Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (24 page)

As far as I know, we’re as invisible to Monsters and psychotic men in withdrawal as we are to normals.  Not something I’d bet my life on, though.  I went and looked at the hospital where your two attackers died.  It turns out they made normal transformations before they passed away – something in the transformations went wrong.  I fear we’re as deadly as Focuses and Arms – you did know that Focuses can kill the Transforms they care for if they’re not careful?  I’m not sure how to take being deadly.  It’s very disquieting.  I’m also not happy that we have the power to do such things as induce transformations.  How can we, us always-scared Crows, be at all powerful? 

I can’t figure those dross spots, either.  I’ve seen Monsters, though…

…and Crow terminology is more messed up than normal language.  For instance, if you look at the roots of a many words like ‘lukewarm’ you learn they mean ‘warm warm’.  Waste dross, for instance.

As you said, I do have some amazing benefits from my transformation.  Illness isn’t a problem anymore.  Nor is cold.  I can run for miles without tiring and I can leap about ten feet in the air if I’m startled.  I only need a few hours
’ sleep, and as you wrote about yourself, I too need to eat more than I used to.  But I can eat nearly any meat or plants, save grass and wood chips, and I think my reactions may be faster than they were before.  No, I don’t have anything like your bald spot that’s growing new hair, but I don’t need to shave as often as I did as a normal…and I’m losing – rapidly – my facial hair.

I think this is all from the effects of juice.  According to what I’ve read, even men and women Transforms get healthier than they were before.  Focuses are much more amazing, almost as if they discovered the fountain of youth.  All Focuses are young in appearance, even the ones who transformed in their forties, and if what I’ve read is correct, they don’t age, either.  Compared to what’s happening to this Tiamat, though, our changes are minor.

Have fun studying at the library.

Midgard

Tonya Biggioni: October 14, 1966

After getting no answer at his hotel room, Tonya tried Hank Zielinski’s office at the Detention Center.

“Dr. Zielinski speaking.”  He had picked up the phone on the fifth ring.  Slow for him.  He was likely noodling with his photographs again.

“Stalker.”  Tonya moved papers around on her desk.  Where had that note gone?  She swore it had been on top of the pile before she dialed.

“I phoned in a report to Rhonda yesterday,” Hank said.  He paused.  “Sorry, I forgot.  I phoned in the report two days ago.  Do you have some questions about it?  I still haven’t been able to get the details of why Tommy’s so pissed off at Hancock.”

Dr.
Zielinski would be a treasure if he didn’t have a little problem about his own personal agendas, Tonya decided.  He was cooperative, friendly and liked Focuses.  He didn’t have to fake it and he wasn’t the least put off by the often un-human peculiarities of Focuses and their households. 

Ah, there was the note, right under the Rolodex she had flipped through to find the Detention Center phone number.  Tonya smiled. 

Delia, on kitchen duty since her improbable transformation, brought in a tea service platter.  She sat the platter down and asked wordlessly if Tonya needed anything else.  Tonya waved her away.

“We’ve got a problem, Hank,” Tonya said.  “Your old sparring partner from the Mary Beth Julius affair is going to be coming by your current job site to take over.”  Special Agent Patrick McIntyre, to be exact.  Nadine, a Network contact as well as a secretary in the FBI secretary pool, had provided the information, as well as a comment that McIntyre had blown a gasket when he realized how many Network people were at work on the Hancock project.  A ten-minute temper tantrum, according to Nadine. 

Hank groaned.  “He’s in a real bad mood about what’s going on,” Tonya continued.

“That’s not good,” Hank said.  “Are you going to be warning our other friends?”  Meaning Keaton and Special Agent Bates.

“The official one already knows.  The other I’ll take care of.”

“Thank you,” Hank said.  It was much safer to speak with Keaton about such a thing from the other end of a telephone.  They both understood Keaton’s loosely held temper. 

“Good luck, Hank,” Tonya said, and hung up.  He was going to need all the luck he could gather, as was this new Arm.  McIntyre and his boys didn’t appreciate Transforms.  No, not at all.

Carol Hancock: October 15, 1966

On the day the world fell apart,
Dr. Zielinski called me down to Dr. Bentwyler’s office.  The guards followed me in and I sat down in one of the chairs opposite the desk.  No Dr. Bentwyler.

“You may leave Mrs. Hancock with me,”
Dr. Zielinski said to the guards.

“If we’re going to leave her alone with you, we’re supposed to lock her down,” the tall blond guard responded.  His name was Ole Strommen, and I didn’t know much about him.

