A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  “Fuck,” Kali said. “Anyone who willingly stays in this godforsaken place deserves what they get.” Kali cried blood tears, reacting herself to the dross miasma.

  Lori held in her disgust until they started talking about the pervasive foulness. She turned and vomited. “It’s worse inside,” she said. “Your call, Stacy. Together or separate in the elevator?”

  “Together.” Doesn’t anyone but me understand even the simplest battle tactics? Sky metasensed Kali mentally shriek in disgust. “Can’t afford to split up now.” She turned to Sky. “Where?”

  “Crow says third floor,” Sky said. He had no idea how, but Kali had provided both blueprints of the Detention Center as well as extensive hand-written notes on the modifications the authorities had made to the place. “Out of the elevator, to the right, past the nurse’s station, past the wide doors, second door on the left.”

  They piled into the oversized elevator, big enough to transport Monsters in cages. They had worked out a new command structure early in the morning. Kali had demanded she be in charge of the tactics once they got on site. Lori agreed, demanding she be in charge of the preparations. With Kali’s advice, of course. Although they divvied up the authority better than before, they still rubbed each other along their raw edges. Crow – Sky – remained in charge of keeping track of things. Spotter.

  Eileen, Tim and Tina would learn a very hard lesson, today, about the real capabilities of Major Transforms. If they survived, Sky suspected their outlook on the Cause would never be the same.

  “Drop your weapons, everyone but Sam and Lori,” Kali said, as the elevator started up. “Hand to hand.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the three Transforms said, and put their weapons on the floor. Tim was starting to show problems with the place’s dross. He kept slapping at imaginary mosquitoes and Sky bet he was hearing things as well. Getting the weapons out of Tina’s hands was equally important. Tina hunched over with her eyes slitted and forehead furrowed, more problems caused by the corrupted dross. Sky suspected she would shoot at anything that moved. Eileen twitched as she walked, with tears leaking down her face. She saw imaginary things as well.

  “You two, cover us,” Kali said, at Sky/Sam and Lori. Kali wiped blood from her eyes, turning her once-disguised face into a demon’s mask. “These idiots are holed up in a narrow corridor, too close to the corner. If we rush them, we’ll be on them before they have a chance to react.”

  The elevator door opened. Ahead of them, a single guard watched the elevator. He raised his weapon at them, readying to fire. Lori put a bullet into his head, a quiet ‘phfft’ from her silenced pistol, just as the guard was about to pull the trigger. Kali burned juice as she sprinted down the corridor ahead, followed as fast as their legs could take them by Tina, Tim and Eileen. No other guards were present. Just a striking woman in a white cloak. Lori didn’t register her and turned to run after the Transforms. The woman’s sea-green eyes tracked Sky as he moved.

  Sky gawked momentarily at the white cloaked woman. She was an illusion, some insanity of the dross, Sky decided. He followed Lori.

  “I’m no illusion,” the woman with the sea-green eyes said. A Focus. Only Focuses were so otherworldly beautiful and had such melodious voices. She stood five nine or so, with rich blonde hair with silver highlights hanging in deep waves around the hood of her cloak, over her right shoulder and down to her waist. She had full but pale lips open in wonder, a dreamy and vulnerable look to her face, and golden teardrop earrings hanging from her ears. She dressed all in white. Sky watched her in shattered awe as he ran after Lori, past cold steel doors and one intersecting corridor. The Focus glided after him.

  Not an illusion, but she wasn’t present, either. She was in his mind.

  “I ride the flow, Crow,” the white Focus said. “Why bother with a rescue? The Arm is ruined. Do not risk yourself in this futility. The Arm is too weak to save, not worth the effort.” Her voice echoed with the voice of angels, almost a contralto Crow whisper, water gurgling over stones. She knew of the flow, the pheromone flow long known of and named by the American Crows, the Crow version of the Dreaming. Her perfect alabaster skin showed thin blue veins in places, ripples over a white sand beach. Her posture reeked of invitation, to lose himself within her perfection. Her pale sea-green eyes were hidden deep behind the Focus’s nearly invisible eyelashes and highlighted by silver flecks matching the silver highlights of her unearthly blonde hair. An angel of mercy, of healing, of comfort, all in the guise of a Focus of knee-melting beauty.

