Sneak Peek: Constant 2, Prelude (Patreon)

Here's a look at the new "prelude" for the second book of Constant. I've decided to cut the Interlude and repurpose some of it into this prelude--if you've read the old Interlude, a lot of this will be familiar. It's a "sneak peek" rather than a "publish" because I'm still fiddling with it, aiming to post it to TGStorytime at some point next week. For some reason I'm finding this absurdly difficult to get right - I suspect I'll just have to draw a line under it and come back to it during the final edit at some point. I want to keep it punchy but touch on some key details, but it keeps getting wordy when I do so. I've got Crystal talking about what they're going to do to David, but keep thinking I should just cut it all, since the reader's going to see it all anyways in the next chapter. I'm sure I'll find the right balance when I find a bit more time to work on it properly. In the meantime, enjoy!

***

Constant in All Other Things 2

Prologue

by

Fakeminsk (fakeminsk@gmail.com / https://www.patreon.com/fakeminsk)

“Friendship is constant in all other things

Save in the office and affairs of love:

Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;

Let every eye negotiate for itself

And trust no agent.”

Much Ado About Nothing

Previously on Constant in All Other Things:

David Sanders, misogynistic corporate executive and womanizer, oversees his boss, pharmaceutical magnate Jeremiah Steele, kill the son of a known rival.  Against his better judgment, David decides to turn to the authorities and testifies in court.  A failed assassination attempt forces the woman assigned to protect him, Agent Katherine Smith, to relocate to a safe house.  There she convinces David that his best chance of survival is to disguise himself as a woman.  David reluctantly does so and adopts the identity of Cindy Bellamy.  They flee to the Asklepios Clinic, a secluded medical facility that promises safety; on the way they shake off their pursuer, Agent Fosters.  David and Katherine bond on the road trip, though he wonders at times where her loyalties really lie; and they share details of their past.

            At the clinic David settles into the role of Cindy and several weeks pass.  Cindy helps another patient, Harry Longman, an aging rock star David idolized as a teen, and soon after Agent K returns to relocate David through witness relocation into his promised new male life.  Just as he prepares to abandon Cindy forever, Agent Fosters catches up with him.  David reveals his past contains its own violent secrets and the two fight.  He kills Fosters but is critically injured in the fight.

One:

“He’ll hate you,” Jonathon said.

            Katherine’s reply came a little too quickly.  “I know.”  She took a deep breath.  “But I can not see any other way.”

            “That’s why I avoid thinking about the ethics of a situation. The Clinic hires professionals for that.”  The doctor scratched at his beard.  “It might all prove academic anyway.  Everything depends on Saunders simply surviving.”

            She felt the guilt of her failure keenly.  “What are his chances?”

            “Based purely on the physical damage he’s soaked up?  Not good.  That gaping hole in his side and the blood loss are the worst of it, but coupled with the chemical burn across his chest, the broken limbs—” and he indicated each injury with a tap of a finger, “multiple lacerations, head trauma, facial injuries? Then add in the complication of the cocktail of drugs we were pumping him full of last three weeks? All those psychotropics, hypnotics and painkillers complicate things.”  The doctor shrugged.  “Frankly, he should already be dead.

            “But he’s not—and that’s worth a lot.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a stronger patient on my operating table.  The man woke up while they were prepping him for the Tank—he nearly damn well ripped out Richard’s throat. The sedatives barely worked on him.” Jonathon’s fingers twitched with obvious excitement, and he drew them back and buried them deep in his pockets.  “His bloodwork’s fascinating….”

            He stared off into the middle distance for a moment, momentarily lost in thought, before continuing.  “This guy’s in peak physical condition and he had the good fortune of getting himself assassinated in one of the best medical facilities in the world.  My people are among the top of their field.  The bastard’s tough.”

            Katherine lips twitched in a hint of a smile.  “He is… stubborn.”

“My gut feeling is that if he survives the night he’ll be in the clear.”

            She nodded.  “And then?”

