Kalen still won't talk to me.

We've been driving for so long that I don't even bother checking the time, but the silence is starting to get to me. I glare at him one last time and look out the window, having had enough of him and his mind games. Ash watches us from his seat, uncomfortable, so Cassie tries to start some casual conversation with him. I half-listen while I watch the buildings blur by. We are getting closer to the capital. I can tell by how many skyscrapers and newer buildings we pass by. Giant billboards flicker all kinds of adds, projecting them onto the digital screens, and cars of every make and model speed past us. I spot a group of teenagers hanging out in one of the parks, and I remember when it used to be just me and Cassie, chilling in our little meadow.

How far we've come.

Jayson makes a left turn down one of the side roads and I make out the silhouette of a tall white building off in the distance.

The Mar, our target.

The White House had been remodeled in 2072 to fit council meetings and esteemed Elite guests, and was renamed the Mar after the architect that redesigned it, Mar Gomez. Like the Pentagon it still resembled its old self, but parts had been changed to fit into this day and age. It had been expanded and now another building, 15 stories high, is connected to it, making room for offices. Members of the council work there, while the president and his daughter live in the original building.

"Here we are," says Jayson, pulling up to one of the many buildings lining the street.

He drives up to a large gate, where the SYLVIA system asks for identification. Jayson rolls down his window and takes out the fake IDs that Leti made for us before we left. We had countless more in the trunk, just to be safe. I wonder if Asher and the rest of his team had their own as well. If they didn't we would probably need to have Leti make them some, just like we need her to create some documentation to convince the council that we are a part of it. It isn't safe to use our real names. If anyone from the council found out and tracked us back to the compound they might find out about our mission, then our only chance at getting the President would be blown.

"Wayne Darken, renting room 503."

A moment of silence follows before the gate starts to slide open, allowing us access to the underground parking.

"Welcome Mr. Darken."

Jayson rolls up his window and drives us into the parking lot, turning off the van and stuffing the keys in his pocket before hopping out and opening the doors for the rest of us. I stretch and rub my legs, trying to get the feeling back into them after such a long drive.

"Nice place," Says Asher, jumping out of the van, pulling a small rucksack out with him.

"Is that all you brought with you?" I ask.

The bag only seems big enough for a couple of sets of clothes, let alone weapons or equipment. We had brought a suitcase each and our mission packs.

Asher smiles and puts the bag on the ground. It takes my brain a moment to process when he pulls a fully functioning stun gun, one larger than any of the ones at our compound, out of the bag. That is followed by camo suits like our own, a dart watch, and lots of other gizmos.

"We call it the Merry Poppins bag," says Asher, putting all the stuff back inside. "In honor of that super old movie. Our tech guy loves all sorts of old-world entertainment."

Jayson smiles, crouching down to inspect the bag closer.

"Sounds just like our guy. He would love to take a closer look at this, I've never seen anything like it before. How does it work?"

Asher grins, happy to have something interesting to talk about.

"He combined science with pocket makers."

"What's a pocket maker?" Asks Cassie, grabbing her suitcase from the trunk and rolling it over to us.

"It's a special kind of Gift. People that are able to open pockets in space to create extra room."

That exists? That's incredible! A space manipulator. Now all we need is a time manipulator and anything could be possible.

"But not many pocket creators were known to create large enough pockets to store a person. Only a few in history have achieved that. Most only use them as storage rooms. They can access them whenever and wherever they want and pull out anything they've put in there."

"That is so cool," Cassie exclaims, eyes wide as she looks at the seemingly small rucksack.

"Well, are we going to stand around and talk about bags all day or are we going to get going?" Says Anna, hoisting her own sack over her shoulder, waiting for us with a hand resting on her hip.

Kalen walks past her, and she misses the way he turns his eyes skyward.

Jayson shuts the door of the van and leads us all up the stairs, taking us to the third level of the building, scanning his thumb over the panel by the door, and opening it with a single push. It isn't a very big apartment, probably not bigger than my old place, but it will do. Everyone goes off to inspect the rooms, while Mara and I start unpacking the files Christian gave us onto the kitchen island. The interior is very modern, with white and black furniture and a sleek tiled floor. There is a large plasma TV on the wall in the living room, where a small glass table holds a weird-looking sculpture. Now that I take a closer look I find lots of odd trinkets littering the apartment, from weird metal cylinders to giant paintings and murals on the walls. Whoever owns this place must be some sort of collector.

"Didn't you look at this place before renting it?" Asks Anna, stomping back to us with a scowl on her face.

"We did, why, you have a problem with it?"

She laughs, throwing her arms up and letting them fall against her legs.

"You bet I do! there are only five beds, and last time I checked there are eight of us"

I groan internally. Was nothing good enough for this girl?

"Don't worry," says Mara calmly, not wanting to start a fight over some beds.

"This was the only place in the area that we could find on such short notice. Three of us will sleep in the living room. There are two sofas, and we brought a sleeping bag. It's not like we are going to stay here for a long time anyways."

"We don't know that."

I twist my neck around and find Asher leaning casually against the kitchen table, looking through some files of his own.

"Who knows how much time it will take us to track this guy down?"

He has a point. So far none of the compounds had any luck in finding him, what made us think we would be any better? I sigh, picking up one of the folders and joining Asher at the table. He gives me a small smile and turns his papers so that I can see them as well, so I do the same with our folder. As I read it over it looks like we have pretty much the same information. Where the president lives, who his closest council members are, how to infiltrate them. One of the council members, the Presidents new ornate, was recruiting Elites for a new campaign. The ornate are the council members in charge of maintaining the peace between Elites and Norms. Norms usually want nothing to do with the government, so ornates always recruit Elites when they need public input. Or when they needed people to flaunt on television to show the population that they do care about our ideas and worries. That doesn't mean they actually do anything about them later, they just want to show the "good side" of the government. If you asked me, it was more like the fake side.

