“Oh! Yes, sir,” said Pienaar, who’d clearly forgotten the doctor’s presence. “All in order now.” He blew his breath out and wiped his hands on his trousers.
“Mantjies?”
“Yes, Doctor Scubbe. I think we can start now,” said Mantjies.
“I’ll be taking the notes,” said the doctor, tapping his clipboard. “Ready when you are.”
“Right,” said Mantjies. “Grobbelaar, pass me canister number one. That’s right, that’s the one.”
Gia handed him the canister and watched as he slotted it into the nosepiece of the gas mask. She was relieved to see that the werewolf seemed to be calming. Her breath slowed and her eyes showed less white.
“Pienaar, can you go stand over there by the door?” asked Mantjies. “Cadet Lee needs to be up here at her head.”
Lee took her place, standing close to the chair behind the werewolf. Mantjies turned to Gia again. “See that row of vials over there, Cadet? They’ve also got numbers. The doctor’s going to read off a number, then you hand it to me. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” said Gia.
“We’ll start with D-forty-nine,” said Doctor Scubbe and Gia, after a moment’s panic when she struggled to read the handwritten labels, handed Mantjies one of the vials.
“Let me get into place first,” said Lee and took off her gloves. She leaned down, moving her hands towards the werewolf’s face. The were’s eyes widened as Lee’s hands came into view from behind her then the whole chair rocked as Lizzie threw herself against her restraints again. The werewolf grunted with effort and Gia watched in horror as she writhed in the chair, putting all her strength into it. She made no sound this time, nothing but the pop and hiss of her frantic breathing in the mask. Gia pressed herself back against the tiles, watching.
I’ve seen this before. Where have I seen this before?
Lee stepped back and at once, the werewolf stopped her struggles and lay still, chest heaving.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” said Lee. “It will skew the reading if she’s panicked like this.”
“You can tighten those restraints a bit,” said the doctor.
Mantjies reached to obey and once again the werewolf thrashed in her bonds, eyes rolling.
It was those panicked eyes that helped Gia remember. She’s just like Nico used to be. When Mom took him to the doctors and he freaked.
Surely the others could see that it was useless to try to force somebody to be calm? But a look around the room did not reassure her. Cadet Lee had stepped back, her expression withdrawn. Mantjies was looking at Doctor Scubbe with concern and Gia could see why: the man was frowning and seemed at the end of his patience. Pienaar had his jaw set and seemed to be nerving himself to another use of force.
If I don’t do something, it will only get worse. They’re not going to back down. What would Mom have done? If Saraswati were here, she would take control. Not with anger or force, but with calm, good sense. Gia’s doubt left her and she touched the werewolf’s hand, where it was strapped to the armrest.
This is how she did it. All those many times, when Nico was in a state...
Begin with the name.
“Lizzie,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Can you feel this? I’m holding your hand.” She slipped her fingers round the werewolf’s hand. Lizzie rolled her eyes in Gia’s direction. So far, so good. Gia forced herself to focus only on the werewolf, to forget there was anyone else in the room.
“Don’t try to speak. You can’t speak.” A voice jeered inside her, of course she cannot speak, idiot, but Gia ignored it and pushed on, keeping herself relaxed, looking calmly, not staring, at the werewolf’s face.
“You can’t speak, but you can signal to me. With your hand. One squeeze yes, two for no. Does that make sense?”
Gia felt it, an unmistakable pressure on her hand as the werewolf’s fingers squeezed hers. The silence in the room pressed on her ears, but she didn’t allow herself to think about the other people in the room—what they must think of her, why they were allowing her to go this far.
“Good! I felt that.” She smiled. Let the others understand, just please let them give her enough time to do this— “Now,” she continued, keeping her voice as calm as she could. “Cadet Lee, who is standing behind you, is going to come round so you can see her. Okay?” She glanced up at Lee, who was looking at her, face impassive. “It’s better if she can see you,” she explained. “If Mantjies goes to the other side, you can stand over where he is, can’t you?”
To her relief, Lee gave a nod and the two cadets moved to their new places. Gia did not watch them. Her attention was back with Lizzie. “This is Cadet Lee, Lizzie,” she said. “She’s a telepath. You know what that is, right?”
