In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6)

by Randall Farmer

  “Hey, Tonya, there’s one other thing I wanted to talk to you about besides my wedding.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, you know Van got his PhD in History, right?”

  “So the dissertation defense went well?” Tonya said.

  “Wonderfully. He got a 4.0 and so he’s Dr. Schuber now. He was thinking about what he’s going to do now, and well, uh, job opportunities in his field are sort of lacking around here. Anyway, he’s decided he wants to write a book about the early years of Transform Sickness. You know, all about all the early Focuses, and what went on back then, and the research effort, and the rest,” Gail said.

  Tonya went silent for a long time on the other end of the line.

  “Tonya?”

  “How serious is this?” Tonya asked.

  “From Van? Van doesn’t say a word about anything unless he’s real serious.”

  “So a PhD in History wants to write a book about the early Focuses. I assume you would like me to introduce you to the people he needs to talk to?” The smile was gone from Tonya’s voice.

  “Uh, yeah. We were hoping you would.”

  Tonya went silent again. “I need to think about this for a little bit,” she said, after a few beats. “On the surface, this sounds good. People are going to start writing about those early years eventually, especially with the way Transform Sickness is spreading. Covering this from the Focuses’ perspective would be good. Necessary and good. But I want to talk to your fiancé for a little while myself, and I’m going to need to run this by Polly Keisterman.”

  “Okay. But, you know, this would be good for us. I mean, think of what it will mean to be able to tell our side of the story. Other writers would probably skim over the Focus side of the story, and tell the story from the doctor’s side. It’s important…”

  “I said I’ll give this some thought,” Tonya said. “But you know, one of the better sources lives right in Detroit.”

  “Who?” Gail said, and her skin chilled when she figured out whom Tonya meant.

  “Wini Adkins,” Tonya said.

  “Adkins was one of those original Focuses?” Gail winced. Adkins’ longevity would explain Beth’s comments about the older Focus’s contacts in the city government.

  “Ninth Focus in the entire US.”

  “Oh. So I suppose you’re hinting that I should deal with her,” Gail said.

  “What exactly happened between you and Wini?” Tonya said. “She’s used to bad juice and young, um, mouthy Focuses. Nobody’s at their best after a Major Transformation.”

  “Uh, right,” Gail said, flushing. “It’s sort of embarrassing.”

  “Give, Gail. Please.”

  “Okay,” Gail said, and then stopped. “Uh, you know she visited on my first day as a Focus, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I didn’t know anything at all about being a Focus?”

  “To be expected.”

  “Yes, well, anyway.” Gail stopped again, her face heating up in embarrassment. “She came into the Clinic with two bodyguards, and one of them was a Transform. I hadn’t ever metasensed a male Transform before, or a Transform who wasn’t mine.” Gail trailed off. She hadn’t understood back then what’s she had done. She certainly understood now. “Before they even got in my room, I reached out to look him over and, um, tagged him.”

  “You what!” Tonya said, her voice filled with surprise and shock. “Your first day as a Focus and you re-tagged at range?”

  “I didn’t mean to!” Gail said. “I didn’t know what I was doing!”

  “You might try talking to her again,” Tonya said, in an artificially gentle voice people use when someone does something appalling. “She might be a little friendlier now that you’ve mastered the basic courtesies. You surprised her. New Focuses normally can’t even tag an untagged Transform at range.”

  Gail winced. Not another one of those. “But she does bad things to her Transforms,” Gail said, her voice still weak from embarrassment.

  “Yes, she does,” Tonya said. “All of those original Focuses are hard, cold women, and every one of them holds her household in a grip of iron. They and their households lived for years in Detention Centers clogged with bad juice. Years. Worse, the doctors didn’t like the power the Focuses had over their people, and so they interfered with every attempt those Focuses made to build functioning households. In the end, the Focuses planned and executed a large-scale coordinated revolt, where hundreds of people had to know ahead of time, and if even one of them talked to the doctors, the entire effort would have failed. They did things to control their people that would make either of us sick. They did what was necessary, and often evil, and did it repeatedly. However, you and I are free right now because of what Wini and those other Focuses did.”

