On the last day of regular classes, I had a test.  A test.  I also had a final for that class two days later.  Is that stupid or what?  I can't tell you how tempted I was to correct that injustice.

Granted, Political Science wasn't my favorite class.  Whatever possessed me to take it, I didn't know, but I was determined to get an honest A in it.

I guess I shouldn't have blamed myself for letting my guard drop so much that I fell victim to the most unique and unusual attack I had ever encountered to that time, but it had been such rude awakening to how relaxed my defenses had become that I would never again go without a mental barrier like I had done all semester long.

I remember having difficulty with the essay portion of the test.  I kept spelling words wrong, but I don't know how many I actually corrected before falling under the pickle-pickle spell.

Yes, the pickle-pickle spell.

"Pickle, pickle, every pickle pickles, pickle to the pickle."

At least that's what I had written on my test before completely pickling out.  I can only imagine what I must have said out loud.

Now, I didn't stay under the spell for its whole duration.  No, nobody in the group came and snapped me out of it.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I guess you could say Joey did, but not in any way intentionally.

I had three tremendous shocks all within twenty seconds or so, the first was feeling the sharp hot pain of a bullet burrowing into my back and through my right lung.

After hitting the floor with my face, the sensations evaporated, and after I regained my senses enough to take inventory of my condition, I was then shocked again by the knowledge that besides a slightly bleeding lip, I was fully intact without holes in my body that weren't supposed to be there.

The instant obvious conclusion raced through my head, and in the time it took me to get back to my feet while gasping, "Joey," the third shock hit me as all of my classmates turned towards me muttering, "pickle," in various emotional voices.

Just hearing the very soothing and welcoming word caused me to lose my grasp on the situation a moment.  Actually this was somewhat of a saving for me, for during that moment I muttered the magic word myself, and the other pickled students lost interest in me.

My old instincts finally kicked in enough to make me raise a telepathic shield around my mind.  If I hadn't, I am certain I would have joined the others in their pickled existence and that I would never have forgiven myself for.

I was just trying to take in what was happening when several of my nearest classmates took notice of my lack of pickle muttering, astonishingly issuing several very crude telepathic commands with the intent on repickling me.

Within a couple of heartbeats, the others in the room seemed to become aware of my condition, and as I sensed their strangely charged symbols forming the same commands as the others had, I put up a false pickled personality and responded with an enthusiastic "pickle-pickle" in time to divert their massive attack.

I wasn't out of the woods yet, however.  They seemed disturbed by my shield and were constantly issuing verbal pickle queries to which I did my best to respond to.

After dissolving my false personality and mimicking their actions as best I could, I became increasingly desperate from the never-ending pickle demands.  My break came when I accidentally made full eye contact with one of them and was overwhelmed emotionally by their pickle-ness.  When I reflected that emotion back at them, the guy literally passed out from an overload of pickle-ness.

I was emotionally drained by the time I had knocked out the whole room, and it quickly became obvious that I wasn't done over-pickling people.  I could feel hundreds more all around me, and in fact that was all I could feel.  It was like the whole world was just a bunch of pickles.  But even if it was, I had to find Joey.  Pickled or not, he had to have been seriously injured for me to have felt it like that.

As I continued to assess the situation, I glanced at the time and was startled to find it was already a little after two in the afternoon.  My class had started at noon, meaning I had been a pickle for more than an hour.

Scanning the surrounding area didn't paint a very rosy picture.  There were pickles out in the hall, pickles in the surrounding classrooms, pickles outside, pickles above, pickles below, and with the sound of a groggy "pickle-pickle", I realized the pickles in the room were starting to wake up as well.

My instincts told me using a blanket command to keep the twenty or so classmates and its instructor under would be like putting a flashing target on my head, and seeing that I couldn't sense very far with all these pickles around me, my best option was to get the hell out of there.

I slowly opened the door and slithered out, immediately finding all twelve pairs of eyes in the immediate area of the hallway were focused on me intensely.

Mimicking their own actions and to some degree their thoughts, I calmly walked down the hallway thinking and muttering "Pickle, pickle," finding that while they didn't ignore me, they also didn't try to stop me, and that's all I really cared about at that point.

Walking down the steps to the main floor turned out to be impossible.  Apparently while pickles seemed to be quite capable of walking around, even running as I found out later, they didn't seem to grasp the concept of climbing or descending stairs.  There were anywhere from ten to thirty pickles clustered at the tops and bottoms of the stair cases with a few apparently stuck on the stairs in between floors.  They would have instantly seen me as a non-pickle if I had done something so unpicklely as going downstairs.

So I took the elevator.  It wasn't hard.  The single pickle in the elevator didn't seem to question the elevator's movements, and even seemed rather relieved to have another pickle wander in to swap pickle-pickle comments.

Sadly, I just wasn't pickle enough for her.  Heh.  After she became very dissatisfied with my pickleness, I had to resort to zapping her with my pickle stare, but got a nice feel of her bod as I helped her down to the ground.

I didn't have any further problems getting out of the building, but not ten feet away from the entrance I found an unconscious Eta who had been severely beaten.

The pickles around me became visibly agitated by my attention to a subdued non-pickle, and before I knew it, I was running from a small mob of pickles that had violent intentions towards me.

All I got to say is, thank God for steps.  It took me a couple of panicked dashes from one set of steps to another before I managed to fool the pickles at the opposite side of the steps that they didn't start to chase me.  Of course it was also rather difficult to find steps that they couldn't just walk up the slope beside them or get around some other way.

By the time I was walking among them without any of them chasing me again, I had seen at least four beaten people laying unconscious along the way and had to focus myself on just the "pickle-pickle" stuff while sneaking in a few thoughts in between about what I should do or where to go.

I wandered around a bit looking for a place to hole up, preferably with lots of stairs and doors I could lock.  Unfortunately, everywhere I went had pickles inside them, and I was about to try my luck at using a phone to call for help when I faintly sensed someone scanning the area from the newer physic's building.

Whatever it was that was doing this to people had the added effect of clouding my telepathic senses.  I felt like I was walking in a fog towards a faint flickering light that of course stopped just as I was starting to get a firm fix on it.

With pickles everywhere I went, I didn't dare probe for the source myself, and just made my way slowly into the building.  Since the source had been at least a floor or two up, I immediately looked for an elevator and found two, both with a large group of pickles around them.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a red horn of the fire alarm just above a glass door with a fire hose behind it.  Straining to keep my thoughts from racing while I was under the scrutiny of so many pickles, I came to the conclusion I needed to draw the attention of whoever was upstairs to me, and what better way than with horns and a few flashing lights.

You wouldn't think it would be that difficult to find one of those little red boxes that manually triggered the fire alarm, especially in a modern physics building where you expected people to blow things up once in a while.

I finally found one behind a big plant in the foyer, which in a way was a good thing since the plant hid me from the ever present eyes of the pickles around me, plus I was near the exit which had steps leading up to it and no ramp on that side.

The coolness of the chemical in the glass vial that broke when I triggered the alarm startled me, and between that, the noise of the alarm, and the probes from upstairs shooting out, the pickles in the foyer became very hostile towards me.

My route outside was blocked by a pickled Eta knocking over a plant in front of the doors as he moved in to probably pulverize me, and after only receiving a few scraping blows, I thrust myself out into the main hall and desperately dodged the pickles racing towards me, tripping them with their own feet or running them into the walls and each other, quickly running out of room as my telepathic activity brought them out in droves.

I was getting knocked around quite a bit and had lost where the stairs were when suddenly there was a ding of an elevator followed by...

"HEY YOU GUYS!  COME AND GET ME, YOU PICKLE HEADED SHIT FOR BRAINS!"

I almost got run over by the crowd of pickles running to silence the non-pickled voice, and I was so stunned by this it took me a good ten seconds to realize they had totally forgotten about me.

"RUN FOR THE STAIRS, IDIOT!" the muffled amplified voice said over the roar of "Pickle! Pickle!" just as I had turned to do so.

When I got to the stairs, I found not only the bottom clear of pickles, but the landings above also void of pickles despite knowing there had to be pickles up there somewhere.  I climbed to the first landing as quickly as I could, then paused a moment to get my breath back while straining my telepathic senses for my fellow pickle refugees.

A distant repetitive clanging drew my attention just as it stopped, and I held my breath listening anxiously, sensing it was a signal from my benefactors.  When the clanging returned, I concluded they were trying to tell me what floor they were on, but the damn fire alarm echoed really bad in the stairwells, and I just couldn't be sure if the clangs I heard were all clangs or echos of the alarm.

So I just started climbing, figuring that if nothing else, I could tell what floor they were on by the loudness of their clangs.  The building was eight floors plus a basement, but they stopped clanging when I reached floor three and didn't restart even when I got up to floor eight.

With pickles on each floor near the stairs, it hadn't been easy to slip by them without their notice, even with all the stairwell doors closed from the fire alarm going off.  I pondered on what to do next while sitting on the steps just below the eighth floor, and I came to the conclusion that being trapped in this building with who knows who wasn't going to help me find Joey and help him.

If it wasn't already too late.  An hour had already gone by since I awakened from my pickled state.  If Joey had been shot, he could have already bled to death by now, and that's only if whoever shot him hadn't finished him off before hand.

I looked up for some divine inspiration or, even better, a miracle, and after nothing immediate happened, I sighed and closed my eyes with the image of the 45 degree slope of the backside of another rise of stairs fading from my eyes.

I snapped my eyes open whispering to myself, "Stairs?  Stairs that go where?"

"The roof," I answered myself a moment later after climbing up the rest of the steps to the eighth floor and peering up to where the steps rose to.

The landing above had a metal ladder that went up to a hatch... that was padlocked.

"Damn.  I wish Joey was here," I muttered after climbing up and checking it out close up.  Joey was better at picking locks than I, not that Joey would have had any better luck with a padlock like that.

I was just about to climb down when I noticed the screws for the hinges were exposed, and in ten minutes, six of those were on the floor below me as I pushed open the hatch.  Or at least I pushed it open as far as the padlocked clasp would allow me to.

The opening was big enough for me to squeeze through, and once I had, I felt safe for the first time since I awoke from my pickled nap.

It's amazing what altitude can do for your perspective.  Passively scanning the area around and below me, I began to get a grasp of what was going on.  But before I get to that, I better explain some of the so called physics behind the magical power of telepathy.

Keep in mind this is highly theoretical and based entirely on my and my team's research into the inner workings of telepathy and its kin.  We have not yet worked out exactly how it all fits into the physics we are all familiar with, but that should all come in due time.

Every body of organized matter generates a... I'll call it field of energy for lack of a better term.  This field of energy represents the sum _state_ of that body, and this field pretty much dictates what that body can do in respect to the other bodies around it.  You can call it a life force, telepathic presence, an aura, or what have you.  Everything has a distinguishable field that's separate from its components, yet it is composed by those component's fields and changes when they change.

Everything we consider matter has this field.  From a single electron, to an atom, a molecule, a microbe, a red blood cell, a rock, a plant, an insect, a bird, a human being, a body of water, an island, a continent, a planet, a sun, a galaxy, and probably the entire universe if there is more than one universe out there.

For all matter, there's its mass and energy with its gravity and inertial forces, but only cold matter (that's matter near absolute zero) is so limited to those purely physical traits.  Warm matter is almost always undergoing reactions of some sort, whether chemical, atomic, or electrical.  The more diverse the reactions, the more descriptive the field, and at some point it crosses the line where you could call it "alive".

(There's are also some pretty interesting aspects concerning dark matter too, but if I tried to even begin to explain that here, I'd have another month long min-war within my team of experts again.)

Most organic species of our planet can sense changes of certain components of the life forces around them.  Take trees for instance.  Some types of trees that are upwind from a forest fire inexplicably wilt.  Flocks of birds fly as one, as do schools of fish swim as one.  Dogs, cats, and other animals sometimes can sense an impending earthquake hours before they happen.

And then there are people.  Humans.  Homo Sapiens.  Some people can sense when the phone is about to ring, others know they will be eating their favorite meal when they get home from work that night.  There's the psychic, the empathic, the telepathic, the very rare telekinetic and the extremely rare... uhm... whatever-you-want-to-call-Joey-with-his-share-link-ic.

Sorry Dave G.  The share link doesn’t' quite fall under being telesomatic or psychosomatic.  The share link only allows the balancing of states between two or more bodies, not alteration of their states.

Telepathy is based on the complex fields we all generate that are not just an aftereffect of the electrical impulses traveling through our body and brain.  These fields in a way actually define HOW the electrical impulses will travel before they do, and in that sense they define how we think and react to stimulus.

Emotion = chemistry with environmental factors.  Full empaths like the twins and lessly myself can sense and to some extent manipulate that "spectrum" of the human aura without needing our other senses.  But other senses do help a lot, and its easier and more conventional to use them, especially in my case.

Telekinetics is something that I have been...  Exploring I suppose.  No, I'm not causing things to float in mid air or anything of the sort.  For the context of this discussion, think of telekinetics as the ability to alter the cold matter physical traits of matter.  Making things float would require altering the gravimetric properties of the mass, or alternatively the inertial properties, but doing so for something as large as an object we can see requires tremendous amounts of energy that the human body cannot supply very long.

That is not to say it doesn't have its uses.  Telekinetics are great healers, for once they are trained to recognize foreign pathogens or cancerous tissues, they can kill them directly by exciting key molecules within their own cellular walls.  They tell me viruses are a bit trickier, and usually it is easier to just help the patient's immune system combat them rather than tracking them down themselves.  I'm nowhere near to being that good with telekinetics.  I'll be more than happy to just get enough electrons to flow to make this damn night-light bulb to light up.  They make it look so easy. <sigh>

Every human being alive has limited psychic, empathic, and telepathic abilities, but very few ever realize them, let alone learn how to control or use them.  Actually, that's a bit misleading.  Ninety nine point nine percent of the human race does not have the...  capability to control these powers at will.  However, most people do experience a few of them at least once in their life time, and perhaps three percent of the mute population do so, a few maybe even as often as twice a month.  There are so many random elements involved in triggering these abilities to surface momentarily in a mute that it is practically impossible to predict who, where, or when.

Anyway, getting back to the roof of the physics building at Central State, what I sensed below me was that different people emitted different levels of what I thought of at the time as telepathic energy.  What was significant was seeing how four or five people in the building emitted much greater levels of energy than the others, almost as if they were somehow generating the pickle field.

