Once We Were Human

by Randall Allen Farmer

Chapter 10

  “Transform Sickness is a very rare disease. In 1965, there were fewer than 10,000 cases in the whole country. That means that your chance of contracting it is just over one in 20,000. You’re much more likely to die in an auto accident. There’s no need to panic over Transform Sickness. Many factors determine if someone catches it, including heredity, environment, perhaps even psychology. The Centers for Disease Control hopes to be able to identify the specifics within the next few years, and have a cure within the next five.” [CDC pamphlet, 1966]

  Carol Hancock: November 15, 1966

  The test that afternoon involved FBI agents with bows and blunted arrows. I wore a blindfold translucent enough for me to keep track of the FBI agents, but not translucent enough to keep track of where they aimed. They chained me to the concrete I-beam in the courtyard, with a fifty-foot long chain. They didn’t remove the engine blocks, concrete rubble and partly splintered picnic tables from the last two days’ tests. They expected me to use them as cover, and this time, the shooters didn’t stay put but circled me as a pack. I performed as they expected and carefully didn’t exceed their expectations. Blunted arrows were better than the real things, but – tables aside – this was no picnic.

  As the staff set up for the party in the dining area, McIntyre came up to me with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Pathetic, Hancock, real pathetic.”

  “Sir?” I asked, hungrily spooning up my beef stew, cranky with not-quite low juice. At least after one of those ‘dodge the murderous instrument’ tests, I had enough exercise to keep my muscles from aching.

  Standard procedure after a test was for the guards to drag me over to Dr. Peterson’s lab for a complete examination. After that, they let me eat. The FBI techs would leave and I would have the rest of the evening to myself. If the day’s tests hadn’t left me too injured or too low on juice, I’d spend more time in the exercise room.

  “Stick her in her cell,” McIntyre said to the guards. “Full security.”

  Four chains held by four guards. “Hey! What about the party?” I didn’t have to feign anything here. The baking and other cooking had filled the Detention Center with unfamiliar homey smells, and I suspected McIntyre heard my tummy grumbling from where he stood.

  McIntyre just snorted. He and his team dragged me by my chains to my cell. I kept a hurt expression on my face, and as best as possible covered up the natural anger McIntyre and his gang of thugs roused in me when they interfered with my life.

  “You’re pathetic if you think something this stupid would have worked,” McIntyre said, after they released me into the cell. I turned away, sorrow warring with anger, and winning. “I expected better of you,” he said, and slammed the door.

  Oh, did I sob after that.

  Not because McIntyre had wrecked my escape plan, though. Mostly, I sobbed because of nerves, the constant ache in my muscles, the need for more juice, and out of annoyance that I had been right and I wouldn’t be allowed to attend the party. Despite the changes I had gone through as an Arm, I still had trouble with that kind of male dominance game.

  Oh, and the food did smell delicious.

  My plan, though, had layers. I had done my thinking, fortunately, back when I had been high on juice. Best case, the FBI wouldn’t even notice the party. Second best case, they would think the party was strange, but wouldn’t connect me to it. Third best case, the FBI would see the party as something I had arranged. Truthfully, I wasn’t shocked that McIntyre had put two and two together and decided a bunch of dumb women had fallen into a really dumb plan of mine to escape during the confusion of the party.

  In the worst case, the FBI would have stopped the party cold, one of my layers of distractions would have vanished, and I would have to ask my night shift friends to risk themselves in a more risky distraction. From the smells, the FBI hadn’t stopped the party. They had simply locked me up in the escape-proof suicide cell, sneered at me and called me pathetic.

  The bastards also hadn’t let me finish my dinner. Real low, even for them.

  Still, I started the evening off right by repainting my fingernails and toenails.

  The knock at my cell door came at ten, as arranged.

  “Carol, you indecent yet?”

  Artusy.

  “Not quite. Get me a damp washcloth and about ten minutes.” He did so, I washed myself as best as possible given the situation, and got dolled up. I imagined the FBI memo for next time they had an Arm in their custody: ‘Under no circumstances are you to allow an Arm access to face cream, blush, eye liner, lipstick…’ I took a minute to scratch furiously at the wound on my leg after I pulled the tape off. I had a nasty gash from a broken piece of picnic table, from earlier today, and it itched like a bitch while it healed.

  I put on the easy-to-strip clothing Artusy had provided, and put on the show. Well, put on the show after I ate some of the food Artusy had trucked up on a cart.

  “You were right that the Feds would lock you up and keep you from the party,” Artusy said. I nodded and stuffed face. Oh, I loved cream-filled chocolate éclairs. Fudge with walnuts, too. Don’t even get me started about baklava…

  I had to restrain my appetite, else I’d end up like the guards. It proved difficult to stop eating.

  “Wheel the cart in and…”

  “Sorry, I can’t,” Artusy said. “Food on paper plates only. For some stupid reason the Feds decided that this party was some sort of escape attempt. They didn’t even leave until the party ended.” This should have been about an hour ago, if Doris and I had this set up properly. “Sampled all the food, too.” Heh. “Can’t image what got into their heads, but they’re going to be going over our security with a fine-toothed comb tomorrow. So the cart stays with me.”

  “No problem,” I said, and grabbed food-laden paper plates. Lots of them.

  I visualized all those FBI agents and techs getting logy from the party food, forced to stay late to make sure I didn’t have anything strange planned. I imagined them annoyed at the overtime, and after nothing happened, stalking off to some cop bar to get plastered. At least I hoped so.

  I grabbed the last double-fudge brownie, stuck the confection on my cell floor, and smiled. I posed. Artusy took pictures.

  “I’ve got to run off and get these developed,” Artusy said, after he finished. If I planned this right, every low-life on the night shift would be ogling my pictures in an hour or less. “You mind if Kelsey here does the dirty work with your late-night shower?”

