Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (37 page)

“Focus.  Tonya, it’s not my fault!” Moore said, a horrible lie.  He was terrified, shaking.  Despite the dark, Tonya saw bruises on his face and blood on his clothes.  “I had to.”  Truth this time.

Tonya shivered, vindictively glad to see someone who had hurt her suffering.  She liked the raw side of power too much, she knew.  But she had always loved power.  She wasn’t proud of the fact, but she couldn’t argue with her love. 

Moore’s ‘I had to’ didn’t make sense.  She walked over to Moore, grabbed his head, and gazed into his eyes.  Contact!  Now she could use her charisma on him.  Keaton rose silently from her spot on the coach and disappeared into the shadows.  The skin on Tonya’s back crawled to have Keaton behind her.

“What did you do?” Tonya asked.

The man shivered and sweat dripped down his bruised cheeks.  “She ordered me to.  The other Focus.  She ordered me to never speak of it.  I can’t.”  He smelled sick, ill with extreme stress, more than she would have expected even under the circumstances.  Some sort of war raged in his own head.

Her household was in danger!  Adrenaline surged through her, and she was ready for a fight.  “What was the Focus’s name?  What did she look like?”

“No name.  Beautiful.  I don’t remember what she looked like.”

Tonya leaned on her charisma to the fullest, nearly enough to ruin a man, enough to give him nightmares for life.  “
Tell me what she had you do.
”  His eyes peeled back in utter terror.  She felt the presence of the other Focus in Moore’s head, the remnants of the other Focus’s commands, resisting Tonya’s charisma.  Futilely resisting.

“She had me arrange for her to talk to your subs.  She talked with them for a long time, alone, without my presence.  I’m sure they told her everything they knew about you and your household.  After she finished, she paid me and told me to cut off contact with you in such a way that you’d never do business with me again.”

Tonya staggered, figuratively punched in the stomach.  Some Focus had grabbed leverage on her.  Not her boss Suzie, though, as Suzie didn’t have enough charisma to cloud Moore’s mind like this.  It might have been a Focus working for Suzie.

If she hadn’t had Keaton collect the bill, she would have never found out.  Tonya wondered how often this had happened in the past.

Her instant instinctive reaction had been right: her household was at risk.  Old instincts surfaced, dormant since her pre-Keaton Monster hunting days.  Back then, she killed to protect her people from the Monsters they hunted.  The killing ate holes in her soul, but even so, she would do it again. 

This man was a victim, a normal, not a Monster.

Still, he endangered her household.  She couldn’t allow that.  Nor was he much of a victim; if he had been forced against his will, the Focus wouldn’t have had to bother with the payment.  The situation was a gray toned mess.  Damnation!

Tonya dropped the man’s chin.  “Forget the bill collection angle, Stacy,” she said.  “I don’t want to alert whoever’s behind this that we’ve stumbled on her scheme.”

“I sure as hell hope you’re not going to object to what I want to do to this fucking thing,” Keaton said from behind her.

The Canadian had warned her about choices of this nature.  She didn’t understand the larger stakes here, though, beyond ‘her’ versus ‘everyone else’. 

No.  Not true.  Truthfully, the situation was more like ‘her and Keaton against everyone else’, if she let Keaton carry through with her threat.  Normally, Tonya would assure Stacy that she would handle it alone.  Her charisma was good enough to send Moore running to South America or Africa, and ensure he would never return.  It was what she should do to assuage her meager conscience.  However, the Canadian had said ‘the obvious choices may not be the correct choices’.

Damn it!  Tonya wished the Canadian wasn’t so consistently correct.

She considered the angles.  Strategically, ‘Tonya and Keaton against everyone else’ would be better than ‘I’ll take care of the problem my way, thank you very much Stacy’, and keeping the Arm at, well, arm’s length.  With this, she would plant the seed of ‘harm the Focus, harm me’ in Stacy’s mind – or, in this case, ‘infiltrate the Focus’s household, you degrade my Arm security’. 

Choosing this path would gain Tonya a closer ally.

“No, I don’t object,” Tonya said, with a cold internal shiver.  Tonya needed all the allies she could get, and the Canadian said she needed to reach beyond her usual habits.  An Arm was certainly a heck of a long way from Tonya’s usual political Focus allies.

Yes, this time they had to do it the Arm’s way.  Stacy had been the one to discover the problem.  Tonya had given the Arm the dubious benefit of deciding this idiot’s fate when she hired her.  Now, Stacy had offered that choice back to Tonya. 