Feeling rather safe from the stair and ladder handicapped pickles, I decided to test this theory and attempt to knock out the nearest pickle emitter to see if the others around him were affected.  The pickles below me were quite agitated by my sudden telepathic burst, but besides causing a temporary shortage of blood to my target's brain to make him pass out, their fuming shouts of "pickle-pickle" and mad scampering underneath me was the only effect.

"Man I sure could use Midge right about now," I muttered after walking the perimeter of the roof and finding nothing but pickled people, some staring up at me.

A couple of robins swooping down from branch to branch gave me an idea, and in a few moments I was flying over the campus with great speed.

Altitude definitely made a difference.  The closer I flew toward the ground, the greater difficulty I had maintaining control over my borrowed feathered body, and twice lost my link when a building of pickles came between me and the bird.

I counted over twenty-five bodies lying out in the open on the campus, but none were Joey, which I was partially thankful for.  A few I recognized as possibly group members, but most I either didn't know, or couldn't see their faces.  I was almost positive a few of them were dead from the way they laid, and this made me even more desperate to find Joey.

Releasing the little sparrow I was using last, I closed my eyes and started building up a pulse I hoped would reach Joey if ...  I didn't let myself finish that thought, nor did I finish the pulse when I recalled the mental wandering I had experienced lately while asleep.

I sat down on the blubber-like roof Indian style and focused on feeling Joey out, recalling what his mind felt like, his body, his soul, even the scent of his cologne, the emotion behind his smile, the fear he felt when fighting for someone else's life...

'Wait a sec...  I never felt him feel that...  Joey?'

'Tim?!'

'Joey, where are you?'

'Safe.  Tim, find Suz.  I lost the link with her, but I can't leave them.'

'Leave who?'

'Neil, and some others.  They're hurt bad.  Share link helps.  Can't leave them.  Find Suz.  Please.  You got to find her.  She was running from them.'

That was all I had to hear.  I didn't think to check the female bodies.  I had been looking for Joey...  'Oh God, what if...'

As I rechecked the bodies, two things happened almost so quickly I almost missed them.  First of all, a body I hadn't noticed before suddenly sprang to his feet and bulldozed his way through a small crowd of pickles heading towards the court yard beyond the building across the street from me.

The second was the slight ripple of energy which flowed from the west towards the area surrounding him, and then rippled back out in all directions.

That’s when the gentle pickle-pickle sounds stopped and all hell broke loose.  People began spilling out of the buildings screaming nonsensical phrases at the terrified man, and it was when he flung his glasses at the crowd while lunging at them, I recognized him as Rich, my favorite gorilla.

"NO!" I screamed as I attacked the crowd with blanket command after blanket command, finding that while they weren't running away with terror like the blanket commands were instructing them to do, it did cause enough of a emotional conflict to stop their frenzied attack long enough for me to yell, "RICH RUN!  I'LL COVER YOU!"

But where to run, that was the question.  Everywhere I could see mad bloodthirsty students and staff spilled out of the surrounding buildings, none of which were the least bit slowed down by steps or even by each other.  For several moments it looked completely hopeless for Rich.

Rich wasn't about to go down without a fight, and seeing this made me focus my attention to helping him take down as many as he could.

And I wasn't alone.  The telepathic fog all but dissipated when the pickle spell ended and the mad crowd spell began, and from every direction trained telepaths started picking off the possessed mutes one by one.

Rich was starting to falter, however, and no matter how hard I and the others tried to knock the ones closest to him out, Rich kept getting pounded by the next wave.

In desperation, I took direct control of a Eta and began protecting Rich physically as best I could.  After handling an entire basketball team a year before, I managed to gain control of about seventeen people and just formed a wall around Rich.  The entire crowd was focused on Rich and Rich alone, and so they only tried to climb over my human wall.  Not one of them seemed to think about attacking one of my human planks to get to their objective.

Once the immediate threat to Rich was finally over, I focused my mind on finding Suzi.  With the telepathic fog lifted, I was getting a very bad feeling in my gut from my inability to locate her since she couldn't be very far away.

I had to find her.  I just had to find her.  With the amount of energy I was putting into my search, I felt I should have at least felt a vibe from her even if she had been transported to the other side of the moon.  Yet I felt nothing.  Nothing but a terrible emptiness.

As the last ripple of energy from the west released the remaining population from its spell and faded from my senses, an all-new emergency presented itself.  Thousands of mutes were awakening to a scene that quickly caused a huge panic, interfering with not just my own search for Suzi, but the group's attempts to help the seriously injured.

But it wasn't until someone realized that people were running away not just to get out of harms way, but to report what happened that containment became the number one priority.  Since I wasn't getting anywhere with all the confusion going on around me, I helped out the best I could, blanketing as many people as I could to forget the strange events of the day and to go about their normal business ignoring anything out of the ordinary.

It wasn't enough.  The sight of ambulances was welcome, but the police cars and even worse, the media made me glad I wasn't apart of the group, and therefore wasn't my problem.

Suzi's unknown location weighed heavily in my gut.  I had all but given up on finding her alive when after things had settled down and I gave the entire campus a full sweep, I still had not found any trace of her.

I rushed back to my apartment to try one last thing before giving up, and that was a dream walk.

Dream walk.  I didn't know what else to call it.  I seemed to have greater resolution while asleep, and hoped that even if she was dead I would find her that way.

Before laying down on the bed, I looked myself in the mirror and simply said, "This is not a joy ride.  This is for Suzi.  You know what you have to do.  Don't fail her."

I can't say I actually fell asleep completely, and there wasn't the usual imaginative transition to the world of symbols.  Just the great expanse of minds all around me in every direction, a great number of them unusually disturbed, but that wasn't my concern right then.  I was only interested in finding one mind.  One particular mind.

I floated in between minds of different spins and states, searching for something familiar.  Slowly at first, then running, I searched with a careful haste between the different bushes and trees in what became a great forest.

My legs were just starting to tire when I thought I smelt her briefly in the wind.  I pounced to a stop, then with my nose and tail up high, I filtering out all the natural forest scents and focused on finding Suzi's flowery scent.

It was there, but only just.  I carefully circled around with increasing radiuses until I could discern from which direction it came from, then very carefully made my way through the undergrowth, several times having to stop and backtrack to regain the scent.

The scent lead me to a dark corner of the forest where dead trees surrounded a patch of total blackness, reminding me of skeleton warriors guarding an evil magician's treasure.  My tail fell from the sense of death all around me, my worst fears apparently coming true.

I had to know.  I had to find her.  If not for me, for Joey.  So with unsteady legs I slowly treaded forward, following the sweet flowery smell inside the hollow dark center of death itself.

My senses deadened, and I felt increasing resistance to my advance inside.  But her odor was growing ever stronger, and even though I was quickly struggling just to inch forward, I could almost feel her...

The dream dissolved as I doubled my efforts to push through the barrier between us.  I was physically straining my muscles, sweating and breathing heavily, just as if I was truly pushing something very heavy up a steep incline.  The sound of my blood rushing through my veins was only a gentle reminder of the intensity of telepathic energy I was generating to keep the forward momentum to my probe.

Finally I was through enough to feel her mind, to touch her mind, finding it simply asleep.  I just barely managed to awaken her before the strain of pushing against whatever it was stabbed me in the center of my brain and I lost my lock on her.

I was just finishing my cusses and wiping my strain induced tears intending to go back and find out where she was when out of the blue I felt her presence pop up half way across campus.

Just as I opened a two way with her, a pulse of telepathic energy rolled out from the west like a fast moving storm.  The two way broke and as people all around campus began surging with the pickle-pickle spell again, I lost my fix on Suzi all together.

I ran out of the apartment and crossed the street dodging a couple of cars and a shuttle bus to reach the taller apartment building on the other side.  Thankful that the building had an elevator, I waited impatiently for the damn thing to reach the main floor, then rode it to the top floor where I raced to the roof's maintenance hatch where a volunteer was already prying it open for me.

The building was only five stories, but between it being outside the pickle spell's influence and the vastly reduced number of people inside the campus, I was able to penetrate the telepathic dampening effects of the pickle spell and hijacked one of its victims.

By jumping from pickled mind to pickled mind, I surveyed the general area where Suzi had been and found nothing.  Fearing it had been no accident that the pickle spell had restarted when Suzi had come out of hiding, I located the closest group member and opened a two way with them.  What I learned made me very anxious.

Whoever was doing this was after Joey's coin.  Once they realized that, Sarah came up with a plan to locate and trap the attacker, using the coin as bait and Joey's share link to Suzi as the line and hook.  The share link wasn't effected by the telepathic fog the pickles caused, and Suzi would appear to be the least threatening of the bunch both physically and telepathically.

The plan fell apart when the pickles attacked the medical complex before they were ready.  Suzi and Rich were already making their way towards what they had labeled the Cloak building when the pickles broke through the medical complex's doors and stormed the first floor of the building.  It was during that chaos that someone started shooting and a stray bullet hit Neil as he and Joey were retreating to the stairs.

Because the bullet's damage to Neil's body was, to a limited extent, shared with Joey and Suzi, Joey instinctively killed the share link, but found he couldn't restore it to Suzi when he relinked to another voice.

Somehow, Suzi managed to keep the pickle spell from taking control of her long enough for Rich to get her to the new construction site which was their destination to begin with.  After learning that a wood existed which telepathy could not penetrate, Sarah apparently had someone find a supply of this wood and was having a new facility built with it incorporated into the structure's furthest interior room's walls.  This was the Cloak building, and despite the building only having been started the previous week, the wood was already on the lot.

Rich had to not only build Suzi a protective box out of that wood, but also fight off the constant threat of pickles accidentally tripping over the foundation and falling inside the two foot wall what otherwise held the small mob of angry pickles at bay.

I apparently had telepathically burrowed in through one of the small air slots Rich had made so Suzi wouldn't suffocate.  Rich had guarded her until the pickles rushed him, and after circling the area to make sure they were leaving Suzi's box alone, Rich took off to get help before they could overwhelm him.  It was after a long game of hide and play dead that Rich reached the area I was in and got mobbed by the angry crowd.

The news that Suzi was out of her protective box was not what the group wanted to hear.  They were still licking their wounds and trying to keep the lid on things, and with Joey having left with Neil and a few others for the hospital, they assumed there was no way of tracking Suzi to the attacker's location.

I quickly corrected them on that assumption.  If I could find Suzi while she was inside a shielded box, I could find her now, I told them.  I also explained that the energy causing the pickle spell seemed to be coming from the west, so whatever their plans, they should take that in consideration.

At that point I was politely told to butt out, that it was a group affair and my help was not needed.  When I tried to argue with the guy, he said he was sorry but he had his orders, and I had mine.

One of the things I disliked the most about that rat every group member had in their head was the way it made them follow their instructions in a time of crisis without hesitation.  Yes, I could see the advantages to this, but at the same time this gave Sarah a hell of a lot of power.  There were safeguards built in to make sure she or anyone else couldn't use this for their own personal gains, but still... She was human.  She could make mistakes.

And so could I, I knew.  I stood on that roof staring at the western sky, teetering on the verge of casting off the self-imposed commands of not interfering while attempting to determine what was being done to find Suzi.  This madness had already claimed six lives, maybe more.  I couldn't stand the thought that I was helpless to protect Suzi from being the seventh.

Searching my feelings, I found there were things I could still do that wouldn't be considered interfering, yet wouldn't be just standing around leaving everything to Sarah's already blotched plan.  Finding an Eta as far west as I could reach in the murky pickle zone was difficult to say the least, but with a little help from my eyes in the sky I managed to find one and form a link.

Within seconds of establishing control over my borrowed body, a bolt of concentrated telepathic energy cut my link like an ax cutting a twig in two.  It had startled me, but I quickly reformed another link to another able body nearby, and this time paid careful attention to where the bolt came from.

Oh, whoever they were, they were good.  The bolt came from a slightly different direction, but it was still west from my rooftop.  Three more links gave me an approximate location, but without a stable link to someone in the area, I couldn't figure out what else I could do with this information.

What I needed was someone who I could direct to the source without losing contact with them and could shield themselves from the pickle spell.  My choices were very slim.  I had Rich or Perry, a group member, or some Joe Smo off the street.

Rich's and Perry's immunity was ideal in that they couldn't be pickled, but that strength was also their handicap.  I couldn't tell them where to go if they couldn't receive my thoughts.

Since all the group members knew I was not to interfere, I was certain none of them would help, not even my drinking buddies.  Of course I wouldn't have asked them in the first place since they weren't experienced enough to go into combat like this.

I had already tried the Joe Smo idea, so without much choice I did a little mind hopping over to the old admin building.

Everyone inside except Perry was pickled of course.  He had locked the entrances, bared the doors at the top of both stairwells, and had the entire bottom floor to himself.  Unfortunately he was apparently napping in his office at the time, and was completely oblivious to my shouts from both the outside and the upstairs.

I ended up calling him on the phone.  Man, if he isn't the crankiest person when awakened from a nap.  I didn't even get a word in before he hung up, and when I tried calling back, the phone just kept ringing.  (Apparently he ripped the phone cord out of its jack and just went right back to sleep.)

So I only had two options left.  Remove the commands that kept me in the groups confidence and go myself, or persuade Rich Bugle to help me.  I decided to try the latter first despite my doubts he would even consider it.

Rich was holed up in the medical complex getting his cuts and bruises tended to while recovering from a slight concussion.  I couldn't mind hop into there since all the mutes had been kicked out of the building the moment the pickle spell stopped the first time, and to hop into a group member wasn't permitted.  So I used the old faithful telephone again after looking up the extension number from a directory Joey had given Suzi months ago.  Mind you, I had to have someone break into her apartment to get it, but I didn't think Suzi would mind in this instance.

"Rich, I know this is a lot to ask, but Suzi needs your help."

"Suzi?  Who is this?"

"Uhm...  The guy from the roof."

"The guy...  You saved my life."

"Yeah, I guess.  Look.  There isn't much time.  Joey told me to find Suzi, and I will, but right now she could be walking right into the hands of enemy, and without you..."

"Alright..  What do I do?"

"So you'll help me?"

"I was supposed to protect her and I couldn't.  If you can get me to her, I'll do what I can."

"Cool.  Okay.  Now all we need is a radio or something so we can communicate.  Any ideas?"

Five minutes later, I met Rich out back in another borrowed Eta, he bringing the walkie-talkies and I the transportation.

"I can't ride that!" he immediately objected when he saw the motorcycle.

"Why not?  Just think of them as a big fast noisy bicycle."

"Fuck that.  There has to be something else."

"Nothing that can cut through the court yards and in between buildings," I said, handing him a helmet.

