Once We Were Human

By Randall Allen Farmer

The Commander (Book One)

Carol Hancock, wife, mother, pillar of the community and faithful member of her church, never expected to contract Transform Sickness. Certainly she never expected to make that rarest of transformations, the female predator transformation. Now she was trapped in the custody of doctors working to research a cure for Transform Sickness while her body changed underneath her, becoming stronger, faster, with more acute senses, resistance to poisons, and more able to heal. Her mind changed underneath her, with new tempers, more aggression, violent mood swings and new hungers. She had new enemies, many of whom wanted to kill her for what she’d become, and more who wanted to use her as a tool. And she was dying, like all the other previous female predators in America except one, and that one had become a psychotic serial killer. She must figure out a way to survive her transformation and her enemies, preferably without becoming a psychotic serial killer herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randall Allen Farmer
• Release date: Nov 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465868916

Randall Allen Farmer

Greetings.I am an author, science nerd, an amateur photographer, a father, and a pencil and paper game designer and gamemaster. My formal education was in geology and geophysics, and back in the day I worked in the oil industry tweaking software associated with finding oil. Since I left the oil industry, I've spent most of my time being a parent, but did have enough time to get two short stories published (in Analog and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine). Now I'm giving epublishing a try, and I have an ample supply of novel-length publishable material to polish and publish.

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Once We Were Human

Book One of The Commander

Randall Allen Farmer

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 by Randall Allen Farmer

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form. This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

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Once We Were Human

Book One of The Commander

Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends. – Joseph Campbell

Part 1

A Deeper Sea

Although the screaming headlines may proclaim otherwise, the Shakes has been shown to be an actual disease, what doctors now call Transform Sickness. The first scientifically verified report of Transform Sickness occurred only two years ago, but anecdotal evidence of the disease goes back to the second World War. Transform Sickness proved to be a bacterial infection earlier this year, linked to two previously undiscovered strains of bacteria of the Listeria family. Doctors suspect some five to ten percent of the population are carriers of the bacteria and may never get Transform Sickness. The new Listeria strains that trigger Transform Sickness are not transmitted by direct personal contact, but come from tainted food, soil, dust, sewage, and many other sources. [UPI report (July 30, 1953)]

Chapter 1

Wash your hands before and after touching any uncooked food. Wash your food three times before eating it. Cook all food to 160 degrees or more. Eat any leftover food within 1 day after cooking; always fully reheat any leftover food. Only you can prevent Transform Sickness! [Department of Agriculture flyer, 1954]

Carol Hancock: September 12, 1966 – September 16, 1966

The nightmare seized me and refused to abate, a torment of dead babies, of giant steel balls chasing me in a pinball machine the size of a building, of immense crowds judging every word I spoke. Voices echoed through my terror: my husband Bill, my mother, my eldest daughter Sarah, nurses, doctors, police, others. Each segue led back to the endless pinball game, where death awaited even the tiniest miscue.

Later, I would wonder what I had been experiencing. The future? The past? Hallucinations? The subconscious mind sometimes figures things out before the conscious mind does. Not that my conscious mind was any great shakes at the time. But still. My subconscious had figured out I had plunged into deep deep shit. Even as I write this as the Commander, a decade later, I still have no idea how. No matter.

What I thought I knew was bad enough.

When I screamed myself awake, nothing had changed. Metal cot. Straitjacket. Legs shackled together. A single tiny light bulb on the ceiling, behind a metal cage, bright enough to hurt my eyes.

I wiggled so I no longer faced the light and looked around. I found myself in a small room, perhaps eight by eight feet across, with cinder block walls and a metal door with no doorknob but with an ominous slot at the bottom.

The last time I awakened, I’d misplaced my name and screamed my throat raw in panic. I knew my name now: Carol Hancock. Mother and housewife. I couldn’t tell where I was. I didn’t know how long I’d been here. I had no idea why.

This time, at least, I didn’t panic.

I had more problems than my location: my body ached, my head spun, and stomach acids gnawed at my insides as if I starved. My clothes, drenched in foul smelly perspiration, failed to protect me from the cold. Neither did the straitjacket I’d somehow acquired. A pressing need I couldn’t satisfy sucked at my soul, a longing deeper than the normal hunger for food. A craving.

