Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2)

by Randall Farmer

  The personal signifier series again to build the Affinity link, the beautiful C flat, B flat, and G chord, two octaves below middle C. Then the series again, only slightly shifted, this time to apply to her juice buffer, then the tie off series with all its careful sequences and echoes. That was the series Lori had given her so much help with, and she hadn’t ever gotten the entire sequence correct, but she did this time.

  This time, she got every bit of the pattern right. Every component, every sharp and flat, every bit of emphasis and voice exactly correct.

  Perfect. Her internal supplemental juice supply linked to her juice buffer, and the juice came pouring in. Gail lay on that bloody floor in shock as she built up her supplemental juice. So much! Ever since her transformation, she had suffered from low juice, but now she had juice in abundance. The juice just kept coming and coming.

  Smack! Gail hit, not the wall, but an odd device of Carol’s with cruel metal spikes. One of the spikes speared her right through the chest, and the juice pattern collapsed as Gail’s attention focused on the horrible metal spike through her body and dripping her blood on the floor. The wonderfully high juice level evaporated. Blood seeped into her lungs and the juice rushed to fix the wound.

  “What?” she said, blearily, still high. She had never dreamed high juice could feel so glorious. Tears flowed at the loss of the wonderful delight.

  Carol picked herself up off the bloody floor and came towards Gail, covered with blood, a vicious demon out of the pits of hell. She lifted one of Gail’s eyelids and then the other, and then made a clucking noise with her tongue.

  Then she stabbed Gail through the abdomen with her knife.

  Gail gasped in shock and tried to summon up her pain-numbing juice pattern. What was Carol doing? She trusted Carol!

  Carol gently picked her up off the metal spike and laid her on the floor again.

  “How’s your juice count?” Carol said. She wore a large bloody smear across one cheek.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m keeping you from going Monster,” Carol said. “You’re supposed to turn that thing off before you send yourself into Monster, you know.”

  “Oh,” Gail said. “Yeah.”

  “Now why don’t you finish healing yourself up, and next time we do this, you can use the juice pattern that lets you read your own juice count, and you’ll put in an automatic stop before you become a Monster, right?”

  “Right,” Gail said, her voice still weak. “I did it, though, didn’t I?”

  Carol grinned a fierce demon’s grin. “You did. You’re a real witch now.”

  ---

  After Hank finished poking and prodding the scar marking her abdominal wound and stating he didn’t see any problems, Gail grabbed her robe and put it back on. “Hank, how do you, you know, cope?” She shivered, unclear whether the shivers came from the temperature in the examination room or because of her thoughts. The basement session with Carol hurt more than physically. It disturbed her. It drew her.

  Thankfully, Carol was elsewhere, though her activities disturbed her nearly as much as Gail’s own questions. Apparently, Carol hadn’t noticed Daisy’s inclusion in the Chicago move until today, and had ‘requested’ an in-depth interview with her. She had dragged Daisy into Storeroom 2 and given her a nasty Arm-style mind scrape. Daisy didn’t impress Carol, save her comment that if Gail let Carol recruit Daisy, she could turn Daisy into a ‘real human being’ in less than two months. Carol apparently found Daisy’s presence too coincidental to be believable, and didn’t trust Gail’s charismatic interviews with Daisy.

  “Cope with what, Gail?” Hank said, still writing notes on Gail’s chart. He looked so at home here at Littleside, so unlike his shifty quack Dr. Smith alter-ego.

  “With Carol and what she’s, um, doing these days.” After Carol’s basement lesson, and the unexpected extracurricular activities that followed, Gail had showered for over two hours. To no avail; the odors and the sensations wouldn’t leave her mind. She feared they would drive her crazy, or at least turn her into another Lady Death. Perhaps she could drive things out of her head by increasing her practice time by a few more hours each day.

  Hank frowned for a moment, hesitant for once. Then he took a deep breath. “It’s difficult, and Carol knows. The issue is why she gave up on her basement activities before. Her activities twist everyone in her organization. But you’re a Focus, and you never hunted Monsters…”

  Gail turned away, not wanting to see the Doctor’s eyes. “I’d kill to protect my household, Hank. After a few years as a Focus…” She let her voice trail off. Why was she unburdening herself to Zielinski, anyway? He was a bloody-minded monster, just like Carol. Only… Only why wasn’t he more bloody-minded, after so many years with Carol?

