Chapter 4: Phantom

April 14th - April 28th, 1990

I awoke the next morning feeling refreshed and eager to start classifying the different symbol groups I was getting a feel for and arrived at the old admin building around eight o’clock.

As I walked down the hall towards the stairs, a door just ahead of me to my right opened. I must have been just a few seconds later than the last time I showed up that early. This time, I saw the cup of coffee momentarily float in mid-air before it plopped to the floor as the familiar “SHLING” sound filled my ears.

I froze, carefully dodged the cane as it came flying at my head, then held my arms up in the universal sign of surrender and only barely saw the blur that was Perry as he lunged.

The next thing I knew, Perry had his legs forked around my midsection as I was falling backward. I think if he hadn’t recognized me at that instant, he wouldn’t have curled both legs around me. I realized later that if he had left one of his legs straight and landed on one foot, his other leg might have caused my back to snap into two.

So instead of a broken back, I got a bruised tailbone and another three good raps on the top of my head while I cleaned up his spilled coffee. I swore to myself I would be prepared the next time.

Once I limped my way upstairs, I made myself at home on the couch and started studying some of the less heavily damaged streams in a couple of ressies.

When the first of the three group members showed up for the game almost two hours later, I was discouraged as hell from finding that there were too many different combinations of symbols that could form a segment that I couldn’t keep track of them all. To make matters worse, one of the voices that had tried to taunt me into a mind-hopping race two months earlier walked in to play.

Terrence Wishmaker was British and probably one of the best offensive voices the Group had. Unfortunately, his big voice came with a big ego, and he loved proving he had one of the strongest voices on campus. Joey and Neil both separately tried to put him into his place by challenging him to a telepathic duel, but Terrence managed to take down their shields before they could do the same to him.

Both of us seized this unexpected opportunity. Terrence challenged me, I immediately accepted, and quickly we agreed the showdown would be at high noon, Sunday, in front of the old cathedral.

Big ego or not, I had to respect Terrence for his skill and strength. But to me, what was more important was the circumstances of how he had come to be a part of the Harrison Group.

Terrence had just begun to experiment with his telepathic abilities when another much more experienced voice discovered him and enslaved him. After convincing his family that Terrence was too despicable to speak too, the man brought Terrence back to the states with him. He taught Terrence a lot, drilled him constantly, and perhaps this was the reason Terrence was so good at the duels. But he spent five years serving this man like any other slave, having no real life of his own.

So when he and his master attempted to enslave the Group believing there were only a handful of them to deal with, they were quickly disabled and brought to Sarah for judgment. Sarah quickly saw Terrence’s situation, and after removing the rather simple commands the man had enslaved Terrence with, Terrence eagerly accepted her offer to join them, deeply afraid he would become someone like his ex-master if left to defend on his own.

Like I said, I respected Terrence for making that decision and adhering to the Group’s rules when he could have left and used his abilities freely. He had seen the corruption that kind of thing does to a person and didn’t want that to happen to him.

What Terrence hadn’t known was I had immediately seen through the ego he used to hide behind and saw his fear of being enslaved again. While Terrence may have physically been twenty years old, in many ways, he was only fifteen. He had been enslaved at the ripe age of fourteen, and essentially his social development had stopped while his body continued to grow for those five long years serving his master without a care about himself.

Terrence refused to allow me to stay for the game that day. I understood his feelings and left without much of a fuss, but you could say I was more eager to teach him a lesson after he used his inflated ego like a club on me to get me to leave. He made it sound like I was worried he’d break through my defenses and try and enslave me, which as everyone knew by then, I would most likely die before that could happen. Hmph ... Like any trick he could have up his sleeve would be less effective by my observing how he cleaned minds.

Joey’s car was parked behind mine when I returned to my apartment building, so I went up to Suzi’s and found they had just got back from apartment shopping with Jason.

“So how come he’s suddenly looking for an apartment?” I asked Joey while Suzi was in the bedroom changing clothes. “I thought he liked living in the frat house.”

Joey snickered, “That was before he was known as the brother to princess Suzi.”

I grinned and said, “Princess Suzi, huh?”