I had to pee. I looked around the room, still squinting because of the bright light, and found the facilities, a metal toilet of brushed stainless steel with no toilet seat. Besides the straitjacket, I wore some kind of coarse hospital gown, rough linen more suited for a drop cloth than someone’s clothing. No panties. The gown wadded up indecently around the strap between my legs. I rolled off the metal cot and stood, more of a production than it should have been. My legs wobbled after two steps and I fell with a clank of metal shackles to the concrete floor. I attempted to stand, but with my legs shackled together and the rest of me constrained by the straightjacket, I only managed to slip across the concrete, a baby who hadn’t learned to crawl.

Darn it. I gathered my strength for another try, each breath deeper than the last. In time, I wiggled myself into the corner formed by the toilet and the wall and pushed myself vertical with my feet. It took me four tries.

I sat and peed, making a disgusting mess of my gown. I had no idea who might have imprisoned me, but nothing else made sense. I’d never done anything to justify this kind of treatment. I was a white middle class housewife, with a businessman husband, three children, a habit of volunteering for good causes, and a clear conscience. Not at all the sort of person likely to find herself shut away in some awful cell.

Gaps in my memories lurched me off the toilet; I didn’t remember how I’d gotten here! Tears slid down my face as I made my way back to the cold metal cot, each step an aching sob of misery. After I sat, I turned away from the light and screamed until my throat hurt too much to stand, and the pain forced the screams to fade away into sobs of hopeless misery.

I jolted awake later, winced and turned away from the light. Someone had slid a tray of food through the ominous slot at the bottom of the door. My gourmet dinner consisted of oatmeal, crackers, and a bowl of milk like you would set out for a cat. I hobbled over and knelt carefully by the tray.

A roach crawled over the surface of the oatmeal. I grimaced in disgust, but I blew on the roach until it ran away, too hungry to let disgust deter me. I licked up every crumb and drop of my minimal meal, making even more of a mess of my hair and face. The food did little but awaken my ravenous hunger and the other craving for which I had no name. I howled on the floor in agony afterwards.

Something was dreadfully wrong with me.

Next time I awoke, I found myself back on the metal cot. The door opened with a clang and I shrank back against the cinder block wall of my cell. A wall of state troopers, dour and angry, stood in a semicircle around the door.

Each one of them had his gun drawn and pointed at me.

Why are you doing this to me? I asked.

They didn’t answer.

Who are you? What am I doing here? What’s going on?

Two of the troopers came into the room, grabbed hold of my bound arms and yanked me roughly to my feet.

I’m just a housewife. I haven’t done anything wrong!

The two troopers dragged me out through their half dozen compatriots, every gun following me as I passed.

The lights outside my room slammed into me, bright enough to hurt. I squinted my eyes shut and turned away from the fierce brilliance, but the brilliance still burned. I howled at the misery and felt an unfamiliar hard and painful impact on my cheek in response, enough to knock my head sharply to the side and send me lurching into the trooper who held me. Someone hit me, actually hit me. Shock made me open my eyes and I caught a brief, burning glimpse of the wooden handle of a gun retreating backwards away from my cheek.

I screamed in pain, keening loudly as they pushed me forward. Still, I kept my eyelids cracked open despite the burning, desperate to know. Five steps later I quieted my screams and listened, my hearing now as painfully sensitive as my vision. Between my two senses I recognized my location, the jail in Jefferson City, my home town. After the troopers dragged me up to ground level I heard the sounds of traffic, the sounds of arguments, and an immediate hush that followed me wherever the guards took me. As best I could without blinding myself, I searched for people I knew and found none. I’d prayed my husband or my friends would come rescue me, but seeing only strangers my hope evaporated into my pain.

The troopers took me through the jailhouse, part of the county government annex I had known so well during my City Decorations Committee volunteer work four years ago. Off down one of the bare linoleum-floored hallways an argument resolved itself, a verbal spat between a lawyer and some important state trooper. The lawyer argued they had no right to take me, Mrs. Hancock, anywhere without the proper legal niceties. The state trooper didn’t agree.

