I suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise to find the Group fighting off another voice after all the attention Central State had received about the deaths and the cover up.  But I hadn't expected it and quite frankly I was annoyed by the fact I had to drive around the campus the long way just to stay out of the way.

By the time I reached my apartment, I realized there was more than just a single voice involved in the attack.  In fact, as I studied the scene from the roof of the apartment building across the street from mine, I came to the conclusion there were three different factions fighting each other and the Group all at the same time.  One group of four voices was apparently retreating while defending themselves from both the Group and a six voice faction, and a two voice faction was attempting to use some of the local mutes to distract them all by making them rush towards the six member group with any weapon they could find.

The Group was holding their own, but I quickly counted only seven active voices within the medical complex, one being Joey's familiar pattern of swirls dishing out a complex blanket command over some approaching hostile mutes that knocked them out for a while.

I carefully checked the attackers' swirls to make sure they weren't just Group members performing some kind of drill, then asked myself out loud, "Where's the hell is the rest of the Group?"

Seeing there were only a total of twenty or so voices involved, and a third of them I assumed were friendly, I felt relatively safe as I headed towards the medical complex to ask if they would like some help.

"Tim?" Joey thought to me just as I entered the medical campus.  "What are you doing here?"

"Just thought you might like a little help," I thought back while sensing a hostile mind probing for mine.

"Hurry up and get in here," he thought to me before closing the connection.

The two voices who were surprisingly holding off at least five others found me despite the link closing before they could get a firm fix.  They probed for my mental barrier, tested its strength with some command streams, then hesitated when I hadn't done the same to them.  I imagine they would have just left me alone at that point if the other two factions hadn't noticed their probes and took interest in me as well.

Suddenly all four sides were scrambling to keep the other three from claiming me.  I had to defend my mind from some rather pathetic attempts to enslave me to one of the three attacking factions, but besides that minor annoyance, I rather enjoyed the symbolic fireworks display they were shooting off in my honor, so to speak.

My entertainment was interrupted when another voice I hadn't detected before suddenly attempted to take control of my arms and legs, momentarily disrupting my balance and spilling me onto the ground.

Without even thinking about it, I locked on to the man's mind, felt out the weakest point in his barrier, then distracted him momentarily with a burning sensory stream to his crotch before penetrating his barrier and scrambling his cognitive mind enough to render him harmless for a while.

The moment after I did this, I became painfully aware of how every voice on the campus had hesitated a moment before attempting to take advantage of the distraction my reflex action had caused.  As I got up off the ground and hurried my way towards the medical complex without even a probe coming in my direction, I cursed myself for having exposed myself like that.

As a couple members of the six-plus-one faction attempted to unscramble their fallen comrade, the four-member faction used that opportunity to disengage completely and run away.  The two-member faction seemed intent on taking out the six-plus-one faction, and by the time I was inside the medical complex the six-plus-one faction was faltering under the combined attack of the Group and the two member faction.

"I guess you don't need any help now, huh?" I asked Joey when I reached the windowed fifth floor room he was in.

"You think you can take out those four before they get away?" he asked as he wiped the sweat off his brow while staring out the window with unfocused eyes.

"I can try," I said, pleasantly surprised, yet with a growing feeling of caution.

"Do it then," he said without as much as a glance towards me.

Considering they were speeding away in two different directions in two separate vehicles, once I had broken through one driver's barriers, I had to have Joey finish up disabling the first pair so I could take out the second before I would lose my lock on their minds.

By that time, the six-plus-one member faction was defeated and the remaining two intruders contacted the Group and called for a truce.  Apparently the two brave women were only interested in freeing their brother who had been enslaved by the six-plus-one faction, and after they allowed the Group to probe them, Sarah took them for their word and allowed them to leave with their brother and another who had been a friend.

The nine others were not as easily dealt with.  Normally the Group freed enslaved voices from their controller and gave them the option to either join them or to leave with deeply embedded controls in their minds to prevent them from remembering anything about the Group or their voice.  But with the Inquisitor's ten voice per campus limit, they couldn't offer to take them in and help them adjust to a sensible life with voice, and it wasn't fair to those who had been enslaved shortly after their voice surfaced to make them forget it ever existed.

But that's what we ended up doing.  Yes, I said we.  Since I apparently had to be counted as one of the ten voices on campus, I was flabbergasted to learn I was welcome to stay instead of being forced to go somewhere else to make room for a tenth Group member.  Naturally, I felt obligated to help out in any way they allowed me to, and Joey and I stretched that to the limits over the next couple of weeks of the heaviest period of attacks Central State ever saw.

While I had been in Texas with Brad, the Group met for the last time to give everyone the chance to form their own independent groups elsewhere, stay in the Group at one of the three campuses, or to go back to a normal life without their voice or the memories of the their time within the Group.

Not surprisingly, many chose to form their own self-sustaining groups, for they only had to stay together for a couple of months before they could go off on their own if they wished to do whatever they liked.  A few were not given that choice due to their history, and I was shocked to learn Neil had opted to go with the block on his voice and memory like most of my drinking buddies had.

Neil apparently feared Joey might talk him out of it, so he had wrote Joey a letter and had Sarah deliver it once he had been processed and released to go home.  

Joey had taken that pretty hard, but he didn't have much time to think about it as power mad voices from all over investigated the suspicious "pickle hazing" and attempted to enslave the Group and each other.

Thankfully the campus was all but deserted due to the spring intersession classes having been canceled.  Of course there were still a few mutes around, but they were mostly faculty and staff who for the most part were not young enough to interest most of the invading perverts.  They were still used by some as diversions, but we were getting pretty good at turning this against them when they least expected it.

Suzi scared the hell out of us when she called Joey's pager from a pay phone just outside of town without warning.   After Joey's and my experience with Steven, the Group had adopted to always assume the phones were bugged, and so Suzi was very aware how she was exposing herself by calling his pager like that.  But after nearly a week of not getting any word from us, she decided she had had enough and came to join the fight.

Joey and I scrambled to locate her mind for linking, and once we had, we wasted no time bringing her into the fold and letting her take over for others so they could get some well earned sleep.

During a small break in the activity later that day, Joey told Suzi off for risking herself like she had.  That was the first time in over a year that Joey had even so much as raised his voice at her, and I think Suzi's brief tears were more from the shock than what he said, but then he did sort of take his anger out on her and said things he really had no right to say.

Once she had dried her tears, Suzi, being Suzi, put on a determined face and set out to prove Joey wrong about how we didn't need her help.  Over the remaining week as the attacks escalated and then finally tapered off, Suzi impressed me with not just her offensive and defensive telepathic skills, but also how she could predict their moves and use it to her advantage.

Those couple of weeks gave me a new appreciation for the tactics, procedures, and training the Group had developed for these types of situations.  At no point did we lose control of the situation, and I accredit that primarily to the high use of teamwork, which virtually every tactic the Group had in their arsenal relied on.  

Everyone in the team had a task.  Whether it was breaking down the shields of the head voice or defending those who were, you only had to worry about your part and leave the rest to the others.  It didn't matter if you were sitting idle most of the time while someone else was straining themselves to their limit.  As long as you performed your job without distraction, the Group as a whole was safe and would eventually succeed at whatever they were doing.  In the few cases where someone was being overwhelmed by their task, they simply had to signal to whoever was assigned to back them up to get relief.

I usually got the job of defending the others, mainly due to my symbolic sight allowing me to detect and counter incoming streams before they reached their intended targets.  In the past, the people assigned as defenders usually had to attack the attackers themselves to divert attention away from the offensive Group members.  Most of the Group members couldn't effectively shield anyone but themselves at one time, and the ones who could always seriously weakened their own defenses when they tried.

Both Joey and Terrence Wishmaker, the British voice I had dueled earlier that year, could counter an incoming stream when it was directed at them, but they both generally let their telepathic shields take the hit so they could focus their attention solely on taking out the source.  Apparently a lot of time was spent the previous year trying to develop and enhance this, but to Sarah's dismay, they simply couldn't use it to protect others without the symbolic sight.

The first time I was assigned as defense was with Joey, Suzi and Thomas, a twenty-three year old Native American with a sharp mind and sharper tongue.  After the first five minutes, Joey and Suzi stood down and eventually curled up together in a room for a nap while Thomas waited patiently a good half hour for something to get through before taking my advice and turning on the TV.

Being the Group's shield was very cool at first.  It was showing off in a sense, but this was okay.  We all already knew what my limit was from Sarah's little surprise test in January, and nobody was interested in retesting that, the least being me.  And since we were never attacked by more than fifteen voices at once during that period, I was very comfortable in the load I was handling.  

After the first week, however, I got very bored with it.  While usually the head voice within a group was usually pretty powerful, the rest were naturally less powerful, and they all were generally pretty inexperienced working together.  They usually focused on sending the same single command in synchronized surges which any seasoned voice knows can be devastating to a telepathic barrier, but at the same time it was so much easier for me to counter that than multiple different complex command streams.  Once they became that predictable, the challenge was gone, and on more than one occasion I got so bored with it I fell asleep while the others were mopping up.

Thankfully, Sarah foresaw that the others were probably getting too used to not having the distractions of being attacked while on offensive duty, and switched me over to offense once the frequency of attacks started settling down.  I can't say I ever got bored with offense, but I quickly came to the realization that it was almost a complete waste of my time to assist them in taking out any less than three voices at once no matter how crafty or powerful they were.

I know what you're thinking.  Timmy finally got to show them his stuff and kicked some serious telepathic ass!  Sorry to disappoint you there.  While I don't doubt I could have taken out quite a few of the voices we encountered without seriously straining myself, I didn't do anything more than what was required of me or any other member of the Group.

Speaking of which, I quickly became acquainted with the remaining group members who were for the most part the pick of the crop of all the voices in the Group before the breakup.

On the men's side we had...

Terrence Wishmaker:
A Brit, whose tactics and strength was only matched by his spurts of arrogance.  His ideal woman was a mother in her early to mid thirties, and in his off hours could be found enjoying one of the many divorced or unsatisfied married women who littered the Kenton county area.  His nickname was Uncle Terrence due the large number children in the area knowing him by that name.  Terrence usually only had one slave, and that was mostly just so there was someone watching his home, not for sex.

