Two hours of my work reduced the baby Arm to little more than burbling imbecility. I had few hopes for this Arm, having learned this was the fourth time her former life had been tortured out of her. The kid doing weights was long gone. Keaton played statue, admiring the blood covering me, letting me handle the breaking on my own. Under other circumstances, I would have even enjoyed my work, but not with Keaton standing over my shoulder. The beast liked her privacy.
“So,” Keaton said, after I finished, “you have a problem with this?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. I could have said ‘of course not’ if I was being polite, or ‘are you shitting me’ if I wanted to challenge, but given the strangeness of Keaton’s orders I decided to just let her read my unvocalized answer on my body. This was her turf, and her student, and if you don’t understand how important those hers are, you don’t know Arms.
“Hmm. You don’t have a problem with this yourself, but it bothers you when someone else enjoys herself?”
Oh crap, she was pissed about what I did to Bass. I went down on my knees to emphasize my subservience.
“Ma’am, I beg you to let me explain.”
Keaton snorted.
“What’s your problem, Hancock? Did Haggerty order you to be a girl scout or something?”
Yah, Keaton was pissed, but Arm on Arm fighting wasn’t forbidden, nor was interfering in another Arm’s interests. How many of Sibrian’s katanas had Keaton taken from her, simply because she thought Sibrian’s clothing choices veered too close to her ‘Arms don’t wear costumes’ rule? Dozens of other examples ran through my mind.
“Ma’am,” I said, stalling for time. “I apologize. I don’t understand. What did I do to displease you?”
“What the fuck did you think you were doing, Hancock?”
“Ma’am,” I said, gathering my thoughts in a hurry. “I learned, nearly a month ago, that Bass was the person behind the Phoenix Church massacre, an event that indirectly led to the deaths of two of my own, as well as the loss of my Chicago territory. I confronted her in her lair to gain recompense, and discovered she held over a dozen people, torturing them, including women and children. You know my feelings about child abuse, ma’am. I took my recompense out of Bass, tagged her, and ordered her as punishment to cease her torture experiments and find a different way. A week ago I fought off an attack on my life, and on the lives of those around me, by a company of thugs who I later learned were Bass’s twisted hirelings. I now believe she’s playing a deeper game than simple harassment, and I also suspect she’s ditched my tag.” In a sane world, this should be enough to justify anything, including Bass’s murder. Keaton grunted but said nothing. “I believe my actions helped preserve the reputation of the Arms, as Bass’s actions were harming the reputation of all Arms.” Including you, boss…I didn’t say.
“What about the orders you gave her?” Keaton said. “No more massacres? No more torture research?”
“The tag holder always has the right to make such demands,” I said. I didn’t know why Keaton forced me on the defensive, except for the obvious: because she could.
“Yes, but why?” Keaton said.
“Arm massacres are bad. They alienate our allies, make enemies out of people who might otherwise be neutral, and cause friction among the Arms. They hinder the projects I’m working on, including the projects you assigned me. Bass is going down a bad path, bad for her and bad for any Arms she convinces to join her. I believe she, if free, endangers us all.”
Keaton raised an eyebrow. “A bold thing for the California Spree Killer to say, don’t you think?”
“Ma’am.” The episode from my early Arm years wasn’t one of my more stellar moments. “I like to think I’ve learned better over the years. My old mistakes don’t make Bass’s actions any less of a mistake.”
“That’s a judgment call. Seems like you made a lot of them over at Bass’s farm.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I repressed all my speculations about the unknown – such as the reason why, on Bass’s farm, I hadn’t asked her about why she staged the Phoenix Church massacre. “I believed the calls justified at the time, even more justified after her recent attack on me, her tagged superior.”
Keaton smiled a half smile. “The latter wasn’t and isn’t true.”
I almost lost my poise and went for Keaton. Before I got any farther than taking my knife out of its sheath, I buried it in my own arm, and twisted. Self-punishment.
