Chapter 15:

The Rescue

***

        Having been conditioned for total obedience, the boys outside hid the foliage and stayed very quiet. Once, when a few guards came out the same door to look around, the larger boys left in charge did as Hop Sing had ordered them - they bashed the guards over the heads with rocks, then stunned them until they were dead. The frightening thing was that it didn't bother any of them in the least. Always before, the guards had only hurt them. For those that survived, it would be a long road to rehabilitation.

    Luckily for Hop Sing and his band of rescuers, Lester Delray had no idea just how badly he'd been compromised. More than once, Chow used Tsu' video game graphics to mislead Delray and his guards. That gave Hop Sing time to get into the hospital wing and grab Sander and the other boys. Luckily, they were able to move somewhat, but most still couldn't talk and were very twitchy.

    "Where's a good place to hide?" Sander asked, as they made the long crawl back up and out.

    "Dunno," the Asian boy answered, "Never been outside that much."

    "Have you guys got names?" Hop Sing asked.

    "Niran, but nobody's called me that since I got here," the Asian boy replied. No one else spoke up.

    They all froze for a long time over a grated part of the shaft as a group of guards milled around under it. The boys listened closely. "Can you believe that kid killed him?" One guard asked. "Can you blame him?" The other replied, "I mean, WE survived it, but what did it get us? We're just as much slaves as those kids are." Freed of their collars, the guards seemed to have realized that they could speak freely for probably the first time ever. "I could deal with being a nullo slave when I was a kid," the first said, "But when I grew up and they put me on hormones to build me up, that sucked! I ain't got off since the last time I was fucked when I was a kid!"..."I know what you mean," the other replied. "I...I kinda hope the kids get away."

    "To where? Where they gonna go? Steal the Master's boats or sub?"

    "That Ben Toeber's a real bastard, from what the Master says," the other guard replied, "I bet he's coming. You know how the Master hates him, and hell, he HAS to know we have his boys here! He'd do just the same...he'd come after them. I bet Mr. Delray would."

    "If he was losing money, he would," the other agreed, "But man," he lowered his voice to a whisper, "Killing kids bothers me."

    "Yeah, but what kind of life we got anywhere else?" the first asked, "I been a slave since I can remember, and at least, I got food here and somewhere warm and dry to sleep."

    Finally, they moved on. The boys resumed their crawl. Tired and hurt and hungry, none of them were sure that they were going to make it. More than once, Hop Sing was worried that one of them crying would attract attention. It was later in the afternoon, after several rest stops, that they finally made it back outside.

    "Someone's been busy," Sander observed, at the sight of the dead guards.

    "We going to the beach now?" Niran asked.

    The African boy, who told them his name was Alem, shook his head. "I'm scared. I wanna hide."

    "No," Hop Sing decided. "They'll look for us there.

    "You're right," Ben Toeber's voice told him through the black collar, "You boys should all hide in the jungle and try to get some rest. Leave the rest of it up to us. We'll be there by nightfall, and believe me, you'll know when we arrive!"

    The boys did just that, moving inland some. Since breakfast had been interrupted and lunch had never happened, all of them were very hungry. Hop Sing and Sander were both shocked at the young age of some of the slaves as well. Ben Toeber had never had a boy younger than ten, even though Lewie was small for his age. Lester Delray, it seemed, took whatever he could find. What also bothered the San Carlos boys was how ignorant their charges were. None of them even knew how to find food such as bananas or coconuts in the wild. By the time they had the younger ones fed and settled down, both of them were exhausted. Niran and Alem offered to stand guard with the pilfered stun stick they had from the doctor's office so that they could rest and wait for night.

    Some hours later, as Delray and Wong, along with a detachment of guards, searched for the boys, the guards that the boys had killed failed to report in. "That's a clue," Delray realized, "Wherever they went out, the boys waylaid them. And they couldn't have gotten too far into the jungles. We know they're not on the beach, too. Let's go to the last exit used."

    "Any luck in IT getting the system back?" Wong asked, which got him a good smack upside the head from Delray.

    "No, no thanks to you," Delray snapped at him. "We're locked out solid!"

