The Curse of M

by Stevie Barry

  ----

  Hansen arrived at Grieggs' office far more quickly than Von Ratched had anticipated -- and he arrived very, very troubled.

  Von Ratched didn't waste time questioning him. The man looked so shaken that there was no point; telepathy was the only sensible option.

  What he found left him disturbed, and he stared at Hansen long and hard, his fingers steepled in contemplation. "Is that what you think?" he asked quietly. "Is that what she thinks?"

  Hansen, wide-eyed, said nothing. Wise young man.

  "I have no ill intentions against DaVries," Von Ratched said. "If she will have you, do as you like. Rest assured I have no ill intentions toward Lorna, either." There was just the barest trace of emphasis on 'ill', that was not lost on the poor young doctor. "Off with you. See to DaVries, if you would like. I will not send her out on grave detail again."

  It was his way of offering Hansen a present, and when he'd fled, Von Ratched leaned back in his chair, thoughtful.

  Well. Wasn't that an interesting bit of information. He sat still a long while, wondering how true it was. Certainly he wasn't surprised Lorna would still be so hell-bent on killing him, but as for the rest -- how much truth was there?

  Transplanting her ability to someone more amenable would never have occurred to him. Quite aside from the fact that such a thing was impossible, she and it came as a package. An obstinate, annoying, difficult package, but nevertheless inseparable. He'd wanted her mind since he'd got his hands on her, but he wouldn't take her apart to get it. And as sickened with himself though he was after last night, he was startled to find he wanted the rest of her, too.

  Even he realized how wrong that was. To his mind he'd done what was necessary, unpleasant though it was for them both. And it was supposed to remain unpleasant, or he'd be the kind of weak-willed cretin he despised. A doctor did not get invested in his patients -- in any way.

  And besides, Lorna of all people...Lorna, with all that rage, and all that untapped power. It was a recipe for disaster, because in a very real sense it was like poking a hornet’s nest. Right now, she cooperated out of protectiveness for her friends, but if he should push her too hard, even he wasn’t sure what she’d do. The fact that part of him wanted to find out was neither logical nor wise, and yet it persisted. She'd dominated his thoughts since she first wrecked his cafeteria, and that wasn't a good sign, either.

  He'd have to see what could be done about that.

  True, getting into her mind was no longer an option, but that only presented a challenge worthy of him. He couldn't cheat, even if he wanted to. It might take years, but Von Ratched was a patient man. He'd always got what he wanted, sooner or later.

  Chapter Eleven

  Katje probably would have gone insane if it weren't for Geezer and Gerald Hansen.

  Escape had seemed like a game to her, an obstacle course. Capture had been terrible, but it could have been borne. No, it was the corpses that broke her.

  She hadn't seen many physically disgusting things in her life, and even her worst nightmares hadn't done justice to the horror on that tarmac. For the first time in her life, her sunny nature had deserted her.

  Geezer often sat with her, silent but there. He didn't say much, but he never needed to.

  Gerald was the unexpected one. He brought her little gifts, the things she liked: hair care supplies, chocolate, even a bottle of whipped cream vodka he found God only knew where. Geezer made sure she rationed it, and she shared it with him, though he complained horribly about the taste. The surprising thing was that Gerald asked absolutely nothing of her in return. Katje had plenty of experience with men plying her in an effort to get in her pants, and he wasn't doing that. To her amazement, he was giving her things because he genuinely wanted her to feel better.

  He would take her and Geezer out into the yard, too, into a world outside that didn't contain bodies. They worked little by little to establish the garden, and day after day Gerald wheedled more inmates to help. She didn't want to know what it cost him, but he was the only staff member who seemed to actually care about them as people.

  The sun burned her fair skin terribly at first, and he brought her some aloe, apologizing for the lack of sunscreen. He looked so contrite and sheepish that she smiled for the first time in two weeks.

