. 03

Author's notes:

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all of you :)

I did plan on uploading this chapter earlier, but real life and the Holidays happened, so it was delayed. Sorry about that.

This is the continuation of 'A Long Time from Home' and if you haven't read that, I advise you to do so.

The series is self-edited, so any mistakes are mine, though I now have a proofreader, that can catch missing words etc. Thanks to Jessejames932006 for doing that.

Due to its length, I placed ALTFH under the 'Novels and Novellas' section, but as you can see, ALTFH II is placed in the 'Sci-fi and Fantasy' section, which fits it better due to the elements of magic that's in it. At least in my opinion :)

Have fun and while you're at it, please rate the chapter and leave a comment :)

I have stated that I would upload chapters of 'Into the Chaos' (my Star Wars: The Old Republic story) every other time and that is still the case.

About the notation:

The Baylon language is a predecessor to Latin, which is why it looks like Latin at a glance.

Mental communication is denoted by a < and ends with a >, so a mental communication will look like this: "< Who are you? >"

Some warnings

:

This is erotic action adventure, meaning that there will be both sex and violence, but I don't mix the two.

This story is posted on the Literotica website and the author does not give permission for it to be reposted or reprinted anywhere else without consent.

P.S. I haven't gotten an editor yet, so any mistakes are mine. Interested editors are welcome :)

P.P.S. While you're here anyway, please rate the chapter and leave a comment :)

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Chapter 3 -- Preparation

Start of August 2000, Villa Bonita, Costa Rica

The next few days went with getting used to being in Costa Rica, but thoughts of the kids we were here to rescue were never far from my mind and as Esther had said that she needed something to do, I had put her in charge of what to do with the kids after we had rescued them.

She had spent some days doing research and then came to see me one evening. "Ivan, we need to talk about housing for those kids."

"Yes, we do." I said and gestured at the balcony's other chair. "Have a seat."

She sat down, placing her notes in her lap. "I've been researching and taking care of damaged kids is a huge undertaking. It's nothing I can do alone."

"That is fair. What do you need?"

Esther took a piece of paper from her stack of notes. "We need people and a place to house the kids. Starting with the people, we need one or two teachers more, a nurse and a full-time psychiatrist to treat them. We need a building large enough for thirty kids and staff for cooking, cleaning, and maintaining the building."

"Eight to ten people?"

She nodded. "That sounds about right."

Leaning back in the seat, I looked at her. "What is your suggestion for the housing situation?"

"Further inland, there're some closed hotels. I would like to rent one of those." She said, "that should be room enough for both the kids and the staff."

"So, you need a hotel and at least eight to ten people working full time." I summarized, making her wince and nod. "Yes, I know it's a lot, but on the bright side the kids should be out of there in about half a year."

"And by then, new ones will have arrived." I said slowly, mostly thinking aloud.

"What!?" Esther exclaimed. "I thought you were going to shut down the operation!"

"Trust me, I've given it a lot of thought and I have decided to limit it, but not close it down completely. If I shut it down the kids will be sold to someone else." I explained calmly. "This way, I can buy them, have them healed and send most of them home where they belong, while the rest can get adopted by people who actually care... or are you suggesting I should leave them in the hands of some sick paedophile?"

"No!" She answered automatically and looked embarrassed. "Oh god, I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."

"Never mind." I was silent for a moment, while I thought about what she had said. "No matter how we do this, we'll need to make it a long-term operation and keeping it secret is going to be a problem. That hotel you mentioned, must be bought, not rented. The people you hire, must be able to keep a secret and accept that the children are not going to be returned until they're mentally healed. Then there are the usual items, like clothing, food, school materials and whatever they need, plus various permissions from the government."

Esther sighed. "Too expensive, I guess."

That made me laugh. Parker and Curtis had made billions of dollars on their criminal activities and I was determined to use the most of this money to make life better for people, including a home for the children we were planning to rescue. "No, no. Just more complicated and I have no clue how to do this, without having law enforcement coming down on us, but that is something we need to think about, while we plan this."

