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Vanishing Manhood: Part 18
Vanishing Manhood: Part 18
Seeds Of My Sins.
Based on ‘One In Ten’ by FinalStand. Listen to the
► Podcast at Explicit Novels.
The race to a temporary safety.
To be
treasured is to be safe in the knowledge you are cared for and unsafe in the
certainty your value puts your life at risk.
"Good to see you awake," Isobel Diaz regarded the
woman, who was strapped down securely to the hospital bed.
"Wha; uh; why am I still alive?" Magdalena
Keverich rasped at her captor. Her eyes slowly took in her circumstance. She'd
been shot; in the shoulder. She recalled the military and SWAT storming her
safe house. She'd gone down early in the fire-fight and had been groggy from
shock and blood loss by the time she was 'arrested'. Then;
"You are too valuable," Isobel showered her with
false compassion. Her eyes flickered to the tubes going into the left arm of
'Little M; which led to a humming device. Isobel struggled to understand.
"Your antibodies," Isobel informed her. "Actually, Israel's
antibodies."
"Ah; you're stealing my immunity," Maggie gargled.
"That's debatable," Isobel's face turned
positively reptilian. "The experts aren't sure if the continuous dialysis
will kill you before we extract enough of the antibodies to make you vulnerable
to this new plague. That's not really important."
Maggie decided disagreeing at this juncture was pointless.
"What is important is how painful your last few days on
Earth will be. You can affect this by helping me find Mr. Jensen," Isobel
offered.
"Why do you think I would know where he is?"
Little M's voice was dull and sounded like she had gargled with sandpaper.
"I don't think you do. I do suspect two of your
associates; Brigit O'Connor and Davia Afrah Qanyare; might know where he is and
if you help us find them;"
"You didn't kill Brigit?" Little M scoffed, with
amusement. "I can see why you would want to find her; before she finds
you."
Isobel's eyes narrowed.
"Someone blew the head off Amy Smith, manager of
Industrial Maintenance Welding, then burned the building she worked in to the
ground," she said.
"Oh; Miss 'staring thirty minutes at the ceiling,
fuck-stunned'," the former Mob Boss mused. "I guess his cop
girlfriends are both gone, too."
"Both? He had more than one?" Diaz leaned forward.
"That Passey-chick?"
Isobel didn't respond, mulling over other information she
hadn't shared. Magdalena looked around.
There were three other beds in her room. In the adjacent bed
was another woman in a similar hook-up with the addition of tubes going down
her throat and nose. Despite the pain in her shoulder and head, she did some
quick suppositions.
"He fucked her, too?"
"What?" Isobel's eyes flickered from Little M,
over to the comatose form then shrugged. "Yes. Debra 'something'. Sadly,
she had nothing useful to contribute except her antibodies. The second, fourth,
fifth and sixth women he inseminated are still at large." Magdalena
recalled Israel's first sex partner in the city had been a woman named Debra.
Sex partner two had been the cop. She was the third. 'Fuck-stun' was the
fourth. Maggie was less certain who the fifth and sixth were.
"Israel warned me what he had was a death sentence for
me," Maggie related.
"He is annoyingly intelligent at times. Now answer my
question. How do I find Miss O'Connor and Qanyare?"
"Let me think on it," Little M' requested.
Isobel didn't look all that patient.
"Listen, I've just woken up and am in a truckload of
pain. I need to think over what I recall about Industrial Maintenance Welding
and Miss Smith."
"I will give you five minutes," Isobel allowed.
She rose up; she had been sitting in a chair at Little M's bedside; and walked
out the door.
There were no other active people in the room. Maggie shook
her wrists and ankles. She was very securely bound. No soldiers, or police.
Certainly no lawyer of any kind. Most likely the world thought she was dead.
She was in a small medical facility under Isobel Diaz's control. That
realization was horrific news.
It wasn't as if she could expect Brigit and Davia to come to
her rescue. They weren't those kinds of 'friends', and Maggie figured 'The
Outfit' was dead. Mom? If Isobel had any sense left, she would have arranged
for Maria Keverich's death already.
Maggie had spent her years in charge of the Keverich Mob,
trying to ferret out who betrayed her mother to the feds and had come up empty.