"But I've never even been on a motorcycle before," he said, handing me my walkie-talkie and hesitating before putting on the helmet.

"All right.  Let me think a second," I sighed.

Reaching out to the nearest pickles, I picked a freshman girl whose petite body suited me, grabbed control over her and took off running for the nearest stairs.  The nice thing about me being so far away was, I could safely blanket the other pickles in the area without other pickles getting worked up.  Unfortunately, it wasn't easy to keep a lock on my borrowed bodies with so many pickled minds between us and I momentarily lost my lock on the first body.

I have to give Rich credit.  He had fast reflexes.  By the time I reestablished my hold over my Eta, Rich had him in a sleeper hold.

"Stop!" I cried from my other body as she turned the corner.  "I've got control over him again!"

"Who are you?" he said warily, loosening his strangle hold just a tad.

"I'm your chauffeur," I had the freshman girl say while throwing her arms and hands over her head and striking a pose.  "You like?"

"Kinda...  small, aren't you?"

"The lighter we are, the faster we are," I said grouchily, her hands now on her hips.  "I could have picked this skinny freckled face nerd boy, but I thought you'd appreciate a feminine figure to grope as we rode."

"Thanks, but I'd rather have someone like him as a riding partner into battle," Rich said while passing the helmet to my Eta body.

"You don't understand.  I can't hold a link with anyone once we get kind of close.  That's why we need the walkie-talkies.  I can only drive you so far, then you're going to have to take over.  The girl is just to give you a chance to get used to the bike a little before you have to drive it yourself."

"Great.  So I'm going in without any backup?" he said as I put the helmet on my female head and we climbed on the cycle.

"I wouldn't say that.  I'll be watching you the whole time and I should be able to knock out any ground resistance there is if they aren't shielded.  Besides, the plan is to make sure Suzi doesn't get hurt and that they don't take her with them.  We'll leave everything else to the group."

"What about the coin?" he shouted after I started the engine.

"To hell with the coin.  Six people have died over it already.  It's not..."

"All right, all right.  But just so you know, they found another one right before it all started up again.  It's seven, not six."

"Fuck!  Hang ON!" I shouted as I peeled out.

Weaving our way through the walkways and the few pickles still wandering about, I almost enjoyed the thrill and excitement of the ride.  It wasn't just the ride that was exciting me either.  I realized it hadn't been such a great idea to pick a small body for this huge gorilla of a man to cling to...  Just shifting our weights back and forth in the turns was making me hornier by the second.

I tried concentrating on showing him how to shift, and once he seemed to get the feel for it, I rode the remaining five-minute journey struggling to keep my arousal under control.  That actually got easier the farther we went due to the increasing difficulty of maintaining the link with her body at a level that wouldn't draw the attention of the visiting team players.

By the time I stopped and got off, my control over her body was reduced to operating her a lot like a robot.  I could see through her eyes, hear through her ears, and had enough sensory information to keep her balance and direct her arms and legs, but I was disconnected from the rest of her body and never knew if he actually did take a quick grope before I got off the bike.

Once Rich got going, I released my hold over her completely and concentrated on watching him and feeling Suzi out.

Bolts of telepathic energy carrying command symbols started hailing down on Rich a minute later as he got closer.  I doubt Rich was even was aware of them, and they didn't have the slightest effect, but I still held my breath while I waited to see if they would.

The energy flowing from the west surged a moment, then stopped, but within seconds of feeling the reduced strain to my telepathic faculties, I felt a probe targeting me personally.

If I hadn't prepared the fake personality before hand, there was no way I could have raised it before the probe's querying symbol payload reached my mind.

My fake personality was constructed to appear to be a zombie acting as a conduit for hiding the true location of a telepath.  Considering that is what this person or persons had done when scouting out the campus weeks before, they wouldn't be surprised to find someone else using the same trick.

What I hadn't considered was they had a counter to this form of protection, but luckily they just didn't do it right.  Before I knew what was happening, they used an old trick of mine, releasing a small amount of my own urine into my bloodstream which made me very faint and sick as a dog.

Telepathy can't stop the effects of blood poisoning, but I wasn't unconscious, and after a few minutes I recovered enough to form a link with another pair of eyes in the sky.

Rich was getting pretty good controlling that bike.  He was dodging the things thrown at him by what few people there were that far away from campus, but he apparently had lost his bearings and was heading a bit too far to the north.

I had trouble forming a link with someone near the walkie-talkie, and was seriously sweating it while fighting the loss of my hold on my senses as my body wanted to faint.  A jolt of adrenaline helped keep my grip on consciousness, but it made my nausea worse, which was really getting hard to ignore.

"Rich, over to you right more," I groaned into the walkie-talkie with a new borrowed voice.

"What?"

"You're going too far north.  Turn towards...  your right."

"You find Suzi yet?!"

"No, I've been...  busy."

"Fuck!  They're shooting at me!"

I zombified my borrowed body so it wouldn't wander away, then mind hopped as far west as I dared before visually searching for Rich and the person with the gun.

Instead I spotted Suzi and three Eta bodyguards heading up this hill away from the activity.  Someone was somehow masking their minds from my telepathic senses, but this also meant they couldn't be in active control of the four zombies.  I would have detected the symbolic control streams if they had been there.

Using my eyes in the sky, I strained my abilities as far as I dared in the condition I was in to see if I could locate where Suzi and the others were heading, and to my surprise my link with the barn sparrow was severed by bolt directly below.

"Rich, I've found Suzi.  She's just reaching the top of the hill to your far right."

Nothing.

"Rich, can you hear me?"

Nothing again.

"Look, if you can hear me, Suzi's heading over the hill by the three tall trees to the south west.  Rich, do you read?"

"Damnit we're so close!" I moaned with my own mouth.

"A little of that help would be good right now!" the walkie-talkie spat suddenly.

"Roger!"

"Well, in for a penny," I groaned while forming as many links with as many birds in that area as I could and sending them in every direction.  I quickly found Rich who had ditched the bike somewhere and was trying to get his breath back after having just knocked out two men who must have come from the other side of the hills.

Rich suddenly hit the dirt, and after circling several birds around the area, I spotted the rifleman.  After unsuccessfully attempting to take control of him directly, I just made his finger fire his riffle until he was out of shells.

"He's out.  Run while he's reloading!" I yelled into the walkie-talkie.

"Which way is Suzi?!"

"Southwest."

"Which fucking direction is that!"

"Look up!" I said as I put my birds into a V formation pointing towards the hill where I last saw Suzi.

"Oh shit," I gasped as I felt multiple minds probe for me.

"Tim!  Are you doing that?" Terrence thought to me.

"That depends.  Doing what?"

"Never mind.  Just keep doing it!  You're distracting them."

"Okay..." I thought back to an already closed thought channel.

"God Damnit!  Will you fucking take that guy out!" Rich's voice screamed over the walkie-talkie.

"Roger.  I'll do my best," I said nervously.

In order to break the hold over the rifleman, I would have to use a greater amount of telepathic energy than I had been using which would be easily traceable back to me.  Exposing myself to the enemy like that meant I would be risking my life to help him.

But I reasoned that Rich was already risking his life, and he was doing this by my suggestion.  I was responsible for his life, and if one of us was to die, I should be the one.  Not that I wanted or planned to die, mind you.

Using my fleet of eyes in the sky, I got a fix on the rifleman, picked out the faint control stream, and traced it back to its source.  Using the same disabling trick as they had tried on me, I triggered the release of urine into the man's blood, but I got the dosage right and he passed out instantly.

Rich didn't take any chances.  The moment the rifleman staggered and dropped his gun, Rich leapt from his cover, hauled his ass across the field, and tackled the poor dazed man, knocking him out cold.

I only had enough time to become a little queasy from Rich picking up the gun and taking it with him before my eyes in the sky got disrupted one by one as I felt an angry probe focusing upon me.

The single attack stream that followed the probe was surprisingly easy to counter.  It wasn't very sophisticated; in fact it was almost insulting to have to counter it at all as simple as it was.

But what the stream lacked in sophistication, it nearly made up with just the raw power driving it.  Normally I can push back an attack once I get synced up with the symbol flow, but in this case, I barely could keep up.  The symbols just came so damn fast.

I was actually starting to lose a little ground when there was an explosion of telepathic activity in the hills just beyond my telepathic vision.  This knocked my attacker off guard long enough for me push the intersection of our two canceling symbolic streams well past the mid point between us, and at that point the stream was cut off to prevent me from tracing it all the way back to its source.

Huffing for breath, I sat up and took a moment to survey what was going on.

"Looks like the troops finally got their act in order," I muttered before closing my eyes and reaching out to my eyes in the sky again.

"Rich.  Follow the birds.  I say again.  Follow the birds.  You're getting close."

"Rich.  It looks like they're getting ready to leave.  I don't think they are planning to take Suzi with them."

"Watch it when you get over the hill.  I think the three Eta's and Suzi will try and jump you."

"Who has the coin?" Rich radioed back.

"Who cares?"

"Damnit bed wetter!  I'm not going to just let them get away with what they came for!  Tell me who has the coin!"

"What are you going to do?  Shoot them?"

"If I have to!  Now tell me who has it!"

"I don't know!"

"Are you telling me the mighty Tim Brandon has lost his magical sight?!  I knew Joey was exaggerating that you could see the stuff coming out of the coin from a mile away."

I was stunned a moment by his revelation that he knew it was me, that he must have known since the beginning.  But for some reason once the shock wore off, he getting my last name wrong ticked me off.

"Fine!  It's the one in the chair!  The little one!"

I watched from above as Rich scrambled around the hill to come up behind a tree, then I held my breath praying he wouldn't actually shoot as he took aim.

The person in the chair hadn't moved since I first spotted the group from above, while the others had climbed into a minivan and were apparently fighting off the group's combined attack from within there.

Rich kept taking aim, then looking over the gun at his target with both eyes, then taking aim again.  He did this five or six times before crawling back away from the tree several feet then rolling down the hill a bit to where he left the walkie-talkie.

"Are you sure she's the one with the coin?"

"Yeah I'm sure!"

"I swear if you're lying to me, I'll beat the living shit out of you," he threatened.

"Why would I lie about something like this?!"

"Because you know I can't shoot a little girl!"

"What?!"

"I can't shoot a little girl!"

I swooped one of my aerial eyes down for a closer look, then swooped down even more when no one disrupted my link.

I landed my bird ten feet away from the small figure who was sitting in a wheel chair, then carefully hopped closer studying the features not hidden behind the impossibly black glasses she wore.

Rich was right.  It was just a little girl, probably no older than Tommy, sitting there with the coin clasped between her hands that were otherwise laying limp in her lap.  She didn't move, not even when I flapped my wings and then did a little chirp that was a favorite of mine.

So I probed her.

Holy shit did she throw a hard punch!  I didn't even feel it coming.  The next thing I knew, Joey was kneeling down beside me gently slapping my cheek to wake me up.

"You all right?" Joey asked as I sat up with a killer headache.

"Uhgn...  What time is it?" I groaned, noticing it was dark out.

"A little after ten.  Can you stand?"

I spit a foreign object out of my mouth that must have blown in during my... uhm... nap, then said, "I don't think I want to try.  Is Suzi okay?"

"She's fine.  She was bouncing off the walls worried about what happened to you."

His voice was tired, but more than that, it was down.  That could only mean...

"Neil?"

"He lost a lot of blood and it was pretty scary for a couple of minutes, but he's stable now."

"Oh.  Good.  For a moment I thought..."

"Seven people died, Tim, possibly more.  The police are all over the place trying to make sense of what happened, it's all over the news, and now the FBI is getting involved.  It's all over.  You and Suz should just pack up your stuff and go home."

"You know neither Suzi or I are going anywhere without you."

"I know... But I wish I never brought you two into this."

I groaned a moment while rubbing my temples trying to reduce my pounding head, then said, "It's been a long day.  You're tired, I'm tired, and I'm sure Suzi's tired.  We're not going to make sense of things or make things any better while we're like this."

"I have to go back to help Sarah in little bit.  I..."

"What?"

"I need someone to link to."

"Oh please yes.  This head is killing me."

Joey's emotions were raging a private war within him, and after over a minute of silence passed without any sign of him forming a share link, I tugged on his arm for him to sit down next to me and said, "Link, then talk."

"All right," he sighed.

As my headache faded and we traded our different kind of fatigues until they were at equilibrium, my dulled empathic senses perked up and explained what was going on inside Joey's head.

"How can you blame yourself for this mess?" I asked him incredibly.

"It was my coin she was after.  If I had just given it to her..."

"Like Sarah would have let you."

"Leave Sarah out of this!" Joey said defensively.  "She's done everything she could do to protect us.  It isn't her fault we get attacked two or three times a month by power hungry... thieves!"

"So that makes it your fault?"

"No..."

"Then why are you torturing yourself about it?"

"Because Neil got shot, I put Suzi in danger, and then I had you risk your neck to finish what I had started."

"Let's just get some things straight here.  Did you in any way cause the gun to go off that shot Neil?"

"Well... No."

"Did you order Suzi to be the hook for the bait?"

"You know no one can order her around like that."

"Did you volunteer her?"

"No!  She volunteered for it herself."

"Then when I risked my neck, I did it for her, not because you asked me to."

"Shit, I know all that.  I just...  If it wasn't for me, you, Neil, and Suzi wouldn't have been here to get hurt in the first place."

"Next thing you'll say is if you hadn't come to Central state, bringing your coin, those seven people wouldn't be dead."

"Shit...  You know, you're not helping by saying things like that."

"But by continuing that logic, those seven people wouldn't have died if I hadn't given the coin to you in the first place."

"So now it's your fault.  That doesn't make it feel any better."

"So then does it matter whose fault it is?  Seven people are dead because we made choices, innocent choices that no one can fault us for, that just so happened to play a role in causing this mess.

"Besides, if it's anyone's fault, its John's."

"John's?" Joey queried, looking over at me.  "Oh...  Heh.  Yeah, I guess it is all John's fault."

"He did find the damn thing."

"Well then... If your dad hadn't given you yours, John wouldn't have recognized mine at the coin shop."

"Now why didn't I think of that," I chuckled.  "I guess your mom was right.  It's always the dad's fault."

Joey's grin faded, and despite in his heart he knew it really hadn't been his fault, he still verbalized the strongest emotion he felt right at that moment.

"It should have been me."

There simply was nothing I could say to ease his suffering, and I knew it.  An empathic link would have temporarily helped, but in the end that would only delay Joey having to deal with this in his own way.

So I did what any normal person could do.  I hugged him, and nearly got the shit squeezed out of me when he hugged me back.

