“Ordinarily I’d say none,” Shadow said. “But I understand the position you’re in. Here’s a list, from least worrisome to most.”
Gilgamesh focused his mind and memorized the list. Full up on Arm dross, memorization presented no problems at all.
Chapter 4
In 1967 there were an estimated 5,500 newly transformed male Transforms. Of these an estimated 310 survived to become members of Focus households, with an estimated mortality rate of 94.4 percent.
“Understanding Transform Sickness as a Disease”
Carol Hancock: March 12, 1968 – March 14, 1968
I smiled to the cameras as Mr. Michaels led me into my new cell. He had become my favorite and I had him good. McIntyre had figured this out, damn him, so if I did anything funky like using Mr. Michaels as a hostage or a human shield, he was dead meat. Everyone in here now, save McIntyre, had signed the death waivers, just like the good old crew back in St. Louis. Mr. Michaels drew my blood, weighed me, poked me, prodded me, stuck things in me in places I would rather not talk about, and generally followed doctors’ orders. We kidded about making sure the CDC put his hazard pay in a secure bank account.
I liked my new cell; well appointed, large and clean. No shackles, and I had access to running water, a real bed and exercise equipment. The only thing they didn’t give me was the shower I wanted. No fools they.
They would be able to talk to me over the intercom and through an ingenious arrangement involving thick steel rolling doors and a Monster-proof net. The latter arrangement allowed people to interview me in safety; after they shackled me to the floor at a welded-to-the-floor steel table and chair, they would roll back the steel doors and expose the net woven from half-inch thick steel rods.
McIntyre paid me a visit an hour later.
“Good news, Carol,” Agent McIntyre said, cheery. “Your request for food on demand has been approved. If you need some reading material, or nearly anything else we allow in medical detention, as long as it’s within reason, you’ll get it. You should decide what you need and make requests to the aide who brings you your food. Sound good?”
“Sure, Agent McIntyre.”
“There’s one hitch.” There always was.
“I have to cooperate and talk.”
“More than that. You have to cooperate, talk and be polite with some interrogators who are far more skittish than I am. If you upset them by pulling any of your stunts, like you did with your fingernails or with Riddlehauser and White, the deal’s off.”
“Fuck this,” I said, no predator in my voice at all. “What if they don’t like my answers? What if they don’t like how with low juice I sometimes forget what I’ve already said. The deal’s worthless.”
“I don’t care whether they like your answers or not,” he said. “Dammit, just be truthful, Carol, don’t play any of your games, and you won’t have any problems at all.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, beaten. I bowed my head in shame.
Pure act. With my juice this low, what I wanted was to have a shit-kicking temper tantrum.
The first set of visitors came in a half hour later. Not ‘in’, of course, but safely on the other side of the Monster-proof net, with me shackled down. Three Army officers, all Generals.
“Mrs. Hancock, we’re here to ask you some questions.”
“Go ahead,” I said, meek and calm.
They didn’t introduce themselves and the names on their uniforms were taped over, as if that would keep me from remembering them.
“Have you ever had any contact with a Colonel Nate Richardson?”
Oh. These sorts of questions. I would make McIntyre very happy, as I would be able to answer these sorts of questions truthfully all day long.
“Nope. No contact, never heard of him.”
As I said, easy. I hadn’t as much as talked to a member of the military since I transformed.
The next group, men in suits from an unnamed government agency, asked me about foreign contacts and my ideological beliefs. No problems there, as I didn’t have any foreign contacts and I certainly wasn’t a goddamned communist. They left pleased, two of them wondering if they would be able to hire me to serve in the clandestine services.
This sort of shit happened every time the Feds got me in custody.
After the agency men came the FBI, including one I remembered from St. Louis, Special Agent Paul Gauthier, the coffee addict. With Gauthier I feared detailed questions about my Transform life, but I didn’t get those. Instead, he asked me questions about a wide range of subjects, including money laundering, wire fraud, robbery, kidnappings, contact with anti-war protestors and other subversive groups. I lied my ass off about the robberies and money laundering and told the truth about the rest. As per Zielinski’s request I stayed at my politest behavior.
With low juice I took a long time to figure out the important element about these questions: not a one about the California Spree Killer’s rampage. They didn’t even suspect the California Spree Killer was me.
“We know about your McIngle identity,” one nameless FBI Agent said, eventually.
I had guessed they might.
“We know about some of your activities, but not all of them, in Chicago. Why don’t you tell us what you were doing as McIngle?”
“I was cleaning up the part of town I lived in,” I said. “I can’t just walk down to the stockyards and get a job. I did some work, and figured out the best people to steal from are those who have the money illegally in the first place…if you’re willing to fight back when they get hacked off and go after you. They don’t complain to the police either.” My theft from organized criminals was only a tiny fraction of my activities, but I spun it up to make this look like the only thing I had been doing.
They hadn’t found any bodies. As far as they knew, I hadn’t done a damned thing in Chicago except avoid attention and run my thugs against the other thugs. They hadn’t penetrated the Mr. Beacon side of my operation. They didn’t know about my bank robberies. Save for the fight where they captured me, I had been a virtual Girl Scout.
