The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Five

by Randall Farmer

  “Yes, Hank. You…” she paused “don’t take this wrong, but you’re my doctor. I screwed up. I have to own up to my screw-up and make recompense.”

  Tonya grabbed a set of clamps and a bone saw, slowly, very interested in the exchange. This was Arm politics at work. Keaton wasn’t operating much above her basic instincts; her heart spoke, here. No, Arm’s weren’t Focuses, but they weren’t purely beasts, either.

  Most normal humans would have been ducking the consequences of their actions so soon after the event. Papering them over, denying them, making excuses for them. Hell, she had seen Focuses do the same. Arms were tougher, more rational, in some screwy fashion.

  Another lever, and one usable for the mutual benefit of both the Arms and those they dealt with.

  “I want the story, as best you remember. I want samples, uh, some blood you shed during the episode. Some from afterwards. I want…”

  “Fuck. I might as well surrender to the FBI.” She smiled. “I will give you anything you want of that nature, as long as you keep your results secret.”

  “If I can use the results on the next baby Arm I run into, it’s a deal.” Dr. Zielinski held out a trembling hand. Keaton took it, and shook.

  Tonya felt the juice quiver, shook her head, strolled back in and grabbed Keaton’s eyes.

  “Stacy, lie down and don’t move.”

  Keaton did so, as Tonya ordered. Tonya straightened out the Arm to a position approaching comfortable, her ruined leg barely hanging off the end of the bed. Keaton was heavier than she looked.

  “Dammit, Tonya, if you could do that, why didn’t you do so to start with?” Dr. Zielinski said.

  “Tell me, what are the limits of Focus charisma use on Arms, Hank?”

  He didn’t bother saying ‘How the hell should I know’, and he didn’t have to. “I treated her as a Focus, and, so far, it’s working. I’m helping her cooperate. If we try anything other than what we’re supposed to be doing…”

  Keaton, still conscious, grinned and twitched her mostly ruined right hand.

  “Exactly,” Tonya said. She went over, took Stacy’s left hand and stared into her eyes. “You will feel no pain. Your leg is already gone. It will regenerate. You feel no pain…”

  Dr. Zielinski did his thing without any Arm interference, though she and Keaton ended up being the ones to bandage up the Arm’s leg stump after Tonya’s charismatic order to keep Dr. Zielinski awake failed, due to his own injuries. She understood Keaton now, at the gut level. She was a living war machine, deadly to her enemies, and willing to bargain with her friends. In some screwy way, she and the Arm had bonded, something Tonya never expected would or could happen.

  “Here’s an address for a safe house you can use in Philadelphia. I’ll arrange for Clinic transfers…” for juice.

  “I’m going to owe you bitches big time, aren’t I?” Keaton was up and hopping. Having her stump bandaged up gave her far too much energy for Tonya’s taste.

  Tonya nodded and sat on the bloody bed, exhausted herself. She made sure Dr. Zielinski wasn’t awake. He was, but only barely. She told him to go back to sleep, and he did. “Let me tell you about a problem the Council is having with a rebel Focus faction. We thought Focus Martine DeYoung’s ‘New Transform International’ rebel group was just espousing intra-household Transform rights. What we didn’t know was they were also espousing, in their words, ‘freeing the Focuses from enslavement by the Focus Council and Network’, and had secretly joined up with Focus Mary Beth Julius and her ‘Lucy Peoples Fund’, dedicated to the eradication of Arms and all other Major Transforms who aren’t Focuses. Stacy, we’re going to be hiring you to be, in the worst case, on the front lines of an intra-Focus civil war.”

  Keaton shook her head. “You’re hiring me to go after the motherfuckers I’m going after because they’re going after me?” She smiled. “I think I’m going to like working for the Focuses.”

  Phase Two

  [Carol’s POV] [expanded version]

  I wasn’t coping well with what they did to me, and I knew it. A full night of Keaton dreams left me tired and wasted, and the ‘murderer’ whispers were getting to me. Pacing didn’t help. Neither did exercise.