“That’s what he called her. I think it was supposed to have been an insult, but you know Suz.”

I nodded and said, “What about Johnson’s apartment downstairs? He’s moving out at the end of the semester.”

Suzi came out wearing tight jeans and a cut off t-shirt and said, “The prick doesn’t want to be in the same building as his overbearing meddling sister.”

“Shit, Suz. Did you run out of clean clothes or something?” I said, personally loving seeing a bare tummy exposed to the public like that after the long winter.

“No, I’m just horny,” she said off handedly, then walked over to me and asked sweetly. “Timmy? Can my boys use your bathroom again tonight?”

“Sure thing, sexy,” I said, giving her a kiss just to the right of her bare belly button.

“Stop that!” she said, slapping me on the top of my head.

“It was only a kiss!” I protested, then issued the old ‘down boy’ command silently.

“Well, just don’t kiss me when I’m like this,” she said, frustrated.

I sighed, realizing that because she was horny, those damn commands Joey put in her head would probably kick in even at something as simple as a hug.

Man, she was horny too. When I started telling them about Terrence’s challenge, Suzi sat down on the opposite side of Joey, plastering herself against him as she listened, her hand absently wandering up and down his chest. Joey was trying to listen, and Suzi was too, but even I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was saying by the time Suzi was teasingly running her finger between his legs and watching his crotch move with his heartbeat.

After everyone had stopped talking for over a minute, I said, “I, uh ... think I’ll be going,” and got up.

I expected someone to say something, but all I heard behind me was the anxious meeting of lips and deepening breaths. I closed her door behind me with a lump in both my throat and my pants and left the building without even stopping off at my apartment.

I was halfway across the street when Joey thought to me, <Hey, wait up.>

To my surprise, Joey came jogging up, asking, “So where we going? Back to the old admin building?”

“I can’t go back there today. Terrence, remember?”

“Oh,” he said, accepting that he had missed the reason while Suzi had been petting him. “What about the hospital then?”

“I don’t feel like it,” I admitted, frustrated in more ways than one. “Why did you leave Suzi like that?”

“I didn’t leave her. She ordered me out. She didn’t want her mood used up before tonight. Besides, she knew I wanted to see what you’ve been working on all week.”

I sighed with my frustration, finding my hopes of what I was trying to do were diminishing out of the sheer number of symbol groupings I would have to memorize to accomplish it.

“Tim, what’s the matter? Did that shit head Terrence get to you?”

“No. Nothing like that,” I quickly assured him. “Come on. Let’s go to the hospital and I’ll show you.”

I was shocked to realize I had never shared the vision of the symbols with Joey before then. We spent hours just rediscovering the majestic beauty and grace of the symbols, something that I seemed to had forgotten to appreciate.

By the time I got around to showing him the details of how impossible it would be for me to memorize the different possible arrangements of simple symbol segments, I was starting to feel the drain of being in that kind of a link for so long. After I closed the link, we remained sitting on this padded bench down a hall for quite some time, my eyes shut while I rested and his mind spun frantically with his forming ideas.

I never got to ask him what he was thinking, for suddenly he jumped to his feet and quickly said to me, “Red alert. All hands to battle stations. Got to go.”

As my grin faded from my face, I closed my eyes again and laid down in the spot he vacated. I ignored the increasing bursts of telepathic noise nearby as the Group assembled to track down and fight off another power-hungry voice.

I dozed off a while, and when I woke, I was surprised to find the search still going on. I then bumped my head on the fucking arm of the bench when I checked the time and saw I was late for my Saturday night drinks.

Strangers were sitting at our usual table, and I slapped myself on the side of my head for not remembering the newbies were confined to their quarters during an attack. I decided if they couldn’t come to the Rave, I could bring a little bit of the Rave to them.

Unfortunately, I found the elevator refused to go to that floor as it apparently had been locked out. When I tried one set of stairs and found the second floor’s door locked, I noticed a swirl of symbols just outside the other staircase’s door on the opposite side of the building.

I cheerily climbed the first set of stairs to the landing between floors, then, as I turned the corner and recognized the guard’s face, the gorilla noticed me and did the same.