“Very well,” Dr. Zielinski said.  “Probably a good idea.”

The guards chained me securely to the chair and left the room.  I was tired of the chains, but didn’t say a thing.

“Carol, I’d like to talk to you about something,” Dr. Zielinski said.

I grunted.  Three days after my draw gave me an almost normal temper.  The chains only made me irritable, not homicidal.

“We have a problem,” Dr. Zielinski said.  I didn’t pay attention to him and glared at the chains.  He hesitated.  “Your situation here at the Detention Center is about to get worse.”

I didn’t respond for about thirty seconds.  “Worse?”

“Much worse,” Dr. Zielinski said, and licked his lips.  “I’m afraid we’re about to lose control over how we’re treating you.  I can guarantee that the next obstacle course session and Special Agent Bates’ plan to get your help on the Monster hunt aren’t going to happen.”

“That’s too bad.  I was looking forward to the obstacle course session.  I can’t say I was looking forward to the second, as Bates was trying to blackmail me with it into accepting his employment offer.”

“You don’t have to worry about the employment offer anymore,” Dr. Zielinski said.  He tapped a pencil eraser on his desk.  “Special Agent Bates has been reassigned. In addition, your trainer, Mr. Borton, has quit.”

I sat up straight and paid attention.  Something was wrong, bad wrong, wrong enough to scare
Dr. Zielinski.  “What’s the reason for all these changes?”

“I’ll get to details in a few moments.  As we talked about before your last draw, you know that nobody understands how to handle an Arm transformation.  However, there’s someone who’s more of an expert on the subject of
Arms
than any of us here.”

“Another doctor?” I asked.

Dr. Zielinski ran his hand through his thinning hair.  “No.  The person who understands the most about the subject of Arms is another Arm.”

Of course.  The Antichrist herself.  “Stacy Keaton,” I said in a whisper.  I leaned as far back from
Dr. Zielinski as my restraints would allow.  What was Zielinski trying to do, get me killed?  Get all of us killed?

“Stacy Keaton,”
Dr. Zielinski said.  “She’s psychotic, murderous, and dangerous.  However, she has survived as an Arm for three years, and I know how interested you are in survival.  The fact that she is alive and has eluded the best efforts of the FBI to capture her implies a lot about her knowledge of survival.  Unfortunately, she won’t talk to me about it.  She’ll talk to you, though.”

“You’re in contact with Stacy Keaton?” I asked, astonished.  I remembered watching him help in the effort to capture her, back at the military base.

“She wishes to speak to you,” Dr. Zielinski said, evading my question.  “She’s going to be here in two hours.  She’ll be speaking to you alone.”

I shook my head in disbelief. 

“Why?  Why are you doing this?  Aren’t you going to get in trouble with the FBI?”

Dr.
Zielinski looked at me, face blank.  “Later today, a different group of FBI agents will be showing up.  These Agents are members of the Arm Task Force, the group hunting Stacy Keaton.  Special Agent Patrick McIntyre, a man obsessed with hunting Keaton, leads them.  I’m not privy to their plans, but they’re not here to help in your care.  Special Agent Bates’ superiors had unrealistic expectations and when Bates didn’t pull off a miracle, they reassigned him and brought in the Arm Task Force.  McIntyre and I don’t get along, and he has a radically different opinion of how Arms should be treated.  I can’t guarantee I’ll be your doctor after McIntyre and his men take over.

“You do need to keep this quiet,”
Dr. Zielinski said, before I could get a word in.  “If Special Agent McIntyre finds out about any meetings with Stacy Keaton, he will shut down the whole research effort and take you into his custody.  You would never see the light of day again.  Don’t talk to anyone else about this except me.  This is dangerous for everyone involved.”

That explained why
Dr. Zielinski chose Bentwyler’s office for this conversation.  If any place in this building was free of surveillance, Bentwyler’s office was.  Nothing important ever happened here.

I shook my head again, trying to understand the changes whirling around me.  “Why is
she
doing this?”

“Listen to her, listen to her experience,”
Dr. Zielinski said, evasive as usual.  “She may have an offer for you.  Listen to the offer closely.  It may mean the difference between life and death.”

---

I sat alone in the stark bare conference room.  The plain curtains over the closed and barred windows needed replacement, worn with age.  A covered bulb in the ceiling illuminated the room and two guards stood on the other side of the door.  I sat in a chair on the far side of the conference table and listened to the heater ping as I tried to understand what I’d gotten into.  Outside, I overheard the low murmur of the guards as they talked about Ole’s new pickup truck.

