Part XX - 8: Filling the Needs of One

Now before you get your panties in a bunch, let me explain what I was going through before Joey showed up.

Hell, that's what. I couldn't move, couldn't see, I barely could blink, and while I was starting to think again, my thoughts weren't normal to say the least. I kept running the whole experience through my head over and over again because that's what Gladius had suggested for me to do when I started thinking again.

I also had this deep motivation to be one with Eric, and without even having to think to do it, the moment Eric had covered my head up with the blanket, I formed a telepathic connection with him to replace the lost visual sensory information I was receiving about him.

Poor Eric. He was lost in his emotions, literally scared witless, his mind in complete turmoil from breaking the conditioning Gladius had imposed on him and then watching Gladius die because of it. And with me recalling the scene over and over in my head while our minds were always trying to get in sync with each others, Eric couldn't rest a moment from the emotions he experienced for both of us.

I knew the moment Joey arrived in the nursery. My sight for the symbols saw his cluster of streams suddenly appear at the edge of the void, along with another cluster, and a much smaller and different kind which I immediately recognized as Joey's coin.

Something remarkable happened at that instant. Something I would have never believed without seeing it myself.

Gladius's streams of symbols had long slowed and faded from my telepathic sight even before my father and then Kain had showed up. But the moment Joey entered, Gladius's streams suddenly reappeared, broke away, and were... pulled to Joey's coin like tiny iron fragments near a powerful electromagnet that had just been switched on.

If my senses hadn't been so sharp, and the walls of the nursery hadn't been shielding them from all the telepathic background 'noise', I probably wouldn't have noticed it... It happened so fast too... Like in a blink of an eye.

While Joey was punching his way through the floor in the adjoining room, Eric was going nuts from the noise and the threat it seemed to him to be. I hadn't felt any emotions per say until Eric was so scared he urinated momentarily, and at that point Joey broke through the floor and I started feeling angry as he was making Eric feel that way.

My mind was regaining some of it's cognitive functions while Joey and Eric were playing cat and mouse, and it was when Eric started projecting his emotions in short bursts at Joey that I reached a point where I could take some kind of action to end the whole mess.

The brief empathic contact I had with Eric after telling him no was the most intense empathic connection I've experienced in my life. For a brief moment, Eric and I were one being, our minds in perfect sync and clear of the emotional chaos running rampant through Eric's soul.

So after that moment passed, Eric understood Joey was not a danger to us, but because of that moment of clarity and freedom from his untamable emotions, he instinctively clung to me knowing only I could give him the calmness he so desperately needed.

From my perspective, everything had been going fine until Joey and my dad had showed up. Okay, so it hadn't been perfect, but Joey's somewhat violent intrusion of punching a hole through the floor caused a series of thoughts and emotions to be linked together, all concerning Joey and the negative results of his actions.

So by the time Joey came back after helping the others in, I was fairly angry, and Joey just happened to be the perfect target for that anger. I knew it hurt him, and at the time I felt it would teach him a lesson. What lesson, I don't know, but I wasn't exactly running on all eight cylinders at the time.

After both my dad and Kain examined us, Joey helped Eric take me into one of the sleeping chambers and then left Eric and I alone to recupe. We both were exhausted from all the energy we had expended, but I wasn't able to fall asleep until several hours after Eric simply because I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened.

For the next couple of days, Eric was the center of my life, as I was his. Part of the reason was I just didn't feel like I wanted to associate myself with anyone else, but more than that I couldn't stand how upset Eric got when someone else was around us, and couldn't bear being away from me even an instant. So for the most part we were left alone, my father being the only one to check in on us besides the Brady twins bringing us food and the elder twins who never left my dad's side.

I knew my father was not himself, yet I could feel his fatherly feelings towards me hadn't changed. When I asked him who he believed he was, he said, "I'm still trying to sort that out myself. For the most part I am Gladius, Grandfather of all the empathic twins. But I also know all that Charles knew, and feel some of his feelings. But right now you need to focus yourself on Eric, not me. And I have a lot of work to do before I can let go of who I am right now."

