Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (20 page)

He hated being a Transform.  Yet, for him, it was the only game in town.

For companionship, he was stuck with this new Crow, whoever he might be. 

In time, he saw a shadow slide past the houses on the other side of the park.  The Crow walked slowly and cautiously.  Bob stayed hidden, unmoving.

The Crow came through the gate in the fence and past the playground equipment.  Bob saw him clearly, despite the overcast.  The other Crow was tall and thin, with short black hair, and looked to be in his early twenties.  Bob realized, with a start, that the other Crow’s skin was brown.  He was a black man.  His clothes were worn but clean.  He looked civilized and respectable.

Bob had no experience dealing with colored folks.  They lived other lives in other places.  It had been that way his entire life.  It was a disconcerting jolt to discover a colored man was one of his own kind.  He had no idea how to deal with someone like that. 

Bob was uncomfortably aware of his own unshorn head and the stubble on his chin.  He still carried the whiff of garbage. 

The other stopped, about a hundred feet away. 

“I’m Midgard,” the man said.  Bob shifted awkwardly and wondered what the man would expect of him.

Well, for a start, his name.  Bob had expected the question to come someday, and had an answer prepared.  “I’m Gilgamesh.” Gilgamesh, a mortal man in a land of gods and goddesses, searching the world for the secret of life. 

“I just came here from Kansas City,” Midgard said, not challenging Bob’s name at all.  “I sensed a Focus household nearby, but it looks like you haven’t been taking from it?”

Midgard’s voice had been soft and non-threatening, a whisper only a Crow would notice.  Bob made sure his voice was the same. 

“There are other Transforms here, in the St. Louis Transform Detention Center.  They generate such a large amount of dross that I had no need of the other.”

Midgard nodded, thoughtfully.  “I can metasense one in the Transform Detention Center.  A Monster, I think.  I’d like to know more about these creatures,” he said. 

Bob stiffened.  To his surprise, he had no urge to keep what he knew about Tiamat and Zaltu a secret.  However, what he knew would take too long to explain and he wasn’t prepared to spend long hours dealing with another person.

Midgard picked up on his unease.  “Not now,” he said.  “Later.  I have things I can tell you.”  He stopped and looked at Bob.  “I’ve been a Crow for a little over a year,” he said.

It was a question.  “I became a Crow almost three months ago,” Bob said.

Midgard nodded, approving.  “You have very good control for someone only three months past your transformation.  Whatever’s in the Center produces more dross than any Focus household I’ve ever sensed.  Just the idea of that much dross sitting in one place is dangerous to think about.  I’m not sure I could creep close enough to take it.”  Bob realized with a shock that the other man had been judging him.  It was an uncomfortable sensation.

He nodded to acknowledge the compliment. 

That did leave the question of why Tiamat’s sea of dross had drawn him in, when it appeared to terrify Midgard.  Bob was a Crow.  He was supposed to run from danger.  He hadn’t run. 

“I’ll live on the north side of town,” Midgard said. 

Bob shook his head.  Midgard was the only human contact Bob had.  “No, come farther south.  I’d welcome the companionship and there’s too much dross there for me.”  He wanted to share it – and share the implicit danger of the unknown predator.  Midgard’s offer took a load off Bob’s mind.  His fear of leaving Tiamat’s dross sea behind made him wonder again if he
had gone mad.

Midgard nodded, and then shook his head.  “Sorry.  I’ll come south, but I can’t face going anywhere near that Center.  I can’t imagine taking any of that dross, at least not yet.  I’ll write my story down on paper for you.  I’ll leave it hidden under those bushes over there.”  He nodded toward the bushes over on his right.  “You can write your story and leave it for me.”

Bob nodded back.  He liked this Midgard person.  The fact he was colored didn’t seem to matter.  Perhaps skin color didn’t matter if they were both Crows.  Perhaps it didn’t matter to normals either.

Then he shook his head again.  Of course it mattered to normals.  It was only because they were Crows that things were different.

He laughed to himself.  Crows were black birds.  Perhaps they were all black now, on the inside.

