Treatment of Patient #307 continues. The date of his cranial MRI draws closer. - Parce
My clinic was probably the least of the Chugg Corporation’s concerns. They had their hands full doing damage control in Fleece City.
The sheep were scared after what had been done to the square. All the destruction and threats had been aimed at Charlie Chugg, but they still felt like they had been attacked. And despite years of propaganda, the increased presence of dogs in the city wasn’t making them feel any safer.
Tenber stood in front of City Hall. The sun hurt his back, but it was still early afternoon and there were not many places he could find shadow without going out of his way, so he just gritted his teeth and bore it. He was overseeing half a dozen of Pincher’s most capable soldiers. Each of those was in command of a small platoon of clone dogs, which were engaged in cleaning up the broken glass and TV fragments, boarding up windows, and directing sheep around the work areas.
The group nearest to Tenber was taking the hanged Charlie Chugg figure down from the lamppost, and he watched them with equal parts interest and dread. He hadn’t seen or heard from Ponder since their argument outside the Chugg tower, but he had hoped Ponder had just gone somewhere to cool down. Now, there was no going back.
Pincher was near the gate, interrogating the dogs who had been standing guard last night. They were claiming to have been misled, tricked into leaving their posts to chase something that ran off into the field and vanished. This was just another clue, in Tenber’s eyes, that Ponder had masterminded this attack. He—and Pincher—had been right there when Karkus had blessed Ponder with the ability to create illusions and deceive the senses. And Ponder had practiced this craft many times during their training as Chugg agents. Tenber remembered this well. Did Pincher remember it too?
One benefit hadn’t escaped Tenber’s notice. Wilter was too busy dealing with this to ruin Whole Hogs’s reputation as Chugg had planned. The mayor was at the top of the steps to City Hall, fielding questions from citizens. Slog stood next to Wilter and said nothing.
The most common subject of the sheep’s questions was protection. The citizens just wanted to feel safe again. They asked if more dogs would be on guard at night. They asked if there would be more security cameras in the residential district. Those questions, Wilter could handle easily. It was the ones about self-defense that gave him trouble. Sheep were asking if the dogs’ old martial arts school, Tooth & Claw, would ever open up again. And they were asking if they could enroll.
While it pleased Tenber to hear about sheep being interested in defending themselves, the thought of Tooth & Claw pained his heart. He touched the silver medal on his collar, the one that had once belonged to Boxer.
A sheep assistant came out of City Hall, meekly opening the tall wooden door and slipping out with his head and ears low. He came up to Slog’s side and whispered to him. Slog in turn whispered to Wilter, then took a few steps down the concrete stairs. The assistant went back the way he came, cracking open the door to City Hall and disappearing inside.
Tenber peered at the heavy door. Both times it had been opened, the lobby was dark inside. Tenber would have been tempted to find some reason to go in there for a few minutes if it hadn’t been for the singular red light he saw in there, a pinpoint laser in the darkness.
Slog let out a sharp whistle that scattered Tenber’s thoughts. He returned his attention to the city square. Pincher stopped what he was doing and ran to the stairs.
“Phone for you,” Slog said. Pincher nodded and went inside City Hall. Tenber watched the closed door with mounting anxiety. When the door cracked again, he turned away and pretended to be focused on watching his men.
Pincher emerged from the building. “Umber. Let’s go. The boss wants to meet.”
Tenber’s heart quickened at the mention of his alias. He met Pincher at the bottom of the stairs and they took off running for the east gate.
“Did the boss say what he wants?” Tenber asked.
“He said it’s something he wants to keep private.”
They didn’t speak again during the run from Fleece City and across the bridge to the Megatropolis gate. The little pigs atop the wall opened the double doors for them without asking any questions. Then the two of them kept up the pace down the main street through the downtown district, then uptown and into the Chugg Corporation compound. They crossed the lawn, entered Chugg Headquarters, and got in the elevator. Pincher pressed the button for the eighty-eighth floor.
The land slowly descended before them as they crept up the side of the tallest building in the Megatropolis. The sun had moved west in the sky and was pointed almost directly into the elevator window, making Tenber wince.
