The Music of the Mind Ch. 17

There were several other cars parked across the lot. I looked around me in the softly falling snow, and sent images of the place, and the view to my friends. I got a startled response of recognition from Ellen, then a feeling from all of them that they thought they knew where I was and were on the way.

Shivering a bit from both cold and adrenaline, I took the keys out of the van, dragged the driver and his friend to the back, and locked them in with the other unconscious guards. I wanted to be able to use the vehicle to get away if I needed too.

I was surprised there were no guards out front of the building. I walked slowly and carefully up to the front doors, and looked through the glass. What was once a lobby was in disarray. Part of the ceiling tiles had been removed, and several light fixtures hung down, dark and useless. Only the light from the big mercury vapor lamps in the parking lot let me see anything at all.

I tried the door, and found it locked. I dug the driver's keys out and flipped through them looking for one that may fit. After a few minutes of fumbling in the dark I found a large square key that slid easily into the lock, and turned opening the door for me. As I reached for the handle to open the door I hesitated, and smiled.

Why give them what they expect. I walked around the building climbing through the overgrown shrubs and bushes. The snow was coming down harder now, and the lights of Boulder were beginning to disappear behind the falling snow. I circled the building looking for lights in any of the windows.

As I walked around the building I realized that the back half of the building actually overlooked a ravine. I was forced to skirt up the hill to even see the back windows. Several in the middle glowed with light flickering through the snow. A small balcony overlooked the canyon and was lit from the light within.

I had found my way in, but how to get to it. The drop into the canyon was too steep to climb the supports for the balcony. I stood for a minute thinking before the idea came to me. I sent images to the girls and got a scattering of approval, concern, and requests to wait for them to get there.

I didn't know if Dolkoff knew that we had attacked the people in the van, but I had to assume he did and so time was limited. I moved back around to the side of the building, and began to climb a tree next to the building. The branches were icy and covered in snow, but I managed to climb up and then out over the building.

I hung from the branch I was on, dropping only a foot or so to the building. I hoped no one was under me to hear the thud. I moved slowly and carefully across the flat roof, between the air handling equipment toward the back where I had seen the light.

The wind was beginning to blow the snow now, and I was shivering move forcibly from the cold. I got to the back of the building and looked out over the edge to the balcony below. I almost threw myself backwards onto the roof. A guard was standing on the balcony now, smoking a cigarette.

I crawled to the edge and peered over into the light and falling snow. The man was huddling in a large parka, staring out into the night as he quickly puffed on his smoke. I watched him laying in the wet snow for a few minutes before he flicked his butt out into the void and turned to go inside.

I heard the door scraped open and for a moment I could hear voices before the door swung closed and I was alone with the snow again. I examined the balcony for a way to get down to it. It was made out of a combination of steel beams and wood, and I was sure that if I jumped onto it would make a hell of a vibration.

One side of the deck though was in shadow, as if it extended beyond the room where the lights were. A small drain spout ran down the side of the building a foot or two beyond the edge of the deck. I though if I could climb down it, I might be able to reach over to catch the balcony rail and climb onto it quietly.

The steel of the pipe burned my bare hands as I slid over the edge of the roof. There was nothing below me but void, and swirling snow. Slowly I began to climb down using the brackets that secured the pipe to the wall as handholds.

Very quickly my hands began to burn and then go numb. I worked quickly, until I was at the same level as the deck. The two or three feet between me and the deck seemed very far now that I was hanging from this frozen pipe over the canyon. I could feel the concern and fear of the girls through the bond.

I reached out for the rail, and found that at my longest reach I was still six inches short of the rail. As I strained to reach it my grip on the pipe slipped and I swung around to slam into the face of the building as I struggled to hold on.

I used both hands to re-secure myself to the pipe, and realized there was no way I could climb back up the pipe to the roof with my frozen hands. I knew I had only one course of action, and I acted on it before I could talk myself out of it.

