Chapter 34
I don’t know what this is, but I don’t like it.
I feel like a child again, uncertain and afraid, unable to understand the powers I was suddenly manifesting.
If Uncle Jim hadn’t been there to guide and train me, I wouldn’t be able to shield myself from people reading my thoughts.
I wouldn’t be able to open a path into someone’s mind and read their thoughts.
I wouldn’t be able to filter. Listen to the thoughts that matter and not the chatter that doesn’t.
But this power is different. It doesn’t require filtering. It doesn’t seem to involve opening a path, and my shield certainly isn’t stopping it from occurring.
What is it? It feels like I’m listening in on a radio transmission.
“We haven’t talked since the Jubilee.”
Her voice scrapes along my spine like shards of glass. I thought we were friends, Lyddie and I. That’s on me. You can’t be friends with someone who hates you.
I was na?ve.
And stupid.
And reckless.
But I’m trying to learn from my mistakes now. To change, to be smarter. I can’t let my emotions cloud me, and so as much as Lyddie’s voice makes me want to rip her throat out with my bare hands, I force myself to take a breath and listen.
“About her, I mean.” Lyddie pauses. “If it makes you feel better, she fooled me, too.”
I don’t know if the transmission cuts out or if Cross just isn’t responding, but it’s several seconds before Lyddie speaks again.
“Look, you don’t have to tell me if you were together. Roe thinks you were. But regardless, I know you liked her. You shortlisted her for Elite. You must have seen promise in her, at least as a soldier. You shouldn’t feel stupid about that.”
“Do you?”
Cross’s voice, his deep raspy tone, is like a knife to the heart.
I can still hear that voice begging me to run away with him. Every day I wonder if I made a mistake saying no.
“Do I what?” asks Lyddie.
“Feel stupid that she fooled you.”
“I did, but not anymore. I’ve come to realize how ruthless and manipulative they are. Travis is right—”
Travis? She’s on a first-name basis with the new General?
“We need to flush them out of society.”
Screw you, you quat!
I draw another calming breath, ordering myself to listen.
“I’m here if you ever need to talk, Captain. That’s all I came to say.”
Where are they? I wonder. In his office?
His quarters?
A wall of red-hot rage slams into me. She’d better not be in his quarters.
“I appreciate that, Lyddie.”
Oh, does he now?
“Travis wanted me to tell you that Mr. Jones is requesting another—”
Her voice drops out.
Silence.
Keep talking!
I strain my mind, trying to listen harder, but I don’t know how to bring it back. I don’t know how it’s happening in the first place. How I’m controlling this.
“You keen, Darlington?”
I jerk out of my frantic thoughts to find Xavier watching me. His dark eyes hold a shrewd glint. He knows something’s up.
“Yeah. I think I’m going to head back to our quarters. Read the rest of this mission briefing before lights-out.”
“I’ll be there soon,” he says.
I push my chair back, shifting my gaze to Saint. I’d be fine leaving Xavier alone with Poppy, but he and Saint rarely interact, and I don’t entirely trust that dynamic.
“You’re not going to try to kill him, right?” I ask the mission lead.
“I’ll try not to.” Saint winks at me. It’s the most playful I’ve seen him since I got here.
Once I’m alone, I allow Lyddie’s conversation with Cross to replay in my mind. Why is she talking to him? Why is he talking to her? About me, no less.
And what the hell is this ability?
I don’t even know whom I trust enough to ask about it. Kallister? Hawkins? No, not Hawkins. He makes me too nervous. And I’m not ready to tell Kallister, because he’ll have to disclose it to the rest of the Authority.
If I’m being honest with myself, there’s only one person I want to talk to right now, and the temptation to reach out to him gnaws at me until finally, I succumb to it.
I try to link with Cross.
And…nothing.
As usual, nothing happens.
I can’t fight the tears that well up in my eyes. The embarrassment. I feel pathetic that I reached out again, and that once again he didn’t want to link.
Maybe he’s too busy with Lyddie.
I swallow my bitterness and take a shower before bed. I stew and ruminate and obsess as the hot water beats down on my head, and by the time I’ve brushed my teeth and put on my sleep clothes, I’m no closer to understanding what happened tonight.
When I emerge from the lav, Xavier is on his bed, waiting for me.
“Did he reach out?”
“Who?” I say, as I run a hairbrush through my hair.
“Cross. I saw your face back there. You had that look, like maybe there was someone in your head.”
“There was.”
“So he did reach out.”
“No. I haven’t heard from him since we broke up.”
“That was months ago.”
“I know.”
Xavier groans in frustration. “What the hell does that mean? Why does everyone on this mountain talk in godfucking riddles? I hate it here.”
I laugh. “Well, you’re in luck. You pretty much talked your way into a leisure pass in two days.”
“Yes, such leisure,” he cracks. “The risk of getting my head blown off by Reed and his goons.”
“It’s better than having your head blown off by the people here.”
“True. Anyway, you’re deflecting. What’s going on with Cross?”
I sit down on my bed. “I think I might have a new ability.”
“Okay…”
“Something happened this evening. Actually, this is the second time.” I exhale slowly. “I can hear him.”
“What do you mean, hear him?”
“The first time, he was with Travis. They were arguing. And tonight, in the common room, I heard him talking to Lyddie.”
“De Velde?”
“Yeah. I don’t get how or why it’s happening.
I don’t think it’s telepathy, because I didn’t open a path, and it’s not a projection because I’m not seeing what he’s seeing.
I guess I’m…hearing what he’s hearing.” I stop, bewildered.
“That’s not a real ability, though. Or at least not one I’ve ever heard of. ”
“Why don’t you ask one of your little buddies here?”
I hesitate.
“Exactly,” he says triumphantly. “Because we can’t trust them, just like I keep saying.”
“That’s not why I’m keeping quiet. You’re supposed to disclose all abilities to the Authority, but I don’t want to say anything until I figure out what this is. Maybe I’ll go to the digital library tomorrow and do some digging. See if there are any records of someone else having this power.”
I fall silent for a moment, Cross and Lyddie’s conversation playing through my mind. I clench my teeth as I picture her in his office, consoling him because I “fooled” him.
“I don’t like that he was talking to her,” I grit out.
Xavier grins at me. “Are you jealous?”
“No,” I lie.
“If it makes you feel better, there’s no way Cross would ever be locked on someone like Lyddie De Velde.”
That does, indeed, make me feel better.
“He doesn’t like meek women,” Xavier adds.
“According to Roe, Ivy was meek,” I say, referring to Cross’s ex.
“Nah, Ivy had some backbone. De Velde, not so much. She didn’t impress me during training. She had the scores for Intelligence, but I wouldn’t have wanted her on a mission with me.”
“She passed all the practical sections,” I point out.
“Barely.” He shrugs. “We talked about her. The instructors, I mean. We talked about all of you. Who we’d want having our six on a high-risk op. There were certain recruits that we knew on day one would be assigned to Intelligence. Lyddie was one of them. She was too timid for fieldwork.”
Yes, Lyddie was timid. I suspect that stemmed from insecurity, though. Now that I know how much power her parents wield, I do understand her a lot better. But that doesn’t mean I sympathize with her anymore.
Cross once told me that compassion is weakness. I argued with him, insisting that strength and compassion didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
But Cross was right. I was wrong.
And I’m not making the same mistake again by having compassion for my enemy.