All Conscience Fled (The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Two) Read online

  At the edge of the scene of my crime, Keaton had me strip. She wiped me down, all except for a thick wad of gore she found in my hair. When she was finished, she glanced at me and shook her head.

  “Why’d I do this?” she said, as I stood half-naked in the frigid air. Her voice rasped, cold as death.

  I tried to proclaim my ignorance, but my voice caught in my throat. I was an Arm, no longer human for three months, transformed by Transform Sickness, a crazy thing the doctors thought of as a disease and I became ever more convinced was a demonic plague. Transform Sickness had filled my mind with new thoughts, new instincts, new understandings of the most improbable things. Horrible new understandings.

  “I had to learn that I must obey your orders, ma’am,” I said. “No matter what.”

  “More.”

  Damn. I understood things about which I would rather remain ignorant. “You feared I was too soft to be an Arm because I hadn’t killed Special Agent McIntyre.”

  “More.”

  I winced. Some things I would rather stay unsaid, despite how obvious they suddenly became. Under the gaze of her deadly eyes, though, I didn’t dare refuse. “You expect me to need to be able to kill innocents.”

  Keaton nodded, took that gruesome mass she found in my hair and smeared it across my chest. I shuddered as she marked me.

  “You thought you were an Arm, but you weren’t,” Keaton said. “Now you’re an Arm, skag.” She tipped her head back and laughed, loudly. A man opened the hospital back door and stared at us in shock, found the corpse of the nurse and swore.

  “Now we run like the Arms we are and get the fuck out of here before the goddamned cops show up.” Keaton grabbed me by the arm and shoulder and ran me back to her car. All the while, a smile played over her face.

  As advertised, Keaton was insane.

  Killing the nurse? A sorority initiation into the sisterhood of the Arms. Looked like I had survived hour one of Arm pledge week.

  On the long trip back to Philadelphia, Keaton’s home, I prayed. I had been hesitant to pray in the past, given what I had become, but I was desperate. I prayed the nightmare that was now my life wouldn’t get any worse.

  I feared it wouldn’t get any better.

  For the entire trip I wore that woman’s brains on my chest. I doubted they would ever leave. Even if I scrubbed myself until the skin came off, they would still be there.

  Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the nurse’s brains, spilling out of her skull, to the pavement.

  Through the rest of the drive to Chicago, then the plane flight to Newark, then the drive to Philadelphia, Keaton’s home, I was little more than a zombie.

  (2)

  I couldn’t move. I lay on the cold concrete floor in exhaustion so intense I couldn’t even shiver. My muscles wouldn’t move. They couldn’t move. The cold consumed me as tears of misery leaked from my eyes. My stomach roiled again and came up. I tried to turn my head, but even that proved to be too hard. The vomit spilled from my mouth and pooled underneath me.

  The exhaustion was so intense it became pain. I lay in a soup of blood and vomit and tears. I couldn’t make my body move. I couldn’t move my arms. Even the thought of moving wracked me with pain. I wept and wondered why I wasn’t dead.

  Keaton had gone after me with a belt. When she thought I wasn’t trying hard enough, she would hit me with it. When she thought I needed a little more adrenaline, she threatened me with it. There at the last, when I cried and gave up and refused to do any more, she turned the belt around and used the buckle end.

  Why? For an exercise session! All this…this…punishment for an exercise session. How could I endure such misery?

  My back and my thighs remained torn open from the buckle. Welts covered me. I had lost consciousness, at least for a little while.

  Keaton stood over me, a cruel smile on her face. When our gazes met her smile twisted into a sneer.

  “You’re weak, bitch,” she said. “You’re the most pathetic specimen of an Arm I’ve ever seen. There are elderly normals driving around in wheelchairs who can do better than you just did. We’re going to do this twice a day from now on. Get used to it. Or die.”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer.

  “Clean this mess up. Clean yourself up. Then fix dinner,” Keaton said. “I expect food to be on the table when I’m done with my workout.” She turned on her heel and walked away.