Joey and I were both startled when Suzi kneeled down beside us, neither of us having detected her coming up on the roof during the hug.  Worried, relieved, and just a tad ticked off that we hadn't contacted her, Suzi waited patiently several long moments as we just stared at her in stupefied shock, then punched us both in the upper arms to get us to let her into the hug.

We not only took her into the hug, but Joey also formed a share link with her with a block to prevent our own fatigue from affecting her.

"Damnit, why can't they just leave us alone?" Joey bellowed as we all suddenly sensed the group's probes searching for them to give them the alarm.

"I'm going with you," I said as Joey made contact and queried for details.

"Timmy, I know you just want to h..." Suzi began.

"I think you better come," Joey interrupted her.

"Why?" I asked a bit nervously.

He looked at me with worried eyes and said, "The Cabal are on campus."

"Joey, this isn't necessarily a bad thing," I said as we raced over to the medical complex in Suzi's car.  "The whole purpose of the Cabal is to prevent the knowledge of the existence of voice from getting out.  With their resources, they can probably fix everything."

"Can they bring people back to life?" Joey snapped sarcastically.

"You know what I mean," I said carefully.  "They can help handle the press, the police, and the FBI."

"Yeah, and break up the Group too."

"What?"

"That's what the emergency's about.  They're demanding that we either break up the group permanently, or they'll permanently disable all our voices."

"Shit.  Can they do that?  I mean, how many of them can there be?" Suzi asked.

"Potentially a lot," I explained.  "The Cabal is a loose organization of telepaths from all over the continent, maybe even the world, I'm not sure.  All they really care about is preventing this massive witch-hunt by mobs of mutes if the world ever found out telepaths existed and what they can do.  If they decide the Group is a threat to that, they can call upon a shit load of power to get the job done."

"Of course they don't fucking care that we were only defending ourselves," Joey spat.  "They'd merrily stand by and watch us all go under if we're quiet enough about it, but make too much noise and we become public enemy number 1.  Fuckers."

"Joey, do you know if the Inquisitor is in charge of this?"

"No idea.  Sarah, Stan, Alex, and I think Rich are all in the main conference room with two cabal and two escorts of some kind.  I'm not even sure if we'll be allowed in."

"Alex is there, but not Wally?"

"Wally's been at Northwest all week for some pet project he's been messing with, but I imagine he's on his way here now.  Since Alex pretty much runs Northwest State, I guess he's involved in the meeting to represent them."

"How many voices are at Northwest now?" I asked.

"Eight, I think."

"Eight?!?" I choked.

"What?"

"Why only eight?  Don't they get attacked too?"

"Uhm...  I think one time last year they did.  Not much happens at Northwest."

"Doesn't that seem strange to you?"

"Never really thought about it," Joey shrugged as Suzi put the car into park and shut off the motor.

We went into the medical complex docking bay door and had to step around all sorts of debris strewn about from the earlier pickle attack.  The debris was everywhere, and only when we reached the main hall was there a clear path, basically from the main doors to the two primary staircases and the elevators.

While waiting for an elevator to arrive, Joey turned to Suzi and said, "Maybe you shouldn't come up, Suz.  Maybe... Maybe you should just go back to your apartment, pack and leave."

"I'm not leaving you," she said firmly.  "Nothing is going to happen.  We haven't done anything wrong."

"Please?"

"No.  You're being overprotective."

"Tim, don't you think it would be safer if..."

"Timmy, tell him he's being..."

"Don't get me in the middle of it," I exclaimed, throwing up my hands.

"Some help he is," Joey remarked to Suzi.

"He's been squeamish ever since he died," Suzi agreed.

"Fine.  If you really want to know what I think," I said as the elevator arrived and I stepped in.

"Timmy!" Suzi yelled as she and Joey tried to move their frozen feet.

"This isn't funny!" Joey exclaimed.

As the doors closed without them, I thought back to them, "Considering neither one of you are true voices and they can't silence them the normal way, I think you both should go home and get some rest and just let Sarah and the others work things out."

"Then what are you going to do?!?" Joey thought back.

"Nobody but me can represent me.  I'm not in the group, remember?  If Alex has a right to be there, so do I."

"Well we're just going to follow you up there," Suzi warned.

"Go ahead.  You wanted my opinion, I gave it," I said as the elevator doors opened and I stepped out into an unfamiliar hallway.

"Uhm, Joey?"

"What!"

"How do I get to the conference room?"

"You'll have to follow me," he said out loud, stepping out of the elevator next to the one I had just left.

"Oh," I said, trying to avoid Suzi's fuming stare.

"You know I hate it when you make decisions for all of us," she said, hitting me on the arm as we followed Joey down the hall.

"Let's see.  The way I see it, if I had taken sides, we probably would still be standing outside the elevator arguing.  Instead I delayed us a whole twenty seconds by playing a little trick and getting you to come to a decision.  I could have broken the share link then commanded you both to go home if I had really made the decision for you."

"So you thought I was being overprotective," Joey complained.

"No.  I think you both should go home.  But I'm not going to make that decision or any other for you."

"You're right, Suz.  Dieing HAS made him more squeamish."

As we turned a corner, I focused my attention towards the thirty or so clusters of symbols ahead of us and picked out the seven which were isolated from the others geographically.

"Looks like Wally's beat us here," I remarked after recognizing his swirls from the others before checking out the swirls of the four visitors.

I stopped in my tracks when I realized that two were in close sync with each others.

"What is it?" Joey asked just as Suzi bumped into him when he stopped too.

"The escorts are twins.  Gladius twins."

"Twins?"

My eyebrows shot up in further surprise as I noticed the different neurological pattern to their bodies, then added, "Male twins."

"Male twins?" Suzi repeated with interest.  "Eww..  this could be..."

"You're not going in there," Joey said parentally.

"If I'm not, you're not," Suzi said just as parentally.

"Well I am," I said as I stepped past them and headed for the crowd waiting outside the conference area.

Unfortunately, the crowd, not to mention the two guards, didn't see things my way.  They were all very tired and stressed, so I couldn't blame them for being so rude about it, but they didn't seem to understand that...  That...  Well, I guess I didn't really have any more right than they did to be in there, but at the time I sure felt I did.

Once I saw I wasn't getting in, I cried, "All RIGHT!", channeling my anger into an empathic pulse to make them all to jerk back away from me.  I hate it when people get in your face like that.

As I started walking back to where Joey and Suzi were standing, the room suddenly got very quiet, then I felt an all too familiar empathic greeting.

I turned around a bit hesitantly, but gave the two male twins the expected empathic reply, almost as automatically as saying "hello" when picking up a ringing phone.

I had never met these fully adult empathic male twins before, yet I felt I knew them, and they knew me.  I guess I hadn't realized how much I had picked up over the summer living in the nursery where all Gladius's empathic twins learned their traits and skills.  There was a particular empathic protocol twins used when encountering other twins they didn't know, something I had picked up on, but hadn't been able to quite comprehend or emulate while in the Nursery.   Or at least not before I had drank that potion and twinned with Eric, and after that I hadn't come into contact with any twins that I already wasn't familiar with.

From that moment on, I trusted them.  As disturbing as that may sound to you, I knew no matter what their master or mistress may order them to do, they simply could not betray the trust of another twin, even a twinless twin as myself.

"Timmy?  You're not really thinking about going in there with them, are you?" Suzi's voice said from somewhere behind me.

"It's okay, Suz.  They can't hurt me any more than Joy could hurt Honey," I said, my words causing the twins quite a bit of amusement, which I was the only person in that room who could detect it.

I opened a partial one way to both Joey and Suzi as I walked up to the twins, then was surprised when the twins turned and opened the doors for me.  In my experience, twins expected others to open doors for them, not the other way around.  My surprise also seemed to amuse them, but they were not amused at all when the two guards refused to allow me to go in.

The guards were trembling at the knees within seconds, erasing any question that male empaths were just as powerful as their softer looking sisters.

"It's okay, guys," Sarah sighed.  "He can come in.  We're done for tonight."

Wally gave me a friendly nod as he and Alex past me to explain to the others outside what was going on, and from the expressions he and Alex wore, I assumed it wasn't going to make them happy.

Stan was standing behind Sarah's chair rubbing her shoulders as she listened to a middle-aged woman wearing a very colorful blouse and a ton of jewelry describing something about blind children.

The Inquisitor came back into the room from apparently using the attached restroom, and as he walked up to me, the twins stepped to either side of me which puzzled the both of us.  That was the standard position which twins took when protecting their master or mistress from possible threats.

"Charlene, call off your pets," the Inquisitor said patiently to the woman.

"Well well...," the woman cooed as she got out of her chair and walked up to me all smiles.  "Charles, darling.  Introduce us, won't you?...  Boys..."

As my empathic brothers took their positions on either side of her, Charles grunted his contempt before saying, "Timothy Brandton-Grodmen, Charlene Stewart-Joules."

"Charmed," she said overflowing with eagerness, holding her hand out limply for me to kiss.

"A pleasure," I said after giving her hand a peck, then glanced at the Inquisitor a moment hoping he'd enlighten me with what was going on.

All I got was a shrug.

"Well, if we're done here..." Sarah interrupted.

"Yes, yes, you may leave now, dearie."

Sarah's look of resentment towards her only lasted a few moments before the twins turned around and hurried her and Stan out with a simple glance.

"Would you mind getting us a drink, Charles?  The poor boy looks as if he's parched, and I know I am."

When the Inquisitor folded his arms and didn't move, the twins took it upon themselves to carryout her wishes.

"Uh, thanks.  I guess I am a bit thirsty," I confessed as one twin poured and the other dropped cubes of ice into a second cup.

The Inquisitor motioned for me to take a seat, which both I and Charlene did, but he remained standing.

"What's going to happen to the group?" I asked directly as the twins brought over the drinks.

"That has yet to be decided," the Inquisitor said, watching the twins as they stood just behind both Charlene and me.  "Since your friends are being more or less cooperative, we are helping them with the damage control before dealing with the exact details."

"So you're not necessarily going to force the Group to break up?"

"From what I understand, you're not apart of this organization."

"No I'm not.  But that doesn't mean I want to see it broken up.  Is that still your intention?"

"Just think of it as downsizing," Charlene answered for him.  "In any case, if everyone stays as cooperative as their leader has been so far, I'm sure we'll find a solution that will suit the majority.  Now, why don't we just move on to the next piece of business so Timothy...  May I call you Timothy?"

"Uh, sure.  Most people call me Tim, though."

"Oh, but you will most certainly find out that I am not like most other people.  Charles, I believe you had something else to discuss with Timothy?"

The Inquisitor's suspicious eyes glanced from her, to me, then very briefly at the two twins before saying, "What do you know about the man who is supposedly helping restore old slaves back to a normal life?"

"Who Perry?"

"Yes, if that's what he's calling himself here."

"Uhm, he's just this ancient guy who's immune to voice, walks with a cane that has switchblades in the end, and basically runs the cleaning program and takes care of the ressies...  Uh, the severely enslaved cases.  Why are you asking about him?"

"This Perry is very likely a well known assassin of voices.  He has a price on his head, so he usually stays clear of potential trouble spots like this.  The fact that he's still here makes me believe he's up to something."

"Is that why they're here?" I asked, indicating the twins.

"They are here because I am here," Charlene clarified.  "Not to make old men repent for their crimes."

"Well, I can't read him at all, telepathically or empathically.  But I guess I really haven't tried to since he's quite capable of castrating me if he thought I was.  I'm not really sure what I can do to help you.  He'd be a hard nut to crack."

"I'm not asking you to do anything, just keep your eyes open and be careful if you have to deal with him at all.  He has a long record of killing in cold blood, mostly without warning or provocation.  He's not to be trusted for a moment."

"Enough," Charlene announced.  "The hour is late, and now that business is done, let us send Timothy on his way so he can get his rest, and us ours, hmmm?"

The Inquisitor held his tongue, but only barely as she stood and held her hand out to me to walk me to the door.  Once I saw the Inquisitor wasn't going to object, I got up and allowed her to lay her arm across my back and walk me to the door like I needed her support to make it that far.

Just before we reached the door, she said very softly, "Now do go and get some rest and perhaps the boys and I will stop by in the morning to answer any more questions you might have.  Would you like that?"

Obviously there was an ulterior motive to her offer, but the vibe I got from her told me it wasn't anything malicious, and in fact just the opposite.

If nothing else, I agreed out of curiosity.  But then again I also planned on keeping her to her word about answering any questions I would have.

Suzi met me at the elevator before we went down a floor to wait for Joey get out of the briefing Sarah and Wally were holding.

"Joey and I will be out all night blanketing the town with the others," Suzi said while we rode the elevator.

"Then I guess I'll be sleeping for the three of us tonight," I said while giving her back a rubbing.

"I wish you could," she sighed.

"I was serious."

She looked up at me and said, "You know it doesn't really work that way, and even if it did, then you'd be just as tired as we were in the morning.  You need to be on your toes when you're asking 20 questions tomorrow.  Joey can just link with someone else tonight."

I sighed, then said, "Alright.  Have it your way.  I guess I just miss having the link to you two.  It's like a hot line.  I know you're both okay every minute of the day."

Joey's commands diverted her natural response to hug me, and that angered me to the point where I almost tore the damn things out.  I didn't, and didn't try to clear up her confusion as to why I was suddenly in a bad mood.

When Joey and the other group members came out, I tried to talk him into keeping the link open with me and just putting a block on it to keep them from draining my energy as I slept.  But like Suzi, he wanted me to be as fresh as I could be the next morning, but he still made me memorize all the questions he personally wanted answered before cutting the share link and letting me go to sleep.

I got my sleep out, all right.  Woke up a little after nine and threw off the covers intending to get up, then next thing I knew the clock said ten forty three.

My head was full of cobwebs for sleeping so late, so after turning on the shower to warm up, I went out to the kitchen to grab a glass of orange juice while absently stroking my semi-hard member.

Extremely relaxed, I let my anything-but-little buddy lead the way back to the bathroom after gulping down the juice, but nearly jumped out of my skin when Charlene said from the recliner, "Good morning, precious.  You all rested up and full of spunk again?"

"How did you get in here?" I sputtered while silently commanding a down boy.

"Is that really important?" she asked while standing up, turning slightly to the right and stretching, making every inch of her leotard and leather outfit mold itself to her feminine curved shape.

She was obviously delighted to see her little stunt had the desired effect, but I ignored my restored hardon and asked straight out, "What do you want from me?"