  “No problem,” I said, a paper plate in my hand and a cream filled doughnut in my mouth. I had already given back the easy-to-strip clothes. “I think my deadly sin of the evening is going to involve food.”

  Once the suicide cell door closed, I leapt up and retrieved the hidden dagger. I pushed the food to the far corner of the room and tried not to think about how good it smelled.

  Of all the temptations I feared would damn my soul in this horrific place, twenty thousand calories of desserts was not what I expected to be the worst.

  But there they were, and there I was.

  I used the knife to clean the underside of my fingernails as I stewed over my plan and listened to my tummy grumble.

  At eleven-thirty, I knocked on my door. By now, Mike Artusy should have had the pictures developed and distributed. Kelsey opened the suicide cell door for me. Chocolate and alcohol flavored his breath.

  As usual, I wore my bathrobe and carried my shower supplies in my arms. The knife rested in its holster below my knee, invisible beneath the long robe. I had the pictures of my children hidden in my clothing. Kelsey led me down the hall to the bathroom. After I went in Kelsey took up his post outside the door.

  As soon as the door shut, I went into action. I took off my bathrobe, uncovering the short-sleeved blouse and loose skirt I wore underneath. I was barefoot. I hadn’t been able to come up with any way around that. Nor anything to do about the
shackles welded to my ankles.

  I started the shower running and checked out the small bathroom window. Painted shut, but still without bars.

  I climbed on the toilet and set to work with Dr. Zielinski’s knife. As quickly as possible, I cut into the paint between the window and the sash. The standard procedure allowed me only fifteen minutes for a shower, so I had to hurry.

  I finished digging out the paint in a few minutes, glad of my many physical enhancements. The hinges were on the top, and the window would open out at the bottom. It didn’t move when I pushed. Or the next several times I pushed.

  I hadn’t expected that. I searched the bathroom for anything that might serve as a pry bar, and found nothing. I went and grabbed soap, thinking I would do something I’d heard of once upon a time and soap the hinges to make them give. I climbed up and discovered the hinges were on the outside. I grimaced in disgust. Here I was, the big bad Arm with all these physical changes, and I still had problems with things mechanical.

  I tried Dr. Zielinski’s knife and decided I was only making a mess. I didn’t have time for that approach.

  Now I began to get panicky. I took a deep breath and examined my options. After I carefully scanned my surroundings, I took another deep breath to steady myself, stuck Dr. Zielinski’s knife in my holster, and got to work.

  I wrapped my bathrobe around my hands for protection, put one foot on top of the toilet tank and the other a little ways up the wall, spread as far apart as the shackles would allow, and pounded on the window. No one noticed.

  The window moved a hair. I pounded on it some more. Still no one noticed. After a long push, the window opened all the way, making a horrible creaking sound. Every guard within miles should have heard it. The cold from outside came rushing in.

  I paused. Kelsey didn’t knock at my door. The escape alarms didn’t go off.

  “Well, here goes nothing,” I whispered to myself, annoyed at the tiny window. I didn’t miss the birth canal symbology: Carol Hancock, housewife and leading neighborhood volunteer, was about to be reborn as Carol Hancock, Arm and outlaw.

  Now, if I only could figure out what an Arm was supposed to be, I would be set.

  Step one: look out the third floor bathroom window.

  I saw as clearly as if it was noon, despite the overcast night. I’d counted on that. No guards walked the grounds. If I craned my neck I could see the gate by the inner wall. In the gatehouse, two of the guards were engrossed over something. My pictures. They hadn’t noticed my racket.

  Why? I hadn’t been loud. It seemed loud to me because of my enhanced hearing.

  Step two: climb up and through the window.

  It was a tight fit. The window really was too small and I was no longer my former petite self. I forced myself through the window, but collected several nasty scrapes along my arms and legs. I tore holes in my clothes, too.

  Step three: get stuck.

  I hadn’t planned on this one. I should have gone through the window feet first, but I had come through head first, my hands still wrapped in the bathrobe. I couldn’t turn myself around, and when I tried to back out, I found myself stuck.

  Dammit.

  Even if I backed up, I didn’t know how to get out the window feet first. The window was too high up, and I didn’t know of anywhere for me to put the rest of my weight while I levered my feet through.

  Step four: deal with the problem.

  Dammit, I would go through this window headfirst whether it made sense or not. I slowly moved forward, and after I almost lost my balance, I braced myself on the brick on the outside of the building. In the end, I hung from the window by my feet, upside down, with my head over twenty feet above the ground. I couldn’t afford to fall. The noise would be too loud and I might hurt myself.

  I dropped the bathrobe and slowly inched my hands back up the wall, holding on to the sill with my now panic-sweat covered feet. It took forever. Finally, I crawled far enough up the wall to reach one hand back and grab the window. I let my feet come free and brought up the other hand up to grab the sill as I twisted.

  Right side up, I dropped.

  I fell between two bushes, not making much noise at all save for the muffled clank of my shackles. Quickly, I crouched down behind the bushes, my toes gripping the cold dirt. The guards at the Detention Center gate didn’t turn toward me.

  Above me, the gray sky loomed, threatening. Out of the Detention Center for the first time in weeks, I felt a chill that wasn’t from the wind, but from freedom. I looked at my wristwatch. Eleven-forty. I still had time before I went over my shower time allowance.

  I took a step and stopped; my shackled feet clanked as I walked. In the noisy Detention Center they had faded into the background, but out here they sounded as loud as a freight train. I stopped, unsure, and thought.