She'd gone to Isobel's party and Isobel had tried to 'mend fences', which
hadn't worked. No daughter of Maria Keverich would ever trust a cop, or those
who served them. None of that mattered.
Isobel returned to the room.
"Well?"
"The night of the MAL Rally disaster, Brigit picked up
Mr. Jensen. They hung out at the unfinished overpass for about an hour. At the
end of their 'stay', she told me they encountered two women with military-style
hardware. It was insinuated there was a sniper as well. The ladies on the
bridge said they were with a person called 'Zara', who Israel appeared to be
familiar with."
"Zara? That's not much to go on, Magdalena,"
Isobel studied her.
"Give me something solid to eat and I might recall more
about their little meeting," Little M suggested. "Being shot
sucks."
"You are alive because I told them to take you alive.
You remain conscious as long as I find you useful, Magdalena," Isobel
frowned. "If I find you are holding something back;"
"At this point, I don't have any option except working
with you, Isobel," Maggie attempted to smile.
"You aren't working with me. Outside of Israel's
antibodies, I don't think I need you anymore," Isobel grinned, shark-like.
As a final, utter humiliation, Magdalena Keverich, once one
of the most feared women in the city, was reduced to a past-acquaintance of a
man, a legal notation of him fulfilling his legal duty as a sperm donor.
'You are not on the short; very short list of women whose
opinions and expectations mean crap to me, Magdalena' she recalled Jensen
telling her.
Isobel caught the slight shift in Maggie's countenance.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Bring me that meal, or bring on your torturer,"
Maggie glowered, "because I'm not telling you shit until I either have my
fill of either food, or pain."
While Isobel considered her options, Maggie Keverich went
over the small list of women who did matter to Israel Jensen; women who might
either provide keys to his thinking, or women he might be trying to save; as
crazy as that sounded. 'On second thought, maybe it isn't so crazy',
Maggie thought.
Brigit and Davia might have very well found Israel. Odds
were good his cop girlfriend was with him, too. If you added the three armed
women on the bridge; Jensen was putting a good deal of guns around himself; and
that was the best hope of salvation she had.
Markham Federal Hospital For The Criminally Insane, Outside Of Madison
The female interrogator walked into the room with one
corrections officer and two members of the HRT (FBI's Hostage Rescue Team) she
had hastily been assigned to work with.
"As promised; one near-vegetable." The corrections
officer pointed to the fifth person in the room.
"This is Verona Hedwig 'Hedy' Salenko?" the
interrogator despaired.
"Yes; the Aurora Slasher herself. Not much to look at
now, is she?"
"Why have you kept her so sedated?"
"Because she's fucking dangerous. She damn near escaped
her first month in custody. Put three prisoners and two guards in the hospital.
Would have been more except for the shock collar," the corrections officer
explained.
"I; need to talk to her," the interrogator
explained.
"She's a monster. The dosages we have her on won't
cycle out of her system for six days; minimum," the CO stated.
"This is a matter of national security," the
interrogator stated.
"For this monster?" the corrections officer
scoffed.
"No." The interrogator bit down on her rage.
"For Israel Jensen. Perhaps, you've heard of him?"
"The one who lived; he's the same Jensen who brought
down the President?"
"Precisely; and the one we desperately need in
custody."
"Why?"
"I can't explain that to you right now; this being a
matter of national security," the interrogator simmered.
"I'll see what the infirmary can do," the
corrections officer shrugged. Off she went.
The interrogator gave her one minute, then gave a hand
signal to the FBI officers in the control room to cut the feed from this room.
"Greetings Miss Salenko, I am Special Agent Winthrop
and these are Special Agents Carver and Lewinsky," the lead investigator
began.
No response whatsoever.
"Israel Jensen," the interrogator repeated. She
had spotted a slight reaction from the subject when she had first said his
name. This time; nothing. Still, the interrogator had few options. She took a
seat opposite the deranged psychopath.
"I'm your only chance to get out of this hell
hole," was her next ploy.
Nothing. She played her last card.
"Israel is in serious trouble, Miss Salenko. Trouble
which could get him killed; or worse."