"Oh silly man," she said walking up to me.  She ran her hands up my tummy and chest to my face, my hormones freezing me from pushing her away.  She swirled her fingers through my hair as she gently and honestly said "You go shower, then we shall eat a nice hot breakfast and talk about anything you want to talk about."

"But..."

"Shhh...  Go..." she said, gently kissing me on the tip of my nose.

I dazedly turned to do what she asked, and while in the shower, I couldn't keep my dick limp with the image of her stretching flashing into my head all the time.  I had no doubt in my mind she was using my hormones against me, yet she wasn't doing it to cloud my mind as much as...  Something else that just wasn't clear to me yet.

I was very tempted to go out there without any clothes on, but some part of my brain was still working enough to talk the rest of it to at least putting on something, even if it was only a pair of sweats.

Stuffing my hardon into the tightest, most ragged pair of jeans I owned almost proved impossible, especially since I was feeling pretty kinky and wasn't bothering with underwear.

I strode out into the living area in my skin-tight jeans, bright florescent green-yellow surf shirt, and bare feet feeling all macho and sexy, and then froze in disbelief at the sight of the male twins cooking while Charlene set the table for four.

"Well, now isn't that outfit...  unique," Charlene said with a touch of sarcasm.

"I uh...  Uh...  I'll be right back."

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," I swore to myself as I struggled to peel off my jeans.  "Rule three to catching an older woman's eye.  Dress accordingly.  God, how the fuck did I get these on!"

Five minutes later, my discarded jeans were now cutoffs and I wore a more spacious sized pair of jeans, a polo shirt, and socks (but still didn't put on the underwear).  The omelet and funny looking pieces of toast were already on the table, but the twins were just sitting down from having served it.

"Smells good," I offered honestly.  "Never would have believed twins could cook, much less cook something as nice as this if I hadn't seen it myself."

"There is very little my boys can't do.  They are very special twins.  Especially to me."

I smiled as they expressed their love to her in the most adoring kisses that didn't contain even a trace of anything sexual in them, then snapped out of my little daze as it became apparent they were waiting for me to take my first bite of the meal they prepared.

Relieved to find it was quite good, I ate probably more than my fair share, but the twins only saw it as a compliment to their cooking which I suppose it was.  Words didn't matter to them, only actions and expressed emotions.  Of course Charlene couldn't get enough praise for her twins accomplishments, and I quickly understood she was more of a mother to them than a mistress.

Now her attitude towards me was a bit confusing to my empathic senses.  She was trying very hard to appeal to me sexually, and while she didn't have much trouble finding me attractive probably because of my youth, she seemed to have trouble keeping the feelings she had for her twins being reflected onto me as we apparently were close to the same age.

"That was excellent," I said, stretching my arms over my head and leaning back with a full tummy.  "I'm so full I feel like I could go right back to sleep."

There was no doubt in my mind she wanted something from me, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that it wasn't coincidence that she had come with the Inquisitor when this crisis had broke.  Yet when I again asked her point blank what it was she wanted, she insisted we move to the sofa and that I first ask my other questions first.

"Why?"

"For heaven sakes, trust me, Timothy.  If I told you what I'm really here for first, you wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything else.  That wouldn't be fair to you and your friends, now would it?"

If I hadn't felt how brutally honest she was being, I doubt I would have accepted her word and started asking Joey's questions.

The Inquisitor had apparently been watching the Group ever since they started growing in rapid spurts thanks to Joey's coin, and had recently placed a few moles in the area to keep closer tabs on their activities.  I found it curious to learn that the guy across the hall in my apartment building kept the Inquisitor informed of Suzi's and my activities.  Exactly how he could do this without my empathic senses warning me Charlene didn't know, but then it also wasn't the first time someone fooled me like that.

The Group was to be broken up, end of story.  Charlene made it clear that the Inquisitor would not settle for anything less, and that he would take any steps necessary to execute his decision.  History has proven time and time again that whenever a large number of voices joined together and formed an organization like the Group had, their activities always drew the attention of not just mutes, but other voices as well.

The Cabal's records showed that in some cases such organizations fell apart on their own, but in most cases they were conquered by larger more powerful organizations created out of the common threat the original organization posed to other voices.

How large a threat one appears to be depends on two factors: the size or relative strength of the organization, and how secret they maintain their work.  Obviously the larger the size such an organization became, the larger the threat they became to other individual voices.  But size also made them more likely for other voices to discover their existence, for no matter how secretly they worked, these organizations always influenced the mute population around them which other voices picked up on.  And the more secret they were, the greater the threat they appeared to be to the outsiders, who's concerns would eventually become so great that they would join together and...  Well, all hell breaks loose.

So why didn't the Cabal and their organization fall into this trap?  There were several reasons.

A, they didn't give a rat's ass what you did (as long as you didn't make a public scene of course.)

B, the members usually hated or feared each other enough that it was obvious that nobody could use the organization for anything other than what served them all.

C, the combination of A&B resulted in the general rule that the Cabal didn't involve itself in protecting members from each other or outsiders.

But mainly it was because of D, the Cabal served every sane voice's self interests, and anyone who wouldn't see this almost always caught the Inquisitor's personal attention long before they could ever grow be a threat to them all.

Through a large network of unsuspecting mute informants, the Inquisitor was a one-man taskforce who carried out most of the Cabal's rather dirty business.  He spent most of his time searching for the telltale signs of a voice who's actions may lead to public exposure, and then took whatever measures necessary to correct that situation, rarely ever needing to call upon other members to help him do so.

The Group's size and secrecy actually wasn't as big an issue as their rapid rate of growth and their focus on defensive maneuvers and strategies.  The Inquisitor had actually resisted a few of the other member's increasing demands that he take action to break up the Group before now, seeing that the Group could be reasoned with and dissolved peaceably given the right circumstances.  Those circumstances he knew would happen fairly soon given the number of individual attacks against them, and had even put safeguards in place in case something like what happened the day before occurred.

Charlene actually seemed impressed by the Inquisitor's handle on the situation.  She hadn't expected Sarah to submit to his terms without a fight, but after announcing their presence and intentions, they were only subjected to a short barrage of annoying probes before they were led to the medical complex to meet with Sarah and the rest.  Together Charlene and the Inquisitor explained the situation, and after offering their help in cleaning up the group's mess, Sarah agreed to the terms with the only condition that the Group as a whole was allowed to decide the means of their breakup.

After Sarah had accepted his terms, the Inquisitor tested her strength like he had mine when we first met.  Apparently Sarah gave the Inquisitor a fairly good fight with all her creative offensive tactics, but she simply wasn't strong enough to hold out against his superior strength and he overcame her defenses within ten minutes.

Her twins shared how terrified Sarah had been by the challenge and yet she hadn't let it show.  I would have said she was just maintaining her fearless leader roll, but Charlene's twins' senses were sharper than mine.  Sarah had done it to keep the others from taking action without thinking, and Charlene had a considerable amount of respect for Sarah's high degree of intelligence and self-control.

Charlene couldn't really answer most of Joey's questions since it was the Inquisitor who would have the final say on things and she could only guess what that would be.  I sensed she wasn't really concerned what happened to the group, but she had taken the time to learn all she could about the whole situation in hopes in aiding her in winning my favor.

I obviously surprised her when I pressed her for as many details as I could for the Inquisitor's plans concerning Perry.  Apparently the Inquisitor didn't know of the... agreement between Perry and I, otherwise he wouldn't have told me that he knew Perry's true identity or hint that he may take some kind of action towards him.  All Charlene knew was the Inquisitor was already investigating Perry's intentions and would deal with him if he found anything he didn't like.

Actually, if I had really thought about it, I might have suspected I was being used to flush Perry's motives to the surface, but it really didn't matter one way or the other.  I felt honor bound to learn what I could and report it to Perry since it obviously endangered Perry's safety.  I only wondered if Perry would have actually done the same for me as he had agreed to.

Once I ran out of questions, Charlene took an interest in the painting I had painted last fall of Suzi, Joey and I, asking questions about them, my parents, my brother, and Honey and Joy which her twins immediately encouraged discussing.

After mentioning them by name, Charlene revealed that she had also named her twins, but only used them when the three of them were alone.  Curious, I tried to worm them out of her, but she wouldn't budge and I couldn't talk her twins into giving me any empathic hints to what they were either.

She had been walking around the room studying the painting, the few pictures I had of my family, and the other knickknacks I had brought from home, then sat down beside me and studied my features with such an intensity I kept breaking out into grins.

I knew she was about to reveal her true intentions, and despite the uneasy feeling I had about it all, I couldn't help but feel she meant me absolutely no harm so I allowed her to get to it in her own time.

"You are a very unusual and unique young man," she finally said softly, stroking my left cheek gently with her fingertips.  "When I first heard of you, I believed you would be a spoiled and selfish child who couldn't possibly trust another being he didn't control.  I have seen so many young voices who grew up with a parent who also had voice waste their youth believing that only through testing and using their power could they be happy.  They never really find their happiness, not like you and I."

"I, uhm..."

"Shh..." she said, putting her finger over my lips and leaning closer.  "You're nothing what I expected to find, and that makes it... much harder for me to ask you for what I came here to ask.  If you had just been like those others, I wouldn't feel so..."

Charlene's eyes were so full of motherly tenderness and empathy she was very nearly triggering a empathic connection to form between us.  She wanted something very badly, yet her motherly feelings for her twins were interfering with that so much, she was scrambling for the strength to put her wishes into words.

Avoiding the empathic link trying to form, I turned away and stood up, finding myself a bit shaken by the intensity of her own emotions and ended up walking over to the kitchen's counter to steady my weight and give us some space to think.

Every nerve of my body sensed her get up and walk up behind me.  I held my breath when she embraced me from behind, then tensed up when her hands started feeling around my chest.

"I'm forty three years old, Timothy, and I've had four children who I've loved and spent every moment I can watching and helping them grow up into good and well adjusted human beings.  I love them all with my heart and soul, and they have given me everything I ever wanted and plus some.  But they do not have voice, and for years I lived believing I would never pass on what my mother taught me and what her father taught her because no third generation voice could have a child with voice..."

"Then you heard of me," I concluded.

"I didn't really believe it at first, but after I looked into it I...  As I said, you are a unique young man.  Perhaps one of a kind if your little brother doesn't develop voice when he grows older, but by then I would be too old...  You're my only hope to give me child so I could teach them what has been handed down to me by my family..."

"You... You want me to father your child?" I stated incredibly.

"Yes."

I turned around and looked her in the eyes, catching the glimmer of tears leaving her eyes from the emotions battling inside her.

"I..." I began, struggling to get a grasp of how to sort out the maelstrom of conflicting emotions running through me.

"Please don't try to give me an answer now," she said with a sincere and empathic smile, obviously relieved that my initial reaction hadn't been an instant negative one.  "I know how hard of a decision it may be for you to make, and you should take as much time as you need to decide, but I hope you will allow me to show how much this means to me and that I love any child I bring into this world more than anything else as my boys can tell you."

I didn't catch her double meaning immediately, but when I glanced at the twins standing a good three yards behind her (which for twins is a considerable amount of private space to give up), I suddenly saw the resemblance between mother and sons.

"You're their real mother..." I stated for the record.  "Are the other two ...?"

"No, they're not twins.  And I wouldn't want them any different than they way they are.  Glenda is fifteen and Robert is eight.  If you would like to meet them, we could go to my home...  I don't feel comfortable about bringing them here under the present conditions."

"I can understand that," I said, finding the whole situation a bit too surreal.  "Uhm, how old are the twins?"

"Twenty.  Twenty and three months, actually.  Although sometimes they act like they're ten."

"You can tell a difference?" I chuckled, remembering how the little ones in the Nursery acted very much like the adult twins, only with less experience.

"Of course I can.  I'm their mother," she said slightly amused.  "They can pout like no other child can."

"Yeah, I guess," I said, imagining it, then wondering...

"If we did... you know... and they turned out to be twins, would you..."

"No," she said with a touch of regret.  "I would want them to experience all the joys of life without the need to please and protect their mother like the boys do.  I've finally gotten them to think seriously about someday choosing a pair of girls they date to marry and start a family with.  I doubt I'll ever get them to move out of the house though."

"They date?  And they can have... kids?" I sputtered out.

"Certainly they can.  Do you think I would deprive them the same opportunity I was given when I had them?"

"I think I need a drink," I said out of the need to distract myself to clear my head a bit.

Charlene sat down at the kitchen table and watched me as I poured a glass of lemonade and gulped half of it down, then without making an audible sound, she signaled the twins to leave, which they did with only the click of the door marking their departure.

"Why did you send them away?" I asked.

"Because it disturbs them whenever I try and seduce a man, you especially...  They seem very protective of you."

"Is there any reason why they should protect me from you?" I asked, wishing I was asking the twins rather than her.

"No.  Please believe me I mean you no harm, no matter what your decision," she said honestly.

I swallowed the last drop of my lemonade, put the cup down, then stared at its bottom as I asked, "Would we... sleep together?"

"Do you mean would we have sex?  I would prefer that, but if you have problems with having sex with an older woman, we could..."

"No, sex is fine," I stammered out before turning to look at her.  "I mean, that is if I decide to go through with it..."

"I doubt I can compare with girls your own age, but I like to think I still have an appealing body," she said, giving me another look at her profile.

"Very appealing," I admitted.

"I've already seen how beautiful a body you have," she stated a little nervously as she approached me.  "If you would like to examine mine a little more...  I won't mind."

I hesitantly reached out to touch her leotard covered stomach with my right hand, then after feeling the feminine softer firmness there, I put both hands on her tummy, then slid them to the sides and ran them up her back, then back down to her butt.  Her body was in excellent shape as far as I could tell, and got brave enough to remove her leather like jacket that hid the shape of her breasts.

Once the jacket was removed, the leotards couldn't hide her breast's growing arousal as her nipples' erections pushed the material even further out.  The thought of sampling those breasts' milk was driving me crazy until the thought of her twin boys having once used those breasts in their intended function and brought me around to reason.

"I need to think about it," I said stepping back and getting a hold of my lust.  "Alone."

Seeing the crestfallen look on her face, I quickly said, "You're as sexy as hell, and if you stay much longer I'll be ripping both our clothes off for sure.  Please, I need to think about this with a clear head, and a clean conscious."

"I understand," she said with a wave of relief, and started heading towards the door.  "But I am going to leave you with something that I hope will keep your attention."

She picked up a box sitting beside the door and put it on the table before gently stepping over to me, kissing me on the cheek, and saying, "My number is inside.  Thank you for giving me a chance."

