janecarnall

Lost my Yuletide Yay

2009-11-16T18:24:28Z

Dear Yuletider;

Er, this is kind of awkward. I asked Astolat and Elyn to tell me what the situation was after I'd revoked my sign-up, and they didn't, but I'm guessing with the way the Yuletide system works that you are still assigned. In which case: my love for you is undiminished (unless you're tazlet, which would be kind of ironic, wouldn't it?*) but I just lost the yayness of Yuletide thanks to OTW madness and, er, tazlet). So I revoked my signup for this year, on the basis that I wouldn't have any yuletide fun writing a story for the OTW archive which I hadn't planned on supporting.

You are the only person involved whom I actually feel I owe an apology to. Sorry, and best wishes.

I've always enjoyed writing Yuletide fic regardless of recipient, fandom, or indeed anything else - it's a unique writing challenge. I have regrets that I felt I would be unable to achieve the proper state of mind under the circumstances: I have strong regrets if my doing so were to spoil Yuletide for you. As House said when faced with the PI, the baby, and the Dean of Medicine: "This is an awkward situation. I believe the awkwardness would disappear if I removed myself."

*OTOH: if you're tazlet, this awkward situation is partly your doing, and I would suggest you ask for a pinch-hitter, too.

Jane

Still not getting the yay! in yuletide...

2009-11-16T09:17:20Z

moar funny pictures

Meh.

Ten days too late, thanks to lack of info between LJ and IJ...

2009-11-14T23:54:22Z

Posted at Yuletide Admin: "So while we are doing signup on the old code, we will be moving to the shiny new Archive of Our Own (about to go into Open Beta) for posting and reveal."

The fuck you are?

Oh bugger.

Woe to the centralization of fandom. You know, I accept cheerfully that Yuletide is not a democracy - that like most successful fannish institutions it is a benevolent autarchy - but I am COMPLETELY BUMMED, nonetheless, that I have now to choose between revoking my signup for Yuletide, when this would be the seventh year running, or revoking my decision not to get one whit involved in the OTW's Archive until it was clear that it was actually going to be useful/used/trustworthy.

This is not the mood I want to be in when I'm waiting to hear what my signup will be.

If I do revoke my signup, I'll let you know with plenty of notice. Even though you gave me none that by signing up to Yuletide this year I might could be signing up to the OTW's Archive.

Not happy,

Jane Carnall

link to thread

Uh, this post WAS the notice. It was posted pre-signup.

Yeah. I'm banned from livejournal/on IJ, so I read the Yuletide site itself a lot more often than I do the yuletide admin community. A brief notice announcing that yuletide admin were thinking about switching Yuletidetreasure over to the OTW Archive when it went to Open Beta, whenever you started seriously thinking about it (which I presume was sometime before 4th November, btw), *would* have been something that would have come to my attention promptly, and would have given me time to give it thought pre-sign up.

But meantime: the OTW is a project I could never get into because it was aimed at Americans and livejournal fans, neither of which includes me, and the "Archive of Our Own" is a project I had significant doubts about because, like the whole trend of OTW, it seemed to be aiming towards a centralization of fandom. (Of US fandom, at least.) - It was a project I was really not sure I ever wanted to get into, and I'm annoyed to find out that if I participate in this year's yuletide, I appear to be signing myself up to it. And yeah: even if I had been reading the admin community on a daily basis, I still think 4th November was too short notice to give that you intended to do that yuletiders. We're not *all* OTW fans, you know?

The OTW is aimed only at people who want to protect the rights of fan creators and preserve fan works, and the AO3 is only intended to help do that. I'm sorry you have issues with it, but I'm not going to try and argue you out of them; I think our work as an org over time has to speak for itself. It's certainly not perfect, but it's what we can do. I think it's pretty damn awesome, obviously.

However, that has nothing to do with the fact that this journal is an integral part of the Yuletide communication process. If you don't want to read the community, you are going to get the core instructions of what you need to do to participate, but you WILL miss things like advance planning, how things are going to change from year to year, etc.

Which, that is up to you if you want to take that risk, but when you subsequently DO miss things, that is not our problem. This community comes with a public RSS feed you can subscribe to via dreamwidth or many other free feed-reader services or even via email; if you don't bother to take that trouble, then please don't complain to us.

I have been posting constantly here for the last two years that the yuletide archive and code was deteriorating under the increasing size of the challenge, and that my coding time was going to building the AO3 as a replacement. You've evidently missed all of that, plus this more-concrete announcement, and you didn't check the admin journal before signing up. That is not our fault, and it doesn't become our fault no matter how upset you are over what we're doing, sorry.

"I'm sorry you have issues with it, but I'm not going to try and argue you out of them"

Good, because tazlet just did a *sterling* job reminding me why the OTW is not an organisation I want to be involved with, even peripherally.

"That is not our fault"

True: it's a problem caused by the increasing centralisation of fandom and the presumption that if you don't want to be part of a centralised fandom it's not the responsibility of those who are centralised.

Tazlet has done a good job of making me feel sure I want to revoke my Yuletide signup, but it's a decision I probably ought to sleep on.

and having slept on it (Monday)
Dear Yuletide Admins,

This is not technically a technical problem, but none-the-less, I'm backing out.

As I understand the rules, by letting you know well before deadline time that I will not be providing the OTW/Yuletide archive with a story for 21st December 2009, I have till sign-up deadline for Yuletide 2010 to decide (by writing a story in the New Years Resolution List) if I want to participate in 2010.

Which gives me the year I wanted to have to decide if I want to be associated with OTW by signing up to Yuletide.

I'm kind of sorry, but in all honesty: Yuletide is primarily, for me, about having fun writing the story - and the more I thought about it, the more I felt: I'm not going to have fun writing the story if I feel that I'm committing myself to be part of a project I've always had mixed feelings about - and the mix has never been good. By Yuletide 2010 I hope it will be clear to me how far being associated with the Yuletide Treasure project means being associated with OTW, and how much I want to be involved with it if it is.

(The final trigger was getting a pro-OTW flame of the post I made about it on my journal: it's far from the first time I've seen anyone making a criticism of OTW get flamed by OTW sidekicks who seem to feel it's their business to police fannish criticism of the project, and it's only one of the reasons I just don't like OTW much: while it doesn't take much to make some fans turn mean, I've seen a lot of meanness around OTW, and all that it seems to take to trigger it is someone expressing a *lack of enthusiasm* for the project. - Obviously my post went kind of beyond "lack of enthusiasm" into outright "AAAGHNO!!!" but I genuinely was taken by surprise.)

Astolat and I exchanged some harsh words about this on the YuletideAdmin. I'm sorry for that: I acknowledge that yes, had I been keeping up with YuletideAdmin I'd have been better prepared for the announcement, but the last two years had been tough ones for various reasons, and I was barely keeping up with communities on IJ, let alone elsewhere.

I realise, writing this, I have no idea what you do with the person assigned *to* someone who backs out after assignment deadline. Please do whatever's most convenient/appropriate for you - and if you could let me know your decision about this, I'd be obliged.

Dear Yuletider

2009-11-13T23:13:25Z

Thank you for writing me a solstice gift! I know that at this moment you are probably staring at the story you are committed to write and wondering why on earth you agreed to put yourself through this hell. Courage, mon ami! We're all in this together. I too am staring at a blank screen thinking "What fresh hell is this?" and (as I write this, having just completed my sign-up form) I don't even know which of many possible hellish choices I have been assigned. But, secretly, I know it's going to be fun. For given values of fun. Right?

I kept thinking in the first couple of novels of Foreigner series how interesting it would be if this was going to be a Bren/Banichi romance.

With Fame - the news that they were doing a remake of the movie and were pushing the Montgomery MacNeill for the 21st Century back into the closet made me think about what happened to Montgomery. Or, to be honest, when I happened to see the movie again earlier this year. Montgomery came out: and yet he's still presented as painfully isolated and alone, and the romances the movie presents are strictly heterosexual. (Another reviewer who remembered the 1980 movie said the odd thing for him was that there were no lesbian or gay teachers: he remembered every performing arts school faculty absolutely hotching with queers.) Depending when exactly you decide the 1980 movie is set (if freshman or senior year is 1980) you may or may not need to deal with AIDS.

Cagney and Lacey - oh hell, even if you don't want to write me it, sign the petition? (Petitions.) I want the rest of the series on DVD, please.... But a good buddy-cop story with Christine Cagney and Marybeth Lacey would be so cool...

Viktor/Victoria - Toddy and Victoria. To say again: Obviously, they were never lovers. But they lived together as best friends and partners and Victoria punched out Toddy's previous boyfriend and Toddy died on stage for Victoria. They were great together. I want the story of how they lived together.

Much love! *tea and hugs*

See you on the 25th.

Love,

Jane

I really hate getting this annual message...

2009-10-31T10:01:40Z

Signup for Yuletide is currently closed, sorry! Please contact the Yuletide admins if there is a problem with your signup that needs to be fixed. If you are too late to join in for this year, you can still sign up to be a pinch hitter or write a New Years Resolutions challenge story.

NOTE: if signups have not officially closed yet, the script may just temporarily be down for some technical maintenance. If that's the case, try again in a little while! Check the yuletide admin livejournal for announcements.

...but I always do, every bloody year.

Ohwell. There's no clue on Yuletide Admin community (which I just added as an RSS feed) when signups are closing (and no announcement about when they opened) but... I checked earlier in the week and they weren't open yet then so ...

Attempted to sign up to mini_nanowrimo, but may have left it too late: still a member of wrimowrimo.

Nanowrimo, wrimo....

2009-10-26T20:27:38Z

I am fairly sure I am just asking for woe and disappointment here, because we are running a bloody big event in November. How am I going to write even a hundred words a day? Eek, really.

However. At the very least, Nanowrimo is good for writing more. So I'm going to sneak into the local Kick-Off Party (31st October at 12.30pm - lunchtime) in the Library Bar in the Teviot (Enter Teviot, turn right until you reach the staircase, then in front of you, to the right of the downward staircase, there is a room which is part of the Library Bar, but separate from the rest of it). I may even sneak along to the Sunday Write-In (Sunday 1st, 4pm, back part of Starbucks, entrance above the Chinese medicine shop, just before the scaffolding in front of the obnoxiously loud souvenir shop). The Nanowrimo Regional Person identifies herself with a "highlighter-yellow shirt".

And! I know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to try and kickstart my Exhausted Brain which has been stumbling and braking towards the end of "The Games" and "Through The Mirror", by inviting you to play.

Please login and post a request for a drabble or a flashfic (it will be at minimum 100 words: if I decide I can't be arsed writing it as a drabble, it'll be longer...) in either one of those universes. I'll do crossovers if you like. (It, er, makes an alarming amount of sense that MirrorM*A*S*H and The Games are in the same universe, just fifty years apart.)

Rules:

1. You have to login. Get an IJ account. Thank you. (Give Squeaky some money! He's buying moar servers! Yay!)
2. Specify if this is MirrorM*A*S*H or The Games.
3. If you want a crossover, specify the fandom (essential) or the pairing (optional).
4. Give me a word.
5. (Optional) Give me a theme.
6. Do not ask for stories which are spoilers. I'm still trying to finish the damn stories... Ask for a missing scene, an AU, a crossover with a background character, a something.
7. There is no rule 7. Inspire me.

My Yuletide nominations (today)

2009-10-14T22:46:53Z

The Fugitive (1993 movie)
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
MASH (tv)
Orson Scott Card - Lost Boys
Roger Zelazny - The Graveyard Heart
Stephen King - Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption

Who knows what I may not think of over the next few days?

An odd side-effect of SurveyFail

2009-09-06T21:00:58Z

A while ago, Dusk Petersen noted to me that a problem with my website was that none of my stories had blurbs: I acknowledged that I write lousy blurbs and prefer "none" to "lousy".

One of the questions in SurveyFail (Q54) was "If you write m/m slash, how do you study male anatomy and physiology in order to write more convincing stories?"

and as both the question and all of the multiple-choice answers contained too many false assumptions to be answerable, in comments to a post discussing that and other poorly-worded questions, I listed the topics I researched for Sins & Virtues.

Six people in the next six days asked me for a link to the story. To give perspective, I think the total number of people who ever read Sins & Virtues prior to 1st September this year is something like 15. (I sent out a dozen hard copies: not all of those got read...)

Okay. I really do need to write blurbs. Even crappy blurbs which consist entirely of a list of research topics.

In The Mouth Of The Wolf: Part 6

2009-08-04T00:40:10Z

It's 1.35 in the morning, my time, though in Montreal (where I am right now) it's 8:35 in the evening. I am beyond exhausted, but I'm posting, because I am too tired to think of a good reason for breaking my word. (Written in Edinburgh, revised transAtlantic, revisions reviewed in Shoshanna's living room, posted via her Internet.)

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), The Gambler (seven parts), The Pieces (seven parts), and End-Game (5 parts).

There are parts one two, three, four, and five of "In the Mouth of the Wolf", the sixth and final section of this story.

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 6:

The car was on I-90 now, and the city came in sight: Stephanie stared at it without thinking for a moment, as Emma said, voice shaking, “What's that?”

The city skyline was broken. Stephanie blinked and rubbed at her eyes. The smoke was breaking up the skyline. It looked wrong because of the smoke, the long black tail sweeping over the city. She went on staring.

It had been made entirely of mirrors, angled to reflect the light. At sunset it glowed like a torch: at night, it gave back the city lights in luminous extravagance: on sunny days it glittered and in the rainlight it shone like a pearl. Stephanie had stopped to look at it a thousand times: she had thought it was the most beautiful building in the world since she was a little girl, and even now …

… it was gone. The thick smoke smeared across the sky where it had been.

“Look,” Bo said. She sounded almost dazed. “It's gone. It's really gone.”

The last thing Deputy Marshal Gerard did was take all four of them into the long room he called the armoury, and get Tam to shoot at a paper target with two different guns. He wouldn't let either Emma or Stephanie herself touch the guns, but he let Bo try to use one of the ones Tam had shot with. She didn't seem to do very well, but it didn't look difficult. The ammunition was kept in heavy cardboard cartons. Gerard had pointed them out to Emma and Stephanie. “Carry all you can.”

The last they saw of Gerard, he was being helped by his slave into the passenger seat of a plain white van. He didn't say goodbye to them. The slave drove the van out the gates, which opened automatically and closed behind them.

“I wonder why they didn't let us have the van,” Emma said. “We could have fitted a lot more in.”

The van was the one that had shown up outside her parents house, all that time ago. Last Sunday. Tam and Bo, hooded and cuffed like parcels, had been stuffed into the back of it. Stephanie glanced at Emma.

She was one of the popular girls: rich and pretty and always dressed right. She was seldom unkind and her body slave was the best-looking one in the school. She always turned in her classwork on time and got regular As. You couldn't imagine her saying anything controversial. She never had, not ever, to Stephanie's knowledge, until last week when she'd asked Stephanie out for coffee and told her that her two slaves were in love with each other, and she was going to help them run away together. All in a breathless, slightly amused voice, that made it all sound like a joke.

Stephanie had never imagined Emma weeping out loud that Bo hated her, Tam hated her, her mom and dad's slaves hated her. It hardly seemed possible that Emma had said that – would ever say anything like that, or cry that she wanted her dad, or stop crying only when Bo comforted her. She wasn't that kind of person. The marks of hard crying were still on her face, even if she sounded just like usual.

Deputy Gerard didn't want Tam and Bo to have to get into the van again. Stephanie understood that.

The trunk of the car was packed to the brim with foodstuff from the kitchen, and a carton of medical-looking stuff that Bo and Tam had collected. “Can you find this church, Tam?” Emma asked.

“Yes, Miss Emma,” Tam said. “The car has a navigation system.” She opened the back door of the car and Emma and Stephanie fitted themselves in, the ammunition boxes piled between them with a couple of blankets from one of the upstairs beds thrown over them. But she got into the passenger seat: Bo got in on the driver's side.

“I didn't know you could drive, Bo,” Emma said.

“Ben taught me.” Bo's voice sounded odd, Stephanie considered: both constricted and filled with some unexpected, inexplicable emotion. “My name's Beatrice.”

Emma opened her mouth, as if to say – as Stephanie certainly wanted to say – “No, it's not”. Emma's girl Bo had never been called Beatrice.

Stephanie caught Emma's eye, and Emma closed her mouth again, slowly, looking forward as if warily: Bo and Tam had guns and could drive and weren't wearing collars and maybe the tall slave had taken their chips out... and they were all dressed funny, in slops that an owner might have provided for an unregarded slave to wear. If someone stopped the car, would they know Emma and Stephanie were free, and Bo and Tam were slaves?

Were Bo and Tam really slaves any more? Stephanie's father owned three slaves, which Stephanie knew was the legal minimum for his income and house size, and treated them well. Harry cooked and Mary cleaned and Sue gardened and did typing and filing, and none of them had ever gone hungry or been whipped. They didn't hate anyone. Dad would pay them wages if they were free.

The smoke from the city skyline, where the Commerce building had been, looked as if it were painted on the sky. “It's gone,” Bo said. “It's really gone.”

