Now We Are Monsters (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  “Fine,” Tonya said. “You should consider letting her go. You’ll feel better about yourself. I mean, what did she do to deserve…”

  “Deserve what, bitch?” Keaton said. The call was long distance, and from the sound of it, from a suburban setting as well. Complete with lawnmowers and the distant sounds of children playing. “Are you saying I’m a punishment to be around? I’m training Hancock, dammit. Successfully, too.” Keaton sounded like a kid-harassed suburban mother today. Always with the different voices and obscure settings.

  “You said yourself you have episodes,” Tonya said. To her surprise, Keaton didn’t spray invective at her for her comment. “Is there any way I can help you reduce the number of them?”

  “Sure. Ship over a nice fat surplus woman Transform twice a month,” Keaton said. “Low juice is the most common trigger.”

  “I can’t guarantee the timing of surplus Transforms coming available,” Tonya said, her voice trailing off in a mixture of disgust and shame.

  “Well fuck, oh wondrous Council Toady, I can’t guarantee the timing of my hunt successes, either. Hancock will need to take her chances, the same way you do when you deal with me in person.” To Tonya’s horror, she overheard a couple of elementary school-aged kids come up to Keaton and ask for raspberry Kool-Aide.

  She didn’t have the nerve to ask how real this was. Or how real the sound of gurgling liquid was.

  “You don’t think I’d be able to stop you if you lost it with me?” Tonya asked.

  “Babe, I’ll be honest with you. My guess is that we would both die. On the other hand…”

  “Yes?”

  “Understand, despite the fact that Hancock is the most annoying thing since beach sand in the bikini, the fact I have her around to beat up markedly improves the chances I won’t go psycho on you,” Keaton said. “Think about what I’ve said long and hard before you push me to let Hancock go.”

  Click.

  Tonya slammed the phone down in response and went half-limp up against the edge of her desk, staring at the ceiling. The Keaton situation always weighed on her conscience, but now the situation had passed beyond ‘weight’ into ‘utterly disgusting’. Her latest letter from the Canadian letter writer friend had said, “If you choose between them, you risk losing both.” Tonya was now convinced the letter writer was the Madonna of Montreal, a Canadian Focus nearly as revered as Shirley Patterson. Tonya couldn’t discount this revered figure’s unexpectedly plain advice. Despite the ‘personal gain’ she might get from having Hancock be Keaton’s punching bag, Keaton needed to find a way to let Hancock go or help Hancock figure out how to solve her graduation assignment.

  Carol Hancock: May 15, 1967 – May 22, 1967

  I was much better after my first post-Monster-draw kill. The next morning I fixed Keaton her breakfast favorite, Eggs Benedict, plus enough pancakes, sausages and hash browns to feed three Arms. I sat quietly at the table and tried to think dour thoughts so I wouldn’t irritate Keaton with my post-kill cheerfulness. Keaton was on the low side herself and in a sour mood, her own hunt last night obviously unsuccessful.

  She tapped an index finger on the kitchen table. I snapped my attention to her, and waited anxiously for her to reveal what she would throw my way next. She leaned back in her chair.

  “I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learned from the Fouke episode and our reactions to her,” Keaton said. “You need your own hunting territory, so I’m giving you Newark and Baltimore. You can hunt these two cities whenever you want to, you can collect money, do whatever you want to do. I won’t hunt them. If you make the cities so hot with Feds and police that you can’t go back, it’s your problem.

  She brought the legs of her chair back down to the ground, and leaned forward towards me. “Philadelphia is mine and New York is mine. For that matter, the rest of the country is mine, too. You’ll need other places to hunt besides your territory, as they won’t supply you with enough juice, but you don’t hunt anywhere else without my permission. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I had questions but she ignored my signal. She eyeballed me impatiently.

  It took me a second to realize what she wanted. I went down on my knees, gushed my appreciation and groveled for her. I probably overdid my display, but with Keaton low on juice, a little extra never hurt.

