Once We Were Human

by Randall Allen Farmer

Chapter 5

  “…and it’s limbo, in many ways worse than the Quarantine. I, and everyone else in my household, am illegal. De-facto non-citizens. We’re free of the Quarantine, but at the cost of society’s opprobrium, at the mercy of any crusading District Attorney who wants to make a name for himself, and powerless against any employer who finds out that one of us is a Transform. On the other hand – the Federal Government is not going to prosecute us for freeing ourselves from the Quarantine because they and their lawyers know that they don’t have a case. We were illegally detained for health reasons, backed by no science at all, forced to prove a negative – that we weren’t contagious – simply to have freedom. Perhaps in a year or two, when our cases reach the Supreme Court, the Bill of Rights will be finally seen to be worth more than the paper it was written on…” [Focus X, as reported in Newsweek, October 1959]

  Carol Hancock: October 15, 1966 – October 17, 1966

  I stared at my exercise instructor in utter disbelief. “You can’t…”

  Larry Borton glared at me, and as he did so, something changed. The illusion of the dangerous but friendly yardstick-wielding trainer fell away, revealing the killer underneath. Cold blue eyes gazed at me with a flat deadness, muscles far stronger than mine, and an inhuman grace as she moved. She was everything I was, except older and far worse. The strength, the temper, the aggression. The killing. She had taken the path to Satan I had been trying so hard to reject.

  He shifted posture slightly and my mind started to play tricks. I saw his teeth at my throat, my guts ripped from my body, my head severed from my neck. Before I had time to flinch, my muscles turned to rubber, my heart thudded at twice its normal rate, and my bladder cut loose.

  Jesus save me!

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  I was a fool. The Antichrist herself had been training me the entire time. I’d never thought it strange to be able to pick up Larry with my metasense, as a faint glow. He’d – no, she’d buffaloed me but good.

  My feet pumped air as I tried to run away. I thought she would be human, but in this small conference room her true animal nature showed through. It showed in the way she moved, the deadly hunger in her eyes. Like a tiger, not a human woman. If she cut my throat, she would enjoy it, a tiger killing an antelope for its dinner.

  Human lives meant nothing to her.

  “You’re a fool,” she said, and smiled a hungry smile.

  The small, primitive part of my mind that recognized terrible danger screamed in panic. I tried to scrabble out of her grip.

  Her flat eyes watched me as I failed to escape, or even wiggle her arm. “You expect me to kill you,” she said, speaking in a medium alto instead of Larry’s masculine baritone. Her voice shivered along my nerves.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. Squeaked. I’d never squeaked in my life.

  She smiled. “Maybe. Probably not today.” Keaton released my neck and backed off. I stood with my back flat up against the wall and sucked air, trying to control myself. I didn’t want to give her any excuse to kill me.

  Keaton watched me for a moment. Then she moved toward me again, with an impossible cat-like grace, until she stood nose to nose with me. Even her strong odor threatened. She no longer smelled like Larry. I recognized her scent from the knife Zielinski had given me. It had been hers.

  “You’ll die on your own just fine, without any help from me. Just like the other Arms,” she said. “Unless you come with me today.”

  The incompetence of Dr. Zielinski and the other doctors had killed the other Arms.

  Faced with the horror of Stacy Keaton, I decided I would still rather gamble on Dr. Zielinski’s competence.

  Her smile twisted into a sneer of contempt in response, even though I hadn’t said a thing. I had the uncomfortable feeling she read my mind. “You’re going to die because you’re too stupid to live. The real FBI is coming, Hancock. They’re not interested in keeping you alive. All they want is a lab rat. You won’t last two months.”

  She brought her hand up and ran her fingers along my cheek. I was too terrified to speak. I was too terrified to move.

  “McIntyre’s going to test you so he can figure out how to kill me. You’ll perform like a nice little lab rat. Zielinski won’t save you; he’ll just stand back and take notes. When McIntyre’s done, the fucking pride-of-the-FBI’s going to perform one last experiment. He’s always wanted to learn what happens to an Arm when she goes all the way into withdrawal. There won’t be a damn thing you can do about it.”

  Keaton ran her hands down to my shoulders and kneaded the muscles there. It hurt. She dug an index finger into the joint and I hissed in pain. I tried to pull free, but her hands held me in an iron grip and I couldn’t move. She took her finger out of the joint and I gasped for breath. Tears slid down my cheeks from the pain she inflicted. To my surprise, she smiled at me.

  “We’ve almost got your muscle problems licked. Only I can exercise you hard enough to keep your muscle growth under control.” She continued to knead my shoulders. The ache in my muscles increased to a fierce pain. I gritted my teeth and struggled to breathe.

  “Without me, your own muscles will betray you. Soon, without my help, you’ll wake up each morning in pain. A few weeks later you’ll wake up each day screaming and you’ll spend the day in agony. No matter what you do, those muscle problems will keep getting worse. Eventually you’ll start to have convulsions. Then, because your bones won’t be able to support the strain, they’ll break. The convulsions will keep them from healing and you’ll grind them to powder. With no bones, you won’t be able to work your muscles at all, and there will be no relief from the pain. With no bones, your body will lose its shape, and you’ll be nothing more than a simple amoeba, pulsing futilely in the air.” She smiled wider. “Don’t worry, though. You’ll have gone mad from the pain long before.”