“Yes,” Tam said. She was tapping at the navigation system. “We need to keep straight on here. The nav route takes us three blocks from Commerce, and we don't want to go there.” Her voice never changed much: but underneath the calm Stephanie thought she heard the same unexpected, inexplicable emotion, between anger and joy.

“It's gone,” Bo said again. “Yes, I see,” she added, and the car didn't turn: they were sweeping on down I-90 at the speed limit, and Stephanie found she was getting a crick in her neck staring at the broken skyline where the Commerce building had stood. Stephanie turned to rest her neck, to take her eyes away, and saw Tam's face in the mirror: her lips were parted in a strange hard grin that showed her teeth.

Stephanie reached out and took Emma's hand, feeling cold fingers curl round hers. She had been in a cell for hours without water, getting angrier and more frightened as the time went by, thirsty and hungry and angry but knowing it was a tactic, they would have to come back with water.

This wasn't the cell. This was the real world, breaking.

Stephanie wasn't sure where they were: somewhere over on the south side of Chicago. Bo parked the car next to the only other one in the paved area next to the church. It felt odd to be outside again: it felt odd to be standing and walking, just as if everything was normal, with Emma – with Tam and Bo.

A man came out of the church – a priest: he was wearing ordinary clothes but he had a white collar on. Stephanie swallowed, trying to think of something to say, but Bo had already stepped forward. “We're runaways. Can we come in?”

“Yes, but you'll have to leave your guns outside,” the priest said, in so normal a voice that Stephanie could almost have hugged him. “Are you all armed? You'll all have to put your guns down before you can come in.”

The church and the parish house were already crowded. Neither Emma nor Stephanie seemed to have a chance to explain that they weren't really runaways, and no one seemed to care: people helped unload the car, all but the guns and ammunition, and Bo drove it away with someone from the church, but came back again in a short while. Tam was in the priest's office; Bo went in to join her. A man had given Emma and Stephanie mugs of instant coffee, heavily sweetened: they sat together on a bench, and drank the coffee, and gradually Emma stopped shaking.

“We should find a phone,” Stephanie said quietly, when Emma's hand felt warm again. She hadn't really been thinking much about her family – there was too much else going on – but when she did: “I don't even know if my parents are in jail.” It hadn't occurred to her till just now.

“I don't think so,” Emma whispered back. “I think they'd have to put my dad in jail too, aiding and abetting, and they couldn't do that.” She stopped. Her voice came out awkwardly. “Steffy, I'm sorry I got you into this, okay?” She wasn't looking at Stephanie.

“Okay,” Stephanie said, after a moment when she wasn't sure whether to laugh or to cry. She thought her own voice came out awkwardly, too. She wasn't as confident as Emma that her father's being nearly a Lord would make any difference to how her own parents got treated, but it wasn't worth arguing with Emma about. “Just imagine, all this could be happening and we wouldn't know what was going on.”

Emma gave her a look and a choked gulp of laughter. They both buried their faces in their coffee mugs, trying to make themselves stop: when someone noticed – the man who had given them the coffee – they tried to stop and sit up straight, but he didn't seem to mind.

“Feeling better? What are you called, kids?”

“Emma” – “Stephanie,” they both said, almost simultaneously.

He looked at them. “Okay,” he said. “Would you two like to help out in the kitchen?”

The basement was partly kitchen, partly eating space – there were tables and benches round the wall. There was no phone. A TV in one corner of the room seemed to be set to a music channel: the sound was on low.

Making sandwiches was trickier than Stephanie had thought.Dan was chopping vegetables for soup, and the other two people in the kitchen were wiping dishes and sorting cutlery. There were big loaves of sliced bread – the date on the wrapper was, she realised with a little calculation, today's date, if today was still Wednesday. There was meat and cheese in big lumps, and lettuce and onions, and big tubs of margarine and peanut butter and red jelly. She and Emma got it all out on the table as Dan directed, looking at each other: Stephanie had made sandwiches, when Harry was busy, but to eat right away, never to stack up and keep. Emma probably never had done even that.

“All right,” someone new said. Dan looked up and said gladly “Mary Beth!”

She was Sue's sort of age, probably in her fifties, big and brisk. She swapped hellos with the other adults, and said to Emma and Stephanie, “So you two are making sandwiches? Let's see, we'll want to run the cheese through the grater – and you can slice spam, can't you? I'll shred lettuce. The onions go through after the cheese, on the number 3 setting – ”

She had an oddly calming effect: the task seemed less monumental as she organised it. When they started to put the sandwiches together, she made easily twice the number Stephanie could, and hers looked tidier, more like proper sandwiches: Stephanie's tended to stagger. Each sandwich had to have two slices of either meat or cheese, and some shredded lettuce and onion but not too much, and the margarine had to be spread out to the edge of each slice. After a while Mary Beth put Emma to make peanut butter sandwiches with the red jelly: they looked easier, but Emma was still just as slow as Stephanie. She talked as she worked, casual and easy, and it was a while (spread margarine, place a slice of meat, second slice with corners overlapping, a bit of lettuce and onion, put the two slices of bread together, cut the sandwich in half, stack) Stephanie realised she was asking questions, and Emma and Stephanie were answering them. It must be obvious by now that neither of them were runaways.

When the sound from the TV changed, it was to something so familiar Stephanie hardly registered it at first: the CNN theme tune.

“News,” Dan said, and dropped the spoon he was stirring the soup with and ran: Mary Beth stopped mid-question, and followed him; the other two, Laurie and Jon, had stopped preparing the tables and were staring at the TV.

The newscaster wasn't anyone Stephanie recognised, and she didn't look well-groomed. Her voice didn't sound like a newscaster's, either: too excited.

“Today the President of the United States of North America signed an executive order declaring all slaves in USNA to be free natural-born citizens.”

No one in the room was a slave; but Stephanie got the same kind of feeling from the four adults as she had got from Tam and Bo. Nobody said anything, but she was conscious suddenly of being no part of them; they were leaning forward, eyes fixed on the screen, almost holding their breath.

“In response to the President's Executive Order, the Department of Commerce declared itself in rebellion against the USNA government and attempted to take control of state governments throughout the USNA, making illegal use of military force against USNA citizens. This rebellion by Commerce – ” The newscaster sounded so odd, saying that, so triumphant, almost – “is being strongly put down, but in twenty-three states Commerce still holds some control.” Below here, state names were streaming past, each one either in blue (“US Government in control”) or in jagged red (“Still under threat by Commerce” the tag lines ran). Illinois was blue. “If you are in a Commerce-controlled state, you are advised to stay indoors if possible and remain calm. Any persons you formerly owned are now free, but your obligation to feed and house them remains. Congress is in session: keep tuned to this channel for further information. In liberated states, state news will follow in half an hour. In all liberated states the state Congress and governor, and the fire, police, and ambulance services are no longer answerable to the Department of Commerce, and at least one state-wide broadcaster is able to freely provide information. Commerce is still active in military operations in some liberated states. Repeat: stay indoors, remain calm. Former slaves are protected by law as free citizens, but may not be denied food and shelter by their former owners. Broadcasts will be made at a state level calling for help with emergency services. The President asks everyone to remain calm at this extraordinary juncture in our nation's history.”

“I bet they don't show us a photo of the President,” Mary Beth said. She glanced round. “Guys: we still need dinner in an hour.”

Dan grabbed her in a hug. “Mary Beth!”

And all the adults in the room were suddenly laughing and crying and hugging each other and exclaiming. Even Mary Beth, though she had seemed the calmest person, was crying: not extravagantly, but as if she could not stop it: even when she went back to the table and was putting sandwiches together, she still had tears running down her face as if there was a tap she could not stop.

“They can come home now,” she said, not quite as if she was talking to Stephanie. “All the children who were sold. They can come home.”

Tbc: final chapter to follow

In The Mouth Of The Wolf: Part 5

2009-08-02T10:38:58Z

I leave for Montreal very first thing tomorrow, but I promise I will post Part 6 either tomorrow or soon after: (or possibly, very late tomorrow evening). Part 7 is *still being written*, but I do know what happens and I won't keep you waiting any longer than I have to. I am taking my laptop with me to Montreal.

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), The Gambler (seven parts), The Pieces (seven parts), and End-Game (5 parts).

There are parts one two, three and four of "In the Mouth of the Wolf", the sixth and final section of this story.

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

You may want to go back and re-read parts 3 and 4 (at least) before you begin on Part 5. Or not. As you please.

Part 5:

There was no sense of familiarity about the hospital corridors. The colour was wrong. They seemed emptier than Kimble remembered, quieter. The smell was the same. Kimble knew the way, but it felt as if he were seeing everything from the wrong angle, as if his height or his eyesight had changed in five years.

The door to research lab one was locked. There was no one in the outer room – the whole research area felt deserted. Kimble had seen no one, heard no one, for some time as they moved through the hospital, and these corridors and offices felt empty.

Sam sat down on the nearest chair. He looked exhausted: his mouth opened as if he were trying to say something, but Kimble turned away. There was a noticeboard with memos and lists of researchers and supervisors, mostly names he did not recognise, but Doctor Charles Nicholls was listed, head of pathology: Kimble stopped to look, to remember. There was a white lab coat hanging by itself on the row of hooks over on the far wall. Underneath the coat, someone had put a postit note on the wall with an eight-digit number. The security rules had been to change the lock codes every quarter, and for weeks afterwards, almost everyone hid a note somewhere with the new number. Who would break into a research lab to steal damaged slaves?

There was an airlock kind of arrangement inside: a double door. The outer door closed automatically: the inner door was controlled by a switch outside the outer one.

Kimble stared at the door: he hadn't thought about it until this moment. The cages inside were locked: probably – his mind fumbled along, feeling awkward at his own stupidity – probably each research project had its own code. He would have known that. He hadn't thought about it. He hadn't known about the double door, but it made sense when he thought about it: why hadn't he thought about it? He hadn't thought about how he was going to get them out, or get their collars off, or get their chips out...

“Richard?” Sam said. Kimble heard him as if from a very long way away. He turned to look at him. He could wedge the chair in the outer door. If Sam were left outside, he could close the switch, he could lock Kimble inside. He still didn't know how he was going to get the cages open.

“Get up,” Kimble heard himself say. Sam came to his feet without saying anything. The chair was light enough to be lifted with one hand: Kimble took hold of Sam's forearm with his other hand. He opened the first door, and dropped the chair across the outer doorway. When he turned the switch the smell of the inner room came out to meet him with greedy, seeking fingers. He firmed his grip on Sam's arm and together they stepped inside.

The room was brightly lit: he only felt as if he stood in darkness. Down both sides of the room, the cages, each one large enough to hold an adult man.

The people in the cages were lying on the floor. The stench in the room was of cooked meat, and burned plastic with charred metal, and cooked meat with blood, and shit from loosened sphincters, and cooked meat.

A weight caught him like his own horror behind his knees, bringing him down: Sam was falling with him, as if they had been felled by the same death.

Richard put his hands to his own throat, trying to wedge his fingers under the collar. He was cold all the way through. He was cold and he could not get his fingers under the collar, though he could feel it burning him.

Death stood over them, skeletal-thin, chained by the throat: death was a slave and he was dead. The people in the cages were cooked meat. He could not get the collar off. He was burning.

There was a narrow thread of sound that seemed to be real. Richard rolled over and pushed himself up and looked at the man curled on the floor next to him, his mouth open and his face wet: Sam, he knew, while he could not think if Sam was a slave or his owner.

“Are you Doctor Richard Kimble?” The man leaning over him was a slave.

“No,” Richard said, without thought. “Not any more.” He sat up: his neck hurt savagely. “Sam, did you fall on your hands?”

Sam's mouth closed, his breath and the sound stopped. He shook his head.

“Sam, did you know they all had convict collars?”

Sam didn't move. His face was wet in tracks from his eyes. He shook his head again.

“Don't lie to me, Sam,” Richard whispered. “You knew.” When he stood, the other man scrambled backwards, staring up at him, his face twisted up in a frown. Richard took hold of Sam's arms above the wrists and pulled him up. The other man used the wall to get up, and lurched to the door: Richard followed, almost heaving Sam with him.

The other man had gone to the water cooler, still limping, and was drinking, one cup and then another. Richard pushed Sam into a chair and took a cup of water. He was opening the container when the man said “Vicodin?”

“Yes,” Richard said. “Did you hurt your leg? Want one?” Sam had stopped making the thin breathy noise, but he was still shaking. If he hadn't fallen directly on his hands, he had hurt himself in the fall. He glanced at the clock: in half an hour's time, night shift would start at the arena. The injected painkiller would be wearing off anyway. The burns unit would need to know what Sam had been given. Richard shook out one Vicodin and handed the container to the man: he had to put the pill into Sam's unresisting mouth, and Sam gulped at the water to swallow.

The man closed the container and handed it back. “Who are you?”

Sam swallowed. He said, without any inflection, “Samuel Gerard, United States Marshal. Retired. Who are you?”

“Greg,” the man said. “Doctor Kimble – ” Richard flinched. “You are Doctor Kimble, aren't you?”

“No,” Richard said, flatly. “Not any more. I'm looking for Doctor Nichols.”

“Well, you won't find him in there.” Greg filled the cup he'd drunk from again, swigged it down, and stared round the room. “What time is it? What day is it?”

“Wednesday evening.”

“I had it figured,” Greg said. He was leaning back against the wall, most of his weight on one leg. “I had it all planned. You're early but that's good. I had it all planned.”

“What?” Richard stared at him.

“Well, it's no good now,” Greg said. “I planned on being dead right about now. I had it figured I'd probably get shot even before I got a drink.” He laughed. “And you show up with Vicodin. Doctor Richard Kimble. Where did I dream you up from? I didn't even like you all that much.”

“Do I know you?”

“Former Doctor Wilson's former body-slave,” Greg said. “But I don't think my face was ever higher than your belt, any time I was in the same room as you.”

James Wilson had been investigated, charged, and convicted of buying ex-body-slaves with hospital funds, supposedly for Final experimentation, in practice for sexual use: he'd been permanently suspended six years ago, and the rules about purchase and disposition of Final slaves had been tightened up. Chicago General had of course been compensated with all of Wilson's property. That might have included any slaves he'd bought with his own money – Richard didn't remember.

“I need to get Sam to the burns unit,” Richard said, after a moment.

“Thought you wanted Doctor Nichols. He's Pathology. He was down in the main hall last time I saw him, sorting out slaves. They're probably all dead by now.”

“I need a wheelchair,” Richard said.

Greg shrugged. “I haven't got one.”

“I don't need a wheelchair,” Sam said. He sounded impossibly tired, his words slurring. “I heard gunfire. Earlier. Sounded like a firefight. Off thataway. Get out of here, Richard.”

“I heard something blow up,” Greg said. “Twice. Felt it more than heard it, those walls are soundproof. What happened?”

Sam was learning back in the chair, his shoulders slumped and his head down. Richard took a deep breath and said, “Sam says there's a revolution. To overthrow Commerce and free all the slaves.” It sounded less absurd to him now he'd seen the smoke of buildings on the wind, but he was still standing in a lab at Chicago General talking to a collared slave about a change that couldn't happen. He touched his neck again and realised as if through opening fog that he had hurt himself, digging his own hands into the burn mark. “Sam says Commerce triggered the convict collars when they took the threat seriously.” He stopped.

Greg wasn't looking at him in disbelief, at his words or his very existence, but nodding as if what Richard was saying made sense. “They were saying, last night, in the dorms. There was going to be a massacre today.”

“There was,” Sam said. He whispered it. His head came back with a lurch and he stared at Greg, at Richard. “Two thousand slaves. Ten percent of the workforce at Devlin Macgregor. They started the killing this morning. The slaves fought back. We'd been smuggling arms into the country. Arms and explosives. We meant this to happen. I knew Commerce would trigger the convict collars.” He was still not much more than whispering. “I knew it. I did it.”

Greg was still nodding. “Yeah,” he said, as if agreeing with a commonplace. “Makes sense. Devlin Macgregor owns a chunk of this hospital, they'd know we knew about the massacre, if I'd cared I'd have told them to shut up about it last night. That's why they rounded us all up this morning. All the slaves in the hospital – ” he began to laugh, not hysterically but as if he really had seen a joke “ – except for us, that is – are probably dead by now.” He was still laughing. “I'm not hallucinating you. You're actually here. I couldn't hallucinate this.” He straightened up from the wall and stood on both legs, lurching to the right and grabbing on to the chair Sam was sitting in. “My leg doesn't hurt. You really are here. I took two Vicodin and I think I'm too stoned to care but we're probably all going to get shot. Where did you say you wanted to go?”

“Burns unit,” Richard said.

“Oh?” Still clutching at Sam's chair, Greg stared close-up at Richard's neck, and then pushed himself upright and looked down at Sam's hands in the puffy, battered-looking green gloves.

“Okay,” he said at last. He was no longer laughing. “Who cut your collar off? When?”

“What?”

“How badly are his hands burned? Because if he kept his hands in between the collar and your neck until the collar burned off, he wouldn't have any hands left, and you probably wouldn't be alive either. Someone must have cut your collar off – how long did it burn his hands for?”

“Minutes – ” Richard shook his head. “I don't remember.”