It was like watching a snake uncoil from within its 'human
skinsuit'. Miss Salenko; the Aurora Slasher; popped her neck vertebra; first
right then left before centering her head atop her neck. Precisely so.
"My Israel is in trouble?" she asked politely.
"Yes."
"Please explain," Verona requested.
"I was wondering what insights into his personality he
might express which would make it easier for the government to find him."
"That's not an explanation," the Aurora Slasher
stated. "Please try again."
"Okay; have you heard about the men vanishing across
the country?" the interrogator asked.
Verona nodded.
"We are afraid he has fallen in with them."
"Oh; has my Israel been a good boy?"
This was a tough one for the interrogator. Her problem was
the nature of her subject. She was brilliant; a career police officer on the
fast track to success when a terrible incident had robbed her of her uterus and
ovaries. Incident reports after her 'take down' by the serial-killer-profiling
squad suggested she was a narcissist with sociopathic tendencies and homicidal
delusions before her wounding, and had become much worse afterwards.
Literally speaking, she had become a homicidal maniac, who
had developed a romantic relationship with one of her victims. One Israel
Jensen was, indeed, 'lucky' to be alive, if a psychologically scarred young
man.
Here she had to determine how much information to spoon-feed
Miss Salenko without putting their mission at risk.
"No. No, he hasn't been a good boy," the
interrogator answered.
"Oh; what happened to him after you subjected him to
one of your 'fuck farms'?"
"Fuck farms?"
"Oh; what you call rape rehabilitation centers. Where
you teach young men to become fuck pigs for the greater glory of society."
Verona smiled, eerily.
"Help me and I'll help you," the interrogator established
the ground rules.
"He goes west," Verona stated, confidently.
"How do you even know where he is; was?" SA Carver
blurted out.
"I watch the news just like everyone else. I've seen my
Israel doing his thing in the city, know the geography, and know the entire
government is looking for him. Hardly rocket science when everyone around me
thinks I'm a drooling idiot."
"Oh-kay," the interrogator nodded. "He has
had sex multiple times since he left you. By your definition he has been a 'bad
boy'."
"Contrary to your mental assessment of my Israel, he
will have attached himself to violent women. He learned that violent women
equals life from me. Now, has he had sex more than once with the same
woman?"
"Why would you want to know?"
"That would be emotional cheating and I wouldn't stand
for that," Verona smiled again. It was just as eerie as it was confident.
"Eighteen."
"Names," the Aurora Slasher requested.
"So you can escape and kill them; no thank you,"
the interrogator shook her head. Despite the Aurora Slasher being chained by
multiple ankle, waist and wrist cuffs, she still gave off the aura of absolute
menace.
"Besides, I gave you a piece of information so now you
have to give me something."
"Give me more to work with," Verona stated.
"What do you need?"
"His sexual history," she related.
"So you can get the names of those women? Again, no
thank you."
"Fine; give me the list from one year back through his
time in the city. That should suggest who is with him and what their
relationship is," Verona explained.
This was part of the process which really sucked for the
interrogator. She wanted to leave the room and give this monster nothing, but
her political mistresses didn't want her to come back with 'nothing'. She had
to break protocols and hand the information over.
Silently the Aurora Slasher went over the data on a tablet
set aside for such revelations.
"I doubt he is with this Keverich woman," she
began after fifteen minutes. "The power dynamic is too much against him.
He wouldn't go to her seeking safety. My educated guess is he is with the cop; who
he had intercourse with four times in one day; bad boy. Very bad boy. Also; something
is wrong with my Israel."
"How so?"
The Aurora Slasher weighed her response.
"My Israel is as delicate boy. He is having sex when
mandated; when he couldn't buy out of it. His reviews are stellar; but until
this police officer, he never goes back. What did you do to him?"
Gut-check time for the interrogator. She would be putting
multiple lives at risk by saying what she needed to say next.
"Recent interviews suggest he was raped multiple times
at a sorority function in college. He tried to report it, but his claims were
rudely rejected by campus security. Information suggests he was brought to the
function by his then-girlfriend. They then broke up; of course."
"Of course," the Aurora Slasher whispered. There
was a pause. "Your 'fuck farm' turned my Israel into a fatted calf who was
then sacrificed at that sorority; and then you simply expected him to blithely
get along with his life. And you call me a monster." She gazed upon the
interrogator and her accomplices.
