The Curse of M

by Stevie Barry

  Eventually he tossed the towel aside and started suturing, using the mirror for a guide. Eight stitches -- not as many as his neck had needed, but more than he liked. Careful washing, antibacterial salve, and a great deal of gauze, and then he could have some morphine. Even with all that, he'd start a course of antibiotics in the morning, just to be safe.

  He was tired enough by the time he was through, but he checked Lorna's shoulder and administered a sedative, to make sure she wouldn't wake up before he did. With a damp kitchen towel he washed the blood from her hands and face, and sat back to look at her.

  Well, he’d misjudged that one and then some. Von Ratched had known she'd be angry, but he'd thought she would verbally spar with him, not try to kill him. It told him that, in one way at least, she was far more afraid of him than she let on. Interesting. Painful, but interesting.

  Putting her back in the living-room was out of the question, so he brought her into his bedroom. She wouldn't be happy about that when she woke, but it was her own fault. They would have to work on this aversion of hers, but not yet. Not until he was better able to fend her off if she attacked him again.

  He sat awake a long time and looked at her, this violent, stubborn little woman who used even her own fear as a weapon. He was honesty beginning to think he was in love with her.

  ----

  Ratiri woke with a jerk, for a moment so disoriented he thought he was still in the Institute. He was drenched in sweat, his leg on fire, and just barely managed to avoid sicking up off the side of the bed.

  He wasn't at the Institute. This was the spare room in Geezer's DMA apartment -- Gerald had signed off on the move, on the condition that he stay off his leg. He was safe here.

  A glance at the clock told him it was a little after two in the morning, and faint moonlight slanted through the window. The fact that this place even had windows had confused him at first, given the garbled explanation he'd had about separate dimensions, but eventually he'd worked out that they weren't real. Still, real or not, it soothed him a little.

  He sat up, pushing the damp hair back from his forehead, and fumbled for the bedside lamp. His hand knocked over a stack of notebooks before he found it, and then a warm yellow glow lit up the Spartan room. Katje had foisted a bright quilt on him, but otherwise he hadn't bothered changing it at all. It was only temporary anyway.

  Ratiri grabbed his crutches and worked his way to the bathroom, splashing water on his face. When he hobbled out to the kitchen he found Geezer already awake, nursing a glass of whiskey.

  "Nightmare?"

  "Yes." Ratiri all but collapsed onto a chair. "I need to know when she escapes, Geezer. I need to."

  "If I knew, I'd tell you." Geezer lit a cigarette, and shoved the whiskey bottle across the table. Ratiri shouldn't be drinking while on so much medication, but a sip couldn't hurt. "She will escape, though. You'll get her back, son." Geezer gave him a keen look. "You sleep with her at the Institute?"

  Ratiri choked on his drink, his nostrils burning as it shot out his nose. "I did," he admitted, when he stopped coughing enough to speak. "Why?"

  "Hope you want kids. You and her are gonna have twins at some point, and I don't think it's very far in the future."

  He sputtered even worse, and had to get up to spit in the sink. "What? You mean Lorna's up there, and alone and pregnant?"

  "Dunno for sure, but you better wrap your mind around the idea, just in case."

  Ratiri hobbled back to the table, stunned. He and Katherine had talked about children, but she'd died before they could make any serious plans. He wanted to be a father, but he wasn't sure he could handle it yet. "Does she know this?"

  "Can't see why she would," Geezer said, pouring more liquor into his glass. "Though she might by the time she escapes. She's so tiny she'd probably show pretty damn quick."

  Children, Ratiri thought, thumping back down onto his chair. Children. Lorna had told him that after she lost her first pregnancy, the doctors said she'd never have another. If he'd known otherwise, he would have been more careful. He loved Lorna, but he'd bet she was as unprepared for parenthood as he was. And what an uncertain world to bring a child into. Would it be cursed, like its parents? Would it spend its entirely life unable to go to the outside world with any safety?

