No Sorrow Like Separation (The Commander Book 5) Read online

  Sky whistled. He didn’t have to say it out loud, but inside his head he said “Lori was right, this Arm is radically different than the other two Arms I’ve dealt with.” Of all things, I had seduced him into my service without even trying. I had no objection to him serving me, not at all.

  “You want me to run a research organization, ma’am?” Zielinski said, dumbfounded. Bitter words spewed forth: “I’ve lost my medical license, one FBI faction wants to kill me, another wants to lock me in prison for life, the first Focuses have a contract out on my life, and you want me to run a research organization? Ma’am, I arranged to get put in that prison as a way of protecting myself!” Zielinski dissolved completely into laughter.

  I didn’t think it was that funny. I decided to be lenient. I had seen this flaw of his before and it was harmless.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “Do I have permission to speak with you clinically.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m a good observer of people. I look at you and see someone who…” he paused. “Someone who has had most of her personality scraped off. Ma’am, I talk to you, but there’s almost no ‘you’ there. How much do you remember of me?”

  I wanted to kill him. His question was too personal. I stopped myself, as he backed off an inch or two. Clinical, I thought. A random memory caught me, something Keaton said once, during a torture session, describing one of her contacts. “When you hire the expert, you hire their advice.” Of course, she was describing how she learned to torture, but still. I broke him out of prison to do just this.

  “My memories are perfect up to the time they turned off the lights in the Detention Center. I have some memory gaps from then on, until I fell into a coma during my interrogation.”

  My answer bothered him. “Why are you so angry with me, then? We’ve been partners, allies, since Philadelphia.”

  “Someone else owns you.”

  He slapped his forehead. “Dammit, I’d forgotten,” he said. “Erica Eissler tagged me in some screwy fashion, or so I’ve deduced. Only she said it wouldn’t bother you.”

  “Tagged? Eissler knows the Arm tagging tricks I discovered?”

  He boggled and nodded. “You’ve figured out how to tag people?” Zielinski was impressed.

  “That’s how Keaton and I get along these days,” I said. “She has me tagged and I work for her. I have several normals tagged as well, including Raindorf. It’s a very useful juice effect.”

  Both Sky and Zielinski froze. “Juice effect? I don’t think that’s what Erica did to me.”

  Sky muttered something in French, nasty and excessively profane.

  “To get the reaction I’m having to you, Eissler’s tag must be a juice effect,” I said. “I need to tag you to establish precedence.”

  “Me? You don’t need… Hell. Juice effects are dangerous, ma’am, especially for someone in my condition.” FBI operatives had injected him with Monster juice after my escape from the St. Louis Detention Center, an assassination attempt. The attack nearly killed him and he acquired a partly transformed adrenal gland in the process. “Can’t we do this some other way?”

  My lust rose. Did he understand what he asked? Arm tags were only a shortcut, and the old way still worked.

  “What…” he started to say, and then paused. He had to look away from my face, disturbed by my anger and lust. “Ma’am.”

  I smiled and waited. Yes. Invite me to hurt you. I will comply.

  He looked down at his hands and didn’t say anything for a long time. “Ma’am, how do I convince you not to be angry with me?”

  “You don’t. Live with it.” I willed the anger and lust away, and they began to recede.

  He shook his head. “What would you do, if you were in my position? How would you ease the anger of another Arm?”

  Memories of Keaton rose in my head. I stood and paced away from Zielinski. Filled with Keatonic anger I fugued on the things I did for her when she was angry.

  “You don’t want to know,” I said, my control slipping out from underneath me.

  “I have to,” he said. “I don’t know you anymore.”

  I paced, stalking on the tips of my toes. “Do you really want to cure my anger?” I said, softly.

  He didn’t answer my question, but I could see the answer in his eyes.

  “I’ll cure it for you,” I said, my voice husky. “Get down on your knees and crawl.”

  “What?” he said, astonished. Sky vanished, but I had been around Gilgamesh for long enough to know that he had just moved to somewhere safer in the room.

