Joey, do you trust me?

The question, asked after a decade together and mutual telepaths for half of that, was needless, almost offensive. Of course I trust you!

Good. Get dressed, we're going somewhere. Don't think about where, don't think about why. And don't worry about it. It was 9:00 at night, and both had had a full day, the women asleep and Joey woken up by Jeremy's thoughts. Joey refrained from asking questions like 'Why now?'

"You know that 'don't worry' is in that list of counterproductive commands, right?" Joey asked instead, as they walked towards the aircraft.

"I know," Jeremy replied, giving a mental shrug. "But just.. trust me. I don't want you thinking at all about this. I'm flying. Don't even look out the windows." With 'Don't think' commands, some servants would be forced to kill themselves. Jeremy's thoughts had enough undercurrent of 'I'm trying to keep you safe' to prevent that. Joey tried his best to accept the orders, choosing instead to lose himself in video games as his master flew, pretending that he was somewhere else. The worst part was that Jeremy was sealing his mind up tight, the standard chatter slammed off. 'He said not to worry about it, so I won't worry about it.' Easier said than done.

In a couple of hours they had arrived, the hangar they had landed in instantly familiar the moment Jeremy opened the door. Northberg?!

Yes. This way. And pretend it doesn't matter. They took the tram to the medical wing, Joey trying to force himself to be calm. 'He's going to modify me somehow,' he realized despite himself, knowing that whatever modification was in store, he couldn't do shit about it anyway. Jeremy completely controlled him, after all. And he thought he'd given up worrying about that so long ago...

They reached the same room in which they had gained their telepathic implants, and saw the Night Operator smiling as they walked in. Joey's fears all came out in a flood: 'He's going to modify my emotions, he's going to alter my brain.' Jeremy mentally moved him down to the table in which he had lain before, the Night Operator silently pulling out an anaesthesia mask in pre-arranged agreement. Joey remembered that the rogues had brain-modifying techniques, realized that the Operator had probably figured out how they worked by now, and wondered what Jeremy would turn him into- but wait, Jeremy wouldn't do something like that, the only other thing he could be doing was-

You're unimplanting me, aren't you, he thought before he slipped into unconsciousness.

"He figured it out at the end," Jeremy said as the Operator sterilized Joey's forehead. "I kind of thought he would."

"Like I said before, I wouldn't have done it like this," the Operator replied, his implant device deftly cutting open Joey's skull. "Would have been better to warn him long in advance."

"Other than the whole 'getting cocky' or 'getting worried' business, he knows what the twins saw." When the Dominator had unimplanted himself and his servants, the withdrawal had manifested itself in horrific nightmare imagery, including skeletons, some sort of enormous canine, and a massive one-eyed lump of flesh with hundreds of powerful tentacles. "I don't want his imagination subconsciously making things worse before this even gets started."

"Well, he's your servant," the Operator said, shrugging, folding back pieces of Joey's skin, skull, and dura to attach a different device, copying the neural connections and encryption key to new, telepathy-only implants. "And I'll tell you again, and I want to be very clear: There is a very good chance that he is going to die. And if he does, I'm not responsible." The Operator wasn't just trying to protect himself from retribution. The act of killing a sentient engineered was distasteful, and it even felt morally wrong, a concept he thought he'd abandoned long ago. So it was Jeremy's decision, and Jeremy's problem, and he was here merely as a facilitator.

"Admit it to yourself, Operator. This is research to you." There was truth to that, as well. The Operator swapped the implants in two quick motions, applied regenerative paste, and put Joey's forehead back together, administering gaseous antidote through the same mask that had knocked him out.

"Yes. And dead guinea pigs seldom give useful results," he said, gesturing to the other bed. Jeremy laid down, trying to relax, opening up his mind and waiting for Joey's anaesthesia to wear off.


thud

"Oh, we're home," Joey said, looking at the mansion, a combination of Kylie's New York home and Jeremy's original one back in England. It was daytime, with bright, cool sunlight shining on them, the mansion's windows reflecting it and the grass green as ever.

"Heh. I guess we can call it that," Jeremy replied. "You do know where we are, right?"

"Yeah. Still don't want me worrying?"

"Not at all. I want you kicking ass," he said, walking up to the front door.

