Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (15 page)

I was demon possessed.

“Carol, over nine out of ten new Transforms die terrible deaths, either by becoming Monsters, dying in juice withdrawal, or being shot in front of a blood-spattered concrete wall like the one they have downstairs in this place,” Reverend Akins said, a preacher’s intensity in his voice.  “I know Christians who refuse to work to change this, or even to pray to God to end these horrible deaths, for to them, the spread of the evils associated with Transform Sickness indicates that the end of days is upon us, heralding Jesus’ return.  I do not believe this is so.  Transform Sickness is just another disease, one of many, and I believe that Arms have a role in the alleviation of this evil.  Think about it.  I don’t know what role the Arms will play in the healing of this evil, but I know in my heart that you and the other Arms do have a proper role to play.  For all I know, you might even be able to subsist on Monsters and men in withdrawal, protecting society from their mindless wrath.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”
Dr. Zielinski hadn’t even mentioned it as a possibility.  Hah.  If it was possible, Dr. Zielinski had tried it.  Probably another disaster he didn’t want to talk about.  “I don’t know who I am anymore, Reverend.  There are times, as an Arm, when I’m no longer in control of myself.”

Let him conclude I was demon possessed.  I couldn’t say it, myself.

“New Focuses often say the same things,” Reverend Akins said.  “I don’t know the medical reasons behind their statements, but they do remind me of something.  Do you remember the changes you went through, Carol, when you were thirteen, fourteen and fifteen?  I remember.”

I blushed.  “That’s just puberty.”

“Just?” Reverend Akins laughed.  “I remember talking to you, Carol, when you went through puberty.  I recall you made a comment, once, about how all of a sudden you thought everyone around you had gotten slow and stupid.  Another time you told me how your body kept doing these horrible things to you that you couldn’t control.  Do you think being called by God into a higher responsibility as an adult is going to involve less tumultuous changes than puberty?”

Yes, I had spent some time as a teenager worrying that I’d been possessed by Satan.  I hesitated to accept the Reverend’s explanation, as I hadn’t been killing people when I went through puberty, but he
had given me some weighty issues to think about.  Perhaps Dr. Zielinski was right and it was nothing more than hormones.

I made polite chitchat and escaped back to my room.  I found that although I could put the pictures of Billy and Jeffrey on display on my nightstand, whenever I saw the picture of Sarah I cried.  Her picture, along with my husband’s, I put in the front of the Gideon’s Bible that came with the room.

---

The next day was Sunday and I felt normal again for the first time.  The aches in my muscles had gotten worse and the craving was a constant burning need, but I was sane enough to reflect on my experiences as an Arm.  My life was an out of control roller coaster: the terrible lows, the stupefying highs, so fast, so extreme.  The intensity left me breathless.  My reasoning was stunned.  Even now, my mind tried to cling to that glorious high.

I told Larry my muscle aches were getting worse, and he had a predictable solution.  “We need to work you harder and longer.” He did some paperwork, and starting Wednesday afternoon, my exercise sessions were now two hours long.  I wasn’t sure what to do about Larry’s continued use of his yardstick as a prod to keep me exercising hard.  For the moment, I decided to do nothing.  Larry seemed to know what he was doing, although the results were hard for me to cope with.  Amazon woman, indeed.  For the first time in my life, I could see muscles all over my body.  I had, in Larry’s terms, muscle definition.  My body fat was melting away, fast enough to be noticeable on a day-to-day basis. 

Larry also had another tidbit for me, regarding last night’s conversation.  “As I was leaving, yesterday, I happened to overhear you talking to your former Minister.  Arms can take juice from Monsters and withdrawal victims, but they have problems afterwards.”

“What sort of problems?” Larry’s knowledge of Arms and their problems was extensive.  The other day, he told me the horrible story of the young Arm who had died of muscle hypertrophy, a goad to push me harder on my exercises.  The story was one of the reasons I put up with his yardstick.

