The Grower's Gift (Progeny of Time #1) (20 page)

Maya read the words as fast as she could. "And then I will be able to go home?"

"To prevent outside interference with their gifts, students stay inside this school for the duration of their training," Ronia answered. "Are you sure you have a gift? Have you ever used it?"

"Of course I'm sure. Only a week ago I made wheat ripen from mere shoots in a matter of hours," Maya replied.

The woman inhaled sharply, then regained her composure immediately. "Perhaps you were only mistaken. The seeds could have been the fast growing kind."

Maya shook her head. "I've never seen seeds grow that quickly."

A trader from another town once brought some fast growing seeds to market, and those matured in a few days. But their accelerated growth didn't stop. In a week they rotted as though they'd been kept for years.

 
Maya sat down on the bed. "Can I send a message to my friend so he does not worry about me?"
 

"Communication with the outside is not allowed," Ronia answered.

"Please," Maya begged. "We didn't know I won't be returning. He must be worried to death about me."

Ronia studied her for a few moments and then pulled a small, thin tablet from her pocket. "Write down your message here. I will see it is delivered. Where is your friend staying?"

"With the Orsini family, in one of the guest houses," Maya replied as she wrote out a quick note for Giles not to worry about her.

Maya handed back the tablet. The woman pulled a small glass vial containing a single dark purple pill from her pocket, unstoppered the vial, and moved closer to Maya. "Hold out your hand," she typed. "This medicine will cleanse you faster and make it possible for you to sleep all through the night."

"I can get to sleep fine on my own, I'm sure," Maya said. After seeing the effect those gifters had on the kids at Rober's party Maya didn't want to take any pills unless they were from someone she trusted completely. And this woman wasn't it.

Ronia took another step closer, her eyes open wide. "You must take this medicine," she typed. "Otherwise they will feed it directly into your vein."

Maya studied the woman, weighing her options quickly. If she didn't take this pill, they'd probably force the medicine into her some other way. She needed this woman on her side so she would deliver the message to Giles.
 

Maya extended her hand. "Fine, give it to me then."

Ronia watched Maya swallow the pill and chase it down with a gulp of water.

"Eat and rest now," Ronia's words flashed.

As soon as the door hissed shut behind her, Maya spat out the purple pill and stuffed it under the mattress.

~

The door hissed open again just as Maya was finishing her meal. She looked up, expecting to see the silent woman. Ty stood in the doorway. He was slightly out of breath, like he'd run all the way there.

His presence brought a heightened note of panic to the air.
 

Maya looked down at her food and moved some of the chicken around idly, trying to ignore the fear rising in her chest. "Did you come take me to the interview?"

Ty walked closer and hovered over her. "She hasn't questioned you yet? She doesn't know what you can do?"

Maya dropped the fork and stood up. He was so close she had to crane her neck to look at his face. "No, I've been locked up here all day."

"Why couldn't you trust me and stay away from here?" Ty sat down on the bed, upsetting the tray of food and making her fork and knife clatter to the ground.

Maya placed her hands on her hips. "Why is that so important to you? A few hours ago you said you meant to bring me here all along."

He wouldn't meet her eyes. His silence dragged, brought panic that was all her own.
 

"What is this place? Why is everyone so frightened here?"

Ty stood up quickly and took hold of her arms gently. "When you get to the interview, deny you have any powers at all. Say you made it all up. If she tests you anyway, do
not
let your gift show, Maya."

Cold hung in the air between them. Maya didn't move back. "Why would I want to do that?"

Ty ignored her. "Isolate the place where your power comes from. Contain it somehow, make sure it doesn't escape. Whatever you see, don't react. Then she'll let you go."

Maya tore her arms away. "I don't want to do that. You're scaring me with all this talk. Why can't you tell me exactly what the danger is?"

The black band on his wrist started buzzing and his mother's face flashed on one of the tiles. He cursed and turned the buzzing off.
 

