Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (21 page)

He didn’t stand a chance.

---

“Hey, whacha doin?” I asked.

“Warming up.  Jumping rope.”  No information, just banter.  “I’ve got a bout at seven.”

An Arm who understands what she is doing can easily read people.  The eyes are the best.  Every little reaction shows in the eyes, even the smallest tension.  The pupils expand and contract.  The muscles around the eyes don’t just tell stories, they write novels.  There is also information in how often a person blinks and the steadiness of his gaze.  There is even information in where they rest their gaze.  All the facial muscles are important, especially tiny expressions that flicker by almost too fast to detect.  They show a true reaction long before a person can cover up his responses.

I snapped my gum and nodded.  “Name’s Kate.”  I
had spent an hour, earlier, trying again to master ‘male voice’, but as usual I couldn’t, so I was here as a woman.  Doing this as a woman ruined my originally planned shocking reveal, but life’s a bitch and all that.

“Bobby,” he said.  He continued to jump rope, but he definitely
noticed
me.

Heartbeat and breathing are also useful for reading people, but not the best.  Muscle tension is better, as is scent.  The real story is not in the individual pieces but in how they fit together.  The pieces are a mystery, a puzzle to interpret, all slightly different for each person.  If you understand human reactions, a normal is an open book.  With a normal you have studied, you can nearly read his mind.

“Guy you’re facing at seven?  He’s got a twitch, right above his left eye, just before he throws his haymaker,” I said, a conspiratorial whisper.  Smiled the right way.  Once you can read someone’s mind you can influence him.  Virtually control him.  Add in the predator effect and you
can
control him.  My goal.

Bobby’s bouncy erection said it all.

Perfect.

Keaton’s project assignment?  I had that man’s
bank account numbers
by Keaton’s deadline.  Everything she wanted to know about him, from across the room, I told her.  Pleased, she gave me a punch on the shoulder and told me to go play.

Which is what I did, here.  Bobby was hung, smart, sensitive and looked like everybody’s All-American Homecoming King, save for the Charles Atlas muscles, a pleasing extra.  Yum.  Given what I looked like as a normal and what I looked like currently
, I never in my life had a chance with a man, or boy, like this.  Until now.

How did I find him so quickly?  Arm memory.  I had been people watching and chatting up people everywhere I hunted, ever since Keaton loosened the reins on me after my California spree.  I had a catalog of thousands to work with.  All I did was sit down, remember, and pick out the one I wanted.

Even better, Bobby Sheffield lived in my territory, in Baltimore.  His day job was at the Chevelle factory; before the factory job he worked as a severely underpaid stevedore at the Baltimore Glass Works with fake union papers.  He went to night school, was an aspiring poet, and though he had forgotten most of his High School French he was able to pronounce the language if he put his mind to it.  Oh, and he was a six foot two hunk, a former High School all-district linebacker, a semi-pro boxer and a workout fanatic.  He finished what he started and he had a forceful personality to go with his boundless ambition.  Oh, did I mention he was a hunk?

He was mine.  Only, he didn’t realize it yet.

“Man, Kate, you are something else.”  He flopped back down in a pool of his own sweat.  Hah.  Twenty-three and could keep things going for hours.  He was going to be fun.

“Oh, I think you’re the special one,” I said, running my fingers slowly down his chest.  I fed his ego when he did what I wanted.  When he pushed the wrong way, I made him feel like shit.  “Tell me, take a guess.  What’s my line?”

“Well…”  He licked his lovely lips.  “You were right about Joey’s tic.  Most girls would never pick up on such a thing.”  Bobby had KOed Joey in the 2
nd
round.  “You look like you’re an athlete.  Uh, you seem to know simply everything about life.”  Such as this free hotel room I had sweet-talked the concierge into loaning us for the night.  Bobby was quite impressed at my scam.

He would be even more impressed when I conned the hotel staff into giving me a free room service breakfast in a few hours.

I straddled him and turned serious.  “Take the guess.”

