All That We Are (The Commander Book 7)

by Randall Farmer

  “That’s good circumstantial evidence. Unfortunately, unless we can penetrate the Antonella family, there’s no way we can verify that one of the first Focuses was behind the assassination attempt on you,” Carol said. “I don’t think any of us has the time to look into that.”

  Everyone sitting around the table nodded. Carol grabbed another bowl of pea soup, and dug in for a few minutes. Then for dessert, she grabbed the entire plate of chocolate chip cookies, doing yet more damage to her diet.

  “How about Arm Haggerty?” Lori said. “Could she look into the Antonellas?”

  Carol blinked. “Perhaps. I don’t want to over-use her. Being a young independent Arm isn’t easy, as you know from when you first met me.”

  Lori nodded.

  Carol turned to Gilgamesh, keeping her face blank. “So your hypothesis is that this is all to stop the presentation about the Hunters to the Council?”

  Gilgamesh nodded, and raised a finger. Carol motioned for him to continue.

  “I found some evidence in Detroit regarding the FBI’s move on Arm Keaton,” he said. “The people who hired the couriers to deliver the materials carried minute amounts of Focus produced dross on them, from an out-of-town Focus. Given the denials we’ve gotten from Focuses Fingleman, Teas and Claunch, I suspect Focuses Patterson and Schrum are behind this. I believe they’re behind all of the recent moves.”

  “If you’re hypothesis is correct, then this is the opening shot in a war,” Carol said. She leaned forward and lost her stone face, back to being the snarling Arm. He could feel her guilt, for going after Haggerty and depriving Lori of some of her protection, through his tag. Her guilt quickly turned to anger. “We’re going to have to take down Focuses Schrum and Patterson. We need to go mobile, corral ourselves a small army, and strike quickly, before Shadow can figure out what we’re doing and throw one of his monkey wrenches into the fight.”

  Lori and Gilgamesh nodded, chilling Hank. This seemed all-too-familiar to him, the small attacks, the nudges, the blackmail material releases. He had seen this from the other side, from the takedown of Focus DeYoung during the Julius Rebellion, or at least the start of it, before he managed to extricate himself from Tonya’s clutches. Focuses Schrum and Patterson had been helping Tonya, then.

  “Ma’am,” Hank said, attracting Carol’s attention. He needed to get her thinking in Commander mode, not in hassled-Arm-protecting-her-Focus mode. “This reminds me far too much of Tonya’s story about the takedown of Focus DeYoung.” The first supposed Commander.

  Carol glared at him for a moment, a classic Arm ‘don’t you dare get between me and my prey’ glare. She didn’t speak, and he didn’t apologize. She slapped her knife on the table and leaned forward, into his personal space. They held the tableau for half a minute, his mind whirling tag-tag-tag, fear sweat from Carol’s predator pooling under his hands, before Carol relaxed back down into her chair and eyeballed the ceiling. “It’s a Commander trap, then. They’re pissing on my territory and trying to entice me into chasing them. Trying to induce me into thinking that my superior command skills can buy me a quick and cheap victory in just a few days.” The Council meeting was only three days away. “Okay, that’s not going to happen. Instead, we’ll go to ground, keeping our heads down before the Council meeting and afterwards. Save for the Focus rescue, there isn’t much I have to do before the wedding save prepare for the wedding defense. No panic, no retaliation. If they want to challenge us, have them do so on our turf.” Hank nodded and relaxed. If Focus DeYoung had hunkered down and defended herself properly, Tonya wouldn’t have been able to take her down so easily. He felt the force of both Carol’s Commander-style inspiration and her Commander-style analysis. He had no problem with her advice now.

  Carol turned to Gilgamesh. “One thing about your hypothesis, though: you can’t seriously be thinking they understood Haggerty enough to predict she’d go all Arm-stupid in my lair.”

  “No, ma’am,” Gilgamesh said, nervous and sweaty. “Consider, though: if Haggerty had traded the information to you, without violence, what would you have done?”

