Part XIII - 15: Rat Hunt

The next three days were very hard on both of us. Joey was back to his "normal" self, and that ended up meaning he was almost as depressed as I was.

For him it was the concept of how completely futile our rescuing his sister appeared. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn't see a way to convince the Eta's to let him join. We both believed that our age was the reason for the hormone levels not being within their acceptable range, and that was one thing we couldn't alter about ourselves. Even though Joey had just turned seventeen exactly one week before the party, we suspected that he wouldn't be accepted next spring either.

My biggest problem was my stupid empathic senses wouldn't stop feeling that damn dark spot I had inflicted on Joey's... soul? Whatever. He didn't understand why I felt so guilty whenever I looked at him, and I guess that also added to his depressed mood.

To top it all off, Greg and Nick both had ear rings on Monday, and simply accepted the fact we weren't going to make it in. They weren't unfriendly towards us, or anyone else for that matter, but they didn't even try to include us in their activities, even the ones we had been doing together for the past four weeks.

Joey and I both had stopped going to the workouts, and were skipping classes right and left. On Wednesday, Joey suddenly started throwing things around the room, not really trying to break anything, just needing to work off some of his powerful body's energy since he hadn't been working it off in a weight room.

It was purely by accident that Joey knocked the cabinet under the refrigerator open. I was laying in my bunk ignoring his cusses and activity, my eyes not looking at anything in particular, and just happened to lock on one of the contents which had been behind the door.

I don't know how long I stared at the bottle before it registered, and even then in my half drunken state it took a minute for my brain to make some connections and trigger an important conclusion.

"SHIT!" I said sitting up and nearly braining myself on the bunk above me.

"What!" Joey snapped, throwing the handcuffs at the radiator that would have drove me crazy if he had done it three hours earlier while I had been hung over.

"Joey... Think about it. Other than our age, what else could make our hormone levels be so different from everyone else's?"

"I don't... Oh shit. You mean... "

"The STERIODS" we both said.

We had stopped taking them three week before the party because we felt we had added enough muscle tone to get us by without them. But we had started taking them before we had left home, so they had been in our systems at the time our blood samples had been taken.

"Oh man... That HAS to be it!" Joey said, grabbing the practically empty bottle out of the cabinet.

"But... How does that help us now?" I said, feeling my head pound from the quick movements I had been making.

"What do you mean? All we do is ask Mike... to... Oh."

Joey frowned, then grabbed one of the notebooks he had been pitching around earlier. He started writing things down silently while I corked my bottle and put it away out of sight.

I laid back down in my bunk while the familiar static electric sensation filled the room from Joey's mind switching into hyperdrive.

I guess I fell asleep, for the next thing I knew Joey was handing me the notebook.

Mission objectives: 1. Construct a believable reason to have our blood taken again for testing. 2. There are twenty open beds, and nearly forty guys to fill them. Determine a way to get in ahead of at least twenty of the others.

"Is that it? All that thinking for two objectives?" I said.

"Fuck you. I was trying to find the solutions, you dork."

"Oh," I said, finding the room trying to spin. "Look, I'm feeling a little woozy. Can we talk about this tomorrow? Say around noon?"

"Shit. You need to lay off the booze. I'm going to go find Greg or Nick and scan them for anything I can get."

"Bye," I said after the door shut.

That night, I had a very strange dream. I was sitting alone on my bunk when Greg walked in. We started talking, but every once in a while I would get a glimpse of what I thought was a rat sticking its nose out Greg's ear or mouth or something. It was kind of gross.

Anyway, I started to catch on that every time the rat showed up, Greg was more... well, perverted. As Greg started to talk about how he likes getting carrots stuck up his ass, I prepared to grab the rat by its whiskers the next time it poked its head out.

When I grabbed it, I suddenly had control over the rat. I told the rat to undo what he had done to Greg, and that's when I woke up.

It wasn't until the next morning when Joey's alarm woke both us up at six before I figured out what my dream meant.

