Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (41 page)

He swung at me, wildly, and connected with the side of my head as I ducked to the side.  Pain shot through my head, and for a moment, I staggered.  I ignored the pain, no worse than many of Patrelle’s tests.  I righted myself and didn’t fall.

I swung at McIntyre’s jaw with my left hand and he blocked my punch.  Instead, I hit the side of his arm.  McIntyre grimaced and leapt at me, trying to wrestle me to the ground.  I didn’t fall; all those muscles I had achingly gained proved their worth.

My unfamiliarity with fighting filled me with panic.  Eventually he would be able to wrestle me to the ground. 
I couldn’t allow that!
  I gave myself over to my instincts, and with my right hand I punched the knife into his belly.  McIntyre’s hands went toward his belly as he pulled back and I punched his jaw with my left hand.

McIntyre fell, instantly.

I couldn’t believe it.  Unfamiliar emotions coursed through my body; something inside me urged me to charge the distant guard and gut him as well.  Go back inside and kill everyone.  This unfamiliar emotion made me all wiggly on my feet, lighter than air, ready to bounce out of my skin.  Strange.  McIntyre had hurt me in the fight, but there was no pain.  None at all, even from my normally achy muscles. 

The only thing inside me was this lust – I didn’t know a better word – this lust for more combat.

Crazy.  I needed to get out of here before the FBI or the staff raised the alarm.  The seven guards who worked nights in the Detention Center had a hotline to the local police station for emergencies like this.  They could have the compound crawling with police officers and FBI agents in minutes.

I enjoyed fighting McIntyre.  I enjoyed it so much I wanted to do it again, despite my bleeding hands and bruised head.

I looked down at him, bleeding on the ground, and realized I had no idea if he would live or die.  I had the urge to make sure he was dead.  Cut his throat.

The stench of his blood hit me like three martinis.  I couldn’t kill someone.  Not like this.

I vomited chocolate éclairs on McIntyre’s right shoe and slowly backed away in disgust.  I couldn’t slice his throat.  Hell, I couldn’t have done what I had already done. 
What had I become?

I shoved that thought away for later.  Time for me to escape.

The only times I had seen the outside of the Detention Center had been on the way in and when McIntyre had me up on the roof for the drop test.  The wall I scaled was only the first barrier, not the compound edge.  I had yet another set of fences to deal with, the chain link fence topped with barbed wire I recalled from the trip in.  There were power lines off to the left, warehouses off to the right, and past the warehouses, a couple of railroad cars.  Far from the main gate, on the right, a road ran straight up to the outer fence and stopped, almost a private driveway.  A thousand feet to the left of the blocked road, the one guard I thought I might evade walked his patrol.

The blocked road was my target.  The guard on patrol still hadn’t reacted to my fight with McIntyre.  I ran for the outer wall as fast as my shackles would allow.  Escape first, react later, was my new motto.  McIntyre’s gun I kicked into the weeds on the way by.

When I got to the blocked road I found a gate, locked, closed and barricaded.  A sign said ‘CLOSED.  DO NOT ENTER.’  I made use of my ragged bathrobe again, climbed over the fence, and left my bathrobe on the barbed wire.  The distant guard didn’t notice my ascent and I climbed up and over in seconds, to land in the bushes outside the gate, dripping blood.  My wristwatch showed eleven forty-four.

I crouched down by a stunted holly, exposed under the threatening sky.  I was out of the Detention Center, but still I worried.  Would Keaton show up?  How would she find me?  Had Kelsey found I wasn’t in the shower?  How long should I wait for Keaton?  How long before they found McIntyre? 

What would I do if Keaton never showed up? 

What had I gotten myself into? 

Hell.  I had made my choice, and now I would have to live with Keaton.  If she showed up.  I had turned her down and left her hanging, once.  Turnabout would be fair play.

If Keaton didn’t show, I decided I’d make a collect call to Focus Michelle Claunch.  Perhaps I could sweet-talk her into getting me in contact with Bates or Dr. Zielinski.

