If you think you know somebody who resembles any of the characters here, congratulations, but you're wrong - any similarity between the characters in this story and any real person is purely coincidental, since all of these characters are figments of my imagination.

This is my story, not yours. Don't sell it or put it on a pay site. You can keep it and/or give it away with all of this information intact, but if you make money off of it without my permission, you're breaking the law and pissing me off.

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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?"

There were none, and Will went off to his sleeping niche to begin his experiments. First checking to make sure his shield was still in place, Will stretched his mind outward, seeking a place he used to call home.

Without much effort, he found himself staring at the entrance hallway to his house in Santa Clara. It was the same place, but different somehow. The pictures of Karen and Stacy were no longer hanging from the walls, or in evidence on the shelves. Some of the furniture had been moved around. His focus moved at will through the house, noting the neat, but dust covered condition of the master bedroom and Stacy's room, as if they hadn't been touched since he left. Katherine was nowhere to be found, though there was evidence of her hasty departure in the disheveled appearance of the guest room.

Will turned his mind to the garage where he had set up his exercise equipment. Somehow, his sister-in-law had managed to get it all pushed into one corner to make room for her car and some boxes, which, upon closer examination, contained all the artifacts of Karen and Stacy's presence that had been in the common areas of the house.

Will decided that the task he had in mind was best done in person, and transported himself to the entrance hall of the house. Working quickly, he found a notepad and pen and left a note for Katherine:

Dear Katy;

Thank you for all your help. It seems I won't be returning anytime soon, so if you will have the papers drawn up to transfer this house to you, and leave them on the kitchen table, I will sign them and you'll be free to do what you want with the property. I would appreciate it if you would put Karen and Stacy's things in storage until I can decide what to do with them.

I realize this is all very strange, but I can't really explain in a way that you'll understand right now, so I must ask you to trust me. If they haven't been here yet, there will be people coming around to look for me. I have done nothing illegal, but the procedures they performed on me changed me in ways that no one anticipated, and I need to figure out how best to take advantage of those changes. Meanwhile, the government has a lot invested in me and they want me back. If they ask, you can show them this note or not. That's entirely up to you - it can't hurt me one way or the other.

I'll be taking the exercise equipment and a few other things, so don't be alarmed if things turn up missing.

I'll check in on you from time to time, once the government realizes they can't get me back. Again, thanks for all your help.

Love,

Will

Without going into the garage, Will mentally 'collected' the exercise equipment and a few of his personal belongings. The equipment was not quite as heavy duty as he would have liked, but it was Olympic quality equipment and would take considerable weight, which would be enough to get the others started on the road to fitness. It was almost second nature to him now, to move himself and the equipment back to the cave, depositing them haphazardly in an out-of-the-way corner for the moment. He checked to make sure that nothing was going to fall and cause injury before turning back to see how the other two were doing.

To his shock, he saw Nine pinned to the wall by invisible forces, and Eight standing beside her, grinning at him.

"I decided that I'm done with bootcamp." Tom said "Now you let me and Nine out of here, or she gets what you were going to do to me."

Will shot a bolt of energy in Eight's direction, only to have it absorbed by a shield similar to the one Will used.

"See!" Eight said gleefully, "I've been learning. Now get me out of here, now!"

Will tried overcoming his hold on Nine, only to find that the shield encompassed both. Thinking furiously, Will considered the properties of that shield. It would absorb any amount of energy, kinetic or otherwise, directed against it, except at levels that were too low to cause harm to the person inside. That was a given, or the wearer would soon suffocate, would not be able to manipulate things around him, and would not be able to see if the shield blocked all energy.

Walking up to Eight until his own shield came up against that of the other man, Will said. "What did I tell you I was going to do the next time you were insubordinate?"

Eight sneered at him. "You told me you were going to kill me. But I just don't think that's going to happen now, do you?"

"Yes." Was all Will said.

At that instant, Will's sheath knife, whose point Will had been slowly advancing through the shield behind Eight's back, pierced the former Marine's kidney. Eight, in shock, lost his concentration enough for Will to insinuate a tendril of his own energy through the shield alongside the blade. Continuing the pressure on the blade until it was fully embedded in the other's body, Will threw his own shield around his opponent, inside the envelope of the other's shield, effectively cutting him off from the rest of the world and collapsing Eight's shield..

Nine slumped to the floor of the cave and Will touched her mind, assuring himself that she was still alive. Will gave a final sharp thrust of his mind and turned Eight's brain to jelly. With the knife back in his sheath and Eight's lifeless body supported only by the energy shell that Will maintained around him, Will heated the interior of the shell until its contents incinerated in a flash that would have blinded them had not the shell absorbed much of the light.

Turning to Nine, Will allowed the ashes of their former companion to drop to the floor of the cave in a puff of dust. "You okay, Tina?"

"Yeah," She replied, struggling to her feet. "Yeah, I'm okay. Damn! This mind stuff is scary! I've never been afraid of a guy before today. I've always been able to hold my own with them, physically and mentally, but there was no way to stop him. If you hadn't come along..."

"You were just his hold over me, Tina..." Will started to say, but Nine interrupted.

