A Loner Mentalist Pt. 09

Not giving up would be a great way to honor White's sacrifice. The only way to honor it, really, but Jack was helpless to do anything. He was bound in the darkness, covered in his mother's blood, and his own vomit, and there was nothing he could do about anything. His mother was dead. He had already failed. All that was left for him was death.

The drive continued to jostle him in the back of the van, smearing his vomit all over his face and neck. Mia rolled into him a few times and he realized she was sobbing.No, death isn't all they have in mind for me. They want to torture Mia right in front of my eyes, first. Jack's face burned as his heart whooshed loudly in his ears. His wrists strained against the ziptie of their own accord.I'll kill them all! He burned for vengeance. He had no idea how he was going to get any, but he was going to die trying, if nothing else.There's always something you can do! If nothing else, I'll laugh at them while they torture us and make them remember me and my "insanity" in their nightmares.

He did his best to ignore the acrid stench inside his hood as he tried to center himself with a few breathing exercises. He tried to list all the things he could do to fight back, but his mind kept circling back to the fact that he missed out on memorizing the route the van had taken so far. Before he could come up with any plan, the van came to a stop. He realized it hadn't done that during the drive, so they hadn't stopped at any red lights, or such.The town must still be evacuated.

The doors to the van were thrown open and Mia screamed into her gag again. Jack felt her be dragged out. He was dragged out a moment later. He tried to kick himself loose, but it was a futile effort. He was carried by strong arms through a corridor and, this time, he memorized the turns they made.

They dumped him into a hard, cold chair. Two pairs of hands grabbed each of Jack's bound arms as one man sat heavily in his lap. The ziptie vanished from Jack's wrists and he struggled with all his might. It was in vain against the arms of the men holding him. All he managed to accomplish was to make his shoulders throb painfully. His arms were thrust through openings in the back of the chair and fastened together with cold, metal handcuffs. Strong arms grabbed his legs and the ziptie holding his ankles together vanished. Jack tried to kick out at his captors, but the man sitting on his lap stopped him from raising his legs. Jack's ankles were painfully pulled towards the chair's legs and fastened there with zipties.

Jack tried to draw deep breaths after his exertions, but his vomit was flying up into his nostrils, making him sneeze. The hood was pulled off his head and the men reacted with disgust.

"Fucking pussy threw up all over himself."

"I ain't cleaning this shit up."

"Nobody asked you to," said the SWAT commander. He pointed at the two complainers. "You two, you're on first watch! Everybody else, get to your posts!"

The SWAT members filed out of the room, one by one. Many shot dark looks at Jack from behind their masks. One even smacked him on the back of the head as he passed by him.

Jack drew deep breaths, finally free of his vomit in his nose, and looked around after the room was cleared. There was nothing but bare concrete all around him. The two SWAT men were flanking the only door in or out of the small room. His chair was made of sturdy metal and was bolted to the floor. Most worryingly, there was no second chair in the room. He could see no trace of Mia.

"Where's Mia?"

"You'll see your cunt soon enough, terrorist scum!"

"I'm not a terrorist!"

"Oh, right! My bad. You're a freedom fighter, right?" Both the guards laughed. "Not so free now, are ya?"

Jack glared up at them. "You're both just patsies, being used by-"

"I'm not gonna listen to this piece of shit camel-jockey wannabe spew his propaganda," said the second guard and tied a gag around Jack's mouth. "You wanna beg to suck our cocks, you sick, towelhead fuck, you do it with your eyes." Both guards laughed at that and resumed standing at the door.

Jack fumed and glared at his captors while they chatted away about their favorite NFL team. He tried to do some breathing exercises and center himself, but there was hardly any point to them. There was an anti-mentalism necklace around his neck and he wasn't going to lose it anytime soon. Besides, the SWAT guys were wearing necklaces, too. Removing his own would get him nowhere.

He sat in the tiny, cold room. A single light bulb illuminated him from overhead. There was absolutely nothing for him to do. There was nothing for him to try. His mother's face cropped up in his mind's eye and he sniffled as he quietly wept for her.

"Fucking pansy-ass fuck," muttered one of the guards.

