A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) (10 page)

She didn’t feel like a lightweight to me, but then again
she was only the second Focus I had met in person.  My immediate impression of her was curvy, beautiful in a WWII pinup fashion: 5’4”, ample bosom and hips, narrow waist, elaborately curled shoulder length light brown hair with faint red highlights, fair skin, faint freckles, and warm gentle brown eyes.  I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her.

“Arm Hancock,” she said, taking a seat in one of the visitor chairs.  She smiled at me and I got the warm fuzzies.  Her bodyguards backed off, two remaining behind to guard the door on the inside, one a tagged Transform and the other a normal.  “I’m Sarah Teas.  I’d like to talk to you, if
I may.”  She spoke with a natural deep South accent, homey and comforting.  I wanted to cooperate with her and help her in any way possible.

Focus charisma
, of course.  Different than Lori’s, though; Lori’s charisma was either a sledgehammer a corpse would notice or so super-subtle I didn’t notice until I reviewed the scene in my memories or someone told me.

“Visiting hours ended six hours ago,” I said.  My internal clock
read just past midnight.  “I’m not sleepy, though and I would welcome a conversation.”  I walked over to the interview table and sat.

Reading Focus Teas was just as difficult as reading Lori.  The only thing I got from her, immediately, was that she wasn’t afraid of me, just anxious about the situation, an anxiety
reminding me of what I felt in the middle of a major robbery.

“I can’t imagine how you could sleep at all in this place,” she said, ending her statement with a little laugh. 
Her pretty smile nicely complemented her mid-range green evening gown.  “It’s grown worse over the years.”

Ah.  This was one of the first Focuses and this is where she
spent her quarantine years.  Zielinski had spoken about several of the first Focuses by name but didn’t mention this one.  She might be important, but wasn’t one of the top boss Focuses.

“What can I do for you, Focus?” I asked.  I watched and metasensed her reactions closely.

“I’m here to evaluate you and see if we can do business,” she said.  I started to pick up a few tiny tells from her.  For instance, she was comfortable with wielding power, and harshly at that.  I didn’t read anything like from Dr. Manigault, though.  As with Keaton, events had forced her into the darkness.

Teas wasn’t as good as Lori at covering her reactions.  I realized I
would be able to read this Focus easily, given enough time.

“My employment opportunities appear to be situationally limited at the present time,” I said.  My Arm instincts told me to bluster and threaten, cause a scene, raise some hell.  I needed juice and anything other than getting juice was a distraction.  I suppressed those urges as best
as possible, but in my current situation I didn’t have enough control to go all Southern formal soiree.  Instead, Teas got my wit.

“That’s negotiable, of course,” Teas said, suppressing surprise.  She hadn’t expected wit.

Her ‘of course?’ surprised
me
.  I left the comment lying there as a mystery and shrugged.

She studied me closely, with a vacant look in her eyes.  For a moment I thought she might be experiencing w
hat Focus Rizzari and I had shared, the still-disturbing feeling of love, but no.  She studied me with her metasense and eyes.  Reading me.

I didn’t bother doing the same; I
had as much off of my metasense from her as I would ever likely get.  The conversational pause did give me a moment to put some disparate facts together.  I already knew a Focus’s metasense had a shorter range than mine and could sense the difference between fundamental and supplemental juice.  What Teas showed me by her actions, and what the far more canny Lori hadn’t, was that Focuses saw the internal details of a Transform’s metapresence.  This sort of trick gave Focuses a huge lever on everyone within their range, as even with my, um, unfocused metasense I could tell moods and health.

I almost lost
my temper and did the rabid dog Arm routine.  Nobody gets a free lever on me!  Nobody!  I caught myself half way out of my seat, deciding that criticizing a Focus for using her metasense wouldn’t win me any points.  Instead, I directed my proper Arm anger into a demonstration, a show.  I continued on to the Monster-proof net, at my full non-burning speed, complete with enough predator to register.

I
got the reaction I wanted, a massive twitch from Teas that nearly knocked over her chair.  Her bodyguards reacted as well, but excessively late.  I had already started my demonstration by the time they pointed their weapons at me.

My demonstration?  I
knelt, took off my shirt, and showed Teas my badly healed left shoulder. “So how bad is it, Focus Teas?  Can you sense it?” I asked.  “I’ve talked one of the local doctors into surgically repairing the damned thing, but I’m afraid that with the bad juice in this place I’m going to end up worse, not better.”  I didn’t care which way she answered; what I cared about were her involuntary reactions.  Stimulus.  Response.  Prodding at people is often the only way to learn how to control them.

“That was uncalled for,” Teas said, continuing to her feet.  “Threat displays will adversely affect my evaluation.”

“Ma’am, I apologize if you took my actions as a threat,” I said, implying the lie, that my demonstration was, indeed, meant to be a threat.

Her involuntary responses, which she didn’t have the self-control to co
nceal, told me everything I needed to know.  She considered herself in charge of the situation, including my captivity here in this Detention Center.  She hadn’t known about my capture ahead of time, meaning I now had a second piece of data implying she wasn’t Officer Canon (the first the lack of an evil feel to her).  She expected to own me when my incarceration ended.  She didn’t think she would be able to get me out of here tonight, but would be able to, later, when the proper authorities were properly manipulated into, well, something.  Oh, and most importantly, she was in charge of procuring my juice.

Lastly, she believed she had already rolled me with her Focus charisma.  I had no reason to doubt her belief.

Definitely not a Rizzari quality Focus.  However, she was a significant step up from
my dumb-as-horse-shit Chicago Focuses.  The fact she held me in her charismatic clutches and my predatory poke got to her meant we had an interesting stand-off going on here.