“Secret agent.  Spy.  Something along those lines.”

I nodded.  I had read him until he came up with an answer I found acceptable, then straddled him at the proper moment to prompt him to cough up the answer I wanted.

“Hmm, I think I like it from up here,” I said.  I leaned over and held down his hands.  His hands no longer moved, because of my extraordinary Arm strength.  The edge of worry crossed his mind.  “Yes.  Perfect.”  I paused to let my hints work their way into his mind.  “I prefer the term ‘covert operative’, by the way.”  Another pause.  “I think it’s time you learned a little more about my talents…and needs.”  I gave him just a little of my predatory smile.

Soon I would learn if I read him right, that fear and pain turned him on.

I
am
an Arm and I
am
on top.

If you threaten an Arm in her territory, you had better be a Major Transform or you are dead.  If you threaten an Arm when she is not in her territory, you had better be able to back it up – and you had better never need to come un
invited into her territory later.

“The Book of Arms”

For the tenth time, at least, he wondered why Carol wanted to meet him in Newark.  Why the parking lot of the Trailways bus depot?  He sat on a cracked curb, closed his eyes and tried to relax, unsoothed by the late night sound of occasional passing cars.  Practicing medicine without a license bothered him.  Still.  At least the Network gave him a set of aliases to use for prescriptions and medical supplies.  His big problem was money, or the lack thereof.  He cleared enough to cover his house payments and alimony, but nothing else, forcing him to drain the last of his offshore accounts.  He suspected he would need to put his house on the market before the end of the year unless something came through.

Someone tapped him on his left shoulder.  With a half-expected start, he opened his eyes and looked up.  Carol, dressed as a folkie, a poor disguise because it didn’t conceal her body-builder shoulders under the plaid poncho she wore.  “Come with me.”  Carol’s voice was tense and cold.

Zielinski stood, shrugged, and followed.  He entered the (likely stolen) car, noting how spotless the car was on the inside.  They drove off, Carol offering no comments and inviting none.  They stopped in a parking lot behind a boarded up factory after about ten minutes of driving.

“Get out of the car,” Carol said, a stiff order.  Zielinski complied.  Carol radiated anger, not a bit of small talk today.  Had her sanity given way?

“So, how are …”

“Shut up,” Carol said.  She paced the parking lot with repressed anger.  A cricket chirped off in the distance, the only sound in the empty lot.
“What can you tell me about Keaton?”

“What would you like to know?” he asked back.  In response, she turned on him and tried her far too familiar ‘I am Death’ pose.  She blinked twice when her trick didn’t work and studied his reactions.  In a flash, she ran over to him, grabbed him, slammed him against the car and hoisted him off his feet.  Fear and adrenaline kicked in.  His reaction being what she wanted, she backed off.  He carefully avoided calming himself.  Just like Keaton.

She read him well, which she hadn’t been able to do before.

No longer head-blind
. Things would get dangerous.

“Everything.  Her history.  Her weaknesses.  How the Network would take her out if they had to.  I want…”

He couldn’t help himself, with her demands and the stress of the situation.  His fear morphed into the realization this was another bit of Arm slapstick humor, and he laughed.

Wrong thing to do.  He realized his mistake mid-laugh, already too late.

When he awoke, he found himself tied up, hanging by his arms from some large piece of mechanical equipment.  The lights were out, and what little moonlight came in through the grimy windows got lost in the dust permeating the air, leaving nothing but darkness.  Zielinski guessed he was in the abandoned factory.  His head and neck hurt
, and his cheeks stung, likely from Arm slaps. The ropes chafed at his wrists, tied so his arms supported most of his weight.  He surmised she had throttled him around the neck so he passed out, dragged him inside the factory and tied him up.

He didn’t see Carol in the shadowed darkness.  He heard her, though.  Somewhere in the near distance, she broke something.  The noise sounded like she beat a boiler with an I-beam.  Zielinski felt his nerves sing.  This was going to be one of
those
confrontations.  He had survived several similar confrontations with Keaton, so deep into a foul temper she had to let some of it out just to be able to talk to him.  Physically, he was helpless.  If either Arm wanted to kill him in a physical confrontation, he couldn’t stop her.  He had accepted that long ago.

