Spare me, Hank thought. “Your household superorganism isn’t so finely tuned,” he said. Yet. In his time here he had observed the Inferno household growing ever stronger, ever tighter. Despite the Focus’s shenanigans. He had a niggling fear that if he didn’t leave relatively soon, he might never be able to leave. Alive. Lori glared at him, half appalled at his statement. Or so she showed.
“You know about the superorganism?” Flo said, surprised.
He was surprised Flo knew and understood. “Before I arrived, Ann and I talked several times on the subject.” He licked his cold lips. Not being able to talk about this sort of thing was one of his current pet peeves. “Have you been working on such things as well?”
Flo nodded. “Yes. Unlike many of Lori’s wild ideas, this one actually works.” He wasn’t surprised most of Lori’s ideas didn’t work for Flo. Flo followed a different household model, what some Focuses termed the charismatic household. Instead of using the juice weapon to keep her household in line, she used her Focus charisma. Many thought the charismatic model kinder and gentler, but Zielinski knew better. “We call ourselves Charade, now. I’ve strengthened many of the household formalisms, and discovered a trick to keep the household juice buffer from inadvertently gathering juice.”
“What sort of trick?” he asked, leaning forward, a conspiratorial smile on his face. This was new.
Lori signaled “No!” to Flo, but Flo kept going, regardless.
“I tagged the damned thing,” Flo said. “Now I can get by with moving juice only once a day – at breakfast time.” Unlike Inferno, Flo’s household ran by the clock. “This trick, and the superorganism stuff, allows me to support an extra triad.” Lives. The crazy household superorganism idea did work outside Inferno, in the way any Focus would lust after: by saving lives. He had feared Inferno was too unique to be useful as a model for other households.
He did wonder, though, what other side effects tagging a household juice buffer might generate. And how she managed to do it in a safe fashion; such tricks had been tried before and hadn’t worked. He suspected a charisma component to Flo’s trick, as it was her strength. What else…
“This is why I had to keep Henry at arm’s length,” Lori said, shaking her head and eyeing Flo, and interrupting Hank’s train of thought. “He got you with his charisma this time.”
Flo leaned back, gave him ‘the look’, and sighed. This wasn’t the first time he had found a way to prompt Flo into spilling some of her household secrets. “I would never pass any of this along without your permission,” he said, to both Focuses.
Lori shook her head, radiating distrust. “I’m sorry you have to leave, Henry,” she said. She accepted his point about needing to depart, now; he relaxed. “I apologize. I deserve your mistrust. After posturing to you about how wonderful and open my household is I ended up treating you like all the other normals in the household who don’t get to know what’s really going on. I keep forgetting, ignoring, blinding myself to whatever it is in you that has allowed you to survive dealing with Arms. You can’t let anything slip by you unnoticed or you’re dead. I also keep letting myself be trapped into thinking of you as another of my academic colleagues, brilliant in their area of expertise but blind to everything else going on around them. I do know better, but…” She paused. “You’ve got to have been hit by this a bunch of times, by how monstrous we have to be to be Focuses. I’m surprised you’re still willing to work with Focuses at all, given our monstrous nature.”
“You can choose otherwise.” The Focus frowned at this, but Zielinski continued. “I’ve said that to many other Focuses and a couple of Arms: your instincts can serve as a fallback position, but following your instincts is not your only option.”
“You’ve got more nerve than I thought if you’ve said that to the Arms, Dr. Zielinski,” Flo said.
Flo didn’t know the half of it.
Buried deep in his mind was evidence that first Focus Schrum had compromised Lori, a likely subject of Schrum’s personality-altering directed withdrawal scarring technique. He had no idea exactly what Schrum had done to Lori, but every day he stayed here he risked finding out the hard way.
Chapter 2
In addition to the roughly 11,400 Transformations in 1967, there were an estimated 850 Induced Transformations. The number of Induced Transformations worldwide would not pass the number of Listeriosis B and C Transformations until 1977, the inflection point that marks the start of the Transform Apocalypse.