"So you believe his story; that he was raped?" the
interrogator played along.
"Of course. Otherwise, he would have betrayed me in a
way most foul and I would have to kill him when we meet again; but this is all
your fault; you and your law enforcement types. Israel; my Israel;" she
choked out.
"He's not 'your Israel'," the talkative HRT woman
growled. "You held him in a basement and raped him for eighty-four days. I
doubt --"
"Enough," the interrogator stopped her
subordinate.
"I protected him," Aurora gave her side of events.
"Where else but my basement would he have been safe from the rest of you?
You would have turned that sweet young boy into a whore. I gave him the purity
of monogamy."
"Don't." The interrogator stopped the HRT woman
from getting into this game of semantics with the brilliant, but deranged,
subject.
"I want to come along," Verona 'Hedy' Salenko
requested.
"Out of the question," the interrogator shook her
head. "You are a very dangerous detainee."
"The more information you give me about your case, the
more detailed response I can give you about my Israel," she reasoned.
"No thank you. What I can offer you is being removed to
a less odious place, or perhaps you would prefer solitary confinement?"
"I already know I know something you haven't even begun
to consider and it is answered in this one question; why would Israel Jensen
have any say in a group of women about where they would be going?"
That stumped the interrogator, which she knew to be a bad
thing.
"Why would my Israel have such an impact in their
decision-making process?" Verona inquired. "Am I coming with you, or
are you going to be one serious step behind the entire time?"
"I would have to check with my superiors first, and
don't even think you would ever be unchained," the interrogator's eyes
narrowed.
"This is a freebie," the Aurora Slasher smiled.
"My Israel is going to be a father; to all, or at least most of the women
he is with and that dynamic is working its way out. He is becoming their
patriarch."
"The patriarchy is dead," the interrogator stated
as fact.
"It is a fire I stoked within him while we were
together," Verona answered. "The power of the patriarch; of men
seeking fatherhood; is greater than any of you realize; though you are just
starting to figure it out with the abolition of marriage. Men want to be
fathers and fathers are the core of any stable family structure. I know this to
be true."
The corrections officer returned to the room, cutting off
the conversation. Verona immediately shut down.
"Sorry," the corrections officer sighed.
"That drug regimen is virtually foolproof and takes six days to work its
way through her system. There is no other cure for it which doesn't risk frying
her synapsis."
"Don't worry about it," the interrogator said.
"We will be taking her with us."
"You will need an order from someone pretty high
up," the corrections officer blanched.
"How about one from the Acting Attorney General of the
Federation? Will that do?"
"Yeah; yes, that would suffice," the corrections
officer's head bobbed. The rest was mere formality
Thursday Evening.
We stayed at Jethro's all morning and most of the afternoon,
while Casper sent a drone westward to check out our possible exit path all the
way to the Mississippi River. Everything looked good. On television we watched
the world slowly become unhinged. Bizarrely, while the government collapsed,
the federation's Constitution continued to function; namely in the area of
freedom of the press.
This was more a result of the turf war between the civilian
administration, the EMM (Emergency Management Administration), and the Military
Command Authority than anyone's slavish devotion to a piece of paper. Globally,
GNN kept us abreast of various nations' and people's attempts to stem the
seemingly unstoppable tide. In the city, an attempt by the RMC (Regional
Military Commander) and city council to bring the 'order' to the various
disparate voices of the press led to unexpected chaos.
Only three outlets decided to resist the new government
directives. One was a collegiate pro-environmental site. Another was a
proto-communist news group. The third was the Sentinel, the city's largest
independent media enterprise. Apparently the Mayor's Pubic Relation's Office
quit en masse, so the folks in charge were forced to simply shut down the
centers of opposition.
They forgot one guy; quite literally. I'd left Doyle Crane
in the midst of GNN with Eloise Granger, hotshot Sentinel journalist and
eternal foe of Isobel Diaz, and Dimples, who was more than capable of figuring
out who the 'bad girls' were as the situation was unfolding.