  ---

  “Good. If you can understand a person, you can control them,” Keaton said, her voice a half octave lower. I had just given her a cold read on one of the men at the bar.

  My eyes narrowed at the wonderful and somewhat unexpected thought. “Ma’am?” Lust rose in my loins at her words, primed by hundreds of fruitless hours in the PTA and Library Volunteers.

  Keaton had taken me to another seedy bar for more mind reading lessons. The day after a successful hunt for her own for juice, of course. Her best lessons always followed a successful hunt.

  Yah, her mind reading trick wasn’t supernatural. Instead, she based the trick on an understanding of what enhanced Arm senses picked up. I learned mind reading like a sponge picks up water. This was the first learned Arm skill in which I possessed natural talent.

  “Control. You didn’t think that the only thing you can do with people is kill them, did you?” she asked. We sat in a booth in the darkest corner of the room and sipped Bloody Mary’s for effect.

  I took a deep and covetous breath. Controlling humans? I had instinctively controlled humans in St. Louis. I wanted more. Unbidden, a smile covered my face.

  Keaton smiled back.

  “Most humans are easy to control. They have all sorts of levers, if you can manipulate them appropriately. Most will even enjoy being controlled. Freedom is hard for people. All those choices, all the responsibility.”

  It couldn’t be that easy.

  Keaton smiled again. “Consider what I did to you.”

  Oh, fuck. Yes, it could.

  “How much freedom have you had the last six months?” she asked me.

  Dangerous question. “None, ma’am,” I said, my voice low.

  “Have I controlled your body?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Have I controlled your thoughts?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” My voice went lower still.

  “Have you worked your ass off to do what I want?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re mine, Hancock. You do what I tell you. You sweat to make me happy. You take whatever abuse I dish out. I can even let you go, and you come back to me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I met her gaze, the whisper gone from my voice.

  What she said was true, and it galled that her words were true, but so what? Someone needed to be the boss, and her name was ‘Keaton’.

  Keaton studied me, coldly, and I dropped my eyes in respect. She quit needling me about how she owned me, though.

  “You think I would have more trouble with a normal?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am.” Nor would I, when I mastered this.

  “You know the basics of how to read people. Now you learn to control them. Spend some time with Joe.” The man I cold read. “Get him to react. Study his reactions and learn. Pay attention to what causes his reactions to change, and how. By tomorrow morning, I want you to be able to list a few consistent reactions and tell me what causes them. Don’t lose your temper and kill him.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I wanted to learn this. I needed to learn this. I had been good at this as a normal.

  I went over to the bar and started talking to the guy. His name was John Fisher, a married man, but I got him to take his dangerous new woman friend somewhere quiet for the rest of the evening, despite his marriage.

  He didn’t stand a chance.

  ---

  “Hey, whacha doin?” I asked.

  “Warming up. Jumping rope.” No information, just banter. “I’ve got a bout at seven.”

  An Arm who understands what she is doing can easily read people. The eyes are the best. Every little reacti
on shows in the eyes, even the smallest tension. The pupils expand and contract. The muscles around the eyes don’t just tell stories, they write novels. There is also information in how often a person blinks and the steadiness of his gaze. There is even information in where they rest their gaze. All the facial muscles are important, especially tiny expressions that flicker by almost too fast to detect. They show a true reaction long before a person can cover up his responses.

  I snapped my gum and nodded. “Name’s Kate.” I had spent an hour, earlier, trying again to master ‘male voice’, but as usual I couldn’t, so I was here as a woman. Doing this as a woman ruined my originally planned shocking reveal, but life’s a bitch and all that.

  “Bobby,” he said. He continued to jump rope, but he definitely noticed me.

  Heartbeat and breathing are also useful for reading people, but not the best. Muscle tension is better, as is scent. The real story is not in the individual pieces but in how they fit together. The pieces are a mystery, a puzzle to interpret, all slightly different for each person. If you understand human reactions, a normal is an open book. With a normal you have studied, you can nearly read his mind.