What kind of a person was Keaton?  She was a killer, they said, but I had no idea if she shot her victims, or seduced them and killed them in their sleep, or did it some entirely different way.  The press had reported several horrible massacres they blamed on her, bodies dismembered and other atrocities, but I no longer trusted those press reports.

The door shut.  I looked up and found Larry Borton, my former physical trainer, standing with his back against the wall.  I started to say something, but Larry shushed me, climbed on the conference room table and pulled the cover off the light.  He reached into the socket, pulled something out and dropped a tangle of wires on the table.

I examined the tangle and found a strange bulge at the end of one of the wires.  A small microphone.  “What…” I started.

Larry kicked the chair out from underneath me, grabbed me and slammed me against the wall, holding me by my throat.  With one hand.  My feet dangled and my neck stretched painfully.

A nasty smile, nothing like his normal expression, covered Larry’s face.  “You.  Will.  Be.  Respectful,” he whispered, not in his normal voice.

My bowels turned to water.  “Yes, sir,” I said.  Respectfully.  I’d been right, back in the beginning, when I decided something ugly lived behind those eyes.  “Are you going to be here, sir, when Stacy Keaton shows up?”

He paused.  “
I
am Stacy Keaton,” Larry Borton said.

Part 2
They’re All Monsters

“The reason for the quarantine of surviving victims of Transform Sickness is not a fear of the spread of it or an irrational desire to punish the victims of the disease.  It is that despite the best efforts of Focuses, some male Transforms still have been known to go into juice withdrawal and some women Transforms still have been known to have juice overdoses – both conditions which are severe public safety risks.” [CDC pamphlet, 1958]

Chapter 5

“…and it’s limbo, in many ways worse than the Quarantine.  I, and everyone else in my household, am illegal.  De-facto non-citizens.  We’re free of the Quarantine, but at the cost of society’s opprobrium, at the mercy of any crusading District Attorney who wants to make a name for himself, and powerless against any employer who finds out that one of us is a Transform.  On the other hand – the Federal Government is not going to prosecute us for freeing ourselves from the Quarantine because they and their lawyers know that they don’t have a case.  We were illegally detained for health reasons, backed by no science at all, forced to prove a negative – that we weren’t contagious – simply to have freedom.  Perhaps in a year or two, when our cases reach the Supreme Court, the Bill of Rights will be finally seen to be worth more than the paper it was written on…” [Focus X, as reported in Newsweek, October 1959]

Carol Hancock: October 15, 1966 – October 17, 1966

I stared at my exercise instructor in utter disbelief.  “You can’t…”

Larry Borton glared at me, and as he did so, something changed.  The illusion of the dangerous but friendly yardstick-wielding trainer fell away, revealing the killer underneath.  Cold blue eyes gazed at me with a flat deadness, muscles far stronger than mine, and an inhuman grace as she moved.  She was everything I was, except older and far worse.  The strength, the temper, the aggression.  The killing.  She had taken the path to Satan I had been trying so hard to reject. 

He shifted posture slightly and my mind started to play tricks.  I saw his teeth at my throat, my guts ripped from my body, my head severed from my neck.  Before I had time to flinch, my muscles turned to rubber, my heart thudded at twice its normal rate, and my bladder cut loose. 

Jesus save me!

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. 

I was a fool.  The Antichrist herself had been training me the entire time.  I’d never thought it strange to be able to pick up Larry with my metasense, as a faint glow.  He’d – no,
she’d
buffaloed me but good.

My feet pumped air as I tried to run away.  I thought she would be human, but in this small conference room her true animal nature showed through.  It showed in the way she moved, the deadly hunger in her eyes.  Like a tiger, not a human woman.  If she cut my throat, she would enjoy it, a tiger killing an antelope for its dinner. 

Human lives meant nothing to her.

“You’re a fool,” she said, and smiled a hungry smile. 

The small, primitive part of my mind that recognized terrible danger screamed in panic.  I tried to scrabble out of her grip.

Her flat eyes watched me as I failed to escape, or even wiggle her arm.  “You expect me to kill you,” she said, speaking in a medium alto instead of Larry’s masculine baritone.  Her voice shivered along my nerves.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.  Squeaked.  I’d never squeaked in my life.

She smiled.  “Maybe.  Probably not today.”  Keaton released my neck and backed off.  I stood with my back flat up against the wall and sucked air, trying to control myself.  I didn’t want to give her any excuse to kill me.

