The Damaged

Experimentation to cure violent tendencies goes horribly wrong.



Gabriel Pullman is more than a little put out about being psychic, especially given that it keeps getting people around him killed. He was a victim of a revolutionary new medical procedure: an aggressive, preventative treatment of mental illness. Those who received the unexpected side effects of sensory hyperstimulation and even telepathic abilities call themselves the Damaged. The military recruits Gabriel to negotiate with the leader of the Damaged rebels, who are out for revenge against the society that has mistreated them, but he must also fight a dark personality within himself. Novella.

~

Gabriel jolted, willed himself flat and uninteresting as a piece of paper, held onto the imagery with all his might. Sheer professional curiosity would get him through this. He'd done his homework. Time to impress the professor.

~

Most surprisingly, there was a sudden absence of pain he hadn't known was there, pain that he'd carried, diffused through his entire body for years. It was gone. The world around him hadn't changed. Gabriel had.