Lever was your basic tomboy who never grew out of it, one of those women who never got interested in boys and never admitted to herself she was interested in other girls. The ‘only girl in shop class’ sort of person. Luckily, she did this in the ‘60s, and thus didn’t end up in a state school for chronically uncooperative young ladies, as girls would have back before then. She was good with automobiles, and after school you could always find her in her parent’s garage, fiddling with one of her or her friends’ cars.
As a high school graduation present, she got the Shakes.
One’s quality as a Transform doesn’t equate to one’s innate worth as a person, one’s intellect, or anything else. There’s no magic, no metaphor, no nothing except the ongoing effects of the juice on one’s personality, and vice versa. Lever’s transformation left her angry and willing to carry out her anger. After she carved up several fellow Transforms, and after her Focus couldn’t bring her under control, Lever got shipped to that ultimate ego squisher and sadistic Transform tamer, Focus Tonya Biggioni.
Their initial conversation went something like this: “Hello. I’m here for you and will help you understand your issues at the appropriate times. Of course, you’ll have some problems with low juice during the times when you’re understanding your issues. Pain. Heh heh heh.”
“Ma’am, I don’t want to be a problem. Please. It’s just at times, something inside me takes over and I hurt people. It just happens. Your car needs a ring job, as well.”
Focus Biggioni knows her stuff, and after two days of dinking with Lever’s brain, she discovered that Lever’s problems weren’t psychological, but a direct result of her transformation. Nothing Tonya could do would affect her, or, well, affect her and leave Lever as a thinking being.
So she and Lever sat down and laid out the options, which weren’t pretty. Basically, Lever had the choice of being turned into a vegetable, going Monster, or dying. Lever chose death, probably rolled fifty ways to Sunday because Tonya was about as anti-Monster as a human being can be. Tonya suggested having an Arm do the dirty work, because dying that way was at least painless. Then she called her bosom buddy Arm Keaton, to arrange a deal.
Keaton had done one of these true volunteers before, and still gets sappy about it. She didn’t want to let another victim into her heart and she didn’t want to pay Tonya for the privilege, so she referred the matter to Carol. Given Keaton’s manipulation skills, I suspect this was a poisoned pawn gambit.
Being of quite different temperament than Keaton, Carol decided to pay Lever a call in person, in Tonya’s place, to arrange the deal. Tonya did herself proud and put on a wonderful show for her, in the crappy little dilapidated nineteenth century inner city Philadelphia hotel that she and her people were renovating. Turned out she didn’t need to bother. Carol talked to Lever for only two minutes, and then said “Hey, babe, would you rather live?”
“Sure, Arm Hancock!”
“Well, I’ve got a way that will work.”
Lever’s personality, although not particularly welcome in a Focus household, was something easily handled by an Arm tag. Trivially, in fact. Oh, she’s still violent whenever her juice quirks flared up, but violence in an Arm organization isn’t a particularly black mark. Violence is something that just happens around Arms, like brushing teeth or taking a crap. Since I’m in charge of her, she can’t kill anyone in my organization. Unless, of course, I give her permission.
Focus Biggioni was appreciatively appalled. She had thought she had given Carol a juice treat Carol would end up paying a bunch for. Instead, Carol saved the life of a Transform, for which Focus Biggioni had to pay her for. Not for the first time, at least for the part about saving the life of a Transform. Although Carol puts on the airs of being a horrible unrepentant monster, she is, in her heart of hearts, as much of a hero as I am. Just don’t mention it to her – she’ll get all growly at you and consider this an egregious dominance display. Focus Rizzari, the putative head of the Cause that’s attempting to save more Transforms lives than we do now, calls this thematic repetition. She says Carol’s trying to save as many innocent lives as possible to balance the innocents she killed back when she was a damned fool of a baby Arm.
Luckily for me, Lever didn’t fit into Carol’s organization. Her people buy their rides and sell them when they need repair, if they last that long. Most end up with funky red stains and many little holes in them, and get shipped off to Mexico before their warranties expire.