Oh. There was something so bad, so horrible, that it caused the authorities to routinely ignore the legalities, something from a few years before the marvelous modern year of 1966. I tried to remember and failed.

The troopers hustled me out the back entrance into the warm September sun and down the wide stairs to the parking lot, where a bus waited. In the bright sun I couldn’t open my eyes at all, and they streamed with tears. One of the troopers jerked on my arm and pulled me, blind and stumbling, into the bus. Inside, the trooper untied the arms of my straightjacket and chained me by the wrists to a metal stanchion.

Hiccupping with sporadic sobs, I listened to the troopers around me for several minutes. My tears slowed and I dared crack my eyes open again. I was the only prisoner, outnumbered ten to one by the guards, chained up like Al Capone or Bonny of Bonny and Clyde. The troopers had placed me in a convict bus, one more commonly used to transport chain gangs and other prisoner work gangs to their jobs. The bus had steel mesh across the windows and a strong metal gate between the driver and the seats.

The men wouldn’t talk to me. One of them actually kicked me in the calf as he passed by me to his spot at the back of the bus. Another murmured, damned murderess, to the man next to him. There had to be some mistake. I prayed so.

The bus drove on for hours. Pain, hunger, tears, loneliness and confusion warred with unfamiliar thoughts that bled through my mind. I cried and cried, beads of salty rain dripping down my cheeks to collect on the point of my chin.

God damn it. Quit with the fucking tears already, one of the state troopers in the back said.

The trooper across the aisle from me leaned forward. With a sharp motion, he hit me in the stomach with the butt of his rifle. I gasped and cringed backwards as far as I could, crying harder. The trooper laughed. At least if she’s going to cry, she can have something to cry about.

A trooper in the front said, Hell, Rudy, what did you go do that for? Now she’s never going to shut up.

The trooper across from me shrugged. She wasn’t going to shut up anyway. She’s been crying for the last four damn hours. He jabbed his rifle butt toward my stomach again and laughed when I cringed.

The brilliant light faded into evening as the convict bus drove on. The state troopers didn’t relax their vigilance or treat me any better in the cooler twilight.

Hey, Snapper, you think she’s a good fuck?

The man two rows behind me grinned. Sure. You gonna go for it, Clete?

The first man laughed. It’s not like she’s going to live long enough to make any trouble over it. I’m just not into dogs. He punctuated his remark with a kick at my legs. You can, though. Just bend her over the seat and take her right up…

Frisky now, the kicks, blows, and appallingly graphic descriptions of their sick desires didn’t stop for many miles. I’d never even heard of some of the abuses they proposed. Yet, except for the blows and the kicks, they didn’t approach within six feet of me.

I cringed as far away from them as my bonds would allow and tried to pray, but I failed: furious, not penitent. I raged at God for letting me fall into such misery and I raged at my family for the same.

The troopers didn’t give me any food, or any water, or tell me my destination.

Night soothed my eyes; I’d never seen a night like this before. Everything lit up, as if the moon had taken lessons from the sun. I watched through the steel mesh, mesmerized by the vivid night, as the farmland turned to suburb, suburb to city. St. Louis? Likely. We circled around the city proper and headed away, into the land of freight trains and warehouses. The convict bus stopped at a heavy steel gate, backlit by city lights staining the sky. The gate interrupted tall walls with barbed wire on top, the loopy kind of barbed wire all prisons seemed to have. Three guards tended the gate.

One of the guards entered the bus, checked me over from a distance, refused to answer my questions, and extracted signatures from the boss trooper. The convict bus rolled over pipes, an unlikely cattle guard, and into the compound.

I expected to see a well-lit state prison, huge and impersonal. Instead, I found a single poorly lit U-shaped building, three stories tall, not large, but surrounded by a brick wall. Along the a quarter mile road to the U-shaped building were concrete slabs, the remains of bulldozed buildings and long unused roads. I frowned, mystified.

