"No, not like that," I moaned as Charles tried to use brute force with his new increase of telepathic strength to penetrate my shield.  "You have to be a lot more subtle."

"I don't need to practice being subtle, Joey," he said with difficulty. "I have a life time of experiences in being subtle.  What I need now is practice control of my new strength."

"All right, all right..." I said, throwing up my hands and then checking the time.  "We have twenty minutes left before we have to check out and head for the airport.  How do you want to do this?"

"Hmmm... Let me see..." he said as he stopped his assault on my mental barriers and scanned the surrounding area.

When his expression changed to amusement, I quickly traced where his telepathic focus was and rolled my eyes at finding two young women digging their hands into each others clothes as they kissed passionately.

"If you try something like that while we're in Venezuela, we're toast," I said as I began undoing his commands in their heads.

"What the fuck," I said after finishing my cleansing work and discovered they were still at it.

"Remember Joey.  You have to be more subtle," Charles said with amusement.  "You removed my commands, but you didn't check their long term memories for tampering."

I did as he implied, and after three tries, I still hadn't found any obvious signs of tampering.  I did find the reason they were currently moving into a sixty nine position, but their distant memory of having had a lesbian experience before simply didn't feel... unnatural.  Well, besides the fact that they both had the exact same memory of the exact same girl, that is.

"How did you..."

"Like I said.  Life time of experience at being subtle," he said as he let his mind wander again.

Instead of him practicing his control, I ended up practicing how to implant a memory into a person's long term memory without it sticking out.  There was a particular procedure to follow which is what I practiced applying, but I saw what he meant about a lifetime of experience at being subtle.  He found every one of my implanted memories easily, yet I only found one of his, and that was by chance more than skill.

On the way to the airport, I did help Charles gauge his control over his additional telepathic strength.  He was having a lot of trouble keeping his focus on a particular mind, and whenever he used a command on someone, it was like he shouted it at them rather than discretely emitting it.  I suppose he had always had to use his abilities at full strength for them to work before being linked with me, and it was a hard habit to break.

I was surprised to find we were boarding a modern commercial airplane for the flight to Barranquilla, for the plane Kain had taken me down to Venezuela on had been a much smaller and older plane...  Of course now that I think of it, that memory with Kain was implanted.  It never actually happened that way.  But still, it had to come from somewhere, hadn't it?

Charles continued practicing his control on the passengers, surprisingly agreeing to limiting his exercises to simple itching sensations or other innocent everyday things.

About an hour after we took off, however, Charles suddenly jerked in surprise saying, "I don't believe it."

"What?  Something wrong?"

"No.  Just the contrary," he said, nodding his head towards a middle aged stewardess.  "Scan her and see if you can find anything unusual about her."

I hesitated at the nature of his request, but did it anyway and didn't find anything at all.

Charles was smiling when I turned to report, and before I could say a word, he said, "You found nothing.  Good.  Now, if she was say...  Twenty years younger and you were checking out the stewardesses for a suck and fuck, would you be tempted by her?"

I suspiciously rescanned her mind, checking her for her sexual details and practices, and quickly concluded, "Not on your life."

"Oh?  Why?"

"She's a regular slut.  She wears her panties out just from all the times she raises and lowers them.  Never uses protection, she keeps a steady supply of penicillin with her.  Basically I'd rather French kiss a cow's butt than contract the latest VD she's got."

"Excellent.  Truly excellent," Charles purred to himself before motioning to the woman and saying, "Stewardess, I need servicing."

"Yes, may I help you?" she said with a slight Spanish accent.

"Yes, would you do me a favor and service my cock with your slutty mouth?"

"Excuse me?" she said with shock and offense while the woman next to me also turned toward us with surprise.

"I... I...  I don't understand," he said as I made them forget what he had said.  "I must have forgotten something."

"Do you need something sir?" she said with the sound of stretched patience in her voice.

"No, go away," he said, waiving his hand while deep in thought.

"What was that all about?" I asked once she went to attend someone else.

"Oh I wish mother was here," he sighed before looking at me and adding, "She always did remember things better than I did."

"Remember what?" I asked.

"That was Maria," he said, nodding his head towards the stewardess.  "She was my first...  enslavement after I left Venezuela when I was eighteen.  I spent weeks programming her before sending her back to her own life to test how my alterations would hold up.  I lost track of her though and didn't think I'd ever see her again."

"What programming?" I asked as I scanned her much more closely looking for any signs of commands buried beneath two decades of her life.

"You won't find anything Joey unless I remember my trigger and use it on her," he assured me.  "Of course if you followed her around and watched her mind carefully, you would realize her mind conjures up all sorts of interesting sexual experiences that never actually take place."

"You mean...  She's not really..."

He patted his crotch and said, "This is the only cock which has ever been in that whore's cunt."

He then lit up and said, "That's what's missing," he said as he unbuckled his pants and unzipped his fly.

"Joey, lean over my lap and pretend you're sucking me," he said.

I gave him this look that basically said 'no way in hell', but he just smiled and said, "You don't have to touch it... Just lean over and I'll do the rest.  Trust me."

He had this twinkle in his eyes that I've seen in Tim's when we're having fun doing something... secret together, so I looked around with just my eyes to make sure no one else was watching, then leaned over and waited.

"Make some sucking sound when she comes over," he said while I avoided his cock from hitting me in the face as it bobbed up just a bit.

The damn thing slapped me on the right cheek when he turned around slightly to call her over again, but after he turned back he whispered, "Here she comes," so I started making slurping sounds like he had asked.

"Yes?" I heard her slightly agitated voice say.

"Yes, could you do my mother a favor and service my cock with your slutty mouth?"

"Why certainly, sir.  I _am_ here to service you."

Looking up at her I couldn't tell anything was different, but when I scanned her mind...

"Holy shit," I gasped as I discovered what had to be one of the most complex rats I had ever seen.  "You did that?"

"Not bad for a weakling voice, eh?" he said as he lightly scanned her mind like running his fingers over an old familiar instrument.

"It's...  It's...  Very impressive," I said as I focused my mind on the mechanism which controlled her subconscious and generated her imaginary slutty life.

"Joey, would you mind sitting up so Marie can take your place?" Charles said humorously.

"Uh, yeah," I said as I realized his dick was touching my cheek again and sat up in a flash.

"Marie, you may service me now," Charles said as he sat back and relaxed.

"Yes master," she said with overwhelming excitement.

I was so immersed in the sophistication and the fine details of her programming that I didn't hear what Charles said to me a few minutes later, so he waved his hand in front of my eyes to get my attention.

"Sorry.  What did you say?"

"I asked you if you wanted her to service you while I fuck her virgin ass."

"What, here?"

"Why not?  Just do that blanket thing and we can see what twenty years of being a virtual slut does to a woman's performance."

"Yeah, sure.  Just..." I began before Suzi's face popped into my head.

"On second thought... Thanks for offering, but..."

"Oh come now Joey.  Do you really thing Suzi will mind something as little as a blow job?"

"Mr. Grodmen, I appreciate what you're saying, but _I_ mind.  Suzi's the only one for me."

"Very well...  But Joey, do me a favor..."

"Sure... Blanketing the crowd now," I said.

Charles squeezed my arm with his hand to make me look at him, then he said with a slight smile, "Please don't call me Mr. Grodmen again.  It makes me feel... Old.  Call me Charles, all right?"

I grinned at him and said, "Okay, Charles.  I will.  And you can fuck her brains out anywhere in the plane now without anyone noticing a thing."

"Thank you.  Marie, take off your clothes and get on your hands an knees in the isle."

"Yes master," she said as she struggled to stand up after having crammed her body between his legs and the seats.

Charles did have style when it came to fucking his fuck slaves.  I mean, I've fucked quite a few slaves myself, and the biggest problem I had was when it got old after fucking the fifth or sixth girl a certain way.  I remember going through an ass fucking phase where that's all I wanted to do, but once I had gotten my fill, I never really found it all that great again.  Okay, so a nice tight ass is a nice change after fucking a lot of pussy, but I get really tired of ass if I do it more than two or three times a week or so.

But Charles was an ass man.  He loved fucking women's asses, especially women who loved getting fucked in the ass which naturally all his slaves were programmed to be.  Charles was good at it too, but that was probably because of all the experience he's had at doing it.

Yeah, I can see why Samantha liked him.  She loved getting fucked in the ass almost as much as getting fucked in the pussy.  I find it strange that neither of them had perverted their ass fucking pleasures to some form of analingus, but I suppose even they have their morals about some things.  Tim laughed when I told him that.

I tuned them out after Charles had skillfully loosened her up with his finger and worked his seven inch cock into her virgin rose.  I spent the hour while they fucked in the isle scanning the minds of the other stewardesses, finding two of the four had encountered telepaths before, one having purposely made the woman pregnant with his child before letting her go without any recollection of that month of her life.

Those two women's programmers were complete amateurs compared to what Charles's had done with Marie.  I was actually in awe of his skill when Charles had satisfied himself with her performance, made some very dramatic changes in her main controls, then reactivated her mind's cloak and watched her walk off without a trace of those same controls having ever been there.

So when he sighed unhappily after washing up and sitting down beside me, I said, "Don't tell me she disappointed you?"

"Hmmm?" he said, bringing his attention back from somewhere far away.  "Who, Marie?"

"Yeah, who else?"

"No, she was excellent.  Truly excellent," he said sadly.

"Then why the long face?"

