Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (36 page)

Tonya looked over to where they had ‘Focus’ laid out on a stretcher.  Only some damned doctor (Zielinski of course, who else?  How could he have won over that one’s trust so fast!) had found a way to stop her whimpering and screaming, get her to half sit up and take some food and liquid.  ‘Focus’ was as frostbit and starved as Crow.

At the other end of the parking garage, a car door slammed and a fracas began.  Whoever sat in the car bent down, and the car started.  He had hotwired it.

“That’s Arm,” Crow said.  “Definitely not a he.”

“You’re kidding,” Tonya said.  Crow read her as easily as Shirley or Polly did.  She found his trick disconcerting.

The car and its driver spun around a barricade, scattering Canadian security and the bodyguards of a Focus household, then exited the parking garage.  Tonya hadn’t met a survivor of Armenigar’s Syndrome before, certainly not one who went by the name of ‘Arm’.  She did
not know any who had survived, as this was the past: Keaton hadn’t yet transformed and Eissler’s survival hadn’t yet made the rounds.

“I’m surprised she held out this long,” Crow said.  “Her temper was completely fucked, just like Beast’s.”  She never learned who or what ‘Beast’ was.  “Keep talking in English, mademoiselle Focus.  I seem to have temporarily mislaid it.”

“The Canadian authorities want to deport the lot of you to the United States, but I need to tell you the UFA Council’s forbidden it.  You’re too dangerous.  You’ve done impossible things they would rather not think about.”

“Ah, yes, the famous uncooperative Major Transforms of the United States.  You need not worry.  I’ll find a way to sweet talk the Provincials into giving me shelter, even if the national government is going to turn up its nose at me again,” Crow said, and blew his nose.  Tonya didn’t think she had ever seen a Major Transform sick with a cold before.  If she only knew the full story of what they had done to themselves!  “Baah!  Your stupid Focus – Crow tiff is going to be the death of both of your groups if you
don’t take care, mademoiselle Focus.  There’s far more things Transform that go bump in the night than you’ve ever imagined in your worst nightmares.”

Tonya shrugged at the truth that rang through Crow.  “I inherited it, I didn’t…”

The phone rang.

“Hey, Tonya,” Lori said.  Tonya fumbled the telephone for a moment and took a deep breath.  Five in the friggin morning, interrupting a dream likely sent to her by ‘Focus’ herself.  “Got the word in from the you-know-who.”

The Crow who took the Chimera as a pet, Lori meant.  So, Tonya asked herself, after she quieted her anger over the Dream interruption, did Lori think her phone was bugged, or did she think my phone was bugged?  How did she figure out she needed to ring my private bedroom phone, anyway?

“Good,” Tonya said.  She sat up in bed, losing the meaning of her Dream.  “What did your friend say?”

“My friend said the problem wasn’t one of his,” Lori said.  “My friend also said the lizard shape you described isn’t among those known of his kind.”

“This means there’s more of them wandering around.”

“Yes.  I have more news.”

“Go on.”

“My friend asked some of his compatriots who live in Philadelphia if they had picked up on anything of this nature, and they said they
had
.  They’re worried.”

“Your friend’s kind would be.  They’re paranoid about everything.”

“Tell me about it,” Lori said.  “My friend won’t even talk to me in person or over the telephone because of that paranoia.  I have to go through one of my women Transforms.”  She paused and rustled through papers.  “My friend also said the Pepacton dog who introduced the two of us to this little problem figured out how to, ahem, befriend and not kill a sturdy Monster before my friend made the dog’s acquaintance.  Thus, it’s entirely possible that your lizard acquaintance is working alone and has figured out a bunch of these tricks by himself.”  Translated: the damned Chimera knew how to tame Monsters without any Crow help.  Crazy, but no worse than any of Tonya’s ideas.

“Any idea why they’re crawling around Philadelphia?”

“When my go-between asked my friend your question, my friend clammed up and got evasive,” Lori said.  “I suspect our paranoid friends know quite well what’s going on and aren’t going to tell us Focuses why.”

