"Sharon Green - Terrillian 5 - Warrior Victorious" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Sharon)

was-turned off-from the way I was supposed to be, all my abilities taken away,
but once I'd been returned to Central without that having been done. I knew I
had, could almost remember the time, could almost feel how unhappy I'd been
even though almost no one else had known. It had been a special reward, a
reward for having done particularly well, a reward for having accomplished

I strained to remember, my body stiff as though the effort were a physical
one, but I couldn't reach through. My hand closed on a fold of the very clean
bed linen that refused to come free of the bed, the resulting fist trying to
act as an anchor, but it was simply no good. The memory I was after seemed
locked behind a door, and scratching frantically at the door with my
fingernails wasn't doing anything to open it. I needed the key, and that was
one thing I didn't have.

"One thing," I muttered with a snort, finding that the faint trace of
annoyance was growing toward a better supply. I was missing a bell of a lot
more than one thing, and I had the sudden conviction that my memory lapse
wasn't anything other than induced. I could also remember having thoughts
about conditioning, and who I'd been conditioned by. Those who ran Central and
the Amalgamation wanted to make sure they had a tight grip on the empaths who
worked for them, so they'd-

Empaths. This time I sat up slowly, knowing that that was what l was. An
empath. Someone who could read the emotions of others and also soothe or
intensify those emotions, and even pass them on from one person to the next. I
was very important to the people of the Amalgamation, I'd worked long and hard
for them, and now I was about to be given the highest reward possible. I
didn't yet know what that would be, but I would know soon and would be
extremely grateful and delighted.

I was so shocked I couldn't even curse, and without my wanting it to the fear
flared again all along my backbone. The memory I'd just found was crystal
clear, no effort of any sort needed to reach it, and that could mean only one
thing: I was supposed to reach it, and also to believe it. It had been put in
my mind with the same conditioning that had covered what someone didn't want
me to remember, a body of knowledge that would conceivably do him or them
harm. But who could I possibly be a danger to, that they would go to such
lengths to confuse and restrain me?

"They did a really good job on you, didn't they?" I muttered to myself, the
annoyance beginning to return in the company of disgust. If it was the
wonderful Amalgamation I was going to be all that grateful to, who else could
possibly be responsible? I still didn't know why they considered me dangerous,
but that was really a very minor point. A much more major one was that I
shouldn't have known what they were up to, but somehow I did. Maybe that's why
I was dangerous to them, because their conditioning was beginning not to work
on me, and I was able to see behind the imposed facade to get a hint of the
truth. Once I got all of it, the game would be over.

But that couldn't be it. I folded my legs under me and leaned my forearms on