I looked in her eyes and truthfully said, "I'll call you tonight whether I made a decision or not."

If she had looked into my eyes a moment longer, I would have kissed her on the lips, hard.  But she turned away the last moment and walked out the door without looking back.

I watched her swirl of symbols join her sons in what I imagine was a van or something equally spacious, and smiled as it appeared they were hugging.  My smile started to fade as one of the two young men sat down in front while the other remained in the back with their mother, then I was astonished to realize that the one in the front was driving the vehicle as they pulled away.

When I turned my attention to the two-foot long plain brown box, I was startled to see not just one set of small swirls of symbols coming from inside, but two.

My hands shook with uncertainty and excitement as I opened and carefully unwrapped the gray metal figure of Charlene's naked body arched backwards in a pleasure filled stretch of pure sexual loveliness, her nipples made out of the  same red amber-like material as the coins.  I stood there a long time astounded by its beauty, its priceless nature, and the raw sexual urges it generated within me.

Joey called about an hour later to let me know they were going to sleep in the medical complex and to hear what I had learned.  Between I not making much sense and he being overtired, he gave up on getting the details and hung up saying, "We'll just come over tonight, k?  Night."

It was well after two o'clock before I had spurted enough seed that my head cleared enough to get my priorities straightened out.  I managed to catch Joey just before he fell asleep and got him to form a share link with me, he being careful to block sharing out his fatigue thankfully.

I knew I would need to be on my toes while warning Perry, not as much to defend myself from him incase he goes loco, but more to keep myself from getting caught in the middle of his troubles.  I considered the share link a sort of safety line I could tug on in case he did go loco, but I really had a hard time believing he would harm me if I told him what I knew and then left him alone.  Didn't happen that way, of course.

The moment I stepped into the building, I knew something was different.  The ressies upstairs were making all their usual sounds, and Perry's fog hiding his swirls of symbols was in his office, but there was an elevated level of tension. Or perhaps it was expectation.  I couldn't quite tell which.  Maybe both.

Expecting him to leap out at me at any moment, I walked up to the open office door as calmly and nosily of footsteps as I could make on the old linoleum covered concrete.

When I reached the door, I found him sitting in his chair with his back to me, the last position I expected a hunted man to take when the hunters were nearby.  As I raised my hand to knock on the open door, he cut me off saying, "What do you want," in a tense yet calm voice.

"I uh...  Need to tell you something," I said as my heart pounded in my ears.

"Tim..." he said, spinning his chair to face me with just a faint look of surprise on his face before it vanished into the cold expressionless mask he wore all the time.  "Don't you have other things to worry about than to come and bug me?"

"Actually, I have a lot...  Wait a minute.  Like what?" I asked suspiciously.

"Hmm?!" he grunted, then saw I expected an answer and said, "I'm busy!  Go away!"

"The Cabal knows who you are and are investigating to see if you're up to something.  If they find out you are up to no good, they're going to do something about it.  Now I'll go."

I turned around and stepped out of the office, then had to forcibly ignore his command "Wait."

A few seconds later I heard the "sching" sound of his cane's blades that made my heart almost stop in fear as the Inquisitor's words came back to me, "has a long record of killing in cold blood...  He's not to be trusted for a moment."

"I trusted you!" I exclaimed without looking back, quickening my pace sharply to a trot.  "I'm not a threat to you, and I..."

I fell when his cane tripped me only two paces from the exit doors, and before I could gather my feet up to leap through them, he knocked the wind out of me with is foot and then sent me into a daze with a hard chop to the back of my neck.

"... down, damn good for nothing grunt.  You know you're a fool for coming in here, but not as big of a fool as your pipe smoking, bible thumping, poor excuse of a protector for believing I would fall for such a transparent trick.  Get up."

"You might as well kill me now, you bastard," I spat as I tugged on my lifeline.

"Oh, so you want to die, do you?  What's the matter, grunt?  Can't decide between your loins and your sanity?"

"What?"

He sighed, twisted the cane's neck to recoil its blades, then leaned against it a bit while he offered his other hand down to me.

"Well, don't take all day!  You think I like bending over like this?" he snapped when I didn't move.

Not knowing what else to do, I let him help me up to my feet, then stood there confused as he just walked away, heading back to his office.

He was just sitting down when I poked my head around the door frame, and we just looked at each other a few moments before he grunted, hung his cane up on the edge of his desk and said, "Come in here and close the door."

Unsure of his motivations, I entered the room and closed the door like he asked, but didn't release the doorknob so it wouldn't latch.

"You jumpy because of what that preacher said?  Or because Charlene's trying to get your sympathy?"

"How did you know about that?" I said, amazed.

Perry took a moment to enjoy holding me in suspense, then grunted, turned towards a pile of file folders on the right edge of his desk, pulled off the top one and tossed it to me.

"I pulled a few too many strings while I was gathering that, and it must have drawn enough attention for someone to look at what it was I was getting.  Hell, I didn't know you were a fourth generation.  Like everyone else, I didn't know you could exist."

I looked up from the birth certificates and other documents he had gathered on my heritage background, and simply asked, "Why?"

"Before I get into that, what did that preacher tell you that made you run from me like that?"

"He said you were a known assassin who targets voices.  That you've killed in cold blood without any apparent reason and I wasn't to trust you."

"And despite all that, you still came back to warn me.  Alone.  I bet you didn't even tell anyone, did you?"

"No..."

"You are by far the stupidest voice I've ever met.  Hmmph...  Rose would have adored you."

"Who?"

His eyes sharpened like I had just insulted him, and then he snapped, "For your information, grunt, your preacher friend was partially right.  In my earlier days, I killed more voices a year than you'll probably meet in your whole pathetic life.  But I always had a reason."

"And what was that?" I said, ready to send a big enough pulse through the share link to knock Joey out of bed and probably clear across the room.

"I'm not sure you could handle it.  Oh what am I worried about?  I doubt you'll even believe it."

"Then maybe I shouldn't hear it," I said, opening the door.

"Timid like a field mouse, just like your grandfather," he snorted.  "Jasper never did like hearing things that might upset his little world."

"You don't really think I'd believe that you knew my grandfather, do you?"

"Hrmm...  No, not if you had any sense about you.  Close the door and sit down, Tim.  I'm not here to murder you or anyone else."

I hesitated, then opened my mouth to ask why and was cut off by the last word I thought I'd ever hear come out of that old man's mouth.

"Please."

What could I do?  The guy was really trying to put my fears at ease, and despite knowing that he could very well be lying through his teeth and I'd never know it, I couldn't help but believe he was sincere.  So I reentered his office, closed the door, wiped off who knows how many months of dirt and dust off the never used chair intended for guests, and sat down.

"You tell another living soul about any of this, I'll cut your tongue out," he warned.

"Do you want me to stay or not?" I said grouchily.

"Yes, damn it.  Hrrrgh..." he growled, cleared his throat, and then turned his chair so his back was to me.

"My mother was a popular dancing girl during the early twenties, but not too smart when it came to men.  I never knew who my father was, though my older sisters both met theirs once, and we lived with my little brother's and sister's father for four years before black Tuesday hit and he took off on us.

"Now my ma wasn't a prostitute or anything of the sort.  She was just not too bright about people, or money..."

I sighed and got a little more comfortable in the chair, then said "Sorry," when Perry paused from the interruption.

"You ever hear of Hoovervilles?"

"Uhm...  Yeah.  Weren't they like the towns the poor built out of trash during the depression?"

He grunted his confirmation, then said, "We lived on the streets for two weeks until my mom hooked up with an old friend from the dance clubs and we moved into the shipping crate he called his home.  It was better than sleeping on the streets, but not much better.

"About a year later, I was a streetwise nine year old looking for my next meal when I spotted a young zoot-suit with two dames heading towards the old Crandon hotel.  But I wasn't the only one to see them.  Every kid from six to sixteen kept a watch on that hotel.  It was a popular place for rich men to take their sluzies to, and a gold mine for anyone brave enough to sneak inside their room and snag their wallet or their watch while they were occupied.

"I couldn't believe my luck when it looked like everyone decided they didn't have a chance and went back to what they had been doing.  I figured they all were just too chicken with there being two dames, but I hadn't eaten in almost two days.  Hunger can make you fearless, especially when you're nine.

"It wasn't hard to figure out which room it was with all the noise they were making, and I couldn't believe my luck when I found they hadn't even closed the door.

"I walked in, took the wallet, and walked right out without anyone seeming the wiser.  I stupidly went down to the basement figuring nobody would think to look in the same building as they were in, and started counting the bills.  I was just reaching a hundred when he walked around the barrel I was hiding behind and said 'I think that belongs to me'.

"I fainted out of fear when I saw he was buck naked and his pecker still hard and wet from the dame's insides.  I thought for sure he was going to make me pretend to be a girl for him.  I had heard of those kind of things happening on the streets and I was terrified of it happening to me."

"I take it he didn't make you into a girl," I joked.

"No.  When I woke up, he and his wallet was gone, but he had left me forty dollars and an apple.  That money kept me fed me for nearly a year."

"You didn't share it with your family?"

"My brother and sisters never shared anything with me, and I knew better than to give it to my ma.  It would have been gone in a week without us getting much out of it.

"In the two years after that lucky day, the Hoovervilles grew bigger and more crowded.  My mom's friend left us one day and never came back, but another man, Big Jake he had us call him, moved in with us so we could keep our two crates.  My oldest sister Tammy took a likin' in Big Jake, and when my ma wasn't around, he'd take her into our crate and they'd make it creak.

"When I was eleven and it got warm enough outside to sleep out there, I started living on my own more and didn't go home much after I found out Tammy was going to have Big Jake's baby.  I spent most of the summer running wild and getting into all sorts of trouble, staying as far away as I could from my family until it started turning cold and I had no where else to go.

"The crates were there, but somebody else was living in them.  I spent a week looking for them, but nobody knew where they went.  And nobody wanted another troublemaker living with them, so I got kicked out after I tried taking some bread from another kid.

"After that I managed to find enough food to stay alive, but I was getting weak from being cold and sick all the time.  I doubt I would have lived through the winter if the man I had stolen the wallet from hadn't turned up again.

"It was on the day after the first snow that year, and I had found a half-eaten apple in the trash and was running from the other scavengers in order to keep it.  I tried to eat it as I ran, but I only had two bites down before they tackled me to the ground.  I curled up into a ball with the apple in my arms trying to hold on to it, but they were too strong and eventually got it away from me.

"Someone yelled from down the ally and they all scattered, but I stayed on the ground trying to hold down the couple of bites of apple I had eaten.  I knew someone was coming, but I was afraid to move and lose the only food I had eaten in three days, so I just played dead.

"I heard the feet stop right beside me, but nobody touched me or said anything until I couldn't hold the apple down any more and threw it up."

"I didn't recognize him from looking at him.  He had an overcoat on and a hat on, and I don't think I ever really saw his face in the basement.  He waited for my heaving to stop, then helped me up and asked me if I had thrown up the apple he had given me before.

"I didn't know what he was talking about until he mentioned the money, then I got really scared and took off.  I know he didn't run after me, but I was just starting to catch my breath after slipping into an abandoned warehouse when I felt something cool touch my cheek and found him holding an apple in my face.

"He yelled my name when I started to run again, so I stopped and asked him how he knew it.  He said he'd take me to my mom, then waved the apple in front of him and offered it to me.  When I took it, he told me his name."

Perry cleared his throat a few times, then turned around and said, "That man made me who and what I am.  He took me to my mother, paid her a thousand dollars to sign me over to him as his adoptive father, then took me away and gave me a life, an education, and a purpose.  They call me an assassin.  I suppose I am in their eyes.  But I was the only weapon the world had to keep the voices out of the war, and to prevent them from tearing the world apart when it was over."

"So you saved the world," I said a bit sarcastically.

"No.  I was only the weapon, the instrument one man, one voice used to save the world.  And his name, in case you were wondering, was Timothy Brandton."

I was... stunned?  Nah...  More like overwhelmed with disbelief.  My grand uncle saved the world?  Yeah, right.

"I knew your mother when she was just a little girl," he went on when he saw I didn't believe of word of it.  "Tim took me with him a couple of times when he went to visit Jasper and Rose.  Sammy loved company.  The poor thing was starved for it with Jasper trying to live like a hermit on that farm of theirs.  I never understood what Rose saw in him.  I would have given her the world if she had given me the time of day.  But she didn't have eyes for anyone but Jasper.  Except maybe for Tim.  Never could figure those three out completely..."

He paused, apparently lost in his own thoughts, but not so lost he didn't notice me shifting in the bare wooden chair and stifling a yawn.

"You still don't believe me.  Hmmph...  I take it you're planning on going home for your little brother's birthday in a couple weeks.  Tell your mother Berry Livingston said hi.  Now get out."

I walked out of the building with only a bruised knee and a head spinning with questions.  The campus was virtually deserted, partially because of what happened the day before, but mostly because there was no finals scheduled until the following Monday.

The sky was pretty cloudy, and I kept getting small chills whenever the breeze picked up while the sun was hiding behind the clouds.  I felt like my life had suddenly spun out of control again, and I was having a hard time deciding what I should be worried about the most.

The idea of fathering a baby which I would have no contact with or who's life I would have no role to play in bothered me a lot.  I wasn't sure if I could leave such a child alone, especially if they did inherit the voice Charlene believed they would.  I believed she was a good mother and all, and from what I could sense she was a good person, but rarely are people really what they appear when they want something from you as much as she did from me.

I stopped by the medical complex to try and talk to the Inquisitor but found he wasn't there.  He apparently had also worked through the night and had left to get some sleep, strangely without leaving a number or where he was staying in case there was a need contact him before he returned.

The medical complex was full of activity, mostly mutes cleaning up the mess and starting to make repairs.   After finding out the Inquisitor wasn't there, I turned to leave so I wouldn't be in their way, but as I was walking to the door, the receptionist I had just spoken to called me back by name.

"Dr. Harrison would like to speak to you.  Go to room three ten, please," she simply said.

I opened my mouth to decline, but then shrugged to myself and just headed towards the nearest elevator.  I knew I would have to face Sarah sooner or later for having involved myself in the mess, but I hadn't expected her to want to do it while she was worn out like I knew she had to be.

You could say I was a bit startled to find "Dr. Stanley Harrison, Associate Dean" on the door, and when I entered, I was greeted by a male receptionist who gave me the old corny line, "The doctor is expecting you," and let me in.