  She let go of my shoulders and the relief from pain went through me like a shock. I staggered to the side, but I didn’t move my back from the wall.

  “Come with me and I’ll save you from all this.”

  I flickered my eyes at her and knew my future. If I went with her I would become like her, a killer, an outlaw, a figure of nightmare, slaughtering innocents, torturing, killing everyone in my path. Rev. Smalley had been right. She was a supernatural monster, the Antichrist. If I went with her, it would cost me my soul.

  I didn’t answer her.

  “Or you can kill yourself. Hell, if you want me to, I could kill you now,” she said. “It’s the most pleasant alternative you have. That way McIntyre won’t learn a fucking thing about Arms from you.” She would do it in a heartbeat and never look back.

  No. I would never kill myself.

  “Too bad. Then you’ll die in hideous withdrawal, if your muscles don’t get you first.”

  She was reading my mind. Damn. Dr. Zielinski had tried to convince me that Arms were not supernatural monsters. He lied. The proof stood in front of me.

  “No!” I said. “I’ll never join you.”

  “Too weak,” she said, with utter disdain. “Just as I predicted. Zielinski’s a fool. You don’t even believe me. All you see is some preacher’s boogey-monster. Supernatural powers. Idiot.”

  I lowered my head in shame, but I still refused to surrender my soul.

  “At least McIntyre won’t learn anything useful from a delusional Arm like you.” She paused and shook her head. “You’ll learn from them, though. Wait and see what McIntyre and his boys do to you. Eavesdrop on your keepers. Even your ears will be good enough. Find out how long McIntyre is going to play with you before he sends you into withdrawal.”

  She smiled, a terrible, predatory thing. She backed toward the door, ready to leave. If she wanted me, why didn’t she knock me out and take me?

  Oh. She didn’t want me unless I was willing. She wanted my soul as well as my body.

  When
Keaton reached the door I could breathe again. I shook, and tears streamed down my face.

  “Ma’am,” I said, as respectfully as possible. I had a hard time getting the words out. “I can’t go with you. Should I try and leave here and go out on my own?”

  “Huh.” Keaton paused at the doorway, as if that chuff of air was her laugh. “You’re too stupid to live on your own. You don’t have the first idea about what it takes to survive as an Arm. How would you get kills? You don’t have any idea how to hunt Transforms. Even if you did, what would you do? Lie down next to the dead body for six hours while you were too stoned to move? Then wander around looking for someone to fuck? How long do you think you would last doing that? The FBI will hunt you down like a rabid dog. What do you know about avoiding a manhunt? You wouldn’t last a week on your own. You can’t handle your current problems. If you leave here by yourself, all you do is add a new set of problems. Your only hope is to come with me.”

  The foulness of her language was a slap in the face. Like my language in the last few days. “I can’t do that. Ma’am.” Not with the evil Antichrist.

  Keaton smiled that evil killer’s smile. “Goodbye, Carol. It’s been nice knowing you.

  “You’re dead.”

  She was gone. I blew my nose and dried my eyes. My soul, I hoped, was still my own.

  ---

  Mr. Cook took me down to the main conference room to meet the new FBI agents. I’d taken a shower, dressed and prettied myself up as best as possible, a problem as my plain institutional clothes no longer quite fit. I drew a breath and braced myself. I willed myself to control my body, to walk naturally despite nerves, pain, and stiff joints.

  Mr. Cook opened the door for me and I went in.

  The conference room’s large rectangular table seated ten, but the table seemed small in the room. Everyone in the room stood, ignoring the ten wooden chairs, twins to the chair in my room.

  Dr. Zielinski stood at the head of the table. Dr. Manigault huddled with Dr. Peterson and Dr. Bentwyler on the near side of the table, as meek as I had ever seen them. They faced, across the table, three men in suits who stood with a kind of coiled energy and hard-edged arrogance. Each of them took up enough space for two men. A short, ratty looking doctor stood next to them, taking up less space than I did.

  The controlled arrogance on the FBI agents’ faces clouded to anger when I entered the room. The near one spoke.

  “What’s she doing here?” he said. He was a lean man, no more than medium height, although he gave the impression of being taller. The blue suit looked more like a uniform on him.

  “Mrs. Hancock is an interested party. I invited her here,” Dr. Zielinski said. He wasn’t happy with me. He thought I should have left with Keaton.

  “Mrs. Hancock is a rabid animal and has no business being out of a cage,” the man said. My jaw dropped. I’d never in my life been so baldly insulted.

  “If you have evidence of her involvement in a crime, take it up with a grand jury,” Dr. Zielinski said, his voice clipped.

  “Excuse me.” I said.

  No one noticed.

  “Failing that, she’s a citizen of the United States, a person with a severe medical condition, someone never formally charged with a crime,” Zielinski said. He matched the arrogance of the FBI agents with his own, revealing an intense forcefulness I had never witnessed before. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten that it’s the citizens of the United States for whom you work.”

  The FBI agent stared back with bullet eyes. “She’s a killer, regardless of how you define what she does, or where her ‘volunteers’ come from. She’s nothing more than an animal. I have every legal right to do whatever I want to with her.”

  “The paperwork that brought her here mentioned a Mr. Hoover, if I recall,” Dr. Zielinski said.

