Altered Ch. 07

*All character engaged in sexual activity are over the age of 18, in case it's not obvious or mentioned.

*This chapter has no sex scenes in it. Don't be too disappointed, there will be chapters that will have too much sex in them and everything will balance out.

*This is a long story intended to span many chapters, please go back and read the previous chapters or else this won't make a lot of sense. If you are looking for a quick fix this probably won't be for you. This story gets violent and reads like a jumbled mess that is my mind. I hope it's at least entertaining.

*Once again, thanks to Alwaysready64, HellCat_Sundry and Kuhpa01 for their help editing and beta reading this.

*Note that single quoted dialogue represents mind to mind communications.

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I declared war on Oriri Ex Cinere and the Tracker Guild. We were living peacefully, staying out of their business, but they still came after us. The first thing I did was blitz the media with a shit load of classified materials that made Snowden look like a pussy. All of the materials were aimed at OEC members or allies. Surveillance footage, buried court documents, hidden evidence and all were entrusted to the right people to bring to the media once the agreed upon signal was executed. The signal was a commercial ad I took out on the Home Shopping Network shown around midnight. The ad itself played nightly, but there was an altered version where everything was basically the same except the hosts shirt color changed from blue to red.

I did not want a war on two fronts so I purposefully did not declare war on the Illuminati, even though they were just as much my enemy. The first reason being that my father was the one that gave the orders to kill Lisa. The second was that I wanted them divided and for the Illuminati to distance themselves from the OEC.

The Illuminati responded by announcing on Ataruian media that they were breaking off all ties with the OEC and considered them a terrorist organization. I'm guessing they still wanted to work with the Ataruian community even if they couldn't work with my father.

Separating themselves from the OEC had two direct consequences. First, the Illuminati no longer had access to the vast network of trackers and had to rely on technology to track people down. Second, the OEC no longer had the unlimited funding and protections that the Illuminati once gave. As for me, I had the advantage of having divided their forces/assets making it easier for me the hide.

With my bunker destroyed and me waging war, there was no way I could stick around to protect my family. I needed help so I looked for Ataru resistance members, and I finally got a hold of one. This guy named Tyson messaged me on a public bulletin board, saying he knew the blind man. I messaged Tyson back, and we swapped information in an app that encrypted communications. The blind man that killed himself right after he warned me of the impending attack on my family was part of the resistance. His was named Maiko in the resistance but everyone else knew him by his legal name - David Brennan.

There were no electronic records of 'Maiko' ever being used, and the only way I knew it was by reading his mind. Maiko had the ability to resist mind reads, so the fact that I was able to read his name while he was conscious and fully able to resist meant that he allowed me to read it. He wanted me to know his name so that I would know who to trust. So, I agreed to meet Tyson, in Denver.

I had been methodically sabotaging the OEC for the past month. I mostly focused on hunting down their trackers. They were easy to find since a lot of them were highway patrol officers. I started at Grand Lake since they already knew I was there at some point. And starting there wouldn't help them find my new location. I didn't want them to be able to track me back to my home, so I rarely went back home.

I systematically hunted them expanding my radius 50 miles at a time. Because of surveillance cameras, especially in areas like Boulder and Denver, I stole a lot of cars to cover my tracks. Even though the girls were located hundreds of miles away from Grand Lake in Wyoming, I included attacks in my area once the radius expanded out that far; I reasoned that I couldn't exclude it or they might get suspicious.

Not all highway patrol were trackers. As a matter of fact, they only constituted a small percent of the sworn officers. Needless to say, it was a bit harder to find the trackers than to simply find a highway patrol. I usually started out by going to a field office or sheriff's station depending on who was patrolling the area I was working, and I did surveillance. If I found a tracker, it was easy to follow them to a remote site where I could ambush them. Usually it was in a parking lot or bar depending on the person.

I didn't kill any of them, even though it would have been easy to do. Believe me when I say that I had to battle again my anger and sense of entitled vengeance. However, fighting a war is never that easy. If I killed them, it would have brought public sentiment against me, and eventually I would have no one on my side except evil power-hungry followers.

