All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) (10 page)

This Focus had no understanding
at all
for how the world worked.

He dropped his bike out of sight of the crew and crept across the park into whispering range.  The Focus didn’t notice when he whispered to her, or even when he waved.  He crept forward, hidden, to just outside of Focus metasense range, and slowly nerved himself up to whisper again.

Before he whispered again, the Focus whistled at her people, who stopped the snowball fight.  They chattered at her, each one talking over the other, but as they chattered she grabbed one, whispered something into his ear, then grabbed another one and did the same.  Those two quieted the rest of the Focus’s crew down, and they spread out around her.  Then the Focus walked directly toward Gilgamesh, crunching snow under her feet, with a young woman Transform in tow.

Okay, Gilgamesh thought.  Absurd metasense range for a Focus, about a hundred and twenty yards.  No problem picking up a Crow’s glow.  As he had metasensed before, she natively hid her emotional state from him.  The Transform she dragged with her was excited and thought she was on an adventure.  And, yes, there the rest of the Focus’s bodyguards went, moving to surround him as well.

He remained invisible to them, though.  They were just obeying Clumsy Angel’s hand-signaled orders.

Gilgamesh ran through the sparse trees, until he reached the edge of the Focus’s metasense range.  She didn’t appear pleased.

“Your bodyguards need to not threaten me,” he said.

The Focus turned to her Transform.  “Did you say something, Sylvie?”

“No, Gail.  Are you sure he’s out here?”

“He’s right
there
,” she said, pointing directly at Gilgamesh.  “What’s wrong with you people?  Can’t you
see
him?”

She could see him.  She was extraordinary.  Her people weren’t.  They couldn’t see him.

Gilgamesh tried hand signs.  The Focus stopped, tried to puzzle them out, then shrugged and continued forward.  Gilgamesh ran away, again to the edge of her metasense range, betting she wouldn’t follow him this time.  He wouldn’t.

She didn’t.  She put her hands on her hips, pouted, thought, before whistling again, calling her bodyguards over.  An argument started.  The young man, head of her security and a normal, stuck a finger in the Focus’s face and barked at her.  The young Transform woman separated the two, and Gilgamesh caught enough of the byplay to realize ‘Sylvie’ was the wife of the head of security.  Sylvie shushed them all up.

“The Crow’s here alone, without any bodyguards,” the Focus said.  “You guys are scaring him off.  So I’m going in alone.”

“Not on my dime,” the guy, Kurt, said.

Frown.  Frown back.

A wince from all the Transforms, as the now heated Focus stripped them all.  Standard nasty Focus bitch behavior, though not normally followed by a “Sorry.”  After apologizing, she gave them all back their juice.  Clumsy Angel indeed.

“Can you read his emotions, like you can read ours?” Sylvie said.  She had to be the Focus’s number two, something she hadn’t been the last time he looked in on this household.  Changes in Clumsy Angel’s household didn’t surprise him.  Clumsy Angel’s household dynamic could be best termed
chaos
.

“Shh!” the Focus said.  “Dammit, Sylvie…”  Said comment was followed by two of the Transform bodyguards complaining to their Focus about the fact they hadn’t known she was able to read their emotions, and how unfair of her to have yet another absurd trick.  Eventually Sylvie quieted them down again.  “Yes.  He’s as scared as we are.”

Gilgamesh ran, then stopped and slunk back, fighting through his panic.  This was insane: a Focus able to metasense Crows without any problems, and one able to read Crow emotions?  Well, he had known Clumsy Angel was extraordinary, from before.  She was no Hera, though.  Not at all dark, not at all inhuman.  She was inexperienced with her power, though.

And as scared of him as he was of her.  That helped.

He looked around for a way to be less threatening to the Focus and couldn’t find a single place to sit; the locals had trashed all the park benches years ago.  He got a better feel for her and her emotions.  Despite her words, she and Sylvie weren’t
scared
scared, but more like roller coaster ride scared.  Her other Transforms had picked up on the Focus’s unconscious signals and thought him a threat.