  “Things were that bad?”

  “They were that bad. And I do apologize for exaggerating a moment ago. Not all of the original Focuses were hard. However, those who weren’t hard got excluded from the planning process. If you want to find out what went on back then, you and Van are going to be talking to some very cold people. If you can’t deal with Wini Adkins, you shouldn’t try to talk to those other Focuses either.”

  “Hmm. I’m going to need to think about this.”

  “You need Wini on your side, Gail. Seriously, for the wellbeing of yourself and your household, you need Wini on your side. Remember, you can always negotiate, even if you surrender first. Negotiation is the Focus way.”

  ---

  At night, in the cold of the sanctuary, she prayed for God to help her forgive Focus Adkins, for God to enlighten her about the dangers of dealing with Crows, and for blessings on everyone. Christmas was coming, their first Christmas as a household, and the problems were already building. Surely God would understand if…

  She heard a clattering above, a brief gust of frigid Michigan winter air, and the apparition of what Gail took to be an angel descending from the heavens, landing light as a feather beside her. The illusion lasted for a moment, enough for her to catch the reek of old and new sweat on the ‘angel’, and to see the angel’s wings were some sort of half cloak the angel wore around her shoulders. If this was a ‘her’. Could this be Gilgamesh? She expected something like this from the forceful-for-a-Crow Gilgamesh.

  “Focus,” the angel said. “What are you doing out of bed at this hour of the night?”

  “I come here to pray, since I don’t need as much sleep as the others.” She tried to get a good look at the person in front of her. Gail smelled woman, and saw man. “Why are you here?”

  “Several things,” the angel said. “I want you to get a good look at me, so you can describe me to your goddamned bodyguards. I don’t want to get shot when I’m trying to protect you.”

  “Protect me?”

  The angel pushed her face up to Gail’s, eyes fire, challenging. Dominant. Her face was gaunt, with cold pale eyes. “Say ‘protect me, ma’am’ next time, Focus.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Gail had a momentary urge to fight this rude angel, but the urge passed.

  This odd, rude, short and muscular woman was a Major Transform. A Major Transform who wore her immense authority like another piece of clothing.

  Everything finally clicked and Gail eased back with a shiver.

  “Arm Keaton, ma’am, may I ask what you’re protecting me from?”

  Keaton didn’t answer. Instead, she sniffed the air around her, and felt out with her hands, as if to touch invisible walls. “One of them is out there tonight, possibly the same one who rampaged through Detroit three weeks ago. The fucker has me on range, dammitall, but I have him on the linger – Chimeras leave a juicy scent trail. One came by, on the road outside, about twenty five minutes ago.”

  The Monster who had rampaged through Detroit was a Chimera? A Male Arm, as the media called them? After the rampage, the papers said the creature was a Monster. “What’s someone like him doing here? What do they want with me, ma’am?”

  “These
Chimeras already possess at least two captive Focuses. We wouldn’t want to give them another. Plus…” Her lips turned up in a predatory smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “Why aren’t you petrified, little Focus? You didn’t call your bodyguards, you didn’t freeze in terror. You’re not petrified, and you should be.” In an instant, she stood beside Gail again. She bent down to where Gail knelt and stared into her eyes. “What’s so different about you, little Focus?”

  Gail shivered, the Arm too close to her. “If this isn’t afraid, ma’am, I don’t know what is,” she said, and held out her hand, which shook.

  “I said petrified, not afraid.” Keaton leapt up to the window above the chancel, looked around at the streets below, then leapt back down. “Fear is normal and keeps all us Major Transforms on our toes. I’m afraid of the damned Chimeras. They’re fucking dangerous, even more so when they’re not doing their charge and fight routine. But I’m not petrified.”

  Keaton whipped around, trying to sense…something. Gail cleared her throat. “Ma’am?”