Although I didn't kill them, I did hurt and torture them. I got them to confess their crimes and published each confession online. Torture doesn't normally work, people will say anything you want them to just to get the torture to stop. Unless, of course, you can read minds and I could. Using mind reading with torture, allowed me to get at the truth and find things the tortured might have been hiding in his mind. I could tell who remained loyal to the OEC and who abandoned them. Those that stayed loyal to the OEC, the psychopaths, and the deluded fucks that justified their evil all got beaten - badly.

The OEC had ways of getting its people out of jail. They owned a lot of judges and district attorneys and were masters of getting trials to be seen by just the right people. So, I often ended having to cripple them so that they would never work as police officers again. I only ran into a couple of cases where the trackers were pretty decent guys. In those cases, I scared the shit out of them Batman style without having to cripple them, and they quit their jobs and went into hiding after that.

Trackers systematically had their memories wiped of anything that would lead someone to know where the OEC was based. However, they couldn't wipe everything without destroying their minds. Humans are imperfect and often lazy and incompetent. You had different levels of abilities in mind wiping, meeting up with different levels of resistances to mind wiping, giving me traces, image flashes and clues. I was slowly gathering the clues and had a good idea where a couple of their bases were located. One minor base was close to Grand Lake, in Denver.

The thing about Denver, it didn't have many seedy sections of town that were obvious. It wasn't like L.A. where the city just gave up trying to maintain the seedier areas of town. There were no areas blighted by overlapping layers of graffiti nor dumping grounds of mattresses, furniture and trash that would only be picked up once a year if they were lucky. The people of Denver cared about their city, so even the poorer areas were taken care of. But, Denver did have a gang problem, thousands of gang members fled to Denver to escape L.A. probation restrictions. This made it easy for the OEC to infiltrate the city. They kept their activities low key so cops left them alone, besides which, they were kept busy trying to control the gangs in the city.

I was going to meet Tyson at a local Starbucks in Parkhill a known Tre Tre Crip territory. I wasn't too worried about the gangs, although the Illuminati did work with the Mexican Mafia so who knows if the OEC had similar alliances with the Crips or other local gangs. I was not taking any chances and I deployed five surveillance drones, these drones were stealthy in that they blended in with the sky and barely made a sound, a normal person would not be able to hear them over other outside noises. The drones circled in overlapping circular patterns that reminded me of the Olympic rings. I was able to see everything they were seeing over my phone and I could take control over any one of them at any time if I saw anything interesting.

I saw nothing interesting for the thirty minutes before our meeting. Not a good sign, I expected more from this group. I would have had look-outs in place, snipers set up, a van of men ready to pull me out of our meeting if things went wrong. But, my feelings were allayed five minutes before the someone meeting Tyson's description walked into the coffee shop. A sniper scaled the building across the street and set up a surveillance of the coffee shop windows. I set the closest drone to hover over the sniper then set the drones on an adjusted overlapping course to make up for the lack of coverage from the hovering drone. Soon enough I spotted a "van", although it was more a utility truck with a camper in the back, but from the way it was positioned, and the way the driver never left the truck and kept it running the whole time while parked, I'd say I found the escape vehicle. I didn't bother keeping tabs on it, it wasn't an immediate threat but I had a drone in the area ready to focus on it if need be.

I had more than cameras on the drones, my drones had the capability of seeing distortions in "invisibility suits" by switching between three spectrums of vision - light, heat, and radiation. This all happened a few times a second and a human would have to slow the images down to process them - I could watch them in real time. There were no hidden objects that I could discern.

"I'll have a caramel macchiato, double shot, extra foam," he said, confirming our agreed upon signal. He paid his drink and stepped aside.

"I'll have a cafe mocha, double shot of espresso, no foam."

Not the best spy confirmation in a coffee shop, people ordered the weirdest things at Starbucks, but it worked this time.

He looked over at "me" briefly and leaned against the wall waiting for his order to be filled. The sniper didn't put a hole in my head, that was a good sign. I wasn't too worried though I wasn't in any danger. I wouldn't lose any sleep if the guy I was using died either. He was a petty thug, rapist, and drug dealer. But we did make a deal so I was trying to keep him out of the scope sights.

