A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) (8 page)

Tonya clenched her fists tight enough to draw blood.  Typical Teas.  Focus Sarah Teas was no friend of Tonya’s, a political opponent who had undercut and at times physically threatened Tonya with her army of poorly trained thugs.  Tonya couldn’t think of an agreement she had ever
made with Teas that Teas didn’t later betray.  However, the CDC’s Virginia Detention Center wasn’t riddled with just Teas’ spies and operatives, but also those of Shirley Patterson, the background boss of the first Focuses and one of Tonya’s strongest backers.  Any protests over this affair would be extremely tricky.  Teas couldn’t be in charge without Patterson’s explicit backing.

Polly took a sip of sweet tea, her favorite vice.  “
Focus Teas requested the Council not to interfere.  The request was made to me, through Jill, and was not pretty.”  Meaning a threat of the use of force or the use of blackmail materials.  “I was also requested not to bring this up in Council, which I’m disregarding.  All of you need to know what’s going on, so you know it’s in your best interest to stay as far away from this situation as you can.  I believe you may be receiving calls from your friends and backers over this issue to influence you, and to ask for perilous favors; I hope you now have enough information on the subject to at least know what the stakes are.”  She paused and turned to Tonya.  “And that’s the last we’re going to speak on this subject.  Tonya, I believe you have a report on our old friend Focus Abernathy and what she’s been up to?”

Tonya fidgeted with her papers while she thought.  Suzie and Wini had to be spitting kittens over th
e Hancock matter and it was part of her and Esther’s job to represent Suzie and Wini’s interests on the Council.  She snuck a peek at Esther.  Esther was enraged but not speaking.

No, Tonya could
n’t think of anything to do about the situation.  Teas was likely already in the CDC’s facility, where Tonya should be right now if the Council’s directives had been followed.  Inserting herself blindly into this internal faction fight among the firsts would be plain stupid.  She needed more information.

“Friends, I have a sad story to tell,” Tonya started.  At least the story of the mutie mill episode
would be long enough to let everybody calm down.

Abernathy’s slave pens weren’t the problem. 
The Council’s job would be to make sure the media didn’t find out, and, more dangerously, figure out who was behind Abernathy’s scheme.  The mastermind couldn’t be Abernathy, who couldn’t find her own ass in a phone booth if she sat on a tack.  Tonya suspected one of the first Focuses, but they had all denied it, one way or another.  Including Suzie Schrum, the President of the Northeast Region, who had been just as surprised as Tonya had been when Ackermann and Rizzari had sprung the news on them back in the December regional meeting.

Tonya hoped Rizzari
had caught Suzie’s buried livid hostility, or the Northeast Region would soon be down one Focus and need a new Vice President.

Carol Hancock: March 10, 1968 – March 11, 1968

“Hancock!” McIntyre said, an attention getting bark.

I looked up from where I sat on the grimy cell floor.  No, I hadn’t gotten my new cell yet.  They were still working on the security modifications.  Enough steel and anything became Arm proof, in their eyes.  “Huh?”  I had been talking, answering questions.  Or had I?  Keaton and Hank Zielinski had sat in, or so I thought.  Hallucinations again.

“That’s the third time you’ve gone through this elaborate song and dance of yours about this alleged Officer Canon person’s attack on you in Philadelphia.”

I massaged my temples with my right hand.  The world swam around me and I took a deep breath.  “Oh, okay.  I believe you.  I’m not feeling well.”  No lie.  “All this healing I’m doing ran through most of my juice.”

McIntyre grunted.  “Your count’s 96.  You’re not supposed to go dysfunctional until it’s down to 90.”

Dammit.  Arguing numbers when dysfunctional wasn’t useful.  “I told you and the doctors I have these problems at higher numbers than I should.”  I did want to be cooperative.  “I’m sorry.”

I didn’t have to fake being broken right now.  Yes, I could attack
McIntyre and kill him before he twitched twice, a pointless victory buying me nothing but pain.  I wasn’t sure I would be able to escape out of the cell if the guards held the door open for me.

“How about I ask simple questions and you give me simple answers?”

