Free Mind Control: A Science Fiction Telepathy Thriller (Perceivers Book 2) by Jane Killick

contact with strangers from outside the estate?” said Jones. “Anything recently?”
    “Not that I saw. But, then, if anything happened outside of my patch, I wouldn’t have known.” She paused, fiddling with the rim of her hat on the table in front of her. “Perhaps they were … what do they call it …? Bedroom terrorists? I don’t patrol their bedrooms.”
    There was a little snigger from some of the officers. Michael wasn’t sure if she was making a joke or if the officers found her funny. It was so hard trying to judge people without perception.
    Barnes was asked a few more questions, which invoked very little more information, she was thanked for her time and allowed to leave.
    Jones concluded the briefing by dishing out assignments to his assembled team and dismissed them.
    Michael tossed his empty Coke can in the recycling and left the broom cupboard.
    ~
    THE PCSO WAS standing outside the briefing room, holding her hat and fiddling with the brim, when Michael saw her again. He was trying to find Jones and was walking back down the corridor, having visited his empty office. As he passed, he perceived a bewildered feeling from her. It was strange how he felt her turn from an image on the screen to a real person in that moment.
    Michael peered through a glass porthole in the door to the briefing room and saw only the table surrounded by empty chairs. He could have gone inside to double-check, but his perception told him it was empty. Jones had probably gone to the canteen for a coffee. Either that, or he was avoiding giving Michael an assignment, which was entirely possible.
    “Excuse me,” said the PCSO. “I don’t suppose you could direct me to the ladies?”
    “Um … sure,” said Michael.
    The women’s toilets was not a place he tended to hang out, but it just so happened it was next to the gents, so he knew where it was. He was about to explain to her where it was when he caught something else from her mind. As she relaxed, and the feeling of being lost dissipated, it revealed that she was worried about what she had said to the police officers.
    Intrigued, he decided that simply giving her directions would be a missed opportunity. “It’s probably easier if I show you,” he said.
    “I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” she said.
    “No trouble,” said Michael.
    He walked down the corridor, focussing his perception and making sure she followed him close. She was thinking about Tyler and Bailecki, the image of their faces mixed up with a group of other teenage faces in her memory. She remembered them gathered by a shop somewhere under a street light, and it made her feel uneasy. There was something about them that unsettled her, something that she couldn’t articulate. She would have felt stupid to have told a room full of a dozen detectives about her intuition. But maybe I should have , she thought. If only they had been drug dealers, then the money they had would make sense . Many of them were from one-parent families and she used to think all the gadgets and clothes and jewellery they had were from absent fathers trying to buy their love. But, after the bombing, she wasn’t sure that was true anymore.
    Michael was so concerned with perceiving her thoughts, that he almost walked straight past the women’s toilets. He covered himself by making a play that he was heading for the gents. “Oops, sorry,” he said, feigning a laugh like norms do when they are trying to convey they have been a bit stupid. “This one’s yours.” He pointed at the door marked with the silhouette of a figure in a dress.
    “Thank you,” she said, and went inside. Michael just caught her relief at being moments away from emptying her bladder before he pulled his perception out.
    He leant back against the wall for a moment and thought about what he had perceived. If even a norm had an uncomfortable feeling about the teenagers in the gang, there had to be more to them than just hanging around on street