After my workout with Joey and Pete in the weightroom, Joey drove me home in the Mustang and we discussed the possible problems of letting the twins try and straighten out Michael's head.

"I have an idea of who to ask about it," Joey finally said.

"Who?"

"Your dad."

"Yeah! He would know better than anyone. Okay."

When I got through to him, he quickly told me, "Yes, the girls probably could do it if they think they can, but you might be better off if you didn't. As long as they don't know we can undo their tampering, they might just kill their slaves instead of leaving them behind like they did Michael."

"Shit.... Shit... Awe shit," Joey said afterwards, staring at me with a sad look.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Well.... let's go see how he's feeling. And maybe have another go at his memories to see if we missed anything. I've already told my mom and dad I'm not going to Florida in June. I just hope we can find Penny and David then."

"Shit.." Joey said again as we started walking towards Michael's room.

Michael was laying in bed on his stomach watching someone make some kind of pasta on cable. His eyes never moved even after Joey turned the TV off.

"Maybe it's time to take those commands out that you used to counter Steven's hold on him," I said softly.

"But what then. I guess we can handle anything he tries, but I wish there was a way to give him his, er, what did you call it this morning?"

"Motivation?"

"Yeah.. We need a way to give him his motivation back without letting his loyalty to Steven through too."

"But you know as well as I do that they are the one and the same. I spent over four hours the other day before figuring that out."

"I know. Like I said, I wish there was a way. Well, are you ready? I hope he doesn't wreck the room or anything."

"Yeah. Including us. I'm ready when you are."

Joey carefully canceled the commands he had used on Michael in order to make him pull the van over. When he finished, Michael did the last thing we could have expected. He started to cry.

"Shit. Now what?" Joey said as Michael wailed into the pillow.

"I don't know!" I said loudly enough for Joey to hear me. "He's not bluffing it. But at least he isn't wrecking the room!"

Michael started calling Penny's and Steven's names between his sobs. I realized that my earlier attempts to undo his conditioning had resulted in the grief he was feeling. I quickly explained this to Joey, and he suggested we wait a little while to see if it would pass before trying anything else.

A half an hour passed before Michael sobered up enough to take in his surroundings. I couldn't believe how white his face turned when he realized who I was.

"Michael, you don't need to be afraid of me like that," I pleaded. "I want to help you, Penny, and your brother."

"Liar!" he screamed. I almost looked around to see if someone else had said it because he had barely moved. He sat motionless, watching us like a rabbit, afraid to move in case his enemy would spot him.

Joey had been scanning Michael's mind and apparently noticed something.

"Michael, do you know who I am?" Joey asked calmly.

"No.. But you must be evil otherwise you wouldn't be here with the devil."

"Shit," I said under my breath. Me? The devil?

"Steven sent me to help you," Joey said, stepping away from me.

"He did? No he didn't. If he had he would have... Oh.." Michael said in a whisper as Joey showed him the inside of his right arm. Joey was using the same trick I had used on Holly and the gate person at the amusement park. Michael saw what he expected to see if Joey really had been sent by Steven to help him.

"Please, sir? Take me to Steven and Penny? I feel like I'm dying inside," Michael said pitifully before softly crying again.

Joey started showing me what he had found. Michael's mind had so many gaps in it that his imagination was using the memories it could access to start filling some of the bigger gaps in. Joey thought he may be able to use this somehow, and we both agreed it would be better if I left Joey alone with Michael.

I had my own reasons for letting Joey try it alone. My greater experience in scanning other minds resulted in detecting what I believed to be a part of Michael's true self trying to reach out to Joey for help. Steven's conditioning had a major flaw in it.

He had concentrated on two things. Making Michael completely faithful to himself and for some reason to Penny also, and also induced the incredible desire to help defeat, capture, and control me.

But they had taken no precautions against anyone else gaining Michael's trust. I wanted to believe that on some level the true Michael was trying to overcome Steven's brainwashing, and hopefully Joey would help draw that part of him out even more. But because of Michael's mind being so unstable, I didn't tell Joey any of this. If Michael suspected Joey was trying to coerce him, he would most likely become violent. This was Michael's struggle. All we could do was let him work it out on his own.

Joey had me call his mom to tell her he wouldn't be coming home for dinner. As usual, Margaret took it with a grain of salt, always thinking we were going to do something sexual, which so far we hadn't. I got a little nosy and poked around inside her head after we hung up.