We had a "talk" earlier and after I read his mind and roughed him up a bit, I blackmailed him into helping me. His name was Ja'Von and I offered him compensation to sweeten the deal and told him I would be communicating with him with a "device" I implanted in his ear. In reality it was a tiny waxy earplug that did nothing - I was communicating with him psychically. He was instructed to say what I told him to say and do what I told him to do for the next hour. I was hoping he was good at improvising but either way I'd have enough time to take out the sniper.

"You must be John," Tyson approached.

"Yeah man! I mean, uh, yes!"

"Nice get up, I'd never have guessed you'd look like this, but I guess you can look however you want, huh?" he said.

"Yeah, well you know."

'Tell him I like his sniper.'

"I - I like your sniper? What sniper? Hey man, no one said nothing about no snipers."

"Who are you talking to?" Tyson asked.

'No worries man, I got your back, the snipers been taken care of,' I spoke, stepping on the sniper's neck and sticking a knife against her temple. "Don't move, bitch. Don't say or do anything. And, take your fucking hands off the rifle," I commanded.

She complied immediately. She wasn't a bad looking girl, nice hips and ass, not an Ataruian so I was guessing ex-military. When I looked into her mind I could see she was ex Mossad.

"If you want to stay alive, don't fuck with me. I'll know what you are doing before you decide to do it..." I told her in Hebrew.

I didn't know I knew Hebrew until just then. She nodded her head and indicated that she had other weapons on her.

"Keep them, but if you go for them you're dead. 'Capiche'?" I asked. She nodded her head and laid down and locked her hands behind her without being asked. She obviously knew a lot about me.

Luckily Ja'Von visibly relaxed as I told him I took the sniper out, as a drug dealer he was used to stressful life-threatening situations.

"You know, you got your guys, I got mine," he recovered.

'Nice!'

Although I couldn't hear what Tyson was saying directly, I could read what Ja'Von thought he heard.

'Tell him, to meet me around the corner in the pawnshop.'

"He," he said, pointing to the earplug in his ears, "says to meet him over at Pasternack's," Ja'Von said, as if they would know what he was talking about. When they looked confused he talked to them like they were five, "It's - the pawnshop... around the corner," he said, almost rolling his eyes.

'There's an envelope on a table, you see it?' I asked, he walked over to it and opened it with a satisfied smirk. It had one thousand dollars in it I ripped off of another drug dealer earlier. 'If I see you ever again, Ja'Von, you're dead, get the fuck out of there.'

"Get up, Ziva," I commanded, using a name of a Mossad agent I seen on TV (NCIS) since I didn't know her name nor did I have time to read her mind.

I grabbed her sniper rifle and disassembled it in a flash, I could see she was impressed. She put the pieces in her pack and looked at me questioningly.

"Down the way you came," I said, and she quickly repelled down the side of the building. I leapt down to her and started heading towards the pawnshop.

"Lieba," she said, following me. I looked back and she said, "Not Ziva."

"You do look lovable," I smirked. She looked a tad offended like I was belittling her. "Your name means 'lovable,'" I said, assuring her I wasn't the pig she thought I might be.

She smirked and I could see a glint of disappointment, (maybe she liked pigs).

As we approached the door of the pawnshop, I gestured for Lieba to go first. And I followed her in. She stood next to Tyson and he gave her a questioning look.

She spoke really broken English, "He is fast, you were right. He caught me off guard. He was on me before I could react," was the gist of what she intended to say. "He knows Yiddish and Hebrew..." she added offhandedly.

"He doesn't know Yiddish or Hebrew... fully. He can pick up any language that someone 'thinks in'. It's one of his abilities."

"What do you know about my abilities?"

"We know a lot about you Mr. Thompson, we've been keeping tabs on your father and our spies have snuck out bits and pieces about you," he informed, and he looked me up and down. "You carry no weapons."

"I don't always need weapons," I said. "But, believe me, I prepped the environment." I had a drone with a 45-caliber ready to drop if I needed it.

