“The actress’s real name is Sara Jenkins, and she’s one of Wendy Mann’s Transforms,” Hancock said. “The Focus is Wendy in a wig and pro makeup. You can tell by the way they all move: the Transforms are all super-athletic and received combat training from Keaton.” Hancock then laughed. Tonya frowned at her.
“Their Focus household is a close steal of the Inferno household, down to the polished wood slide beside the stairway,” Hancock said. Tonya nodded, seeing it now. All they needed was the Apocalypse Clock ticking backwards and the Buddhist statuary. “For a Focus household, an acting gig like this should have them rolling in oats. So why isn’t Keaton bouncing around and being happy about her Focus making good?”
“Something else happened,” Tonya said. “I caught it too, in my last visit. I’m guessing she learned something nasty, likely about the first Focuses or Focus Schrum in particular. I couldn’t get her to say, though.”
“Don’t let it bother you,” Hancock said. The Arm had regained her good cheer during dinner. “So, Tonya, when are you going to pick up a Crow as a partner?”
For the rest of the evening, Tonya got to sit through Hancock proselytizing to her on the benefits of the Crow – Focus symbiosis. Her enthusiasm was infectious, especially the part about increasing the size of Tonya’s household. The idea was an easy sell, though Tonya didn’t understand how a Focus of her nasty reputation could go about getting a Crow to partner in a household.
They had really done it! Tonya hadn’t believed, early on, that Haggerty’s push the Cause project would ever amount to anything directly useful. Now they had something with the potential to avert the coming disaster. Saving lives, real progress for once. If everyone kept working together, they would be able to save the lives they had long worried they wouldn’t be able to save.
They never did come up with a potential Crow for Tonya, though.
That night, Tonya’s dreams were just as bad as they had been for the past week.
Carol Hancock: October 17, 1972
I jogged up to Keaton’s immaculate California split-level house with a bounce in my step and trepidation in my heart. Under my right arm I carried a box with almost a thousand pages of well written reports, leading off with all the benefits of mutual tagging. If this worked, I would wipe Bass’s idiotic plans away like the markings on last semester’s blackboard; if not, I suspected my days as the Commander were over.
Despite the preliminary nature of much of my report, the mutual tagging benefits were quite real and quite extraordinary. Keaton had ordered me to give her data on a real push the Cause success, and now I had one, and promised more. With the endemic Focus and Crow weakness for saving lives and enhancing fertility, this gave us Arms the (pardon the pun) armlock Keaton always wanted. Add in the progress on the ‘Focus giving juice to an Arm project’ and Hank’s juice pattern codification project, and the sum would place us Arms at the center of Major Transform society. Then, as Arm-friendly tasty cake icing, because this broke all the old order’s restrictions on Focuses and Crows working together, our success would likely precipitate the blood-drenched war Keaton wanted. Presents for everyone!
I metasensed Keaton’s three students, one of whom was brand new, as well as Bass, Rayburn and a Focus. Keaton herself was down in the basement talking to the Focus, which said something. The Focus wasn’t being tortured, but even so, Keaton’s basement wasn’t a place for a friendly conversation.
Keaton headed up the stairs the minute she sensed my presence, Bass and Rayburn following behind. They left the Focus in the basement. As I came to the front door, the damn kid Arm opened the door and then got out of the way. She appeared hard used, not what I expected of a later stage student. I wondered if there was some sort of problem with her. I took a sniff to check the ambience, which proved to be low in stress for a single dwelling crawling with a pride of Arms.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Hancock?” Keaton said as I walked across the foyer. As she stopped and snarled at me, Bass and Rayburn carefully slid to the side, stony expressions on their faces. Bass was blood-spattered, but blood on her didn’t mean anything. Bass started her day by torturing people, before breakfast and exercises.
“Ma’am?” I said, carefully polite. The tag kicked in, and I felt the disloyal independence which always crept in between visits slip away. Her contempt hurt.
“Don’t play stupid with me. What the fuck are you doing with those extra tags?”
