Inescapable (Talented Saga #7) (53 page)

“
He totally winked at me,”
Cressa overheard a 2P named Claudette say to her practice partner,
a cadet called Dina.

“
You’re dreaming,” Dina
retorted. “It was definitely me that he was looking at.”

Stifling a grin, Cressa tried to return her
attention to the task at hand. She wanted so much to be above
fawning over Kev, though he never strayed far from her
thoughts.

Daphne, Cressa, and Ritchie were working
together in one corner of the classroom, practicing telekinesis.
Madame Gillis had provided several objects of varying weights for
the cadets to move with their minds, and the trio was taking turns
shuffling each to the other side of the table. The most challenging
was a pitcher of water; they were supposed to transfer the contents
to an empty container. So far, none of the three had successfully
done so.

Kev—who, to Cressa’s immense relief, was
evidently not one of the four cadets feeling the Dame’s wrath at
that very moment—was practicing with a short, freckled boy not far
away. Unable to help herself, Cressa kept looking over, hoping to
catch his eye. She knew it was silly; with so many options, he
would never think twice about Cressa. Still, she couldn’t help but
feel a bond with the movie star after their daring escape the night
before. The big question was whether he felt it too, or if he
simply saw her as another face in the crowd fawning all over the
movie industry’s golden boy.

“
Stupid brats,” Ritchie
muttered, glaring at Dina and Claudette. The pair was still arguing
over the recipient of Kev’s offhand glance. Ritchie huffed,
attempting to move the water from one pitcher to the other while
her attention was on the other girls. The water leapt in an arc
from the first pitcher, but flew past the target, landing in a
puddle on the floor. “Crap. Daphne, get me some towels, will
you?”

As Daphne started towards a cabinet across
the room, the classroom door banged open. Shyla Towers stood in the
doorway. Dark circles marred the thin skin beneath her listless
brown eyes. Her ponytail was askew, and looked as though the hair
hadn’t been brushed in days. She shuffled her feet when she walked,
reminding Cressa of a zombie from an apocalypse movie.

Cressa, Daphne, and Ritchie stared, mouths
agape, then shot uneasy glances at one another. Whatever had
happened to Shyla, her condition didn’t bode well for the four
cadets who were actually apprehended in the tunnels.

Did they find out about
the rest of us?
Cressa wondered, a shudder
wracking her body.
Did they search through
her mind?

She eyed Daphne and Ritchie, both white as
ghosts and visibly unnerved. Thankfully, the instructor’s attention
was locked solely on Shyla.

“
Cadet Towers, so kind of
you to join us,” Madame Gillis said, pursing her lips in annoyance.
“You are already behind. We are practicing telekinesis, you can
work with Karmine, Ritchie, and Beaumont.”

Shyla gave no audible response, but shuffled
towards Cressa and Ritchie.

“
Girls, help Cadet Towers
get caught up,” Madame Gillis commanded.

“
Yes, ma’am,” Cressa and
Ritchie replied in unison.

Silently, Shyla joined them. Cressa waited
until Madame Gillis went to scold a pair of girls who were using
their powers to make pencils sword fight, then she rounded on
Shyla.

“
What happened to your
sister? What about Hartley and the Jacobs? Are they PDs now? Does
the Dame know we were down there?” she hissed.

Shyla stared blankly at Cressa, almost as if
looking through her. After several long, uncomfortable moments, her
lips started to move, but no sound came out.

“
Don’t bother. It’ll be a
while before she can think on her own,” a boy’s voice
murmured.

When Cressa looked over, she was shocked to
find Kev kneeling beside her, a small rubber ball in his hands. He
held it up, and in a much louder voice added, “Sorry, guess I don’t
know my own strength. It wasn’t supposed to travel so far.”

Using her hip, Cressa bumped the table
holding their practice objects, causing a paperweight and three
foam peanuts to fall to the floor. Bending down to retrieve them,
she muttered, “What do you mean? What did they do to her?”

“
Interrogation, by the
looks of it,” he said, his glittering eyes looking impossibly
sad.