"No, that's not all I was." She spat into the ash heap that had once been Prototype Eight. "That son-of-a-bitch was going to make me his slave. I could see it in his mind while he was waiting for you to come back. He even tried to take control of my mind, but I was able to fight him off. Didn't matter. He was going to use his telekinesis to make me do what he wanted, and there wouldn't have been anything I could do to stop him!"

Will was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, it was slowly, softly.

"Tina, we can't do what we need to do if we don't know that we can trust each other," he told her, "so I would like your permission to look inside your mind and your memories - to know, once and for all, who I'm dealing with, and how far I can trust you. In return..." He held up a hand to forestall her protests. "...in return, I will give you the same permission."

Nine peered sharply into his face.

"I don't know, Ten." She said. "I've just had one guy that tried to take over my mind. I'm not real sure about giving another one permission to root around in my brain. Besides, there are things in there I don't really want other people knowing about."

"I understand, Tina," Will said. "and I won't try to force you, but with the powers we're wielding here, I think we owe it to each other to know who we're dealing with. There are things in my past I don't really want anyone knowing about, either. Frankly, I'm not real concerned about your past, anyway. What I want to know about is your present state of mind. I want to know if I need to watch my back when you're around, or if I can trust you. I'm pretty sure you'd like to know the same things about me."

"Yeah, I guess I would." Tina reluctantly replied. "Okay, I guess... but I want to go first."

"I guess you would." Will said without rancor, "I'm not real keen on opening my mind to someone who's an unknown quantity, either. How about we go together?"

"Guess that's about as fair as we can get." She answered.

"All right, might as well get comfortable..."

"Yeah, I think I want us to be holding hands while we're doing this." Nine said. "That way, I'll know if you try to do anything with your hands while I'm concentrating on your mind."

Will, sensing another reason, acquiesced. Soon, they were seated on his sleeping bag, facing each other. Will took Tina's hands in his, and said, "Ready? I'll try to start slow. Here we go..."

Delving into another person's mind and memory was a strange experience for Will. He found that, although she was basically the person he assumed her to be from his association with her, Tina Rosales had had a hard life. She grew up on the mean streets of East L.A. and learned to take care of herself early. Her gang membership and the things she did to keep it were a means of protecting her from much worse things, and while she wasn't proud of the things she had to do, neither did she regret having done them. Ultimately, she escaped that life by enlisting in the Army. For a while, she thought she had found the answer to all her problems, but became disillusioned when she discovered the real reasons for so many of her comrades having been killed in meaningless wars against people who just wanted the same things out of life that she did.

She had joined the super-soldier program after her second enlistment was up, hoping to find a better way of protecting the country she loved from those who wished to harm it. To Will's astonishment, during their time together in the program, she had developed a deep-rooted respect and even affection for him. What was most gratifying, however, was that she wanted essentially what he did - to try to rid the country of the terrorist threat and the world of its hatred for the US so that recruitment for terrorist organizations would dry up. To that end, he saw, she had committed herself to follow him wherever he led, as long as she believed in what he was doing.

At the end, he also saw that she was satisfied with what she found in his mind. A bond of deep-seated trust was forged between them.

Tina, searching Will's memory, cringed at some of the sexual fantasies she found there, but relaxed when she realized that he had them classified as 'not to be realized, only fantasized.' Tears filled her eyes when she came across the memories of his family and that final, terrible night. She quickly moved on, discovering a proud man who was determined to make the best of any situation. She also found a man whose sole ambition was to find and bring to justice the killers of his wife and daughter, and beyond that, rid the world of the forces of terrorism. He didn't expect to create a utopian world, just one where fear was less of an everyday emotion.

They never spoke of what they had seen in each other's memories, but from that day forward, Will didn't bother maintaining his shield while in 'their' cave.

With some judicious leveling of the cave floor, he got the exercise equipment set up and started both of them on a rigorous workout schedule that included both mental and physical exercises. Tina's mental training accelerated now, as he allowed her to simply couple her mind to his when he performed one of the now commonplace miracles of which he had become capable. With the increased strength and stamina of her body came a greater reservoir of internal energy that allowed her gradually to accomplish more with her mind. The range and clarity of her mindsight and telepathy increased first, then she began having the ability to move things with telekinesis.

During this period, they periodically checked on Dr. Robinson and the underground facility that was once their home. Three weeks after their escape, the facility was closed for good. All of the computer equipment and paper files were taken away, then a demolition team blew up the elevator shaft that seemed to be the only way in or out of the facility. This was good news for the two escapees because they had long since outstripped the capabilities of Will'sr standard exercise equipment. No sooner had the last person left the vicinity of the complex than Will had snagged the beefed up exercise gear from the special gym that had been built just for the program. The fact that it had been left behind was a good indication that the government didn't expect to have any further use of it.

Six weeks along, he and Nine were about as physically strong as they could be, and Nine had finally mastered the technique of teleporting short distances. She did not seem to be able to draw in external energies the way Will did, however, and could do only as much as her body's store of energy allowed. When Nine could easily teleport into and out of the cave, Will decided they were about as ready as they were going to get.

Together, they chose Los Angeles as their first target to test and hone their ability to seek out and destroy terrorists.