  The bathrobe. I’d discarded it as useless, but perhaps I might make use of it. I reached down, wrapped my bathrobe around the chain between my legs, and took a step. No clank. Perfect. I headed toward the Detention Center wall as quickly as possible with a bathrobe around the shackles between my legs.

  The wall was brick, topped by concrete, about ten feet tall. Certainly too tall for me to climb. After I holstered Dr. Zielinski’s knife, I jumped anyway.

  My fingers caught the lip of concrete that overhung the brick and I began to pull myself up. Pain!

  I dropped to the ground again. Something sharp was on the top of the wall.

  My fingers bled, cut along the length of them. I wouldn’t be able to pull myself over doing this. I needed another solution, and I needed it now.

  What to do?

  I had the urge to sit down and cry. Give up. Not a thing in my escape had gone as I had planned. The window wasn’t supposed to be so hard to open. I wasn’t supposed to get stuck. The shackles weren’t supposed to be so loud. There wasn’t supposed to be something sharp on the top of the inner wall.

  Quitter, quitter, quitter, the voices in my head whispered. I closed my eyes and tried to stop shaking. I had to move.

  I took stock and looked over at the guardhouse. The guards were still engrossed with my pictures, but I couldn’t stand here all night, exposed. I had to do something.

  Hell. I still had my bathrobe wrapped around my shackles. I pulled it loose and wrapped one end of the robe around each hand, with about a foot of slack in the middle. I jumped again. Something dug into my hand through the heavy fabric of the robe, but I ignored the pain and pulled myself up.

  The top of the wall was set with broken glass.

  I didn’t have time for this. I took my right hand, reached over to the far side of the wall and held on, the bathrobe between my hands protecting my arm. I pulled my other hand loose from the bathrobe. Holding on with my right hand, I scrabbled up with my feet until the toes of my left foot gripped the wall. Leaning to the side, right hand holding on to the far side of the wall, left foot holding on to the near side of the wall by my toes, I barely kept my balance. I pulled my right leg up between my left leg and the wall and swung it over in a big motion. This vaulted me over the wall and I fell to the dried grass on the other side. I wrapped the bathrobe around my shackles and took off.

  I got two steps. “Well, lookie lookie what have we here,” a voice said, a low whisper.

  McIntyre.

  Gilgamesh: November 15, 1966

  Echo had been creeping toward the Detention Center for hours. He had started at dusk and still crept forward, a mile and a half to the north of the place.

  He hadn’t showed yesterday at all, day or night. He must have spent the day working up his courage.

  Gilgamesh checked his battered watch. Nearly midnight, if the damned thing was accurate. He thought things through, and decided to keep himself between Echo and the Detention Center. He began to walk.

  A couple of minutes later, Gilgamesh began to run. He now knew where Echo headed �
�� toward the hotel where Tiamat’s FBI torturers stayed, a mile and a quarter northwest of the Detention Center.

  Echo started to run as well.

  So much for Thomas the Dreamer’s protections he imagined had kept him hidden from Echo’s metasense.

  Gilgamesh’s stomach churned as he ran. This time, there would be a confrontation if he wanted to save Tiamat.

  “So, you found some friends of your own who are willing to back you, eh?” Echo said.

  “Thomas the Dreamer,” Gilgamesh replied. Thomas had told him to mention his name. The mention didn’t have the effect Gilgamesh had hoped for.

  Echo didn’t run.

  He and Echo stood on opposite ends of a parking lot of a small office building one block from the hotel the FBI used. Discrete signs for dentists and pediatricians cluttered the tiny lawn. The overcast sky blanketed the city, the air warmer than the last two nights.

  “Thomas says it would be unwise for you to betray the Arm,” Gilgamesh said. “Unwise and in violation of prior Crow agreements.”

  With his metasense, he sensed Tiamat on the way to her evening shower.

  “Fools. There are no Crow agreements on the subject of Monsters. Monsters have no rights.”

  “The Arms are Major Transforms, not Monsters,” Gilgamesh said.

  “Weak,” Echo said and started to walk across the parking lot. “This argument is pointless. I’d advise you to clear out. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I don’t think you can,” Gilgamesh said. This damned pile of dross on him had to be good for something.

  Echo stopped and clapped his hands. Dross moved out from him, a thin shell, and when it reached Gilgamesh, the dross pummeled him with loud noises.

  Loud echoing noises. Deep base drums, loud enough to shake Gilgamesh.

  They were not, though, loud enough to damage him. He backed off two steps, no more. A moment, and he had control of himself again.

  Echo ran toward the FBI hotel. Gilgamesh had expected it. He also turned and ran, keeping between Echo and the FBI hotel.

  In the Detention Center, Tiamat had kicked out a window and attempted to squeeze her way through. The escape was on.

  Zaltu, who had been on the top of the warehouse all day, motionless, still didn’t move.

  “What Thomas the Dreamer gave me protected me from your ‘echo’ attack,” Gilgamesh said, as he ran. “Now what are you going to do? In a moment, Keaton’s going to swoop down and grab Hancock, and…”

  “So? You still can’t do anything to me,” Echo said. The other Crow glared at Gilgamesh and continued to run.

  There probably was something he might do, but Gilgamesh wasn’t sure what. All Thomas had said was ‘this will equalize things, save that some Crows are more equal than others’. Cryptic. Non-informative.

  Tiamat ran toward the inner Detention Center wall. Her first leap didn’t carry her over the wall, but after a long pause, a second one did.

  It was up to Gilgamesh and his wiles to stop Echo. “You go into the hotel and I will as well. I’ll tell the FBI that you’re a Major Transform. A Crow.”

  Echo stopped.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me,” Gilgamesh said.

  In the Detention Center, Tiamat ran into someone and stopped.

