Chapter 23: Head Games

Foreigner - 1979

"Kim, we're getting ready to come in, but I need you to do something first," Caleb said through their Companions, and keeping Jorge in the mental loop.

"I'm busy being frightened at the moment," Kim replied tensely, trying to use humor to prevent herself from sliding into full-blown terror. "What do you need me to do?"

"When you touch someone, or someone touches you, there is an emotional signature that you pick up," Caleb explained carefully. "That is why, after touching someone, you can read them easier at a distance. Have you touched all three men?"

"Oh, yeah," Kim replied bitterly. "They've all three touched me," she continued, revulsion clear in her thoughts.

Caleb felt Jorge stiffen beside him, and take a step forward. He put a hand on Jorge's arm to hold him for a moment longer.

"Kim, I need you to of think of each man, individually," Caleb continued. "I need their emotional signature to offset the advantage they have with their weapons."

Kim quickly did as Caleb asked, and Caleb better understood her revulsion. Two of the signatures felt bad, in a slimy sort of way. The third was truly evil, and made Caleb feel like he had dipped his fingers is a pile of rotting filth.

"Caleb, they're walking towards me! Hurry!," Kim screamed in their minds.

"Kim, If I can't get to you, before the men do, I'll initiate the link between Companions, and pass it to you," Caleb promised.

Caleb nodded, and Jorge ran beside him, as Caleb sprinted towards the door to the warehouse. It was locked. Caleb investigated the window, which was in the door frame, before fishing into his backpack. He pulled out a roll of duct tape. He quickly taped the window-pane with the tape, before smacking the window with his elbow. The window broke, but without the noise of falling glass.

"I need to get closer to them," Caleb explained to Jorge in a whisper, as he reached through the window, and unlocked the door.

They entered a short hallway that ended at another door. This door wasn't locked, and they could see Kim tied to a bed, on the far side of the warehouse. She had been stripped. A nearby empty cardboard shipping box attested to where the bed came from. Three men were standing around the bed, and one reached towards Kim.

Caleb initiated the link that Al had talked about. He linked with Kim, or rather, Al linked with Alice. Caleb was still too far away to take any positive action, himself. It would have been a long pistol shot, too, if he had tried firing across the warehouse. Giving Kim control of the link was the only solution he could think of. Caleb, or Al, also provided the flash of information about what she could do with the power the link represented.

The power increase of linked Companions does not increase linearly. It increases exponentially because it represents the power of the Companions, plus whatever power their host can contribute to the link. Two linked Companions has the power of between two and four, depending on the power of the host. Three minds linked, would have the power of three to six. All the power of a link would be put at the disposal of the master host.

There were seven Companions in the world that were fully integrated with their hosts. Everyone one of their human hosts were angry at the wrong they were witnessing. Human emotions, according to Al, represented a more unique and powerful force than he had ever known. The power generated by the seven nearly reached a power of twenty instead of the expected fourteen or less.

The most dangerous gender of any terrestrial species, is the female. A reason for that is that in a fight, females have no preconceptions of honor, or rights, or 'limited response' to a threat. The military phrase that most aptly describes a females response to danger is; 'go big, or stay home'.

The man reaching for Kim's leg was startled when the girl suddenly stopped struggling against her bonds. Her terrified expression instantly changed to rage, and her eyes blazed. His hand had nearly reached her leg, when he froze.

The man reaching for Kim was one of the two whose mental signature simply felt slimy. When Kim lashed out, she fused his motor functions with a precision learned from Al in the last heart beat. Slimy number two also began reaching for her, and she fused his motor functions, too. Then, with a rictus snarl, she tweaked both men's motor functions. She wasn't quite sure what she did, but she was very happy with the results.

Each man's body began twitching, and writhing, as every skeletal muscle in their bodies began pulling their bones in random directions. They couldn't scream, but their eyes bugged out in pain and horror.

Rotting Filth man was a whole different proposition. Kim could read what all three men intended to do to her. Slimy One and Two intended to inflict the normal indignities a rapist might consider with a young woman. There was nothing normal about Rotting Filth man's intentions. He was the one that had shot Jorge. He wanted to do terrible things to her. He wanted to debase her, hurt her, and crush her spirit so badly that it could never recover.

Kim was not as 'gentle' with Rotting Filth man as she had been with Slimy One and Two. She didn't freeze his motor functions because she wanted to see his entire body writhe in pain. Kim didn't know if Al was aware of how much information he had provided, but knowing where the pain receptors were, and how to control them, gave Kim some diabolical options.