  “Shhh.” Keaton’s hand covered her mouth, and Keaton’s other hand and arm went around her waist. They leapt to a ledge next to a partly open window, and Keaton carried her through the window and up to the icy roof. Two more leaps deposited them on a flat area next to the steeple. The air was frigid cold and a few lonely snowflakes drifted down from the dark sky, but Keaton’s arms were warm. Gail found this the oddest thing, comforting, having this dangerous, terrifying creature protecting her. She recognized she couldn’t fight the Arm, but then, she couldn’t fight a Chimera either, and so she found the evidence of Keaton’s power reassuring.

  “Look.” Keaton whispered and pointed. “There.” In the distance, a car slowly drove down Beech St., four blocks away from St. Luke’s. Normally, Gail’s metasense barely covered St. Luke’s, but here on the roof by the steeple, she could metasense forever.

  “The bastard’s taunting me. He knows my metasense range. I’m well inside his range, and he’s just hitting the edge of mine, to attract my attention, trying to trick me to come chase him. His goal, his trap. Now do you understand why I don’t want you wandering alone at night?”

  The feel of the creature touched Gail’s expanded metasense like a chill reek of rotted sewage. Death, rot, twisted poisoned things. Her stomach churned and she wanted to gag. “Yes. He’s evil.”

  Keaton turned Gail in her arms so Gail faced her, and took Gail’s chin in her hands and looked into Gail’s eyes. The Arm’s grip was like a vice and Gail suspected she would have bruises. “Say that again.”

  “The creature is evil, ma’am.” She had to be getting the extra metasense range from Stacy Keaton. Borrowing Keaton’s metasense? An Arm’s metasense was about a quarter mile, and this seemed to be the new limit of her range.

  Keaton blinked. “Focus Rickenbach, you just earned yourself a free lifetime membership in the Stacy Keaton fan club. Even if you do have a problem with respect.”

  “What? Ma’am.”

  “You sensed emotional state, at range. That’s a Focus trick, but using my metasense. A real fucking synergy, one I wasn’t able to tease out of my other goddamned experiments along this line. Hancock was right.”

  Gail studied the creature with their combined metasense. The creature’s juice was diffuse and just plain different from any other Transform she had ever metasensed. Some of the difference came from using an Arm’s metasense, but most had to be because this was an unknown form of male Major Transform. As she metasensed, the diffuse glow resolved itself into three male Major Transforms, a Crow and two others.

  “Ma’am?”

  The Arm let go of Gail’s chin and looked out toward the odd Transforms, still holding Gail close with her other arm. She continued to whisper. “Focus Rizzari’s got one of her theories about metasense sharing. Chemical messengers instead of perceptual illusions. I wonder if I can squeeze her enough to get named as a contributor on one of her fancy academic articles. That would sure hack off the fucking FBI.” The foul-mouthed Arm paused. Gail had the urge to shout ‘why me?!’ at the top of her lungs. She wanted nothing to do with any sort of fight between the Major Transforms.

  “Bullshit, Focus. You already know ‘why you,’” the Arm said, almost as if she had been reading Gail’s mind. “You’ve got too much potential for your own good. You have a hell of a metasense, better than any other Focus I’ve tried this trick with, even Rizzari. I already knew you were potentially one of the top Focuses. So does Tonya. More dangerously, so does Adkins. Most dangerously, so do our enemies.”

  “Ma’am, may I ask, if the minimal history the press prints about you is remotely correct, then why don’t you feel evil, and they do?” Gail wanted to kick herself for her insatiable curiosity. Here she was in the arms of a serial killer, and still she asked probing personal questions. Except, somewhere in her heart, Gail’s terror had faded enough for her normal insatiable curiosity to rise to the front. She was sure she had been in stranger situations in her life, but she certainly couldn’t remember when.

  Keaton chuckled, an evil sound. “We’re not the good guys, we’re the better guys,” the Arm said, definitely a quote. “This Chimera is the ‘other side’.”

  The Arm paused, looking out. “You said ‘they’. You meant it, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m metasensing three of them in the car, one Crow and two others, presumably Male Arms.”