Stan was on the phone when I entered his rather modest office.  He greeted me with a friendly nod as he continued to interject "uh-huh", "yes", "no", "right", and other verbal acknowledgements to the person on the other end of the phone.  After a couple of minutes, though, he rolled his eyes and made gabby motions with his hand, then covered the mouthpiece and said, "Dean's wife."

"Ahhh..." I said.

"Yes, Fran, I'm listening," he said, rolling his eyes again.

My eyes drifted over to the framed documents on the wall behind him:  Bachelor of Biochemical Science - 1979; Doctorate of Medical Science - 1983;

three or four awards in Biochemistry and at least a half a dozen for outstanding achievements in the medical science education.  All these were in black plastic or wooden frames, but the crayon drawn award for the best dad in the world - Father's day, 1988, was in a gold frame and hung in the center of the rest.

"All right, Fran.  Thanks for calling," I heard him say, drawing my attention to his rather comical expressions while trying to end the conversation.

"I swear that woman thinks she's just as much the dean as Rodney is," he sighed when he finally hug the phone up.  "She's almost as big of a pain in the ass as the school lawyers are."

"Did he marry her out of love, or to avoid a lawsuit?"

He chuckled, then said, "Probably both.  They got married a few months before she gave birth to their first child."

"Heh."

"I have a favor to ask you.  You're the only one here who’s awake and not tied up with the cleanup."

"Sure.  What's up, doc?"

"The little girl won't communicate with us, or even acknowledge us unless we touch her, and then she just screams and throws a fit until we either leave or she wears herself out.  I was hoping you could use your...  empathy on her to get her to trust us enough to get some answers out of her.  Or at least get her to eat something."

"I can try, but...  Could you fill me in on what happened after she got the coin?  I kind of missed it."

The little girl was not only confined to a wheelchair, but she was deaf and blind as well.  I quickly realized it was only natural for a deaf, dumb, and blind child with symbolic sight to have new insights and learn different uses for it than someone more fortunate like myself would.  Yet to learn that none of the adults that I, and the others, had traced the probes and direct telepathic attacks to had any signs of voice afterwards made me reconsider this.  Surely such power was beyond the average telepath.  At least I certainly hoped so.

I apparently had startled her with my probe, and her natural reaction to repel it caused her to divert the power she was using to drive the adult's battle with the Group long enough for the Group to take them and end the whole thing.

And the little girl hadn't seemed to care that her soldiers were in the hands of the enemy.  She just sat in her chair holding the coin contently up until the moment Sarah sedated her and she passed out.

They kept her unconscious until workmen finished paneling a room with the telepathy-proof wood and had transferred her inside it.  When she awoke and found herself not only totally blind and alone, but coinless too, she let out a loud whimper before throwing herself out of the chair and dragging herself all over the room in search for a way out.

I was somewhat glad to hear that when Sarah finally got the time and courage to enter the room, the little girl didn't try anything.  She did let Sarah help her back into her chair, but neither Sarah nor the Inquisitor could penetrate her shielded mind to try and talk to her.

Stan had a grad student who worked in one of the group's projects come and take me up to the room the girl was in.  I admit I was a bit nervous about being in the room alone with this powerful little girl, but one glance at the video monitor that showed her sitting motionlessly in her chair told me all I needed to know.

She felt totally alone.

Her swirls of symbols were barely visible through her telepathic energy barrier, but I could tell she knew I had entered the room from how the activity behind the barrier fluctuated.

My own barrier was purely defensive and I was purposely keeping it as transparent as I could in hopes she would read my intentions and let me talk to her somehow.  At that time I figured she either couldn't read my thoughts through her own heavily distorted field or simply didn't want to, but I later realized that perhaps it was more that she didn't know how to interpret them.

Nothing I tried got through to her, and after an hour of begging, pleading, and even shouting, I tried shaking her gently to try and get a reaction from her.  All I got out of her was a couple of silent tears.

By that time my empathic senses were seriously making it difficult for me to stay objective without trying something stupid like opening the door and wheeling her out.  So after giving her an unacknowledged hug, I promised her I'd be back and left the room so I could sober up and think.

I found an empty office and sat down in the middle of the floor and just let my thoughts run wild.  After letting all the crazy ideas work themselves out of my head, I let my mind drift a few minutes and ended up seeking out Joey's and Suzi's swirls in the building to check on them.

As I confirmed to myself they were still asleep, I recognized the smaller signature of Joey's coin apparently hanging around his neck.  My mind raced as I leapt to my feet, but then I slammed on my brakes as I reached the door realizing the girl might not give the coin up again without a significant fight.  I wanted to use it to gain her trust, but that trust would be crushed if I had to force her to give it back.

Seeing I really didn't have any other options, I made my way up to the room where Joey and Suzi were sleeping and gently roused Joey.  I only had to tell him I wanted to borrow it for Joey to take it off and hand it to me.  I wondered if he'd even remember he had given it to me when he woke up when he fell right back asleep before I even left the room.

I told the people watching her and the room what I was going to do, and was rather surprised when they didn't put up any resistance to my plan.  They did warn me that if anything appeared wrong they would gas the room, and I had the feeling that wasn't the only precaution they had standing by.

The girl didn't react any differently than last time when I entered the room, and didn't show the slightest interest when I held the coin out in front of me.  But when I put it in her hand, she jumped in startlement, then hugged the coin against her, sniffing after happy tears formed in her eyes.

Her fears slowly dissipated the longer she hugged and fondled the red translucent coin, then suddenly she reached out with her mind and like two fingers squeezing a grape, she squashed my barrier and... felt me out.

She wasn't using symbols to probe me, just...  feeling me out telepathically.  When just thinking to myself that I wanted to help her, that we didn't mean her any harm and were just protecting ourselves from her, stuff like that didn't seem to catch her attention like it should, I instinctively looked into the unfocused and wandering eyes and attempted to form an empathic connection.

I just couldn't quite get it to form with her eyes roaming everywhere like that.  In a surge of frustration I commanded her eyes to look straight forward, then we both held our breaths as she stood ready to pound my mind into telepathic goo while feeling the empathic connection form.

At birth, a child's mind is entirely composed of their immediate physical needs and feelings.  They have no sense of past or future, just the immediate now.  So naturally at first there is only emotion, but as time goes on the developing mind begins to learn how some sensations lead to other sensations, how the sensations of sight and hearing work, and before you know it, the little bugger begins constantly searching for new images and sensations to associate together to bring them even more new sensations.

All the senses are explored.  The sense of taste being the main reason babies put everything in their mouth, while the sense of sight is the reason simple objects can hold them spellbound for long periods of time.

With the sense of sound, the human mind begins the all-important association of sound to thought.  Before a child can even learn how to form these things we call words with their mouth, they first have to grasp their meaning when they hear it, and quickly the mind learns to use that sound to convey the same meaning to another.

Essentially, the very format of a child's thoughts are defined by the language they use to communicate with.  As a child grows and matures, the mind uses these memorized sounds internally to explore linear derived topics to their learned conclusion.  An example would be feeling your stomach's emptiness and perhaps having visions of food generate the word "hungry" in your mind.  I personally tend to verbally say out loud, "I'm hungry," whenever my body tells me it's chow time.  Of course there is a very good reason for me to say it out loud, but I do not wish to disclose the reason at this point of my little story.

Children born deaf tend to still learn to think in a very similar way through the study of other people's mouth movements.  It's a little slower process, but many deaf children naturally learn how to talk, and of course read.  It is usually more difficult for a telepath to read a deaf born person's thoughts, but the underlying emotions, images, and other sensations are enough for any half decent voice to interpret them correctly, especially if the subject learned how to read at an early enough age.

But this girl's thoughts were nearly indecipherable to me due to their unique wordless form.  Part of her language, if you could call it that, was loosely based on the patterns of symbols she had learned from watching them swirling around in peoples minds.  Her thoughts were more emotion with a slightly structured combination of senses and a few symbols, and as I carefully shared my side of the empathic link with her, I concluded my best method of communication with her was through emotion rather than thoughts.

In just a few hours, I was able to roll the poor girl out of that room to change her soiled diaper, give her a bath, get us both a dinner, then meet Sarah, Stan, the Inquisitor, Charlene and her boys to explain what I had learned.

Since she had no concept of what a name was, she obviously couldn't tell me hers, so I chose to call her Helen after Helen Keller, the blind deaf woman who learned not only to read and talk, but to teach others how as well.

For as long as Helen remembers, she had been alone.  I got the impression she was an orphan who had lived in several different foster homes before she fell out of her wheelchair and hit her head and started sensing the minds around hers.

Like any child, she quickly explored this new sense, and while she never learned how to interpret other people's thoughts, she did recognize their emotional states.  Within a matter of days she trained herself in influencing their emotions to do what she wished them to do, a slower, more subtle, but just as effective, form of mind control.

From what I had gathered, that had been over a year ago, for even Helen knew of the seasons changing the weather outdoors.  During that year she began exploring the world using the people around her as conduits of both her will and power, and it was on one of these expeditions that she encountered another voice.

At first she believed the voice was just playing with the three people's minds, but when the voice didn't put them back to the way they had found it, she realized the woman had done something to them, something not right.

Helen watched that voice for a long time without the voice ever noticing.  During that time Helen studied and learned how to emulate what the voice was doing, but didn't understand exactly what it did or what it was for until trying it on one of the men who gave her a bath at night.  After the shock of having a tongue lick her between her legs and trying to penetrate her hymen, Helen quickly decided the woman voice was evil and kept a close eye on her.

The voice eventually came across an Eta who had gone home to visit with his family over a weekend.  Shortly following that, the voice went in search of the person behind the Eta's hidden programming which she had been unable to uncover, and was quickly dealt with by the group when she attacked the first voice she found.

Helen was horrified by the existence of so many people with the power who in her mind were just as evil as the woman they had enslaved from the things they made their mutes do.  Yet she would have never involved herself with the group at all if she hadn't observed Joey using his coin to test some students about a month ago.

The way I understood it, Helen believed it had been calling to her ever since she first started feeling the minds around her, but she hadn't known where the call was coming from until seeing Joey pass it around.  After that she began feeling out the mutes on the campus to see which were the strongest conductors for her power and working out some sort of strategy to get the coin.  I had felt the strength of her obsession to get to the coin.  It had simply blinded her young mind to the consequences of her actions, even the deaths she had caused.

Helen ended the meeting by impressing her desire to go to sleep.  I was fairly tired myself from the long empathic links and other activities of the day, so after tucking Helen in a bed she picked out through feel, I left her and the coin to the capable hands of the child psychologists and doctors for the night.

Part of me didn't want to go back to the apartment because I knew that statue would be there tempting me, yet I couldn't think of anywhere else to go that was close.  So I went back to my place and went to bed with the door shut so the statue couldn't see me in there.

Didn't help.  Those nipples were like two eyes glowing in the dark.  I could feel them constantly watching me, and as I fell asleep, I could have sworn they were calling me, desiring me to caress them and suckle them dry.

I was startled awake when an arm fell across my midsection, but relaxed instantly when I recognized Suzi's symbols swirling lazily beside me, and Joey's beside hers.

As my eyes picked her features out of the dark, I decided to keep my business with Charlene to myself for the moment.  They had enough on their minds to deal with.  I'd try to figure things out for myself first, then talk it over with them before giving Charlene a final decision.  I'd probably take her up on her offer to visit her home just to make sure she was the type of woman she led on to be.

Around midnight, I got up and called Charlene just to let her know it'd probably be a couple of days before I'd really know how I felt about it.  I think she had been asleep, for she wasn't too coherent, but I had promised her I'd call her and she had thanked me for doing so before hanging up.

"I have to admit," Joey said with a shit-eating grin on his face standing next to the kitchen table when I turned around.  "I never thought you'd go for an older woman."

"What are you talking about?" I said as my cheeks burned guilty-as-charged red.

"What are you talking about?" he mimicked me before picking up the statue, holding it up in front of his face and answering in a higher pitched voice, "He's talking about me, with my cold naked body and my red glowing titties standing on your kitchen table waiting for you to call me and say, 'fuck me, you big stud.  Fuck me and make me young again'."

"It isn't anything like that," I said while my dick screamed, "Yes it is! Yes it is!"

"What, she's just loaning this to you for the weekend or something?" he said as he took another close look at the nipples.

"She thinks I can give her a kid with voice, okay?  She's trying to buy my genes."

"Really?  Shit.  So are you going to put your dough in her oven?"

"I don't know... She's been nothing but honest with me and isn't trying to rush me into deciding, and I think she probably is a good mother, but..."

"You don't know if you like the idea of having unlicensed Timmys and Timmyets running around outside of your backyard."

"Yeah, something like that."

"Well, looks like you got some soul searching to do," Joey said, yawning.  "You hungry?"

"Yeah, actually," I said, feeling better from just telling him about it.

"Well, I got cherry flavor and raspberry favor," Joey joked with the statues tits.

"God, put that thing down.  It's already given me blue balls once today."

"Really...  Shit, Tim.  Maybe we should see if Suzi is up to...  Okay, okay...  It was only an idea."

I put the jar of m&ms down I was threatening to throw at his head, then followed him into the kitchen area to raid the fridge.

After getting some odds and ends out and sitting down to eat them, Joey paused before his first bite to ask, "So why you?  There's lots of other young stud voices on campus."

"Fourth generation voice," I simply said, not expecting him to understand the relevance, but I figured it was enough to get him to shut up at least a minute so we could both eat.

"And I'm a sixth generation blonde, so what?" he said only ten seconds later.

"All the experts say that a great grandson or great granddaughter of a first generation voice can't get voice.  My dad's, dad's, dad had voice.  I'm not supposed to have it.  Plus there's the fact my mom and dad both have it and that's never supposed to happen either.  Charlene thinks that even though she's a third generation voice, I could give her a kid with voice so she could pass on her family voice heritage or whatever."

"Oh."

"What would you do if some woman wanted you to father her child so her child could form share links and stuff?"

"Depends on what Suzi thinks."

"Oh come on, Joey.  That's a cop-out.  What would you do if Suzi wasn't in the picture?  Besides shriveling up and dieing I mean."

"Let's see...  Tommy doesn't seem to have it, so I probably wouldn't do it because the kid wouldn't live up to their expectations.  And even if he or she did have it, if I couldn't raise the kid myself, I wouldn't want to take the chance the kid grows up without the right upbringing that they use the share link in bad ways.  So I guess in both cases I'd say no.

"But," he added after draining his glass of lemonade, "If it was because they wanted their kid to have my good looks or something, I'd charge them a thousand bucks an orgasm."

"Oh yeah?  Who's orgasm?  Yours, or theirs?"

"Heh.. Both."