“If we can find a gurney, that's better than nothing,” Greg said. “We won't get there, you know? If they've started shooting, they'll shoot us.”

“I know.”

From the corridor outside, footsteps. Booted, fast-moving: the sound of guards, Richard thought: soldiers. He glanced back at the Final lab. If he'd gone to find Doctor Nichols first, he might have got here in time to kill him.

“Too late,” he said, quietly, and put a hand on Sam's shoulder. It wasn't likely that, here, a US Marshal's ID could be used to save either himself or Greg, but they might not shoot Sam if his badge was visible.

The door opened. Half a dozen uniformed soldiers, all armed. Richard froze. Neither of the other two spoke or moved. Two of the soldiers stopped, guns pointing at the three of them, one stayed out in the corridor, the other three went on into the Final lab. They came out after only a minute.

“All dead,” one of them reported.

“I know,” Greg said.

“Were you in there?” A corporal, from the stripes. There was something odd about the uniforms. Richard couldn't place it.

“I belong to Chicago General,” Greg said. “They all died in there.”

“Yeah, we got that,” the corporal said. She gestured at one of the other soldiers, who caught Greg by the collar and did something so abruptly that Richard hardly realised what had happened till the heavy chain fell with a clatter on to the ground.

“We are the United States Free Military, representing the Free People of the United States,” the corporal said. You could hear the capitals. “You are now a free person. You will receive a full explanation of your status and current events via the news channels: we recommend you find a television and bring yourself up to date. If you have any medical training kindly report to the ER, this hospital is now an official emergency aid station under the International Red Cross. What are those two?”

“Slaves,” Greg said. He was rubbing his neck. “They work in the offices here. They came to get me out.”

“Either of you collared?” the corporal asked. What was odd about her uniform was that the USNA insignia had been clipped off.

Richard shook his head. Sam lifted his head and stared at the corporal, who looked back at him for an instant, frowning.

“No,” Sam said.

part 6

Anticipation in Montreal: 3rd August - 13th August

2009-07-27T11:23:04Z

I'm going to Anticipation in Montreal - weekend after next, whee!

I'm arriving in Montreal the evening of Monday 3rd August, and departing the evening of 13th August: between Wednesday 5th August and Monday 10th August, I anticipate (pun) being enjoyably occupied with the Worldcon at the Palais des Congrès, just on the edge of Vieux-Montréal. (I am staying at a delicious bed-and-breakfast gay guest house about 20 minutes walk from the Worldcon.)

Below the cut is my Worldcon panel schedule. Please note that I have no idea where any of the locations are, or if they're likely to change from day to day. (I was on another panel about writing sexual orientations in SF, "Rainbow Futures", but got taken off because it clashed with the "Gender Issues" panel - obviously, no one interested in sexual orientation in SF could be expected to be interested in gender in SF, and vice versa: and you may see my name on a panel item about role-playing games, but that was a mistake, and besides, it clashed with a panel about Doctor Who.)

Anyway, that's what I'm doing. And yes... *still working on 'The Games' to post the last three parts before I go*. Promise. But, if any of you are coming to the Worldcon: let's meet up!

The Most Slash-Worthy Shows on TV: 163
Thursday at 7pm in P-511BE
All Participants: Jane Carnall, Niall Harrison, Kathy Sands, Rhodri
James, Shoshanna Green
Moderator: Jane Carnall
"Why do some shows lend themselves to fanfic? And what makes certain characters ripe for speculation? Which shows have inspired the best fanfic?"

Snobs R Us: 541
Friday at 12:30 in P-511A
All Participants: Emma Hawkes, Jane Carnall, Paul Cornell
Moderator: Emma Hawkes
"What kinds of fiction in our own world do we ignore, put down or exceptionalise? Why do we dismiss YA books and tie-ins?"

First Contact: Create and Design Aliens: 832
Friday at 3pm in P-516E
Carl Fink, Jane Carnall, Judy T. Lazar, Jean-Pierre Guillet, Dana MacDermott, Diane Kelly
Moderator: Judy T. Lazar
"A workshop conceptualizing other beings: What sort of biology are aliens likely to have? What might they look like? What personalities/behaviors? How will this affect our communications?" (Actually, the blurb has "effect", which would also be an interesting discussion.)

The Doctor and the Dalek: 169
Friday at 8pm in P-511CF
All Participants: Christine Mains, David D. Levine, Jane Carnall, Rhodri James
Moderator:
"Where does Dr. Who fanfic go now? Are there new opportunities for slash fiction? Or should we just tiptoe quietly away?"

Writing Gender Issues: 744
Sunday at 4:30 in P-513B
Anne Harris, Jane Carnall, Jason Bourget, John Kessel, Joshua Palmatier, Lila Garrott-Wejksnora
Moderator: John Kessel
"How do writers approach gender and gender issues? What’s taboo? Can women write men and men write women without making a mess of it? How do you write a story that explores gender issues without hitting the reader over the head?"

Hello! New confusion and new chapters...

2009-07-12T15:39:15Z

Look at this way: you're having an adventure!

See, I had a problem with "End-Game", and it's mutated. A bit.

What I thought was going to be the last section of the Games story turned into the penultimate section. "End-Game" now has five parts and was posted in April.

"In the mouth of the wolf", the new last section of the Games story, started in May and now has five parts written, four posted, and two more planned. You have already read three out of the first four chapters posted. Sorry.

There are now posted: part one, part two, part three (this is the only brand-new part) and part four of "In the Mouth of the Wolf", the sixth and final section of this story. Part five is written and will be posted after review: parts six and seven are still under development, but I do not *touch wood* perceive any MORE course-changes. And the goal is to have it all posted by end-of-day 2nd August at the very latest, sanity permitting. Ideally, earlier.

However. "The Players", posted back in November, now has a new alternate version of Part One: Willow. At the moment, such is the way my mind works, both versions are hanging in a Schroedinger's Box, with identical reality. But you get to read them both because I didn't mean to keep you hanging this long for the rest of the Games story.

And as I say: I am resolved, to have it all finished for you by the time I leave for the Worldcon on 3rd August.

Links to all chapters here in The stories so far.

Rodney's Adventures in Wonderland - Chapter 2

2009-07-12T12:16:50Z

CHAPTER 2: The Pool of Tears

'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Rodney (he was so much surprised, that for the moment he quite forgot how to speak good English); 'now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!' (for when he looked down at his feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off). 'Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I'm sure I shan't be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must manage the best way you can;--but I must be kind to them,' thought Rodney, 'or perhaps they won't walk the way I want to go! Let me see: I'll give them a new pair of boots every Christmas.'

And he went on planning to himself how he would manage it. 'They must go by the carrier,' he thought; 'and how funny it'll seem, sending presents to one's own feet! And how odd the directions will look!

    RODNEY'S RIGHT FOOT, ESQ.
        HEARTHRUG,
            NEAR THE FENDER,
                (WITH RODNEY'S LOVE).

Oh dear, what nonsense I'm talking!'

Just then his head struck against the roof of the hall: in fact he was now more than nine feet high, and he at once took up the little golden key and hurried off to the garden door.

Poor Rodney! It was as much as he could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more hopeless than ever: he sat down and began to cry again.

'You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' said Rodney, 'a great scientist like you,' (he might well say this), 'to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!' But he went on all the same, shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round him, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.

After a time he heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and he hastily dried his eyes to see what was coming. It was the fluffy-haired Major returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a large alien device in the other: he came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself as she came, 'Oh! the General, the General! Oh! won't he be savage if I've kept him waiting!' Rodney felt so desperate that he was ready to ask help of any one; so, when the Major came near him, he began, in a low, timid voice, 'If you please, sir--' The Major started violently, dropped the white kid gloves and the alien device, and skurried away into the darkness as hard as she could go.

Rodney took up the alien device and gloves, and went on talking: 'Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, THAT'S the great puzzle!' And he began thinking over all the scientists he knew of to see if he could have been changed for any of them.

'I'm sure I'm not Marie Curie,' he said, 'for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all; and I'm sure I can't be Isaac Newton, for I know astrology is nonsense, and he, oh! he knows such a deal of rubbish! Besides, HE'S he, and I'm I, and--oh dear, how puzzling it all is! I'll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: e equals m c squared, and V equals R times I, and p is prime if it is a positive integer greater than 1 and is divisible by no other positive integers other than 1 and--oh dear! I shall never get to Fermat's last theorem at that rate! However, that doesn't signify: let's try Fourier. If e equals 1 plus 1 over !1 plus 1 over 2! plus 1 over 3! plus 1 over 4! and assume e equals p over q where both p and q are negative integers - no, THAT'S all wrong, I'm certain! I must have been changed for Isaac Newton! I'll try and say pi until the hundredth decimal place.' Rodney put hands on his lap as if he were saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but his voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the numbers did not come the same as they used to do:-- 'Three point two four three F six A eight eight eight five A three zero eight D thirty-one thirty-one nine ...'

'I'm sure those are not the right numbers,' said poor Rodney, and his eyes filled with tears again as he went on, 'I must be Isaac Newton after all, and I shall have to go and live in that poky little house in Oxford, and have next to no computers to play with, and oh! ever so much tea to drink and astrology to learn! No, I've made up my mind about it; if I'm Isaac Newton, I'll stay down here! It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying "Come up again, dear!" I shall only look up and say "Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else"--but, oh dear!' cried Rodney, with a sudden burst of tears, 'I do wish they WOULD put their heads down! I am so VERY tired of being all alone here!'

As he said this he looked down at his hands, and was surprised to see that he had put on one of the Major's little white kid gloves while he was talking. 'How CAN I have done that?' he thought. 'I must be growing small again.' He got up and went to the table to measure himself by it, and found that, as nearly as he could guess, he was now about two feet high, and was going on shrinking rapidly: he soon found out that the cause of this was the alien device he was holding, and he dropped it hastily, just in time to avoid shrinking away altogether.

'That WAS a narrow escape!' said Rodney, a good deal frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find himself still in existence; 'and now for the garden!' and he ran with all speed back to the little door: but, alas! the little door was shut again, and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as before, 'and things are worse than ever,' thought the poor scientist, 'for I never was so small as this before, never! And I declare it's too bad, that it is!'

As he said these words his foot slipped, and in another moment, splash! he was up to his chin in salt water. His first idea was that he had somehow fallen into the sea, 'and in that case I can go back by air,' he said to himself. (Rodney had been to the seaside once in his life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go to on either coast of the US you find a lot of surfers risking drowning, sunbathers courting skin cancer, then stores selling ice cream and candy, and behind them the highway to the airport.) However, he soon made out that he was in the pool of tears which he had wept when he was nine feet high.

'I wish I hadn't cried so much!' said Rodney, as he swam about, trying to find his way out. 'I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That WILL be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.'(This was very likely true.)

Just then he heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and he swam nearer to make out what it was: at first he thought it must be an American or a hippopotamus, but then he remembered how small he was now, and he soon made out that it was only a Scotsman that had slipped in like himself.

'Would it be of any use, now,' thought Rodney, 'to speak to this Scotsman? Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very likely it can talk: at any rate, there's no harm in trying.' So he began: 'O Scotsman, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Scotsman!' (Rodney thought this must be the right way of speaking to a Scotsman: he had never done such a thing before, but he remembered having seen in his sister's book of poetry, 'Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie, O, what panic's in thy breastie!') The Scotsman looked at him rather inquisitively, and seemed to him to wink with one of his little eyes, but he said nothing.

'Perhaps he doesn't understand English,' thought Rodney; 'I daresay it's a Gaelic mouse, come over with Montgomery Scott.' (For, with all his knowledge of physics, Rodney had no very clear notion of history outside sci-fi films.) So he began again: 'Where are the dilithium crystals?' which was the first sentence in his Star Trek handbook. The Scotsman gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright.

'Oh, I beg your pardon!' cried Rodney hastily, afraid that he had hurt the poor Scotsman's feelings. 'I quite forgot you might not like Star Trek.'

'Not like Star Trek!' cried the Scotsman, in a shrill, passionate voice. 'Would YOU like Star Trek if you were me?'

'Well, perhaps not,' said Rodney in a soothing tone: 'don't be angry about it. We won't talk about this any more if you'd rather not.'

'We indeed!' cried the Scotsman, who was trembling. 'As if I would talk on such a subject!'

'I won't indeed!' said Rodney, in a great hurry to change the subject of conversation. 'Are you--are you fond--of--of Star Wars?' The Scotsman did not answer, so Rodney went on eagerly: 'What do you think of Attack of the Clones? --oh dear!' cried Rodney in a sorrowful tone, 'I'm afraid I've offended it again!' For the Scotsman was swimming away from him as hard as it could go, and making quite a commotion in the pool as it went.

So he called softly after it, 'Scotsman dear! Do come back again, and we won't talk about Star Trek or Star Wars either, if you don't like them!' When the Scotsman heard this, he turned round and swam slowly back to him: his face was quite pale (with passion, Rodney thought), and he said in a low trembling voice, 'Let us get to the shore, and then I'll tell you my history, and you'll understand why it is I hate sci-fi movies.'

It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the people that had fallen into it: there were an Athosian and a Genii, a Satedan and a Traveler, and several other curious creatures. Rodney led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore.

Without doubt I am going to go to hell

2009-06-23T21:34:39Z

I read this.

And it made me think two things:

1. I do get the point of having "If you want to read it, there's a warning associated with this story". Except I also agree much more strongly with this (from livejournal, three years ago) and this from fanfic symposium: warnings are not obligatory.

2. But given that, as she outlined very clearly, a trigger may be something as unexpected as calculus - ought we all then to warn for every event in the story, since any event may be triggering?

I don't want to cause anyone unwanted distress.

But if you read my stories, you should know that I want to harrow up your emotions like a fork in butter frosting: to make you cry, make you laugh, turn you on, startle you like a thin knife that pierces your heart before you know your skin is broken, suck you in as if I were a black hole and you were my light, make you shake, make you shiver, melt your brain, make you keep coming back -

...if you want me to do that to you.

If you don't, you shouldn't read my stories.

MAS*H: Northern Spies

2009-06-19T19:21:51Z

Northern Spies

for Jennifer, who loves apples and Hawkeye

“You the doctor who operated on my men?”

"No,” Hawkeye said. He was so tired it felt like someone sitting on top of him. “I'm the janitor. Sometimes they let me operate. Did I leave anything inside?”

“He's just kidding,” Radar said, looking uncomfortable. “He's a doctor. Hawkeye, this is Henry Canfield. He's a sergeant.”

“Congratulations,” Hawkeye said, and yawned. “Hope you get over it soon.”

“Real kidder, aren't you?” Canfield said. “Doc, I got a parcel of these from home but I've only got one left now, and they tell me you're a Vermonter. Figured you'd appreciate it.”

“Maine,” Hawkeye said. He yawned again, his eyes squinting shut. “Mom's from Vermont. Can I help you?”

Canfield seemed to give up: he picked up Hawkeye's arm by the wrist and pushed the red thing he was holding into it. Hawkeye lifted it to his nose and smelled: faint and sweet and unmistakable, the scent of a New England apple, picked hard in autumn and left to ripen in storage.

“For you. Thanks,” Canfield said, and walked out of Hawkeye's life. He was gone before Hawkeye got his eyes properly unsquinched: and even then Hawkeye wasn't sure what he had looked like. But the apple in his hand was round, slightly flattened, wine-red with streaks of green: it smelled sweet and wintery. An apple.

“Who told him I was from Vermont?” Hawkeye asked in puzzlement.

He got up and walked away from the mess table, holding the apple in his hand. Trapper would have told the sergeant Hawkeye was from Maine: but Trapper wasn't here. Trapper was home where he could have all the apples he wanted.

“Did you tell the sergeant I was from Vermont?” he asked Radar.

“No,” Radar said. “Do you want that apple? I could get a whole pack of toilet paper for it, maybe some peanut brittle, too. No one around here's seen fresh fruit in weeks.”

“Let them eat cake,” Hawkeye said, with a queenly gesture that didn't let go of the apple. He wandered on.

“Hey, BJ, did you tell the sergeant I was from Vermont?”

"No,” BJ said. “I told him I was from Vermont, but he didn't believe me. If you don't want your apple, I'll have it.”

Hawkeye laughed. It was difficult to laugh with sleep sitting on him. “Did he give Frank an apple?”

“Ha!” Frank said. “I didn't want one of those apples. Are you going to eat that? An apple? It's very bad for you.”

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” Hawkeye said, and waved the apple at Frank. “Away, away.” He wandered on.

“Hawkeye, are you all right?”

“I'm asleep, Father,” Hawkeye explained. “I dreamed someone told me I was from Vermont and gave me an apple.” He sank down on to the nearest bed, and sniffed the apple again. “It smells good for a dream. Do you want an apple?”

Father Mulcahy sat down on the edge of the bed, and Hawkeye pulled him down like a reluctant coverlet to lie on top of him. He bit into the apple: the white flesh beneath the thin skin had run in streaks of red, like wine, like blood. He held out the apple in his mouth to Father Mulcahy, lifting his face towards Mulcahy's, feeling sweet relief as Mulcahy's head dropped in surrender, and Hawkeye felt his teeth bite into the apple's flesh.

“Why did you tell him I was from Vermont?”