  It seemed like they flew, but this was only Keaton’s leaping. In a blink of Gail’s eyes, Keaton returned them to inside St. Luke’s, just down the hall from Gail’s bedroom. She tried not to think about what the location implied. “We’re going to talk again soon, Focus Rickenbach. Don’t forget to tell your bodyguards not to shoot at me. And stay fucking protected at night! This is no game!”

  Keaton vanished. Gail smiled. As terrifying as the encounter was, she enjoyed it, like one of the dangerous roller coasters at the Cedar Point amusement park. Now that she was back safe, she wished for a chance to ask a hundred more of her questions.

  What did it all mean? What could she afford to tell to anyone in the household? Or to Beth or Tonya?

  ---

  “Gail?” Tonya’s voice ached sleep.

  “Tonya, I’m sorry,” Gail said. “I told your people this wasn’t an emergency and they shouldn’t wake you.”

  “I’d fallen asleep in the kitchen,” Tonya said. She sounded upset. “It’s been one of those days.”

  “Oh, have I been calling you too often?” Gail said, confused. She would pay for the all-nighter tomorrow. Well, actually, later today.

  “Uh, no. You called earlier, didn’t you?” Tonya said. The older Focus sounded out of it.

  Gail repressed the urge to order Tonya to get some sleep. “I just had an unexpected night-time visitor,” she said, pressing on to the reason she had called. “Arm Keaton.”

  Tonya groaned. The sound of an angry grunt and the crash of crockery followed. Tonya had just thrown a coffee cup across her office, or kitchen, Gail guessed. “My official position is all contact with Arm Keaton must go through Focus Lupe Rodriguez.”

  “Official position?”

  “The position of the Focus Council.”

  “Oh.” Gail made an ick face, and gave back the juice she had taken from her nearest Transforms. “What am I supposed to do when an Arm shows up in my household, then? Quote her that position?” Tonya didn’t answer. “I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine saying that to someone that, um, forceful.”

  “Hmm. This wasn’t a bad encounter?”

  “Nah, just the usual ‘check out the weird out-of-control overpowered Focus’ meeting,” Gail said, bitter. “This is right up there with the incomprehensible phone calls and letters I’ve been getting from these supposed Crows.”

  “Crows?” Tonya asked. “Did they give names?”

  “Uh huh. Gilgamesh and Whisper. My people are convinced they’re stalkers and want to screen the contacts for me, but I put my foot down. These supposed Crows kno
w too much, and their names sound like Crow names to me.”

  Tonya moaned. “What do these supposed Crows want?”

  “Well, they also think I’m a target in some crazy Major Transform conflict, and they want to help me by arranging for one of them, the Whisper fellow, to remove the bad juice from my household. But since they won’t agree to meet me in person I’m still, um, negotiating with them.”

  “My official position is that Crows are a myth and do not exist. There are no male Major Transforms.”

  Still? Stupid Focus Council. Gail, who had been pacing around her office, sat down. What had been an attempt to quell her fears for her household by talking to Tonya had turned into a mystery. She wasn’t asleep on her feet, now. The game was afoot!

  “I metasensed both varieties. Tonight. With my metasense linked to Arm Keaton,” Gail said. “Do you have an official position on metasense sharing?”

  “With or without a tag.”

  “Huh?”

  “Did the Arm tag you?”

  “What? No, not at all. This just worked. I had a queasy moment I made go away by adjusting my juice when she grabbed me, but no tags.” Major Transforms could tag each other? This tag stuff would be interesting to investigate. Van definitely needed to know.

  More crockery breaking noises came through the phone. “Gail. I know you can’t help being the target of other Major Transforms’ interest, but there’s a trick you need to use when dealing with this, if you want to protect your household: lying. Don’t tell anyone about these things. Ever. Focuses can lose their households this way. You’ll even need to lie to yourself at times, at least in your outward thoughts. Your actions and reactions reflect your outward thoughts, and far too many Major Transforms can read your outward thoughts through your actions and reactions. I’m sure you’ve noticed you can do such things, at least a little.”

  Of all the conversations Gail had expected to have with Tonya tonight… Hell. “I can,” she said. She fought to keep fear out of her voice, and managed not to continue with a ‘more than a little’.