Lori shook her head. “I have to. What I’m about to do is dangerous.” Carol snorted, no longer convinced that anything a Focus considered dangerous was worth her time. Lori had Tonya’s full attention, though.
“Sky is convinced you wear Patterson’s tag. It’s taken me two days of work, but I’ve finally identified the thing. What I found doesn’t look like a standard tag to me, but something else, something vile. Care to comment?”
Tonya’s mind spun as goose pimples covered her arms and legs. Tagged by Patterson? Tonya turned to Lori. “Impossible. You’re wrong. This can’t be!” Tonya’s voice went high with terror and she didn’t attempt to control her voice. The Council forbade Focus – Focus tags!
Lori knelt down in front of Tonya, with a pregnancy ‘oof’, and touched Tonya’s forehead. Anger rippled through Tonya; she would rather die than be enslaved by Lori. “Sure it can,” Lori said, mistaking Tonya’s political comment for a technical observation. “I’ve used tagging as a weapon against Monsters and all of the Major Transform varieties, but I’ve never run into a variety able to last beyond a moment or two on a Major Transform.” That would serve Sky right, Tonya decided, the Crow most likely to have been Lori’s target. Lori’s head-butting sessions with Keaton must have been livelier than either reported.
“Normally, to last, a tag recipient must agree,” Carol said. Lori had awakened Carol out of her judgment meditation, and the Arm walked over to stand beside the much smaller kneeling Focus. “I can’t metasense anything taglike in this morass of a juice structure, though.”
“I certainly wouldn’t agree to anything like being tagged,” Tonya said. Something started to move inside her mind, a vile snake filled with hunger. “I…I… You were right to do this to me, Lori. There is something. Only low juice is keeping me from acting on this sudden compulsion to destroy you.” Panic entered her voice. “Something is wrong with me.” None of them spoke for about a minute, but Carol did nod in response, a moral judgment rather than a comment about the tag.
“The tag’s right here,” Lori said, frustrated, pointing at Tonya’s heart. Figures, Tonya thought.
“Unfortunately, I have no idea what Patterson’s tag looks like,” Carol said. “There’s nothing but smears, and none of them look like any of the tags I metasensed in Pittsburgh.”
The younger Focus paused and bit her lip, thinking. “I can point it out to you if you want, Carol.” Carol nodded, sat behind Lori, and boosted her onto her lap.
“This is the metasense sharing trick?” Tonya said, looking up. They nodded. “It’s also forbidden.”
“Well, then, don’t look,” Carol said. The two of them studied Tonya for several minutes.
“Yes. It is some sort of perverted tag,” Carol said, disgusted. “It reminds me of a cross between Teas’ object tags and the air tag she did that she said was a juice pattern. It is nothing like the tags I metasensed in Pittsburgh.”
This just kept getting worse and worse. Teas, the utter fool, should never have shown her crazy tricks to anyone, especially an Arm. She probably even taught Carol enough to be able to recognize juice patterns.
A quick stab of pain ran through Tonya’s head, accompanied by the stench of rancid meat. A tidal bore of agony followed, so strong Tonya saw spots. She grabbed her head and screamed. “Something’s attacking me! In my mind!”
Something tried to claw its way out of Tonya’s own mind, and force her to attack Lori and Carol. Tonya’s will to resist melted out from underneath her by the second.
“It’s the tag. It can’t do anything to you…” Lori said, and then stopped. She fell into some meditation mode.
“It’s got Lori!” Carol said. She was on her feet now, with Lori in her arms, probably ready to run Lori out of Tonya’s range if anyone thought that would help.
“No, she’s fighting back,” Gilgamesh said, standing and edging away cautiously. “There’s a knot of sludge dross, about the size of a ping-pong ball, in Focus Biggioni’s brain. Just behind her metacampus. I know this sounds impossible, but whatever’s going on is coming through the knot, from somewhere else.”
“Little help, people,” Lori said, whispering. “I can’t hold this long.”
Zielinski got up, quickly, and picked up one of Carol’s many weapons, a snub-nosed semi-automatic. He knelt and aimed the weapon at Tonya, while patting blindly for something better.
Most of Lori’s household juice buffer now sat in Tonya’s, which left Lori almost nothing to play with in her personal juice supply. “Take. Carol’s. Juice.” Tonya croaked out. The thing inside her wanted her to shut up. Tonya fought the foreign thing with what remained of her will.