  I struggled to my knees fifteen minutes later. I gasped for breath for a moment and found a way to stand after my next effort. The world swam around me. I took a step, then another, until my stagger turned into a shuffle, off to search for the cleaning supplies.

  I slowly, painfully and carefully walked up the aisle created by the partitions in Keaton’s warehouse home, with the gym at my back. My fresh scabs cracked and more blood leaked into my filthy clothing before my Arm healing kicked in and the bleeding stopped. I found several rooms, all marked by moveable wooden partitions, and after a quick, nervous search, I located a basin in the kitchen area.

  The kitchen basin had only a drain. No faucet. I couldn’t find running water anywhere in the kitchen, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. After my close encounter with Keaton’s knife, followed by the brutal abuse of the exercise session, I had become honestly afraid of what she might do to me if I displeased her. I did not intend to push the limits of her tolerance. I found a bucket under the counter, a mop and broom leaning against the refrigerator. Cleaning supplies lined one of the shelves.

  When I leaned over to get the bucket from under the sink, my legs gave way in searing agony. I fell to the floor as my muscles flooded me with the painful complaint of their abuse. Grimly, I forced myself to stand. Standing hurt. Every movement was pain. I focused my will and held on to the counter. Slowly, I reached down under the counter for the bucket. Even my fingers were weak, and I had trouble grasping the handle.

  My thighs hurt when I tried to walk. My hamstrings and calves screamed in pain with each step as I put my foot down. I barely had the strength to hold the bucket.

  Tears still streamed down my face. I shivered and almost stopped as a sudden burst of fury came over me. I wanted to threaten Keaton, expose her as the monster she was.

  Those were the gut feelings of an Arm, which I had experienced many times in the Detention Center. They betrayed me this time. Keaton scared the crap out of me. My life was a small thing in her eyes. She had taken me on for her own reasons, but even the littlest thing might make her change her mind. Killing me would be so easy for her. She would even enjoy it. My accomplishments as an Arm – I had escaped FBI captivity, dammit, using my own wits and Arm tricks – meant nothing to her.

  I walked.

  The bathroom was the filthiest thing I had ever seen. The toilet was old and cracked, the porcelain of the toilet and the sink stained black with age and abuse. The gritty and foul shower stall eclipsed the concrete floor in disgust. Heaven knew what sorts of germs grew in there. The only clean thing in the room was the old and tattered shower curtain.

  At least the bathroom had running water. This place remained a warehouse, not a proper place to live.

  I filled the bucket with water. When I tried to lift it from the green-mold-encrusted bathroom shop sink, my legs gave way underneath me. This wouldn’t do. I focused my mind, remembering the slap of Keaton’s belt, ignored my calves and hamstrings, and got back up. I emptied most of the bucket of water and found a way to lift it out of the shop sink. The effort pulled loose the scabs on my hands, abraded by the bars as I tried to lift weights too heavy for me. Blood joined the water in the bucket. I ignored it.

  In the gym, Keaton lay flat on her back doing bench presses. I computed the amount of weight the bars carried and realized why she used heavy reinforced barbells. Over 500 pounds of weights bent down the bar. Keaton lay under it on a reinforced bench, and slowly lowered the bar to her chest. Sweat poured from her, and she grunted with effort. Her grotesque muscles bulged as she focused on her
lifting. She paused for a second, the bar just a hair above her shirt. If she lost control of the bar, the weight would crush even her. Slowly, she tried to force it up again. Her arms shook, momentarily unable to make the lift. She gave a pained grunt of exertion, her arms steadied, and slowly, the bar went back up again. Slowly the bar went down again. The cycle repeated.

  I shivered, doubting she would appreciate my watching her. I twisted swiftly away, back to my own business. By the time Keaton finished her set, I had cleaned up the last of my mess. Keaton ignored me and went on to shoulder lifts. I breathed a sigh of relief and went to take a shower. After twenty-one hours, I finally had the chance to clean Keaton’s gory mark from my chest, though in the green and black stained shower, clean might have been an exaggeration.

  In my mind, the bloody mark stayed on my chest.

  When I finished I froze in a sudden realization: the bathroom had no towels, and I had no fresh clothes to wear. I froze, suddenly woozy.