"Joey. I got it!"

"What? A hang over?"

"No... Well, that too. But... shit... What was I going to... Oh yeah. You and I are going to go rat hunting."

"Are you sure about this?" Joey said as we stood outside Greg and Austin's door that evening.

"Positive. I've tried it out on three different people. It will... Hi, Greg. Mind if we come in?" I said, not waiting for an answer when Greg opened the door.

"Uhm, actually... " Greg said.

"Close the door, Greg," I said as I closed the curtains while Joey used his version of a Vulcan neck pinch on Austin who was sitting at the table doing homework.

Joey gently let Austin sag forward, resting his pudgy nose on the book he had been working out of as Greg said, "What did you do to him?"

"Oh, just a little thing I picked up," Joey said, blowing across the tip of his index finger and putting it back in his imaginary holster.

"What do you want," Greg asked as he examined his cousin, then wondering why he felt so calm.

"Mike sent us," I said after sitting down on Greg's bunk.

"He did?"

"Yeah. We're supposed to give you a test," Joey said.

"What kind of test?" Greg asked suspiciously.

"Sit down next to me, and I'll show you," I said softly.

"How do I know Mike really sent you?" Greg responded just as softly as he sat down.

"Because of this," I said, raising my shirt up to show him my right nipple.

Greg gasped, seeing the illusion of a nipple ring on my right nipple with the Roman letters Gamma Alpha Eta inscribed on it. He looked up to Joey, and watched him with a look of respect as Joey flashed his own right nipple at us.

"What do I have to do?" Greg said, suddenly very willing to proceed.

"Simple. Take off your ear ring and never put it back on," I said.

"But... " he said, hesitating.

"We're waiting, Greg," Joey said before turning around and closing his eyes. "Don't fail this test, or you'll never get in.

"I don't understand... " Greg said, reaching up to his ear ring, then looked over at me.

I looked in his eyes and formed an empathic connection, and immediately began pushing against the confusion. I pushed hard. Very hard, actually, and once I was passing through his emotional tide, I set out feeling my way through his emotions searching for their sources. I waded through the streams of emotions, seeking out the ones that felt they didn't belong. There were hundreds of forks in the stream, and at each fork I had to determine which way the out of place emotions were coming from in order to follow them to their source.

Suddenly there it was. A foreign energy or pattern sticking out of the riverbed, sending all sorts of pollutants downstream. With a surge of anger and fear, I lashed out at its base, and found it retaliating by surging and spewing even more waste down the stream of emotions.

After I slammed it with my emotional sledge hammer twice more, I felt it suddenly expand, exploding outwards and flinging me back down the stream.

As my senses returned to the real world around me, I heard Joey announce, "GOT IT!" and knew it had worked so far.

"Hurry up, Tim... It's slipperier than KY!" Joey sputtered.

I focused my telepathic senses to follow the hold Joey had on what we were calling Greg's mental rat, and as soon as I got a hold of its tail, I quickly went after its neck.

He was right about it being slippery. Three times I had just about got it pinned down that it suddenly rewrote itself into another section of the subconscious. But on the fourth attempt I got my mental grasp around its scrawny neck, and immediately tore out its puny mind and began replacing it with a far more complex one of my creation.

"Okay, Joey. Let it go," I said finally while keeping my mind focused on it just in case I missed something.

"What happened?" Greg said a moment later. "Did I pass the test?"

Seeing that everything was in order, I let the new improved rat go and opened my eyes to find Greg waiting for our answer.

"Take off your ear ring and we'll find out," I said, trying not to grin.

"Uhm... Okay," he said reaching up and pulling its clasp off.

The moment the pin came out of his earlobe, Greg's own face broke out into a broad grin before he said, "I guess you might say I'm all yours."

"How do you feel?" I asked, letting myself mirror his grin.

"Like an undercover cop or something. What do you want me to do?"

