a handful of states and formed The Coalition. While School had taught us that his rebellion was unsuccessful, I personally thought that gaining control of seven states was not a failure. However, The Agency knew that the more states he gained, the harder it would be to defeat him the second time around.
Kansas was one of the few border states that had yet to come under martial law. One of our Crypto teams had learned of a large gathering of Coalition supporters taking place in Topeka. Our mission was to apprehend the leaders before the meeting could take place. If we could take the organizers into custody and prevent the rally, we could, hopefully, prevent a recurrence of the trouble that took place in Mobile, AL five years earlier.
In Mobile, almost a hundred citizens died when TOXIC had tried to break up a similar gathering. Since the incident, hunting teams were frequently dispatched to arrest the leaders in advance. TOXIC found that the rebel factions frequently disbanded in the absence of leadership.
Honestly, I wasn’t really gung-ho on the whole idea of preventing free speech and all that. (In The United States v. Brighton, the Supreme Court had ruled that Talents were a protected class of individuals and therefore, the First Amendment didn’t protect salacious speech). Most days, I wasn’t even sure that I was completely on board with the Mandatory Talent Testing Act. I mean, forcing children to be tested seemed a little extreme. Imprisoning violators, parents who refused to submit their offspring to testing, definitely seemed harsh. Despite that, going to the McDonough School had proven beneficial for me. Prior to meeting other Talented kids, I’d honestly believed there was something shameful about my abilities. My parents, bless them, had discouraged me from exploring my powers. They’d made it clear that I should hide them. Now, I understood that they were probably just scared that untalented people would treat me like a freak, and they didn’t want me subjected to taunting and teasing. That same sentiment was likely what drove parents in the U.S. to risk jail time by violating the Act. I’d always wondered if my parents would have submitted me for testing if I’d been born in the U.S. I believed that they would have. My father had been friends with Mac so he would’ve known that I’d be taken care of and trained well.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
What I was sure of, without a shadow of a doubt, was that anyone who supported Ian Crane was inherently bad. Any man who ordered the deaths of innocent people was evil. Anybody who supported such an agenda was, by association, evil.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t the only member of our team that didn’t completely back the Mandatory Talent Testing Act. Erik worked hard to keep his thoughts about it to himself, but sometimes they leaked out. I never pressed the issue. Speaking openly against the Act was only a few steps removed from treason. Normal citizens were given a little more leeway, but a TOXIC operative speaking out against the Act would lead to traitorous accusations. I’d heard of loose-lipped Agency operatives being charged with spying for The Coalition. The thought of Erik standing trial for spying shook me to my very core.
Like our previous few missions, this one went off without a hitch. The misguided leaders of The Coalition rally were a husband and wife. I’d been shocked when we arrived at their modest, yet well-maintained home. It was in one of those cookie-cutter neighborhoods, where even the hover-cars in the driveways matched. We’d purposely raided their home in the middle of the night, in hopes of preventing a spectacle. However, the stealth proved unnecessary as they came without protest. I wondered how many of their neighbors would be surprised to learn that they’d been living amongst rebel supporters. I wondered how many of the neighbors were rebel supporters.
Erik remained steel-faced through the short endeavor, yet I could tell that he wasn’t comfortable. He performed every detail of the mission with the same precision and thoroughness that he did everything, but his mood was heavy; very un-Erik-like. I tried not to dwell on it too much.
After taking the offending duo into custody, we escorted them to one of TOXIC’s interrogation facilities just outside of D.C.’s overcrowded beltway. My first real twinges of unease came when we handed our captives over to the guards at the base. Psychic interrogation was not fun for anybody involved. The prisoner’s minds would be poked, prodded, and searched; every memory examined, every detail of their lives exposed to determine exactly how far their involvement with The Coalition went. I shuddered at the thought.
Secretly, I hoped that their interrogator wasn’t very strong. True, they were in league with the man who’d ordered my parents’ deaths, but they might just be people against mandatory testing. They may not know of or support Crane’s more radical agendas. Not everyone who underwent intense mental interrogation made it out unscathed; sometimes, the interrogator went too deep or broke the person’s will. I really hoped that the interrogator wasn’t that strong and assured myself that it was unlikely they would be. According to Mac, I was the only Mind Manipulator currently with TOXIC who was strong enough to break someone’s will.