  Rover (Interlude): November 15, 1966

  Rover loped through the pine trees until he got to the wide cleared pathway where the towers carried the wires over the low mountain. He stopped at the edge of the trees, sniffed the air, and howled in frustration. The moon had gone another half way through her courses, and as he had feared, they were back. He was too far away to catch them with his ability to sense the good loving, but he smelled them. He remembered their scent.

  He was an idiot. He had made another mistake soon after their last confrontation: he had chased some sort of running Monster that looked like a cross between a giant rat and a giant rabbit, and it had plowed into a bus at a stop sign. He had taken the Monster there among all those people, raped a few women, beaten up a few men who got in his way, and killed the man with the tiny gun who shot him. He wondered what the men who made newspapers would think of the rat-rabbit thing, as it wasn’t one of the Monster varieties who made the headlines.

  Whenever he growled, nearly everyone either froze or ran. He liked that. He liked it so much he had ambled into a grocery store a day later, growled everyone out of the grocery store, and pigged out on the meat section until he could barely move. He didn’t try anything like with the teeth that had gotten him into trouble before, and to his surprise, after good loving and all that food, a day later he had gotten some of his words and memories back. Unfortunately, he found a limit to how many of his words and memories he could recover: he hadn’t regained anything from before he became Rover.

  He swore he was smarter than he had been, though.

  He didn’t want yet another confrontation with those good loving-filled hunters. He loped back the other way, and only went a half mile before he stopped. People filled the pine hills. People with guns and bright flashlights, stretched out in a thin line, but close enough together to keep each other in sight.

  Coming toward him.

  He went off at a right angle to avoid them, straight up the hill, and pulled up short. Yet another line of people awaited him. These didn’t move. Instead, they squatted in holes in the ground. One of them caught a glimpse of him and fired a shot over his head.

  Rover snarled.

  Another shot, over his head. They weren’t trying to shoot him.

  I’ll bet if I charged them, they would, Rover thought. His stupid half was talking again. He turned around and went the last direction, along a ridgeline and down a steep slope to a small pass that cut the ridge in half.

  A third of the way down, Rover stopped. About a thousand feet ahead, he sensed something different. Like the fake Monster lady, this one had nearly as much good loving in him as a Monster did. Only this one’s good loving was much more visible than the good loving of a Monster or the fake Monster lady, a huge glowing bank of fog, much larger than the tiny man in its center. Complex and structured. The beauty of the fog bank called to Rover.

  Rover whimpered.

  The little man stood alone, except for a Monster at his feet, a wolf-Monster. Not chained, not half dead. A free Monster, peaceful and at rest, right next to this little man.

  The little man had tamed the Monster. Impossible. Monsters were mindless fighting machines, not a thought in their heads. Yet the Monster sat at the little man’s feet, tamed.

  “Come on down here, Rover,” the little man called up to him. The little man didn’t have a flashlight; like Rover, he could see in the dark. “Let’s talk.”

  Rover took two steps closer and stopped. “Rover scared of little man. Go away.”

  “You can’t hurt me, Rover,” the little man said. “But I can help you.”

  “Help me not kill people?”

  “Yes sir, that’s the idea, you lame-brained overgrown puppy dog,” the little man said. “Now get down here. My name’s Occum, and, well hell and damnation, I guess I’m going to be your master. Someone’s got to save you, and I guess since you came to me, I’ve drawn the short straw.” He paused, which let Rover try to figure out what the little man named Occum had actually said. He didn’t understood all those words. “Try and be nice to Brunhilda, she’s…”

  Nice? Bah. This Occum didn’t know squat about him and Monsters. He rushed up to the Monster, grabbed her by the neck and raped her. Took her good loving.

  “Stop that! You’re killing her,” Occum said.

  Rover didn’t bother to answer or stop until he drained the Monster of all her good loving. Oh, that felt good. Too bad she died, though.

  “Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Occum said, between clenched teeth. “So I guess I’m next?”

  “No, master,” Rover said, and rolled over on his back and presente
d his belly to Occum. With all this good loving in him, he felt happily lethargic. “You’re not named next, you’re named Occum.”

  Occum rubbed Rover’s belly, and Rover’s tummy rumbled. “Now I eat Monster. Monster’s good eating. Then rape master.”

  “What?” Occum said. “Forget it, Rover. No. Rover does not rape master. That’s rule number one, got that?”

  “Okay, boss master Occum.” Boss Master Occum looked like he was about to start crying.

  “Dammit, how’d Shadow talk me into this one, anyway?” Occum said. “I’ll wring his goddamned starched shirted neck. ‘Rape master’? How am I going to get myself out of this one?”

  Rover ate the Monster, and the world was good. He had gotten himself out of his mess and ‘getting them out of this one’ was his master Occum’s responsibility now.

  He wasn’t a stupid magic dog anymore.

  Yes, the world was good again.

  Carol Hancock: November 15, 1966

  I stumbled, half from shock and half on purpose. When I recovered, I had Dr. Zielinski’s knife in my blood-slick right hand and McIntyre had his honking big gun resting on my forehead.

  McIntyre was alone. I couldn’t understand why he came here alone, but his giddy excitement implied he had just won a bet. He understood Arms and Patrelle didn’t, and Patrelle thought him foolish to think Carol Hancock, Housewife and Twit, might be able to pull off an escape.

  “Oww, my ankle,” I said, softly. Anticipating.

  “Stand up anyway, bitch,” McIntyre said, matching my quiet voice. He wanted the credit for my capture alone. I stood, slowly. He moved back, gun still pointed at my forehead. I froze in confusion. This couldn’t be happening! I was far enough along in my escape that this hurt. I could taste my freedom. “Don’t you dare pull any of your goddamned crap…”

  Something snapped inside me, some switch turning on that had never turned on before. The world around me vanished, all except for McIntyre. I sprang at him, fast fast fast. He flinched in surprise as I backhanded his gun hand with my left hand. His gun went flying.

