by Tommi Hayes
Newbies are so much easier. But he's also hostile. “Record of anti-State political activism?" I ask. There has to be some reason he was brought in, considered a suitable candidate for the Wolf Unit. The Section doesn't touch the respectable majority of wolf society, which is at this point unofficially integrated and quiet and happy to engage with the rest of the populace in all the regular human ways. The State has no issue with them. Counter-intuitively, it is the dangerous ones, the extremist end, that get picked off. First, to neutralise the threat, and then to make use of it. It can be justified, ethically. It was all explained to me very carefully in my own induction.
And Jeff scans through his paperwork some more, and shakes his head. "Nothing much–on the record. Do you count veep of his student union? But the pre-processor, now... She picked up a lot of stuff. Hm-huh," he says, reading more. “They had her go into the ER and liaise."
Liaise, now. That's code for a quick, vigorous, painful scan, that picks up anything really egregious in a werewolf brain, or any. “Must have been pretty major, for that," I say, doubtfully. “That's for the real bad apples."
"Let's see," he muses, and reads from a list. “Detailed and specific destructive plans, seditious meetings with known troublemakers, consistent tertiary assistance of sabotage of State projects in outlying regions, career plans based on working to get positioned to do maximum damage. Cover of innocent do-gooder established with care over years, after radicalization in teens. Leadership potential maximising potential damage. Possibly reversible to Section's advantage." He finishes reading, and raises a brow at me. "Good enough for you?"
I shrug. "I don't pick 'em. I just fuck 'em and fillet 'em."
His face collapses in a wince that involves all the rest of his body too, at that. "Need to know basis, sir. I don't need to know!"
Do I sound hard, do I sound cold? I don't want to be that. But I'm getting to be that. I pat Jeff's shoulder. "No, you don't, do you? I'll buzz you if I need you, Jeff."
And I go in to the rec room, and sit down opposite the target, to see what I can see, what we've got to deal with. Jeff shuts the door behind me. I'm a telepath. If I want him, I know how to call him.
My seat is a big angular, tubular seventies-style affair, green stripes on the thin knobbly bouclé. It's opposite a large bucket-couch where they dump the subjects. Often enough the drugs and the silver and the tech-synch have done the job, and they're only lightly bound, as insurance. Not this time though. This one must have given them extensive trouble.
Even his mouth is sealed up with duct-tape, something I've never even seen before. On first sight, they're usually so drugged to the gills they couldn't come up with any really inventive or creative verbal abuse in any case. Still less, get to the point of biting anyone. It makes me laugh, and I don't think I have a lot to fear from him, so I get up and go over, rip it off quickly. No point in gentleness. He's not going to remember the first hour or so in any case. Nor anything else I choose to gently wipe off the whiteboard of his mind.
And I lean over to get a good look at him. His eyes are fishy, reeling, not tracking properly or even focused. But they're a beautiful dark brown, with white whites. His features are perfectly modelled, Grecian, but with that trace of softness in the finish that makes a masculine face more lovely, with just a trace of girliness. Amisa said he was a pretty thing, of course, and she was right. About twenty-three, four, maybe five. Light tan skin, looks mixed-race. It's probably there in the name. Rajan Donoghue? Half Irish, half Indian or Pakistani? Something like that, presumably. Black curly hair, extremely wild. It's probably not that crazy, normally. He'll have been through something of an upheaval, what with being bitten and medically treated and taken into custody and pre-processed and spirited away and no-one explaining a damn thing to him and–
Sometimes I feel so sorry for them, I wonder how I can keep going from this moment to the next. I wonder how I can justify my collusion. I remember my mother, her fear and her protectiveness and her caution, her envisioning of just such a future as this for herself, for me. And I think, it won't always be like this, but maybe I'm just kidding myself.
And I keep going, by remembering what it is she feared, and was right to fear. The danger is real. Section telepaths know their jobs. The Section picks the best, although sometimes they don't know just how good that best is. If whoever they had on him said he was trouble, then trouble he is. So I tamp down on the sympathy. For all the nasty bit of house-keeping I'm going to do on his mind, it's better. Society will be better off, and so will he. It's better not to be a murdering monster, isn't it? Even if you might not think so, if you are one.
Tough. I sit and wait for him to come around a bit, head rolling back and expression slack and dazed. They've got the bonds too tight, probably cutting off some circulation. But he hasn't been in them that long, and I'll soon get him neutralised as an imminent threat, at least. Better than him loose, frothing and raging and having to be immediately put down like a beast. The wolf doesn't normally come out, for a new-made wolf, until the first full moon. The emphasis there is on normally. The Section doesn't take chances.