  “I would have been stuck in Texas attempting to figure out how to save my organization, nowhere near Lori, or any of the Council Focuses,” Carol said. She shook her head in disgust. “We need to remember Shadow’s involvement in this. Haggerty had a map board with push-pins in it, labeled with all the local Transforms’ contact information. Including Shadow’s old place. Which she learned about before whatever happened there. And, according to her, there weren’t any Transforms involved in the so-called attack. I think when she cracked Shadow’s defenses, she forced him to fake an attack on his place and take up being Wandering Shade full time.”

  Gilgamesh shook his head. “There’s another explanation, Carol: Haggerty’s detective work allowed Wandering Shade to find Shadow and attack him, enabling Wandering Shade to steal Shadow’s identity and ruin his name.”

  Glare. “I think you’re taking your loyalty kick way too far,” Carol said. She stood and stalked off, radiating exasperation.

  “Ouch,” Lori said.

  Gilgamesh nodded. Ouch indeed.

  Lori turned to Hank. “Henry,” Lori said, with her cold bitch Focus voice. “I’m beginning to get more than a little worried about how your transformed adrenal gland is affecting you. Coming here was too risky. You should have stayed in Houston.” He could also say the same about his standing up to Carol a few minutes earlier. Or his standing up to Haggerty back in Houston, which got him mildly tortured from a so-called ‘good guy’ Arm who disliked torture. “You need to get that thing out of you before it entices you into doing something fatally stupid. So…” she paused. “If you don’t agree to the operation, I’m going to formally and charismatically order you to do it.”

  Hank raised his hands in surrender. “I give up.” Lori’s argument had finally convinced him. “Just don’t come complaining to me if my old worn out body expires on the operating table.”

  Carol stuck her head back into the kitchen, and smiled, flicking her magical tongue of healing at him. “Don’t worry,” Carol said. “I’m not going to let any of those nasty ol’ doctors kill you. You’re mine, remember?”

  Tonya Biggioni: April 4, 1969

  Ten o’clock at night, and she still hadn’t gotten to the meat of her visit. Tonya sighed. The waiting room was beautiful. Lush and ostentatious. Queen Anne chairs, elegant cherry occasional tables, delicate crystal vases and ornate porcelain figures. It would have been wonderful except for that ‘waiting’ part. Wini had been absent for over an hour, finishing some household issues. When Wini came upstairs, they would finally get down to business.

  The end-of-March Council session had turned out to be anticlimactic. With their failure to intimidate Polly and her conspirators into silence, the first Focuses as a group had dropped their objections to the recognition of the existence of the Chimeras and Crows, and had, through their unofficial representative on the Council, Cathy Elspeth, offered an implied deal, suggesting the Council label the Hunter variety of Chimeras as ‘irrevocable enemies’. The final vote was unanimous. Tonya had actually enjoyed the Council session for once; her work with the Arms and her success negotiating an end to the Rizzari rebellion had won her enough acclaim to make her, for the first time ever, the strongest voice on the Council after Polly.

  Wini came in, eventually, followed by a female Transform with a large plate of sandwiches and exquisite homemade candies. Whatever else one might say about Wini Adkins, she did have the courtesies down cold. Wini had decorated her personal section of her household richly, in the same fashion as this waiting room. From what Tonya had seen, the rest of Wini’s current household was little more than a slum tenement. The disparity hadn’t been so sizeable during Tonya’s last visit, five years ago.

  She wondered if the luxe was a side effect of Wini tagging her household’s bad juice, or whether it was a natural progression of Wini’s personality and her people getting older. Tonya couldn’t reme
mber the last time she heard someone refer to a radio as a ‘Hi-Fi’.

  “So, tell me what sort of emergency the Council has thought up,” Wini said, sitting in her elegant chair with her ankles genteelly crossed, sipping from a thin porcelain cup of expensive tea. Tonya sipped her own tea and kept an iron grip on her self-control. This wasn’t a courtesy call, which they both understood. Tonya noticed the tiny signs of stress in the stiff way Wini’s hands moved, in the occasional twitch of her left foot. She did her best to keep from showing any signs of her own stress, and wished Wini didn’t know her so well. This visit should have been Esther Weiczokowski’s job, as the Midwest Council Rep, but Esther wasn’t in a cooperative mood right now, with either the rest of the Council or, apparently, Wini. Therefore, Tonya ended up stuck with the dog job yet again.