  Two days later, she cornered him after dinner. The Activities Hall was still a wreck, so they stayed in the cafeteria before being herded back to their rooms like errant children. Even now, voices remained subdued, but the misery that followed the escape attempt had dialed back a notch.

  "You have apartment, yes?" she said. "Take me there later."

  Gerald swallowed, his expression a mingling of panic and regret. "Katje, I'm not doing all this because I want--"

  She cut him off with an imperious finger, pressing it against his mouth. "I know," she said. "And that is why I do."

  He sighed, and took her hand. "Katje, you barely know me," he said. "Give it a month or two at least, and see if you still feel the same."

  Her expression darkened, along with her mood. "We may not have that long."

  Gerald cast a surreptitious glance around the room, and drew her further away from the rest of the crowd, well out of earshot. He looked…anguished, almost. "Yes we do," he said, and sighed again. "I've been put in something of an untenable position."

  Katje looked at him blankly, leaning back against the wall and crossing her arms. "What?"

  He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, searching for a better term. "Morton's Fork?" he offered.

  "Still what?"

  "What about 'damned if you do, damned if you don't'?"

  "That one I know."

  He ran a hand through his short, curly hair -- a nervous, awkward gesture. "Von Ratched agreed to leave you alone, so long as I…cooperate. If I don't -- if I try to stop what he's doing -- he'll do worse than kill you." He shook his head, bitter. "As if I could stop him anyway."

  Poor man was beyond miserable, torn in ways someone as naturally gentle as he should never have to know. "Is Lorna and Ratiri he…do things to?"

  "I can't tell you what it is," he said. "If I did, he'd know. I can't stop him -- I don't even know what he's really doing -- but I've got a chance to keep you safe. You, and hopefully others. And that's all I can do."

  It grieved her to see him so distraught. He must have learned very recently what kind of place he was really in. She had a feeling he'd suspected early on, but dismissed it, willfully blinding himself. Now he was faced with incontrovertible evidence, and the guilt was eating him alive. "The we do what we can," she said, and let it mean whatever he wanted it to mean. The fact that Von Ratched had yet to come after anyone else, and that Lorna and Ratiri hadn't been seen since the escape attempt…well, at least they probably weren't dead, though they might be wishing they were.

  Gerald took her hand, and squeezed it gently. They had solidarity, if nothing else.

  ----

  The room Lorna and Ratiri were put in now was a slightly larger variation on the normal inmate room. Just as sterile and white, but it had a window, and Lorna spent a good hour standing on the head of her bed, looking out at the vast tundra. It was cloudy today, but she didn't care. Natural daylight alone helped her in ways aside from what Ratiri did.

  She wanted outside so badly she could taste it, wanted to escape from this quietly murderous stranger who had taken her over. That alien self scared her, for her anger had never been like this. Her temper had always run hot, not cold, easily given vent to, and then the air was clear. She had never been a woman to hold a grudge, except against her father -- and look how that had ended.

  But she wasn't going to ask Von Ratched to let them out. She wasn't going to say a word to that bastard until she absolutely had to, and she'd only put up with it then because she had to be near him to kill him. Thank God he couldn't read her mind anymore. He was bright enough to know she'd try sooner or later, but this meant he wouldn't know when, or how.

 
She sat down and looked at Ratiri. He was going even more stir-crazy than she was, though he tried not to show it. The last few days she'd tried to let his mind roam, at least, showing him Dublin and the places she'd been as a roadie. He'd cleaned out her aura when she grew too irritated for words, and they kept each other as sane as they could. Both would have lost it without the company of the other.

  A week passed like that before an orderly came to do anything but deliver food. He was a big man, obviously ex-military, all muscles and a closely-shaved head. He towered over Lorna, but he nevertheless looked wary. "Doctor wants to see you," he said.

  She regarded him thoughtfully for so long he started to squirm, almost imperceptibly. A large part of her wanted to say no out of sheer spite, but in the end she nodded.

  Ratiri, allanah, I'll be back in a bit, she sent him as she stood. Don't worry, I won't try to kill the bastard yet.