A squeeze from the hand and, Gia might have imagined it, a touch of irony entered the brown eyes.
“Good. So Lee’s going to touch you with her bare hands. She’s just going to put her hands on your skin, by your shoulder—” She glanced at Lee for confirmation and got a nod. “And she’s not going to hurt you.”
She looked up at Lee again, suddenly wondering at her own temerity, but what else could she do? “You’re not going to hurt her, are you?”
“No. Not at all,” said Lee, her face still expressionless.
“Good,” said Gia. “You can trust her, Lizzie.”
Now for it.
“Will you let her touch you, Lizzie?”
A long pause. Then another squeeze.
“She says yes,” said Gia. “You can go ahead, Lee.”
A movement from the door attracted Gia’s attention and she saw that Sergeant Kemp was back.
“Oh,” she said and would have stepped away from the chair, but the sergeant held up her hand. “Carry on, cadet,” she said. “You seem to have this in control.”
“Can we start?” said the doctor, impatience sharp in his voice.
“Of course,” said Lee and, moving slowly, leaned forward and placed her bare hand on the werewolf’s shoulder. Her eyes were closed and she frowned in concentration. “Connection established,” she said after a moment. “Subject in heightened emotional state, but rational. There is reasoned fear, but no paranoia. All sensory input within normal parameters, no auditory, olfactory, visual, or tactile hallucinations.”
“Noted,” said the doctor.
“If I may, sir,” said Lee. “I recommend that Cadet Grobbelaar maintain her contact with the subject, otherwise there is a strong likelihood that she’ll become unstable.” She opened her eyes for a moment and looked at Gia. “She wants you to stay there, cadet. Can you do that?”
“I can,” said Gia.
“You can proceed, Cadet Mantjies,” said Lee.
“Um. Okay,” said Mantjies. “I’ve just slotted canister number one into the mask and am about to apply substance D-forty-nine.” He picked up the long hose attached to the gas mask’s nosepiece and inserted the vial into its end. Gia heard a pop and guessed some kind of seal had been broken.
“Vial inserted,” said Mantjies, glancing at his watch. “I’m timing.”
Gia watched the werewolf closely. She’d half expected her to hold her breath, but the werewolf’s chest continued rising and falling. Her eyes were half closed now, but her ears were still alert.
“Faint scent of myrrh and rosemary,” reported Lee, her voice soft. “No sensory distortion, no change in mood or thought patterns.”
“Mark, twenty seconds,” said Mantjies.
Gia shifted her weight, wondering how long she’d have to stay crouched on the edge of the chair.
“Anything to report, Lee?” asked the doctor.
“Nothing new,” said Lee.
“Mark, forty seconds,” said Mantjies.
At sixty seconds, he unscrewed the vial from the mask. “Removing vial,” he said and blew out a breath. “That’s it for the first sample, then. How long should we wait between tests, Doctor?”
“We can continue as soon as Lee indicates that the s
ubject is back to a normal state.”
“She is,” said Lee. “I think you can go ahead.”
Gia gave the hand she was holding a little squeeze and was glad to feel a responsive pressure. This is not so bad after all. It’s going to be okay.
Pienaar handed Mantjies the next vial. Gia felt the werewolf’s hand tighten on hers, heard Lee’s intake of breath. Gia felt Lizzie jerk once and saw that her eyes were wide open now, staring at the ceiling. Tremors ran through her body and Gia could hear the rasp of her breathing under the mask.
“Mark, twenty seconds,” said Mantjies. He was watching Lee, who stood, silent, lips tight and face pale. “Mark, forty seconds.” More time passed, with no change. “Mark, sixty seconds, removing vial. You okay, Lee?”
Lee drew a breath. “Significant auditory and visual hallucination,” she said. “Faint at first but rapidly increasing, full strength before twenty-second mark.” She leaned back, licking her lips. Her voice, when she continued, was as steady as ever. “Subject temporarily lost track of her surroundings, but was still aware of the induced nature of the phenomena throughout.”
“What is her state at the moment?” said the doctor.
