Page 63 of Freedom
“What’s your feel for them? What can you tell me about them as individuals and not just members of their species?” The Director watched him with calm, calculating eyes.
Victor realized his right knee was bouncing and stopped it. “Do you have any... criteria?” Somehow, he didn’t think that the man cared who gave good head.
The Director steepled his fingers, mouth pinched in thought. “What has Mr. Sloan told you about my little project with the unidentified freak Jake Hawthorne removed?”
“Sir?”
The Director smiled. “Please don’t pretend ignorance in defense of Mr. Sloan. Rest assured I wouldn’t have told him anything that was not appropriate for him to know. And I assume that as the two of you are... close, he may have shared more than a little.”
Victor’s palms broke out in a cold sweat, and he resisted the urge to wipe them on his pants. He ran a half dozen options through in his head, from denying that he had any fucking thing to do with Crusher to trying to defend the asshole’s absolutely nonexistent honor, but he settled on “We work well together, sir,” and stopped, waiting to see which way the Director would jump.
His smile never wavered. “I have noticed. So beating around the bush would be counterproductive. What do you know about the project Mr. Sloan assisted me with until that unfortunate... night of overenthusiasm?”
Victor remembered hearing about that night as a mix of nasty fun and bad choices, followed by a dressing-down in his presence that had convinced him that if he ever fucked up something Director Dixon valued, he was about as likely to just disappear as lose his job. He remembered less of what Crusher had told him before, except the somewhat breathy pleasure with which the other man had told how he had “helped,” or the badly hidden pissiness at the things he hadn’t been allowed to do.
“With Pre—with that freak, Hawthorne’s freak, you were... training him, somehow. Getting him good at research, trained to follow orders and do... whatever you needed.” And just because what the Director needed hadn’t been what most hunters or guards demanded of a monster didn’t mean that Victor couldn’t appreciate the cold-blooded artistry and skill that went into the process.
Pretty Freak had been Crusher’s obsession, not Victor’s, but Victor had to admit there had never been another freak like him before or after. He still couldn’t name whatever quality it was about him that had Hawthorne cock-struck for so many years, but no inmate had learned better than Pretty Freak how to survive and avoid trouble—at least until Crusher got hired.
“Hmm.” The Director frowned. “I am continually reminded of Mr. Sloan’s lack of vision. Supernaturals are a plague on humanity, something that infiltrates, corrupts, slaughters, and conceals itself, nearly undetectable within our society until it strikes. My goal is to take that perverse talent, that ability to pollute, and turn it back on the supernatural source. You could say I am researching a vaccine. You could also say that I want, above all, to make these monsters useful, and it is clear to me that means turning them to the service of the human will. Now, in that light, Mr. Todd...” He leaned forward and tapped the files that Victor had returned to the desk. “How would you evaluate these freaks as viable subjects for my project?”
Victor picked them up again and leafed through them, thinking not so much about what they could do for him or other guards as how they reacted, which monsters he believed when they shied away, which ones reminded him of Pretty Freak. Not in looks or... amiability, but in something deeper, something maybe best described as adaptability without cunning.
“This one,” he said, dropping 98UI4982 on the table. “She’s biddable without being... broken. Another unidentified.”
The Director hmmed and began to peruse the file while Victor went back to the others.
At the end of an hour or so, he’d pulled four names out of the dozen or so in the pile, and the Director was nodding thoughtfully and making little marks in the margins with a pencil nub. He looked up and smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Todd, you’ve been very helpful. It’s always good to get input from the men on the ground.”
Victor nodded, but the compliment unsettled him in a way he couldn’t define. “This has been enlightening, sir.”
“Perhaps if I have need of your experience and good eye, I will bring you in for the more hands-on applications.”
“I’m not—” It would have been a lie to say that Victor didn’t like the violence, the fucking, hitting the freaks around a little and knowing they couldn’t do a damn thing about it. But one of the last things Victor wanted was to be handpicked by the Director for a project like this, to be under the man’s eagle eye even more than usual. “From what Cru—Sloan’s told me, what you need might be outside my skill set.”
“Brutality is only one way to break down a freak, Mr. Todd. I think you would excel at many of the other methods. You have the eye.” The Director stood and stretched behind his desk. Victor could hear bones creaking from even where he stood, the ever-present reminder that hunting was no profession for old men. “I’m sure you have other things that need doing, and I have some things to mull over.”
Victor stood as well. He almost bowed, caught himself, and changed it into a weird kind of half head wiggle. “Yes, sir. Glad I could be of help.”
“I never doubted you would be.” The Director gestured at the door, and Victor took the opportunity to get the hell out of there.
He made it to the break room before he had to sink down onto the couch, lean his head back, and breathe. It took a few minutes before he realized that he hadn’t locked the door or turned the cameras off (fuck, the Director had probably seen every moment of that, maybe making careful notes in yet another file). He relaxed again when Crusher came into the room, shaking out his hands and rubbing his wrist.
He paused on his way to the bathroom. “You okay, Todd?”
Victor rubbed his face. “Just got out of a fucking meeting with the Director.”
“Cocksucker,” Crusher muttered. “Still can’t believe he stopped my playing with Pretty Freak, then gave him the fuck away. What’d Dixon want?”
“You don’t want to know.” And he didn’t, because if Crusher knew that the program was starting up again, he would get dangerously pissed at anyone else who got attention, praise, and permission to hurt freaks in new and inventive ways under the benevolent eye of the Director.
And then Victor realized that if anyone was going to get drafted into the program on the guard side, it would probably be himself.
“Hey, I’m gonna”—Crusher gestured toward the bathroom—“and then I’ve got a freak to fuck. Wanna come?”
Victor swallowed painfully and tried to return the smirk. “Nah. Thanks, though. Who’s up?”
“Lucky,” Crusher replied, grinning wolfishly. “Not so lucky today.”
