Tenants and Tyrants (Book 5 of The Warden series) (23 page)

Jill followed the men as they carried Garr away. She was already plotting her plan of action. Skin grafts, antibiotics, steroids, and a hyperbaric chamber. All she knew for certain was she wasn’t going to let this boy walk away scarred for life.

38

Jill shivered in Hirem’s arms. She was trying not to, but her coat just wasn’t enough insulation from his penetrating cold. “Are you cold?” He asked.

“No,” she said teeth chattering. “I’m fine.”

“Liar,” he laughed as he pulled his arm from around her. They had only been watching television, but it was her favorite part of their evenings together. They managed to find a happy medium between work and home, which she hadn’t achieved with any other relationship. With him it seemed so easy. He was far more understanding of her work than other men had been. She found men to be surprisingly needy.

“I like it when you hold me,” she objected.

“I don’t want to give you hypothermia,” he said.“The gloves and coat are obviously not working.” He pulled off his thick gloves and rested his hands on the arm of the couch, where they weren’t touching her or him. “I’m sorry, Jill.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’ll figure out a way. It’s a side effect. I’m sure we can stunt it in some way.”

“The General won’t approve that.”

“I don’t care what the general says, I want to feel your hands on me again.”

He smiled mischievously. “I guess until I can I will have to feel you with other parts of my anatomy.” He licked his lips and she laughed and buried her head shyly against his chest.

When she looked back up, he was still smiling. He was already interested in pursuing that plan. She smiled widely and stood up to slip off her coat along with her other items of clothing. She was pleased that this handicap, was barely a bump in the road for their love life. Hirem was a determined and optimistic man. He always found a way to get his prey. “I love you,” she said hoping that phrase would encompass everything she wanted to say.

“I love you,” he said as he leaned forward to kiss and bite her stomach playfully. “I will always love you,” he added before he explored her as promised.

39

“What do you mean we can’t reverse this?” Jill yelled at General Clark. They were alone in the lab. She had asked him down to discuss the treatment options to reduce the group’s capacity to use their powers.

Garr had healed from his burn incident, but he like the others had developed an inability to touch anyone or anything with inducing the powers. Efrat’s frustration to shorting out small appliances had become a bitter awakening, when he realized that he couldn’t touch his girlfriends without shocking them. He couldn’t even sit next to them without making their hair stand on end.

Hirem for the most part had handled his inability to touch her, but making love was becoming increasingly more difficult because, the more excited he was the colder the bed got. His hands were now so cold, that touching her would burn her like liquid nitrogen. He had for some time been keeping a strict distance from her. They were trying to pretend it was okay, but it wasn’t.

Garr’s hands were so super-heated that touching anything remotely flammable would set it on fire. She wasn’t sure what pressure his relationship with Remi was under, but he was growing distant and cold from everyone. He was becoming dangerously introverted and unfortunately was still obsessed with his powers.

Remi probably should have been the least affected by her powers, but she had a surprisingly horrific skill. The extension of her powers was only visible as a directed water laser. In close quarters she could propel water in a laser thin burst that could rip flesh from bone, and with enough concentration could actually cut through flesh and bone.

Aside from constantly dripping wet hands, Jill had thought that Remi would be able to tolerate touching people, albeit wetly. It wasn’t until Jill reported her incident with her friend that Jill truly understood what Remi’s affliction would be.

Her friend was trying to console her in regards to Garr’s accident, so they hugged. Remi thought nothing of placing her hands on her friends back. And her friend thought nothing of the moisture that she no doubt assumed was from her tears.

Remi never anticipated the dangers of osmosis at the hands of a water power. Her friend began to gasp, cough, and sputter. When she drew her friend back, she saw water draining from her mouth and nose, like a faucet. Remi had managed to get an ambulance there in time to save her, but she almost drowned her friend because of a hug. That was not something you just got over.

It was that incident, that finally put the brakes on the operation. Jill put in the request for emergency surgery. She was going to remove the new hands, and replace them with the old ones. The response she got from General Clark was, “We can’t put their original hands back.”

“Garr can’t even sleep on a mattress or he’ll burn to death. Efrat fries every electrical device he holds. I can’t even measure his voltage, because it’s too high. Hirem can’t eat with his hands—for God’s sake the men can’t even use the restroom properly without risking their manhood!”

“I understand your concern, but the men new the risks.”

“No, they didn’t! They knew the risks of lobbing off their hands in exchange for new ones. They knew about nerve damage, and possible amputation. They were prepared for that. There was no discussion about the risk of the powers associated with those hands, because we had no idea if the powers would truly be transferred in that flesh, or if it was only the mind that carried the ability.

“These men took a risk. The danger has now outweighed the potential for a safe human contained weapon. Let’s be done with this. Let me remove the hands, and put back the old ones.”

“We can’t reattach the old ones.”

“I know the nerve damage will be extensive with the procedure, but at this point these people are better off as amputees than as a menace to themselves and others.”

“You don’t understand. We don’t have their hands anymore.”

“What?” Jill clenched her fists, not understanding and not wanting to. “Just get me the patients that you switched their hands with. We can switch again. If you don’t want those patients to have their powers back, then we can leave them as amputees, but let our people have their hands back at least.”