He shrugged slightly before saying, "I just wish my mom could have seen her.  She would have been so proud of me."

It took me a few moments to absorb that, then said, "Well, if it helps any.  You sure impressed the hell out of me."

He looked somberly at me while tears welled up in his eyes, then he said "Thanks Joey.  I just wish I could hear my own son say something like that."

Charles looked away from my surprised expression to recompose himself, and despite feeling I should say something either in Tim's defense or just to comfort the silly man, I remained silent and just continued scanning the minds of the other passengers for anything interesting.

Rosalind, the woman sitting on the other side of me, was returning from her trip to the states which was her fortieth birthday present to herself.  The interesting thing about her was the fact that she was very interested in me personally, yet was cursing her luck for having to sit right next to me where she couldn't watch me unobserved like she could if say sitting across the isle a row or two behind ours.

Rosalind was strongly attracted to young muscular American men, and in fact her whole vacation had been spent hopping from one male stripping club to another.  I traced her memories back to when a young muscular American man saved her from a mudslide when she was about nine or so, and had spent two days and nights with the man while he tried in vain to find her parents who had been buried alive in the slide.

Roger, the man who had saved her life, spent the rest of his two weeks in Columbia with Rosalind as he tried to ease the pain of losing her family.  During that time he infected her with her fascination for the US and body builders, and even though she felt deeply betrayed by him when he dumped her off at the orphanage before going back to the US, she never felt safer than when she was within Roger's bulging arms.

Rosalind married an American body builder ten years older than she when she was only seventeen, and the marriage lasted almost two years before it ended rather nastily.  After that, she went back to Columbia, and while having a few other flings with several men her ex had introduced her to, she never married again and now the strip bars was as close as she can get with her middle aged status and very little cash to tip them with.

Her discomfort at being so close to me made me uncomfortable as well, but after about twenty minutes had gone by, Charles asked me to help him practice his control again which took my mind off her presence for a while.

Charles and I spent probably two hours working on tempering his wild power, and despite it having drained us both, Charles didn't hesitate to call Marie over and had her and another woman about twenty three take turn riding his cock in the middle of the isle.

I dozed off after Charles had finished his fuck, and I'm not sure how long I slept, but when I woke up I was leaning up against Rosalind who's hand was leaving my chest.

Curious to see how far she would go, I feinted sleep and waited nearly ten minutes before her hand crept back across my chest to feel it's way down to my tummy.

She felt my muscle tone through my light T-shirt, her breath barely audible to me as her excitement increased the longer she probed.  At least three times I thought she was about to feel her way down to my crotch, but she never did, and I was actually slightly disappointed she didn't when she finally pulled her hand back and sat still as best she could.

I continued to wait to see if she would try anything else, but dozed off again and didn't awaken for another half hour or so.  By the time I woke up, I had moved away from her supportive shoulder and wasn't in physical contact with her anymore.

I went to the bathroom to take a leak, then when I returned I struck up a conversation with Rosalind, I speaking in my broken Spanish, and she speaking in her broken English.

She was very interested in my life, particularly in my workouts, and despite having reserved feelings about her fondling of my muscles in my sleep, I went ahead and let her feel my arms while I tensed them, and generally had a pleasant conversation with her until Charles woke up and decided it was time for another fuck.

Charles and I had a slight disagreement about that, for I felt he needed to slow down since we couldn't really indulge in a quick fuck at every town we stopped at if we were to stay inconspicuous.

But Charles swore up and down he was just getting it out of his system while he had the chance, and he pointed out that no one was going to dig out what he did with Maria which I had to admit he was right.

So while Charles fucked Marie in the isle again, the smell of their sex became thick in the air around them.  Even though Rosalind's mind completely ignored the sights, sounds, even the vibrations they made beside her, her body was very aware of their scent.

Shit, my body was very aware of it too, and with Charles's three fucks and my own digging into the sex lives of several other passengers, I was pretty fucking horny myself.

"Senior Joey," Rosalind suddenly spoke just as Charles came with a grunt and a groan.  "Could you, ahhh, assist me with, ahhh, with my, ahhh... remojado tapón?"

"Your what?" I said, not familiar with her words.

"Please, come..." she said standing up and motioning me to follow.

"I don't think..." I began, then looked around nervously and followed her anyway.

Not surprisingly, she lead me to the bathroom, and even though I was feeling very uncomfortable about being in close quarters with this middle aged woman who had the hots for guys like me, I felt... obliged to comply with her requests until she went too far.

"What is a remojado tapón?" I said once we were in the bathroom with the door shut.

Rosalind began having a serious reality check, and immediately started apologizing for misleading me and that I should go before she couldn't stop herself.

"Stop yourself?  From what?" I said, feinting naivete.

"From taking advantage of you, you mucho sex boy," she sighed, her hands reaching out to my belly before stopping and returning.

"You mean you like my muscles, huh?" I said, hiding my evil grin as I pulled my shirt over my head.

"Please, senior Joey.  I am...  powerless to resist my temptations," she said as her right hand gently touched my left breast.

"Hmmm...  what kind of temptations?" I said, standing still while she began feeling my chest and stomach with her shaking hands.

"Oh Senior...  Very pleasurable temptations..." she moaned as she ran her hands down my shorts and thighs, then dragged her ample chest up against my lumpy crotch and lightly kissed the hair just above my belly button once, twice, and then a third time.

When her tongue slipped into my belly button, I put my hands on my hips, closed my eyes and let her lose herself in her temptations without having to say or do anything.

She took her time exploring my chest and stomach with her mouth and tongue while slowly coaxing my shorts down my legs with her hands inside them.  I have no idea when she had taken off her top and bra, but when she had my shorts and underpants down past my knees, I nearly fell over from the first touch of her hot sweaty breasts against my cock's head.

Shit, I had never had a woman use her breasts to explore my body like that before.  Rosalind's tits were like loose mounds of hot velvety flesh in her hands, and after she rubbed my chest, stomach, legs and face with them, she wrapped those two knockers around my cock and jerked me off with them, catching every drop on her chest and spreading it around with them.

While I was still a bit dazed from my release, Rosalind arose slowly while pressing her cum covered breasts against my sweaty skin, shocking me back to reality when her face closed in for a kiss.

I guess I was slightly repulsed by her age.  I mean, she was old enough to be my mother for God's sake. 

Anyway, she saw it in my face and jerked away at the last moment, then as she scrambled for her bra she said shakily, "Please, go!  I do not wish you to see my shame!"

I was still in shock a little and didn't respond right away, but when she turned and said, "GO!  Please?!" while her left strap slipped from her hands and exposed her breast again.

"I..." I sputtered, completely unsure what to do or say.

"Go?" she said while sagging to her knees, about to burst out in tears.

"No," I said uncertainly,  "I'm sorry, Rosalind.  I...  Shit."

I reached down, pulled her up to her feet, then kissed her gently with just a little tongue before pulling back and saying, "You're mucho sexy woman, it just took me a moment to see how much of one you really are."

She carefully pulled herself away from my grasp, then turned her back towards me and said, "You say this because you feel guilty.  I am old, you are young.  I took advantage, and now I..."

"Shit, Rosalind.  Who took advantage of who?  I just had one of the most erotic...  shit, I don't even know what to call it.  Besides, I pretty much knew what you had in mind when you brought me in here.  Especially after feeling me up while you thought I was asleep."

"So now I am fool as well as old..." she sighed pathetically, yet still not attempting to dress while she stood there with her back towards me.

"You're no fool, and you're not old," I said, carefully embracing her from behind, purposely flexing as many muscles as I could that made direct contact with her skin.  "If you were, my cock no sea tan duro como una roca, sí?"

She felt my hard cock pressed up against her clothed buttock, and after giving her a few kisses on the neck and cheek, she returned them with a frisky tonguey one of her own.

"Okay?" I asked her after she broke off the kiss and hugged me with exploring hands on my back and ass.

"Si, mucho gracias," she sighed before giving my cock one last feel and stepping away to get dressed.

We went back to our seats separately, and didn't say much the rest of the flight.  But after we landed I gave her kiss on her cheek goodbye which brought a smile to her lips and I think added some pep in her steps as she walked away.

"Ahhh..." Charles said stretching his arms out in the Colombian sun once we had left the terminal heading for our rental car.  "I've forgotten how invigorating the weather here is."

"Invigorating?" I said, wiping the sweat out of my eyes.  "It's so fucking humid I think I'm already pruning up."

"Oh come now, Joey," he said as he unbuttoned his casual button down shirt.  "When I was your age, I didn't mind the humidity at all.  When mother and I got warm, we'd take off our shirts and tie them around our waists.  Actually, most of the time we never bothered to put them on."

"If I didn't wear a shirt, I'd be scorched by dusk.  I peeled like crazy for a week last year."

"But you were golden brown after that, weren't you?"

"Yeah, I guess, but we don't have time for me to shed my skin.  We have to find Tim as soon as we can, remember?"

Charles sighed, then said, "Yes, of course... You're right.  This isn't a vacation after all.  Something about just being here...  So many fond memories."

We reached our rental car, and after I tossed my coin and he called it, I took the keys and got in the drivers seat.

"So how many times have you come back after leaving the first time?" I asked after starting the car and pulling out.

"Only once," he said.  "A couple of months after they made me free Sam, I took her male slaves she had bought from Gladius back.  I witnessed Joy's and Honey's birth while I was there, and Gladius Junior offered them to me saying his father would have wanted me to have them.  I didn't really want them at the time, but in many ways Gladius was like a father to me.  So I went through the bonding ritual, then six years later they were delivered at my door.  ."

