An excerpt from

Impulse Control

A Talent Chronicles Short

The natives were getting restless.

Natives?

Classmates?

Inmates.

My fellow inmates were getting restless. The class we were waiting for should have started two minutes ago. Doesn’t seem like much, two minutes, but classes were always on time. Everything was always on time. And any deviation from routine generally meant some kind of trouble.

It was unusual for them to leave us unsupervised. Well, how unsupervised can you be with two cameras mounted in the room? But it was unusual not to have any NIAC—National Institutes for Ability Control—personnel physically there to eyeball us. I’d heard stories from kids who hadn’t been at State School #15 as long as I had, who’d come from normal schools and normal lives on the outside. They said kids acted up at school sometimes, caused trouble just for the sake of causing trouble. Took the consequences just to get attention, or for the thrill of breaking rules and the possibility of escaping with no consequences at all.

It was hard to wrap my brain around that. But then, Detention doesn’t mean the same thing to them. Out there.

My pencil snapped in my hand. Damn.

Ethan, Karen’s voice soothed its way into my brain, you need to relax. It’s probably nothing.

I glanced over to throw her a smile, reassure her that I was fine and not a danger to myself or others…except for the pencil. She was fiddling with her long, black hair, and while her mental voice was calm as ever, she couldn’t hide the apprehension in her grey eyes.

Then those eyes flicked to Elle who, a moment later, turned in her seat and reached across the aisle toward me. I put the two pieces of the pencil in Elle’s hand. She closed her fist around it, opened her hand, and I retrieved my pencil, good as new, from her palm. My fingers brushed her skin and I felt a tingle all the way up my arm. I had to clear my throat to whisper “Thanks,” at her. I doubt she heard me. I barely heard me. She was already facing front, and I was looking at her honey-brown braid again.

You know what you learn when you can read minds? Karen “asked.”

I heaved a heavy mental sigh. Lots of things that aren’t your business, I’d imagine.

Boys are idiots.

Don’t you have anyone else to pick—?

They’re coming.

The door opened and three people entered the room. One was the armed guard who would stand in the corner and look bored the entire time our instructor was in the room. One was the instructor for this class. The class was called Mental Defense, but the instructor had never told us his name. Lots of NIAC personnel didn’t give us their names. We called him Sir. The third was a guy about the same age as Karen and me.

He was on the tall side, pale and really skinny, and his hair was cropped so close to his scalp you could hardly tell what color it was. Brown, I guessed. He walked kind of strangely, one foot dragging a little with each step. The instructor didn’t tell him to take a seat. As the kid stood at the front of the room, it seemed he had a tick that caused his head to tilt to the side a few times a minute.

“This,” the instructor said with a tone of suppressed excitement in his voice that made me kind of nervous, “is Anderson. He’ll be helping us test the telepathic blocking techniques we’ve been working on.” I definitely didn’t like the sound of that. “Anderson has come to us from Delta Facility.”

That announcement broke through even our rigid discipline. There were a bunch of gasps, even whispers. The instructor pounded his fist on his desk, looking really pissed off at the outburst. What did he expect? Delta Facility was the proper name for what the NIAC personnel more casually referred to as Detention. It was the worst threat of punishment available to them, the nightmare of every kid in State School. It was a place few kids ever came back from, and no one ever left the way they went in. It was a place of free experimentation where life had no value and pain wasn’t a concern. Rumors of unending torment, yet a territory vastly unknown. It was Talent Hell. We called it Everlast.

Across the room, an empath groaned loudly and his chair scraped against the floor. From the corner of my eye I could see him grab his head and twist in his seat.

“Use your blocking, Kenneth,” the instructor snapped.

I tried to pull my emotions back, to calm down, to put Everlast and the concern about what the Anderson kid was here to do aside for the moment. I hoped the rest of the class would do the same and give Kenneth a break, poor guy.

“Can you continue without disrupting us?”

