by Tommi Hayes
Well, what do you know? One after another, exception after exception in file after file. And I can feel the reaction, in Raj. What it's doing to his lovely, warm, trusting mind. He didn't even know about the criteria, before he was unwise enough to crawl into the dark hole that is evidently Amisa's mind. Pretty butterfly Amisa! What he knew, was that he'd been made into a wolf, kind of like a gangster getting made into the Mob, and that it was a done deal, couldn't be gone back on, no returning to old ways and days. And because of that, the Section–and lovely Izak, who loves him against his better judgement, against his professional duty–had conscripted him into the Wolf Unit, where he will do his duty and do service for his country, his State. (The State he loves and is happy to serve, with the tight little knot of rebellion snipped out of his head, of course. By me.)
To say he was happy about it would have overstated the case. It was a loss, and a drastic break with all the pleasures and activities of his old life. It was a life made anew, and not one he'd chosen, the loss of any ambitions he had already had. But he had me, and that made up for a lot–for everything, in his head. And a life of service and duty wasn't so bad. No, scratch that, a life of service and duty is what Raj was born for. His entire pre-werewolf life, looking at his file, looking into his head, was made up of rescuing kittens from trees, helping blind guys across the road, spearheading college charity drives and being a volunteer fireman, on and on ad nauseam. Leading his team to victory, too, all of that.
He didn't know the Section played dirty, that he shouldn't have been on the list of eligible candidates at all.
He does now.
What Raj is was just too tempting, it seems. Because the next file, springing up into kaleidoscopic, 3-D hologrammatic life, belongs to Raj. And everything in it screams what he is. Natural leader, temperamentally suited to service and stoic duty, brave and self-sacrificing and strong and smart enough for good decisions in tight spots, for marshalling a body of men, for generalship in a crisis situation.
And what the file gives me–the additional nasty little secret–is what Amisa knows, and hasn't been telling. That when Raj's bite-wound, his newly-turned state and unusual level of suitability, got called in by the informant positioned in every emergency room in the State, it was just too tempting.
I could pass out, everything goes black and then white for a split-second. Raj isn't who he's supposed to be, that's the thing, more ways than one. And there's a reason Amisa is so interested by the ease with which I scanned and weeded his nasty seditious tendencies out of him. Oh yeah.
It's all there. I don't need to read the file because it plays out for me–and for Raj–in a nice neat little series of incidents. The pre-processor, called in to deal with Raj because he was 'obstreperous' and 'aggressive' in the emergency room, at the hospital he was admitted to after the bite–she did much more than scan and check and psychically tranquillize him. Technically she went way beyond her job description and pay grade–but none of it without the silent nod and knowledge of her superiors. Including Amisa.
She plants evidence on him, and she's not skilled about it. I don't know her, she's not one of the standard unit, the psy crew. Must be fairly strong, to have done the job, and considerably less principled and ethical than most of the rest of us. We like to comfort ourselves with scraps of human decency. She doesn't have the delicacy of touch, the skills to do a full job of screening and weeding. Only enough to set the scene for a more highly skilled operative.
And she doesn't need to. She just plants a vital bit of evidence, plonks it down anyhow, makes Raj a very one-note chiaroscuro bad guy for my perceptions, dumps all his supposed naughty plotting down in one place and gets the heck out. Then it's only left to me to do the official job, write the report and justify the Section and State in making him the property of the State, a tool for a job to be cut down, revised and honed as necessary.
I'm tingling with shock. And I can feel how Raj, who has never been angry up until this point, who I have thought incapable of such anger, is incandescent. He's been used, violated, imprisoned and stolen from himself, from his life. Why wouldn't he be angry? Maybe I'm the one teaching him to be angry.
I pull my consciousness back, out of Amisa's, maybe not as carefully and unobtrusively as I could have done. And I give a yank at Raj, a wordless prod that suggests strongly that he follow me. There's no let up in the roil and bubbling of his mind. But he holes up in mine, a simmering fury overlaying all that nice righteous stoic virtue they liked so much, that made them cherry-pick him as worth ignoring all rights and principles for, in the service of and for the advantage of the overmastering almighty State.
And Amisa is still, still, talking at me. How much time has gone by? Normally no matter how deep I dive into another mind, I keep pretty damn good track, a dual consciousness at work both in the mind I'm lodged inside, and outside keeping track of threats and potential observers. This time, though... This time, it could have been moments. Or alternatively, decades. Here's Amisa– Amisa!–though, looking pleasantly foolish and girlish and silly, in her pretty, natty black suit and her long eyelashes, chattering at me about...
Oh. "...quite easily explained, really," she's saying artlessly, tossing her pretty shiny hair about a little, flapping her eyelashes at me. Fluoro mascara, she's wearing, and it completes the picture of a giddy girl who can't possibly be a ruthless shark that implements the Section's will like a mob enforcer. "I've seen a few cases before, of subjects who practised meditation and martial arts and you know, their minds were apparently amazingly organised and kind of shuffled all problem issues and similarly themed subjects into the same areas. So, you see, it's not really a big deal that you found Raj's mind to be..."