He averted his eyes and his thoughts turned inward, drifting back to the day of Boxer’s death as they often did when he was alone with Pincher. The old wolf had had no reason to kill Boxer. It was no honorable duel or sanctioned tournament match. It had been an ambush, a pure murder done out in the open simply to intimidate the rest of the dogs into submission.
It would have been so easy for Tenber to drop his pretense of being a loyal chief officer and just pierce Pincher to death with dozens of tendrils of shadow, right here and right now. Like me, he had come to question the value of showing mercy to this enemy. But he bit back on his anger, reminding himself that at this stage of our plan, Pincher was more valuable alive than dead.
Tenber came out of his thoughts and noticed Pincher glaring out the elevator window.
“What’s on your mind?” Tenber asked.
Pincher’s ears flicked. “It’s just disappointing.”
“What is?”
“You put in all this time training someone, only for them to turn against you.”
Tenber’s guts crawled. He wasn’t concerned for his own safety, but he didn’t want to blow the mission either. “Not sure what you mean, sir.”
Pincher whirled on him. “Didn’t you pay attention to anything you saw in the square? That puppet did this. I tell you, if it had been up to me, he and Mauler would have rotted in that cell for all time.”
Tenber nodded. “I didn’t want to make assumptions. But I agree with you. Sir, is that what the boss wants to talk to us about?”
“Yeah, he wants to work out how we’re going to take Ponder down without making this whole thing public. He wants you in on it because he figures Ponder trusts you more than me.”
“Maybe so.”
The elevator chimed and the door slid open. They moved into a waiting room with an intercom on the wall. Pincher jabbed the button with his paw.
A low voice crackled through the cheap speaker. “Yeah.”
“It’s us,” Pincher growled.
“Just a minute.” It wasn’t a minute. More like fifteen. Finally, the voice came out again. “Alright. Come on in.”
The door drifted slightly open as the electronic lock was disengaged. Tenber opened it and nodded for his commanding officer to lead the way. Once they were inside Chugg’s office, the door slammed shut again.
The office was dark as usual, although Tenber had no problem seeing. The massive pig sat behind the desk, although he wasn’t smoking this time. He didn’t look at them right away.
“Thanks for coming,” he muttered, “and sorry about the wait. Umber, come on up here and have a seat. We have some pressing matters to attend to.”
Tenber did as he was told. The best thing to do now was quietly accept any information he was given and then warn Ponder later if necessary. One of the wooden chairs had been pushed up against the near wall, so he climbed up into the other one that was still centered in front of Chugg’s desk.
“This is going to be a private discussion,” Chugg said over Tenber’s head. “Leave us.”
“But—”
“If you know what’s good for you, Pincher, you’ll do as I say.” Chugg reached under his desk and the door swung open again. The wolf growled as he slunk out.
Tenber turned to watch Pincher go. As he did, he noticed something beside him that hadn’t been in the office before—a large, circular piece of glass, standing upright on a metal frame in front of the shuttered window.
The creeping dread in his stomach flared up into a fight-or-flight rush. He started to move, but Chugg had already pressed another button under the desk.
The shutters flipped up, opening the window, which faced west. The afternoon sun glared directly through the window and into the massive glass lens, which concentrated its rays into a superheated point right where Tenber was sitting.
He screamed at the intense heat and light washing over and through his body, his black features thrown into sharp relief against the white light. The chair smoldered and then collapsed underneath him, leaving him writhing on the floor.
Chugg burst into laughter. “Hurts, doesn’t it?” He stood up and walked around the desk. His bare hooves clomped on the floor under his unfathomable weight. Tenber tried to drag himself toward the shadow under the desk, but Chugg drove him back with a kick to the head.
The leather collar burned away and Boxer’s silver medal clattered to the floor. Unable to maintain his dog form without the collar, Tenber melted into an undifferentiated black puddle, which was even more vulnerable to the light. His shrieks doubled in volume as his body churned and seethed under the beam.
“You think I didn’t recognize you, you piece of shit?” Chugg yelled over Tenber’s screams. “I haven’t forgotten you, shadow boy. I knew it was you the second you tried to assassinate me. I didn’t think you’d have the balls to show up here again.”