“Y-yes, Sir,” Kenneth gritted out. He folded his hands on the desk in front of him, arms trembling, knuckles going white. They told the public that they took us from our families to train us to control our abilities, protect us as well as them. Since we were never allowed to communicate with our families, since no one ever went home, it’s hard to believe that anyone on either side of the electrified fence believed that. We were training to be government operatives and they didn’t like to see weakness. If you couldn’t handle the strain, you weren’t going to hack it as a soldier. And if you couldn’t hack it as a soldier, the next best use was lab rat.

“Glad to hear it,” the instructor said curtly. “Anderson has been a successful part of an experimental trial involving an important new technology that may someday aid all Ability-Affected persons. What brings him to our Mental Defense class, however, is his inborn ability: Compulsion.”

Even I could feel another shift in the energy in the room. Compulsion and Influence Talents were pretty rare. At least they were in the State Schools. NIAC didn’t trust kids who could affect their thoughts. No wonder he’d ended up in Everlast.

“As we have discussed on numerous occasions, there may be a time when you will be faced with an Ability-Affected opponent or even, at some point in the future, a technology that may attempt to force you off-mission through some form of mind-manipulation. Today we’re going to be getting real-world practice in using the blocking techniques we’ve been learning. All right, Anderson, let’s start with something simple. Choose your subject and make that subject…walk to the front of the room.”

Anderson and the instructor went a few rounds of trying to make us dance—literally in one case. The instructor pointed out Rand and Karen and told Anderson to force Rand to strike his older sister. The poor kid got a nose bleed and almost passed out, but he held his own. No big surprise to me. Rand and Karen were really tight and even at twelve, Rand was shaping up to be a strong guy. Even Anderson broke out in a sweat on that one, looking kind of embarrassed and pissed off, but the instructor was pleased.

“All right, take your seat, Rand, and keep your head back. We’ll do one more and then we’ll call it a day. Your choice Anderson.”

Anderson’s head kept snapping that little sideways jerk as his narrowed eyes looked us over. When he looked down my row, I glanced away. Nope, no challenge here. The last thing I wanted was to find out that I lacked the mental fitness to stand up to him and end up giving Rand a busted lip to match his bloody nose. Anderson’s expression looked mean and I figured that’s what he’d go for. Better he pick on one of the smaller guys.

Elle pushed her chair back and stood. She grabbed the back of it and swayed on her feet, as though trying to pull herself away from invisible hands. Her hand jerked away from the back of the chair as one foot slid forward. Then another. She was shaking her head as she moved haltingly forward, grabbing at the sides of desks in an effort to hold herself back, sometimes pulling them away from their owners.

Anderson waited for her at the front of the classroom, lounging negligently against the instructor’s desk. He was smiling now, a predatory smile that made my blood boil. I heard the scrape of my own chair before I was even aware of what I was doing.

Stop it! Karen’s thought was forceful, edged with urgency, and made me pause long enough to see the instructor’s attention directed my way, his expression half warning and half challenge. Yes, he’d love an excuse to go after you. Don’t give it to him, Ethan.

Help her, I thought.

You know I can’t get involved any more than you can. She’s gotta do this on her own.

Some best friend you are. Unfair, but I wasn’t feeling a lot of fairness just then. Elle’s no match for him. She was already near the front of the classroom now.

I know. Ethan, you need to calm down. Sir’s watching you. The violence pouring off you is about to make Kenneth sick, and there’s nothing to be done. It’s humiliating, yeah, but she’ll live.

He won’t.

Cut the macho crap. You’re always going to be on probation here. You can’t afford a show of temper, so just cool it. Close your eyes and think of your happy place or something.

But I couldn’t close my eyes. I had to watch Elle being pulled and jerked by Anderson’s Talent until she seemed to throw herself against his chest. He caught her lightly around the waist and waited for her to raise herself on her toes and press her mouth to his.

I think I growled.

Careful, you’re about to out yourself on the whole secret crush thing.

If that was supposed to lighten my mood, it was total fail.

Karen? Shut. Up.

I hoped you enjoyed reading this beginning of Impulse Control. If you would like to continue reading the story of these State School Talents, please find it at the following web address: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/48526.