The Forgefires of God (The Cause Book 3) (19 page)

“Yes.  In no uncertain terms.  Bass is going to grab you after the Firsts fall.”

Hearing Bass’s plan so exposed was chilling.

“I’m not going to let that happen.”

“Right.  Sure.  I’m not going to let you tag me, no matter how desperate you…”

Bam!

A single.700 shell went through the sleeve of Merry’s shirt, close enough to her skin to hurt.  Merry went down, but none of the three Arms surrounding her attacked.

“I’m looking for protection, not a slave,” Del said.  “Dammit, Arm Bartlett, I’m a goddamned student, not a multi-year Arm veteran.”

Merry took the opportunity to bounce back up and turned to Del.  “Are you defecting to Arm Hancock or something?”

“I don’t know her from Adam,” Del said.  “She didn’t seem that stout to me.”

Merry barked in laughter.  Del took advantage of Merry’s momentary lapse of attention to come close.  She grabbed Merry’s right wrist and twisted her arm behind her back.  Del put her knife against Merry’s throat.  “What sort of a display is this?”

“Arm Hancock, not stout?  She’s the goddamned Commander, you idiot!  She’s back being the number two Arm, and she has a plan.  The reasons she hasn’t broken with Keaton are long term strategic reasons, not weakness.  I’ve got connections in her camp, Student, and from the hints they’ve dropped…”  Merry didn’t seem at all intimidated by Del’s knife at her throat.

“What?” Del said.  Growled, actually.  Dorothy had convinced her that anger was useful for an Arm.

“I’ve said more than I should, already.  Understand, though, the concept of stalemate, and where that would lead?”

Del nodded, understanding instantly what Merry implied.  So Hancock’s plan was to avoid a war among the Arms?  If true, her actions were more heroic than Del could have managed.  “So, are you going to take the tag?”

“Hell no,” Merry said, knocking Del backwards with a blow far faster than Del could anticipate, much less counter.  Del didn’t fight the blow, and let herself be knocked out of the circle.

That was the signal to Mona, who triggered the Monster net, which exploded from concealment to cover Merry, Dorothy and Theresa in a ton of heavy chain net.

It was all over but the tagging ceremony.

The proper question is ‘can we protect each other from Arm Bass’?

Winifred Adkins – Focus #9 – August 1956.  Much the opposite of Focus Schrum, Focus Adkins has long pushed for the Transform community to be self-sufficient and work independently from normal society.  From 1959 until 1964, Wini (as she prefers to be called) was the public leader of the UFA Council and the UFA Council President.  She retired from the UFA Council in 1964 to raise roses.  “The main danger faced by the Focuses are the other Major Transforms, and if the leadership of the UFA had any backbone, they’d toss the Crow, Arm and Chimera representatives out of their non-voting seats in the UFA council and hunt them down like the monsters they are.”  Focus Adkins is a management specialist, the Focus who found a way to organize the first Focuses despite the fact that during the Quarantine they were housed in four separate detention centers across the United States.

“Lives of the Focuses”

Tonya Biggioni: December 20, 1972

“They did
what
?”

The voice on the other end was hysterical and only somewhat coherent, but the gist was clear.  Last night, one or more Arms had come in and snatched Wini Adkins.

“Stop that!  Would your Focus be proud of this sort of behavior?” Tonya said.  She sat in her office, where she lived these days, and picked at a dessert three hours too old.  It was a wonder her own people even recognized her.  Maybe someday she would emerge from her office to find her whole household changed out from under her.

The hysterical Transform on the other side fell silent in shock, and then responded in a much more sane voice.  “No, ma’am.  I apologize.”

“Good.  Your household understands how to deal with difficult circumstances.  You remind them of that.  I’ll arrange for you to be supported until we get this straightened out, and find out what happened to Focus Adkins.”  Now, there was a no-brainer.  Hancock had obviously gotten her, and would be torturing her into insanity just about now, but Adkins’ household didn’t need to know the details.  Tonya wondered if this was part of some larger plot of Keaton’s, or if Hancock had slipped the leash.

Or whether this was the big day the ball dropped, and the world ended, at least from the non-enslaved Focuses’ perspective.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.  Now you call me if anything goes wrong, and I’m going to arrange for someone closer to help you out.  Can you manage?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the man said, a salute in his voice.

“Good.”

She barely put the phone down before it rang again.  Tonya had the sudden sinking sensation that she had only seen the first edge of a crisis, and it was due to hit like a tidal wave.

“Biggioni,” she answered, not bothering to wait for Delia.  She could feel already that there would be no small matters coming through today.

Her dreams last night had been vivid nightmares.

“Tonya,” the voice said and Tonya froze.

“Carol.”  Not Lori, with an ultimatum about joining the side of the Arms.  After last night’s dreams, she was ready to give in.