  I had to wear something, but she hadn’t given me anything to wear. All the options I thought of would give her an excuse to get mad at me. I trembled. If I guessed wrong, she would kill me. I began to pant, my mouth parched in terror, unable to swallow, even in the wet shower.

  Keaton had given me direct orders to clean myself up. I couldn’t disobey, even at the risk of doing something I wasn’t permitted.

  I stepped out of the shower, dripping wet. No towels. Forget towels. I wouldn’t risk Keaton’s displeasure just for towels.

  I held on to the edge of the sink for a long moment before I started, trying to bring the panic back under control. No towels. No clothes. Hell! I froze in place, yet again, this time after realizing this was a test.

  No! Delay was death. I had to do this. I couldn’t let panic rule me. I had no time for weakness.

  Keaton would have less.

  As I ran, the cold of Keaton’s unheated warehouse cut through me like a knife. The room I found was either a dressing room or an extra-large closet, and in there I found several piles of clothes and towels, one set clean and another dirty. The dressing room smelled of paint and other noxious chemicals. A former storeroom, I realized.

  I toweled off and put on a T-shirt and shorts similar to the ones Keaton had given me to wear before the gym session. I also found her underwear. I put on underpants, but I didn’t bother with a bra. Her bras were just too small. I hoped she would give me the opportunity to buy some bras of my own. I threw my dirty clothes on the dirty laundry pile, hesitated, and left them where they landed.

  The next step was food. I ran, barefoot on the concrete floor, into the kitchen. To my surprise, I had already recovered to the same achy state familiar from my time in the Detention Center. The changes from my Arm transformation always surprised me.

  My kitchen duties were important, as Keaton had expressed real interest in my ability to cook. If I pleased her, I might buy myself back a few inches from the precipice of death. I carefully rooted through the shelves and the refrigerator to find what she had on hand, and decided to prove myself and show her my best, an elegant complicated meal. Haute cuisine.

  I heard Keaton change weights on a barbell and changed my mind. Haute cuisine would take too long, and I knew how hungry I got. I didn’t expect Keaton’s hungers to be any different. She would want food quickly.

  I fried up some bacon. My hands shook with nerves as I cranked open two cans of green beans to heat on the stove. Cuts on my thighs and rear stung from sweat as I made the grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon between slices of cheese.

  Business, I told myself. Concentrate on business.

  I knew what kinds of food I liked as an Arm: leaden food, food that filled you up, with plenty of butter, sugar, and oil. Grilled cheese sandwiches would also be immediately available, if Keaton wanted to eat before I finished cooking. I hoped Keaton had the same tastes I did. My well-being depended on it.

  After I finished heating the green beans, I drained them and put some of the grease from the bacon on them. I took one of the empty bean cans and saved the remaining bacon grease. I had uses for bacon grease in the future.

  I made eight sandwiches. At first, I thought about making six, but I remembered my own hungers and changed my mind. I resisted the temptation to eat more than a few pieces of cheese while I cooked.

  Keaton came in while I made the seventh sandwich – the stove was small and I didn’t have enough pans to make more than one grilled cheese sandwich at a time. She ignored me and headed toward the bathroom. For the shower, I assumed. Her clothes were soaked through with sweat and she was unsteady on her feet.

  I didn’t want to think about what her sweat implied about how hard she worked. Or what her sweat implied about me and my future.

  I quickly set the table, laid out the plate of sandwiches and the bowl filled with green beans, and filled both glasses with milk. I hoped she liked it; too late to make changes now. Not one of my best efforts, alas; I wasn’t familiar with electric stoves and it heated unevenly.

  I waited while she finished her shower, clenching and unclenching my fists. She brought a towel and a change of clothes with her into the bathroom, and she came out dressed. I stood by the table, my palms sweaty. She glanced at the food and grunted.

  “Next time make enough for two, and you can eat as well,” she said.

  I stared at her for a moment, in shocked surprise. She sat down at the table, pulled the plate of sandwiches and bowl of beans in front of her, and started to eat.

  She meant what she said. The food was her dinner now.