"Do what I say. Please," he said urgently. "I have to go."

Maya stared at the place he disappeared through for a while after he was gone, trying to make sense of it.
 

His panic was real, it left the room with him. Maya sat on the floor and tried to do as he instructed. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the warmth of her gift, bubbling deep inside her chest. She imagined a tall fence holding it in. The warmth swallowed it up. She imagined a wall of stone; that too disappeared in the heat.
 

If anything, her power grew the more she tried to stifle it, bubbled over, filled her entire torso, trickled down her legs and arms.
 

It was pointless.

She didn't want to stop her power, she wanted to
use
it. It was her one calling in life, the thing she was born to do. If she failed, she failed.

~

Ty unsnapped his phone to call his mother back once he reached the control room, but she was already there.

"Where have you been?" she asked as the door hissed shut behind him.

He avoided her gaze. "Around."

"Your friend Sage has been released for her parents to deal with," Violetta said. "Your father thought it was best."

Ty stifled a relieved sigh.
 

"I actually wanted to talk to you," Ty said and sat next to her at the table. "That girl Lana brought this morning, I don't think she actually has a gift. She only said that so that we'd bring her into the Ring."

His mother studied him from beneath raised eyebrows. "You wouldn't let her fool you like that. I'm sure you questioned her before bringing her here."

Ty leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. "I did. I also kind of liked the look of her, so I thought why not go along with it? I never intended to waste your time bringing her to you. That was all Lana's doing. Maybe I should go and release her."

His mother giggled. She sounded unnervingly like his little sister when she did that.
 

"I think you were wrong, Ty. I definitely don't think she's giftless," his mother said. "I'll interview her tomorrow and then we'll know."

Ty lost his balance on the chair. His mother grabbed his arm to steady him. "Don't worry about it. I don't expect you to recognize the gifted on sight yet. In a few years, you'll be able to, just like I can."

Ty's mind raced, looking for something, anything to make her change her mind. "I could interview her again. Get some practice."

His mother grabbed the back of his chair and pulled it so he was facing her. "Whatever kind of feelings this girl stirred in you, it's over. She's been brought here, and no one leaves once they arrive."

Ty tried to laugh it off. The sound caught in his throat.
 

"You're so soft," his mother barked, the cutting tone jarring against her kind, smiling eyes. "You know very well that our work here is secret. How else would we get new subjects to study if everyone knew what we really did to the ones who come? This girl has already seen too much. She's staying whether she has a gift or not."

Ty laughed, but it came out a grunt. The cold exploding in his head made him see double. He forced it all into the metal chest in his mind, barred the locks. "Fine. I just thought I'd ask. You're absolutely right."

Every word was preceded by a shard of ice stabbing his brain.
 

His mother looked at him for a few more moments, then she stood up and brushed her long hair back behind her ears.
 

"It's better you don't see this girl again," she said. "But I want you there for her first testing, if we have one."

Ty stood up too. "Whatever you say."

She studied him for a few more moments, then left the room.

It took a full fifteen minutes before the room came back into clear focus. Longer still before Ty fully understood that Maya was lost forever.

~

Ty called Rober as he was out of the facility. Rober answered on the fourth ring.
 

"Where are you?" Ty asked. "We need to talk."

They didn't have much time. Sage might still give them all up, especially if Hercules was now questioning her. Hercules and Violetta were so equally matched in ruthlessness and cruelty, Ty sometimes wondered if he hadn't maybe been mixed up at birth.

"I'm at home," Rober replied. "Where are you?"

Ty ignored the edge in Rober's voice. "I'm coming over."

Maybe Rober would listen to reason now that his plans failed so miserably. Ty found him lounging on the sofa, the windows of his apartment showing scenes of the Badlands, the world beyond the Ring.
 

"Sage has been caught," Ty blurted out. "Tell me you abandoned the rest of the plan."

"That's partly your fault," Rober said and hiccupped.
 

"I never asked to get dragged into your dumb plan."
 