In his agony, Tenber hurled black spikes in every direction. Some of them impaled the walls and ceiling. The ones that hit Chugg tore his suit but glanced off his skin without leaving a mark.
“Yeah, I couldn’t have you killing Pincher,” Chugg said. “He’s still useful, even though he’s even more of a coward than you. How long have you been lurking in the nooks and crannies of my world? Five years? Ten? Well, it doesn’t matter. You can’t hide from the eyes of the gods. No one can.”
Tenber slid in the direction of the door, but Chugg grabbed the lens and turned it to keep its focus on him. “A bit of equipment I borrowed from the boys in the cloning lab.” Chugg laughed. “I should thank you, really. If it weren’t for you, Ponder wouldn’t have gone off the rails so soon.”
Tenber kept moving toward the door. “I tried… to talk… Ponder out of it.”
“I know. But you failed to understand how deeply my methods have wounded him. Your reluctance strengthened his resolve. And now all your schemes against me are going to fail. You know I thought it was the Trampler’s boy who was behind that little play at insurrection last year? If I’d paid more attention, I would have smelled your filthy hand in that whole affair.” Chugg turned the lens again and then pulled a cigar case out of his jacket pocket. “Just one question before I watch you disintegrate, shadow boy. I know who you are. But I’m curious whether you know who I am.”
Tenber stopped moving. “I do now.” Then he reversed direction, flowing as fast as he could back across the floor toward the desk. Caught by surprise, Chugg dropped his uncut cigar and tried to grab the lens. But it was too late. Tenber made it under the desk.
Out of the path of the light beam, Tenber could take a breath and let the pain subside.
“Hide all you like,” said Chugg. “You still can’t kill me.”
“Not yet,” Tenber said. Then he reached up a black tendril and started pressing buttons under the desk. The door flew open and the window shutters flipped down. With the office dark again, Tenber could safely emerge. Pincher ran inside.
“Close the damn door!” Chugg yelled as he moved toward the desk. Tenber slid across the office under cover of darkness. He didn’t bother with Pincher; he was still too weak and he couldn’t risk taking another blast of sunlight.
By the time Chugg opened the window again, Tenber had made it into the waiting room. He flowed toward the elevator door, seeping through the seam at the bottom and sending himself into a free fall down the shaft.
I had put the shattered pelvis back together, but the middle-aged miner still refused to walk. I’d been trying to coax him down from my treatment mat for half an hour. Dreamer hung back, dutifully keeping to her observation role, but I could tell she wanted to say something.
“It just came out of nowhere,” the Quarry worker mumbled. “Just bam, out of the sky. It’ll happen again.”
“Let’s try some slow breathing,” I said. “We’re going to just put one hoof on the floor.”
“Back off, guy,” the patient shouted. He curled up on the mat table. “I’m going to stay right here.”
“No one’s forcing you,” I said. “Take your time, breathe, and let me know when you’re ready to try coming down.” When he didn’t move for several more minutes, I looked over my shoulder at Dreamer. “What’s on your mind?”
“I’ve seen this before,” she said. “Can I talk to him?”
I moved aside and beckoned her toward the patient. “I’ll try anything.”
The older sheep settled down a little when he saw Dreamer. His heavy brow lifted. “I recognize you. You’re Shiver’s daughter. Nobody forgets those eyes. They said Scurvert got you… and you’ve barely been back to the Quarry since then.”
“That’s right.”
The miner pointed a shaking hoof toward the back of the gym. The wall separating the plains from the Quarry could be seen through the sliding glass door. “I don’t want to go back there. That place kills us. I don’t want to be there. Surely you of all people would understand that.”
“Of course I understand,” she said. She took his hoof and gently guided it back to the mat. “Healer took away the wounds on my body, just like he did to you. But that didn’t make the memories go away, did it?”
The patient shook his head. “No. I can see it every time I close my eyes.”
“I know what that’s like,” Dreamer said. “In time, I learned how to put those memories away. I can show you how I did it, if you want.”
