Part XIV - 8: Crash Course Under Fire

After spending all weekend re-experiencing what it was to be a seventeen year old heterosexual male, I decided I would have to double my efforts the rest of the week if I was going to finish my work by Friday.

James seemed indifferent to me when he and James came back from Wally's. And Eric was acting a little strange too, but I couldn't quite put my finger on exactly it was he was doing that was strange. But I let it go, figuring it was just a little depression since we would be packing up and going home the week following this one.

I spent all day and most of the night in the lab, having set up three teams that would work for six hours before the next team would show up and take their place. I guess I was pushing myself too hard, but I was feeling the pressure of a deadline, and since in the evenings I was having to take small doses of the drink to keep my brain from hurting, I was getting some stress relief from the six blow jobs three of the girls gave me.

Monday wasn't too productive despite all the effort we all put in. Tuesday began to look like it would end up just like Monday, but suddenly I saw something I had looked at a hundred times before and simply ignored it because it was too obvious to be right. But it was right, and when I knew I would get it the following day, I sent everyone but Jillian home early and spent the evening showing her what it meant to have a telepath make love to a woman with nice tits.

Jillian had such a wonderfully dirty mind. We kept taking turns being the master and slave, and I loved every one of her wicked little orders. Things like... picking your nose and letting her taste it, or picking her nose and tasting it yourself. Stuff like that. And she surprised me by ordering me to fuck her ass before I got the chance to order her to do it in my next turn.

The only thing we didn't get a chance to do before we wore each other out was the thing I had wanted to do in the beginning, and that was fuck her tits. But I didn't really care, figuring I could just do it the next night, not suspecting everything would be different by then.

I went home and straight to bed, not even bothering to check on James and Eric. And then the next morning when I woke up, my mind was so set on finishing my work that day, I never noticed that Eric hadn't come in to snuggle that morning.

There must have been plenty of indicators that there was something going on around me that I normally would have instantly been aware of, but I was extremely distracted by what I needed to do that day that I was taken completely by surprise.

It all started when Alex and Mike paid a surprise visit.

"Hey guys. What up?" I said, having to break my concentration on decrypting Bridget's attack on Janice's mental barrier since Janice was distracted by Mike.

"Janice, can I talk to you outside a minute?" Mike said with a sparkle in his eyes. "We'll just be a minute," Mike said to me, leading the excited Janice out by the hand.

"What's he gonna do? Pop her the question or something?" I asked Alex in a hushed voice.

"Oh, you'll see soon enough," he said in a way that made me a little uncomfortable for just a split second. "Do you have your coin with you?"

"Yeah," I said, digging it out. "Why? You want to see it again?"

"Yes. Very much," he said stepping forward eagerly, almost anxiously.

I held it out and was about to drop in into his open hand when my empathic senses finally got through to me that something was very wrong with him.

"Alex, are you feeling okay?" I said, trying to capture his eyes with mine.

"I'm feeling fine. Can I hold it?" he said, his eyes never leaving my hand that was holding my coin.

"How's Wally doing? He was pretty upset about you going away for... "

"Wally's fine too. Are you going to let me see it or not?"

I was starting to feel something more than just an anxious nervousness from him. Almost a greed or need for pow...

"No. I'm not," I said, slipping the coin back in my pocket as I began a probe.

"GIVE IT TO ME!" he screamed with a sudden surge of rage, instantly lashing out a powerful array of control symbols, nearly disabling my barrier simply by the pure volume and the element of surprise.

"Shit!" I said, realizing he had not only discovered his abilities, but had completely lost touch with reality. My probe had confirmed that he had intended to use the coin against me somehow, and just as I was starting to beat down his attack, Janice suddenly began her own.

I was straining myself to hold the two off when I realized Mike had broken Bridget's own barrier and was enslaving her to their cause. Shutting my eyes and sitting down in the chair immediately behind me, I started opening myself up to my new senses, having found I could increase my concentration when I didn't have my other senses distracting me.

By the time Mike had turned Bridget against me, I was fully prepared for their attack and easily began countering the waves of symbols coming at me. They probed, they commanded, they even used the mutes in the room to physically try and rush me, and somehow I managed to counter each and every one of the attacks, and was even beginning to push my own offense against them.

But then suddenly Eric rushed in the room in a panic and I lost my advantage since I had to counter the attempts to take his mind as well as my own.

