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

question.  At least to begin with.  On the other hand, if I let them think they softened me up, I would be able to play for time while I watched for an opening to escape.
    I decided not to answer McIntyre.  I had one more surprise coming.  I still might be able to parley my ‘miraculous’ healed spine into an escape.  McIntyre kept silent for a long moment.  I heard his anger in his heartbeat and breathing.
    He turned to the walking gun rack who called himself a guard.  “You stay here,” he said. “Don’t touch those bonds.  Dr. Wilson is going to be here in a couple of minutes.  Until then, she stays chained down.”
    “Yes, sir,” the guard said.  McIntyre stalked out.
     
    Agent McIntyre came back a few minutes later, an angry Dr. Wilson in tow.  A couple of aides and the original guard sent out to fetch Dr. Wilson followed.
    “This is insane,” Dr. Wilson told McIntyre.  “We need this monitor attached to her if we’re going to save her life and obtain any scientific information regarding her condition.  She has a severed spine.  She might go into cardiac arrest at any moment.  Remember, Arms are failed Focuses and won’t be able to tolerate anywhere near the damage a Focus can.  Who knows if this Arm still has any mind left at all.”  What utter imbeciles.  They even gave me some important bits of information: the doctors thought I was a dumb Monster and Focuses can survive injuries that would kill a normal.  Assuming the idiot read my St. Louis records, this implied Focuses could survive a lot.  If I played this right, I just might be able to learn more from these yahoos about the medical secrets of Focuses and Transforms than they would learn from me.  Before I escaped.
    “Just do what I said, Doctor.”  McIntyre knew better, of course.  He actually rolled his eyes and winked at me, feeling a far closer camaraderie to me than to Dr. Wilson.
    I didn’t wink back, but socked his wink away as yet more useful intel.  In some important way, McIntyre had changed from when I last encountered his pustulent ass in St. Louis.
    Dr. Wilson’s shoulders slumped.  He did as told, muttering about “supposed to be saving lives”, “gathering information for science”, “nothing but the Monster version of a Focus” and “useless, paranoid fascist”.  When he was finished removing the sensors, he moved the IV from the back of my left hand to the top of my left foot.
    They all left, leaving me helpless again, and weaponless.
     
    Henry Zielinski: March 7, 1968
    “Henry?  There you are.”
    The former Doctor and Professor Henry Zielinski glanced up from his seat in the cabana by the Inferno household pool.  The sleet had let up and a cold north wind howled outside the unheated building, ostensibly locked up for the winter.  He had been thinking, planning, groping with problems far too big for him to deal with.  He often couldn’t think inside Inferno, Focus Rizzari’s household, even in the smaller guest house where he slept at night.  He needed a place of escape.  Normally, crowding didn’t bother him.  He had grown up in a small noisy house and had learned early how to block everything out when reading or studying.  A small noisy house with eight people didn’t compare, though, to the close-quarters bustle of a Focus household with sixty plus men, women and children.
    The Focus walked toward him, escorted by Focus Florence Ackermann , cabana door banging shut behind them.  He waved at Flo and motioned for her and the Focus to come over and sit in one of the small clump of summer lawn chairs gathered in the corner of the otherwise empty building.  Which they were doing anyway.  He kept a smile off his face, as he had been the one who invited Flo to visit the household.  Flo, a half pace behind the Focus, kept her face blank.  She knew she was being manipulated, but didn’t yet understand why.
    “You wanted to talk to me?” the Focus said, relaying a message he had