The Shadow of the Progenitors: A Transforms Novel (The Cause Book 1) (43 page)

The bad news, though we all knew this was coming: the end of Lori and Gilgamesh’s intimate relationship.  I nodded again, firmly not reacting.

---

“I can’t believe you’ve agreed to this,” Lori said.

I shrugged.  Lori, Sky, Webberly and I settled in Lori’s basement biochem lab, in the conference room-like area, not the dissection area, thank you very much.  Sky perched himself on a stool, consciously emulating a bird.  Webberly remained nervous but expectant.

“I have an ulterior motive,” I said.  I settled on the floor, my back resting on the metal folding chair where Lori sat.  “This doesn’t leave this room.  Bass got to me with a juice trick when I tagged her, and I need to figure out what she did before I see her in person again.”

“What sort of juice trick?”

“She kept me from asking certain questions when I interrogated her.”  Which should have been impossible.  I had her fully under my control, and I had suspected she was holding back on me and did a full Arm-style mind scrape.  “I figure when you have me tagged, you should be able to figure out what she did, and how.”

Tagged.  Yes, I had agreed to let Lori tag me as an experiment.  Webberly, Sibrian and, gasp, Whetstone (dragged into the project against her will by the two more-senior Arms) needed the data, and Lori and I were the only Focus slash Arm pair who trusted each enough for such a crazy experiment.

“No guarantees,” Lori said, absently rubbing her hands through my hair.  I had made Webberly swear not to use this against me in the future.  Even though Lori had five years on me as a Major Transform, an Arm giving rank to any Focus cost the Arm stature, even in an experimental situation.  However, the potential benefit was worth the risk.  “Ready?”

I opened my mind and will to accept what she did to me.  “Go to.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Webberly said.  She closed her eyes to better focus on her metasense.

“First is the standard tag I use on Transforms,” Lori said.  I felt my juice wiggle and I gasped.  My juice was hers now; if she wanted to destroy me she could, without even the slightest exertion.  “As expected, I can’t move juice to Carol.  Let me try various modulations Sky and I have been working with for my household Transforms.”

Whatever Lori did, I couldn’t tell, or metasense.

“Ma’am?  Modulations?” Webberly asked.

“Tags, it turns out, are very malleable,” Lori said.  “Tag modulation is dangerous, at least if you’re a Transform.  On the other hand, Major Transforms are far sturdier.”

I needed this.  Tags were an Arm strength, dammit.  I burned a quarter point of juice into my metasense and, poof, my metasense cleared.  These modulation changes were, as expected, absurdly subtle, within what I considered the error bar of tagging.

Error bar.  Gah.  Far too much time hanging around with Hank.

“Next will be the Arm tag emulation,” Lori said.

My juice more than wiggled.  When my juice resettled, the world changed.  “I’m yours,” I said, as I twisted around and bared my throat to Lori.  “What would you have me do?”

“Hush,” Lori said, and gazed into my eyes as she rubbed my scalp.  My mind melted into hers.  If she wanted a pet Arm, she had me now.  I wouldn’t even bother fighting; for years I had wanted
in
, wanted to join Inferno, wanted to be her Arm.

Not good for me at all.  I went into this trusting Lori wouldn’t betray me and make me
hers
.  Right now, I began to marshal my arguments to convince her to keep me.

The only bad side of this was the loss of my normal sexual desire for her, a standard side effect of the Arm tag.

“Anything, ma’am?” Webberly asked.  This was the big test; Arms can, in most circumstances, move juice to each other.  When tagged.

“Nothing, darn it,” Lori said.  “Not even from my personal juice.  There’s some physiological incompatibilities at work here.  According to my metasense.”

Rats.  Webberly’s hypothesis had crapped out, typical for all of our juice link experiments.

“We should make this permanent,” I said, smiling.  “This is…”

“Carol, no, that’s the tag talking,” Lori said, and undid the tag.

The world remade itself again, this time in an emotionally shattering way.  I froze, concealing my emotions and reactions.  I wanted to cry over yet more loss, but I didn’t.

