Part XXI - 5: Fitting In, Again

Have you ever been awakened by a brilliant flash of light in the middle of the night? Sure, everyone has been woken up by thunder, but what about the flash before the boom?

Well, about two weeks after settling into my new home, I was awoken one morning around five by a brilliant flash... Only it wasn't a flash of light, but of telepathic energy.

After Sarah's unannounced testing of my telepathic strength, I guess I was a little jumpy about strange surges of telepathic energy around me. And shit this was definitely bigger than a surge. This was an all out eruption.

Paranoia settled in when I couldn't sense Suzi or Joey within the building, and my ingrained sense of self-protection prevented me from feeling them out to keep myself from being detected. After stumbling around a bit while trying to passively scan the telepathic "glow" to the southeast, I got dressed and carefully began making my way towards the source.

The sky was still quite dark, and despite it being a class day, the streets and walkways were strangely deserted. Not that I had ever been outside that early in the morning, and the late January cold probably had a factor in it too, but I was too scared and hyped up to think of anything but how deserted everything was.

As I neared the medical complex, I confirmed my suspicions that Sarah's new headquarters appeared to be under attack. There were at least forty telepaths scattered around and within the building, most of them apparently on the offense as well defending themselves from one or two other attackers at a time.

The telepathic glow was now more like noise being so close, and it was so chaotic that I couldn't tell who was on whose side. But after a couple of minutes of watching the ones closest to me, I decided they weren't on anyone's side any longer, for probably they couldn't trust anyone to still be on their original side at that point.

I could clearly see I had the advantage of not only being able to see their streams of symbols without needing to actively scan for them, but I could see where they were not protecting themselves, for most telepaths rely on their senses to tell them where an attack will be by the probe that's usually sent just before.

That's how Jennifer had disabled those Cabal goons the previous year without them detecting what she was doing before it was too late. It still amazed me how simple these things had come to her where I was always struggling to make these kinds of connections on my own.

Jennifer's method worked in this case just as it had the year before. I didn't try to take more than two or three out at a time so as to not draw attention to what I was doing for as long as possible.

I think I had taken down around fifteen of them when someone realized something wasn't right. Suddenly they all stopped their attacks, then after a minute of very little activity, half of them started scanning the surrounding area while the others revived the ones I had knocked out.

Their sudden cooperation and overall group efficiency was so organized, so methodical, I quickly realized that it had just been some kind of exercise.

Lucky for me, their probes were actively laced with command symbols to trigger a physical response in an unshielded mind, so it was easy for me to avoid their scans since I could see the symbols coming. It was sort of like someone spraying a fire hose along the path of a searchlight's beam.

I figured Joey had to be apart of this exercise, and I expected Suzi was too, since they both never got up this early without needing to be somewhere. I knew I had to fess up to my honest mistake to prevent wide spread paranoia through out the entire group, but to just step out and say, "Sorry guys... It was only me," right there and then would have been asking for another round of a meat-tenderizing hammer pounding the inner recesses of my brain.

So I waited for a chance to contact Suzi or Joey, but to my surprise Suzi contacted me first, and from the way she did it I knew she suspected what had happened.

I didn't even have to respond to her probe. She just felt out where I was and then thought to me, "I knew it was you," just before the other probes stopped.

Joey's probe was a little more... uhm... invasive, but it was directed towards my memory recall processes rather than my cognitive functions, so I let it pass knowing he was just making sure I was really who I was, and I still thought I was who I was, if you know what I mean.

"You better get in here," he then thought to me. "But don't hurry. Sarah's already throwing a fit about this."

"Shit. Like I should be surprised," I said to myself as I hurried towards the building anyway just to get out of the cold.

I felt the minds of at least a dozen people focused on mine as I walked down the misleadingly empty hallway towards the elevator. I couldn't help but smile in relief when I found Suzi in the elevator with her arms crossed giving me the "you just can't stay out of trouble" look.

"You two could have warned me, you know?" I said in defense when she didn't return the smile.

"We didn't think you'd wake up this early," she sighed, then yawned.

"I don't," I yawned back. "But I practically fell out of my bed from the blast you all made. I take it you were practicing for something?"

"I can't talk about it," she said with regret as the elevator's doors opened and we walked out.

"You know, I'm getting tired of hearing that," I said as I noticed at the end of the hall there was some kind of electronic door. "Are we going in there?"

"No. We're going to wait in that conference room for Joey and Sarah," she said indicating the doorway two doors down from the silver door.

"Oh... So what's in there? No, let me guess. You can't talk about it."

"Actually I've never been in there," she said with the first sign of humor in her voice since she met me in the elevator. "I think Joey just had it put in because it's Star Treky."