  “Go away,” Sky said, batting at her with his hand, striking nothing but air. Lori swiveled her head at him. Alarmed. Sky slowed when he reached the corner. Up ahead and to the left, in front of the outer door to Hancock’s cell, Kali had subdued two guards and had knocked the weapon out of the hands of a third. Tim, Tina and Eileen fought the other three. One of the guards fired and hit Tina’s leg before all three fell. The fight lasted only a few seconds. Lori turned from Sky back to the fight, running to help Tina subdue her opponent.

  “An interesting fight, Crow, but very violent,” the Focus said, her voice soothing and cool, calming Sky’s incipient panic. Even her teeth gleamed perfect whiteness. Her chin was comely, pointed, almost aristocratic in its form. Her mouth held a secret smile of gravest invitation. “Your boon companions include very well trained Transforms. Someone pushed them into post-human capabilities, someone of greater intellect than their Mistress. You must give me the entire story, my most wondrous Crow hero.”

  Sky knew himself now to be a dark evil being, rolling in mud, corrupt and in need of salvation. Why would such an angel of perfection be willing to save him? Amazing! “Of course. Mademoiselle Foyer, I am…”

  Sky choked his voice to a stop. What was this Focus doing to him? Tendrils of corrupted gristle dross climbed his legs, reaching into his body, toward his torso, on the way to his head. He hadn’t even noticed their appearance. “No!” Sky shrieked and began to fight. He was the Crow! Not this thing, this saintly Focus entrapping him with her soft-spoken words. The dross would obey him, not her!

  Or he would eat it.

  Sky gritted his teeth and consumed the corrupted gristle dross already in his body. He metasensed Kali, airborne, leaping toward one of the guards, the one with the keys to Hancock’s cell. Poised in mid air, defying gravity.

  Ah. The world had stopped around him – meaning he moved quicker. Thinking quicker.

  “My hero is a powerful Crow,” the Focus said, sighing an incredible sad sigh. She raised her right hand to Sky, stopping at her waist, the hand palm open to Sky in supplication. “Not powerful enough to fight the truth of goodness and light. Without my aid, you are doomed!” she said, her voice the whisper of tiny waves upon a sandy shore. The Focus closed her eyes, a beautiful and inviting smile creeping across her face. Corrupted strands of gristle dross whipped at him from all directions, clouding his vision and metasense with their cankerous decrepitude.

  “Never. Submit.”

  “You can be liberated if you accept my aid!” the Focus said, imploring, breathlessly, now down on one knee, begging him to come to her, in her supplication. She opened her left hand to him and she bowed her head. The dross surrounding him began to dig deep, to spark within, an attack on his own glow. “I can cleanse you of this hideous darkness and bring you into the pure fire of utter goodness. I can redeem you from your evil ways, Crow,” the white Focus said, raising her head from her bow. “I can preserve the true fire within you, but only if you choose to let me guide you. Only from me will come your salvation!”

  She wasn’t here. Wherever the white Focus lived must be a place like this, corrupt of dross. Her presence was only possible through the resonances of the minds of the Major Transforms who were present and the resonance of dross so corrupt. She was a piece of Kali, of Lori, of Hancock and of himself, made to function by the will of the White Focus, powered by the gristle dross of this place, resonating with the gristle dross of the Focus’s home. All in s
ome electromagnetic, chemical and arcane manner. The living fetor of the gristle dross had joined with her spirit, an abomination of vital sepsis, now growing into Sky’s very being. The words of the Focus belied her actions as she attacked him.

  “Non!”

  “By the life that lives within us all, I can break you free of the evil that binds you. But only if you let me! I can save your soul, Crow. By doing so, I can qualify you to become of the elect, those who serve my cause of goodness and truth! I am the one light, Crow, and I call you home to me!”

  One light? This was not the way of the Buddha. Or of Catholicism. Even so, bit by bit, his glow, his internal mixture of juice and dross that made up his élan, twisted. Imprinted by the Focus’s pattern. Betrayed by his fickle subconscious he had let her in, and he was lost.

