Part XIII - 6: The Quest for Sarah Begins

"NO!! SARAH!! NO!!" Joey cried just before he fell out of the bed.

"Joey! It's okay! It was only a dream!" I said, nearly falling out of bed after him.

"NO! I SHOT HER! I SHOT SARAH! I REMEMBER! I DID IT! IT WAS ME!" Joey continued as he stumbled and struggled to get free of the covers.

I realized he was lost in the emotions his dream had produced, and just as he got to his feet intending to run, I tackled him back to the floor and held onto him with everything I had while he went into a hysterical fit.

The twins where gone by the time Joey had worn himself out, and before Joey dropped back asleep, I had managed to piece his dream together from the fragments his terrified mind had recalled.

His dream was a combination of real events and imaginary ones, the imaginary ones having come from Steven's tampering of Joey's memory. From what I saw, Joey had taken on the role of both Steven, himself, and Tammy's old master, where he raped, enslaved, brainwashed, toyed with, mistreated, and finally shot his 12 year old sister in the head.

The worse part was Joey had done almost everything he experienced in the dream, and at the time, he had loved doing it. While he had been settling down from his fit, I found Joey still believed he had killed his sister, and wasn't listening to me, even when I thought directly to his mind.

It took me a while to go back to sleep, and when the twins woke me up doing their morning rounds, I snapped at them and sent them away with their feelings hurt.

I was relieved to find Joey's sense of reality had returned, but I could still see the horror in his eyes. He didn't say a word to me, just moved towards me and started crying.

I fell asleep holding Joey's head against me, but I don't think he went back to sleep at all. For when I opened my eyes, Joey lifted his head and smiled weakly at me, saying, "It's about time you woke up."

"Are you okay?"

"No... Tim, I want to go find her. I want to forge my way into college, join that fraternity, and find out if my sister is alive or not."

"Joey... We can't join that fraternity. Ron knows we're not old enough. He'd blow the whistle."

"Not if we use the twins on him and make him forget us."

"What about Jason and Pete? They're going to join it too, and we're not going to wipe them."

"We'll just make them transfer to another school. Tim? You know I can't do this without you. I can't promise you anything in return because I don't have anything to give you except my own life, and I know you don't want that. But without you... "

"Shit, Joey. I pretty much guessed this is what you'd want to do, and you know I'd do anything for you... Okay... I'll help you do it. But we have to figure out a better plan than that. I have some ideas of my own that you might not have thought of."

Joey and I spent the entire morning exchanging our ideas, arguing over which made more sense, and finally decided we simply had to have more information before we could do anything.

We found that Ron and Jason had left that morning to get Jason ready for the initiation into the fraternity. Usually the fraternity only allowed new members to join during mid-semesters, right after the initiates had endured a vigorous and intensive bodybuilding program which was run by the fraternity's upperclassmen.

Because Jason had been able to continue his bodybuilding while in hiding with his parents, the fraternity was making an exception for Jason by holding his initiation rituals the week before classes began. They apparently had been impressed by his determination when he proved to the fraternity's higher council he had surpassed their entry requirements by nearly %50. And I'm sure Ron had a hand in getting Jason's entry approved.

Even if I didn't already know there was a ulterior goal behind the fraternity, it was plain there was something fishy about it. Anyone accepted into the fraternity stayed in it until they graduated, their members having the highest grades and the largest muscles. Their parties were the best, their sexual habits were always safe, and no one ever saw a member high on drugs or smoke a cigarette. They were too good to be true, but no one seemed to find that suspicious.

Joey and I had gotten most of this information from Pete, but once he couldn't tell us anything else, he pointed us to the exact kind of person we were looking for.

Fredrick Paul Brown, Fred to his friends, Freddie to his loved ones, had just graduated from Northeast State and happened to be an alumni of Gamma Alpha Eta, the fraternity which Ron was a member of. Joey and I couldn't believe our good fortune of finding that Fred had undergone the same programming Ron had. I wasn't able to detect whether his hidden personality was still there or not, and there was no sign of any overlooked memories, but his mind was littered with foggy blank areas, and his huge muscular body was probably proof enough. No one could get that big without something extraordinary making him do it.

Fred was friendly enough to talk to us about Gamma Alpha Eta and such, but he kind of brushed us off after fulfilling his duty to his frat brothers. His mind was full of expectations about his new job waiting for him three states away. After a few minutes of discussion outside his parents home, Joey convinced me we had to take him home and see what my dad could make of him.

Twenty minutes later, Fred was packing his suitcase with excitement equal to landing that job he wasn't starting for another two weeks. He couldn't believe his new boss had given him the extra time to go and live with his two new best friends before moving away and probably never seeing them again.

Joey and I became completely consumed in preparing for our self-assigned mission. Surprisingly, my mom and dad didn't even try to talk us out of it once our intentions became clear. They spent many hours testing and launching surprise attacks on the cover personalities Joey and I were constructing. I knew they were doing it so they could feel a little more comfortable knowing that we were a safe behind a mental cloak that even they couldn't penetrate.

The mental cloak that Melissa had taught me was nowhere near as thorough as her own, but I believe that was because Melissa's cover personality had been formed over years of growing up in a hostile place, obtaining its own set of memories which were from real events.

Joey's and my cover personalities were composed of as many real memories as possible, but because we were only half way through high school, and most of those memories were inappropriate, we had a lot of trouble filling that area in with something that felt believable.

We were under a great deal of pressure to get our cover personalities worked out, forge our enrollment at Northeast State, gather as much information as we could to help us prepare for college and getting into the fraternity, all while dealing with the hysterical fits Joey had every night after waking up from another nightmare.