  Ratiri looked very much like he wanted to protest, but she gave him as reassuring a glance as she could. It told him the only way she wouldn't be leaving this meeting in one piece would be if Von Ratched didn't, either.

  The hallway was downright spacious after so long in various cramped cells, though the gloom outside the windows made the interior seem even harsher. It was empty but for them, and she wondered what was happening to all the others. And how many others were left.

  She wasn't surprised the orderly didn't take her to Von Ratched's office, given how bloody she'd left the place. This was an area of the Institute she didn't recognize -- not that that was saying much, since the whole place was so ungodly featureless and sterile. And, at the moment, so completely deserted it was creepy. She and this hulking man might well have been the only people alive here, and she thought, a little absurdly, of zombie movies. Seemed like half of them had scenes like this, characters wandering a hospital-turned-tomb until something jumped out and ate some poor sod.

  The thought made Lorna laugh, very quietly, and her guard cast her a distinctly nervous look. What had Von Ratched been telling the staff about her? That she really was a dangerous lunatic? He might not be so far off the mark, come to think of it.

  The office they arrived at had once been Grieggs', if the nameplate on the door was any indication, and she wondered what the nurse had thought about being booted out of her space. Not that Von Ratched would care one way or the other. This one was much starker than his; Grieggs hadn't tried to inject much personality into it. It was the same tiresome white as the rest of the Institute, and a shade too warm for Lorna's comfort. She sat in a hard plastic chair, and tried to veil her hostility as she looked at Von Ratched.

  His neck was still bandaged, she noted with something like smugness. The rest of him was as immaculate as ever, but that only made the heavy layers of white gauze all the more incongruous and obvious. His expression was peculiar, though; he'd always been a hard man to read, but now she had no idea at all what was going on behind those pale eyes.

  He said nothing, and she kept resolutely silent herself, unwilling to look away. They were like children locked in a staring contest, though she couldn't help but blink now and again.

  "If you just brought me here so you can stare at me like a lizard, I'll not stay," she said at last. "I've had about enough'v you for two lifetimes." So much for hiding her hostility -- it dripped from every syllable, and thickened her accent to a point where he might not understand her at all. Even her sister had trouble with it, at times.

  "I brought you here to apologize," he said, and her eyebrows shot up before she could help it. Sure, he was just trying to manipulate her, but she doubted he'd apologized for anything in his life.

  "I think the Americans have a phrase," she said. "'Day late and a dollar short'. Save it for someone who'll believe it, Doctor. I'll do your damn tests, but don't sit there and insult my intelligence trying to make me believe you're sorry." There, she'd told him she'd cooperate, hard as it was to force herself to say it. Cooperating was the only chance she had of getting close enough to kill him.

  To her surprise, something close to overt anger darkened his expression. Shouldn't he be pleased by that? Damn the bastard, could nothing make him happy?

  "I am sorry," he said, and it sounded like it irked him to admit it. "I never thought I would say this of anything, but I wish I had not done that to you."

  "Well, that makes two'v us," Lorna said flatly. "Can I go now?"

  "No." He was looking at her with a mingling of emotions she couldn't decipher. Exasperation, obviously, and a regret she chalked up to the barrier his stupidity had allowed her to create, but there was something else, something so alien to him it took her a moment to identify it: guilt.

  What the hell.

  It was genuine, too. Contrition could be faked, but not this kind of guilt. Further, she didn't think he was aware of it at all. And what on Earth was she to make of that?

  "No?" she echoed, arching an eyebrow. "What else is there to say, for God's sake? Try to get in my bloody head again and I'll finish tearing your throat out, but otherwise, go ahead with your damned 'experiments'. And if you really want to apologize, let Ratiri and I outside for a while. We're both going mental, being cooped up all the time."

  Something unpleasant sparked in his eyes at her mention of Ratiri, but it was gone so fast she couldn't be sure she'd seen it at all. "Very well," he said. "I will go a step further and allow DaVries and Geezer to accompany you, but no one else. Doctor Hansen will supervise."

