Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (26 page)

“I’m sorry, Carol,” Dr. Zielinski said.  “You must be hallucinating again.  Special Agent Bates never gave you any job offers.  He was only here to consult on security.”

For a moment,
Dr. Zielinski saw the true killer behind the Arm’s eyes, the eyes of someone who had come to grips with the knowledge she had to kill to live.  She bit back her snarl as she worked out the double meanings and warnings. 

“I need help,
Dr. Zielinski,” she said.  “I know you don’t think much of me anymore, but these FBI tests are going to drive me insane.  Is there any way we can get them stopped, or at least slow them down?”

“The FBI’s test schedule runs about six weeks.  After they finish, you’ll be left in peace.”  As in ‘rest in peace’.

She caught the hidden meaning immediately and looked away from him.  She was focused on survival.  Like Rose Desmond, the only other Arm he worked with who had lasted this long, Carol had started the process of simplifying her emotions.  Soon, all her old emotions would be overwhelmed by the ‘Arm basics’:  a bloodthirsty focus on survival, winning confrontations and juice.  Dr. Zielinski suspected it was a progressive transformation effect.  When he first met Keaton, she had still been in that state, but he and Tonya had been able to quickly re-socialize her.  How long the dominance of the Arm basics would last in Carol was an open question.

“What do they want of me in the long term?” Hancock asked, a few moments later.

As she already knew the FBI’s plans for her, her question referred to a different topic.  Such as ‘Why are you still here, Dr. Zielinski?’  “I’m guessing their superiors want you to eventually work for them.  At some point, they’re going to be willing to help you, but not yet.”  He hated to string her along, but he was short on ideas.  Biggioni and her Focus cronies – his superiors, if you looked at the situation from the right direction – wanted another Arm on the team, but he had a nagging suspicion they weren’t willing to pay the price for Hancock.

“That’s good news.  I take it you’re willing to be my agent and represent me?”

“Unfortunately, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be able to stay here,” Dr. Zielinski said.  “You’ll have to use some of those contact methods we talked about earlier.  In fact, you should give some thought to the idea that your situation may be similar to those people we talked about earlier, who were similarly unemployed.”  Meaning the first Focuses during the Quarantine.  Any messages she sent would end up in Tonya’s hands and Dr. Zielinski hoped Tonya would be able to come up with a way to save Hancock’s life.

Hancock nodded.  “Gotcha.  Larry was convinced, though, that I wouldn’t be able to keep my Arm muscle problems under control without his help.  Will they be able to give me any help?”

The Arm meant her juice supply problems.  “You’re going to have to teach yourself how to deal with that problem.  Larry’s so annoyed at you that he’s not likely to ever want to speak to you again.”  Once you made Keaton’s shit list, you never wanted to deal with her again.  Unless you wanted to die.  He was sure Tonya or some other Council Focus could come up with Transforms for Hancock.  What he doubted was whether they would want to.

Hancock frowned.  “Are there any others of his specialty available?  He was sure I’d die before I mastered the muscle control techniques.” So hunting down Transforms for their juice wasn’t as easy as he supposed, eh? 
Dr. Zielinski rubbed his chin and didn’t answer for a few steps.  He had thought the Arm instinct package would provide, but apparently Keaton didn’t agree.  That was bad news…and also put a new light on some of Keaton’s comments and behaviors.  She had been covering up the fact that hunting down Transforms was difficult.

“We’ve talked about this before, Carol.  Larry’s skills are quite unique.”  No,
Dr. Zielinski didn’t associate with any other Arms.  He didn’t have any good answers for any of Hancock’s needs.

“I guess I’ll just have to cope on my own.”

To his surprise, she didn’t try to kill him or escape right then and there.

---

“Dr. Zielinski, have a seat,” Agent McIntyre said.  The FBI Agent had claimed Dr. Bentwyler’s office.  “I didn’t like your conversation with Hancock.  What the fuck did you think you were doing, anyway?”

