“I need to fill you in on a little problem.” They looked at me attentively. “You remember how I said my next visit with Arm Keaton was dangerous, and that I might not come back? Well, the fact I’m back doesn’t mean all is well.”
I told them the truth about what Keaton did to me, and her plans. Keaton would carve me to ribbons if she ever found out. The hints to Lori were bad enough, but this was outright disobedience of orders. I didn’t care. The tags made them mine, and I also needed to give them a chance to put down the rabid dog.
I didn’t tell them anything about Bass. I still couldn’t tell anyone. I had run into this before when I went to Bass’s lair, shut down her projects and tagged her. Bass’s mind control had made me ‘forget’ to ask why she did the Phoenix Church Massacre. I wished I knew the limits of Bass’s trick. They had to be large limits, or the situation would be far worse and she would already be world Empress. One distinct possibility was that I was more vulnerable to her trick than anyone else.
I didn’t like that possibility at all.
“So the Arms are going after the first Focuses, and you get to take Adkins?” Gail said, reminding me of Keaton’s ‘gift’, giving me both Adkins and Schrum as targets. It had been an attractive gift. I wanted Adkins, and, unlike Bass, Keaton wanted my cooperation. “You know, that might not be so bad…”
I winced. “You don’t want Keaton as boss,” I said, reminding her of my Keaton stories.
Gail tapped her fingers thoughtfully. “I’ll take your word for it, for now,” she said, unconvinced. Damn, those first Focuses had set themselves up for a big fall, if a Focus like Gail was willing to think that Keaton would be better than the Firsts. “So you think we need to move to Chicago?”
“Yes. You need to be in my territory, and you need to be out of Wini Adkins’ reach.”
“Carol, we can’t afford to move. You know how expensive this move will be? I’m still working on getting new jobs for my people.”
“I’ll cover the move. You’re a good enough Focus to brain-bend people into giving your people jobs in Chicago. You’ll all get back on your feet soon enough. Oh, and your man Kurt needs to drop his side business after your move.”
Gail frowned and shook her head. “What’s your problem with Kurt’s side business?” His side business involved moving illegal drugs in large quantities.
“He’s your blackmail handle. You can’t afford those any more. You’re going to be so clean you squeak.” I paused and gathered their eyes. “I’m talking as the Commander here. You move to Chicago or you die. I can’t protect you in Detroit. I want you to finish your move to Chicago by November 15th, and the sooner the better.” The 15th was my next planned meeting with Keaton, and the earliest time when Keaton could order us to start moving on her plan.
Gail held her head in her hands. “Shit.”
---
“All right, everyone, we’ve got problems, so pay attention.”
Haggerty turned from some discussion with Sibrian about proposed tag nomenclature and glared. I winced. “Ma’am.” I wondered briefly if Bass’s tag messed up my other tags, which should be keeping me from inappropriate dominance displays, and then decided I was just too damned cranky to pay attention to my internal prompts. I suspected Keaton’s orders to challenge Haggerty, if she didn’t cooperate, didn’t help either.
My boss nodded forgiveness, fortunately, so I looked around my Detroit war room and gathered eyes. I figured I would keep this place for the moment, as good a location as any to study Adkins and cover Gail’s household as they prepared to move. Unless another Arm wanted to step up and piss on Adkins’ back, I would maintain two territories, one here and one in Chicago.
I smiled at them, thinking about the benefits of Keaton’s orders. Years ago, when the FBI held me captive, Wini Adkins had arranged for me to go into withdrawal for twenty-nine hours and eight minutes. Now, I would take my much-delayed revenge.
Haggerty, Webberly, Sibrian, and Whetstone were all there in my war room, along with Tom and Ila. No Gail this time, no Gilgamesh, no Zielinski, no Tommy Bates and no Duval. Duval might go everywhere Webberly went these days, but I didn’t want her hearing this. She could stand guard outside for this meeting.