I patted my box of documents, and smiled. “Ma’am, you asked me for formal proof of the benefits of the push the Cause project during my last visit. I made a breakthrough you’ll be interested in. We’ve got’m, ma’am!” I visualized the first Focuses and recalcitrant senior Crows burning at the stake, and let Keaton read my emotions.
“A breakthrough that leaves you with extra tags? Where did you leave your brain, Hancock? Whose tags are those?” Keaton put her hands on her hips and glared at me. Bass snickered and Rayburn attempted and failed to repress a grin. My stomach fell in confusion.
“Focus Gail Rickenbach, ma’am, and Crow Guru Gilgamesh, ma’am,” I said. “This is…”
“A Crow? You let yourself be owned by that twit!” I froze in shock, as Gilgamesh was Keaton’s favorite Crow, and Crow Gurus weren’t twits by anyone’s definition. The blood rushed to my face and I firmly forced it back down. Traditionally, for Arms, a tag was a sign of superiority and rank. The mutual tags were different, though, and metasensed as different as well. I hadn’t given rank to either of them.
Bass turned on her predator, instantly echoed by Keaton and Rayburn. My knees hit the carpeted floor of the living room with a bang and Keaton got down into my face. Bass initiated and Keaton followed? Who was in charge of this gaggle, anyway? “This is the most abject, embarrassing, ridiculous display I have ever seen in my life,” Keaton said, inches from my nose, her voice the icy cold rage-fueled whisper that always meant big trouble. I guessed, right about then, that Tonya would be using the box I put in her safe, and wished I had been more emotional and effusive in my will and final letters I left Hank and Tom. I burned a full point of juice to erase the knowledge of the box and letters from my memory. “I knew you had some fucked up ideas, but I thought you still retained the sense due an Arm. Apparently, I was mistaken. You’ve been fucked up since you started the push the Cause project, and this…this…” Keaton paused, and grabbed my hair, hard. “How could you let yourself be tagged by a Focus? And not even a senior Focus, just a junior Focus who specializes in Focus politics.” What the fuck happened to Keaton’s spies? Didn’t she know anything about my Gail training?
Keaton let go of my hair and stood to tower over me. She shook her head in angry bewilderment. “And Gilgamesh? You let yourself be tagged by your lover!” She gave me a half-assed kick of angered exasperation, not even enough to roll me over.
“They wear my tags, too,” I said, head bowed. This felt like some sort of dominance battle, perhaps mixed in with an ounce or two of good old-fashioned jealousy. She had considered Gail hers, once. Dammit, this wasn’t a challenge! I followed her goddamned orders, here!
With Keaton, though, rationality was always a luxury item, and it appeared we were in a full-blown logic recession, here.
“I’m training Gail. She’s a powerful witch Focus now, and I long since kicked her out of her political rut,” I said, and took a short deep breath, my eyes tracking the room from floor level. Such a bright and cheery house, if you didn’t possess Arm senses. Bright white thick shag carpeting. A normal wouldn’t suspect a thing. The decorations came right out of House Beautiful, and Keaton’s new hobby was potted plants. I had never seen so many bromeliads in my life. I wondered which of her students had the green thumb, as I had never been able to keep any of the damned things alive. “She’s quite similar to Lori’s skill level around the time of the Battle in Detroit, just with different strengths. What we’ve done is going to add…”
“All right,” Keaton said, interrupting me. She under
stood my point and didn’t want to hear the details. “I see how you’ve been wasting your time these last few months in Detroit.” Uh oh. “All this time you’ve had your coterie of brainwashed Arms guarding Hank in Chicago, because Chicago isn’t yours. Oh, I understand quite well the bait and switch trick, attempting to distract me with something you knew would set me off while attempting to hide the real problem right under my nose.”
I had used that trick on her before, but not now. “Ma’am, what’s the real problem?” I said. The now obvious real problem. Shit.
“Since Hank isn’t yours any longer, I want him back,” Keaton said. “Him and Littleside.”
