Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (18 page)

The uniformed man, whose name turned out to be Major Collins, spoke up.  “I don’t care what you say about her capabilities.  She’s not doing this wearing those clothes.”

Chagrined, my doctors agreed.  It was a three-ring circus getting me proper clothes.

“Carol,”
Dr. Zielinski said, once I finished dressing in their ill-fitting khakis.  “We need you to run this obstacle course.  The results here will give us some important information.”

I imagined so, for them to go to this much work. 

“Hancock,” Major Collins said.  “We have soldiers stationed all along this obstacle course.  Don’t even think about trying anything.”

I didn’t understand their worries.  I was a housewife.

They positioned me at the beginning of the obstacle course.  A Corporal stood with a stopwatch, and after studying me for a moment, shouted, “Go!”

I ran to the first obstacle, a whole series of tires set into the ground all against each other.  I stopped, having no idea what to do.  Bates muttered curses and got the Corporal to cancel the run.  After talking for a few minutes, they directed a Sergeant to walk me through the course.  First was the tire section, which I was supposed to run through, putting my feet into the center of each tire.  Next was a wooden wall with a rope I was supposed to climb.  Next, a rope swinging between two wooden towers, which I was supposed to swing on like Tarzan on a vine.  After a tromp through the mud, they had a network of wires I was supposed to crawl underneath on my belly.  The course continued after that, so many things to crawl over, under and around, all extremely intimidating.  I was supposed to do it as fast as I could, then turn around and run back.  The Major was right about the soldiers posted along the course.  They were everywhere.

They set me up again and the second time I ran their obstacle course for them.  I didn’t have any trouble running out of breath, which I hadn’t expected.  I thought the wall with the rope attached would be difficult, but I grabbed the rope and pulled myself right over, which brought a grin to my face. 

When I returned to the start, I was pleased with myself and much less achy.

“Six minutes, thirty-seven seconds,” the Corporal with the stopwatch announced.

The men at the start greeted my return with deafening silence. 

I thought they would be pleased with my performance, but they didn’t look happy at all.  Their stone-faced expressions made me uneasy.  I worried about what I’d done and where I’d fouled up.  I hadn’t gone all out.  I’d been nervous about making a fool of myself.

I looked from face to unhappy face and wondered how to make things right.  “Let me run the course again, please,” I said.  “I’ll do it a lot better now that I’ve done it once.”

Special Agent Bates smiled, a vaguely sickly smile.  “Yes,” he said.  “Why don’t you give it a try, Mrs. Hancock?”

I ran the obstacle course again.  This time I pushed myself.  I ran as fast as possible.  I practically flew through the tires, over the wall with the rope, and through the other obstacles. 

“Five minutes, twenty-two seconds,” the Corporal said.

Their stone-faced expressions did not change.

“Could you stand over there for a few minutes please, Mrs. Hancock?” Agent Bates asked me.

‘There’ was a group of a half-dozen soldiers, all with rifles in their arms.  I stood.  Quietly.

The observers watched me as I walked over.  Major Collins said quietly to the others, “The current record for that course is five minutes, forty-one seconds.”

Very, very interesting.

My crew of observers went over to a table about a hundred feet away.  They laid down several pieces of paper and began talking quietly, privately.  I heard them clearly.  I could also read their papers. 

My hearing had always been fine, but never this excellent.  My eyes?  The only reason I hadn’t worn glasses before I transformed was vanity. 

I expected some improvement, based on the Detention Center tests.  I hadn’t expected anything like this, though – but all those tests had been in small rooms, indoors.  Not only did I read their papers, I could count the leaves on every tree and practically make out the stitching on the uniform of every soldier here.  I saw everything around me that clearly.  Perhaps Arms were
meant
to be outdoors.  For the first time, I began to think about my transformation in terms of what I did, instead of what people did to me.  The possibilities made me giddy.

