 good view of the surrounding area. It was the tallest house on the block as well, giving him an unobstructed view of the other side of the river if he was atop it.

He stood on the large porch, his mind already working. It would take about a week to get everything set up to his satisfaction, and he'd have to work mainly at night. He seemed to recall a pair of night goggles in that gear he bought, now that he thought of it, in the camping gear. They'd let him see as if it was bright as noontime outside. He bought so much, so fast, it was kind of hard to remember exactly what he had. Maybe a detailed inventory was in order. If anything, he'd have the time.

The first step, obviously, was securing the skimmer and the bridge itself. There were any number of things he could do to make those more than untouchable by anyone but a Faey. He also had to take into account the possibility of one of the Huntington gangs using boats to cross in unexpected areas. After those were secured, he'd have to secure the house and the area surrounding it, then devise a means of alerting him when people approached using the other two bridges across the river, both to the east and to the west. His talent was more reliable than anything else he had available to him, but he _did_ have to sleep.

He was confident. No two-bit gang boss was going to interfere with him now. No way. He'd chosen this place to set up, and damn it, he was _not_ going to budge. This was _his_ place, and he was not going to give it up. Not to Joe Bueller, not to the other gangs, not to the Faey, not to _anyone_. This was his territory, and he would defend it to the death if that was what it took, because he was not going to move. This was his home, that was the line, and God help anyone who crossed it.

Pugnacious, yes, but he'd been feeling a tad aggressive since the epiphany that led him to find his freedom. But he did mean it, oh yes. It was better to die free than to live a slave.

                                        * * *

_Kaira, 26 Oraa, 4392, Orthodox Calendar_
_Wednesday, 13 July 2007, Native Regional Reckoning_
_Huntington, West Virginia (Native designation), Orala Nature Preserve, American Sector_

The sun was warm, maybe a bit too warm, but Jason really wasn't all that worried about that. Gently biting his tongue, he worked out in the yard of his new house, lining up with mechanical efficiency a little purple flower in the flower bed outside his house.

He was more than open about where he lived now. After all, the gangs in the city across the river had no intention of ever bothering him again, the chatter on the radio he'd stolen made that abundantly clear. They'd tried, that was for sure. He couldn't fault them for tenacity, but no matter how clever they were, they were no match for Jason Fox.

Obviously, the first attempt was using the bridge, for it was the fastest way across the river. Joe Bueller had sent four men armed with their precious machine guns over that bridge the day after Jason arrived, at dawn. What they didn't know was that Jason had been working all night on defending that bridge, and he was more than ready for them. They rushed across the bridge on foot, knowing that the skimmer was parked under the bridge near where it joined to the ground, intent on capturing that prize for whatever might be inside it, before the Faey came to retrieve it.

They never got off the bridge.

They got very close to the edge, and then every piece of magnetic metal they owned suddenly slammed to the ground. Their Uzis and Tek-9's were ripped from their hands, their belt buckles yanked them to the ground, metal pocket knives tore holes in their jeans, and one unlucky fellow had his earlobes ripped when his earrings suddenly slammed to the ground. It took them a few minutes to disengage their metal objects, for all four had to take off their pants and squirm out of them due to metallic objects in their pockets, or rivets in the pants themselves. They all tried to yank their guns off the bridge, but found them stuck fast. When Jason appeared on top of a house near the bridge, railgun prominently displayed, they all turned and ran back for the other side of the bridge. Jason used binoculars to look over on the other side of the bridge after getting down off the roof and saw Joe Bueller himself, looking through binoculars back at him from the top of a building on the other side. Jason blew him a kiss, which made him start silently shouting and throw his binoculars to the ground.

Later that day, Jason came out, collected up the items left behind, protected from snipers by the curvature of the bridge, then retreated back out of sight.

Oh, the joys of plasma magnets.