The Arm had been testing Tonya.

“You don’t?”  Stacy stalked into Tonya’s view again, licking her lips.  She gave the man a loving look.  “Hot damn.  Reality sinks in to the Focus, for once.”  Stacy paused.  “You might want to leave, Tonya.”

Tonya nodded, and backed away.  “One last thing,” Stacy said.  “Hank’s got me a surplus Transform.”

“How?”

“Don’t know.  But I suspect we’ve made more enemies.  Keep your eyes peeled.”

Tonya nodded and left.  Moore screamed, and Tonya reflexively glanced back into the dark room.  Keaton
was skinning a strip of flesh off the man’s right arm.  Tonya winced and quickly turned away, but the shut door didn’t stop the screams, not given Tonya’s acute hearing.  As pleasant as Stacy had been with her recently, the Arm still was a violent sadistic killer.  Tonya couldn’t allow herself to forget that, not with her own dark urges pulling her in the same direction.

Tonya still heard Moore scream until the sound faded into the distance.  She shouldn’t have glanced back.

She hoped she made the right choice.

She knew it wouldn’t be her last difficult choice.

She hoped she would still be recognizably human when the crisis ended.

Chapter 9

“Because of the effect of juice on the mood and activity level of a Transform, the Focus possesses a special responsibility and power over the life of her Transforms.  Because the range over which a Focus can sense and manipulate juice is rather short (around the length of a football field), Transforms must live together in a household and be available to their Focus at regular times during the day so that the Focus can either move juice to them or from them.  It is in the best interests of all to accommodate such needs.  As a reminder, although the prosecution of this as a crime is rare, it is illegal to discriminate against Transforms in hiring matters.  We trust you will deal appropriately with this issue.” [Department of Labor circular, 1965]

Dr.
Henry Zielinski: November 11, 1966

The volunteer’s name was Jeff Johnson. 
Dr. Zielinski had heard of his problems, but hadn’t expected to meet him, especially in a situation like this.

“They had to sedate me to bring me, but I’m okay now.  Really,
Dr. Zielinski.  I don’t have any real options guaranteeing survival.  Seventeen Focuses have verified the problem, and the Network officially notified me I won’t even be allowed to submit…”  Jeff stopped talking, and sniffed.  Dr. Zielinski gave him space for his own thoughts and stared at the worn wallpaper of the motel room.

According to the rumors
Dr. Zielinski had heard, and the documentation he had received from Focus Rizzari, Jeff was an anomalous male Transform who Focuses couldn’t support for more than a month.  His personality wasn’t the problem.  Instead, Jeff was a male Transform Sport, and his particular variation made Focuses nauseous and drove them to constant tears or rages when they tried to support him.  Jeff had been through many households, from the weakest Focuses to the strongest, and had the same effect on all of them.  No Focuses would take him anymore, and Jeff faced death by withdrawal or suicide.  What he was volunteering for, here, was a million to one chance at life…and a painless death, if the million to one chance didn’t pan out.

The two of them waited in the shabby motel room, each huddled in their own thoughts.

“What’s taking so long?” Jeff said, about an hour later.  “I’d like to get this over with.”

“I expect she’s making sure this isn’t a trap.”

More waiting.  Minutes passed, and Dr. Zielinski closed his eyes to rest.  The cheap motel clock ticked through another fourteen minutes.

Jeff exploded off the bed, panic on his face.  He scrabbled to a corner of the room and cowered.

Dr. Zielinski fully awoke and turned around.  Stacy Keaton stood by the door, as always short, muscular, and dangerous.  He hadn’t heard her enter.

He stood and half bowed his head to the Arm.  “Very good.  I’ll leave you two alone…”

“No,” Keaton said.  Dr. Zielinski stopped his first step in mid stride, color leeching from his face.

“No?”

“This is your bright idea, bucko.  If this goes bad, I want to make sure you’re here to receive your proper reward.”

Dr.
Zielinski gulped.  “But you’re going to…”

“Screw him silly.  So?  What, you’re embarrassed?  Take notes, then, dammit.  There’s nothing here you haven’t seen or done before.”

Keaton smiled as she came closer and chucked him under his chin.  “You’re cute when you turn red, you know.”  Keaton was as unpredictable as always.  His thoughts raced with the million ways this scenario could go wrong, many of them ending with an Arm in a psychotic rage.  He would rather be nearly anywhere else than here.

“I still…”

Keaton crossed her arms, cold, controlled, even more terrifying than her usual in-his-face I-am-death pose.  “I’m tired of your schemes, Hank.”