Thomas Battise:
A Native American male with very fast reflexes and wit, Thomas was considered to be on par with Terrence in the offensive category.  He liked his women intelligent, bisexual, and dirty in the mouth when in the sack.   Anal sex was his solution to pregnancy prevention.  He hated condoms.

Jon Brigley:
Well rounded in both the offensive and defensive departments, Jon was the only group member who enjoyed swapping bodies for sex, other than myself.  He seemed to prefer threesomes, and while his cock was the only one, he was pretty fair about getting fucked by it as much as he fucked with it.  Out of all the voices with slaves, he modified his women the least, but tended to get tired of them fairly quick.  Jon and Thomas would usually combine their harems once a week for a group fuck.

Shannon Baker:
A big time pedophile, Shannon was the main reason all group members were not allowed to enslave anyone under 18 and/or not out of high school.  He was extremely sensitive to telepathic activity, which is why he was such an asset to the Group.  He could sense out telepathic probes miles away that even I couldn't detect without specifically looking for them.  While he had fair defense capabilities, he couldn't attack worth a shit, so he was usually with Sarah, keeping her updated with whatever was going on and seeking out new threats.  The one time I dream walked into his household really disturbed me, finding the women he had enslaved all behaved like preadolescent girls who were just always curious about sex.  Pathetic.

Jacob Greenburg:
A big time homophobe and redneck, Jacob was all about tits and pussy, and getting as much of them as he can.  Extremely powerful defensive abilities combined with a very good collection of offensive attacks, Jacob was easily capable of taking out most average voices by himself.  By the time he had encountered the Group, he had used his five enslaved voices to build him a harem of over two hundred women between the ages of fourteen and twenty three.  Jacob was also the youngest group member, having only been sixteen when he had attacked the Group the previous year.  Because of both his history and his power, Jacob was the only group member who hadn't been given a choice about staying or leaving, and in fact his mind had been significantly modified by Sarah in order to make him trustworthy and loyal to the Group enough that he could become apart of the Group.

On the women's side...

Gina Harrison:
Sister-In-Law to Sarah and the person whom Sarah linked to the most, Gina was useless in terms of defending the Group from anything except possibly an invasion of a homosexual drama brigade.  Sarah and Gina's older sister Denise had spent years helping Gina get her GDA, and prior to moving to California to marry a famous actor whom I cannot name, Denise had managed to help Gina get sufficient certification to become a professor of the drama department at Central State.  Granted, Central State didn't actually have a drama department before that, but the new drama center was a nice addition to the ever-expanding campus faculties.  It gave Gina something to do besides looking for fresh meat, and she surprisingly was very professional with her work and never touched her students even after they completed her class.  Her lair was two complete levels below the supposed drama center's basement, and closely resembled Wally's own lair beneath the medical center, both in layout and security.  Her hobbies included wine tasting, attending craft fairs, and turning innocent straight young college men into bisexual cock whores.

Josephine (Joe) Grant & Kara Briar:
These two twenty year old women not only grew up together, but developed their voices together, a sort of female version of Joey and I.  Kara was generally more sexually active than Joe, but Joe was definitely the aggressive one, and usually led the way when dealing with enslaving the opposite sex.  They were very close, very powerful when together, and always shared their men with each other and never with anyone else.  They lived together, and because of that had the largest harem of all the Group members, all of which were male.  To keep things interesting, they liked to alter their slaves personalities when they became boring, making them aggressive one day, meek the next, turning them extremely innocent then seducing them and eventually perverting them until they were mindless cocks with legs.  After running into one of their ex-slaves one day and my vision of the damned momentarily kicked in, I basically offered my services to clean their slaves when they were done with them.  When they refused, I went over their heads and convinced Sarah it was in the Group's best interest to ensure all retiring slaves were properly cleaned to reduce the chance of drawing attention to them, and of course us.

Robin Stewart:
Robin was a strange bird.  Intensely bisexual yet very private, she wanted nothing to do with anyone sexually if they weren't under her power.  My dream walks into her household were... Not disturbing, just somewhat distasteful.  The three and four way bisexual action was pleasant enough, but it was always so focused on her will.  It's not that she didn't attempt to pleasure her slaves, it just didn't have any intimacy.  She would tell them what to do, they would do it and that's it.  Luckily for the guys she was a cum fiend otherwise I imagine they would have suffered from blue balls quite a bit.

The Cabal ordered that the Group could have no more than ten members residing at each campus, and if you bothered to count the names, and then added one more for myself, you would have came up with ten voices.

So now you're probably wondering why Sarah, Joey, and Suzi didn't count.  That's simple.  They weren't technically voices, especially Suzi.  While Sarah and Joey had some telepathic abilities when unlinked, they couldn't control anything.  You may also recall that Stan, Sarah's husband, was also telepathic.  However, when the Inquisitor had tested him, he deemed his telepathic abilities were not much more that parlor tricks and didn't consider him a true voice any more than Sarah or Joey was.

And then there's Wally.  While his official residence was actually at Central State, Wally normally spent more time at Northwestern state than Central State and was counted as one of their voices, not ours.  While Wally still held all of his weekend gatherings in his lair under the Harrison III Medical Center at Central State, all of his special projects were located at Northwestern State where he stayed during the week.  I wasn't privy to what his special projects were, and I honestly don't think even Sarah really knew what they all were either.  Wally pretty much did what he pleased, mainly because everyone trusted him.  

That trust was strained a bit when Wally announced late that June he had adopted a ten-year-old boy and everyone learned he was taking the boy to his weekend lover's sessions.  The weekend after I heard of this, I dream walked into the boy.  Yikes.  If Wally ever had a biological son, I couldn't imagine him being any more like Wally than Terri was.  Terri was definitely destined to be gay, and while he didn't have sexual intercourse with anyone, he most certainly enjoyed watching the others and getting his little dick sucked on by his adoptive father.  It took a lot to bring the prepubescent boy to a dry orgasm, and if I hadn't experienced it myself to know his whimpers and tears afterwards were out of happiness, I would have been very alarmed by them.

After those first two intense weeks of attacks, I generally tried to always be around the ressy house so I could do some of the physical work of setting up an office for taking over Perry's job.

Apparently Perry left Central state the day after I had, and even though the Group realized his absence almost immediately, they didn't have time to give it much thought with the break up of the Group followed by the waves of attacking voices.

When I learned that Perry was gone and no one had stepped forward to take over, I immediately seized the opportunity to have unrestricted access to the ressies and control over the cleaning process.  Even though there wasn't anyone else left in the Group who was interested in the job, I was still surprised when Sarah just granted my request without a lecture or even a discussion.

The first thing I did was to put flyers out all over campus offering jobs in "helping mentally ill human beings return to a normal life," splitting the money Sarah had been paying Perry eight ways for eight positions.  I didn't have a great response to that.  In fact, only one girl filled out an application, and she didn't return my phone calls.

So after doing some field research, I used my own money to fix up six of the rooms on the old admin building's ground floor as a sort of private dormitory, and re-divided the funds six ways instead of eight to make the job more attractive.  I can't say people flocked to my door, but between the free room and board and the better wages, I didn't have a problem hiring six undergrads to babysit the ex-slaves around the clock.  Part of me despised doing it, but I took Joey's advice and inserted small rats into my employee's heads to ensure their loyalty, reliability, and to somewhat protect their innocence.  

I spent every minute of my free time that June and part of July cleaning the minds of the thirty-eight ex-slaves we had accumulated before and during the attacks, and that didn't include the ones I cleaned on the spot after defeating a new group of loony voices.

Suzi and I had arranged our summer schedule to where we were in the same classes so we could take notes for each other, study together, and generally cover for each other when one of us missed class for our different reasons at the time.  Of course now whenever Suzi was called away, I was generally called away as well; but whatever convenience was lost there, was more than made up for by the strengthening of our friendship from all the time we spent together.

We rarely saw Joey during the week, but on Saturdays and most Sundays, Joey and I would spend the afternoons working on a computer program and database which I could use to record and eventually analyze the symbols, their streams, and the complex interactions between them.  Suzi would come and collect us for dinner around five o'clock, then afterwards I'd part their company to give them their own time alone by going over to Joey's house.

Joey's dad had graciously allowed me to park Midge's trailer in their big backyard, and I ended up spending the night at the Connors almost every Saturday night so I could fly her in the morning before it would get too hot.  

At first spending those evenings with Joey's parents while Joey wasn't there felt a little strange.   But after Joey's dad and I did some male bonding when he came out with me one night to do some maintenance on Midge, I started to feel like I was part of their extended family like back when Joey and I were growing up.

So you could say I was thoroughly enjoying my time at Central State.  Suzi and I were acing our classes together, Joey and I were working together like in the old days, I was gaining a great deal of knowledge and experience in the way the symbolic streams worked, and two or three nights a week I'd experience the sexual exploits of some of my fellow students, leaving me clear of the distractions my loins usually imposed when I wasn't getting any.

Of course, sharing in people's most intimate moments did present their own distractions.  Many of the lovers I dream-walked into were total strangers to me, but there was the occasional classmate, neighbor, or other acquaintance; which I would see after the dream-walk that I naturally had to pretend nothing was different from the last time I had seen them.  Two girls I had classes with were especially difficult to deal with for their boyfriends were very much in love with them.  From my perspective during a dream-walk, that meant I was very much in love with them, and the feelings didn't entirely go away after I woke up.  I don't know what I would have done without Suzi keeping me out of trouble in those classes.  Of course she constantly commented how hypocritical she was with all of the carnal sex she was having again.

If I hadn't known it had been Joey's idea, I would have been very concerned when Suzi started having her toy boys come over on Wednesdays again... but without Joey.  I suppose I understood he only wanted to give her the chance to experience the solo voice scene.  I just hoped she wouldn't go overboard with her kinky sex.

Anyway, every night except Wednesday, Saturday, and most Sunday nights, Suzi and I were always together doing homework, watching TV, playing telepathic hopscotch, or just talking like only two best friends could.  No topic was taboo, and we absolutely never took offense when the other didn't see things the same way, which we very often did.

Suzi just loved hearing my dream-walk stories.  It was our secret gossip.  We spent many a morning in my bed talking about the people and the sex I had experienced the previous night, and it became a regular routine to check in on the lovers telepathically together to see how they were doing the morning after.