"Well for starters, tell us everything they said or did while you... er... "

"While I was a zombie?" Greg said humorously. "Okay. Mike and Alex, asked me and Kyle if we wanted to see were we would sleep if we got in. As soon as we were alone in the sleeping area, I just didn't want to do anything but stand there. I guess Kyle was done first since nothing happened to me for a while.

"When they did get to me, I felt everything for me change. I saw how important it was to become a Gamma Alpha Eta brother. I wanted to do whatever Mike or any of the other Etas asked me to do. I knew how to make myself forget things, and then remember them when I needed to. And what's really cool is I can even make up something and believe it when I need to.

"Oh... I guess you know all that already. Uhm, lets see... They really didn't say much of anything. Oh. Mike asked if some guy... Richardson I think, was going to try any of us out before we were officially in. Alex said something like, 'You know Wally. He's already asking me about the new recruits'

"Richardson again," Joey said. "Huh... Sounds like he's above Mike."

"You might want to get Nick in on this. I think he's going to meet this guy this weekend."

"Nick was next on our list anyway," I said while probing Greg real quick to make sure the rat was still working right. "Did they say anything else?"

"Just instructions on what to do. Sorry about giving you guys the cold shoulder. They told us to get our ears pierced and to start spending all our time with the other initiates or full brothers. We're not to have any sex, drink, smoke, stuff like that until told otherwise, and to keep our grades up because they were important for our cover. Then they told us to make ourselves forget everything except looking around and then go back to the party."

"Has any of the other brothers told you anything that you had to forget later?"

"Oh yeah... Just today too. Blake told Nick and I we were for sure getting in, and told us about what they did after seven o'clock. Get this! The Etas all workout in the nude!"

"Really?" I said, truly surprised.

"I wonder why Fred never remembered that," Joey said.

I shrugged at him, then said to Greg, "What do they do afterwards? Suck each other off?"

"No! Or at least we didn't. You would have really like it. Blake told us to get the maximum performance out of our bodies, we had to concentrate on keeping ourselves hard while we worked out. He kept talking about how hard it made him to work out in the nude, and man... You should have seen his. I swore it looked like it would explode sometimes."

"That does explain the way Fred kept wanting to mention getting undressed," I muttered to Joey.

"Anything else?" Joey asked.

"Nothing except that we were all supposed to start eating a special diet. I got the list of what we could eat somewhere. Do you want to see it?"

"Show me tomorrow. I think we better go do Nick before it gets any later," I said.

"Okay... What do you want me to do until then?" Greg asked anxiously.

"You know you have to hide everything about our visit from yourself and the Eta's right?"

"Yeah. And you're the only two who can tell me to take my ear ring off and bring all my memories back."

"Right. What we need is any information about what goes on behind the scenes, who's in control of who, and things like that. Maybe try pumping Blake and others for information. Don't take any risks, though. Try and make it look like your natural curiosity, not something more. The most important thing you can do is not to get caught, okay?"

"Yes sir!" he said, making a mock a salute. "I'll crack my cyanide filled filling open and swallow it before they can even ask me my name."

"Suicide is not an option," I said seriously.

"Okay. Understood," Greg said, just as serious.

"Shit, Tim. Maybe you shouldn't make Nick as eager to die for our cause," Joey said after we left Greg to wake his cousin up.

"I didn't make him like that. It's part of the original rat's programming. If I change it, there's another chance they will find it and trace it back to us," I said before knocking on Nick's door.

"FUCK!" we heard Nick's voice say inside. "WHOEVER IT IS, GO AWAY!"

"What ya doing, Nick?" I said through the door. "Jerkin' off to one of my pornos again?"

"And what if I am?!" he replied as we heard the TV shut off.

"Shit, Tim. He was." Joey said, peeking out through Nick's eyes.

"Come on, Nick. Put your little buddy away and let us in. Or do you want Lenny to find out you like watching 'After School Watersports'."

"Shit," Nick said, opening the door.