Something unnervingly final rattled through her statement. 
Dr. Zielinski’s stomach churned.  If she decided she wanted to kill him, he couldn’t do a single thing do about it.  He opened his mouth to say something, but Keaton’s cold expression dissuaded him.

“You try to have it both ways,” she said.  “Inside with Transforms who have no choice but to risk their pathetic lives, and outside, safe to take notes, write papers, and embellish your reputation.  Frankly, you piss me off with your fucking ‘Doctor God’ bullshit.  Forget it.  Not this time.  You leave, I’ll entertain myself, and then I’ll leave.  I won’t lift a finger to help Hancock.  You’ll never see me again, and you’ll never see Hancock again either, unless she comes by someday as a blood-drenched by-her-own bootstraps Arm seeking to clean up a loose end on her back
trail.”

Dr.
Zielinski didn’t back away or flee, but standing still took an intense effort of will.  In his entire history of dealing with Keaton, he had only seen her like this once: cold, controlled, and with something she wanted to say.  The other time he had seen her like this he had just given her the line about not having to act on her instincts, in the process saving the life of Focus Biggioni.  He hadn’t walked out of that confrontation; instead, he had been carted out on a stretcher.  He had a bad feeling he wouldn’t walk out of this confrontation, either.  “I’m not pushing you, Stacy.  Nor am I going to argue that you should hold to your word.  You have the power here to do whatever you want.”  He sucked air, wondering if his next statement would get him killed.  He had to say his piece, though.  “But I’m not going to cooperate, ma’am, unless I know why.”

“Why?”  Danger appeared in a rush, the mad killer, the predator, standing with her face only inches below his.  He hadn’t seen her move.  Her voice grew deeper and the threat in it sawed on his nerves.  “I’m fucking tired of you lying to yourself, Hank.  You want to save the world from Transform Sickness?  Okay, fine, better you than me, but goddammit
commit
yourself to it.”  Dr. Zielinski staggered back, as his heart skipped a long beat at the word ‘commit’.  Like in the grip of an eagle, squeezed tight, he was unable to breathe. 

“Forget about ‘I’ll save the world but only if I can increase my reputation in the process’ half-assed bullshit,” Keaton continued.  Her breath was hot on his face, rotted wind from a just-opened crypt.  “Either you’re in or you’re out.  It can’t be both.  That’s one lie.” He forced himself to take a step back, but Keaton followed forward.  With a caressed whisper of leather, Keaton reached behind her neck and brought out one of her foot long combat knives, and held it in front of
Dr. Zielinski’s face.  “You’re not doing any of these Arms a damned bit of good playing safe.  When the going got rough and the FBI nasties moved in, did you find some way to stop them and save Hancock from their sadistic games?  No, you just sat back, took notes, and congratulated yourself about the horrible risks you thought you were taking.  You think you’re a hero.  You’re not.  That’s the second lie.”

The heel of
Dr. Zielinski’s backpedaling right foot touched wall, followed by his shoulder blades.  Pressed against the wall, a specimen between the slide cover and the slide, he had nowhere to go.  The black steel of Keaton’s knife touched the angle of his jaw, on the left side.  His heart beat pit-pit-pit-pit, fast enough to terrify him all by itself.  Her eyes inescapable, her nostrils wide as she drank in his terror, Keaton thrust her body against his in a cruel mockery of lust.  “The third lie is so dumb I’m shocked you haven’t caught on.  The day is coming soon where the only way you’ll be able to save your precious reputation is to sell out the Arms to the FBI and the Focuses.  You keep telling yourself you’re so damned good at manipulating people that you can skate past this problem without harming anyone in the process.  It’s not going to work, and everything you’ve done is going to go down the toilet.”  She backed away a half pace, still eye to eye with him.  “It’s all bullshit, Hank.  Bullshit.”  She slashed her knife with each word, each slash a frisson of echoing fear from him, but the knife didn’t touch him.  He flashed back to a two-year-old memory of Keaton half beheading a police officer in Cincinnati, ending with him drenched in blood.  The stench of blood filled the air.

What Keaton said might be true, but her words were all still misdirection, he realized.  Even so, he didn’t dare respond.  He clenched his hands together in front of him to quiet their shaking, and the pain and muscle tension steadied him enough to speak.  Keaton was good at terrifying people, and he sometimes wondered if she knew how exceptionally good she was.  It took all his willpower and tricks to force a reply.  He lowered his gaze to her feet.  Feet were safe.  No one could threaten an Arm if all he looked at was the Arm’s feet.  “There’s more going on here than just my witnessing this test, isn’t there, Stacy?” he asked, his voice unsteady and ready to break with each syllable spoken. 

