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.Her hands were already removing her top and revealing her breasts to his hungry eyes.A moment later, she started to inch her pants down.She saw the bulge in his pants and shivered.If Art didn’t come quickly, she was going to be forced to go all the way with him.And yet she still could not panic.***Art had watched in astonishment and dismay as Alice walked out of the club, followed by a man wearing a hood.The mental feel of the mind controller had been shocking.It was clear that most of his development had followed a very different course to any other known telepath, as his mind seemed completely chaotic.He was also very dangerous, not least because he wasn’t entirely sane.Art followed him at a distance, relying on his own powers to keep him hidden from view.He didn’t even dare draw his pistol and shoot the mind controller in the head.The spark of emotion might have tipped the bastard off.He took a moment to fall back as Alice was forced to enter another apartment block, almost indistinguishable from his previous house.He guessed that everyone within the building had been programmed to serve as the mind controller’s guards – if not his servants – after he’d lost the previous apartment, which meant that they might alert his target.The door slammed closed and Art held himself back for a few moments, just to allow the mind controller to reach his apartment, before pulling out a lockpick he’d used in Afghanistan.The apartment locks yielded easily to his pressure and the door opened, allowing him entry.He pulled a small terminal out of his pocket and checked on Alice’s signal.Art had been careful not to tell her that she had been carrying a transponder as well as a radio.What she didn’t know couldn’t be read from her mind.The terminal said that she was upstairs, so he followed her, opening his mind as far as he dared.There were faint traces that suggested that there were others in the building, but no one waiting in ambush.He reached for his pistol and checked it quickly, before pausing in front of the mind controller’s door.The sign on the front read ZELLER, which made him jump.Was it a coincidence, a joke or a sign of a genuine connection? Professor Zeller was still in a coma, according to the latest report from the Telepath Corps.All attempts to probe his mind had been useless, of course.Whatever perversion of telepathic talent he had that made peeking into his head impossible had doomed him to remain in a coma.No telepathic mind healer could help him return to himself.Art listened carefully, wondering just what was going on.He could hear the sound of someone breathing deeply, a harsh masculine sound.It dawned on him that his caution might have led to Alice being forced into sex, just as so many other victims had suffered.Angrily, throwing caution to the winds, he kicked the flimsy door and it shattered.Inside, a naked Alice was performing a seductive dance, while the mind controller was sitting on a chair, playing with himself.Art hesitated, just for a second.It was almost too late.FREEZE! The mental command blasted into his skull.It hurt, sending unpleasant tendrils of pain running through his mind.A non-telepath would have frozen, unable to move, perhaps even unable to think.Even a telepath who had skirmished with other telepaths found it hard to move, but then none of the drills the Telepath Corps had carried out had risked serious damage.Art realised, as the pressure on his head swelled into a hellish nightmare, that even a victorious skirmish might leave him with serious mental damage.The thought was paralysing, far worse than wounds he might have suffered on Afghanistan’s plains.He could have taken the thought of losing a leg, or an arm, but not his mind.He’s pushing at you, idiot, Art thought to himself.The mental battle was taking place within his skull.He pushed back hard, reaching out with his own talent to slash into the mind controller’s mind.A name – an insistence of identity – flickered through his skull.The mind controller was called Henry.There was no hint of a surname.Henry’s thoughts and feelings – his surprise and rage at being violated – raged back at him, daring him to keep pushing into his mind.Memories flared open.He was lying on the ground, his chest hurting from the beating.An overweight man was staring down at him, slowly returning his belt to his waist.The young man was in so much pain, yet he didn’t dare cry out, knowing that it would merely mean another beating.Art winced.Henry was fighting back, hacking away at Art’s own memories.For someone who had never encountered another telepath, he seemed to understand mental combat far better than Art.But then, Art had never fought another telepath to the death.The Drill Sergeant is laughing at the clumsy recruit; the other recruits are laughing.The entire Marine Corps is laughing at Little Art, who cannot fight, or fuck, or shoot straight.The merest exercise is impossible for him; guns shatter in his hands, he cannot bring himself to fight the foe, even on training grounds.When he is dismissed, it is almost with relief.He was never cut out to be a Marine.Art felt cold anger flaring through him.It hadn’t been that way at all.His anger gave him new strength and he pushed back, allowing his anger to slash deep into his foe’s mind.The woman is laughing at the skinny young boy.Why would she want to go out with him, let alone allow him to share the pleasures of her body? Her boyfriend comes over and beats the skinny boy up, laughing at him for daring to even think of touching his girl.The pain and rage flare up within him and lash out, ripping the jock’s mind apart.For the first time, the boy has touched the power he possesses and loves it.One girl, a dozen girls, a hundred girls, so many that even he loses count.The girls who rejected him when he was a powerless youth go first, compelled into his bed and made to perform shameful acts.Later, when he leaves school and flees into the underground, there are others, girls who can give him money as well as sex.He’s a simple man.All he wants is money and sex.Even when he first hears of telepaths, other telepaths, it never occurs to him to draw a link between his gift and theirs.He is special.Art felt a vein pounding away in his forehead.It was stalemate.He couldn’t dislodge his opponent and his opponent couldn’t dislodge him.He’d fucked up, part of his mind reminded him; the battle would be decided by endurance and the winner would be the one who collapsed last.Except that even the deadly embrace would leave him with mental damage [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]