Haggerty left Sibrian and took her spot at the head of the table, and everyone still standing found a seat. The fragrant odor of Tom’s coffee filled the air, and they all looked at me attentively. I nodded. “Last Tuesday I went to Los Angeles to visit Keaton and update her on our progress…”
The room grew quieter by the minute as I told the story. I took fifteen minutes to finish the high-level summary, glossing over only one thing, Bass’s session with me. No one said a word. When I finished, nobody spoke for a full minute. My boss broke the stunned silence.
“Is Keaton out of her mind?” Haggerty said. “This is beyond stupid. Why would we even want to go that direction?”
“Ma’am,” Webberly said. “This is insane. Given the successes we’ve already racked up pushing the Cause, abandoning it would be criminal.”
“Keaton’s made a call, and she’s the boss.”
Haggerty leaned forward. “Forget these orders. That bitch doesn’t give me orders, especially after the way she’s been treating me these last nine months.” Something had happened between Haggerty and Keaton last February, not long after she flipped dominance on me and set up the push the Cause project. Neither she nor Keaton would say anything about what happened, even obliquely. I suspected a decent amount of what just happened to me in Los Angeles was due to Haggerty messing up her relationship with Keaton. “Get our people together. There’s one way to stop this nonsense, and that’s for me to take over as boss Arm.”
“You won’t win, ma’am,” I said. I had given myself a 60:40 chance of victory if I challenged Keaton with everyone at my back, but that was before Bass tagged me. I read the situation differently now. “If you call her out or challenge her in any way, you won’t get a fair fight. I’m not sure you would even get a challenge fight.”
Haggerty grabbed my shirt collar, I grabbed hers, we both rose to our feet, and we almost started our own inevitable challenge fight…except that Haggerty froze in place, her mind elsewhere. I waited, and when I let go of Haggerty’s collar, she let go of mine. A room full of people each did whatever method they preferred to wash the adrenaline out of their systems.
About ninety seconds in, Haggerty winced, sat down, and put her head in her hands. I sat down in my seat to her right. “We’re screwed. By her actions, Keaton defines what makes us Arms, all the basic procedures revolving around deference, tags and challenges. All the implied honor crap I can’t understand. That’s all gone, now. She’s fallen into the same idiocy that rules the minds of the first Focuses: do whatever it takes, no matter how foul.”
“Ma’am,” Sibrian said. “I don’t understand.”
“Consider what she allowed Bass to do to Carol,” Haggerty said. “First, Keaton humbles Carol, knocking the starch out of her. Then Keaton gives Carol to Bass to play with, saying ‘no physical torture’. Bass uses juice and chemical tricks to drive Carol beyond her limits in a situation where her Arm superior ordered Carol not to fight back. In the end Bass forces this screwy tag-like thing I can’t metasense on Carol by saying ‘take this or I’ll destroy your mind’, after nearly doing so. Later, Keaton just shrugs and continues her planning session as if nothing happened.”
I wanted to rip Haggerty’s guts out for her accurate between-the-lines analysis. I still couldn’t acknowledge Bass’s tag. Hell, I couldn’t even lie and say she didn’t have me tagged. I wanted to rage, kill and destroy, but a room full of people looking at me in sympathy, or at least what passed for sympathy among Arms, convinced me I needed to keep my temper in check. I did realize Haggerty’s information on Bass’s ‘tag-like thing’ came from Sibrian, the only Arm here able to metasense it. This had been the subject of their earlier discussion on tag nomenclature.
“Keaton’s actions mean we’re not Arms
anymore,” Haggerty said. “We’re Monsters again, nothing more than might-makes-right ravenous rampaging Monsters.” Haggerty grabbed my shoulder and turned me to her. “This is not your fault. This is a betrayal. Keaton has declared herself our enemy. The question here is what we do about this.”
I shook her hand off my shoulder. I didn’t want my boss’s pity, I wanted payback.
“What did Keaton do to you in February, ma’am?” I asked.
Haggerty turned away. I read hurt, a hurt I recognized. “She reneged on a deal,” she told a wall, finally answering my often-asked question.
“What deal, ma’am?” I said.