"You miss them," I simply said.

"Of course I do.  They were my girls.  I miss them as much as I do my mother.  But despite what Tim thinks, they're gone.  The two women who I banned to live in my English mansion are not the two girls I raised, and I doubt even Gladius could bring them back.  They were... unique."

"You okay?  I'd like to ask you some questions but..."

"I've been dealing with my mother's death and having let the twins be taken from me for a year now...  Go ahead and ask, Joey.  I'll be all right."

"Okay, but just say if you want to stop a while, 'kay?"

After he nodded, I asked, "When did Gladius er... Senior die?"

"Right before I left.  That was the biggest reason I left.  I wasn't exactly on best terms with Gladius Junior.  In fact, I was somewhat an outcast among the other voices.  If Gladius Senior hadn't taken such a liking to me, I probably wouldn't have been allowed to leave after he died, but enslaved as a toy instead.  I owe a lot to that old man.  He taught me a lot before his death."

"Hmmm... You know, Gladius Jr. made everyone believe Tim was really weak when he was Nathan.  I wondered why he had done that when Tim's probably as strong or maybe even stronger than any of the other voices there.  It can't be just a coincidence, could it?"

Charles shrugged, then said, "I don't know.  Gladius Senior took pitty on me because my father didn't appreciate me just having the gift, and personally helped me develop my techniques to the best of my abilities would allow.  I didn't participate in the activities the other teen voices, and Gladius Jr. probably treated me the best among them, but he never respected me as a voice until after his father died and he took his place as 'Grandfather"."

"Any idea why he did afterwards?"

"Maybe because we had both lost our fathers about the same time.  Or maybe the responsibilities his father left for him made him grow up a little more.  All I know now is that he took my son, he took my girls, and I'm nearly positive he was responsible for my mother's death."

"So.... You're out for revenge as much as to rescue Tim?"

He looked at me with a slightly surprised expression, then snorted and said, "Revenge?  No.  Revenge is for children who don't know any better.  All I desire, besides getting Tim back, is to know why.  WHY he betrayed them like that."

When he didn't add anything to that, I considered asking why he felt there was any trust there to betray in the first place, but then I suspected it must have something to do with what Tim couldn't tell me before.

So I changed gears a little and asked, "What was the bonding ritual?"

"You mean for the twins?" he asked with a slight grin.  "Joey, if I told you that, I'd have to kill you."

My response was just a simple, "Heh," but then he looked at me with this amused yet serious expression...

"You're serious?" I said with a start.

"Yes, but if it helps any, I don't actually consciously remember it myself.  If someone ever tries to force it from me, my options are to either die or kill them if I am unable to stop them.  It's just part of the twin's package, you see."

"So is there anything you can tell me about it without one of us dying?" I half joked.

"I suppose so, but it may only be relevant to my specific case and not other twins and their masters."

"Like?" I prompted.

"Joy and Honey had to absorb all their empathic knowledge in their first six years of their life without being able to test their knowledge until after they were shipped to me.  When I first received them, they were a pair of expressionless, personality-less, obedient pets, and for several years I treated them as such until they began taking on the personalities of a pair of hounds I used to have.

"They were nothing to me back then.  Just two mindless slaves too young for me to enjoy, but worth keeping around for when they matured.  They were about nine when I first took a little more interest in them after they gave me a superb blow job after years of their mouths being to small to take anything more than my head in.  I suppose you could say they grew on me after that.  By the time they were thirteen and capable of fucking me like I had always envisioned, I couldn't bare to think of the physical pain it would cause them to take my girth.

"So I waited.  Two years later, I found I had a son and planned to have the twins break themselves in on him, both physically and with their empathic brainwashing skills.  I'm still not sure what it was about Tim that stopped them from completing their...  task.  It certainly was nothing that Tim said or did that night.  It must have been something they felt from within him..."

"Charles, have you actually ever... you know...  fucked Joy or Honey?"

"No.  Never.  And before you ask why, as absurd as it may sound, my mother told me not to."

"Your mother?"

"My mother."

"But...  But why?"

"She never said.  You see Joey, my mother knew things about the first empathic twins and Gladius himself from when she was growing up.  Things Gladius didn't want others to know about.  She was conditioned to never reveal any of it to anyone, just like I or anyone else who lived within his fortress's walls."

"Except me," I pointed out.

"No Joey...  What you remember is what I call a self filtering memory.  You can examine your memories as thoroughly as you want and never find anything wrong with them, but anything which Gladius would wish to hide from the outside world is hidden from you or anyone who tries to probe your mind, much like Tim's phone call last week."

"What phone...  Oh.. Oh yeah.  Shit.  I see what you mean."

"Getting back to the twins, there is one thing I can tell you which I couldn't have before Gladius betrayed me."

"Yeah?"

"When the twins seeded you and Tim, they were under direct orders from Gladius to do so, and had my consent."

"What?!?"

"Gladius assured me it was purely a preventative measure, Joey.  The only reason I agreed was to prevent something like this from happening, and he was never to use the embedded controls on either of you without my knowledge."

"Shit, and that's supposed to make me feel better?" I spat.

"If I hadn't agreed, he would have found another way to do it without my knowledge, and then I wouldn't have had any control over the circumstances.  And ever since they had seeded Tim, Joy and Honey activated their controls in him to acclimate him so he could eventually resist it.  Unfortunately I believe that is why Gladius staged Tim's death and kidnapped you both."

"But why?  What is Gladius so afraid of to go through so much trouble?  Do you know?"

"Yes.  And by now, so does Tim, I imagine."

"Shit.  But you can't tell me, right?"

"Right."

"I can see where Tim might, _might_ appear to be a threat to Gladius, but why did he kidnap me?  He didn't know anything about my encryption until after he had me."

"Why are you here, Joey?"

"What do you mean, why?  I'm here to rescue Tim!"

"Precisely.  And that's the same reason why he kidnapped you."

"Boy, was that stupid.  I hated Tim's guts at the time.  No way in hell would I have risked my neck for him back then."

"No, you're probably right about not risking your neck to rescue him, but you would have sought him out, even if you believed he was dead.  Did they ever explain to you why Gladius prefers teen voices, and why he always groups them into pairs of the same sex?"

"Uhm... No.  There's a reason?"

"Of course there is.  Voice is a very complex phenomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries is the lifetime link between two voices who bond on the mental level while first exploring their gifts.  I recognized that bond the moment I met you, Joey.  Nothing would have stopped you from seeking Tim out, and that's why I believe Gladius isn't planning on keeping Tim this time."

"Oh really?" I said with disbelief.  "Then why are _you_ here?"

"To find out why, of course."

"But you said you knew why!"

"I know why Gladius kidnapped my son, but I don't know why he took my girls, or whether he is truly responsible for my mother's death."

"You fucker!  Then what the hell am I doing here?"

He turned towards me and said with a smile, "In case I'm wrong, Joey.  In case I'm wrong."

Charles took another nap while I drove to the boarder, and I quite frankly was happy for the peace and quite.  His last revelation started me thinking, and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed he was right about Gladius not planning to keep Tim.

First of all, there was the fact that Tim had been able to call me in the first place.  If he was in trouble, why would he only call me and not his parents too?  And why would Gladius let me go after obviously having been able to hold on to me if I was destined to seek Tim out if he really was in serious trouble.

And what about Eric?  Why did they go through all the trouble of making Suzi and I believe Eric hadn't gone with us when he obviously had, despite us having no memories of him doing so?

And then there was Charles.  What were his true motivations behind coming here?  He said he wasn't seeking revenge, but if that was true, then what's the point of learning the truth behind his mother's death?  What if Tim really isn't in any trouble and he's just using me somehow?

But the last thing I needed on this trip beyond doubts about my so called partner were doubts of my own instincts, and my instincts were telling me Tim needed me.  So I pushed those doubts out of my mind for the time being and concentrated on the plan to get inside the fortress without detection.

After entering Venezuela, we stopped for fuel and to eat, and then Charles angered me when he went off and fucked a woman in the backroom who had been sitting at the table across from us.

He argued that he had been totally discreet and that there was no chance anyone would uncover his fuck before we were long gone from Venezuela, but I still insisted that any telepathic activity can be detected by another telepath, and that he was taking unnecessary risks by using his voice without any real cause to.

Shit if he didn't have a hissy fit about that.  He told me I had no right to say how he was to use his abilities and that he was perfectly aware of the risks and that they were minimal at that time.

Needless to say when we got back in the car, I went to sleep while he drove, feinting it for a while just so I wouldn't have to talk to him.

When I finally woke up, it was getting dark and raining a bit.  Charles looked fairly tired, so I offered to drive, but he said, "Thanks, but we're coming up on a town that should have a decent hotel to hole up in for the night.  It's not safe to drive at night in the rain with the shape these roads are in."

I bit my tongue to keep from arguing that point, but after a few minutes I saw he was right.  It's amazing how big of a difference those painted stripes down the middle of a road make.  Charles was having trouble just staying on the road from the way the rain made the uneven shoulder look smooth like the rest of the road.

When we reached the town he spoke of, we found quite a few hotels and had trouble deciding on one.  Actually, Charles had the trouble, I didn't care.  He just had to make sure we got the best one, which was pretty hard since they all looked alike from the outside.