If Keaton got enraged and killed him over his impertinence, well, so be it.  He refused to let Keaton bully him into something without knowing why.

“Yes, you arrogant piece of shit, but you’re not cooperating,” Keaton growled.  The Arm stuck one of her impossibly muscular fingers in Hank’s chest and pushed him back against the wall, a push for each word that followed.  “You’re not even safe enough for me to tell you what’s going on.”  The anger crept away from Keaton, replaced by frustration. 

He relaxed a little.  Progress.  He might live through this.  “You need my help, and you expect danger.”

Keaton’s face became stone.  “Yes.”

He had a good idea where this was going.  “I’m going to have to lie to the FBI and Focuses.”

“Yes to the first.  On the second, even I’m not sure.”

Hell and damnation.  To his surprise, he found himself at a loss for words. 

“So, Hank, how much is it worth to you to save an Arm for real?  For the first time.”  Keaton paused, and got back in his face when he didn’t answer immediately.  “Are you in or are you out?”

Dr. Zielinski thought and tried to quiet the Arm-induced terror that shook his legs and churned his stomach.  What did he risk if he went along with Keaton?  His career?  Certainly.  The FBI or a few Focuses could destroy his career whenever they wanted to.  He avoided those dangers by being useful.  His scientific reputation?  Much more difficult to affect, but possible.  He doubted it was worth the work.  His life?  Yes, even that, though Keaton was a far bigger danger in that regard. 

His self-respect, though?  Could he live with himself if Hancock died because he didn’t have the guts to save her?  The more he thought about it, the more he felt Keaton might be right.  He never backed off from the more reasonable physical risks of dealing with Arms, only the more foolhardy ones, but he had backed off from risks to his reputation.  Even minor ones.  He played all the angles, played things safe.  What kind of person did his choices make him? 

A coward.  Keaton’s point.  He couldn’t find it within himself to disagree with her analysis.

He was well on his way to becoming one of the myriad of spineless doctors who swarmed around the Transforms, more concerned with helping themselves than helping the Transforms.  It galled him that it had taken a mass murdering psychotic Arm to make him understand.

Keaton could force his cooperation if she wanted to and kill him afterwards to eliminate the risk to her security.  That she didn’t said something about how much she valued him.  His help had to be worth something; a hell of a thing to base his life on, given whom he was dealing with.

Knowing what he knew now, he would never be able to look at himself in the mirror if he didn’t ante up.

So he decided to ante up.

“I’m in, ma’am,” he said.  The FBI and the Focuses might destroy him, but he would make them work.  He might still pull it out, but he wouldn’t take the Arms down with him trying to do so.

She studied him for a moment.  “Good enough for now.”

“I’ll sit over there,”
Dr. Zielinski said, pointing to a cheap motel chair at the far end of the room.  He would rather be farther, but at least it was something.

“You,” Keaton said, turning to Jeff.  “Can you even talk?”

Jeff shook his head, still shivering in terror.  Dr. Zielinski’s confrontation with Keaton hadn’t been good for this Transform, not at all.

She smiled a one-sided smile.  “I guess we’ll get right down to business, then.” 
Dr. Zielinski didn’t see her cross the room, but she stood by Jeff now.  She ran her hands over his shoulders, gentle hands, calming him like a horse trainer might calm a skittish horse.  As his breathing settled she came closer, holding and touching him, gentle caresses, not at all like the Keaton Dr. Zielinski thought he knew.  Soon, Jeff’s breathing became rapid once again.

Dr.
Zielinski took notes.

“Jeff here’s a lot better than your usual volunteers, Hank,” Keaton said as she held Jeff in her arms.  Jeff didn’t seem to notice her words. 
Dr. Zielinski guessed the Arm’s interest was enough to distract any man.  “You ever pay any attention to the bullshit they feed the volunteers?  Those ‘surplus Transforms’ sign all those waivers because they think they’re going to get access to all sorts of experimental drugs and crap.  Or the big whompum pain killers so it doesn’t hurt when they kill themselves.  This is the first time I’ve actually met a volunteer who knew ahead of time that he was going to be fed to an Arm.  That’s why they all freak out, you know.  That’s the sort of deceit that’s corrupted the medical community and has the Focuses refusing to cooperate with you.  Pure arrogance.”