Gilgamesh sat on the ground, back against a small tree, crossed his legs, meditated and waited.  He wasn’t happy with his own moment of panic.  Given everything he had faced in his career, Clumsy Angel and her crew were about as harmless as threats came.

The meditation did the trick.  The Focus and her number two came up alone and sat.  Sylvie probably shouldn’t have, given that she wasn’t a Major Transform and would be cold and unhappy soon.

Her husband had slipped a handgun into Sylvie’s purse before she came over.  There was deviousness here.  They weren’t the fools they appeared to be.  No, they just
liked
chaos.

“Hello,” Gilgamesh said, exiting his zazen state (which he knew Carol was going to give him grief over when he told her about it; it wasn’t his fault that Inferno’s tricks were useful).  “I’m Gilgamesh.”

“Gail Rickenbach,” the Focus said, and stuck out her hand for a lady-like shake.  He shook the Focus’s hand, despite the fact he wanted to run like mad.

“Wow, you are different,” Gail said after doing the Focus juice-feeling trick.  She turned to Sylvie and spoke as if Gilgamesh wasn’t even there.  “The person I should have brought was Van.”  Sylvie muttered something about Van being allergic to midnight and shook her head.  The Focus turned back to him.  “I’ve never met a Crow in person before.”

This was more than obvious, which he didn’t say.  Instead, he nodded.  “When I told you over the phone that all Crows were creatures of darkness, I wasn’t talking good and evil, but day and night.  We hide in the shadows.”

Gail blushed.

“He can read you?” Sylvie said.  She put her hand in her purse, fast on the uptake.

She
was dangerous, another Hank Zielinski or Ann Chiron.  Not what his world needed.

Gail shushed her number two.  “No households?” Gail said.

“Some of us tame animals and other things.”

“Uh, what?”

“Sorry, Focus,” Gilgamesh said.  “I carry many secrets I cannot explain.”

Gail and Sylvie looked at each other for a moment, before turning back to him.  “Can you tell me why this Whisper Crow is being so obnoxious?”

He nodded.  “As with Focuses, Crows have many different skills and temperaments.  In short, he’s too scared of you to meet you in person.”

“More than you?”

Gilgamesh bit back a comment about rudeness and nodded.  He found the young Focus’s prickly nature both amusing and naïve.

“Well, I’m sorry, but I’ve been warned by others to keep an eye out for strangers.  There are evil Chimeras and Crows in Detroit, I’ll have you know.”

She spoke from personal experience.  Her comment filled in the blanks in some of Kali’s more cryptic observations.  “You’ve talked to Arm Keaton, haven’t you?”

“Yes?”  She blinked.  “You know her?”

“I work with her,” Gilgamesh said.  “She’s the boss of Arm Hancock, the Arm I work with most of the time.”

The Focus metasensed around.

“Neither are here, now.”  Alas.  He would have liked some Arm backup right now.

Gail blushed.  “Well, if Arm Keaton is willing to vouch for Whisper, perhaps we can do business without having to meet,” she said.

Gilgamesh closed his eyes for a moment, trying to shut out visions of negotiating this bit of insanity with Kali, or what it would take to convince Whisper to come within whispering distance of the Arm.  “Arm Keaton can vouch for me, and I can vouch for Whisper.”

“Sir?” Sylvie said.  Gilgamesh opened his eyes.  “May I ask a question?”

“Certainly.”

“You’re as extraordinary a Crow as Gail here is as a Focus, aren’t you?”

“There are many extraordinary Crows,” Gilgamesh said.  Yes, just like the Good Doctor and Ann, Sylvie was far too perceptive.  “They are, however, as you are intimating, all far older as Crows than I am.”

“Do you ever have the feeling the world doesn’t make sense to you and none of the other Focuses, or, well, Crows you are acquainted with have any idea what you’re going through?” Gail said.  Focus Rickenbach and her number two were clearly on the same wavelength.

“Yes.  And if you do say what you’re going through or what you’ve figured out, they blink at you in incomprehension, or say that what you’re doing isn’t proper for Crows.  Or, um, Focuses.”

Sylvie laughed.  “I thought so.  It’s too bad you...”  Gail put her hand over Sylvie’s mouth.