  I lost my composure. I pinned Zielinski’s neck to the back of the chair and straddled him, my face inches from his.

  “I SAID CRAWL! You have a problem with orders? Get down on your fucking knees and crawl!”

  He crawled. I walked over to near where Sky had to be, reached around my back and grabbed his shoulder without looking. I twisted him around to in front of me and got nose to nose with him as well. “GET ON THE FUCKING FLOOR AND CRAWL.”

  He got.

  My breakdown of control continued for a long time, and I’m not going to say exactly what happened in that room. I’ve never described exactly what I did for Keaton and I’m not going to describe what I made Sky and Zielinski do for me. I only gave them a taste of what I had given Raindorf.

  Sky didn’t respond the way I expected. Many minutes in, as things began to get ugly, whenever I turned my attention to him I felt the particular toxic mix of aggression and lust that in the past led me to rape. A few moments later, I realized Sky did this to me on purpose, thinking that if I raped him, the violence of rape would quiet my darker lusts. A hard choice, but this was a hard scene, and he considered me sufficiently out of control that he needed me to rape him. He was right. I was out of control. I took him without hesitation, right there in front of Zielinski.

  Funny thing, his plan worked.

  “Go get a shower and get cleaned up,” I told Zielinski after I finished with Sky and my beast fled back into the bowels of my mind. “Come back when you’re finished and we’ll talk.”

  He looked at me, numb, barely able to understand me. I had shown him things about himself he would rather never have known. He hadn’t moved since I turned my attention to Sky, rightly afraid that if he attracted my attention, he would be dragged in also, and too stunned by what I had done to him to be able to think. After a moment, the message got through. He stood, walked away, and found a shower. He did not return quickly.

  I hoped I hadn’t fucked him up too badly.

  Sky, of all things, cuddled up to me. He had the shakes. This hadn’t been easy for him, but at least for now he considered me safe. He had taken one for the team, I hadn’t injured him in the process, and for some reason, rather than holding my behavior against me, he considered what I did reasonable for an Arm. He even cared for me a little, although he still wanted to run away at the first real opportunity. I might be decent for an Arm, but Arms as a category terrified him, and I had just rather effectively proved why. Except of course, right now I was safe. As I had started to understand with Gilgamesh, Crows had severe head problems.

  “How’d you know that was going to work?” I said, in a reasonable facsimile of a Crow whisper. He had successfully kept himself hidden from Keaton on the rescue. It couldn’t have been her.

  “Arm,” he said. “I regularly did this with Arm to help her control her temper.”

  Oh. Arm. From Gilgamesh’s stories I knew that a Crow by the name of ‘Crow’ had been companions with an Arm named ‘Arm’, a Focus by the name of ‘Focus’ and a Chimera by the name of ‘Beast’, the I-once-thought-legendary Lost Tribe of Transforms. I had just raped a goddamned legend.

  He had done this for Arm regularly, he said. Sky led a rough life.

  “I’m still coming back to myself,” I said, quiet. “I’m kind of a mess.” I didn’t feel much like apologizing, so this was as much as he would get from me. Just thinking of Gilgamesh had made my heart ache. The heartache
made me cranky.

  “Lucky for Gilgamesh, unlucky for me,” Sky said. His voice dropped to an even lower whisper. “Ma’am, you should know that Major Transform sex, when done right, is far more pleasurable, but can lead to pregnancies.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I think. Sky was a tough old buzzard.

  I left Zielinski a spare set of my workout clothes, so he came back into the living room wearing my shorts and t-shirt. I sent Sky off for his shower.

  Zielinski’s legs were hairy and thin, absurd in my clothes. A wounded and vulnerable look haunted him, wary but not afraid. I searched for a mad light in his eyes, indicating something broken inside of him. I didn’t see it.

  “Come in,” I told him, my voice gentle again. “Tell me what it is you’re worrying over.”

  He glanced quickly at me, hesitant about whatever passed through his mind.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, still gentle. “We’re done with that other. I won’t bite.”