  “So does my paperwork, Dr. Zielinski, and my orders authorize my task force to take over the detention of this Arm. Which, if you care, includes the right to decide which of you so-called doctors have access to her.”

  “Mrs. Hancock is participating in a very valuable research effort.” Dr. Zielinski said. “Putting her in a ‘cage’, as you so quaintly put it, would disrupt our efforts and…”

  “Agent McIntyre?” I said to the FBI agent who sparred with Dr. Zielinski. This agent was the only one here with enough starch in his drawers to deserve Keaton’s mention.

  “She’s a risk to an untold number of lives, now.” McIntyre glared at Dr. Zielinski and didn’t even acknowledge my existence. I disliked McIntyre immediately, and for more than the insults. I’d never before known someone I could legitimately label ‘enemy’, but I knew one now. He sparked an anger I didn’t know I had in me. I did my best to push it down. I couldn’t afford temper, not here. “Treating her as a rational human makes everything worse. She’s dangerous.”

  Dr. Bentwyler jumped in and confirmed my surmise. “McIntyre, you don’t understand the value of the research we’re doing.” The other FBI agents frowned when Dr. Bentwyler left off ‘Agent’ McIntyre’s honorific. I’d walked into the middle of a years old argument. Bad, very bad. “This has the potential for a medical breakthrough. You can’t just come in here and screw that up.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about treatment or breakthroughs, Dick,” McIntyre said. Bentwyler frowned. “I’m interested in knowledge. I don’t know enough about Arms. You have an Arm. She’s going to teach me everything I need to know. End of story.” McIntyre slapped his hands together.

  “The only danger…”

  Dr. Manigault held up his hand, interrupting Dr. Zielinski.

  “Dr. Zielinski. You’re a guest here at our facility. If you’d like to remain here, you’d better remember that. I have no problem with Agent McIntyre’s new plans and procedures. We weren’t getting anywhere before.” Dr. Manigault gave me a sadistic leer.

  I wasn’t getting anywhere trying to break into the conversation by being ladylike. Years of holding offices in PTAs and women’s groups had taught me how to bring a room to order. I wasn’t fool enough to use those techniques here. I was the only woman in the room. Assertive was not the image I wanted to project.

  As McIntyre responded to Dr. Bentwyler, I edged over to Dr. Peterson.

  “Dr. Peterson?”

  He looked over to me and listened, uneasy.

  “Do you think I might get a few words in?” I asked.

  He grunted and rose to his feet. “Gentlemen!” His voice cut through the other noise. “Mrs. Hancock would like to say a few words.”

  The men turned and looked at me. I took a breath, and told myself to remember meek and non-threatening.

  “Agent McIntyre,” I said to him, eyes properly downcast. “I apologize for any danger I may pose to anyone.” I kept my voice low and mild. I wanted them to think of me as a normal human woman, not some rabid murderess. “I didn’t choose to become an Arm. This isn’t the sort of thing a proper woman wants to become. I’m trying to do the best I can despite my transformation, so I’m helping…”

  McIntyre cut me off. “Legally, Arms are classified as Monsters. Like any other woman Transform who’s gone Monster, you’re subject to summary justice by any agent of the law, at any time.” He drew his weapon, a duplicate of the gun Bates carried, and pointed it at me. “Now. Shut up.” I got the point, and shut up. McIntyre turned to Mr. Cook. “You. Take her out of here and put her in Detention Cell 1-B. I don’t want to see this Monster again until I ask for her. In writing, in triplicate. Got that?” Cook nodded.

  1-B was the padded room, my new home away from home. I was quiet and polite on the way to 1-B, but inside I seethed. I ached at the way I had been treated. I lusted for my knife, hidden in the suicide cell. I longed for my personal belongings, especially the family pictures. I attempted not to consider that Keaton might have been right. I’d thought I could handle the new FBI agents. I hadn’t had any pr
oblems with Special Agent Bates.

  Less than four hours after I turned Keaton down, I already suffered second thoughts.

  ---

  The next day, Dr. Peterson had me brought down to Lab One, where he introduced Dr. Fredericks to me and left. Dr. Fredericks was the FBI doctor, the short fellow with the rattish face. “Today we’re going to study how Arms respond to some common chemicals,” he said. An orderly I hadn’t met before copied notes on a clipboard. Dr. Fredericks’ man, presumably.

  Dr. Fredericks instructed the orderlies to tie me to the examining table, while he instructed the clipboard orderly to wheel in a footlocker filled with chemical bottles, many of which were marked as poisons. No, he hadn’t asked my permission.

  “Hey! What…”

  “Gag her,” Fredericks said, with an offhand wave of his hand. The orderlies did so before I could even flinch. I panicked and thrashed, to no avail. They fitted me with an IV and catheter, and the test commenced. After each test, Dr. Fredericks took blood samples and urine samples. They monitored my heart and breathing as they tested. I was aware enough of Dr. Fredericks to know he really enjoyed his job, got off on it.

  The chemicals went into the IV line. Some of them stung, some of them made my heart beat off rhythm, some of them hurt like hell. My body was doing something energetic with most of them; I became feverish and dehydrated in moments. They ended up having to change the IV bag every ten minutes. Other tests made my vision blur, others made me feel full of energy, others made me woozy, and one made me pass out and sent the heart monitor machine screaming. Hours of agony later, they finished, wheeled me into my padded cell, and unceremoniously dropped me on the floor. I’d never been so hungry in my life, but they did not give me extra food.