"Not so hot when it'syour mother getting killed, now is it?" asked the other, venomously.

"Fucking towel-headed camel jockey faggot. Got some sand stuck in your pussy and decided to go kill innocent people. Fucking scum thinks that'll get him laid by seventy virgins in paradise."

"Fucking pathetic."

The insults just rolled off Jack. With the wave of sadness passing, he was left empty. All his emotions left him. Wrath took up all the vacated room in his heart. He considered the guards with cold eyes.What is keeping me from snuffing these assholes? he asked himself. The only answer he could come up with was handcuffs. He decided to break his thumb off, so he could try and slip the cuffs down his hands.Distance. He judged the space between himself and the guards. It was at least seven feet. He'd need to take two steps to get to them and his feet were bound to the chair.

While he was wrestling with the matter of distance, one of the guards said, "I need to go take a piss. You got this?"

"Fuck yeah!" The first guard opened the door and stepped through. "Just bring me some coffee when you come back!" The first guard nodded and closed the door after himself.

Jack's heart beat like crazy.This is it. This is my chance. My only chance. He drew a few deep breaths and slowly let them out as he counted ten Mississippi to himself. During that time, he tried again to use his power on himself to try and block any pain coming from his hands. His power was engaged by the necklace and looped around his mind, making it useless to him.Oh, well, I'll just have to do without. He rubbed the handcuffs over the cuts that the ziptie left on his wrists to make them bleed anew.

When he reached ten Mississipi, he lifted his head to glare at the remaining guard. He started to yell expletives, as loudly and as clearly as his gag allowed him to. The guard rolled his eyes and shook his head. Jack strained and pushed against the back of the chair, desperately pushing his arms as far back as he needed to be able to grasp his left hand with his right. His shoulders throbbed as he strained to gain just that one, last inch of distance which would allow him to grab his left thumb.

"Jesus fucking Christ," muttered the guard as he undid the clasp of his tactical helmet and removed it.

I'm almost there! Just a little more! Jack kept pushing his arms behind and upwards to reach his thumb.

"You fucking assholes just never learn," the guard complained as he undid the straps to his body armor and lifted it over his head. He let it drop to the floor, next to his helmet.

Jack reached his thumb and adjusted his grasp on it. He looked the guard dead in the eye and kept up his stream of gagged expletives. His voice jumped in volume and pitch when he jerked on his thumb and his expletives became genuine shouts of agony.

"Never know when to shut up about that sand in your vagina and listen to," he lifted his rifle and slammed its butt into Jack's face. "Some fucking." He hit Jack in the face again, putting all his weight into the thrust. "Reason." Another hit. "And logic."

Jack saw stars as his face went numb. For a moment, he couldn't quite figure out what was going on. The pain coming from his hand was strong, but soon superseded by the pain coming from his face. Jack sneezed blood and his vision dimmed momentarily before clearing. His awareness came back to him as he watched the disgusted guard smile down at him. Jack smiled under his gag and nearly thanked the man for distracting him from the agony shooting up his arm.

Jack pushed his thumb out of the way and pulled on the cold, metal handcuff. It was made slick by the blood coming from his wrist, but it was still refusing to slide over the hump of the base of his thumb.Come on, bitch! Come on!

"You know," the guard said, "I'm really gonna enjoy working on that hot piece of ass you got." He looked up at the ceiling and laughed. "Oh, you better-"

Jack tugged on the cuff with all his strength and it jerked right off his useless left arm. Now or never!

"-believe I'm gonna volunteer to-"

With a snarl of rage, Jack lowered his head and stood up to headbutt the guard in the chest. The air was knocked out of the guard's lungs at the same time as he lost his balance. Jack's right hand shot forward and grabbed at the man's neck. The guard fell backwards, but Jack's slick fingers touched the tiny, metal links. His hand closed into a claw and the anti-mentalism necklace snapped off the guard's neck as he fell over. Jack immediately tossed the necklace aside and reached up to take his own off. His rapid maneuver sent him falling after the guard, but the zipties dug into his ankles and kept him upright. Compared to the agony coming from his face, he barely registered the damage to his ankles.

