Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (5 page)

Barely.

Hey, I’m pushy.  Live with it.

“What do you think is appropriate, Hancock?”

She stayed tense, reading my cocky nature, shallowly buried underneath my fear.  Her tense hesitation did its trick and I began to sweat fear in earnest, losing, at least for a moment, my hidden cockiness.  “Ma’am, that’s not for me to say.”

Keaton
relaxed; I had passed her test.  “Okay, then, tell me what you’re thinking.  Why do you think your idea solves anything?”

This I had rehearsed.  “Ma’am.  A graduation requirement makes me more officially a student” rather than a bundle of stupid Arm reactions that ran me through a roller coaster of statuses ranging from dangerous threat to barely tolerated slave “and, as a student, I can’t be competition for you.  I
’m hopeful I will annoy you less in this case.”

“Perhaps yes, perhaps no.  How about you?”

What will keep my own urges to be dominant in their proper place?  “Ma’am, a graduation requirement will serve to distract me from those improper urges, and will constantly remind me those urges are wrong.”

Keaton sighed, theatric.  “Overthought as usual.  On your head be it.  I’m not promising to be easier on you, understand.  I’m just giving you a goal to work for.”

She agreed!  “Thank you ma’am.  Thank you.”  I meant it, too.

I expected some thought before she came up with a graduation goal, but she surprised me, with no hesitation: “How about this, scag: you leave when you defeat me in combat when I’m not burning.”

Burning meant ‘burning juice’, an important Arm trick I had failed to learn, one I
should
learn before I graduated, and the only sane way I might be able to beat her in combat.  Her idea was intellectually plausible and appealed to my scheming mind.  My instincts quailed, though, at the thought of
beating her
.  I and my smelly fear sweat decided this was another test.  It took a full minute of Keatonic exasperation to think my way through why my instincts rebelled and what to say to her next.  “Ma’am, I do
not
want to leave here with you remembering me as competition.  Anything that has me defeating you in any way would be wrong.”  I thought Arms should be able to work together in a social fashion, something I had mentioned to Keaton once or twice.  She distrusted all my ahem overthought ahem speculations, of course, but did appreciate them as a sounding board.  Some of the time.

“Huh.”  Keaton for: ‘thank you for the obvious answer, you scag’.

Another test passed.  She thought and let me sweat.  I couldn’t read her, at least too often, but I suspected she left me waiting and sweating on purpose, already knowing what she would say and do.

Her eyes focused on me, hot, a full two minutes later.  “A choice then, decided now.  Option one is to bring me a prey Transform and give the Transform to me.  Option two is to give me a million dollars.”

Again with the options.  This time my instincts didn’t quail.  I understood her unstated point, as my choice would define our relationship from then on.  Both sounded nearly impossible, but that’s how it should be.  “Option one, ma’am,” I said, with no hesitation.  I wanted whatever relationship Keaton and I had in the future to be as Transforms, not as businesswomen.

Keaton nodded.  “The harder one.  Good.”  As in: I would rather not flush the investment I made in you down the toilet; by choosing the harder option I will get more time to teach you how to better succeed – oh, and get more time with my personal punching bag.

Giving up
my
prey would not be easy.  On our first hunt together, I discovered Keaton couldn’t give up prey.  The hard way.  I also knew she had mastered the ability to give up prey sometime in the last five months, so doing so was possible.  I didn’t know how to go about learning this Arm trick, though.  No
way
would she be teaching me how, of course, if she set this as my graduation requirement.

On the other hand, I had a gut feeling giving up prey would be easier than coming up with a million dollars.  For me.  Money and I were on speaking terms
, but we weren’t close friends.

I took a deep breath and barreled on.  My plan also involved positive reinforcement.  “Ma’am
, I also have something I would like permission to show you.  Something I learned while I was away, based on your example.”

“Oh?”  Pause.  “Dammit
skag, stand up if you’re going to show me something you’ve learned.”

I stood and waited until it was my turn to speak.  Despite the
recent beating, I was refreshed and exhilarated, high on tension and adrenaline.  Arms heal fast and recover faster.  “I’ll need a target, ma’am.  Can I make use of your toy?”

Keaton often kept toys around the warehouse
, and I heard the ragged breathing of one in residence.  Always men, to be tortured or killed.  She went through one or two a juice cycle.  Some lasted for days.  All, I think, had abused their wives or their children.  Or they just annoyed the crap out of her.

Being able to kill one of her toys, on my own, when she wasn’t around,
had earned me my California spree.

Yes, the pleasant and kind Carol Hancock was gone.  A beastly monster, an Arm, had taken her place.

I wondered how many more transformations still waited for me.

The toy, a scruffy-looking wretch, stank of alcohol, dirt and old sweat.  He knelt, attached by a chain to a support pillar in the partition-marked room Keaton used as a torture chamber.  He looked like Keaton had found him on the street somewhere.  Certainly enough street had come in with him.

“Well?”
Keaton said.  The man looked up and probably would have pissed himself if he wasn’t already half gone from dehydration and Keaton’s abuse.  He was certainly afraid of Keaton.

Me, not so much.

His lack of fear of me offended me.  I shifted position slightly and my mouth turned up in a hunter’s smile.  The blood drained from the man’s face just before he slumped over, heart no longer beating.

Oops.

Without warning, I found myself flying through the air toward the partition separating the torture chamber from her bedroom.  The partition fell to the ground in a clatter and I fell with it.  Before I bounced to my feet, Keaton leapt on me. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she snarled, holding her knife against my throat with her right hand.  I barely repressed the urge to pull out my own knives and start hacking.  The partition, spattered with blood, some of it Transform blood, turned me on and boosted my aggression.