  I was very hungry.

  I struggled to find the right words through my fear. “I apologize, ma’am. I’ll make some more food right away.” I had used the entire package of bacon, but grilled cheese sandwiches didn’t need bacon.

  “No,” she said. “Consider it a lesson.”

  This time I didn’t manage to suppress the surge of fury. Not fair! I had to eat. I had been with Keaton for a day. She had beaten me, insulted me, and threatened me with death. I was so hungry I wobbled when I stood. I couldn’t deal with this. I had to eat! With a barely repressed snarl of anger, I stalked to the refrigerator to get more cheese to make myself some sandwiches. To hell with this shit!

  Keaton stood in front of me. I didn’t see her move, but there she was. She studied me with her cold, dead eyes.

  “I have to eat,” I said with a growl, fear forgotten, my hands shaking with anger. “You’ve been beating up on me all day. You’ve been treating me like crap. Get out of my way, ma’am.”

  My vision narrowed as my anger took control, the anger I had seen so many times in my last month at the Detention Center. I expected Keaton to be angry in return. I expected terrible things, more beatings with the belt, if she didn’t decide to kill me. Instead, she smiled, relaxed. An element of smug satisfaction and waiting anticipation suffused her smile.

  Then, so quickly I didn’t catch her move, she punched me in the stomach and knocked the wind out of me. Before I caught my breath, she grabbed my throat and cut off my air. Then she held it. Second after long second passed, while I panicked and struggled to breathe. My vision dimmed and my world contracted to a pain in my chest from lack of air and a loud ringing in my ears. My feet scrabbled at the floor, unable to gain traction. I slapped at her, blows that had sent people flying across rooms in the Detention Center, and she didn’t even notice. Sometime later, I have no idea how much later, she released me. I fell to the floor and gasped for breath.

  She lifted me again with a tight hold on my neck and slammed me back against the refrigerator. It rocked and nearly fell over. Faster than I perceived, she hit me, a broad, brutal blow across the cheek. My head snapped over sideways. Then, Keaton hit me again. And again.

  My anger and rebelliousness vanished in a whimper and left behind fear, pain, and absolute stark panic. I gasped for breath in between the blows as I screamed. Keaton continued to hit me.

  Eventually she stopped the hitting, but she didn’t let go
of my neck. I continued to scream through my sobs, in the grip of an ugly, shattering panic. A moment later, she dropped me to the floor. Her feet hovered in front of my teary eyes, unmoving; I felt her presence above me, lustful. Relief ran through me as the absolute hysteria left my sobs behind. I survived her assault. I could take this, I could bend with it, I would get my…

  Before I realized anything was amiss, my face smacked the floor and I lay prone on my stomach with Keaton on top of me. She pressed her knees into my ribs and cut off my air, then twisted my right arm behind me with a grip of stone. With her other hand, she grabbed my left index finger and pulled the bones right out of their sockets. Then she drove her fingers into the now open joint, freezing me in agony. I shrieked, louder than I believed possible, until I had no breath left. Keaton laughed. Laughed again.

  She bent my finger to the side, making the pain worse.

  Then she did worse. She did worse for a long time.

  I thought I had survived hell in the Detention Center. I thought I had seen the worst of life’s misery. I was naïve. Keaton caused pain for its own sake, and she was skilled in her creations. She played with my mind as well as with my body, doling out hope only to shatter it, threats to raise terror, and agony to destroy the will and the pride. Even after the misery of those last few weeks at the Detention Center, I never imagined Keaton.

  More, as I understood why she made me kill the nurse, I also understood why she tortured me now. She intended to shatter me, break me, set in me a fear of her so deep I couldn’t think past it, and would never even dream of disobedience or defiance. Whatever independence or will I possessed, she wanted gone.

  She also tortured me for fun. She enjoyed her cruelty, and my pain aroused her. Once I recognized her pleasure, I expected her to rape me. I had never considered a woman raping another woman, and I wasn’t clear about the mechanics, but I was sure Keaton knew. After the first few minutes of her torture, I would have welcomed rape. She never did, though.