  “Thank you, dear Crow,” the white Focus sang, her words now liquid music out of the sea. She looked at him anew, her face a vision to break Sky’s heart. “Out with the old. In with the new,” the white Focus chanted. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, he is stamping out the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored,” she sang, quiet, inviting, vulnerable, vacant eyed and yet triumphant. The sound of unstopping oceans filled his ears.

  The white Focus spread her hands to him again, in fervent invitation. Sky’s mind whirled as the putrescence of the rancid corruption of the building, the no longer quiescent gristle dross, bound him. He tried to recoil as the dross effluvium poured into him, but he could not. “Your acceptance has proven insufficient to save you, alas, my hero,” the Focus said, her voice husky and boudoir inviting. “Come to my arms. Let me heal you with my loving touch. Come let me protect you from this evil!”

  He had no target to attack. Where he perceived the unearthly Focus was nothing. Skunking the white Focus, here in the corridor, would fail, because she wasn’t present to be skunked. If he did so, he would cut off the escape route of his companions. Or, if the Focus had twisted his mind and messed up his aim, he might skunk his companions, bring them down, and end the mission right there.

  In his mind, he saw all of them fallen, saw Lori fallen.

  He refused to let such a thing happen.

  “I am one,” Sky said. He knew of only one way out, a way of horror. “I am immanent, Buddha made flesh. A perfect silence surrounds me, transforms me. The world is as it is. Your attack is mine. I claim this place!” Sky placed his will on the dross and from his inner silence summoned the method truly sublime, the secret trick of all senior Crows that amplified and allowed their minor efforts to become immense. The catalyst acting on itself, catalyst catalyzing catalyst, building, building, to infinity. All did become silent, a silence that went on and on in this imaginary place of no-time-at-all. Finally, in the well of silence around him, his juice and dross moved inside him, shattering the Focus’s pattern impressed upon his glow…and his perceived reality changed.

  The corruption of the CDC became his. All its years, all the deaths, all the suffering, all the gristle and sludge dross, the entire living torture of a building gone bad, this immense unwholesome cesspool of decay became Sky.

  The Focus diminished, faded, her hands covering her mouth in horror of Sky’s actions. “My Holy Jesus,” the Focus said, her voice a pale whisper fleeing on a gathering gale of terror. “I cannot save one such as you. You have desecrated the temple of your…” The Focus’s voice faded away as she vanished from his sight and from his metasense.

  Time lurched forward out of the entrapping nightmare instant. He fell to the floor of the CDC building, twitching, clawing at himself, drawing gouges across his skin. Dross overflowed from him and leaked out across the floor, illusions from his subconscious, tiny mirror images of the white Focus spreading out Dali-esque around him, melting away, melting away.

  “I’ll get the Arm. She isn’t safe… What the fuck happened to Sam?” Kali said.

  “Dammit,” Lori said, gasping at Sky, uncomprehending. “The bad juice of this place got to him through his connection with Crow.”

  Good save, love. The whispering sound of distant oceans would not leave Sky’s ears. There was a reason he rarely called on the method; the method was far too dangerous for a poorly trained senior Crow like himself to use.

  “Okay. We cope,” Kali said. “You said this might happen, so we cope. Eileen, can you pick… lightweight sucker, isn’t he?”

  Sky couldn’t move, couldn’t feel anything, could do little else save twitch. Eileen carried him on her shoulder like a bag of onions or a large inflatable bed toy. Hancock bobbed beside him, draped over Kali’s shoulder. The rescue team, those still standing, ran back to the elevator, and entered. Tim picked up weapons as Lori inspected Tina’s wound. Lori reached into her pockets and spilled spare clips, a set of lockpicks and a roll of bandages on the floor. She tied one of the bandages on Tina’s leg and scrabbled after the lockpicks.

  “Oh, crap,” Eileen said, as the elevator descended. “Sam’s like the concentrated bad juice of this place. He…” She turned away from Kali and vomited on her Focus’s back. “Uh-accch! Sorry, Focus.”