Doyle wasn't the Voice of the Resistance. No; he gave
a voice to those who were res
View all episodes
By Steamy StoriesVanishing Manhood: Part 18
Seeds Of My Sins.
Based on ‘One In Ten’ by FinalStand. Listen to the
► Podcast at Explicit Novels.
The race to a temporary safety.
To be
treasured is to be safe in the knowledge you are cared for and unsafe in the
certainty your value puts your life at risk.
"Good to see you awake," Isobel Diaz regarded the
woman, who was strapped down securely to the hospital bed.
"Wha; uh; why am I still alive?" Magdalena
Keverich rasped at her captor. Her eyes slowly took in her circumstance. She'd
been shot; in the shoulder. She recalled the military and SWAT storming her
safe house. She'd gone down early in the fire-fight and had been groggy from
shock and blood loss by the time she was 'arrested'. Then;
"You are too valuable," Isobel showered her with
false compassion. Her eyes flickered to the tubes going into the left arm of
'Little M; which led to a humming device. Isobel struggled to understand.
"Your antibodies," Isobel informed her. "Actually, Israel's
antibodies."
"Ah; you're stealing my immunity," Maggie gargled.
"That's debatable," Isobel's face turned
positively reptilian. "The experts aren't sure if the continuous dialysis
will kill you before we extract enough of the antibodies to make you vulnerable
to this new plague. That's not really important."
Maggie decided disagreeing at this juncture was pointless.
"What is important is how painful your last few days on
Earth will be. You can affect this by helping me find Mr. Jensen," Isobel
offered.
"Why do you think I would know where he is?"
Little M's voice was dull and sounded like she had gargled with sandpaper.
"I don't think you do. I do suspect two of your
associates; Brigit O'Connor and Davia Afrah Qanyare; might know where he is and
if you help us find them;"
"You didn't kill Brigit?" Little M scoffed, with
amusement. "I can see why you would want to find her; before she finds
you."
Isobel's eyes narrowed.
"Someone blew the head off Amy Smith, manager of
Industrial Maintenance Welding, then burned the building she worked in to the
ground," she said.
"Oh; Miss 'staring thirty minutes at the ceiling,
fuck-stunned'," the former Mob Boss mused. "I guess his cop
girlfriends are both gone, too."
"Both? He had more than one?" Diaz leaned forward.
"That Passey-chick?"
Isobel didn't respond, mulling over other information she
hadn't shared. Magdalena looked around.
There were three other beds in her room. In the adjacent bed
was another woman in a similar hook-up with the addition of tubes going down
her throat and nose. Despite the pain in her shoulder and head, she did some
quick suppositions.
"He fucked her, too?"
"What?" Isobel's eyes flickered from Little M,
over to the comatose form then shrugged. "Yes. Debra 'something'. Sadly,
she had nothing useful to contribute except her antibodies. The second, fourth,
fifth and sixth women he inseminated are still at large." Magdalena
recalled Israel's first sex partner in the city had been a woman named Debra.
Sex partner two had been the cop. She was the third. 'Fuck-stun' was the
fourth. Maggie was less certain who the fifth and sixth were.
"Israel warned me what he had was a death sentence for
me," Maggie related.
"He is annoyingly intelligent at times. Now answer my
question. How do I find Miss O'Connor and Qanyare?"
"Let me think on it," Little M' requested.
Isobel didn't look all that patient.
"Listen, I've just woken up and am in a truckload of
pain. I need to think over what I recall about Industrial Maintenance Welding
and Miss Smith."
"I will give you five minutes," Isobel allowed.
She rose up; she had been sitting in a chair at Little M's bedside; and walked
out the door.
There were no other active people in the room. Maggie shook
her wrists and ankles. She was very securely bound. No soldiers, or police.
Certainly no lawyer of any kind. Most likely the world thought she was dead.
She was in a small medical facility under Isobel Diaz's control. That
realization was horrific news.
It wasn't as if she could expect Brigit and Davia to come to
her rescue. They weren't those kinds of 'friends', and Maggie figured 'The
Outfit' was dead. Mom? If Isobel had any sense left, she would have arranged
for Maria Keverich's death already.
Maggie had spent her years in charge of the Keverich Mob,
trying to ferret out who betrayed her mother to the feds and had come up empty.
