Susan Bischoff - Impulse Control (Talent Chronicles)

Impulse Control

Scribd Edition

Copyright 2011 Susan Bischoff

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Copyright to the additional sample material included at the end of the primary work is also held by the author.

http://www.susan-bischoff.com

All cover art was designed by Robin Ludwig Design Inc.

Scribd Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and MAY NOT BE SOLD for commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please visit http://susan-bischoff.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Authors Note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Note from the author: Im just a girl who wants superhero romance! Is that so much to ask? Why must it always be a tragedy? Why does Angel walk away? Why does Spike

what did happen to Spike? Why did Wonder Woman go back home after the end of season one and WWII, then come back, work with Steve Trevors grandson, and still not hook up? Seriously! And lets not even talk about SupermanReturns, ok? Lets. Just. Not.

The Talent Chronicles Series began with my desire for more superheroes! More romance! More

Superhero!Romance. In my stories, I like to explore how the things that make us different can sometimes be the making of us. The Talents are kids born with a variety of supernatural abilities. Because not everyone can read minds or move things with their brains, the general population has become afraid of them, resulting in various legislations and a government agency which seeks to find and control them.

Kids who are discovered to have these abilities are removed to government-run research and training facilities known as State Schools. Thats where this story takes place

Impulse Control

A Talent Chronicles Story

by Susan Bischoff

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.

Doesnt 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 Controlpersonnel physically there to eyeball us. Id heard stories from kids who hadnt been at State School #15 as long as I had, whod 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 doesnt mean the same thing to them. Out there.

My pencil snapped in my hand. Damn.

Ethan, Karens voice soothed its way into my brain, youneed to relax. Its probably nothing.

I glanced over to throw her a smile, reassure her that I was fine and not a danger to myself or othersexcept for the pencil. She was fiddling with her long, black hair, and while her mental voice was calm as ever, she couldnt 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 Elles 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 arentyour business, Id imagine.

Boys are idiots.

Dont you have anyone else to pick?

Theyre 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 didnt 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 didnt 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. Hell be helping us test the telepathic blocking techniques weve been working on. I definitely didnt 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 wasnt 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, its hard to believe that anyone on either side of the electrified fence believed that. We were training to be government operatives and they didnt like to see weakness. If you couldnt handle the strain, you werent going to hack it as a soldier. And if you couldnt 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.