Carol Hancock: October 5, 1966 – October 6, 1966

The day after the obstacle course was the first day I slapped a nurse.  The new nurse, Givens, was the one.  I’d finished a morning blood test and Givens wanted me to put my shoes back on.  No, I wanted to carry them.  They hurt my feet today.  She wasn’t being rude or anything, merely insistent.  So I slapped her.  Nurse Givens bounced off the wall and ran, and I had panicked orderlies with weapons pointed at me, ready to shoot.  Cook, of all of them the most familiar with me, kept shouting, “Get down, get down.”

I got down. 

I had a problem, though.  I enjoyed slapping Nurse Givens and I wanted to do it again.

The slap bought me another visit to the scabrous Dr. Manigault.  He sentenced me to half rations and solitary confinement for the rest of the day.  He repeated his employment offer.  I turned him down again.

The solitary confinement cell was new to me, somewhere up on the third floor, and the room smelled funny, a sour chemical odor I couldn’t place.  The eight feet by ten feet cell had a twelve-foot ceiling, so I felt like I was at the bottom of some odd box.  Several water pipes crossed the cell, up by the ceiling, and a metal grating reinforced the drywall.  The small sink was set in a tin cabinet, all sharp edges and metal points.  The bed, a glorified footlocker, had body bags inside it, along with thick rope, extra sheets, and on top, a knife. 

In case I didn’t get the hint, someone had tied a hangman’s noose on the rope.  Dr. Manigault had thrown me into a suicide chamber, the sort of place the Detention Center incarcerated unwanted Transforms while waiting for their inevitable deaths.

I slammed the bed back down without further thought, enraged.

At night, I dreamed again of the man in the film.  I’d dreamed of him before, in my nightmares, first his withdrawal then myself in withdrawal.  This time I came for him with my arms extended, to envelop him and give him death, and he hugged me.  I held him to me, I pulled…

I woke up in the grip of a craving so fierce I shook with it.  It was only the fifth day since the last time I had taken juice.  The craving shouldn’t have been this powerful yet.  I held my pillow tightly, and lay on my side and shivered. 

As I turned in the bed, I realized something else: the dream left me aroused.  I thought of that man in withdrawal, the juice he represented and I wanted him.  I wanted his juice, I wanted his body, I wanted him inside of me in all ways.

I was sick.  Bad mind sick.  My skin itched, as well.  I didn’t like this room.

Every time something good happened, like with the obstacle course, another ten bad things happened.  I was so overwhelmed by my emotions I couldn’t think straight anymore.  I hated this!

I couldn’t get back to sleep.  I hadn’t needed more than two or three hours of sleep a night since I’d transformed.  I daydreamed that one of the staff would come down with Transform Sickness.  First thing in the morning, one of the staff would come in and he would be a Transform, filled with juice.  Right next to me.  I could reach over and drain him dry.

Sometime just before dawn, I sat straight up in the bed and put my head in my hands.  A knife?  I scrambled out of bed and looked again in the chest.  I hadn’t been mistaken.  A knife.  Someone had put a goddamned knife in with the suicide equipment.

I picked up the knife in awe.  This was no normal kitchen knife.  It was huge, a foot long black steel monstrosity, sharp on both sides at the end, serrated like a kitchen knife on the front side starting half way down, and with a short section of saw-like serrations on the other side opposite the front serrations.  The knife came in a hand-tooled custom holster with straps top and bottom, and the holster looked well used.  I sniffed the scent of old blood and the heavy odor of its owner, unrecognizable.  Much fainter, I smelled the odor of a person I recognized. 
Dr. Zielinski.

I’d say the knife was too big for dainty-ol’-me, but I found something comforting about it.  I closed the lid on the footlocker bed and sat down to think, the knife cradled in my arms, held baby tight.  I thought for a long time.

I couldn’t make myself believe it was a coincidence that the knife had shown up right after I’d slapped the nurse and right after my trip to the obstacle course.  I came up with only one rational conclusion: Dr. Zielinski had given this to me because he thought I needed the knife to defend myself.