“
Right, but isn’t
interrogation just a fancy word for questioning? I get that it can
be traumatic and all, but she’s like the walking dead.”

Kev shook his head, eyes darting nervously
towards Madame Gillis. The instructor was still berating the sword
fighters.

“
It’s a little more
serious than just questioning,” he replied, leaning in so she could
hear his whispered explanation. “I mean, they do ask questions. But
you don’t answer verbally. They pull the thoughts from your head,
so you can’t lie. It’s super intense, from what I understand. And,
depending on the interrogator, whether he or she wants the
experience to be pleasant or not, it can be painful. Just pray they
don’t call you down next.”

Standing abruptly, Kev returned to his
partner.

“
Sorry about that,” he
called over his shoulder. “Guess I just need more
practice.”

Between her own lingering fatigue from the
night before, Shyla’s return, and Kev’s ominous statement, Cressa
found herself struggling to move even the lightest of the objects
telekinetically. Suddenly, opening the heavy stone doors in the
tunnels seemed like a cakewalk compared to levitating the virtually
weightless foam peanuts.

By the end of the lesson, Madame Gillis was
hoarse from yelling at the cadets for their failures. Cressa didn’t
really blame her for being so upset; the cadets were making her
look bad. Each one of them had passed their telekinesis exam, so
this should have been an easy lesson. Instead, they were acting
more like 1Ps on their first day.

The 2Ps invisibility training was an even
bigger catastrophe. In addition to Madame Brink, the dedicated
light manipulation instructor, Suzu, Leslie, and Gregor walked
around the room to give one-on-one instruction to each cadet. Even
though this was a solitary exercise, Cressa, Daphne, and Ritchie
made sure to position themselves near each other, so that they
could talk when no one was paying attention to them. Because they
were impatiently waiting for Shyla to speak, they kept her close as
well.

The zombie twin’s return had quickly shifted
much of the focus off of Kev. A lot of girls still tried to catch
his eye, but most of the not-so-discreet glances were directed at
Shyla instead. Cressa noticed that Kev had reverted back to the
lethargic shell she’d met in the elevator from med bay. He spoke
only when someone addressed him directly, and barely made an effort
to use his invisibility. Mostly, Kev stared off into space, his
expression nearly identical to Shyla’s. Cressa found it alarming,
yet intriguing.

What game is he
playing?
She wondered.

By lunch, the day had gone from atypical to
downright weird. Instead of eating in the cafeteria, Suzu announced
that all of the 2Ps would be eating in the girls’ common room. This
was exceptionally strange, since boys were not allowed on the
girls’ floors and vice-versa, aside from admins and 8P leaders,
like Gregor.

With all of the 2Ps present, the room was
packed. Cressa, Ritchie, Daphne, and Shyla were wedged in one
corner of the room, near the swinging chair the little canary had
been sitting in on Cressa’s first night on the floor. Kev was close
by, though surrounded by a gaggle of admirers, both male and
female. He kept his eyes locked on the floor, not responding to any
of the attempts to engage him in conversation.

Cressa was nibbling a black olive—a food she
hated, but that supposedly intensified light manipulation
powers—when the Dame’s serene voice boomed via the school-wide comm
system in the commons.

“
Good afternoon to all of
my cadets,” the Dame began, her voice as sweet as the sugary apple
pie Cressa’s mother baked on holidays. “I hate that I must address
you today with devastating news, particularly after the triumphs I
shared with you yesterday. But four of your own have shown their
true colors, proving themselves traitors to our cause.”

The Dame’s pronouncement was met with
audible gasps and boos from the gathered cadets. Only Cressa and
her friends seemed confused by the Dame’s version of events.

“
Traitors?” Daphne hissed
to the others. “What does she mean? We were just having a little
fun. How does that make us traitors?”

“
Just be quiet and
listen,” Ritchie replied quietly, twisting a lock of her magenta
hair around her forefinger.

“
It’s going to be okay,”
Cressa reassured the younger girl in a soft tone. “Just stay calm,
and try to remember that they’re going to be watching our
reactions.”