“With regard to what?”
Dr. Zielinski asked.  McIntyre still thought Dr. Zielinski had helped Keaton evade him back in Keaton’s early years, after she escaped from FBI detention.  It didn’t help that he was right.  McIntyre just hadn’t been able to prove it.

McIntyre slammed a stack of typewritten papers down in front of
Dr. Zielinski.  He looked them over, and to no big shock, they were a transcript of his conversation with Hancock.  “On the third page, you said we were going to offer her a job when this was over.  You had no right to say any such thing.”

“Then what are you going to do with her?”
Dr. Zielinski asked.

“That’s not for me to decide, that’s for my superiors to decide.  Whatever they decide, I can guarantee we won’t be offering a Monster any form of employment.”  McIntyre grabbed the transcript back.  “You agreed to be her agent.”

“I most certainly did not.”

“Bullshit.  She asked you, and you didn’t say ‘no’,” McIntyre said.  “You and that Focus-loving bastard Bates are trying to grab Hancock for the bitch underground you help, aren’t you?”

McIntyre meant the Focus Network.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dr. Zielinski said.  He had disliked McIntyre since the instant they met.  Anti-Transform bigots always got under Dr. Zielinski’s skin, and McIntyre was one of the worst because he knew enough to know better, and chose not to.

“You pussy-whipped Focus-lovers never do,” McIntyre said.  He smiled and cracked his knuckles.  “You’re fired, Zielinski.  Pack your stuff up right now and leave.”

“On what grounds?”

“On the grounds I don’t trust you,” McIntyre said.  “Tell you what.  You resign today of your own accord and I won’t release this transcript of your conversation with Hancock.” McIntyre slid a second transcript across the desk, holding on tight. 
Dr. Zielinski read a few paragraphs, not surprised to read that in the altered transcript he had revealed the test results to Hancock.

The dismissal was, unfortunately, inevitable.  If he resigned, it would save both of them the ensuing political fights.

“I understand,” Dr. Zielinski said.  “Since I do have pressing business back in Boston, I believe I will have to resign, as you’ve indicated.”

He pitied Hancock.  Without his input, minimal as it had been in the last several days, conditions here were about to get much worse.

---

Dr.
Zielinski put down the telephone in his Detention Center office and kept his face stony blank.  That was his final status report call on this project.

Had he covered his tracks as well as he covered his emotions?

Everyone involved was unhappy, as the Detention Center staff blamed him for McIntyre’s appearance.  Dr. Manigault had called an all-hands meeting to go over the situation.  All hands except Hank. 

Dr.
Zielinski called his local travel agent and requested his return ticket to Boston.  He didn’t look forward to the journey home.  He had lost another Arm, suffered another failure, and taken yet one more step backwards in his academic career.

He walked down the hall, down two flights of stairs, and found the meeting room
Dr. Manigault had mentioned.  He took a seat outside the door and waited for the meeting inside to finish.  While he waited, Dr. Zielinski wrote slanted reports in his head. 

Three hours later,
Dr. Manigault stalked out of the meeting, angry.  On the way by, he dropped a piece of paper in Dr. Zielinski’s lap, an exit interview waiver.  McIntyre and the FBI agents still argued among themselves in the meeting room, unusual disunity.  Patrelle, McIntyre’s boss, must have been up to his old heavy-handed tricks again.  Dr. Zielinski wiped his face with a handkerchief as he stood to leave. 

So far, no one suspected Keaton had been here only a few days ago.

Carol Hancock: October 18, 1966 – October 21, 1966

I learned about Dr. Zielinski’s resignation first thing in the morning, from Dr. Fredericks.  As he and the FBI techs ran through the day’s tests, at first I silently cursed Dr. Zielinski for failing me.  After more time passed, I began to realize how much I had lost.  He had protected me and helped me, and I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that my insistence on our last conversation led to his resignation, his
forced
resignation.

They tested my reaction time, hand to eye coordination, and resistance to electrical shock today.  The last was extremely painful, left me with burns all over my body, nothing more than torture.  I wanted to scream ‘I’m a human being.  You can’t do this to me!’, but they wouldn’t have cared. 
Dr. Fredericks would have probably enjoyed it.