“How will you do that?”
“Just focus on my eyes,” she said. Her violet gaze began to glow. The patient’s shoulders let go of all their tension as he fell into her trance. She didn’t bring me along, as she had done before with Ponder, but I had an idea of what was going on.
While I waited, I felt a hard tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see Gobb glaring at me through his thick glasses.
I sighed. “Yes?”
“I shouldn’t have to remind you that neither you nor this… volunteer is qualified to be performing any kind of psychotherapy treatment. If this patient is having emotional problems related to his incident—and he clearly is, since I could hear him with my door closed—he is to be referred to me for medication.”
“He doesn’t need to be drugged,” I said before I could stop myself.
Gobb gasped. “I’m going to report you.”
“Go for it. But before you do that, you might think about the side effects of Dopemol and the fact that this gentleman operates heavy machinery. You want your name to come up when another accident happens at the Quarry? I wouldn’t. Let me handle this, OK?”
His pink face turned something closer to magenta. He spun around and stomped back into his office. I caught Swifter watching from the far end of the gym and gave him a “don’t worry about it” wave.
Dreamer and the patient came back to reality just then, sharing a gentle smile.
“I feel better,” the Quarry worker said. “I understand now. Thank you.” He shook her hoof and then mine. “Thank you both.” He got down off the mat and walked to the door on his own, leaving me dumbfounded and Dreamer looking satisfied.
I turned to her. “What did you do?”
“I took him back to the scene of his accident in the mine. We walked through the last couple of minutes before the scaffolding fell on him. He pinpointed where he had taken shortcuts in his safety check. Then we talked about which parts of the accident he had control over and which ones he didn’t.”
I didn’t know what to say for a moment. “That’s… brilliant.”
“It’s just the way I taught myself to get through the bad memories so I wouldn’t have to keep reliving them. I’ve been wanting to try it on my dad someday, too. When he’s had a nightmare… sometimes he acts like that miner was acting.”
I didn’t answer right away. I was thinking. But I felt guilty for what I wanted to ask of her.
There was still a bit of a flicker in her eyes. Now that she’d given herself permission to use her power again, it was returning in full force. She read my every emotion and picked up on my hesitation. “It’s OK. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “There’s a girl from the Quarry.”
Dreamer’s gaze turned serious. “I’d love to help. Is she coming today?”
“She’s not scheduled, but let me see what I can do.” I let myself into the locked room next to Gobb’s office, where we kept all the patient records. I pulled the file I needed and then reached for the phone.
“Hello?” said the tired voice on the other end.
“Good afternoon. This is Healer from Whole Hogs.”
“Good afternoon! What an unexpected surprise. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I think we might have a new treatment method I want to try.” I let my excitement come through in my voice. “I’d like to bring her in as soon as possible. Today, if you can manage it.”
“Oh, goodness. I’d love to, but we’re not free until this evening.”
“I’ll keep the clinic open. Your train fare is on me.”
“You must really be on to something. We’ll be there.”
“Fantastic.” We exchanged goodbyes and hung up. I brought the file out and set it next to Dreamer. She had waited patiently in her spot by the mat, watching Swifter’s class.
“I know you wanted to talk after closing time,” I said, “but that patient’s going to come by. I don’t want to keep you here too late.”
She shook her head, already looking at the file. “It’s fine.”
Swifter and I worked our way through the afternoon without anything else unusual happening. I kept an eye on the TV, but after the square had been cleaned up, the news network seemed to want to put the entire vandalism incident out of the public’s mind. I didn’t blame them.
Gobb glared at me on his way out. I gave him my best “kiss my ass” smile and told him to enjoy his evening. Swifter cleaned up his area and then approached me.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to get rid of that pig,” he told me. “I can’t stand it having him here. He’s always waiting for us to screw up so he can pounce.”
“I know it,” I said, walking out the front door with him. “You just do your thing. It’s me he wants to bust. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Tomorrow.” He waved to Dreamer and then headed for University. He still had night classes to do after this. I didn’t envy him. My chest burned as I watched him walk to the gate.