"Heh... Yeah, me too."

Suzi walked in yawning, "I hope you guys left something for me to eat."

Joey popped to his feet and rushed over to the refrigerator ahead of Suzi, and after Suzi saw he was taking care of getting her something, she sat down where Joey had been and asked, "So what's the story with the stone slut with the red head lights?"

"Let me, Tim," Joey inserted before I could say anything.  "The slut wants Tim to knock her up so she has a kid with voice even though her slut mother's mother had voice and it's against the genetic rule book for there to be a fourth generation slut with voice.  Since Tim's dad's, dad's, dad had voice, he already broke the rules, so she figured he could do it again with her."

"Oh," Suzi yawned.  "So the slut gave you the statue thinking she'd buy you with trinkets.  Have you told her to go to hell yet?"

"Thanks Joey.  Now she has the completely opposite picture I wanted to paint."

"Does it matter what the picture looks like?" he asked, setting Suzi's sandwich down in front of her.  "I know you.  You won't do it.  Too many consequences to worry about."

"And besides," Suzi said with a full mouth. "What would Jennifer think?"

"Oh shit.  You're right!" I said in horror.  "How could think of such a thing?"

"Timmy," Suzi winced.  "I didn't mean to make it sound..."

"It's okay, Suz," I sighed.  "I haven't actually done anything.  And you just saved me a lot of personal grief trying to decide."

"I guess that means she'll want the statue back," Joey sighed.  "Ya think she'd notice if we pry the nipples out and replace them with some kind of clear red plastic?"

"You think you'd notice if I pry your nipples off and bronzed them?" Suzi teased.

"You want them?  They're yours," Joey teased back.

"Hmmm... Maybe later."

I told them what I had found out from Charlene about the breaking up of the group, and as it turns out it wasn't anything they didn't already know.  Around one o'clock they went up to Suzi's so we all could go back to sleep, but I ended up laying awake even after they had made love and fallen asleep themselves.  I couldn't stop feeling the size and shape of the empty space inside me that I had reserved for Jennifer, and Jennifer alone.

I dreamt I was chasing little Timmys through fields of pink, blue, and yellow blooming corn, trying to round them all up before someone decided to snag one and use them to take over the cornfield.  I was carrying three of them while chasing a fourth, yelling at the one riding my right hip to stop tickling the one on my left while the one around my shoulders was trying to cover my eyes with his hands.

And then suddenly there she was.  Standing in the middle of my cornfield that darkened and disappeared as I stopped to stare at her.  She had been watching me playing with the kids...

She said, "I miss you..."

I awoke feeling her faint thoughts slipping away, my mind frantic to keep the already disintegrated link open to tell her, to ask her, or even just to be with her one second more...

But she was gone...

I felt dead inside again.

Suzi appeared at my bedroom door wrapped in her robe with worry written all over her face.

"Jennifer touched me while I was asleep.  She said she missed me," I explained with very little energy in my voice.

"Oh Timmy," she said, sitting down on the bed beside me.  "It was just a dream.  I'm sorry I mentioned her."

"It was her, Suz.  I know it was."

"Timmy...  It was only a dream.  It couldn't have been her."

"It was her," I repeated, putting my arms around her waist to hug her, my left hand going beneath her robe and finding bare skin.

She jerked to her feet at that moment, and as I recovered from my shock I realized Joey's damn commands had triggered it.

"I am so SICK and TIRED of these things!" I spat as I tore them out of her head.  "If I get horny from hugging you, that's my problem, not yours!"

"Shit, Timmy..." Suzi said, her head spinning slightly from the intensity of which I had performed my altering of her mind.  "Don't do that without warning me next time!"

"Sorry," I said guiltily.  "I'm just...  Oh, I don't know what I am," I sighed, rolling over to bury my face into the pillow.

"What's going on?!" Joey yelled, standing at the foot of the bed naked as could be.  "Suz, you okay?"

"I'm fine.  Timmy, scoot over.  Joey, go back to bed.  Timmy and I need to talk."

"Yes ma'am," Joey said hesitantly, then went back upstairs to Suzi's bed as ordered.

Suzi took off her robe and got in bed with me, carefully scooting herself against me and began stroking my chest soothingly.

"It had to be her, Suz...  I want so badly for it to be her..."

"Maybe it was Timmy, but it's been a year since she left.  Don't you think it's time to let her go and get on with your life?"

"No!  I don't want to let her go.  I want to prove to her..."

"Timmy stop it!  She's not coming back."

"You don't know that!"

"Yes I do...  Joey and I looked for her last year before coming down for Christmas..."

My world was now spinning violently from beneath me.  I was frozen, afraid to look at her to see her expression, terrified that I really would never see Her again.

"They had moved to Lake City, Florida, but they somehow knew we were coming... The house was empty by the time we got there, but she left a note...  Joey burned it he was so mad.  He didn't want you to know any of this because he thought you'd be happier not knowing."

"What did it say?" I said with my heart already smeared across the highway of life.

"Tell Tim to leave me alone," Suzi said with teary emotion.

"Joey put a memory block in your head," I reasoned out loud.  "I must have mistaken it as part of the other commands.  Does he remember?"

"No..." Suzi sniffed, deeply worried I had switched my emotions off again.

My emotions were very much on, but didn't know what to feel except I didn't want to be alone.  At least I knew I wouldn't be with Suzi right there.

I hugged her, and relaxed in a sort of temporary state of emotional contentedness when she hugged me back with a ferocity I really needed right then.

Waking up the next morning with Suzi sleeping naked beside me generated an assortment of conflicting emotions in me I hadn't felt for a long time.  Trust, guilt, love, sorrow, lust, loyalty...  Half of them were against me staying in bed with her any longer, while the other three, trust, love and lust, for once teamed up and argued why I should stay.  But it was Joey who decided for me, sleepily walking in wearing tented shorts and crawling in bed beside me.

"Morning," I said softly as my own tent started to go down a bit.

"Mmmm.." he acknowledged, rolling onto his side to face me but leaving is eyes closed.

Feeling a little wicked and playful, I sent my hand over to his crotch and dug his semi-soft wood out.

"I hope you have a permit for that," he said, his eyes still closed, but only because he sensed I was up to something.

"Never needed one before," I replied as it hardened under my slow strokes.

"Shit," I groaned in dismay when it suddenly went soft from Suzi's commands kicking in.  "A guy can't even have a little fun."

"Nope," Joey said as he got out of bed, pulled his shorts back up, then crawled back in bed on Suzi's side.

"Mmmmmm..." Suzi sighed, then reached over to Joey and pulled herself on top of him.

After exchanging a lazy kiss wet kiss, Suzi straddled him the rest of the way, then slid down to where her head was laying on his chest and went back to sleep.

"She'll wake up again in about ten minutes for some loving," Joey said softly.  "We can go upstairs if you want..."

"What, and spoil the mood?" I said, kissing Suzi on the tush before crawling out of bed and tossing my boxers off.  "I'll just go shower and wank off, then fix breakfast, okay?"

As I headed into the bathroom, Joey thought to me, "Tim?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"No problem, buddy."

In the shower I thought of the old days when in situations like this, Joey and Suzi would have joined me in the shower to surprise me and make love to me in their own special way.  But I stopped that line of thinking, for it was becoming more of an erotic fantasy than anything else, and ended up not orgasming in the shower after all.

They were both asleep when I left the bedroom, so I held off making breakfast until they were for sure up and instead lay down on the couch to think.

My thinking didn't get very far with that damn statue calling me to seduce its red horny nipples.  I studied it from the couch with both visions, admiring the workmanship, the detail, the simple steady flow of energy the red translucent material generated as the strange not quite human symbols traversed it, and sometimes crossed the empty space between them.

There was some sort of telepathic... attraction to the material.  I could just barely sense this tiny pull from them, and I realized that's really what Helen had been describing.  I smirked to myself that maybe they really were calling me to sample their nipples, then quickly checked to make sure Joey and Suzi were still asleep before sucking on each one for a moment to see what would happen.

Other than tasting the dirt left behind by who knew how many hands, I didn't get anything out of it but another woody.  Just a bit infuriated by this, I decided to do what I had been wanting to do since I first saw the damn thing.  I wacked off and sprayed the lavish sex object with my cum.

I used my fingers to spread as much of my spunk over its surface before cleaning up the spatters off the table and started making breakfast.

"What?" I said, hiding my amusement when Joey and Suzi finally came out and found me still naked eating my breakfast with a cum-frosted statue in the middle of the table.

"Shit, if you were that horny, why didn't you just say so?" Joey said grouchily, probably due to not having gotten laid that morning like he had expected.

"Are you okay?" Suzi said worriedly, hugging me around the neck from behind my chair.

"Yeah, I'm fine.  I just had to get it out of my system, that's all.  The twins would approve of my artistic inspiration, don't you think?"

"If they didn't just see it as a waist of good spunk," Joey commented as he fetched the eggs and bacon I left in the pan I had cooked for them.

"Heh.  That's exactly what Charlene will probably think too.  This is all the spunk she's going to get from me.  But I'm thinking she doesn't need it any more."

"Why?" Joey asked as Suzi sat down in her chair and Joey divvied up eggs.

"Because there's already a little girl with voice needing a good mommy, and between the two nipples and Charlene's twins, I think Helen would be happy with her."

"That's a wonderful idea, Timmy," Suzi said.

"Is it?" Joey said skeptically.  "Do we really want to turn something as powerful as that little girl over to someone we know almost nothing about?"

"Do you ever want to get your coin back?" I teased.

"I don't care about the coin," Joey said defensively.  "It's already caused more trouble than it's worth.  And explain to me how turning Helen over to her is any different than you fathering her a kid with voice.  Jennifer and all that shit beside."

"Joey, what is wrong with you?" Suzi snapped.

"I'm tired, okay?  And I'm not hungry," he said, getting up without having touched his food. "I'm going for a walk."

When Suzi stood up to go with him, he added firmly, "Alone."

"I really worry about him sometimes," Suzi said after he slammed the door behind him.  "First he blames himself, then he gets so angry..."

I nodded, then said, "At least he's letting some of it out now.  He'll be okay."

Suzi sighed, then looked at me thinking the same thing as I was.

"I guess he's right.  There isn't much difference," I admitted.

"I don't know, Timmy," Suzi said, sliding Joey's plate over to hers scraping his eggs onto her plate.  "One creates a new life, the other doesn't.  Someone has to teach Helen how to live, and it sounds like that's what Charlene wants to do."

"Yeah, you're right.  Plus I think I could sell it to Charlene by pointing out Helen could very well be a first generation voice, and that means Helen could pass on what Charlene taught her to another generation.  I can't see how either one of them could say no if they just think about it."

"Well then you go get dressed and get going.  I'll take care of the dishes and lock up when I leave," she said, patting my bare thigh.

I looked her in the eyes and playfully said, "You gave me a boner just my touching me like that."

"Really," she said, rubbing my thigh, then smacking it just hard enough for it to sting.  "Maybe tonight I'll touch you there some more, but right now you have a job to do.  Now go!"

"Yes ma'am," I sighed while giving the old down boy command.

I had expected some sort of greeting, or at least a positive acknowledgement from Helen when I joined her, but instead she gave me the cold shoulder and once even tried to make me leave the room.

She wouldn't let me form an empathic link either, but after spending a few minutes studying her shielded mind, I decided I would have to get her to open up to me again in a more natural way.

From the little bit I had been with her, I knew Helen loved her baths, but I ruled out a swimming pool from suspecting she feared deep water since her legs were useless.  So I took her to the next best thing I could think of.

After draining the water to where it was only at her knees, I sat her down on the Jacuzzi's bench, started the fill and switched on the jets while making sure the temperature wasn't set too high.  She started getting a bit nervous when she realized the water was rising, so I stripped and sat down beside her, holding the hand that wasn't holding the coin at the time.

I felt her mind probing me for my intentions, then slowly relaxed as the water reached high enough for the jets to kick in and she felt their soothing vibrations.  When the water got up close to her neck, though, she panicked a moment and grabbed my bare chest with her fingers and sharp nails.

After I winced, I instinctively pulled her into my lap and held on to her as she hugged my neck, soothing her fears with calm supportive words while rubbing her back.  She may not have been able to hear my words, but she could sense enough of the feelings behind them for they to have the intended effect.

She eventually turned around in my lap to enjoy the bubbles and warm water.  There was a moment of panic for both of us when she dropped the coin in the water and it went straight into one of the jet intakes, but the symbolic vision show us both it only went in about an inch before stopping.  I just assumed there was a filter of some sort preventing foreign objects from entering the jets and tried to explain that to her without any luck.

Helen wasn't happy until we got out, turned off the jets and retrieved the coin, but then after she hugged it several long moments, she held it out to me, then directed me to put it somewhere safe before we went back in.

After ensuring the coin was safe sitting in her wheelchair with her clothes, we got back in with the jets on full.  Helen's smiles were all I needed to see to know I had her trust again.

I had told Charlene to meet me for lunch and to bring her sons along, and Helen didn't fight me when I picked her up and got out to keep our lunch date.  But she must have picked up what I was planning to do for Helen started giving me the cold shoulder again by the time we left the Jacuzzi room.

So I picked her out of her wheelchair and carried her, hoping the closer physical contact would help her feel my intentions were for her best interests rather than my own.  She was a limp noodle in my arms until I reached the cafeteria and saw Charlene and her boys waiting for me, my hesitance making Helen clutch on to me in a sign of not wanting to go.

Despite the short time I had spent with her, I was becoming very attached to the helpless girl.  This conflict between doing what I knew would be best and my feelings of loss comforted her in a way I doubted anything else could.

Charlene listened to my idea and my reasons why it would work, then surprised me by admitting the idea had occurred to her as well.  The twins seemed a little skeptical she would do it, but it didn't surprise them when her motherly feelings kicked in while looking the girl over and triggered something in Helen I could never have.

Helen held her arms up to Charlene in a sign to be held.  Charlene carefully took her and held her against her, her eyes widening in concern as I felt Helen focus her mind on Charlene's and popped her mental barrier like she had mine.

The twins tensed and readied their empathic punch to protect their mother, but I managed to get them to hold off long enough for Charlene to understand what was going on and relax.

That evening, Charlene handed me the coin after convincing Helen she didn't need it, then tried to talk me into keeping the statue which I certainly felt tempted to do.  But in my mind it already belonged to Helen, and I wasn't about to keep what wasn't mine.

I gave Helen a kiss goodbye before they left that night, and I am proud to say I received Helen's very first kiss.

I just wish it hadn't been in my eye.

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