One night I dream-walked into Jason, Suzi's older brother, just as he used his well practiced fuck me look on a girl he had just met three days before.  The blush on her cheeks and the slight movement of her thighs meant she was responding very well to his empathic wooing, and with only a few more enchanting smiles and maintaining this vibe he was constantly sending out to her, she agreed to go with him to see his new apartment.

During the ten-minute walk to our/his apartment, we started stoking her heat by slipping our hand down her back and briefly patting her ass, sending her our arousal in the brief glances she made.  By the time we got her to our apartment she was like jello in our arms, accepting our tongue into her hot wet mouth while sending her hands under our shirt and sliding up our back to hold herself tight to our hot and pulsing bod.

Her resistance to my hands removing her shirt and bra faded as our sexual desire surged through our skin and poured into hers, her emotions unable to resist my manipulation as more and more of my skin touched hers and strengthened my control.

As I unsheathed my cock and pulled her shorts and panties down with one hand, I was thrilled for a moment when the wiggling mass of female flesh seemed to pull herself together to object.  But just like the others before her, her resolve fell to the chaotic lust I drove into her like a spike, and despite the thrill instantly evaporating, my cock shortly followed, driving into her somewhat satisfying tight cunt.

From the point of penetration and on, the fucking was purely routine.  Once I had gotten them this far, it was just a matter of motivation to get them to do anything else.  Oh, getting them to want me to fuck their ass was usually a significantly harder thing to do, but it just wasn't worth the trouble to have to cope with them the next morning when they freaked out.

So I fucked her until she came, then rolled onto my back and let her wear herself out, getting a small kick out of watching her little breasts jiggle as she humped her way to a third climax.  Once she had that out of her system, I settled in for the cuddling and after sex kissing where I would have to work my magic again to keep her from hating me in the morning.  

At first I was fairly relieved when she said she couldn't spend the night and had to go, but I knew if I let her go, this thing would become a long drawn out affair instead of the one night stand I had intended for her to be.

So we did some more of our magical wooing and got her onto her back again before finding the whole thing ridiculously routine and stopped.   We couldn't help but laugh in her face when she used the word "lover" while asking us what was wrong, then laughed again when we saw how it infuriated her, for a pissed off bitch was a much easier thing to deal with than a sobbing wench.

I started to drift away from Jason's mind as he watched her rush around gathering her clothes to leave while calling him every filthy name she could come up with, but I didn't drift so far not to notice how he got deeply depressed after she left.

Suzi and I spent hours debating whether or not we should invade her brother's privacy to learn what was going on, eventually Suzi agreeing to just go talk to him rather than spying on him like she originally wanted to do.

Once Jason cooled down about my mental eaves dropping, he spilled his guts to Suzi.  He was just starting to understand that what he wanted most out of a girl was someone who he could be equal to, someone who could do to him what he did to her.   He wanted to find someone who could resist his empathic spell enough to put him under her own spell.

"What he wants is a female version of himself," I said with a snort over dinner at Suzi's the next night.

"Freud would have a field day with this," Suzi said between bites.  "Of course it would be someone like mom who he'd say Jason was really looking for."

"More like my mom."

"Yeah, but your mom would burn him out," Suzi joked.  "Which by the way, she called here earlier asking me to have you call home.  You still haven't talked to her since you left?"

"No," I said, wishing I hadn't brought her up.  "I've been... busy."

"Well you're not busy now," Suzi said, getting up and heading for the cordless phone Joey and I got her for her birthday last February.

"I am kind of eating," I said as I took a second helping of hush puppies.

She was about to tell me I could call after I finished when the phone rang in her hand, startling her a moment before she automatically pressed the on button and saying "Hello?"

"It's for you," Suzi said with a tone of caution, holding out the phone to me.  

"It isn't your mom," she added when I hesitated.

"Then who is it?" I asked her while taking the phone, but didn't wait for her answer before putting it up to my ear and saying "This is Tim."

"..."

My eyes went wide, sensing... knowing...

"Eric?"

"Yeah?"

"Shit..."

"Yeah..."

"Uh... Hi..."

"Hi."

"You sound...  Happy."

"Yeah...  I have a new boyfriend..."

"You do?  Hey, that's great!"

"Yeah..."

"When did this happen?"

"It started a couple of months ago..."

"Shit.  And you just now got around telling me?"

"Yeah.  I...  I wanted to tell you myself.  But you know..."

"Yeah...  I guess I do know..."

<....>

"His name is Randy Stein..."

"Randy, huh?"

"Funny, isn't it?"

"What is?"

"That his name is Randy.  Don't you remember?"

"Sorry... I guess not."

"Like Randy Myers...  From camp?  The one I...  You know..."

"Oh yeah...  I see what you mean.  Funny."

"Randy's deep in the closet.  Only I know.  And you I guess."

"Thanks.  That really means something to me."

<.....>

"Tim?"

"Yeah Eric?"

"I feel...  good about this.  About us talking like this."

"Yeah.  Me too."

"Not like last time," we both said at the same time.

We both waited for the other to speak for over a minute before Eric said, "Maybe you should put Suzi on."

"I'm already on," Suzi said from her phone in the bedroom.

"Oh," Eric said.

"What's he like?" she prompted him.

"Who?"

"Randy!"

"Oh," he laughed.  "He's tall, dark, muscular...  He played football and baseball last year.  Did I tell you I was on the varsity baseball team?"

"No," Suzi and I both complained.

"Sorry.  Well, that's where we sort of got to know each other.  But I didn't have a clue he liked guys until after he saw me in the showers one day and started putting out these vibes."

"Empathic senses kicking in again?" I asked.

"Maybe.  But then you also know, you know?  I... I couldn't really tell which it was."

"Well, what happened?" Suzi impatiently asked.

"Oh.  Nothing right then.  He left the showers and avoided me as much as he could, but when he was around me, I could feel him just...  undressing me.  You ever feel someone doing that to you?"

"Couple times," I said.

"Once or twice," Suzi stated.  "So did you corner him and whip it out?"

"What?" Eric laughed.  "No, I didn't whip it out."

"But you did corner him," Suzi stated, pleased she had pegged it right.

"Well, kind of.  I noticed he waited until after I finished my shower before he would get his, so I started taking longer showers, and after about a week of this, Randy was used to being the last to finish his shower."

"You turd," Suzi said with pleasure.  "You set him up."

"Yeah, I did."

"So?  Finish the story!" Suzi complained.

"Hang on...  I need to... do something..."

Something brushed up against the phone, then after a long moment of silence, we heard Eric's distant voice yelling "Jodie!  GET OFF THE PHONE!"

"Jodie!  You better not be eaves dropping again!" Eric's mom yelled from even farther away.

Suzi and I just barely heard a click, then after over three minutes passed, Eric picked up the phone again and said, "Okay, I'm back."

"Your poor sister is probably dying to know what happened," Suzi complained sadly, then added devilishly, "Quick, tell us before she figures out something else to try."

Humoring her, Eric lowered his voice to an almost whisper and said, "Once everyone else was out of the showers, I went back in with some shampoo, took the showerhead right next to him and told him I had forgot to do my hair.  His eyes had that deer in the headlights look, but he didn't leave.  I purposely made my hair so sudsy that I had to keep my eyes shut the whole time, and made my uh... trunk swing back and forth as much as I could.

"When I finally washed the soap out of my hair and opened my eyes, Randy was hustling out of the showers.  I did the exact same thing the next day, but I guess he got scared and left before I was done.  I thought it was all over, but then that Friday we had a pretty late game and instead of showering before going home, I just put on my street clothes and was walking out when Randy looked at me and..."

Eric paused and sniffed a few times before saying, "Sorry.  He just...  He didn't know what was going on.  He was so confused.  I felt like he was begging me to stay, but he also wanted to run away if I did...  So I pretended I had misplaced my keys and hung around.   I waited and waited for him to come out of the shower until like a half hour after everyone else had already left.

"I was really getting worried about what he was doing in there so long.  I mean, he could have been committing suicide, you know?  So I went in and found him sitting on the floor.

"Tim, maybe I do still have some of that empathic stuff left.  I did kind of feel something pass from me to him when he saw me and we made eye contact.  I think it kept him from jumping up and running away from me."

"Could have been," I said softly.  "But it may have been your normal empathy or something."

"Maybe..."

"So did you get naked and make love?" Suzi asked with impatience.

"No!" Eric said firmly.  "We talked.  We talked for...  Well, a long time.  My dad grounded me for a week when I came home so late without calling, but it was worth it.  Randy started to open up to me after that.  About three weeks ago I kissed him for the first time, and then...  We...  you know...  did it... this afternoon."

"I knew that's what it was," I admitted, more to myself than to him.  "I could feel how relaxed and... in love you are."

"Yeah, I love him," he said little surprised, then chuckled and repeated, "I love him.  I love him.  I really do love him.  I can't believe it."

"Why?" Suzi asked.

"Because... I don't know.  I just...  Didn't think I'd ever feel this way again.  I... I'm me again.  I'm...  me."

Eric's phone call put me in such good spirits I ended up calling my mom later that night just to tell her the good news.  After we exhausted the topic, I could tell she was concerned by my sudden departure and lack of weekend phone calls, and after making small talk a while, she out right asked me if anything was wrong.  

Unable to speak, my answer was in the click of the phone going on hook, and since she didn't call me back, I guess she knew exactly what that answer meant.

That Saturday we ate dinner at Joey's, and from the moment I entered the house, I knew that the barbequed pork steaks wasn't the only reason we were all there.  It was obvious that Margaret, Joey's mom, had learned I was avoiding my mother, but it was also obvious she didn't know why.  Heck, even Suzi didn't know why I was upset with my mom, and I normally told her everything.  But since I hadn't come forth with it on my own and my mom hadn't pushed to get things cleared up, Suzi had decided to stay out of it.  But not Margaret.

I was a bit preoccupied sorting out what I would say if and when the topic arose during dinner.  It was still hard for me to accept that my mother had altered Michelle to not only allow it, but to thoroughly enjoy having sex with my little brother.  Telling someone else about this would only make me feel like I was slandering my own mother, and I didn't want other people to see her any differently than I wanted to see her myself.

Yet I couldn't ignore the hope that telling the Conners and Suzi would somehow make the problem go away.  I wanted to tell them, but I didn't want to either.  