“Ma’am.”
I took several deep breaths to quell the adrenaline and started again, slower and calmer.  “I thought I would use the predator effect to make the man afraid.  I learned the predator effect from watching you.  I’m sorry he die…” The ‘d’ died in my throat, squeezed to death by Keaton.  Her iron fingers clawed into my windpipe.  She stared into my eyes for a minute before releasing her grip.

“Come with me,” she said.  I followed her out of the torture chamber, around the partition corner and into the filthy, reeking kitchen.

Keaton turned to me as soon as we reached the kitchen’s dining table, a Formica thing that hadn’t been wiped down since I left.  I wondered what had happened to the tablecloth.  “What.  The fuck.  Did you do?”

Sweat dripped down my sides.  I learned this from her, dammit!  What the hell did she want?

“I do…” I started, and then stopped to clear my throat, trying to force my voice out through my aching voice box.  I still felt the vice grip of her fingers in my neck.  “I noticed the effect you project sometimes, ma’am, where people around you seem to be aware of how dangerous you are.  I call this trick the ‘predator effect’, but until my trip out west I couldn’t do it.”  Normally, around Keaton, I was as predatory as a mouse.  She didn’t interrupt me.  I kept talking, ignoring the stabbing pain in my throat.  “Out west I followed your orders, let my beast out, and discovered I could do the predator effect as well.  I played with it a lot.”  Even thinking about the predator effect made my loins tighten.

Keaton smiled.  Yes, she read the loin tightening.  “Tell me how you do this.”

Light dawned.  She did the predator unconsciously.

I held myself as still as stone and chose my words carefully.  “I think predatory thoughts, ma’am.  I think about what I can do to a person, how much power I have over
him, and how little he can do to stop me.  Then I let my body go, and relax.  I fall into positions people consider threatening.  I make motions reminiscent of stalking.  There are other signals, too, but I haven’t identified them yet.  Different people react differently to the effect.”

“Show me.”

Damn.  Use the predator effect on her?  “I would like to apologize in advance, ma’am.  I have no desire to offend…”

“Just.  Do.  It.”

I took a deep breath and tried to think of myself as a predator, dangerous and powerful.  Anyone who crossed my path was my toy and my prey.

My throat hurt like hell.

What a joke.

With Keaton standing in my personal space,
I was the only prey in this room.

I looked over at Keaton.  She studied me coldly.  Impatiently.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”  Her eyes went narrow.  She didn’t want an apology.  She wanted results.  “I’m having a bit of trouble convincing myself I’m a predator right this instant.  With you here, ma’am, I’m more like prey than predator.”  It worked.  The dangerous narrowness in her eyes relaxed a fraction.

“Huh.”

“I’ll try again ma’am.  This might take me a minute.”

She nodded for me to go ahead.  I remembered how I terrorized some damn fool hippie in San Francisco until he peed in his pants, shat in his britches, and dropped into a dead faint.  Well, he had gotten between my prey and me.  I presented myself in such a fashion.  Wonder of wonders, Keaton stepped back a step.

Progress.  I closed my eyes.  I took a deep breath and tried to block out Keaton.  Then I visualized one of my stronger predatory experiences.  I faced a woman.  Prey.  I was deep into the hunt.  I saw her again, kneeling at my feet, hurt and frightened, but still hoping she might survive.  My predator had been strong, overwhelming her mind, destroying her strength.  She was so vulnerable, so open.  I loved her for her weakness and tore the juice right out…

“Enough,” Keaton interrupted me.
“You’re right,” she said. “I find this offensive.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  I took those necessary deep breaths to let my predatory nature slip away.

She glared at me until satisfied I didn’t hide some last snippet of predator inside.  “Sit,” she said.  I sat down at the kitchen table.  She sat in the other chair.

“
Tell me everything you know on the subject.”

I told her.  In fact, I spent the next two hours going over every possible detail, voice raw and rasping.  She wanted to
hear about every time I noticed her use of the predator effect, every use I made of the predator, everything I figured out, and everything I speculated.  She ate raw hamburger as I talked, her favorite snack food.  Me, I got nothing.

Finally, after she had pulled every piece of information out of me, she leaned back in her chair and studied me with her normal cold cruelty.  I shifted nervously, but, thank God, her dangerous judgmental look was gone.  Sometime during my explanation, I passed her test.

“Let’s run an experiment.”

I repressed the wince.  Experiments meant pain, despite how much I learned from them.

She rolled out her most expensive TI juice analyzer out of her brick-walled office.  She took a reading from me: 117.3

“Now, despite how offensive this is, try out all your tricks on me,” she said.

I did.  I gave her every predatory pose I knew, for a fucking hour, until I nearly passed out from hunger.  Part way through, she started showing me predatory moves to emulate, things I hadn’t thought of: ‘stand aside’, ‘be nice to me’, ‘give me that!’, etc.  Then she altered her pose or mindset or something, allowing her to resist the predator effect, which really made me sweat.

An hour later, she measured my juice again: 117.1

“Ma’am!”

The predator effect was a goddamned juice effect.

“Huh,” Keaton said.  She backhanded me on my right shoulder with her fist, which meant ‘good job’.

I allowed myself a smile.  I had discovered something important, if only by accident.

“Take a few days off and hit the weights hard, bitch.  Go ahead and fuck Ed silly, but don’t kill him, dammit, just because you’ve let your true nature out.”  Ed, more of toy than a boyfriend, served as my sex partner when I wasn’t too exuberant from getting juice.  He worked as an assistant manager at the nearest supermarket to Keaton’s warehouse.  His death would be a security breach.  Keaton kept track of damn well everyone I knew and everything I did.  She was paranoid, but the world really
was
out to get her.  The world was out to get me, too, especially after my California spree.  “I’m going to go out and get me some juice.  When I come back I expect the corpse to be gone, the place to be spotless and the food to be excellent.”