After we walked in and Nick closed the door, Joey and I both couldn't help but glance down at the raging hard on which was struggling to get back out of his boxer shorts.

"Well? What do you want? I'm trying to get some sleep."

"We're here to test you," Joey said, then giving me a shrug when I looked at him in surprise.

"Test me?" Nick said doubtfully.

"Never mind what Joe said, Nick. I forgot to tell him that the rat comes when its called," I said for Joey's benefit.

"Oh yeah? Mind telling me what its name is?" Joey said amused.

"It doesn't have a name. Does it Nick. It just knows when it is supposed to come out."

"What are talking about? Come on, guys. I really have to get some sleep. It's not my fault you two quit."

"You still don't get it, do you Nick," I said, walking around him, inspecting him like a piece of meat. "Perhaps Mike was wrong about you."

"Mike? Wrong about what?"

"Oh, just that he thought Richardson wanted someone like you. Aren't you supposed to meet him this weekend or something?"

"Richardson? How do you know him?" Nick said, finding the name vaguely familiar.

"Let's just say we were present in a very important discussion about whether Richardson would get to try any of the new initiates before the initiation."

"Yeah," Joey said, seeing what I was trying to do. "Was that before or after Janice gave you that blow job?"

"I don't remember. I think it was before. Maybe Mike remembers. Oh yeah. Mike said that you can work out in the nude if you want, but you still can't have any sex until we say. Got that?"

"Yes sir," Nick said immediately. "Does that mean I'm not going to have to watch that video any more?"

"Which video?" I said confused.

"The one that teaches you how to give blow jobs. I'm supposed to study it every night before I go to bed so I know what I'm doing when I give Master Richardson a blow job."

"Oh that tape. I thought you were talking about the pornos that I gave you. Who's in it? Anybody you know?"

"I don't know what you mean... " he said, suddenly frightened he had given himself away.

"We made a new one last month, and I was wondering if they're using it yet," I said, realizing he was starting to disbelieve me again.

"A new one? I don't think so. Alex said his trainer gave it to him for his first time with Richardson, and wanted to give it to me because I was cute. Was I supposed to get a different tape?"

"Got it Tim," Joey announced.

"Got what?" Nick said before he felt his mind's very center get torn out and replaced.

"Got what?" Nick repeated ten minutes later, not recalling he had said it before.

"The answer to all your problems," Joey mysteriously said.

"What does that mean?" Nick replied irritated.

"Nothing. Just take off your ear ring."

Nick gave a frustrated sigh as he slipped the clasp off and started pulling the pin out of his ear.

Just as with Greg, Nick grinned when it was out of his ear and said, "Now I understand."

"Told you it was the answer to all your problems," Joey said, trying not to give in to the contagious grinning.

"Okay, Nick," I said, wiping off my own grin, "Tell us everything they didn't want you to remember."

Nick's story was pretty much the same as Greg's except he had gone alone with Mike and Alex to see the sleeping area, and after Nick's rat program was done, Alex asked Mike if he could talk to Nick alone for a few minutes, which Mike agreed to.

Alex told Nick that he would meet one of his masters next weekend, and that Master Richardson was going to like Nick a lot. He offered Nick to help him please his Master Richardson, and that's when he gave Nick the tape. After Nick called Alex master while thanking him, Alex quickly corrected him.

"I'm not anyone's master, Nick. Master Richardson is my master just as much if not more as he is yours. And if Mike wasn't a Eta, we'd be calling him Master also. You should call any of the leading council 'Sir', and that includes me and Mike. But you don't have to call me that when you and I are alone, okay? I'm Wally's favorite, and because you remind me of me as a freshman, I want to help you become Wally's new favorite before I graduate this Christmas. Just like someone did for me."

Nick had agreed enthusiastically, his programming making any suggestion made by a council member a top priority in his life. After Alex gave him instructions concerning the tape and forgetting what had happened, they left to back to the party.

