Chapter 9

Will had trouble sleeping, and he realized that it was because he wasn't yet sure of Eight's intentions. He was tempted to probe his mind the way he had done the guard, but resisted. If he wanted these people to follow him, he couldn't start by digging into their brains without their permission.

Remembering the shell he had used to ensnare Hall, he thought, If I build one around myself, like this, and hook it into this energy source like this... Then, if I set up some kind of feedback mechanism, it should absorb any energy directed at me and use it to strengthen the shell at that point.

"Hey, Nine." He whispered into the dimness that remained from his last lighting of the stalactite tip. "You still awake?"

"Yeah." She whispered back. This was the same way they had started conversations when they roomed together back at the complex and a strange feeling of nostalgia swept over her. "What's up?"

"Throw a rock at me, will ya?"

"You have gone crazy Ten!" Tina replied. "Just count sheep or something. I'm not throwing any rocks to send you beddy-bye! We don't have any medics here but you!"

"It's an experiment." He said, "Just throw it at my legs or something."

"I still think you're crazy, but here goes. It's just a little one."

Tina hadn't had the daily workouts at the gym that he'd had, but the augmentation of her muscles still sent the rock flying in his direction at the speed of a major league fastball. Will had only an instant to brace himself for the impact before the stone hit his improvised shield. To both their astonishment, about three inches from his body, the stone stopped dead, then slid slowly to the floor of the cave.

"Cool!" Will said. "That worked, now try a bigger one!"

Hefting a fist-sized rock this time, Nine gave it a mighty heave in Will's direction, only to achieve the same result. As the rock tapped onto the stone floor, she muttered, "Damn! I gotta get me one of those!"

"I'll see if I can teach you tomorrow, Nine, but thanks for helping with my little experiment. Good night!" Ten replied.

"Yeah," Nine said, "g'night!"

Will still awoke a couple of times, but finally fell into a deep sleep when he realized that, once set, his little shield wasn't going anywhere unless he told it to. Some of those 'corrections' he had made to himself must have duplicated at least part of the function of the microprocessor. Much of it worked on a subconscious level. It was sort of like walking. If he tried to make individual muscles do what was necessary to maintain his balance and move him forward, he would wind up flat on his face, but if he thought about walking in that direction, his muscles automatically did what was needed to move him along. That was the sort of thing that seemed to be happening with these mental abilities he had so recently acquired. If he simply thought about what he wanted to do, it got done. If he tried to manipulate things directly, it was much more difficult.

There was no sunrise in the cave, but Will, now in tune with the energies around him, felt a quickening outside their little world as the sun's rays began to touch the tops of the mountains. On impulse, he sent his thoughts eastward to the little store that had hosted their 'shopping' spree last night.

Sure enough, the proprietor was up and preparing for the day. His wife was the first to notice the broken lock on the gun case that Nine had forced to take the handguns, and the proprietor himself found the note Will had left on the phone. In puzzlement, he went to the register, and Will eavesdropped on their conversation.

"Martha, you want to take a look here?" The proprietor said. "Looks like somebody paid for those guns."

"Wasn't just guns they got, Sam." The woman replied, taking a hasty visual inventory of the store. "Looks like they took some camping gear and food and stuff, too. My Lord!"

She gasped as she saw the two gold pieces in the register. "I reckon they did pay for that stuff."

"Don't matter none." Sam said, "I still gotta call the gummint. Them ATF boys'll be all upset if they come around an' find a coupla guns missing that we ain't got the paperwork on."

ATF! Will thought. Shit! I forgot about that! Now the government will be all over them and they'll probably confiscate the gold as evidence!

"Well, we better go see what's on the videotape, Mother." Sam continued, heading for the back room.

Videotape? Will's mind went into overdrive. He hadn't expected such a small country store to have such things, and hadn't looked for it last night. He sent his thought into the back room ahead of the couple, and sure enough, there was a monitor showing four separate views of the store. One showed the front entrance, another the gun case, and a third the cash register. The fourth showed another door that must have been a side or rear entrance. Working quickly, Will 'mind-nipulated' the controls on the machine and rewound the tape until he estimated that it was at least an hour earlier than when the couple came to open the store, then fast-forwarded, forcing the tape between the wheels of the mechanism, erasing and shredding as he went. It wasn't perfect, but perhaps it would do.

The tape should show a couple of shadowy figures inside the store, especially at the gun case, and he and Nine might even be identified, but the tape would have been shredded by a machine malfunction before the couple came to open up, so their discovery of the note and the gold should go unnoticed. Since the phone was out of view of the cameras, the note he left shouldn't show up on any of the tapes, which meant that Sam and Martha, if they wanted to, could keep the gold and no one would be the wiser. As the door to the little video closet opened under Sam's key, Will slowed the mechanism to normal speed, and it ground to a halt as shredded videotape clogged the mechanism.

"Well, I'll be!" Sam said, staring at the tangle of videotape that protruded from around the cartridge. "Looks like we've had a malfunction. I'll call the Sheriff and he can come and investigate, and then we'll call the ATF boys."

"What about what we saw in the register, Sam?" Martha asked.

"What was that, Martha?" Sam asked casually. "I don't recollect seeing anything in the register."

"Why, now that you mention it," Martha smiled, "I guess it must have been a trick of my old eyes."

Will chuckled to himself. Sam and Martha were no dummies!

"What's so funny, Ten?" Eight asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

"I was just listening in on the old couple who own that store where we got all this stuff last night." Will answered. "We almost got them in trouble with the BATF, but I think I fixed it. How about some breakfast?"

"Sure, but I can't cook for beans. Maybe Nine..."

"That won't be necessary. Like I said, we're too small a group to worry about formality, and I'm a passable cook, if I do say so myself." Will interrupted. "I'll cook and you and Nine can clean up."