I gave McIntyre a conspiratorial smile.  “I can live with that.”  I was breaking him, seducing him to the idea that Arms were people, too.  Not an easy process; experienced willful law enforcement officers resisted the more subtle uses of my predator effect.  However, I had been around him long enough to learn him thoroughly.  Given enough time I would get him to the point where he would free me on his own, bucking his superior officers.

“Where’s Keaton’s current home?”

A question easy to answer with truth.  Keaton was good.  “I don’t know.  She left Philadelphia when I graduated and she’s always been the one who’s contacted me, since.  Hey, I just thought of something.  Her new answering service ladies speak with a Guatemalan accent.  I wonder…”  I concocted a specious story about Keaton being out of the country, all based on excessive speculation.  I nurtured a thousand of these bits of excessive speculation and I doled them out as slowly as possible.

Night in the Detention Center was deadly quiet, even to my ears.  Sleep, though, still came rough.  Bad dreams of evil clowns warring with Madonna figures and evil princesses dressed in white.  Dreams starring Keaton, almost all from the first few months of my training, when I didn’t understand how to avoid giving offense.  Dreams of Bobby and I screwing.  Those were the good ones, but they had become corrupted: Bobby always died in them.  I worried that even if I escaped from this place, the bad juice here would have driven me mad.

I still didn’t dare pray.

About three in the morning I gave up on rest.  I had a growing problem, or set of growing problems, due to my incorrectly healed left shoulder.  Its range of motion was limited and I couldn’t exercise it as I needed.  Which meant the shoulder muscles were atrophying, following the Zielinski dictum on Arm muscles that the muscles you use grow and the ones you don’t do not.  I risked hypertrophy in many of the surrounding muscles, from compensation.  In addition, because of my left shoulder and the confined nature of my cell, I couldn’t exercise the rest of my muscles sufficiently to keep my old muscle problems at bay.  So I starved myself, to lose muscle mass all over my body.

I
needed to figure out my left shoulder.  I poked and prodded, creating a visualization of its structure.  The shoulder wasn’t dislocated; my humeral head was lodged in the glenoid socket as it should be.  Only, if I wasn’t mistaken, the glenoid socket itself had healed about 20 degrees off true.  More poking and prodding produced incredible pain and a hypothesis that both my scapula and my clavicle had healed into a warped configuration, because of the way the Feds chained me up for however many days the Feds took to transport me here.  Yet more poking and prodding convinced me I had a second structural problem in my left shoulder: my rotator cuff muscles and tendons, shot away while I lay bleeding on the pavement after my takedown, had somehow split in two lengthwise when they regenerated.

I was well and truly fucked.

I wa
ited until mid-morning and most of the way through the day’s medical tests before I brought up my problems.

“Dr. Wilson,” I asked.  “May I have a moment of your time?”  He might not know shit about Arms but his ignorance was at least honest.

He looked up at me from his paperwork and waved away an orderly to meet my gaze.  He did have years of experience dealing with (I couldn’t say ‘caring for’ with a straight face) other Transforms, including Focuses.  Like Zielinski he had some immunity to my blandishments, likely from his experience with Focuses.  Unlike Zielinski he was both still employed and still trusted by the Feds.

“Certainly, Carol.  It’s a pleasure to talk to you,” he said, lying like a rug.  Deep in his mind he still
believed my ability to talk closer to the skills of a parrot rather than a human being, despite how I peppered my commentary with medical lingo.

I explained my shoulder problem.  “Would it be possible for you to surgically fix it?”

“Technically, yes,” he said, after a pause.  “I’ve done similar regeneration-based surgeries to Focuses after car crashes and falls.  Practically, no.”

“What’s the issue?”

“Without anesthesia this operation is far too dangerous.”  For him.  “I can’t immobilize your left arm and still be able to fix your shoulder.”

I bet Zielinski
would be able to.

I
had also forgotten about the immobilization part.  I wasn’t sure I would be able to fake my cooperation to the level of allowing myself to be tied down.  Well, shackled down, with thick steel, to be more precise.

I thought for a moment and came up with an inspiration.  “How about if I told you how to ge
t around that problem?”