I had a hard time convincing my mom everything was all right when I called her the next day, and nothing I said would change her mind about coming straight down to make sure both my dad and I were really all right.

That was the first time I ever gave my mom a direct order with a threat behind it if she didn't comply. Oh, she'd done it to me hundreds of times, but nothing like this, and never something so serious before. But it was just another worry to stack up on the pile of worries while I was nursing Eric back to something like his old self.

I didn't see Joey again until the week after Gladius's death, and that was only briefly since my mom wanted to talk to him after me. I listened to his description of what he had been doing the past several days, which mostly sounded like he was having a pretty good time with his old teen voice friends. For some reason he left out how he had just finished helping restore Joy and Honey. I didn't find that out until Kain told me the morning before we left for home.

Speaking of Kain, he brought Jack into the nursery to meet me the day after I heard Joey telling my mom about him on the phone. One look at the kid and I could tell he was different than any other voice I had met. He had an aura of preserved innocence about him, like he was immune to the corruption he was constantly exposed to. Even Eric felt it, and that's probably why Jack was the first person Eric felt comfortable being around besides me. The three of us spent the whole afternoon talking about, shit, everything I think. And that included the symbols which Jack could see as well.

When Jack challenged me to a telepathic duel, I tried to blow it off saying I didn't want strain myself after all I had been through.

Jack really knows how to get under your skin when he wants something from you. I ended up agreeing to the duel just to shut him up, and Eric was grinning like a fool the whole time since it was pathetically clear to him I really hadn't had a choice from the start.

The duel lasted about thirty seconds before I overcame his defenses and made him do a little dance before letting him go. He was a good sport, and while he was disappointed, I sensed he really hadn't expected to win. And by the time he left, I had the distinct impression he had realized something. Like he knew a secret I would have been interested in knowing, but he didn't dare tell it to me for some reason.

The next day, Kain took Eric, Joey, and I up the mountain to meet Lea, Zoe, and their month old baby boy Ian. The moment I sensed Lea approaching our position to meet us, I felt my heart sink from the way her remarkable symbols were different than everyone else's. They didn't have the crystal like quality that Jennifer's had, but they were uniquely different enough to bring back a lot of old feelings concerning Her.

Zoe's symbols were pretty much like her daughters, yet Ian's were for the most part normal. There was something different about the infant's swirls and streams, but they definitely didn't have the... unique energy intensity like the females had.

I still grin at all the little hints and teases Zoe made that day without any of us having a clue that's what they were. I did sense a great deal of wisdom from both Zoe and Lea, and that there was something more going on that just a simple meeting of past acquaintances. Little did I know how much in common I had with those people in that cave.

Things had happened over those two weeks that I still feel I should have been a part of. First of all there was the matter of my dad and his... confusion of who he really was.

As I found out from Kain later, my dad had been carrying Gladius senior's memories around with him since the day of Gladius's death in 1967. The fifty nine year old man had become very attached to my dad, and after breaking the news of my parental grandfather's mass suicide, Gladius senior had followed my dad when he ran out into some of the caves underneath the palace.

Venezuela has a history of having fairly serious earthquakes, and despite the fact they were nearly two hundred miles from the epicenter near Caracas, there was enough of a shake to cause a catastrophic cave in.

My dad found Gladius half buried in the rubble, still breathing, but with serious injuries. Gladius Jr. was in Mexico City at the time, and despite there being other teen voices in the area, my dad wasn't strong enough telepathically to contact them through the panic of all the inhabitants.

When Gladius regained consciousness, he was able to contact one of the voices who immediately organized a rescue party to dig them out. But as the hours went by waiting for them to reach them, Gladius grew weaker and weaker and knew he might die before help arrived.