The next attempt was by boat. Bueller sent over three men in a boat in the middle of the night, and they were very good. They used oars instead of a motor, and got across the river and to the far bank. They quickly moved towards the skimmer, moving stealthily and covering each other, until they were all up to the skimmer. The stairs were down, but the hatch was closed. They seemed nonplussed at that, for the access panel beside the door was open, waiting for someone to come along and open the door. One of them whispered that this was way too easy, and the other two agreed. So they all got back and looked around, then carefully touched the access panel with a stick they'd found laying nearby. Nothing happened. A few other careful tests displayed nothing untowards, so they calmed down a little and tried to get the door open.

A few seconds after they tried again, the entire area around the skimmer suddenly became alive with electricity. Arcs of electricity danced around the skimmer, impacting the bridge, the ground, and the three men, making their hair stand on end and causing their muscles to lock in electrocution paralysis. The lightning storm lasted almost five seconds, then ceased as quickly as it began. All three men collapsed to the ground with smoke wafting up from their clothes, though all three were very much alive. A little while after they'd been hit by the skimmer's theft prevention system (which was standard on most skimmers), Jason came out and stripped them naked, then left and hid a discreet distance away. He waited for them to wake up, then came back with his railgun as if to finish them off. The three naked men scrambled back down to the river and jumped in their boat, then started the engine and raced for the opposite bank. Jason let them get about halfway, then he allowed them and the men watching from the far bank to see his railgun fire. There was that familiar _BEE-yah_ sound followed up by the loud _bang_, like the crack of a large whip, but the round was already buried twenty feet in the opposite riverbank, below the water's surface. It had gone right where Jason had aimed it, through the neck of the outboard motor and through the back of the boat. The round struck with such speed and force that it didn't shatter the boat, it simply punched a hole in it. The outboard motor, however, had the neck snapped in half from the impact, which broke the propeller away from the motor. The three men looked back in surprise, and saw the outboard motor suddenly start to smoke. They saw the dissipating corkscrew smoke trail that led back to the far bank, and it didn't take them long to make the connection. They jumped up and jumped overboard just as another corkscrew trail simply _appeared_, hitting the outboard motor squarely, then igniting the gasoline in it. The boat caught fire immediately, and illuminated the heads of the three men as they swam frantically for the far shore. Jason lowered the railgun and looked on with satisfaction, then simply went back to his house.

That taught them that they weren't getting anywhere near the skimmer, so, since Bueller wasn't dumb, he knew that the only way to get past the skimmer's security system was to have the owner shut it off. The next attempt was the next night, as a group of six, armed with more machine guns, crossed the river by boat a goodly distance east of the skimmer, then made their way to the bridge on foot. After they got there, to the little town of Chesapeake, which was where Jason had set up shop, they fanned out and started searching for his house. He let them come in, let them get close to his house, and then he activated his countermeasure.

The little town of Chesapeake suddenly began to _vibrate_. There was no other explanation for it. The ground buzzed like an angry hornet, which spooked the invaders, and caused them to retreat back towards the bridge. Or at least try.

One by one, they all went to set foot in the street, and when they did, they found their feet _sinking into the asphalt_. Whatever it was didn't affect the ground or the concrete under the asphalt, just the asphalt itself. They all found themselves ankle deep in what was supposed to be a solid rock surface, and much to their horror, the now permeable asphalt street clung to their feet like thick mud, making it extremely hard to pull a foot out of it. It didn't help that every single one of them had fallen when the ground had grabbed their feet, so they all had their hands in it as well, and most had their knees down in it too. Jason observed from the window of his house, and when his talent told him he had all six ensnared, he shut off the device that was causing a rare effect called _liquefaction_. It was a phenomenon where a solid material became semi-liquid when exposed to a certain frequency of sound or vibration. By setting his emitters to a specific composite frequency, it allowed them to induce liquefaction into the asphalt-specifically the tar that glued the asphalt together-but cause no damage or harm to any other material. When the device was shut off, the asphalt instantly hardened, entrapping them all within it.