"Heh. Yeah, that sound's like something Joey would do," I said before sensing she was more worried than she wanted to let on.

"You think I really screwed up," I said with a unavoidable edge to my voice.

"No," she said a little hurt from my tone. "I mean I can see how you were just trying to help. But Sarah..."

"Won't. Yeah, I know."

"And it's more than that, Timmy. If one person can knock out a third of us before the rest of us can notice..."

"You're more worried about that than you are about what Sarah's going to do or say, aren't you?"

"I can't talk about this..." she whined as she gently banged her forehead against the wall.

"It's okay, Suz," I said, hugging her from behind. "I think I can figure things out from here without you having to strain any of Sarah's stupid rules."

"Oh? And exactly what have you figured out?" Sarah spat from the doorway.

I held Suzi tightly as she grimaced and tried to turn instinctively to cover for my intentionally overheard words.

"That someone must have tried to enslave all of you recently and you're just trying to take precautions to prevent anyone else from succeeding."

"Hmph," she said with annoyance. "If you didn't have Joey wrapped so fucking tight around your finger..."

"My finger!" I growled. "For the past two weeks that I've been here, Joey's been so damn busy 'helping his sister' I've seen him maybe twenty minutes total!"

"Timmy..." Suzi warned me.

"Shit..." I sighed. "Look Sarah. I'm only here because Suzi and Joey want me here, and because I want to be with them too. But if you want me to leave, I'll leave. I'm not going to stay where I'm not wanted."

"But..." she said due to my tone indicating I wasn't done.

"But I just took down over a dozen of your people without being detected. If you really are worried so much about security, doesn't it make sense that maybe, just maybe I might be more useful to you than harm?"

"You caught us off guard today, that's all," Sarah said coldly. "It won't happen again, and we certainly don't need your help. In fact I want to make that perfectly clear. Under no circumstances are you to interfere with our business. Even if you are sure we are being attacked by an intruder, our defenses are based on teamwork and knowing what each other is supposed to do. The last thing we want is a loose cannon swooping in trying to save the day. If you agree to that, I'll over look your attempt at being a hero and won't have you expelled."

"Fine," I said with the coldness of the air outside. "But let me make this perfectly clear as well. I have no loyalties to you, your group, or anyone else here except to Joey and Suzi. I'll play by your rules because they want me to. You can have your little war games and go up against whoever you want without me lifting a finger to help. But if I think either one of them is in serious trouble, not you, the school, or your pathetic army of symbol blind telepaths will stop me from trying to protect them."

Sarah's nose flared with anger, but all she said was, "Get out."

I wasn't about to argue with her, and just got up and left without saying another word.

Suzi led me back into the elevator and pressed the lobby button before I was even in the doors. Normally I would have leapt into the car when the doors started to close on me, but I was so mad I didn't really take much notice to my surroundings, and even pressed the lobby button myself after the doors were already closed.

It made me even more angry to realize Suzi was escorting me out of the building as per Sarah's standing orders. I was getting so bent out of shape about the whole situation I nearly didn't notice it when Suzi gave me a kiss on the cheek when we got outside.

"What was that for?" I said with surprise, distracted from my anger a moment.

"For what you said," she said with an adoring smile.

"What did I say?" I said finding the hot heavy tension in my chest starting to drain away.

"Protecting us if we get into trouble," she said before she put her arm behind my back.

I put my arm behind hers as well, and we walked most of the way back to our apartment building like that.

Suzi invited me in for some breakfast, and then listened patiently as she fixed our food to my long list of reasons why Sarah should have accepted my help when I had offered it.

"You know what I think?" she said as she brought our omelets to the table and I poured our drinks. "I think you want to be apart of the group more than you want to admit."

"I don't care about being or not being apart of the group," I insisted. "It's just aggravating that I'm not allowed to be involved with things we always did together before coming here."

We didn't say much while we ate, and when I got up to help her clean up the plates, I realized she was discussing something with Joey on their little private two-way link they always seemed to have open.

"Joey's coming over tonight," she announced as we did the dishes. "Will you be around?"

"For most of the night," I said with a smirk. "I know you have to be aching to play with your boy toys."

"I doubt I'll be in the mood tonight for that," she said.

"Why? And don't say I can't talk about it because it can't be all about the group."

Without looking at me she said, "I'm quitting the group."

"You're what?"

"You heard me."

I turned her towards me, but then had to duck down in order to capture her eyes for a moment when she tried to avoid my doing so.

