Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
“I’m in control.” The last rage storm had hit three months ago, and she usually had six between strikes. “I need to know why I’m in those files.” There was no reason, no reason at all for Theo’s name to be anywhere near that of a Center.
She had full mental capacity.
She hadn’t ever had a brainwipe.
Hadn’t ever been rehabilitated.
Cold in her veins. Ice that crackled as it spread.
Are you sure, Theo? asked the cruel phantom of her dead grandfather.
Chapter 3
Gradient 1: Baseline—no one below a full level 1 has ever been able to link to the PsyNet.
Gradient 2: Minor useful ability but 2s do not work in fields that require psychic ability, unless the power requirement is negligible.
Gradient 3: Beginning of beneficial levels of power, though 3 remains in the low range.
—From the introduction to Overview of Gradient Levels (24th Edition) by Professor J. Paul Emory and K. V. Dutta, assigned textbook for PsyMed Foundation Courses 1 & 2
Twenty Years Ago
THEO STOOD OUTSIDE the door to her grandfather’s study in the large family home that they were all supposed to live in before they turned eighteen and moved to their own places in either a high-rise owned by the family or, if they’d “achieved positions elsewhere,” in “suitable” local apartments.
Theo knew that word for word because all children in the Marshall family knew that. Just like they all knew that while Grandfather’s last name was Hyde, he was the Marshall. It was complicated and she didn’t quite understand, but her mother had once said that Grandfather’s surname was Hyde because he’d been meant to be raised in the Hyde family.
“The agreement didn’t work as intended,” her mother had added absently while she finished up a piece of work, “and Father returned to our family. He was old enough at the time that he didn’t want to change his name, and because he’d won various accolades as a teenager under that name and was already building an excellent profile, he was permitted to retain it.”
Theo still didn’t know what “accolades” meant. She kept forgetting to ask the computer. What she did know was that her grandfather had grown up to be the head of the Marshall family.
He was the boss of everyone in this house.
Theo had watched her older cousins leave at eighteen, known that those cousins would no longer have to follow the rules of the family home. She and Pax had whispered about it, deciding what they’d do if they could do anything. They’d thought they had years and years to make their plans.
Then Grandfather had made Theo leave only days after her and Pax’s seventh birthday.
Theo hadn’t understood why. She’d cried. She’d tried not to, knowing that Silence said she shouldn’t cry, but she wasn’t very good at Silence then, and so she’d cried and asked her mother why she was being made to go away from Pax.
They hadn’t even let her say good-bye to her twin.
Her mother had given her a firm look out of eyes the same color as hers and Pax’s. “It’s for the best, Theodora. Now stop embarrassing yourself and go wash your face.”
Theo knew to obey her mother when she spoke like that, so she’d gone and washed her face. She’d tried to telepath Pax, but just like all the other times she’d tried to ’path him since the time they’d last seen each other, the pathway was blocked.
It had panicked her.
Pax had always been there. They were always in each other’s heads. He was stronger so he could reach her from farther away, but she’d never had trouble reaching him either because Pax did the work of bridging any gap between them. Only now he was gone, and she couldn’t find him, and no one would tell her anything.
Theo didn’t panic anymore. She didn’t cry these days, either. And she knew why she’d been moved from this house and into the apartment of a foster “parent” who was paid to look after her. The place she lived in wasn’t a Marshall high-rise. It was also nothing like this big house with its many rooms, antique carpets, and large green spaces.
Theo’s apartment had two bedrooms, the smaller one of which was hers.
She stayed inside her room nearly all of the time.
Her hands wanted to fist. She kept them flexed straight. Someone might be watching. She remembered that about this house. People were always watching and reporting back.
That was the only good thing about where she lived now.
No one watched her.
Colette, Theo’s foster parent, spent her time in her room or in the living area, doing administrative tasks for the family, because that was her real job, her fostering of Theo an “addition to her duties for which she was paid a substantial sum”—that was how Colette had put it once, when Theo had screamed and cried and accused Colette of kidnapping her.