    "Hop Sing is going to pay for this," Wong muttered, as he began to grow excited at the idea of slowly torturing the boy to death. But he also knew that for as bad as he wanted to, he couldn't fuck him again. Delray had seen to that. But he felt like he was going to cum at any time, as he thought about it. Perhaps that would give him so relief.

    Just then, Delray cocked his head as his implanted chip buzzed him. It was the doctor, who'd just managed to regain control of himself to call and report that the hospital was empty. Delray cursed and raged, and everyone stepped back. The fact that he'd already tried ordering level 3 pulses for all of the boys, and failed, was readily evident. Tsu had disabled all of that. "Maybe he'll kill you with a level 5," Delray told Wong with a cold smile.

    "He won't, I know him," Wong said.

    "And would you have thought that your boy could kill a grown man?" Delray countered. "He's a little monster, that one! Ah! the door!" He exclaimed, but found it locked. "Knock it down," he told the guards.

    The sun was just beginning to set when Sander and Hop Sing awoke to the sounds of crashing in the underbrush. "They're onto you, Q.," his father's voice told him through the collar. "The only ones I can track are Wong and Delray, the rest don't have collars anymore."

    "We can't outrun, them father!" Hop Sing gasped.

    "And these boys are in no shape to fight," Sander added. "Half of them won't even talk to us!"

    "Anywhere to hide?" Tsu asked desperately.

    It was then that a boy of about nine or ten tugged at Hop Sing's arm, trying to tell him something.

    "That's 24, we call him by his room number. He can't talk. The Master cut his vocal chords out, said he talked too much," Alem said, as 24 insisted that they follow him. Then Alem seemed to remember something. "The Master used to take him outside, dunno why, maybe 'cause he's a native of the mainland?"

    Faced with being caught, as Delray and his men drew closer, the boys ran after 24. They did the best they could to help the injured ones along, and 24 led them to the beach. He then ran along it, near the water's edge, splashing, up and around a bend, and stood panting and smiling, pointing at a cave opening. "It's perfect," Tsu agreed, when Sander told him. The rest of the boys had to be forced inside, and they all went as far back as they dared and hid.

    "Do our collars have lights?" Hop Sing asked, and at once, he and Sander's began to glow. "Figures," Sander muttered, "Can't even hide in the dark."

    "That was slick," Hop Sing told 24, "The waves will wash out our footprints?" 24 beamed at him. His smile gave Hop Sing some hope.

    Lester Delray was having a fit again at the sight of hundreds of small footprints that seemed to vanish into the lapping waves on the beach. "I hate that kid," he growled.

    "OK, where would they go? Where can you hide here?" Wong asked, but Delray was too angry to even think. The thought of losing all of his slave boys, his plans to open a resort like Ben's - only for men like himself and Wong - along with his entire way of life was rapidly falling by the wayside. He HAD to have those boys back. And he HAD to have his security system working again.

    "Split up," Delray ordered, giving Wong a deadly look. "Report back to me in one hour, Wong, or I swear, you'll suffer for it!"

    What the hell can he do? Wong wondered, He's nullified me, ruined me! Then Wong realized, as he and the guards set off up the beach, that he really didn't want to know the answer to that question. He was still thinking about it when they came across the mouth of the cave, just as it was beginning to get dark. "Anyone got a flashlight?" Wong asked. A few guards did. They went in anyway.

    "Someone's coming!" Sander whispered in the darkness. "Quiet!"

    "I can smell them," the boys heard Wong saying, his voice an echo in the cave, "Someone can't hold his bladder!"

    "Some of  the boys are incontinent," Niran whispered to Hop Sing, "Can't help it. The Master put valves up some of the boys' peeholes so they drip all the time."

    "Come out, Hop," Wong called, "Come to uncle, and I promise I'll make it fast. You won't suffer too long, boy!"

    "I say we kill him," Sander muttered.

    "We must fight," Hop Sing decided, realizing that after how Wong had hurt him, after all he'd done to him so far, that there was no choice. He had to kill him. If he didn't, Wong would surely kill him. He made up his mind. "Wait for them," he whispered, as the bobbing lights drew nearer and nearer.

    Some miles offshore, Chow smiled at Li at the helm of the lead gunboat. "Less than one hour, sir," Li told him.