“I hoped he'd give you the apple,” Mulcahy said. His mouth tasted sweet and cool.

“Serpent,” Hawkeye hissed affectionately, twined round him.

***

These are what Northern Spies look like:

In The Mouth Of The Wolf: Part 4

2009-05-25T23:27:42Z

(This was the eighth part of "End Game", and then had the Author's Note: "Part 8 (and Part 7) are neither of them from Kimble's point of view. I am sure you would notice and not be confused, but as we're all friends here, I just thought I'd mention it. Part 9 is from Kimble's POV, and I think the story should wrap up inside 3 parts. Sorry to be muddled about this. I'd known these characters were going to show up, I just hadn't realised they'd want their own POV-sections, and am finding myself feeling horridly confused about what this has done to the structure of the story. ("Whee?")" Well, I am no longer horridly confused. Hope that you are not too much so either.)

If you prefer to read a warning before you read the story, there is a warning associated with this story.

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), The Gambler (seven parts), The Pieces (seven parts), and End-Game (5 parts).

There are parts one two, three and four of "In the Mouth of the Wolf", the sixth and final section of this story. Part five is written and will be posted after review: parts six and seven are still under development, but I do not *touch wood* perceive any MORE course-changes.

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 4:

“They say there's going to be a massacre,” one of the other slaves whispered. Ashka or Mason, Greg didn't pay attention to their names till they'd been here at least six months and they were probably going to stay.

“I heard,” someone else whispered. “Out at the big pharmaceutical plant.”

“I heard two thousand.”

“Ten thousand,” someone else said.

“They wouldn't do that, would they? I mean, slaves are worth something.” That was someone very new. Not just new to the hospital. New to being a slave.

Six years ago, when Greg was new to sleeping in the slave dorm at Chicago Memorial – new, really, to being a slave – he would have sat up and told the last voice, “Yes, they would and they will. They can do anything they like to any of us or all of us, and if you don't shut up with the Internet gossip, you'll find out what that means.”

But that had been six years ago, and Greg was still alive. He pulled his blanket over his head to shut out the voices, and let the stuffy air and his own utter weariness take him to sleep. True or not, he couldn't think of a reason why he should care.

Eleven-thirty in the morning was Greg's first scheduled meal. The alarms jangled his nerves, but he kept walking, hoping the next thing would be a voice declaring this to be a random test of the system. Or at least that they wouldn't get around to evacuating the building till he'd grabbed some food.

When he saw five security guards running down the corridor, he reacted: head down, keep moving, don't look like you're walking fast, don't –

The taser-blow to his shoulder was mild: they were herding, not punishing.

After six years of being a slave – fourteen, if he counted the years wit h Wilson – he ought to know how to handle himself better. When the alarms went off, all the slaves with quicker reflexes had scuttled for cover, leaving a handful of the slow, the old, and the stupid in plain view.

Kneeling in the main hall, hands on the back of his head, there was plenty of time to think about that. Other slaves got herded in – by threes and fours and dozens – so it didn't look like being fast and smart about the alarms had done them any good.

There were ways of passing on a message slave-to-slave, without the free people present noticing: but no one was taking that risk now, today. The hall wasn't silent: the ambiant noise reminded Greg of the Commerce centre that trained new slaves for sale. He had known Doctor Wilson was going to buy him at the end of it. Day after day, week after week, miserable and weary and bored to breaking point, crowded with dozens of people who smelled of misery and pain: even understanding what they were doing to him,even knowing at the end of it he would be going home with Wilson, hadn't helped him resist it. They knelt with their heads up and their hands on the back of their heads, sore and shocked and hungry, separated out in tidy rows that the guards could walk between, the hall filled with the sound of horribly scared people trying not to breathe too noisily –

Someone had smuggled something in, or someone had done something slaves weren't allowed to do. Chicago Memorial owned a couple of hundred slaves, and the senior consultants all had slave assistants and bodyslaves who were theirs personally, and it looked like all of them were being herded into this one room.

Someone had done something to make the hospital administration really pissed. This wasn't a difficult diagnosis: this conclusion was running through the room even without words.

The slaves had all been arranged so that they were facing away from the clock above the main door: but even so, Greg estimated it took about an hour to herd all the slaves in the hospital in. He heard the guards before he saw them: they were talking, not loudly, to each other. They had been told to pick out some slaves from the group. The slaves they chose were being herded towards the exit, away from the clock, further into the hospital.

When they stopped behind Greg, one of them roughly pulled his collar round till the tag was available, and tugged it out, pulling the collar against Greg's throat, to be handier for a reader. Greg stared ahead. They hadn't stopped by every slave. Impossible to tell, really, whether it would be good or bad to be chosen. All of the slaves chosen so far had been older than average – none from the personally-owned slaves. Probably bad. There was probably nothing about any of this that would be good. His belly felt cold and heavy, his chest was tight, and his knees hurt, and if he stayed kneeling too much longer he'd start leaning over to the right, involuntarily and untidily. In any ordinary situation, he could deflect this by going down on to his face and kissing the floor, or someone's feet – anyone's feet – but he didn't think that was going to work this time.

When he felt the man's grip shift on the tag of his collar, he knew what was going to happen. He knew better now than to obey an order before it was given, but he was ready to move when he felt the first taser-touch that was meant to impel him to his feet. There was time for a moment's glance around the hall, and it didn't look good. He hadn't known the hospital had this many security guards, and they were carrying guns, not the usual tasers.

Head bowed, hands on the back of his head, Greg was almost at the exit from the hall before he remembered last night's Internet rumour; the massacre of slaves said to be planned for today.

Here? Greg stumbled, but caught himself, and checked out the guns again. Most of them were handguns, nothing worse. But if he had seen right, two at least of the guards, standing where they had a long view of the hall, were carrying machine guns.

He was almost the last of the slaves pulled out of the hall. The hospital administrator and one of the department heads – both of them had bodyslaves who were both in the hall, in the front row – were checking items off a list on a clipboard that the department head was holding in his actual hands; slave labour, that Greg didn't suppose either of them had ever performed before.

“Chem lab two,” the department head said. The slave just ahead of Greg was June, a lab technician: that made sense.

“Fine. This one?”

Greg kept himself perfectly still, head down. He had come to the conclusion that being chosen was preferable to being left in that hall under the eyes of the guards and their guns. Whether they planned to kill all the slaves in the hall or only some, Greg certainly wanted to be somewhere else when it happened.

There was a pause. It seemed long: there was time for Greg to count his heartbeats, to tell himself to be calm.

“He's got research lab experience,” the department head said.

“Fine. Research lab one.”

No one in Greg's hearing had called the room by its formal name before: but he knew where he was going. It was probably still better than staying in the hall, but he wasn't sure by how much.

The door was unmarked. If you didn't know what it was, you had no business there. The guards pushed him through the first door; he heard it lock behind him. The second door opened on a switch from outside. The smell came through the second door to meet him like an unwelcome friend, and Greg almost thought of staying where he was.

But there were cameras, and there was the risk of being taken back to the hall, and the certainty of punishment. Greg stepped forward into the warmth and smell of the cage lab.

Eight cages: six occupants. The first thing the other slaves warned you about, before you were put to work in the cage lab, was never to look the occupants of the cages in the eye: never to speak to them: to ignore them if they spoke to you. They were slaves on Final contracts, who had agreed to be sold knowing they were going to be killed: the researchers who were making use of them might talk to them and question them as if they were still human, but the slaves who were put into the cage lab to keep an eye on the automated feeding and watering mechanisms must remember they were no different from the other lab machinery: they didn't talk to the inmates of the cages, and they didn't respond if the inmates spoke to them.

Eight cages: six occupants. Greg walked slowly up to the end of the lab, glancing into each cage – not at the occupant, he knew not to do that, not when they had eyes that would look back at him, mouths that would open, as if they wanted to speak – there was no one new to the cages, no one who would speak out loud, but they would stare and open and close their mouths –

Four of them were on a normal diet, though given the chemicals they were being dosed with, they probably didn't have much appetite for it. One was on liquid food every six hours: at least one feed this shift, then. One was on a special test diet on which she would die from malnutrition in about three weeks –

Greg cut that thought off, with some difficulty. The results of the diet were not his concern. The standard food supply worked pretty well: inmates being fed a test diet required checking because it sometimes didn't work properly in the automated machines.

There would be nothing to do for three hours, providing nothing went wrong. Greg went back down the lab to the square of floor under the security camera at that end of the room, and let himself down on to the floor. The wall was hard against his back. There was no point in wondering what was going to happen to the other slaves in the hall. There was no point in thinking about the inmates of the cages.

There was no point in thinking. Everything he had to do was better done without thinking about it.

There was a large flat thud. Greg moved as if impelled, away from the wall – he had felt it more than heard it. He crouched on the floor, waiting for it to happen again, wondering if this was why the hospital administration had rounded up the slaves –

He looked up and saw all of the six inmates were pressing against the front of each cage, all staring at him. For an instant, before he looked away again, he saw their faces.

The cameras were always on, and recording. Greg looked down at his hands and began, with great concentration and never lifting his eyes, to get up on to his feet. He knew better than to talk out loud, pretending he was talking to himself. There was a panic button: it could be used if anything were going wrong with one of the inmates. The slave on shift wasn't expected to know what could or should go wrong.

The telltales were on and shining green in all the cage panels. There was no other indication that anything was wrong, anything that justified pressing the panic button. Something was wrong – that had been an explosion, a big one, outside the hospital perhaps but not far away – but here in this room, there was nothing wrong. Greg went back to the place under the security camera, and sat down, and rested his face in his hands: he could hear the inmates moving in their cages now, hear them breathing, and they had seen him look at them. He couldn't take any more risks. He couldn't look at them. He wasn't supposed to hide his eyes: he was supposed to pay attention.

He took his hands away from his eyes, and looked up the room. The security camera at the far end recorded his movements. He sat still, staring up the room, not looking at the cages. He could wait like this forever. He knew he could.

“Hot,” one of the inmates said. It came out as a gasp: it took Greg a moment to realise it was a word, and in that moment, the other inmates – three of them – all of them – screamed.

They were dancing in the cages, Greg thought: dancing and screaming. He couldn't help looking at them: it was a long moment of bewilderment before he knew there was something wrong. There were deep red marks where their collars touched their throats, forming and growing – they were struggling with the collars, one had her hands jammed between the collar and her neck, and the red marks were growing on her hands, too. They were jerking and howling. Greg was on his feet: he hit the panic button and ran to the first cage, lurching and falling –

There was a fire extinguisher against the wall by the door: he struggled to his feet and scrambled towards it, jerking it from the wall and stumbling back to the cages. One of them – two of them – were lying on the floor of their cages, twitching, not screaming –

Three of them. The fourth stumbled and slid down against the wire and landed on her face as he reached her cage: the fifth and sixth were still somehow more or less upright, their throats roasted red wounds, their voices gone –

“I'm sorry,” Greg said, out loud. He knew he had spoken out loud when one of them looked at him, her eyes wide, her mouth open in a scream she could not voice. She must have been dead when she fell: but she was looking at him when she died. The sixth had fallen over on to his side and lay twitching: somehow he had jammed his hand between the front of his throat and the collar, and his hand and throat looked fused. He had bled from the neck as he died. Greg dropped the fire extinguisher and stood still. His heart felt as if it was going to pound out of his chest. “I'm sorry,” he said again. He sat down on the floor by the cage and leaned forward to press his hands between the wires: he couldn't reach her where she'd died. He couldn't have reached any of them. The fire extinguisher was designed for electrical fires: to save the cages, not the inmates.

After a while it became clear that no one was coming in response to the panic button, or the death of all six inmates, or the disobedient behaviour of the slave put in to take care of them. From the smell, the collars on their throats were still hot, still burning their flesh.

Their collars had burned them. Greg put his hands to his own throat and felt the cool link-metal of his own collar. The hospital had decided they didn't need these bodies in the cages, and they'd used their collars to kill them all. They wouldn't send help: they'd send a clean-up crew. He was going to die here.

Greg stood up. He walked down the row of cages, this time looking at each one. He was going to die here. Halfway down the row it occurred to him that he had felt a second thud, larger than the first, while he was watching these people die.

The walls of the cage room were soundproofed. Outside, the hospital could be deserted, or the lab staff could be watching and having a party, and Greg wouldn't know it. But the large flat thud he had heard and felt through the floor and walls had been something large and close-by blowing up. Something outside was happening: outside the hospital, because there had been no vibration in the structure, no indication of internal damage.

It was the worst job in the hospital, cleaning out one of the cages after the occupant had finally died. There would be a lot of bad cleanup jobs after this. Greg leaned against the last cage, looking at the man who had died fastest: he had fallen on to his back, and the collar had burned through his windpipe. There wasn't very much blood, because the collar had cauterised the wound, but there was some: his carotid artery had been burned through. He was in his twenties, and had fair hair: the slaves in the cages were shaved every two weeks if they still grew hair, and the stubble on this one was barely visible.

“I'm sorry,” Greg said again, to this man in particular, to all six of the dead. He had tried to stay alive and unharmed for six years – kept trying, with all his tenacity and intelligence, to remain visibly useful, to appear obedient and submissive – and there had been no particular point to it: all of that trying had led him to this room, to standing before these cages, knowing he was going to die, if he survived long enough to see the door open again. There was no access to food or water except from inside the cages, and there was no opening the cages. He could have done something more useful the first time he had been pushed inside the cage room: he would have been dead by now if he had.

Walking up and down the room passed time: walk for ten, sit for ten. After a while it became harder to get to his feet, and after a while, Greg gave up: he sat, staring at the cages, the fire extinguisher resting between his knees, listening for the sounds of the outer door being opened.

He was done.

</a>

to part 5

The warning associated with this story: Gruesome death. Six gruesome deaths.

Meme, apologies, End Game

2009-05-22T08:21:20Z

I've been going through a bit of a weird period personally, but I have finished Part 8 of End Game (I think - I need to do the usual re-read / review) and to continue on with Part 9.

I'm going away next week, Tuesday through to Thursday. I will be taking my laptop with me (probably) but I don't know how much writing I can get done. I will post Part 8 before I go away, and let you know where I am with the rest of the story. I'm sorry this has been dragging on like this - I do know where I'm going, trust me *looks shifty* No, seriously, I know how the story ends, it's just some crap has been coming down this month and it's really interfered with getting into the writing zone.

THE ANONYMOUS WRITING FEEDBACK MEME

In The Mouth Of The Wolf: Part 2

2009-05-10T22:39:08Z

(This was the seventh part of "End Game", and then had the Author's Note: "Part 7 (and Part 8, to follow) are neither of them from Kimble's point of view. I am sure you would notice and not be confused, but as we're all friends here, I just thought I'd mention it. I'm still frankly not sure if I can squeeze the rest of the plot into part 9, part 10, or if I need part 11, and how the hell this works out for the structure of the story, but, that's what makes this an adventure, right? ...right?" - Well, I have now found out what it did to the structure of the story.)

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), The Gambler (seven parts), The Pieces (seven parts), and End-Game (5 parts).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 2:

All the while alone in that dark room, it had not been real to Beatrice that she was going to die. At some point the process of questioning was going to end, and there would be nothing more. The dark room was real, and the concrete and metal of the walls and floor. The men who asked her questions did not seem altogether real, as if she dreamed them. They never touched her. Once one of them gave her a cereal bar, and it tasted sweet when she ate it, but that too could have been a dream. What had been real to her was that Tam was going to die, her face smashed to pulp by blows, her skin torn and flesh bruised and ripped. She had seen people beaten so badly that they died, and they said – everyone said – that what Commerce did to you was worse. They were going to do that to Tam. They had slept together one night, just one, and though her hands and mouth and nose and all her body remembered Tam in ways she had never imagined she could feel, what she remembered could already be gone: Tam might already be dead.

Upstairs they seemed to carry the smell of the cells with them. Miss Emma and Miss Stephanie looked sick, and smelled worse. Tam trudged up the stairs behind them, carrying the gun, her eyes down. She wouldn't meet Beatrice's eyes.

Upstairs: a carpeted hallway, open doors to deserted bedrooms. “Where the hell are we?” Miss Emma said. She sounded as if she would be angry if she weren't so tired.

Miss Stephanie pushed the nearest door open and went in: Miss Emma followed.

For the first time, Tam looked at Beatrice. Her eyes opened wide as if she were drinking Beatrice with a look. She said, so quietly Beatrice could hardly hear her, “Did they hurt you?”

Beatrice shook her head. “I kept thinking – ”

Tam nodded, a quick me too, and pointed through the door, interrupting with a gesture. Just then Miss Emma called, not loudly but urgently, “Tam! Bo!”

Miss Stephanie was throwing up in the bathroom. Miss Emma came out of the bathroom and said, almost as if they were home, “Oh, there you are. Bo, can you find us some clean clothes? For yourself and Tam, too. We all need to wash. Tam, come through and help Steffy, she drank too much water too fast. I'll call my dad, he'll come get us.” She said the last tightly, but with certainty. Miss Emma did not get on with her father, every household slave knew it. “I can't figure out where we are, so if you see anything, let me know.”

Beatrice said “Yes, Miss Emma,” hearing Tam echo it.