I sat down to dinner still undecided what to say, and my face drained of color when Margaret mentioned that she, Tom, and my mom and dad were planning to take a camping trip to the Grand Cannon at the end of July.  And then she turned to me and asked point blank, "Would you like some bread and butter?"

"I really don't want to talk about her," I stuttered out.

"Huh?" Joey exclaimed as I felt my fingers and toes go ice cold.  "Her who?"

"My mom," I said before taking a big drink of my milk to avoid looking into anyone's eyes.

"Your mom?" Joey questioned, but was hushed by both Suzi's and Margaret's warning glares.

When nobody said anything for a couple of minutes, Tom cleared his throat and said, "Tim, you better check Midge out good before you fly her tomorrow.  I caught Tommy and Josh playing in her a couple of times this week, and yesterday Margaret noticed Tommy had engine grease on his hands."

"I didn't say I saw it on his hands," Margaret corrected.  "It was all over the bathroom sink."

"It still had to have been Tommy," Tom insisted. "Joey and I know to wash our hands off in the utility sink when they're that dirty.  Tim, I think it would be best if you lock Midge back up in the trailer when you're done with her tomorrow."

"Especially with Tommy and Kathy spending the week here while Sarah and Stan are out of town," Margaret added.

"Actually, I was kind of planning to take her to school for the week," I announced.  "That's why I didn't drive my car today."

"How come you've been leaving it out anyway?" Joey asked.  "I would think you'd be worried about someone stealing it, or the birds shitting on it."

"The trailer gets really hot from the sun where it's at, and after I opened it up and nearly choked on the smell of rubber and gas a couple of weeks ago, I've been parking Midge in the woods under a tarp.  There's no way someone is going to get her out of the woods unless you know how to fly her in close quarters like I do or you disassemble her.  You can't roll her out.  Too many rocks and dead trees.

"Heh, I guess that explains what Tommy and Josh have been conspiring about all week," Joey snickered.  "I swear, Tim.  Those two remind me of us at that age more and more."

"Well, Josh is not going to be here all next week like he was this week," Margaret said firmly.  "When Josh wasn't coaxing Tommy into something they knew they shouldn't be doing, he was wearing my ear out talking about his poor sick grandmother."

"But it's good that he talks about things like that," Suzi inserted.  "And talking to someone he doesn't really know very well can be a lot easier, especially if it really bothers him."

"And it makes sense he'd talk to you about his grandmother since you're Tommy's," Joey pointed out.

"Oh," Margaret groaned.  "Now you're making me feel guilty."

"Sorry," Suzi said, meekly.  

"My brother fucks his nanny, and my mom programmed her to do it," I blurted out.

"What did you say?" Margaret asked.

"I...  I didn't say anything," I moaned as I pushed my chair back.  "Excuse me.  I'm not feeling well."

I might have left if I had drove there, and I didn't feel like going out into the heat to check Midge out, so I just went to my room.

Of course it wasn't really my room.  They had two guest rooms that shared a bathroom, one with a queen-sized bed, and one with a bunk bed.  I would have been just as happy to sleep in Joey's bed, but Margaret had made such a fuss about it, saying I shouldn't have to sleep in Joey's dirty bed when there was perfectly good clean bed available that hardly ever got used in the first place.  I personally think she just wanted to have a real excuse to change the sheets once in a while.

The room with the bunk bed was basically Tommy's exclusively, as he tended to spend a lot of his summer weekdays there to play with kids his own age.  Security was a big thing to Sarah and Stan, and it didn't really surprise me when I learned that Tommy wasn't allowed to have friends over to his house.  Of course even if he invited one over, he wouldn't have been able to tell them how to get there.  Tommy didn't know where his house was in relation to the rest of the town, didn't know what its address was, or anything else that someone could lift from his mind and expose where they lived.  

The lengths of which they went through to ensure no one knew where they lived was astonishing, and Margaret and Tom were both quite upset when Sarah wouldn't even tell them her home phone number.  Even Joey had been in the dark until he had proven that he could encrypt his most private thoughts and knowledge, and even then Sarah took three months before taking him to their secret home.

Anyway, you can see why Tommy liked to stay at his grandparents.  He could live like a normal kid.

I was truly missing those days where I had been a normal kid, with a normal mom and normal friends.  I laid on the bed lost in my childhood memories for...  well, a lot longer than what I had thought.  

The room was getting dark from the sun having set when I sensed Margaret hovering outside the bedroom door, undecided whether or not to peek in to see if I was asleep.

"I'm awake," I simply said.

"May I come in?"

"Sure," I said, then cleared my throat from my voice having cracked.

She entered, leaving the door open behind her, but hesitated when she saw I was looking out the window.

"Joey and Suzi still here?" I asked, already knowing they weren't.

"They left over an hour ago."

"Oh.  Sorry about...  Dinner."

"Tim, what did you say at dinner?  Nobody understood you."

"Good.  I think that's the way I'd rather have it."

She sighed, then said, "Alright.  I won't try to worm it out of you any more.  But not talking to your mother isn't going to make whatever it is go away.  You're just dragging things out."

I finally turned my head and looked at her, then nodded silently in agreement when I saw she was right.  Then after a moment of staring at how she had her arm crooked behind her back, I asked, "Your back bothering you again?"

"Yes," she sighed with a touch of aggravation.

"You want me to..."

"Only if you feel up to it," she said while her fingers lingered around the edges of her blouse.

"Sure I'm up to it," I said, rolling myself off the bed and following her to the bathroom.

"I really appreciate this, Timmy," Margaret said as she handed me a couple of towels and the baby oil, then closed the door after me so she could undress.  "Until this afternoon, I haven't had any problems with it since you massaged it last weekend."

"Any idea what causes it?" I asked as I spread the towels out on the bed.

"Oh, I have a very good idea of what causes it."

"But you're not going to say," I stated.

"No.  And don't be poking your mind where it doesn't belong, either," she warned.

"I wouldn't dream of it," I said while canceling the probe I had been forming.  

I kept my back to her when she announced she was coming out, then once she had climbed on the bed and had gotten comfortable, she said, "Okay Tim.  I'm ready."

When I turned around, I was surprised to find she had removed her shorts as well, and while she still wore panties, they were a light tan color and for a moment I thought she was literally butt naked.

After warming the oil up in my hands, I started the massage at her upper back and worked my way down, finding her back a lot less tense than it had been the previous weekend.

My own back started to complain a bit from the angle I was working at, and after trying it kneeling on the bed on the other side of her which was worse, I had her swing herself around so her head was at the foot of the bed.

When that was only marginally better, we ended up moving to the floor where I straddled her like I had the last time.  Not only was I much more comfortable, but I could put more weight into the massage when I needed to.

Everything was going fine until Tom walked by the bedroom and caught a glance.

"Timothy Brandton, what the fuck are you doing with my WIFE!" he exploded.

I was so surprised that I had to look back down at Margaret's oiled back and then back at my hands before my mind recollected itself enough to remember.

But just as I opened my mouth, Margaret spat, "He's helping my back!  What does it look like!"

"It looks like he's...  You know God damn well what it looks like!  Tim!  Get off her!"

My cheeks grew hot and rosy as I stood up, doing so somewhat slowly as to be careful to not touch anything with my hands.  But then I made a dash for the bathroom when Margaret rolled over and I got a flash of her breasts a swingin'.

They went to their room and argued a few minutes, then things grew suspiciously quiet before their shower was turned on, drowning out any further sounds.  I took a quick shower myself, then went out to the kitchen and chowed down on some leftovers from dinner before plopping myself in front of the TV for a couple of hours.  From my symbolic sight, I knew they were in there fucking like two teenagers on their honeymoon, and I had to work at keeping myself interested in the TV programs as I didn't want to feel like I was spying on them.  I didn't dare go to sleep.  I couldn't think of anything worse than dream-walking into that lot.

I spent most of the next morning and early afternoon working on Midge after finding Tommy and his trouble-making friend had played mechanic with her.  I was pretty upset when I realized that, but the weather had turned nice, and I later admitted to myself I really enjoyed the time Joey's dad and I spent on it together.  

Later in afternoon, Joey came home in his Mustang with Suzi pulling up behind him in her car.  By four thirty, Midge was up and running, so while Tom grilled some steaks, I started giving Joey and Suzi lessons on flying my baby girl.

By the time it was dark, Suzi was flying Midge fairly comfortably, but Joey's extra bulk caused him to sit closer to the controls, restricting his movements so much he had trouble with turns.  After one of the blades hit a tree's trunk hard enough to stall the engine, the resulting scare made him swear he would never get in the thing again.  And even though it broke my heart to say it, I agreed he probably shouldn't try.

That Wednesday evening, Suzi only had one of her toy boys over instead of the usual two.  Kent Sklar was one of the two toy boys I had encountered the first night I had stayed in my apartment, and at the time he had been confused over who he was sexually attracted to more, Suzi or Jeff, Suzi's head boy at the time.  As Jeff was participating in a co-op job over the summer and wasn't on campus, he left Kent in charge after Kent had impressed him with his devotion to pleasing Suzi the rest of that semester.

Suzi was fairly impressed by him herself, and had teased Joey on more than one occasion that Kent was more attentive to her needs than he was with all of the time Joey committed towards the Group.  I honestly was starting to get sick of the guy showing up to cook her dinner three times a week.  It was an interruption to Suzi's and my nightly routine, especially when he started staying the night on her couch so he could cook her breakfast and served it to her in bed.

Suzi was very strict about not having sex with any of her boys except on the designated nights, so it only reinforced how dedicated he was to her that he did these things without expecting anything sexual in return.  He was so in love with her that it was making Suzi feel really guilty.  So that evening she undid all of the enslaving commands and they spent the night making love on a more equal level.

I don't know if that had been my idea or hers, but we both felt it was the best thing to do in the situation.  Neither Joey or I saw any problems with her having another lover, especially after I realized how similar her feelings for him were to that of my own for someone like Holly Quinn, the girl who had given me Midge.

I had a difficult time staying away from them during my dream walk that night, but I managed to keep myself entertained by staying in Thomas, the Native American group member.  I had a deep respect for his quick wit and fast reflexes, but most of all, after Terrence ><echem> defeated me ><cough> that spring, Thomas had challenged Terrence the next day and put him in his place.  Of course I helped him a little.  Even Joey and Suzi didn't suspect I had used my version of Stan's telepathic shift to make Terrence's telepathic senses misjudge where Thomas's mind was a couple of times.