  She could live with that. Hansen was maybe the only decent staff person in this damn place. "Deal," she said. "But I want some warning before you do any painful tests."

  Von Ratched's surprise at her easy acquiescence was almost comical. He looked at her suspiciously, and she gave him a bland smile in response. Let him wonder. Maybe his distrust would trip him up, if he was forever wondering how she'd really react to something. If this was to work at all, she had to be unpredictable, or as much so as she could manage. She was normally such a creature of impulse that it wouldn't be easy, but she was also stubborn. For this, she could force herself to think before she acted.

  After all, it was for a good cause.

  He regarded her in silence for a long while, but she refused to be discomfited by his stare. That cold anger buoyed her.

  "Very well, Lorna," he said at last. "I will notify Hansen, and you and Duncan may go outside after lunch."

  "Why d'you do that?" she couldn't help but ask. "Why d'you call me by my first name?"

  To her immense surprise, he actually froze for a moment. "Why shouldn't I?"

  "Because you don't for anyone else," she said evenly. "And I don't like it."

  "Well, I do," he said, completely inflectionless. "Get used to it."

  "Fine," she snapped, and added under her breath, "Raoul."

  The force of his glare unfortunately hid whatever shock he might have felt. "How do you know my first name?"

  "Telepathy goes both ways," she retorted. "Or didn't you know that?" That wasn't how she'd found out at all – she’d caught a flash from Nurse Grieggs -- but he didn't need to know that. Let him second-guess every single time he'd been in her mind. It wasn't as though he had any way of verifying it now.

  His gaze was so piercing and so steady it started to unnerve her in spite of herself. "If that were true, Lorna Saoirse Donovan, you would not be nearly so flippant with me."

  First, middle, and last. This was not, she realized belatedly, a game she should have started. He could easily have got her middle name from whatever files he had on her, but he was pronouncing it right, Sheersa, rather than mangling the vowels as most non-Irish did. Shit.

  "Touché," she said, just barely keeping her voice even. A moment later that frigid anger surfaced again, though; it told her that odds were good his implied threat was just to keep her in line. Well, sod him. She'd just have to try to take it in stride. "Can I go now?"

  Again a long, measured stare. "Yes. But I want to see you again tomorrow."

  Brilliant. She meant
it, too. All the more opportunity to search for weak points.

  ----

  When she'd gone, Von Ratched rubbed his temples. Repairs were going well, his mercenaries had arrived, and the inmates were suitably subdued. Everything had been perfect until a single conversation with that accursed woman.

  He asked himself for the hundredth time just why he wanted her. She was still aggravating beyond all belief, and he knew her submission to further testing had to be a ruse. Was he really juvenile enough to want her just because she would be so hard to get? The thought was troubling.

  There was yet more paperwork to attend to, and he did it, but his mind was elsewhere. Lorna was upsetting his equanimity with such frequency that he really ought to just kill her, unique subject or not. He wanted to tell himself he'd do just that, should he find another telepath, but he knew he would not. Maddening though she was, his thoughts had latched onto her, and he had an unfortunate suspicion he wasn't going to get bored of the game this time.

  And yet now, after the escape -- after what he’d done -- for the first time in his life, he began to question if he even ought to want. There was something...wrong...with Lorna, something that made part of him recoil from her. Whether he liked it or not, she was a time-bomb, a human disaster still waiting to happen. That she could wreak so much destruction already was a troubling sign -- and she as yet had no inkling how much raw strength she actually possessed. And he was entirely convinced that the only thing that kept her from killing every living thing in this Institute was her friends. And that...that was the biggest problem, and one for which he did not, at present, have any solution.

  Things within this had stabilized to the point that he could probably resume experimenting on someone, and tomorrow he would. While this might no longer be his job, he'd never been in it for the money, or even the benefit of his superiors. As had been the case all his life, he did what he did to try to satisfy his insatiable curiosity. And no personal upheaval would get in the way of that.