"I believe you. We could really use your help, John, Nate, whatever you are going by nowadays."

"Why don't you give me a cool name like Maiko... I think it would be easier, I change my I.D. every couple of days now, it seems."

"Ah, yes, well he was given that name by a Japanese compatriot in the order because he would sing us ballads to inspire us. He wasn't much use to us otherwise... at least that's what we thought. He hid his powers from us; we will never know the reason, but we will always honor his memory," he said sadly. "Anyway, I'm not much for the nicknames..."

"Mechayeh..." Lieba quickly named.

I looked at her crossly and she smirked.

"Yeah, OK, Mechayeh it is," Tyson comment.

I looked at him funny and he added, "One does not choose one's nickname."

I shrugged, "Whatever."

At least it was considered a compliment even though she was indirectly calling me a breeder depending on how you took it. It literally means resurrection, but it is used in speech to mean that - something you did brought life into that person's day. But what she was thinking when she named me was how I would bring life into women's womb, so for her it was a joke.

"You know what we are all about, Mechayeh," Tyson began, and Lieba giggled, "And we know a little bit about you, although most of it is legend. So, tell me, how can you help US?" he asked.

"Your mission is to stop the OEC at all costs, and I have already begun picking away at their infrastructure."

"What you are doing is insignificant, attacking the lowest of the totem pole isn't going to stop them."

"That's true, but if you gather what they know, you can find out things the higher up don't want you to know... Like where some of their bases are located."

"OK, I'll bite. Tell me where one of their 'super-secret', that we've been trying for years to ascertain, hideout... is," he said, sarcastically.

"One of them, is right here in this city... I'll even take you to it... however..."

"However, you have a price," he said, as if he was expecting this. "Listen, I don't have time for these shenanigans... Let's go he said to Lieba.

"You don't even want to hear my cost?" I asked, and Lieba gave him a shrug as if to say why not listen.

"Fine, what's your price?"

"I want you to protect my children."

"Your children? How do YOU have children? You're barely older than my son."

"Well technically they aren't born yet, but they are due soon. I will have at least five children in less than a month. At least two will be born in a week or two."

"FIVE! Holy shit, kid. You've been working overtime. You know, if what they say is true, it's your children that both the Illuminati and the OEC are after."

"No shit, Sherlock! Why the fuck else would I need your help?"

"I'll have to make a call but your intel better be good."

An hour later, after he made his calls to his superiors and secured a safe house for the girls along with a protection detail. I led them to the Denver base, that I had scoped out, which was an old warehouse and it looked like it was abandoned.

"This? There's nothing there!"

We were on the roof of an adjacent building separated by an alleyway from the building we were observing. We bought an old satellite dish from the pawnshop before we left and got some cable repairman suits from a uniform store earlier in the day, (yeah, I did my homework on everything before they arrived), and we were pretending to install the satellite dish as our cover.

"It's underground. See there," I said, showing him my phone app, I flipped through the different drone images. "Cameras," I said. "Now tell me, why would you have so many cameras guarding an abandoned building. And look inside. There are over five thousand homeless in this city and not one of them have ever squatted here? No, there is more to this than meets the eye."

"Just because someone takes care of their property, doesn't mean there is a base hidden..."

"Watch this," I said, pointing down the alleyway.

Down the alley were ten, armed thugs approaching the back door. One of them had a crowbar and another had a sledge hammer, the rest looked armed to the teeth.

"I stole fifty thousand dollars from a drug mule and left clues that the money would be here. You see this?" I said, pointing to the camera footage of the top of the other roof. "That sunroof, is made of glass. Watch," I said pointing to the drone hovering twenty feet over the sunroof, it had a briefcase attached to it.

I pressed a button on my app which set off a servo that released the hold on the briefcase and it dropped, breaking through the sunroof, hitting the floor inside the warehouse, bursting open, and spilling money everywhere.

The gangsters heard the noise and rushed over to one of the windows. They saw their money spilled all over, some of it still floating to the ground.

"That's our money, Dog!" one of them hollered.