“Do it,” Carol said, to Lori, without the slightest bit of hesitation.
Lori worked, Carol’s juice flowing into Lori’s personal juice supply. Carol trusted Lori with access to her own juice, Tonya realized. So much for the wedges she had driven between them.
Tonya’s will to resist collapsed, exhausted. Juice flowed into Tonya from her own household juice buffer, not of her doing, as this was beyond her capabilities. Her metasense clicked on. “Jesus, attend me!” she said, someone else controlling her voice. Her head turned to look at Zielinski. “Kill them all!”
Zielinski didn’t move from his crouch, ignoring her charismatic command as if she hadn’t spoken. Strange. Not his resistance, but that whoever controlled her might think she had a chance with someone like Zielinski. Focus Doctors were notorious for their charisma resistance and Zielinski was practically a legend. He was ready to put a bullet through her brain the second Carol gave the order. Or fell.
Carol dumped Lori on the floor behind her and whipped out her knife, but her knife went skittering across the floor. The something now controlling Tonya had numbed the Arm’s hand. “Free!” Tonya’s controller said, using Tonya to spew out a juice pattern aimed at everyone in the room, ripping off tags and ongoing charismatic controls.
“Now you’re mine!” Tonya said, the thing inside trying an impossible juice-amplified charismatic control. Lori screamed as Tonya sensed Lori’s will become hers. Carol winced at the same time, half frozen in place, the control attempt failing to penetrate Carol’s mind.
A vomit inducing spasm whipped through Tonya, some Crow trick, disrupting her controller’s takeover attempt. Tonya’s head turned to find Gilgamesh, hidden now behind a couch. He had rolled a tennis ball over at them. “Die!” Gilgamesh screamed and fell from a nasty juice pattern Tonya found herself creating, but as Gilgamesh fell he pounded another tennis ball on the ground. The world filled with light, dazzling Tonya’s metasense. The thing controlling her faded into the background, unable to work through her dazzled metasense. The thing’s juice patterns dissipated as well.
“I’m back,” Tonya said, around Carol’s choke-hold. She hadn’t seen the Arm move.
“Uh huh, I believe you, your eyes aren’t green anymore,” Carol said. She didn’t let go. “But for how long?”
Green eyes? Hell. “Snap her neck before Patterson takes control again,” Lori said. The look on Lori’s face said it all: she couldn’t resist another of Patterson’s juice pattern amplified charismatic takeover attempts.
Carol tried a different tactic. “Drop the Patterson tag,” she said, her Arm charisma battering into Tonya.
“The tag won’t let me.”
“Do. It.” Carol said. Tonya smelled ozone oozing from the Arm as her charismatic hold over Tonya grew. Instinctively she fought the Arm’s charismatic control, unwilling to have anyone control her mind, friend or foe, even in this dire a situation.
A memory of Gail’s voice echoed through Tonya’s mind. “It’s the right thing to do,” she had said. “I know as a Focus I can’t always do the right thing, but when it’s possible, we must. Anything else and we risk becoming an amoral monster.” Tonya latched on to Gail’s idealism and pulled, as she might pull on a rope thrown to a drowning man. She let her revulsion over the tag, this thing allowing Shirley Patterson to control her
like a puppet, fill her with disgust. Tonya didn’t value anything more than her independence. She must be independent. Even if she had to surrender her will temporarily to Carol in the process. She needed to do the right thing.
Yes; she felt Carol’s will add to hers, both opposed to Patterson’s control. Tonya searched her heart and found the thing, this horrible tag. She cobbled together what she mentally thought of as a broom, an internal juice pattern, and with the pattern she swept Patterson’s tag out of the juice around her heart without any problems or delays. Willpower had never been something Tonya lacked. Tonya screamed as she swept, a scream of pain from outside her, at her, attempting to stop her. Tonya visualized squeezing Schrum’s neck to drive away the pain. When the last of the tag vanished, a thunderbolt blasted through her juice and Tonya lost consciousness again.
Tonya awoke to the smell of her own vomit. “Not good,” she said, her voice a croak. “I’m not volunteering to do that stunt ever again.” A tin bucket clanked near her head, and Tonya opened her eyes.