I’d also assumed the Detention Center staff monitored the entire place with closed-circuit television whatnots, but the appearance of this knife here was a good indication they didn’t monitor this room.  I was surprised, but then remembered that the Detention Center was a decade old.  They hadn’t kept the place up to date.

I couldn’t figure out how to get the knife out of this room.  I couldn’t carry it.  They frisked me too often for me to conceal the knife under my clothes.  Worse, I ended up half-naked far too regularly during the damned medical tests.  I puzzled over the straps attached to the holster and after a while realized they would fit well around someone’s lower leg.  That had to be how Dr. Zielinski got the knife in.

Although, looking at the worn spots on the leather straps, I decided the original owner had big legs. 
Dr. Zielinski’s lower legs weren’t as thin as mine, but they were still thin.  Even at its tightest, I had to put the sheath right below my knee to keep it on my leg.

I played with the knife and noted its lethal sharpness.  Thought about
the uses I could make of it.  No, this knife was only for emergencies, something to give me a fighting chance if the Detention Center scheduled me for termination, a tool to help me if I needed to escape.  Dr. Zielinski had put the knife here because he knew I would end up in this cell if I got in trouble.  I couldn’t carry the knife with me but the cell had ample hiding places.  I doubted the government had built this this room to serve as a maximum-security holding tank.  Storeroom would have been my guess.  Therefore, I hid the knife on top of one of the overhead pipes. 

I figured if I wanted to get the knife, I would just slap another nurse.

I did have one problem, though:  I didn’t know the first thing about fighting, with or without a knife.  I needed to talk to Dr. Zielinski.  I knew not to mention the knife but I could talk to him about his experiences with other Arms.  There was a message here I didn’t get. 

I needed to understand that message.

After a half day of confinement in the suicide cell my muscles were noticeably worse.  I couldn’t sit still for long, as immobility made the ache intolerable.  When they released me from the suicide cell, I went to see
Dr. Zielinski.  Instead of giving him an apology for yesterday’s behavior or asking questions about his experiences with other Arms, I lost my temper.

“This transformation thing is getting worse,” I said, after I sat down.  “My body aches and my mind is full of mush.  I swear I’m becoming some sort of Monster!”

“Despite what certain people have said, I can assure you that Arms are not Monsters,” he said, with a barely muted eye roll.

The arrogant bastard didn’t even take me seriously.  “How in the blazes do you know that?  I suppose in your infinite wisdom you know everything about me.” I glared at him, angrier by the second.

“No, I don’t,” he said, steepling his fingers and looking off to the side.  “Unlike some who’ve become fixed in their belief and faith, medical researchers find out that they’re wrong every day.  That’s how we learn and…”

Jerk.  “So you admit you’re wrong?”

“When the data are wrong, certainly,” he said, with a small smile on the edges of his lips.

‘Data are’?  My face grew hot at his utter pomposity, but he didn’t notice.  “Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you?” he continued, as if he spoke from a canned script.

“I
hurt
, damn it!” I said, my voice loud and an octave higher than normal.  “I can’t even hold still.  Every time I sit still my muscles hurt.  My stomach has hurt for two weeks now, my shoulders hurt, and everything just keeps getting
worse
.”

“Carol, I understand you’re in some discomfort,”
Dr. Zielinski said, nervous now.  He watched me with a tight, tense expression.  Wary, as if he didn’t trust what I might do.  “This is normal.  Your body’s undergoing a lot of changes, as you’re not fully an Arm yet.  As time goes on, the pain should decrease.  Until then, I know…”

“You don’t know
anything.
” I was profoundly angry.  “You don’t know
anything
about what I’m enduring.”

“Carol, I thi…”

“Shut the hell up!  You sit there and tell me you understand what I’m going through, yet you’ve never experienced the pain or the craving.  What gives you the right to decide when I get juice and when I don’t?” I shook in anger.  The only thing that kept me from more violence was the freshness of the memory of the suicide cell.