  “Oh, that opening,” Hank said, his voice flat and Arm-like. Distant, non-judgmental. He understood how a Focus could twist her willingness to do anything to protect her household into the right to do any sort of moral depravity imaginable to non-household members.

  What he said surprised her, though. “Major Transforms – perhaps all Transforms – come equipped with some extra instincts, new instincts you didn’t possess before,” he said. “They’ll serve you well in an emergency, but outside of an emergency, you can choose not to follow them.”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Gail said, anger seeping into her voice. ‘You can choose not to follow them’ indeed! She wanted sympathy, not some asshole telling her to grit her teeth and tough it out. “You don’t have these temptations.”

  Gail turned to Hank, who reddened with anger. His hot eyes met hers directly. “As a doctor, with my background and knowledge, I know of more ways to end life than to preserve it,” he said, his voice focused and precise. “Carol’s organization is a criminal organization, Gail, far beyond the law. The only constraint on any of us is Carol herself, and she’s a predator and thinks nothing of killing. Don’t you tell me that I haven’t faced those temptations. I have. We all have. Some of Carol’s people even act on them.”

  She turned away, not sure whether she wanted to give Zielinski mock applause for having at least some moral rectitude or charismatically twist him into a pretzel for his insufferable superiority. Instead, Gail swallowed her anger and stalked out of the Littleside examination room without saying another word.

  ---

  “Gail?”

  “Tonya?” Gail was in her office, taking a brief break from training. Eating cold roast chicken and leftover mashed potatoes. The scent of newly baked Thanksgiving pies filled this entire end of the Branton, and had been making her stomach rumble all day.

  Her metasense ached from overuse. The two torso wounds Carol gave her still itched. She bet she would need Gilgamesh to clean a whole bunch of dross from inside her. In her lunch date with him, yesterday, she had apologized, in teeny tiny sentences, making sure that she wasn’t pushy and didn’t interrupt. She had seen his relief reaction in other people many times, most recently with Lori when Gail had said she was ‘in’. Was she really so headstrong, contrary and bitchy? Surely not!

  Gail and Tonya made small talk over the telephone for several minutes, and then Tonya hesitated. “I know we weren’t going to talk about Carol, and I know we can’t risk any problems with our project…”

  “But?” Gail said, ever so slightly cold. Carol may be doing Keaton’s bidding, but she was still Gail’s Arm.

  “Can’t you talk her into breaking with Keaton?” Tonya said, intent.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? It doesn’t make any sense that she keeps supporting Keaton when Keaton’s destroying everything Carol’s ever worked for!”

  “If Carol broke with Keaton, that would also destroy everything she’s ever worked for.” The choices they all faced made Gail want to puke.

  “Gail, the Arms are destroying the Cause! For God’s sakes let’s get the Arms fighting each other instead of us.”

  “The Arms are fighting the firs
t Focuses, not the Cause Focuses. If this changes, Carol will re-evaluate.”

  “Gail, I can smell the blood from here,” Tonya said. “How can she go along with Keaton?” Tonya sounded honestly confused and distraught, but Gail didn’t trust her ability to read Tonya.

  “It’s a gamble, Tonya. She’s stalling for time. Tonya, we need some form of unified Major Transform group to build on, or we’ll descend into anarchy under the pressures of the epidemic, and humanity will be doomed. For the moment, that’s the Arms. We just have to pray something comes up to change Keaton’s mind.”

  “Hell,” Tonya muttered. “Did she say this as the Commander? Or as Keaton’s loyal flunky? Or as an egotistical Arm that can only imagine a solution coming from the Arms?”

  “Carol is the Commander.”

  “She’s also been kicked down to number four Arm, and if she isn’t careful, she’s going to lose even more rank. What she’s doing may be good for the Arms, but it’s personally bad for her,” Tonya said. “I don’t suppose you can talk her out of this? To protect her from herself?”

  “No. I’m not going to do any such thing.”