  “Guy you’re facing at seven? He’s got a twitch, right above his left eye, just before he throws his haymaker,” I said, a conspiratorial whisper. Smiled the right way. Once you can read someone’s mind you can influence him. Virtually control him. Add in the predator effect and you can control him. My goal.

  Bobby’s bouncy erection said it all.

  Perfect.

  Keaton’s project assignment? I had that man’s bank account numbers by Keaton’s deadline. Everything she wanted to know about him, from across the room, I told her. Pleased, she gave me a punch on the shoulder and told me to go play.

  Which is what I did, here. Bobby was hung, smart, sensitive and looked like everybody’s All-American Homecoming King, save for the Charles Atlas muscles, a pleasing extra. Yum. Given what I looked like as a normal and what I looked like currently, I never in my life had a chance with a man, or boy, like this. Until now.

  How did I find him so quickly? Arm memory. I had been people watching and chatting up people everywhere I hunted, ever since Keaton loosened the reins on me after my California spree. I had a catalog of thousands to work with. All I did was sit down, remember, and pick out the one I wanted.

  Even better, Bobby Sheffield lived in my territory, in Baltimore. His day job was at the Chevelle factory; before the factory job he worked as a severely underpaid stevedore at the Baltimore Glass Works with fake union papers. He went to night school, was an aspiring poet, and though he had forgotten most of his High School French he was able to pronounce the language if he put his mind to it. Oh, and he was a six foot two hunk, a former High School all-district linebacker, a semi-pro boxer and a workout fanatic. He finished what he started and he had a forceful personality to go with his boundless ambition. Oh, did I mention he was a hunk?

  He was mine. Only, he didn’t realize it yet.

  “Man, Kate, you are something else.” He flopped back down in a pool of his own sweat. Hah. Twenty-three and could keep things going for hours. He was going to be fun.

  “Oh, I think you’re the special one,” I said, running my fingers slowly down his chest. I fed his ego when he did what I wanted. When he pushed the wrong way, I made him feel like shit. “Tell me, take a guess. What’s my line?”

  “Well…” He licked his lovely lips. “You were right about Joey’s tic. Most girls would never pick up on such a thing.” Bobby had KOed Joey in the 2nd round. “You look like you’re an athlete. Uh, you seem to know simply everything about life.” Such as this free hotel room I had sweet-talked the concierge into loaning us for the night. Bobby was quite impressed at my scam.

  He would be even more impressed when I conned the hotel staff into giving me a free room service breakfast in a few hours.

  I straddled him and turned serious. “Take the guess.”

  “Secret agent. Spy. Something along those lines.”

  I nodded. I had read him until he came up with an answer I found acceptable, then straddled him at the proper moment to prompt him to cough up the answer I wanted.

  “Hmm, I think I like it from up here,” I said. I leaned over and held down his hands. His hands no longer moved, because of my extraordinary Arm strength. The edge of worry crossed his mind. “Yes. Perfect.” I paused to let my hints work their way into his mind. “I prefer the term ‘covert operative’, by the way.” Another pause. “I think it’s time you learned a little more about my talents…and needs.” I gave him just a little of my predatory smile.

  Soon I would learn if I read him right, that fear and pain turned him on.

  I am an Arm and I am on top.

  Chapter 7

  If you threaten an Arm in her territory, you had better be a Major Transform or you are dead. If you threaten an Arm when she is not in her territory, you had better be able to back it up – and you had better never need to come uninvited into her territory later.

  “The Book of Arms”

  Henry Zielinski: May 23, 1967

  For the tenth time, at least, he wondered why Carol wanted to meet him in Newark. Why the parking lot of the Trailways bus depot? He sat on a cracked curb, closed his eyes and tried to relax, unsoothed by the late night sound of occasional passing cars. Practicing medicine without a license bothered him. Still. At least the Network gave him a set of aliases to use for prescriptions and medical supplies. His big problem was money, or the lack thereof. He cleared enough to cover his house payments and alimony, but nothing else, forcing him to drain the last of his offshore accounts. He suspected he would need to put his house on the market before the end of the year unless something came through.