“Still disorientated.”
“We’ll take a twenty-minute break then,” said the doctor. “That should give everything time to settle. Mantjies, I’d like you to do the next test with the same substance, but a different filter canister.”
“Yes, sir.”
The tests continued. Mantjies called for a new vial, or a new filter cartridge. Lee’s voice never changed its tone. Sometimes the werewolf showed no reaction, lying calmly in her bonds. Sometimes she gasped and spasmed, once arching so hard against the straps that Gia thought she would break them. In the pauses between the tests, she rolled her face towards Gia and stared at her, never letting go her grip on Gia’s hand. It took her longer and longer to recover from each test, until at last, the doctor tapped with his pen on his clipboard and said, “I think that’s as much as we’re going to get today.”
Gia laid her forehead on the chair’s armrest and let it remain there for a moment, hardly able to believe it was over. Her cheek was against Lizzie’s arm and she could smell the fear-sweat that breathed off the werewolf’s body.
“I think you can let go now, cadet,” said Sergeant Kemp from behind her. Gia had not realised that the sergeant was still there. She got unsteadily to her feet.
Lizzie had her eyes closed and seemed to be asleep, her hand slack and unresponsive. Kemp and Pienaar were already undoing her restraints. Mantjies was talking to the doctor, looking at the notes he’d made.
All at once, Gia knew she had to get out of this dreadful little room. Feeling the pressure in her gut, she made for the door, then down the corridor to the toilets. She reached the cubicle just in time and crouched there, retching, enveloped by the smell of her vomit mingled with the scent of the orange blossom air freshener.
-oOo-
“You okay?”
Gia looked up, blinking. She’d rinsed her mouth and washed her face, wishing there was a shower that she could use to clean her entire body.
“There’s a towel over there.” Mantjies stood by the door. “Come,” he said, when she was done.
A kettle stood steaming in the doctor’s workroom, next to two large mugs of instant coffee. “One for you, one for Lee.” He stirred in some sugar. “She’s out there on the steps.”
There was an external door with steps leading down into a courtyard. Lee sat in a patch of sunlight, eyes closed, her head back against the wall. She did not open her eyes, but moved, wordlessly, to make space for Gia on the step.
“Here you go, Lee.” Gia took the mug and passed it on to Lee, then took one for herself.
“Thanks,” she said. Her voice sounded shaky, as if she’d been crying. Had she been crying?
Mantjies sat on a step below the two girls. He stretched out his legs and sighed. For long moments Gia sat there, cradling the mug, feeling the sun on her skin. A pigeon fluttered down to the gravel of the courtyard and she watched as it walked in that jerky, pigeon way, pecking at the ground every now and then.
“You shouldn’t be ashamed, you know,” said Mantjies, and Gia saw that he’d been watching her. “Of how you feel, I mean.” He looked away again. “It’s good to have empathy. Some people don’t understand that.”
Lee stirred and gave a little laugh, which made Mantjies squint up at her. “Oh, I know,” he said. “It sucks. And you’ve got a bit more than the usual amount of empathy, Lee. But I’m talking about Grobbelaar here.”
“I know,” said Lee softly. “I wasn’t arguing with you.”
“Just wanted to say it.” He was looking at Gia again. “This place can be a bit tough at times. Especially for newcomers.” He shrugged. “You care about others, even if they’re not human. Even a werewolf. That’s a good thing. That’s all I’m saying.”
Gia looked at the steam rising up from the mug, at the way it eddied as she breathed on it. “What were you doing?” she asked, her voice still rough. “What were you testing, in there?”
“It’s one of my projects.” Mantjies settled more comfortably onto the step. “Something the doctor passed onto me to investigate. Checking how different kinds of gases affect magicals and how to filter them. You know about teargas and magicals, right?”
Gia shook her head.
“Well, okay, this is the thing. When it comes to dealing with magicals, we don’t have much in the way of nonlethal weapons. Ways of getting crowds to disperse, or to break up a demonstration before it gets violent. With humans we can use teargas. Burns like hell and makes you feel like you want to die, but it doesn’t actually do permanent damage. That’s important. You can’t always just go in with full force; that just escalates a situation. Better to have a way to put the fight out of people. See?”