That night as I cuddled up with my bottle of Jack Daniel's, I started thinking about how we could use Greg, Nick, and other initiates to gather information and maybe even help us get Sarah away from them if we could ever find her. I had some fairly good ideas, but after a while, my brain sank into a drunken state of depression. I laid there for some time remembering all the gross and perverted things Joey and I had done together, and ended up imagining Nick doing those things to some overweight out of shape middle aged man which is what I though Richardson would be. I fell asleep very disturbed, seeing myself no better than Steven for what I thought would happen to Nick.

Joey and I decided the next morning we had to keep our appearances up just in case we found a way to get in the fraternity. So even though I had a hangover, I went to classes that morning in order to hopefully get my grades back up.

Having lost the fear of our telepathic activity being detected while in the dorms, Joey and I took as many shortcuts as we could in catching up our course work. We even went as far as having a few people copy other peoples homework for us, and had two guys down the hall that were in our English Comp class write our already late three page papers for us.

We had a good reason for all of this dishonesty. Joey and I were very busy Thursday and Friday flushing out more mental rats to convert, and simply couldn't do that, go to class, and catch up on our school work at the same time.

Joey and I got pretty good at catching those slippery rodents, but we almost screwed up really bad with the first guy Greg and Nick brought with them to our room.

The first screw up was the fact that even though Nick and Greg had complied with our orders while under the Eta's rat had control, they and Olsen all left saying they had to go right after they got there. We saw the problem immediately. The only way for them to help us would be to ask them to remove their ear rings.

But instead of doing that in front of Olsen (which would have made him very suspicious), we "arranged" to have Austin stay away from his and Greg's room, and simply programmed Nick and Greg to get Olsen's rat to surface by talking about secret Eta stuff, while Joey and I sat in our room next door grabbing and replacing the rat with our own.

The second thing we screwed up with Olsen was after we finished, we knocked on their door and asked them to take off their ear rings. While all three of them did so, Olsen's face showed shock instead of a grin.

Apparently, Olsen had gotten his ear pierced when he was still in high school, but had gone and had another hole made so he could wear both his expensive stud and the one that the Etas supplied. So when we had asked them to remove their ear rings, Olsen complied, but removed the wrong one first and noticed the other two had removed their Eta pins which he thought was impossible. Luckily Joey responded immediately by asking him again, then we were relieved to see his grin while holding out the Eta earring in his hand.

By Friday night, Joey and I were exhausted from all the use of our telepathy. I realized that telepathy was just like a muscle. For nearly two months, I had refrained from using my telepathic abilities as much as possible. While it hadn't lost any of its strength per say, I just couldn't use it as much without feeling tired or strained.

That Saturday and Sunday seemed to last forever. Nick and another guy named Conner spent the whole weekend with their "Master Richardson," and we both were worried about what Nick was being put through. It wasn't just our concern for our friend, mind you. There was a possibility that Richardson might discover my small alteration of their rat's program that allowed my own rat to interrupt and control theirs. If he did find it and then caught our rat, we could find ourselves in deep shit.

That was the first weekend the twins came to visit us. Believe it or not, it was actually pretty difficult to keep the twin's presence a secret with all the Eta initiates around. We simply didn't want any of them to see the twins, even if they had our rat in their head. The twins were our backup in case we were discovered and attacked, and the element of surprise was their best defense and would aid their offense significantly.

One of us spent a day back at the dorms bored out of their mind, trying not to feel like rat bait. The other was with the twins at an apartment we were renting just for their weekend visits. That lucky cat had a wonderful time in between the half hourly checks through the share link, making sure the cheese for the big rat was still uneaten. I elected myself to be the cheese on Saturday, and Joey stupidly agreed.

You see, Joey slept with the twins Friday night, so that meant I got to sleep with them Saturday night. What's the difference? Easy. Who can sleep when at any moment your mind may come under attack? Nick didn't leave until early Saturday morning, so I didn't have any major problems going to sleep Friday night, but I think Joey only got about three hours Saturday night.