Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (19 page)

Tonya smiled and bit her lip to keep from laughing.  Then she realized what Keaton’s comment meant: Hancock was being hit with
regular
abuse from Keaton’s psychotic episodes, and she had just survived one of Keaton’s
bad
ones.  The smile vanished from Tonya’s face and her stomach began to churn.  She had witnessed the aftermath of one of Keaton’s bad psychotic episodes, and she was surprised Hancock had survived even one.  However, not too surprised.  As a Major Transform, Hancock should be able to live through an incredible amount of abuse. 
What had it done to her mind, though?
  Thinking about it brought tears to the edges of Tonya’s eyes. “Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that Arms have enough Focus in them to throw off even the most reasonable charismatic suggestions in a few hours.”

“Hah hah hah.  But she’s a young Arm.  Doesn’t experience make any difference for Focuses?”

“Not as much as you might suspect, if you factor in individual personalities.  Give me an Arm who has the same lack of spine as our less endowed Focuses and I might be able to do something.”

“If Hancock had less spine she probably wouldn’t be a fucking Arm,” Keaton said.  “Tell you what.  You think on this, and if you can come up with something that works before I off Hancock, I’ll do one of your damned muscle jobs for free.”

Incentive.  This wasn’t play acting.  Keaton was desperate.  “I’ll do my best,” Tonya said.  She already had the germ of an idea involving a painful talk with Focus Rizzari, about something she said once.  “Don’t be a…” Click.  Dial tone.

Tonya shivered.  As usual, cold sweat covered her body, a typical consequence of a fractious conversation with Keaton.  Damned Arm!  Why wasn’t anything
simple
with her?

Keaton had a point, though.  If Tonya couldn’t come up with anything useful, Hancock would end up as dead as Fouke.

“So, here I am, Hank.  Finally.  A beast.  A goddamned beast,” Carol said, in his face and definitely crowding him.  Carol had called him for some immediate medical help, but she had refused to explain what sort of help she needed.  They agreed to meet in Dr. Hesrith’s office in Philadelphia.  Zielinski received the phone call in Focus Mancini’s place in Washington, as part of his rounds as a roving Network doctor.  The call had been a transfer from Focus Ackermann’s household in Boston.  Ever the consummate local Focus politico, Ackermann was the only Focus he knew of with a switchboard in her house.  He wondered what either Focus Ackermann or Focus Mancini would say if they realized the phone call had been from an Arm.  Both were rather old-fashioned Focuses.  Zielinski hadn’t expected any trouble cowing Hesrith into lending Hank his office and fleeing the premises, which turned out to be the case.

Dr. David Hesrith and his phony diplomas were located in the basement of an innocuous medical building on the west side of Philadelphia.  The carpet smelled of mold and flood damage, the painted cinder block walls could use another coat of paint, and the certificates of Hesrith’s ridiculous faux specialty of ‘Post-neo-natal immunology’ he had posted in the hallway outside needed an update.  It might work to scare off the non-Transform patients but it wouldn’t scare off the state inspectors.

Hank slowly backed up and gave the Arm room.  She rolled her eyes and limped off, checking in corners and behind doors.  Twitchy.  Barely able to walk.

“I see the place has improved,” Carol said after she finally entered Hesrith’s examination room.  She paused for effect.  “Hesrith isn’t here.”

Zielinski chuckled.  “Let’s see what’s happened to you,” he said.

“I’ve got a list.”

Carol stripped and he winced.  Welts ran up and down her body, the worst at the bra line and belt line.  The inside of her thighs didn’t look good, either.  She pointed to her well-bruised feet, a fresh scar along her neck, burn marks on both arms, other dim scarring on the arms, and to her right hip, which looked fine.  He frowned, wondering how this happened.  “Any abnormal growths?  Muscle pains?”

“No to both.  Look, Hank, this is driving me nuts,” she said, and scratched at the welts under her bra line.  “How do I fix this?”

“I need to learn more before I can say, Carol, because I don’t understand yet what’s happened to you,” he said.  “Why don’t you tell me the story while I run some tests?”