He doesn't look at all like a beast, though he's not in the most aesthetically pleasing, flattering condition he's ever been in, no doubt. There's no trace of the change in his features, whatever the rage he's been through. But the bite mark is still fresh on his neck, cleaned and stitched, which explains that. It won't even have taken, yet. Not that that means anything. The work on a cure is ongoing, but so far fruitless, even if a victim is found immediately after exposure. Perhaps there'll be a cure or vaccine one day, but right now it's just speculation.
He still has to go through his first change. He may be barely aware of the fate that's befallen him, or not aware at all. One more shock, one more trauma. The existence of werewolves – literal existence, not metaphor or horror story – is rumoured at in the wider society, by this point, but there's no official confirmation. Werewolf communities are discreet–for reasons of self-preservation. Hordes of torch-bearing humans experiencing blood-lust in the name of self-preservation might be a foregone conclusion, if panic over the issue became widespread. It's still an urban myth at the moment, but just barely. There are enough stories, enough weirdnesses, that it's straining at the leash to become mounting speculation and a demand for government pronouncements. There are rumours of cover-ups.
The State knows. It is the business of the State to know about that which may assist in preserving the State.
I'll have to guide him through werewolf transformation, as well as pruning his mind, a little light topiary. As well as letting him seduce me. There's no need to take an active role, they leap to do the work. As well as throwing myself into weeks of intimacy and tenderness, culminating in a careful diminution, a winnowing away of the artificial bond. Well. It's just one more task to add to the list.
Although I really, really can't help but feel sorry for the poor bastard. However misguided and dangerous he is, it's hard to understand how anyone can deserve this much shit thrown at them in so short a time. He stirs as I muse, though, and it brings my attention back to him.
It's not just his face that's lovely. His physique is close on perfect, solidly muscled without being too heavy-set, all graceful flowing lines to his contours. He's naked–did I not say?–bound, and turned a little away from me. His hospital gown must have been lost at some point in the struggle and the transport. It's plenty hot in this lodge. He's not going to have any problems with hypothermia. I watch the line of his back, the shoulder-blades shifting and sending his muscle-tone wriggling, his fine ass as his legs kick in his dreams of chase and capture and the bite.
I always get guys to deal with. They tested me for orientation at the very beginning. I could have told them then (and tried to) that I was batting a straight five point eight on the Kinsey scale, but no, they wouldn't just take my word for it. No, they had to test me anyway, and what do you know... Well, actually I came up around five point two, apparently. Bu
t I think I know my own psyche a little more closely than a mere level five scanner, or the adequate level three psy-guy they had on me for the subjective assessment.
So it would be a waste of time and resources, to put me with any of the female wolves. I know my tastes, they know their tastes, it's a case of go with your strengths. I really don't like whoring, though. Of course that's not how Amisa would put it, it's not how any of the Section managers would put it. Admittedly they have a point. It's not even fifty per cent of the functions of the job. But it's how I feel about it, and that counts a little bit at least. Whatever Amisa and her ilk think.
I'm busy musing, running my eyes over his lithe body, pale curves of haunch and muscle easy on the eye. It's getting my motor running a little, no point in denying it, although it feels a little perverted to admit it. And my mind's too far away as a result. His eyes have already been open for moments, by the time I register it.
Dark brown, close to black, with beautiful thick lashes, and trained on me. He's fully conscious, not just awake, and assessing me. In there and assessing me, before I've even bothered to get started on him. But though his eyes are alert, his voice is thick and drugged when he speaks, the tacky residue from the tape clinging to his fully sensual upper lip, its rose flush. "Who the hell are you?" There is a long pause after the first question. It's as if it has taken an immense amount of effort to form the words and eject them clearly from his mouth. Then he closes his eyes a second, and gathers himself together, exhales. "Where am I? What's going on? You damn... you..." He pauses again, and his eyes glaze a little.
My cue, I think. He's weakened and vulnerable. I could take this moment to begin scanning, to assess his character, intentions, and potential for harming others, more fully than the pre-processor could have had time or skill or raw brute strength for.
Some handlers work that way, summarizing the target before softening him up. But it's not my preferred mode. Why start cooking a steak before you've tenderized it fully, before it's nice and pummelled and pliable and juicy? I reverse the procedure, almost always. I marinade my meat to the max.
I take a few meditational breaths, hands resting on each arm of my nice designer chair, and close my eyes. And slip quietly into his mind, and light a fire in it. No searching around, no moving through the levels, attic to dungeons. There's only the light and the warmth, the glow I set to grow and illuminate every corner, every darkest thought.
No, that doesn't express it quite correctly. I set nothing, do nothing. Inside a mind, you create love by being love. (A whore, lecturing you about love. I know, I know. I'm not a bad person. I have loved before now. I'm doing the best I can. And in fact, whatever they are, whether I can even like them or not... I have to love them, each one of them, a little bit, for a little while. It doesn't make the job any easier.)