“Somehow, we need to find some way to cooperate with…”

“…which won’t happen until your Council recognizes their existence.”

Tonya stewed for a moment and took a deep breath.  “If any openings come up, I’ll toss it on the table for discussion, but don’t hold your breath.”

“Just
do it
, Tonya.”

“I’m not interested in professional suicide, Lori.”  They could go on for hours on the subject, the source of most of their political disagreements.

“Speaking of that,” Lori said.  “Have you considered siccing the Arms on this new Philadelphia problem of yours?”

“Yes, I did, and they failed.”  Their failure was another high annoyance stuck in Tonya’s craw.  “Keaton hasn’t been returning my calls ever since.  I think she’s embarrassed.  Oh, and according to Zielinski, she suffered one of her psycho episodes and carved up Hancock a bit, which I’ll bet she’s also embarrassed about.”

“It was more than ‘a bit’,” Lori said.  “The good doctor sewed Hancock back together in my Boston College lab and the place simply reeked of juice, blood and feces for days until I got a crew of my paranoid friends to clean the place out.”  Her voice dropped an octave.  “I got a tissue sample of the Pepacton dog out of the deal.  Most definitely a peer of ours, yes in-deedie.”

Tonya winced as Lori edged over into Lori-land.  “Feces?  Damn Keaton!  No wonder she’s clammed up.”  Tonya often wanted to wring the Arm’s neck because of her excesses.  “Any word on Hancock’s progress on her graduation test?”

“Not a peep.”

“Thanks a bunch,” Tonya said, tried to make small talk, failed, and hung up.

When Keaton was out I went through my options again.  I stalked the warehouse back and forth, angry because of lack of progress on Keaton’s graduation test and because I had just wasted yet another hour failing to figure out how to burn juice.

I followed Zielinski’s suggestion and read up on the differences between psychological and physical addiction.  Useful, but not a road map.  I understood his point: my juice monkey was both psychological and physical, and I needed a psychological trick to counter the psychological aspects of my juice addiction.  But
, what trick?

Back in the gym
stood the squat rack, massive, threatening, and silent.  I walked over, put my arms up to the upper corners, where I had hung for so long, and let the horror of my memories wash over me.  I relived the cuts of Keaton’s knife as it went into me, and again experienced the tight belt around my neck.  I faced the gleam of sadistic cruelty in Keaton’s soulless eyes and froze in place.

Ever since Keaton hung me on the rack I had been working on my graduation test.  She cut me down every time I failed to make progress, beating down my ego and mind.  Well, good for her.  She helped in an ass-backwards way by providing me
incentive
on a regular basis.

Much better incentive than regular psychotic episodes,
for damned certain.

I touched the bar.  I remembered the blood and the smell.  The pain and the horrible slow draining of the juice.  The need and the overwhelming terror.

Keaton taught me only superficial lessons these days – tricks and talents – but everything she taught me built up my internal strength.  My will and strength as an Arm.  Soon I would be so willful and so much an Arm that the ‘student’ status and the Catholic schoolgirl uniforms would lose their worth.  Then I would be back to mightily irritating her.  Soon after, I would probably die.

I owed it to Keaton to pass her final test.

I left the squat rack and walked through the corridor towards the kitchen.  When I got to the clothing room, I turned in.  There, off to the right, lying on top of the dresser, were eight old, blood soaked belts, all too stiff to be useful.  Keaton’s belts, the ones she used to beat me.  She never threw them out.  She saved each one of them, treasured mementos of my pain.

I took the topmost one, the last one she used on me.  I bent the belt and flexed it in my hands to work the stiffness out.  I had little success.  The blood had soaked too far into the leather.

I snapped the leather across my arm.  I noticed the pain on some distant part of my mind.  I deserved the pain.  Pain was good.

The belt didn’t work. 
Not enough pain and the belt was too stiff to beat myself with effectively.  I left the belts and went back into the hall.