"That's good to know." Nine mumbled sleepily. "'Cause I can't cook boiled water without burning it."

Will 'relit' the tip of the stalactite that served as their light source and went to the stacks of food and cooking supplies they had stored in the designated kitchen area. He found a frying pan, bacon, and eggs. Within a few moments, he had chipped away the rough rock of the broken stalagmite to make a smooth, flat cooking surface. Concentrating, he heated the entire surface to what seemed about the right temperature, and placed the pan upon it. Soon, bacon was sizzling in the pan.

With the bacon cooked crisp, Will drew some of the heat out of the 'stovetop' and fried eggs in the bacon grease. Since he was pretty sure that some of the 'wrongness' he had cleaned up in 'fixing' himself included partially clogged arteries, he wasn't going to worry about cholesterol in their diet just now.

Needing another cooking surface, he created a blade of energy and neatly sliced the top off another stalagmite near the first, creating a smooth, flat surface slightly smaller than the first. As he prepared to boil water for the grits, Will turned to find the other two staring at him.

"What?" He asked. It hadn't occurred to him that what he was doing was that much different than any of the other things he had done, but the expressions on the faces of his companions told him otherwise.

"Damn, Ten!" Nine said, shaking her head, "Is there anything you can't do?'

A bit confused by her comment, Will shrugged and answered her literally. "Don't know. I'm still learning, same as you guys. Why?"

"You just sliced through that rock, smooth as glass, without touching it, that's why!" Eight came back.

Will shrugged. "Well, I've been shaping the energy I use for other purposes. It just stood to reason that it would be thin enough to separate molecules in almost any material. I tried it and it worked. I don't understand what the fuss is about."

"I can't wait for the training to start!" Eight muttered as he returned to rolling his sleeping bag.

"Right after breakfast." Will said, turning back to the pot of grits and water, heating the new cooking surface almost white hot.

"See," Nine said, watching him, "what I don't understand is why you bother with heating the damn rocks. Why not just heat the pot and the food directly?"

"Because..." Will began, then paused, thinking. "Because I never thought of it, I guess." He finished with a sheepish grin.

Doing it her way, the pot of grits boiled much more quickly, and soon they were ready to eat.

"What is this white mush, anyway?" Eight asked, poking at it with a fork.

Will's mouth opened but Tina beat him to the punch.

"Corn, essentially." She told him. "Ground and soaked in lye, or maybe it's soaked in lye before it's ground, I'm not sure which. Anyway, it's basically hominy. Add a little butter, it'll grow on you."

When breakfast was finished, Will sat with the others to map out the activities for the next few days.

"Okay, my idea is this, but feel free to add your own." He told them. "After all, this is really new stuff. Giving someone what you've learned takes only a few seconds, though coaching and practice will take a bit longer, so what I propose is this: Today, we'll each focus on that part of these abilities that we have a handle on. Learn the limits, if any, and as many variations as you can come up with, then, in the evening, we'll share what we've learned with each other and try to coach the others so they can do it themselves. Tomorrow, we'll rotate and each try to expand on the skills we learn tonight. These plans may require adjustment as we go, but they're the best I can come up with when I know so little about what we're facing. Once we think we have the best handle we can get on the basic skills, then we'll work on tactics and maneuvers - how we as a team can use these abilities to best advantage. Anything to add? Any questions?"

"Yeah," Eight asked, "how the hell do we get out of here? There aren't any holes big enough for anything larger than a rabbit to enter or leave by."

Will looked him steadily in the eye. "You either learn to teleport out, or you wait for me to do it for you."

"So that's it?" Eight replied. "We're your prisoners?"

"Think of it as bootcamp." Will told him, not dropping his gaze. "I want your undivided attention for a while, and I don't want anyone interrupting us. By using a cavern that has no entrance or exit, I get both, okay?"

Eight drew his sidearm and pulled the slide back to chamber a round. "And what if I decide I want out sooner?"

Without moving, Will told Tina. "Nine! Throw a rock at me!"

Remembering last night's experiment, Tina picked up a fist-sized rock and hurled it full-force at Will's head. She watched the expression on Eight's face with a grin as the rock stopped three inches from Will's ear and slid slowly to the ground.

Will glowered at Eight as he slowly holstered the sidearm. "That's the last insubordinate act I will tolerate from you, Mr. Hall. Do I make myself clear? My control is not sufficient yet to hold you down while I reverse what I've done to make you who you are, so if you get out of line again, I will simply kill you."

Will could see the rebellion in Eight's eyes, and knew that Tom was just waiting for his chance. He was tempted to end it right there, but that would undermine any sense of loyalty Nine felt and Will still hoped to be able to turn Eight around.

"All right." He turned his gaze to Nine. "Nine, I want you to work on the mindsight and telepathy stuff. See if you can discover any limits to it. Also, try to figure out how we can find bad guys in an environment where there are lots of other minds. As a way of practicing, why don't you check up on Robinson and her crew, and see how they're making out."

"You," He looked again at Eight, being careful to keep his expression neutral. "Work on telekinesis. Try working further and further away, not just here in the cave, but don't create any seismic events or do anything to attract attention to this location. See what, if any, limits there are on weight, distance, etc."

"Got it." Eight nodded crisply. "What about you?"

"I'm going to be working on teleportation." Will replied. "Again, looking for limitations. I suspect that one of the things causing the difference between our respective abilities is that I've been working out, and therefore have greater reservoirs of energy in my body. As part of my experimentation, I'm going to see if I can't get us some exercise equipment. If nothing else, it will help bring your bodies up to snuff so you can use all that extra muscle power along with your brain power. Any questions? Comments?"