I almost leapt to my feet and charged her in a challenge. I didn’t. Barely. I understood her game now. Her sneering at my mutual tags with Gail and Gilgamesh wasn’t real, but part one of an attempt to goad me into challenging her. Mutual tags were power and Keaton never turned down power. Part two of her goading? A real grab at Hank. She liked Hank and had her own historical claims on him. My emotional reaction came from Keaton’s claim of what was mine.
I considered my choices quickly. I could do as Keaton wanted and challenge her. Here, butt naked, facing Keaton and her household of Arms, I wouldn’t win, even with my recent stature gain. My successes wouldn’t allow me to succeed in an unaided challenge in my opponent’s lair. With my ‘coterie of brainwashed Arms’ at my back, along with Gail, Gilgamesh and her household, with Lori, Sky and Inferno backing me up and supporting my claims…I probably had a 60:40 chance at success in Keaton’s house. On neutral turf I would win today, no contest.
Keaton expected me to challenge. She wanted me to challenge her and lose before I gave my presentation and upped my stature enough to be a threat to her, or caught her in a neutral location. No, she wouldn’t allow me to give my presentation, no matter what I did. I had been accumulating strength, of course, but to challenge Haggerty, not Keaton. Stature was stature, though. Someone had mistakenly convinced her I wanted to challenge her instead of Haggerty, and for that I blamed Bass.
I could do what Keaton wanted and challenge her over Hank, attempt and fail to take her place at the top of the Arm dominance hierarchy. The dumb Arm’s reaction, all instinct and no thought. I would get the crap beat out of me, lose Hank and Littleside, and I would never get either of them back. Scratch that option.
I could skip the fight and just give up Hank and stay in Detroit, hoping to negotiate Hank’s return someday. Actually, no, I couldn’t. I had ample willpower, but Hank was my number one, and I couldn’t give away my number one possession. Scratch that option, too.
I could stand, walk away, drop Keaton’s tag and maintain my Arm stature and equipoise. This was the only rational way out of this dilemma. Bass’s hungry gaze said she wanted this decision. The logical next step would be for Keaton, Bass and Keaton’s other Arms to show up on my doorstep with an army at their back, armed with heavy weapons and the knowledge of my latest army combat tricks, the ones Bass learned about in New Orleans. Bass wanted me dead.
Hell. Not only would I be dead if I lost, so would everyone I dragooned into defending me. Yet another big Major Transform vs Major Transform fight, like the Fight in Detroit and the Clearing of Chicago. Win, lose or draw, though, the carnage would end the Cause and cripple the unity of the Arms for all time. Another victory for Bass.
This left only one way forward: cheating. The whole situation pissed me off; I had supported Keaton at her lowest, after she killed Svensen. What did my support earn me? This crap. By staging this stunt she reneged on her word, on her orders, when she ordered me to show progress in the pushing the Cause project, and then by not allowing me to follow through with the presentation of my results. Betrayal. She no longer deserved my honor. Any honor.
“Ma’am,” I said, carefully wording my response. “I agree with your assessment. Without me there in Chicago to protect Hank, he’s yours.” Hank would be hers only while I didn’t claim Chicago, and I would reclaim Chicago the instant I left Keaton’s territory.
My response presented her with a dilemma. Unless Keaton moved to Chicago first, she wouldn’t be able to keep me from moving back to Chicago without giving me orders no Arm would obey. Ordering me to stay away from Chicago would allow me to change the allegiance of some of her Arms, enough for me to challenge her and win. She would no longer be able to show up with an army on my doorstep. No mature Arm would ever follow an Arm leader who messed with a subordinate’s territory. Keaton’s only way to block my move to Chicago would be to move there first, herself, and if she did so, I would challenge there and win. Chicago had never been hers and was still partly mine.
As an Arm, I should have said, “Okay, I’m reclaiming Chicago now.” An Arm’s territory is an Arm’s soul, and you don’t play sneaky subterfuge games with something so essential. However, such a statement under these circumstances would be a challenge in the face of her orders, and give Keaton the opening to beat the snot out of me and enslave me to do whatever crap she needed done. By leaving my intent unstated, I issued no challenge. She could force me to state my intent, but if she did, I would be following orders, not challenging. This was a twisty Focus-style gambit…and thus, cheating. And I played my twisted game with the heart of an Arm’s life, her territory.