"It looks like a couple of us will be able to get in through here. Join the campaign. They are going to have a meeting with the president in a few days so he can choose who he thinks are the best candidates," says Asher, reading over the same segment I was looking at. "If any of us manage to get in then we will probably be staying at the Mar, so we won't have to worry about beds," he says, sending a pointed look at his teammate, who just rolls her eyes and disappears into one of the rooms.

"How do we decide who goes to what?"

Not all of us are going to get a chance to check on the President first hand, probably only a couple of us will manage to get close enough to him to find out if he is our guy, if we even manage to get close to him at all.

"I guess it's a matter of who's Gift will give them a greater advantage," he shrugs. His brown eyes look up from the paper and settle on mine.

"What's your Gift?" He asks, and my head goes back to my conversation with Christian.

"You're sure about this" he had asked me, concern wrinkling over his brow.

"How will they trust me if I keep my Gift from them? The whole point is bonding with these Elites so we can work together as a united front, one team, not two. If I started keeping secrets from day one, our chances of that happening diminish."

I sigh, coming back to the present.

"It's complicated, I would rather explain it when all of us are present. Not have to explain myself twice, you know?"

He quirks his head, probably wondering what was hard about explaining ones Gift, but he doesn't question it and nods.

"Fair enough," He says, leaning back "my Gift isn't super easy to explain either, but I guess you could say it gives my brain a boost."

I hear laughter and turn to find Anna standing behind us.

"That's an understatement," she says, tuning in on our conversation.

She's taken off her hoodie, revealing a navy-blue shirt with sleeves that come down to her fingers, constellations printed on the front of it. She isn't what I would call pretty, but there is something about her face that makes you want to keep looking at her. She has stick-straight black hair that's cut in a bob that falls below her chin. Her skin is pale, and she has a fine line of freckles sprinkled over her nose and cheeks. Her eyes seem to be too big for her face, but it's their color that has me staring. Golden, almost like the eyes of a cat at night. I wonder if her eyes have anything to do with her Gift. It would explain the color, and how her pupils seem to dilate every two seconds, then expand as she focuses on something else.

"His neural cortex is ten times more complex than that of a regular human being," She says, ignoring his protests at her implying he isn't "normal"

"The way his neurons transmit information, the velocity at which impulses travel to his brain, it's like comparing a turtle to a hare."

She gets more and more excited the longer she talks about Asher's Gift, which sounds to me like it makes him super smart. The scowl that seemed to be permanently etched onto her face softens and almost turns into a smile.

"Okay okay, I think they got it," says Asher, rubbing his head with a slight tint to his cheeks.

"So, are you like the Tony Stark of this era?" Says Jayson, coming into the little living room that joins with the kitchen, Kalen following closely behind him.

Asher laughs, but doesn't deny Jayson's claim.

"Technology is my strong suit. I guess you could say my head is like a computer, it stores information and analyses it within seconds, so I understand machines. Probably more than I understand people."

Technological Gift, useful when you lived in the era of technology and AIs. That means that Asher will probably be staying at the apartment to look up more information on the President. He will also be able to help us get into the council if he can create fake profiles for us. I ask him about it, and he nods.

"Sure, I planned to stay at base anyway, I'm not great at undercover work. I'm a terrible liar." He says sheepishly. Anna snorts.

"It's true, he can't even give someone a fake name without breaking into a nervous sweat."

He swats at her arm and she laughs, dodging.

"Well, I think it would be a good idea if we all got to work on figuring out what our next move will be, so I'm going to go grab my TekPad and start some research."

He gets up from the table, taking a couple of files with him, and heads towards one of the bedrooms. Anna follows him, and Jayson says he's going to start looking into that campaign we had been talking about earlier.

"Hey, what happened to Cass and that other kid, Xavier was it?"

Mara shrugs, while Kalen keeps looking at his TekPad on the sofa, not uttering a single word.

I roll my eyes at his silence and get up to search for my friend. I don't notice how his eyes follow me out of the room, or how his shoulders seem to slump once I've left.

I find Cassie trying to talk to Xavier in one of the rooms, only succeeding in getting a blank stare from the boy.

"Come on! Why won't you say anything?" She pouts, sitting on the floor next to where Xavier is unpacking.

"What's going on?" I ask, startling when Cassie pulls me over to her side.

"This kid won't say a single word to me" She whisper yells in my ear. "It's like he can't hear me or something"

"Maybe he just doesn't want to talk to you" I say, flinching when she moves to slap my shoulder.

"I know they said he was shy, but so were you and I got through to you!"

It's true, I was terribly shy when I was younger. It's probably thanks to Cassie that I'm so open now. But as I regard Xavier move around the room, the way he seems to hunch in on himself, the dark circles under haunted eyes, he doesn't seem shy, he almost looks traumatized.

"Are you okay?" I ask, and to my surprise he gives me a subtle shake of his head. I'm about to ask him why not when Anna comes barging into the room.

"Xavier did you see my," she pauses.  "What are you two doing in here?" She asks, mask coming back up when she notices Xavier isn't alone. She looks between her friend and the intruders and goes over to tug on his jacket sleeve.

"Come on, Ash wants to talk to you," she says, so softly I'm surprised it's the same girl as before. Her blunt exterior seems to disappear as she pulls Xavier out of the room. She glares at us over her shoulder, closing the door behind her, leaving Cassie and I alone in the now-empty bedroom.

"So much for becoming friends," mumbles Cassie, disappointed. I pat her on the back, getting up off the floor.

"Don't worry, they'll come around eventually."

At least, that's what I keep telling myself.