She'd gone to Isobel's party and Isobel had tried to 'mend fences', which
hadn't worked. No daughter of Maria Keverich would ever trust a cop, or those
who served them. None of that mattered.
Isobel returned to the room.
"Well?"
"The night of the MAL Rally disaster, Brigit picked up
Mr. Jensen. They hung out at the unfinished overpass for about an hour. At the
end of their 'stay', she told me they encountered two women with military-style
hardware. It was insinuated there was a sniper as well. The ladies on the
bridge said they were with a person called 'Zara', who Israel appeared to be
familiar with."
"Zara? That's not much to go on, Magdalena,"
Isobel studied her.
"Give me something solid to eat and I might recall more
about their little meeting," Little M suggested. "Being shot
sucks."
"You are alive because I told them to take you alive.
You remain conscious as long as I find you useful, Magdalena," Isobel
frowned. "If I find you are holding something back;"
"At this point, I don't have any option except working
with you, Isobel," Maggie attempted to smile.
"You aren't working with me. Outside of Israel's
antibodies, I don't think I need you anymore," Isobel grinned, shark-like.
As a final, utter humiliation, Magdalena Keverich, once one
of the most feared women in the city, was reduced to a past-acquaintance of a
man, a legal notation of him fulfilling his legal duty as a sperm donor.
'You are not on the short; very short list of women whose
opinions and expectations mean crap to me, Magdalena' she recalled Jensen
telling her.
Isobel caught the slight shift in Maggie's countenance.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Bring me that meal, or bring on your torturer,"
Maggie glowered, "because I'm not telling you shit until I either have my
fill of either food, or pain."
While Isobel considered her options, Maggie Keverich went
over the small list of women who did matter to Israel Jensen; women who might
either provide keys to his thinking, or women he might be trying to save; as
crazy as that sounded. 'On second thought, maybe it isn't so crazy',
Maggie thought.
Brigit and Davia might have very well found Israel. Odds
were good his cop girlfriend was with him, too. If you added the three armed
women on the bridge; Jensen was putting a good deal of guns around himself; and
that was the best hope of salvation she had.
Markham Federal Hospital For The Criminally Insane, Outside Of Madison
The female interrogator walked into the room with one
corrections officer and two members of the HRT (FBI's Hostage Rescue Team) she
had hastily been assigned to work with.
"As promised; one near-vegetable." The corrections
officer pointed to the fifth person in the room.
"This is Verona Hedwig 'Hedy' Salenko?" the
interrogator despaired.
"Yes; the Aurora Slasher herself. Not much to look at
now, is she?"
"Why have you kept her so sedated?"
"Because she's fucking dangerous. She damn near escaped
her first month in custody. Put three prisoners and two guards in the hospital.
Would have been more except for the shock collar," the corrections officer
explained.
"I; need to talk to her," the interrogator
explained.
"She's a monster. The dosages we have her on won't
cycle out of her system for six days; minimum," the CO stated.
"This is a matter of national security," the
interrogator stated.
"For this monster?" the corrections officer
scoffed.
"No." The interrogator bit down on her rage.
"For Israel Jensen. Perhaps, you've heard of him?"
"The one who lived; he's the same Jensen who brought
down the President?"
"Precisely; and the one we desperately need in
custody."
"Why?"
"I can't explain that to you right now; this being a
matter of national security," the interrogator simmered.
"I'll see what the infirmary can do," the
corrections officer shrugged. Off she went.
The interrogator gave her one minute, then gave a hand
signal to the FBI officers in the control room to cut the feed from this room.
"Greetings Miss Salenko, I am Special Agent Winthrop
and these are Special Agents Carver and Lewinsky," the lead investigator
began.
No response whatsoever.
"Israel Jensen," the interrogator repeated. She
had spotted a slight reaction from the subject when she had first said his
name. This time; nothing. Still, the interrogator had few options. She took a
seat opposite the deranged psychopath.
"I'm your only chance to get out of this hell
hole," was her next ploy.
Nothing. She played her last card.
"Israel is in serious trouble, Miss Salenko. Trouble
which could get him killed; or worse."