  Chalk one up for Keaton. To Dr. Fredericks, I was nothing more than a lab rat.

  ---

  The next morning I wouldn’t move and I wouldn’t let them drag me from my cell. Eventually, they called in Dr. Peterson, who told me to cooperate or there would be no food, no water and no juice. After a mere moment of hesitation, I cooperated. After the previous day’s horrors I had little resistance left in me.

  The first test was one of Dr. Zielinski’s. If anyone could help me, he could. My guards led me down to Lab Room Two, the room with the fancy equipment where the doctors performed the most complicated tests. Dr. Zielinski waited for me in the room, along with Dr. Fredericks. The orderlies strapped me down, in what seemed to be the new standard procedure.

  Dr. Zielinski turned from the papers he was looking through and frowned at me. Dr. Zielinski’s frown was frightening: cold, distant, and impersonal, without affection, the same as the other doctors’ frowns. I thought of the calves on my uncle Herbie’s farm. Cute and cuddly, but the children knew better than to love them, because they were slated to die.

  “Carol, how are you feeling today?” he said, cold and impersonal.

  “No worse than normal,” I said. He already knew about the pain, the hunger and the craving.

  I felt like one of Uncle Herbie’s calves.

  “We have something a little different we need to do today. We need a sample of your bone marrow.”

  “All right,” I said. I didn’t see anything special about that.

  “Excellent. There’s going to be some discomfort associated with the process.”

  “What do you mean, ‘discomfort’?” I said, suspicious of his cavalier attitude toward pain.

  “Well, we’ll try and make the procedure as painless as possible, of course. Unfortunately, we already know that painkillers don’t work on you, and…”

  Dr. Fredericks coughed. Loudly.

  Dr. Zielinski looked over at Dr. Fredericks, his face dark. Dr. Fredericks looked back at him and didn’t say a thing. I wondered what was going on and I decided Dr. Zielinski must have violated some new security rule. I guessed I wasn’t cleared to know the results of research done on my own body.

  Dr. Zielinski looked away from Dr. Fredericks without any of his normal fight.

  Keaton had predicted this as well.

  “I can’t go into the details. You’ll just have to trust us to do the best we can,” he told me.

  “What if I don’t want to?” I hurt and I was irritable, and I wasn’t interested in their test.

  “I can’t help you with that problem now.”

  The orderlies tightened the straps to make sure I didn’t move at all when they took the sample. The sample was to come from something called the Iliac Crest.

  When I was completely immobilized Dr. Zielinski brought out his bone marrow needle, a large, heavy thing. I was lying on my back, and he began to force the needle in through the skin over my left hip.

  That needle hurt. When the needle got down to the bone, it more than just hurt, it was agony. I screamed. I screamed with everything I had and no one cared. Dr. Zielinski kept pushing the needle. “Hold her,” he said to the guards, as I tried to buck.

  The needle went in, bit by agonizing bit, deep into the bone. I screamed and kept screaming. The orderlies held me down and the needle kept going in.

  Finally, forever later, red fluid came up the needle into the vial at the end. I shook and whimpered. Sweat pooled all around me and tears dripped down the side of my face. One tiny vial filled. Dr. Zielinski swapped it out and replaced the vial with another one. Slowly, that one filled also.

  With one smooth motion, Dr. Zielinski pulled the needle out. I shrieked again as it came out, but he was done. I shook and shivered with sudden cold, and sobs came out of me in a storm. I cried with heartbroken, exhausted pain.

  Dr. Zielinski bent over my miserable form, right next to my ear. “I’m sorry, Carol,” he said.

  “I need to talk to you in private. Please,” I whispered urgently, gulping back my sobs. “I’ll explain everything I’ve learned about Arms.” The information from Keaton. “I want what you promised me. Back when we talked about the Arms who died. A way to survive.” He had promised me he would find me a way to survive.

  “You turned that down just before Special Agent McIntyre arrived,” Dr. Zielinski said, in a whisper.

  My last hope turned to ashes in my mouth. His promised way to help me survive had been to give me to Keaton. The bastard!

  Still, I was desperate. “Please?”

  Dr. Zielinski’s face turned to stone and he turned away without an answer. I had no idea if I would get to talk to him in private. As Keaton had predicted, Dr. Zielinski was now on the outside, standing back and taking notes. Or worse, in collaboration with the enemy.

  They wheeled me back to my room. As I was leaving the lab, I heard Dr. Fredericks say, “I still think you should have had monitors on her. There was valuable information regarding pain responses that we could have recorded.”

  The door shut before Dr. Zielinski answered and I could not hear through the closed door and my own tears. I’d learned a valuable and painful lesson in the past three days: I was surrounded by men who played a game for high stakes and that my wants and desires were only a small thing.

  I was but a pawn in their game, at best a minor pawn. Soon the pawn would be sacrificed and the game would go on without me. I didn’t like that at all.

  Keaton had been right. I’d screwed up. I was dead.

