Talent to Burn (Hidden Talent #1)

by Laura Welling

  Justine’s “room” was an office, not living quarters. She had a desk and several tables along the walls, each covered in piles of paper, file folders, Post-its, and various other bits of stationery. A dead plant occupied one corner, and several coffee cups nestled in among all the paperwork. I couldn’t tell if she’d been in here recently—maybe not since she’d left with Eric. I wondered whether they’d put her back to work or whether she was persona non grata since then.

  I’d give her a chance to turn up. I brushed crumbs from a chair and settled down to wait. I had no further appointments for the day, and nothing to do except avoid thinking.

  I looked around the room, noting the blank walls and largely empty bookshelves. She was a strange character. I had no insight into what Eric saw in her, what drove her, what she did here, or even what she did for fun other than hang out with my brother. We’d exchanged a couple hundred words and that was all.

  Some minutes passed. I was itchy. The air in the Institute dried out my skin. Standing up, I stretched the kinks out of my shoulders, and moved my weight from foot to foot. She had a ton of paper on the desk here.

  Glancing at the door guiltily, I angled my head and began visually flicking through the paperwork on her desk. Memos about lunches, the gym, irrelevant things. The secret stuff must be in the filing folders. Looked like she never threw anything out, or filed it.

  The top folder had Eric’s name on it. Interesting. I sneaked a glance at the door again, and then reached out and opened the folder. A pile of paperwork lay inside. Medical records, weight, blood pressure. Nothing that meant anything to me.

  Shoes clicked down the hallway. I jumped, knocking the papers in the folder flying. Frantically, I stuffed papers back into the folder. As the door swung open I still had a paper in my hand, so I shoved it into my pocket, scrunching it.

  To give her credit, Justine didn’t shriek or jump when there was an unexpected visitor intruding in her office.

  “Hi,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  “Not too bad,” I said, sounding even less nonchalant than I felt. “I didn’t know if you were back at work.”

  She grimaced, coming into the room and dumping another folder on the desk. “I do a lot of special projects, detective work. Being able to disappear is useful for a lot of things.”

  “And they took you back, like that? No trust lost over disappearing with Eric?”

  One shoulder lifted inside her shiny suit jacket. “I tried to get him to come in, went back and forth with Ryder a bunch of times. No one blames me for what he did. Besides, when I came in they had plenty of work needing to be done, and no one to do it.”

  “You’d think they would have put you through a debrief,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “It went on for two days. You were in the infirmary for a while.”

  “Ah.” I considered that blackout in my memory. Fair enough then. “Eric asked me to give you a message.”

  Her gaze finally settled on my face. “What did he say?”

  “He wants you to come visit.”

  “Ah.” She moved across the room and sat down behind her desk. “I thought he might be mad at me.”

  “Why would he be?” I couldn’t see how Justine was to blame for any of this.

  “I thought he might blame me for us being caught and brought in.”

  I shook my head. “He seems completely at peace with being here. They have his Talent back under control, and I think that went a long way toward convincing him.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll go down and see him.”

  “Thanks.” Huge shadows lay under her dark eyes. Her skin was pallid and she looked tired and vulnerable. We’d never really gotten to know each other, and I felt bad, suddenly, about that fact. “You know, I might be here for a while. Maybe we could have coffee sometime?”

  “Sure,” she said, nodding. “Thanks for coming by. I have to get back to work.”

  I let myself out, and it wasn’t until I got back to my room and sat down on the bed that the paper rustled in my pocket.

  I pulled it out. The paper was covered in chicken-scratch handwriting—dates and numbers, in a list. It didn’t mean anything to me and I threw it on the desk with the notepad and paper that I’d been provided. Hopefully she wouldn’t miss it.

  The rest of the day passed as slowly as the continental drift. I waited for someone to come and tell me what to do next. I figured they wouldn’t let me leave now, not after Dr. Jenn’s pronouncement. I should have made a break for it before the testing, but how far would I have gotten? Escape seemed like a far distant possibility, given how well Eric’s attempt had ended. Counting the cracks in the ceiling passed the time until I fell into a restless sleep.

