Chapter 24: Deep Thought

When we woke him up, Special Agent Bob Scarpelli was cooperative, especially when we removed the crude controls that Lyle Boyle had placed within his mind.

Lyle, coercer that he was, did not have the skill or delicate mental sense of perception required to actually alter someone's mind in anything but a minor way without destroying that person's ability to function undetected in public, so Lyle's normal method was to place a layer of compulsion or obedience on top of his victim's consciousness.

With those layers of compulsion and obedience removed, Bob Scarpelli was once again a hard charging and dedicated FBI agent. An FBI agent who remembered every command he had been given, every act he had performed while under the compulsions that had been laid upon him.

We had to remind him that his boss was still a victim, and still obedient to the compulsions placed upon him.

A quick phone call from FBI Bob later, Warren Zimmerman was on his way to us via fast FBI helicopter. While we waited, Ginny and I went through the house, freeing the people we found there from any of Lyle's handiwork. We gave each person a full body scan as well, looking for damage the brother's may have caused.

Once Bob's boss arrived, and we had freed him from Lyle's layers of compulsion, we sat down to talk about the future.

"Gentleman, we would like to reassure you that we are not prepared to act as the recently deceased Boyle brothers might have. We will not compel your obedience or devotion."

"How can we be sure of that?" Director Zimmerman asked.

"I know of no way, short of showing you my mind and letting you see for yourself. Unfortunately, with no previous experience with mental contact, you would not be able to make a valid interpretation of what you saw." I said.

"What we can tell you," Ginny added "Is that there are other monsters like these two out there. They even knew of some of them."

"It our duty to find them and bring them to justice." I said. "You would find this difficult, if not impossible to do yourselves."

"Why are you wearing those masks?" Bob asked.

"What you see us wearing is armor. It protects us, and our faces and hands are just as vulnerable as the rest of us, so they too are covered." I answered.

"We do not go around reading everyone's thoughts and digging out their secrets. We use our gifts to share our thoughts with those like us, and for protection." Ginny offered. "We are no danger to either of you, now that you are free of the Boyle's influence. In fact we could be an asset."

"How's that?" Zimmerman asked.

"We will be spending a lot of time in the next few months following up on what we learned here. We will be tracking others like the Boyle's, though we can hope that none of them share in Lyle's evil proclivities." I said. "As we do, we are sure to come across information useful to you, and to the agency. We will contact you when we do."

"Alright." Bob said. "What's the catch?"

"The catch is that we need to be sure that our existence remains a secret." Ginny said.

"Are you going to wipe out our memories?" Bob asked.

"No, of course not." Ginny said quickly.

"I want to do two things, but I will only do them with your permission." I said. "I want to place what I call a 'tag' in your minds. This is a little like the trap that Lyle had placed in you, but my tag only does two things, it allows me to keep track of your whereabouts more easily, and it will alert me if either of you are ever in danger."

"What's the second thing?" Zimmerman asked.

"I want to place a compulsion, nothing like the kind Lyle used, much more subtle and specific. All it will do is prevent either of you from ever revealing our existence, even under torture or coercion by anyone, even someone else like Lyle."

"Damn!" Bob said. "You're asking us to trust you completely!"

"Exactly right." I deadpanned. Easy to do wearing a full mask.

I read their acceptance in their thoughts, and had both of them tagged and under the effects of my gently placed compulsion practically before they could say it.

"Thank you gentlemen, it is done." I said, and jumped Ginny and I back to our bedroom on Meadow.

We stripped quickly out of our armor and took a shower. With Lyle Boyle's memories still fresh in our thoughts, the shower did not leave us feeling clean. We lay on our bed afterwards and I let Ginny cry her grief out onto my shoulder until we both fell asleep.

When Ginny and I woke up the morning after our dealing with the Boyle brothers we felt much better. We had taken human lives, and though they were deserving of the end they came to, we had felt the need to grieve their end and express, at least to ourselves, our remorse.

We woke late for breakfast, but found some sausage links and scrambled eggs that Loretta left in the warmer for us. We polished them off quickly, washing it all down with a couple large glasses of orange juice. A quick trip to the bedroom to brush our teeth and we were off to Sheye.

Felicia had already left by the time we got there. Eru and the girls were sitting in the positions we had started in last week, so Ginny and I slid into our spots, and quickly slid our minds as well into their joining.

<Our apologies, but we will have a short session today.> I thought to the group.

<Is everything all right?> Riah asked.

<We found our coercers last night, and had to deal with them. We used our minds to take two lives last night.> I said.

<Share your memories with us. All who would become Soul Divers or Spirit Masters must know what it means to oppose coercers.>

<We are reluctant to expose the girls to the evil perversions of one of those we faced.> Ginny thought. <The girls should not have to learn of such things at their young age.>

<Such is the burden we all will bear. We are here to guide young minds past such horror, and lead them to the truths beyond.> Eru said.