  Dr. Henry Zielinski: October 17, 1966

  Dr. Zielinski frowned as the guards unhooked Hancock from all but one of the chains and handed the one chain to him. He thought he had arranged for normal security, the standard four guards to accompany him and Hancock in the Detention Center courtyard. Instead, no guards, and they handed Hancock a weapon she could use against him.

  He smelled McIntyre’s devious mind at work here, born out when he examined the empty enclosed courtyard and found a dozen FBI agents stationed in the shadows behind open second story windows.

  His position here grew more untenable with each day. He had hoped Hancock would go with Keaton, but
she hadn’t. Stubborn, not yet desperate enough. He hoped she didn’t harbor him any ill will over the way he lied to her about Keaton.

  McIntyre had the FBI set up in a position where if Hancock as much as twitched, they could blow him away without any administrative or legal risks. The setup explained why McIntyre had easily approved his request to talk to Hancock alone. He only had to promise not to reveal any of the information gained from the tests.

  Hancock frowned when she noticed the arrangement in the courtyard. Still shackled at the feet, she couldn’t run well, but Dr. Zielinski knew the Arm could still escape the courtyard if she desired, with only a small chance of being fatally shot. The FBI underestimated her capabilities if they thought they were safe. Dr. Zielinski didn’t. Instead, he hoped her excellent mind would be able to override her more violent Arm urges and she wouldn’t make any threat displays and spook the FBI agents. If she did, he was dead. If she was still angry about the bone marrow test this morning, she would kill him herself. This conversation was a gamble, but he wagered Hancock valued survival over revenge.

  Once the last of the guards backed off, out of the courtyard, Hancock leaned over to him.

  “They don’t like you very much, do they?” Hancock asked, mild. She had seen the marksmen. Dr. Zielinski relaxed. The Arm was desperate for allies and not out for revenge.

  “Agent McIntyre would like to see me dead today more than he would like to see you dead today.” The FBI was listening.

  Hancock didn’t respond as they ambled in a slow circle around the small courtyard. “I want to apologize for messing up my last talk with Larry,” Carol said, her words filled with as many hidden meanings as his. “I’ve been an idiot. A fool. I’m really worried about my future. I would like to accept Special Agent Bates’ job offer. Please?”

  “I’m sorry, Carol,” Dr. Zielinski said. “You must be hallucinating again. Special Agent Bates never gave you any job offers. He was only here to consult on security.”

  For a moment, Dr. Zielinski saw the true killer behind the Arm’s eyes, the eyes of someone who had come to grips with the knowledge she had to kill to live. She bit back her snarl as she worked out the double meanings and warnings.

  “I need help, Dr. Zielinski,” she said. “I know you don’t think much of me anymore, but these FBI tests are going to drive me insane. Is there any way we can get them stopped, or at least slow them down?”

  “The FBI’s test schedule runs about six weeks. After they finish, you’ll be left in peace.” As in ‘rest in peace’.

  She caught the hidden meaning immediately and looked away from him. She was focused on survival. Like Rose Desmond, the only other Arm he worked with who had lasted this long, Carol had started the process of simplifying her emotions. Soon, all her old emotions would be overwhelmed by the ‘Arm basics’: a bloodthirsty focus on survival, winning confrontations and juice. Dr. Zielinski suspected it was a progressive transformation effect. When he first met Keaton, she had still been in that state, but he and Tonya had been able to quickly re-socialize her. How long the dominance of the Arm basics would last in Carol was an open question.

  “What do they want of me in the long term?” Hancock asked, a few moments later.

  As she already knew the FBI’s plans for her, her question referred to a different topic. Such as ‘Why are you still here, Dr. Zielinski?’ “I’m guessing their superiors want you to eventually work for them. At some point, they’re going to be willing to help you, but not yet.” He hated to string her along, but he was short on ideas. Biggioni and her Focus cronies – his superiors, if you looked at the situation from the right direction – wanted another Arm on the team, but he had a nagging suspicion they weren’t willing to pay the price for Hancock.

  “That’s good news. I take it you’re willing to be my agent and represent me?”

  “Unfortunately, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to stay here,” Dr. Zielinski said. “You’ll have to use some of those contact methods we talked about earlier. In fact, you should give some thought to the idea that your situation may be similar to those people we talked about earlier, who were similarly unemployed.” Meaning the first Focuses during the Quarantine. Any messages she sent would end up in Tonya’s hands and Dr. Zielinski hoped Tonya would be able to come up with a way to save Hancock’s life.

  Hancock nodded. “Gotcha. Larry was convinced, though, that I wouldn’t be able to keep my Arm muscle problems under control without his help. Will they be able to give me any help?”

  The Arm meant her juice supply problems. “You’re going to have to teach yourself how to deal with that problem. Larry’s so annoyed at you that he’s not likely to ever want to speak to you again.” Once you made Keaton’s shit list, you never wanted to deal with her again. Unless you wanted to die. He was sure Tonya or some other Council Focus could come up with Transforms for Hancock. What he doubted was whether they would want to.

  Hancock frowned. “Are there any others of his specialty available? He was sure I’d die before I mastered the muscle control techniques.” So hunting down Transforms for their juice wasn’t as easy as he supposed, eh? Dr. Zielinski rubbed his chin and didn’t answer for a few steps. He had thought the Arm instinct package would provide, but apparently Keaton didn’t agree. That was bad news…and also put a new light on some of Keaton’s comments and behaviors. She had been covering up the fact that hunting down Transforms was difficult.