  The next morning, someone shaking my shoulder awakened me. I threw myself out of the bed, half-awake and ready to fight, my knees bent, my hands cocked.

  The Major’s aide stepped back from me, looking confused. “I’m sorry to wake you,” he said. “The Major wants to speak with you again.”

  “What time is it?” I said, standing up and making myself deliberately casual. My cheeks burned. If I wasn’t going to fight back, there was no reason to be ready for action.

  “Oh-seven-hundred.”

  “Huh.”

  “The Major tends to run on military time,” he said, not unkindly. “It’s probably something of an adjustment.”

  I followed him downstairs, not to the Major’s quarters this time, but instead through a heavy door like a bulkhead into a room with a counter and rows of metal cabinets behind it. He unlocked one of the cabinets and produced two sets of earmuffs, one of which he handed to me. We proceeded through an inner door into a shooting range. The Major stood alone at a station at the end of the room, taking shot after shot at a target.

  When he ran out of ammo, he double-checked the magazine and chamber were empty, set the gun down on the bench in front of him, and removed his own ear coverings.

  “Good morning, Catrina,” he said without looking in my direction, and I wondered what the Major’s Talent was. His aura held rock steady around him, navy blue and regimented like his uniform.

  I slid the earmuffs off and stood silent, waiting to find out what he wanted from me.

  “I understand you went through testing yesterday, and I have been apprised of the outcome.”

  I waited.

  “Today we will run some more tests.”

  My patience and strategy ran out. “What this time?”

  He pushed a button on the bench, and the paper target began moving toward us, making a squeaky noise as it came. It was remarkable that anything in this place was allowed to squeak.

  “I believe Eric has spoken to you of the array of Talent-affecting drugs we have available. Dr. Jenn has something to try that she hypothesizes will open up your Talent.”

  “Those drugs didn’t do so well for Eric,” I said quietly, not wanting him to see my fear.

  “Nonsense,” Major Hudson said cheerfully, taking down his target and turning to look at me for the first time. “Right now, those drugs are saving him from a lifetime in jail.” His cold blue eyes burned pale in his ruddy face. “I look forward to hearing the results of the tests.”

  “What if I decline?” My voice came out small, as if it were coming from the end of a rabbit hole.

  The Major opened his gun and began to reload. “Why would you? You’ve spent your entire life as a failure.”

  I recoiled, physically taking a step back from him.

  “A failed Talent,” he continued, “turning into a failed adult, without any education or skills—and note, I don’t count the ridiculous training your father gave you as any kind of life skills—ending with failure to help your brother. This is your chance to be someone, to be worth something. Why would you decline?”

  The bullets snicked into the gun, one by one. “You should be grateful to be away from that abomination of a Talent, James Murphy, as well. Using such power for minor criminal ends
. We could have done a lot with him. Terrible waste.”

  “Do you know where he is?” I said, painfully aware of the desperation in my tone. The blood rushed through my ears and the world had taken on a decidedly gray aspect.

  Major Hudson snapped the gun shut and put his earmuffs back on. Turning back to the range, he said absently, “You may take her back down to Testing now.”

  I’d all but forgotten the presence of the aide, who took my elbow, whether for support or to restrain me, I didn’t know. As he led me out of the shooting range, gunshots resumed behind us.

  How did the Major know about my upbringing? We’d been in a race to find Eric so I wasn’t surprised he knew about Jamie, but how did he know about my father? Had they been watching me this whole time, waiting to see if a Talent emerged?

  The insults he’d delivered casually stuck with me like thorns under my clothes. A failure. My skin ran hot and cold and my hands shook. A small child fought to break out inside my head, shouting, “I’ll show them!”