He didn't get any argument from me when he suggested getting separate rooms, and later I was glad that he had taken the time to check the hotels out because after having slept in the car for several hours, I wasn't feeling very sleepy and spent some time watching old reruns on T.V.

Charles didn't even attempt to hide it when he enslaved two women to attend his bed for the night.  Oh, did that piss me off, especially when I finally turned in for the night, then listened to his two fuck slaves moan in the next room for another hour.

We got a late start the next morning after both of us having been up so late.  I drove while Charles practiced his telepathic control again, but about three hours down the road we stopped at a very small village for bite to eat and another fuck for Charles.

"I hope you're not planning on doing this the whole drive," I commented when we climbed back in the car.

"Once we cross the Rio Orinoco, I'll stop," he simply said.

"The Rio Orinoco!" I said, grabbing the map and looking for it.  "What are you talking about?  That's way out of our way..."

"You don't remember how to get there, do you?"

"Well, I guess not precisely, but..."

"I know where I'm going, Joey.  You need to consider your memory may not be entirely trustworthy when it comes to anything about Gladius."

"Well, we're going to have to hope it is if we're going to get inside undetected," I reminded him.

"Not necessarily.  We're going to see an old friend of mine first and see what he can do for us before we attempt to sneak in."

"A friend whom you haven't seen in twenty years?  Do you really think he'll still be your... friend?"

"As sure as the moans of the next woman I lay..." he said with a chuckle.

Twenty minutes later, Charles suddenly asked, "How is your sister?"

"My sister?"

"Yes.  Did she enslave her husband?"

I explained what happened, then asked him, "How did you find out about her pregnancy anyways?  Sarah almost didn't tell me, and I'm her brother."

"By chance, I glanced inside from the porch just at the moment she told you.  Lip reading is an old hobby of mine..."

"Lip reading?  Why would a voice need to learn how to read lips?"

"I wasn't always a voice, remember?  I learned how to lip read after my father...  Let's just say I learned it to impress him, shall we?"

"Shit.  So what did you say to Sarah to get her to open up to you?"

"Well, after we washed the two boys' hands, Tommy offered Richie a piggy back ride, so I simply asked if she knew whether it was a boy or girl yet.  Her expression was truly priceless..."

"Shit, I bet.  Now I know where Tim gets his kicks at seeing the shock on peoples faces," I mumbled.

"Joey, being blunt and to the point is always more productive than trying to get someone to admit to something they've taken great care to hide."

"Oh, and that's why you blurted out you having a tape of Tim, Suzi and I having sex?!"

"Precisely.  It was only a matter of time before your parents found out the whole truth, and with Sam, myself and Suzi's mother being on your side, Sam and I figured it was the best time to deal with it."

"Shit, you know what?  In a lot of ways, Tim's just like you.  He's always doing shit like that.  It really pisses me off when he does it too!"

"It seems you have that in common with your sister.  If I hadn't been prepared for her assault...  Well, she calmed down very quickly when I explained Sam already knew and would tell her mother if she didn't hear me out.

"Joey, not to get off the topic, but...  Have you ever had sex with her?"

"Who, Sarah?  NO WAY!"

"I wasn't trying to imply you should," he said after noticing my hostile glare.

"Oh, so if you had a sister, you wouldn't have sex with her?"

"I didn't say that...  I don't really know what would have happened if I had a sister.  I suppose it would have been up to my father whether or not...    I'm glad I don't have a sister.  I wouldn't wish anyone else to have to grow up in that household like I had."

"Charles...  Do you hate your father?" I asked.

"Sometimes I say I do, but no, I don't really hate him.  Despite all the humiliations he put me through and his uninhibited use of his voice on me, I wouldn't be the man I am now if he had pampered me my whole life.  And he always made sure my mother was with me, and for that single reason I forgave him a long time ago."

"Oh...  Well, I guess that's good."

"I would hope so.  If it wasn't for my father dictating every aspect of my life all those years, I'm sure I would have never accepted the...  relationship between you and Tim when I first met you."

"So...  If Richie decides he liked guys better than girls when he gets older..."

Charles' choked before saying, "Over my dead body!"

"Heh...  Thought so."

Seven hours and two fuck stops later, Charles finally announced, "Yes, this is it," and turned our rental car down a gravel road that had a sign hanging over it saying, 'Welcome Friend' in plain English.

We had spent the past two hours driving on this crummy road in the flatlands three hours out of our way, so you could say I wasn't in the best of moods, especially after Charles pointed out I need him more than he needed me when I complained.

The car rattled and bounced noisily down the pothole infested gravel road, Charles apparently being so anxious to see his old friend he could bear to slow down at all.

The farm we drove up to consisted of a cluster of ten or so houses with a number of other buildings surrounding them, and fields of corn and rice as far as the eyes could see.

As we drove up to the houses, children came running out into the rain to greet us, then scattered when we pulled to a stop and Charles hopped out.

"Miguel!  Where is my old friend Miguel?" Charles cried out to the children dancing about all around us.

Several of the older children excitedly went on about something, then one boy was elected to ask Charles, "You amigo del papa?"

"Yes, I'm Miguel's friend, Charles.  Where is he?"

The entire crowd of children stopped in their tracks like they had misheard him, but then the boy who had spoke turned around and said shakily, "Amigo del papa...  Amigo del papa Charles!" 

Most of the children took off in all directions, yelling his words as they ran, leaving us standing there looking stunned with only a few of the youngest children remaining behind looking almost as bewildered as we did.

Within minutes our hands were being shaken nearly off our arms as young man after young man came running up to greet Charles and introduce us to their wife and children.  None of them could have been older than twenty-two or so, and at least half of them were younger than I was.

They spoke so quickly I had difficulty following their words, but from what I gathered they were either Miguel's son's or son-in-laws, and while the women were very talkative themselves, they let their husbands do all the talking when addressing Charles or myself.

Suddenly a large overweight mustached man appeared and bellowed, "Charles!"

"Miguel!" Charles bellowed back.

"You sexual demon!"

"You hymen-buster!"

"Good to see you, amigo!" they both cried as they hugged and noisily patted each other's backs.

"Look at you!  And your family!  You have done well, Miguel!  I am impressed!"

"Si, I have been very fortunate, mucho thanks to you," Miguel said while surveying the crowd of anxious people surrounding them.

Miguel suddenly stepped forward and picked up the boy who had spoke to Charles when we arrived. 

"Charles Grodmen, this is Charles Enriquez, my youngest son."

"Well, nice to meet you Charles," Charles said joyfully as he held out his hand to the boy.

The boy timidly held out his hand but then shook Charles's hand quite vigorously as he chanted on about how he loved hearing his father's stories about Charles and his wonderful mother.

"Where is your mama, Charles?  And who is this?  Your son?"

Charles' expression lost its glow before saying, "No, this is Joey, my oldest son's best amigo.  Mom died about a year ago."

Miguel, put a consoling hand on Charles' shoulder and said softly, "I grieve for your loss, amigo.  She was wonderful person, and a wonderful mama.  Come, let us go inside out of this rain and drink to her memory.  Then afterwards we fuck a few of my wives just like old times, eh amigo?"

"Thank you, Miguel.  You always knew how to cheer me up," Charles said while they put their arms behind each other and led the way in.

Bottles of their best whisky were opened up and passed around to commensurate Charles's mother's passing away, everyone over the age of ten getting a drink from one of the bottle before most of them left to go back to their work.

"So how many children do you have now, Miguel?" Charles said after Miguel introduced us to his twelve wives.

"Thirty boys, thirty three girls," Miguel said while six of his wives left and the remaining six got undressed.  "How about you, amigo?"

"Two boys," Charles said glancing at my disgusted expression.  "Miguel, Joey prefers women his own age..."

"Is he so closed minded not to see the beauty of my wives?" Miguel said smartly.

"I'm not closed minded.  I'm just not interested.  Excuse me,"  I said as I squeezed past the two women who were approaching me and went out the nearest door.

I headed back out to the car to try and figure out exactly where we were on the map, but the boy Charles ran up and walked next to me in silence until I stopped and asked, "What do you want?"

"You hijo del amigo?" he asked.

"No, I'm not Charles's son," I spat.

He frowned, then asked, "You no like mama?"

"Whose mama?  Mine or yours?"

I repeated the question in my broken Spanish, and he responded simply by pointing at himself.

"I like girls my own age," I repeated Charles somewhat.

He accepted my explanation, then after thinking a moment, he took my hand and said, "Come.  Come."

"Look, I know you're just trying to help, but I'm really not in the mood to play," I said while allowing him to lead me.

After repeating it as best I could in Spanish, Charles broke out in a grin and said, "No play...  Fuck."

"Fuck, huh?" I said, frowning at his humping jester, which in turn caused him some concern.

"You no like fuck?" he asked in Spanish with surprise.

"Sure I like fucking, but I'm not interested in fucking anything you got to show me," I said while turning around and heading back to the car.

I was a little surprised when I reached the car and found he was gone, but I just put the whole thing out of my mind and focused on the map.

The map was fairly detailed, but even though I had been keeping track of the turns as Charles made them, I was totally lost as to where we were.  After an hour of frustration with the map, I took a long walk in the rain in my bare feet, taking off and tying my shirt to my waist after having my fill of being hot and wet at the same time.

I ran across a group of children playing in the mud at the corner of one of the corn fields.  While I didn't join them in their game of mud flinging, I did find a nice private spot in another field to let my feet sink in the soft wet mud and sat down on a rock while swirling my feet in the soothing wet mother earth.