The guard wheezed on the ground and looked around for his fallen rifle. He looked up at Jack's snarling, blood-covered face and blindly fumbled with his sidearm holster.

With the necklaces off, the guard's mind was at Jack's mercy. And he had none. He made a hole in his cloak in the shape of his glaring eyes and struck the man's mind with all the despair and pain he felt. The guard lay still and silent on the floor as his will to live was buried under the storm of emotion Jack was pouring into him.

Jack's lungs began burning as badly as his face. He realized he was suffocating with all the blood plugging up his broken nose and the blood-soaked gag keeping him from breathing through his mouth. He reached up, but couldn't clear his painful airways with just one hand. He reluctantly ebbed the flow of suffering into the guard's mind. There was no finesse to subjugating the guard's mind. Jack stomped in and raped every bit of the man's personality into submission with pure wrath.

The guard rolled over onto his stomach and stood up, ignoring the dark dots swimming along the edges of his vision. He pushed Jack upright, took the gag out of Jack's mouth and straightened out his nose. Jack snarled with fresh pain and punched the guard's face with all his might. The guard slammed backwards into the wall and started to slide down the wall as his eyes fluttered closed. Jack sent more rage into the guard's mind and snapped him back awake.

After drawing a few deep breaths, Jack managed to regain enough composure to be able to use his power on himself and block all the pain he was feeling. He sucked more air into his hungry lungs and kept rebuilding his calm. He snuck a peek into the guard's mind and learned more about the situation he was in.

The men weren't a SWAT team. None of them were police, or FBI. They were private military contractors, working for a Virginia firm whose owner had close ties to bigwigs in the government. They did extraordinary renditions and other illegal work that various government agencies couldn't do, but deemed worth doing. Very few among their number weren't murderers or rapists. Nearly all of them had started as underage punks, beating up weaker kids and robbing old ladies. Their records and psych profiles kept them from being accepted into the military, but the idea of wreaking havoc across the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan appealed to them. Tipped off by the military, their current firm had gathered them up and shipped them overseas. There they got to do what they liked without any consequences. They reveled in raping young Iraqi girls and killing civilians of all age groups.

They soon befriended the Taliban and started smuggling their heroin into Germany and the US. The firm didn't mind it at all, so long as a big chunk of the profits was kicked upstairs. The military turned a blind eye. The officers were too scared of the firm and the grunts knew better than to object.

Now, the firm had been called up to deal with him under the guise of terrorism. None of them gave a flying fuck about who Jack was and what he had supposedly done. All they wanted was to inflict pain. According to the guard's mind, very few of them had any standards, or qualms. To them, you were either a bigwig that paid them big money, or you were free game.

None of them knew the name of the thin man, they just knew they had been hired by him. Jack saw that the thin man used his power on their minds to make them extra obedient. He had done it the day before and handed each man a necklace to wear. Jack took note of how the guard had felt when his will had been tweaked to bend to the thin man's will. He adjusted his modification of the guard's willpower to match.

Jack looked at all that the guard could guess about the thin man. The thin man was most likely already in the air by now, flying to Chicago. The local police, or FBI, were probably already staking out George's house and waiting to arrest him and hand him over to the thin man, as soon as he arrived there in the morning. The guard didn't know about the interrogator, but he guessed it was a senior FBI agent, who would be coming there from Quantico in a few hours, tops. Jack also took a look at the probable deployment of the rest of the mercenaries in the safehouse. He learned that they were in the office building of a shut down factory, just outside of Springfield.

Jack sat down and put his arms behind his back. He had the guard straighten up his appearance and worked on fine tuning the man's new thought process. He made the guard fully aware of the fact that he was being mind controlled and completely unable to resist following each and every one of Jack's orders, despite desperately trying. "Stand there and take off your colleague's necklace when he comes back and gives you a clear chance," Jack ordered the man. "Make him believe everything's alright when he comes back."

The guard's eyes betrayed his agony as he stepped towards Jack and said through gritted teeth, "You'll need to be wearing your gag again."

Jack smirked at the guard. "Pick up my necklace and don it." He replaced his gag.