There were three bedrooms on this floor, and a locked door that might be a holding cell or slave quarters. There were two other bathrooms, and Beatrice drank water in the first she found. She hoped Tam got to drink, too.

There were clothes in the dressers of two of the rooms, a mixed bag: the kind of thing that would be left behind by departing guests. The third bedroom looked more lived-in, and had a lot more clothing, but all sized to fit a man taller and broader than any of them were. Beatrice went back to the bedroom with what she had found.

Miss Stephanie had finished throwing up. She still looked shaky, but she sounded more like herself. Miss Emma hadn't been able to find a phone, or anything with an address on it. “I didn't want to go downstairs on my own,” she said.

“I don't blame you,” Miss Stephanie said. “This place is weird. What did you find, Bo?”

Tam and Beatrice got to shower together: Miss Emma and Miss Stephanie were both arguing over the pile of clothes Beatrice had found, and paid no attention to what they were doing. Under the noise of the water, Beatrice said “Do you know where we are?”

Tam shook her head. “Did you see either of those two men who let us out before?”

“No,” Beatrice whispered. “Are we still runaways?” If they weren't – if they had been let out because someone had decided –

“I wanted to run away,” Tam said. “I think I told them that. I don't remember.” She had been washing Beatrice's back, and her hands slid up to Beatrice's shoulders. “I still want to,” she said.

Beatrice turned around and put her arms around Tam, leaning against her. “I thought they were going to kill you,” she whispered. She didn't have words for how much she wanted Tam to stay alive. Even if they couldn't touch, couldn't talk to each other – even if they couldn't see each other –

Tam nodded. She moved her head and kissed Beatrice on the mouth. “I don't want them to hurt you,” she said. “But I can't – ” She was trembling. “We can't,” she said, and stepped out of the shower.

Miss Emma decided about the clothes: Beatrice had known she would. They all wore baggy t-shirts, which covered them almost like dresses, and Miss Emma distributed the other clothes. They were all more or less dressed, and Bo dumped the dirty clothes in the shower. “Let's go downstairs,” Miss Emma said, when they were dressed. “That man said there'd be food. And there must be a phone.”

There was a large room downstairs, a sitting-room or library, looking like people had left it in a hurry. Further down the hall the other door led to a kitchen. There was no one there. There was no sign there ever had been cook or kitchen maid there – no slave quarters at all.

“I can't see a phone,” Miss Emma said.

“I don't care,” Miss Stephanie retorted. “Let's eat! Bo, you can cook, can't you?”

“We should get out of here. Bo, Tam, find us something we can eat now. No cooking.” Miss Emma sounded crisp and definite.

Tam was still holding the gun. She had put it down only for a few minutes on the bathroom counter, when they showered. She stood looking at Miss Emma for a silent moment.

Beatrice didn't want to think about what she saw in her mind's eye in that moment. She knew what Tam wanted to do. It would be the end of everything. “Oh,” she said, out loud, and moved across the room, between Miss Emma and Tam, “bread. I can make sandwiches.” She was standing between Miss Emma and Tam, and turned, trying to look casual. It was improper for one slave to give another slave instructions in front of their owner, but Miss Emma had always been relaxed about propriety when her parents weren't around. “Tam, could you look in the fridge?” she said out loud, staring right into Tam's eyes.

She saw Tam blink, and the focus change: not on Miss Emma but on Beatrice. Tam nodded. Miss Emma and Miss Stephanie were talking again: where were they? How hungry they were! How long had they been in the cells? Why had they been let out? As if nothing had happened. They hadn't seen anything, or were pretending they hadn't, who knew? Tam was looking through the fridge, taking food out with one hand: the gun still weighted down her other hand.

The sound of a door opening in the hall froze Beatrice's blood. She turned: she saw Tam lifting the gun in both her hands. There were footsteps, more than one person, coming down the hall. Tam said, quietly, “Hide,” and moved to face the door. Miss Emma and Miss Stephanie were kneeling behind the table: Beatrice crouched down in the corner behind the fridge.

One man came in ahead of the other: they were the men who had let them out of the cells, Beatrice saw in a burst of relief. The man ahead stopped as if he'd been hit when he saw Tam: the other stepped from behind him and lifted his hands, which looked very strange: they were green and puffy, malformed lumps. Neither of them were collared.

After a moment – Tam was still pointing the gun at them – the first man glanced sideways at the other, and Beatrice saw him swallow, and lift his hands. Though he wasn't wearing a collar, he was the other man's slave. He was marked on his neck where a collar might have been.

“I'm Samuel Gerard.” He sounded rough and tired. “This is Richard Kimble. We're not going to harm you. Put the gun down, Tam.”

Tam did not move. The man smiled, briefly, a twist of his mouth without showing his teeth. It looked ugly, but his voice was still even. He didn't sound like a free person talking to a slave. “Okay. I am a former deputy US Marshall, I am the man responsible for your being held prisoner here, and I know exactly what you went through before I let you out. I know you need a meal, a rest, and directions to get out of here. You can shoot me, but it won't do you any particular kind of good. Don't let go of that gun. You're going to need one that won't break your hands if you fire it, but you should have one. Just stop pointing that one at me.”

Miss Emma and Miss Stephanie were getting to their feet as the man was speaking. He must have seen them, but he didn't acknowledge them: he was looking at Tam, focussed on her – on the gun she was holding. He sounded like one slave talking to another.

Beatrice stood up. This time, the man's eyes did flicker towards her: and his slave's head turned, quickly, as if he thought Beatrice might be dangerous. Neither of them moved.

“Good,” the man said, after a moment. “All four of you. Okay, sit down; Richard can make you something to eat.”

“Deputy Gerard?” Miss Emma sounded as if she were imitating her mother, trying for a cut-ice social tone. “I'm sorry, but I need to call my father, Kevin Channing.”

“Richard can find you a phone after you eat. He's good at that. Sit down.” He glanced at his slave, and added, like tugging a leash: “Richard.”

After a moment, the slave turned back to look at his owner: the look was not respectful. He pulled a chair out from the table for his owner: the man sat down, with a look up at his slave that Bo could not interpret. He looked almost amused.

Miss Emma and Miss Stephanie sat down across the table from Deputy Gerard. Tam's hands had dropped: she stood uncertainly by the table. The man glanced across at her, at Beatrice: “Sit down,” he said.

The slave – a tall man in his fifties, thin and grim – had moved to the fridge: he looked down at Beatrice. His eyes flicked in the direction of the table, and his mouth opened, silently voicing a “Yes” without a nod: the familiar slave-to-slave communication was comforting even here.

It felt very strange to be sitting at a table with Miss Emma and Miss Stephanie sitting next to her and Tam sitting on the other side. Beatrice's stomach roiled: there was bread and cheese and cold cuts and butter on the table, and though they hadn't been starved in the cells, she was hungry.

The slave put down plates and knives on the table, and – almost at the same moment as Miss Emma reached for the loaf of bread – Deputy Gerard said “Don't eat too fast, you'll throw up if you do. I need to talk to you.”

“Sam,” the slave said, and Miss Emma and Miss Stephanie turned their heads, at once, both surprised. “They're hungry. Don't talk to them yet.”

Deputy Gerard tilted his head back and nearly laughed – a rough, unamused heh of breath intaken. “Okay,” he said.

It was hard to eat slowly. Richard scrambled eggs for them, and fried bacon, and there seemed no end to the food and no need to ask for permission to eat more: Miss Emma and Miss Stephanie weren't paying attention to either herself or Tam.

“Where are we?” Miss Emma asked at last.

“I was a deputy US marshal for Northern Illinois,” Gerard said, not answering her question. “My team dealt with runaways, and the people who help them. We were also working to overthrow the government and free all the slaves.” He glanced along the table at all four of them: they had all stopped eating. “There was a slave uprising today, a few hours ago.” He glanced up at the clock, and went on, monotone, as if he was not saying anything very momentous. “I can tell you to the minute when Commerce took it seriously enough that they activated all the convict collars, but that's not really important. Emma, your family lives in a walled estate, Stephanie, yours lives in a gated community. Either one could be under attack, and if so, the lives of the slaves inside won't be worth much by now. Bo, Tam, can either of you drive a car?”

Bo was cold inside. She nodded, briefly, unsure why she was being asked. Tam glanced at her, and nodded, too.

“But we don't live anywhere near each other!” Miss Emma protested.

“Where exactly is this happening?” Miss Stephanie asked.

“Everywhere, by now,” Gerard said.

“Everywhere in Illinois?”

“Everywhere in the USNA,” Gerard said. “There's a company called Devlin MacGregor, they own about two million slaves. They were the starting point, and they're spread across a dozen states. But they're just the beginning. The plan is for a general slave uprising, supported by the friendship networks, the US Marshals, the Secret Service, and as many of the military units as we've infiltrated, with support from the European Federation. Within a week, the government of the USNA won't exist any more, and all the surviving slaves will be free. A lot of people are going to get killed. I'd just as soon you four weren't among them. I went to a lot of trouble to keep you alive.”

Miss Emma dropped the piece of bread she was holding: the expression on her face, half confusion, half anger, made Beatrice want to dive for the floor. She glanced sideways at the gun on Tam's lap, and stayed where she was.

Miss Stephanie said, sounding more confused and less angry, “But my father says we can't free all the slaves. He says our manufacturing base depends on slavery, even if we could free all the slaves it would cause a world-wide recession.”

“Yeah, it might,” Gerard said. He nodded. “I know your dad's in trouble with Commerce because he wants to have term-limit slavery for debt and the right to give slaves their freedom after they've served twenty years.”

Miss Stephanie was nodding, but she glanced down the table at Beatrice and Tam. “We shouldn't be saying this in front of them,” she told Gerard. “It's not fair on them.”

Miss Emma said, abruptly and angrily, “You can't just free all the slaves!”

Gerard shook his head. “Not me personally all by myself, no,” he said. “But all the slaves in this country are going to be freed, and the goal is it's going to happen by this time next week. What I want you to consider is where you're going to go for that week. You can't stay here: I shut down all the defenses so you could get out alive if Richard killed me. You can have my car and whatever guns you can use, and anything else you want to take from this house.” He was looking at Beatrice. “Questions?” He glanced down at the table, and pushed two sets of keys over to her – unmistakably to her, not to Miss Emma.

Car keys. And a collar key.

Miss Emma reached out for the keys. Beatrice's hands fell on them before Miss Emma could touch them. She picked them up and cradled them with both her hands. Miss Emma was looking at her with the strangest expression.

“Bo?”

“Yes, Miss Emma,” Beatrice said automatically. The slave – Richard – was standing rock still, staring at Gerard. He looked as if something had broken up his world: Beatrice understood that. She had belonged to Miss Emma since they were both five years old.

“Do you believe him?”

“I don't know,” Beatrice said. She didn't know what answer Miss Emma wanted. But the keys were cold metal in her hand, hard and real, warming themselves against her flesh.

“What kind of shit is this?” Richard said. He leaned forward, his voice loud, looking – sounding – more angry than Beatrice had ever imagined a slave could look. “Overthrow the government, hell – you won't be able to get rid of Commerce. Whoever's in charge next week, they'll still own slaves.”

Gerard lifted his head and looked back at Richard. “The department of Commerce is the USNA government,” he said. “When I said we were going to overthrow the government and free all the slaves, I meant the real government. That's Commerce. They run the country. We aim to change that. The election in November next year, every former slave over eighteen will be registered to vote, and all the states which have been returning a Labor majority to Congress for the past eighty years are going to see their politics turning inside out and upside down. We've been planning this revolution for longer than these kids have been alive.”

“But – ” Miss Emma and Miss Stephanie spoke together, but Miss Stephanie was louder, and when Gerard looked away from Richard he looked at her. While everyone's attention was somewhere else, Beatrice pocketed the keys, and glanced at Tam, who was watching her. If they could get out of here without being stopped –

“There are more slaves in this country than free people,” Gerard said. “Slaves don't vote, but they get counted in the census. How many seats in Congress a state gets, how much funding a state gets – Commerce makes those decisions now. They've been making those decisions for decades.” He was talking as flatly as a slave who's just been told he's going to be sold. “This is the end.”

“But this kind of change – My parents say slavery's bad, but we've got to change this gradually, we've got to make things better as we go along – ”

Gerard leaned back in his chair. “I expect your parents support raising the age of consent to fourteen, and making education mandatory for slave children, and banning Final contracts except as a legal penalty for murder – ” these were all things Bo had heard the adult slaves talking about, when they knew there were no free people to hear. “All of those are good things, girl, but I wanted the whole house down.”

“Why?” Miss Emma's voice was shaking. Her face was white. Beatrice wanted to be on her knees, her head down, not looking at Miss Emma: this was the way Miss Emma had talked to her father the few times she'd fought with him openly. “People are going to get killed! My dad – my mom – you don't understand – ”

“People were going to get killed anyway,” Gerard said. “Least this way they're dying for something worth dying for.”

Miss Stephanie put an arm round Miss Emma's shoulder. “How can you?”

Gerard's shoulders lifted in a slow shrug. He said tonelessly, “Because slavery is an abomination.” The word fell into silence: Beatrice felt Tam sit upright as if the same nerves moved her. “Buying, selling, owning human beings – it's not something you can make better, it's not just bad, it's – ” his shoulders lifted in another slow shrug “ – abominable. Slavery should not exist. And as of this week, it's not going to exist in this country any longer.”

Miss Emma stood up, brushing Miss Stephanie's arm away. She was standing next to Richard, but she hardly seemed to notice that: Richard stepped back to get out of her way, and with a crawling feeling in her gut, Beatrice saw Miss Emma was coming for them. Her hands went out, shaped to grasp, but nothing landed.

“You don't understand,” she said, and she was still speaking to Gerard. “My parents own twenty-three people and they all hate them. My parents. Most of them don't hate me because I'm just a kid, but my mom bought me Bo when I was five and Bo hates me, and my dad bought me Tam when I was fourteen and Tam hates me, and my mom and dad's slaves hate them worse, if they weren't afraid of Commerce they'd kill my parents, they'd kill them, they will kill them – Tam wanted to kill me, I saw her, and my mom and dad – they're probably already dead – Please let me call my dad!”

Beatrice stood up. Miss Emma's hands were over her face: Beatrice knew the master and mistress would pull her hands away when she got like this and they wanted to talk to her. She hadn't pulled one of these fits in years. Beatrice hadn't had to be in the room when they happened, at least. She put her right hand into the pocket of the shorts she was wearing, and felt the shifting metal lumps of the keys. She hadn't been sure what she wanted to do when she stood up. She'd just reacted as if it was still her job to do something. It wasn't.

“Tam and I are getting out of here,” she said, loud enough to make Miss Emma hear. “You can come too, if you want. I don't want you dead.”

With a loud sniffle, Miss Emma pulled her own hands away from her face. She looked at Beatrice in a kind of disbelief.

“I don't care about your mom and dad, though,” Beatrice added.

As she had so often before, before Tam was bought and Beatrice was assigned to kitchen work, Miss Emma dived forward and buried her face in Beatrice's shoulder and cried hard: her hands gripped each other behind Beatrice's back. Beatrice stood there, feeling awkward, horribly conscious everyone in the room was looking at them, and especially Tam.

After a moment, Tam got to her feet. She was looking at Beatrice. She was still holding the gun. She said to Miss Stephanie, “I suppose you can come as well.” Her gaze held Beatrice's, over Miss Emma's head, and she almost smiled: brief and crooked, but happy. “Where's the key? I want to take your collar off.”

“I do too,” Beatrice said. She handed Tam the key, and patted Miss Emma's shoulder. It didn't seem that Tam was going to mind.

Richard was looking at them, one hand rubbing along the red line where his collar had been. As the collar came loose from her throat, he said, much more quietly, almost calmly, “I can take the Commerce chip out. From both of you. If you want. I used to be a surgeon, and there's a kind of clinic upstairs.”

To Part 3

In The Mouth Of The Wolf: Part 1

2009-05-08T08:30:28Z

(This was the sixth part of "End Game".)

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), The Gambler (seven parts), The Pieces (seven parts), and End-Game (5 parts).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 1

To overthrow the government. To free all the slaves.

Kimble sat still. Sam's hands drooped from his wrists: he looked grey and flattened. He was going into shock: the local anaesthetic would wear off, and then he would be in agony. The burns were open wounds: left alone, they'd get infected. Amputation, or death, would follow.

You're free to go.

Kimble stood up. From the window, he could see the wall: the wall that killed. He wasn't wearing a convict collar. He was chipped, like any slave, but he had no collar. He could cross the wall – even if Sam was lying about the locks, he could get out somehow, without a collar – he could climb the wall and go –

Where?

Chuck Nichols had tried to buy him for the cages. Any of the senior consultants at Chicago Memorial would have signed for him. Any of them.

Kimble looked down at Sam's hands. Sam had put his hands round Kimble's neck. If not, the collar that had burned Sam's hands would have burned Kimble's throat: might have killed him. The death he had expected from the wall.

The chip under his skin, below the shoulder-blades, the freeze-brand on his shoulder. Any time he was seen naked, or he walked through a scanner, he would be known to be a slave: and any detailed scan would tell anyone he was a convict. Welcome to the revolution. It was insane. Commerce would act. The military would be sent in. No one could free slaves. No one could overthrow the American government.