My mind wandered to thinking about what Suzi might have been doing then, but didn't let myself get so distracted that I didn't notice the kid Charles walking towards me with a pregnant girl...  about my age.

I pretended not to see them, hoping they were just heading to the next field or something, but when they stopped behind me and Charles said, "Amigo like talk?" I turned and felt guilty about how I was acting with him.

"Yeah, talk is okay.  Pull up a rock or something."

"Pull up a rock?" the girl repeated in well practiced English a bit puzzled.

"I mean...  You can sit down if you want," I said with surprise.

"Gracias," she said, then sat down carefully on a grassy spot next to me.

"Uhm, I'm Joey," I said, offering her my hand in greeting.

"Gloria," she said, lightly grasping my hand and giving it a gentle shake.  "My brother believes you are... unhappy being here."

"I'm not unhappy...  We're just supposed to be on our way somewhere else, that's all."

"May I ask if you are...  voice?"

"Yeah, I have voice," I said with a touch of surprise in my voice.

"Why do you not use it?"

"Who says I don't?"

"You do not use it on me or Charles when we come."

"Maybe I did and you just don't realize it."

Charles juts in saying something about her shirt, which Gloria simply says, "Si," and holds her arms up.

Charles jumps to his feet and carefully but swiftly pulls her shirt off to expose her stretched stomach and swelled breasts to the hot muggy air.

"What did you do that for?" I said, steering my eyes away from her swelled out body parts as she laid down on her back.

Charles took my hand and firmly pulled it towards Gloria's stretched stomach, causing me to lose my balance on the rock and I nearly jerked Charles into the mud when I instinctively used my hands to catch myself.

"You little shit!" I spat as I pulled my hands out of the mud and stood up.

The boy started apologizing desperately, and if he hadn't been so close to Tommy's age, I probably would have stomped off cussing.  But I knew that, like Tommy, he was only trying to gain my favor by trying to offer me something he thought I would like.

So I allowed the boy to help clean off my hands, then after he swore up and down he would let me be if I just did one thing, I allowed him to guide my hand to Gloria's stomach and feel around.

"Papa like baby in girls," Charles mentioned while I stroked Gloria's tightly stretched skin.  "I like.  Joey like?"

"I suppose so," I admitted as I gave her tummy a gentle kiss, then recognized the scent of an aroused woman.

I glanced up at Gloria's face and found her cheeks slightly flushed with her eyes closed.  Charles was watching me with great interest with a serious bulge in his shorts, and after a moment I scanned Gloria's mind to confirm a suspicion I had.

"Shit," I breathed as I slipped my fingers under her shorts and found the wetness there.  "You people are sick!"

"No like?" Charles said with disappointment.

"No, I no like!" I said while standing up.  "God, and I thought you might actually be a little normal."

"You LIKE!" Charles suddenly said, nodding his head down and looking at me at the top of his eyes, casting a telepathic command of such intensity that stunned me for several moments, then did so again before I could recover and strengthen my weakened barriers.

"You like," he said as I was overcome with the need to suck the juices out of her pregnant pussy.  "You like sister with baby inside."

The image of a pregnant Sarah flashed through my mind when he spoke those words, triggering a wave of revulsion and anger within me that caused me to jerk my face away which had been descending on Gloria's mound, grab the little shit by his leg and pulled him off his feet.

I had a hell of a time resisting the urge to return to her cunt, but I managed to hold it off long enough to undo the simpleton command, then made the squirming boy unable to use his voice as long as I was around.

After I sent the sniffling child and his disappointed sister on their way,  I marched right into the room I sensed the real Charles in and found him still fucking one of Miguel's wives in the ass.

"Joey!" Charles exclaimed before grunting his release in the woman's ass.  "Looks like you've been enjoying yourself."

"Enjoying myself?!?"  I exclaimed.  "I almost got enslaved by a nine year old kid with a thing for pregnant women, and you think I'm enjoying myself?"

"Miguel, you didn't tell me any of your kids had voice," Charles said with passing interest.

"Hmmm?" Miguel said, rousing himself from a drunken slumber. 

"I said you didn't tell me you had any brats with voice," Charles said with a touch of humor.

"No..  No children with voice," Miguel said distantly.

"I hate to break it to you, but your son Charles has voice.  He just.."

"No son Charles..." Miguel said distantly.

"Shit, he's so drunk...."

"Miguel," Charles said, gently slapping Miguel on the cheek to sober him up a bit.  "Miguel, your youngest son...  The one you named after me..."

"NO SON Charles!" Miguel said strongly.  "He favor for...  for...  someone..."

"What do you mean, favor?" Charles asked patiently.

"Boy had bad papa.  Papa dead now.  Boy needed new papa, I be new papa."

"But what about the name?" I asked.  "Charles isn't your everyday Venezuelan name."

"Boy wanted new name," Miguel said with a lazy shrug.  "When he learn about Charles, he wanted that name."

"Miguel, you said you took the boy as a favor.  A favor to who?" Charles said, holding the bottle out of Miguel's reach as he tried to grasp it with a sloppy hand.

After rolling onto the floor on the third attempt to get the bottle, Miguel chuckled, "Charles...  You no play fair..."

"Come on, my friend," Charles said patiently, helping him back up into his chair and handing him the bottle.  "Now who's favor was it?  The boy's?"

"No no...  Your old amigo.... Gladius."

"Gladius?!?"  Charles and I both repeated in alarm.

"Si.  He bring boy to me and ask very nicely.  Promised boy would be...  asset to my retirement when he grow.  Boy needs firm but gently hand, he said.  He right.  Boy no problem.  Care as he was my own, but he not."

"Shit, we sure stepped in it this time," I said, getting nervous and angry at the same time.

Miguel threw his head up while drinking deeply from the almost empty bottle and rocked himself backwards onto the floor with a crash.  Once he recovered from the stun of the fall, Miguel simply looked at the neck of the broken bottle still in his hand, cursed, then closed his eyes and let himself pass out.

Charles carefully checked Miguel over to make sure he wasn't injured while we both scanned his drunken mind for any signs of tampering.

"He's a voice?" I suddenly realized when I ran across a memory of using his gift on a neighbor.

"Yes, but his strength is even less than mine," Charles said slightly mumbled.  "Joey, I'm going to break this link between us for a minute.  I don't have the precision I need to detect anything."

"We need to get out of here," I said, taking his arm to tug him firmly towards the door.  "Gladius could already be here with an army of twins..."

"If he is, then nothing we do will matter.  But if he isn't...  Then we need to contain this here and now before it gets out.  Agreed?"

I stared him in the eyes for a good minute while that sank in, then I said, "Alright...  But don't break the link until I can round up the little runt.  He could be on the phone right now with Kain."

"Kain?" Charles asked.

"Gladius's son," I thought back to him as I ran out the door.

I found 'Junior' playing with some of the other kids in a barn, basically acting like any other nine year rather than a spy.  Maybe I was being overcautious, but I couldn't take the chance of him being a plant of some kind, and easily took him over and marched him out before the others could even guess something was wrong.

I took him back to the main house where I had left Charles, finding him back in his britches and had gathered Miguel's wives to inspect their minds.  When Charles insisted he needed to break the link, I simply linked with Charles Junior and started scanning his mind.

Shit, the kid had had it pretty rough.  His father was a drunken brute who periodically beat the shit out of the little boy.  The kid didn't know any better than to take it, but when his father cornered his best friend and started beating on him, something snapped in the boy's mind and he made his father run away and never stop.  The man couldn't stop running away from everyone or everything, and apparently died somewhere from not even stopping for a drink of water.

How Gladius found out about him, the boy didn't know.  Gladius just showed up one day and asked him if he would like a new and better papa.  That was two years earlier, and during the time the boy had been with Gladius, I could sense there being fuzzy spots where I imagine the boy was under the control of a pair of twins.

I scanned him as best I could and found nothing that could point to the boy being a mole.  Perhaps it was just coincidence that Gladius just so happened to show up on Miguel's front doorstep with the boy two months before Tim and I were abducted by his twins.  Yeah, right.

"I can't find anything," I relented to Charles.  "How's the women?"

"Clean," Charles said distantly, then turned and said, "Miguel is too drunk to do this right.  Let me try the boy."

"I said I didn't find anything," I repeated while allowing his probes to pass into the boy's mind.

"You might have missed something," he said softly from the strain of the probing, but then paused his telepathic scan and said firmly, "And I might have missed something too.  Do the women."

"Yeah, all right," I said, not really believing it would do any good.

I guess you could say I got a little side tracked.  Those women had been Miguel's wives ever since Charles helped Miguel develop his abilities when they were teens.  Shit, Charles Junior was right about Miguel liking pregnant women. Miguel carefully chose each one of his wives from the entire region based upon not just their looks, but the number of siblings in their family.  Miguel then kept half of them pregnant at all times for the first several years, then tapered it down to three at a time from having so many mouths to feed.

At least Miguel wasn't into incest like Candice's father was.  The closest he came to incest was checking out some of his son's wives while they were pregnant, but he never touched them.  Or at least _his_ wives didn't believe he did.

Charles took a long time with the boy, much longer than it took me to scan the women and even do a little digging in Miguel's head too.  The boy just sat there looking slightly limp, his eyes staring at nothing in particular while blinking like they normally did.