The night where Joey and I accidentally tipped his and Suzi's parent's off about our relationship was running through her mind. I found the events that had taken place while Joey, Suzi, and I were in the garage and walking around outside very interesting.

Suzi's and my mom had calmed the other three parents down while my dad went to the surveillance room and piped the garage's cameras through to the family room's TV.

They had seen everything. They had turned the TV on the moment I had found Joey sitting in the car. Margaret almost cried herself when Joey had his face buried into my shoulder, especially when my own tears had started to fall. She was torn between the wrongness of what she thought we had done and her motherly feelings for both of us.

I was rather surprised to find Margaret didn't think very highly of Suzi. When Suzi came into the picture, Margaret started to feel protective, or maybe a little jealous. She had fought those feelings in the past, knowing it was inevitable for Joey to find a girl he loved more than his own mother. But as Suzi pulled Joey up against her chest, Margaret felt a pang of hatred towards Suzi.

Even as Margaret thought about this, I sensed her battling those same feelings. She knew they were unfounded, especially when her own assessment of Suzi's character told her Suzi wasn't the manipulating type nor trying to corrupt her son. Logical arguments such as these very rarely help something as illogical as the feelings she had. But for now, they allowed her to keep her mouth shut, hoping either Joey will lose interest in Suzi, or she and Suzi find something they can relate too.

What startled me the most was Margaret and I had both come to the same conclusion. Joey and Suzi were destined to be together. Her intuition had told her the exact same thing mine had told me. I never really had strong doubts about this, but I had hoped... Anyway, this washed away any doubt, any hope I had of being somehow a part of their lives. Or at least until death do us part.

I disconnected at that point, not wanting to find anything else to depress or worry me.

So to kill time, I went and worked on Midge for a while. Despite my strong desire to get her operational, Midge's motor still couldn't run anywhere near the lift off speed. Joey and I spent nearly 100 hours trying to find some reason for this before Joey gave up. I couldn't blame him. I was being stubborn about wanting to fix her myself instead of getting someone else to do it for me. But after almost a month of working solo, I had pretty much given up on that myself.

But I wasn't about to take her to someone in pieces. I worked for two hours straight, carefully reassembling Midge's heart, making sure everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be.

I was nearly finished when Joey contacted me. Michael now believed Joey was his best friend, and had told Joey about his fears and desires. Joey patiently listened and comforted him without attempting to coax any information that Michael didn't freely offer.

After Michael had fallen asleep from exhaustion, Joey said he had reinserted the zombie commands. Michael wouldn't be aware of time passing while he was in that state, so Joey planned to wait until the next day before having another go.

I told him I would be finished in another twenty minutes, and after a shower I'd be ready to eat. I felt something odd when I closed the connection, a feeling that someone needed to say something. I would have reopened it, but I couldn't figure out if I had picked something up from Joey or myself.

I was just starting to scrub some of the grease off my arms when Joey opened the shower door and got in, holding his hard dick with one hand.

A shudder passed through me as his muscular body pressed up against mine. I didn't know what was worse. The strong revulsion I was feeling, or the sadness that was sinking deeper into my soul.

Joey and I hadn't done anything more than kiss a few times since... I can't even remember. Sometime last winter I think. We loved each other, just like we loved Suzi, but it was a love that had reached a point where we didn't need sex with each other to prove it. All of our sexual energy was spent on the slaves at school. I hadn't even fucked Suzi with Joey around since Joey and I took turns in the back of his car that December night.

So when Joey's mouth started sucking at the back of my neck, he almost fell on his face from my involuntary step to get away from him.

"Shit Tim!" Joey said when he regained his balance. "What did you do that for?"

"I'm sorry.." I said, fighting my desire to shed tears. "I can't do it anymore.... Not with you anyway.." I said.

"The fuck you can't," Joey said. "Look in my eyes and say you don't want me to fuck you like only I know how."

I raised my eyes up to his, opened my mouth, then froze as I felt his mind enter my own by force. Before I could take any action, he gave me one single command and left my head.

"There," Joey said with satisfaction as I blinked at his suddenly attractive body.

I took a hold of myself and closed my eyes, forcing my mental eye to examine the change he made in me. As I suspected, he had given me a lust for his body that paralleled his own for mine.

