Mind Control: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 2) Read Online Free

Michael.
    She shrugged. “Okay.”
    Michael shuffled up a little closer to her on the bed. He reached forward and took her hands. Warily, she allowed him, and so they sat with his fingers clasped around hers, resting on the bedclothes between them.
    Her body was tense. “Relax,” he said. “My father did this for me once.”
    “Your father?” Her body relaxed a little as she was distracted. “But adults aren’t perceivers.”
    Michael smiled at that. “Not everything they tell you out there is true. You’ll learn that in here.” He remembered how his father helped him block the painful perceptions, holding him in his arms, entering his mind gently and keeping away the cacophony of other people. He could not be as intimate with Pauline. “I’m going to meld my perception with yours, okay?”
    “You’re going to what?” She didn’t understand.
    “You’ll see what I mean. But if you don’t like it at any time, just tell me to stop. Okay?”
    “Okay,” she agreed verbally, even though she really wasn’t sure.
    Michael had to drop all his blocks and filters to enable him to do it. For a moment, the residual babble of the thoughts, feelings and dreams of all the other perceivers, rumbled at the edge of his mind. Then he concentrated his perception on Pauline and probed deep.
    She gasped. She felt it. This meant she was a strong perceiver. Probably one of the reasons she broadcast herself so loud when she arrived.
    Michael allowed his perception to sit comfortably inside hers until she relaxed. Then he found her fear and locked onto it. “I imagine a wall,” he said. And inside his head – inside her head – brick by brick he piled up a barrier to keep the fear inside. “I’m going to let go of that image in a moment, but I want you to hold onto it.”
    She nodded and the movement of her head rippled through her body so he felt it through his hands. In his mind, the wall wobbled a little.
    “Don’t move, just speak,” said Michael.
    “Okay,” she said.
    He pulled his concentration back from the wall, allowing his hold on it to dissipate. The image in their minds faded for a moment, then strengthened as Pauline latched onto it.
    Pauline giggled, her attention faltered, and the wall was gone.
    “Almost,” said Michael. “Try again. On your own this time.”
    He stayed in her mind as she imagined, not a wall, but the rolling corrugated metal of an automatic garage door, gradually descending at the edge of her consciousness. Blocking not just fear, but everything in her mind, until—
    The door to Pauline’s room flung open and bashed against the wall behind. Michael pulled out of her mind. Pauline yelped.
    “WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?” a deep, male voice bellowed.
    Michael and Pauline let go of each other’s hands.
    Sergeant Norman Macaulay stood silhouetted in the doorway. He was, unusually, dressed in combat fatigues with the night lights of the corridor outside highlighting his balding head.
    Michael jumped off the bed and stood to attention. “Sergeant!”
    Pauline grasped at the bedclothes and pulled them up to her chest.
    “What are you doing in here?” Norm demanded.
    “We were having trouble sleeping,” said Michael.
    “Doesn’t look to me like you were trying to sleep,” said Norm.
    “He was just—” Pauline’s explanation was cut off.
    “I don’t want to know what ‘he was just’,” said Norm. “You, madam, are new, so I shall cut you some slack, but you young man should know better. One-hour punishment duty for you tomorrow, report to my office at oh-nine-hundred.”
    “I have my debrief with Agent Cooper then,” said Michael.
    “Oh-eight-hundred, then.”
    “But—”
    “Are you questioning my order, Sanderson?”
    “No, sir,” said Michael. He hated the way Norm used his surname.
    “Because, if you are, I can give you a harsher punishment than the one I have planned.”
    “No, sir. I’m not, sir.”
    “Good,” said Norm. “You’re dismissed,