“Thank you, Gilgamesh, for being willing to talk to me in person,” Gail said.  “Do you have any way we can get in contact with you?”

He nodded and fished out of his wallet one of the business cards Carol had arranged for him.  It displayed his name, an Austin PO Box and the phone number to Carol’s answering service.  He handed it to Gail.  On a whim, he also handed her Carol’s card, which following Kali’s orders showed Kali’s PO box and answering service phone number.  “You’re not based out of Detroit, are you?”

“No.”

“How did you get caught up in our problems, then?”

“That itself is a mystery I’m trying to solve,” Gilgamesh said, ending the conversation.  He slipped away into the darkness.  Or tried to.  Gail had no problem seeing or metasensing him as he left.

If he read her right, this sort of craziness appeared to be what she lived for.

Carol Hancock: January 2, 1969 – January 4, 1969

I came up to the guard in the wide corridor outside of Bass’s room, whispered to him to surrender and put his head in his hands.  He curled on the floor in a fetal position, just as all the others had.  Gotta love the predator effect.  We entered.

I wrinkled my nose at the reek of chemicals, blood and juice permeating the room.  It was a stark place, like a hospital room except without any signs of warmth, just a single bed and a host of cold machines.  Bass remained hooked up to at least four of them, but even I could tell she wasn’t as bad off as we feared.  That is, her heart beat and she breathed on her own, around the various tubes and crap associated with the heart-lung machine.  I guessed that the sadistic monsters who ran this place worked 9 to 5 jobs, and this being 4 AM had given Bass time to recover.

“I wish we had you along when we rescued you,” Sky said, as I set my garbage can on the floor with a clank.  He had been radiating a mixture of disgust and awe the whole way in.

“Sorry, I’m afraid I was detained at the time,” I said.  Keaton, who had been all stone-faced since we started, barely repressed a laugh.  “Now, shush.  Hank?” I pushed the lid on the can down more firmly.  Something inside was trying to crawl out.

Hank, deep within himself, took my comment as an all clear.  He dropped his itinerant doctor bag on a rolling metal table and fished out his instruments.  I still wasn’t clear why Keaton and Sky needed to be here, save that Keaton ordered it.  Hank, on the other hand, was necessary.  I couldn’t have kept Bass alive on the way out, even after all Hank had taught me.  For one thing, I wouldn’t have known which tubes and equipment I needed to detach from Bass, or which to cut and clamp.  Hank did, and he worked quickly and professionally until he whispered “Done.”

Keaton slung Bass over her back like a sack of flour, which drew a very strange déjà vu reaction from Sky.  I suspected more echoes from my rescue, even though the place wasn’t old enough to have the level of bad juice contamination of the CDC’s Detention Center.  I had been in Focus households with worse bad juice.

I took the garbage can of the still slithering, utterly foul and decomposing part-Monster we had filched from the Patriarch underlings’ pack and sloshed the remains on Bass’s former bed.  The harem Monster had been trivial to steal and kill.  We retraced our steps on the way out, Bass over Keaton’s shoulder and garbage can over mine.  The damned thing leaked ichor down my chest as we jogged.  The guards stayed nicely surrendered and oblivious, courtesy of me.  The route out the side entrance of the laboratory building and back to the closest of our two vans was nicely shrouded in darkness, courtesy of Sky’s leaping and wire-cutting.  Keaton wouldn’t say why we brought two vans; she was being ultra-paranoid and very careful today in all things.  Inside the van, we had a case of ice ready for Bass, a suggestion from Hank.  I had already written a mental note to myself to quiz Hank on this trick, why it worked, and where he had learned it.

When we were seven paces outside the lab building, and almost to the parking lot where the nearest van waited, Sky leapt into deeper shadows.  “Marde!”

Incoming.  Easiest Crow signal in the world to recognize.  Once he was safer, he hand-signaled the problem.  Not that I needed the hand signals by then.

Four Chimeras waited for us at the close van, which now sat far closer to the ground courtesy of four slit tires.  They had several normals with them – I wasn’t sure how many yet.  I got the four Chimeras first by eyesight in the faint starlight, and only then on my metasense.  They all wore man-forms.