The guard put on Jack's necklace, followed by his body armor and helmet. He picked up his rifle and suspended it from his neck by the strap. He adjusted the rifle to press the butt against his shoulder and resumed standing at his post like nothing had happened. A few minutes later, footsteps were heard just outside the door and Jack barely had the time to wipe the smirk off his face before the other guard opened the door and walked in. The second guard gave Jack a glance and then held a cup of steaming coffee towards his colleague.

The first guard reached for the coffee, but then extended his arm and lifted the necklace over the head of the second guard. "What the hell?" exclaimed the second guard. He looked for a place to set the cup down on and then gave up and dropped it. By the time he grabbed the handles of the rifle slung in front of his chest, Jack already had his mind. Jack made the second guard stop and pulled the gag out of his mouth. He spat flecks of congealed blood and lint out of his mouth. "Take these fucking ties off my ankles and get me a first aid kit," he ordered the first guard. He turned to the second one and checked on the deployment of the guards and where Mia was.

The second guard detailed the deployment of the guards while the first one removed the zipties and applied some first aid to Jack's face. Jack had the two of them come up with a plan how to go around the compound and take necklaces off their colleagues' necks. After removing each necklace, they were to touch the mercenary on the nose and say "boop", so Jack could find their minds and alter them. After he subjugated the will of each mercenary, he would have them don their necklaces again, just in case the thin man was still in range to sense it and intervene.

They left the tiny room and Jack took his seat. He closed his eyes and peeked out of his cloak to watch for his nose to be touched while someone makes a boop noise next to him. He took a few lone mercenaries and grew more nervous with each second spent waiting for his new mercenaries to get to the room where Mia was being held. He sobbed with relief as he looked through the eyes of his two newest acquisitions. Mia looked scared and miserable, but she was otherwise unharmed. The guards had contented themselves with talking about exactly how they were going to rape her and making her listen to them. The will of the thin man had made them keep her unspoiled for the interrogator.

Jack had them release Mia and head for the evidence lockup, where they took down three more mercenaries and collected all four of his bags. The mercenaries carried the bags and escorted Mia to him.

She looked horrified at the sight of him, but she ran into his arms and they held each other tightly while she sobbed. He kissed her forehead and temples as he stroked her long, dark hair. "Hush, now. Everything's going to be alright. I promise." She cried harder into his shoulder. He could feel her anti-mentalism choker was around her neck again. "Do you want me to take off your choker and use my power to make you forget this night? Or any part of it?"

She sobbed for a while as she considered his offer. Finally, she shook her head no and wailed louder into his chest. He held her close to him and nodded at the mercenaries to proceed with their mission. While she cried and gasped for every hitched breath, he coolly looked out of his cloak hole and modified the will of every mercenary on the premises, one by one.

One of the mercenaries opened the door to the small room and said, "It is done, Sir."

"I know, jackass," Jack said. "I counted." He rubbed Mia's back as she cast dubious glances at the masked mercenary. "Shhh, it's alright. They're my bitches now." He nodded at the mercenary. "Gather them all in the production hall and wait for me there!"

"Yes, Sir," the mercenary saluted and left.

Jack snorted. "He fucking hates taking orders from me and knows I'll make him hurt himself, yet he adds the 'sir' bit, hoping to ingratiate himself with me. Hoping I'll be merciful." He shook his head. "What an asshole."

"What," Mia swallowed. "What are you going to do?"

He ran a finger down her tear-stained face and smiled. "First, I'm going to call George and warn him."

She burst into fresh tears. "I'm so sorry!"

He crouched before her. "Hey! Hey, it's not your fault. Nothing's your fault!"

"If he hadn't read my mind, he wouldn't know where to find that list and where to find all those people...I've failed you!"

"Mia. Mia! Mia!" He grabbed her head with both hands and forced her to look him in the eye. "You didn't fail me. You saved us!" She stared at him with open disbelief. "George doesn't have a copy of that list." Her mouth dropped and her brow furrowed. "You misunderstood it when I had him copy the lists. I told him to copy the lists of the dead mentalists. The ones that died by Jacobs' hands, the ones that died before he got activated and the ones that died after he got activated, but seemingly not by his hands. I wanted him to correlate those with Jacobs' travels. Why would I give George the list of living mentalists, too?"