She nodded slowly. "It was easier when I had the government on my side."

Thinking back on my time in the Securitas, I silently agreed with her. Esther was a former member of the

Yamam

, one of at least four special units within the Israeli Border Police, where she had been a sharpshooter, and from what I understood from the vague stories she had told, they had always had back-up units ready to move in with a moment's notice. The Baylon Securitas had operated the same way before the Disease, where Inquisitors had been sent in and as soon as it was safe for the back-up, they were sent in, so the Inquisitors could move on without worrying about what was behind them.

That had changed with the Disease, as the back-up became scarce, and we had to really think things through before we moved in on something. Not to survive, because that part didn't change, but what to do with the people we liberated. We could easily move in on the sites, that held most of the kidnapped children, but first we needed to have a support system in place, so we could take care of the children afterwards.

To make things worse, what we were planning to do was highly illegal as liberation of kidnapped children was supposed to sort under the police, but from Parker's memories I knew that at least some of them had been bought by the criminals, so we couldn't rely on the police to do it. That meant that not only did we have to make sure that we got the kids out, but we also had to do it in a way that made both us and the kids impossible to trace.

"What're you thinking?" Esther wanted to know.

"That without government help, we'll have to turn to other ways of doing things." I said slowly, feeling my mind speed up.

Parker had set up a criminal network called

Erebus

for smuggling goods, people and medicine, and as far as people knew, the whole organization was controlled by a mysterious figure named

The Dream Lord

with his two trusted business partners, who went under the names

The Nightmare

and

The Dream Maker

.

However, nobody had ever seen the three leaders and the reason for that was that they didn't exist as people. They were like characters in a play and the role of any of them could be assumed by Parker, Curtis or anyone they trusted to do the job, making sure that nobody could identify the leaders at any point.

Directly under three non-existing leaders, was an assembly of mind-controlled people who took care of running Erebus, using the directions given to them by

The Dream Lord

. All of them had codenames taken from Greek mythology to obscure their identity and all communication was done in code using electronics.

One of those people lived here in Costa Rica. Her name was Gabriella Delgado and though her job description was officially 'financial consultant', her real job was to take care of some of Erebus' finances under the codename

Hemera

.

I had read Parker's file on her and even with my limited experience of the modern world, she seemed like the least likely candidate ever to be a member of a criminal organization. Relatively young, extremely well educated and without any obvious ties to any form of crime, she was also the financial adviser to a humanitarian foundation and spent most of her time organizing funds for humanitarian work. On the other hand, it didn't really conflict with her position in Erebus, as she dealt only with the money coming from human smuggling (Not trafficking) and counterfeit medicine.

Her work with the humanitarian foundation was the reason for me thinking about her now. She had to know which hoops to jump through and which to avoid when it came to dealing with the government here in Costa Rica.

"Hmmm... I have a contact here, named Gabriella Delgado, who works for a humanitarian organization here in Costa Rica." I said slowly. "It might be a good idea to bring in on this. She will know what to do and what to avoid."

Esther nodded with a smile. "Excellent idea."

"Good. I'll talk with Delgado, while you find a good place. Or at least get into contact with someone who deals with selling hotels."

"I'll get right on it." She promised.

When Esther had left, I walked into the office and got hold of Sandra Rodriquez, the Chief Financial Officer of Starlight Merchant Group and talked it over with her, using one of the secure lines Parker had set up. Like all the important people in Starlight Merchant Group, Parker had mind controlled her for silence and loyalty, and I had transferred that loyalty to me, along with the rest of the Board of Directors.

Not only did she manage the finances of Starlight Merchant Group but she was she one of the few that had knowledge of the money Parker had made from

Erebus

, as she also managed his personal accounts.