“Understanding Transform Sickness as a Disease”
Carol Hancock: March 7, 1968
I awoke from my latest nightmare shaking and sweating. I could go for days without sleep, but my healing needed help, and so sleep was something I sought out. Here, though, every time I fell asleep nightmares plagued me, an endless varied array of them. The sadistic pinball game, with me as the pinball. Stacy Keaton and her torture sessions. Enkidu the Chimera rapist. Bug-boy, the Kafkaesque cockroach Chimera I fought hand-to-hand and killed. Gilgamesh’s whispers, always from behind me. Stacy Keaton again, with her bloody belt and barked orders. The pinball game again, but instead of the evil clown some Disney movie-style blonde in medieval garb stared down at me, equally evil, and uncomfortably reminiscent to the aspect of Satan who had responded when I prayed. Her cackles when the pinball hit the bumpers had startled me awake.
My one functional hand grasped the table in a white-knuckled grip. I tried to lurch up, before my chains and my unresponsive legs reminded me where I was. I was safe, at least sort of. No evil princesses here. Everything was all right, I told myself. Peachy keen. I took deep breaths and tried to calm my racing heart.
Damn. The eternal eye of the camera still watched. Someone, somewhere, got this all on film.
My cell remained the same. The light glared down from the ceiling. The lime green walls stayed silent and cold. The empty space where the monitor should have been reminded me of my helplessness. The guard stood in the hall, but he had turned away. The murmur of other voices and footsteps faintly echoed in from the far corners of the building.
My heart rate and breathing came down, but I heard them whispering, all plotting against me. Dr. Manigault waited in the corridor, drinking in my pain with a leering smile. Enkidu’s heavy breathing joined the pantheon of whispers. Gilgamesh whispered ‘good bye’. Keaton yelled ‘shut the fuck up in there’ from somewhere distant. All faintly amusing, save the voices scared me stiff.
My hallucinations, quiescent for so many months, had reappeared with the stress of my injuries.
I was angry and lonely and frightened, and I wanted to go home. To eat, and heal, and lie in bed next to Bobby in my home in Chicago.
Henry Zielinski: March 8, 1968
“Have a seat,” Special Agent Paul Gauthier said to Zielinski. “I heard about your deal with Special Agent Bates. Ingenious. I thought you had the details all worked out, though.”
They didn’t meet in the Virginia TDC. Zielinski hadn’t been able to get in. Zielinski sat in the Rocky Road Motel coffee shop, across from Paul.
“This is about a different problem,” Zielinski said. “I can’t seem to get Detention Center clearance. I need to visit Hancock, figure out…”
“Not going to happen,” Gauthier said. He sighed and shook his head. “Hell, Hank, we’re so far on the outs in this one it isn’t even close to being funny. I’m a fucking Section Chief and I can’t get into the place.”
Gauthier’s confession was unexpected news. Paul was the Network’s top FBI man, one of the founders of the Network nearly a decade ago. He stood an imposingly athletic six foot one, was in his early fifties, and wore his fading red hair in a crew cut. He had hard eyes, thin lips and a narrow face. His current job wasn’t Transform related, though: wire fraud in the New York City financial district, if Hank remembered correctly. He had a lot of pull in the Department, or had, the last time they had traded tall tales.
“How are they keeping you out?”
“They aren’t.
Focus Teas is, the bitch. She thinks I’m one of Claunch’s people.”
Hank turned away, disgusted. “Let me speak to her,” he said.
“Not a good idea. To get control of the CDC facility” as the FBI people referred to the Virginia Transform Detention Center “she’s had to call in a great many favors. Being able to offer you up to Adkins would be a coup she couldn’t turn down.”
“Focus Adkins is behind my problems?” Hank asked, surprised. “I thought Shirley” Focus Shirley Patterson, the background leader of the first Focuses “was the one who blackballed me and took out the kill order.”