    "Good, get me Interpol on the comm system," Chow replied. Li gasped. "I want them to see just what this Delray fellow is up to." Chow's face then went hard. "Business is one thing, but what this man does is just wrong!"

    "You seem very set on getting Delray, Chow," Ben asked, "I have reason to, but you? No offense, but morals and ethics? After all, you just sold me your nephew for six years?"

    "Would have sold you one stepson, too," Chow confessed, "But drug addict mother sold him first. Said some man called 'Lester' bought him last year. Blood is blood - boy is family. If he's alive," Chow paused, "Delray will pay. I had no idea until I saw Tsu's hacked data."

    "I can't say I understand," Ben shook his head, "But I won't argue."

    "Sir," Li spoke up, "After what we saw that Mr. Tsu downloaded, the torture and killing and stuff, I mean to say, your island was a good place to grow up, sir. I miss it. Those boys, even if they are slaves, deserve better."

    About then, Ben began having second thoughts about his enterprises.

    It didn't take long for Wong and the guards to reach the boys. Hidden all over, behind rocks, in gullies, back in the darkness, they waited. It was Hop Sing who took the lead. "Lights," he said, and his collar lit up, exposing him. "Wong," he said coldly, as he heard guns cock.

    "Idiots!" Wong snapped, "If you miss, the ricochets will hit US! And Lester wants them ALIVE!"

    Hop Sing smiled. It gave him an edge. Next to him, just out of the light, Sander stood with the stun stick set as high it would go. 2 would have to do; it was all they had. The rest of the boys clutched rocks. Freedom - or the next best thing to it - was within their grasp and they weren't about to let it slip by.

    "Here we are, please don't kill us," Hop Sing said. "It's a dead end, we can't get out."

    Wong motioned two guards forward. As they made to grab Hop Sing, there were thuds in the darkness and the guards went down as hidden boys brained them with rocks. Two more rushed forward, and Sander stunned the both of them, retreating back into the darkness. Flashlights darted this way and that, but the boys moved like rats, vanishing into the shadows. One by one, and with the advantage of having studied the cave, Delray's slave boys picked them off one by one. A few got stunned in the process, but the sticks only went up to a level 2, they remembered. Finally, only Wong was left.

    "I see Mr. Delray fixed you," Hop Sing pointed out, "How does it feel, being a nullo like me?"

    Wong paused. He wanted to kill the boy so badly. Only that would do. All of this was his fault, Wong thought - the demise of HKS3, his loss of his stolen money, his imprisonment and nullification at the hands of Delray...ALL of it! Killing the boy wouldn't be enough, but it would have to do. Slowly, he would kill him so very slowly, Wong thought, cautiously advancing on the boy and remembering full well that Hop Sing could ... had ... already killed a man.

    "Come here, boy," Wong ordered him, holding tight to a stun stick. Behind him in the darkness, the slave boys moved. Wong tried to watch, but if he turned, Hop Sing drew closer, his collar shining. Then something hit the back of his head, and Wong went down with a cry of pain.

    "Leave us, and you can live," Hop Sing offered.

    Wong, despite his pain, laughed. "Live?" he gasped, "Why? As a nullo? As a nothing, like YOU?" He coughed. Someone hit him again, and Wong screamed and coughed harder. It sounded like ribs had broken. Also in the darkness was the hum of stunners. It was apparent that some of the boys were taking no chances on the guards getting back up and were stunning them over and over again at level 2. In fact, most of them were already dead, their hearts having given out.

    "I trusted you," Hop Sing said sadly, "I loved you."

    "And I loved you," Wong coughed again, "I only wanted to show you how much! How beautiful you were, Hop Sing, after they cut you! What man could not look at you and find such beauty, beauty beyond even women?"

    Hop Sing felt ill.

    Then he saw Sander move out of the darkness to take Wong's flashlight.

    "And you set him up," Sander finished for him, kicking away Wong's stun stick. He already had one. "You cost him his family, his boy parts, all his future children! You cost him being humiliated for life by being a nullo! And you cost him being fucked every day, and he hates it! Well let's see how YOU like it!" Sander yelled, as some of the boys jumped on the wounded Wong and held him.

    Sander then shoved the stun stick up Wong's ass.

    "You like that, do ya?!" Sander yelled at him, moving the stick in and out, "You like being fucked up the ass? How's it feel? Huh?!"