  "We have to find a way to do a press conference by the end of this week," he said, taking another swig off the bottle. "If she's up there long enough for Von Ratched to figure things out, God only knows what he'll do. Or what she'll do in retaliation."

  "Talk to Miranda," Geezer said. "She can light a fire under everyone's asses."

  ----

  Katje panicked a little, when Ratiri said he wanted to go to the news right away. She didn't think her statement was nearly ready, so she scrambled to find a Dutch translator who could make sure she didn't make any embarrassing mistakes with her English.

  She agonized a little over what to wear to meet any executives, too, because she was her, and she knew image could be important. Finally she settled on black slacks, and a burgundy sweater that wasn't too low-cut. Gerald was mystified by her concern over her clothes, but he was a man, and therefore wasn't likely to understand at all.

  The BBC was the first network to bite. Britain had come to terms with its cursed better than any other country had yet managed, and were more than happy to pick up what might be the scoop of the decade.

  Miranda accompanied the four to London, and she certainly didn't bother dressing up. Her fatigues were almost a natural extension of her, though; she would have looked very awkward in a suit.

  It was a chilly day in London, with high clouds that would burn off later. It was so strange, being in an actual city again, walking damp pavements crowded with people who gave only Miranda a second glance. All around them life went on, in a fashion that looked suspiciously, well, normal. No protesters, no extra police or men in grey suits -- just people, moving to and fro on thousands of different errands, and Katje wondered when and how things had stabilized here.

  BBC headquarters was busy as a termite mound, but a guard corralled them before they could get lost. Gerald looked somewhat awkward, and she took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. She'd forced slacks and a button-down shirt on him, but nothing in the world could have induced Geezer to dress up. At least he'd had a haircut.

  Ratiri moved with a strange, grim, nervous energy she'd never seen from him, and she was genuinely afraid he'd hurt someone if things didn't go their way. He'd refused to let Gerald give him a sedative, and now, even with his crutches, he moved in such a predatory way that even Miranda was giving him the hairy eyeball, as Geezer might say. Julifer had scared up a black suit that actually fit him, so at least he looked civilized.

  They were led to a conference room that looked -- and even smelled -- expensive. Dove-grey carpeting on the floors, a long hardwood table with a glossy finish, and picture windows looking out over the city.

  Three network controllers sat at the table, two men and a woman in conservative suits. Their eyes widened a little when they saw Miranda, and Katje fought a sigh. She liked Miranda, but the woman was not good at dealing with anyone she considered a fool, which seemed to be almost everyone outside the DMA.

  "Thank you for coming," the female controller said. Her voice was distinctly Received Pronunciation -- newscaster English, Katje thought. "Please, sit. I understand you have quite a story to tell."

  Miranda slung her messenger bag onto the table, taking out notebooks, manila folders full of printouts and satellite images, and a thick sheaf of papers she'd called Von Ratched's file. The three controllers passed them to one another while an aide brought coffee and donuts.

  "This is…is all of this real?" one of the men asked.

  "Unfortunately, yes," Miranda said. "These four escaped that Institute, and now we know where it is."

  "But this doctor, this Von Ratched fellow -- you don't even know how old he is? How is that possible?"

  "We're not sure, either. These f
our have all the personal experience with him. They could tell you a lot more than this file." Miranda glanced at Geezer, who had become their unofficial spokesman.

  Geezer sipped his coffee, the harshness of his expression making him look very old. He told them what Von Ratched had done to him personally, turning his own memories against him, and the traumas he'd seen inflicted on others.

  Then it was Gerald's turn. "I had no idea what I was getting myself into," he said. "I was more or less drafted -- I had a choice of going to the Institute or a facility in South America, and I took the Institute because of the isolation pay. Nobody told me what was going to happen up there, and at first most of us didn't know what was going on. After the first escape attempt, everybody did."

  "What did you do about it?" one of the men asked.

  Gerald put his head in his hands. "I tried to protect people," he said wretchedly. "It was all I could do. If I'd tried to openly defy Von Ratched, he would have killed me, or worse."

  Katje laid a hand on his shoulder. "You helped," she said. "You did."