What was an Arm?  I still didn’t have an answer.  ‘Athlete’ didn’t cut it, not after what had come over me when I faced McIntyre.  I should have folded when he pointed his huge Monster gun at my head.  Instead, I had passed into some red-tinged state where I felt as light as air and my body had moved faster than my thoughts.  I enjoyed the fight, my strange and unexpected lust for combat.  Talk about unladylike behavior.

Like Keaton, I had become a real Arm.  Once we were human.  Not anymore.  McIntyre and Bates realized that Arms were no longer human, but the rest of the FBI and likely the rest of the government didn’t.  Neither did the doctors, save perhaps Dr. Zielinski.  We were beset by a bunch of doctors playing God and a bunch of clods playing doctor, and the lot of them were so tied up in their preconceptions they didn’t have eyes to see the truth.  I wondered if the Focuses had discovered they weren’t human anymore.  If they were anything like Arms, they certainly…

The Detention Center sirens went off.  Without thinking, I ran across the street and into a warehouse parking lot, clanking as I ran.  Another siren went off, a police car siren from the other side of the Detention Center.  The one visible guard took off toward the second siren, away from me. 

Someone had decided to help me.  No idea who.

I slowed to a quiet walk and continued to move away from the Detention Center.

Gilgamesh: November 15, 1966

Echo turned again and ran, not toward the hotel where the FBI lodged, but at an angle, in the direction of the Detention Center.  Gilgamesh hadn’t expected Echo to do anything of the sort, and so by the time Gilgamesh turned to follow Echo, Gilgamesh lagged several paces behind.

Gilgamesh couldn’t figure out Echo.  Obviously, Gilgamesh’s threat had cowed Echo, but now he had some other idea.  The last thing Gilgamesh expected was for Echo to run
toward
the Detention Center.

In the Detention Center, Tiamat attacked the person who had confronted her.

Gilgamesh spotted Echo’s target a little ways farther.  Straight down the road, a police car sat unmoving in the parking lot of a plumbing supply outlet.  A single officer sat inside the police car, eating a sandwich.  Gilgamesh quailed when he thought through the implications. 

Echo had the ability to metasense things that weren’t Transforms.

Gilgamesh couldn’t fight a Crow with such advanced abilities.  He shouldn’t even be bothering.  Echo would tell the police officer what was going on and that would be that.  Echo had a ten pace lead on Gilgamesh, now.

Gilgamesh wanted to flee.  With each step, he edged closer to panic, closer to the terror that ruled his every day.  He found it harder and harder to chase Echo.

Echo’s lead increased to fifteen paces.

However, if Gilgamesh fled, the police would be after Tiamat before she got away.  They would capture her or kill her.

He had to do something.  Tiamat depended on him.

Playing through his options, Gilgamesh worked out what he had to do.

Echo reached the police car and tapped on the window.  “Officer, officer, Carol Hancock, the Arm in the Detention Center is…”

The officer rolled down the window and turned to Echo as Gilgamesh closed in.  Gilgamesh approached to within five feet and sicked up bad dross on the police officer.  The officer slumped over in his police car.

“Dammit!” Echo said.  He started to draw in the dross that Gilgamesh had sicked up.  Gilgamesh stopped and backed off to ten feet away from Echo.

“You clean him up, I’ll just do it again,” Gilgamesh said.

Echo grimaced at Gilgamesh, anger on his face.  He didn’t do anything but stare.  Ah, Gilgamesh realized.  Echo was attempting to be
fierce
, but it didn’t work because of Thomas’s defenses.  To Gilgamesh’s eyes, Echo appeared to be near panic, but Gilgamesh couldn’t think of anything to do to push Echo over the edge.  He had to try something.

“I caught Stacy Keaton putting makeup on a couple of days ago.  I think she might be a master of disguise,” Gilgamesh said.  Echo shivered, but didn’t run.  “Not even close…” to being a Monster.  He didn’t get a chance to finish, because Echo reached into the police car and grabbed the police officer’s gun.  Pointed it at Gilgamesh.

“Go.  Now,” Echo said, his voice cracking.  The gun wavered in Echo’s hand.  In the Detention Center, Tiamat had reached the outer wall.  In an instant, she leapt over.  Zaltu ran as well, faster than lightning.  Toward her car.