For a few days, If he was careful, if he didn't go through any scanners, he could go free. Then he would be found and he would be killed. Runaways were killed. The girls they had just let out, two of them must be runaways. They'd be killed, soon.

No one's going to hurt you. Kimble wondered if they had believed Sam: though they had obeyed him. He had obeyed him.

Be my hands. Kimble stared down at Sam's hands. Breathe.

“Where's the clinic?”

Sam's eyes didn't open. His voice was a tired, monotone mumble. “Find it yourself. Just down the hall.”

Kimble reached down and took hold of Sam's arms, above the wrists. Sam's eyes jerked open and he stared at Kimble, without saying anything.

“You can't fight me,” Kimble said. He got a vicious satisfaction out of saying it. “There's no point in fighting me.” He braced himself, and pulled: Sam came to his feet without more than a moment's resistance.

Sam's eyes were wide and dark. His mouth was inches away from Kimble's. He was smiling, humourlessly, the familiar gargoyle grin. He said nothing, but Kimble saw him swallow. His gaze did not flinch from Kimble's: his skin still felt cold to the touch.

Kimble had lain naked in bed beside him, and felt those ruined hands explore him, known he could not flinch from that cold assessing look. Sam stood helpless in his hands.

Kimble shook his head. The warmth of vicious satisfaction was slipping away. He couldn't bring himself to say “I'm not going to hurt you,” but he couldn't bring himself to accomplish even the small cruelty he'd wanted, of not telling a hurt and helpless man what he was going to do. “I'm going to take you to the clinic and dress your hands,” Kimble said out loud, trying to keep his voice steady.

Sam almost shrugged: Kimble could feel his wrists move, slightly, as his arms shifted a little in Kimble's grip. His look neither flinched nor altered. “Okay,” he said.

There were five examination couches in the clinic. Kimble got Sam to lie down on one of them, and pulled down the unfolding shelf: Sam could rest his wrists on that. The clinic was well-stocked and well-organised: Kimble looked through the supplies, finding what he needed easily. The top drawer of the painkiller stack was labelled “Bullets”, and Kimble ignored it: the Vicodin was shelved below that, for when the local stopped working. The ampules the worker had given Sam –

in the white room, with the crowd baying outside the doors

– Kimble caught himself, and shuddered. That hadn't happened. He hadn't been in the white room since Sam bought him.

He came back to the couch and laid what he needed out. The couch was fitted with IV equipment, and the clinic's stores had plenty of bags of saline with glucose to treat fluid loss and shock. This was as good as anything available at the arena, for slaves who were meant to live. There should have been a supervisor to tell him how long he could take over this victim: what supplies he could use: whether he was meant to try to repair or simply do a patch that would hold till the next shift.

There was no one: only Sam. It was oddly peaceful, peacefully strange, to work with his hands on injuries that could be treated, damage that could be fixed, without any orders or threats. These were deep burns, as wide or wider as a convict collar, as if Sam had been branded.

Kimble went on working. His throat hurt. Fog was clearing. Sam had grabbed him round the throat, under the collar, with his hands. If the collar had been left to burn his throat, as it had burned Sam's hands, Kimble would have died.

Sam had saved his life.

Kimble had done all he could with these resources: a surgical team would do more. There was a good burns team at Chicago Memorial. They should go there. There were protective gloves, auto-inflatable, that would protect Sam's hands against accidental injury on the way over: Kimble slid them on, fastened them at the wrist, and flicked the button that would inflate the shell.

Sam stirred. He lifted himself up a little, looking down at his hands, and his voice when he spoke was without expression. “I can't take these off.”

“Don't,” Kimble said.

Sam said nothing. He looked back at Kimble. His mouth worked a little: he shook his head, after a moment, and lay down flat again. “Okay.”

Kimble stood still a moment, looking down. The expression on Sam's face was absolutely unfamiliar. But he wasn't saying anything, though his eyes were open. The bag feeding into his arm would take another five minutes or so to finish. Kimble began to clear up what he had used. Long ago this would have been an OR assistant's job, a slave's job. It still was.

There were restraints attached to the couch. Light steel manacles and chains. Kimble reached out to touch one, confirming he knew what he was seeing: the chill of the metal against his hand was familiar. He had used restraints like this, not long ago.

There were restraints attached to all five couches. Of course. This room had a purpose. The equipment had a purpose.

Kimble opened the drawer he had ignored, and found the bullets. Long silver ampules, protected from accidental use by a shielded trigger, their official name was longer, but everyone called them bullets. They didn't need to be used on a vein: injection anywhere on the body would work. They were painless – so it was said, though who could know? They were death.

This room was death. Kimble closed the drawer and turned round, to look at Sam.

I bought you so one of my team could use you for practice, eventually – work her up to interrogation to the death.

“In easy stages,” Kimble said out loud.

Sam turned his head, slightly, to look at Kimble. He did not speak, but Kimble heard his voice. I had you down as just a guy who'd killed his wife for the money.

Now you're no damn use to me.

I'm not keeping you around just to screw.

“I'd have died here,” Kimble said. “That girl. Willow. She was supposed to kill me.”

There was silence. After a moment, Sam rolled his head back to look up at the ceiling. He said nothing. Kimble came closer. “Here's where you kill runaways. Those girls. The ones you let out. You'd have killed them here.”

Sam's breath came out in a short sigh. He looked back at Kimble. “I was lying to you about Willow,” he said. “None of my kids would do that.”

Kimble took another step closer. Sam's whole body was tense, but he wasn't moving. He asked, abruptly, lifting his hands, “Why'd you do this?”

Kimble ran his tongue over the inside of his lips. Sam's voice made him flinch. He shook his head. “I couldn't stand looking at them,” he said. “When you screamed – We were in the white room. I should – you should have been killed. You won't be able to fight next time. I knew I couldn't help you. I wasn't in the white room, I know it, but every time I looked at your hands, I thought I was.” He swallowed, and the next words came out, thick through the buzzing in his head, “I could have sorted you back to the doors, if you had come to me.”

“Richard,” Sam said, his voice urgent through the fog. “Sit down.”

Kimble's legs folded under him. He was on the floor. His knees hurt. He put his hands up to feel the burn around his uncollared throat.

“Why did you save my life?” He wasn't even sure if he had said it out loud, but when he looked up, Sam was sitting on the edge of the couch, awkwardly, the IV line trailing from his arm.

“I wanted to,” Sam said. “I could do it because I wanted to. I saw you in the arena dorms, two years ago. I've been into every single mass storage facility for slaves in Northern Illinois in the past ten years, and I remember faces from every god damned one. I remembered your face. I don't know if many of people I remember are still alive. These are not good places, none of them are good places, they all run on death, Richard, there's not a one of them that doesn't reek of death. But you were one I remembered from those dorms. I knew you had to be dead, but when I was looking for a canary, I saw you were still alive. I got you out alive. I knew when I felt your collar burning that everything was going to change. I could do what I wanted.” He half-laughed, a sound unlike the grim chuckle Kimble knew. “I'm not sorry I can't send you to Commerce on Monday. They won't be taking deliveries Monday, and if they ever do again, they won't take anything from me.”

Kimble said nothing, but Sam said, as if Kimble had spoken, “Because if they win, they'll know what I did.” He grinned: it was like a shock from a taser baton, to see it, thin-lipped and humourless. “And if we win – I've sent a lot of people to Commerce. Some of them are probably still alive to testify. Once it began, I'm done. I could do what I wanted. And I wanted you to get out alive.” He said nothing for a minute, staring at Kimble, and said finally, “Even if you didn't want to.”

Kimble sucked in a breath, and swallowed. “I wanted...” he said out loud, in a voice that wavered. “I want...” Night after night, Sam had asked him what he wanted. Night after night, the same response. You're lying, Richard. Don't lie to me.

Helen's voice, when she was dying, shot and bludgeoned to death, faint and wavering. Alone and afraid and bewildered. Richard. Richard. He's trying to kill me.

After a little while, Kimble's mind wandering, he stood up again, and removed the IV line from Sam's arm. His hands knew the work. He saw Sam swallow, twice, as if he wanted to say something and changed his mind.

“Richard,” Sam said finally. “I showed you where the keys are, in my office? The van, my car, the key for the collars – you can find them?”

Sam had pointed. Had said something about vehicle keys and collars. “Yes, Sam,” Richard said.

“You take the van. Let the girls have my car. They came here in the van, they won't want to leave in it. Make sure they don't leave here without having something to eat, either. Take whatever you need.”

Kimble stared, lost in confusion. “When I drive you to the hospital?”

“What?” Sam stared back, looking profoundly startled. “What are you talking about, Richard?”

Kimble couldn't remember when he had made the decision, but it was clear enough to him that he was surprised Sam didn't see it too. “There was a good burns team at Chicago General. There probably still is. I can drive if you're in the car.” The room with the cages was in his mind, and would stay in his mind. And Chuck would be there, too.

“You can't be serious,” Sam said. He was grinning. “Go, get out of here. Vattene!”

Kimble stood still. He was looking at Sam from very close up. He could smell him, the sweat and the pain, the antiseptic Kimble had used, the odour of a wounded man. Kimble smiled, though his face felt distorted. “You don't have a choice,” he said. “You can't use your hands. I can.” He laughed, though it wasn't funny. “I'm not going to ask you.” Night after night, no matter what Kimble said, Sam had pushed him into the holding cell. “I don't care what you want.”

“All right,” Sam said. Gingerly, he stood up, his hand still on the couch. He looked at Kimble. His face was expressionless, and his voice was quiet. “All right,” he said. “Andiamo.”

To part 2

Okay... what happened?

2009-04-18T23:17:14Z

You ever have one of those "Oh shit... oh wow!" moments?

I'd been struggling with part 7.

...and today it occurred to me that I was trying to tell it from the wrong point of view.

I have no idea what this will do to the structure of "End Game" or how long it will now make it, but I do know that part 7 and 8 aren't going to be told from Richard's POV, and there will be a part 9.

...sorry.

I don't want to be mean

2009-04-16T03:02:34Z

But I am still awake, still at work, still trying to complete an essential report, and there is no bloody way I'm going to be posting any updates to the Keptverse in a few hours.

Also, in sheer selfishness, I feel I would like not to have to worry about this Friday morning, either.

Part 6 will be posted Friday evening.

End Game: Part 5

2009-04-14T08:35:05Z

This is the fifth part of the penultimate sequence: it's the End Game. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 are here.)

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), The Gambler (seven parts), and The Pieces (seven parts).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 5:

The door closed. Before the silence of the house could fall, Sam said “All right, Richard, help me up.” He leaned forward, bearing down against Kimble's hands, and speechlessly, Kimble pushed himself to his feet and pulled Sam up with him.

“We're going through to the other side,” Sam said. “You'll have to help me open the doors.” His skin felt cold and moist: he was sweating. He had been badly injured and there was no fix for the next day: he was going into shock and he would die.

The white room opened around Kimble, faded: he stood still, trying to grasp where he was. Sam said, almost in his ear, “Richard. The door. This way.”

Kimble went where Sam directed him. There was a keypad. Sam lifted his right hand, the raw mark of cooked flesh striped across it. “Stay with me. Richard. You've got to use my hand to enter the numbers. Four numbers. My forefinger. Okay?”

“What?” Kimble turned to look at Sam.

“Can you do it?” Sam sounded urgent. “I can't feel my hands, I can't use them.” His right hand was almost over the keypad. “Use my forefinger to enter the code. Four numbers. Just four. If you do it, there'll be sixteen numbers.”

Kimble stared at the keypad, and Sam's hand. If he put his own hand over it, he supposed he could move Sam's forefinger, like a lever. It was a fingerprint lock. He put his own hand out, over Sam's: it seemed as if he could feel the heat from the burn, though he wasn't touching it. “What numbers?”

Sam told him, one by one. On the fourth, there was a click. The door was open.

“Good work,” Sam said, and turned, holding his hands out, to shoulder through the door: he staggered, and Kimble went after him.

“We've got four more doors,” Sam said. “Five. But four that matter. The secure cells. Come on, don't quit on me now – ”

He might have said more, but Kimble did not hear him. They were going slowly but steadily towards the stone box he remembered, the dark place. It was cold. The bunk was metal.

“Same set of numbers. Do you remember?” Sam put his hand over the keypad. “Don't scare the girl,” he added. He gave Kimble the numbers again, one by one.

The smell wasn't right for the white room: the dorms had smelled like this. There was barely a sound from inside the dark cell, but someone was alive in there.

“Bo,” Sam said. “Come out. We're not going to hurt you.” His voice slurred over the words, his accent thicker than usual. “Bo. Do you hear me? Come on out. We'll go get Tam.”

There was a sound of movement from inside the cell: bare feet on cement. The girl looked like someone who had been gagged for two rest shifts, and done a stint in the arena between, waiting for the doors to open. She stared at Sam, at Kimble, with hollow eyes. The chain collar round her throat looked too heavy for her.

“Good girl,” Sam said. “Come on. Come with us. We'll get Tam out. You tell her there's nothing to worry about. I'm Sam. This is Richard.” He turned down the corridor, and Kimble went with him, not far: past one locked door, on to another.

“There's no one in that cell,” Sam said, glancing back: the girl had followed them a few steps. She stood still, staring at them, unwashed hair a tangle, her skin bruised with dirt, wearing only a grubby t-shirt and shorts. “I'm not leaving anyone locked up, Bo.” He raised his hand again. Kimble had the numbers down, but Sam repeated them again, out loud, and stepped back as the door clicked open.

“Tam. Bo's here,” Sam said. “Come out. We're not going to hurt you.”

There was a pause. Kimble glanced back: the girl from the first cell was a few steps closer.

“Bo,” Sam said. “Tell Tam. Come out. I've got to let you all out, then you can go have a wash, and something to eat. Tam. Come on out.”

It seemed to take longer – and Bo said not a word – but the sound of bare feet and a whisper of breath, and another girl appeared: under the dirt and the fear, she had a clear, classic beauty, striking enough to give Kimble a moment's pause. She looked at them with a rigid jaw and wide eyes. The collar was the same as the other girl's: it looked grotesque on her.

“Good girl,” Sam said. “Come on. I've got Emma and Stephanie to let out as well. They're here too. Tam, this is Richard, I'm Sam. You and Bo take care of each other, now.”

Kimble knew this corridor: not as memory but as something in his flesh. Sam's voice was thick and weary, and he was leaning on Kimble more and more: the two girls followed as if they were trailing on a leash. This was the cell he had been locked in. He was sddenly certain, like a cold weight in his stomach, that Sam intended to shut him in here again.

“Emma's in this cell,” Sam said. He seemed to be talking to the girls. “Richard,” he added, and raised his hand to the keypad.

Once more – Sam said the numbers out loud – Kimble used his fingers to unlock the door. The smell that came out was worse: stale vomit as well as the other odours of human caging.

“Emma,” Sam said. “Come on out.”

The girl was differently dressed, jeans and blouse, but barefoot like the other two girls – and she wore no collar.

She stared at Sam, at Richard, and lifted her chin. Her voice held a strained control. “I'm a minor. I want to call my father. Kevin Channing. I'm his daughter.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. He was leaning on Richard. “Yeah, I know. Hold that thought, girl, I have got to let your friend Stephanie out, too.”

“She's here?” The girl's voice broke. She had been crying: the tears resurfaced.

“Yeah, of course she is,” Sam said. He started to move towards the next cell. “I'm Sam, this is Richard, and you know who these two are.”

“Tam,” Emma said. She looked past the beautiful girl doubtfully. “Bo?”

“Mistress,” the beautiful girl said, on a whisper.

Kimble hardly glanced back: he heard the three girls talking – Emma more loudly than the other two, whose voices could barely be heard – but he could feel how unsure of his footing Sam was, could feel the chill of his skin.

They did the fourth door. “Stephanie,” Sam said, as the smell washed out at them.

The fourth girl didn't say anything at first. She stared past Sam and Kimble, to where the three other girls stood, her mouth open: her lips looked dry and crusty. She swallowed hard, twice. “Where are we? What day is this?” Her voice was barely a croak.

“It's Wednesday,” Sam said. “You're safe. You're all safe. No one's going to hurt you. When was the last time you had a drink?”

“I don't remember,” the girl said, hoarsely. She swallowed again. “Safe?”

“Yeah. Don't worry about a thing. Richard. Andiamo.” They moved – and the girls moved after them, a broken necklace with bodies instead of beads – back to the door into the safe side of the house. The door opened: Sam propped himself against the door jamb and Kimble held the door wide. The four girls went through between them. “Okay,” Sam said. “Upstairs, there's bathrooms and clothes – help yourself to anything you find. Stephanie, if you drink too much too fast you'll be sick, drink a little at a time, okay? Come downstairs when you're ready, there'll be food. Do any of you know how to fire a gun?”

There was silence for a moment. The two uncollared girls looked at each other, shaking their heads minutely. The beautiful girl said after a moment. “I do... sir.”

“Tam!” Emma said, sounding startled.

