A Method Truly Sublime (The Commander) Read Online Free PDF Page A

comfortable there, Carol?” McIntyre said, mockery in his voice.  His real business here.  The monitor had just been a spur of the moment observation.  I didn’t bother to answer him.
    McIntyre waited a while and then spoke again.  “We c an make your life here a little more comfortable.  Give us a little cooperation and life can get better for you.  Would you like some food? Maybe a nice steak?  A few candy bars?”
    ‘Here Fido, be good and we’ll give you a doggie treat.’  He wasn’t wrong: steak and candy bars would be wonderful.  I was ravenous.  My stomach tried to grumble at the thought but my control was better.  I showed no reaction, still cursing to myself over the loss of the monitor.
    “We want to run a few tests on you and ask you a few questions,” McIntyre said.  “Give us a little bit and we’ll give you a little bit.  Do you want something besides an IV drip for breakfast?”  McIntyre knew how much I ate from his work with me in St. Louis.  He would offer juice next.
    “How about some juice, Carol?  You a little low on juice from all your healing?  You cooperate with us and we’ll give you what you need.”
    Just as I predicted.  A desperate part of me wanted me to scream Yes, yes, give me juice! I’ll do anything!   My juice monkey sunk its teeth into me and gripped and shook me the way a cat shakes a mouse.  I had to have juice.
    McIntyre was trying his weapons to find out what pushed my buttons.  Juice would work, so I needed to hide my reactions from him.  The juice was an addiction as well as a need.  My life depended on my concealing the depths of my juice addiction.  If I convinced him he couldn’t use juice to control me, I bet he would stop trying.  He already understood I needed juice to live, the same way I needed food, water and air.  I needed to convince him not to play games with the juice, because those games would work far too well.
    “Grow up, little man,” I said, my voice oozing contempt.  My face gave no hint of the consuming hunger inside of me.
    McIntyre frowned, startled at my reaction.
    “Well,” he said after a moment, “you think about that for a while.  I’ll come back later, after we’ve taken away all this extra equipment here, and we can talk some more.”
    He stood up and made to leave.  I turned my head towards him and the look in my eyes made him catch his breath.  Then I let my smile grow, the slow predator smile that set fear in the hearts of normals.  McIntyre stopped moving and I could see the primitive monkey that lives within all normal humans.  It gibbered in fear inside him, telling him ‘run, run, there is danger here’.  He tried to cover his reaction.  He tried to pretend he didn’t feel the fear, but he did, and he knew I knew.  I smiled wider.
    Then I let him go and dismissed him with contempt.  I turned my eyes away from him and spoke into the air.
    “If you expect to keep me alive, you need to give me food, water, exercise and juice.  Otherwise I’ll just die and you won’t have anything, not even a fancy trial.  I’m not saying anything else until I talk to my lawyer.”  As if I had a lawyer.  At best, I would get access to a court appointed stooge.
    “If you expect any of those, you have to cooperate first.  You hear me, Hancock?” he said, rattled by the naked predator I had shown him.
    I ignored him.
    “I want medical tests and information from you.  Otherwise, you’re going to end up as a footnote in some research paper with your body parts preserved in formaldehyde.  You don’t get a lawyer because you’re not in jail.  Currently, you’re being held under medical quarantine at the CDC.”
    The CDC?  That meant I was in the CDC-run Virginia Transform Detention Center.  My first bit of real intel.
    I needed to make a decision as to whether to cooperate or not.  Medical quarantine meant doctors, researchers and their questions.  Not the police and the FBI and their style of