He gave them a few minutes to struggle frantically, then came out of his house. He was carrying a baseball bat, a pair of large pruning shears, and a portable radio/CD player. All six were trapped within two hundred feet of each other, and he would be visible by all of them by setting up at the corner leading to the bridge. He did so, putting the radio down and turning it on, filling the street with the gentle melodies of Tchaikovsky's _Swan Lake_. He then put down the baseball bat, and snapped the pruning shears shut a few times. "Good evening, gentlemen, and ladies," he had told them, nodding at the two women and four men calmly. "I seem to recall warning you not to come over here. Well, I'm going to have to do something about that, I suppose." He had shouldered the shears as he stood up. "I know I said you'd never go back if you came over here, but I'm really not into murder. It's not my thing. I'm the kind of guy who much prefers letting you drag your asses back over that bridge thoroughly humiliated. Death isn't much of a life lesson, you understand. So, let's commence, shall we?"

They were probably afraid he was going to torture them or cut off their noses or something, but when he started on the first person he reached, a middle-aged woman with tanned skin, some wrinkles, and dark hair, they understood. Jason used the shears to literally cut the clothes off her body, took her weapon, then used those shears to cut the hair off her head. What he left behind was so laughably uneven that only a shaved head was going to fix it. She screamed bloody murder as he cut off her hair, and continued to curse vituperously after he moved on to the next person. He had gone right on down the line, systematically stripping each person, then cutting off their hair. When he was done, he collected up their guns and the scraps over their clothes, then wandered back to his house. He left them stuck out there all night, and went back out in the morning to get them out. He activated the harmonic emitters he had buried around his house and allowed them to pull themselves out, then marched them all to the bridge after forcing them to remove their shoes and socks. He made them march over that bridge naked as they day they were born and with their hair cut off with pruning shears... so needless to say, they were a sorry looking lot indeed.

Joe Bueller had an absolute fit, he heard over the radio after he sent the invaders packing. Not only did they fail, but they also lost four more machine guns, and they were running dangerously low on them.

With that afternoon came the culmination of Joe Bueller's temper. Twenty men and women launched from boats at the park and motored over in what could only be called an armed assault. They landed about a quarter mile east of the bridge, then stormed towards Chesapeake with Joe Bueller himself leading them. Jason's skimmer's sensors picked them up and relayed the alert to his remote, and Jason just sighed and closed the book he was reading and went to deal with them. Instead of going outside, he instead went to his basement, then waited for them to get close enough. Once they were, he simply activated the last and most effective of his personal safety measures, yet another sound-based concept. It was the same basic idea as the itchers he'd had Symone plant on the armor of the Marines that last day, but since he didn't have the materials to build a bunch of individual ones, he instead went with the idea of a speaker. It was located atop the steeple of the church down the block, and when he activated it, it emitted a hypersonic frequency that would create a similar effect. The closer they got to the steeple, the worse the itching would get. Jason had a damper going down in the basement, which was why he retreated to it.

He waited until they were literally on top of the church, and he turned it on. He had a camera up there as well, so he had the opportunity to see it in action. He felt it against his skin as well, despite the damper, as a feathery touch all over him. Those outside, however, suddenly felt like they were dipped into vats of live fire ants. He watched with clinical interest as they all suddenly went wild, squirming, thrashing, most of them dropping to the ground and rolling around, doing anything they could to make it stop. He let them endure it for about five minutes or so, when they started drawing blood clawing at themselves, then he shut off the speaker. He picked up one of their radios and keyed it up. "Fun, wasn't it? That was the low setting. Want to see high?

"No, I don't think you would," he added when Joe Bueller went for his radio. "Now that you've done went and put yourself on my side of the river, it's time for one of those important life lessons I'm so fond of handing out. All of you out there on my street, start stripping. All of it."

_"You son of a bitch, there's no way in hell-"_ Joe Bueller started, but Jason simply turned the speaker on again. His transmission was cut short when he dropped the radio and started rolling around on the ground again. He let it go on for about a minute, then turned it back off and brought the radio up to his mouth again. "Temper, temper," he chided lightly. "Face it, Joebob, you're not getting out of here with your clothes. Now, you can continue to fight and be an idiot and make _everyone else_ suffer with you, or you can behave like a good little madman and start stripping. And if you do do that, I'm fairly sure that they'll all be really unhappy with you when you do manage to get back on your side of the line. Now, all of you, start stripping. You have one minute, and the clock is ticking."