"Tim! James is ru... ACKKK!" he gasped when I accidentally let a BE OBEDIENT symbol through.

A couple of minutes must have gone by before a small break in their attack allowed me to send the cancellation symbol for the one I had let through. As soon as Eric was capable of thinking again, I moaned out, "Eric, get behind me," with a considerable amount of slurring.

Eric was quick to respond, but Alex still managed to grab him by his long hair and quickly had his bulky muscular arm around Eric's neck. I could literally see the thoughts as they circled around his head, and as his powerful arm began compressing the air passage in Eric's neck, I suddenly feared for Eric's life.

"NO!" I spat as I lashed out with every ounce of my strength.

Alex had expected me to concentrate my attack on him, and I did, but not in the way he was prepared to deal with.

As he continued to squeeze the life out of the neck of the already unconscious Eric, I began to telepathically crush his testicles, having long ago decided that when someone wants to play dirty, I would play the dirtiest, and had learned how years ago.

Alex struggled desperately to numb the effects of what his nerves were reporting from down there, but when it came right down to it, Alex didn't know what the hell I was doing, and wasn't skilled enough to keep his own body from reporting what it felt was going on.

Mike was picking up a chair to throw at me when I lashed out the same attack on him, then quickly started sending the two women the symbols that would trigger labor contractions, effectively physically disabling them by making them double over from their straining internal muscles.

Finally Alex couldn't take it anymore, sinking down to his knees in agony while Eric sagged to the floor unconscious but alive. Because the other three were still attacking my mind, I couldn't dare risk losing my concentration by opening my eyes and go help him. But Alex was already beginning to fight off my mental hold on his testicles, and knew if I didn't get Eric over by me, I wouldn't be able to protect him.

I suddenly sensed the presence of my coin in my pocket, and realized I had to make a choice. And since there was no choice to be made when it was between a coin and Eric, I jerked myself into a standing position, literally ripped the pocket out of my jeans while pulling the red object out, then screamed, "YOU WANT IT! GO FUCKING GET IT!" and threw it as hard as I could out the open doors.

Alex scrambled towards the exit to fetch it, and as I carefully crawled over to Eric's unconscious form, I struggled to fend off the other three battering my handicapped mind.

Eric wasn't breathing too good, and with a surge of desperation from seeing the way his tongue looked bloated, I scan what his nerves were reporting and found Alex had in fact caused severe internal bleeding within my poor Eric's head, mostly in the tongue and sinuses.

My body went cold as the thought, "He's dying," sank in, and for a moment there was nothing but the sight and feel of my loved one's haggard breathing. Then the pitter patter of the four telepaths attacking my mind began to anger me, and suddenly I was so angry I could kill.

With one huge surge of my will and power, all four of them crumbled when my empathic ability knocked them out cold. Ah, the twins would have been proud if they had seen me, but all I cared about was my Eric, getting weaker by the second as his blood clotted within the ruptured vessels of his brain and tongue.

There was only one way I knew of saving him, and there was no way I was going to allow Joey's current attitude stop me from doing it. I wasn't sure if I could find Joey's mind over the distance we had between us, and I was sure I would have to literally force him to form the share link, further enraging him and probably causing him to have another violent fit.

And that was exactly what happened. As soon as my mind touched his, he almost locked me out before I could stop him, then he began screaming and hollering in the middle of his class. Before he was restrained by the other students, Joey had picked his desk up and threw it at the teacher who thankfully got out of the way just in time.

Once I had inserted the controls to prevent him from cutting the share link off, I proceeded to link up with as many people as I could around me, then finally linked up with Eric.

By the time the damage to Eric's neck and head had been sufficiently spread over the nearly thousand people I had linked to, I was almost too weak to think. Somehow I managed to close the links before I laid my head on my lover's chest and fell into a deep sleep.

Well, not that deep. Otherwise Eric wouldn't have been able to wake me up when he found himself surrounded by a sea of unconscious bodies.

"Tim, please wake up... " he whispered as loud as he dared, having noticed Mike stirring in his sleep as he shook me. "Are we safe?" he asked when my eyes parted briefly.

I struggled to shake off my exhaustion as I sat up and attempted to recall what it was I needed to do.

It wasn't until the shock of Mike waking up and immediately taking advantage of my vulnerable state that I was able to think clearly enough to do something completely accidental that still got the job done.