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.He d felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up from under theedge of the shelter into James s face. Lie down. That was the firstthing he could remember James ever saying to him.So Matt lay down, and the fire burned around their back-burn andnever got close to them.Matt pushed the memory away and refocused.James ran a hand across his jaw, rasping his stubble.He must nothave a sonic razor here.Then his hand traveled up through his hair,absently yanking on it.He blew out a big breath, puffing his cheeksout.Matt didn t need a psychology degree to read James s bodylanguage.He didn t want or didn t know how to tell himsomething. So, you know what Psi-force does, right?It took Matt a second. Psychological warfare, right? Confusingthe enemy, luring them into situations where we have the advantage,hearts and minds, stuff like that. Yeah, we do stuff like that.What I do more is predict enemybehavior.Individual and group behavior.He seemed to need an acknowledgment.Matt nodded. Uh-huh. Yeah, so mostly we deploy with other SF as requested, maybeone to three of us per battalion, and we predict the way the firefightmight go, and how best to end it fast.And usually we fight alongsideeveryone else while we do it. But it s the fucking military, and somebody did some researchsomewhere and a bunch of someones came up with a plan to turnsoldiers into a new kinda weapon.How unusual, huh? James rolled hiseyes and gave a disgusted and kind of unhappy snort. And so theyexperimented on some Psi-Force troops.I don t know how many.Butof course they didn t give them any choice in the matter.Just implantedsomething in their heads.And then they sent the altered Psi-forcetroopers out with bio-rhythm trackers and built-in uplinks implanted inthem and started conducting their real-world experiments.32 Anne TeninoMatt groaned. So you re telling me&. He made the  go onmotion with his hand. I m telling you I m one of the Blue s guinea pigs.And the Redhad to have found the extra tracking info on me when they disabled mychip.They know there s something different about me. How much do they know? And what was there to know? The RIA knows I have tech implanted they d like to figure out.Idon t know if they re keeping that to themselves, or if they ve let thewhole Confederation of Red States in on it. Jesus Howard Christ. Matt groaned at the ceiling. I thoughtthis was going to be easier than normal since you re SOUF.Fuck.I drather bring that lesbian couple with the two toddlers out of Utahagain. So would I. James cracked half a smile.It was kinda cute, theway he could quirk up just one side of his mouth like that.And thegolden stubble was kinda sexy.Matt sighed and shook his head. So, are you going to tell me what this implant does? Sorta gave me a sixth sense, I guess. James s voice was flat,and his face was extra blank. It s like there s another sensory organhooked up to my brain.I can decipher emotional states and intent.Likean empath plus some.I know when someone is deceiving us to lure usinto an ambush.Or when someone s remembering what an asshole Iwas in high school. But I wasn t, Matt said, lamely, after a moment of silence.Thatwas all he had. Yeah, but I was. James cleared his throat. Sorry, he addedgruffly. For being a dick about finding you, you know.With Steve.Matt stared.He had to deal with the news that James had somekind of implanted ESP, and his apology? He decided to deal with theeasier issue first. You can t really read someone s mind, though, right? That swhat you said.You only pick up their intent? It wasn t like the idea ofimplanted ESP was unheard of.Gramma Anais had been talking about 18% Gray 33it for years.And they could hook up com equipment directly to yourbrain, now. Yeah.But by knowing someone s intent and emotional state, Ican usually make an educated guess about what they re thinking. You just woke up from brain surgery an empath? Didn t thatfuck with your head?Another disgusted snort. Oh, yeah.I almost went insane at first.Took me months to get used to it.It was like I had an exposed nerveand everyone nearby was jumping on it.After a while I learned toignore it.Like being in a crowded room and everyone s talking, butyou don t listen unless you pay attention. I had to be sort of& tuned, I guess.If I worked with the sameguys for a while, I knew who was feeling what, but there was thisprocess I went through to  introduce them to my implant.So I d knowthem.God, this makes no fucking sense, does it? Yeah, it does [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]