For instance, why hadn’t Agent Bates made me stand farther away?  He ordered me over here so I couldn’t overhear their conversation.  However, from the results of the hearing tests in the Detention Center, they all knew how acute my hearing had become.  Either they didn’t realize what that meant out in the real world or else they didn’t think about my test results at all. 

I decided not to enlighten them.  I stood quietly and eavesdropped as they took me apart and tried to figure my future physical improvements.  I didn’t understand their guessing until Major Collins put an X on one of the curves, at the three year mark, and said “Keaton”. 

I’d become part of the effort to capture Stacy Keaton.

They had me run the obstacle course again.  They had me go through several small parts of the course separately.  They had me run a hundred yard dash several times.  They had me run for longer distances.  They tested my jumping, height and length.  They set up one strange arrangement where they had me run between two lines of soldiers dodging tennis balls they threw at me.  I lost count of the number of things I did.

We stayed at the obstacle course all that beautiful day, and I enjoyed being outdoors enough to joke with Agent Bates and Dr. Zielinski.  Not with Dr. Peterson, who seemed unhappy that I was enjoying myself.  Once, after I stumbled and fell while trying a Tarzan leap from one rope swing to another rope too far away, several of the soldiers cocked their weapons and pointed them at me.  I waved at them, turned to Dr. Zielinski, and said “What are they worried about, anyway?  Don’t they know the first rule of Arms, that bullets are faster than juice?”

Of all things,
Dr. Zielinski turned pasty white.  “Where did you hear that from, Carol?” he asked, in his most persuasive voice.

“Oh, that was just something Mr. Borton passed on to me.  He knows all sorts of interesting tidbits about Arms.”
Dr. Zielinski’s hand shook as he helped me up, but by the time I was standing, he returned to his normal doctoral self. 

“Next time,” he said, “try and hold the rope near the
bottom
.” The suggestion worked, and then I went on to the next test.

The tests didn’t stop until after the sun went down.  At the end of the day, by the light of a lantern, they fed me one last meal and the soldiers packed in the equipment.

I felt wonderful.  Absolutely wonderful.  The day had been magnificent.  I’d even almost gotten enough to eat.

I loved the exercise.  I didn’t care that I shouldn’t have been able to do so much, that the juice was making changes in me I did not want.  I simply felt too good.  I wanted to do it all again.  A full day of exercise had done miracles for my mood and had worked out the aches in my muscles. 

It was a beautiful feeling.

I ate slowly and tried to make the day last.  Finally, though, they made me lie back down on the cart, chained me up and took me home.

I thought a long time about that trip to the obstacle course.  I’d done things they hadn’t expected.  The obstacle course itself was the most obvious.  However, my vision and hearing improvements were similarly interesting.  Even my sense of smell had improved.

Everything I discovered today led to a great many questions about myself, and about Arms in general.  I’d never before thought of my transformation as anything but a curse, but now I did.  Satan, it seemed, richly rewarded his minions. 

I thought about the day some more, and another thing bothered me: all this extra information from my senses didn’t overwhelm me.  I didn’t have any trouble sorting out the various conversations I’d overheard.  There really was something supernatural about me.  I wondered if the doctors, with all their research, had figured that out. 

I suspected not, or they would not have left me so close to them.

I decided I didn’t have any real desire to let them know.

Dr. Henry Zielinski: October 4, 1966

Stonehams’s Bar was more downscale than
Dr. Zielinski normally frequented, and he found himself more nervous about the clientele than the person he had arranged to meet.  Which in itself was worth a chuckle.  Stoneham’s was filled with working men, shot and beer fellows grousing about their wives, jobs and what they picturesquely termed ‘lack of pussy’.  Although Dr. Zielinski had arranged the meeting using his Network phone contacts, the other party had chosen the location and the time.

He weighed the ‘bar’ or ‘table’ options, and chose a table as far away from the bar as possible.  Only a moment later, a man he overlooked stalked over, grabbed a chair and sat down opposite
Dr. Zielinski.