“We had a deal where I came by every six weeks, and I bartered training from her for information,” Haggerty said. “All formal and proper, as neither of us wore each other’s tag. We’d been doing this ever since I finished my punishment for challenging her after my return from Europe.” She paused. “In our February meeting, she took my information and thanked me for the gift. I mentioned our deal, and she said ‘deals change’ and ‘if you want the training, come up with something in addition to the information you normally give me’ and named several cockamamie espionage missions she wanted me to do. When I refused, she spent the next five minutes insulting me and attempting to goad me into challenging her in her lair, where I had no chance of winning and would have had to accept her tag. I left, disgusted, and haven’t been back since.”
“What missions, ma’am?” I asked. Damn Haggerty! If I had known Keaton was pulling this shit before she grabbed Bass, I would have gone in on Tuesday to make my presentation with my entire Arm, Focus and Crow entourage. If Haggerty had the guile, I might suspect she set me up, but this was just another example of Haggerty’s cluelessness about the deeper aspects of high-end Arm politics.
“She wanted more information on Guru Chevalier’s organization.” Fuck. Keaton had been goading Haggerty with suicide missions. I wished I had known of this before. “Next point,” Haggerty said. “With what Keaton’s doing, turning us back into rampaging Monsters, does it even make sense to keep the Arms together as a group?” She wanted to break with Keaton. “Aren’t we doing the Transform community more of a disservice by letting Keaton turn us back into Monsters?”
“Things change,” I said. “Right now, we’re going the wrong direction, but there’s still hope. Keaton needs us, remember. For one thing, she can’t afford to break with us any more than I can afford to drop her tag. Don’t forget that we’re Arm celebrities, Amy: the Hero and the Commander. Keaton isn’t, and won’t even acknowledge her nickname as The Boss. If Keaton breaks with us, she’ll probably lose Naylor and Bartlett, maybe even the new idiot, Kent. Our considerable weight on her, through her tag on me, might be enough to help her see the light and change her mind. In addition, any of a thousand different surprises, like Focus Pitre’s unexpected strength of will, may also pop up. Oh, and one other possibility I can’t discard: maybe we’re all wrong and Keaton’s new power-mad methods will work. Stranger things have happened, and betting against Keaton has never been a wise thing to do.
“If we split the Arms, though, then we have no hope, because there won’t be any force at all capable of acting when we need action. The Crows, Focuses and Chimeras are already factionalized and split. It’s up to us Arms to hold things together.”
Haggerty nodded. After she nodded, the rest of the Arms joined in. “No matter what we do, I also want contingency plans for forcing a challenge with Keaton,” Haggerty said. She met my gaze. “For either of us to challenge. So, what’s Keaton ordered us to do?”
I relayed Keaton’s orders. Haggerty assigned the real time eater, the Network operatives Keaton wanted me to suborn, primarily to me and divvied up the remainder to herself and the other Arms. She also divvied out the first Focus research projects to the appropriate Arms, taking Schrum personally and giving me Adkins. She put Mary and Betsy together and assigned them Teas and Elspeth. Webberly got Claunch. Haggerty, at least, accepted my strategic guidance. “You heard how Pitre proved tougher than Biggioni?” Haggerty said, at the end. “Let’s not get caught by any of our assumptions, folks. I want regular updates and lots of thinking.”
“This is going to take more money,” I said. I was just about tapped out to start with, and given the time constraints, we would be burning through money by the bushel full just on the Network crap. PIs in quantity cost lots of money.
She grinned at me.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked. She nodded. “The Von Hirschsprung project.” Another nod. “Ila? Could you get us the VH project from file cabinet 4?” I turned to Tom. “You’re going to like this one. Elsa Von Hirschsprung and her cats live in Westchester County, New York, and her money, mostly in stocks and bonds, is just sitting there waiting on someone to convince her to divest her horde to the proper charity…meaning us. The trick is going to be keeping her financial advisors and her rightfully paranoid children from interfering while we loot her blind. This is a one-time trick, because the FBI’s going to catch on and get rabid once they figure out how we did this.” Amy and I had been saving this one for an emergency, such as now. Ila put the thick folder down between Amy and me. I opened the folder and grinned at the latest financials. “Looks to me like she’s worth just over a hundred million dollars.” Sibrian and Tom whistled amazement. “If we can’t grab half of that before someone catches on, I’ll eat my combat boots.”