Nothing was more important to him than the continuation of his work, and the only person he truly trusted to take over his work was his son who simply wasn't ready to do so. He realized his only hope was to transfer his immense storehouse of knowledge to someone else before he died, and the only person who knew enough about how to do that was thankfully someone he trusted and was there at his side.

My dad's memories of Gladius's death along with the following week and a half were purposely hidden from him to protect what was implanted deep within his mind. Even my mother while going through his mind two years later completely missed the hidden store of memories and knowledge. Only the people directly involved in transferring the bulk of the knowledge into Gladius Jr. knew of this secret at the time Joey and my father had began their quest.

There had been one other person who knew of the secrets stored there, but she could never betray her Grandfather and son by revealing it to anyone. My grandmother took that information to the grave with her, and my father will never know what truly caused her death. Was it her breaking of her oath to her Grandfather by tell me of the twin's true loyalties? Or was it something else like old age, or the sense of being redundant in her son's married life.

Zoe and the eldest twins were the ones who had made the transfer back in 1967, and did so again this time. But what happened leading up to this is best told by Joey who was responsible for making it all happen.

Shit. I thought my part was done already. Well since he gave it back to me, I'll just take it all the way to the end.

Before I get to the part about Charles though, I want to cover what went outside the nursery that week.

Ever since I remembered Tim's phone call, I felt like that was my chance to make it up to him, to prove to him I'd never let him down again like I had at Northwest State. I wanted so badly to... Shit, this sound's pathetic, but I wanted to be the one to find him, and to be able to hold him as he cried because I had come to rescue him.

But instead of being the knight in shining armor, I was the blind fool who had continued on my quest for glory even after realizing that Tim's life probably wasn't in danger, receiving Lea's advice to return home, and basically allowed myself to go along with Charles even after seeing his goals were not the same as mine.

I felt like I had betrayed him again, irrationally as that may sound. That I should have resisted my urges and trusted in his abilities and judgment until it was obvious something had gone wrong.

But most of all, I was hurt by the fact that he hadn't needed me. After helping Eric carrying Tim into the sleeping quarters, Tim made it clear that he needed to be left alone with Eric as much as possible.

So as much as it pained me to do, I left their room, then found myself locked inside the nursery while Kain, Charles, and the eldest twins, who all seemed unaffected by the chaotic grief outside, went out and quickly gathered all the twins together.

Just like <snap> that, everything became calm again outside. I, however, had felt like doing some crying, but they had stopped what would have been perfect cover to so before I could take advantage of it.

After they unlocked the nursery and twins started flooding in, I avoided Kain and Charles, not wanting to draw their attention to me while they were so busy with all the twins, and eventually drug myself through the rain to the garden house, seeking the comfort of the friends I hadn't realized I still had until that afternoon.

After Jack had made them aware that the emotional strain Whitney was under had triggered the start of the birth process, Whitney and Gordon struggled for over an hour trying to hold it off until they could get help.

When I arrived, Whitney had four women from the surrounding buildings helping her as she struggled to bare down again for another round of strenuous pushing while Gordon was in the bathroom trying to recover from throwing up and passing out. He had been trying to help remove Whitney's shorts and panties when he witnessed the baby's mass moving downwards moments before her water broke and it spilled out onto his hands.

I had never personally witnessed a birth before, but Tim once shared some of his memories of when he had telepathically experienced a couple of births from both a baby's perspective and the mother's. So I guess you could say I had an insider's grasp of what was going on.

But seriously, after watching Whitney struggle and strain for several long hours, I just wanted to reach in and pull the baby out for her. I knew that really wasn't possible, and after Peter, Jonas, Beatrice, Connie, and two new girls I hadn't met before showed up, the women had me and Gordon leave and only let the others in two at a time.

When Peter's and Connie's turn was over, they came out with their arms behind each other supportively, both with worried expressions while Peter said, "She's so worn out, I wish I could just reach in and pull it out of her to get it over with."

"So did I," I said as Beatrice gave him a hug.

"I probably would too if I could stand to be that close to it," Gordon admitted.