“Clean up your mess,” Carol said. Lori had backed away from Tonya, wary, a Monster gun in her hands, pointed at her. Gilgamesh had recovered and did the Crow vacant-eyes thing, meaning Tonya had generated a lot of dross as she swept the tag out of her body. Hank still crouched with his semi-auto, still aiming the weapon at her head.
She once thought Carol had rolled Lori, Hank and Gilgamesh with her charisma. That couldn’t be the case; not after Patterson had stripped off any unnatural juice-level tricks. Not one of them wavered in their devotion. They weren’t rolled. Hell, as she watched, Hank got himself re-tagged simply by going gooey-eyed at Carol and enticing her to come over and rub his bald head. No, something greater moved them.
Hell and damnation. Carol was the Commander. She inspired them.
“Yes, ma’am.” Tonya’s head still spun as she cleaned vomit. Carol and Hank argued over whether her comment meant Tonya’s will had collapsed or whether Tonya had just been joking. Tonya wanted to weep.
Holy Mary, they were in trouble. Patterson’s tag had messed up Tonya’s mind and memories. Extensively. Patterson’s charisma was nothing exceptional, or at least hadn’t been the last time she dragged Tonya over for a visit three years ago, but charisma wasn’t Patterson’s strength. Tonya could never afford to face Patterson again. Tonya wouldn’t come back if she did.
On the other hand, she was free now of Patterson’s control. No wonder she had been so bad at juice pattern witchery. Patterson had ordered her not to practice. Only Tonya’s exceptional will allowed her what little juice pattern success she had. Tonya expected she was about to get much better, and quickly. In fact, she realized as she finished her cleaning, she could fix herself up, mentally, right now, with juice patterns – the growth in her ability to utilize juice patterns was analogous to the difference between moving from a house choked with bad juice to a new house.
When she finished fixing the gaps in her mind, Tonya looked up, and smiled. Three powerful Major Transforms and one brass-balled normal slunk back, startled, wary of her. As well they should be. Oh, breaking free from this unholy tag was wonderful. Painful, still painful, but oh so wonderful. Tonya was going to enjoy this, save for the fact Patterson now scared the living daylights out of her.
“Does that answer your question, Commander?” Tonya said, stretching with delight and sitting down in her chair. “I’m myself again. The person I should have been if Patterson hadn’t tagged me. She got me when the first Focuses initiated me into the Council, and she redid the tag last week. Over. The. Goddamned. Telephone.”
“This isn’t an improvement,” Carol said. Tonya felt Carol’s itchy trigger finger. She didn’t like being called the Commander. Good for her.
Lori smiled, a lusty acquisitive smile. “I know of a way out of this, Carol,” she said. “Tonya, I’ll drop my rebellion if you join the Cause. For real. I want you working for me, now.”
The negotiated Focus solution. Tonya licked her dry lips, tasting vomit. “For you, I’ll do it.” Lori had figured out the only reason Tonya hadn’t joined the Cause earlier was Patterson. Even nine months pregnant and suffering from low juice, Lori had figured this out instantly. “With the tag gone, I’m in.”
“You’d really change sides?” Carol said. Her voice was casual, but Tonya didn’t believe the casualness for a minute. If Tonya hesitated or negotiated, she wouldn’t get out of here alive. Carol’s question made Tonya feel a little bit good, actually, to know the Cause she was joining had strong leaders, leaders who weren’t going to let treachery or equivocation slip by.
“Yes,” Tonya said, meaning it wholeheartedly. Patterson’s tag had warped her tremendously. This was why she had tried to roll Carol with her charisma at the start of the mind scrape. Why she recoiled from the idea of a close relationship with an Arm. Why she spent all her time while ‘surrendered’ angling for a way to turn Carol’s crew. Why she spent all those years carrying out the first Focuses orders, despite how wrong she knew they were.
She felt so free, as if she could fly if she wanted. Just flap her arms and take off.
For some reason, Patterson had crippled her metasense, the bitch. Tonya could see again, and she metasensed Carol reading her for veracity. Tonya didn’t attempt to hide her feelings. “Patterson left me alone for years, content her tag did its work. Starting with Carol’s transformation, though, Patterson’s been actively controlling me by telephone, and making me forget the phone calls. She made me leave the CDC’s Virginia Transform Detention Center complex the night your captors messed up getting you juice, Carol. She’s the reason I’ve been on your case from day one.”