Paul laughed and sipped his third cup of coffee. “You’re out of the loop. Focus Patterson’s backing Teas here, if she’s paying attention at all. I suspect Adkins either bought off Patterson, or is representing her behind her back on the hit. As things stand now I’d divide the Firsts this way about all things Arm, including your status: the rabid anti-Arm group is currently led by Focuses Schrum and Adkins and they’re carrying Focus Corrigan and Morris along with them for the ride. There’s no other side, just a bunch of Firsts who aren’t particularly cooperating with each other on the subject: Fingleman, Teas, Claunch and Julius. I needn’t tell you the factions are in flux because of the events; I know there’s tension between Schrum and Adkins and some hints of alliance between Fingleman and the anti-Arm group.” He put down his coffee mug and filled it from one of the two coffee thermoses he always carried with him. He was paranoid about such things, but he did have a weakness for waffles and bacon.
Paul’s list of the first Focuses was limited to what Hank thought of as the ‘ruling first Focuses’. He would put Focus Cathy Elspeth in the list as well, due to her work on the Focus Council and in the Transform rights effort.
“This is ridiculous,” Hank said. “Teas needs our help. If she wants to save Hancock, that is, for whatever scheme she has going this month.” Teas schemed, and when her scheming got hot so did her wheeling and dealing…and her backstabbing.
“Not unless we’re willing to pay, and by pay, I mean Focus Claunch.”
“Beyond my means,” Hank said.
“That’s not true and you know it,” Paul said. Hank understood. He could offer himself to Claunch, to be in her employ.
Hank shook his head. Signing on with Claunch would buy him two Arms with a mad on. For him. They thought he belonged to them. They would rightfully take it out on him if he jumped to Claunch.
Still… “Come to think of it, I can offer something to Teas,” Hank said. His new Transform training techniques were just the sort of thing Teas would jump at. He could offer it to Claunch as well, set up a false bidding war… “I also think I may know a way to get a message to Focus Teas she would pay attention to.”
Paul’s eyes shot up. “You’re talking about my brother?” Paul’s younger brother Mark was a Transform in Focus Elizabeth Holder’s household. Focus Holder was at best a marginal Focus, ruined by debilitating Transform issues she had suffered by being only the fourth Focus to transform in the United States. Back then, nobody knew how to get even the basics of juice handling to work right. Focus Holder and Focus Teas were relatively close and went all the way back to the bad old days.
Hank nodded. “I hate to involve Mark in something like this…” Mark had been heavily involved in the Breakout, the first Focuses’ coordinated escape from the early Transform quarantine.
“And you’re not going to,” Paul said, voice firm, eyebrows lowered. “He’s out of the game permanently, and the last thing he would want to get involved with is a Focus fracas like this. Face it. We’re going to have to live with these restrictions, at least for the moment.”
“You’re right,” Hank said, and sighed. He thought about the old days and remembered a trick he once recommended Carol use. “We’ll just do things a different way.”
Carol Hancock: March 8, 1968
With each hour that passed my pain grew worse, my rashes spread and the pressure in my mind turned into a grinding headache. The need for food was a constant craving. The need for juice was starting to grow. Fear was a constant companion. My needs gnawed constantly at my control, threatening to turn my fear into a full-blown panic. My spine had to heal!
If my spine never healed I could never hunt again. In that case I would become theirs, stop, end. If my spine healed, I might be able to escape. Until then I needed to keep my control tight, waiting for my chance.
There was definitely something odd about the spreading rashes. I did heal from my many wounds, albeit slowly. The urine coming out of the catheter looked like real urine again, no longer a red-black mess. The rashes shouldn’t be getting worse. But they were, accompanied now by an odd crawling sensation under my skin and a constant, low grade itch. The malicious presence of the building, eating at my mind, reminded me of how I felt the time I took a Monster for my kill. The effects weren’t as bad now as they had been then, but still, I wondered if somehow, the building itself had become saturated with bad juice.
Dr. Wilson visited me again in the afternoon. Shortly after he left, McIntyre escorted in a larger group of doctors, led by a Dr. White. This group of doctors poked and prodded me and took more blood samples. They wanted me to participate in a long list of tests, but I ignored them.