“Find a phone you can guarantee isn’t bugged and contact me.”  Carol gave a number.  Tonya’s heart plunged when she heard the Philadelphia area code.

Carol was in Philadelphia and Tonya was next.

The ball had indeed dropped.  Hell.  Tonya took a moment or two to shiver, and she paged Delia.  “Get me a bodyguard detail.  Make it twelve.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The phone rang again, and again, Tonya answered before Delia could pick it up.

“Tonya, this is Claunch.”

Tonya recognized the deep, smoky voice of Michelle Claunch, one of the leaders of the first Focuses and the putative head of the Network.  One of the first Focuses with a terrible relationship with Tonya, especially since the Arm Flap of ‘67.

“Yes.”

“Rebel leader, we need to talk.”

Tonya gulped at hearing those words from a first Focus and hit the alarm button.  The alarm that meant ‘evacuate the household’.

“Talk, then,” Tonya said.

“Carol?” Tonya said.  She watched warily around her, but saw no sign of the Arm.  She still felt exposed.  She was sitting at a random phone both, surrounded by a full dozen guards, and her household had evacuated and was on the road to Long Island.  If the Commander came through with her backup Arms, Tonya and her people were going to fall over like so many bowling pins.

“Yes.  I need to talk to you in person.”  Hancock’s voice was always so chillingly cold.

“In person?  So I can be next on your list?”

“No.  Enslaving the Focuses was Keaton’s dream, not mine.”

“You aren’t following Keaton’s orders anymore?”

“Right now, Keaton, Bass and Rayburn are being served tea and biscuits by Shirley Patterson in her hallucinatory palace of insanity.”

“Shit!” Tonya said.  For a moment, the world turned dark and claustrophobic.  However, this did explain Claunch’s reasoning.

Carol’s voice brought her back.  “Yes.  We need to talk.”

Tonya nodded.  “Yes we do, assuming you’re telling the truth.  But I’m not going to let you take me down the way you took down Wini Adkins.”

Carol let loose a single bark of laughter.  “Only Wini Adkins?  Your gossip network is slow.  Lori’s already danced on Suzie Schrum’s corpse, and besides Wini Adkins, I picked up Sarah Teas and Cathy Elspeth.  Keaton’s got another crew of Arms at work as well, and they captured Julius and separated Fingleman from her household.  The first Focuses are finished, Tonya, except for Patterson.”

“Fuck,” Tonya said, disgusted at both Carol’s and Lori’s behavior.  “What do you want with Cathy Elspeth?  She’s the only one of that entire bunch that does any actual good.”  Schrum, now.  Lori, probably with Haggerty, had actually killed Suzie Schrum?  If Tonya wasn’t sure she was next on the list, that would be worth a party.

“Keaton’s orders from before she was captured.  Let’s talk precautions.  I’ll be willing to grant you a few basic precautions, but I’ll want the same.  You can bring…”

They met in Fairmount Park, and sat on two wooden benches that overlooked a children’s playground.  In better times, young mothers with children in strollers would sit here to watch their children play.  Today, Hancock was running a mild predator effect, and no normal humans were anywhere near.

There were abnormal humans in plenty, though, several of Tonya’s people in sniper positions among the bushes, and Tonya sensed another Arm at the edge of her range.  Lori was here, as well, probably about twenty or thirty yards out, but hidden from sight and metasense.  Damn, Rizzari was getting good.  If Lori hadn’t been sending little ‘relax, this is in good faith’ juice patterns over to Tonya, she would have never realized Rizzari was in the vicinity.  Tonya wasn’t sure what the results would be if it came to a fight, except that a fight would be a godawful mess.

“Do you really need your predator effect?” Tonya said.  The day was cold and clear, and the mid-afternoon sun warmed the playground up to the mid 50s.  Tonya wore a wool coat as camouflage, but didn’t need it.  Carol wore a felt jacket for the same reason.  She was dressed in a shirt and trousers, and loosely pretended to be male.  She wore no makeup to conceal her baby smooth skin and her breasts weren’t bound down.

“It’s a tripwire.  It lets me know when you’re using your Focus charisma on me,” Carol said.  There was a new edge to her, a likely result of finding that she was juggling all the balls on her own.  Tonya preferred the euphoric Carol who announced the first preliminary success with her household redefinition project in Tonya’s kitchen.  In any event, the old Commander was back.

“You’ve learned quite a few tricks, haven’t you?” Tonya said, and smiled.

“Like now, for instance,” Carol said.  Her eyes had that flat stare that gave nothing away.  “If you could dispense with trying to manipulate me, we might get on better.”

Tonya didn’t respond to the comment, but she quit with her attempts to be friendly.  “So Keaton fell.  Are you here looking for allies?”

“Right now, I’m looking for information.  How fast someone can break an Arm…or three?”