“I’m not surprised,” Carol said. “For a moment, in the untagging fight, you even appeared to me as Patterson does in my dreams.”
Tonya winced. Of course the Arms Dreamed. They were indeed their sisters. Patterson had messed up Tonya’s ability to Dream, filling her mind with dreams of Patterson’s warped Christianity. She would have to start over on the Dreaming, like a newly transformed Focus.
“So, what can you tell us about Patterson now?” Carol said, demanding.
“Too much,” Tonya said, leaning back in her chair. She was filthy with dried blood and vomit, but with Patterson’s tag gone she felt as clean as a baby just after a bath. “Forget everything I told you before. That’s just what Patterson ordered me to believe. Shirley Patterson is a top end witch, like Polly Keisterman. She has an immense amount of personal power as a witch Focus, but her charisma isn’t as good as her witchery. Assuming normal growth, her charisma is about as good now as yours is, Lori, or just a little worse. Her witchery? She was Teas’s star pupil until she grew powerful enough to control Teas and ruin her. Teas didn’t used to be a flake. I’m fairly sure Patterson’s been able to tap into her juice buffer since before the breakout.”
Tonya’s words elicited a yowl of terror from Lori, the only one in the crowd who understood the ramifications of her statement.
“At a minimum, her witchery is on par with Polly’s, but I doubt it’s hugely better. I know she deals with Polly differently than with me, and she and Polly treat each other as reluctant allies and rivals. Her hold on Polly is blackmail, not raw power. Patterson is powerful, but not invincible.
“Patterson deals in illusions, which makes her skill set similar to Lori’s here. Her compound in Pittsburgh drowns in bad juice, the same way the CDC Detention Center was, something she uses to her advantage. She considers herself the ‘good guy’, the only truly good Focus, and she backs this up with a bunch of pseudo-Christian nonsense. I think she’s delusional, because she’s capable of torture and mind-warping of the most evil varieties. She can make normals into controlled automatons with her witchery. She can completely remove the will of a Transform who gets out of line, and she, she…”
Tonya stopped, and started talking again, her voice reduced to a whisper, appalled at her own memories. “She has several captive Focuses working for her, tagged by her, drained of their
will. One of them is Martine DeYoung, the number two Focus in the Mary Beth Julius rebellion, a top end Focus like Lori and me. Patterson’s Pittsburgh lair is a multi-Focus household. If I disappear, you’ll most likely find me there.”
“Tonya, you were supposed to have killed DeYoung when she resisted capture. According to the official stories,” Lori said. “You grabbed her instead, and gave her to Patterson?” Tonya nodded. That piece of ‘murder’ had been a large dark mark on her reputation for several years, and likely a reason why both Lori and Polly had been less than trusting of Tonya.
Carol wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “The Transforms of Patterson’s I encountered wore multiple Focus tags, none of them Patterson’s. If Patterson had flunky Focuses in her household, that finally explains what was going on.”
“Never underestimate her on anything,” Tonya said. How many more Focuses had Patterson claimed, still unknown and hidden?
“She has captive Crows as well,” Gilgamesh said, in an archetypical Crow whisper. Carol waved her arms, politely, to shush him.
“What about her goals?”
Tonya shrugged. “In the early sixties, Patterson decided to make sure there were no more breakthrough advancements in personal power by the younger Focuses.” Tonya paused and thought. “Adkins and Schrum have some power, too. Schrum’s talents with directed withdrawal scarring are far better than I’ve told you, and she’s still experimenting and improving her tricks. These days she sticks bad juice in her Transforms and uses it to enforce her orders. Adkins? Jesus Christ. Every time I’ve visited her I’ve realized she’s tagged her household’s bad juice, and every time I leave Patterson’s wiped the knowledge out of my mind. Patterson’s household bad juice is alive, a willing ally, but Adkins’ is not; her bad juice is a club she can wield to cause madness. Wini’s is a dangerous and powerful trick, but far more limited than juice pattern witchery. She can, however, move juice inside her household as if there was no bad juice; but the tagged bad juice has driven her insane. I think she’s less human than Patterson these days.”
In this Night We Own (The Commander Book 6) Page 38
