Puppeteer

"It was her brother. Try the nearest church- the man was a Catholic, and racked with guilt. PIN number 342-34-353. He should be registering a confession soon."
I spoke to the Inquisitor, and he nodded.
"Alright, pull out. Get out of there, Reader."
the disconnect has always been difficult for me. Part of what makes me an unusual Reader is my ability to mesh so seamlessly with the minds of the dead. However, this makes extricating myself from their minds difficult. Just like the living, the dead are greedy and grasping, stubborn to relinquish that which has been given them.
With a feeling like yanking one's boots out of deep mud, I pulled my awareness out of her neural pathways, leaving the young woman a lifeless husk once again.
"Alright. Purge him."
A young technician stepped forward, holding a scrambler in his trembling hand. Hesitantly, he reached towards me, preparing to activate the device. I smirked at him.
"Here, let me help you."
As I reached towards him, the two guards swiveled their blasters towards me, but I knew they were too slow. I grasped the man's quivering, pale hand, and felt my synapses open up, aligning my frequencies with those of his nervous system. Suddenly, I felt myself grasping at nothing, as a cold wall slammed up between my thoughts and his. A coruscating web of energy surrounded my gauntlets, and I turned again to see the Inquisitor.
"That was foolish boy. Truly, monumentally stupid. Freeze him."
At that order, the guards lowered their weapons and discharged twin streams of what is known colloquially as "brainfreeze." A liquid solution of neural stimulators and depressants, it is absorbed through the skin and immediately causes a sensation of extreme cold, while activating synapses in a random pattern, causing muscle spasms.
I fell gasping to the floor, and turned to see the technician I'd disabled earlier, still clutching his head and moaning piteously.

A dark pool, seething with life and memories. This is my mind, buried under layers of consciousness that are routinely stripped away by the violent pulse of the memory Purge. But what does the purge really destroy? I retain memories, I do not forget how to walk or talk-- so clearly, memory isn't the issue. But emotional attachment to memories is eradicated. I remember, I am conscious, I think, I cogitate-- but I do not feel. I do not have to. Here, hidden deep in a level of consciousness that I could only reach while comatose, lurk those lives that I have seen, those existences that I have lived vicariously. The talent that damned me may prove to be my salvation.
"You've been summoned. Get up." A cold rush as the antidote to the brainfreeze was applied, and I retched, spewing up the remnants of the vile chemicals that collected in my stomach as a side effect. Turning, I glimpsed a lone technician, and realized that I wasn't wearing the gloves or any device with an EM barrier. Of course. I'd been purged, and so there was no danger from me. As the boyish, pudgy technician busied himself with the computers next to my stasis cell, I reached over and gripped the back of his neck. With a feeling similar to the exhale that comes when you didn't know you'd been holding your breath, I simply let go, searching for the faint current in the man's body.
Funny. When I try to push them down, those souls, clamoring to escape my mind, they struggle and thrash at the barriers. But now, as I seek to grant them the release they've longed for, they suddenly recoil, and I must plunge in after them.
A lifetime of emotions flitted across the man's face, and then were gone. My heightened sensitivity to such things told me that his brainwaves now matched the patterns given by one of my many accumulated memories, moments before death. A particularly violent stabbing victim, as I recall.
And then he screamed. Ear-splitting shrieks of pure pain and terror echoed in the sterile exam chamber, as the man clutched his stomach and wept. Idiot. Why didn't I think of that? If I gave him brainwaves matching those of a victim at the moment of death, then his nerves would think he was being stabbed. So, a different sort of memory. A rational memory. A grin crossed my face, and I reached for the man again...
It is a simple process, once begun. Long practice at drowning the minds of the dead in that dark river gives equal proficiency with the minds of the living. And rather than give them the minds of those long dead, why not give them a mind that I knew intimately? A mind, one might say, that I knew as well as my own...