  “We’ve talked about this before, Carol. Larry’s skills are quite unique.” No, Dr. Zielinski didn’t associate with any other Arms. He didn’t have any good answers for any of Hancock’s needs.

  “I guess I’ll just have to cope on my own.”

  To his surprise, she didn’t try to kill him or escape right then and there.

  ---

  “Dr. Zielinski, have a seat,” Agent McIntyre said. The FBI Agent had claimed Dr. Bentwyler’s office. “I didn’t like your conversation with Hancock. What the fuck did you think you were doing, anyway?”

  “With regard to what?” Dr. Zielinski asked. McIntyre still thought Dr. Zielinski had helped Keaton evade him back in Keaton’s early years, after she escaped from FBI detention. It didn’t help that he was right. McIntyre just hadn’t been able to prove it.

  McIntyre slammed a stack of typewritten papers down in front of Dr. Zielinski. He looked them over, and to no big shock, they were a transcript of his conversation with Hancock. “On the third page, you said we were going to offer her a job when this was over. You had no right to say any such thing.”

  “Then what are you going to do with her?” Dr. Zielinski asked.

  “That’s not for me to decide, that’s for my superiors to decide. Whatever they decide, I can guarantee we won’t be offering a Monster any form of employment.” McIntyre grabbed the transcript back. “You agreed to be her agent.”

  “I most certainly did not.”

  “Bullshit. She asked you, and you didn’t say ‘no’,” McIntyre said. “You and that Focus-loving bastard Bates are trying to grab Hancock for the bitch underground you help, aren’t you?”

  McIntyre meant the Focus Network. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dr. Zielinski said. He had disliked McIntyre since the instant they met. Anti-Transform bigots always got under Dr. Zielinski’s skin, and McIntyre was one of the worst because he knew enough to know better, and chose not to.

  “You pussy-whipped Focus-lovers never do,” McIntyre said. He smiled and cracked his knuckles. “You’re fired, Zielinski. Pack your stuff up right now and leave.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds I don’t trust you,” McIntyre said. “Tell you what. You resign today of your own accord and I won’t release this transcript of your conversation with Hancock.” McIntyre slid a second transcript across the desk, holding on tight. Dr. Zielinski read a few paragraphs, not surprised to read that in the altere
d transcript he had revealed the test results to Hancock.

  The dismissal was, unfortunately, inevitable. If he resigned, it would save both of them the ensuing political fights.

  “I understand,” Dr. Zielinski said. “Since I do have pressing business back in Boston, I believe I will have to resign, as you’ve indicated.”

  He pitied Hancock. Without his input, minimal as it had been in the last several days, conditions here were about to get much worse.

  ---

  Dr. Zielinski put down the telephone in his Detention Center office and kept his face stony blank. That was his final status report call on this project.

  Had he covered his tracks as well as he covered his emotions?

  Everyone involved was unhappy, as the Detention Center staff blamed him for McIntyre’s appearance. Dr. Manigault had called an all-hands meeting to go over the situation. All hands except Hank.

  Dr. Zielinski called his local travel agent and requested his return ticket to Boston. He didn’t look forward to the journey home. He had lost another Arm, suffered another failure, and taken yet one more step backwards in his academic career.

  He walked down the hall, down two flights of stairs, and found the meeting room Dr. Manigault had mentioned. He took a seat outside the door and waited for the meeting inside to finish. While he waited, Dr. Zielinski wrote slanted reports in his head.

  Three hours later, Dr. Manigault stalked out of the meeting, angry. On the way by, he dropped a piece of paper in Dr. Zielinski’s lap, an exit interview waiver. McIntyre and the FBI agents still argued among themselves in the meeting room, unusual disunity. Patrelle, McIntyre’s boss, must have been up to his old heavy-handed tricks again. Dr. Zielinski wiped his face with a handkerchief as he stood to leave.

  So far, no one suspected Keaton had been here only a few days ago.

  Carol Hancock: October 18, 1966 – October 21, 1966

  I learned about Dr. Zielinski’s resignation first thing in the morning, from Dr. Fredericks. As he and the FBI techs ran through the day’s tests, at first I silently cursed Dr. Zielinski for failing me. After more time passed, I began to realize how much I had lost. He had protected me and helped me, and I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that my insistence on our last conversation led to his resignation, his forced resignation.

  They tested my reaction time, hand to eye coordination, and resistance to electrical shock today. The last was extremely painful, left me with burns all over my body, nothing more than torture. I wanted to scream ‘I’m a human being. You can’t do this to me!’, but they wouldn’t have cared. Dr. Fredericks would have probably enjoyed it.

  When the day’s tests ended, around ten in the evening, the guards escorted me to my padded cell. Again, no time to exercise today. I curled up on the floor in agony, and as best as possible, thought.

  I didn’t have anything else to do in my padded cell. I no longer had my television. Before McIntyre and the new FBI team came, I watched Johnny every night. The laughter from the television had been a sound from some other world in the ghostly darkness of my room, but it had been at least something. Now, nothing remained for me to do except read the books and magazines I had already read, and attend to a stack of old coffee-ringed newspapers and a pencil for finishing the half-finished crossword puzzles. I wasn’t sure they knew about the pencil.