She lashed out at Rotting Filth man with her mind, and sent every pain receptor in his entire body into overdrive. He screamed, and Kim's rictus smile changed to a wide grin. It wasn't a pleasant sight.

The pressure on the soles of Dick's feet caused excruciating pain. He fell to the floor to escape the pain, but he couldn't escape. Every place his clothes touched his body caused pain. The pressure on his skin from lying on the floor caused more pain. Air moving across his skin caused pain, and not the simple, bearable pain of a very bad toothache, or gall stones, or possibly even child birth. This was the pain of his entire body being thrust into a flesh searing fire, except his body's nervous system didn't shrivel and die. His nervous system remained very functional. He screamed again, but that only increased the pain!

Caleb and Jorge hurried through the door, and towards Kim. Jorge tried to avert his eyes from Kim's body, and whipped out a knife to cut Kim's bonds.

"That is Master Sergeant Denison," Caleb said with satisfaction, looking down at the screaming man.

"Pay attention, and look where you're cutting," Kim ordered Jorge angrily. "I don't need any extra holes in me. Caleb, they cut my clothes off. I need something to wear," she commanded.

Caleb looked at the two semi-frozen men, shrugged. He began struggling to take the shirt off the larger of the two twitching men.

"I don't mind him being in pain," Caleb said conversationally, nodding towards the writhing man on the floor, "but the noise of his screaming is irritating. It could attract unwanted attention, too," Caleb explained as he continued struggling to take the man's shirt off. "You still have control of the link. Would you freeze his vocal cords, please?"

The silence was immediate, except for the sound of the Master Sergeant's feet drumming on the floor.

Caleb got the shirt off, and quickly draped it around Kim. Jorge finished with the bonds holding her hands. Kim shrugged into the shirt, hiding her charms, and quickly began buttoning it. Her glare never left the man on the floor.

"It's hard to keep him conscious, when he's in that much pain," Kim stated as an observation.

Jorge finished cutting the bonds holding her feet, and Kim shakily stood. Jorge gripped her elbow, until she quit swaying on her feet. She nodded to herself as she steadied, took one step, and then stomped the heel of her bare foot into the junction of the writhing man's thighs.

Master Sergeant Denison would probably have been classified as a psychopath by any reasonably skilled shrink, before the evening that he met Captain Jane Janus' little girl. He had still been capable of participating in polite society. His insanity was only apparent to those that knew him well. That moment, when the girl kicked him in the balls, was when any semblance of sanity shattered. His eyes bulged as the pain radically increased, when he hadn't believed pain could be any worse. Pain became his world. His mouth opened wide in a silent scream. The last shred of his sanity, and his humanity fled into the dark recesses of his mind, searching for a place to hide from that terrible agony.

"I think he's gone," Caleb said, looking down at the man. "It would be kinder to kill him."

"I hope he lives to be a hundred," Kim said viciously. "He certainly wasn't considering any kindness towards me."

"One of the very real dangers when dealing with filth like him, is sinking to their level and becoming like them," Caleb said gently. "That is a lesson your Granddad had to learn to become a good cop. It is a lesson every soldier learns when dealing with the atrocities of war. You're a little young, but it is a lesson that you need to learn now. Kim, do you want to be like him?"

"No," Kim choked out, before doing something with her mind that Caleb didn't quite catch.

Kim turned to Caleb. Hugging him, she began crying with deep, racking sobs. Caleb hugged her back, and looked down at Dick Denison from over her shoulder. He wasn't moving now, and his eyes had dimmed.

"She killed him!" Caleb thought to Al as he felt the link between the Companions dissolve. "She turned him off like a light switch. That was pretty cool."

"Yes, and she'll have nightmares about taking a life," Al said sadly. "I've warned Alice. She will do what she can, but there's not much that can be done for mental anguish."

"Could I have done this from across the room, and spared her?" Caleb asked.

"Capable with the link, eventually? Yes. Able to right now? No," Al answered solemnly. "Some things, like reading people, are easy for you to do because humans are constantly doing them, anyway. Think of it like a muscle that you use a lot. It gets well developed. Attacking a mind, as Kim did, is more difficult. That's because it isn't a muscle that humans normally use. They were near enough for Kim to do it, but you were too far away. If your world continues to be such a dangerous place, then you need to think about developing defensive and offensive skills and tools. Young ones, such as Kim, should not have to learn such things, or endure such pain."