On the other hand, one of the pieces of my organization involves high-end car repair. Carol approached me and we worked out a deal – I gave her personality profiles on the upper echelons of the state government of Georgia and the Focuses of Atlanta. She gave me Lever.
Technically, taking care of Lever is a pain. Whenever I move, I need to arrange with the Focus Council a deal with a strong willed and secretive Focus to keep Lever in juice. Simplifying things, the Focus gets extra juice for her household juice buffer without having to pay for room and board. Keeping Lever’s temper in check around said Focuses is an ongoing problem, though.
However, once we got Lever properly trained as a Transform, she turned out to be about as top of the line an auto mechanic and internal combustion engine engineer as it was possible to be. She’s also a decent straw-boss, and sooner or later she’s going to be running my auto shop. Lever’s worth her weight in chrome.
---
Nancy wiped her eyes from the laughter. “I didn’t know Arms had a sense of humor.”
“Some of us do.” Arm Haggerty paused. “Where did Gail go?”
“A phone call,” I said. Gail and her chief bodyguard, Kurt, ran off part way through Arm Haggerty’s presentation. I thought Amy’s presentation riveting, but Gail apparently had a different opinion.
“I’ll wait.”
Gail came back five minutes later, her face an impassive mask. “We’ve got a problem. I’ve been summoned over to Focus Adkins place. Unless you want the worst experience of your life, Nancy, you’d better get going on this quest.”
“I was about to suggest the same,” Haggerty said. The Arm handed the walkie to Gail. “You’d better arrange back-up. Adkins can’t be happy about Wendy leaving town, as Wendy was her lever on Keaton.”
I took a step back, in shock, but kept my mouth closed. Some Focus kept Arm Keaton in line by threatening to harm her Focus friend? Was this Focus insane? You controlled Arms by tossing them morsels of red meat – metaphorically speaking – not by threatening to harm their children – metaphorically speaking.
Yah, okay, where did that come from? Actually, I no longer bothered to ask the mental question. I just accepted the impossible.
“Arm Keaton, we have a problem,” Gail said. “Or at least I do.”
Squawk. “Talk to me, kid.”
“This way,” Arm Haggerty said, dragging Nancy and me away from Gail’s conversation with Arm Keaton. “The sooner we’re across the border to Canada, the better.”
Gail Rickenbach: October 9, 1971
The hammer came down on Gail’s middle finger, breaking it. The thumb and index finger on her right hand were already broken. Adkins’ nameless male Transform waited until Adkins signaled before breaking her next finger.
Tears rolled down Gail’s face. She had never learned to manage pain. Pain hurt, dammit, and pain like this, mixed with humiliation, hurt worse. Another signal from Adkins, and the beefy Transform who held her hair in both hands swiveled Gail’s head to force her to look at Focus Adkins.
“Where’s Wendy?” Adkins asked.
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“Is she dead?”
“I don’t know, ma’am.”
“You lie,” Adkins said. She nodded at the beefy Transform. The hammer swung. He shattered her pinkie.
“No, please.” Gail barely got the words out before she needed to stop, to force back another round of vomiting.
Adkins pointed, and the hammer swung again, breaking one of the bones in the p
alm of her hand. “Who did she add to her household? Who was that woman?”
“I don’t know.”
The hammer fell again, breaking another bone in her palm.
“Please, please, I don’t know anything,” Gail said. Again. Lying. All lies.
She wasn’t sure whether Adkins would realize it if Gail started to ‘play games’ – Adkins’ words – with her charisma. She firmly believed, though, that Adkins would destroy her household if she did. Gail couldn’t afford the risk.
After a long while, just before the goon swinging the hammer was about to go after her lower arm, Adkins made a cutting motion with her hand.
“Enough. She’s clueless.”
Tears rolled down Gail’s face, and didn’t stop. When the man put the hammer away, she let herself howl and blubber.
“Quit that, Rickenbach,” Adkins said. “You can use your damned charisma on yourself, now.”
Gail did so, and the tear fountain and hysterics stopped. She was a rock, a rock filled with pain, but now, she wouldn’t let the world hear about it.
“Good, good. I hope you don’t hold any hard feelings toward me, but there are times when discipline is necessary,” Adkins said.