The building had no signs, no markings at all. A few lights shone from ground floor windows, breaking the darkness. An acre of graveyard lay four hundred feet to the side of the road, with hundreds of small identical white crosses, tightly crammed together, as if the graves held cremated remains. I’d seen this a long time ago, not this building, but similar. I dredged my mind, trying to remember.

Newsreels. Newsreels, while I attended college.

My God.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach.

They’d taken me to a Transform Detention Center, one of the old ones where they took Transforms to die in the bad old days, before they had discovered Focuses. I thought the authorities had closed down all the Detention Centers.

I raged for a moment, furious I’d been sent here in a prisoner bus. Transforms were dangerous! What a horrible thing to do to an innocent God-fearing housewife.

Then I got it. They thought I was a Transform.

I looked at my handcuffed hands, and, yes, they shook a little. The Shakes was one of the most horrifying diseases known to mankind, nearly as bad as Leprosy and the disease they described once on the Dr. Kildare show. The one that makes your skin fall off. They called this disease the Shakes because your hands shook, at least at the start of it. The proper term for the Shakes was Transform Sickness. You got it and you never recovered. You became something else. Someone else. Transformed.

This shouldn’t have happened to me! Transform Sickness was one of the ways God worked in the world, the hand of his wrath upon the blatant sinners.

The Shakes wasn’t supposed to be a death sentence for a woman if diagnosed early enough. I’d learned the truth in Parade magazine and Readers’ Digest: Focus households wanted woman Transforms and regularly took them in. Male Transforms, though, often couldn’t be saved and had to be euthanized or face a death too horrible to describe. Back before World War II euthanasia had been illegal, but because of the horror of the Shakes many state governments had legalized euthanasia, including Missouri. When the end came, male Transforms often went psychotic and tried to kill everyone around them. Women Transforms became Monsters if they weren’t taken in by a Focus, literally demonic monsters. Killing them was a kindness.

A rare variety of Transform, the Focus, saved other Transforms from death by moving a special Transform-only compound all Transforms had in them, juice, from one Transform to another. Only women transformed into Focuses, and only after spending several days in a coma. However, salvation from becoming a Monster or psychotic didn’t save the Transform from the eternal punishment of sterility, or the other marks of the curse they wore.

Now, I wasn’t a blatant sinner – or sprouting fur or growing claws. So why bring me here?

Was I a Focus?

The bus approached the brick wall around the u-shaped building and went down a ramp into a bright well-lit basement. Through the cracks in my eyelids, I saw tall concrete pillars, parking spaces, and a roped-off, pock-marked, discolored wall: the shooting gallery, where authorities shot women transforming into Monsters in the bad old days.

The wall looked freshly washed to me, though.

The bus rumbled by the wall and stopped.

We waited.

Ten minutes later a doctor in a white lab coat, flanked by two well-armed orderlies, came up to the bus. The doctor tapped on the door and the driver opened it. After he walked up the bus steps he held a huddled conversation with the officer. They talked, exchanged paperwork and signed papers. They took a moment to point at me and talked some more.

Eventually the driver opened the gate into the back part of the bus. The doctor turned to the guards, waved his hands at me and said Bring her. He turned and left, ignoring my presence.

Hey. Talk to me, I said. He didn’t. Sudden hot hot anger erased my tears and I slammed the cuffs against the metal pole. I slam Want slam Some slam Answers! slam.

The cuffs broke.

The Goddamned cuffs broke.

Rach – rat! went the guns in the guards’ hands. I held my hands in front of me in disbelief. I was a housewife, a town girl. My wrists bled red under the broken cuffs, with actual strips of skin laid open. Oooh! Yuck. The wounds should have been horribly painful, but no. Not too much. They did make me want to throw up when I looked at them, though. My anger melted away along with my blood as it dripped on the metal floor of the bus.

Mrs. Hancock?

I looked up at the firing squad of terrified state troopers in front of me and wanted to shake my head. The doctor had spoken, on the other side of the guards. He had come back into the bus. The nametag on his white lab coat read ‘Dr. Peterson’.

Yes, Dr. Peterson?