“
As those of you in Phases
Seven and Eight already know, many of your dismissed brethren
choose to remain at the Institute instead of returning to their
former lives. They may not be deserving of the title of Privileged,
but they are still eager to help our cause.”

“
They don’t bloody choose
anything. Nobody
chooses
to live in a cage,” Daphne muttered.

Cressa agreed, but didn’t say anything.
There was no way a kid like Damon Bizon chose his current life. No
one would ever choose to be a practice dummy for inexperienced
cadets to use their abilities on. The custom was inhumane, at
best.

Shyla started to shake. The twin hadn’t said
a coherent word since her return from interrogation, though she’d
mumbled a number of nonsensical phrases like “Carrots before peas”
and “Must not blink.” Cressa would’ve preferred Shyla’s continued
silence; her random mutterings were unnerving.

Still, it wasn’t as though Cressa was
without compassion. Shyla may have bolted in the tunnels, not
caring about the fates of the others, but seeing her so broken made
Cressa’s heart hurt. When Shyla began to openly cry, Cressa wrapped
her arms around the twin’s shoulders, holding her as her body was
wracked with sobs. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like for
Shyla, knowing that Lyla was at the heartless mercy of the
Dame.

Throughout the commons, cadets were cheering
the Dame’s words. It was just like in the auditorium, where the
Dame handed out news of murders like candy to children deprived of
sugar for most of their lives. Given their reactions to the news,
it seemed the children were eager for more of the good stuff.
Cressa was sickened by their excitement.

“
Now, for the identities
of the traitors,” the Dame proclaimed, causing a hush to settle
over the room. “First, Hartley Pinkerton.”

When the Dame said Hartley’s name, a
holo-image of the tall boy appeared at the front of the room where
a spot had been cleared. It appeared to be a live-feed, though she
couldn’t tell where he was.

To Cressa, he looked drugged rather than
scared; he had the same vacant expression as Shyla. Hartley wore a
red jumpsuit with a five-digit number over his heart, which Cressa
found quite alarming.

PDs wore green. Sources wore white. Who wore
red?

“
Lyla Towers,” the Dame
proclaimed, all trace of faux pleasantness gone from her voice.
Lyla’s holo-image materialized beside Hartley. Cressa saw no light
in the windows to the twin’s soul, just like Hartley.

Shyla shrieked shrilly when her sister
appeared. Without thinking, Cressa clamped her hand over her
mouth.

“
Shh, it’s okay, it’s
okay,” she chanted, trying to calm the other girl.

But she was too late. Leslie and Gregor
swooped over and plucked Shyla from Cressa’s arms.

“
Where are you taking
her?” Cressa demanded, too shocked to care about being
disrespectful.

“
Not your concern,” Leslie
replied crisply.

Cressa watched as the 8Ps dragged Shyla out
of the commons, wishing there was something she could do to help
her.

“
Don’t,” Kev warned in her
ear.

If nothing else, the movie star was
stealthy. She hadn’t noticed him move to sit beside her, and Cressa
jumped at the sound of his voice.

“
You can’t help her,
Cressa,” he said softly.

For a brief, embarrassing
moment, all Cressa could think was,
Kev
Leon knows my name.
Nonetheless, the
severity of the situation yanked her out of her girlish
excitement.

“
Where are they taking
her?” Cressa whispered back.

At the front of the room, holograms of both
Jacobs had appeared beside Hartley and Lyla.

“
For a sedative, if I had
to guess. If she calms down and stops freaking out, they’ll
probably bring her back. If not….” Kev shrugged. “Who
knows?”

“
These four individuals
were caught attempting to kidnap former cadets,” the Dame
announced. Cressa’s head snapped up at the words, drawing her
attention back to the announcements.

Kidnap?
She thought incredulously.
What the hell is she talking about?

“
The cadets they were
targeting are those who have chosen to remain at the Institute to
aid you in honing your new abilities,” the Dame continued. “While I
believe they were under the misguided assumption that these former
cadets were being held against their will, this crime is of the
utmost seriousness. I assure you all, every one of these former
cadets is well cared for, and enjoys every luxury the Institute has
to offer. They have remained here because they, like you, are
committed to a Privileged world.”