  "I don't think any of the staff knew just what went on in F wing," Ratiri put in. "So far as I know, Von Ratched didn't let them in there. It was always just him and his subjects." He pulled up his sleeve, revealing a wrist covered in knotted, chewed-up scar tissue, dark and very new. "The things he did to us…he'd hit us with stimuli tailored to our curses, to see what would happen. Nobody who went in there came out whole."

  "I was lucky," Katje said. "He use me as bribe for Gerald, to behave. He say he would leave me alone if Gerald did not interfere with what he do to Ratiri and Lorna." She was not going to mention her own method of bribery, not to these stuffy English businesspeople.

  "Lorna is…how we escaped," Ratiri added. "And she's still up there. If she stays too long -- if Von Ratched hurts her too badly -- she might kill everyone up there without meaning to. We're hoping that if we expose him, he'll bolt, and we can rescue everyone when he's gone."

  "Either way, people need to know about it," Gerald said. "About him. I don't know exactly who bankrolled it, but the Institute was originally funded by our government."

  "Originally?" one of the men asked.

  Gerald sighed. "Someone decided to shut him down," he said. "I don't know the details, but a military force came to take everything over. Von Ratched killed them all."

  The three controllers sat in stunned silence. "All of them?"

  "Like we said, he's dangerous," Ratiri said. "Very dangerous. I'm not sure anyone but him knows how powerful he really is."

  Another silence followed. "If we run this story, what's to stop him coming after us?" the woman asked.

  "Lorna," Ratiri replied. "He knows he can't leave her alone with anyone else, and he won't risk taking her anywhere that would give her an easy chance to escape. He's…fixated on her, and it's definitely not mutual. There's a chance she'll kill him before we ever get there."

  "Excuse us a moment," one of the men said, and the three rose and left the room.

  "What will we do if they say no?" Katje asked.

  "Try someone else," Miranda said. "Lot of news agencies in the world. I think we've hooked 'em, though."

  Sure enough, the trio returned not five minutes later. "We'll run it," the woman said. "I want you to meet with some of our reporters, and work out an interview. This could be a media goldmine -- you'll get all the exposure you can handle."

  Katje let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. They wouldn't have to waste time looking elsewhere. The days of the Institute's secrecy were officially numbered.

  ----

  Von Ratched didn't manage to sleep very long. Pain of an intensity he'd rarely known woke him at four in the morning, and he rose to inspect his wound and make some coffee.

  Lorna was still dead to the world, so deeply unconscious she hadn't so much as stirred in the night. He'd need the fortification of caffeine and morphine, if he was to be able to deal with her when she woke. She'd probably throw as much of a temper tantrum as she could muster, the damn stubborn woman.

  The wound had bled in the night, but not much, and he washed it carefully when he took a shower. It ought to heal cleanly, but he'd start some antibiotics anyway, just to be safe. He wasn't going to try to deal with the living-room window himself, either -- for one thing, he didn't want to bother with this injury, and for another, so long as it was broken he had an excuse to keep Lorna with him. She wouldn't like that at all, but it was her own fault.

  He'd have to be careful not to push her any further for a while, though. He hadn't realized the degree of stress she'd been under, and if he pressed the issue, she'd snap. And for once his curiosity took a backseat, because he didn't want to know what would happen if she did.

  While the coffee brewed, he sorted through his kitchen and removed anything she might be able to use as a weapon. A much as he hated plastic utensils, she'd have a hard time trying to murder him with them. All the glass dishes had to go as well, anything she could break to make a sharp object. His razor was electric, but all the bathroom cleaners had to go -- he didn't want her poisoning him or herself. The glass coffee-pot would have to be swapped with a steel carafe.

  He regarded the gas stove, and decided it should be disconnected. Von Ratched wouldn't put it past her to turn it on and try to suffocate them both. His days of actually cooking in his kitchen were temporarily over.

