Talent to Burn (Hidden Talent #1) (29 page)

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.”

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.

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.”