“I’d like to hear about
your idea,” Dr. Wilson said.  McIntyre did as well, coming over to peer over Dr. Wilson’s shoulder.

“In a few days I’m supposed to be getting juice,” I said.  I didn’t want to explain this, but anyone who read my St. Louis records
would know already, so I didn’t give away any secrets with this information nugget.  “After I get juice I’m helpless for an hour or two afterwards.”  Unless some damned Chimera raped me.  “Would it be possible for you to do the surgery while I’m indisposed?”

Dr. Wilson turned to Special Agent McIntyre.  “Is this so?”  Wilson not only didn’t know anything about Arms, he hadn’t read up on us, either.  He should.  For grins Keaton had procured the official report on me from St. Louis; she
had used it to puncture my ego, but I had found the report hilarious.  In a grim sort of way.

McIntyre smiled.  “Totally helpless, and when she comes to, she’s so horny she
would even screw you, Wilson.”

Wilson shivered and backed off; I don’t think he did sex of any variety, including self-administered hand jobs.  “Well, if you’re willing to vouch for my safety, I’ll do the surgery. 
Understand, Mrs. Hancock, this will be painful and will involve rebreaking bones and removal of muscles.  You won’t be able to use your shoulder for days afterwards.”

“Uh huh.  Just make sure they get pinned into the proper orientation and my body will do the rest.”

Or so I fervently hoped.  The number of ways this might go wrong, in a place so choked with bad juice, boggled my mind.  On the other hand, not getting my shoulder fixed would lead to my death, especially if I stayed confined in this hellhole.

No angst this time, no hesitation.  Choosing between bad options had become a specialty of mine.

Gilgamesh: March 10, 1968 – March 11, 1968

“She hasn’t left,” Gilgamesh said.  This was his first phone call to Shadow from California, from a phone booth among a rank of several outside the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco.  An AC Transit bus rumbled by as he spoke, spewing black exhaust.  A Greyhound followed immediately behind.  A lot had been going on since the last call.  He had sent his letter, exchanged phone calls with Sinclair, and sent another two letters out, pleading with Occum and Ezekiel for phone numbers so they could be in closer communication during the crisis.  He didn’t expect he would get either phone number.

“Who hasn’t left?” Shadow said, and paused.  “Good news, Gilgamesh.  I got word from Sinclair.  Hancock is in the CDC’s Virginia Research Complex, in the
ir Transform Detention Center.  I also managed to get Sky’s Toronto phone number for you.”

“Thanks.”  Gilgamesh didn’t say he already had contacted Sinclair on his own.  Sinclair had been driving near the eastern locations on Shadow’s list since Gilgamesh
last called Shadow.  Sinclair had found Tiamat three days ago.  Perhaps it was a little rude of him to test Shadow this way, but even though Gilgamesh acknowledged Shadow’s leadership as a Guru, it still would have been foolish to trust him blindly.  Treating Shadow so poorly should bother his conscience, but Gilgamesh was tired of being meek and mild, and tired of continually letting others talk him into holding back.  Officially, Crows had no leaders.  Shadow was a Guru, though, and the Gurus, the teachers of Crows, earned their titles by attracting Crows to them.  According to the common wisdom on the matter.  Gilgamesh suspected more to the story, but as a young Crow, no one would tell him.

“The ‘who’ is the Skinner.  Stacy Keaton.”

Shadow paused.  “Have you contacted her in person?”  Wary.

“No, just by letter.  So far.”  He
had looked over the Skinner quite carefully once he arrived in California.  She had gone to ground.  No organization, no contacts with anyone he could see.  Spooky.  In Philadelphia, she had a large organization of normals she ran around, mostly criminals.  Seeing a Major Transform as powerful as the Skinner go to ground put Gilgamesh on edge.

“Good,” Shadow said, relieved.  “What did you tell her, anyway?”

Gilgamesh smiled.  “I wrote the letter on stolen paper, using gloves, so she wouldn’t catch my scent.  I slid the letter under her door when she wasn’t home, so she couldn’t trace me.  I addressed it to ‘SK’.”  He read the rest of the letter to Shadow, leaving out Tiamat’s location.