Only, why did they even care? I had killed a hell of a lot of officers in the takedown fight. They had enough on me to put me away forever, or, given the lack of rights for Transforms, declare me a Monster and just shoot me.
Something stank.
Given my sordid history, my first thought was: ‘who’s trying to recruit me?’
I got the answer later, at night, when I metasensed a Focus and her Transform entourage enter the bowels of the Detention Center, on their way to visit me.
---
The Focus’s entourage appeared first, all beefy crew-cut men in expensive suits, all ex-military. They professionally secured the viewing area on the far side of the Monster-proof net, and opened the door for their Focus. I knew this Focus through her metapresence as the Focus from Jackson, Mississippi, a Focus Keaton had once dismissed with a derisive one-word comment: ‘lightweight’ and hadn’t bothered to name.
She didn’t feel like a lightweight to me, but then again she was only the second Focus I had met in person. My immediate impression of her was curvy, beautiful in a WWII pinup fashion: 5’4”, ample bosom and hips, narrow waist, elaborately curled shoulder length light brown hair with faint red highlights, fair skin, faint freckles, and warm gentle brown eyes. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her.
“Arm Hancock,” she said, taking a seat in one of the visitor chairs. She smiled at me and I got the warm fuzzies. Her bodyguards backed off, two remaining behind to guard the door on the inside, one a tagged Transform and the other a normal. “I’m Sarah Teas. I’d like to talk to you, if I may.” She spoke with a natural deep South accent, homey and comforting. I wanted to cooperate with her and help her in any way possible.
Focus charisma, of course. Different than Lori’s, though; Lori’s charisma was either a sledgehammer a corpse would notice or so super-subtle I didn’t notice until I reviewed the scene in my memories or someone told me.
&n
bsp; “Visiting hours ended six hours ago,” I said. My internal clock read just past midnight. “I’m not sleepy, though and I would welcome a conversation.” I walked over to the interview table and sat.
Reading Focus Teas was just as difficult as reading Lori. The only thing I got from her, immediately, was that she wasn’t afraid of me, just anxious about the situation, an anxiety reminding me of what I felt in the middle of a major robbery.
“I can’t imagine how you could sleep at all in this place,” she said, ending her statement with a little laugh. Her pretty smile nicely complemented her mid-range green evening gown. “It’s grown worse over the years.”
Ah. This was one of the first Focuses and this is where she spent her quarantine years. Zielinski had spoken about several of the first Focuses by name but didn’t mention this one. She might be important, but wasn’t one of the top boss Focuses.
“What can I do for you, Focus?” I asked. I watched and metasensed her reactions closely.
“I’m here to evaluate you and see if we can do business,” she said. I started to pick up a few tiny tells from her. For instance, she was comfortable with wielding power, and harshly at that. I didn’t read anything like from Dr. Manigault, though. As with Keaton, events had forced her into the darkness.
Teas wasn’t as good as Lori at covering her reactions. I realized I would be able to read this Focus easily, given enough time.
“My employment opportunities appear to be situationally limited at the present time,” I said. My Arm instincts told me to bluster and threaten, cause a scene, raise some hell. I needed juice and anything other than getting juice was a distraction. I suppressed those urges as best as possible, but in my current situation I didn’t have enough control to go all Southern formal soiree. Instead, Teas got my wit.
“That’s negotiable, of course,” Teas said, suppressing surprise. She hadn’t expected wit.
Her ‘of course?’ surprised me. I left the comment lying there as a mystery and shrugged.
She studied me closely, with a vacant look in her eyes. For a moment I thought she might be experiencing what Focus Rizzari and I had shared, the still-disturbing feeling of love, but no. She studied me with her metasense and eyes. Reading me.
I didn’t bother doing the same; I had as much off of my metasense from her as I would ever likely get. The conversational pause did give me a moment to put some disparate facts together. I already knew a Focus’s metasense had a shorter range than mine and could sense the difference between fundamental and supplemental juice. What Teas showed me by her actions, and what the far more canny Lori hadn’t, was that Focuses saw the internal details of a Transform’s metapresence. This sort of trick gave Focuses a huge lever on everyone within their range, as even with my, um, unfocused metasense I could tell moods and health.
I almost lost my temper and did the rabid dog Arm routine. Nobody gets a free lever on me! Nobody! I caught myself half way out of my seat, deciding that criticizing a Focus for using her metasense wouldn’t win me any points. Instead, I directed my proper Arm anger into a demonstration, a show. I continued on to the Monster-proof net, at my full non-burning speed, complete with enough predator to register.
I got the reaction I wanted, a massive twitch from Teas that nearly knocked over her chair. Her bodyguards reacted as well, but excessively late. I had already started my demonstration by the time they pointed their weapons at me.
My demonstration? I knelt, took off my shirt, and showed Teas my badly healed left shoulder. “So how bad is it, Focus Teas? Can you sense it?” I asked. “I’ve talked one of the local doctors into surgically repairing the damned thing, but I’m afraid that with the bad juice in this place I’m going to end up worse, not better.” I didn’t care which way she answered; what I cared about were her involuntary reactions. Stimulus. Response. Prodding at people is often the only way to learn how to control them.