  They had me, but they didn’t realize, and my job would be to convince them that they hadn’t broken me. I just didn’t see how, with them cutting off all communications, and with me nearly ready to trade everything for some juice. My juice monkey ate at my mind; if I didn’t get juice soon, there would be nothing left of me but a rabid animal.

  I realized what the juice would do to me, of course. The knowledge was why I tried so stubbornly to escape, and why I tried to misdirect them away from my craving. And why I had cooperated. I kicked myself for my earlier request to talk to Dr. Jeffers. I had hoped to give a little ground and shift to a better position. Instead, all I had done was betray a weakness.

  I now lived in a room with no exits.

  I needed juice. I craved juice. I had to have it.

  I exercised, ate, drank, and futilely checked the room for a way to escape. My distractions didn’t work. All I thought about was the juice. If I had been on my own, I would have been hunting long ago. I would have found a kill by now and be high on juice again. I would be safe in my home with Bobby.

  Within a few hours, even thinking about my predicament began to hurt.

  One day. I told myself that if I held my mind together one more day, Dr. Jeffers would reestablish communications and I would be able to talk myself out of this trap. I was good enough to last another day.

  No one came. Every few hours food appeared, slid under the door. I waited, but I ran out of distractions. I had nothing to do. I couldn’t even surrender! No one would even care if I decided to tell them everything they wanted.

  I needed juice, dammit, and nobody listened or cared. Not counting the damned cameras with their never-sleeping eyes, of course. I picked up a ten-pound dumbbell and fired it at the camera to the right of the door.

  The dumbbell hit dead-on. My strike should have shattered any camera, but instead the dumbbell bounced off the steel bars in front of the recessed camera and clattered to the floor. I hadn’t done anything but make a futile gesture.

  I needed juice.

  When I tried to meditate, I slipped into a nightmare instead. Keaton had me. She was closing in on me, to torture me.

  I woke up shaking, with my heart pounding in stark terror.

  I looked around at me at my cold cell, the light glaring overhead, with the oppressive presence of the building around me. Why had Keaton put me here? What new torture awaited me? I couldn’t remember. Whatever she had planned, it was awful. Why couldn’t I remember?

  I tried to bring my heartbeat down. I had to control myself. Keaton might come back any minute, and I didn’t dare be so vulnerable.

  I couldn’t get my heartbeat down. I couldn’t control my shaking. What was wrong with me?

  Low juice. I suffered from low juice. I needed juice. I had to have juice. I should have been hunting long ago. What was Keaton doing? She beat me and she tortured me, but she almost never played games with my juice count. Why now? What did I do wrong? I needed to be out hunting. She knew I needed to hunt!

  Finally, I remembered. Keaton wasn’t playing games with my juice. I was a captive of the CDC. All my memories flooded back in. No Keaton. My fears came from a nightmare.

  It was bad when I couldn’t bring myself out of a nightmare. My mind was starting to go.

  I threw myself into another round of exercise, desperately trying to fight off the demons eating at my mind. Desperately trying to fight off the horrible driving craving.

  Was this some new torture of Keaton’s? Maybe these people were her people. This was such a horrible place. Such pain, such fear. Keaton was the source of all misery. Any minute now I would hear her footsteps. Any minute now she would be there at the door, ready to take advantage of my helplessness. I found myself listening, sometimes, for her heavy, powerful tread. She was c
oming. Sometime soon, she was coming.

  I realized where my thoughts led, and I shook my head to bring myself back to reality. I reminded myself of my real location. My hell was bad enough already. I didn’t need to add Keaton to this appalling place.

  Not long after, I started thinking about the building, alive and cruel, digesting me alive in its stomach. The “murderer” whispers started. I knew the building wasn’t alive, but the presence took life and personality as I let myself believe. Officer Canon stalked around behind me. A princess all in white sang dirges for my soul, now consigned to the eternal torment of hell.

  My mind was going. Arms lived life too fast, about three days’ worth of life experience for every calendar day. At times, when circumstances trapped me and forced me to inactivity, hours became days to me. Bad things happened in the minds of Arms in such predicaments; these stuck periods were where Keaton’s psychotic breaks lived.