“Master Channing was having me trained as a bodyguard,” the girl said. “I – wasn't supposed to tell you, Mistress.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “Good. That's good. Richard.” He looked at Kimble. “Open up my jacket, get my gun out, hand it to the young lady who can shoot.”

Kimble bent forward. It felt strange, with the consciousness of the four young women staring at him, to undo Sam's clothing. Stranger to have his hands on a gun. He had not held one in five years. He had forgotten how heavy a handgun could be. The girl who had said she could shoot held both her hands out for it, but she too looked surprised by the weight.

“Don't fire it unless you have to,” Sam said. “It could break your hand. You shouldn't have to. We're the only people in the house. There's guns more your weight in the armoury, but you can keep that for now. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go. Go. Richard. We've got one more thing to do.”

There was a flight of stairs, but Sam sat down on the third step. His hands were out in front of him. He bent his head. “Jesus, I'm tired.”

Kimble stood uneasily. After a moment, as Sam did not move or speak, he said “I don't understand.”

“I'm goddam tired,” Sam said, his voice grating and all but expressionless. “Just give me a minute.”

“You're in shock,” Kimble said.

Sam looked up, apparently with surprise. “I am?” He shook his head. “I don't have time for this. My office is just up the stairs. I've got to – ” His voice trailed off. “I've got to,” he said finally, without any expression at all in his voice. “You'll need to help me. It's not far.”

It was the root of nightmares: a shabby working office, looking as shockingly normal as it had this morning, the walls narrowed by battered metal filing cabinets, the desk crowded with papers and files, the desk and chair black and scarred. Kimble ducked his head, looking down at the carpet, worn in shiny stripes where Sam's chair had rolled across it. He could feel how hard that carpet was to his knees.

“Richard. Sit down. This isn't fingerprinted. Don't try to kid me you don't know how to use a computer.”

Sam was standing behind him. Kimble sat down. He half expected to feel Sam's hands descending on his shoulders, and Sam's voice saying Richard belongs to me. But of course Sam couldn't rest his hands anywhere. He glanced back in time to see Sam fold downwards to sit on the floor: not a fall, a kind of deliberate collapse. Sam tilted his head back. “Open a command window,” he said.

Kimble followed Sam's step by step instructions: a line of code that half made sense, another that followed it. “It's asking for a password.”

“Yeah. Key this: one, lower case n, cap b, zero, then all lower case: c, c, a, a, one, one, u, p, zero. You need to echo it in the next field.” Sam repeated the string, his voice hitting each character distinctly and clearly. The window closed and re-opened:

Are you sure?

“Tell it yes,” Sam said. His eyes were shut. His skin looked grey.

Are you really sure?

“Enter the password again,” Sam said. He spelled it out. The third time through Kimble got it.

Start process Y/N?

“Tell it yes,” Sam said.

The window closed. Nothing else seemed to happen. The door clicked suddenly, and Sam looked up. “That's it,” he said.

“What?”

“That was the code to open all the locks and shut down all the defenses,” Sam said. He leaned his head back against the wall. “You and the girls can get out now. You don't need my fingerprints. You should let the girls take my car: you can have the van.”

“I don't understand,” Kimble said again.

“Don't you?” Sam's voice was distant, level. “The vehicle keys are in that drawer.” He lifted his hand slowly and pointed. “There's one that should unlock the girls' collars, too. There are guns in the armoury. You're free to go. I don't need you any more. Welcome to the revolution.”

“You said that before.”

“I've been conspiring to overthrow the USNA government,” Sam said. “We have. The US Marshals service. The Secret Service was in on it, too. To overthrow the government and free all the slaves. We started this afternoon. You were the early warning system. I'm done. That's all.” He closed his eyes again. “I'm so fucking tired,” he said again, so quietly Kimble hardly heard him.

to In The Mouth of the Wolf

End Game: Part 4

2009-04-10T07:07:39Z

This is the fourth part of the final sequence: it's the End Game. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 are here.)

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), The Gambler (seven parts), and The Pieces (seven parts).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 4:

The slave screaming agony into his face had his hands around Kimble's throat.

One free worker leaned in and set a tool against his collar with a sharp click. Another worker with a pair of metal cutters, brutal tools, moved them to his throat. With a harsh snib sound the pressure loosed from his throat and he felt a flash of heat against his chest, but the worker's hands shoved him.

The white room was full of people. The sounds of the white room were the sounds of the arena through the doors: all that was missing from the noise of the white room was the blood-bay of the crowd, and you could hear that whenever the doors opened, and through the walls, about an hour into the games, when the crowd were maddened and being fed.

It was nothing new for one of the injured, fallen into the hands of the sorters who waited behind the doors, to try to attack them.

The other man was still howling: he held his hands out in front of him as if he were begging for manacles, and as he dropped to his knees, he still held his hands out. Kimble went down too, his knees meeting wetness: blood, a lot of it, if he felt it through his work clothes. He could not remember coming on shift, but they must be near the end.

Sam. In the white room. They were both in the white room. Sam was hurt. He knew Sam.

Sam's hands had thick lines on them like cooked meat. Kimble caught at his arms just above the wrists, to support them without touching them, and looked closer.

He had never seen injuries like this in the white room before. And though they were fixable, he wouldn't be allowed to do a fix. It would be days before Sam could fight again. Days, or even weeks. Too long.

Sam was going to die. They would send him through the doors on the next shift, no rest, no waiting. He couldn't fight but he could die.

One of the free workers was bending over them both: she was preparing to make use of a ready-charged ampule. Injuries to the hand hurt savagely: the noises Sam was still making were nothing he could help. But he would live through the next shift, the rest shift, if he were allowed. It was nothing new for a free worker to decide to get rid of an injured survivor making too much noise.

“Let go of his wrists,” the worker said.

“Don't,” Kimble said, knowing it was no use even as he spoke, not even sure why he was protesting. Sam couldn't fight. He couldn't use his hands. He was going to die. Now, later, what difference did it make? Kimble only knew he could not bear it: to see this slave put down with a jab of the needle. Sam was going to die. “Don't – ” He felt the gag closing on his mouth and choked, but he did not let go.

The worker slid her needle in despite him. It was not death. The noises Sam was making had slowed to ragged sobs. Kimble looked up and saw Sam's dark gaze on him, taking him in without hope or surrender. If either of them spoke now, they would both be gagged: Kimble shook his head, very slightly, willing Sam to understand as the drug numbed his pain. He would live another shift if he didn't speak: maybe more. Maybe they did mean to fix him. He let go of Sam's wrists.

The worker turned to Kimble and set her hand against his head to tilt him back and forward, to spray the front of his throat and the back of his neck with an anesthetic: he felt the liquid cold against his skin without understanding.

He was kneeling on the carpet, wet with coffee, not with blood. The walls and floor and ceiling were not white. The collar that had been locked round his throat lay in a blackened part of the carpet, and just then someone sprayed it, with white foam. It smelled odd and caught in his throat.

There was no collar on his neck. Sam's hands were marked with a thick line like cooked meat. Sam's hands were out in front of him, as if waiting to be cuffed, but he wasn't collared either. Sam sobbed once more, and stopped, his breathing ragged. He looked at Kimble: his eyes were wide, seeming to absorb light. “Richard,” he said, and his voice shook. He would be gagged, if he was not killed.

“First degree burns where his collar was: worse in a couple of places, but nothing serious,” the worker said. Dana. Her name was Dana. “Sam, you need to go to hospital. I can't treat you here.”

The words hung there in the white room, which was not white. Coffee, not blood.

“No,” Sam said. He shook his head, violently. He did not speak like a slave. “George. The last channel. My office. Use it.”

No one moved. There was such an absolute command in Sam's voice that Kimble thought he would have obeyed, if he understood what was wanted.

Sam took his eyes off Kimble. He was still holding out his hands in front of him, his wrists resting on his knees: he lifted his hands, burns outward, staring at one of the workers. “We have this,” he said. “This is the signal. Trust me. We don't have long, they'll shut down every channel. Send the message. In bocca al lupo.”

“Sam,” the man said. George. “For this?”

“Yes,” Sam said. “In bocca al lupo. The last channel. Send it. Tell them.” His breath caught. “It's now. Vattene!”

After a long moment, George nodded. He turned, abruptly, and went down the hall towards the door into the other side of the house.

The other four were crouching, mouths open, eyes wide. Their astonishment was visible: but it seemed as if they knew something: they didn't ask.

“There's nothing on the news,” Benton said.

“Like there would be,” Ray said.

Adam shook his head. “There are no new videos on Youtube. Not for nearly an hour.”

“Sam,” Dana said. “I need to get you to the clinic, right now, and then to the hospital.”

Sam's headshake overrode her without a word. He was laughing: hard, unamused, shaking. Kimble heard him laugh and knew who he was: the harsh sound was as familiar as a calloused hand. He put his hands up to his neck, bare of collar, and touched the tender flesh that had burned.

“It's started. It's here. It's now,” Sam said. “Don't waste your time. Richard was my canary.”

They all looked at him: Kimble stared back. His skin felt strange to his hands. His hands felt strange on his skin. My canary.

“Richard was my early warning,” Gerard said. “When the haeftlings rise, what else did you think Commerce would do with the convicts? They can kill everyone wearing a convict collar just by turning a switch. They turned the switch. The rising – the change – it's now. The Games should be on TV, but there won't be any Games. There won't be anyone to fight them. You all have to go. We've talked about this. You can't waste time.”

Adam went back into the lounge. Dana stood up and looked after him. Benton and Ray were both hunkered down, staring at Sam.

“But what if you're wrong? What if this is just Richard?” Benton looked – sounded – both appalled and calm. Ray glanced at him, then at Kimble.

“Sam, you bought him – for this?"

“I'm not wrong,” Sam said. He looked at Kimble again. “Welcome to the revolution.”

Adam came back out: he was carrying his laptop and his coat. He sounded almost amused. “They're showing a prerecorded show from last year on the Games channel. And the rolling news is repeating sports headlines every five minutes. Sam's right. Let's go, Dana: we can be at Melissa's in an hour.”

“You're serious?” Ray stood up: Benton followed him a moment later. “It's started? Really?”

“It's now,” Sam said. He had not moved: his head was tilted back, staring from face to face of the people standing round him. “Not tomorrow, not next week, it's now. Get what you need, get out of here, go.”

For the next two or three minutes, it was almost like being alone. Sam stared at Kimble, his eyes dark, his mouth open. He said nothing.

Three of them came back: Adam was standing by the front door. None of them looked at Kimble. Before any of them could speak, Sam said “You do what Melissa says, kids. You're going to work for her, and that's an order. Give her Willow's report, the first one – that'll give her the best idea we've got where they're rising.”

“You should come with us,” Ray said, almost as Dana said “We shouldn't leave you.”

“You can't be serious,” Sam said. He smiled, the familiar gargoyle grin. “Arrivederci, bambini.”

The door closed, shutting them in with the noises from the lounge: attenuated and far away, but they kept tugging at Kimble's spine, at the back of his neck.

“Richard,” Sam said.

Kimble looked back at him. You can't fight me, he thought of saying: it was almost funny. He felt his mouth twitching into a kind of smile. Hands numbed by a local, crippled with burns, couldn't use a weapon, couldn't strike an effective blow.

“Richard,” Sam said again.

“Deputy Gerard,” Kimble said. The burned wounds would scar Sam's hands forever. In the arena, the damage would be a death. It was never worthwhile trying to repair wounds if the wounded couldn't fight within a very few days. Sam couldn't fight. He couldn't use a weapon. He was disabled. He was alone.

“I didn't know I was your canary.” He could take the gun away from Sam, and then. There's no point in fighting me. He had wanted to stay alive, but he could kill Sam. Kill himself. The noises from the lounge were screaming at him quietly. He wanted to stop them.

He stood up, and walked away down the hall. The television was on. The scenes on the screen were not familiar, but the noises got louder in his mind. He had heard all this before. The scarred coffee table was empty. Kimble reached down, putting one hand on the table's surface, feeling strange and offbalance, and switched the television off. The sounds died. Kimble could see himself, reflected dimly in the screen. He had no collar on his neck.

He stood up, and put his hands to his own throat. The collar was really gone.

Welcome to the revolution.

Sam was still where he had left him, on his knees. The house felt very silent. Kimble crouched down in front of him, and took his wrists: Sam didn't stop him. Kimble stared at him from very close up.

“You saved my neck.”

“Yes,” Sam said.

“Why?”

Sam smiled. Not the familiar, humourless grimace: brief, but curiously sweet. “Everything changed,” he said. “Besides, I wanted to.”

“I don't understand,” Kimble said, after a minute.

“I've lied to you since you got here,” Sam said. “I don't need to lie to you now. I need you. Not for very much longer. You can go once I'm done. But I need you now.” He turned his wrists in Kimble's grasp, not much, almost as if he were reminding Kimble. “Be my hands.”

The door to the other half of the house slammed open and George came through it, almost at a run: he glanced down the hall and came towards them.

“I got through,” he said. “I spoke to someone I know: I delivered your message. I checked the news online. There's every sign it's happening. They'll come.”

“Good,” Sam said. “You've got to go. Get your laptop. Take whatever you need. Get on your way.”

Kimble felt George's cold blue eyes on him. “We'll all go,” George said.

“There's no time,” Sam said. “Richard's going to unlock some doors for me. You don't need me along.” He tilted his head back, as he had done for the other four, but the command in his voice was less compelling: he sounded as if he were issuing a reminder. “You don't have time,” he said again. “If you start now, I think you can do it. They don't know we know – not yet.”

George shook his head, “I'm not leaving you.”

“Go get Giles and Willow and get them out. We're all safer once Willow's out with everything she knows. I want you to get them safe home. Go.”

There was a moment of wrenching struggle on George's face: he shook his head, again, looking bitter. “Sam,” he said, and glanced at Richard. His eyes were cold and assessing. “I hope to God – ” He did not finish the sentence. He turned away. When he came out of the lounge with his laptop cased under his arm, he did not come back towards them, but opened the front door, and lifted his hand as he left, in a kind of salute.

to Part 5

Happy Easter. *wanly* I have looked my Easter weekend in the face and concluded that it's better not to attempt to post Part 5 and continuing until Easter's done with. It's not all chocolate eggs and joy, you know.

End Game: Part 3

2009-04-09T06:55:20Z

This is the third part of the final sequence: it's the End Game. Part 1 and Part 2 are here.)

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), The Gambler (seven parts), and The Pieces (seven parts).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 3:

The other side of the house was windowless: the corridors were brightly lit. The holding cells were dark. Kimble perceived his surroundings in flashes like nightmare: his conscious awareness of his surroundings was fixed wholly on Sam's hands on him. Even when the doctor in the unexpected clinic – it looked like a clinic, smelt more like a hospital than any room Kimble had been in for years – even as the doctor checked his eyes and the back of his skull with impersonal, delicate care, Sam stood behind him, his hands on Kimble's shoulders.

The doctor and Sam spoke together: Kimble heard without listening. Sam made him take four tablets, which Kimble's mouth recognised after he swallowed as aspirin. Another walk through the brightly lit corridors, but the door Sam opened led to a room with a window, and ordinary furniture, not a holding cell: Sam got him to sit down on the floor beside a crowded desk, and sat down himself at a chair behind the desk: his hand settled on the back of Kimble's neck, a warm and heavy clasp. He said nothing, but tugged a little, and Kimble obeyed: his head was resting against Sam's thigh, Sam's hand solid weight on the back of his neck. On the other side of the house. Not a holding cell.

Kimble came out of it when Sam swore. He did not get the words, only the explosive anger: and Sam's hand was no longer on the back of his neck. He sat still, cold to the bone, feeling the metal of the cuffs hard and warm around his wrists. He could smell Sam, soap and sweat, and feel his rage.

Sam did not speak to him. After a few minutes brisk typing, his hand settled back to the possessive clasp, like a living collar: Sam's hands were large, bony, with callouses on his thumb and index finger. Kimble sat still, not moving his head from where he rested against Sam's thigh, wishing he could stop thinking just by wishing it. He hadn't killed the one-armed man. Chuck had tried to buy him for the cages. Sam was sending him to Commerce on Monday.

This was still Wednesday. He could not see a clock from where he sat, but he thought that only an hour or so could have passed in this room: he could not think how long it had taken Sam to walk him through the brightly-lit corridors and the room that looked like a clinic, but not long, surely: not long.

He had nothing to do but sit on the hard carpet, rest his head against his owner's thigh, and keep himself still and his breathing steady. It was all he could do, and it was as much as he could do. The cuffs were a solid, locked weight on his wrists.

“How are you, Richard?” Sam asked. He sounded absent, tired, but his hand shifted on Kimble's neck as if questing for a better grip.

Kimble swallowed twice before he could answer in a voice that he hoped was steady, “Fine, Sam.”

Sam's voice was a monotone. “Right.” His other hand moved on the keyboard: Kimble could hear the clicking noises. “I'm almost done here. Going to take some work over to the lounge for the afternoon: you can get more comfortable there. I'll get you something to eat.”

Kimble swallowed again. “Thank you. Sam.”

The corridors were normal corridors – brightly and coldly lit, but not the stuff of nightmares: and there was a flight of steps Kimble hadn't remembered. Through the locked door, into the hall: Sam turned him and unlocked the cuffs, pocketing them. His hand returned to the back of Kimble's neck, and they walked down the hall to the kitchen.