Carol shook her head, grabbed his shirt with her hand, and snarled into his face.  They held the pose for a moment, sweat rolling down his face and back.  Then the Arm licked her lips, tasting his ample fear, and let go of him.  “Fine,” she said, through gritted teeth.  “I took juice from a Monster.  Keaton punished me for being stupid.  End of story.”

Oh, no wonder she was in a bad mood, Zielinski thought.  “How did…”

“I’d rather not talk about what happened.”

He indicated the examining table and she lifted herself onto it, where he continued to examine the very cranky Arm, without comment, waiting her out.

“Okay, okay, you can’t help me unless you know what’s going on, you don’t need to rub it in.”  She paused but he didn’t respond, knowing better.  She met his gaze and told him the story, starting with the abduction of a new Arm, Mary Fouke and ending with Keaton working over Carol in a bad way after Fouke’s death.

Zielinski covered his reactions as best he could as he worked: anger at Keaton’s stupidity for thinking she could handle a newly transformed Arm, happiness at Carol’s humanitarian instincts when she saved the baby, horror at the implied danger of Carol’s blackout, back to anger over Keaton’s inept test which resulted in Fouke’s death, anger over Keaton’s psychotic rage at the end, directed at Carol…and the urge to laugh at the dark slapstick humor of the entire episode.

He couldn’t even figure out what to say about Keaton’s new Catholic school girl uniform fetish, which sounded like an intro to a sexual dominance game.  Some things he was better off not knowing.

“An older Monster wouldn’t fall apart so quickly after you killed her,” he said, after Carol finished.  “I’m not sure what would happen to an older Monster if you took juice from her.  Or to you.”

The Arm began to alternately pick at her fingernails with her knife and use the knife to scratch her back.  “Well, I’m not going to do any experimenting for you, Hank,” Carol said.  She
gripped his shirt again and pulled him close, her voice a low growl.  “It’s the Monster’s juice that’s causing my worst problems, dammit.  Second worst is the bullet lodged in my ass. 
Find some way to get them out of me!
”

“I’ll do my best,” Zielinski said, after writing down some notes.  “Can you tell me more about what you’re currently feeling from the Monster juice?”  Almost without thinking, he settled into the angry Arm routine: don’t react, be polite and be businesslike.

Carol sighed and let go of his shirt again.  “Muscle twitches, hallucinations, the feeling of taking a bath in itch powder, and an upset stomach.  The hallucinations appear to be going away on their own.” She scratched some more.  “Tell me, Hank, how did the other Arms cope with this?  I’m sure you ran the juice-from-a-Monster experiment at least once in your work to get safe juice for Arms.”

Zielinski shook his head.  “No.  You’re the first Arm I know of who
’s taken juice from a Monster.”

“Day-aam,” Carol said, her accent moving south to somewhere around Dallas, her stone face now showing fear.  She stabbed the knife deep into the wooden examination table.  “I could have died from this, couldn’t I?”

He nodded.  “The mental changes you described sound reminiscent of the effects Rose Desmond reported after the interrupted draw and Francine Sarles reported after she took juice from a Transform in withdrawal.  We should both be glad your mind didn’t snap.”

“I think my mind did snap,” Carol said, her voice low, perhaps chastened.  “At least for
a while.”

“So,” Zielinski said, shaken.  “Why don’t you lie down and let me run some tests.  I understand how embarrassing this must be, but if you have any other symptoms…”  Carol lay down and let him take a blood sample.  “The juice count of a newly transformed Monster is similar to a woman Transform near low juice, because the Monster transformation process uses up juice.  So you probably didn’t get much juice from this.”  Hesrith’s juice meter beeped and Zielinski looked at the result.  “One hundred twelve, plus or minus the usual.”

“So I got less than ten points from her,” Carol said.  “That’s annoying.”

He needed to check his notes, but he swore Carol’s ears had shrunk since the last time he did a full examination of her.  Strange.

“One thing you need to know, Carol, is once a Monster’s finished her physical transformation and several months have passed, her juice count can be as large as yours.  Perhaps larger.  We can only guess, because nobody has ever captured a live Monster of that age, or older.  Based on what happened to you, my guess is that if you took juice from an old Monster it would either kill you or turn you into a Monster yourself.”