  “Just don’t drop him,” Lori said, crawling away from Eileen. Sky looked into Hancock and his metasense flashbulbed to stare into the brilliance of an Arm so close. Chaos. Juice hunger. Nothing else. The potential for human life remained, but lay dormant and shattered. All was lost. They had staged a rescue, and come out with little more than a mockery of a Major Transform as the result.

  The elevator door opened in the basement, the last shots of the firefight echoing in the distance. They hurried up the ramp to the personnel exit door, which Kali unblocked. They sprinted, illuminated by the building’s exterior floodlights, over to the VW, eyes out for enemies. Eileen tossed Sky on a seat, turned to help stow weapons and dragged Tina over to the seat next to him.

  “Thank you, Focus,” Tina said. “Thank you.” Lori took Tina’s pain away, flooding her with juice. Eileen climbed into the driver’s seat of the van, started the VW, and rolled off, out of the accusatory stare of the floodlights.

  “Kali,” Sky said. The dross linking him to the cesspool of the Detention Center started to stretch as they left the building and he shrieked in pain as it tore him apart.

  “She’s opening the stopcocks on the tanker,” Tina said. “There’s going to be a big big big big…” explosion, Sky finished for Tina. Tina’s voice had trailed off in pleasure. Sky heard Kali’s footfalls as she burned juice to catch up to the van.

  “Untag the one on the left,” Kali called out, now inside the van with a leap and a rocking thud. “I’m about spent.” Kali shoved Hancock down in the middle of the bus, resting on a pile of medical supplies.

  Sky’s metasense flickered, no longer under his control. Somewhere in this mess, Kali had taken a half dozen bullets in her upper back, likely while setting off the firefight. She should have been dead. But Kali was death; she continued on, despite her wounds.

  “Untagged,” Lori said. Lori sat in the front passenger seat, swiveling back and forth, watching everything. Sky sensed her in his head, in all their heads, adjusting their mental states and keeping them functional. Or at least more functional than they should have been. “Cops coming. Firing.”

  The building exploded behind them, then past them. The van skidded sideways from the force of the explosion, off the asphalt and over to the slick wet grass amidst chunks of falling concrete. Eileen feathered the brakes and turned into the skid. The van tipped for a moment, up on its left-side wheels, but righted itself under Eileen’s firm control. Screams of burned men echoed from behind them and a few desultory gunshots hit the van, one shattering glass and the rest poinging off the van’s sheet metal. Back on the asphalt, Eileen stepped on the gas. Fighting a stall the van accelerated forward, not even fast enough to burn rubber.

  The CDC building burned on its own now, its gristle dross consumed in the conflagration. The dross wasn’t supernatural, nor unreal, and not psychological; gristle dross was real, chemical, and qu
ite susceptible to heat and flame, losing its chemical identity at around 80º centigrade. Sky’s connection to the gristle dross vanished in a few moments. Save for the building’s dross surviving inside Sky, it was gone.

  Sky screamed. Pain, agony. His body spasmed two, three times, before he relaxed. He felt his hands again, then his feet, and soon, his entire body. Giddy, achy, hands shaking. They passed the guard station at the inner gate, unmanned. The lights blinded him on the way by, and Sky flung his arm over his eyes.

  Low juice. Not possible. He felt full up. Full up on the worthless gristle and sludge dross of the CDC building, though. So corrupt as to be useless. Now he understood how he had defeated the white Focus, if there ever was such a creature. He had filled himself up with the corrupted dross to where he had driven out all his good juice, except for his fundamental juice. Made himself powerless. It didn’t matter whether the Focus was real or a psychotic illusion generated by his own mind: he had done the attack to himself. At the edge of withdrawal, he had made himself powerless so he wouldn’t be able to destroy himself.

  So why couldn’t he snap out of it? Sky screamed as his metasense snapped on, revealing the carnage inside the van. Everyone except Eileen was wounded. His metasense flickered off. He didn’t understand the chaos, and he couldn’t stop it.

  Kali echoed his scream, in her case pleasure as she finished draining the sixteen year old boy. She hadn’t been able to control herself and had taken him too fast, in less than thirty seconds, while still too close to the CDC building and its horrible dross. Kali passed out in a faint.

  The van and its wounded inhabitants drove off into the night. Behind them, minutes later, the angry sound of sirens followed them away.