  I hurt, I was hungry, and I felt betrayed by the world. Alone. Dr. Fredericks reveled in my helplessness and refused to explain anything. The FBI techs didn’t speak to me at all. They didn’t consider me human.

  I was lonely and friendless. I was helpless, tied up whenever I was an inconvenience. I had no control even over myself.

  I hated that lack of control.

  The images in my mind of my family dimmed, to where my sharpest memories of them were the pictures my mother had brought me. Those pictures I recalled with Arm-clarity of memory, unlike the memories from before my transformation, which had faded. I wanted my family back. I wanted Sarah alive again. I didn’t want to be a Transform!

  After an hour of pointless self-pity, I realized the only person responsible for my situation was me. I could have taken up Agent Bates on his offer, rolled those dice and taken the gamble. I could have gone with Stacy Keaton and entered her mad world of violence and domination. I chose neither. Hell, I might have even accepted Dr. Manigault’s offer.

  I didn’t know what to do about my current situation.

  I owed it to Sarah, though, to do something.

  I didn’t fall asleep until around two. I woke up at five, fully refreshed. Three hours, as always, was enough.

  The next day, more tests. My juice was a day lower and the tests got on my nerves. The slightest hint of temper, though, would leave me restrained, so I began to cultivate stoicism. I hated the restraints.

  First, they tested my reactions to various light levels. They knew already I saw in the dark, and those tests were fine. They tried lights of different colors and brightness, which went fine except with my low juice, all the light was too bright.

  The rest of the day, they hooked me up to a machine I didn’t recognize. They shaved patches on my head, the bastards, and attached dozens of electrodes to my scalp. The tests started, testing my reactions to many things, including a gunshot from behind me when I didn’t expect it.

  At night, I curled up on the floor and thought again, anything to keep my mind off my unending muscle pain. FBI techs had talked about being here for Thanksgiving but home for Christmas, positive they would be ‘finished here’ by then. Keaton was right. The FBI planned to pull the plug on me sometime early in December. I wracked my mind in an attempt to explain that date, and remembered a conversation Dr. Zielinski and Dr. Fredericks had when they tested my resistance to poisons. Dr. Zielinski had said ‘the muscle growth curve will lead to problems in mid December’, and Dr. Fredericks answered with a cheery ‘nothing we need to worry about’. Also, Dr. Zielinski had said the FBI would ‘leave me in peace’ in about six weeks.

  From this, I concluded my muscle problems were intractable without Keaton to drive me into exhaustion, and my own muscles would immobilize me a week or two before Christmas. Then the FBI would pull the plug on me. The idea that I lived under a death sentence chilled me.

  I still didn’t know what to do.

  I did get up and start some stretches and exercises, though.

  The third day after Dr. Zielinski’s departure I didn’t go hungry. Dr. Fredericks wasn’t being kind. No, today they tested food poisons. They restrained me, catheterized me and fed me, with a needle up my right arm for near constant blood draws. The show was good enough to attract McIntyre’s personal attention. Some of what they fed me I vomited up almost immediately. Other things they fed me gave me intense bloody diarrhea within a half hour, or filled my urine sack with awful red, black and orange fluids. One vile thing – botulism toxin, if what they muttered to each other was correct – made blood seep from my body right through my skin. Just like a male Transform in withdrawal, not a pretty sight.

  I kept myself awake by force of will. McIntyre and the FBI techs whispered to each other most of the day, softly enough they thought I couldn’t hear them. Hah. I learned a lot from them, none of it good.

  After a huge dinner, they led me to the weight room for more tests. I reveled as much in the exercise as in their discomfort with my near instant recovery from their poisoning.

  Back in my padded room, I went back to my calisthenics. From what I overheard, I now knew how I would die. It turned out Arms didn’t have exactly the same withdrawal symptoms as male Transforms. An Arm did go through a wild and violent psychotic phase, but after some unspecified amount of time the Arm curled into a ball and went catatonic. I remembered Dr. Zielinski telling me about Julie Bethune, who died of her wounds while in withdrawal. I guessed they wanted to see what happened to an Arm in withdrawal who wasn’t wounded.

 
I was close to being useless from lack of juice, either tomorrow or the next day. I was terrified of the yawning blackness of need. My craving for juice crept up on me, a dark shadow of an unknown beast stalking me and overwhelmed me with despair. I tried to pray but I doubted God heard me.

  I hated myself for the choices I had made, choices turning me into the title character of my own Greek tragedy.

  Blood, death and fear filled my dreams these past nights. And juice. Always juice. The terrible craving never stopped. My dreams echoed the terrible highs and terrible lows that wore me out and wore me down. Lack of human contact had dried out my voice and my humanity.

  I became powdered hate, my tears acid rage.

  I came to understand Keaton’s kill or be killed viewpoint toward our fellow humans, or at least one of them. I had never met anyone before like Agent McIntyre, only heard of his kind of people in stories. To him, I wasn’t a human being, I was a puzzle to be solved to give him the knowledge he needed to go hunt down that great white whale of his named Stacy Keaton. Doctors Manigault and Fredericks were sadistic, but they needed human targets for their sadism. For them, at least I was human.