She was torn between her feelings for me and her programmed loyalty to the Group constantly making her watch what she said around me. During Christmas break we had developed such an honest and open rapport... But now with all her Group related activities, she had been unable to continue to do this while I hadn't stopped. It was making her feel guilty as hell.

"I sorry," I said as she turned away again. "I didn't think about how all this was making you feel."

"You don't have anything to be sorry about," she said a bit unsteadily. "It's not your fault."

"It's not yours either," I said, stepping up behind her and rubbing her upper arms with my hands. "It isn't even Sarah's. It's just the way things are. I don't want you to quit the Group because of me."

"It isn't just because of you, Timmy. Mostly it is, but... I'm here to get a degree, not to be part of the Group. I'm not a brain like Joey and you, but still I've never had a D in my life. But the only reason I didn't get two D's last semester was because somebody fiddled with my professors' minds."

"Who, Joey?"

"Shit! I can't TALK about it!" she spat angrily as she stepped away and faced me. "This is so fucking stupid! I have to quit. This is just driving me NUTS!"

Her eyes were damp, and without thinking I gently stepped into her space and hugged her to calm her down. She resisted a moment, but then relaxed and hugged me back, and after we relaxed our arms and simply stood there with our arms around each other, I started to slowly rock us back and forth.

"What does Joey say about all this," I asked her as she started to go with my movements and relaxed even more.

"The usual. Whatever I want, he wants," she sighed. "And the scary part is, I know he means it."

"Won't that change if you quit? I mean, I can't see Sarah letting Joey be your love slave if you're not part of the Group."

"Joey's already said if it came to that, he'd quit too."

I stopped our little rocking dance to gently separate us enough to look her in the face and say, "You can't do that to him. I mean WE can't do that to him."

"Don't you think I know that?" she said with a shrill voice before glancing at the clock on the wall. "Shit, it's already ten till eight. I got to go to class."

"So do I," I admitted. "But promise me you won't do anything until the three of us can talk about it tonight. Okay?"

"All right," she grunted as she put her coat on, then paused just before opening the door to say, "But you know, if I have to say 'I can't talk about it' one more time today..."

"You won't. I promise," I said before kissing her on the cheek and thinking to myself, "I'm going to make sure of that."

After my first two classes, I had a three-hour window before my logic class, so I decided it was time to pay Wally a visit to see what he thought of the whole mess.

I thought I remembered the way to the building his suite was in, but I ended up wasting an hour of my time wandering around before finally asking a nearby Gamma Alpha Eta who naturally didn't seem to know what I was talking about.

I followed him discretely while I filtered through his cover personality only to find he had never been to Wally's lair and really didn't know its location.

Of course it wasn't hard to locate another Eta to... uhm... query since Central state was the home of the muscle bound fraternity. But finding one who knew the location of Wally's suite turned out to be pointless. Even the one I found that regularly attended Wally's weekends for lovers was always met and put to sleep while he was transported to and from the mysterious suite.

I did, however, learn something much more revealing and informative from a few other Etas. My assumption that the Group had recently been attacked had been correct, but I was shocked to learn just that the last semester there had been at least seven separate such attacks, three of which that had actually succeeded in disabling a number of the voices in the Group before the rest were able to get mobilized.

I never did go see Wally that day. I even skipped my logic class, which was my favorite class that semester, just to pull more details of these attacks from the few Eta's who had been directly involved. I admit I was, in a sense, violating my agreement with Sarah to stay out of the group's business, but I knew if the trend continued as it had last semester, I couldn't see how I could ignore the possible dangers these attacks were to me, let alone everyone else.

Most of the incidences had been just a single person who's appetite for power had grown so large they were literally unable to resist the notion of enslaving the Group and gaining control over three campuses of college students.

On at least two occasions, however, there were more than one telepath to deal with, but in both cases it was just a matter of determining which one was the master or mistress of the rest, then focusing all their resources to enslave that single person. Once the master was defeated, the enslaved telepaths were easy to take down, and most of them ended up joining the group willingly once their free will was somewhat restored.

I suppose you could say I had a little more respect for Sarah's rules once I understood the reasoning behind them. I still felt she wasn't giving me a fair chance to prove myself, but I was less offended by the restrictions she had placed on Suzi and Joey concerning me. I guess I was a loose cannon, but that's only because she wouldn't accept my help without first planting her damn failsafe program into my head.

There was only one person who could help me work this out, and that was Sarah herself. I knew I'd probably end up aggravating her more than resolving any of our... differences by going to see her and revealing what I found out, but I couldn't see I had any other option if she was to ever trust me.

Getting her to agree to see me wasn't easy either. I had to resort to using her feelings for Joey against her by threatening I would leave Central State and never return if she didn't at least hear me out. As much as she personally wished I would do just that, she knew Joey would never forgive her for it.