"I can't believe you did that," I said without emotion. "I would have never forced something like that on you."

Joey ran his hand across my chest as he pressed his dick against my ass cheeks. "Yeah, I know. But I'm not you. Remember when you had that wet dream about me? Well, I had one about you last night. And I got so turned on feeling your chest and ass today.... Shit. I haven't felt that horny for a long time. I talked to Julie about it. Before we went into the locker room, we dropped by the weight room and had everybody strip."

Joey wrapped his arms around me, and despite my own arousal, I shrugged him off.

"Damn it Tim. I was looking for similarities between their bodies and yours. I got so horny, Julie had to blow me right in front of all of them, and then all I could think about was fucking your ass. I need to get this out of my system," he said looking into my eyes and closing the gap between us.

"Can't you forgive me for trying to share it with you? You and I.. We are meant to be together. Just like we were meant to be with Suzi. I need you. I want you," he whispered before our lips met.

Something about the way he said 'want' sent a chill of fear down my spine. Joey jerked slightly as I simply dodged around his shield and grabbed control of his mind, freezing his consciousness so he wouldn't even know I had done anything. I used his own brain to cancel the command he had used on me, then I did a double take when I found he inserted not one, but five.

There was something fishy going on. The other four commands were so small and simple, I couldn't find them without Joey's help, and were completely useless by themselves. But I realized if Steven ever got his hands on me and used his drug, I would be completely defenseless against his tampering.

The horror of what Joey did made my blood run cold. I quickly made him undo the remaining four, then started combing Joey's mind to find out why he had done it. I found it almost immediately.

I reached out with my mind searching for Michael's, finding him sneaking into the garage to steal a car and somehow get back to Penny and Steven.

The moment I sent the command to stop him, I canceled it. I realized Michael might lead me right to the den of my enemy if I let him go thinking he had made a clean escape.

Time. I needed just a little time to think. Damn, how I needed Joey's input.

Michael had managed to hypnotize Joey while I was busy working on Midge. He made some incredibly effective suggestions that resulted in Joey subconsciously implanting the commands into my mind without his conscious mind's knowledge. I would have to hypnotize Joey and undo the damage that way, but for the moment I was concentrating on just keeping a lock on Michael's mind.

(I realized an important fact about the limits of my telepathic abilities from all this. The subconscious mind was far too complex to know whether it was providing the conscious mind with correct information or not. You see, while I can change various aspects of the human mind, the subconscious is such a wispy character and you just can never tell what it is truly going to do.)

(Even though the subconscious couldn't directly disobey commands inserted into its realm, it could work its way around them when the opportunity arose. That was a critical concept my mother had hinted at when I had first rediscovered my abilities, and I had quickly understood what it meant.

(There's a lot more to telepathic mind control than just issuing a command. If the command goes against the person's nature too much, control will eventually fail. The trick is to change the underlying values and conceptions towards the goal of making the person's nature fit the command.)

(A lot of times all that is required is adjusting what the person finds to be pleasurable. In fact, pleasure is the greatest tool one can use on another being. Well, fear is also a powerful tool, and as I would find out later the hard way, anger and hatred even more so.)

My mother came home from work no more than ten minutes after Michael took off in a limo. I nearly lost my lock on him trying to explain what was going on, and then I screamed "NO!" when Michael attempted to pass a truck and lost control of the vehicle.

The stretch limo flipped, then rolled right into the on-coming traffic. I felt another vehicle collide into the limo before Michael's sudden surge of pain caused me to lose the connection. I was so shocked by what had happened, my mother had to slap me to get my attention.

"I'll go to the crash site. You take care of Joey first, then you both can follow," my mother insisted before I could say anything.

"But he's..." I said when my brain finally got around to comprehending her words. I didn't finish my sentence, partially because she was already outside heading for the garage, and partially because I just couldn't say it.

I was so shook up, it took me a half an hour before I calmed down enough to hypnotize Joey.

"What's going on?" Joey asked when I brought him out of it.

I guess my face showed my state of mind. I started to shake again, but managed to get a grip when Joey started get alarmed.

"WHAT?" he pleaded.

"Michael hypnotized you and used you to make me unable to resist Steven's drug. Then he took off in a limo and... Shit, Joey. Michael's dead. He flipped the limo and was hit by a truck and two cars."