One I could play to with a little play-acting I was sure she wouldn’t notice if I
avoided any big overt whopper lies.

“I’m scared,” I said.  “The longer I’m stuck in here, the more I worry about my physical and mental health.”

Teas stepped closer to the Monster-proof net and eyed my shoulder.  “Dr. Wilson won’t have any problem with surgery like that.  If you want, I can get your Network contact Dr. Zielinski to consult with him beforehand.”

She referred to Zielinski as a Doctor, meaning she respected him and
she wasn’t bothered by the fact he had lost his medical license.  She hadn’t been one of the Focuses behind the threats on his life.  She knew he was in the area, but had made sure he wouldn’t get clearance to see me.  Also, Dr. Wilson was one of hers, someone she controlled.

Hell.  Talk about loose lips sinking ships.  Teas was either so arrogant that she didn’t care what she reveal
ed, or she wasn’t half way as brilliant as she needed to be for the scam she was trying to run.  I bet on the latter.

I could do business with this Focus, and make a handsome profit while doing so.

“I would appreciate that,” I said.  I gave her a little more predator, just to remind her who I was.

She backed away, the response I wanted.  “We’ll talk again tomorrow night,” Teas said, trying and failing to cover the fact I
had flustered her.  “Remember that I’m evaluating you and that your life depends upon my evaluation.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.  I watched her closely as she left the viewing area.

---

My nightmares continued that night, dominated by the white-clad princess.  Tonight, she appeared as Keaton, torturing me.  I don’t think she liked me.  When I
woke, I got to thinking: rather than an aspect of Satan, was the white-clad princess a real person interfering with my dreams, the same way the evil clown in my pinball game dreams had been Officer Canon?  If so, was she Focus Teas?

My gut said ‘no’.  If I analyzed the situation logically, given that Teas wasn’t one of the top Focuses Zielinski told me about, the white-clad princess had to be Teas’ master.  That made me very wary
of Teas and what might happen to me if I got sprung from this place under Teas’ control.

I also had another, more disturbing, thought: what if Teas
was a wish-fulfillment hallucination of mine?

That morning I didn’t get interrogators.  Instead, I got what seemed like fifty doctors and researchers taking samples, X-Rays, and asking nosy questions.  I couldn’t keep track of them all, and after a while, they all started to look and smell the same.  Low juice.  I even lost control when one of them didn’t tell me he was going to take a skin sample before he did and I snarled at him, full predator.

After
my little excess, the white-coats had me shackled down.  Dr. Wilson wasn’t in charge of this gaggle; he only appeared once or twice to consult.  The person in charge was Dr. White, he with the marital problems.  He didn’t like me much, fancy that.  I casually asked about Dr. Vance, Dr. White’s colleague; I assumed Dr. White had figured out Dr. Vance was the cuckold and had chased him off the team.  Dr. Riddelhauser, sober today, administered various written tests and loudly crowed over their results, which showed I was of sub-human intelligence.  With my juice so low and with my lack of interest in the tests, I wasn’t at all surprised.

In the afternoon I got an official visit from Focus Teas.  She came into the viewing area with eight bodyguards, all far more heavily armed than last night, and one mousy Transform woman with a steno pad.  Even with low juice I figured out what the Teas visit meant: last night she or her people had found a way to turn off the security cameras.

Teas showed
no warmth in this visit, didn’t mention recruiting me, didn’t mention juice, or mention surgery on my shoulder.  Not even an introduction.  Instead, I got an elaborate show.

“Arm Hancock, I have some questions for you,” Teas said.

This time the guards followed normal procedures and shackled me to the interrogation table.  I could barely focus my attention enough to follow Teas’ questions.  I don’t think my attention mattered, despite Teas’ big show, her flourishing of paperwork, the tape recorder and the meticulous note-taking by her people.

“Okay,” I said.

“Describe your activities of February 2
nd
, 1968, please.  In full.”

I concentrated for far too long just
to wrap my mind around the question.  Low juice.  My memories weren’t completely shot, but I knew I would be able to recall now what I did then a lot better than I would be able to recall later what I did today.

Got that?  I certainly wouldn’t have during Teas’ interview.

Hmm.  February 2
nd
was the day after a bank robbery in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  I had spent the day doing paperwork…oh, and I got the letter from Gilgamesh detailing his Crows-eye-view of the goings on in Philadelphia at the end of my training.  I had done a lot of meditating and thinking that day, worried about how sucky the Arms’ political situation was and how smart I was to try and make friends with Gilgamesh.

“I woke up in the morning in my home in Chicago and worked out.  I went to my Chicago office, did paperwork regarding my business activities, went home, worked out again, ate dinner, went to a
gym and worked out again, including some sparring with a couple different boxers.  After the gym closed I did a full Arm-style workout, the type nobody else is supposed to see.”

“Did you hunt down any Transforms on February 2
nd
?”

“No.”

“Did you have any other interactions with any Transforms on February 2
nd
?”

“No.”  A lie, sort of.  I wasn’t sure reading a letter from a Crow counted, and I wasn’t giving up Gilgamesh.

“Have you ever hunted Detroit?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I never felt like it,” I said.  Another lie
, told to cover Keaton, who claimed Detroit as her territory.  I was willing to talk about Keaton’s Philadelphia activities and hunting, but information about Detroit was current.  No way would I give up Keaton.

The questions went on and on, strange questions.  From the questions and the involuntary reactions of Teas and her people, I learned that someone had been killing tagged Transforms.  Twenty
-six if my count was correct; twenty-seven if you added in the one I did kill, Kensington, which Teas did ask me about.

The funny thing is, Teas didn’t think I
had killed anyone besides Kensington.  These questions weren’t hers, but someone else’s.  She just followed the party line.  Which I found both distressing and interesting.