"If anything happens to her... " Jonas said, running his hands through his hair before clasping them on top of his head and leaving them there.

A round of murmured agreements circled the group, making me feel like the outsider I was for not having joined them.

"Uhm, I want to thank you guys for doing what you did to help me out," I said a few minutes later to Jonas and Peter. "If there's anything I can ever do to repay you, just say so."

"How about having Whitney's baby for her," Jonas kidded.

"I would if I could," I said seriously.

"Me too," Gordon and Peter said almost at the same time.

"I wish Chris was here," Connie said. "I can't believe he's missing this."

"Where is Chris?" I asked.

"He and Squeak are still helping the others sort out the mess and figure out who all's dead," Peter answered.

"Dead?" I repeated. "You mean people died?"

"Shit yeah. Didn't you see what we were doing when I asked you to help?" Gordon asked.

"Well, sort of. I mean, I though you were all doing that and trying to stop the grief somehow, but then got so caught up in it that you couldn't break free."

"We couldn't break free without letting more people kill themselves," Gordon said. "You were just lucky that Squeak was able to wake up Peter and Jonas so they could take up his slack while he went off with you."

"Shit. You mean because of me, people died?" I said, horrified.

"Nah," Jonas said. "Squeak may have a big voice, but Peter and I can cover five times the area working together than Squeak can by himself."

"Yeah, we did do good, didn't we," Peter said before suddenly throwing a powerful punch at Jonas's face, but stopped it before it hit and just gave him a playful tap on the chin.

"So who won the fight, anyway?" Beatrice asked after Jonas and Peter tapped their fists together in a show of friendship.

"The twins," they both said before shuttering at the memory of their 'correction'.

Drew, one of the two fourteen year old blonde newbie girls, came out saying, "Bea? I think you better talk to Whitney. She doesn't want to push anymore."

"Shit," Peter and Jonas muttered as Beatrice got up and went in.

"She's so damn tired," Gordon added a moment later. "I wish I could give her some of my energy."

Peter saw the look on my face and suddenly recalled what my share link had done for him while battling the girls last year.

When I noticed his questioning stare, I said, "Alright, I'll do it. But don't blame me if she shoots the kid across the room when she gets a jolt of the Joey Conner super pick-me-up share link."

"The what?" Drew asked as I got up.

I thought I had left the others behind to explain, but after I entered the room and tried closing the door after me, I found them all following me in.

I realized her contractions had just subsided again for the hundredth time from the way she laid there limp while gasping for her breath. Knowing I didn't have much time before the next round, I ran to the bathroom and washed my hands as best I could before stepping up to home plate. I figured between my share link, the memories Tim had shared with me, and my textbook understanding of the procedure involved, I would be the best one to deliver the baby. The surprising thing was, nobody tried to stop me.

I nearly passed out from the sight of her vagina and the little bit of fluid still coming out of it. I had to close my eyes and mentally brace myself before I could go on, and couldn't stop the shakiness when I said to her, "Tell me when you feel you're about to start pushing again, then after I form a share link with you, push as hard as you can, all right? It should give you a big enough boost of energy to pop that watermelon of yours right out."

"Then get ready to catch, cause here IT COMES!" Whitney groaned out as her body tensed up again.

I actually had a little trouble forming the share link with her since I hadn't mentioned she had to accept it by consciously sharing her... uhm... life force, I guess, with me. She eventually did do it when she tried to ask me where the help was I promised, and shit... Did she suck the juice out of me when she did.

Of course nothing is ever as easy as it first appears. Child birth isn't just a matter of pushing hard enough to push the baby out. The cervix, the muscular entrance to the uterus where the baby resides, has to be pulled up into the walls of the uterus and then dilate open to allow the baby to pass out through the vagina. Only at that point does it actually become a matter of pushing the kid out.

I spent over an hour probing her body and trying to focus her contractions to open up her birthing gate, and I can't tell you how happy I was when we finally felt the baby was finally moving down the birth canal with each push and then suddenly I could see the head between her vaginal lips.