He slipped back a few feet when I addressed him by name, his face ashen. These men are going to fire their weapons and kill you unless you allow us to shackle you again, Mrs. Hancock.

At least he knew my name.

I saw the shooting gallery as we drove in, Doctor. All of a sudden, I feel safer in here than out there. You wouldn’t want to puncture the gas tank shooting up some Monster, would you? Phooey. I was making things up as I went along.

Monster? the doctor said. Where’d you get that idea, Mrs. Hancock?

Why else would I be here? Why else would you treat me like this?

Truthfully, Mrs. Hancock, we don’t know what’s going on. None of us has ever even heard of a Transform like you. Unfortunately, you were involved in an apparent homicide.

You’ve got to be kidding.

When you started your transformation coma, Mrs. Hancock, you took four women with you. You killed them. The doctor flipped through his papers. A Mrs. Susan Holtwich. Paper flip.

No, softly. Transformation coma? Me?

A Mrs. Alice Winslow. Paper flip.

No, agonized, louder. Kill?

A Mrs. Beth Farragut. Paper flip.

No, pain, terror, agony, and louder.

and lastly, a Sarah Hancock, a minor, age twel…

"You lie!" I screamed teary agony at the top of my lungs and launched myself forward. Guns fired. I ripped the clipboard from the doctor’s hands, ran headlong out the bus door and fell to the concrete. A siren to my left screamed air raid. I got up with barely a pause and ran as fast as I could with the shackles on my legs, faster than I believed possible. Behind me, boots pounded on concrete like a herd of horses. I stopped, looked at my bare feet, and noticed a growing red pool around them.

My blood.

I bolted, backtracking to the ramp the bus had used. It didn’t take me long to find it or to realize the futility of escape. The authorities had set up this place for people like me, for horrid monsters who killed their own daughters and their best friends. Instead of an open ramp, I found a floor to ceiling metal mesh net blocking my way. Beyond the mesh net sat a row of steel bars; behind that, another net. I turned right and ran along the edge of the underground garage, searching for another way out.

I started to slow, lightheaded and weak, overwhelmed by the worsening craving. I reached a corner and had to turn right again, past the shooting gallery. I could smell death there, recent death. The freshest blood on the concrete had spattered on it less than a month ago.

I had no idea how I knew that.

It hit me that I had no way out. I was dead. They would kill me if I didn’t bleed to death first. The people who chased me didn’t seem to care.

I sat behind a pillar, covered in cold sweat and woozy, a narrow stream of blood slowly snaking away from me. Only the state troopers in the truck had shot at me, not the men who chased me. The men who followed me walked and ran differently, though again I had no idea how I knew that.

I read the doctor’s paperwork. They had my name right. My husband was in custody, for striking a police officer and for four counts of involuntary manslaughter.

That puzzled me for a moment until I worked it out. The authorities blamed Bill because he hadn’t taken me to a hospital or police station. I’d read about cases like this. I actually considered it appropriate punishment – or had.

The paperwork listed me as Transform, unknown variety. I had killed my daughter along with three other women, probably while they took care of me…

I flipped back to the first page in sudden shock. There it was: coma onset. I checked the transfer paper remanding me from the custody of the Jefferson City Jail to the St. Louis Transform Detention Center and found the date. I’d been in a coma for three days. Strange. The transformation coma that produced a Focus lasted four or five days. I’d never heard of three.

Memories flooded back, dim memories of my couch and women caring for me. Some sort of rapture, ascension to heaven, pleasure akin to passionate love with my husband but something else. Then darkness.

Somehow, I’d killed them all, right there and then.

The authorities were right. I deserved to die. Transforms were monsters. I was a monster.

I’d killed my own daughter. I must have recognized my condition. I wasn’t stupid, I knew the symptoms of the Shakes, and I knew to be on the lookout for them.

However, the Shakes was the curse of God, punishment meted out to sinners and unbelievers. I was neither. In my pride at my sinless life, I must have denied to all that I had the Shakes.

Well, sinless life no more, if I’d done that. I stood and almost passed out. Tossed the paperwork away. Go ahead. Shoot, I said through my tears. I deserved it for what I had done. For being a Transform. They didn’t shoot. Yaaaaah!

