Talent Chronicles 2 - Impulse Control Read Online Free Page B

chair. Her hands settled on his shorn hair and I sort of wished Karen was around to tell me what he was thinking. Elle’s eyes were closed, and she frowned in concentration. Anderson continued looking at me, but then his eyes lost focus. His pupils dilated. Elle’s hands were moving over his scalp and then I saw a tear fall from the corner of her eye. I got up just in time to catch her as she stumbled back from Anderson’s chair.
    “What? What is it? Did that hurt you?”
    She reached up brushed the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand. “No. No, I’m fine, Ethan.” But she was leaning into me and I wasn’t sure. “Anderson? Are you okay?”
    Anderson got up out of his chair and walked a few steps away. He shook his leg, and I remembered how it had sort of dragged as he walked into the classroom the other day. He paced back and forth and then turned to us.
    “Something’s different. Something’s definitely different.” He sounded excited. Hopeful. “Look, I can still…feel it. In there. Still hear the hum of it. But other stuff is different.”
    “I think the tick is gone,” Elle whispered.
    “There’s no way to be sure, not until they give me a command. But I think this might actually have worked.”
    Elle was beaming. I was very concerned that there might be crying.
    “Listen, you guys, you should know something.”
    Here it comes, the big ‘I was being used’ apology thing.
    “When you’re a lab rat, they see you as a lab rat. These guys talk in front of me all the time, like I’m not even there.
    I guess they figure it doesn’t matter, who am I gonna talk to, right? So look, the guy who did this to me, Dr. Piers, he’s here. At least, he was supposed to arrive tonight. They’re not happy with the results of the first round of experiments here, so they’ve flown Piers in from Delta Facility to perform the next round of implantations himself. I heard they were moving the surgeries up to Friday.”
    “As in the day after tomorrow?”

    “Right. He’s giving himself a day to look over subjects, then he’s planning all the surgeries for Friday, and he’s flying out again on Friday night.”
    Elle clutched at me. “We have to do something.”
    I didn’t know what to say.
    She turned back to Anderson. “We’ll come up with something. If there’s a part for you to play, will you help us?”
    “If I’m not under NIAC control anymore, I’m going to owe you, bigtime. And even if I didn’t I wouldn’t mind getting a chance to get in the way of Piers’ success. If I can do it, count me in.”
    “I guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see how well this worked.”
    “I guess so. See you in class, Ethan.”
    As much as I was clear on the whole Talents vs. NIAC
    thing, it was still hard not to be uneasy at the thought of possibly having helped someone like Anderson out of his cage. I hoped we didn’t regret it.
    Outside we waited in the shadows for the break in the surveillance loop that would allow us to cross back to our own building with the least chance of being spotted. Elle’s back was pressed to the wall and I was using my own bulk to try to shield her from any possible view. It seemed like she was glowing. She wasn’t. But she was wired, practically bouncing and humming with excitement.
    “I can’t believe it! I mean, Angie said I should be able to, she explained it really clearly and it made sense, but I didn’t really think I could, you know?”
    I almost reminded her that we didn’t actually know if it worked or not, but I looked into her sparkling green eyes and couldn’t bring myself to be that much of a heel. So I just smiled at her and glanced around at the guard towers again.
    “Ethan.” She tugged at my jacket and I looked down at her. She looked very serious all of a sudden. It kind of made it hard to breathe. “You didn’t have to do this for me tonight, and now I get what a big risk you’ve been taking.”

    “I don’t know why I told you that.