Oh, my feelings are plenty hard, Gail thought. You’ll never hear about them, though, not until the moment you die at my hands. I can’t believe I once thought you were salvageable.
“So regarding the suggestion you made to me last week…” Adkins said, a small smile playing on the corners of her lips.
Gail nodded. Go on, go on, you sadistic moron. Gail’s suggestion likely triggered this interrogation, or at least made it harsher. How could she predict that two days after her suggestion, Wendy would up and vanish, leaving behind a charred junkyard? Just Gail’s luck. Her cursed luck.
Focus Adkins pulled out a butcher knife. “Cut off your ruined hand. If you can cut off your hand, the job is yours. That would be one better than the Focus who holds it now, as she only offered me a finger.”
Shut the fuck up, you sadistic lunatic bitch! Gail wanted to scream. She held in her voice and mutely shook her head. Adkins was farther off her rocker than Gail had ever imagined in her worst nightmares. Not at all close to sane.
“I guess you aren’t as tough as you think, Focus Rickenbach,” Adkins said, and turned away. “You need to be that tough to take Esther’s place on the Council. You want the job? Be tougher.” She sighed, a symphonic work of art. “Let her go. Send her back to her household.”
They bundled her up, actually picked her up, and took her to the front door of the basement apartment where Adkins and her enslaved household did their dirty work. Cold eyes watched from the other apartments in the building that housed Adkins and her household. Gail shivered uncontrollably, resistance to both kinds of cold lost in the misery, and too busy using her charisma to stop the hysterics to manage the cold.
The guards carried her across the parking lot to the barbed wire-topped front gate, where they unceremoniously dropped her at the feet of Kurt and Sylvie.
Save that this wasn’t Sylvie, thank the Lord, given how little control Gail had over the juice now. ‘Sylvie’ picked Gail up off the ground, still wrapped in the blanket, and carried her away from Adkins’ diseased household. Gail waited until they were out of sight and metasense range before she turned on ‘Sylvie’.
“I th-thought you were going to protect me,” she said, biting back worse. Harsh words wouldn’t be wise, given to whom she spoke.
Arm Keaton, disguised as Sylvie, shrugged, and put Gail down on her feet. “If you were in any danger, I would have acted.” Gail had kept her silence to protect Keaton and the other Arms, not the other Detroit Focuses. Because of what happened to Wendy, Gail doubted Stacy would lift a finger to help them even if all the Hunters in the Midwest descended on their doorsteps.
Kurt turned from studying Gail’s hand to Arm Keaton. “She was tortured. That wasn’t enough?”
“No,” Keaton said. Utter dismissal. Keaton did something with her Arm predator to send Kurt off, leaving Gail alone, without bodyguards, at Keaton’s mercy.
“I suspected the sick bitch might torture you,” the Arm said. “I’m glad you held up to it. If you hadn’t, I would have had to kill them all.”
Well, fuck. “Let me go b-back in and spill what I…”
Keaton chuckled, put her hand on Gail’s shoulder, and led her farther away from Adkins’ apartment complex. “I do appreciate your anger and need for vengeance, but the timing isn’t right. Adkins arranged for Bitch Patrol backup, and they’re ready to act if I do,” Keaton said. “You don’t want to know the details; you wouldn’t sleep for a month. Yes, someday we’ll strike. Today, no, not if I can help it.”
Gail nodded, and staggered as she walked. The pain nearly overwhelmed her charismatic control, dropping her back into hysterics. Which she didn’t want to do, not in front of an Arm.
Thank heavens none of her Transforms were with her, now. They would be in withdrawal for sure.
“I can heal that for you, if you’re willing,” Keaton said, whispering.
Gail nodded.
“Let me take you somewhere private,” Keaton said. “I’m going to need to cut your hand open to heal the bones. You did real good work today, Gail.”
More pain. Someday, Gail would be able to learn the trick the other Focuses used of avoiding or ignoring pain. She wished she had it today.
“Did the quest group make it into Canada before Adkins began?” Gail asked.
“They did. They even managed to keep from tossing that annoying Focus-Sport into the river, much to my surprise.”