    Wong screamed.

    The boys scattered.

    Then Sander activated the stick, leaving it on.

    Wong's body jerked and he screamed as the constant level 2 shocked his bowels. It caused him to orgasm at once, but as the nerves burned out, it became more pain than anything. Wong ejaculated, the pent up fluid firing from his relocated urethra as he screamed and screamed. It was even worse than Peter's scream, which sometimes still woke Hop Sing up at night in a cold sweat. It was worse than his own screams when he'd been cut himself. It was a scream full of loss and suffering that he couldn't comprehend. Spasm after spasm racked Wong's body, and he gasped out one last word: "Tsu boys," he managed.

    They all watched him spasm and jerk for quite some time, mutely, as the currents tore at Wong's nervous system.

    Some of the boys even laughed.

    Then Wong lay still, the stick humming uselessly inside of his dead body.

    "At least YOU didn't have to kill him," Sander said to Hop Sing.

    Hop Sing then fell to his knees and sobbed. Sander hugged him.

    One hour had gone by.

    In his office, Lester Delray was shouting at Ben Toeber on the video phone. He'd just sent the guards out to follow Wong's trail, since Wong hadn't reported in as ordered.

    "Les, Les," Ben laughed, "I have no clue what you're on about?" Toeber smiled at him. "Things falling apart are they? Maybe I can send Tsu down to fix it?"

    Delray was beyond coherency, though. "I know you did this to me, Ben!" He raged, "And if you come within 1,000 km of my island, the Chilean military will  have you! I pay them well in revenues, you know!"

    "The Chileans are busy watching your latest videos," Chow cut in, "That one where you nullified the little Chinese boy, and then had your doctor pull that one boy's teeth? How about the one where you had boys buried in the sand up to their necks when the tide came in?"

    "No military is coming to help you, Lester," Ben told him, "But I AM COMING, in force! I'm taking your boys, Lester, and I'm opening my doors to Interpol. You see, unlike you, I operate the legal way. I generate revenues for governments, too, and I'm technically under the jurisdiction of the Far Southeast Asian Rim Alliance. Slavery is perfectly legal there, but then again, my boys aren't slaves. They're indentured servants. They're paid. And technically, due to a little known and seldom used clause in the contracts, they can leave when they've hit a 40% profit makeup purchase limit."

    Delray spluttered in rage, the veins in his head throbbing.

    Then Tsu spoke.

    "Everyone in the world is going to see your face, Delray," he promised him, "And the videos. Everyone is going to see how men like you treat boys. Even if you live, which we're willing to let you, you'll have nowhere to run. Interpol will seize your assets, and you'll be ruined. You're already ruined! You'll never be able to do this again!"

    Delray then slammed his fist into the monitor, breaking the connection. Across the speakers all around the complex, his voice echoed as he used his manual PA system:

"THIS IS LESTER DELRAY SPEAKING! GUARDS ARE TO HUNT DOWN AND KILL ALL BOYS ON THE ISLAND!

REPEAT - ALL BOYS ARE TO BE SHOT ON SIGHT!"

    Then the building shook.

    "You hear that?" Alem asked.

    "Guns," Niram agreed.

    "I think Ben's here," Sander said dryly, as they all headed to the mouth of the cave.

    Off the coast of Delray's island, Chow's gunboats cut loose with everything that they had. Twenty-inch shells slammed into the buildings, rocking the foundations and caving in the lower underground floors. Beneath the complex, the ceiling gave way and crushed the submarine bay. Some miles out, the Chilean navy that Delray had counted on sat and watched. But the videos of Delray's day to day life were much more interesting. "Did you hear something?" The fleet Admiral asked. But no one did.

    Delray fled his office. He had no idea where he was going. Damn you to hell, Toeber, he thought, as he grabbed up a satchel and fled the collapsing room.

    When the shelling finally stopped, not much remained of Delray's planned resort. Smoke rose from the ruins, then the power core exploded. Debris flew everywhere, and the whole island shook. Far underground, a long dormant magma pool began to bubble with the rocking of the earth. Then something ruptured, blocking the magma's escape route, and pressure began to build.