  Someone tapped him on his left shoulder. With a half-expected start, he opened his eyes and looked up. Carol, dressed as a folkie, a poor disguise because it didn’t conceal her body-builder shoulders under the plaid poncho she wore. “Come with me.” Carol’s voice was tense and cold.

  Zielinski stood, shrugged, and followed. He entered the (likely stolen) car, noting how spotless the car was on the inside. They drove off, Carol offering no comments and inviting none. They stopped in a parking lot behind a boarded up factory after about ten minutes of driving.

  “Get out of the car,” Carol said, a stiff order. Zielinski complied. Carol radiated anger, not a bit of small talk today. Had her sanity given way?

  “So, how are …”

  “Shut up,” Carol said. She paced the parking lot with repressed anger. A cricket chirped off in the distance, the only sound in the empty lot. “What can you tell me about Keaton?”

  “What would you like to know?” he asked back. In response, she turned on him and tried her far too familiar ‘I am Death’ pose. She blinked twice when her trick didn’t work and studied his reactions. In a flash, she ran over to him, grabbed him, slammed him against the car and hoisted him off his feet. Fear and adrenaline kicked in. His reaction being what she wanted, she backed off. He carefully avoided calming himself. Just like Keaton.

  She read him well, which she hadn’t been able to do before.

  No longer head-blind. Things would get dangerous.

  “Everything. Her history. Her weaknesses. How the Network would take her out if they had to. I want…”

  He couldn’t help himself, with her demands and the stress of the situation. His fear morphed into the realization this was another bit of Arm slapstick humor, and he laughed.

  Wrong thing to do. He realized his mistake mid-laugh, already too late.

  When he awoke, he found himself tied up, hanging by his arms from some large piece of mechanical equipment. The lights were out, and what little moonlight came in through the grimy windows got lost in the dust permeating the air, leaving nothing but darkness. Zielinski guessed he was in the abandoned factory. His head and neck hurt, and his cheeks stung, likely from Arm slaps. The ropes chafed at his wrists, tied so his arms supported most of his w
eight. He surmised she had throttled him around the neck so he passed out, dragged him inside the factory and tied him up.

  He didn’t see Carol in the shadowed darkness. He heard her, though. Somewhere in the near distance, she broke something. The noise sounded like she beat a boiler with an I-beam. Zielinski felt his nerves sing. This was going to be one of those confrontations. He had survived several similar confrontations with Keaton, so deep into a foul temper she had to let some of it out just to be able to talk to him. Physically, he was helpless. If either Arm wanted to kill him in a physical confrontation, he couldn’t stop her. He had accepted that long ago.

  Carol’s Arm charisma appeared to be coming in, and she had learned to read others. The rest, the enhanced manipulation and intimidation, would come in soon, if she didn’t already have them. If her reactions mirrored a Focus’s, she would be all jangled because of the changes inside her, all elbows and raw skin. She would go after him physically, and he would need to avoid panic and still be submissive. She would go after him mentally and learn the blunt truth. Cold sweat beaded on him when he considered the possibility Carol’s capabilities might be different from Keaton’s, or better. Either might get him killed. He expected Carol’s charisma skills would be better in the end, considering her background. He repressed a smile as he felt himself come alive with the danger and excitement, almost looking forward to the deadly game about to start.

  He could compete in a psychological confrontation.

  A couple of minutes later, Carol approached with quiet footsteps. She stopped close, only feet away, still invisible in the darkness. She, with her enhanced Arm eyesight, wouldn’t be bothered by the dark. “Time to choose sides. Are you my friend, or are you Keaton’s?” Her voice growled, harsh and threatening.

  Keaton had given him to Carol a while ago. Now, Carol wanted him to submit to her. “Your friend,” he said. He paused to think, choosing his words carefully. “I can’t betray Keaton’s confidences with me, though.”