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mean I liked it.  It wasn’t his fault that he was born Mac’s son.
    “What?” To his credit, he seemed slightly taken aback, like he really didn’t know what I was talking about.  My anger lessened slightly.
    “Mac raised me.  I lived with his family up until I came here,” I said evenly.  “Do you think that I get special treatment?  Do you think I only got here because of Mac? That he called in special favors to get me in to the Hunters?”
    “Oh, shit.  Talia, I’m sorry.  I didn’t know,” he apologized, but Henri was the only one left in the cabin to hear his words.
    I was very sensitive, maybe overly so, when it came to my relationship with Mac –what those close to him called him – Director Danbury McDonough.  The crappiest part of being able to read minds was knowing what people really think about you.  Erik’s view wasn’t the minority opinion; a lot of other students thought I’d only been accepted to Pledge the Hunters because Mac had pulled strings to get me in.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a lot of Toxic Operatives believed that too.  They complained to each other – that if I were anyone else I would be working in some remedial Agency position, like food services or janitorial duty.  It had been this way since I went to the McDonough School:  the whispering when I walked past, the sneers when I answered a question correctly in class, the outright condemnation by all the girls my age when I started dating Donavon.  It usually didn’t bother me much; mostly the accusations just made me work harder, and I didn’t make an effort to correct them.
    The truth was that I worked extremely hard to get an invitation to Pledge the Hunters.  Mac had begun working with me when I first came to the School.  Hunters are typically Morphers because their natural Talents give them extremely heightened senses in addition to the ability to morph into a variety of animals, and in some rare cases other humans.  I will never be able to “learn” to morph, since it’s not a learned behavior, but fine-tuning my senses was something that could be taught.  So I did.  I also took extra combat and weapons lessons every day instead of making friends.  When I went to try out for the Hunters, I felt confident my abilities rivaled those of the best of my classmates.  Captain Alvarez, the leader of the Hunters, had thought so too; I’d taken the liberty of taking a peek in to his head to make sure.

 
    Chapter Six
     
    After the Mandatory Testing Law took effect, several Rebel factions developed in response; they accumulated a strong following, mostly in the southwestern United States.  The Rebels staged a small revolt, but the Agency had quashed it before it had gone too far.  In the end, the Coalition of Rebel States:  California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, seceded from the rest of the country and elected their own president.  Over the years, the Coalition has served as a safe haven for citizens who championed a country where Talents were suppressed, hidden, where being Talented, was something to be ashamed of.  One of the primary objectives of Toxic is to prevent the Coalition from gaining any more momentum.  In fact, Mac’s main goal as Director was to defeat the Coalition’s leaders and reunite the country.
    I was ten years old when my parents, Katerina and Francis Lyons, were killed in an attack by the rebels.  My family moved around a lot when I was a child, on account of my father’s job as a government scientist, and at the time of the attack we visiting the States so that my father could attend an annual meeting with members of Toxic.  My family always stayed in the same hotel in the same small town in Maryland, about twenty minutes away from the School’s campus.
    The men in black came in the dead of night.  My father and his bodyguard tried to fight them off, but they were greatly outnumbered.  My mother hid me in a closet and went