I stumbled toward one of them.

The men were not the state troopers. They were armed hospital orderlies, men with experienced eyes.

Something hit me with the force of a jackhammer on the back of my head, and down I went.

---

Hello, Mrs. Hancock? I’m Dr. Peterson.

I awoke on the floor of a featureless concrete cell, right next to a six-inch grate in the floor that smelled like a neglected woman’s restroom in an east Texas highway rest stop. In a heat wave. The straightjacket and chains were gone and I wore a hospital gown. I cautiously levered myself into a sitting position.

The voice came from a speaker set in the ceiling. Hello. I’m hungry, I said. It took me a few moments to remember how I got here. I was surprised I was still alive. My annoying craving hadn’t left; I now guessed I wanted juice, the strange life-chemical of Transforms I thought of as the Devil’s soft drink.

Now that you’re awake, let’s start out with some information. Dr. Peterson’s tinny voice from the speaker echoed off the concrete walls. "Technically, you’re a multiple murderess. However, in my medical opinion, you haven’t harmed anyone of your own volition. Thus, if we can come to an agreement, I would like to work with you in a less confined situation. You would have a real hospital bed, receive medical care, and yes, we would feed you. You wouldn’t be tied down."

I’m confined to a Transform Detention Center? Let it all be a mistake. Please, God. Let it all be a mistake.

Yes, Dr. Peterson said, dashing my hopes and prayers. Confined for the safety of the surrounding community. Although you’re human now, things can happen quickly to those with Transform Sickness.

I took a deep breath and accepted the situation. Yes, yes, I have the Shakes, if I turn Monster or am about to, you’ll shoot me. Fine. I don’t have a problem with that. Can I have some breakfast? The horrors in Dr. Peterson’s paperwork evaporated, replaced by numbness.

Yes. You should know that all of us in the Transform Detention Center have signed waivers. If we’re taken hostage, the guards here will shoot to kill the person who took us hostage. If we die, so be it.

Hard life.

Hard life, and government hazard pay at two and a half times normal.

Good for you, Dr. Peterson.

While I waited, I counted bullet wounds. Four, none through my torso. Five, if you counted the long red welt along my ribcage, a graze. Amazing. I must have been out for weeks to heal so much.

The secret cell door opened to reveal five orderlies. Mrs. Hancock? I’m going to push in a tray of food. When you finish eating it, leave it in place, and stand.

Looked like dinner, not breakfast, to me, but I didn’t complain. I ate it, a man’s portion, but still felt hungry afterwards. I was used to dieting to keep my figure trim and expected to be hungry after eating. The hunger normally went away after a half hour or so.

I stood.

Mrs. Hancock, you’ve been approved to be a status four prisoner, the lead orderly said, a tall, thin man with a complexion problem. You’ll be allowed to walk from room to room, but only when accompanied by four or more orderlies. Two will accompany you in front, two in back. You won’t be restrained.

Okay.

Two of us will now enter the room. Please do not move.

I obeyed orders and the orderlies did a complicated dance of positioning, ending up with me between the four of them. The two in front did not put their backs to me, but walked half sideways, half backing down the corridor in front of me. The orderlies pointed guns at me the entire time. They hadn’t mentioned that as part of being a status four prisoner.

They brought me to see Dr. Peterson.

Dr. Peterson offered me a chair and I sat. The armed orderlies boxed the room, their guns still aimed at me. The cold men with their guns seemed odd in such an ordinary office.

Mrs. Hancock. Dr. Peterson said to me from behind his oversized wooden desk. You present us with many problems.

I’m sorry, I said. I didn’t ask for this to happen. To my surprise, I was already famished and wobbly. On top of my annoying craving for juice and my stiff joints, hunger made my mind feel like old molasses. It would be impolite to demand another meal so soon, so I decided to tough it out.

I understand, Dr. Peterson said, laying his hands flat on the desk as if it would rise up if he didn’t hold it down. He was in his forties, with dark hair and facial stubble like Nixon. He had a round face and a solemn look of professional competence, which I might have believed more if he hadn’t been so callous in the bus.