When the day’s tests ended, around ten in the evening, the guards escorted me to my padded cell.  Again, no time to exercise today.  I curled up on the floor in agony, and as best as possible, thought. 

I didn’t have anything else to do in my padded cell.  I no longer had my television.  Before McIntyre and the new FBI team came, I watched Johnny every night.  The laughter from the television had been a sound from some other world in the ghostly darkness of my room, but it had been at least something.  Now, nothing remained for me to do except read the books and magazines I had already read, and attend to a stack of old coffee-ringed newspapers and a pencil for finishing the half-finished crossword puzzles.  I wasn’t sure they knew about the pencil.

I hurt, I was hungry, and
I felt betrayed by the world.  Alone.  Dr. Fredericks reveled in my helplessness and refused to explain anything.  The FBI techs didn’t speak to me at all.  They didn’t consider me human. 

I was lonely and friendless.  I was helpless, tied up whenever I was an inconvenience.  I had no control even over myself.

I hated that lack of control.

The images in my mind of my family dimmed, to where my sharpest memories of them were the pictures my mother had brought me.  Those pictures I recalled with Arm-clarity of memory, unlike the memories from before my transformation, which had faded.  I wanted my family back.  I wanted Sarah alive again.  I didn’t want to be a Transform!

After an hour of pointless self-pity, I realized the only person responsible for my situation was
me
.  I could have taken up Agent Bates on his offer, rolled those dice and taken the gamble.  I could have gone with Stacy Keaton and entered her mad world of violence and domination.  I chose neither.  Hell, I might have even accepted Dr. Manigault’s offer.

I didn’t know what to do about my current situation.

I owed it to Sarah, though, to do
something
.

I didn’t fall asleep until around two.  I woke up at five, fully refreshed.  Three hours, as always, was enough.

The next day, more tests.  My juice was a day lower and the tests got on my nerves.  The slightest hint of temper, though, would leave me restrained, so I began to cultivate stoicism.  I hated the restraints.

First, they tested my reactions to various light levels.  They knew already I saw in the dark, and those tests were fine.  They tried lights of different colors and brightness, which went fine except with my low juice, all the light was too bright.

The rest of the day, they hooked me up to a machine I didn’t recognize.  They shaved patches on my head, the bastards, and attached dozens of electrodes to my scalp.  The tests started, testing my reactions to many things, including a gunshot from behind me when I didn’t expect it. 

At night, I curled up on the floor and thought again, anything to keep my mind off my unending muscle pain.  FBI techs had talked about being here for Thanksgiving but home for Christmas, positive they would be ‘finished here’ by then.  Keaton was right.  The FBI planned to pull the plug on me sometime early in December.  I wracked my mind in an attempt to explain that date, and remembered a conversation Dr. Zielinski and Dr. Fredericks had when they tested my resistance to poisons.  Dr. Zielinski had said ‘the muscle growth curve will lead to problems in mid December’, and Dr. Fredericks answered with a cheery ‘nothing we need to worry about’.  Also, Dr. Zielinski had said the FBI would ‘leave me in peace’ in about six weeks.

From this, I concluded my muscle problems were intractable without Keaton to drive me into exhaustion, and my own muscles would immobilize me a week or two before Christmas.  Then the FBI would pull the plug on me.  The idea that I lived under a death sentence chilled me.

I still didn’t know what to do.

I did get up and start some stretches and exercises, though.

The third day after
Dr. Zielinski’s departure I didn’t go hungry.  Dr. Fredericks wasn’t being kind.  No, today they tested food poisons.  They restrained me, catheterized me and fed me, with a needle up my right arm for near constant blood draws.  The show was good enough to attract McIntyre’s personal attention.  Some of what they fed me I vomited up almost immediately.  Other things they fed me gave me intense bloody diarrhea within a half hour, or filled my urine sack with awful red, black and orange fluids.  One vile thing – botulism toxin, if what they muttered to each other was correct – made blood seep from my body right through my skin.  Just like a male Transform in withdrawal, not a pretty sight.