"I have to be careful how much ass, it's the inside of my head after all." thud "Damn, that's annoying. Wait, why are we walking?" he asked, cancelling gravity for both of them. "Hey, careful, there's something on the other side of the door." But Jeremy opened it anyway, and an enormous swarm of rats attacked him at once, each one with too many limbs, too many tails, and far, far too many teeth. "Jeremy-" But the rats' bites and lunges were passing right through him as he laughed, stomping and smashing them by the dozen, feet and hands a blur, some of them getting past for Joey to incinerate with white beams coming from his hands.

"I'm not the one who got unimplanted here. What do you think they can do to me?"

"Oh. You're invincible. That might help."

"I don't think I can win this for you, though," Jeremy replied, floating into the massive living room, the elevator in an impossible spot in the center of the room. thud "Damn, that brain-interrupting thud is annoying. Think the twins mentioned that, too."

"Yeah, let's put a stop to it. Open," Joey told the elevator, and it did. He gasped and took a step back when he saw what was inside.

It was Jeremy, but not Jeremy. It swirled with dark energies, its teeth fangs, its presence a series of evil imaginings and nightmare terrors. "Hello, Joey," it spoke in a voice that was Jeremy's through some kind of awful, distorting filter. "Didn't you know how this would end up? I'm going to have such fun with you, for the rest of your-"

"No," Jeremy said, pimp-slapping it with a powerful backhand, breaking its jaw. It looked up with wide eyes, unable to understand who or what this interloper was. It lunged a claw through Jeremy's chest, and when that accomplished nothing it tried to lunge past him at his servant.

"I said no," Jeremy reiterated, choke-slamming it back into the elevator, its eyes bulging out cartoon-like. "No." He punched it in the face and its head exploded, ichor and gibs covering the walls of the elevator.

"Oh, geez," Joey said, embarrassed that something like that was in him to begin with. "I could have just erased that, you didn't have to bother." He did erase the corpse and the mess.

"We both know what that was. You understand why I had to be the one to kill it." Joey understood.

"So, let's see.." There was a button going to a sub-basement they never had, and Joey pressed it. The elevator wanted to become a trap just then, to form spikes and crush the occupants, but Joey didn't let that happen even with a thud striking his senses.

The door opened, and Jeremy's laughter echoed off the walls of the enormous dome, a football field high and wide. For inside this great room of steel and threat was a tiny little monster no more than two feet tall, its one puppy-dog-like eye looking plantively up at Joey who had teleported to it, its one puny, feeble tentacle making its little thud against the ground. Joey stuck his hand inside the monster's mouth, and the razor-sharp teeth did nothing but gum and drool on his fingers. "Sorry, little guy, but you can't exist," Joey told it before he tore it in half, promptly erasing the blood and ichor, leaving a foul stench and then not even that.

"Okay, that was even easier than I expected," Jeremy said, still laughing. "Was that really it?"

"Yeah, that was really it. No more thuds. Can you tell me why now?" The 'why' was the secret-keeping and the timing. Joey knew why Jeremy had chosen to do it at all; his master worried about mentally lashing out at him one day, giving an undeniable command they'd both regret. In an eternity, every possible eventuality was a certainty, and the only way to prevent it was to make it an impossibility. The concept of Joey rebelling simply didn't exist for either of them anymore.

"Oh, yeah. The reason I didn't want you to know in advance was because I didn't want you getting cocky, or getting worried, or pre-inventing some more evil shit to fight." Joey got that. It was his imagination, after all. "And the reason I decided to do it now is because of some new information.. Here, I'll just show you." Jeremy formed a projection setup and sat down on empty air, the lights dimming and reels clicking as he replayed the last question the twins had asked Montgomery.

Joey sat down and shared a bag of popcorn with him, nodding and understanding, and wincing in mock-sympathy as Montgomery died screaming. "It looks like he saw something chopping off his limbs. Wonder what that was?"

"Don't know, I'm just glad you didn't have it. Although it probably would have been.. a two-foot-tall..." He started laughing again. "The battle between your ego and your unresolved issues! We could have been hunting for dust specks."

"I'm not that perfect. But I'll get there." Self-effacing laughter. "It's over, but we're still..."

"I think the Operator's going to let us sleep."

"Then why don't I show you around?" Joey asked, forming a door that said 'Joey's Memories' and opening it wide. Jeremy, curious, followed him in.