Talent Chronicles 2 - Impulse Control Read Online Free PDF

no idea it would get so messy when you guys finally got together.
    You say that like you thought it would happen.
    Well yeah. You’ve both liked each other for, like, ever.
    Wait, you knew she liked me? And you didn’t tell me?
    What kind of friend would I be if I did that?
    Um…helpful?
    Totally caught off guard, I found myself jerked up out of my chair. It took me a second to realize that there was no one there. At the front of the classroom, Anderson was smiling at me. And then I wanted to get up on my desk, scratch my armpits, and make monkey noises. Really, really badly. I shook my head at him. This was so not even funny.
    I found I couldn’t sit back down. I took hold of the back of my chair.
    He’s thinking you’re a big ape, Karen thought to me,
    and Elle should see you as you really are. But you’re okay, just focus. Concentrate.
    I was trying to concentrate, but resisting him made it feel like he was ripping into my brain. I broke out in a sweat, my heart rate sped up, and then it was like I could feel the blood moving under my skin.
    Karen, he’s trying to make me shift.
    He can’t do that, Ethan. Her mental voice was calm, sure. That’s your Talent. You’re in control of that. You’re always in control of that.

    But I wasn’t sure that was true. I could see it now, the image of the ape in my head, the same way I’d see a form I wanted to morph to. Only I couldn’t do animal forms. But I could feel my body gathering itself, preparing itself to change.
    “All right, Anderson, let Ethan go.”
    And just like that it stopped and I was released so suddenly that I dropped to one knee before I could catch myself. I climbed back into my chair, panting, exhausted, sore, and glared at Anderson.
    He shrugged.

    * * *
    “Are you sure you’re okay to go on?” I whispered to Karen.
    She jabbed her elbow into my ribs. Which hurt. “I’m fine, okay? Stop hovering. I’m not a marshmallow.”
    Here we were, here we all were, out again, lined up along the outer wall of the mess, waiting for the break in the surveillance loop to make the dash to the next building.
    Waiting this part with Elle had been a lot more pleasant.
    “Maybe you should keep your mind on the task at hand?”
    “Maybe I’m trying to keep my mind off how many times I’ve been talked into running around after lights out this week and how my luck can’t possibly hold. We’ve got way too many people along for this. We should have come up with a simpler plan. You should go back. Rand, you should take your sister back to the dorms right now. We can get by without you.”
    “No way. Chaz was my friend. Mine and Craig’s. And those kids who’re supposed to go under the knife tomorrow are our friends too. We’re doing this.”
    I looked down the line of us to Craig, the Intermediate pathfinder who was going to lead us through the max security building. We’d heard it was supposed to be a labyrinth. He was looking pale, nervous, and had the saucer-eye thing going, but he nodded at me.
    “Anyway,” Karen said, “we don’t know all obstacles, and you never know what Talents are going to come in handy. If nothing else, I can hear people coming by their thoughts. Since we’re not in disguise, maybe what we don’t need is a shapeshifter. You could go back.”
    “Oh for Pete’s—”
    I sensed a presence before I even saw the gun, and by then I was already reacting, knocking the barrel aside, out of the guard’s grip so that it spun away on the strap he wore.
    The heel of my hand smacked up into his nose, I drove my other fist into his gut, doubling him over, and then brought my fist down like a club on the back of neck. He was facedown in the grass before I even started to think.
    “Holy shit!” Rand squeaked.
    “Watch your mouth,” Karen hissed. “Jesus, where did he come from?”
    “What was that you were saying about hearing them coming?” I snapped at her, shaking out my throbbing hands and trying to get my heart rate to