It was like watching a snake uncoil from within its 'human
skinsuit'. Miss Salenko; the Aurora Slasher; popped her neck vertebra; first
right then left before centering her head atop her neck. Precisely so.
"My Israel is in trouble?" she asked politely.
"Yes."
"Please explain," Verona requested.
"I was wondering what insights into his personality he
might express which would make it easier for the government to find him."
"That's not an explanation," the Aurora Slasher
stated. "Please try again."
"Okay; have you heard about the men vanishing across
the country?" the interrogator asked.
Verona nodded.
"We are afraid he has fallen in with them."
"Oh; has my Israel been a good boy?"
This was a tough one for the interrogator. Her problem was
the nature of her subject. She was brilliant; a career police officer on the
fast track to success when a terrible incident had robbed her of her uterus and
ovaries. Incident reports after her 'take down' by the serial-killer-profiling
squad suggested she was a narcissist with sociopathic tendencies and homicidal
delusions before her wounding, and had become much worse afterwards.
Literally speaking, she had become a homicidal maniac, who
had developed a romantic relationship with one of her victims. One Israel
Jensen was, indeed, 'lucky' to be alive, if a psychologically scarred young
man.
Here she had to determine how much information to spoon-feed
Miss Salenko without putting their mission at risk.
"No. No, he hasn't been a good boy," the
interrogator answered.
"Oh; what happened to him after you subjected him to
one of your 'fuck farms'?"
"Fuck farms?"
"Oh; what you call rape rehabilitation centers. Where
you teach young men to become fuck pigs for the greater glory of society."
Verona smiled, eerily.
"Help me and I'll help you," the interrogator established
the ground rules.
"He goes west," Verona stated, confidently.
"How do you even know where he is; was?" SA Carver
blurted out.
"I watch the news just like everyone else. I've seen my
Israel doing his thing in the city, know the geography, and know the entire
government is looking for him. Hardly rocket science when everyone around me
thinks I'm a drooling idiot."
"Oh-kay," the interrogator nodded. "He has
had sex multiple times since he left you. By your definition he has been a 'bad
boy'."
"Contrary to your mental assessment of my Israel, he
will have attached himself to violent women. He learned that violent women
equals life from me. Now, has he had sex more than once with the same
woman?"
"Why would you want to know?"
"That would be emotional cheating and I wouldn't stand
for that," Verona smiled again. It was just as eerie as it was confident.
"Eighteen."
"Names," the Aurora Slasher requested.
"So you can escape and kill them; no thank you,"
the interrogator shook her head. Despite the Aurora Slasher being chained by
multiple ankle, waist and wrist cuffs, she still gave off the aura of absolute
menace.
"Besides, I gave you a piece of information so now you
have to give me something."
"Give me more to work with," Verona stated.
"What do you need?"
"His sexual history," she related.
"So you can get the names of those women? Again, no
thank you."
"Fine; give me the list from one year back through his
time in the city. That should suggest who is with him and what their
relationship is," Verona explained.
This was part of the process which really sucked for the
interrogator. She wanted to leave the room and give this monster nothing, but
her political mistresses didn't want her to come back with 'nothing'. She had
to break protocols and hand the information over.
Silently the Aurora Slasher went over the data on a tablet
set aside for such revelations.
"I doubt he is with this Keverich woman," she
began after fifteen minutes. "The power dynamic is too much against him.
He wouldn't go to her seeking safety. My educated guess is he is with the cop; who
he had intercourse with four times in one day; bad boy. Very bad boy. Also; something
is wrong with my Israel."
"How so?"
The Aurora Slasher weighed her response.
"My Israel is as delicate boy. He is having sex when
mandated; when he couldn't buy out of it. His reviews are stellar; but until
this police officer, he never goes back. What did you do to him?"
Gut-check time for the interrogator. She would be putting
multiple lives at risk by saying what she needed to say next.
"Recent interviews suggest he was raped multiple times
at a sorority function in college. He tried to report it, but his claims were
rudely rejected by campus security. Information suggests he was brought to the
function by his then-girlfriend. They then broke up; of course."
"Of course," the Aurora Slasher whispered. There
was a pause. "Your 'fuck farm' turned my Israel into a fatted calf who was
then sacrificed at that sorority; and then you simply expected him to blithely
get along with his life. And you call me a monster." She gazed upon the
interrogator and her accomplices.