I climbed up several feet to the next bracket that supported the pipe, and found the one below with my feet. Slowly I turned so that I held the pipe with both hands behind my back, and tried to get both my heels on the lower bracket. Then with all the force I could muster I jumped for the rail.

I struck the rail mid chest and wrapped my arms around it holding on for dear life. I managed to get one foot in between the rails and I pushed myself up and over the rail with my legs. I tried to land as quietly as I could on the balcony, before huddling against the wall and stuffing my frozen hands into my warn jacket pockets where they immediately began to burn. I had managed to knock the breath out of myself when I hit the rail, and it was all I could do not to cough with my burning lungs.

I edged down the deck, and peered around the edge of the window into the lighted room beyond. It was a large room, with a number of tables and chairs stacked against one far wall. My first thought was that it looked like a cafeteria for what ever organization had owned this building. I imagined that the employees must have enjoyed sitting on the balcony eating their lunch and looking down over Boulder.

I let my eyes drift around the room, there were quite a few people there. I counted four guards before I found Dolkoff. He was seated in the middle of the room, and around his feet, seated cross legged on the floor were eight men and woman. Both he and those he had surrounding him, looked to be calm and in a minor trance of concentration.

Then I saw Jill. She was tied naked to a bed that was pushed up against the wall. She was completely naked, and her skin was blue and blotchy. Her face was bruised from repeated blows, both eyes swollen shut. There were bruises and bite marks on her breasts, and dried blood between her legs and down her thighs. I could see no signs of her breathing, no sign that she was awake or even alive.

I felt that madness rising in me that I had felt that first night when I realized she was taken. I sent the images down the bond to the girls even as I stood up in the shadow of the building. I could see the door only a few paces away. I knew it was unlocked. I was going to kill every one of those bastards.

Before I could pick up my foot to take one step a flood of images and feelings came back to me through the bond. First was Suzan, her medical training pointing out that she was alive, that her color was likely the result of cold and perhaps drugs, but she was definitely alive. Ellen analyzed her condition, the likely trauma that she had undergone, and sent images of reassurance that she could be treated, that in time she would be fine.

From Tuyen and Wendy I got images to restrain myself, to wait, to formulate a plan. They were almost there. But I was beyond reasoning. I was ready to act. Then I felt Meg in my mind. She understood better then all of us what Jill was going though, and what it would take for her to recover.

She begged me to be calm, and to use my mind not my rage to attack these people. The one thing Jill would need more then anything was for me to survive. Really, was for us all to survive, because otherwise she would be lost to these people. I felt her empathy, her love, and her compassion and the rage in me transformed.

It boiled down to a cruel detached cunning in which I left behind all the moral doubts and hesitations. I became calculating in a way that I had never experienced before. I knew that Dolkoff had done this to drive me into a rage so that I would not fight him rationally. I knew that it meant no more to him then swatting a fly.

I was not going to play his game. A calm settled over me. I pulsed several notes to the girls that I was going, opened the bond and walked for the door. I sent images of the four guards to the girls and as I pulled open the door I felt them lash out at them, their energies firing through the room.

These were better trained then the ones in the van, but still obviously new to their powers. Several balls of thought shot at me and deflected off my shields as I lent my strength to Tuyen as she attacked the guard by Jill's bed. His defenses tore like tissue paper and I shredded his mind to bits, scattering it on the plain of sound. He fell silently to the floor with no sign of the trauma that he had just undergone.

I walked into the room and stood facing Dolkoff, Jill still unmoving on her bed behind him and to his right. The men and woman at his feet sat still, their eyes closed in concentration, and he smiled at me. I could see him in the plain of sound now, so close was I too him.

He was armored in a column of sound larger and more powerful then I had thought possible. Around him the notes of his power circled and danced inside the whirlwind of power, building the column, and bending to Dolkoff's will. I felt a trickle of fear from the girls, but oddly I felt none myself.

