Free FightingSanity by Viola Grace Page B

that one action, she had done what no amount of negotiators had managed to do—unite the objectors and the government with fear.
    They had turned on her, beaten her almost to death and when she woke, she was in the facility with others of her ilk—uncontrolled talents who had dared to step into the public eye. She was now part of the dirtiest secret on Bassinor—a line of DNA that cropped up at random and could not be stopped unless each and every carrier was expunged from the population. With over thirty percent of the population carrying the gene in its dormant form, there was no way to cleanse the taint of power from their planet.
    Erinii was one of the descendants of those tainted genes and her power of telekinetic control had to be locked away for the safety of the population, lest she choose to reign over them.
    It was a spurious argument that had united her people and locked her in a facility where she was dosed with gas and locked in her mind every day. As she pasted a false, vacuous and cheerful smile on her face, she had only one question.
    What had changed?

    Chapter Two
    As the gas flowed from the ceiling to pool around the edge of her bed, she hoped that she had gained enough strength to keep the gas out while enabling herself to breathe. Watching her door open, she tried to keep the blank and cheerful expression on her face.
    “Good morning, Zakkata. Who are you today?” The breather strapped to his face made the expression in his eyes all the more poignant. She knew those eyes.
    “The Swan Queen, of course.”
    She got to her feet and swept past her stepbrother Davio and then waited for him to escort her down the hall.
    Images of the last few years in a drugged state flickered through her mind. The breathers did resemble squids, wrapping their limbs around the face of their wearer and protruding downward to house the filter.
    The stone walls were actually a solid-pour composite designed to keep the psychic emanations to a minimum.
    As she entered the dayroom, she was hard pressed to keep her face in its bland configuration. Patients were arranged haphazardly, some tethered to their chairs and some roaming free. These were the tumbling trolls and fairies of her imagination.
    They were wearing the same tight, sleeveless top and black tights that she wore as well as black slippers. They shrieked, moaned and rocked in place, each had a caretaker with them, but no one was moving to help them.
    Keeping her features straight was the hardest thing she had ever done. She took the seat that Davio directed her to and smiled politely at the server who brought her a tray containing a sandwich of dried bread with some protein spread on it and an array of pills.
    “Thank you, squid face.” She smiled beatifically at the server and the startled man bobbed his head.
    As he had yesterday, the server walked over to Davio and began speaking. “They are lobbying to get her freedom, you know. Can you believe it, after what she did?”
    She blinked and smiled as she nibbled at the food. She palmed the pills calmly and wedged them into half her sandwich.
    As she ate, minute amounts of the gas seeped into her lungs. It didn’t have a firm hold on her, but the shrieking prisoners were changing into jesters before her eyes and the few folk who were sitting immobile were pieces on a game board.
    She stood and pointed. “I want to play the game.” It seemed best to go along with the hallucination.
    Davio was at her side, “Please, my lady. Have a seat. The game will wait. You need to eat something.”
    “The candy was good but the sandwich was a little bland.”
    The sadness came to his eyes again. “Did you enjoy the candy?”
    “I did. It reminded me of being a little duck on the pond and wishing for a bit of sweet to call my own.”
    A flicker of light entered his eyes. “Did you get sweets as a little duck?”
    “Eventually. My father was a swan and he had other swan babies. They took pity on me and now, I am the Swan