  A little after midnight, tired of my calisthenics, I sat down on the floor of my cell, closed my eyes, and began to think. Mom had told me a million times if I didn’t like a situation, I needed to change it. Good advice, which I had passed on to my children. Well then, I needed to change my situation. Take risks, because all the options I thought of involved risks.

  The question was which risks to take.

  I assumed, first off, that everything Dr. Zielinski had told me was meaningful. As a hidden ally of Stacy Keaton, he had to have something going for him. She would have killed him otherwise. Based on his comments, I knew I might last six months or more if I had juice and proper exercise, even if I didn’t learn whatever secrets Keaton knew to keep herself alive indefinitely. Based on Dr. Zielinski’s comments, I could pass notes to this underground thing the Focuses ran, and these notes would be delivered to other conspirators, such as Dr. Zielinski, Agent Bates and if my assumptions were correct, Stacy Keaton herself. I doubted he would have bothered to speak about the Quarantine otherwise. Also based on what he said, I should be able to get help from the staff members at this Detention Center, because the low-end staff members here were naturally sympathetic toward Transforms. If I behaved myself.

  I came up with several possibilities. First, I needed to get a message out. For that, I needed an ally. It would have been better if I had allies among the staff already, but I hadn’t been that smart. Instead, I needed to depend on a little history. I needed someone on the staff who had been here back during the Quarantine, which I hoped meant he or she would be inclined to help a Transform in trouble, and also still had connections to the Focuses. I ran down my mental list of the people on the staff I had remotely friendly dealings with, and found one, and only one, who had been here since the fifties. Doris Trotter, the kitchen lady.

  If she was actually willing to help me, I would be a hell of a lot luckier than I deserved.

  I wrote two letters, one to Dr. Zielinski and another to Agent Bates, and in both I asked them to help me get out of this place. They would go under my plate at breakfast. If the FBI found out, I would end up back in the suicide cell, which lead down another avenue of minor hope. I would have Dr. Zielinski’s knife back.

  I also made the overdue decision to start befriending the staff in my own right. Based on my observations, save for the doctors, they weren’t all bad. At least compared to the FBI people. If none of my letters helped, I suspected that with the help of the Detention Center staff, I still would be able to find a way to escape. I didn’t have any idea where to start, so I considered that option far riskier than the letters.

  I still didn’t know how to get juice on my own, but I was more afraid of the possibility the FBI would drive me into withdrawal in this hideous place. Besides, if I was going to die, I didn’t want to give McIntyre and his sadistic crew the pleasure of being the ones to do the job.

  I also decided to keep up with my hygiene. I was a woman, dammit. I wanted to look like a woman again. Act like a woman again. I had to get over my annoyance at the damned muscles that made me look so mannish. If those female Olympic athletes found a way to work around their muscles, I could as well. I vowed to take a shower every day, especially after any exercises. Brush my teeth. Wear deodorant. Wear proper makeup and clothes; if I couldn’t befriend one of the women here and get her to provide me with real clothing, I deserved what I got from the FBI.

  I dealt with one more decision, and that one bothered me more than the others did. Keaton. She was a killer, a monster. I might write her a letter and put myself in her hands, if she would take me, but doing so would cost me my soul. Assuming my soul hadn’t already been damned. No church would ever welcome me, because of what I had already done. Yet, placing myself in Keaton the atheist Antichrist’s hands would go far beyond my previous actions.

  I didn’t remember anything in “Thou shalt not kill” along the lines of “unless you’re an Arm about to go into juice withdrawal”. Or “unless the person you’re about to kill has volunteered to die for you”. To survive, I would have to kill unattached Transforms. Sure, I would save them from a worse fate, but that was nothing more than a fancy argument. God knew better. I thought I had been a good Christian. No. I knew I had been a good Christian.

  Not anymore, not since I became an Arm. Not from the moment I transformed.

  Those church doors closed for me just because of what I was. Those church bells rang now for someone else. I was on the other side. The only question I had yet to resolve was how far on the other side. If I gave myself to Keaton, I would be giving myself to someone so far on the other side of God as to have joined the pantheon of names like Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Hitler, Eichmann, Stalin and the rest of those termed Antichrists in the books I’d read and the sermons I had listened to.

  Surely, Keaton would not require me…

  No. I couldn’t predict Keaton. That was obvious. If I placed myself in her hands, all I could do was hope.

  Therefore, in the end, I gathered my courage, calmed my nervous hands, and wrote a third letter, to Keaton. I asked her for her help. I put myself in her position and decided that since I rejected her help once, she wouldn’t likely want to help me. It didn’t feel right to me, as an Arm. I had to offer something.

  I thought for a long time, and looked at the problem from all sides.

  I really had only one thing to offer. Myself. My meager skills at business, organization of volunteer groups and entertaining all went into the letter. Weak, but those were my strengths. I didn’t mention I could clean house, cook or care for young children. I couldn’t imagine Keaton would have any use for those skills.

  I looked the letter over and almost crumpled it up. My gut said my offer wasn’t enough. I chewed my lips for several minutes and added, at the end, that I would do whatever she wanted.

  I gave up my soul in that letter. I had considered my soul worth preserving, once. Now, to hell with my soul. I wanted life. I wanted the disease’s taking of my daughter Sarah’s life to be something more than a pointless tragedy.

  Now I had to hope.

  That hope was all I had left.