“A couple of years ago, a new Arm named Francine Sarles refused to take a second volunteer Transform kill.  Instead, she and her doctors tried something risky.  Her next kill was a psychotic man in the depths of withdrawal.  Francine was able to take the juice but it did something to her mind.  Made her psychotic, I guess.  Anyway, she killed herself three days later.”

“Killed herself?”

“Bullet to the brain.  You Arms might think you’re invulnerable and can heal from everything.  Not true.  There’s a rule I think all Arms need to learn: bullets are faster than juice.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of that and went back to my leg presses.

---

On Monday I was a little down, but still mostly normal.  The tests were beginning to bother me again.  Another blood sample, a little more pain.  I wanted to snap at people, but was able to hold back.

Dr.
Zielinski seemed bothered about my muscles.  He did a bunch of X-Rays and wasn’t happy with the results. 

“I think we have your exercise time cranked up as far as we can take it for now,” he said, spreading the X-Rays over the metal counter in Lab One.  I looked over his shoulder.  “We only have one other option.  You’re not going to like it, either, Carol.”

“What?”

“Less food.  Let’s take things back to 5500 calories.”

“I’m already hungry all the time, Dr. Zielinski.”  My food! 

“You’re putting on muscles too quickly, Carol, some in the wrong places.”

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself.  “You give the order, I’ll attempt not to complain too much.”

“Good.”

He collected his X-Rays and started out the door.  I shook my head.  Put my hands on my hips and stared.  “How am I supposed to do this, anyway?” I asked.  “This ‘being an Arm’?  I’m a housewife.”

Dr.
Zielinski turned and looked me over.  “I don’t have all the answers, Carol.  In many ways, you’re quite similar to the other Arms:  they’ve all been intelligent, willful and talented.  Not a shrinking violet in the bunch.  None of them had extraordinary backgrounds.”

“But I’m…” I shook my head again.  “I’m clueless about medicine, biology and chemistry.  I was the sort of girl who got a bookish boy with thick glasses to dissect my frog for me in High School.  I don’t know the questions to ask.  Darn it,
Dr. Zielinski, ‘the big answer’ could walk right in front of me and I wouldn’t be able to tell you.”

Dr.
Zielinski nodded, and unconsciously took off and polished his glasses.  “I know that feeling, as do many of the other Major Transforms.”

“The Arms all
died
, Dr. Zielinski.”

“In America, all but one,” he said.  I didn’t immediately bring up
her
name.  Neither did he.  “Adversity can be overcome.  One of the important Focuses I work with transformed at age fifteen, during the Quarantine.  Despite her youth and inexperience, she elbowed her way into a leadership role when the Focuses found a way to escape the Quarantine a few years later.  She – Focus Claunch – is a bitch and a half.”

I drew breath to complain about his language, but cut myself short. 
That hadn’t been an insult. 
“You’re not saying…” I reddened and let my voice tail off.  Dr. Zielinski didn’t answer.  “I understand,” I said, a few moments later.  “I thought I’ve already been too unladylike.”

“To your face, Focus Claunch is an elegant classy lady with a wicked sense of humor,”
Dr. Zielinski said.  “It’s not how she says things, but what she says and when.  And who she says them to.”

“I’m supposed to cope with these darned Arm mood swings and muscle problems by
feminine wiles
?”  I said, and put my hands back on my hips.  “I suppose that’s why I’m growing all these muscles.”

“The problem is, Carol, no one understands what you or the other Arms are growing those muscles for,”
Dr. Zielinski said.  “Or why Arms have any of their other transformation benefits.  There’s no obvious use for an Arm, as there is for a Focus.  The biggest thing we need your help for, Carol, is to figure out why Arms exist.”

“So why do you try to save Arms, then?  We’re killers.  Keaton is a serial murderer as bad as any in history.  The world would be better off if we all died.” I was a minion of Satan.  Someone should have killed me while I was still in my transformation coma.  “Why do you try so hard to save my life?” I asked, almost plaintively.