Nods all around. We wouldn’t get instant access to the millions in question, but what we were able to scare up immediately would give us enough to fund our ongoing operation.
“Okay, time for the details,” Amy said. “Carol, why don’t you start with that notebook of information on Denise Pitre…”
We talked for hours, nailing down the details and going over every contingency. Working so hard to go in the wrong direction hurt.
I couldn’t help thinking, though, about taking down Wini Adkins. Despite everything, Adkins’ near-term humbling brought a smile to my soul.
Dolores Sokolnik: October 20, 1972
“Ma’am?”
“Over here,” Ma’am Billington said. Del followed Billington across Ma’am Keaton’s obstacle course to the back of her estate. Then out of the estate and down a steep embankment to the narrow road. Across the road, into a scrub field. “Sit.”
Del sat on an old washing machine. Trash filled the field, the local illegal dump. The late afternoon sun warmed the air to a comfortable pleasantness.
“What the fuck is going on, Sokolnik?” Ma’am Billington stood in front of Del with her arms crossed, worry overriding her normal expression of disapproval.
“Ma’am,” Del said. Strange. Del hadn’t seen anything abnormal going on, at least abnormal for Keaton’s place. “Ma’am Keaton finished breaking the new Arm, Mona Fairly Roche, early last week.”
“Yes. After that.”
“Ma’am Keaton called in Ma’am Rayburn to take over teaching for several days, and Ma’am Keaton left. Five days ago, Ma’am Keaton and Ma’am Bass returned with a Focus by the name of Pitre. Ma’am Keaton, Ma’am Rayburn and Ma’am Bass attempted to break Focus Pitre, but failed after encountering unforeseen difficulties. Two days later, Ma’am Hancock showed up, and the four of them together were able to break Focus Pitre with combined predator use. Focus Pitre took Ma’am Keaton’s tag. After Ma’am Hancock left, Focus Pitre was sent back to her household.”
“More.”
“Ma’am Keaton informed Ma’am Rayburn and Ma’am Hancock that she had chosen to follow Ma’am Bass’s model for Arm future development. Ma’am Keaton also forced Ma’am Hancock to give rank to all of us, and she let Ma’am Bass play with Ma’am Hancock for a few hours. Her playing didn’t involve physical torture, but did leave Ma’am Hancock with a tag I could metasense but none of the others could.”
Arm Billington paced a ragged path between the rusty appliances and Del sought relief in her quiet pools. Ma’am Billington found Ma’am Keaton’s change
of direction disturbing. Her reaction implied these activities hadn’t been going on before Del became an Arm.
Unrestricted Arm activities invited war against the Focuses, and perhaps the other Major Transforms. Wars needed soldiers, and in a war an Arm like herself, as a young soldier, would have a short life expectancy. This was just the lot of the Arms, though. She remembered, from her previous unenlightened life, reading about many conflicts in the past half-decade involving Arms.
Why did these events so disturb Ma’am Billington? This was worth serious contemplation.
Later.
“More.”
“Ma’am. I did not get invited to the later discussions.”
“Sokolnik, why was I assigned to, quote, ‘gather information on Focus Julius, with respect to her organization, her defenses, and her contacts with other Focuses’?”
“Ma’am. I can offer only speculation.”
“Speculate. Let’s see if your speculation matches my own.”
“Ma’am. Evidence indicates that Ma’am Keaton is aiming to neutralize the first Focuses, by death or by kidnapping and breaking them. I would speculate that your target is first Focus Julius.” This was a dangerous topic to be speaking about, but as one of her teachers, Del treated Ma’am Billington’s orders as coming from Ma’am Keaton herself.
“I hear you,” Ma’am Billington said, pacing some more. Dry grasses brushed her legs and scattered dust into the cool air. “Sokolnik, how did the Commander react to this information?”
“Ma’am, I don’t know. I can tell you that Ma’am Keaton forced Ma’am Hancock to give rank to all of us, including the students, punishment for allowing herself to be tagged by a Focus and a Crow and for bargaining in bad faith.”
Love and Darkness (The Cause Book 2) Page 24