Everyone else immediately started tearing off their clothes. They did _not_ want to go through that again. Joe Bueller, however, seemed unwilling to do so. He got to his feet, his shoulders huffing as he seemed to be trying to control a violent temper tantrum. The others started shouting at him-Jason couldn't hear it, his camera was video only-and Joe Bueller suddenly reached down and snatched up his M-16. Jason quickly got to his feet and reached for the button on his remote as he whirled around and brought up the barrel of that weapon, his intent obviously to cut down _his own people_. Jason realized he wouldn't have time, that the hypersonic speaker wouldn't stop him in time. He had to take direct action.

Jason had never attacked another before in earnest, but Jyslin had taught him well. She had taught him how to attack and take control of a human mind, and he executed that attack instantly. He drove a spear of consciousness into Joe Bueller's mind, and felt that mind instantly yield to the power of the blow; human minds, which had no active talent, were defenseless against a telepath. In an instant, he was inside Joe Bueller's mind, and he moved at the speed of thought. His power sought out the part of Joe Bueller's brain that dealt with motor control, and then wrapped his power around it to smother any activity.

Joe Bueller's muscles locked up, even in the act of pulling the trigger. The others looked at him with strangled expressions, then their eyes furrowed in confusion, for he was standing as still as stone, though his own eyes were wild and almost frenzied.

Jason brought the radio up again. "Would one of you kindly relieve Mr. Bueller of his gun?" he asked grimly. "I assure you, right now he can't move or speak, so it's perfectly safe. What I'm doing to him will do him harm if I keep it going for too long, so do it quickly." A young, rather pretty woman rushed up and ripped the rifle out of Joe Bueller's hands, then trained it on him. "That'll do, young lady," Jason snapped, even as he reached deeper into Bueller's mind. He touched on the man's memory, then carefully wiped out the last few seconds, the part that would allow Bueller to remember the attack and realize that Jason was telepathic. Then he touched one of the baser functions of his brain and caused Joe Bueller to pass out. The portly man collapsed to the ground in a boneless heap. He'd remain unconscious for about an hour or so, but that was more than enough time. "When he wakes up, he won't remember what happened," Jason told them. "But we digress. All of you, strip. And when you're done, strip Bueller. The clock is ticking, ladies and gentlemen."

He watched the monitor as the nineteen men and women quickly stripped bare, then two of the bigger men dutifully pulled the clothes off Joe Bueller. Bueller, it turned out, was noticeably fat, where all his followers looked undernourished. "Very good. In the brown house on the corner behind you, you'll find a wheelbarrow in the garage. Someone go fetch it, then dump Bueller into it. I'm not going to make you carry him. As fat as he is, that'd be cruel and unusual punishment."

One of the men rushed over and pulled the large, dirty wheelbarrow out of the garage, then four men hauled Bueller up-none too gently either-and dumped him in the wheelbarrow. His arms and legs dangled out of it.

"Very good. Now, this is the _third_ time you've come and broken the rules, people. I'm losing my patience. I've been accommodating this far because I know that you just couldn't resist the temptation, and I really don't like to hurt people. But, now that you see just how forbidden this fruit is, I do hope you'll realize that it's out of your reach. I'm growing tired of being merciful, people. Next time you come over here, I send you back in a box. Do we understand each other? Just nod if you do, I'll see it." Every one of them nodded. "Good, good. So, who's rolling Bueller back over the bridge? Raise your hand."

They all looked at each other, then one man raised his hand.

"Ok, you who raised your hand, put your shoes back on. You'll chew your feet up trying to roll that heavy load up the bridge." They all watched the man put his boots back on, the young pretty lady who'd pulled the gun from Bueller's hands trying to cover herself with her hands. Jason found that amusing for some reason, like the stubborn denial of truth. When he was done, Jason disengaged the power to the speaker. "Alright, all of you, march. Up the bridge, leave everything behind. I will be watching, so don't get any ideas. Oh, and have a nice day."