            “Then things get interesting.”  His voice thrummed with barely suppressed anticipation. “We’ve already inserted the test subject into the Tank. Meanwhile, we’ve made the preliminary injections and have Saunders in an induced coma. We’ll keep him on ice until the data comes back from the test run. Even quiescent, the Juice might be enough to keep him alive. Once we’ve reached the required threshold of cellular diffusion, we’ll tweak the process according to the test feedback. And then? It’s Saunders’ turn. He’ll go in the Tank and if all goes well, he’ll emerge—well, he’ll be a changed man.”

            If he survives the night. If he survives the Tank. If he survives waking up—changed. If I don’t fail him again. If Steele doesn’t get him. If David doesn’t go insane. If… if.

            If David doesn’t again surprise them all with hitherto unrevealed talents for violence and subterfuge.

            So many ways this could go wrong. She felt weak and tired. Katherine winced in pain.

            “You’ve got to take it easy, Katherine.” There was a tremor to Jonathon’s voice, easily mistaken for annoyance—he was concerned for her, in his way.  “That other agent, she took a good chunk out of you, too.  Your injuries aren’t exactly negligible, either. You lost a lot of blood. You need to rest.”

            “I will rest,” Agent Katherine Smith answered, “when Cindy is safe.”  She took a deep breath, a painful one, and tried to to suppress the growing unease in the pit of her stomach.  She indicated for Jonathon to continue.  “And there remains too much to do, and little time in which to do it.  Please, call her in.”

            The doctor nodded and tapped a button.  A moment later the door opened, and they were joined by a tall, statuesque woman.

            “Just so we are clear,” Crystal Dawn said as she sat with them. “What you’re doing is morally reprehensible, ethically wrong and almost certainly doomed to failure.”

             She was a tall woman in her late forties, tastefully if conservatively dressed.  A pair of drop pearl earrings and a retro-style perm, tightly coiled and streaked with grey, framed her face.  A thin nose offset a strong chin, and expressive eyes, minimally made-up behind thick-framed glasses, glared at the two sat opposite her. 

            She clicked glossy nails rhythmically against the table’s surface, clearly expressing her annoyance at the meeting.  “If you hadn’t convinced me that this was the only way of keeping this man alive, Jon, I’d have you before the board of directors in a minute,” she said.  “This David’s a neurotic, screwed-up asshole, but anyone who can get through to Harry Longman deserves a second chance.”  She shook her head.  “I can’t believe you’re even marginally involved in this insane plot.”

            “Yes, yes, Carl, your objections are well noted,” Scooter answered. A grin lurked behind the bushy mass of his beard.

            She pursed her lips in annoyance. “Listen,” she continued. “You can’t just expect to throw a skirt on this guy and make him into the person you want.  Yes, this David is… unusually adept at adapting to a role. He presented as female unusually well, considering no obvious prior history of experimentation or inclination towards that identity.  But for him, it clearly remains an act. But that’s all it is, and all it’ll ever be.  An act, and that’s insufficient for what you want.”

            Agent K leaned forward.  “That’s why we need your help,” she said.  “We need to . . . change him.  Change his mind.”  She thought of her own past, and how her experiences with Steven changed her.  “We need to break him and put him back together in a new shape; the same ingredients, just a different end product.”

            Crystal’s eyes narrowed.  She turned to Scooter.  “Do you hear this?  You’re kidding, right?”  She turned back to Katherine.  “He’s not a bloody Lego kit.  You can’t take him apart and reassemble at leisure.  What you’re talking about would destroy this man--probably still wouldn’t achieve what you want--and would most certainly leave him useless to you.”

            Agent K leaned forward.  “Why?”