Gilgamesh didn’t run. 

No, he was angry, as angry as he had ever been as a normal man.  “You would shoot another Crow just so you could betray an Arm?  I expect better behavior from a Crow.  Leave those Arms alone. 
You’re finished here!
”

To Gilgamesh’s surprise, Echo’s eyes opened wide and he backed away from Gilgamesh.  The gun clattered at Echo’s feet and Echo ran, a mad, terrified dash to the east, away from everything save the Mississippi river, which curled through the bottomlands a few miles that way.

Oh.  Gilgamesh smiled as he remembered again Thomas’s statement: ‘this will equalize things, save that some Crows are more equal than others’.  With help from Thomas’s trick, he had out-
fierced
Echo.

He caught his breath and cleaned his sick-up off the police officer.  He didn’t want the police officer to die.  Doing so also took care of what remained of Thomas the Dreamer’s dross tricks, as he sucked them in as well.  As he worked, loud sirens went off inside the Detention Center.  The guards had noticed Tiamat’s disappearance.  However, she was still close to the Detention Center and Zaltu was only now opening the roll-up door so she would be able to drive her car out of the warehouse.  The Detention Center guards might still be able to capture Tiamat.

Gilgamesh started to run.  He caught himself.

He could do something before he left.  He smiled as he imagined the effect it would have.

Instead of running away, Gilgamesh reached into the police car and switched on its siren. 

Gilgamesh backed off.  From what he metasensed, he didn’t see anything else to do.  He had done his part, small as it was, and he grinned from ear to ear that he had managed to do some good.  Tiamat was free.

Carol Hancock: November 15, 1966

“Here,” a voice said.  I turned and saw a beat-up blue Ford stopped on the other side of the parking lot, about a hundred yards away from where I crouched.  Keaton sat inside and I ran over to her.  She hadn’t shouted.  I heard her anyway. 

I wiped blood on my skirt and climbed into the front seat.  Keaton drove off before I had a chance to shut the car door.

I was free.

Dr. Henry Zielinski: November 16, 1966

Dr.
Zielinski stretched his feet out in front of him and glumly considered the prospect of going back home.  Glory wasn’t going to be pleased with him, and so he chickened out and delayed the inevitable confrontation by staying here with Bates and his men at the FBI temporary base.  He guessed the time as after two in the morning, too late for him to drive back to Boston.

The so-called base was actually three rooms at a small Catskills vacation lodge, complete with rough pine walls and bare floors.  Many of the men had gone home already and most of the rest were asleep in the other two rooms, but a few sat in this small room, consuming beer and recovering from the adrenaline excitement of hunting a Monster.  Bates stood by the telephone, jammed in between the bed and the wooden table, murmuring quietly to some unknown caller.

Bates was so intent on his conversation that his cigarette smoldered into ash in the ashtray beside him, ignored.  Dr. Zielinski frowned when he noticed, and leaned forward, unabashedly eavesdropping.

“Yes.  How long ago?” Bates said into the receiver.

“Yes,” and, “yes,” again.  Around the room, the other men began to register the conversation as well, and the room grew slowly quiet.

Bates turned his pale head over towards
Dr. Zielinski.  “No, he couldn’t have been involved.  He’s been with me since this afternoon.”

Dr.
Zielinski felt his heart leap with a sudden suspicion of what the phone call meant.

“Absolutely,” Bates said into the phone.  “I’ve got a dozen men right here who’ve been with him, too.  The man’s sitting right in front of me right now.”

After a long pause, and a final, “Yes, I can make it by this afternoon,” Bates very gently hung up the phone. 

Bates turned to glance at the listening men.  “Hancock escaped, just a couple of hours ago.”

There was a low murmuring of obscenity, and one loud, “Son of a bitch.  Now we have
two
of them on the loose.”

Dr.
Zielinski’s heart leapt again and he felt like he was floating on air.  Yes!  She did it.  With any reasonable amount of luck, she was with Keaton right now.  With a little more luck, she might even live.