A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) (6 page)

Paul’s list of the first Focuses was limited to what Hank thought of as the ‘ruling first Focuses’.  He would put Focus Cathy Elspeth in th
e list as well, due to her work on the Focus Council and in the Transform rights effort.

“This is ridiculous,” Hank said.  “Teas needs our help.  If she wants to save Hancock, that is, for whatever scheme she has going this month.”  Teas schemed, and when her scheming got hot so did her wheeling and dealing…and her backstabbing.

“Not unless we’re willing to pay, and by pay, I mean Focus Claunch.”

“
Beyond my means,” Hank said.

“That’s not true and you know it,” Paul said.  Hank understood.  He could offer himself
to Claunch, to be in her employ.

Hank shook his head. 
Signing on with Claunch would buy him two Arms with a mad on.  For him.  They thought he belonged to them.  They would rightfully take it out on him if he jumped to Claunch.

Still…  “Come to think of it, I
can offer something to Teas,” Hank said.  His new Transform training techniques were just the sort of thing Teas would jump at.  He could offer it to Claunch as well, set up a false bidding war…  “I also think I may know a way to get a message to Focus Teas she would pay attention to.”

Paul’s eyes shot up.  “You’re talking about my brother?”  Paul’s younger brother Mark was a Transform in Focus Elizabeth Holder’s household.  Focus Holder was at best a marginal Focus, ruined by debilitating Transform issues she
had suffered by being only the fourth Focus to transform in the United States.  Back then, nobody knew how to get even the basics of juice handling to work right.  Focus Holder and Focus Teas were relatively close and went all the way back to the bad old days.

Hank nodded.  “I hate to involve Mark in something like this…”  Mark had been heavily involved in the Breakout, the first Focuses’ coordinated escape from the early Transform quarantine.

“And you’re not going to,” Paul said, voice firm, eyebrows lowered.  “He’s out of the game permanently, and the last thing he would want to get involved with is a Focus fracas like this.  Face it.  We’re going to have to live with these restrictions, at least for the moment.”

“You’re right,” Hank said, and sighed.  He thought about the old days and remembered a trick he
once recommended Carol use.  “We’ll just do things a different way.”

Carol Hancock: March 8, 1968

With each
hour that passed my pain grew worse, my rashes spread and the pressure in my mind turned into a grinding headache.  The need for food was a constant craving.  The need for juice was starting to grow.  Fear was a constant companion.  My needs gnawed constantly at my control, threatening to turn my fear into a full-blown panic.  My spine had to heal!

If my spine never healed I could never hunt again.  In that case I would become theirs
, stop, end.  If my spine healed, I might be able to escape.  Until then I needed to keep my control tight, waiting for my chance.

There was definitely something odd about the spreading rashes.  I
did heal from my many wounds, albeit slowly.  The urine coming out of the catheter looked like real urine again, no longer a red-black mess.  The rashes shouldn’t be getting worse.  But they were, accompanied now by an odd crawling sensation under my skin and a constant, low grade itch.  The malicious presence of the building, eating at my mind, reminded me of how I felt the time I took a Monster for my kill.  The effects weren’t as bad now as they had been then, but still, I wondered if somehow, the building itself had become saturated with bad juice.

Dr. Wilson visited me again in the afternoon.  Shortly after
he left, McIntyre escorted in a larger group of doctors, led by a Dr. White.  This group of doctors poked and prodded me and took more blood samples.  They wanted me to participate in a long list of tests, but I ignored them.

Dr. White spoke quietly to me about cooperation.
“You’ve killed many people, Mrs. Hancock.  Can you understand what I’m saying?  You would be helping the Transform community greatly if you cooperated with us, and allowed us to perform some tests.  Perhaps you could make up for your mistakes if you cooperated with us in our research effort.  The courts would take your cooperation into account if you pled guilty to your charges and asked for leniency.  We all know you have no choice about where you get juice from.”  His voice was slow and condescending, as if he spoke to a child or an idiot.

I looked Dr. White over.  Dr. Wilson was a fool, but at least he meant well.  Dr. White didn’t.  He
would sell his grandmother for cigarette butt if he didn’t have a penny in his pocket.  I would no more trust my life to Dr. White than to a yeast infection.  I was also very tired of listening to the doctors talk over my head.

“How’s your wife, doctor?” I said.  Love that pale mark on the finger where a wedding ring used to be.  Dr. White stopped short.  “Does she have another lover yet?”

Dr. White took a deep breath and pulled back in panic, terrified because I could talk intelligently.  His face gave me all the answer I needed.  He ain’t heard nothin’ yet.

“Do you ever think about them, lying there in bed, with his cock inside of her?  She’s eager and panting for him.  She loves it.  She opens her legs for him every chance she gets.
You think about that sometimes?”

The blood drained out of th
e doctor’s face.

“Excuse me,” he said, his voice tight.  He turned, and walked stiffly and quickly out the door.

I scanned the three doctors remaining in the room.  “Who’s next?” I asked, and gazed at the one in the center, Dr. Riddelhauser.

“Let’s talk about alcohol.  Do you always drink that much at lunch?”

“What are you talking about?” he said, surprised, offended, but his comment rang false, even to the normals.

“Do your colleagues know how much you drink?  You tell them it’s just social drinking, don’t you, but you know it’s a hell of a lot more than that.  You ever hurt a patient when you’re drunk at…”

“Out.  Everybody out.  We’re done here.”  McIntyre cut me off and herded the doctors out.  I practically heard the blood pounding in his head in fury.  He turned to glare at me as he got the last doctor out the door.  I gave him a friendly smile.

He came back a few minutes later.