I was bluffing, of course. I had no intentions of leaving Joey and Suzi so abruptly like that, but she couldn't know that for sure, and she agreed to see me for ten minutes after she finished with what she was doing.

In retrospect, I imagine she could have seen me immediately, but she too knew how to use other people's feelings against them. I wasn't prepared to have to face Joey as I waited in the same conference room I had that morning.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Joey said angrily after slamming the door closed.

There wasn't any point to trying to mislead him or to withhold anything from him, so I simply said in as calm of a voice as I could, "I know about the attacks, Joey. I'm here to tell Sarah I understand what she's doing and why, and that I'll try my best not to interfere."

"And you couldn't have waited until tonight to simply tell me so I could tell her without having manipulate her into seeing you?"

"I need to talk to her, Joey, in person."

"About what?" he said hotly, my empathic abilities picking up on his fear within his anger.

"About what Sarah and I can do to make it easier on you and Suzi."

"Make it easier? How?" he said less aggressively after that had sunk in.

"I don't know. That's why Sarah and I need to talk."

"So you're not going to try and make Sarah let you join the Group."

"Phht, no!" I strongly confirmed. "I don't want anything to do with the Group. But I know you want to be in it, and Suzi does too, so I'm willing to do what I can to make everyone happy."

Suzi then thought to me, "You should have talked to us about it first."

"I'm sorry Suz. Maybe you're right, but I think the biggest problem is Sarah and I have been letting you and Joey mediate things for us and then you two end up taking part of the problem onto yourself rather than us working it out directly."

"For once, I agree with Tim," Sarah said from the door. "Joey, go to class. You're late as it is."

"No." Joey said stubbornly, his eyes studying my face. "This has everything to do with me and Suz. We need to be..."

"Joey, go to class," I said standing up from my chair.

"I'm not going leave the two of you alone," he insisted, trying to make it sound like a joke as a distraction.

"Yes you are," Sarah said, holding the door open for him.

"I'm not LEAVING!" Joey said angrily as he successfully fended off my attempt to override his legs and march him out the door. "I'm the one who pushed you both into this! You can't...

"Make...

"No, Suz...

"But...

"Okay, I'm going."

As Sarah closed the door after Joey, Suzi sent to the three of us, "Now if you two don't work things out before dinner, we're all going over to Joey's house and let their parents in on it. Clear?"

"Clear as crystal, Suz," I thought back to her, grinning. "Thanks for understanding."

"Don't I always?" she replied before closing the connection.

"Well... At least we've cleared one thing up already," Sarah said with a weak grin.

"What's that?" I said, cautiously taking her bait.

"Who really does have Joey wrapped around their finger."

"What? You just figured that out?" I laughed.

"Well, I always suspected," she said, a bit unsure whether to be insulted by my laughter or not.

I grew instantly serious and said, "That's part of the problem too. Joey wants very badly to be apart of whatever you're doing, but his first... uhm... priority is to making Suzi happy, and... well..."

"She's unhappy with having to hold things back from you," Sarah finished for me to speed things up. "I know all about that, but I can't just let her be free to talk about things that might not seem important, but in the wrong hands could be used against us."

"I want you to know I understand that now. I really am trying to look at these things from your point of view, but... Well, things like the fact you've been attacked over a half a dozen times the past five months. How can me knowing that be used against any of you? I have voice. Surely you can see that there are some things I need to know just so I can live in coexistence with what you all are doing."

She shook her head, then sat down in the chair across from where I had sat and stared at me with probing eyes.

I too sat down and we ended up playing a little staring game as I studied the streams of symbols swirling through her mind.

Every mind is unique, and I have never found two minds whose swirls of symbols are so similar as to immediately understand what they were thinking about that way. But there were patterns that I was starting to look for when deciphering another's mind, and even through her shield I could make out enough to recognize she was recalling the first time we had met.

I guess I lost the staring game when I smiled at her memory of Joey kissing me on the lips in front of her in his old room. My smile faded quickly seeing that everything I did seemed to irritate her. And not just irritate her...

"Sarah, why are you afraid of me?"

"Afraid of you?" she sputtered, then laughed like she had never heard anything so funny in her life.

"Look me in the eye and deny it," I said, feeling a bit irritated myself.

"Okay," she said with a wicked grin.

She leaned forward and stared deeply in my eyes while she said, "I am not afraid of you."

I blinked, confused by the sincerity of her words after having felt the fear towards me just moments before. But then I noticed the strange dual layer of streams within her mind, and that's when I knew how she was hiding it from my empathic skills.