That was the last time he heard anything from Joe Bueller's gang. The gang in the west end, after hearing about Jason, certainly made their own attempt, but their four man raiding party, riding in on bicycles in the middle of the night, had the bad luck of getting there after Jason had time to dig into his box of junk and scrape together the parts to build a proximity sensor that automatically activated the hypersonic irritater. Jason simply moved his bedroom down into the basement. They too left Chesapeake naked, but unfortunately for them, they had a mile's hike to get back to the west end bridge.

Needless to say, Jason had quite a collection of guns and bicycles now.

But, things looked to be calming down. He still had the radio the gang used, and from what he'd pieced together, Joe Bueller had met with an unfortunate end soon after getting carted back over into Huntington. He wasn't sure what happened, but odds were that one of the people who'd had the business end of that M-16 pointed at them took serious offense to the idea that Joe Bueller was going to shoot _them_ because he was angry. He had no idea who was in charge now, but the last couple of nights he'd heard sporadic gunfire to the east. It seemed that Bueller's replacement was having a territorial issue with the gang that controlled Guyandotte and Barboursville.

As long as they kept it over there, he really didn't care what they did.

Today wasn't like any of the other days, though. He didn't know exactly when it was, but he knew that his physical appointment had to have come and gone, so they knew that he was not in New Orleans. Well, they knew that already, but now they knew that he hadn't come back. So, it meant that from here on out, he wasn't going to be overlooked. He still listened carefully to the Faey traffic channels, listening for any hint that they had a transport or search party out looking for him, because he knew that they were going to start looking for him soon. If they had any logs or records of his flight path from the space-based sensors, they were going to know where he was, and were probably going to send a detachment out to find him pretty soon. Many of the defenses he had up around his skimmer and his house were intended for the Faey as much as they were for the gangs. He'd have many more up, but he simply didn't have the parts to put anything else in place, not without starting to take apart some of his other equipment. That simply wasn't going to happen. He would simply have to rely on what he had. He was pretty sure that the sonic emitter on the steeple of the church was going to be _very_ effective. It was going to make it clear to the Faey that he wasn't about to budge, but it would be effective.

That morning, he had done what was necessary. He had emptied his skimmer out of all gear and equipment, then shut it down. He didn't even leave the security system on, since the _threat_ of it would most likely more than suffice. From this day forward, they were going to be looking for it. The plasma signature of his smaller PPGs may or may not have showed up on their sensors, so he shut down the largest one, the one that came from the habitat module, and relied on the small ones to power a piece of equipment by itself, and only when it was needed. He had one on his Faey transceiver, so he could monitor traffic frequencies, and also used that one to power his portable stove. He relied on portable lamps for light.

He'd gone out to do some scavenging of his own yesterday and today. There were lots of houses on his side of the river, as well as a K-Mart and Wal-Mart a few miles west, which had been all but stripped bare. He wasn't after what most others were after, however. He scavenged some furniture and some decent dishware (which required extensive cleaning before it was usable), and also hunted down some supplies and equipment to get his house back in proper working order. Things like flashlights and batteries were long gone, but Jason found lots of light fixtures and light bulbs at the Lowe's home improvement store just past Wal-Mart. He scavenged some of those things, then used it to repair the wiring in the house. After severing the house from the unused power grid, Jason was able to get the electricity back on in the house using one of his smallest PPGs and a simple generator he built out of his rapidly dwindling supply of spare equipment. Generating electrical power was something that was considered child's play to the Faey, and that tiny module with its slapdash generator could probably power the entire city block by itself. The lack of running water had Jason concerned, so he went through the plumbing section in Lowe's to try to come up with some ideas. A water tank with a portable pump, maybe. He'd have to dig up the water line and break into it, then hook up the water tank to it. Wastewater wasn't much of an issue, since the house was connected to the city's sewer system, and that gave it somewhere to go. Purifying the water was another issue, but not a hard one to solve, for the habitat module had a water purification system installed in it. He could take that out and install it somewhere in the water line.