“YOU!” he yelled. “COME’ER, FAGGOT!”

I bet my face was as white as ash, and as I turned to run back down the steps, I heard this electrical buzzer going off above and below me followed by two slams somewhere above me and clicks from what I guessed were electrical locks closing on all the doors to that stairwell.

“You can’t get away this time, bed wetter,” he snarled. “You’re going to pay for making me miss my lunch.”

I turned towards him, seeing my trapped-like-a-rat expression in the reflective sunglasses he wore.

“Look, I don’t think you know...” I started to explain, then got cut off as he grabbed me by the throat and threw me against the concrete wall, winding me and knocking me momentarily senseless.

“When I get done with you, bed wetter, you’ll wish you had stepped in front of a locomotive instead of running into me.”

“I already do,” I gasped, then snapped my sprawled legs together and tried hooking his left foot out from under him.

“Looks like I need to beat some more sense into you,” he laughed after I failed to pull him off his feet.

“Shit. Perry makes it look so easy,” I muttered to myself as he dropped to his knees, pinning me between them.

As he raised his arm to commence with his promised beating, I looked him in the glasses, desperately trying to look behind those damn mirrors he wore, and said, “I’m here to see the newbies!”

After his moment of surprise passed, he exclaimed, “The fuck you are!”

“I was supposed to meet them at the Rave!” I shouted, barely moving out of the way as his fist came down at me. “God Damn it! I’m a voice!”

“And I’m a silencer!” he barked, hitting me this time squarely in the gut, the impact not only rearranging my organs in very uncomfortable ways, but also jarred his sunglasses off his face and partially into my open mouth.

It took me several seconds to realize what I was trying to spit out of my mouth, then just as he grabbed them with one hand and raised the other to finish me off, I made eye contact and “ZAP!” he was out for the count.

The twins would have been so proud of me. Heh. Of course, I can’t take all the credit. If the gorilla hadn’t done such a good job inducing the terror I had felt, I probably would have only been able to stun him for a few moments.

Once I stopped holding my guts in agony and helped all my organs to go back into their regular assigned spots, I was strongly tempted to give the asshole a couple of kicks in his gut for the trouble. But I didn’t, finding it against my code of honor to injure someone while he was down, not to mention not wanting to risk waking him up and having to relive the terror again.

After inspecting around the door he had been guarding and not finding anything to release the locks, I carefully searched the gorilla’s pockets and found what looked to be a garage door opener in the left one.

Once the doors were unlocked, I was tempted to strip the fucker down and take off with his clothes, naturally locking the doors behind me. But the buzzer had made him stir, so I didn’t take any chances and just got the hell out of there.

The telepathic activity was still going strong as I made my way towards the dorm building Shelly lived in. I was puzzled. What could have been taking them so long to track down the intruder? That’s all they had been doing since I had awakened from my little nap.

I knew Shelly wasn’t in the room when I knocked on her door, but Vanessa was, and my curiosity got the better of me.

When Vanessa opened the door, I asked, “Hi, is Shelly in?”

“She ran to store for some stuff,” Vanessa said with a cautious tone. “Are you ... Tim?”

“I am,” I blurted, actually surprised she knew my name. “Uh, I was just...”

“Come in, I guess,” Vanessa said with uncertainty.

“Thanks,” I said, stepping past her and momentarily grinning at the sight of Shelly’s unmade bed.

“So you’re Tim,” she said, motioning me to sit on her bed as she turned down the volume on a twelve inch black and white TV set sitting on the study table at the foot of her bed.

“And you’re Vanessa,” I said, keeping my humor of the situation from showing on my face.

She looked at me like she suspected something, then as she discarded the thought with a yawn, I had front row seats watching her raise her arms over her head and her braless breasts tried to poke through her t-shirt.

She caught me admiring her bust, and instantly went on the offensive by asking, “Are you planning to get serious with Shelly?”

I blinked a few times to reinitialize my thought processes, then said, “I didn’t plan on it, no. She didn’t want to get involved with someone else so soon.”

“So you’re not out to get into her pants?”