Tonya’s eyes narrowed.  Patterson would break Keaton and her crew with ease.  The thought was appalling.  Patterson with senior Arm enforcers would be the worst of all worlds.  With Keaton, Bass and Rayburn captured, they needed the Commander on their side.  Tonya briefly considered bargaining with Carol for the knowledge Carol wanted, and decided against it.  There would be time for games later.

“You control an Arm the same way you control any juice consumer, Commander, by controlling her juice supply,” Tonya said.  Once, the Focus with the captured Arm had been Tonya, and the Arm had been Carol.  Tonya had been far too competent at breaking an Arm back then.

Carol nodded at the comment, and her title.

“Keaton’s control over her juice craving is nearly absolute,” Carol said.

Tonya nodded.  “‘Nearly’ won’t be good enough.  I suspect Patterson will try simple juice conditioning first, which if you’re right, won’t work.  From there, she’ll go to the rougher stuff.”

“Tell me.”

“Patterson is good enough with juice patterns to be able to read Keaton’s exact juice count.  Assume she’ll keep Keaton at the bottom end of periwithdrawal with occasional dips into true withdrawal.  You have no idea of the power that withdrawal conditioning can give a captor.”

Carol frowned.  “Actually, I do.  That little horror was in the research notes the Crows gave to Keaton in payment for Keaton finding a Focus to fix Crow Sinclair.  Along with information about how the first Focuses orchestrated Focus Mann’s tarring and feathering.  That was the first Focuses’ mistake, ruining Keaton’s Focus.  An unforgivable mistake.”

Tonya sighed, and nodded, agreeing.  Attacking someone an Arm thought of as hers was an attack on the Arm.  No wonder Keaton went after them.

“The withdrawal conditioning will come later, and only if she can’t break Keaton by juice torture.”

“Why?”

“Recovering from withdrawal conditioning takes time.”  Even for a Major Transform.

“Continue.”

“So assume Keaton is chained up, probably being tortured to remove her physical ability to cope with periwithdrawal.  Assume Patterson will keep some untagged Transforms near her, but just out of range, maybe accompanied by offerings of bad juice.  I’m sure Patterson has got some way to drain off most of the juice from a kill so that Keaton only gets a point or less.  Keaton will never see a juice count above ninety-two until she starts cooperating, and then probably only up to a hundred or so.  All the while she’ll be subjected to Patterson’s juice-powered illusions, and unable to tell reality from fiction.”

“How likely is this to work?”

“Assuming Patterson doesn’t screw up?  One hundred percent.”

Hancock blinked.  This was the first emotional reaction Tonya had seen.

“How long will the process take?”

Carol said the words with the same lack of emotion she said everything else, but Tonya knew better.  This was the important question, the big unknown, and Carol’s memories of what Tonya had orchestrated in the CDC were likely diffuse and untrustworthy.

“Two days of Patterson’s finely tuned juice torture should break anyone.  If the ‘should’ proves wrong and Patterson needs to use withdrawal conditioning, getting Keaton useful again will take ten days or more.”

Carol looked away, idly watching what was supposed to be one of Tonya’s hidden snipers, and thought.

“There’s no hope that Keaton can hold out?”

“Not against withdrawal conditioning.”

“If we go in after Keaton, even as fast as we possibly can, there’s a significant risk we may be
facing
Keaton,” Carol said.  “And if we wait too long…”

Tonya nodded.  If they waited too long, there was no telling what Patterson might do to Keaton.  An attack, though.  Tonya was glad to hear the word ‘attack’.  They needed something to derail the terrible possibility of Patterson with two and a half senior Arms in her household.

Carol didn’t say anything for several more minutes, and then Tonya metasensed an odd shivering in Carol’s juice structure, almost a change in who Carol was.  Tonya gasped.  “You just got rid of Keaton’s tag!”

Carol didn’t answer, but it was obvious enough.  She had to.  Unless she wanted to join Keaton as Patterson’s slave, she couldn’t retain obedience to Keaton, and she couldn’t go into a fight that might include Keaton among the opposition while wearing Keaton’s tag.

Nor could she plan effectively under the effect of whatever psychological adjustments the tag made.  Especially if one of those adjustments included loyalty to Keaton.  Just like Tonya herself needed to shuck Patterson’s tag to join Carol and Lori’s rebellion, before the Battle in Detroit.

Tonya wanted to throw a party.  The Keaton dictatorship nightmare was over.

Now they were in the nightmare of the rebellion, with no warning.  They would need to win before Tonya relaxed enough to hold the victory party.  With Hancock’s dormant bloodlust and Lori’s not so dormant kill lust awakened, they were in grave danger of the rebellion turning into an orgy of death.  Tonya had her suspicions about Gail, as well.  And herself.  Would she be the next to turn into a blood-soaked monster?