  The drugs terrified me, but I didn’t see what option I had. If got out of this place, they’d bring me back. Maybe if I could reach some level of trustee, I could find out where Jamie was, and go to him.

  Of course, for all I knew he’d wandered off to Atlantic City or Monaco, to find the next girl he could charm with his silver tongue and sparkling dark eyes. Would he?

  Gah. So many questions, so few answers. I had no plan, no goal to move toward. I’d take the drugs, and failure be damned.

  The testing center was cold this morning. I sat down in the chair, twitching numb fingers and toes while techs wired me up as they had the day before. I flinched when they put the cuff on my leg.

  “Do I have to have that?” I said.

  “Standard protocol,” one of the women said. “You get used to it.”

  I found that hard to believe.

  The doctor came in. She smiled at me with what appeared to be genuine warmth. I supposed cooperating with her experiments had put me in her good books. I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  “Good morning,” she said brightly. “Are we all ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “This morning, we’re going to give you two injections. The first is a light sedative. This will relax you. From our analysis, I believe you have some emotional inhibitions to using Talent, so the sedation should help to free you of that inhibition. It shouldn’t be enough to make you fall asleep, only to make you calm.”

  I couldn’t imagine falling asleep with all these monitors strapped to me and all these people staring.

  “Then we’ll begin with the minimum dose of one of our new drugs.”

  “Is it the Nova-22?” I asked.

  “Ah.” She folded her arms. “I suppose Eric must have told you about that. No, this contains a similar compound but without the de-inhibiting effect. This way, we can adjust the levels of the Talent amplification and the sedative separately. The Nova-22 does both. I’d like to get you calibrated before we try that, although it is a lot more effective.”

  A tech bustled up to her with a metal tray with two syringes on it. Dr. Jenn pushed up my sleeve and quickly administered one. I tried not to shiver or flinch away.

  “That’s the sedative,” she said. “Now we’ll give you the active drug. This is Nova-18, a previous generation of Talent enhancer. I’m administering ten units.” She swiped my arm with an alcohol swab and stabbed me with the needle.

  I could feel the drug entering my arm, like a tendril of cold metal moving through my body. A wave of nausea washed over me, and the room moved far away. I closed my eyes and waited for the world to end.

  My skin was warm, my body lax, almost post-coitally. A far corner of my rational brain suggested that was probably the point.

  Dr. Jenn spoke in a soothing voice, asking me to relax, relax, and think back to that day in the cabin. My lips smiled and I felt again an aftershock of the pleasure of Jamie’s touch, the heat of his body pressed against mine. I remembered lying back in absolute relaxation and pleasure, as happy as I’d ever been. Reliving it, I felt again what I had felt that day: the sensation of something opening deep inside my mind.

  Dr. Jenn continued to drone and I let my head loll to one side. One of the techs busied herself at the monitors. I watched her, and had the oddest sensation, as if our auras were touching.

  The best way I can describe what happened next is that my soul got up and stretched. It was as though I was outside my body, and then I saw through the tech’s eyes.

  She understood what all the monitors meant—I was in good shape, but the waveforms were still the inverse of what they had expected.

  She was an empath, this girl. I don’t know how she worked in Testing, feeling people’s pain and fear day after day, but she thought she was helping. I found her empathy Talent, and as if in slow motion, I pulled it into myself.

  Using her Talent, I sent my consciousness out into the building around me, feeling people as clusters of aura, some bright, some irritated, some dark with rage. I could taste the flavor of their auras, which should have been overwhelming, but the Talent was old and familiar, and I survived. The tech had used it her whole life, and therefore I knew how, and I didn’t have to climb up the same painful learning curve she had as a child.

  Some of the auras were familiar to me. I tasted Eric, full of sorrow, as I passed. This Talent was not a deep one—I skated over the surface of people, seeking, seeking, until I found something I didn’t expect—an aura hurt, an aura badly damaged. An aura almost as familiar to me as my own.