“Excuse me?” I said, mocking my taking offense at the suggestion. “I’m not trying to get into anyone’s pants. I’m engaged!”

“Oh. Sorry!” she winced. “She never said you were engaged.”

“Even if I wasn’t engaged, I wouldn’t be trying to get into her pants without her wanting me too!” I said, still playing mad.

“Sorry!” she said in aggravation. “I just got dumped by a guy and I guess I’m just feeling protective.”

“Tony dumped you? Why the hell would he do that?”

“You know Tony?”

“I doubt he’d know me, but yeah, I know him.”

“Oh,” she said, slightly disappointed.

“Pardon me for asking, but why did he dump you?”

“I’m not going to tell you that,” she said, looking me in the eyes and suddenly sensing something familiar.

“Have we met before?” she said, blinking after I glanced over at the TV a moment.

“Not in person, no. I’ve seen you around, though.”

She looked me in the eyes again, this time triggering an empathic connection.

She asked softly, “Why do I feel like I know you?”

Curious to see where this was going, I didn’t break the connection and asked her again, “Why did Tony break up with you?”

She gasped, “You ... You already know why.”

I insisted, “Tell me why Tony broke up with you.”

She said shakily, “He said he fell in love with ... another man.”

“What else did he tell you, Vanessa? How did he tell you?”

“All week long something was bothering him, and when he was late picking me up to go to the Rave last night, I tried kissing him in the car to try and soften him up so he’d tell me what was bothering him.

“He didn’t kiss me back right, and when I stopped and looked him in the face, he had this big guilty look ... He told me he met this guy last week ... And ... Tony’s gay!” she blubbered, breaking the link and throwing herself forward into my shoulder.

I gently rubbed her back as she recovered her self-control, then sheepishly scooted away from her when Shelly came in and caught us like that.

Holding two sacks in her arms, Shelly closed the door with her foot while exclaiming worriedly, “What’s going on? Tim, what are you doing here?”

I said honestly, “My plans for tonight fell through, so I stopped by to see if you wanted to do anything. Vanessa was just telling me how she had picked out a fruit as a boyfriend and...”

“Don’t call him that!” Vanessa objected, then lightened up a little and giggled slightly.

Shelly said with mixed feelings, “You told him?”

“I ... I guess I did,” Vanessa stuttered. “I don’t know why. I just...”

Shelly asked nervously, “You didn’t give her any coffee ice cream, did you Tim?”

“No, silly. As far as I know that only works on you,” I said, looking her in the eyes to see what would happen.

Vanessa suddenly asked, “Shelly, did you tell him?”

Shelly asked even more nervously, “Tell him what?”

“Anything about ... things?”

“I um...”

Looking Vanessa in the eyes, I quoted, “It never happened.”

“Yes it did,” Vanessa said with a sudden burst of emotion.

I looked up at Shelly to see the same surprise on her face as was probably on mine, then as I got up to leave, I said, “Well, then, I guess you two are unavailable tonight.” I looked at Shelly and said, “Look, I’ll just see you in class on Monday, ‘k?”

“You’re not going to ... say anything still, are you?” Shelly said worriedly, following me to the door and opening it for me.

I smiled at her and pretended to zip my lips closed with an invisible zipper, to which she gave me a peck on my cheek and slowly shut the door.

“What to do, what to do,” I sighed as I left their dorm building. “It’s Saturday night, and there’s nobody left for me to hang out with.”

I was tempted to just go to the Rave, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the crowds even if dancing stag did somewhat appeal to me.

I walked around the quieter parts of campus until I noticed the Group’s probes were starting to spread out across the whole campus.

“I wonder what took them so long to try that,” I said aloud, then nearly jumped out of my skin when a motorcycle came speeding down the walkway and had to hop out of their way.

“Why don’t you fucking watch where you’re going, you morons!” I yelled after them, then watched as two more went down a walkway on the other side of the yard.

Within five minutes the Group had formed a perimeter around the entire campus, and after watching them slowly make their way inwards for a while, I got bored and tried a tiny little pulse that I estimated they wouldn’t sense from their distance just to see if the intruder was hiding anywhere nearby.