Nobody in the room moved or even breathed until Keaton reacted, and she reacted exactly as I expected. “Okay, Focus,” Keaton said. “You’ve announced your status, live with it. You’ve given up all claim to Arm rank, so you’re junior to every Arm in this house, including the students. I want to see your best groveling obedience to every one of them. Maybe next time, you’ll think better of giving up on your pride and self-respect. Bass, entertain yourself with her a while. No physical torture, but anything else you want is fine. Show her the nerve trick you taught me. She clearly likes that sort of thing.”
Among Arms, choices don’t come without costs. As soon as I declined the challenge and accepted the truth of Keaton’s words, the walls of Keaton’s house closed in on me. With my new lack of rank, Keaton’s beautiful suburban home assaulted me with a cesspool reek of pain and fear and blood and lust, worse now on my more sensitive nose, its foulness a sudden danger. I inhabited a place of death, a split-level house far too small for the number of Arms in residence. Unhealthy sensations I normally blocked out began to crowd me – the odor of blood and brains on Bass’s hands, the difficult breathing of several normal victims in the basement, the weak and failing heartbeat of one normal who neared death, the terror miasma of tortured normals, the righteous anger and fear from the Focus. Blood on the soles of shoes. Feces spilled the hard way. Ozone from electrical shocks. Butane from torches. The faint charred stench of burned flesh. The omnipresent odor of old blood. I gambled with my life here with six Arms around me, three of them now far superior to my humbled rank, now thinking of me as defeated prey.
I would not leave this place unscathed…if I left at all.
Bass stuck a false half grin on her pasty white face as she demanded I strip and put on some hooker’s bunny outfit stolen from a nearby men’s club, someone’s idea of archetypical Focus. Complete with cheater D-cups that would have made Mary Beth proud. With all my years of experience and skills, I fought past my own fear, barely repressing goose bumps and shakes. “You’re not the only one learning new tricks,” Bass said, her voice silky, after she dragged me to an appropriate playground. Lust pooled around her like a sick blot, and she smiled, enjoying her victory. “I’ve learned how to alter healing and affect nerves. Of others. Don’t move.”
She touched my arm, and fire shot through it, painful enough to make me twitch. “I said, don’t move. Otherwise, I’ll need to punish you.” I stood stock still, anticipatory terror lurking just beneath my skin as she walked around me. Damn the damage the loss of rank did to my control! Under Keaton’s distant metasense gaze, Bass didn’t wear an ounce of fear on her. She chose Keaton’s elaborate bathroom as her playground, the hugest bathroom I had ever been in, some decadent lu
xury of the former owners of the place. The tub was nearly an indoor swimming pool. Immaculate, save for one thing only a Major Transform could recognize: three Transform men had drowned in that tub. While having their juice drained out of them.
“The human body has a lot of nerves, and I’m going to show you all of them.” Twisted bitch. Bass touched me on the back and I almost doubled over in pain, as a barbed wire whip flayed me alive. I normally fought off pain of this magnitude with ease, but Bass’s induced pain hurt in a new way, something unexpected. Bass tsk-tsk-tsked. Punishment was coming.
To hell with this. I refused to let Bass get to me, regardless of the circumstances. I knew Keaton listened, so I started my presentation while Bass attempted to use my body’s pain against me. The distraction worked and I no longer flinched under Bass’s attention. After giving an overview, I started with the details of the inconsequential discoveries first, building up to the Transform-life saving climax. I got about halfway through my presentation, to the explanation about my discovery that I could get pregnant with a tagged male Transform as a father because I had tagged all the Transforms in his household, and a similar discovery that I could turn off my fertility. Good news? Not to Rayburn and Keaton, who got into a side discussion in the oversized living room, regarding a hundred and one uses of aborted Arm fetuses. I flat out gave up. Like six year old girls with their hands over their ears, they were ‘not listening’. Bass continued her perverted lesson. To distract myself from the pain, I filled my mind with the memories of what I had done to Bass in her former lair.
Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) Page 21