  “It’s your responsibility, to all the Focuses who will suffer in Keaton’s rampage.”

  “No, this isn’t my responsibility. You gave me to Carol and gave me a job to do. Well, I’m doing the job, and I belong to Carol and she belongs to me. She’s the Commander, and we certainly don’t have anyone else who can claim to be that good, so I chose to believe she knows what she’s doing.”

  Tonya was silent for a long time, and then Gail heard a low, “Hell. Hell, hell, hell. Fuck.”

  Henry Zielinski: November 24, 1972

  The abandoned Inferno household made the hairs on the back of Zielinski’s forearms twitch. He had two Inferno bodyguards, keys for entry, and he signed the security guard’s log at the front door, but the place still bothered him. Another hour, and he would leave. No, two. The Focus had arranged to meet him here. She hadn’t showed.

  In addition to his many short visits over the years, he had stayed here for three extended stays, the first a four monther while Carol was starting out as an Arm; the second a two monther during the first time Haggerty flipped her relationship with Carol and Carol feared for his life; and the third a three week sojourn at the beginning of the Clearing of Chicago episode, while Carol scouted out the Chicago area at her stealthiest. Each time, he left annoyed at the Focus and Inferno. Yet, in Chicago, he was back with them again in the Branton, although he officially didn’t belong to either Branton Focus household. He found himself missing the physical Inferno household itself, especially yesterday, Thanksgiving. He had buried too much of his life here, his successes and his mistakes.

  Zielinski walked down the creaking stairs to the empty basement, to the common lab, thinking of his Inferno projects that hadn’t succeeded. The project to block induced transformations using Crow dross constructs. The Focus autohypnosis project which went nowhere because it turned out that the female Major Transforms uniformly resisted hypnosis. All the other failures.

  His thoughts echoed the dusty silence. Carol, in his memory, berated him for dwelling on failure and aggravating his predisposition toward depression.

  Hank turned on the lights. A smile crept over his face when he saw his old friend, the Inferno gas chromatograph, lying unwanted in the corner, as usual half torn apart. Too old now to bother moving. Old lost friends of his, Tina and Jim, both of whom had been Transforms here, haunted his memories of this place. At various times, they had both helped him repair the chromatograph. Since he first met the Inferno household, nine household members had fallen in battle. Nine. Too much, too many bad memories for an old man like himself to cope with.

  “She set you up, Doc.”

  The quiet voice echoed faintly in the empty basement, not a voice Hank recognized. He turned around, looking for its source. His bodyguards kept their distance and showed no sign of having heard anything. He saw no one else here. Then, five feet away, a Crow appeared, a young man dressed in a judge’s robes.

  “Who might you be?” Zielinski said. His bodyguards didn’t hear him speak, either. As usual, bodyguards were proving to be no protection whatsoever against the more talented Major Transforms.

  “The Crow La Brea.”

  Not a familiar name.

  “What can I do for you?” Hank paused. “And why do you say she set me up?”

  “My people want to help Arm Keaton in her struggle, and we have an information packet we want to pass along to her, as a gift.” The Crow’s voice was a whisper, barely heard. “We’ve enclosed several letters as well. We thought we’d be able to hand these over to Focus Rizzari today, during her visit, but since she isn’t here, we’ve come to a different conclusion regarding the day’s events.”

  “I don’t believe Focus Rizzari is in contact with Arm Keaton.”

  “We see no need for direct contact. We give the information to Focus Rizzari, to pass to Focus Rickenbach, then to Arm Hancock, and then to Arm Keaton.”

  “I see.” Typical Crow caution. La Brea was a thin man, about Zielinski’s height, with short light brown hair and eerie dark blue eyes. He put no effort into hiding his Crowness, complete with the half-distracted air of someone paying far more attention to his metasense than to his eyes. “Can I ask which first Focus the information is about?”

  La Brea smiled. “Our files on you appear accurate, Dr. Zielinski.” He paused, and for a few moments, his face went blank. Zielinski perked himself up with sudden shock. Metasense-based verbal communication! “Guru Athabasca agrees. The information concerns Focus Fingleman and a business your faction has investigated; we seek to ally with Arm Keaton.”