“Pardon me, ma’am,” I said. “This has never happened to me, before.” Now I understood: after I broke her and trashed her lair, Bass came to Keaton and signed on the dotted line, taking Keaton’s tag and dropping mine. The shock of learning this nearly made me lose control, as Bass had been mine. Now I would need to suck shit, big time.
I couldn’t see Keaton’s face, but I felt her smile. Each of our tags reflected our own individual personalities, and Keaton’s tags allowed her to experience her sadistic jollies through them, in the appropriate circumstances. Such as this one.
“Bass is mine, now,” Keaton said. “The events in New Orleans she accepts as payback for the wrongs she claims of you. The dominance issues between the two of you aren’t my problem. When the two of you are working with me, here, they will not be an issue.” At those words, my metasense cleared. Bass was here, upstairs in Keaton’s library, under Keaton’s protection. Visible now in my metasense, Bass gave me the middle finger. Both hands. Belying Bass’s ‘payback’ claim. She still wanted a piece of my hide, or the damn thing intact without me in it.
So much for my urge to capture Bass, torture her to death, bring her back to life and do it again. A more deserving target had never existed…and now she had bought herself some protection.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I still believe she’s playing a…”
“She is not,” Keaton said. I shut up about my ‘deeper game’ fears. Keaton would properly see my hypothesis as a dominance challenge.
“You’re missing something,” Keaton said. She motioned for me to stand, and I did. “You and your ideas. You talk about the natural order and finding our ecological niche. Our need to cooperate with the other friendly Major Transforms. You organize wars against those who declare against us, such as the Hunters, with the other Major Transforms as allies. You think Arms ought to restrain their darker urges.
“Has it ever even occurred to you that you might be wrong?”
I met her gaze and I paled in fear. “Ma’am, you know I believe we have an important role to play, and how our role involves cooperation rather than unconstrained destruction. You yourself told me no one gets to live without limits. Has some evidence come up that this approach isn’t working?”
Keaton got in my face.
“How the hell do I know whether it’s working or not, when I don’t have anything to compare it to? What makes you think your way is the only way?” I felt her anger now, her unceasing anger over the Focuses’ treachery during the Clearing of Chicago, treachery that had kept us from wiping out the Hunters. Something new added to her old anger, though, something I didn’t recognize. Nothing I had done, or didn’t do, and worse, a something she wouldn’t be telling me. “I didn’t train all of you just to fall for the first stupid idea that comes along. For the first time, we’ve got someone with an idea for a different direction than yours, and you don’t get to fuck it up before it even gets started.”
“Ma’am,” I said, my fear edging over into panic. Bass wanted to watch the world burn and rule over the ashes, or so she said. “You’re giving Bass’s ideology serious consideration? Going our own way would be a disaster.”
“Maybe it would. Maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know, and neither do you. I do want to see some other alternative than the one you’re trying to ram down everyone’s throats, and so you will damned well keep your hands off Bass and her operation. It’s well past time we probed a few of our favorite enemy Focuses. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, automatic. My agreeme
nt hurt like hell. Keaton’s order was a mistake, a huge one, and it gave Bass cover for her lust for total personal freedom and general anarchy. Worse, I feared for my boss. I feared Bass had already gotten to her.
But Keaton was my boss, she held Bass’s foul and contaminating tag, and the price and benefits for owning and using Bass were hers now, not mine.
“If you want to claim your way is better, prove it,” Keaton said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. What else could I say?
Dolores Sokolnik: August 25, 1972 – September 9, 1972
The woman tossed Del across the pit, into a rough concrete wall. Before Del recovered, the woman attacked her again. “Worthless,” the woman said. “Six weeks and you haven’t snapped out of it. My goddamned graduation is tied to you, freak. Die or snap out of it, dammit!”
“Motherfucking asshole, get me some juice!”
Kick.
“You’re going to die,” the woman said. Del’s battle pit opponent was one of many, and her name didn’t matter. Interchangeable. Beating on her, torturing her, starving her. Names didn’t matter in this circle of Hell, the one reserved for damned violent women.
“I see teeth littering the ceiling,” Del said. The words came out of her mouth in a different voice. The voices in her head, too many to count, never ceased clamoring, a constant chaotic cacophony.