  Through all of my mental ills stalked the burning need, the consuming craving, for juice.

  Wednesday noon came slowly. Nobody contacted me. I had to do something. I had to convince Dr. Jeffers to negotiate. I needed the juice. I would give him some real information, enough to keep me alive, enough to get me juice. If he would just come in here, I would be able to convince him.

  When they slid lunch under the door, I yelled out “Tell Dr. Jeffers I want to talk to him. I have some things he needs to know.”

  No answer.

  “Take my word for it,” I said. “He’ll want to hear this.”

  No answer.

  “Tell Dr. Jeffers, you fucking idiot!”

  No answer.

  “Fuck!” I sat down on the sleeping bench and held my head in my hands.

  Too late, I remembered the cameras. They watched every move I made, and my excessive reaction wouldn’t go unnoticed. I needed to pull myself back under control.

  I felt so awful. My juice monkey had me, and had ridden me for far too long. The need for juice overwhelmed all other considerations. The pain, the hunger, even the slow poisoning of my body from this crazy place was nothing compared to my need for juice. I needed juice. I needed a Transform body, glowing with beautiful, overwhelming, life-saving juice.

  I hated my cell. I wanted to go home. I wanted a simple kill with no complexities involved, and then I wanted my nice warm house with Bobby in it, in my city where I knew the people and the place, someplace mine, where I didn’t have people screwing with my juice supply.

  “Murderer,” the voices whispered.

  I wanted to go home.

  People watched me, alert for every sign of weakness, waiting to take advantage. Slowly, so slowly, I brought myself under control. I lifted up my head and looked proudly at the cameras. Satisfied, I lay down on my bench and pretended to sleep.

  I couldn’t handle the pressure. I didn’t want to handle the pressure. My headache had gotten worse, the lights were too bright and my skin was sensitive. I was cranky and depressed and the juice craving became a constant nagging thing, eating at me every moment. I couldn’t think of anything else but the juice and how badly I needed the juice. The need for juice ached, a hunger. I had to have juice.

  How would I get them to talk to me? I needed them to give me juice. I knew there had to be a way, but I was tired, and my brain little more than warm molasses. I couldn’t think past my desperate need. Every time I tried to form a thought, the overwhelming, persistent longing for juice consumed my thoughts whole.

  No one came.

  After I gave up pretending to sleep, I remembered the cameras again. I sat on my bench and talked to them. I explained I had information they needed, but they needed to come and talk to me. I waited and waited for someone to come.

  No one came.

  I tried to exercise. I couldn’t summon up the will to exercise properly. I judged my juice level to be about 97 just then, possibly 96, too low to exercise properly. I needed juice with every pore I had. I shook with the need for juice.

  Why did I hold out, anyway? Why didn’t I answer all their questions? What would have been so awful about that?

  Bobby.

  If I answered all their questions, they would find Bobby. They would want information about all my people, and they would arrest them and try them and put them in jail. The courts would never understand how I forced them. All they would see would be the many times they had done what I wanted. What kind of monster would I be if I betrayed my own? I had to protect my people. I had to protect all my people, but most of all, I had to protect Bobby.

  I lay on my bench and tried to pretend the misery didn’t consume me. For the sake of Bobby, I couldn’t give in.

  I drifted back into semi-sleep, an afternoon nap, dreaming about Bobby. I dreamed I crawled into bed with him, snuggling close to his warm, pliant body.

  When I curled in close to him, though, his body was cold. I pulled the covers off him and found he lay on the bed in a pool of blood. His cold face was a rictus of terror and agony. His eyes were wide and his mouth opened in an eternal tortured scream.

  Worst of all, below the middle of his neck, there wasn’t one inch of skin on his body. Someone had flayed off every single bit of his skin, and lay his skin whole underneath him like a pelt.

  And then, as I knelt on the bed, looking at him in shock and horror, I sensed a coldness behind me. I heard a slow, strong heartbeat, and the low sound of breathing. I sensed the warmth of her body and the chill of her presence.