  He swung at me, wildly, and connected with the side of my head as I ducked to the side. Pain shot through my head, and for a moment, I staggered. I ignored the pain, no worse than many of Patrelle’s tests. I righted myself and didn’t fall.

  I swung at McIntyre’s jaw with my left hand and he blocked my punch. Instead, I hit the side of his arm. McIntyre grimaced and leapt at me, trying to wrestle me to the ground. I didn’t fall; all those muscles I had achingly gained proved their worth.

  My unfamiliarity with fighting filled me with panic. Eventually he would be able to wrestle me to the ground. I couldn’t allow that! I gave myself over to my instincts, and with my right hand I punched the knife into his belly. McIntyre’s hands went toward his belly as he pulled back and I punched his jaw with my left hand.

  McIntyre fell, instantly.

  I couldn’t believe it. Unfamiliar emotions coursed through my body; something inside me urged me to charge the distant guard and gut him as well. Go back inside and kill everyone. This unfamiliar emotion made me all wiggly on my feet, lighter than air, ready to bounce out of my skin. Strange. McIntyre had hurt me in the fight, but there was no pain. None at all, even from my normally achy muscles.

  The only thing inside me was this lust – I didn’t know a better word – this lust for more combat.

  Crazy. I needed to get out of here before the FBI or the staff raised the alarm. The seven guards who worked nights in the Detention Center had a hotline to the local police station for emergencies like this. They could have the compound crawling with police officers and FBI agents in minutes.

  I enjoyed fighting McIntyre. I enjoyed it so much I wanted to do it again, despite my bleeding hands and bruised head.

  I looked down at him, bleeding on the ground, and realized I had no idea if he would live or die. I had the urge to make sure he was dead. Cut his throat.

  The stench of his blood hit me like three martinis. I couldn’t kill someone. Not like this.

  I vomited chocolate éclairs on McIntyre’s right shoe and slowly backed away in disgust. I couldn’t slice his throat. Hell, I couldn’t have done what I had already done. What had I become?

  I shoved that thought away for later. Time for me to escape.

  The only times I had seen the outside of the Detention Center had been on the way in and when McIntyre had me up on the roof for the drop test. The wall I scaled was only the first barrier, not the compound edge. I had yet another set of fences to deal with, the chain link fence topped with barbed wire I recalled from the trip in. There were power lines off to the left, warehouses off to the right, and past the warehouses, a couple of railroad cars. Far from the main gate, on the right, a road ran straight up to the outer fence and stopped, almost a private driveway. A thousand feet to the left of the blocked road, the one guard I thought I might evade walked his patrol.

  The blocked road was my target. The guard on patrol still hadn’t reacted to my fight with McIntyre. I ran for the outer wall as fast as my shackles would allow. Escape first, react later, was my new motto. McIntyre’s gun I kicked into the weeds on the way by.

  When I got to the blocked road I found a gate, locked, closed and barricaded. A sign said ‘CLOSED. DO NOT ENTER.’ I made use of my ragged bathrobe again, climbed over the fence, and left my bathrobe on the barbed wire. The distant guard didn’t notice my ascent and I climbed up and over in seconds, to land in the bushes outside the gate, dripping blood. My wristwatch showed eleven forty-four.

  I crouched down by a stunted holly, exposed under the threatening sky. I was out of the Detention Center, but still I worried. Would Keaton show up? How would she find me? Had Kelsey found I wasn’t in the shower? How long should I wait for Keaton? How long before they found McIntyre?

  What would I do if Keaton never showed up?

  What had I gotten myself into?

  Hell. I had made my choice, and now I would have to live with Keaton. If she showed up. I had turned her down and left her hanging, once. Turnabout would be fair play.

  If Keaton didn’t show, I decided I’d make a collect call to Focus Michelle Claunch. Perhaps I could sweet-talk her into getting me in contact with Bates or Dr. Zielinski.

  What was an Arm? I still didn’t have an answer. ‘Athlete’ didn’t cut it, not after what had come over me when I faced McIntyre. I should have folded when he pointed his huge Monster gun at my head. Instead, I had passed into some red-tinged state where I felt as light as air and my body had moved faster than my thoughts. I enjoyed the fight, my strange and unexpected lust for combat. Talk about unladylike behavior.

  Like Keaton, I had become a real Arm. Once we were human. Not anymore. McIntyre and Bates realized that Arms were no longer human, but the rest of the FBI and likely the rest of the government didn’t. Neither did the doctors, save perhaps Dr. Zielinski. We were beset by a bunch of doctors playing God and a bunch of clods playing doctor, and the lot of them were so tied up in their preconceptions they didn’t have eyes to see the truth. I wondered if the Focuses had discovered they weren’t human anymore. If they were anything like Arms, they certainly…

  The Detention Center sirens went off. Without thinking, I ran across the street and into a warehouse parking lot, clanking as I ran. Another siren went off, a police car siren from the other side of the Detention Center. The one visible guard took off toward the second siren, away from me.

  Someone had decided to help me. No idea who.

  I slowed to a quiet walk and continued to move away from the Detention Center.

  Gilgamesh: November 15, 1966

  Echo turned again and ran, not toward the hotel where the FBI lodged, but at an angle, in the direction of the Detention Center. Gilgamesh hadn’t expected Echo to do anything of the sort, and so by the time Gilgamesh turned to follow Echo, Gilgamesh lagged several paces beh
ind.

  Gilgamesh couldn’t figure out Echo. Obviously, Gilgamesh’s threat had cowed Echo, but now he had some other idea. The last thing Gilgamesh expected was for Echo to run toward the Detention Center.