Getting water and power back up in his house were important, but it was also important not to draw _too_ much attention to himself. The Faey would know exactly where to go if they saw a single house with lights on, given his background in engineering. Getting the power back on in a house would be child's play to him, and they knew that. He'd already addressed that problem, however, by scavenging some very heavy drapes that weren't in too bad of shape from several houses. They weren't exactly going to match his hodgepodge furniture, but he wasn't doing this with an eye out for fashion. He was _not_ going to live in the dark. He just needed to take certain precautions.

Jason looked up as a gust of wind blew past him. Wind. It was always blowing out here, most likely because of the river. With a little work, he could get a windmill of sorts up that could generate some electricity, get the whole block some power. And the water system was still intact, it just lacked the power to operate... well, and qualified technicians to watch over it. But, he could tap into the river's water and set up a very small purifying plant of sorts, a single large tank with one Faey water purification system on the intake valve. Rework the piping to close off the other blocks... he shook his head. There was no reason to do any of that except for maybe the challenge of it. It might be fun though, give him something to do. Having things to do was important right now. Keep his mind occupied. The game with the gangs across the river was entertaining, but very, very short. In a way, that was very good, because he didn't feel like endlessly scrapping with them. It did, however, keep his mind occupied, kept him from worrying too much.

Kept him from dwelling on the past, and that was past was his friends. He hoped Tim was doing alright, and as much as he hated to admit it, Symone, and Jyslin... and also Maya now. He'd never thought he'd be worried about Faey, but Jyslin and Symone, they were friends. Friends. Jyslin was more than a friend, he had to admit. Yes, he had Faey _friends_, and he was strongly attracted to a Faey. But fate had written a different set of circumstances. Everything about Jason that made him what he was wouldn't allow it, and if he changed to allow it, it was making him something other than what he was. He'd realized that before he left, realized that by bending for Jyslin, he was turning his back on his highly regarded principles, and those principles defined him. Maybe he was too proud, a bit too arrogant, but that pride was a part of him, and without it he would be lesser of a man. He'd been so infatuated with his telepathic talent that he had bent over backwards to justify fraternizing with Jyslin just so he could explore this strange, exciting power. And even now, he had to admit that he _liked_ Jyslin and Symone, that he did care about them. It was hard for him to rationalize that, for they _were_ Faey. He was having feelings for the enemy. He hadn't wanted to, but it was so easy to see Symone and Jyslin as something other than Imperial agents after spending so much time with them.

Yes... Symone and Jyslin were _friends_.

Ok, he admitted that to himself. _Finally_. He did find, though, that it didn't change his mind all that much. They had made decisions that placed them on the other side of the line he had drawn in his own mind, and so had Tim for that matter. But then again, Tim wasn't really ready to do something like what Jason had done. He would be too afraid, and despite not liking the Imperium, he _did_ like the luxuries of his position. Tim hated the Imperium, but not on _philosophical_ grounds, only on _personal_ grounds. If they treated him well, he would be content. If they did not, he would not be. Jason couldn't really fault Tim for that, though. He was a generous man, with a good heart and a kind disposition, but he, like most humans, was more concerned with his personal well-being than the state of the human race as a whole. That attitude stemmed from the feeling of hopelessness that almost every human felt, knowing that there was absolutely no way to escape from Faey domination. So Tim, like so many people, was just trying to make the best of it he could. Many saw his relationship with Symone as selling out-those who didn't know Symone, in any case-but those who did knew better. Sometimes one just had to close one's eyes to certain boundaries when two people who were meant for one another managed to meet. He had no doubt that Tim and Symone would be together until death parted them. May God see to it that that was seventy years down the road.

Despite their political or philosophical views, they were still his friends, and he would always care about them.

Wiping his brow, he looked at his little flower garden and nodded. He'd found the plants at Lowe's growing wild in a grassy patch in the parking lot. They'd somehow managed to take root and grow in that patch, until Jason dug them up and brought them home, that is. It took a while to separate them, and he wasn't sure they'd all live, but they looked a heck of a lot better in his front yard than they did competing for sunlight with the weeds that were overgrowing them. After he was done, he pul