  I turned, slowly, too afraid of what I would find. And find her I did, her sadistic smile, the tiny little knife she used, still covered in the blood of my love.

  When she turned to me, her smile grew wider and the stalk began.

  I woke then, heart pounding. Long moments passed before I regained control.

  At least this time, I remembered where I was.

  That’s when I lost my temper.

  I roared, cursed, tried to break through the doors and walls, started a fire when they turned off the lights, and utterly lost my temper when they turned on a set of fire sprinklers cleverly recessed into the ceiling. By the time I finished the cell was trashed, half my exercise equipment useless and the water fountain dribbled water endlessly to the floor and into the nearby drain.

  Okay, I knew my temper tantrum was childish. I knew it as I trashed the place, but I needed to do something to quiet the beast inside and fight off the damned whispers. About an hour afterwards I faked a total breakdown, complete with tears, sobs, pleas about juice and the once magic words of “I’ll do anything!”

  My faux breakdown didn’t even merit a response from my captors.

  I lost track of time after my temper tantrum, alone in the dark with my thoughts and nothing else. Food turned out to be an endless supply of military rations, recent vintage MCI rations, edible but otherwise indistinguishable from their wrappings. The guards pushed them under the door in loads of twenty, at random intervals so I couldn’t tell the time from the visits. The cell’s darkness was total. The bastards also tried to harass me with repetitive soft music, but they didn’t know ignoring audible distractions was one of my strengths. I tuned out their music before the second repeat finished.

  Funny, I never did tune out the never-ending ‘murderer’ whispering, though.

  I ached for juice. Not a bad ache, just the juice monkey ache from thinking about the juice for too long a time. Four or five days remained before I would start suffering from debilitating low-juice effects. That’s when they would break me, if they were going to break me before I went right to the edge of withdrawal. They would need a trick, though; otherwise I would hold out right to the edge of withdrawal. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction otherwise.

  Of course, I could end up dead from my stubbornness. I didn’t care. I worked through all the options of what they might do with me and most ended up with me spilling my guts and later dying in withdrawal or by firing squad. My welfare wasn’t in their interest. They kept me in a locked room with absolutely no chance of esc
ape. If they were going to get real information out of me, which seemed inevitable, I wanted them to pay - with juice - to get the information.

  Phooey. I didn’t believe a word of my thoughts. Instead, I expected the person behind this would use some sort of psychological trick to break me early, and my stubbornness wouldn’t be tested. Hell, after a couple days of this sort of treatment even Focus Teas would have been able to come in and break me with her half-assed charisma. Of course, if as I suspected a Focus was behind my current torment, she might not realize how devastating low juice was to an Arm’s willpower.

  My darkest fears, that either Officer Canon or Teas’ boss Patterson was now the Focus in charge, I banished to the depths of my mind.

  Speaking of Teas, I spent a long time in the dark thinking through the last six months of my life, looking for information to exploit and memories to keep me sane. Teas said Focuses could tag everything. Well, I had never heard of Arms tagging anything, but I was willing to try anything by then. I tried tagging the unseen guards (useless; it didn’t work), the air (something moved, juicewise yet impermanent, so I flagged the trick for later investigation), my own body parts (an advanced trick my instincts told me I wasn’t ready for), and objects. After I successfully tagged a twenty-pound dumbbell from the remains of my workout equipment, I recognized what I had done.

  This object tag had nearly the same feel as when Bobby and I did our ‘I’m yours’ ‘you’re mine’ games. The juice trick I did with Bobby had been a tag!

  I got excited, and stayed excited, for I have no idea how many hours on end. Many. Perhaps over a day. I investigated what I did, tried every imaginable variation and examined what I created in every possible way with my metasense.

  The bad news? My discovery wouldn’t get me out of my cell. The good news, muted by my incarceration problems, was I had figured out Arm tagging. Arm tagging declared something yours and meant it, establishing dominance over the tagged object. Tagging made something mine. This is what Keaton should have done to me the instant I escaped from the St. Louis Transform Detention Center.