All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Why?  What’s the problem?”
    “Every time he looks at me he’s measuring me for a coffin,” Keaton said.  “I was going to order you to keep him out of my sight, but a tag would work as well.”
    Crap.  Keaton was right.  Tom hadn’t ever gotten over my last torture session with my boss.  Hank had.  To Hank, torture was just something Arms did to each other.  Tom, though, needed more experience with Arm-Arm interactions.
    “I’ll agree, because he’s my top military guy and you’ll need to deal with him,” I said.  “He’s still mine.”
    Keaton rolled her eyes, exquisitely theatric.
    “So that’s how Arms build households!” Ann said, a Crow whisper.  From above.  She had been observing us out of a second story window, in the small room Bill Fentress and Steve Huddleston shared.
    “They are truly and completely incorrigible,” Keaton said, quiet.  She turned and got predatory.  “This is private.  Go study the Crows or something, Chiron.”
    Ann slammed the window sash down with a thunk.  She was one of mine, so I was responsible for defending her, but Keaton was my boss, and I hadn’t ordered Ann to spy on us.  I couldn’t defend her from my boss’s order.
    “She’s right, though,” I said, about Ann’s household comment.  Zing!
    Who could have predicted that Arm ‘households’ would involve shared Transforms and normals, the exact opposite of what Focuses did?  I had the urge to do a little happy dance at the idea the Focuses didn’t get all the neat tricks.
    Keaton glared at the now closed window and searched the area.  No more eavesdroppers.  “Haggerty dropped my tag,” she said, not looking at me.  “The bitch stopped right at the edge of my range and made a show of it.”
    “Idiot,” I said.  “So, are you going to hunt her down, or am I?”
    “Neither,” Keaton said.  “Not yet.  Keep an ear out, though, for the inevitable screw up.  She’s not going to listen to reason until she’s half dead from her own screw ups or imprisoned.”  Keaton didn’t even have to add the ‘like you were’.  Zing!  “Let’s go.  I need to tag Tina and Tom.”
     
    I found a corner of the giant Inferno living room to hide in, shadowed in the evening darkness.  Conflicted.  I hadn’t liked Keaton tagging Tom, although she had played the scene straight and told Tom the truth about either letting her tag him or keeping out of her sight forever.  I wanted to protect Tom, of course, and yes having my boss tag him did make him safer, but I still didn’t like it.  I didn’t like my boss calling me ‘the Commander’, either, even if she did so as an insult.  It was like an insidious disease spreading through my life.  Bah and humbug.  Merry Christmas.
    “You want to talk?” Tim said, and sat down beside me.  Tim Egins was another of the Inferno household members I had tagged.  Like Ann, he was one of Lori’s brain trust, along with Connie Yerizarian (the Inferno household boss) and Sadie Tucker (the Inferno poet and house conscience).  I shook my head, but he didn’t leave, willing to be close and companionable.
    I found the presence of a tagged Transform near me comforting.  My mind wandered down strange alleys, where I imagined half a dozen Focus households under my protection and working with me, with dozens if not hundreds of tagged Transforms available for all occasions.  It was numbers; Arms were rare, Focuses were not, and Transforms ubiquitous.  The Arm ‘household’ would be a household of Focus households and their people, some of said people she would share with other allied Arms, serving as both a form of currency and as mediators.  A pleasant dream.  The idea wouldn’t work, now.  I could hold myself together around Transforms without any problems when I was healthy, but eventually, as I was an Arm, I would end up in some damned fight, get crazy wounded, and juice suck some poor Focus’s tagged Transform.  As Lori would say,