  “I’ll make sure to pass this along,” Zielinski said. Chrysanthemum. Shit. La Brea had just fingered Fingleman as one of Chrysanthemum’s owner slash directors. “So, what is Focus Rizzari up to today? Why did she set me up, as you claim?”

  “You tell me. All I have are wild guesses and suppositions.”

  Zielinski nodded, then realized in horror he knew. Lori had sent him chasing this particular wild goose to keep him away from her while she made a blind leap into the darkness. How ludicrous was it that this strange Crow fell for the same lie Lori told him, and met him in this empty house. Zielinski kept his face blank while his stomach churned. “I have no idea,” he said, a bald-faced lie. “Do you have any interest in setting up contact with me? I’m always interested in conversations with previously unknown Crows.” Especially Crows using techniques his Crow friends hadn’t mastered.

  “We are in contact with a friend of yours, a Dr. Van Reijn. If you wish, we can pass along word to him that you can contact the Judges through him. He won’t know the names I mentioned.” Van Reijn, eh? Well, that cleared up one mystery. Dr. Van Reijn, Zielinski’s European counterpart, had been in contact with American Crows for about five years, but he had never been able to pry from Van Reijn which Crows.

  “Judges?” Hank said. It was a strange name for a Crow faction.

  “Our name for ourselves.” A faint smile crept over La Brea’s face. No, La Brea wouldn’t answer his question. “Goodbye, Dr. Zielinski.” With that, La Brea vanished from Hank’s sight. A two inch thick manila folder appeared on the floor where the Crow had been standing.

  Carol Hancock: November 24, 1972

  I waved at Darrell as I got out of my car. He watched from the lookout tower disguised as a children’s tree house. His giant afro bobbed as he nodded in response, but he made no other motion to attract attention.

  The scent of stale take-out Chinese greeted me as I opened the door from the garage. I sniffed, disgusted, and tried yet again to figure out when I could squeeze some time out of my schedule to do some real cooking. Not tonight. I needed a shower too badly, and then I hoped to get a couple of hours of actual sleep. I mopped my face, again, with the towel hanging around my neck, took two steps toward the bathroom, and stopped.

  I heard someone in my torture chamber.
>
  Besides the victims, that is. I shook my head in disbelief. No one was supposed to be able to break in past my perimeter guards, enter my torture chamber, and entertain one of my guests.

  No one was supposed to want to.

  I had already put in twenty hours of work today, prompted by my meeting with Keaton the previous week, and I fought exhaustion. The Network takeover still ate vast amounts of my time; no matter how many Network operative jobs I fobbed off on my Arms, Keaton’s list remained far too long. I refused to do any of the Network jobs in a sloppy fashion. Whether Keaton fucked up or not, the Network was mine, after this. Which, until Keaton fucked up, if she ever did, made it hers. I continued to towel off and backed up to one of my storage rooms, where I put on my new combat boots and oiled my elbow and knee callus pads. It figured the first time I might need my new combat method would be after an hour and a half of sparring with Webberly; my body was one large head-to-toe ache, and I didn’t have the juice count I would need when I went after Haggerty or Bass.

  Finished with my preparations, I crept down the staircase, my own metapresence masked, trying to ignore the sexual heat of my own torture chamber. The intruder entertained Walter, and Walter didn’t enjoy the ministrations.

  My meeting with Keaton last week hadn’t been a disaster. Just Rayburn, Keaton’s students and me. Keaton treated me like shit, picky and second-guessing, but she showed no interest in my basement work, my side projects, or my relationships with my former Cause allies. No, just her orders, and how well I followed them. Which I had. My success didn’t please her at all, and it should. I remained in her doghouse, and came out of the meeting with more time consuming projects to complete.

  I held three men in my abattoir of blood and gore, Thanksgiving leftovers. Two of them remained chained to the wall on the far side, and one man, Walter, had been freed from his wall chains and chained across one of the racks set up for play. Frank the serial rapist and murderer followed me with wild mad eyes from his wall chains, while Davie remained curled up in a fetal ball, his mind nearly gone. Perhaps I had been a little hard on him in the past days, but I didn’t like men who raped eight year old boys.