            The therapist leaned back and removed her glasses and pinched her nose, taking a deep calming breath.  “My encounters with David were few and informal--he didn’t know I worked for Asklepios, after all--but I was immediately struck by his intense masculinity--and I use the term in the most stereotyped way possible.  I’ve looked through the data you’ve given me and its simply reinforced this certainty.  If there was a sliding scale for gender, he’d be at the far end of it. If gender’s a loop, he’s at that point where it suddenly switches over. If anything, this is what drove him into his adopting the most stereotyped of feminine behaviours: extreme masculinity meets extreme femininity, and it’s precisely because he’s so confident in the one identity that he's able to venture over the threshold into the other.”

            Crystal drew a circle on the table between them.  “But what you want to do to him--what you’ve already begun to do--will directly challenge his core identity.”  Her finger drew a radial line down to the centre of the circle and she tapped one glossy nail there.  “You can’t just pound his psyche with drugs, carve his body into a new shape and expect a new person to emerge.  You’ll either kill him, or the conditioning will fail.  You’ll be left with a very angry, very dangerous and deranged man.”

            The psychiatrist shuffled through some papers and withdrew several photos.  They weren’t entirely flattering to their subject, revealing Cindy at moments when the façade had dropped: staring openly at a passing female patient, or sprawled in a most un-lady like fashion across the sofa in his room. 

            “David’s sexuality is at the core of his being,” Crystal continued, one slender finger gesturing at the photos.  “What we know about this man suggests he’s an inveterate womaniser. He draws great satisfaction in pursuing the opposite sex. Chasing after women is a powerful motivator for him.”

            “Overcompensating for something?” Jonathon asked.

            “No.” Crystal rolled her eyes. “But seeking validation? Maybe.”

            Katherine leaned a little closer. “What do you mean?”

            “This man has a history with women, correct?”  Crystal indicated her folder. “Even a preliminary survey reveals weekend after weekend of one-night stands, reaching back for over a decade. Dozens of women—hundred, even. Few lasted longer than a month; none for even half a year. He is—I believe—looking for something. Or someone.”

            “Someone?” Katherine glanced down at her own tablet, scrolling back through some notes.  “Persephone?”

            Crystal nodded.  “Persephone.”

            Jonathon looked between the two women.  “Who?”
            “The name he spoke during surgery,” Katherine said.

            “And several times in his sleep,” Crystal said.

            “Who is she?”

            “That,” Crystal said, “May be the key to understanding this man.”

Two:

Sickly yellow light seeped into the far corners of the dirty little backroom, flickering as the bared bulb swayed as the end of its frayed cable.  A shoddy table stood next to a rusty, steel-frame bed.  An old round clock ticked persistently, its shadow stretching and twisting as the light above danced.  The clock sat on the table next to a worn, dog-eared book.  Tattered wallpaper peeled and curled from the walls; bugs crawled from cracks between the floorboards.  The place reeked of sweat and mould and sex.  There were no windows and two doors on opposing walls provided the only escape from the room.

            The mattress was filthy and stained. 

            David stood unmoving in the centre of the room.  He blinked in the dim light, slowly coming to his senses.  He felt strangely numb, though the hint of terrible pain throbbed in the background.

            No,” he whispered.  “Not here.”

            His voice faded into the dusty air.  He heard the deep thrum of distant music rising through the floor.  Fingers curled into a tight fist.  He thumped his fist against his thigh, and again, but the pain achieved nothing. Then, the creak of hinges. David spun to face the door behind him.  The door swung open onto impenetrable darkness; a slash across a canvas; a chill wind breathed into the room and swirled about bared legs.

            A gasp; a cry and moan: unable to stop himself David turned back to the bed.  A woman was now splayed across the filthy mattress.  She was beautiful--far too much so for such a room--but that beauty was tainted.  The ivory basque she wore should have gleamed but was tarnished and stained. Her stockings were torn and the skin beneath was red and raw.  Dark and heavy makeup, smudged and cracked, did more to conceal her beauty than enhance it.  One leg hung over the edge of the bed and her arms lay limply at her side.  She seemed unconscious or insensate but for her eyes--which were open and blazed with anger.

            “Sephy?” David said.

            (“Hey, did he just say something?”