“Intense,” I said, when I recovered.

“Mademoiselle Arm, the first time you got out of metasense range you would have declared war on us if my lady left the tag on,” Sky said.

“I suppose.”  My mind still wanted the comfort of Lori’s emulated Arm tag.  Sky, I think, was wrong about what I would do when I got out of range.  Lori’s emulated Arm tag conveyed
stature
, unlike her earlier tag, because of her very important five extra years of experience and her Cause leadership.

Definitely this messed with my head.

“Lastly, the Focus-Focus tag,” Lori said.  “If I can get it to work.”  Technically, this was the most difficult of the experiments, as she had to jigger the juice to make me appear as a Focus to the tag.

Slowly my juice sloshed around, and I metasensed an impossible and yet familiar tag configuration develop.  The warm fuzzy glow of Lori’s emulated Arm tag vanished into dust.

“This is foul,” I said.  “Sticking this thing on an Arm is a declaration of war.”

Lori flinched.  “I feel the same way.  I’ll get it off of you as soon as we do the test.”

“Okay.  I can’t draw juice.  Can you give me juice?”

“Nope.”

“Wait, ma’am, ma’am Hancock,” Webberly said.  “You flashed in recognition when the tag took hold.  Why, ma’am?”

I repressed the urge to growl at her, or beat the crap out of her for this interruption.  She was right.  This was important.  So I repressed my instincts.  “Grrrm.  Something from a long time ago.  Long…oh crap!”

This I did
not
need.

I took a deep breath and fought my urge to do a Keaton berzerko attack.  “This, or something like this, was what Gail used to give me access to her juice buffer in the Battle in Detroit.”

Lori dropped the tag, making cat barf noises eerily similar to Gail’s.  “The tag’s not enough.”

I got to my feet, echoing Lori’s sound effects.  “There’s something wrong with the Focus-Focus tag, something we’re missing.  Something big, and not just with the juice transfer failure.  I’m willing to try it again, but only if we can come up with a good idea about what’s wrong with the damned thing.  It’s like the Focus-Focus tags are cursed.”  I paced the conference area and met gazes.

Nobody had any good ideas to try.  Not a one.

“And the Bass question?” I asked, too many paces later.  “Anything on what she did to me?”

Lori shook her head.  “Not a thing.  Sorry, Carol.  Not a thing.  If she used a juice trick, it wasn’t anything I’ve encountered before.  I don’t want to bring this up, but the best answer to your question of the identity of our unknown enemy is Haggerty’s theoretical hidden uber-Major Transform.  Arm Bass is too junior for such advanced juice tricks.”

I turned away, annoyed.  Life was definitely turning into a bed of shit-stained roses.

Henry Zielinski: August 2, 1972

Zielinski arrived at Gail’s household’s dilapidated student housing apartment just after dawn.  Half the household was awake and stared at him from doors and hallways as he came in, not what he wanted to see.  Too many people knew he existed already.  He really hoped Gail kept tight control over her household, but given the household dynamic he saw, he suspected the wish was futile.

Focus Rickenbach had called him at two in the morning, the standard time this year for a Major Transform crisis.  “Your Arm just tortured one of my people.  You can damned well get your ass over here and take care of her,” she had said.  So, he came.

The woman, Melanie, wasn’t in bad shape.  She had been in good physical condition even for a Transform, and Carol had been a little bit restrained, at least for her.  Melanie wasn’t coping emotionally, though.  Damn it, what could Carol have been thinking?

“She’ll be all right,” Zielinski said as he pulled the sheet back up over Melanie and stood up.  Melanie’s bed was in the small single women’s dorm bedroom, where she huddled under the covers in a bottom bunk.  “The damage appears to be superficial, meant to cause pain rather than any lasting effect.  I’ve given her a painkiller and something to help her sleep.”

Gail nodded once, still angry and still glowing with righteous rage.  Focus charisma poured off her in waves.  Five other women watched uneasily from their own bunks, concerned for Melanie and concerned they might be next.