I guess it spooked me a little seeing this little boy mindless like that.  We weren't hurting him, but it was unsettling just the same.  I guess the thought of someone doing something like that to Tommy scared me to death.

"Well, I'm not sure why, but..." Charles said suddenly.  "Gladius had his girls imprint a fascination for me into the boy.  The only reason he tried to please you was to get closer to me."

"What, did you find a hidden memory?" I said, probing the boy's mind again.

"No...  It was right out in the open," Charles said while having the boy recall his thoughts at the time he approached me.  "See?  Some kind of hero-worship..."

"So you really haven't found anything..."

"Hidden?  No.  But this cinches it for me.  We best make them all forget we were here and be on our way."

"Now you're thinking my way," I said as I began forming a very large blanket command.

"It's a shame we have to leave so soon," Charles sighed as we climbed into the rental.

"We should have never stopped here in the first place," I pointed out.

"Perhaps, but I thought Miguel might have some information on Gladius's activities...  Well, it was worth the shot.  I don't have any other friends here I can trust, so I suppose we'll have to try your plan now."

I kept my mouth shut, not wishing to start an argument right then.  But once we were back on the main road and I had reblanketed the area just incase someone noticed us leaving, I started outlining my ideas to him.

"You're forgetting one thing," Charles interrupted suddenly.  "The Okicutians."

"The what?"

"The tribe of people who live on the mountain.  Voices can't detect them, and they guard the mountain from intruders.  I thought you saw them..."

"I did, but...  Shit, you're right.  I didn't think of them...  But actually they might make things easier for us.  I'm pretty sure they're loyal to Lea and Zoe, not Gladius.  If we can convince them to take a message to Lea..."

"What makes you so sure Lea and...  Zoe will help us?"

"I'm not sure, but...  Well, they were the ones who helped me and Tim escape last year.  Why wouldn't they help us now?"

"Because helping you escape is very different than helping us break in.  What kind of relationship do they have with Gladius?  You don't really know what their motives were for helping you last time, but they must have believed Gladius could be made to see reason afterwards.  There's too many unknowns, Joey."

"But without inside help..."

"Don't get me wrong, Joey.  I'm convinced they won't turn us over to Gladius the moment we make contact, but we can't rely on getting their help either.  We must have a backup plan, and whatever we do, we can't trust anyone, even Tim when we find him.  Clear?"

"Not even..." I repeated before comprehending his meaning.  "Yeah...  Clear as crystal."

We stopped for the night in a village on the banks of the Rio Orinoco, and to my surprise Charles didn't round up any bed companions that night.  He had fucked every one of Miguel's wives, so I figured he had just had his fill of fucking ass for the day, but I still had expected him to enslave a couple of women for the night before we crossed the river.

The next morning, Charles had me drive while he...  daydreamed, or at least that's what it seemed to me.  At the town we stopped for lunch, I was surprised when Charles didn't offer drive, but after he got in on the passenger's side, I went ahead and took the captain's chair again.

"We probably should discuss that otehr plan," I prompted him after another twenty minutes of silent driving went by.

"Hmmmmm..." he said noncommittally.

"We're only a couple of hours away...  We really should talk about that backup plan," I said a few minutes later.

"Go ahead," he said distantly.

I paused a moment, then asked, "You thinking about your mom again?"

"What?" he said, snapping out of his self induced daze.  "Why do you say that?"

"You've been somewhere else all morning.  I just thought that maybe you were missing your mom again."

Charles sighed, then said, "I do, but I've been trying to remember everything I can about Gladius and his keep."

"Remember anything useful?"

"I'm not sure.  I seem to have a blank spot in my memories shortly before Gladius Jr. allowed me to leave.  I've been picking away at it, but I haven't recalled anything substantial yet."

"Isn't that sort of dangerous?  I mean, what about your suicide conditioning?"

"That's only if I allow someone else to access it."

"So even if you do remember something important, you're not going to be able to tell me, are you?"

"No, probably not.  But it won't stop me from using the information to our advantage."

"Shit.  In other words, I have to trust you."

"Precisely.  But for now, I know nothing new of consequence, so we will proceed with your plan for now."

"All right.  So we sneak in and try to reach Lea on our own, but if we get caught by those jungle people, we try to convince them to let Lea know we need to see her, etc, etc.  If that doesn't work, one of us will probably have to make a distraction while the other tries to slip away or something."

"I'm not sure what that would accomplish considering you don't know where this Lea's cave is."

"I know, but I'm counting on Lea finding us if she just learns that we're there."

"And if she refuses to help us and they turn us over to Gladius?"

"She won't turn us over.  I know she won't."

"All right, but what if Lea isn't there and the Okicutians have no choice but to turn us over to Gladius?"

"I don't think that is very likely.  From what I gathered, Zoe never left until after Lea was...  Shit...  I wonder how old she was when Zoe left her.  I mean, none of the other voices knew anything about Zoe, and a few of them had been there at least four years."

"Zoe..." Charles said with a shiver.

"What?  You know her?"

"I'm not sure..." Charles said in a strained voice.  "I think I may be on to something..."

When Charles didn't say anything else, I let him pick at his brain without disturbing him.

I started to get worried about us finding the lone road leading down from the opposite side of the mountain as Gladius's keep was on after three more hours of driving and having seen no sign of it.  If I hadn't already been sweating from the heat of the day, I would have been from the strain I felt while driving farther and farther around the mountain, expecting to see Gladius's keep pop into view from having gone too far.

The worse part of it was, we were getting low on gas and there hadn't been any sign of a fuel station that last hour or so.

But then I saw the cliff we had to have come out on that day we left Gladius's keep, and decided I was close.  So I stopped the car under a sparsely shaded area and got the binoculars out to scan the area underneath great cliff.

After about twenty minutes, I put the binoculars down and rubbed my eyes, then jumped when Charles said, "Let me look."

"Go ahead," I said, tossing him the binoculars.  "Everything's covered with trees and shit.  I can't see anything that even resembles the path we took last year."

"Gladius loved hiding things through deception and decoys...  Do remember if the path zigzagged a lot?"

"Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't," I recalled.  "We came out on that cliff then started making our way down the left side where the trees go up to meet it.  See it?"

"Yes, I see it...  The path you can see from here...  I don't think it's the path you took.  Yes...  The one you took goes straight down the side then banks left."

"Let me see..." I said, reaching for the binoculars.

He handed them over to me, then guided my line of vision to where the faintly detectable line going straight down the face of the mountain ended and two other faint traces of paths branched off in opposite directions.

It took Charles and I about an hour and a half to work our way all the way down the mountain through the binoculars.  We kept the sun at our backs so the glasses wouldn't make our presence known, and after another half hour of driving back the way we had come, we found the mouth of the path we were looking for.

Shit, it was a long way up.  We took only the essentials, food, water, first aid kit, a small plastic tent, and of course my coin, and after Charles having stopped to rest way too many times, I carried his pack and mine in the hopes he'd make better time.

I could have climbed that damn mountain three times in the time it took Charles, but we at least made it up to the cliff before dark.

I felt a little exposed camping out right there at the edge of the cliff, but at least we could see someone coming and hide if need be.  Charles could barely keep his eyes open by the time we set up our little tent and ate our dried meat and canned fruit for dinner in the dark. 

We didn't dare build a fire, not that we could have with the rain still coming down.  And without a fire, everything outside that little pup tent was lost in darkness.  I just hoped that if we couldn't see anything beyond two feet outside the tent, then anyone who was crazy enough to be walking around a cliff in the middle of the night in the poring rain wouldn't see our little tent just off the beaten path.

I woke at first light with Charles curled up against my backside.  I carefully disentangled myself from him and wiggled my way out of the tent, finding that while the rain hadn't quit, it at least wasn't poring like it had most of the night.

Once I was sure no one was around, I woke Charles up long enough to get the share link back up, then let him sleep another half hour while I scouted around and checked things out.

On the way back to the tent, my attention was captivated by the sun shining through a parting of the clouds onto the flatlands below.  I've never seen anything look so... divine, I suppose.  Like God was looking down on that particular patch of Earth, or even maybe He was trying to tell me where to go.  But my instincts told me otherwise.  Tim was here.  I knew he was.  I just knew it.

Have you ever tried to get a middle aged, out of shape voice who had climbed halfway up a mountain the day before out of bed early in the morning?  No?  Do you have any idea how hard it is?  Charles complained he was sore from head to toe, that given another hour of sleep he'd feel a lot sharper, and basically made up all sorts of excuses to go back to sleep.

I got him some aspirin out of the first aid kit and let him sleep another forty five minutes to give the aspirin some time to take effect, then when he refused to come out of the tent after that, I got pissed and collapsed it on him.

Unfortunately, Charles didn't seem to mind the tent like that.  But then I remembered my mom telling me how she used to get dad up when they went camping together, and started looking for some dry wood to build a fire.

Charles got up on his own about twenty minutes later, however, when the sun came out and started heating up the tent with it's light.

While I was grateful that the rain had stopped and the sun had gotten Charles moving, I was cursing the sun by the time he finished his breakfast and I had broken down camp.

The humidity was really getting to me by the time we reached the cave like crack in the rock that lead to another path farther up the mountain.  That path wrapped around to the other side where a gate was embedded in the huge wall surrounding Gladius's keep at its highest elevation on the mountain.

The path had several forks in it along the way, so naturally we took a few wrong turns.  On one such occasion we came across a cave that had to have been man made, and had an intricate gate about ten yards inside that appeared to be easily opened from the outside.