            “Don’t be stupid.  The patient’s under.”)

            This is where (s)he died.

The pain of her death never went away. But it did fade to an almost comforting numbness.  The guilt was another matter: he used it as he was taught.  Following Persephone’s death, Sakura no longer had any use for him: a tool with a flaw can no longer be trusted. But her teaching remained.  Guilt fuelled his rapid ascent in the corporate world; it underscored many of his sexual conquests.  Like his fear and anger and love, he made it a part of himself and gradually his guilt, as with his fear and anger and love, dwindled until all became nothing more than a comforting numbness, nearly forgotten, easily ignored.

            The nightmares stayed.  He often woke in a cold sweat in early morning, causing him to cry out in the night and if he had company, frighten whatever girl lay next to him.  The company of women did nothing to keep the dreams at bay.  Sometimes the bad dreams came so incessantly and intensely they seemed to haunt him even after he awoke.  Then he sat by the window, looking out at the city glinting coldly below, breathing and trembling steadily until the sun rose and banished the darkness.

            One nightmare recurred most frequently and with greater intensity than the others.  There was no returning to sleep after escaping its clutches.  He recognized the room in the nightmare.  I’m dreaming, he though to himself.  Yet the nightmare had never gripped him with such clarity.  His surroundings and the steady creep of sensations and emotions felt incredibly lucid. 

            The musty taste on his tongue, the urge to wipe his hands clean against his short, pleated skirt, the palpable scorn that flowed hotly from the girl on the bed—his senses felt fully engaged even as he recognized that he must be dreaming.

            With growing dread, he turned to the open door behind him.  The threshold roiled with darkness and in it stood a figure. The figure resolved itself into familiarity: tall, heavy-set, fists clenching at his side and jaw clenched: Agent Fosters now stepped into his nightmare.  Blood flowed freely from a thin slit along the man’s throat, a crimson smile as terrible as the man’s grin above.  The assassin’s muscles bulged and strained against his suit.  Dark eyes flicked over to David.  The man sneered and dismissed him and returned his attention to the girl lying across the bed.

            Fosters grin grew with lust.  Blood dribbled from between his teeth and from his nose and down his chin.  He stepped ponderously across the room, eyes locked on Persephone’s vulnerable form.

            “No,” David howled and launched himself at the man.  But his footing was unsure in heels, and his weak, wobbly steps slowed him, draining all strength from his attack.  With an idle swipe, Fosters sent him crashing into the wall.

            David fell to his knees.  Pain flared in his side.  He clutched his ribs and they felt wet and slick, but his eyes never left the man’s back as he approached the girl on the bed.  Fosters towered over her. He towered over them both, and his powerful hands, fingers long and curved like meat hooks, reached down for Persephone.

            “Don’t touch her!” David screamed.  He struggled to his knees, crawled towards her, reached for her.  “Sephy!”

            Fosters methodically tore the woman apart.  Gore flooded the bed and flowed across the wooded floor. Blood pooled and spread and reached David, still scrabbling to reach the woman he loved. He reached his enemy. Lurched to his feet.  His hands, stained red, curled around the man’s throat.

            “Stop,” he said, tightening his grip. And then Fosters shouted, “Get him off of me!” and suddenly the room was gone, disappearing in a florescent flare, white light, antiseptic slap, and he was sitting up on a table surrounded by men and women in white coats, spattered in red, staring at him with wide eyes over face masks, and everyone began to cry out at once:

            “Holy shit, he’s awake!”

            “Quick, pin him down!”

            “Robert, fuck, Robert, put him out, put him out!”

            “Don’t you touch her!” David cried, flailing out against his opponents, struggling against the hands that sought to restrain him.  A suddenly stabbing pain in the thigh, and he glanced back to see the needle jutting out of his leg, and a moment later he felt his body grow cold and numb beneath him.

            “Sephy,” he said, reaching but unable to reach her, sinking as he was, down into darker depths of unconsciousness.