Kick.
“Die, then.” The woman wrenched Del’s left shoulder out of its joint and Del screamed again. The woman tossed Del across the pit and she landed on her left hand, popping something. Then the woman tossed her again.
The voices in Del’s head never stopped. “Sexless reject,” Del said to her opponent, in yet another voice. “No passion for life. That’s why you aren’t graduating, not because of my issues.” She no longer remembered which of the voices was her own.
“You’re faking the lust, but Ma’am Keaton isn’t fooled,” Del said, this time a man’s voice, echoing a different set of thoughts. Del shifted positions as the woman tossed her again, and the woman slipped. An idea popped into her head on its own, how to make the shift and produce the slip. A gift from one of the voices. Del fell, but gently. “I’m hungry,” Del said. Thoughts about architecture ran through her mind. An early TV actress once owned Ma’am Keaton’s mansion, someone not smart enough to realize the people building her house had been robbing her rather than building for her. The place slowly collapsed on itself for lack of sufficient internal supports. “Agriculture and brush clearing have accentuated the drought cycle,” Del said, in a different voice. The woman recovered from her slip and returned, kicking at Del.
Del rolled. The woman grabbed and tossed her again. Del hit the concrete wall with a jolt, knocking the breath out of her. The pain of her dislocated arm made even partial control over the thoughts and voices utterly impossible.
She would die. Today. Unless she snapped out of it, whatever that meant. The other damned women who lived in this house knew how to keep silent. They spoke with only one voice.
Ma’am Keaton stood to the side, eyes hooded and arms crossed. She was the judge of Del’s life. The nameless woman rushed at Del again, aiming to slam her shoulder into Del’s midsection. The blow would stun Del’s heart, and if successful, well, that would be the end of that. Del rolled toward the leaping woman, enough so that the shoulder blow only glanced off her ribs.
Exhaustion sapped Del’s will to move and to fight back. Exhaustion, low juice, and the voices. The never ending voices. The woman, behind Del now, kicked at her, and Del went flying, heels spinning over her head in a full circle, to land on the small of her back. Ma’am Keaton remained quiet, always so quiet. Where were Ma’am Keaton’s thoughts, her voices? Could Del be like her? Quiet? Would being quiet save her life? Would being quiet count as snapping out of it?
The other student, not the nameless woman Del fought now but a different one, a student only a few months farther along than Del, had said Del was too smart. Too many thoughts, too much of a good thing. Del couldn’t disagree. Nearly twenty years teaching politics and social studies to high school students had engaged Del’s mind, kept her thoughts from falling back into the mush of mindless entertainment and housewife worries plaguing the minds of her three sisters. Del considered her brilliance her edge, and held on to her thoughts the same way a dog worried a favorite shoe.
Her thoughts now came in torrents. Each took a voice of its own and never stopped. The voices took over her mouth and her mind.
By any definition, she was insane.
Ma’am Keaton’s quiet was the only way. Nothing Del tried stopped the voices. Nothing.
Pain, death and insanity approached. The nameless woman snapped Del’s left arm as she tossed Del across the pit again. Bodily exhaustion threatened to use up the last of Del’s juice, threatened to send her into the horrible place without juice. More, unless she stopped the woman, she would die from this beating. Worst, unless she stopped the voices, she would die whether or not she survived the next five minutes. Soon, Ma’am Keaton would make her hunt on her own, and with the voices, she would fail.
The woman ran at her from across the pit, as Del lay prone, exhausted. The woman was her death now. In desperation, Del screamed at herself, inside, for quiet. Screamed for deliverance from her attacker.
Inside herself, inside her panic and desperation, Del sensed something new. Something akin to a lever, or a dial, on the juice itself. A way to use the juice directly, to do what needed doing. “Burn juice,” a voice murmured through Del’s raw throat. With an extra bit of juice, she could quiet the thoughts.
Juice she had little of now. Her instincts forbid its use.