There was no one in the kitchen. Sam did not tell Kimble to sit down: he made sandwiches of beef and tomato, piled them on a plate, and handed the plate to Kimble. Benton and Ray were in the lounge: George sat across from them.

Benton stood up as Sam came in. “We saw it on Youtube,” he said.

“Yeah, I know,” Sam said. He stopped, and his grip on Kimble's neck tightened, as if he were angry. Kimble stood still, holding the plate in front of him, trying to keep his face impassive. “I know, Benton. I saw it too. Dana and Adam don't get to leave the house tonight, got it? What's on the news?”

“Nothing,” George said.

“Nothing,” Ray echoed. “We checked all the channels.”

“What I expected,” Sam said. He spoke neutrally, without much emphasis. “Keep tracking it. I would think they can sit on it for twelve to twenty-four, no longer. But it could break any time.”

“What about Will and Giles?” Ray asked.

“They're not coming in today,” Sam said.

The carpet was softer, and Kimble was free to move his hands. He ate one sandwich, and another when Sam handed it to him. No one spoke: the room was so quiet Kimble could hear the small clicking noises of keyboards at work from the other side of the room. This could go on forever: it felt as if it was.

If he had killed the one-armed man...

He had no notion what Sam would have done. Had him killed; had him locked up; returned him to the arena; even handed him back to Commerce on schedule. He had no more notion today what Sam had really bought him for than he had the day Sam had told him I bought you to have sex with, which had turned out to be untrue.

Sam had been clear about what he wanted Kimble to do, or intended to do to him, any time Kimble didn't expect to know more than eight to sixteen hours ahead: and for three years, Kimble never had. Sam's hand on his neck was solid and real. Sam lied.

Kimble shuddered. He wasn't able to stop it or control himself, even if he didn't get up or move away from Sam: Sam lied.

Of course he did: Kimble was his slave. On a Final contract.

“What is it?” Sam asked.

Kimble shook his head, trying to control his shudders, pressing himself down and into himself. He did not speak. Sam's hand moved from his neck to his shoulder, and back again, almost as if caressing, patting Kimble.

“Any one want any more coffee?” Sam said, and stood up, taking hold of Kimble's shoulder and pulling him up with him.

They went down the hall to the kitchen. Sam was holding him as if they were outdoors, keeping him from the wall: one hand locked round his wrist, the other over his neck. Kimble said, before they got there, “I can make coffee.”

“I know,” Sam said. “It's not about coffee.” The coffeemaker was empty: he refilled it, using his right hand, never once taking his other hand off Kimble. He turned, not smiling. “We're going to talk.” He was backing Kimble round the table and up against the door. “No one's going to interrupt us, Richard. You've got five minutes, less however long it takes me to piss.” He put a hand on Kimble's throat: his other hand held Kimble's wrist: he was standing so close his mouth was inches from Kimble's. “Talk to me. What got you spooked?”

For a fractured moment, Kimble thought of kissing him: fastening his mouth to Sam's and using his teeth and tongue to worry at Sam's mouth.

“You didn't want to have sex with me,” he said out loud.

“What?” Sam's eyes widened. After a moment, he laughed: the rough, unamused chuckle that had become as familiar to Kimble as the callouses on Sam's hands. “What?” he said again, and this time the word had three sylables and a whiplash crack on the end.

Kimble swallowed. “You said you bought me because you wanted to have sex with me,” he said. “You lied. That wasn't why you bought me. I don't know why you bought me – but it wasn't for sex.”

Sam said nothing. He was smiling, a lipless closed-mouth grin. Gargoyle-ugly, and unamused.

“You've lied to me all along,” Kimble said. “I don't know – ” He swallowed hard, and he could hear his voice wavering. “Commerce. On Monday. You said. But you could be lying. I can't – ” He could not speak for a long moment, Sam too near. “That got me spooked,” he said finally. “I want it over.”

This close, Kimble could feel it when Sam relaxed. Not by much: Sam was stressed like wire. But the gargoyle-smile faded, relaxing into the grim lines Sam's face usually wore: and his hands on Kimble no longer felt like immediate death.

“I bought you for my own good reasons,” Sam said, after a moment. “I planned on having sex with you, sure. I just don't have much taste for beating a guy into submission so I can screw him. I figured you'd come round of your own accord. You would have, too, if I'd had more time. But I didn't buy you for that.” He drew in a breath and fixed his eyes on Kimble: “I bought you so my team could use you for practice. Interrogation. One of my team's never done an interrogation to the death, and I figured I could use you for that, eventually – work her up through it in easy stages. I had no idea she'd turn up actual evidence of a criminal conspiracy: I had you down as just a guy who'd killed his wife for the money. Now you're no damn use to me, and I'm not keeping you around just to screw, and thanks to those bastards at Devlin Macgregor sending their head of security here we now have independent evidence of some kind of cover-up going on, so yeah, Richard, on all counts: you can be sure you're going to Commerce for processing next week. Monday if I can, but soon. Got it?”

Kimble nodded. He swallowed. Sam's eyes were still fastened on his. He did not know if he believed Sam or not: but he understood that all he could do was wait for Monday.

Sam was wearing a gun. Kimble had glimpsed the holster this morning. This close, he was sure of it.

Could he get the gun away from Sam? Kill him? Kill himself. Two shots. If he could.

He didn't believe he could. Not any more. He could feel it in his muscles: the certainty of defeat. He could get Sam to kill him: but then he wouldn't be evidence. For Helen. To take down Chuck. Nichols.

“Richard,” Sam said, abruptly. “Are you getting this?”

“Yes,” Kimble said, as shortly as he could. “Yes.”

“Okay.” Sam nodded. “I'm going to step away and you're not going to panic. If you panic, I'll have you doped till Monday. If you want that, ask for it. We're going to take a bathroom break, get coffee, go back to the lounge. Got it?”

“Yes,” Kimble said.

Sam stepped back. His hand was still fastened about Kimble's wrist: he did not let go. As he had the first night, he did not give Kimble even an instant's privacy. In the kitchen, the coffee had brewed: Kimble poured five mugs full, added milk and sugar to Ray's, milk to George's mug: Benton and Sam took coffee black.

Kimble had the tray in both his hands: Sam's hand was on the back of his neck. The change felt, in the first moment, only like ordinary heat.

For an instant, Kimble even tried to keep his grip on the tray. He opened his mouth, but Sam was turning him: he felt the wall against his back and Sam's body locking him to it as he heard the cups and tray spill over the hall's carpet.

Sam's hands were choking round his throat. Sam's mouth was open in a howl that Kimble could not even hear.

The wall. He had reached the wall.

to Part 4

End Game: Part 2

2009-04-08T07:30:54Z

This is the second part of the final sequence: it's the End Game. Part 1 is here.)

The previous stories in this series (my Keptverse) began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), The Players (seven parts), The Gambler (seven parts), and The Pieces (seven parts).

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There is a species of cast list here.

Part 2:

Breathe. Don’t speak. Don’t fight, don’t die. Breathe.

Kimble swallowed, rubbing his face, blotting it dry with the towel, swallowing hard, again and again: it helped.

The new mattress had been unrolled and spread out. When he lay down on it, it still smelt of the plastic it had been packed in. He rolled over on to his back and looked up at the sunlight through the window.

Breathe. He kept breathing.

Don’t flinch. Don’t fight. Don’t talk. Breathe.

Breathing in, past the ragged check and flutter of his throat because of crying: exhaling like a sigh. If that was all he did, all he let himself think about, just from one minute to the next, he could live. He could keep breathing.

Six days. No more decisions. Six days.

The noise was the door opening. Kimble rolled over, trying to get up on his knees, but he was dazed: his arms grabbed Don’t fight and cold metal clicked round his wrists and he was lying on his back with his hands cuffed together. The man who had come in was the one Sam called George, the older man with the faded-sand hair. Sam might not want you dead, but I’d have killed you.

“Sam wants you downstairs,” George said.

Kimble rolled over and used both his hands to push himself up, awkwardly. He got halfway there. George stopped him with a word. He was holding something else in his hand: a strap with a mouthpiece. Kimble knew it at first sight: an official gag.

Hands grabbed his face and pushed the mouthpiece past his jaw. Once in, the strap buckled and locked at the back of his head.

Breathe. Don’t fight. Don’t flinch.

“Are you paying attention to me?”

Kumble nodded. He let his tongue run along the inside of his lips, reminding himself that he wasn’t gagged. Yet.

“Sam wants you downstairs. If you say one word – if you even open your mouth and I think you’re going to speak – then this goes in – ” he held the gag up, in front of Kimble’s face “ – and I don’t intend to remove it. I’ll let Sam decide when he wants the use of your mouth again.” George paused. “Let me hear you understood me?”

Kimble found it difficult to speak out loud. “Yes, sir.”

“No. Tell me in your own words what you understood. Or I’ll gag you before you go downstairs.”

Laggingly, uncomfortably, Kimble managed to repeat it.

“Well done.” George didn’t sound sarcastic. “There’s one more thing you need to know. No matter what you hear, no matter what Sam or anyone else says, you’re not being sold. Sam isn’t going to sell you to the man downstairs, or to anyone else, or let you go out of the house at all. Let me hear you understood me.”

Kimble nodded. He licked his lips again, and again tried to repeat this. He didn’t know how it came out, but George nodded, once.

“Well done,” George said again. “On your feet, now. We’re going downstairs for you to be looked at. Have you got it? Not one word out of your mouth, or I’ll gag you: keep your mouth shut, keep that daft look on your face, and remember nothing is happening to you today but going downstairs and back up the stairs again. With a gag in it, if you’ve opened your mouth.”

“Yes, sir,” Kimble said, and set his teeth.

Sam was sitting at the desk by the far end of the room, his chair turned to face another man: the man downstairs, George had said, the man who wants to buy you. For some reason Kimble had supposed he would know this man, but he was a stranger.

“Told you I wouldn’t ask you to buy a pig in a poke,” Sam said. He stood up. There was a note in his voice that Kimble had only ever heard before when Sam spoke to him: but this man was not a slave.

“I assure you, Mr Gerard, this is quite unnecessary,” the man said: his voice was unfamiliar, too, pale and clipped. “My employers are prepared to pay what I think you must agree is a very generous price. There is no need for any kind of inspection.”

George’s hand on Kimble’s arm made him walk a little further into the room: Benton and Ray were sitting on the couch. Their laptops on the coffee table in front of them, but they seemed to be paying more attention to Sam and the man who wanted to buy him than to their work.

“I assure you,” Sam said, “I wouldn’t sell a dog to someone who didn’t care to look at it first.” He made a gesture with his hand, and the man stood up and turned round.

He had a narrow, sour-looking face, with very deep-set eyes. He looked Kimble over once, briefly, and turned his head away to say to Sam “All right, I’ve seen him.”

Sam had already moved round the man and was walking towards them. He was smiling: he still had that note in his voice. “No, no, you haven’t had a fair chance to look him over. Come here.”

The man followed. He was not looking at Kimble, though this might not have been obvious to anyone but Kimble: his face was turned towards Kimble, but his eyes were looking away.

“Are you satisfied that this is the man your employers wanted to buy?” Sam asked.

“Yes,” the man said, and turned away. His face was in profile to Kimble for an instant.

Kimble’s eyes dropped to the man’s hand. It did not quite match his skin, though it was a good colour: a hand slightly too smooth, too symmetrical, to be real.

Don’t flinch. Don’t talk. Breathe. Live.

“Turn around,” Sam said. The friendly falseness had all evaporated from Sam’s voice: Kimble very nearly turned, even though George’s hand on his elbow reminded him this could not be meant for him.

Breathe. Live. Don’t flinch. Live. He could now remember why he had wanted to.

The man turned. “What the hell do you want?” he snapped. “I’ve looked him over, we want him, I’ve offered you the price. Are you trying to raise the bid?”

“Would you pay it if I asked for it?” Sam asked.

The man gave Sam a poisonous look. “I would need to consult with my superiors if you were to raise the price from my final offer. Can we at least get the man into my car while we discuss the final price? I have my own shackles.”

“No,” Sam said. “George, take him back upstairs, will you?”

“Very good, sir,” George said, and a pressure on Kimble’s elbow warned him to turn. But the man had taken two steps closer, standing almost at Sam’s side. Consciously, Kimble relaxed all his muscles, dropping his head. Helen.

The man said “Deputy – ” and got no further: Kimble launched himself without looking again. He brought his cuffed hands up and hit the man under the chin, and went down with him, landing half on him at the wrong angle, moving up him roughly, a three-legged animal with death in the front clubbed limb. Helen. He brought both his hands up, clenched together, the cuffs on his wrists locked and painful, and meant to bring them clubbing down on the man’s throat, but a weight hit hard on the back of his skull.

Hurt radiating out from the back of his skull was the first thing he knew: he was lying on his face on a carpeted surface, his hands locked behind his back. He hurt: not only his head but his sides and his arms. Another bruising thump landed: a noise was kicked out of his mouth.

“Put that gun down, sir.” The voice was cold and rough, and brutally familiar.

“Put that gun down now,” the voice said again. Sam.

Sam. Kimble closed his mouth.

“That man’s mine.” The voice wasn’t Sam’s. “You saw him. He’s fucking out of control. I paid you and I’m taking him.” The voice sounded breathless and uncontrolled.

“I didn’t take your money, sir,” Sam said. “We have him under control for all ordinary purposes.”

“He attacked me!”

“That’s unfortunate, sir, and you have my sympathies. But you moved too close to him. You were aware he was dangerous. Fortunately my men were able to disable him before you came to harm.”

“I bought him and I’m taking him or I’ll shoot him now.”

“I wouldn’t do that, sir,” Sam said. “It might raise questions in our minds why your employers want to pay so much money for him, yet you felt able to kill him.” There was a pause. Kimble understood, like a light coming on in a darkened room, who Sam was talking to. The one-armed man. The man he hadn’t killed. Sam sounded amused. “And I will send your employers a bill for redecorating this room.”

“And your collection of illegal DVDs?”

“What?” Sam still sounded amused, but his voice had a snap to it.

“My employers are aware you have in your possession contraband DVDs. My employers may feel that they should report your contraband material. What else do you have in this house besides a Final contract slave you’re not using, and contraband DVDs you shouldn’t own?”

There was a moment’s silence, and then Sam laughed. “Is that all you got? Get out of here.”

“A moment,” George said. He was standing almost on top of Richard. “Sam?”

“You don’t have to tell him anything,” Sam said.

“Mr Sykes, I’m from Great Britain originally. I have a large collection of British DVDs I bought, quite legally. I’m also an alcoholic,” George said with bitter precision, “and Sam stores my collection here for me because they’re irreplacable. Does that clarify the situation for you?”

“If your employers want to know how I’m going to make final use of my slave, they can call me up and ask,” Sam said. He had moved away. “But you are leaving my house right now. Benton. Ray. Escort Mr Sykes to his car.”

The toe of George’s shoe prodded Kimble in the side. Kimble set his teeth. He hadn’t opened his mouth. He tried to turn his head, but that shoe prodded him again, harder this time, and he gave up.

The door of the room closed sharply. Sam’s footsteps came back across the room.

“Richard.”

Kimble lay still. His lips were pressing into carpet.

“He’s not still out of it?”

“No,” George said. “I didn’t hit him hard. He’s been conscious for a few minutes.”

“Richard. Sit up.”

“You may be expecting a bit much there,” George said.

The cuffs made a clicking sound as they were unlocked. The relief of pressure around his wrists. His arms, no longer locked together, slid apart and fell – he did not seem to be moving them – to lie on the carpet. That felt comfortable enough: Kimble couldn’t bring himself to move. He could breathe more easily.

“Richard,” Sam said, and his hand on Kimble’s shoulder reminded him that he must do things besides breathe: use his arms to push himself upright, scramble back till he was kneeling with his buttocks pressed against his heels and his hands on his thighs, facing Sam.

Sam bent and put his hand against Kimble’s face, his palm feeling cool, tilting his head upwards. “I think he’s got a concussion. Okay. Richard. Can you hear me?”

Kimble nodded.

“Don’t give me any shit. Talk to me.”

Kimble swallowed. He opened his mouth, meaning to say Yes, Sam, I can hear you, but what came out was “I didn’t kill Helen.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, as if this made perfect sense. “I know it.” He nodded. “I know it. You looked at his arm after you looked at his face. And he knew you, and he was scared out of his gourd you’d know him.”

“Sykes knows you know it,” George said.

Sam nodded. He didn’t take his eyes off Kimble’s face. “If they start trying to shove things around, cover up the evidence, we’ve got them good. Okay. Richard. I have got to take you through to the other side of the house, let Dana take a look at your head. You’re going in cuffs, but nothing’s going to happen to you. Got it?”

Kimble shook his head, slowly. He managed to get to his feet, and keep his balance, though the room was swaying. He squinted at Sam. “I can’t,” he said, even though slaves weren’t allowed to say I can’t. Everything beyond lying on his face breathing seemed impossible. He held out his hands and felt the cuffs lock round them. Sam took his arm and held him upright, walking him towards the door.

to Part 3