But when I saw that head emerging from her like a... damn, nothing really comes close to it. Anyway, I just got so excited. At first I just tried to help open her up with my fingers, but before I knew it, I was holding the whole head in my hands.

I panicked when Whitney paused in her pushing a moment, thinking she was going to stop and the baby would die from lack of blood flow to its head or something. But before I could do anything about it, Whitney took another raspy deep breath and shoved the kid out another three or four inches.

I had to resist my urges to pull the baby out by its head, but once its shoulders were out and I found its armpits, I slipped my fingers partially inside Whitney one hand at a time and managed to help pull the already wiggling creature from its mother's womb.

It came out so fast at that point, I found myself holding the baby in front of me for several seconds before one of the women started to take it from me while another snipped it's umbilical cord with a pair of scissors.

I was pretty overwhelmed by what I had just done, and just kind of stayed at the end of the bed on my knees while the women got the baby breathing and started cleaning it up as it screamed. It wasn't until after the baby had been bathed and wrapped up in a towel that I looked back at where it had come out, then leapt backwards and knocked Gordon down on top of me from seeing... blahhhchk...

Shit... Sorry. They said it was just the placenta, but for a moment I had thought she had pushed so hard her guts were coming out... heh...

"You all right?" I asked Gordon, lifting him off and setting him down beside me.

"Yeah, I'm... " he began as my hands released his bare arms, the gunk on them having dried enough to make them stick to his skin.

"OH GROSS! Uuuaaahhh YUUUCK!" Gordon said, scrambling to his feet and rushing to the bathroom to wash his arms off.

Jonas laughed so hard he fell down, but the others had missed what happened since they had clustered around the bed as the newborn was given to her mother.

I was feeling the drain on my body from the share link with Whitney, and after Gordon had finished in the bathroom, I washed up and then made myself comfortable on the couch on the other side of the suite.

I dozed off pretty quickly, but woke up when the rest of the teen voices arrived. I laid there listening to their exclaims and arguments of who the baby looked like, and for some reason held my breath as Peter described what I had done.

When I felt Chris probing for my whereabouts, I started to get up, but then felt a little dizzy when I tried standing up.

"You look almost as bad as Whitney," Chris commented from bedroom's doorway.

"How is she?" I said, sitting back against the couch's plush cushions.

"Pretty perky for someone who just went through six hours of labor," Peter answered for him as he emerged and Chris disappeared back into the bedroom.

"Shit, no wonder I feel like a depleted battery," I somewhat joked.

"You hungry or want something to drink?" Peter offered, walking towards the kitchen.

"Actually yeah. I wouldn't mind something wet. My tongue feels like I've been licking the bathroom floor. Is there any juice?"

"Yeah. Orange and apple."

"Apple. No wait. Orange. Shit. Either one, I don't care."

I closed my eyes as he poured me a glass, then it seemed like the very next moment he was pressing the cold glass against my cheek.

"Thanks," I said sleepily as I reached to take it.

"Hey, don't give him that," Chris said coming from the bedroom carrying the baby in his arms.

"Why not?" Peter asked.

"Because then he can't hold this," he said, sitting down next to me and gently transferring the baby to my arms.

"Shit, she's so small," I said gently.

"Hey!" Peter exclaimed softly while slapping the back of my head. "Don't cuss around my little girl."

"Our little girl," Chris said firmly as I examined her little hand with my right thumb and forefinger.

"So you're both going to be the daddy?"

"And Jonas and Gordon," Peter said.

"Shit she's got a grip too!" I exclaimed when the little hand squeezed my forefinger, then added, "OW! Stop that!" when Peter slapped my head again.

"Stop cussing then," Peter hissed.

"Shi... Fine, then I can't talk," I said with frustration as the little girl started to cry.

"Okay... baby want's her mommy," Liz announced as she rushed over from the bedroom after my pathetic attempts of hushing the child failed.