You remember when I first met Sarah's husband Stan, don't you?  His seeming impenetrable shield and undetectable illusions were so effective that in the early days of the Group, he had been the only reason they had never fallen to another telepath.  Stan's abilities were based on being able to shift telepathic energy away from him so regular telepathic probes never actually reached his mind.  Without the symbolic sight to show me where his mind actually was, I could never have adjusted my aim, so to speak, so that the shift actually pulled the command stream to him instead of away.

Generating illusions to the senses without telepathic detection was a bit more complicated to figure out.  I honestly don't know how Stan does it without having symbolic sight.  I wouldn't be able to tell if my streams reached their intended receptacle cluster without it.  Basically I generate a telepathic shift to carry the sensory differentials to the target's nervous system.  By differential I mean I only send the changes to the sensory data, not a complete replacement.

Each sense's symbolic streams get generated at points outside the brain.  A telepath can usually shield any part of their nervous system, but you usually don't shield anything but your mind as it takes quite a bit more energy do more than that.  It is very difficult for a telepath to maintain any sort of firm hold over another telepath's nervous system since the owner has a hard wired connection and the other does not.  But if the owner doesn't detect another telepath's mental energy, then the only way they could know their senses are being mucked with is by something obvious like their body moving when they didn't intend it, or they see something they know couldn't possibly exist.

Shifts are very closely related to telepathic pulses except a pulse doesn't shift everything in one direction.  A pulse is a ripple or a wave of telepathic energy that can optionally carry a payload.  Of course the biggest difference between the two is that a shift is nearly impossible to detect without symbolic sight, but a telepath would have to be very drunk or stoned not to know exactly where pulse came from or what it was carrying.  And if you have a mental shield up when a pulse reaches you, you can get a headache from the shield absorbing the pulse's telepathic energy.

I certainly do like going off on wild tangents, don't I?

Getting back to Thomas, he was a pretty typical red blooded male voice.  There had been an all time high in the number of students who had accepted to be slaves over the summer in exchange for financial aid.  But with the large number of group members having left, there wasn't anywhere near enough voices to take them all in, so for the six remaining voices interested in having them, they got to pick and choose.

Thomas had chosen one of each.  By that I mean, a blonde, a brunette, and a red head.  As I mentioned earlier, he liked them smart, bi, and noisy.  The blond needed a little work to say the dirty words he liked to hear, and the red head had to be taught to enjoy girl sex, but other than that and they couldn't go more than a couple of days without sex from him or one of the other girls, he didn't alter their minds as much as most of the voices had their financial aid sluts.

The lesbian sex I was enjoying that night was the first I had had all summer.  I nearly pulled out when Thomas came in with his cock pointing straight ahead and heading for my lover's ass, but the dirty talk coming out of the two women's mouths was so filthy, I think I accidentally triggered my host's orgasm from my own surge of horniness.

Thomas liked watching them sucking his cream out of each other's asses too.  That was a bit of a treat for me as I hadn't experienced that in a dream walk before.  It really was totally gross and disgusting and completely kinky beyond words.  I flip-flopped back and forth three times just to suck his cream out of the other's ass, then slipped into him when he laid down and let them lick the sweat off him and each other before all four of us fell asleep together.

It was just starting to get light outside when Thomas and I sensed a disturbance in the force.  Or at least that's what it felt like considering we were dreaming our own episode of Star Wars at the time.

We opened our eyes, finding Sal, the red head, slipping her nighty off to join the rest of us in bed.  We were just about to invite her to slip in between us and Taylor, the brunette, when she pointed a water pistol as us and hit our face with a stream of liquid.

Thomas's senses went dead so fast that for a moment I thought I had died.  But just before I woke up, my symbolic vision revealed the four of them on the bed, all four of their symbolic clusters were slower than any deep sleep would normally produce.  They were drugged.

Snapping awake, I had to collect myself before trying to reach out across town to where my mind had just been, and it took me at least five minutes to locate them, mainly due to how small their mental signature were in the state they were in.

That was the first time I got to call a red alert, and between the adrenaline and not having done it before, I think I knocked everyone out of their beds from the intensity.

Terrence, Suzi, Robin, Jacob, and finally Joey checked in, then when after a minute went by without hearing from anyone else, Terrence ordered everyone to knockout anyone in the home with them and to lock their doors.

"Suz, you heard him," I thought to her when I saw she hadn't knocked Kent out.

"I spent all night in his head," she thought back.  "He's clean."

"You can't be sure of that," Terrence urged.  "Put him to sleep, pet."

"You'll both be safer if he's asleep," I added.

"No," Suzi thought to all of us firmly.  "The last time I did that, I ended up getting attacked from behind.  I'm going to send him home.  He'll be safer there than staying here."

"Don't bother arguing, Terrence.  I'll cover her," I thought to Terrence, seeing she had made up her mind.

"I'm clear here," Joey thought.  "Everyone is locked in their rooms."

"I'm clear too," I echoed.

"I'm clear," Robin chimed in. "Terrence, weren't you on watch?"

"No, Brigley and Grant were.  I'm clear."

I was so focused on watching Kent that after he and Suzi got dressed, I didn't notice Jamie, the girl who lived in the apartment across the hall from Suzi, standing at her door until she opened her door just as Kent opened Suzi's.

"Suzi DOWN!" I commanded while at the same time taking control of Jamie's right hand and arm and diverted her aim away from the door.

"Damnit!" I yelled as both Suzi and Kent went down, and for a moment felt my own energy being sucked through the share link.  

Joey willed a block into place before it could really affect me, but he was still sharing himself fully with Suzi, hoping it would keep her from getting knocked out.  The pulses he sent me through the share link told me to hurry, and I could feel it was dragging him down pretty fast.  So I rushed to my own door, flung it open, and found myself looking straight into the eyes of Roger, the guy who live across the hall from me.

My empathic senses immediately warned me of the abnormal vibes coming from Roger, and without even thinking I zapped him with my empathic zapper, stopping him just before he could pull the trigger on his water pistol.

"Shit!" I exclaimed from the shock, and stood there dumfounded for several seconds.

Once I recovered my wits, I used the extra energy the adrenaline shooting through my veins gave me to leap up the steps four at a time.  When I saw Suzi struggling to shake herself to stay conscious, I almost didn't notice Jamie's drugged body at the top of the stairs in time to hop over it.

After touching Suzi's wet face and finding my hand going numb, I grabbed her and carried her to the shower.  I turned the water on full blast, and without waiting for it to warm or to remove any of our clothes, I held her sputtering face under the water until she gasped, "Stop."

I shut the water off and held her against me as she caught her breath, then after we both had calmed down enough, I gently made her look at me as I asked, "Are you okay?"

"Still a little drowsy," she said.

"How about you?  Are you okay?" I thought to Joey.

"Need caffeine," was all he sent back.

"One of us, or just you?" I asked him.

"Suz."

"'Kay," I thought back before saying to Suzi, "Joey wants you to drink some coffee.  Do you want your instant or my perked?"

"Instant," she said as pulled her head away from my shoulder to look at me.  "Timmy, what happened?"

"Jamie shot you and Kent with a water pistol full of some sort of knockout juice in it.  If you hadn't been linked to Joey, you'd be in dream land right now."

"Kent?"

"He's okay," I said after checking him with my symbolic sight.  "Just deeply asleep."

"Coffee," Joey reminded us.

I carried Suzi out and put her down on her bed, and was just standing up when I sensed Roger entering the room.

I zombified him just as he was about to speak, and after making sure he didn't have the water pistol or anything else that could be used as a weapon of any sort, I had him carry Kent in as I closed and locked the front door.

I had zombie Roger start Suzi's coffee while I took Kent into the bathroom and washed as much of the chemical off him as I could.  That had been fairly difficult to do as he was as limp as a noodle, and since the drug's affects prevented me from taking control of his body, I couldn't do a very good job without risking drowning him as he slept.

After stripping his wet clothes off him and putting him in Suzi's bed, I woke Suzi who had dozed off and said, "Coffee's ready."

I carried her out to the kitchen, then helped her with the cup as she started sipping the coffee.  

After downing about a half cup, she suddenly noticed Roger and asked, "What's he doing here?"

"He walked in right as I was going out to make your coffee, probably wanting to know what was going on with everyone lying around asleep in the hall."

"Tim, can you reach Terrence or any of the others?" Joey queried.

"Shit, I forgot all about them," I asked before checking.  After several minutes of querying, I used my eyes in the sky to check out the other's last known location.

"Robin's out," I said once I found her asleep on her bathroom floor, naked from the waist down.  "Not sure how."

"More coffee," Joey said just as Suzi set her empty cup down.

"Make yourself some," Suzi thought back with a touch of annoyance.

"I can't.  I'm busy securing the house," was his response.

Suzi sighed, then mentally commanded Roger to make her some more as she said, "I hope he remembers coffee makes me irritable."

"I'm sure he does," I said patiently.

"Mostly because it makes me have to pee every five minutes."

"Yes, I know."

"He's the one who likes coffee.  I only drink it to be sociable," Suzi said, getting up and heading for her bathroom.

I navigated my feathered friend down Jacob's chimney and into his living room, finding two women lying on the floor with a water pistol laying several feet from one of them.  I began checking the other rooms, and found Jabob also asleep in his bathroom's floor, his britches pulled down to his feet.

"Jacob's out too," I announced as I navigated my feathered friend back to the fireplace to escape.

I was about to turn my attention to find Terrence when the fact they both had been in the bathroom started ringing bells in my head.

"Suzi!  Don't sit down on the toilet!" I yelled as I leapt towards her bathroom.

"Too late," she said, already having sat down and started peeing.  "Why?"

"Shit Suz.  Don't move," I said, approaching her cautiously.  "Both Jacob and Robin were knocked out right after they used the toilet."

Suzi sat still as I carefully inspected her porcelain throne for any hidden booby traps, then sighed with a little relief when I announced there wasn't anything there.

"Good," she said, reaching for the toilet paper, then janked her hand back like it had bit her.

"What?" I asked when she looked up at me with worry in her eyes.

"Do you think it's the paper?"

"I don't know," I said before I went over to the vanity and looked underneath.