She was more than willing to help, but unfortunately, I didn't understand half of what she was trying to explain, so in the end I decided to use one of the accounts Parker had created to stash away the money from Erebus and had her take care of it, while keeping Starlight Merchant Group out of anything illegal.

As I closed the connection, I realized that for the first time since leaving Baylon I was dealing with a system I couldn't easily understand. In the past it had only taken some light studying before I could understand a system, but modern economics was beyond that and I would have to get somebody to teach me once we returned to Oldenburg Island. Not that I needed to understand it completely, but I needed enough knowledge to ask other people to do things, instead of fumbling in total ignorance as I was now.

That would have to wait though. First, I needed to get hold of Gabriella Delgado, as well as the rest of Parker and Curtis' security force. Then we could see about the rest.

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The financial advisor

Start of August 2000, San Jose, Costa Rica

The dance club was an inferno of music, coloured lights, alcohol, and people, who were dancing on the small dance floor, while a young man was standing in a booth, fiddling with some sort of electronic equipment that made the music. Despite the ear shattering noise, people were clearly having a good time and the area was filled with positive energy.

Shaking my head, I made my way to the bar and caught the attention of the young man behind it, ordering a beer, before I turned around to look at the dancing people. It was a mixed crowd, but one of them was a dark-haired Latin woman in her early thirties, who was smiling widely as she whirled around on the dance floor. She was also the reason why I was in the capitol San Jose, as she was the Gabriella Delgado, I had spoken with Ester about.

I had reread Parker's notes about her and discovered that Parker hadn't been totally sure that his Loyalty Codex had worked as well as it should have done. Under most other circumstances, I would have shrugged it off, but as Delgado was one of the people controlling the flow of money, it was another reason to seek her out.

She lived here in the capitol, had a nice house in a nice area and in general didn't do anything out of the ordinary, except visiting clubs like this to dance on the weekends.

There was a lull in the music and at the same time, the bartender returned with my beer. I nodded thanks, before I returned my attention back to Gabriella Delgado, who had left the dance floor and was aiming for the bar where I was standing. As she came nearer, I realized she was short. At a distance and surrounded by other Costa Ricans, she had looked to be of normal height, but up close, it became clear she was only about 1.55 cm (5'1") tall.

I turned and moved discreetly to one side, creating an empty space next to me and a moment later, she pressed in between me and the man on the other side, trying to get the attention of the bartender. Since we were touching, I could use Ars Mentalis with very little chance of being discovered and I took advantage of that with a quick scan.

The first thing I investigated was the Loyalty Codex, but that was exactly as the ones I had seen in the people on the Board of Directors of Starlight Merchant Group, disproving Parker's doubt about her. The next thing I discovered was that her humanitarian work wasn't a cover for anything. Delgado was simply a caring person, who had been hijacked into a criminal organization by Parker, due to her skills with money. Because of her personality, Parker had been clever enough to make her handle the money from human smuggling and counterfeit medicine. Both were areas where Erebus's activities could be seen as helping people, though that was purely by coincidence.

Erebus was created as a smuggling and money laundering operation and human trafficking was just a tiny part of that. Their main focus was smuggling and selling counterfeit medication in Africa and Asia, which in my opinion wasn't a bad thing, despite the number of laws that were broken. At least not when it was done the way Erebus did it.

Not wanting to become enemies of the warlords they traded with, Parker had made sure that while the medicine they smuggled was indeed cheap copies, it was still real in the sense that it worked as promised. It was like a counterfeit purse: It might not be a real Gucci, but it still worked like a purse.

It meant that Erebus provided a lot of real medication, like anti-malaria pills, tuberculosis medicine, cancer and anti-infective drugs that actually worked, to people who could not afford it otherwise.

Not that it had been Parker's intention, when he created the organization, but it had been the effect and once the profit had started to roll in, policies had been put into place to ensure, it stayed that way. If a factory sold ineffective medicine to Erebus, the leaders of that factory were warned. Second time they were killed. In the rare instances, it had happened again under a new management, the factory was burnt down, the leadership killed, and a new supplier was found.