General Clark looked her over as if he couldn’t believe he had to explain this to her like she was a simpleton. “Dr. Frank do you really think that we surgically switched their hands. The hands you received were the only thing left living from those patients.”

Jill shook her head. “No, I packaged their hands for transfer back to the facility for that purpose. The helicopter …” She trailed off hoping that he was lying, or he had been misinformed.

“We all have to do our best to give the civilians what they want. Your talent was essential for this project. I couldn’t have told you we were going to kill the donor patients after the removal. We had no way to store the live tissue after it was removed. We threw away their hands, Dr. Frank.”

“You, son of a bitch,” she couldn’t comprehend the callous way he suggested that he threw away body parts like they weren’t of any value to him.

“Let’s not get personal about this Dr. Frank. I am still commanding this project. I expect to use these men as weapons, and that is not contingent on whether they can hold their dicks to piss.”

“Oh, my god, your arrogance, you presume that this project is all that is going to matter to them. They can’t touch anyone!” She shook her fists at him, engaging as much anger as she could without just outright bawling or screaming. “They will never lead a normal life. They can’t even touch their own body to wash themselves.”

Jill turned away, thinking of the handicaps that Hirem had been enduring, and the humiliation he had felt at having to ask her to do so many personal things for him. She loved him so much, and thought nothing of supporting him, but a man could only endure so much, before he started to resent her for her compassion. Eventually, he would turn her away despite the fact that he needed so much help.

Now that she knew she could never undo what she had done to him and the others she was so grieved by it. She was ashamed of her part in this debauchery of medical advancement. She felt guilty for Garr’s slowly diminishing grasp on reality, Remi’s fear of getting close to her friends and family, and Efrat’s once jovial flirtatious spirit that was turning ascorbic and indifferent. Mostly though she felt guilty that the man she loved more than anything was pulling away from her, because he loved her too much to stay with her.

Jill whipped around with her hand ready to slap General Clark, but he was ready for it. The pinching hold that he put on her wrist was painful, but it didn’t matter. She was already crying. “You bastard, how could you do this? How could you watch them go through this?”

“I don’t let myself get personally involved Dr. Frank. You should have maintained your objectivity with this case.” He threw her hand down. “These men will perform the duties they were hired for or they will be considered deserters, and will be dealt with accordingly.” He turned and walked out. The discussion was over. The hope was gone.

40

Jill sat at the candle lit table with soup that she had pureed and placed a straw in for Hirem. She had learned to make food that he could eat without hands, or with little assistance. Feeding ones lover was fine for the first few bites, but it lost romanticism when your lover was actually incapable of doing it themselves.

Hirem walked in and looked over the dinner. He might have found it romantic at first, but the gun sitting in her lap and the vacant stare she gave it probably ruined that. “Jill, what are you doing with that?”

She looked up at him. It was obvious that she had been crying, her face never hid it well, but the tears had since dried and her logical side had taken over. “I was thinking that we could be like Romeo and Juliet. We could die just on the cusp of our love. I thought it sounded romantic, but the gun seems so emotionless. I thought about poison, but they are rarely as quick as they say.”

She looked back down at the gun. “And then I thought, maybe I was wrong, maybe we could do this. I thought maybe you might want to live with this. Maybe this life is possible. Maybe you won’t resent me for staying with you beyond reasonable constraints on our relationship. In the end, I just realized that I couldn’t sit across from you at a beautiful dinner, and then shoot you in the face like a coward.” Her tears started again. “I want a better life for us, and I’m so selfish that I want to kill us both to get it, but I’m too much of a coward to actually do it.”

“I wish you had done it,” he said.

She looked up at him. He was serious.

“I don’t know how romantic a gun is, but I definitely don’t want this life for us either. I don’t want you dead, but if you won’t leave me, then we should do something to end this madness. This is no life for a human. I am not handicapped or feeble. I am of sound mind, and I am dangerous to myself and you.” He moved to her and pulled the gun away. It frosted as he moved it to the table. He knelt before her not touching her, not holding her. “I have found everything I ever wanted in you, Jillian. I need nothing more from this life. If I can’t hold you, and make love to you, then let us be rid of these bodies. If nothing else, our souls can hold each other.”

Jill remembered a time in her past when those words might have sounded tawdry, but from him they were beautiful. All the more potent to her, because she knew he meant it. He had just given her permission to kill him, and invited her to join him in that death. Gun or poison, it made no difference. The idea of releasing this misery was a relief.

Jill leaned forward and kissed him. She leaned him back against the floor and made love to him. He cupped his hands together over his head, not daring to touch her or the floor. In addition to touching him, she touched herself. She caressed her own body in the way that she knew he so desperately wanted to. He watched and smiled at her. He loved her, and loved that she met his shortcomings with as much inventiveness as he had.

She laid on his chest after and he lowered his biceps to hug her as much as he could without letting his hands touch her skin. They exchanged, “I love you,” and she promised to kill him tomorrow.

41

Tomorrow never came. Or at least Hirem didn’t return to her that next night. She searched for him and the others, but General Clark informed her that they would not be returning to her facility.

She demanded to know where he had taken them. She fought for weeks on the phone with high-ranking officials to get their location released to her. No one would tell her or no one knew.

It was years before she got a lead.

It was several more years before she found a way to get to them.

It was strange. Despite her talent for it, she had never really liked singing.