Gail hoped she would never see the rest of them for a goodly long time.
“Oh, as to that,” Keaton said, reading her mind as usual. “Probably not. You’re going to be helping me keep track of them in the Dreaming.”
Crap.
Dan Freeman: October 9, 1971
“Ma’am, is there any other preference…”
Arm Haggerty sighed. I drove while she navigated and thought. Arm Haggerty stole much better cars than Gail’s household drove, or I usually drove for that matter, and I enjoyed the experience of the almost new Mustang in excellent condition. Nancy slept in the back seat, something artificial. She had said ‘don’t bother to wake me until we get to London’ and passed out. I think dealing with Gail stressed her out.
The trip was most perverse, starting with a bus ride through a tunnel into Canada. I was the only one of the three of us who went through the minimal customs check. Haggerty and Racshke were invisible to them. Then Arm Haggerty got us into the back of a panel truck, but only for a few miles. She stole us the Mustang in an industrial part of south Windsor, a two part procedure involving a second stolen Mustang burned to the ground in the location of the first stolen car. Then we drove the back roads until we hit Ontario farmland.
Damn, she was gorgeous. And she moved like a dancer – better than a dancer – so graceful and coordinated she was almost inhuman. I could spend the whole trip just watching her.
“Call me Amy, Dan. In private. In public, around other Transforms, ma’am is preferable.”
Gulp. My friggin’ wet dream wanted me to call her by her first name. She could nearly read my mind, as well. Not anywhere as good as her boss, but enough to insure my death several times over.
“Arms don’t work that way, Dan.” She was reading my mind. Doomed. She grinned at me. “Nothing wrong with a good fuck. My call, though, not yours, no matter how interested you are.”
Gulp again. “Uh, Amy, I would have never said a thing. Never.”
“Uh huh. You’re too new at this, too normal. Normal morality doesn’t work even for regular Transforms, much less Arms. Who the hell knows how it’ll work for you.”
“You mean you expected to be asked?”
She still grinned at me, enjoying my discomfort. “You can always ask. Another Major Transform certainly would. And don’t worry about the fertility thing. Crows and Chimeras of all types
are also fertile with Arms, so it isn’t unique. We take precautions.” She paused. “Not today, though. I’m too low on juice.”
Okay. Why wasn’t I screaming in terror?
“Because of your tag, Dan. Your juice knows you’re mine, so you’re more comfortable with me. Mmm, sloppy terminology – the juice doesn’t know anything. But you know you’re mine because of the juice. And you know I won’t hurt you by accident, which is mostly true but not completely, so no fun while I’m a bit low on juice.”
If we spent the rest of the trip across Ontario talking about sex, I would go stark raving mad. The fucking 401 was already the worst damned excuse for a freeway I had ever experienced, wall to wall 18 wheelers. They towered over us, and went too damned slow. I didn’t need to make it worse.
“So, if you don’t mind me asking, Amy, how does this work? Aren’t you Arms all secretive killers who kill anyone who realizes you exist?”
Haggerty giggled and stomped her feet on the bottom of the car. The Mustang shook all the way back to the tailpipe. “You’re not terrified of us Arms. Most people can’t even think about such questions around an Arm. It’s so cute!”
Translation: in public, I’m toast if I talk to Haggerty this way.
She nodded at the hidden words in my head, and continued. “Carol is good with normals. By the time she’s done with your brother, he’s not going to be able to tell anyone what happened. As I said before, she’s a secret girl scout, just like I am.”
“Uh, Amy.” Secret girl scout? “You’re a killer. Unless the press is mistaken, you’ve killed dozens of FBI agents.”
“I wish. Only seventeen so far.” She paused, more serious now. “Really. There aren’t that many FBI agents who need killing. I just go after the bad ones. Though I have killed a few in self-defense, which is different.” Pause again. “You probably think the FBI is doing a good thing by tracking down Arms.” She eyed me. “No. You aren’t sure, any more, are you?”
I shrugged. “I’ve learned a lot in the past two days, and I’m not sure about how I feel about anything right now. I’m almost afraid of what I’m going to learn next.”
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