“Long time no see, Hank,” the man said.  He was a short muscular guy, clean shaven, with black Marine-cut hair and the bottom of an anchor tattoo peeking out from under his blue shirt sleeve.  “Why couldn’t we talk over the phone?” The man’s voice was a deep growl, the sort to instantly awaken a Marine private.

This was the person Dr. Zielinski had arranged to meet.

“Because, Larry, we have a few issues to discuss,”
Dr. Zielinski said.  The disguise was good.  Larry didn’t match his normal Detention Center appearance: a little taller, darker skin and features, longer nose and less muscular. 

“Took you long enough, doc,” Larry said, referring to Larry’s
other
disguise.  “You didn’t answer
my
question.”  The last bit he spoke with a hint of threat, not anything beyond normal.  Part of Dr. Zielinski’s desire to meet in person in a public location was to prevent the ‘beyond normal’ from taking over.  He had enough ‘beyond normal’ in his day job.

Dr.
Zielinski smiled.  “The FBI’s wiretapped my phone at the center and, likely, my hotel phone.”

Larry shrugged.  “You’re getting better at finely shading your answers, doc,” Larry said.  “But I understand you better as well.  Hancock has you spooked, doesn’t she?  Spooked
and
frustrated.”

A waitress frowned at the weight of her tray as she slammed it down on the table in front of the two men.  Zielinski’s order was a beer and a small basket of peanuts.  Larry’s order included the biggest steak on the menu, a double order of country fries, a baked potato heaped with butter, cheese and sour cream, two ears of corn-on-the-cob, and a pitcher of water.  The waitress kept trying to inch away from Larry, as if he carried some sort of disease.  Whatever it was about his companion that bothered the waitress, it didn’t bother
Dr. Zielinski.

“You ordered for me,”
Dr. Zielinski said.

“Of course,” Larry said.  He cleared his throat.

Right.  Dr. Zielinski couldn’t allow himself to woolgather.  He had to pay close attention to everything Larry said.  Or asked.  If he didn’t answer Larry’s question, bad things would happen.

“You’re right.  I’m frustrated.  Hancock has her own ideas about what Arms and Transforms should be and do, and she’s proven to be difficult to educate,”
Dr. Zielinski said.

“Goes with the territory,” Larry said, rapidly chowing down on the baked potato.

“The other reason I wanted to talk to you in person is our mutual friend out east.  She has her own expectations about this assignment, and in her eyes, we’re not meeting them.” Earlier this evening, Tonya had said ‘If between the two of you, you can’t get this baby Arm to say ‘how high’ when either of you yells ‘jump’, you’re both slacking off.’  Said over the phone, safely from Philadelphia.

“She has no right to complain,” Larry said.  “I agreed to study the situation, nothing else.  No promises.  I taught Hancock some of the basics, but I’m not impressed with her either.  Or your little set up, doc.  Do you have any idea how fucked up that center is?  It’s like a Focus household gone bad, only ten times worse.  I doubt you could get a Focus to come to the Center if you paid her, and that’s saying something.  Damned if I know what the place is doing to Hancock but I doubt it’s good.” Larry started in on the steak, slicing through it with unrepressed violence.  “I’m not sure
I
want to work at the Center much longer.”

“Careful, Larry.  You’re scaring people by the way you’re cutting your steak.”

Larry didn’t reply to Dr. Zielinski’s sotto voice suggestion, but he did cut his steak more sedately.

“You think there’s a bad juice problem with the Center?”
Dr. Zielinski asked.  A bad juice problem would support his hypothesis about Hancock’s mental issues.

“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”

Dr. Zielinski sighed, frustrated.  Even if this hypothesis was true, he had no way to validate or fix it, and no way to move Carol anywhere else.  All he could do was keep an eye on Carol and hope he spotted any effects before they became too serious.