Dr. Zielinski gave me a thoughtful glance and sat back down in the room’s single chair.  He waved me to sit and I hoisted myself up on the examining table.

“Did you ever think there might be a purpose for Arms?” he said.

I frowned.  “What do you mean?”

“Arms are complicated.  You have to kill to survive.  You have all sorts of extra capabilities: strength, healing, better reaction time, eyesight, and hearing.  The list is endless.  It doesn’t make sense that something as complicated as an Arm is an accident of nature.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that,” I said.  “But what’s the purpose?”

He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.  “I don’t know.  However, Transform Sickness is a huge puzzle and you don’t solve a puzzle by throwing out one of the pieces.  More people are dying of the Shakes every year, while we all stare blankly at a collection of puzzle pieces we can’t fit together.”  He looked up at me, intently.  “I don’t understand what the purpose of an Arm is, but I do know that Arms are a crucial piece of the puzzle.  You’re too complex and too powerful to be otherwise.  If we do fit the puzzle together and figure out how to make it all work, Arms will be a critical part of the final solution.”

He shrugged and leaned back, casual again.  “So I research Armenigar’s Syndrome and try to help Arms survive.”

I shivered.  I heard what he told me, in his secular, scientific rationality and translated it into terms I understood: Arms were a part of God’s plan and the only reason Arms seemed so evil was that we limited humans couldn’t understand the plan.

It sounded so good in my head.  In my heart, I knew better.  I was evil, doing the devil’s work, and fine words wouldn’t change my damnation.

It did make me think, though. 

I turned away and watched the barred window.  I could barely see a courtyard outside, through the bars and mesh and layered glass.

While I stared silently at the window,
Dr. Zielinski slipped out. 

Special Agent Bates stopped by my room on Monday, a couple of hours after my talk with Dr. Zielinski.

“Mrs. Hancock,” he said.  “Have you given any thought to my offer?”

Offer.  Right.  Joining the FBI.  His crazy idea.

“Would I be able to go back to my family?” I had to ask. 

“Probably not.  As an Arm, you’re too dangerous to be out in the community.”  There’s that refrain, again.

“I’d be locked up?  I thought this was employment, not enslavement.”

Bates turned red.  “It would be employment.  I can’t guarantee your freedom, at least until you prove yourself.  There are political realities to consider, Mrs. Hancock.  Arms are not normal people.”

Not much of a sales pitch.  I’d have signed the contract already if Bill had been selling me this deal.  “You mean like the fact I acted like an animal when I killed the volunteer Transform?  Like the fact I acted like a whore after I took juice?  Like I’m cruel and foul-tempered when I’m low on juice?”

“That’s part of it, Mrs. Hancock.”

“How about the fact that all I can think of, today, is getting more juice.  Getting another volunteer.  How I would do anything to get more juice.  That sort of political problem?  Can you guarantee you’ll have volunteer Transforms ready for me, whenever I need to kill one?” I leaned forward and snarled the last, unhappily.

“These are just little problems we can work through,” Bates said.  “Keep thinking about my offer.”

“I will,” I said.  What I wanted was my normal life back.  Nothing else would suffice.

Tonya Biggioni: September 26, 1966

“…so this project was assigned to me because of the Arm connection,” Tonya said.  “I’m passing the job on to you.”

No reply from the other end of the phone line; instead, Tonya heard the sound of someone chewing something, most likely a sandwich.  Most Focuses would have at least paid Tonya the courtesy of putting down their lunch to talk to her.  Not this one.

Most Focuses didn’t work in an office away from their household, either.  This one did.  Most Focuses stayed home to run their Transform households.  Not this Focus.  Actually, this Focus broke a great many of the rules about how Focuses ought to behave.

What aggravated Tonya was that despite her rule breaking, this Focus was quite successful.  If you measured success by the number of Transforms she supported in her household, the most successful ever, period – and her success bought her a tremendous amount of slack in the Transform community.  If she wanted to go the celebrity route, the world would kneel at her feet.  However, this Focus avoided publicity like the plague.