Dr. White spoke quietly to me about cooperation. “You’ve killed many people, Mrs. Hancock. Can you understand what I’m saying? You would be helping the Transform community greatly if you cooperated with us, and allowed us to perform some tests. Perhaps you could make up for your mistakes if you cooperated with us in our research effort. The courts would take your cooperation into account if you pled guilty to your charges and asked for leniency. We all know you have no choice about where you get juice from.” His voice was slow and condescending, as if he spoke to a child or an idiot.
I looked Dr. White over. Dr. Wilson was a fool, but at least he meant well. Dr. White didn’t. He would sell his grandmother for cigarette butt if he didn’t have a penny in his pocket. I would no more trust my life to Dr. White than to a yeast infection. I was also very tired of listening to the doctors talk over my head.
“How’s your wife, doctor?” I said. Love that pale mark on the finger where a wedding ring used to be. Dr. White stopped short. “Does she have another lover yet?”
Dr. White took a deep breath and pulled back in panic, terrified because I could talk intelligently. His face gave me all the answer I needed. He ain’t heard nothin’ yet.
“Do you ever think about them, lying there in bed, with his cock inside of her? She’s eager and panting for him. She loves it. She opens her legs for him every chance she gets. You think about that sometimes?”
The blood drained out of the doctor’s face.
“Excuse me,” he said, his voice tight. He turned, and walked stiffly and quickly out the door.
I scanned the three doctors remaining in the room. “Who’s next?” I asked, and gazed at the one in the center, Dr. Riddelhauser.
“Let’s talk about alcohol. Do you always drink that much at lunch?”
“What are you talking about?” he said, surprised, offended, but his comment rang false, even to the normals.
“Do your colleagues know how much you drink? You tell them it’s just social drinking, don’t you, but you know it’s a hell of a lot more than that. You ever hurt a patient when you’re drunk at…”
“Out. Everybody out. We’re done here.” McIntyre cut me off and herded the doctors out. I practically heard the blood pounding in his head in fury. He turned to glare at me as he got the last doctor out the door. I gave him a friendly smile.
He came back a few minutes later.
“God damn it, Hancock! I expect to see some cooperation out of you.” He spoke through a clenched jaw, and the tendons in his neck were tight with anger.
I just smiled at him, mocking.
“Maybe you don’t understand, Hancock, but you’re a prisoner here. You don’t get anything unless we give it to you, and that inc
ludes food and medical help. If you ever want juice, considering how hard it is to get juice, you had damned well better cooperate better than this.”
The juice weapon again, much harder to deal with now, compared to the first time. I wanted juice so badly that I would do almost anything. His words went from my ears to my juice monkey, hardly touching my mind in between. The kill lust squeezed me in its grip and my vision darkened around the edges. My breathing started to deepen. I needed juice.
With one last remnant of my mind I brought myself back under control. I had to keep him from understanding how strong my need was for juice. If he knew he held a tool that strong, he would use it. What’s more, he would string me along, withholding juice to ensure my cooperation. I told myself I would more likely get juice if I controlled myself, but the animal craving ate at my control like a pack of starving wolves on a dead deer.
Damn the juice! This situation was utterly stupid. I remained a long long way from withdrawal. The only reason my cravings were so strong was McIntyre’s comments about juice. Eventually, my control would break. My will and my reason were only temporarily mine, borrowed from the juice. Inevitably, the bill would come due.
Not yet, though. Naked and chained in a dungeon cell, I bluffed once more and laughed at McIntyre.
“You think you’re going to threaten me, little man? You’re a fool. Take what you’re already getting from me and be glad.”
McIntyre’s face turned a beautiful shade of red and he started swearing at me. He meant to be threatening and intimidating, his words meant to make me angry.
I didn’t let my tone change. “You seem to have a problem with self-control, don’t you? You might want to work on that.”
McIntyre left. Just stalked out in a cold fury, with no more words to say, slamming the cell door shut behind him. I smiled.
So far so good. Two shots from McIntyre’s juice weapon, and I survived them both. I wasn’t sure I would be able to hold my shit together through a third. I just hoped my act convinced him.
A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) Page 4