"Uhm, yeah. Please," I said as she took her out of my arms.

"Did those men make you cry? Shame on them," Liz said soothingly as she headed back to the bedroom.

When Chris or Peter didn't move to follow her in, but also didn't say anything after a minute, I asked, "I haven't heard anyone mention what you're all going to call the kid."

"Amanda," Chris simply said.

I sensed they were telepathically discussing something with each other, but from the way they were just sitting beside me, I had the feeling they were planning on including me in on whatever they were thinking about.

"So Joe... " Peter finally began. "You got back together with that girlfriend, right? The one you were all broken up about last year?"

"Yeah," I said cautiously, sensing he was going somewhere with it. "What about it?"

"Just wondering," Peter said hesitantly.

"So what about you two? Are either of you serious with someone?"

"As a mater of fact... " Chris began.

Peter cut him off saying, "That's actually kind of complicated."

"Relationships usually are," I said looking Peter in the eye a moment. "But you guys seem to have smoothed things out between you and the girls. I can't even guess which of you are going with which right now."

That kind of disturbed Peter, so I said, "So what makes it more complicated than normal? What are you guys trying to tell me without wanting to tell me?"

"The nine of us... Beatrice, Liz, Whitney, Connie, Annette, me, Peter, Jonas, and Gordon... We don't want to forget each other," Chris said a little shakily.

"What he means is, when we're made to leave, we don't want to lose each other. Especially now that we just finally worked things out," Peter said. "We were hoping... "

Peter didn't finish his sentence when Chris suddenly got up and went over to the window, so I said "Hoping for what?"

"Would you... Take us with you?" Peter whispered like he was afraid he'd be overheard.

"What, all of you?" I said softly, yet not so soft Chris couldn't hear.

"Just the nine of us. The newbies aren't part of... uhm... us."

"Shit, Peter... What makes you think I can help you guys get out of here? I mean, I'm pretty sure my memories will be edited before I can leave myself."

"Yeah, but you have a family and... your girlfriend to go back to. All we have is each other. Or at least that's all I have," Peter said, getting up and joining Chris at the window.

Chris put his arm across Peter's shoulders, and for a minute they both stood there staring out the window, never even glancing at each other. I could sense they were communicating telepathically again, but they didn't offer to share their thoughts with me so I didn't pry.

Beatrice startled me when she sat down beside me without me noticing she had entered the room. She smiled gently at me a moment, taking my hand in hers and saying "Chris is scheduled to leave in two months, and I'm supposed to leave in five. But we've all come so close that we stopped having sex with anyone but each other, got rid of our slaves... "

"Leaving them... " Chris said emotionally from the window. "Just the concept of it is killing me. I can't stand thinking that in two months time I'll forget every... "

"Awe, Chris... " Peter said as Chris buried his face into his best friend's shoulder. "Come on, man... You said you wouldn't do this."

"I'm sorry... I can't help it," Chris said muffled from Peter's shoulder.

All the other veteran voices except Whitney gathered around them and formed a big giant group hug, most of them sniffing, especially the girls. Squeak, Drew, and the other newbie named Vanessa, all kept their distance from the bedroom entrance, but apparently weren't oblivious to what was going on.

Once they all had regained their composure a bit, I said, "Look I... Shit, you guys. If you're asking me to help orchestrate some kind of escape plan for all of you... You're talking to the wrong person. The only reason I got out of here last time with all my marbles intact was because of Lea and Zoe. My own escape plan didn't work."

"But it was Lea who told us to ask you," Liz said.

"She did?" I said, completely surprised. "But... But... But why? And when?"

"After Chris and I went through your memories and kept getting sick, Liz and Bea went to her for help," Peter explained.

"We thought you had somehow made Chris and Peter sick or something. But Lea said it wasn't a sickness, but just opposite, and to trust what they remembered because it was our key to prevent ever losing what we've gained since your last visit."

"But that doesn't mean _I_ can help you all to escape," I pointed out.