"Here, this should be okay," I said, ripping open a new bag of tp and handing her a roll.

"And don't flush it when you're done," Joey added.  "That might trigger something."

"Are you done?" Suzi asked Joey.

"Yeah," Joey thought back. "I found a water pistol in my mom and dad's room.  The bastards planted some sort of suggestion in my mom to squirt me when I got up."

"What about your dad?"

"I didn't find anything in his head, or the little ones either.  I'll wake them all up after I'm on the road."

"Joey, I think you should stay right where you are," I thought to him urgently.  

"Fuck that."

"If you get hit with this stuff, it'll either affect all three of us, which would be really bad, or just you which is worse as it'll knock you out so hard, we'll lose the share link, leaving Suzi defenseless."

"I'm not going to just sit here while you two are in danger," Joey thought back stubbornly.  "I'm coming whether you like it or not."

"Joey, listen to me," I though to him while sending surges through the share link.  "You're our best defense.  If one of us gets hit again, you can do just like you did with Suzi."  

"But what if you need me?  I think I should at least be on campus."

"If you come shooting out now, whoever is doing this will know you're still a player.  But if you wait, they'll eventually assume you're out for the count, and if things get really bad, then you can be superman and fly to our rescue.  You'll have the advantage of surprise on your side then."

"Superman, huh?"

"Timmy's right, Joey," Suzi thought to us.  "You're our link, our safety net, and our Calvary."

"I'm Superman and the Calvary," Joey thought back.  "Okay, I guess I can live with that.  But whoever is doing this apparently knows everything about us.  It's almost like it's an inside job."

"You mean..."

"I just mean watch your backs.  You can't trust anyone."

"Understood," I thought back.

"And if the share link breaks, you're both to go straight to Tim's mom's and dad's."

"We're not going to abandon you," Suzi immediately replied.

"Suz, while Sarah is gone, Terrence and I are in charge, so you have to follow my orders."

"Shit," Suzi muttered.

"Don't worry, sweetie." Joey thought back while sending a gentle surge of his own through the share link.  "Nothing is going to happen to me.  This house was built to keep anyone from getting in or out in case something like this ever happened.  As long as I don't use the potty, eat anything, or, shit, touch anything, I'll be fine.  Of course I might go mad with boredom..."

As Joey was about to make a joke of his situation, I sensed a shielded mind entering our building and sent a warning pulse through the share link.  I didn't recognize the mind's swirls, but I couldn't be sure if that was just due to their heavy shielding.  Since the mind wasn't actively probing for us, we didn't dare probe them, so we just waited as I watched the mind search my apartment the old fashioned way before it started climbing the stairs.

Suzi stood two yards from the door holding the water pistol aimed on the door as I prepared to open it once the mind walked up to it.  But just before I was about to spring our trap, Terrence's hushed voice called out, "Suzi.  Tim.  You in there?"

"Yeah," I said cautiously, motioning to Suzi to stay ready. "Terrence, we thought you were knocked out like rest.  Why didn't you respond when I called?"

"You git, you broke protocol," Terrence said, his voice remaining hushed.  "If an outside force continues to take out Group members after an alert is called, all members are to maintain telepathic silence to prevent the intruders from locating..."

"Okay, okay.  I remember it now," I groaned before saying cautiously, "I'm going to open the door now.  Don't make any sudden moves, okay?"

"Yes.  But no fast moves from your lot either," Terrence said with equal caution.

"Agreed," I said, turning the handle as Suzi took aim again.

As it turns out, Terrence and Suzi were both looking down the barrels of identical water pistols, which after the shock of that wore off, Suzi giggled before lowering her aim.

I came out from behind the door to find Terrence, who had also lowered his gun, slightly blushing as he walked in wearing a nurse's uniform: skirt, bra, panty hose and all.  It would have probably looked convincing if his head wasn't so obviously male.

"Is that supposed to be a disguise?" I asked, resisting my urges to laugh.

"It was the best I could do in the little time I had," he said, spotting the cup of coffee still waiting to be drunk.  "I say pet, are you still going to drink that?"

"Not if I can't use the potty," Suzi remarked.  "Help yourself."

"Thank you," he said sitting down and taking a sip.  "Cinnamon.  Fantastic."

"You look ridiculous," I said.

"I wore a wig," he said, understanding what I was thinking.  "I took it off when I came inside so you would see it was me."

"That was good thinking," Suzi said while her face was still smirking like mine.

"What of Joey?" Terrence asked.  "Is he still up and about?"

"He's up, but not about," I simply said.  "He's locked in his house until this all blows over."

"I remembered his house was fitted with a lockdown," Terrence began.  "But I didn't think he would trigger it with you two still on the loose.  Well, one less to worry about, I suppose."

"He's more use to us out of harms way than in," Suzi said, giving me a look that meant she really needed to go pee.  "Timmy, why don't you run downstairs and get dressed while I put our neighbors away and use Jamie's toilet.  Then we can plan our... plans without any extra ears around to overhear."

"If it's not too much trouble Tim," Terrence began as I headed out the door. "Could I borrow a pair of pants, shorts and shirt from you?  I doubt this attire will help any if we're seen together."

"Pants and shorts?"

"Underpants and shorts."

"Oh...  Gotcha covered, old chap."

"Old chap," Terrence muttered, shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

I grabbed two sets of clothes, my emergency kit, and a bottle of unopened orange juice, then started to snag Roger's water gun with my right pinky on the way out, but noticed it was leaking and just left it there.

By the time I got back upstairs, Terrence and Suzi had already covered the windows and unplugged all the phones from their outlets, and were just each plugging in a privacy generator when I walked in.  The generators made both audio and electrical noise, which rendered any listening devices inside the room or focused on the room from the outside useless.

"Hey, make sure your pistols aren't leaking," I said as tossed my load onto the couch and Terrence secured Suzi's apartment door behind me.  "Roger's had a puddle under it."

"We better not take them with us then," Suzi said, thinking out loud.  "They'll leak on us if they warm up, and it's supposed to be in the nineties again today.

"Thanks, _old_ _chap_," Terrence said as he took the clothes I brought for him.  "These will do nicely.  Pet, any chance of a quick breakfast?"

"Do we have time for that kind of thing?" Suzi asked.

"We might as well eat while we plan our next move," Terrence said with a shrug.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Who knows when we'll get another chance to eat anything."

"But what if the food is drugged?" Suzi asked.

"Unlikely," Terrence said.

"If they booby trapped the toilets, then why not the food?" Suzi insisted.

"The toilets?" Terrence asked.

"That's how they took Robin and Jacob down even after they had dropped everyone in their homes," I explained.  "I'm not sure how they did it, but it looked like Robin and Jacob had just enough time to realize what was happening but couldn't get away fast enough.  Jacob still had his pants around his legs."

"The compromised slaves simply sprayed the seats before they went in to spray their master or mistress," Terrence said after a moment.  "Rather brilliant on their part.  Even in emergencies, most people will take care of a call of nature.  But I doubt anyone got to your loo or your food with your neighbors being your attackers."

"Makes sense," I said, giving Suzi an apologetic glance.

"We should still be careful as they would have taken other precautions.  But I believe we can rule out any booby traps in here.  They wouldn't have risked early detection by entering our flats and leaving something behind.  Oh, weren't you the one to call the alert Tim?"

"Yeah."

"How did you detect them?"

"I didn't actually detect them per say," I said while looking to Suzi for help.

"Yes, Timmy.  How did you know we were under attack?" Suzi asked as she loaded the toaster with frozen waffles, pretty much guessing what the true answer was.

"I uh...  Was sort of dream walking, and..."

"Dream walking?" Terrence repeated.

"Yeah.  When I'm asleep, sometimes my mind kind of wanders around and I..."

"Oh for heavens sake," Suzi exclaimed.  "He pops into peoples heads while they're shagging, and gets off from it."

"Shagging?" I repeated, understanding the word as she meant it, but having never heard her say it before.

"Having sex," Terrence said, again rolling his eyes.

"I know what it means," I stated.

"It didn't sound like it to me.  So you dream walked into someone boffing some bird.  Who?"

"Thomas."

"Thomas?!  And he didn't object?"

"Well, he didn't know."

"Rubbish," Terrence snorted.  "You couldn't possibly..."

"Last Thursday night.  'Yes, pet.  Suck my nob and lick my crown jewels.  Gordon Bennett, you're randy tonight.'  Then this Monday night, you were snogging the bird across the street in her back yard while her husband and kids were sleeping.  A police car came screaming down the street and startled you, but after you made sure everyone was still asleep, you had a romp in the pool," I said, grinning.  "I have more."

"You're nothing but a bloody peeping tom," Terrence exclaimed.

"Maybe, but at least I'm not worrying about whose eye's Janice Goodman's new baby has," I said coolly.

"Fuck," he said, his face turning pale. "If you know that, then you know bloody everything."

"I wouldn't go that far, but I think I know you well enough that I bet you were already wearing that uniform when I called the alert."

"I think we're a little off topic here, boys," Suzi pointed out as she handed me glasses for me to fill.

"You're right," I said.  "So what's our next move, Terrence?"

"Procedure states we head for the medical center," Terrence stated.  "Then we try to determine what the invaders are after and stop them."

"What about the others?" Suzi asked.

"We must know what the goals of our enemy are first.  Time may be critical, and we can't waste time trying to increase our numbers.  I don't really believe we'll be able to revive any of the others before the invaders are gone, do you?"

"Probably not," I agreed.

"It would help if we just knew their numbers," Terrence said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

"There wouldn't need to be more than one or two," I stated.

"It would take more than that to prepare all of the slaves, monitor our movements, learn our procedures..."

"Not if they already knew all of that," I stated, anticipating I would enjoy the chaos this would cause in the orderly symbolic streams zooming around inside his skull.

"Indeed," Terrence said as only a few streams took a divergent course.

"So you already considered it could be an inside job?"

"Considered it, yes.  It is far more likely one of the members who left the Group is the source of our security leak, but I doubt they are doing it by choice.  The only reason I can think any of the past members coming back like this would be for revenge, and you don't put everyone to sleep for revenge."

"Unless they wanted to torture us one at a time," Suzi pointed out.

"Actually, we can rule out revenge pretty easily," I said.  "If you wanted to get revenge, who here would you want revenge on the most?"