Keaton watched me for a moment.  Then she moved toward me again, with an impossible cat-like grace, until she stood nose to nose with me.  Even her strong odor threatened.  She no longer smelled like Larry.  I recognized her scent from the knife Zielinski had given me.  It had been hers.

“You’ll die on your own just fine, without any help from me.  Just like the other Arms,” she said.  “Unless you come with me today.”

The incompetence of Dr. Zielinski and the other doctors had killed the other Arms. 

Faced with the horror of Stacy Keaton, I decided I would still rather gamble on
Dr. Zielinski’s competence.

Her smile twisted into a sneer of contempt in response, even though I hadn’t said a thing.  I had the uncomfortable feeling she read my mind.  “You’re going to die because you’re too stupid to live.  The real FBI is coming, Hancock.  They’re not interested in keeping you alive.  All they want is a lab rat.  You won’t last two months.”

She brought her hand up and ran her fingers along my cheek.  I was too terrified to speak.  I was too terrified to move.

“McIntyre’s going to test you so he can figure out how to kill me.  You’ll perform like a nice little lab rat.  Zielinski won’t save you; he’ll just stand back and take notes.  When McIntyre’s done, the fucking pride-of-the-FBI’s going to perform one last experiment.  He’s always wanted to learn what happens to an Arm when she goes all the way into withdrawal.  There won’t be a damn thing you can do about it.”

Keaton ran her hands down to my shoulders and kneaded the muscles there.  It hurt.  She dug an index finger into the joint and I hissed in pain.  I tried to pull free, but her hands held me in an iron grip and I couldn’t move.  She took her finger out of the joint and I gasped for breath.  Tears slid down my cheeks from the pain she inflicted.  To my surprise, she smiled at me.

“We’ve almost got your muscle problems licked.  Only I can exercise you hard enough to keep your muscle growth under control.”  She continued to knead my shoulders.  The ache in my muscles increased to a fierce pain.  I gritted my teeth and struggled to breathe.

“Without me, your own muscles will betray you.  Soon, without my help, you’ll wake up each morning in pain.  A few weeks later you’ll wake up each day screaming and you’ll spend the day in agony.  No matter what you do, those muscle problems will keep getting worse.  Eventually you’ll start to have convulsions.  Then, because your bones won’t be able to support the strain, they’ll break.  The convulsions will keep them from healing and you’ll grind them to powder.  With no bones, you won’t be able to work your muscles at all, and there will be no relief from the pain.  With no bones, your body will lose its shape, and you’ll be nothing more than a simple amoeba, pulsing futilely in the air.”  She smiled wider.  “Don’t worry, though.  You’ll have gone mad from the pain long before.”

She let go of my shoulders and the relief from pain went through me like a shock.  I staggered to the side, but I didn’t move my back from the wall.

“Come with me and
I’ll
save you from all this.”

I flickered my eyes at her and knew my future.  If I went with her I would become like her, a killer, an outlaw, a figure of nightmare, slaughtering innocents, torturing, killing everyone in my path.  Rev. Smalley had been right.  She was a supernatural monster, the Antichrist.  If I went with her, it would cost me my soul.

I didn’t answer her.

“Or you can kill yourself.  Hell, if you want me to, I could kill you now,” she said.  “It’s the most pleasant alternative you have.  That way McIntyre won’t learn a fucking thing about Arms from you.”  She would do it in a heartbeat and never look back.

No.  I would never kill myself.

“Too bad.  Then you’ll die in hideous withdrawal, if your muscles don’t get you first.”

She
was
reading my mind.  Damn.  Dr. Zielinski had tried to convince me that Arms were not supernatural monsters.  He lied.  The proof stood in front of me.

“No!” I said.  “I’ll never join you.”

“Too weak,” she said, with utter disdain.  “Just as I predicted.  Zielinski’s a fool.  You don’t even believe me.  All you see is some preacher’s boogey-monster.  Supernatural powers.  Idiot.”

I lowered my head in shame, but I still refused to surrender my soul.

“At least McIntyre won’t learn anything useful from a delusional Arm like you.”  She paused and shook her head.  “You’ll learn from them, though.  Wait and see what McIntyre and his boys do to you.  Eavesdrop on your keepers.  Even
your
ears will be good enough.  Find out how long McIntyre is going to play with you before he sends you into withdrawal.”

She smiled, a terrible, predatory thing.  She backed toward the door, ready to leave.  If she wanted me, why didn’t she knock me out and take me? 

Oh.  She didn’t want me unless I was willing.  She wanted my soul as well as my body. 