  He looked doubtful about my statement and hesitated again, but he spoke.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “Wasn’t that supposed to end with you taking me the way you took Sky?”

  So much for inadvertently breaking him. How much did he need me to be his Madam Dominatrix?

  “Let’s say I’d done you like I did Sky,” I said. “Where would that lead us?”

  “For me, as I’m a normal, this would lead to a form of sexual enslavement,” he said. “Which might last a few months at best as a method of control. Amorous passion has never been an overwhelming interest of mine.” Good. He knew himself.

  From experience. Keaton had raped him at least once, I saw in him. I also realized Keaton had tortured him, at least once. I watched his memories at war in his mind. The former had been far nicer than the latter. He found both very disturbing.

  “I hope this has convinced you that tagging is a much safer option,” I said. “The other way needs frequent repetitions and I doubt we’ll have Sky around much longer.”

  Zielinski shivered. “Have you ever seen this work on anyone besides Fred? Ma’am, I have a lot of respect for the power of juice. Too many of the chemical components in juice are analogs of the chemicals that regulate our intellect and keep us sane. This is dangerous stuff you play with.”

  “Good. This will give you more respect for what us Transforms go through every day.” I paused. “The answer to your question is ‘yes’.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll agree, but on one condition. I want a suicide option. If I get too messed up, and we can’t undo it, I want the right to die.”

  Dealing with Zielinski was like trying to ride a bucking bronco. Everyone else I controlled wanted the right to back out of my little agreements. Save for Bobby, I never agreed to their demands. Zielinski wanted the right to off himself if his precious mind got messed up too much. Dealing with Zielinski was like trying to deal with a different species or different sex of human. I didn’t understand what to make of him.

  “I agree,” I said. I mean, what was he going to do if I backed out? No. Wrong way to think. My instincts protested again. If I made this promise, I would have to keep it. I needed to think more clearly. Someone like Zielinski would probably find a way to make a much worse mess if I backed out on a personal deal. Unlike the other yobbos I dealt with and controlled, Zielinski was competent. Very competent.

  “So what do I do?”

  “Come sit next to me,” I said. He did so, and I took his still-wounded hands in mine. I looked him in the eyes. “Tell me you’re mine. Mean it.”

  “I’m yours.” Zielinski didn’t have to even think hard. He meant it. Shit. He had been mine from the start. I just hadn’t been able to see the link. Of course he was mine. I was his only, unique, Arm success story, his pride and joy, the trainee Arm who survived.

  “You’re mine,” I said, completing the pattern. The juice moved. Things happened I had no control over, things Zielinski could not sense.

  “Ma’am,” he said. His voice no longer hurt my ears. The challenge of his presence vanished. “How much has Keaton told you about my role in the rescue?”

  I frowned. As with Keaton, after she tagged me, I now read Zielinski far more easily. “I got your letters,” I said. White wax on napkins. “You never explained why in God’s name you were at the CDC.”

  “I wanted to help you,” he said. “Eventually Keaton and I got together, but no matter what we tried we couldn’t come up with a way to get you out. I have to apologize. If we’d realized how impossible freeing you would turn out to be, we would have involved Inferno earlier and gotten you out before you’d been sent into withdrawal.”

  I growled. Good thing he had waited until he had become mine before bringing up this point. I might have gotten rash. He nodded at my growl.

  “I thought you were in hiding at Rizzari’s,” I said. “Remember? Contracts out on your life?”

  He shrugged. Damned fool.

  “How’d you get in to gather your information?” He couldn’t just go up to the FBI or CDC administrators and ask.

  He smiled. “I talked Focus Biggioni into providing me with the access I needed for some of the information and I got the rest while disguised as Dr. Bentwyler.”

  “You were Keaton’s inside man?” Sky said. In admiration. He hadn’t finished toweling off, but couldn’t resist the conversation. Hmm. He was a nice bit of distraction, wasn’t he? “No wonder the FBI’s gunning for you, Doc.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That and the fact they hadn’t known how much help I gave Keaton over the years.”

