Last Guard by Nalini Singh
Before
Severe behavioral and psychic problems that manifest in physical disobedience. No medical issues found to explain sudden bouts of uncoordinated motion, loss of balance, and apparent migraines that lead to blackouts.
Full re-education authorized by legal guardian.
—Intake Report: 7J
THE BOY FOUGHTagainst the psychic walls that blocked him in, made him helpless. His brain burned, a bruise hot and aching, but he couldn’t get through, couldn’t shatter the chains that caged his child’s mind.
“Stand!” It was a harsh order.
He’d long ago stopped trying to resist the orders—better to save his energy for more useful rebellion—but he couldn’t follow this one. No matter how hard he tried, his legs wouldn’t move, wouldn’t even twitch anymore.
He’d been able to drag himself through the corridors earlier that day, even though pain had been a hot poker up his spine, and his legs had felt as numb and as heavy as dead logs. Now he couldn’t even feel them. But he kept on trying, his brain struggling to understand the truth.
Nothing. No movement. No sensation.
Each failure brought with it a fresh wave of terror that had nothing to do with his tormentor.
“You think this is a game? You were warned what would happen if you kept up this charade!”
A telekinetic hand around his small neck, lifting him up off the schoolroom floor and slamming him to the wall. The teacher then walked close to him and used an object he couldn’t see to physically smash his tibia in two.
He should’ve felt incredible pain.
He felt nothing.
Terror might’ve eaten his brain had he not become aware that the man who’d hurt him was stumbling back, clutching at his neck, while children screamed and small feet thundered out the door. Thick dark red fluid gushed between the teacher’s fingers, dripped down his uniform.
As the man stumbled away, the child crumpled to the ground, the trainer’s telekinesis no longer holding him up.
No pain, even now.
He should’ve been scared, should’ve worried. But his entire attention was on the wild-haired little girl who’d jumped up onto a desk to thrust a sharpened toothbrush into the teacher’s jugular. “Run!” he cried. “Run!”