I was about to open it just to see what would happen, but Charles stopped me before I could grab the lever saying, "No, Joey.  Something tells me this gate shouldn't be opened.  Let's go back and take the other path."

By mid-afternoon, we were still unsure if we were on the right path, Charles was exhausted, and I was starting to feel a bit tired myself.  I was sure we were close to the right elevation just for the fact that the air was cooler and even felt relatively dryer, but with the sun being right over our heads and thus no hint as to which way was north, east, or west, we could have been turned around a number of times and had been on the wrong side of the mountain by then.

So once we reached another fork we hadn't been to before, I climbed up a tree to try to get a better perspective, and nearly fell out of it when I saw not only the wall below us, but the entire keep as well.

Charles suggested we leave the paths and head straight down the mountain to the wall, then just follow it until we found the gate in the wall.  We attempted to do that, but quickly came to another cliff that was impossible to climb down without ropes and other climbing shit.

At least we could see the wall pretty good from the cliff, and I thought I could see the gate in the distance to our left.  So we made our way back up to the paths and eliminated a lot of wrong turns just knowing exactly where we were going.

Finally, around six o'clock, we found the path that lead up to the gate, and even had it in our sights just before thirty or so naked camouflaged painted men popped out from the trees all around us.

Shit, did I jump.  Charles hadn't been kidding about voices being unable to detect them.  If I couldn't see them with my own eyes, feel their hands as they stripped our packs from our backs and roughly forced us to strip our clothes, I would have thought they were illusions from the empty space my telepathic senses reported them to be.

I tried to explain to them I needed to see Lea, but to my dismay, once our clothes were off and they had satisfied themselves we hadn't brought any weapons beyond a Swiss army knife and the scissors in the first aid kit, they tied our hands behind us and lead us back the way we came without uttering a single word.

Charles was really having a rough time keeping up with the pace they made us go.  Despite the fact they were carrying our gear and we were always either on level ground or descending, Charles was so tired he kept falling to the ground.  At least they had the decency to release his arms so he could catch himself.

It was nearly dark when we reached a hidden cave opening very similar to the one we had found earlier that day.  In fact if the entrance hadn't been hidden so far off the path within a dense area of trees, I would have said it had been the same cave.  Even the gate was identical to the first one, and I was very careful to watch how they opened it for obvious reasons.

I was rather surprised when they flipped a couple of flashlights on to light the way.  I mean, their appearance didn't suggest they would use such things.  And where the hell did they get new batteries when the old ones run out?

Again, the cave was obviously man made, for no natural cave would be so straight.  Yet there were stalagmites poking up from the floor and stalactites hanging about, and the Okicutians took every opportunity to remove them and lay them off to the sides without breaking their stride.

At one point the cave actually opened up into a real cave that was filled with water, the drips from the ceiling becoming almost deafening as we carefully wade waist deep in very chilly and slow moving water to another opening on the far side of the cavern.

This cave was man made also, but unlike the first one, I noticed a steady breeze blowing through it.  Perhaps because the water had chilled me slightly that I noticed it, but the breeze was definitely there, and it definitely felt warmer than the other passageway.

We must have been walking for over an hour before we finally reached it's sudden end after a ninety degree turn and a short decline.  The Okicutians herded us into this wooden cage just to the right of the opening, then surprisingly returned all of our gear to us, minus the knife and scissors of course.

After we took our wet shoes off, put our shorts on, then ate half a granola bar each, Charles was so tired he just curled up in a corner and immediately fell asleep.  I spent another twenty minutes trying to get one of the two new un- camouflaged Okicutians guarding us to tell me what was going to happen to us, but couldn't get anything out of them but a single "Shhhhhh."

The sun was shining in my eyes when I opened them next morning, but that wasn't what had awakened me...

"You shouldn't have come here, Joey."

"But I had to," I said, shielding my eyes from the sun as I sat up, then took a moment to blink away the spots while Lea stood outside the cage watching me carefully.

"You've grown," I said, finding myself feeling slightly humbled by her presence.

"A few centimeters," she said without interest.  "You said you came here to see me."

"Yes.  Gladius has Tim again and I hoped you'd..."

"I'm afraid you're mistaken.  Tim is not here.  You must leave."

"Are you sure?" I said a bit shocked.  "I mean, I'm certain Gladius has Tim and a friend of ours.  If they're not here, then where could..."

"Who is that with you?" Lea interrupted when she suddenly noticed Charles stirring in the corner.

"Tim's dad.  Look, are you sure Tim isn't here?"

"You brought Charles?  Here?" Lea said, stepping back away from the cage.  "I can not help you, Joey.  You must leave."

"Wait!" I cried as she stepped out of my sight.  "But where is Tim?!?"

When she didn't reply and I was sure she wasn't going to, I shook Charles awake and explained what happened.

I barely had enough time to stress the fact that Lea had been disturbed by Charles being there before our escort party arrived and we were rushed to pack up our shit and were lead away from the cave we had arrived through.

At first I was seriously worried they were going to hand us over to Gladius, but we were going up rather than down, and I quickly realized we were heading towards the gate at the top of the wall.

I kept trying to get one of our painted escorts to tell me why they weren't taking us back the way we had come in, but the only person who would say anything was Charles, and he wasn't saying much at all during the climb.

The gate was actually an series of four interior walls made out of metal, rock, and wood, that slid out of the way one at a time, all to protect a two foot square hole in the wall. 

I guessed from the way the gate worked that you simply couldn't come in that way, and I kicked myself for having not realized it until then.  Once Charles and I entered the space where the second wall had been, the third wall/gate began to open while the first started to close.  Shit, when I had been through it the year before, Benjamin had made it seem like he was the one responsible for deciding when the gates would move by walking up to a wall and tapping it.  It was a bit unnerving having those four foot thick massive walls sliding open and closed automatically without there being anyway for anyone controlling them to know if we were out of the way or not.

"Now what do we do?  Go home?" I sighed as I sat down beside Charles underneath a tree just outside the closing gate.

"Go home?!?" Charles exclaimed wearily.  "I haven't worn myself out walking up and down this damn oversized rock to quit now."

"But Lea said..."

"Forget Lea, Joey.  If she didn't know I was with you until she saw me, she must not be as omnipotent as you believed her to be.  You're only person who can tell us where Tim is.  Feel him out, Joey.  If he's nearby, you'll know it.

I closed my eyes and tried everything I could think of to 'feel' Tim out without success.  I even tried imagining back to the old days when Tim had just figured out how to form our two-ways, and it was in the middle of recalling our first dual jerk off that the share link suddenly broke and I found Charles fast asleep beside me.

I got the tent out and laid it out so we could lay on top of it, then decided I was starving for something besides granola bars and the other rations we had been eating and broke out the can of refried beans and my boy scout cooking kit.

By the time Charles woke up, I had a modest if a bit smoky fire going and was dumping the beans into the aluminum frying pan/plate.

"You look as if you've done this a few times," Charles commented as I carefully placed the pan on top of the rocks I had put in the fire.

"You know how my mom and dad like camping," I simply said.  "I don't really enjoy it as much as they do, but I don't mind roughing it once in a while."

"Has Tim ever gone camping with you?"

"Yeah, lots of times.  Sometimes I wondered if I got sick before a trip that he would go with my dad without me anyways.  How about you?  Did you go camping when you were a kid?"

"I had never even seen a campfire before I met Miguel and he built one for us.  I remember how badly I wanted to show Mother I could rub two sticks together to start a fire like Miguel could...  I never got it work though."

"That's too bad...  I have a feeling we that trick might come in handy sometime soon," I said, showing him the nearly depleted package of matches which had been full the day before.

Charles chuckled, then said, "I'm surprised you got anything to burn as wet as everything is."

He noticed me starting to turn red, so I said, "Well, it wasn't really all that dry, but I used something to get it started that I figured wouldn't matter if I went without..."

"What's that?"

"My jockey's..."

We both laughed at that, then Charles said, "You must really like your refried beans."

"Heh.  You bet your ass I do.  A camp out just wouldn't be the same without them."

"Hmmm..." Charles said before going over to his back and rummaging around in it.

He brought over one of those shiny metal containers you see people drinking hard liquor out of in westerns and said, "A souvenir I picked up from Miguel before we left.  It's his secret ingredient," before pouring some into the pan.

"Shit," I muttered when I started stirring it in and accidentally slopped some over the side.

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed the moment afterwards when the alcohol I had dumped over the side burst into flames.

Charles and then I started laughing again, both seeing we wouldn't have to burn his jockey's to start our next fire.

By the time the beans were ready and cool enough to eat, we were both so anxious to eat them we didn't bother to use a second plate and just ate it straight out of the pan.

"Mmmm...  Miguel sure knows his secret ingredients," I commented as we ate.

Charles chuckled then said, "It's not really a secret.  Miguel puts this in everything he eats."

"Heh...  Somehow I knew you were going say that."

After we finished eating and I cleaned my gear with wet leaves and a small portion of our drinking water, we packed up our stuff and started heading up the path.

Once we were out of sight of the wall, I asked, "Well, if we're not leaving, then what are we going to do?"

"Did you feel Tim?"

"No, but that doesn't mean he's not here.  But I don't know what we can accomplish without Lea's help."

"I didn't believe she would help us from the beginning," Charles stated.  "Luckily, I know exactly where Tim is for you not to sense him, so all we really need now is a way in and out without being detected.  Do you think we could find that other cave again?"