When nothing came back, and the others’ search pattern didn’t change, I just started hopping around people’s heads looking for anything unusual, making sure I kept out of the range of the Group’s probes.

I didn’t really expect to find anything that way, and I didn’t. You could say the intruder found me, but it was really just chance that she probed the person I had just popped into and instantly attacked my mind through the link.

I never had had someone attack me through a link I had formed to another person’s mind. She nearly succeeded in worming herself into my head through my own remote sensory feed streams, but I cut them off the moment I recognized the non sensory symbols within the streams.

I barely got a fix on her before she stopped emitting her command streams at the person I had just disconnected from. Seeing she was still effectively boxed in by the group’s shrinking perimeter, I just watched her streams from a distance as she moved briskly towards their northern-most flank.

By the time I realized where she was heading, she was physically too far away from me for me to catch up with her in time.

I urgently broadcasted across the whole campus, <She’s heading for the Rave.>

Joey thought to me, <Tim, what are you doing?>

<The intruder accidentally scanned me while I was hopping around heads, and I’ve been watching her. She’s heading right for the Rave. I’ll lose her if she goes into that crowd.>

<Are you sure it’s her?>

<Yes, I’m sure. Look, do you want me to stop her or not?>

<Just a sec ... Yeah. Go ahead.>

I focused my symbolic vision on her and discovered she didn’t seem to have a shield or protective barrier up, and with a simple command stopped her fast in her tracks.

I had expected some kind of fight, probe, or something, but it never came, so I probed her and found out the reason why.

<Joey, whoever it was, was just using her as a relay. She doesn’t have voice.>

<Good thing I didn’t call off the search then, > he replied before closing the thought channel.

After examining the young woman’s mind a bit more, I made sure I knew where I could find her if I wanted to scan her in more detail later and sent her back to the Rave where apparently she had been before whoever it was had borrowed her body for some scouting.

They didn’t find the real intruder that night, and it was doubtful the intruder had ever actually set foot on the campus on that or the other nights during the previous two weeks that someone had detected a suspicious probe and hadn’t been able to locate the source.

I was relieved to hear that they had easily ruled myself out as being the cause of some of these mysterious ghost voices. I wasn’t all that pleased to find how easily Suzi could detect when my mind was drifting around outside of my skull.

Suz had canceled her plans with her slave boys, but that’s not to say she didn’t have any fun that night. After their climaxes and things got quiet upstairs, I drifted off to sleep without knowing it and found myself cuddling Suzi on top of me as I stroked her long sweaty hair.

My cock was still hard and deeply embedded inside her, and every once in a while, she’d stir and readjust her hips to get it in deep again. My balls were getting a little sore for having fucked so much without cumming, but then they were used to this. And Suz never forgot to take care of that before going to sleep.

I closed my eyes to enjoy the slutty sensations Suz was sending to me through our share link. I loved being her instrument of pleasure. I’d do anything she wished without question or hesitation.

She’s thinking about it now. She’s going get me off in some really perverted way. I know her. She hasn’t been this horny since before Tim came here.

She’s getting ready. I can always tell because her cunt gets wetter as she thinks about it.

But then she snapped her head up, looked me in the eye with a suspicious look, and said, “Timmy? Are you in there?”

“What?” I asked.

“You ARE! Get out of his HEAD, TIMMY!”

“What are you talking about, Suz?” I ... Joey asked as I found myself drifting slowly away.

<Go on... > Suzi thought to me. <Go find somebody else to haunt. If you want to have sex with me, you come up here in your own body and do it. I don’t like SNEAKS.>

Well, excuse me for dreaming. Shit.

“Good morning,” Joey said with false cheeriness when he opened Suzi’s door the next morning.

“Morning,” I said, not sure what to make of his mood. “Suz still mad at me?”

“Nah,” he scoffed, closing the door behind me. “I think you just surprised her, that’s all.”

I looked him in the eyes suspiciously, then as he let his concerns show on his face, I said, “But you’re upset about what happened last night.”