All the color drained out of Joey's face. We sat there silently for a long time before Joey held his hand out and I immediately took it. I never hugged him so hard in my life. The longer we hugged, the more we realized how close it had been. Steven had almost won.

"But I felt it!" I cried. "I felt something slice right through his gut! I swear he was cut in HALF!"

"I understand that dear," my mother said. "But his body wasn't found in the wreckage. Either he wasn't as hurt as you thought he was, or someone somehow managed to steal his body without anyone noticing."

"No.. NO!" I couldn't accept it. I painfully recalled everything I had felt just before I lost contact with Michael's mind.

"I know what I felt! I've gone through it so many times.... Something cut right through him right below the ribs! And... And... The last thing I got was.... His face was burning!" I yelled as I started shaking again.

"Timmy," my mom said as she took hold of my shaking hands. "The limo never caught on fire. Somehow you were sent false images."

"Oh my God," Joey said, realizing the implications of her words.

"I can't believe..." I said, even though I was starting to believe it anyway.

Joey suddenly opened his eyes real wide and went stiff all over as a thought occurred to him.

"Oh Joey.... WHAT!" I said, not really feeling I could take much more.

He put his finger to his lips, then thought to my mom and I, "How did they know so much? How did they find out about the commands we gave each other?"

Before either of us could answer, he jumped up and ran out of the kitchen.

"They've bugged the house," he thought back to us. "Somehow they have been able to hear everything said inside the house without anyone knowing. And I think I know how."

We caught up with him in the surveillance room. But he wasn't doing anything with the cameras or monitors, nor was he inspecting the equipment. There was a closet with a bunch of tools and spare parts inside, some of which his dad had in his workshop at home. Joey found what he was looking for, a box with a few knobs and terminals which he quickly started connecting wires to. I was astonished to see him take electrical components out and wire it up to the box which turned out to be a power supply.

Several hours later, Joey was starting to get frustrated when he couldn't find the last piece he needed. He had connected nearly twenty different resisters, 'caps', and 'chokes' together and connected them to the power supply. I had no idea what it was supposed to do, or how he could possibly make something that complicated without writing something down or looking something up.

He let out a whoop when he found another 'choke' and started soldiering it on to the almost artistic wire sculpture.

My mom had gone back to the kitchen to fix us all something to eat. It was nearly ten before Joey and I finally joined her there.

Joey placed his invention down by the kitchen phone and started taking the mouth piece apart. He connected two wires to the connections the mic usually used, then put the mouth piece back together and hung the handset back on the hook. With a big smile, Joey plugged in his device and turned it on. Immediately every phone in the mansion started to ring like mad. Then just as my mom and I was about to tell him to turn it off, they all stopped.

"Heh," Joey said outloud. "Who said you can't learn something from reading comic books."

"What the hell was that all about?" I asked. "I take it they bugged the phones?"

"More than that. When you first moved into this place, I noticed you had a speakerphone in every room. I remembered thinking that if I wanted to know what was going on at your house, all I had to do was tap into your phone system and I could listen through the intercom's microphones."

"So what did that thing do?" I said, pointing at his humming device.

"Remember how I always used to read those spy comics? Some of the stuff they put in them really works. This 'thing' caused a feedback loop in the equipment they were using to tap into your phone system. This part here," he said, pointing to a smaller cluster of... electrical stuff, "made the phones ring while their equipment was still working. Sorry about the noise, but we wouldn't know when their equipment blew up if I hadn't. I wish I could have seen that."

It was my turn to go all wide eyed and freeze up.

"What?" Joey thought to me.

"He would have bugged the house another way too. He wouldn't have only done it like that without having a back up."

"Boys," my mother said out loud, "You two have school tomorrow, and I don't think you should be too worried about what someone might learn tonight. Even if you talk in your sleep. We can go stay at your father's mansion tomorrow night through the weekend. And in case there are other ears listening, I wouldn't bother trying to 'bug' it. Charles doesn't accept gifts, visitors, or allow his equipment serviced by any one who isn't... under his influence. And when I designed the mansion, I had the walls insulated with a metallic grid that prevents any signals to enter or leave the building."

"Oh... So that's why that cell phone didn't work in doors..." Joey said.

"Aw, man! You mean my walkman wasn't broken? Aw, man!" I whined.