Ghosts of Punktown Read Online Free PDF

they glared out of. Sometimes Cal thought he was still a prisoner, still being tortured, but this time just psychologically. Perhaps he had never been freed, but right now sat in a cell instead of an examination room of the VA Hospital. Maybe this doctor wore makeup to change his skin color. Or maybe they had drugged him, or implanted a computer chip in his brain. Played around inside his mind...
     
         “Do you think you’d benefit from talking with one of our counselors?” the doctor asked him.
     
         Cal stepped down from the examination table, resealing his shirt. “No,” he grunted. “I’m fine. Just like you say.”
     
         He didn’t have a car yet, so he figured he’d buy a coffee from a vending machine in the little cafeteria, and sip it while he waited for the next shuttle to Blue Station. Blue Station , he thought with a smirk. Yeah. How appropriate.
     
         In a nexus of hallways where elevators were situated, Cal paused to look at directional plaques on a wall. Arrows pointed one way for the CAFETERIA. And in another direction, toward PSYCHIATRIC SERVICES. He found himself, almost against his will, drifting down that corridor. Maybe it was the sobbing voice he heard from one of the rooms that compelled him. As it turned out, it was a man sitting in the little waiting room, his face in his hands and his elbows on his knees. The receptionist behind the counter could have been a robot for all the concern she showed him. Another vet was strapped into a cybernetic “pony” with insect-like arms and legs, as his own four limbs were missing, making him look like a swaddled overgrown infant. He met Cal’s eyes with a dazed, or maybe just fatalistic, expression.
     
         The nurse looked up, finally noticing Cal. “Can I help you?” she asked blandly.
     
         “No – I’m...just looking for a friend,” Cal stammered, and then he ducked back into the hall.
     
    *     *     *
     
         Stake left the counselor’s office without his mask on, as the man had suggested. “As long as you wear it, you fortify your need for it. And you fortify your identification with the Ha Jiin soldier. Every time you put it on again, you reestablish that identity. This is a wound that needs its bandage off in order to heal, Jeremy. Don’t look in the mirror. Don’t fret about it. You have to ignore it, which is not the same thing as the hiding you’re doing now. Go about your life. Your mutation aside, there is no physiological reason for you to maintain this appearance.”
     
         Stake had nodded, listening to these words. Normally he wouldn’t have looked too long at the counselor’s face, but he had stared at him intensely, hoping, hoping to see the man’s expression change to surprise as his patient began to mimic him. Yet it did not come.
     
         “But you know,” the counselor had gone on, “the surest way to deal with this is to treat your brain itself with a surgical procedure, in such a way that your ability will be forever inhibited. No more shape-shifting at all. Do you think you’d be interested in that?”
     
         “Maybe later,” Stake had murmured. “Not...not yet.” His ability had served him well during his military stint. Might he make use of it in some future career? And then there was the matter of his heritage. He was a Tin Town mutant, like his mother. He was almost defiantly defensive about that. He didn’t need to be... corrected , like some freak, some abomination.
     
         But as he left the counselor’s office, he couldn’t help but wonder if there were something more masochistic in his choice not to have his mutation treated. Something like punishment involved in that decision.
     
    *     *     *
     
         Cal Williams was waiting for one of the elevator doors to open when he looked to his right and saw the man walking toward him from the psychiatric wing. He wasn’t the only one who’d noticed