  I came back to my own mind, screaming. The Talent was gone, dumping me, cold turkey. I was alone, reaching again for the taste of Jamie.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I thrashed among the wires. Equipment skidded across the floor, clanging against the side of my chair. Something fell. A couple of techs grabbed my arms and held me down.

  “Give her another dose of sedation,” Dr. Jenn said, barely looking up from her clipboard.

  A rat in a trap. That’s what I was. I shook my head, trying to clear the panicky thoughts, trying to focus on what was important. Jamie. I’d felt Jamie, somewhere in this building.

  I took a deep breath, but it sounded more like hyperventilating in my ears. The needle slid into my arm again.

  The second dose took effect faster than the first had, my body going limp almost instantly. My mind took a moment longer. Opposite me stood the metal cart, piled with flammable materials. Nothing had burned.

  I slumped into a fugue, not caring when someone lifted and carried me to something softer. The darkness deepened, and I knew no more.

  The pounding in my temples reminded me of a hangover. I groaned and rolled over, not liking the way my stomach roiled.

  This wasn’t my room, but rather a hospital cot, presumably still in the Testing center. Footsteps approached, rubber shoes squeaking on the linoleum. They must have been monitoring me.

  “Would you like some water?”

  I held my hand out and a polystyrene cup with a straw poking out of it appeared. I swigged, getting the antiseptic cotton wool taste out of my mouth, and handed the cup back.

  “I’ll fetch Dr. Jenn. Just a minute.”

  A few minutes later, the doctor’s black shoes bore into view. I rolled onto my back and levered myself up to a sitting position, swallowing the nausea.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Sorry we had to put you out. You became agitated.”

  I nodded, not wanting to say anything. How much did she know?

  “Unfortunately the test was not successful: we didn’t manage to release your Talent. May I sit down?”

  “Sure.” A spark of something—was it hope?—grew inside me.

  “Not to worry,” she said. “It often takes a few attempts to get the drug and dosage right.” She held my chart in her hand, running her finger down the notes. “I think we’ll try the newer drugs next. They work a bit better on our recalcitrant patients.”<
br />
  I froze, feeling sick, until she let out a peal of tinkly, grating laughter.

  “My little joke. It’s your Talent that’s recalcitrant, of course.” Dr. Jenn laid a hand on my knee. “Really, don’t worry. I have every hope that we’ll manage to get your Talent out in the open. The readings were different from last time—we saw a good energy spike, maintained for several minutes, but with no outward manifestation. That’s promising.”

  She pulled out a card and made a note on it, and tucked it back in the file.

  “We’ll see you again tomorrow. In the meantime, try and rest.”

  “Can I go back to my own room?”

  She nodded. “As long as you don’t feel faint, by all means. I know most people don’t rest well in hospital beds.”

  After she left, I got up, slowly, like an old woman. I didn’t know if it was the after effects of the sedative, the amplifiers, or the shock, but my thoughts moved through a thick fog.

  Going back to my room, I caught myself tiptoeing. How long until some Institute Talent casually read me and found out what I had experienced and knew? What if they were monitoring me now? The paranoia made me sick. How long had they been watching me? Was anything I thought or felt private?

  Jamie. They had Jamie, and no one had told me, so it was some kind of secret. The Major had made reference to him at the shooting range. What had he said? “We could have done a lot with him. Terrible waste.”

  That sounded as if they’d tried to turn him and failed. He’d felt hurt. What had they done to him?

  My chest squeezed. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. After I reached my room, I closed the door behind me as quietly as I could and lay down on the bed.

  I needed a plan, and quickly. I needed to find Jamie. I needed to think about what had happened today—the fact that I’d somehow acquired someone else’s Talent.

  That was what had happened, as far as I could tell. I had looked at the tech and suddenly I’d been inside her head, stealing her Talent. This must have been what had happened at the cabin, accidentally—I must have taken Eric’s power and used it to start the fire. Incredible. I’d never heard of anything like it.