[Ganzfield 2] Adversary Read Online Free Page B

no obvious way to talk her out of this decision. It didn’t seem right; she’d been good about not charming the team members. Arrgh ! I wanted to yell at everyone to just cut it out and get along.
    The uncomfortable car ride back seemed to take much longer than an hour. For the rest of them, it was just awkwardly quiet. I, on the other hand, got to listen to everyone’s mental fuming.
    Oh, joy.
    Rachel was full of dark-red, angry snarls; Grace felt unappreciated and put-upon; Hannah, as usual, just wished herself elsewhere.
    Replacing Grace probably wasn’t going to be difficult—Ganzfield had plenty of charms. But Grace’s decision made me worry about Hannah. She wasn’t comfortable with the training we’d started. Hannah was a gentle, quiet person with a strong Christian faith. The quasi-military exercises and legally-grey nature of some of the things we practiced upset her. Healers were rarer than charms—there was only one other one besides Hannah in training, and Lester kept mentally undressing me when we were in the same room. I didn’t want him on the team.
    I needed to find a way to make Hannah happier with the training, but I didn’t know how. And all this drama gave me a headache.
    Trevor, their thoughts are driving me crazy. Please distract me!
    An invisible hand started rubbing my neck, soothing me. Something like this?
    I closed my eyes, trying to block out the tension emanating from the rest of them. It didn’t work; it never did. If I was close enough, thoughts hit me whether I wanted to hear them or not. Fortunately, Trevor’s presence buffered their intensity for me.
    Why did we wait until now ? Why didn’t someone tell me we could drive at sixteen in New Hampshire? Back in New Jersey, the driving age is seventeen. I could’ve taken the driver’s test here months ago. We’d waited until today, my seventeenth birthday, for no reason.
    I got mine in Michigan. I didn’t know about New Hampshire. And Drew’s had his for a while now. Besides, you’re a minder so we never think we have to tell you anything.
    I pouted. S omeone should have thought it .
    Trevor chuckled. His laughter always did something wonderful to me. His joy amplified as it came into my mind, filling me with warmth.
    A few minutes out from Ganzfield, I felt the touch of two new minds. Fear and hatred flowed blood-hot through the two strangers. Here come some of them now!
    My head shot up and every muscle tensed. Dead —they wanted us all dead.
    “We’re being watched,” I said aloud.
    I felt Trevor’s invisible arms wrap around me. He’d stopped bullets with those arms in the past to protect me. He was ready to do it again.
    Drew filled with energy, ready to fight. I suddenly hoped he didn’t accidentally spark anything near the car’s gas lines.
    The watchers head-counted us. “Too many. Wait until we can catch one or two of them alone.” They had flame-retardant clothing and white-noise-generating earpieces, which meant that they knew what sparks and charms could do. Cold washed down my neck and arms.
    The strangers also had friends; one grabbed a cell phone. “Six of them in the grey sedan, heading back in,” he reported as we moved out of range.
    The gate clanged shut behind the car and I started breathing again. “I need to talk to Dr. Williamson.”
     
    *   *   *
     
    I spent a lot of time in Dr. Williamson’s office on the third floor of the main building. Since I’d started training with the team, I’d stopped attending regular classes but my workload had only gotten heavier. Dr. Williamson had me studying neurology—how to find and differentiate the areas of the brain—fine-tuning my ability to incapacitate.
    We worked together to figure out what I was capable of with my ability. If I overloaded the visual cortex, could I blind someone?
    Possibly.
    Could I overload Broca’s area in someone’s brain? If I did that to a charm, it would render the charm unable to speak for a while. Painless,