While harsh compared to the rest of the modern world, it was not unlike many of the systems of quality control in the ancient world. Deliver faulty weapons to the armies of Rome, Kemet (Egypt) or Lescare (China), and you were dead if it was discovered.

This policy ensured Erebus always delivered what they promised and that was entirely by design. It increased the chance that the police tended either not to go after the Erebus, or were easily bribed, since the medication worked and that was the core of how Erebus operated: It wasn't set up for maximum profit, but for maximum ease of operation combined with a minimum risk of creating enemies.

That being said, the world went through a staggering amount of medication and even with a slightly lower profit margin, Erebus still made an enormous amount of money. Especially since the invention of Viagra, which could be cheaply produced and was in demand everywhere. That Erebus was supplying some of the poorest people in the world with affordable medicine was exactly why Gabriella Delgado liked working for the organization and that it was illegal, just made it more romantic somehow. At least to her.

Having found out what I needed to know, I retreated from her brain and returned my attention to the beer, drinking some of it, while I pondered how to get her out of this noisy place and into the peace and quiet of the cool night air. This modern world had many wonders, but many of them were extremely noisy and I had a hard time dealing with all the disturbances.

The movement of my arm made Gabriella Delgado look in my direction. She had clearly expected a lower person, because as she turned her head, she was looking right into my arm and then looked up to my face with a slightly shocked expression on her face.

I swallowed a chuckle. On Oldenburg Island, where most of the people were of Danish and Dutch descent, my height hadn't been all that unusual, but here in Costa Rica people were generally shorter and I had suddenly become a giant. Not that it was anything new. While being short for a Baylon, I usually towered over most humans, especially Asians and Mediterranean's, though there were always exceptions to the rule.

Looking at me, Delgado raised her eyebrows. "Hello there."

She must have thought I was a tourist because she was speaking English.

"Hello there yourself." I replied with a smile. "Having a good time?"

"It just became better." She said as she returned the smile, and I could feel a spike of desire emanating from her. She glanced around and then returned her eyes to me. "Let me guess, you're here on vacation?"

Before I could answer, the bartender arrived with a tall glass filled with a pinkish liquid and topped up with a paper umbrella. "Here you go, Miss Delgado."

"Thank you, Roberto." She flashed a smile at him and then looked at me, but at the same time, the music started again, making conversation almost impossible.

Taking her glass, she stepped away from the bar, indicating with her head that I should follow her. I couldn't help but notice her round ass swaying as she walked away, confident that I would follow, which I did.

Seduction haven't been on my mind when I had decided to see her in person, but it was now.

The nightclub had an outside seating area and most of the tables were occupied. The table Gabriella Delgado was heading towards was no different, but as soon as she came near enough to the table to be heard, Gabriella said something I didn't catch and the woman sitting by the table stood up with a smile and walked inside, leaving us alone by the table.

"It was her turn to dance and my turn to watch the table." Explained Gabriella with a charming smile as she sat down. "So, what's a guy like you doing in a place like this?"

"Talking with a good-looking woman in a nice outside seating under the stars," I said. "I'm Ivan, by the way... and you are?"

"Gabriella."

We shook hands and then I asked. "So, what do you do for a living, Gabriella?"

"I'm an accountant." She said and then chuckled. "Yes, it sounds boring, but I work for a charitable foundation, which makes it a lot better."

"Oh." I raised my eyebrows. "That sounds interesting... Do tell."

That was all that was needed to get her speaking and it was clearly a cause close to her heart because her eyes lit up and she became quite animated as she told me about the humanitarian organization and the work they did for the children of Costa Rica.

Leaning back in the chair, I watched her as much as I listened to what she said. While not a beauty like Petra, Delina or any of the three women from Los Angeles, she was a good-looking woman and her passion was a turn-on for the simple reason, that it made me think how passionate she would be in bed.