Eve moved with the grace of a queen towards Badu's Starhawk, thanking the old Naga for the endless lessons of behavior she had been given as a child. No baggage had been allowed, and she and her clothes had been checked thoroughly to detect if she had any beacon on or under her skin. Considering no one had luggage and Badu's means of transportation, Eve decided that her destination shouldn't be too far away. "Don't you ask where we're going?" Badu guffawed. Eve shrugged without uttering a word. The Gray jammers were still functioning and shielded her captors' thoughts, but their emotions were clear and enveloping her as a sucky slime. "So, Princess, you think that that bastard Sea will come to save you?" Badu whispered in her ear licking it with his tongue. Eve made an effort not to throw up and whirled finding Badu's mouth just centimeters from hers, his breath blowing right in her face. Eve turned her head and closed her eyes. "Ah! Ah!" One of the other thugs sneered: "The lady doesn't like your foul breath, Badu!" "She'll have to like it or else..." Badu left the sentence hanging as a threat, but Eve was thrilled by a discovery: when Badu had touched her, she had been able read his thoughts! Her mother was still alive, but imprisoned somewhere! "So the jammer doesn't work when they touch someone!" Eve thought and began to focus on the frequencies. "By now your main asset is telepathy," JS would say, "so make the most of it." Eve soon realized that there was a pattern in the frequency of the jammer and by working a little the jamming frequencies could be eliminated as a background noise. Chuckles. Catcalls. "Certainly they're up to something!" Eve thought, even though she felt reasonably certain that neither Badu nor the others would hurt her, at least for the moment. One of the three moved. "I won't give him the satisfaction to open my eyes to see what he does." Eve decided. Then, suddenly, the thought assaulted her as a vicious blow: Badu had removed the Gray device and deliberately imagined himself cutting JS's throat. Eve opened her eyes wide and Badu laughed cruelly. "Well guys, we found how to have fun with the princess!" and he started to shower Eve with lubricious thoughts of what he would like to do with her. After a few moments the other two thugs' minds joined Badu's. Everyone was laughing uproariously. They started to describe aloud their thoughts arousing themselves and occasionally striking Eve to highlight their proposals and get her attention. Never Eve had been more thankful of the exercises to shield her mind she had honed over the years. After a while the mental rape Badu had devised, ended: the Starhwak had landed at their destination. Eve immediately sensed 3TC's and other three individuals' minds. Two of them were surely Grays. Badu pushed her into a terminal built in an unknown, desolate planet, and after a few moments Eve was in front of 3TC. The two Grays and a human female stared at her. The black eyes of the woman, a beauty beginning to fade, pierced her with hate: "So this is the chick?" "That's right. Saving Sea's life she set in motion the avalanche that overwhelmed us, my dear. Eve, may I introduce you to Mrs. Lou Cyfer, my wife?" 3TC grinned. "So you're the culprits." Eve replied. "It's time to go." said the older of the two Grays. "See, my dear, Sea denied the demands the Grays had made to be given a share of the rebuilding contracts of the Rogue Empire. And now you pay the bill." "Jay told me you were used to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds, but now you're running with the fox only. He will find you and kill you." She remarked icily. "That's just what we want except the second part, of course." 3TC replied. "It's much easier to find a man who's trying to find you than to find a fellow that is in some way on the run." -- Thanks!