I’d killed my daughter Sarah. My thoughts hurt too much to face, so I turned my mind away from them.

As best as we can determine, Dr. Peterson said, you contracted Transform Sickness and started to make a Focus transformation. However, something unexpected happened soon after you slipped into a coma, while your friends and daughter were trying to call for an ambulance.

Transform Sickness did something that killed two friends, a neighbor, and my daughter. A Focus transformation induced transformations in nearby women, but didn’t affect children. Sarah must have been barely old enough.

Phooey. I didn’t believe my own words and rationalizations.

Yes, that’s the right way to look at it. You’re not at fault, Mrs. Hancock, save that under the archaic laws of the state you still might be prosecuted after you’re released from the Detention Center.

What can you do for me here, Dr. Peterson? I asked.

You’re of course familiar with the fact, Dr. Peterson said. He paused and brought his hands together on his desk to make a little church steeple. That if a Focus cannot be found for a Transform, he’ll die.

I nodded. Men go into withdrawal and go psychotic, women turn Monster.

We can predict to within the hour, these days, when this is going to happen. A day ahead of time, the authorities take unfortunate unwanted Transforms from a Transform Clinic and ship them here. This Detention Center also deals with the aberrant cases, of which there are plenty. For instance, there are two women Transforms on the third floor who…

All of a sudden I knew their location. That’s what had been bothering me. I wanted them, a strange sexual arousal mixed with a deep hunger. I needed them. They could satisfy my mysterious craving.

Yesrightthere, Doctor, I said, turning swiftly and pointing up. We must have been on the ground floor. Let’s go. I need them.

Dr. Peterson blinked at me. "You need them?" He backed away, white as a sheet and breathing rapidly, and slowly rose to stand with his back against a window. Thin stripes of black shadow from the thick metal grate on the outside of the safety glass dappled his white lab coat. Terrified, he slid along the glass to stand next to an armed orderly.

"I need them. Now," I said, and hissed.

Mrs. Hancock, Dr. Peterson bellowed. He gathered himself. You have just been reassigned as a status six prisoner, he said, with authority. Bend forward and place your hands on the desk.

Will that get me to those women?

Yes, yes, Dr. Peterson said. Absolutely.

Sure. Anything to arrange a visit with those two women Transforms. I bent. They shackled me with heavy shackles. When I looked up, Dr. Peterson had left the room.

I waited and examined my situation, suspicious of Dr. Peterson’s smooth assurance. There were little half-moons cut in the office carpeting. I had noticed them when I came in. The guards had peeled one of them up, revealing an eyebolt embedded in the concrete floor. They had shackled me to it.

A few minutes later I felt the woman Transforms moving closer to me, arousing my desires. Then, to my appalled anger, they moved farther away. When they left the building, a couple minutes later, I howled in agony and danced around the embedded bolt, pulling furiously at my restraints. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d actually managed to break free; the armed guards watched my manic performance with cold indifference. Eventually, the women went so far away I couldn’t sense them anymore.

I swung the chain at the floor in a futile display of anger and sat back down in the chair. I cried, furious and miserable with the loss of those two Transforms. They were mine. I needed them.

Dr. Peterson returned and wove his way in through the guards. Yes, now that that has been taken care of, Mrs. Hancock, where were we? he said as he settled in behind his desk again.

You bastard, I said. Hot anger. You lied to me.

I apologize, but it was necessary. You’re a Major Transform, Mrs. Hancock.

You said I’d failed my Focus transformation. I said, still livid with anger. Those Transforms had been mine!

You did. You’re a Major Transform, but you’re not a Focus.

His comment made no sense. To me, Major Transform and Focus were synonymous. Like Santa Claus and Kris Kringle. It didn’t help that my mind felt like mush.

I don’t understand.

Neither do I, he said, and artfully raised one and only one eyebrow. His smarmy air of smug superiority galled me. I tensed. "This is outside my area of expertise. However, I have an expert flying in to deal with you who predicted you’d be…what you are. So, other than the fact that I have to keep you shackled up and that you are indeed some form of Major Transform, are there