“That was uncalled for,” Teas said, continuing to her feet. “Threat displays will adversely affect my evaluation.”
“Ma’am, I apologize if you took my actions as a threat,” I said, implying the lie, that my demonstration was, indeed, meant to be a threat.
Her involuntary responses, which she didn’t have the self-control to conceal, told me everything I needed to know. She considered herself in charge of the situation, including my captivity here in this Detention Center. She hadn’t known about my capture ahead of time, meaning I now had a second piece of data implying she wasn’t Officer Canon (the first the lack of an evil feel to her). She expected to own me when my incarceration ended. She didn’t think she would be able to get me out of here tonight, but would be able to, later, when the proper authorities were properly manipulated into, well, something. Oh, and most importantly, she was in charge of procuring my juice.
Lastly, she believed she had already rolled me with her Focus charisma. I had no reason to doubt her belief.
Definitely not a Rizzari quality Focus. However, she was a significant step up from my dumb-as-horse-shit Chicago Focuses. The fact she held me in her charismatic clutches and my predatory poke got to her meant we had an interesting stand-off going on here.
One I could play to with a little play-acting I was sure she wouldn’t notice if I avoided any big overt whopper lies.
“I’m scared,” I said. “The longer I’m stuck in here, the more I worry about my physical and mental health.”
Teas stepped closer to the Monster-proof net and eyed my shoulder. “Dr. Wilson won’t have any problem with surgery like that. If you want, I can get your Network contact Dr. Zielinski to consult with him beforehand.”
She referred to Zielinski as a Doctor, meaning she respected him and she wasn’t bothered by the fact he had lost his medical license. She hadn’t been one of the Focuses behind the threats on his life. She knew he was in the area, but had made sure he wouldn’t get clearance to see me. Also, Dr. Wilson was one of hers, someone she controlled.
Hell. Talk about loose lips sinking ships. Teas was either so arrogant that she didn’t care what she revealed, or she wasn’t half way as brilliant as she needed to be for the scam she was trying to run. I bet on the latter.
I could do business with this Focus, and make a handsome profit while doing so.
“I would appreciate that,” I said. I gave her a little more predator, just to remind her who I was.
She backed away, the response I wanted. “We’ll talk again tomorrow night,” Teas said, trying and failing to cover the fact I had flustered her. “Remember that I’m evaluating you and that your life depends upon my evaluation.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I watched her closely as she left the viewing area.
---
My nightmares continued that night, dominated by the white-clad princess. Tonight, she appeared as Keaton, torturing me. I don’t think she liked me. When I woke, I got to thinking: rather than an aspect of Satan, was the white-clad princess a real person interfering with my dreams, the same way the evil clown in my pinball game dreams had been Officer Canon? If so, was she Focus Teas?
My gut said ‘no’. If I analyzed the situation logically, given that Teas wasn’t one of the top Focuses Zielinski told me about, the white-clad princess had to be Teas’ master. That made me very wary of Teas and what might happen to me if I got sprung from this place under Teas’ control.
I also had another, more disturbing, thought: what if Teas was a wish-fulfillment hallucination of mine?
That morning I didn’t get interrogators. Instead, I got what seemed like fifty doctors and researchers taking samples, X-Rays, and asking nosy questions. I couldn’t keep track of them all, and after a while, they all started to look and smell the same. Low juice. I even lost control when one of them didn’t tell me he was going to take a skin sample before he did and I snarled at him, full predator.
After my little excess, the white-coats had me shackled down. Dr. Wilson wasn’t in charge of this gaggle; he only appeared once or twice to consult. The perso
n in charge was Dr. White, he with the marital problems. He didn’t like me much, fancy that. I casually asked about Dr. Vance, Dr. White’s colleague; I assumed Dr. White had figured out Dr. Vance was the cuckold and had chased him off the team. Dr. Riddelhauser, sober today, administered various written tests and loudly crowed over their results, which showed I was of sub-human intelligence. With my juice so low and with my lack of interest in the tests, I wasn’t at all surprised.
In the afternoon I got an official visit from Focus Teas. She came into the viewing area with eight bodyguards, all far more heavily armed than last night, and one mousy Transform woman with a steno pad. Even with low juice I figured out what the Teas visit meant: last night she or her people had found a way to turn off the security cameras.
Teas showed no warmth in this visit, didn’t mention recruiting me, didn’t mention juice, or mention surgery on my shoulder. Not even an introduction. Instead, I got an elaborate show.
“Arm Hancock, I have some questions for you,” Teas said.
This time the guards followed normal procedures and shackled me to the interrogation table. I could barely focus my attention enough to follow Teas’ questions. I don’t think my attention mattered, despite Teas’ big show, her flourishing of paperwork, the tape recorder and the meticulous note-taking by her people.
“Okay,” I said.
“Describe your activities of February 2nd, 1968, please. In full.”
I concentrated for far too long just to wrap my mind around the question. Low juice. My memories weren’t completely shot, but I knew I would be able to recall now what I did then a lot better than I would be able to recall later what I did today.
A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) Page 7