Instincts be damned. Juice wasn’t everything. In her mind, Del twisted the dial, and in her mental hands, she metasensed power.
“Quiet!”
Del visualized the quiet as still pools of water and, with the juice, built the pools in her mind. She became the quiet pools, and the thoughts and voices vanished.
The woman continued to run at her, to deal her a final fatal blow. The power of the juice had other uses, Del realized, and she willed the juice into her muscles. Del stood, moving quicker than before, and jumped out of the way. Her opponent hit the side of the battle pit, attacking the wall as she meant to attack Del. She fell back in agony. Del twisted the mental dial back to its previous position before she exhausted her juice. In her quiet pools, she sensed only a few points of juice remained before she went into withdrawal.
The voices didn’t return. Her broken bones and dislocated shoulder didn’t pain her. The pain sunk out of sight in her quiet pools. Only a single self remained.
Del turned to Ma’am Keaton, and nodded. Speech was unnecessary. Ma’am Keaton nodded back, leapt to Del’s opponent, and kicked her.
“Ma’am!” the woman said, as she landed on the far side of the pit.
“Congratulations, Arm Kent,” Ma’am Keaton said.
Arm Kent was Del’s former opponent’s name, now. The Arm, no longer Student Kent, stood, looked at Del, and then at Ma’am Keaton. She bowed in full, touching her head to the ground. “Ma’am,” Kent said.
“Your official graduation ceremony is tomorrow evening, at seven. I expect you to be fully presentable.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kent said. She stood, backed three steps away from Ma’am Keaton, bowed again, and then nonchalantly climbed the rusty ladder out of the pit. Del sensed the fierce pride in Arm Kent, pride over her success at yanking Del out of her madness.
Ma’am Keaton turned to Del. “Juice count?”
“93, ma’am.” Dangerously low, and painful. Del’s voice echoed through her quiet pools and vanished alone, raising no other voices in return.
“Huh.” Ma’am Keaton looked Del over for quite a long time, unreadable as always. “This is your last free Transform, Del,” Keaton said. “Next time, you hunt.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The thoughts and voices still did not return.
---
“
Would you like to explain your hunt to me?” Ma’am Billington said.
The passionate heat of the post-kill lust flooding Del’s body vanished into her quiet pools, as did all distractions since her discovery of the quiet pools a week and a half ago. Her left arm ached from the still-healing break, but her other injuries had healed. Nothing disturbed the quiet peace of her mind.
They returned to the school past cast-iron fences hiding expensive homes. Del wondered why Ma’am Billington had shadowed her on her first hunt. She assumed she would succeed or fail on her own.
“Ma’am, I located my assigned territory, found a Transform, approached him in his car, persuaded him to drive me to a secluded location, took him, and then drove his remains to the student graveyard. I then entertained myself for the allowed eight hours.” Del paused, savoring the stillness in her mind. So quiet, so controlled. “Did I do anything wrong, ma’am?”
Ma’am Billington shook her head and stopped by the cast-iron fence hiding the extensive grounds of Ma’am Keaton’s Arm school. “Follow your routine until I call for you, later.” Ma’am Billington was a medium-tall heavily muscled woman, about five-seven, with light brown skin. She didn’t approve of Del.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Del exercised, careful of her newly healed left arm, ate, attended a lecture by Richard Kerwin, a normal, who spoke today about police procedures. After the lecture she exercised some more, ate again, and then went to the library to study. She signed the reading logs, took down some books on military organization and began to read.
A half hour later, the other student Arm, Student Maynard, walked in and hissed at her. “Ma’am Keaton wants you in meeting room two,” Maynard said. Maynard was the only other Student Arm in Ma’am Keaton’s school after Arm Kent’s graduation, and she progressed slowly. The techniques and knowledge Ma’am Keaton required took Maynard extra work to master because of her calendar age, 14.
“Thank you,” Del said, voice flat. She stood and walked to the door. She carefully avoided coming within Maynard’s reach on the way by. Maynard delighted in hurting Del, and Del found she couldn’t remain in the same room as Maynard without becoming aggressive herself.
Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) Page 2