"The Doc, of course," Terrence said.  "So it must be someone else behind this.  Someone smart enough to choose to attack now while the Doc, Harrison and Richardson were all away, and realized most of us would be distracted by our own private activities while they were gone."

"While the parents are away, the children will play," Suzi said.

"So we know two important things about them," I began.  "They're smart, which is a bad thing, and they think they know exactly what our moves will be, which can be a good thing."

"Are you suggesting we don't follow procedures?" Terrence asked.

"I'm suggesting we let them think we are until we can get a better handle on what they're after.  Then we may be able to catch them off guard by doing something not in the procedures."

"But we have to follow procedures," Terrence argued.  "They have been carefully thought out, taking nearly every possible..."

"You can't live by the play book if the other team has a copy," I interrupted him in exasperation.

"For the past month, Joey, the Doc and I have been working on new procedures written specifically for this exact situation.  You didn't really think this sort of thing wasn't anticipated, did you?"

"So what do these new procedures say to do then?"

"It depends on what they are after."

"Alright, then in order to figure that out, we may need these," I said as I grabbed my emergency kit and opened it up.

I took three of the four compact walkie-talkies out, then dialed in the combination to open the locked compartment inside the kit and took out two of my special packs of double mint gum.

While I was disappointed that Suzi didn't even raise an eyebrow, I still got to grin at Terrence's expression from the seemingly ridiculous security for four packs of chewing gum.

"Special gum?" Terrence queried, not letting me bask very long.

"Very," I said with complete seriousness.  "This gum is probably the only good thing that came out of a very bad experience Joey, Suzi and I suffered through several years ago."

"Steven?" Suzi asked while suppressing the shudder saying his name had tried to trigger.

"Yep," I said.  "The gum is laced with a chemical that magnifies a voice's power for a short time.  With the same dose a single stick has, I was able to shield my mind against nineteen of the Cabal's more powerful members while they threw everything at me at once."

I handed one of the packs to Terrence and said, "It's extremely potent, expensive, and if you use it right, it could turn a losing battle around.  But whatever you do, don't take more than a quarter of a stick per half hour, and don't' chew it.  Just stick it under your tongue.  It'll get absorbed into your bloodstream through your mouth and tongue.  And I have to warn you, the aftereffects of a full stick are ten times worse than any hangover you've ever heard of, and after the amplification affects run out, you'll be useless for a good day.  Taking slower smaller doses will give you a significant boost without making your head explode afterwards."

"Blimey," Terrence muttered, looking at the pack of gum.

"Don't I get a pack?" Suzi asked.

"Sorry Suz," I said, slipping my own seven stick pack in my pocket.  "It wouldn't be very effective with the share link.  I'm only taking some with me in case we lose the link and I get in a tight spot.

"Oh, and Terrence?" I added when I noticed he had opened his pack up.  "I'll want them back when this is over.  The twenty eight sticks I have with me took three years of R&D and cost a quarter of a mill to produce."

Terrence whistled, then said, "I suppose shouldn't have opened mine up then.  You don't have a zip-lock baggy I could rap mine up in, do you pet?"

At that point I grabbed two of the waffles and my orange juice and headed to the door.

"Where do you think you're going?" Suzi asked after running past me and blocking the door with her body.

"The bat cave," I said grinning with my mouthful of waffle.  When she gave me her frustrated look, I added, "The woof."

"The roof?" Suzi repeated, then frowned and said, "I thought you needed more height to see the campus clearly from here."

"I'm not going to try and see the campus, just the immediate area around us."

"You think someone is watching us?"

"If we're the only members left, they'd have to have someone watching us.  If they have voice, then they'll most likely have a shield up which I'll see. And if not, a pulse would reveal their location."

"It isn't in the procedures," Terrence began. "But it isn't prohibited either.  If it works, it should at least give us somewhere to start.  If Suzi and I stay indoors, the worse that could happen is they knock you out while you're outside."

"I didn't think about that," I admitted.  "I doubt they could hit me with the stuff in water pistols, but they could have tranquilizer darts."

"Or just bullets," Suzi pointed out, worriedly.

"We don't have a lot of options," I said, looking her in the eyes, questioningly.

"Alright, but don't linger up there," Suzi said, stepping away from the door to let me pass.

"Are you kidding?  I'll melt if I stay up there more than a few minutes," I complained.  "I'll be back in a flash."

Even though the roof wasn't as hot as I had expected it to be, I still didn't waste any time to look around with my eyes before studying the area around us with my symbolic sight and then sending the pulse out.  But when it didn't any reveal minds focused on watching us, I did take a quick look around and realized with all the traffic heading into the campus, now was the best time to go if we wanted to sneak in undetected.

"No one is watching us," I said when I got back to Suzi's.  "And if we leave right now, we can join the morning commuter rush."

"Bollocks," Terrence exclaimed.  "That means if they didn't know we were still active, they will now."

I shrugged and said, "At least now they'll be coming to us instead of us having to find them.  Who's car we taking, Suz?"

"Kent's," Suzi said after a moment, then turned to head for the bedroom to get his keys.

"Brill idea, pet," Terrence said.

"Yeah, smashing even."

Suzi giggled from the bedroom, then said, "Timmy, stop trying to talk British.  It just doesn't sound right coming out of you."

"Fine," I said, not really offended, just disappointed.

For once, I was grateful that Kent had parked in my usual parking space.  Because he had, his car was behind Suzi's, right out front at the curb where it was easy to pull out into the main road leading to the campus.  My car, on the other hand, was around the corner.  That wouldn't be a big deal if they had put in a stoplight at that intersection, but they hadn't, and trying to get out of that side street during morning rush was really a pain in the ass.  Or at least it was when you couldn't use your voice.

I was just stepping out into the street to get in on the passenger side when we all sensed someone telepathically manipulating someone else's mind just down the street.  I immediately focused my symbolic sight on the general area it had come from, looking for any signs of a shield or a telepathic transmission.

The next thing I knew was some tires were screeching, Terrence shouted at Suzi, then the back corner of Kent's car came up behind me, popping me on the butt and sending me up in the air.  I bounced once on his trunk lid before the back of my head hit his rear window's glass with a crunch.  

As I took inventory of myself, I found I wasn't hurt.  I wasn't even scratched.  I was, however, sitting on top of Kent's trunk whose front end had been hit by a rather large bus.

"My CAR!" Suzi suddenly cried.  

Both she and Terrence were on the grass several feet away from the vehicles.  Apparently Terrence had grabbed Suzi and thrown them both out of harms way.  The bus had been on the other side of the road when it suddenly veered left, crossed two lanes of opposing traffic, and slammed into both Kent's front end and Suzi's rear.  How I had escaped injury was pure luck, but if Terrence hadn't had kept his wits, he and Suzi would have been seriously hurt, possibly killed.

Traffic was now at a halt, and several people had rushed over to offer help to those who were in need, leaving Suzi and Terrence alone once they had stood up.  As the shaken people started getting off the bus, I let my anger at what could have happened help me power my next move.

"Son of a BITCH!" I exclaimed, standing up on the trunk, then hopping up onto the roof.  "That's it!  They want to play rough!  I'll show them what rough really is!  How about pickle, pickle, you fuckers."

"Timmy!" Suzi yelled as I started building up energy in order to release my own short ranged version of the pickle-pickle spell.  "Think about what you're doing.  If you do it, everybody would know, and you'll never be able to live it down."

"But...  They just tried to kill us!  They nearly killed you!"

"But they didn't kill anyone.  Now come down from there before they try something else."

I pursed my lips together, then released the energy I had been building up as a pulse of pure telepathic energy without any commands or thought transmissions embedded in it.  Both Terrence and Suzi clutched their heads with a moan, then a few moments later I sensed another moan coming from across the street.  I just barely had enough time to look to where it had come from before witnessing a mind's swirls of symbolic symbols fade away from my sight.

"Holy shit," I said in a hushed voice before scrambling off the car and hid behind it.

"What?" Suzi hissed as she and Terrence ducked down out of sight as well and moved over to me, ignoring the few bystanders' reactions.

"I just saw someone across the street cloak their mind from my symbolic sight," I said while focusing my vision on the area where it had been.

"If that's true," Terrence began, "then we must get away from here quickly."

As police and fire department sirens started getting nearer and the chaos in the local area increased sharply, I agreed, knowing it was the best chance we'd have to get away without anyone following us.

Using my eyes in the sky and my symbolic sight, I managed to locate the cloaked mind by a process of elimination and watched the man from above while we headed to my car.  After we turned the corner, the man started following us, but then stopped and waited as we approached my car.

"I don't like this," I said, stopping a full car length away from my car.  "Either someone else is watching us and telling our other friend what we're doing non-telepathically, or he can sense us without visually seeing us."

"Could he just be sensing your links with the birds?" Suzi asked.

"Can you?" I asked simply.

"A little," Suzi said after moment of trying to passively feeling them out.  "It's very faint.  I don't think I'd sense them if I didn't already know they were there."

"Non-human sensory streams are pretty hard to detect if you're not used to working with their energy signature."

"That sounds like something Joey would say," Suzi said, watching the traffic carefully as Terrence peeked into my car's windows.

"Well he didn't," I stated before turning to Terrence and asking, "Anything?"  

"I'm not sure," Terrence said.  "Did you leave your sunroof cracked?"

"No," I said, unhappy with seeing it was now open if just slightly.

"Then I'd say we need to find some other transport.  The seats look a bit too dark for my liking."

"You think they sprayed them?"

"I think they've been tampered with."

So we walked passed my car and headed further down the street, and after we were four or five car lengths away from my car, the man watching us started moving in the direction of campus at a very fast pace.

"He's heading for campus."

"They must have someone else watching us," Terrence said.  "I'll try doing a pulse like you did on the flat's roof, then Tim, you try one like the one you did on the car.  That should reveal our watcher no matter if they are mute or voice."

"What range?"

"Range?  Whatever you can do is fine."

"So you want it to cover the entire county?"

"A quarter mile then?" Terrence sighed.

"Right," I said as he started powering up his pulse.

After he sent it and nothing came back, I started powering up the second one.

"Uh, you might want to drop your barriers.  This one's going to be a bit stronger than the one I did earlier."

"I'll be fine," Terrence said.

"Okay, it's your head," I said, then nodded to Suzi.