  In the Detention Center, Tiamat attacked the person who had confronted her.

  Gilgamesh spotted Echo’s target a little ways farther. Straight down the road, a police car sat unmoving in the parking lot of a plumbing supply outlet. A single officer sat inside the police car, eating a sandwich. Gilgamesh quailed when he thought through the implications.

  Echo had the ability to metasense things that weren’t Transforms.

  Gilgamesh couldn’t fight a Crow with such advanced abilities. He shouldn’t even be bothering. Echo would tell the police officer what was going on and that would be that. Echo had a ten pace lead on Gilgamesh, now.

  Gilgamesh wanted to flee. With each step, he edged closer to panic, closer to the terror that ruled his every day. He found it harder and harder to chase Echo.

  Echo’s lead increased to fifteen paces.

  However, if Gilgamesh fled, the police would be after Tiamat before she got away. They would capture her or kill her.

  He had to do something. Tiamat depended on him.

  Playing through his options, Gilgamesh worked out what he had to do.

  Echo reached the police car and tapped on the window. “Officer, officer, Carol Hancock, the Arm in the Detention Center is…”

  The officer rolled down the window and turned to Echo as Gilgamesh closed in. Gilgamesh approached to within five feet and sicked up bad dross on the police officer. The officer slumped over in his police car.

  “Dammit!” Echo said. He started to draw in the dross that Gilgamesh had sicked up. Gilgamesh stopped and backed off to ten feet away from Echo.

  “You clean him up, I’ll just do it again,” Gilgamesh said.

  Echo grimaced at Gilgamesh, anger on his face. He didn’t do anything but stare. Ah, Gilgamesh realized. Echo was attempting to be fierce, but it didn’t work because of Thomas’s defenses. To Gilgamesh’s eyes, Echo appeared to be near panic, but Gilgamesh couldn’t think of anything to do to push Echo over the edge. He had to try something.

  “I caught Stacy Keaton putting makeup on a couple of days ago. I think she might be a master of disguise,” Gilgamesh said. Echo shivered, but didn’t run. “Not even close…” to being a Monster. He didn’t get a chance to finish, because Echo reached into the police car and grabbed the police officer’s gun. Pointed it at Gilgamesh.

  “Go. Now,” Echo said, his voice cracking. The gun wavered in Echo’s hand. In the Detention Center, Tiamat had reached the outer wall. In an instant, she leapt over. Zaltu ran as well, faster than lightning. Toward her car.

  Gilgamesh didn’t run.

  No, he was angry, as angry as he had ever been as a normal man. “You would shoot another Crow just so you could betray an Arm? I expect better behavior from a Crow. Leave those Arms alone. You’re finished here!”

  To Gilgamesh’s surprise, Echo’s eyes opened wide and he backed away from Gilgamesh. The gun clattered at Echo’s feet and Echo ran, a mad, terrified dash to the east, away from everything save the Mississippi river, which curled through the bottomlands a few miles that way.

  Oh. Gilgamesh smiled as he remembered again Thomas’s statement: ‘this will equalize things, save that some Crows are more equal than others’. With help from Thomas’s trick, he had out-fierced Echo.

  He caught his breath and cleaned his sick-up off the police officer. He didn’t want the police officer to die. Doing so also took care of what remained of Thomas the Dreamer’s dross tricks, as he sucked them in as well. As he worked, loud sirens went off inside the Detention Center. The guards had noticed Tiamat’s disappearance. However, she was still close to the Detention Center and Zaltu was only now opening the roll-up door so she would be able to drive her car out of the warehouse. The Detention Center guards might still be able to capture Tiamat.

  Gilgamesh started to run. He caught himself.

  He could do something before he left. He smiled as he imagined the effect it would have.

  Instead of running away, Gilgamesh reached into the police car and switched on its siren.

  Gilgamesh backed off. From what he metasensed, he didn’t see anything else to do. He had done his part, small as it was, and he grinned from ear to ear that he had managed to do some good. Tiamat was free.

  Carol Hancock: November 15, 1966

  “Here,” a voice said. I turned and saw a beat-up blue Ford stopped on the other side of the parking lot, about a hundred yards away from where I crouched. Keaton sat inside and I ran over to her. She hadn’t shouted. I heard her anyway.

  I wiped blood on my skirt and climbed into the front seat. Keaton drove off before I had a chance to shut the car door.

  I was free.

  Dr. Henry Zielinski: November 16, 1966

  Dr. Zielinski stretched his feet out in front of him and glumly considered the prospect of going back home. Glory wasn’t going to be pleased with him, and so he chickened out and delayed the inevitable confrontation by staying here with Bates and his men at the FBI temporary base. He guessed the time as after two in the morning, too late for him to drive back to Boston.

  The so-called base was actually three rooms at a small Catskills vacation lodge, complete with rough pine walls and bare floors. Many of the men had gone home already and most of the rest were asleep in the other two rooms, but a few sat in this small room, consuming beer and recovering from the adrenaline excitement of hunting a Monster. Bates stood by the telephone, jammed in between the bed and the wooden table, murmuring quietly to some unknown caller.

  Bates was so intent on his conversation that his cigarette smoldered into ash in the ashtray beside him, ignored. Dr. Zielinski frowned when he noticed, and leaned forward, unabashedly eavesdropping.

  “Yes. How long ago?” Bates said into the receiver.

  “Yes,” and, “yes,” again. Around the room, the other men began to register the conversation as well, and the room grew slowly quiet.

  Bates turned his pale head over towards Dr. Zielinski. “No, he couldn’t have been involved. He’s been with me since this afternoon.”

  Dr. Zielinski felt his heart leap with a sudden suspicion of what the phone call meant.