After depositing the violators, we headed back to Elite Headquarters. Once there, I headed straight for my new room. I’d expected it to look like Penny’s, except instead of white, the room was decorated in shades of purple. The carpet was a deep royal purple color and the walls had been painted lavender with white trim. My new bed was covered in a violet and white floral-patterned bedspread with matching purple pillows. The plastic chair and table set was somewhere in between the deep purple of the carpet and the lavender on the walls. My meager clothing hung pathetically in the humongous closet. I might actually need to take Penny up on her offer to help me buy new clothes, even though I would likely never wear them. I had a ton of clothes, but I’d left them at Mac’s house. There wasn’t really a need for my more extravagant outfits here.
I fell in love with my room the moment I stepped foot inside. But I didn’t have much time to enjoy its luxuries before I was back at training and gearing up for my next hunt. This quickly became a trend, but I didn’t mind; the more time that I spent away from Headquarters, the less chance I had to run into Donavon.
Thankfully, the hours in-between waking and sleeping were packed full, and I rarely had time to think about anything except the task at hand. I’d begged Erik to convince his medic friend, Zach, to sneak me pills that induced a dreamless sleep. He caved, so it was only twice a day that thoughts of Donavon invaded my mind, threatening to pull me back into the darkness and depression that I was still clawing my way out of.
Our missions took us all over Coalition and Agency territory. One day, we would be in a small town with no running water, the next, in a huge city with techie stores on every corner. Even though I was spending all of my time with Erik and Henri, I felt more alone than ever. All of the previous confusion over my feelings for Erik seemed trivial. I no longer felt anything. My internal numbness wasn’t reserved specifically for Erik; I felt indifferent, at best, towards everyone and everything except Donavon. I hated Donavon. Nothing excited me anymore; nothing shocked me anymore; nothing hurt me anymore.
During our actual hunts, I let my teammates’ emotions become my own. I fed on the thrill and excitement that coursed through them, using it to propel my own senses into overdrive. The surge of adrenaline that accompanied the moment before we entered a building, the heart-stopping pandemonium associated with every fight, and the ecstasy of victory when we succeeded filled the void left by Donavon’s absence. I soon became addicted to the hunt.
On the rare occasion that we were at Headquarters long enough to do anything besides prepare for the next mission, I spent my time with Penny. Mac allowed us to go into the city on our days off, as long as we were back before dark. Unfortunately, he balked at authorizing hover lessons for either of us. We had to rely on the good graces of Henri and Erik, but that wasn’t usually a problem.
Penny urged me to buy decorations for my room when we went into the city, but I never felt like it. I spent so little time there that it seemed silly to hang pictures that only the cleaning staff would see. I did let her talk me into buying clothes and shoes to fill my closet. That also seemed silly, but it made Penny happy, and seeing Penny happy actually made me feel… something.
The best thing about spending time with Penny was not being in her head. It was nice to sit with her and pretend that I was normal. I had no choice with Erik and Henri since I had to connect with their minds for our missions. And unfortunately, no matter how hard they both tried to keep it from me, their thoughts of Donavon and the incident in his cabin came to the forefront while we were practicing. With Penny, I never had to know what she was thinking. When I asked her a question, I waited for her response. I took her answers at face value because I didn’t have a reason to suspect otherwise.
I hadn’t actually seen Donavon since the incident. Not living in Hunters Village reduced the risk of me running into him by accident. I was careful to avoid the cafés that I knew he frequented, choosing to order my meals from the kitchen downstairs instead. When I went into the city, I didn’t have to worry about running into him at the kind of places Penny liked to shop. My practice gym was far enough away from his that if I took certain pathways, I knew I was unlikely to see him. Also, I had a feeling that Mac and Captain Alvarez were arranging our missions to ensure that one of us was almost always away from Headquarters. That suited me just fine.