The moment she dropped her shield, I let it go, then both Suzi and I scrambled to catch Terrence after he let out an "Irk!" and passed out.

Suzi ended up having to catch him all by herself as I was instantly distracted by two minds nearby suddenly appearing then disappearing from my symbolic sight.  I immediately set two of my more hearty birds to follow them, then when I noticed both Suzi and Terrence's shields were down, I cut my links to all of my bird friends and lowered my own shields.

"Why did you do that?" Suzi asked.

"I think they're tracking us by our shields.  That's how I'd do it, anyway."

"But we're not protected," Suzi said worriedly.

"I'll catch anything before it reaches us," I promised as I stepped out into the street and stopped the next car.

Once I explained to the driver our friend had hit his head and passed out, I talked the driver into taking us to the Medical Center which was the nearest medical facility.  While I didn't use my voice, I did have to use a little empathic power on him to get him to fully cooperate.

"Oh, my bloody head," Terrence moaned about a minute or so after we got in.

"Lie still," Suzi said.  "You hit your head pretty hard."

"What are you talking about, pet?" Terrence said.  "I didn't hit my head."

"Yes you did," I said, stressing the importance empathically. "And this nice gentleman is giving us a lift to the medical center to get your head checked out."

"Oh.  Well I don't remember hitting my head," Terrence said weakly.  "Bullocks.  A bloody concussion, that's what I have.  I'll be forgetting me name next."

"Looks like they closed Penn Street," the driver said, indicating the turn we would take to reach the parking lot nearest to the medical center.  You want get out here?  Or try another route?"

Suzi and I looked at each other a moment, then Suzi turned to Terrence and asked "Can you walk?"

"If you have some aspirin, yes," he moaned.

"I didn't bring my purse," Suzi sighed.

"Try a piece of gum," I suggested.

He looked at me a moment like I was speaking rubbish, then his eyes lit up when he remembered the gum in his pocket and pulled the pack out.

"We'll get out here, thanks," I said to the driver, then pulled out a fifty and handed it to him saying, "For your trouble."

"God damn," the man said, taking it hesitantly.  "I don't know what to say.  I didn't expect anything from you."

"I know," I simply said, opening my door, stepping out, then opening the rear door to help Terrence out.

"You don't have your shields up," Terrence observed as our ride pulled away from the curb.

"I think they were using our shields to track us," I said.  "Hey, can you shield someone else's mind while shielding your own?"

"Normally, yes," Terrence said, using both hands to press on his temples to try and reduce the pain.  "Why?"

"We might use it as a diversion later," I said.  "Shit.  We really should split up now and make our way to the center, but you can barely stand up by yourself."

"I think the gum is starting to help, so just leave me here.  I'll catch up with you later."

"We have the walkie-talkies," Suzi reminded us.

"Make sure they're on channel 7," I said after looking at mine.

After doing a quick voice check, Suzi and I left Terrence sitting behind a tree, then once we reached the walkways, we split up.

"I just checked with my birds," I said over the radio a couple of minutes later.  "The two that were watching us earlier are heading back here.  I don't think they know where we are though."

"How are you feeling, Terrence?" Suzi asked a few moments later.

"Better.  I'm on my feet now.  I'll head for the loading bay entrance."

"I'll go to the south entrance then," Suzi said.

"Main doors for me," I said.

"Main doors?" Terrence asked.

"If they're watching the entrances, it won't matter what door we go in, and it would be hard for them to block if I needed to get back out fast."

"Are we going in all at once?" Suzi asked.

I was on a walkway with at least two-dozen people heading the same direction as I was, so it was somewhat of a shock when I sensed a probe directed right at me without probing the people in front of me first.  I knew Suzi had constructed a fake personality like I had while we were in the car just in case someone tried probing us, but because there had been no warning, I couldn't activate mine in time.  I was able to shift the probe's energy so it didn't return to its owner, but as a result, I couldn't get a fix on its sender.

"Someone just tried to probe me, so watch out," I said over the talkie.  "They did not, I repeat, did not probe anyone else around me."

"Location?" Terrence asked.

"Inside the medical center, I think."

"You think?"

"Their probe caught me by surprise.  I couldn't tell where exactly it came because of the way I prevented their probe from working."

"Timmy, are you watching me?" Suzi broke in.

"No."

"Well then someone else is watching me.  I can feel it."

"Shit.  Shields then?"

"Affirmative," Terrence said.

I could see the main entrance, and everything looked just as it should.  I picked out the swirls of the receptionist and the two guards and didn't see any obvious tampering in their streams.  When Suzi and Terrence raised their barriers, their symbols became fuzzy and appeared obviously abnormal compared to the people around them.  But while I had known where Suzi's mind was due to my familiarity with her swirls, I hadn't known where Terrence was until he had raised his shield.

Perplexed as to how the enemy could have known my location, I stood there and simply observed while the other two approached their entrances.  After a few minutes, I started noticing how some people's minds faded momentarily as if something walked in front of them, and began tracking these anomalies as best I could.

Suzi and Terrence were in position and were waiting for me when I finally got a grasp at what I was seeing.

"There are at least seven cloaked minds inside, five watching the entrances, and two upstairs.  They are definitely expecting us."

"Where upstairs?" Terrence asked.

"Third or fourth floor, around the research labs I think.  I don't really remember what's in that part of the building."

"Any sign of Jon or any of the others?" Suzi asked.

"No," I said, mainly because I was not interested in looking for them.

"Is there anyone in Richardson's lair?" Terrence asked.

"Negative," I said after checking.

"Meet me in Larson's basement."

"Roger."

The Larson building was the nearest building with classrooms to the medical center, and had been built at the same time the medical center had been.  While I hadn't known of the secret passage into Wally's lair from the men's bathroom in the basement, it didn't really surprise me.

What did surprise me was the fact that there was a hidden room right off of Wally's bedroom that had three monitors that could be switched to observe any room in the Medical Center, including the restrooms, with only one exception.

"Records room?" I repeated.

"The room with the metal door and electronic lock," Terrence clarified.

"You mean that Star Trek looking door?" Suzi asked.

"Yes.  It contains everything we keep secret.  Our procedures, the Doc's medical research, all of the financial and business information for all the projects, the records on all Group members, and so forth.  Oh, and Joey' coin."

"So that's where he's been keeping it," I said as I focused my symbolic vision in that room's general area.  "I don't sense it.  Is it shielded?"

"Yes.  Are you sure there are no cloaked minds in that area?"

I didn't respond right away as I as having difficulty determining where the cloaked minds were from beneath.

After a minute or so, I gave up and said, "I can only make out three on the upper floor.  There's no one between us and the others at the entrances, so I can't get a fix on them from down here.  The three that I can detect are at the northern end of the building."

We switched monitors to the rooms in that area, and found everyone apparently searching the labs for something.  Not only were they looking through papers, journals, and filing cabinets, but also through the equipment, test tubes, bottles and everything else.

"Jefferson," Terrence pointed to a black man who wasn't in a lab coat.

"And Peter Louis," Suzi said a moment later.

"And Brian something," Terrence said a couple of seconds after that.

"All ex Group members?" I asked.

"Yes," Suzi answered.

"This doesn't make any sense," Terrence said.  "We have to figure out what they are after."

"Well, we could just take the elevator up there and ask them." I said seriously.

"Or you could do that dream-walk thing," Terrence said, just as seriously.

"It's not that simple," I said carefully.  "I haven't figured out how to trigger it.  It just... happens."

"Boys, I think I know what's going on," Suzi said.

Ten minutes later, I was on my way up to the fifth floor in the elevator wearing a lab coat and trousers, both a few sizes too big for me.  I could see the anomalies moving closer to the elevator, and could almost sense their confusion when the elevator didn't stop at their floor.  By the time I had reached the fifth floor, I knew I had their full attention as I tracked a total of eight anomalies, five of them moving up the stairwells.

When the doors opened, I walked out and went straight towards the briefing room where fifteen other people wearing lab coats were planning the next week's research.  They didn't take any notice of me when I came in and sat down, and while I was actually trying to blend in, it was rather strange how easy it had been.

When five of the anomalies approached the room I was in, I almost forgot what I was supposed to do from the discovery of how their cloak failed to hide them when in close proximity.  The field they generated seemed to distort my symbolic vision.  It was like looking into one of those fun house mirrors that made you look really skinny or fat.  From a distance, you disappeared.  But when you were close up, everything was completely distorted and their swirls where not only visible, but magnified.

When the five outside didn't come into the room, I made no physical indication that I knew they were there while I focused my symbolic sight on locating the other three.  When I sensed them below me right where they had been searching before, I knew this whole thing was a complete waste of time.

"You were right, Suz," I said into the radio as I stood up, ignoring the surprised looks of the people around me.

After I sent the five unshielded minds outside into dreamland, I confirmed they were simply puppets, apparently following orders coming from an ear piece they all wore.  

I sent three pulses to Suzi through the share link then, as I waited for her acknowledgement, Terrence and I began building up for a double pulse.  Once I felt her pulse back, I let mine build a little more until I felt a slight tickle of an ache in my head, then said over the radio, "Now."

The moment I saw their shields lower, I let the pulse go, Terrence's pulse following mine a second later.  I marked each cloaked mind as they shimmered into my symbolic vision and let Terrence and Suzi take them out, the dual pulses effectively covering over a mile and a half out.

When the five cloaked voices followed me but didn't attack without me first provoking them, I realized they couldn't have been using their own judgment.  And when I saw the other three had continued their fruitless search, it was obvious they were only there to distract and delay us.  They knew we would head for the medical center first, so whoever was in charge of this whole thing had ordered some of the voices under their control to guard the entrances while they had three of them search the labs for nothing in particular.  It probably would have worked if Suzi hadn't known Peter Louis well enough to see he wasn't acting anything like himself.

They were all ex-Group members, all enslaved to follow orders given to them by someone they had never met.  We didn't find the master-mind behind the operation that day, nor did we really learn exactly what they were after.  Whatever it was, they apparently weren't in too great of a hurry to get it as it would be several months before they tried again.

You think that was anticlimactic, just imagine how disappointed Joey was when he learned he wasn't going to get to come flying in on Midge to save the day.  Heh.  He had even made up his own little jingle, "Joey Conner to the rescue!" complete with trumpet fanfare.  

Suz and I agreed he really had gone a bit mad.

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