<Very well.> I thought.

We gave our memories of the events to the three of them. They saw what we had seen, felt what we had felt, relived the deaths of the Boyle brothers and our dealings with their victims. As the girls began to stiffen in reaction to the horror that had been Lyle Boyle, we sent a flood of love and caring into them.

As they reacted to our supportive efforts, Eru quickly slid into teacher mode, and began highlighting bits and pieces here and there within those memories we had shared.

<Here, see how they made that man sleep?>

<See here how they were able to slip behind this man's perceptions of them and into his mind unnoticed?>

<There! Feel how their minds were able to avoid the coercion at the end? The coercer did not even realize he was finally able to reach out without physical contact at the end!>

Hell! I thought. We hadn't even realized it ourselves. At that point we were focused on Ending Lyle Boyle's twisted and evil life, and hadn't even noticed his coercive efforts.

Eru made them endure the deaths again, including the death of the poor victim we had released from her physical prison. Eru signaled the end of our joining and we all broke apart.

Eru leaned forward and kissed the girls on the forehead.

"To love life does not mean you must fear death." Ginny said.

"Give Ginny's words great weight girls." Eru said. "On earth she is recognized as a medical doctor, their world's version of a healer. The medical sciences of Earth are more advanced than ours in many ways, but those who practice healing there are taught to recognize, as healers here are, that death is not always an enemy. It is not always unwelcome."

With that, and hugs and kisses all around, the girls left for home.

"They will be fine." Eru said after they were gone. "You've been in their minds and have seen the deep reservoirs of strength they possess. In ones so young, such strength lends endless resilience."

"Speaking of endless resilience, you will perhaps be pleased to know we are not planning on going for a run today. We want to take you along for some other mischief." I said. "Did you know that your Legion armor makes for more than adequate rain gear?"

Low clouds and a drizzling rain seemed to be a permanent condition on the facet I had designated as 'Cloudburst'. It was not the atmosphere that had our attention, but the Sea.

We joined the two teams in the Beloth, our Planetary Survey Platform, which had been pressed into duty as a staging area for our efforts to learn more about the aquatic intelligence we had found to be living in the deeps of Cloudburst's oceans. Everyone in both teams were sitting at the PSP's observation stations. We quickly followed suit and were watching the feed from a probe that was sitting a few thousand yards above the sea floor. In the murky darkness a mile deep, the view was unrevealing. The probe was not using lights, unwilling to risk offending whoever might be lurking beneath.

Arden spotted us as we moved over to take up a station, and he came over to greet us.

"Hi guys! Glad you could make it!"

"Hi Arden. Have we missed any of the excitement?" I asked.

"Constantine came through, as you knew he would, I'm sure, and provided us with a deep sea version of the survey platforms we've been using in the atmosphere of other facets. They even load and deploy through the tubes in the same way as what we we're already used to." Arden told us. "We've been making runs, sweeping them lower and lower each time, for about five hours now, and I think we're getting close to making some sort of contact. We're still unsure of how we'll be able to communicate once we do, but we're planning on lowering the probe that you are seeing the feed from on the monitor now until it gets noticed."

"I'd like to leave Eru here with you." I told him. "You may need his skills if it appears that our only option is a meeting of the minds, so to speak."

"Great! I think it very well may come to that, and yes, Eru would be our choice for making a first contact through mental means." Arden said.

Ginny and I left them then, jumping to the Hall of Gifts on Obsidian.

<Con! We're here!> I sent my thoughts.

<Excellent! I am already on the roof, if you care to join me.> He thought back at us.

I jumped us to him, and found him just pushing a loading cart away from the little ship we found ourselves in front of.

Starting this trip, we were going to be using what we called a 'hopper', A small, 4 person ship, much smaller than Kes and Aya, our two cruisers.

Con pretty much had her prepped and ready to go, all I did was pop in the needed supplies for making the tea that had become our drink of choice, after much lobbying by Eru. We sealed her up and I jumped her to the little utility pad I'd built on Meadow for our big picnic a while back.

We had been using the area around our house on Meadow as our starting point for our facet discovery trips, mostly because it had meant our 'office' was only a few steps away outside our front door.

With the hopper where we wanted her, we stopped to brew some tea and visit with Constantine for a few minutes.

"I'm going to need the 12th and 13th of next month off." Con opened with.

"Of course! What have you got going on?" I asked.

"Do you remember Carl and Arne?" Con asked.

"Weren't they two of the guys you met playing darts that one time at The Sluice Box? The ones who took you fishing?"

"Yes. Arne's daughter Emily is getting married, and I've been invited to the wedding. I've given them the impression that I spend a lot of time out of the country working, so I've told them I'd try and arrange my travel schedule to see if I could make it."

Ginny filled him in a little on the status of our pregnancy. Of course he had questions, some of which would have been inappropriate coming from anyone but Con.