  “Absolutely,” Bates said into the phone. “I’ve got a dozen men right here who’ve been with him, too. The man’s sitting right in front of me right now.”

  After a long pause, and a final, “Yes, I can make it by this afternoon,” Bates very gently hung up the phone.

  Bates turned to glance at the listening men. “Hancock escaped, just a couple of hours ago.”

  There was a low murmuring of obscenity, and one loud, “Son of a bitch. Now we have two of them on the loose.”

  Dr. Zielinski’s heart leapt again and he felt like he was floating on air. Yes! She did it. With any reasonable amount of luck, she was with Keaton right now. With a little more luck, she might even live.

  He kept his delight off his face, but only barely. He didn’t dare open his mouth to ask a question, because he knew a grin would escape.

  Fortunately, other people asked for him. “What the hell happened? I thought McIntyre had that place locked up.” The question came from the agent with the loud voice. Dr. Zielinski thought his name was Cozart.

  “Out the window in the bathroom,” Bates said. “She knifed McIntyre on the way out.”

  “Shit,” somebody murmured. “He going to live?”

  Bates shrugged and his eyes landed on Dr. Zielinski. “They’re sure she had help, though. You don’t know what a lucky son of a bitch you are that you’re here tonight.”

  Dr. Zielinski nodded and let the men continue their chatter. Some agent in the far corner said, “We’ve only ever lost two damned Arms, and that jackass is responsible for both of them. You’d think they
would finally cut that lunatic loose.”

  “He’s got backing,” someone else said. “They don’t care if he’s…”

  She escaped. Dr. Zielinski still marveled at it. After all these years, and all those dead Arms, he finally had one who might live.

  Dr. Zielinski turned away from the cluster of men around Bates, so they wouldn’t notice the sudden moisture in his eyes. He had dedicated his life’s work to saving the Arms. Sacrificed what appeared to be both his career and his marriage. He had wounds, nightmares, and a life infested with terrible people. Yet, right now, it all seemed worth it.

  Carol Hancock, his problem child, his temperamental, superstitious, over-sexed housewife, might live.

  He laughed to himself, when he thought about what he had been doing this evening. The Arm and her male counterpart, both finding a way to live and grow up, both surviving what appeared to be certain death sentences. This was progress, immense progress. Better, he had found a way to help the Major Transforms cooperate with each other, necessary if the Transform community was to grow and thrive. Now, if the Major Transforms could just learn to cooperate in a public fashion…

  He wondered what they would grow up into.

  Tonya Biggioni: November 16, 1966

  “…and no, Tonya, you can’t fucking pay me enough, either.”

  “What’s this, the Little Red Hen story?” Tonya asked. So much for Keaton’s recent spate of kindness. This was unacceptable. It didn’t help that Focus Shirley Patterson, Tonya’s political backer, had predicted Keaton’s response. “According to our agreement, I get to help you with this new Arm. You owe me.”

  “Our goddamned agreement was for us to work together to grab the next Arm. What fucking work did you do to help me? A couple of safe phone calls? Fuck you, Tonya! She’s mine, now. Mine!”

  Click.

  Tonya put the phone down and grimaced. Keaton could get so touchy about things she considered hers. Tonya wondered if this was a Keaton personality trait or a characteristic of all Arms. If extreme possessiveness turned out to be an Arm personality trait, dealing with Arms would be a living nightmare. “Sorry about the interruption,” Tonya said, after she turned back to the person she had been talking to before the phone call.

  Lori shrugged. She sat on the other side of Tonya’s desk and sipped on a cup of honeyed tea. Tonya glanced at Delia, who had drawn waitress duty today, and signaled her to leave the room. This conversation had to stay secret. Delia shut the door behind her.

  Tonya had called Focus Lori Rizzari down to Philadelphia for a personal debriefing on the now finished Rover affair. Lori had complained but she had showed up anyway. Tonya could have done without Lori’s screwy super-athlete bodyguards, but they were part of the package that made up Focus Lori Rizzari and her Cambridge Zoo. Tonya also could have done without Lori’s shallowly hidden arrogance, her belief that her household was a decade ahead of Tonya’s, and her assumption that anyone who didn’t follow her path was a fool.

  “No problem,” Lori said. She had been in a foul mood to start with, but her mood brightened after she learned what Tonya wanted from her. “Quite educational, actually, as I’ve never had the chance to deal with any of the Arms.” Lori paused, and she smiled for a moment. Her eyes went vacant as the Focus metasensed Tonya’s household. The pit pat of cold raindrops on Tonya’s office window, along with the gurgling of the old hot water radiator in the corner of the office and the smell of pies baking announced the sudden onset of winter.

  “You sure you want to do this information trade?” Lori asked. “My information is disturbing.”

  “Positive,” Tonya said. “We may not agree on much at all, but we do share one thing in common: we work with Major Transforms who aren’t Focuses. Someday, I predict, you’ll end up working with Arms and I’ll end up working with these Crows and Chimeras.” Tonya smiled. “As always, none of the information we talk about today leaves this room.” Meaning Lori couldn’t share the information with the other Focuses. Tonya wasn’t even going to try to convince Lori not to talk about it to her household leaders. Lori would tell whomever she chose to in her household, and Tonya couldn’t do a single thing about that.

  “How about Dr. Zielinski?” Lori asked. “Hancock’s escape will land him in trouble on many fronts, and I invited him to join my household as one of my non-Transform adjuncts if things get too hot for him.”