“Don’t worry about me, Gail,” Melanie said, her voice groggy and weak.  “I’ll be fine.”  According to his measurements, Gail kept her at a juice count of 24.7, too high for Melanie to function, but just right to make her feel high as a kite.  Exactly what he would have recommended.

“If your Focus keeps caring for you the way she is now, you should be on your feet by this afternoon,” Zielinski said.

Melanie smiled faintly before she closed her eyes and drifted off.  Gail glared at Zielinski and twitched her head toward her office.  He followed, pliant for now, fearing this would be a bad one.

Gail’s office was on the east side of the building, and the early morning sun illuminated the shabby furniture too clearly.  Zielinski blinked at the sudden brightness while Gail pointedly took the power symbol position behind her desk.  He sighed and settled into the wooden folding chair opposite.

“How do you manage to live with yourself?” Gail said, fixing him with her gaze.  Zielinski winced, feeling like leftover refuse despite himself.  Damn, she was powerful with her charisma.

“That Arm tortures people, and you know it.  She enjoys the torture!  That’s sick!  And you support her anyway!  What excuses do you use to convince yourself you’re a decent human being?”

Zielinski sighed.  A powerful Focus with a mad on.  Never easy.  Old memories of mistakes and failures nagged at him.  “I support Carol because I agree with her goals.  I don’t support everything she does.”

Gail glowered at him, whatever small amount of trust she had in him now gone.

“So you can walk away from Melanie after seeing what that Arm did to her, and still support her?  What happened to your humanity, Dr. Zielinski?  Or did I forget, it isn’t Doctor any more.  Isn’t this sort of inhumanity the reason you lost your medical license in the first place?”

Oh, both nasty and hurtful.  If he didn’t pull himself together she would take him apart in pieces and he would end up as a candidate for one of those nice cheerful wards where they fed you happy pills all day.  He wondered if Gail even knew her own strength.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he said.

“Oh, your Arm mistress didn’t brag?  I’ve learned how to control my own pain, so she needed someone else to masturbate to.  She’s now insisting that one of my people be in the room every time she trains me, so she can torture them every time I screw up. 
Every
training session.  Three to five nights a week, indefinitely, or at least until she comes up with some new and different torture.”

Zielinski froze and slipped helplessly under Gail’s charismatic control.  He thought he understood Carol’s cruelty, but arbitrarily torturing some random innocent?  No, Carol must have needed a reason, though Arm training techniques were almost impossible for him to figure out unless Carol walked him through the logic first.

“There are steps you can take as a Focus to help your people through pain and stress,” he said, only habit keeping his voice steady and confident.  “You’ll have to learn them, so they won’t be of help immediately, but they may be useful if she keeps this up for very long.  That would be on top of the normal support you provide, of course.”  Was this some sort of combat training?  No, combat training would only make sense if Carol wanted Gail’s household to be active mercenaries.  Which she didn’t, as far as Zielinski knew.

“Listen to yourself!  Your Arm is torturing my people, and all you offer is ways to make the pain hurt less.  I don’t want this to hurt less, I want this to
stop
.  Figure out how to make her stop!”

Of course, Gail was correct, something this cruel couldn’t be tolerated.  Zielinski started to summon ideas of ways to derail Carol from her obviously incorrect course.  Difficult and dangerous, but he knew a few arguments Carol would respond to…

Wait a minute.  If Gail was in the room when Carol tortured Melanie, then the amount of damage Melanie showed didn’t match her emotional state.  With her Focus supporting her and keeping her high on juice and resistant to pain, Melanie should have been tough as old shoe leather.

“Did Carol interfere with your ability to support Melanie?” Zielinski said, and frowned.

Gail’s jaw dropped for just a second and she flushed bright red.  “This was all Carol’s fault,” Gail said.  “She tortured Melanie!  This was her fault!”

Of course, he wanted to say, but his treacherous mind couldn’t help seeing the connections.  Melanie didn’t show the signs of someone well supported by her Focus during the torture.  Gail’s fury and defensiveness reminded him of someone who felt guilty about something.