This way around, the ground is prepared, for the assessment and the weeding out of undesirable thoughts and intents. Whatever their mindset, it can't withstand love. It doesn't matter what they're thinking. Everything springs from what they're feeling.
In the chair, there's only my limp abandoned body, now. I'm inside his mind, this Rajan. I don't look around, I don't examine, not yet. Too busy being love. Feeling, not analysing his mind, his self and spirit. Just opening my awareness and loving it, letting the warmth fill his mind. An optimist would say that no-one's really bad, really evil, not deep down at the heart of them. I don't know about that, and I'm surely the one in a position to judge. I've been inside many a mind, and some of them are very, very dark places, like you wouldn't believe. I'm not talking about killers and perverts and politicians, either. Regular down-home folks you might live next door to, some of them. You would never know.
But I've not had a failure so far. I've managed to love every single one of them. Depending on what you call love, of course. I've got it down to a fine art, a formula, a process, highly systematized. I can synthesize a perfectly acceptable ersatz love, deep, bone-deep, in under two minutes. I saturate a subject's mind in it. They experience it from within, being loved completely, and it changes everything about who they are, every atom. They make an easy mistake as a result. When what you feel inside is perfect love – emanating out from core to skin – and it's coming from being perfectly loved, what do you think, what assumption do you leap to? There's a perfect white-hot fire of love inside you, like nothing you've ever felt before, and it's cleaning out every dark place in your soul, healing every wound you've ever experienced. Everything is good. Everything is right and perfect and lovable. You love everything and everybody, that's how it feels.
And you're gay, and there's a good-looking guy in front of you smiling, and he touches you, and talks to you tenderly, and treats you well. And he's your handler, he explains, a professional, and you can't be together, although he's really drawn to you, and he really really wishes... It doesn't usually take long. It's amazingly quick, really. I have the process down, by now. I create a substitute love amazingly well. They feel intense love, you're there, they imprint. Done deal.
Wolves are supposed to be especially susceptible to the process. They mate for life, they are psychologically set up to experience an intense bonding period with one person, and it seems to hold as much for made wolves as the born ones. Certainly they fall like ninepins. Is it so bad, anyway, that they get to feel good, to feel love?
Or you could just call it addiction. It feels good. Amazingly good. I'm their pusher, their dealer, I give them a taste, get them hooked good and proper.
Anyway. Here, inside, in this Rajan's mind, I set the procedure going. The chants, the rhythm, the reverberations. The emotion begins, practised and easy, inside me, ready to transfer to him. I let it swell up, irradiate beyond my own mind's confines, begin to warm and fill his soul.
I know how it feels. I should do, I've done it often enough. I know how it should feel. There's something off, here, though. And what's off is my control. I should be the source of all of it, controlling its growth and progress. But there's–it's like a foreign note introduced into a musical work, that's what it is. There's a piercing sweet hum, a tang, a throb that sets up, wincing and echoing through my mind. And it's not from me, though it melds into what I'm building. It hurts. It hits all senses and none, and it's pushing me off my game, disorienting me as I struggle to regain control.
I'm not in control. I haven't been knocked sideways, not completely, but the structure, the love I'm building doesn't look, feel, taste the same as it should. There should be product standardization. It's fast food love, pumped out the same way to the same recipe every time, minimal modification regarding the service user. But this is growing... organically. It's him.
It's him. And I can feel his consciousness becoming more complete, his awareness sharper. Aware, he's aware of me, here in his mind, much more than he should be and... He's feeding into it. Not with hostility. He's not trying to push me out. He's pulling me in. If it's a song he's adding a counterpoint, he's harmonising with me and...
This is all wrong. This is not how it goes. It's supposed to be controllable, I've always been in control, but it builds to a climax of completion and I'm barely holding on to keeping my hands on it, senior partner status. It comes to completion, and it's a lot like coming to orgasm emotionally. The sweetness is really unbearable and perfect, exquisite, and when I really can't bear it I wrench myself outside of his mind and pull back into my own limp body, seated feet away from him.
I open my eyes, and I'm crying. Limp as a rag doll and weeping, and he's staring at me, still bound and helpless on the couch, trying to lift his head a little to see me better. He's as limp as I am, with more excuse. The drugs won't even have worn off him yet. But the smile that illuminates his face is dazed and radiant, and his dark eyes are lit up from the inside. With love, that's what. Just as it should be.
But I shouldn't be feeling like this, the way I do. Wrecked, that's it. A little stirred, yes, that's natural, that's par for the course. Getting a little caught up in it is part
of the deal, it's the price we handlers pay. That isn't loss of control. It's an acceptable cost of doing business.
"Hello," he says, dumb as a bag of rocks surely. For smooth first lines it's not the finest. “Darling. What's your name?" Not even a trace of laughter or trickery on his face, shining with feeling.