Carol’s Arm charisma appeared to be coming in, and she had learned to read others.  The rest, the enhanced manipulation and intimidation, would come in soon, if she didn’t already have them.  If her reactions mirrored a Focus’s, she would be all jangled because of the changes inside her, all elbows and raw skin.  She would go after him physically, and he would need to avoid panic and still be submissive.  She would go after him mentally and learn the blunt truth.  Cold sweat beaded on him when he considered the possibility Carol’s capabilities might be different from Keaton’s, or better.  Either might get him killed.  He expected Carol’s charisma skills would be better in the end, considering her background.  He repressed a smile as he felt himself come alive with the danger and excitement, almost looking forward to the deadly game about to start.

He could compete in a psychological confrontation.

A couple of minutes later, Carol approached with quiet footsteps.  She stopped close, only feet away, still invisible in the darkness.  She, with her enhanced Arm eyesight, wouldn’t be bothered by the dark.  “Time to choose sides.  Are you my friend, or are you Keaton’s?”  Her voice growled, harsh and threatening.

Keaton had given him to Carol a while ago.  Now, Carol wanted him to submit to her.  “Your friend,” he said
.  He paused to think, choosing his words carefully. “I can’t betray Keaton’s confidences with me, though.”

“Why not!  I order you to!”  She appeared out of the darkness, facing him from inches away, projecting death.

He swallowed, expecting the worst.  In his last conversation with Tonya, the Focus let it drop that she had talked Keaton into giving Carol a personal hunting territory.  He suspected Carol chose Newark for this confrontation because Newark was now her territory, and the rule he learned from watching Keaton and many dying young Arms was: never threaten an Arm in her territory.  Tonya referred to the territory idea as ‘something out of Lori-land’, revealing the idea’s origin; her acceptance of the idea spoke of her intelligence and open mindedness.  The latter didn’t surprise him.  Tonya had been the one who tamed Keaton.

Carol’s breath blew hot on his cheek, too close and too dangerous.  He had to refuse her order, but he needed to do so in an unthreatening fashion, if he expected to survive.  Simpler would be better, given Carol’s current state.  “If I was the sort of person who betrayed confidences,” he said, “as soon as you graduated you’d conclude that since I betrayed Keaton, I would betray you if pressed.  I would be a liability and you would kill me.  If that’s what you’re going to command, you might as well kill me now.  I’m not the sort of person who betrays confidences.  If anything, I’ll err in the opposite direction.”  Both Keaton and Biggioni had laid into him about
his reticence on multiple occasions.

Carol’s breath on his cheek ceased.  Pissed Arm.  He suspected friction with Keaton lay behind her anger.  Both Tonya and Lori
had told him Carol needed to get out from under Keaton’s thumb immediately.  He didn’t think he should press Carol on the subject, and told them so.  Now he would pay for his advice as well as his laughter.  He also noted a new rule for dealing with Arms: never get between two Arms working out dominance issues.

A knife flickered in his vision and touched his skin, right below the breastbone.  The knife stopped, and the ragged sound of her breathing filled his face as she fought for control.  A moment later Carol retreated, back into the pitch black.  Zielinski hadn’t noticed her do so, but somehow she had cut him free.  He slipped to the ground and rubbed his chafed wrists.

“Go!” Carol said, across the room now, her voice flat, affectless.  “Go!  Before I wise up and change my mind.”

Zielinski considered the odds and weighed Carol’s anger against her control.  She was in her predator mode, what Keaton called ‘the stalk’.  She didn’t
comprehend what went on inside her, the floods of hormones coursing through her, giving her little room to think.  If he walked away, he might arouse her predatory chase instincts.  The innate emotions and instincts of an Arm were too strong to ignore in such a state.