  Which I had told them. Ouch. Having him tagged wouldn’t stop his incessant mind games, I realized.

  “I hope you’re not too attached to Biggioni,” I said. “She dies for what she did to me.”

  Zielinski shook his head.

  I grabbed him by the collar and shook him. “She must die!”

  “As wrong as she is, as much harm as she cost you and the Network and the Focuses overall, she’s too important to kill.” I controlled myself, at least enough so I didn’t shake Zielinski to death or cut off his words.

  “Why?” Rationality. I had to focus on rationality.

  “There are lots of reasons, but the best is that she’s the Focuses’ best leader.” Zielinski smiled, a little. He didn’t like Biggioni, either. He admired her. Big difference.

  He might have said a lot more, but didn’t. “You should be able to get some sort of recompense out of her. Revenge, of a sort,” he said.

  “I’ll give this some thought,” I said. Maybe someday I would be able to think again.

  Then he said something sweet to me, bringing up a distant fluttering of the same sort of Arm-love that Bobby had brought out in me. He asked me to call him Hank.

  Hank Zielinski was another tough old buzzard.

  Gilgamesh: May 28, 1968

  Five Crows and none of them lived near the massive South Main Transform Clinic. In fact, all of them lived east of Houston proper, in the eastern industrial suburbs of Channelview, Baytown, Pasadena and South Houston. Gilgamesh mentally flipped a coin and it didn’t come up on its edge, so he didn’t do an up-close investigation of the area of Houston near the South Main Transform Clinic. He made a beeline to the Crows.

  One of the Crows wasn’t a Crow, though. It was a piece of dross art, a Crow-sized dross-statue in a huge vacant lot large enough to plunk down two shopping malls or a small airport. Gilgamesh couldn’t resist, so he parked nearby at nightfall and went to investigate.

  He had sweated through his now thoroughly beat up suit by the time he reached the statue, a pleasant reminder of his old home town of Miami, where even the evenings were warm and humid. No, the dross art wasn’t a real Crow. Or even a scarecrow, which he half expected. Now that would be a priceless bit of social commentary!

  He didn’t understand how the Crow artist had done his magic, but the dross-statue was a perfect mimic of a senior Crow, bedecked with dross constructs and ready for, well, action. Which meant a dozen
nifty ways of distracting an enemy while he ran away, if he was a standard senior Crow.

  The Crow dross-statue stood six one, had blonde hair, was gaunt, tanned and weathered, and old looking for a Crow. Said Crow wore his hair in a crew cut, an actual flattop, and looked at the world through narrow slitted eyes. Something tickled Gilgamesh’s metasense and he focused it on the statue – and heard words. “My name is Arpeggio. I welcome you with all my heart and hope your journey will be safe.”

  Gilgamesh shook his head and noticed two of the four real Houston area Crows on their way, together, to visit. No, three. One just ‘appeared’ as a metasense flicker three miles away.

  Ah. A senior Crow. Gilgamesh predicted he would have a flattop crew cut.

  Ten peaceful yet sweaty minutes later, a beat-up pickup truck rumbled into the vacant field from a back entrance and bounced across the ruts toward him. The vehicle stopped a polite distance away and the Crows finished the approach on foot.

  “I’m Gilgamesh,” he said, when the three got within two hundred yards. Two of the three fled at his words. The third actually yelled at the ones who fled.

  “Get back here, you roving pustules of fear! He’s a Crow, you imbeciles. Save your panic for something real.” Pause. “Well, okay, but if you’re not willing to exert your tiny little Crow-hearts and squeeze out enough courage to stay with the truck, you might as well keep on running, because I’m gonna tan your hides.”

  The source of the yelling walked away from Gilgamesh and whispered something to his companions. Then he started to back his way toward Gilgamesh, still whispering. He did a quick turn and wave to Gilgamesh, and continued the whispered conversation. He finally finished.