"So you believe his story; that he was raped?" the
interrogator played along.
"Of course. Otherwise, he would have betrayed me in a
way most foul and I would have to kill him when we meet again; but this is all
your fault; you and your law enforcement types. Israel; my Israel;" she
choked out.
"He's not 'your Israel'," the talkative HRT woman
growled. "You held him in a basement and raped him for eighty-four days. I
doubt --"
"Enough," the interrogator stopped her
subordinate.
"I protected him," Aurora gave her side of events.
"Where else but my basement would he have been safe from the rest of you?
You would have turned that sweet young boy into a whore. I gave him the purity
of monogamy."
"Don't." The interrogator stopped the HRT woman
from getting into this game of semantics with the brilliant, but deranged,
subject.
"I want to come along," Verona 'Hedy' Salenko
requested.
"Out of the question," the interrogator shook her
head. "You are a very dangerous detainee."
"The more information you give me about your case, the
more detailed response I can give you about my Israel," she reasoned.
"No thank you. What I can offer you is being removed to
a less odious place, or perhaps you would prefer solitary confinement?"
"I already know I know something you haven't even begun
to consider and it is answered in this one question; why would Israel Jensen
have any say in a group of women about where they would be going?"
That stumped the interrogator, which she knew to be a bad
thing.
"Why would my Israel have such an impact in their
decision-making process?" Verona inquired. "Am I coming with you, or
are you going to be one serious step behind the entire time?"
"I would have to check with my superiors first, and
don't even think you would ever be unchained," the interrogator's eyes
narrowed.
"This is a freebie," the Aurora Slasher smiled.
"My Israel is going to be a father; to all, or at least most of the women
he is with and that dynamic is working its way out. He is becoming their
patriarch."
"The patriarchy is dead," the interrogator stated
as fact.
"It is a fire I stoked within him while we were
together," Verona answered. "The power of the patriarch; of men
seeking fatherhood; is greater than any of you realize; though you are just
starting to figure it out with the abolition of marriage. Men want to be
fathers and fathers are the core of any stable family structure. I know this to
be true."
The corrections officer returned to the room, cutting off
the conversation. Verona immediately shut down.
"Sorry," the corrections officer sighed.
"That drug regimen is virtually foolproof and takes six days to work its
way through her system. There is no other cure for it which doesn't risk frying
her synapsis."
"Don't worry about it," the interrogator said.
"We will be taking her with us."
"You will need an order from someone pretty high
up," the corrections officer blanched.
"How about one from the Acting Attorney General of the
Federation? Will that do?"
"Yeah; yes, that would suffice," the corrections
officer's head bobbed. The rest was mere formality
Thursday Evening.
We stayed at Jethro's all morning and most of the afternoon,
while Casper sent a drone westward to check out our possible exit path all the
way to the Mississippi River. Everything looked good. On television we watched
the world slowly become unhinged. Bizarrely, while the government collapsed,
the federation's Constitution continued to function; namely in the area of
freedom of the press.
This was more a result of the turf war between the civilian
administration, the EMM (Emergency Management Administration), and the Military
Command Authority than anyone's slavish devotion to a piece of paper. Globally,
GNN kept us abreast of various nations' and people's attempts to stem the
seemingly unstoppable tide. In the city, an attempt by the RMC (Regional
Military Commander) and city council to bring the 'order' to the various
disparate voices of the press led to unexpected chaos.
Only three outlets decided to resist the new government
directives. One was a collegiate pro-environmental site. Another was a
proto-communist news group. The third was the Sentinel, the city's largest
independent media enterprise. Apparently the Mayor's Pubic Relation's Office
quit en masse, so the folks in charge were forced to simply shut down the
centers of opposition.
They forgot one guy; quite literally. I'd left Doyle Crane
in the midst of GNN with Eloise Granger, hotshot Sentinel journalist and
eternal foe of Isobel Diaz, and Dimples, who was more than capable of figuring
out who the 'bad girls' were as the situation was unfolding.
Doyle wasn't the Voice of the Resistance. No; he gave
a voice to those who were res