Then, without my prompting the girls formed up around me, a column of sound began to rage around me. It was different in form then Dolkoff's, but I hoped similar in function. I could feel the energy of each of the girls in the column, each distinct personality, each anxious, enraged, panicked, and hopeful all in one. In one instant I was shielded in all the intimate details of my allies, my lovers, my most sincere friends

The assault when it came was sudden and relentless. The spinning tornado of power that enclosed Dolkoff reached out with arms of sound and began to batter us over and over again. Each blow hurt physically, and it was all I could do to hold the focus for the girls and me together. Dolkoff was wielding pure hate, pure rage against us.

The girls fired balls of thought back at him, but they were like specs of sand hurled into the eye of an F5 tornado. Each thought was absorbed by that monolith of sound, and scattered impotently across Dolkoff's collective. I felt each attack increase in ferocity from the girls, but none had any more effect then the first.

I knew we were overmatched then, and the girls knew it too. Though in this knowledge a sudden fatalism took us, a desire to die proudly, and fighting with all the strength we could muster. I felt my love and respect for the girls grow in me then by tenfold, if I was to die I couldn't think of a better group to go with.

The next blow that struck me drove me to my knees, and I felt the scream of pain and terror echo though the bond to the girls. I could see Jill, move her head slightly, her eyes still closed in pain and unconsciousness, but that slight movement wrung my heart like nothing I have ever felt. My emotion washed out though the girls and I felt their pain and their support reflected back into me.

In that moment, I opened my heart to all of them. I opened it like I had when we had made love, like we had when I had opened their minds, like we had over years of trust and friendship. I dropped all pretense, all attempt to hide my human frailty and just let my love for them shine in my heart like a blazing torch. Then from each of them, even Meg and Wendy, I felt a similar response.

As each of them opened to me, we formed a web of pure love and trust. I began to forget where I began, and where I ended. I was part of this being we created together, but my individual being did not matter. In a sense we became in that moment what all human beings wish to be, something greater then our small selves. We surpassed our human frailty in favor of a moment of transcendence.

Dolkoff must have sensed the change in our sound for I saw him smile in triumph. The next arm of the whirlwind swung through the plane of sound like a tree in the hands of a giant. Instead of fighting it this time though, I stood unafraid as it smashed into me. I let all the love that was in me, that poured through me from the girls, well up as that anger and hate slammed into my mind.

I felt all the fear of the souls tied like slaves to Dolkoff, their minds not their own. I felt the damage in them, the scars on their minds, the devastation to the very nature of their beings this man had wrought on them and I wept for them. The pain flowed over and through me, and then passed. It took nothing but my sympathy, its most destructive energies washing over the note of pure love the girls and I had formed.

I could see the rage now in Dolkoff's face, and a new look of determination. The shape and form off the whirlwind changed, altering its sound slightly before swinging around to attack us again. The last assault had heartened us, but in doing so our connection had faded slightly.

As the new threat hit I felt absolute despair crushing into me, I felt the shields of the girls' love shredding and tearing, and I felt their fear rise.

"NO!" I thought "We must fight him only with what he does not have. Hold on!"

Then, the support and love washed over me and flung the darkness away. I reached for that deepest level of connection to the girls, and there within the love, I found the feelings of passion and physical intimacy that had given us the bond. In desperation I reached out and poured these feelings out leaving myself at last naked to the minds of my friends.

I felt strange sensations pouring through me, like a thousand kisses rained upon my body, and a thousand hands stroked and touched me. The passion of each of my friends washed over me. The feel of each of their unique forms of both mental love, and physical love weaved a pattern through us all. Never have I felt such pleasure, or so whole.

Several more blows from Dolkoff crashed against our pillar of sound and washed around us with little effect. I could feel the euphoria amongst all the girls and myself. We were fighting back, and for the moment we were at least holding our own.

The shape of Dolkoff's whirlwind suddenly shuddered and for a split second seemed to shrink in size before swelling almost to its same gargantuan proportions in the plain of sound. Then I noticed that a faint shielded note had left the column and was slowly moving away from it.