When Keaton reached the door I could breathe again.  I shook, and tears streamed down my face. 

“Ma’am,” I said, as respectfully as possible.  I had a hard time getting the words out.  “I can’t go with you.  Should I try and leave here and go out on my own?”

“Huh.”  Keaton paused at the doorway, as if that chuff of air was her laugh.  “You’re too stupid to live on your own.  You don’t have the first idea about what it takes to survive as an Arm.  How would you get kills?  You don’t have any idea how to hunt Transforms.  Even if you did, what would you do?  Lie down next to the dead body for six hours while you were too stoned to move?  Then wander around looking for someone to fuck?  How long do you think you would last doing that?  The FBI will hunt you down like a rabid dog.  What do you know about avoiding a manhunt?  You wouldn’t last a week on your own.  You can’t handle your current problems.  If you leave here by yourself, all you do is add a new set of problems.  Your only hope is to come with me.”

The foulness of her language was a slap in the face.  Like my language in the last few days.  “I can’t do that.  Ma’am.”  Not with the evil Antichrist.

Keaton smiled that evil killer’s smile.  “Goodbye, Carol.  It’s been nice knowing you. 

“You’re dead.”

She was gone.  I blew my nose and dried my eyes.  My soul, I hoped, was still my own.

---

Mr. Cook took me down to the main conference room to meet the new FBI agents.  I’d taken a shower, dressed and prettied myself up as best as possible, a problem as my plain institutional clothes no longer quite fit.  I drew a breath and braced myself.  I willed myself to control my body, to walk naturally despite nerves, pain, and stiff joints.

Mr. Cook opened the door for me and I went in.

The conference room’s large rectangular table seated ten, but the table seemed small in the room.  Everyone in the room stood, ignoring the ten wooden chairs, twins to the chair in my room.

Dr. Zielinski stood at the head of the table.  Dr. Manigault huddled with Dr. Peterson and Dr. Bentwyler on the near side of the table, as meek as I had ever seen them.  They faced, across the table, three men in suits who stood with a kind of coiled energy and hard-edged arrogance.  Each of them took up enough space for two men.  A short, ratty looking doctor stood next to them, taking up less space than I did.

The controlled arrogance on the FBI agents’ faces clouded to anger when I entered the room.  The near one spoke. 

“What’s she doing here?” he said.  He was a lean man, no more than medium height, although he gave the impression of being taller.  The blue suit looked more like a uniform on him.

“Mrs. Hancock is an interested party.  I invited her here,”
Dr. Zielinski said.  He wasn’t happy with me.  He thought I should have left with Keaton.

“
Mrs. Hancock
is a rabid animal and has no business being out of a cage,” the man said.  My jaw dropped.  I’d never in my life been so baldly insulted.

“If you have evidence of her involvement in a crime, take it up with a grand jury,”
Dr. Zielinski said, his voice clipped.

“Excuse me.” I said.

No one noticed.

“Failing that, she’s a citizen of the United States, a person with a severe medical condition, someone never formally charged with a crime,” Zielinski said.  He matched the arrogance of the FBI agents with his own, revealing an intense forcefulness I had never witnessed before.  “Perhaps you’ve forgotten that it’s the citizens of the United States for whom you work.”

The FBI agent stared back with bullet eyes.  “She’s a killer, regardless of how you define what she does, or where her ‘volunteers’ come from.  She’s nothing more than an animal.  I have every legal right to do whatever I want to with her.”

“The paperwork that brought her here mentioned a Mr. Hoover, if I recall,”
Dr. Zielinski said.

“So does my paperwork,
Dr. Zielinski, and my orders authorize my task force to take over the detention of this Arm.  Which, if you care, includes the right to decide which of you so-called doctors have access to her.”

“Mrs. Hancock is participating in a very valuable research effort.”
Dr. Zielinski said.  “Putting her in a ‘cage’, as you so quaintly put it, would disrupt our efforts and…”

“Agent McIntyre?”  I said to the FBI agent who sparred with
Dr. Zielinski.  This agent was the only one here with enough starch in his drawers to deserve Keaton’s mention.

“She’s a risk to an untold number of lives,
now.
”  McIntyre glared at Dr. Zielinski and didn’t even acknowledge my existence.  I disliked McIntyre immediately, and for more than the insults.  I’d never before known someone I could legitimately label ‘enemy’, but I knew one now.  He sparked an anger I didn’t know I had in me.  I did my best to push it down.  I couldn’t afford temper, not here.  “Treating her as a rational human makes everything worse.  She’s
dangerous
.”