  You shouldn't have threatened her like that, he thought, laying his steak knives in a box. The worst part was that he should have known better -- by now he knew very well how Lorna handled threats, but to his deep consternation, he hadn't been able to help it. Most of him loved her strength, her willingness to fight, but a small part of him wanted to break her. That bit resented the hold she had on him, and the fact that she refused to admit he owned her. It wanted to beat her into submission, possibly literally, and that too disturbed him.

  It was stirring in his mind now, as he downed a cup of coffee and cleared the morphine-haze from his thoughts. It told him he could easily throw over his warped consideration of her, could force her to become addicted to him like a drug, and it was right. The problem was that it would break her, and make her hate him even more than she did already. And to his annoyance, he found the idea deeply distasteful. It went entirely against what few standards he had.

  With a scowl he went to check on Lorna, and found her still sound asleep. She'd moved, though, rolling onto her uninjured side. It might be best if she had some privacy when she woke, but he could keep an ear out for any movement. Meanwhile he went to make her some tea, and then into his office to continue working on the blueprints for his replacement Institute.

  ----

  When Lorna finally came to, she was so disoriented that at first she wasn't sure if she was alive or dead. Her surroundings were completely unfamiliar -- where was she, and how did she get here?

  Remembrance of the previous night slammed into her mind like a freight train, and her eyes snapped open. This had to be Von Ratched's room -- that son of a bitch had actually had the gall to sleep next to her after she'd tried to kill him. The thought made her ill, but she was too drugged and too exhausted to summon any real telekinesis.

  She really needed to pee, but that would mean she'd have to face the bastard, and she wasn't sure she wouldn't try to kill him again. In her current state she wouldn't stand a chance, and he'd probably just knock her out again.

  Bladder first, she thought. Murder later. A flailing search along the side of the bed produced her crutch, and she hobbled out to the bathroom.

  Thankfully, Von Ratched was nowhere to be seen, so she made it to the bathroom in peace. She had to brush her teeth twice to get the taste of his blood out of her mouth, and she had as thorough a wash as she could with the small sink. There was nothing to be done about the dried blood on her shirt, but oh well.

  Much as Lorna wanted to, she couldn't linger in here forever. She was furious with Von Ratched, but though she didn't want to admit it, s
he was also afraid of him. She'd thought his ability to affect her synapses -- or whatever the hell it was he'd done -- had been killed when he stopped being able to get in her head. Pain didn't scare her, but that…the thought wasn't just nauseating, it was terrifying.

  The really hard part was that she couldn’t let on. He'd pounce on any fear she showed, any perceived weakness he could find. He of all people knew how to use shite like that to his advantage.

  But on the other hand, maybe she could use it to her advantage. If he thought she was too afraid of him, he might make the mistake of underestimating her again, and give her another legitimate chance to kill him. The question was whether or not she could keep her anger in check long enough for him to buy it. Every time she thought she'd gained control of her temper, Von Ratched did something to set it off again.

  She studied her reflection, trying out various expressions. It was a pity she couldn't make herself cry, but tears would probably be overdoing it anyway. Von Ratched knew too much about her to believe she'd cry over much of anything. Lorna had spent so much of her life unwilling to show fear that she wasn't really sure how to do it on purpose -- and if she let it become too real, she ran the risk of it taking her over. What was the line from Dune? 'Fear is the mind-killer'. Truer words were never written.

  All right. She could do this. She rubbed her eyes a little to make them red, which made her look even paler. She'd get some tea, and let him face her when he was ready. For all she knew, he might be in too much pain to bother her.

  A search of his kitchen cabinets produced only two metal mugs, and she smiled grimly, already certain the drawers would be empty. He wasn't stupid, Von Ratched, nor suicidal. That butter knife had probably given him a lot to think about.

  When he emerged from his office, she froze. Pretending fear of him wasn't going to be a problem, but resisting the urge to brain him definitely was. She knew her hostility had to be showing in her expression, but she simply couldn't help it.

  At least he was moving a bit more slowly than usual, ever so slightly favoring his left side. Oh, she'd hurt him, all right. Good. She couldn't hide her satisfaction, either.