  “The Council has received some information pertaining to an operation you’re running in Detroit, concerning the training of Focuses to act without households.”

  Wini sat up straight and the blood rushed to her face. A massive loss of control, except Wini had never mastered the juice-powered control Tonya and the other Council Focuses possessed. Wini didn’t have much charisma, and she had never learned to hide her true emotions and feelings.

  “That’s no business of the Council, even if it came up in the closed session,” Wini said, and stood. “I’m afraid this meeting is over.”

  “The Council didn’t gather this information, Wini,” Tonya said, staying seated. “It came from an outside source, and pertains to a special report that CBS News is working on.” Keaton had finally found a way to leak the information Arm Haggerty had collected to the media. Keaton hadn’t leaked Wini’s involvement. Yet. “The Council denied any involvement or knowledge of what the reporters were asking about, of course.”

  “CBS News?” Wini asked. Tonya nodded. Wini sat back down, her face fading from reddened anger to pasty white.

  “Later, the Washington Post and the New York Times contacted us, followed by someone from the Detroit News,” Tonya said. They hadn’t published anything yet because they were still researching the story.

  Wini’s eyes took on a wide, glassy look. “I see.” Her hands shook, and drops of expensive tea splashed onto her elegant suit. “How much do the media know?”

  “We’re not sure. Everyone but CBS News appears to be working on rumors. CBS News claims they have documentation. They claim at least two Focuses have been trained to function without households, with skills better suited toward combat than Transform maintenance.”

  Focuses were supposed to save lives. This thing was an abomination.

  “Hmm,” Wini said, then sat back and thought. Two minutes passed before she managed to compose herself. “I want to thank you personally, Tonya, and the Council in general, for bringing this to my attention. It will be dealt with.”

  “If I may ask, what…”

  “No,” Wini said, her eyes growing hard. “The less the Council knows about this, the better. We can’t afford to have the Council besmirched by the actions of myself and those working with me.” Damn. Some of the other first Focuses were involved as well.

  “I’ll relay this information to Polly,” Tonya said. She couldn’t do anything else. She hadn’t been authorized to press Adkins, just to bring the issue to her attention, and ask if there was anything the Council could do to help.

  “I can ask nothing more of you,” Wini said. She thought for a moment, and smiled. “I’ve a few private questions to ask of you, though, and I may as well ask them now.”

  Even though she was but the messenger, Tonya had suspected she would end up roasted by Wini for her part in this. She had been correct. Wini wanted a report on her mentoring effort. In detail, immediately, with no time for preparation. All the secrets, all the blackmail information needed to keep the younger Focuses in line.

  Tonya no longer respected the blackmail threat as much as she used to, and neither did Polly. Once the word got around about how easily she and Polly had evaded the effects of the information Schrum had released about them, she doubted any other Council Focuses would respect the blackmail threat either. A Council Focuses’ household had to be strong to survive the rigors of the Council, strong enough to live through the loss of a few jobs and some criminal investigations, and they shared their high-end resources more than the other Focuses realized. Suzie had released so little on Tonya and Polly, compared to what Tonya had feared might happen, and although neither Tonya nor Polly had the wherewithal and knowledge to legally discredit the released information, Connie Webb and Jill Bentlow did. As both Polly and Tonya had the financial resources to make low-interest loans to Connie and Jill, to help them recover from the firebombing of their households, the situation had practically resolved itself.