On and on she goes. It's actually amazing just how long she's willing to drone on at me about this subject for, as long as it gets me to stop thinking about the subject. And if I wasn't already tipped off, then maybe her tactics would succeed.
Not good, I suppose, to get the psy-force thinking too much about the ethics of what they're asked to do on a continual basis. You could wind up with rebellion in the ranks. Or at best, telepaths undergoing uncomfortable, unproductive moral quandaries, requiring counselling and wrangling and careful reining back in with rationalizations and obfuscations.
What I do, I nod and smile as she leans in closer, smiles wider, uses all her charm and girly sweetness and schoolmarm sternness to get me to fall back in line and stop thinking. It doesn't matter, what matters is getting the hell out of here, and doing it safe and in one piece. Thank the Lord we're not scanned ourselves, in and out, not even monitored regularly. Because it's not necessary. We're not strong enough to be a real danger, not without the drugs and the tech assist.
LOL, I think is the appropriate aside to that.
What's important is that Raj is raging and flailing in my mind, is seething and roiling, is experiencing distress and fury that is intolerable to me. I need to get out of here and find him, in body and not just mind, damn quick. I need to bring him the comfort that, amazingly, I seem to be capable of, where he is concerned. To lie him down and to stroke his head, his belly, his cock, take his mind off his fury, before we decide what in God's name we do now.
To hit him round the face and demand to know what exactly the hell he thinks he's been playing at. How the hell he's capable of doing the thing he's just done, and how long it's been going on. (God. How long has this been going on? What has he been up to? A cold chill... Is he really who he seems to be? But I reinforce myself, bolster up my faith in him. I know his mind, if not this particular wrinkle of it. He loves me. He wouldn't wilfully deceive me. Is expecting praise for his parlour trick, or he would be if he hadn't been knocked off course alongside me by this bombshell. Was so proud of it, a surprise, not a secret.)
Yes, there's still an accounting to be had with him, just the same. I am the boss here (aren't I?) and he's been a bad, bad boy. But first, I get the hell out.
It's all smiles and excuses with Amisa. And I
can tell she wants to hold on longer, to keep on brainwashing me, dipping it in the bucket over and over until she's absolutely sure that I will never wonder if there was anything unusual about this induction ever again. Never look at Raj, or see his file after he's gone (gone!) and think to myself that he was oddly companionable, sane, strangely lovely and upright and decent and how odd to have all those things combined with a potentially homicidal terroristic streak.
Yes, how strange. Sarcasm intended.
However unwilling, though, she does let me go. At least when I'm pulling away from her sincere, friendly two-handed grip on my hand, and have to ask her if there's anything else you needed to talk to me about, Amisa, because I've left the subject alone in the hotel suite and it's a long way from normal procedure, Amisa, therefore as a result I'm kind of concerned, Amisa, so I'd kind of like to get back to him and just make sure he hasn't flipped out and gone rogue wolf on our asses, Amisa. If there was nothing else you needed me for?
There's nothing else she needs me for. She's reassured, and lets me go. But I am on edge, uneasy, waiting for the tap on the shoulder all the way out of Section. It could happen. Maybe they've instituted compulsory scans at the hidden exit. Maybe Amisa herself suspected me all along, was just lulling me into complacency with her drivelling on about Raj and martial arts and serenity and certain personality types with oddly neat precise brains. All that line of shit she was feeding me. Maybe she knew, or maybe she'll get routine-scanned too soon, for interference and a regular check-up, and they'll pick up on something wrong, or–
I'm going to be hyperventilating if I let myself carry on this way. So I don't. Instead I rather efficiently switch my brain off as I exit, create my own in-brain version of white noise, white non-thoughts, a swarm of fragmentary impressions shutting down cogitation. Through the levels, through the offices, through the labs. Down the security vault and the fake elevators and the pseudo-corporate section, out into the lobby. No eye contact with the doormen, who are so much more than just doormen, and out to the car where the driver waits for me.
I slam myself in without looking, and all the way I've been aware of the presence of Raj in my mind as a fierce, sullen spot of darkness. He's never about darkness. It should never be this way. I'm in a hurry. I need to get to him, and I need to get to him now. Why are we still sitting here, why isn't the car moving? “To the hotel, please," I say, impatient, and this guy is lucky I don't blast it into his head. Doesn't he know where to go? He knows where we came from, he brought me. He should know where to go!
The curled up ball of fury, of sullen, that is Raj, now uncurls a little, and the movement creates a tickle in my mind, a stir. And there's no voice, when he does it. But a bubbling up of images, like a hot tub. Of my route through the city, from our hotel to the Section HQ. Amisa's office, and Amisa herself. (His perception of her is skewed, dialling down her unarguable attractions, up-dialling the avaricious, calculating gleam in her eye, the slightly ferrety nose and chin. A touch of the green-eyed monster there, perhaps.) Her mind, and the cabinet with all its nasty little woodshed secrets, and the looming of my self, my mind behind him. And me now... still behind him.