“And you can’t use teargas on magicals?”
“That’s the problem. Shoot a canister of teargas at a troll or a werewolf and suddenly you’ve got a raging monster on your hands. Makes them go utterly nuts. They don’t just get angry. They go ballistic. Which isn’t really the effect you want in a tricky situation. So we want to find a gas that we can use to disperse a crowd and won’t make them batshit crazy. Just bother them enough so they want to leave.”
Gia nodded, puzzling it out. “And the canisters you were putting in the mask, you were testing how effective they were at filtering out the gas?”
“That’s right,” said Mantjies. “You got it. It’s not enough to find a gas that works. We also need to find a mask that makes it safe for Special Branch officers, especially the werewolves. At the moment they can’t even use the standard gas masks to filter out just normal teargas. Just doesn’t work on them. So with this new stuff we’re developing, we’ll need masks that are even more effective.
“So far, the substances we’ve found are pretty good against humans, but we had no idea how they affect werewolves or other magicals. So we’re starting our test with Lizzie. Lee taps into her mind, sees what she’s experiencing. That way we can know how the gas affected her, even whether she’s hallucinating and whether the mask is effective in protecting her from it.”
“The gas only affects magicals?” Gia drank some of her coffee. It was much sweeter than she was used to and had an unpleasantly bitter aftertaste, but it steadied her.
“Well, no,” said Mantjies. “That’s the ideal, of course. But so far we’ve not found anything that works on magicals and doesn’t affect humans. Drives the doctor crazy.”
“Even the tests are not all that reliable,” said Lee. “You know, the Annex tests. Like the one you got, Grobbelaar. They’re always throwing up false positives, or missing out on picking up people’s talents.” She stared into her mug. “The doctor’s been trying to create a fool-proof test for years now. Some way of quickly and reliably checking whether somebody is talented or not. But so far, he’s not found a way.” She gave a soft laugh and leaned back against the w
all again. “It’s almost as if there isn’t really a difference, one that you can test for, I mean.” She shot Mantjies a smiling look and Gia understood that this was part of an on-going argument, a joking fight that the two of them had been having for a long time.
“But they can test for magic, can’t they?” she asked, hesitating. “I mean, they tested you, didn’t they?”
“Oh, yes, they can test,” said Lee. “For some specific things. Like, they can do a blood test to see if you’re a werewolf. You can see that right there on a microscope, looking at your blood cells. And for something like my telepathy, they can pick that up on their machines too. But a lot of it’s just hocus pocus and guesswork. Yes, it is, Mantjies. Even the doctor admits as much.”
“So they can think somebody is magical even if they’re not?” asked Gia.
“False positive,” said Mantjies. “It does happen. And it’s theoretically possible we can miss a latent ability, with the equipment we’ve got here. But really, Lee, we do pick up the majority of things.”
Lee shrugged. “No way of telling, really.” She drained her mug then made a face. “Ugh. Sweet. Did you stir this?”
“Sugar is good for shock,” said Mantjies, in a mock-prissy tone. And then more seriously, he added, “And you had a pretty tough run there, Lee, admit it. Couple of times there, I thought you were going to pass out.”
“Yes, not my idea of a relaxing time,” said Lee. “But you did good, Grobbelaar, getting Lizzie to calm down like that. We could never have done those tests without you.”
“That’s true,” said Mantjies. “You were the star, Grobbelaar.” And he laughed at the unintentional rhyme.
-oOo-
Spyker grabbed at the tipping inkwell, catching it just before it spilled.
“Watch it! For fuck’s sake, Billy, can’t you keep this little fucker away from me?”
Billy widened his eyes at Nico and beckoned for him to come away. “He just wants to see what you’re working on, Spyker. He’s curious.”
“I can’t work with somebody staring over my shoulder. Or climbing around the place like a baboon.” He tore the page he’d been working on out of his sketchpad. “I’ve already started this over four times this morning.” He swept his hands back over his head, flattening the bush of silver hair. It sprang up again, crackling with energy.
Wolf Logic Page 11