With extreme effort I opened my eyes to the physical world. Seeing with my eyes and not my mind right now was disorienting, and left me feeling slightly disjointed from the web of thought, I could feel it weaken in my divided attentions.

As I looked to the circle around Dolkoff, I could see many of those seated around him had blood running down their faces from ears, eyes, and noses form the strain he was placing upon them. But one older man had stumbled to his feet and was walking toward Jill's bed slowly, as if he was in great pain.

Before I could act, even think to the group to take him down, an assault of such furry came from Dolkoff that I actually cried out in pain. It was as if a hundred balls of thought flew from the whirlwind at once, slamming us with a variety of horrible thoughts, feelings, and images.

Our concentration had wavered watching the man move toward Jill, all of us concerned for her safety, and now the impact was terrible. It took all of our effort to hold together, to cling to each other as if in a terrible wind storm. The man drew a long knife from a hip pocket as he stumbled to Jill's bedside.

My mind and heart shrieked inside me, and was echoed a thousand times through my friends. Only at that moment did I realize I was screaming myself horse in that cold room. Though the fog of my pain and fear, I saw Jill open her eyes and her head roll toward me. I could see her eyes open in dazed fear at the man standing over her with the knife, and then the comprehension as she saw me.

I prepared to thrust out at her assassin, even though I knew it would cost me everything. I prepared to break with the group, to sacrifice myself for her, but not those that I had dragged into this with me. But so connected were we, that the girls felt my intent, and I felt the bond deepen and strengthen even more. The thought rang through as one voice, if you go, we all go. There was no hesitation, no doubt that we would all perish, or none of us would.

The assault from Dolkoff began to wind down only a fraction, as if his people were overdrawn on their mental accounts. Now I thought, now or never. Then as I readied, as I began to slip back fully into the plain of sound and the bond with the girls, two bright notes of sound slammed into the man spinning through the plain of sound from somewhere behind me.

Then a virtual hail storm of incredibly disciplined and focused attack balls drove into him and tore him to bits in the plain. With my physical eyes it was as if he simply sighed and slumped to the floor.

I turned my head with great effort to see Anna and Dimitry standing in the door, their arms around each other. They were smiling, but they also had a look of resignation on their faces as if they knew the cost of this interference would be the end of them.

I could hear the howl of rage from Dolkoff in the whirlwind and a great arm swept out on the plain of sound toward the two tiny shielded notes of his own children. They would not survive; they would be torn apart like paper dolls.

My heart and mind rebelled against this, rebelled against the idea of two people I had known so deeply, that they should die before they had lived. I felt this despair and rage wash through the web of my friends, and without more thought then that, we reached out and pulled them into the web.

For only a moment we felt their shields before they welcomed us. They too saw their doom and their only chance at life in us. The blow meant for them instead hit us all, and though it was terrible indeed we weathered it.

I was then immediately struck by the separateness of these two within us. It was like I had wrapped an orphan in an oversized great coat. They were not part of us, but yet they were within us. They did not add to us, yet they did not take away from us.

I turned back to Dolkoff and couldn't help a little smile at him. The rage on his face contorted him till he looked inhuman. There was no hiding the monster within him now. Then, I felt Ellen reach out, and for a moment she directed the energies of the group. Not understanding, but trusting her, I let her lead and she reached out on the plain of sound and pulled Jill's now awake mind into us.

I felt her shock, and her incredible pain and shame. Such was the power that the girls and I were locked in at that in moment she was laid bare before us. In moments we shared, communicated, consoled, grieved, and trusted one another. Years of friendship, and terrible hardship let Jill release her fear and cling to her friends in a way no other power could have caused.

Jill unlike Anna and her brother, joined with us. Why I can't say, beyond maybe the friendship and trust that existed between us. Though I could feel no power in her closed mind, I could feel great emotion, and it sang in all of us like a choir of angles. No matter what happened now we were all together. We would live or die together, and no one would suffer alone.