From the hall I paced into Keaton’s workshop, her chamber of horrors.  Knives lay scattered around the room.  Tiny instruments covered the leftmost worktable.  Little bits of blood still clung to some of them.  To think that once I thought those instruments were for working with machines.

Over to the right, a soldering iron lay on a table.  A spool of lead lay near it.  I went over to it and picked up the iron.  A distant part of me gibbered in horror.

I plugged the iron into an extension cord and squeezed the trigger to make the iron hot.  While I waited, I traced the extension cord
with my eyes, back to the wall and one of the few electrical outlets that the warehouse supported.  The soldering iron tip turned from dead gray to red-hot.  I took the spool of lead and touched the tip.  A bead of melted metal slowly formed, and dropped to the wooden table.  The bead burned into the table.

Once my flesh
had burned like this.

I touched my fingertip to the tip of the soldering iron.  It burned and I snatched my hand away again.

I laid the iron back on the table.

Her other instruments of torture lay all over the room.  Her nightstick hung from a hook in the wall.  The dental instruments marched in order neatly on a shelf.  Surgical clamps lay next to them.  The small knives were stored on the next shelf down.  Next to them were the nameless things Keaton used to prop my eyes and mouth open when she wanted to work on them.  Shackles lay scattered in a bin, a container of small wires above them.  Drugs and chemicals lined the shelves in the back of the room, but those, thank God, weren’t meant for me.  Weapons lay all over the room, as well as lock picks and other tools that really were tools rather than torture instruments.

I went over to the tiny little flensing knives responsible for so much of my pain.  Seven knives sat on the shelf.  They all looked the same.  I wondered which one Keaton used last on me.

I picked one up.  The blade was only about three inches long and razor sharp.  I didn’t see any signs of use.

I shivered when I held the blade in my hand.  I remembered pain as she drove it into the base of my fingernails.  I re-experienced the gut-twisting horror as she sliced those long strips of flesh and then slowly pulled them off me.

I drew the blade across the back of my hand.  The blood welled up briefly before the cut closed again and the bleeding stopped.  Not even a ‘one’ on the pain scale.  I cut my hand again.

No pain.  The cutting didn’t hurt.  What she did after…hurt.

I laid the knife against the base of a fingernail, not yet fully healed from her last punishments.  The nails came only halfway to the ends of my fingers, soft and delicate.

I quailed as I pushed on the knife.  This hurt.  Dammit!  I pushed until the blood seeped out from under my nail.

There was strength in overcoming pain.

Enough to overcome a psychological addiction?  Perhaps.

I kept the flensing knife.  I needed something to remind me.

“I need one of your bank account numbers, Hank,” Carol said.

Zielinski blinked and shook his head.  He slipped his glasses on and looked at his alarm clock.  1:56 in the morning.  He sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes and managed not to drop the phone.

“Bank account numbers?” he said.

“Yes, dammit, a bank account number!  Pay attention!  This is important, and I don’t want to spend my time listening to you repeat back to me what I’ve already said!”

Damned Arms.  “May I ask what this is about, ma’am?”

“What it’s about is your trip to West Germany,” Carol said.

“What…” trip to West Germany, he almost echoed.  “I don’t have any trips scheduled to West Germany.”  Hell.  Lori’s Dream-based insight, now slapped in his face, Arm style.

The Arm didn’t reply.  “I’m…”

“You’re talking to two Arms here who need everything they can get about Eissler,” Carol said.  Keaton.  She wouldn’t even need to be on another phone to listen in, just be present in the same room.

“In addition, this will
take you out of the country and keep you from becoming Chimera food or any other ‘too helpful’ mistakes in any other areas.”  Such as helping her with her graduation test.  Ahh.  “I’m wiring you some money because you’re otherwise broke.”

He closed his eyes, worked through his med school-honed memory tricks, and rattled off an
eleven-digit number.  “That’s it,” he said, and gave the name of the bank.