"You mean the one you said we should leave alone?"

"We know more now than we did, don't we?  It should be worth a second look in any case."

Seeing there wasn't any better options presenting themselves, I agreed.  We spent most of the afternoon looking for it, and it was around five before we finally found it.

"Remember the cavern with all the water?" Charles said as carefully examined the metal gate blocking our path.

"Yeah.  What about it?"

"Don't you find it odd there is an unlocked passageway in?  It's not like Gladius to leave the backdoor open.  I believe if we somehow find the entrance to it now, we'd find the cavern completely flooded."

"That would explain why we didn't step on any stalagmites on the floor, and why it was dripping so much," I analyzed.  "But even if it was flooded, someone who wanted in bad enough could bring some diving gear or something to get past it."

"Hmmm...  True..." Charles said thoughtfully as he felt around the walls.

The mechanism which opened the gate was simple enough to work out.  Squeeze the handle, pull it back, and it would release some sort of counterbalance to lift up the heavy iron gate.

"Why would you have a gate you could open from the outside and not the inside?" I said out loud.

"Probably to trap the unwary.  Look at this.  There's another gate in the ceiling here."

Sure enough, what at first appeared to be a crossbeam near the entrance was in fact another cast iron gate which looked even thicker than the other. 

"Well I don't think we're gonna get anywhere here," I said after feeling the walls for any other hidden tricks.  "This cave has to be a trap.  It probably doesn't even have another opening."

Charles stuck his finger in his mouth a moment, then went over to the gate and held it out by one of the many tiny holes in the gate.

"There's too large of a breeze for there not to be another exit," he announced.

"Then it's an exit on a cliff to nowhere.  Surely you can see that this can't possibly be a way in."

"I'm not so sure, Joey.  Anyone who would be looking for a way in and go to the trouble of finding this cave wouldn't go blundering in without looking for traps.  I agree we should be cautious, but this is very likely a way in, and if we rig it up right, very probably our way out as well."

So I went out and found some large rocks and some dead branches to put in the way of the hidden gate while Charles stayed in the cave, shining his flashlight through the holes and trying to see what was beyond the gate.  He helped me with a few of the big ones, but for the most part I did all the work.

It was getting dark by the time I was satisfied by the rubble I had collected, and after eating a pretty skimpy dinner, checking our gear and hiding our trash, we entered the cave and tried opening the gate.

The squeeze handle didn't want to move at first, but when it did, the lever jerked from my hands and to our surprise nothing else happened.

"Shit!  Something must be stuck," I said after attempting to return the handle to home without success.

"Lets try to wedge the gate up," Charles suggested, pulling out one of the more sturdy looking branches from my pile of debris.

I did likewise, and once we broke enough of them, I got frustrated enough to give it a big kick and ended up flat on my back from the thing shooting up and catching the heal of my shoe a moment.

The crash behind us was deafening, and for a moment I though the whole cave was collapsing on top of us from all the rock flying through the air.  But as we came to our senses and found ourselves still in one piece, we discovered something almost just as bad.

The gate behind us was closed.  All the way.  The damn thing came down so fucking hard it had pulverized my modest pile of rock and wood, sending the remains everywhere.

"Oh shit, oh shit, ohhhhh shit," was all I could think to say as Charles scrambled around the debris to find a flashlight.

When he found one, he flipped it on and shown it around the massive solid iron gate before turning it down the dark hole which looked to be a one way road for us now.

"Are you all right?" Charles asked me as I tried to get up on my feet.

"I think so.  I'm just half buried in gravel...  Shit.  Where's the other flashlight?"

He shone it around the immediate area, but I found it first by stepping on it and almost landing on my face.

Once I was back on my feet again and had my light ablaze, Charles said, "Well, now that we've sprung the trap, let's go get the cheese."

"If there is any cheese," I couldn't help but say.

We didn't say much else as we walked down that black hole.  Charles shut off his flashlight after a while to conserve the batteries, and it just kind of amplified my feelings about whether or not we'd get out of there.

We must have been walking over an hour before we reached a small natural cavern with several naturally formed passageways going off in different directions.

"Well, which way now?" I sighed, sitting down on a large broken off stalagmite, then jumping to my feet with a yip when it moved with a loud grumble.

"This way," Charles said, pointing the light at the foot wide crack in the wall which had appeared behind me.  "You must be good luck, Joey."

"Maybe my ass is.  It did all the work," I joked before sticking my head into the crack for a look.

"Oh my God," I gasped, backing away a little shaken while trying not to throw up.  "Something's dead in there."

Charles took a deep breath before taking a looking inside himself, the after a few moments he stepped away, took an even deeper breath, then slipped his way inside.

I could see his light moving around inside, but it kept getting dimmer until it was gone.

I took a deep breath and stuck my head in the hole and yelled "Charles?!  You all right?!"

I heard what I thought was something stumbling on some rocks, and after a moment of carefully listening to nothing, I took several deep breaths and slipped through.

The passageway wasn't much bigger than I was, and there were a few spots I had to squeeze through sideways before I reached a small decaying animal of some kind by a pile of rubble.

My lungs were starting to convulse for the need for new air, and just as I was about to turn and run back the way I had come, I realized I felt a breeze coming from the way Charles must have gone.

So I rushed forward a ways, slightly stumbling on the rubble but not enough to slow me down, and just as I was about to go around a corner, Charles came around it and scared me half to deaf.

"Shit!  Why don't you have your flashlight on?!" I complained after getting enough of my breath and my wits back to speak.

Charles reached forward and clicked mine off, then smiled in the dim red light saying, "That's why."

I looked around the corner and found another small cavern with a man made tunnel at the other end emitting the red light.

"What could be making the light?" I said as we walked through about a foot of slow flowing water towards the tunnel.  "I mean, it's dark outside, so it can't be sunlight shining through something..."

"We'll soon find out," Charles said before noticing the cave's steep incline and muttering, "Damn.  Another climb."

"Well at least we have stairs this time," I said when we got close enough to see the steps.  "It's a good thing too. As wet as everything is and as steep as it is, we'd never get reach the top without spiked shoes or something."

"Just be careful, Joey," he said as we stepped out of the water.  "Those steps will still be pretty slippery."

"Spoken like a true parent," I said as I took my shoes off and tried wringing them out. 

I didn't put them back on right away after finding I had much better traction without them, but thirty or forty steps up I reconsidered and sat down on the steps from stepping on too many sharp points.

Charles had kept going while I was nursing my feet and putting my sneakers on.  He was about fifty steps ahead of me by the time I got up, but when I tried to hurry and catch up, my sneakers couldn't keep enough traction and I ended up actually going slower than he was.

Charles had just yelled down that he could see the top when I first noticed the whispery like sounds.

"You hear that?!?"  I yelled up to him.

"What?!?"

"I said do you hear that?"

"Hear what?!"

"You don't hear them?!  Sound's like someone whispering."

"Whispering?  I don't hear anything but us and our echos."

As I kept going, the whispers became a little louder, and just as Charles reached the top and exclaimed something I didn't understand, I realized what it was I was 'hearing'.

"CHARLES!" I yelled when I heard him speaking but couldn't make out what he was saying.  "CHARLES!  Come back to the stairs!  I can't hear what...  CHARLES!"

Something about what I could hear of his voice combined with some strange surges in our share link told me something was very wrong.  I instinctively sped up and ended up skinning my knee before I took off my shoes and tried desperately to avoid cutting up my feet anymore than they were as I rushed up the last thirty steps or so.

When I reached the top, Charles was on his hands and knees directly underneath a...  cluster of luminescent veins of a red amber like substance.  The whispers were no longer whispers, but screams, screams of gibberish, yet not entirely gibberish for I swore I could hear my name...

I instinctively grasped my coin hanging from my neck with my right hand and tried to raise some kind of shield against the assault of symbols flooding the passageway before Charles's scream made me bear down and rush into the maelstrom before me.

When I reached Charles, he grabbed onto my legs sobbing, "Grandfather...  Don't leave me..." and nearly made me lose my balance.

I could barely think, but somehow I managed to grab Charles by the neck of his shirt and lifted him partially to his feet before bending over and taking him over my shoulder as I rushed us both out of there.

I think I fell after stepping on something sharp, but I don't really remember what happened.  The next thing I can recall is Peter pouring my canteen of water on my face while Chris and a pair of twins stood behind him, probably ready to zap me if I became hostile.

"In case you don't know it, you're in deep shit," Peter said as I sputtered and sat up.

"Nice to see you too, Peter," I said.

Their reaction was one of shock, and as I started to realize what this meant, Chris confirmed my suspicion by saying, "Who are you?!  How do you know his name?!"

"My name's Joey, but of course you don't remember me.  They made sure of that after I left," I said, nodding towards the twins.

"What do you mean by that?" Peter said as I felt Chris attempting to probe me.

"He's got voice, Peter," Chris said.

"Where's Charles?" I said as I noticed for the first time he wasn't there.

"Lower your shield or we'll break it down and enslave your ass!" Peter said after also probing me.

"Tell me where Charles is first," I said, knowing I didn't stand a chance without the share link.

"He's being taken to the infirmary.  Now this is your last warning!"

"Alright, alright," I said, lowering my pathetically weak shield when I saw he meant it.  "But I'm warning you not to go looking into my memories from last summer.  Unless you like throwing up or fai..."

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