    Above, on the beach, all was quiet as the gunboats scanned the shoreline with searchlights. "Hop Sing?" Tsu's voice called over the bullhorn. "Sander?" Ben called.

    "Is that...is that your...Master?" Alem asked.

    "Yeah," Sander finally smiled, for the first time in a long time that he could remember. He got Hop Sing to his feet.

    "Father!" Hop Sing breathed, as the boys helped one another out of the cave and down to the beach to stand, staring, into the lights.

    "There they are!" Chow shouted, as the gunboats anchored and smaller invasion craft set out for the beach.

    The boys just sat in the sand, exhausted, waiting. Delray's boys, some of them too terrified to move, just sat and whimpered. Others, who hadn't had all of their hopes crushed out of them yet, waved.

    Then the smaller boats landed.

    "My son!" Tsu cried, running for Hop Sing and grabbing him up. Hop Sing pulled back, faced his father, and nodded his head. Tsu nodded back. Then Hop Sing burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably into his father's shoulder.

    "Oh, Sander," Ben gasped, taking the bruised boy in his arms and holding him - oddly, Sander thought - as he'd never felt anyone on the island hold him before. It was tender, not needful, this holding. Sander didn't know what to make of it.

    Then the adults noticed the rest of the boys, who were watching them with a mix of fear and wonderment. It was obvious that many of them had never seen such a display before. It was 24, the little mute boy, who finally stepped up first and tugged at Ben's sleeve. The look on his face was confused, but hopeful. After all, 24 was thinking, if these men were crying to see their boys, they couldn't be bad like the man who'd made him a mute. Then the little boy held his arms up at Ben.

    "He needs it worse than I do, sir," Sander said, as Ben put him down and picked up 24. "He can't talk, Delray cut his vocal chords," Sander informed Ben.

    Ben Toeber then hugged the smaller boy, kissed his cheek, and with tears in his eyes, stared at him and the other assembled slaves of Delrays' island. Some of them couldn't stand unaided, due to the recent stuns they'd had. But even in the narrow beams of the searchlights, Toeber could see the signs of hard abuse on all of them. "I had no idea it was this bad," he breathed. "Gods, I had no idea!" He then handed 24 off to Chow, who was searching faces with his flashlight.

    When it landed on a pale yellow face with almond-shaped eyes and black hair, Chow froze.

    "F-father?" the boy whispered, looking down at his feet and tightening up as if he expected to be struck.

    "Jin?" Chow asked, and the boy nodded. Chow looked him over, as if studying some merchandise. The boy was, like most of them, a nullo. He was also thin, and his body showed signs of older, healed wounds where he'd been whipped. Around his wrists and ankles were more pink areas, signs of freshly used rapid-healing gel. "My son," Chow finally nodded, bending down. But Jin pulled away. "Master," was all he said.

    "It's going to take some time," Toeber told Chow, "For all of them."

    "Sir," Sander spoke up, his face once again without expression. Ben looked at him and worried that the boy might be settling back into his old depressed self, as Ben nodded at him. "Sir, we have to take them. We can't leave them here, and we can't let some strangers have them."

    Hop Sing, in his father's arms, could only nod. He couldn't stop crying, hard as he tried.

    "WE have to take them? Who is 'we'?" Ben asked, teasingly, not bothering to tell Sander that he'd already made up his own mind in the matter. Then Sander smiled at him, as if some type of epiphany had taken him.

    "There's plenty of room on San Carlos," Sander said, nodding, "plenty of food. We don't use half the island, sir! Please sir, it's a good place, and ... and they've been through enough!"

    The rest of Delray's slave boys just stared at Sander, unable to believe that a nullo boy like them could speak to his master in such a way - and live through it!

    "Boys," Ben said to them all, "Anyone who wants to come with us, can. These boys can promise you, I'm not a bad man like Lester Delray was. I don't torture my boys on my island. You can do almost anything you want to, and you don't even have to have to have sex with anyone, if you don't want to. So, anybody want to come with us?"

    Ben watched as hands slowly raised, one by one. Most of the boys started crying again. For many of them, it seemed to be all they knew how to do.

    Sander glanced over at Hop Sing, who was wiping his face on his father's shirt. He stepped over to the Tsu's, and whispered, "No sex, he said? Something's definitely wrong here!"

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