Avalon chapter 5

Sensation seemed to open up before her, within the minds sensorium blossoming, even as she struggled to close her thoughts and memories as she'd been taught, a sense of well-being began immersing her like a warm bath. Knowing she was safe, she allowed her powerful minds barriers to lower, as a voice deep in the center of her thoughts screamed out that something wasn't right, yet the numbing softness rose up, suffusing her mental core, her resistance slowly faltered then simply crumbled.  Suddenly her life's memories began to flow, replaying before her with a clarity better than her own memory. Seeing details she had long forgotten or never known. Watching her childhood, projected, growing up in her governance embassy home, the glittering aurora dome, protecting them from an attack which would never come. Yet hiding the stars she loved and longed to see, denied forever, as the only daughter of a wealthy and powerful family rumored to have held power since the latter days of Old Terra, born on Prime, the capitol world she was being groomed for power.  Then the day of her testing, where they were so proud, scoring so far off the charts they sent her to a special Psion school, joy at the new freedoms, and friendships found at the Academia, where they excepted her for who she was, not as Jandira, daughter of  Xylus and Jendra Ferris, until the day... The point when everything went so terribly wrong in a singular instant. That moment when everything in her privileged life was ruined. The tainted revelation she could tap into others private "peer to peer" thoughts confused her, that was impossible, but hearing her friends conversation in thier psychic gestalt, savaged her, tearing her mind and spirit, flaying her thoughts with its truth to the point of near mental dissolution. Always so proud, so respected, receiving the best of everything, eugenic processing, training, clothes, anything she'd ever wanted. She, the pride of the school, beautiful, wealthy, and influential, in truth reviled by everyone. Her best friends seeing her as just a spoiled rich girl, getting the best because of her parents name, influence, and money.  How could those she'd loved and trusted believe she was just an incredibly stupid, air headed dilettante?  Fleeing the school, as much as herself her mind reeling, rent and torn by the revelations her mind could not shut out, only to be tracked down by HOUNDS sent by her parents, psi's trained to hunt rouge meta's, the shame and humiliation growing. Being dragged back, and forced to expose her inner mind to her families meta-concerted probe. Their discovery of her secret, then banishment, sending her away for her "protection and safety". Exiled to Atlantis 12, the furthest post from the core, at the edge of the rim, she was commissioned as an ambassador. On paper the liaison between rim and core worlds, while acting representative to other races and cultures from the outer regions and the Imperium.  Working on a station where few brains lived, above a world who had no genetic capacity for psionics, leaving her mind her own. Until the day she met a captain looking to hire an ambassador for her crew. She could travel the stars, a job normally illegal for true people of her skill, power and rank because of it's intrinsic dangers. Finely her true dreams of exploring the endless mysteries of space would be realized, as a crew member of the Avalon she found she had little to fear from her psi ability, most of the crew were from worlds without true people, so only the captain and the ship posed a problem, and in the end it was almost a relief to connect to them, neither held any preconceptions or passed judgments, and the captain had her own situation to deal with, well similar but so different, what had happened to make the captain resign, when she had commanded the flag ship of the Imperium, what happened out in the rim to change her so much?  NO! NO! NO! This was wrong, something was terribly, horridly wrong, as thoughts of the captain broke through the sopoforic effects, she would not betray the captain, as waves of despair rose up to engulf her, all her secrets shown, shame at her weakness, powerlessness, unforgivable guilt, irrepressible rage overwhelmed her, as blackness rose up to silence her splintering mind. Quietude all that remained.