  Tonya shrugged. She had a bad feeling Secret Agent Zielinski knew everything they were going to be discussing anyway. “Tell him only what you need to.” Tonya took one of the slices of the meat pie. Normally, Tonya wouldn’t serve such heavy fare to another Focus, but even though Lori was improbably petite and stood an inch less than five feet tall, the Boston Focus was an athlete and enjoyed such food. “First, I’d like to learn about your household’s work on the demographics of Transform Sickness.” Lori raised an eyebrow, surprised about both Tonya’s knowledge of the work and Tonya’s interest.

  Tonya filled Lori in about the reason, the induced transformation she had witnessed back in September.

  “We call it the Transform Apocalypse,” Lori said, after Tonya had finished her story. “If you want, I can forward a couple of technical papers on the subject to you. After considerable investigation, we concluded the number of induced transformations occurring outside of major transformation events is rising – and the curve is exponential, not linear. At some point, the number of Transforms will explode, and everyone who isn’t immune to Transform Sickness will be transformed.”

  “My God,” Tonya said. Years ago, Lori had predicted the number of induced transformations would overtake the number of regular transformations, but Tonya hadn’t realized the increase rate of induced transformations was exponential. “How soon?”

  “Unclear. Our data depends on the growth of infection-based transformations, which makes the numbers a little suspect, but sometime in the mid to late seventies, the number of induced transformations will pass the number of infection-based transformations. Three years after the induced transformations become dominant, the number of induced transformations will increase by an order of magnitude, and three years later, the curve goes straight up. Then, everyone who can transform will, or, my guess, the curve is wrong at that point. We call the point where the number of induced transformations passes the number of infectious transformations the apocalypse point, because the spread of the Transformation Sickness can no longer be stopped, even if the infectious agents are eradicated. We have no idea how long the transformation apocalypse might last. In nature, exponential growth curves eventually flatten out, but we don’t possess enough data to give us a feel for when the pure exponential growth curve will begin to flatten.”

  “That’s the end of the human race, then,” Tonya said. Transform women were infertile, or close enough it didn’t matter. She once worried the induced transformation problem would cause a holocaust endangering the lives of her grandchildren. Ten years was soon enough to catch Tonya and her children as well.

  She hoped to hell Lori was wrong.

  “Not necessarily,” Lori said. “Enough immunes exist to repopulate.”

  “It’s not just the die-off, it’s the fall of civilization that will doom us,” Tonya said.

  “I know, even though that’s not science, just hand-waving,” Lori said. “We need to find a way around all these problems. I’m positive a solution exists. That’s what keeps me going.”

  “Why?” Tonya asked.

  “I can’t give you any hard science on why I have hope,” Lori said. “But my household and I, in conjunction with a researcher in Europe, have come up with a hypothesis you need to hear about. Brace yourself, Tonya. This is wacky, even for me.”

  “Any hope at all is better than no hope,” Tonya said. Lori began, and spun out a tale of nonsense about myths and recurring episodes of Transform Sickness in the past, and why the established models of the Transformation Sickn
ess didn’t work. This was the worst bit of Lori-land nonsense Tonya had ever heard, but the fact that Lori didn’t fully accept the story made the hypothesis much more palatable.

  “Hopefully, someday, I can come up with some hard proof of the Myth Hypothesis,” Lori said, and Tonya nodded. Tonya wouldn’t be convinced until she saw the hard proof, as well. “So, if you’re good with this, we need to plan on how to convince the Council…”

  Tonya waved her hand. “No. Absolutely not.”

  “You’re going to sit still?” Lori’s face turned ashen. “We have to unite the Focuses in order to fight the apocalypse, Tonya, otherwise we’re all dead!” Tonya shook her head. “My household even uses some tools to increase household size; the number of Transforms I can support is not due to that pack of lies the stodgy old Focuses force me to tell, and we’ve learned all sorts of tricks: Buddhist meditation, vigorous athletic training, reduction in the frequency of moving juice, vacating the house and letting the Crows at it, but we’re just one household and Tonya, you’ve…”

  Far, far into Lori-land. “The time isn’t right to even contemplate going public. I wouldn’t keep my political career if I exposed even the tiniest bit of this.” Lori refused to acknowledge political reality. Neither of them would be any use to Transform civilization if they were dead!

  “Then what’s the use? Why bother to listen to me, if you don’t believe me!” Lori said, an emotional wail. She stood and glared at Tonya, her anger palpable enough to fill the air.

  Lori was too young and naïve, both as a Focus and as a person; Tonya was old enough to be Lori’s mother. “We have a decade, and I expect you to continue the work you’re doing, even if we can’t mention anything now to the outside world. I can’t predict when we’re going to get the chance to push any of this, but trust me, I’m certain the time will come. Not fast enough to please you, but too fast to please me.” This is what the Canadian letter-writer had meant. The choice? To work with the other Major Transforms or not. To work to survive the ticking demographic bomb or ignore the predicted disaster. The choice fit, finally, and Tonya understood. “I’ll handle the Arms, at least for the moment, and you work with the men. Now,” Tonya said, meeting Lori’s eyes and working her charismatic will on the other Focus, “Sit back down and compose yourself.” For a moment, Lori didn’t budge. Tonya realized she had slipped beyond Tonya’s ability to control. “It’s my turn to give the spiel, and you’re not going to like what I’m going to tell you about the Arms. About Stacy Keaton. She has Carol Hancock now, or soon will, for good or for ill.” Tonya hadn’t been able to tell, from the conversation, whether Keaton had grabbed Hancock yet. “I fear, because of this, none of us can afford to ignore the Arms.”

  To Tonya’s surprise, Lori sat of her own choice, when she could have stood and fought Tonya in another of their little contests that Lori never won and only occasionally tied. A conscious choice Tonya recognized.

  Lori had gotten advice from the Canadian as well.

  So Lori got to learn – wide eyed and half terrified – how Keaton was something else entirely, something new.