"Jesus!" My yelp is utterly embarrassing, because I'm a telepath, for god's sake. Not a seer, perhaps, but the next best thing. And it shouldn't be so easy to surprise me, I shouldn't be capable of being surprised. My heart stutters and speeds up, then calms again. And Raj, my Raj, he twists around in his seat, but I barely recognise him as our eyes meet. And it has nothing to do with the peaked cap that he's nicked from the driver, whatever he's done with the guy.
"I hope you haven't killed the driver," is what comes out of my mouth, and he only laughs.
He's not touching me, not kissing me, not even trying to get closer to me. This isn't normal, as we've established normal these few weeks. It isn't good. He stares at me in silence, and how can he bear not to be kissing? I can't bear it, and I'm at least as mad with him as he is with me.
"Why are you angry with me?" I ask, because he's not exactly trying to hide it. And he slides the peaked cap off his head, which is good, because it makes him look ridiculous. He's too young and hot and flawless to wear a chauffeur's uniform, something for fat middle-aged men who yawn and doze, waiting for their clients in the driver's seat in the middle of the afternoon. In the car the sunlight is filtered, dim and fuzzy, and the world outside only a grey hum. It's just us, we're the only ones who exist. It's warm and stuffy and I'm light-headed, and tempted to just go into his mind and take what I need to know, and fix whatever he's feeling that's wrong and... inconvenient. So many ethical choices, all my life. Sometimes it's hard to keep your self within bounds.
Raj sets his jaw, in a show of teeth that isn't at all a smile. He's playing with that damned cap. "You've been lying to me," he says, very soft, soft and deep and threatening. "Who are you, anyway? If I can't trust anything I've been told... can I trust you?"
He's angry. But also distressed. There's a vulnerability in the last words that's some reassurance, that I'm not in completely over my head, that I haven't utterly lost control and ceded all authority in this relationship to Raj.
This relationship, God, I am slipping so far and so fast. Does he still love me? The thought flies through my head like a startled panicked bird, fast and uncontrollable. And it's yet more sign of my unravelling, my loss of reason and control, giving it up to this maverick who's doing things he shouldn't be able to, has more autonomy than he should be capable of. And what is he, why is he, why is he like this? (Why am I like this? What's happening to me?)
But I suck in air and grasp at what measure of control I can find. Fast, quick, assert authority, stabilize the situation. Process the issues, because we are in trouble. "Raj. Darling." I reach out and touch his hair, and he allows it, though his eyes are still suspicious. So I am emboldened, lean in closer and put my arms around his shoulders, past the top of the car-seat back. He allows that too, and I can feel the tension in his shoulders release a little. There's a crease between his fine straight dark brows, and he's too young for it. Twenty-four, not even done with his grad studies. He's too young for any of this. Anyone would be.
I choose my words carefully, heart trembling like a rabbit's when you hold it a little too hard. "I haven't lied to you."
He's quick to bat that off, though. "Not actively. By omission. You work for them, and I thought–I assumed you were..." He's struggling to think, and his face creases up, anger and more emotion. "I want to believe the best of you. I want to believe you're a good person. I want you to be a good person. But what I saw in there, in her, it's wrong. It's wrong, isn't it?"
Well. There's a whole other issue here, the one about how the hell this sweet ingenuous mind-controlled guy, this mid-twenties nicey-nicey earnest do-gooder has overturned my machinations and sneaked around and isn't the person I thought he was, any more than I'm the one he was entitled to expect either. But first, I need him to know who I am. That I have some limits. That I'm not entirely disgustingly unprincipled.
Not entirely unworthy of love, of his love. I can feel my composure beginning to crumble, though. My presentation of the case for my defence isn't what it might be. "It is wrong, it is, it is–I didn't know either, though. Love, I didn't know either, it's the truth, and." I'm panting, and my eyes are not perfectly dry, and I don't know where my hardened mask, my hardened self has gone. The lack of affect that has protected me through this whole horrible experience, these past three years, this journey from academic to secret agent/whore.
I still have his shoulders in my hands. And my knuckles are white where I'm clutching on. But eye contact is too hard, and I let my head drop. Maybe submission and giving in is what the wolf in him, the intruder, requires for forgiveness. Because at the least it earns me a hand, slowly lifted and stroked over the outgrowing length of my silly, showy white-blond hair, too long and girly, a draw for eyes. Pretty enough, but half of what got me in this trouble, this job in the first place. That and an unsuitable gy
m habit, considering I'd been a stuffy academic with suits and hiking boots in my wardrobe. If I'd not been unsuitably, notably pretty, a deceptive appearance, I might have made the grade. Been allowed to be one of the back-room boys, running data and doing psy-scan staff reviews. But not–but not on active duty, out running inductions with actual subjects. Not getting my hands dirty, fiddling around with other people's minds in ways that will change them forever.