"Fine. If you don't want to be honest with me, then I guess there's no point of me trying to be honest with you."

She squinted her eyes at me, then stood up and turned her back to me as she slowly dissolved the cover personality.

"Why shouldn't I be afraid of you? You infiltrated my office, you broke through my defenses, you disabled my best friend and made my husband unable to resist you. And then you single handedly hold off the combined force of the entire Group, and to top it all off I end up looking like the bad guy for having nearly killed you in the process. All I am trying to do is protect what is mine and keep everyone safe from the stupid people who try and take it all away. But I can't do that very effectively if every time I turn around someone brings up 'Tim would do this, ' or 'What about asking that Tim guy how he did it.' You scare me shitless because you've become a God damn living legend around here, and the others might eventually believe in that more than in what I'm trying to accomplish here."

Her voice was strained, and she was clearly trying to keep herself from showing how shaken up she really was. She still had her back to me, but even without eye contact, I knew exactly what she was feeling.

"I didn't come here to threaten your authority..."

"Well, you are... At least you are to me."

"Someone once said to me the only way others can believe in you is if you believe in yourself."

"Well that someone was full of it," she said, wiping her eyes.

"Don't talk about your mother like that," I said crossly. "It's bad karma."

"Leave my mom out of this!" she said defensively, turning around with more anger in her eyes.

"We're not getting anywhere, are we?"

"No, we're not... Why are you here?"

"Huh? To figure out a way to help make..."

"No, dip shit. Not why you're here in this room. Why did you come to Central State?"

"To be with Suzi and Joey. That's all."

"So you didn't come here for an education?"

"Well, yeah, that too. But I could have gone anywhere for that."

"I told you the truth, now you do the same. I know what Joey told you to try and entice you here; promising help from the university with your little projects, and getting paid for it too. Are you sure you're also not here to take him up on his offers?"

"Honestly? I really haven't given it much thought. Sure it sounds good, but..."

I sighed, then looked her in the eyes so she'd know I meant what I was about to say.

"When Joey suggested that stuff, I imagined he would be doing it with me, and that's what made the idea so... tempting. But he doesn't have time for me... or at least for that kind of stuff with his classes and working with you. So I wasn't looking to do anything like that for a while. Maybe even never. It just wouldn't be any fun without him."

"So you're not planning on starting your own little 'study' group?"

I shrugged, then said, "I'm just trying to fit in right now. I'm not interested in forming a 'study group, ' and I'm not sure what I'd do with one if I did. I take it you don't like the idea."

"No I don't, but..."

"But?" I said with hopefulness in my voice.

"Joey made me promise him I'd let you form at least one study group, and depending on how well you do with it, maybe more. We have specific rules you would have to follow, but they're the same rules we all have to follow..."

"Understood. I wouldn't want you to make an exception in my case."

"But you ARE the exception. That's the problem. Every telepath who steps on this campus must either join the group or let us bury the memory of our existence and leave. But because of Joey and my parents, I can't give you that ultimatum without divorcing them in the process."

"And so here we are," I said, resisting the grin from the warm happy feeling her admission gave me. "We're both here because we care about them so much that we're willing to compromise."

"I can't compromise anything that may jeopardize the security of the Group," she said very certainly.

"I wouldn't ask you to. But at the same time, I can't jeopardize my own security by allowing you to put that failsafe in."

"So what does that leave? Not a fucking lot."

"Oh come on, Sarah. Don't give up just when we finally get to the point of the problem."

"I'm not giving up! I'm just..."

I saw a spark of an idea in her eyes, and then felt her mind begin to probe mine which I had to restrain myself from blocking.

"You know, most telepaths consider that to be extremely rude," I commented when she finished.

"I'm sorry, but I do have an idea..."

I kept my mouth shut as she outlined a series of commands that she wanted to give me. I knew I couldn't allow her to give me the commands, but if they were reasonable and wouldn't interfere with my own defenses, I was willing to put them in myself.

After she finished, I listed my objections then, in a completely business like manner, we compromised until we had something we both were comfortable with.

Basically, the programming I inserted into my own mind would prevent me from interfering in the affairs of the group, made me protect any details or secrets I learn about them as if they were my own, and I would allow anyone in the group to scan my mind to make sure this program was still in effect after I had verified their intentions to be honest and they were still loyal to the group which I could do with just a glance into their eyes.

Sarah's idea was to make it so I was free to remove this programming at any time with understanding to do so would mean I was betraying the group and basically destroying any trust between us. But as far as I was concerned, removing it would only put me back to where I had been that morning, which was basically Joey and Suzi having to be tight lipped around me all the time.