Dreamer joined me on the front step. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” We both knew that was a lie, but I didn’t want to talk about it.
She didn’t give me a choice. “You don’t have to feel guilty all the time, Healer. Associating with you is a risk, yes, but it’s a risk we choose to take. Both me and Swifter. Let us carry that. You’re allowed to have people in your life.”
I glanced at her. After a minute of thought, I nodded. “Do you want to walk around for a little bit?”
“I’d love to.”
I led her down the path to the gate. Instead of going out, we turned to walk along the fence. We did a full revolution before I said anything.
“Look, I know you’ve been trying not to use your power, but… did that apply to that mental connection you and Ponder had going on?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Either way, I haven’t heard from him, if that’s what you’re asking. How about you?”
I gritted my teeth and told her about the last letter he’d sent, when he had expressed his intention to cut me out and take matters into his own hands.
“That’s all I’ve heard from him,” I said. “He hasn’t reached out to me mentally either.”
“You think I should try?” Dreamer asked.
“Not now. But soon.” I looked to the south. Most of the field was hard to see because the sun was setting, but that only made the train engine’s powerful headlight stand out more. It had emerged from the tunnel through the Quarry wall and was coming to a stop with the passenger car lined up by the guard shack.
“We’re on,” I said.
“Good,” Dreamer answered. “We’ll finish this conversation later.”
We waited at the gate until the two Quarry sheep arrived. I opened it up for the patient to walk through—seven-year-old Whisper. Her mother came after, and I made the introduction.
Dreamer and Whisper looked at each other without a word for a while, like somebody meeting their own self displaced in time. The only immediate difference between them was Dreamer’s violet eyes and Whisper’s more typical brown ones.
“Thanks for being flexible,” I said. “I think this is going to do her a lot of good.”
“Of course,” Whisper’s mother answered. I led everyone inside, where the older sheep got comfortable and made herself a steaming drink in my kitchen. Whisper gravitated toward a trunk full of toys in the back corner opposite from Swifter’s exercise area. I unfolded a floor mat so she would have a place to sit and play. Then I opened the trunk and let Whisper pick out some toys.
Dreamer looked at me, and I nodded. Picking up a soft doll, Dreamer made the approach. Whisper reached out to receive the doll, sitting up on her hindquarters and hugging it with both forelegs. The two of them played in silence for a few minutes.
“Whisper,” Dreamer said, “Healer told me that you need some help. He said you got hurt. He made the cuts go away, but you still have bad dreams and you haven’t talked in a long time.”
Whisper nodded without looking up from her toys.
“I can try and make it better, but we might have to see some things that are scary for a second. Just one more time. And then hopefully the bad dreams will be gone for good. What do you think?”
Whisper nodded again.
“OK. Then I need you to look at me. You can hold your doll. Just look at my eyes.”
Whisper’s mother and I both watched with interest as Dreamer and the girl went into the trance together. I kept my distance, letting Dreamer work, expecting to only have to wait a few seconds as usual. When a full minute passed, I got curious. Both of them started to tremble, which made me concerned. I grabbed Dreamer’s shoulder and gave her a light shake, which broke the mental connection.
They both grew alert again, but neither of them said anything. Whisper sat there, clinging to the doll, frozen with fear. Dreamer looked discouraged. I waited for someone to fill me in but no one did.
“Well, what happened?” I asked. “Why did that take so long?”
Dreamer glanced over, like she’d forgotten I was there. “We were stuck. There’s a block of some kind. I can’t explain it. I can see her memories right before and right after the attack. But not during. It’s there, but not there. It’s causing damage from its hidden place. I wish I had words for it.”
I took her hoof. “Show me.”
Dreamer composed herself. “You’re right. Hey, Whisper, we’re going to try again. But this time, I’m going to show Healer what’s happening so he can help us. OK?”
She didn’t agree, but she didn’t object either. Her mother watched us, sipping her coffee with no outward reaction, implicitly trusting me to figure this out.
The peculiar violet glow over took Dreamer’s eyes again. I focused in on that glow, and so did Whisper. We dived together into the little girl’s memories. I dreaded what I was about to see, even though I already knew what it was.