"True," Rober said. He walked to the other side of the room and returned to the sofa with a bottle of cognac. An empty wine bottle already sat on the table. The last thing Ty needed was to get drunk. Rober seemed to have a different idea. He filled their glasses and drank all of his before Ty had the time to refuse.
 

"Sage tried to force us into action today, as soon as the talks started. You didn't answer your phone, and Liam didn't either. In the end we had to abort. Sage went ahead anyway. Now, who knows what will happen?"
 

Rober raised his second glass in a defeated toast and drank that too.

"They're letting the Montagues handle it," Ty said quietly.

Rober raised his glass again. "At least it's not your mother. There was always a very real possibility that we'd get caught. Sage knew that. She won't talk."

Ty took hold of Rober's hand over the bottle, preventing him from refilling his glass again. "Call it all off, Rober, disband. Wait for a better time to carry out your plans. Once you have more power."

Rober looked down at his hand. "I thought you getting to know Maya better, falling for her like you did, you'd see how important the work we're doing is."
 

Ty let go of his hand and looked up at the ceiling noticing the new wallpaper, shimmering stars against velvet blue night. "Lana took her to my mother's facility this morning. There was nothing I could do to stop it."

Cognac sloshed into the glass. "It's what she wanted."

What a rotten thing to say.

And then it hit him, bursting open the metal box that Ty had struggled so hard to keep shut all day. Freezing cold erupted in his forehead. He knocked the glass away from Rober's mouth, dousing them both in cognac. "Did you tell Lana where Maya was?"

Rober's eyes widened in shock. "No, of course I didn't."

"Lana knew exactly where to find her," Ty continued.

Rober reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. "She didn't hear it from me."

Ty studied him, trying to find the lie or truth in his friend's eyes, his face. To prevent himself from striking out, unleashing anything he couldn't undo, he balled his hands into fists, squeezing so hard his nails dug into his palm.
 

In the end, he decided to believe Rober. It was easier.
 

Warm sticky blood trickled down his palms when he finally released the grip.

Rober looked at his hands, then stumbled to get the first aid kit. "Here, let me see that."

Ty waved him away and wiped up his own blood, then traced the healing cream over the cuts, watching his flesh seal shut.
 

Rober was drinking his third glass of cognac. "I didn't tell her, Ty. I might have, eventually, to make you see."

Ty didn't doubt it. Rober had the most compassion of anyone Ty knew, except Eve, but it still wasn't much. Empathy was a dying thing in the Ring, one of the first traits to be bred out after the genetic engineering of babies started. "I have no power to change anything. Never did, never will."

"Things need changing," Rober replied. "I thought we agreed on that. Why else did we make all those plans to found our own city when we were younger?"

Ty shrugged. "That was always more about running away for me."

"There's no running!" Rober said, then dropped his voice to a whisper. "How long do you think you'll be safe, before she finds out you have a special gift too, and locks you up in that facility?"

"That could be for the best," Ty said. He never told Rober what his gift was, only that he had one.

Rober gasped. "You can't mean that."

"I do," Ty said. "You have to let it go too, for your own safety. Promise me you'll give up your plans."

Rober snorted. "I can't do that. I see now it was a mistake bringing you in. You're too much of a coward. One would never guess it, just looking at you."

Ty ignored the insult. "We're not children anymore. I can't help you with your plans. I won't. And I can't risk anyone else being pulled in and destroyed because you're trying to convince me otherwise."

Even if Rober had never told Lana where Maya was, he could have made her harder to find. All Ty needed was one more day, and Maya would have been safely back in her home in the Badlands. Now he was being forced into action he never wanted to take.

He leaned down and pulled Rober's VR console from under the sofa. It was the same one he had at home. Top of the range, with seamless immersion, complete control and freedom over the experience, and the ability to inject anyone's DNA into it and have their clone in the setting of their choice, along with a part of their consciousness. As much of it as could be extracted from blood, anyway.