  The Council was no longer the total puppet of the first Focuses, and the first Focuses would now have to live with the change. The first Focuses remained little more than decadent puppetmasters whose only goals were their own self-interest, and they no longer understood the strength of the Council. They would still cut the young Focuses down, keep them weak, and keep them poor, but they wouldn’t be able to extort them and ruin them as much as before. Not with Tonya in the way, as head of the mentoring program. Polly had been right. Being in charge of the mentoring program put Tonya in the blackmail information loop, giving her immense power, and she intended to hold back as much information as she could.

  As she did here this evening.

  How many young Focus households had gone hungry, over the years, so Wini could sit in Queen Anne chairs and sip from fine porcelain teacups? So Wini and the other first Focuses could work with impunity on evil projects like the salt mine and the Mutie Mill?

  The Cause existed because of this impunity, and the first Focuses’ days of absolute impunity were over. With Patterson’s tag on her now nearly four months gone, Tonya considered her decision to join the Cause the best choice she had ever made.

  Gilgamesh: April 18th, 1969

  “Are you sure about this?” Sylvie asked Gail from beside her in the back seat. “I know you want a seat at the grown-ups’ table, but this terrifies me. We’re getting involved in something way too large here.”

  “Uh huh,” Gail said. “It’s my idea, too. Gilgamesh here wanted information on Focus Adkins, but didn’t want to say why, so we traded. We’re going to get this whole negotiation on the record, into the YFL newsletter, in as positive a way as we can. Well, positive for Focus Adkins.” And take in every last nuance of this negotiation, she didn’t say.

  “Your Focus is becoming quite a good negotiator,” Gilgamesh said, turning around to look back at Gail and Sylvie. He did enjoy the chaotic byplay among the members of Gail’s household. However, he had only made it part way through the one meal Gail talked him into attending. They were too much for him, too real, too much of a reminder of the life he led before he transformed, the life he kept barricaded in his memory, never to remember. Gail’s young clique of somewhat leaders was much easier to cope with than the full household.

  Such as today. Sylvie and her husband Kurt, both household leaders, shared the car with him and Gail.

  He owned the upcoming negotiation, the culmination of the project he had been working on since mid-February, ever since he learned Stalin held Newton captive. He once counted on Lori being by his side, but after the assassination attempt three weeks ago, he gave up on his earlier plan. Instead, he had arranged for Kali’s protection and support, and he didn’t want to think about what her protection would eventually cost him.

  Thus today’s café meeting. The place, named Sugar and Cream, was a ramshackle dive across the street and a half block down from Stalin’s household. This was her turf, and easily within range of her tamed gristle dross. Kali would be acting as both his bodyguard and as his negotiating partner. Gail and her people attended as witnesses and reporters. She had already told him Focus Adkins possessed enough of a hold on her that she would have to think hard to print something in the You
ng Focus League newsletter Focus Adkins didn’t want printed.

  Gail’s attitude didn’t match what he understood about young Focus relations with the first Focuses. There wasn’t supposed to be any thinking involved in a young Focus’s mind. Gail broke the rules, certainly not a first for her. Even more shocking, her household was aware of the blackmail material Stalin held on them and the whole household was prepared to thumb their noses at Stalin if she got too abusive.

  As they walked to the café, the car holding Kali and four of Focus Mann’s second-line bodyguards parked behind Gail’s car, and one of the guards formally opened the right rear door for Kali, who stepped out like a queen. Two of the other guards took up defensive positions around her, and the remaining guard settled himself to watch the car. Kali’s disguise, as Focus Mann, was perfect save for her glow (which would fool many Crows, but not him) and the extra hundred plus pounds of muscle she carried on her body. Gail and her crew took nearly a minute to recognize her. They hadn’t been told what Kali’s disguise would be today.

  “Let’s do this,” Kali said. She had Focus Mann’s voice down perfectly.

  Stalin’s bodyguards greeted them at the café door and led them to two small pushed together café tables. A cheap place, with dusty linoleum floors and crumbs from the last guests still littering the tables. No other guests occupied the dining area, and the clerk at the cash register disappeared into the back when he saw them coming. The guards signaled, and Stalin walked across the street, flanked by four more bodyguards. She wore a glower on her face under the full regal air of a Focus doing the Show.