Carol grimaced and scratched.  “I can’t wait to write your advice in my diary,” she deadpanned.  “
So how do I get rid of the Monster juice?
”

“I can’t give you any guarantees.  My best advice is for you to get more juice, as it will dilute the small amount of Monster juice you have in you,” he said.  Arms shouldn’t have such a huge vulnerability, especially if Van Reijn’s hypothesis was correct, and certainly not if the Rizzari – Chiron Myth hypothesis was correct.

Carol sighed.  “It isn’t as if hunting down untagged Transforms is easy.”

Zielinski nodded, and wrote down the term ‘untagged Transforms’ in his notes.  The Arms hadn’t used the term before.  The term implied much, and bolstered a theory of his he had told Carol about, in their last physical meeting
.  He had gotten no confirmation from the Arm.  Said Arm began to scratch at her crotch again.

“I’d suggest sooner, rather than later, would be best,” he said.

“No shit, doc.  No shit.”  More scratching.  “Oh, and I’m frigid.  Probably a Monster juice effect?”

He nodded.  “Your feet will heal on their own, as will Keaton’s other excesses.”

“What excesses?” Carol asked.  “I may not like what she did…actually, I really really don’t like it…but I did screw up and she did need to punish me.”

Carol’s little bit of Arm psychology bothered him a lot.  “Keaton understands enough about anatomy to cause pain without leaving marks, if simple punishment is needed.”  He had personal experience with Keaton’s knowledge on the subject.

“I know that, dammit,” Carol said.  “Okay, okay.  She did have one of her psycho episodes, about average in nastiness.”

Zielinski licked his lips and continued on, much quieter.  “Any progress on Keaton’s graduation test?”

Carol growled and gave him the evil eye.  He stepped back involuntarily.  He took her growl as a ‘no’.  “Now about the bullet?” she asked.

“Right.  Let’s get you X-Rayed.”  At least Hesrith had an X-Ray machine and developer available.  Most places wouldn’t, but
as Keaton’s tamed doc, his job required one.  After he developed the X-Ray, Zielinski shook his head.  “You’re right.  The bullet is lodged between a tendon and your thighbone, and the bone has partially regrown around it.  I need to operate.”  He laughed.  “Yet more surgery without a medical license.”

“I won’t tell if you won’t tell,” Carol said, and laughed her first laugh of the day.
“So, tell me what’s involved with this surgery.”

“The operation is not going to be fast and is going to be painful.”
Zielinski said.  “I may need to use a hammer and chisel.”

“Do it.”

“Lay down on your stomach, ma’am,” he said.  Carol complied.  He inked a spot with a marker then started to attach the restraints.

Before he even secured the first restraint, he had an Arm in is face with a knife at his throat, denting his skin and threatening to draw blood.  Fear flooded through him.

“No restraints.”

“Carol, I…”

Hancock grabbed his tie and yanked, hard.  “With respect,” she said.  “You’re not the boss here, I am.  I said, ‘no restraints’.”

“Ma’am, this will be painful.  For a long time.”

“I’ll hold on to the restraints.”  Death filled her eyes.  “Remember what Keaton said to start with about this job being dangerous as all get out.  Well, this is one of the dangers.  You need to trust me not to screw up and kill you.  Just as I trust you not to screw up and kill me,
doctor
.  Given those impressive surgery diplomas I saw in your house, I don’t expect any mistakes.”

“Very well, ma’am,” Zielinski said, covering his anger and lack of respect
for Carol’s level of control with his surgeon armor.

“If you can’t avoid screaming, bite on this,” he said,
extracting a piece of thick leather from his bag.  She growled, took it and settled herself on the examining table.  He started.  “A little pain,” he said, then continued with a “So, ma’am, did you catch the news about that Clinic massacre in Chicago a few days ago?”

She grunted.  He cut.  She grabbed restraints and grimaced, but kept her eyes on him.

“It wasn’t us Arms,” Carol said, around the leather.  “Honest.”