“God damn it, Hancock!  I expect to see some cooperation out of you.”  He spoke through a clenched jaw, and the tendons in his neck were tight with anger.

I just smiled at him, mocking.

“Maybe you don’t understand, Hancock, but you’re a prisoner here.  You don’t get anything unless we give it to you, and that includes food and medical help.  If you ever want juice, considering how hard it is to get juice, you had damned well better cooperate better than this.”

The juice weapon again
, much harder to deal with now, compared to the first time.  I wanted juice so badly that I would do almost anything.  His words went from my ears to my juice monkey, hardly touching my mind in between.  The kill lust squeezed me in its grip and my vision darkened around the edges.  My breathing started to deepen.  I
needed
juice.

With one last remnant of my mind I brought myself back under control.  I had to keep him from understanding how strong my need was for juice.  If he knew he
held a tool that strong, he would use it.  What’s more, he would string me along, withholding juice to ensure my cooperation.  I told myself I would more likely get juice if I controlled myself, but the animal craving ate at my control like a pack of starving wolves on a dead deer.

Damn the juice!  This situation was utterly stupid.  I
remained a long long way from withdrawal.  The only reason my cravings were so strong was McIntyre’s comments about juice.  Eventually, my control would break.  My will and my reason were only temporarily mine, borrowed from the juice.  Inevitably, the bill would come due.

Not yet, though
.  Naked and chained in a dungeon cell, I bluffed once more and laughed at McIntyre.

“You think you’re going to threaten
me
, little man?  You’re a fool.  Take what you’re already getting from me and be glad.”

McIntyre’s face turned a beautiful shade of red and he started swearing at me. 
He meant to be threatening and intimidating, his words meant to make me angry.

I didn’t let my tone change.  “You seem to have a problem with self-control, don’t you?  You might want to work on that.”

McIntyre left.  Just stalked out in a cold fury, with no more words to say, slamming the cell door shut behind him.  I smiled.

So far so good
.  Two shots from McIntyre’s juice weapon, and I survived them both.  I wasn’t sure I would be able to hold my shit together through a third.  I just hoped my act convinced him.

More hours passed.  I struggled to control my fear and misery.  My face broke out in pimples from the poisoned building.  I worried again about Bobby.

Early that evening I thought I felt a little tingle in my left knee.  Nothing much, and I credited the tingle to my imagination, but a few minutes later my knee tingled again.  A few minutes later, I registered some pressure from my big toe.

Heh.  My severed spine healed.  I would walk again.  T
ime to escape!

Oh, not yet.  My legs still weren’t ready
, and I had to arrange my escape, but my spine healed.  I would escape.

Three hours passed before my legs completely came back.  The sensations started as little tingles and pressures, but they gradually progressed to pain.  My legs, stationary for too long, screamed for motion.  The ferocious pain in my legs almost blinded me.

I didn’t move.  If I made even one slight move of my legs
, the camera would catch the motion, and I would have blown my one chance.  My life depended on my staying still, regardless of the pain.  I wanted to live very badly.  I managed.

I plotted and planned.  The night shift guarded me now, including the
same aide who earlier unlocked my legs.  I waited until I mastered the pain in my legs before I made my bowels move and messed myself.

Th
e aide winced at the stench as he came in for his next rounds, and took the keys from his friend Fritz before he even left the doorway.

I forced my legs to a relaxed limpness as he unlocked the first one.  I forced myself to breathe normally.  I forced myself to seem harmless and trapped.

He unlocked my second leg, and I had him.  I wrapped my legs around him and held him to me.  I kept him pinned with one leg and I braced the other foot against his chin.  One kick and I would snap his neck.  The captive aide let out a panicked shriek.  The keys went flying across the room, landing about five feet from the guards.

Damn it!  I needed those keys!  I
had planned for the aide to give them to me.  I had control of him, and he would do what needed to be done to save his life.  The keys had been safely in the lock when I grabbed him.  How in the hell did the keys get knocked out?

N
o time for recriminations now, though.  Time to improvise.

“Get me the keys, Fritz,” I said, my voice harsh and commanding
and male.

His reflex was to obey a voice with that snap of command.  Reflex almost made him do it.  Fritz took a step towards the keys before he
realized who gave him the order.  His face hardened and he pointed his gun at me.

“Let him go or you’re dead, bitch,” he
said.

One of the other guards also pointed his gun at me.  The third left the room at a run
, the Detention Center alarms blaring almost immediately.

My legs shrieked in agony
and started to fail.  They had been unused too long and they wanted to go into convulsions.  I clenched my teeth and forced them to obedience. They couldn’t betray me now.  I needed them.

I smelled the funny ozone
odor of the burn.  Dammit! I couldn’t afford to burn juice to keep my legs functional.  I needed to end this, now!

“Unlock me or Johnny here is dead,” I said
, cold and demanding.  Johnny whimpered in my grasp, twisting, but he couldn’t break free.  His thrashing cost me, though.  Something in my injured left shoulder gave way, flooding me with a tsunami of pain.

Fritz’s face was white.  For a minute, he didn’t know what to do.

Then Fritz figured it out.  I read his decision, and it landed like lead in my gut.  He wouldn’t let me escape.  He would sacrifice Johnny and anybody else I got my hands on, but he wouldn’t let me escape.  I was too dangerous.  I couldn’t be allowed free, no matter the cost.

I looked over to the other guard.  I thought maybe I could gain some
advantage there, but he looked to Fritz for guidance.  He would follow whatever Fritz did.

I couldn’t fail in this!  I had to get free!

“He’s going to die, Fritz.  It will be your fault if he dies.  Get the keys.”  I tried to get through to him, but he didn’t listen to me.

F
our more guards entered the room.  Too many.