“Kind of,” he admitted. “Tim, I didn’t sense you doing that. You were in my head, but I didn’t know it.”

Suzi called from the bedroom, “Joey, I’m ready.”

“Coming,” he immediately responded and left to join her.

I sat down at the breakfast table to think about what Joey had said but got distracted watching his symbols flow about his body as he dressed Suzi.

Joey’s and Suzi’s mental signatures were as familiar to me as the feel of my own body. I could even recognize them by their symbolic streams, and I had never really studied their streams in that great of detail to do that.

I asked Suzi when they came out, “Suz, how did you know I was connected to Joey when Joey didn’t?”

“I felt you watching me,” she said, shrugging. “I didn’t sense anything else.”

“I didn’t sense anything at all,” Joey pointed out. “That’s really starting to freak me out.”

I said, “I’d like to try something before we go eat.”

Suzi said, “All right, but hurry up. I’m starving.”

I remarked, “I bet. You put out more energy last night than the whole football team does in a game.”

“Well, at least I don’t sneak around spying on people to get my jollies,” she snapped back playfully.

I smiled at her comment with my eyes closed, focusing my mind on just her symbols. I imagined I was like a camera with a zoom lens, going nearer, focusing, going a little closer, focusing...

Suzi said a bit nervously, “Timmy ... This is feeling weird.”

Joey huffed in frustration, “What is? Damn it, I can’t sense anything!”

I mumbled out, “What does it feel like?”

Joey repeated for me, “He asked what does it feel like.”

“I feel like he’s looking at me under a microscope,” she said, clearly starting to get rattled.

I opened my eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “It didn’t feel like last night then?”

“No, not even a little,” she said shakily. “Maybe you should try it on Joey.”

I asked, “I thought you were hungry?”

“I’m not anymore,” she said with an uncomfortable expression.

Noticing the difference in her digestive stream, I said, “Sorry, Suz. I didn’t think it would upset your stomach.”

She asked, “How did you know my tummy was upset?”

“I can see it,” I said simply. “Let me try this on Joey, then I’ll explain.”

Joey thought privately to Suz, <He just likes holding us in suspense.>

“I do not. I’m keeping the conditions the same. She didn’t know what I was doing, so you shouldn’t either.”

As I closed my eyes again, Joey thought to Suz, <Remind me to encrypt this thought channel later.>

Focusing in on Joey seemed easier, but that might have been because I had a little more practice.

“I think I can feel it,” Joey commented. “I feel like I’m standing up on stage in a packed house and forgot to wear pants.”

Suzi said honestly, “I wish that’s how it felt to me.”

Joey asked, “So you feel it too?”

“No. I meant when he was doing to me. Timmy, what I felt last night was much more subtle. I think you’re trying too hard.”

So I backed off, then just studied his streams as a whole for a while.

Joey updated, “I don’t feel anything now.”

Suzi added, “Neither do I.”

I took another deep breath, then tried relaxing in hopes to reform that drifting feeling I got before and after my little mental romps.

After a few minutes, Suzi said, “Timmy, I’m getting hungry again. Can’t this wait until after breakfast?”

I opened my eyes and yawned, “Sure. I’m a bit hungry myself.”

We went to Denny’s. After getting seated, I closed my eyes and let my senses wander around the room to see if I could recreate the conditions of last night without actually falling asleep.

There was this little girl about three who was idly playing with her dolly while her family waited for their breakfast to arrive. I enjoyed listening to her thoughts. They reminded me a lot of Richie’s, yet they were different in the sense that Richie didn’t really go for dolls. I guess he was too spoiled to need to pretend dolls when he had people to keep him company.

I got close to that drifting state a couple of times, but never quite got there enough to drift into her head.

“I give up,” I finally announced, opening my eyes and finding my breakfast was already in front of me. “Shit, why didn’t you tell me the grub arrived?”

“We did,” Suzi said with her mouth full.

“Yeah,” Joey said critically. “You ignored us, as usual.”

“Sorry,” I said, cutting my pancakes up with my knife and fork. “Anyway, I think the reason you didn’t sense me in your head, Joey, was because I wasn’t in your head.”