Constant in All Other Things - Interlude I: The prognosis is grim for David. Lying on the operating table he loses himself in the past. But even should he survive, K’s plans for him may prove a living nightmare.

Constant in All Other Things
Interlude I
by
Fakeminsk ([email protected])

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

From her position behind the one-way glass overlooking the octagonal operating theatre, she stared down at the body. The harsh florescent light did nothing to soften or hide the brutal condition of the patient. Surgeons fluttered about the bed like anxious parents. The few places across the patient’s body uncovered by bandaging or twisted tubing revealed lacerated flesh.

She saw the man’s approach in the window, and shifting slightly refocused on the faint image of herself caught in the glass. In her eyes she saw an uncertainty she despised, one she thought overcome long ago. She chased away the doubt before the man noticed.

He came up and embraced her, his strong arms circling her waist. “Come back to bed, Katherine.” His voice was soft but his hold insistent, resting casually beneath the swell of her naked breasts.

Agent K’s hands drifted up to rest lightly against his. “Just give me a moment,” she said, her fingers gently stroking his forearms, winding through the thick red hair there. She couldn’t repress a small smile. “Scooter.”

His scowl showed little rancour. “Don’t you dare start that too.”

Her smile faded as she continued to watch the still form of David Sanders through the faint outline of reflected intimacy. Jonathon was nearly a half-foot shorter than she was; the unkempt mess of his beard scratched her skin as he nuzzled a sensitive spot between her shoulder blades. He knew her so well: Jonathon with his heavy hands and thick fingers that played so gently with her secret places, that found and traced without hesitation her many hidden scars and badly-healed wounds.

She sighed deeply. The sight of David’s form, splayed out on the operating table, stung her deeply; deeper than she would have thought possible. There had been so much blood when she found him. He hadn’t been breathing; his heart had stopped.

“Are you having second thoughts?”

“No,” she answered, and then again more confidently. “No, I’m not.”

She continued to look down at David’s unmoving form. Despite the enforced persona of ‘Cindy’, she had always sensed the tightly restrained energy and aggression that seethed just beneath the surface of her charge. The absurd confidence, obnoxious misogyny and incessant cursing: so much about David infuriated and attracted her in equal measure. She wouldn’t deny the angry pleasure she took in forcing such a masculine presence into skirts and makeup, nor the vicious joy of watching him prance in heels and subsume himself into a character as feminine and flighty as Cindy.

Yet she also thrilled at the vitality he contained, transformed but never reduced even when disguised. From their very first encounter she felt the possibility of violence that lurked behind those carefully controlled eyes. Cindy tempered but never dispelled the rawness that defined the man; and Katherine could not deny that the unconscious threat and challenge drew her like the proverbial moth.

To see David--Cindy--now laid out unmoving down below, his life all but shattered, body broken: it felt like a heavy grip wrapped around her heart, unyielding and slowly squeezing; breathing suddenly felt difficult. I failed him, she thought. I promised to keep him safe and I couldn’t. Agent K felt the shadow of past failures fall over her. The disguise hadn’t been enough. The Clinic failed to safeguard her charge. My own efforts, she thought--not enough.

The arms around her waist tightened their amorous grip. “Don’t do this to yourself,” Jonathon said.

Katherine shook her head slowly. “I’m not,” she insisted. Her mind raced through the new possibilities ahead of her. She wasn’t beat yet; not by a long shot. A moment later she added: “Am I doing the wrong thing?”

“Judging ethical issues isn’t really my thing,” Scooter answered. “You know that. You put a patient in front of me and I do my job; give me a test subject and I’m not going to ask too many questions about where it came from.

“But I’ll say this: you’re playing a dangerous game, Kate. That was nearly you on the table.” His hand delicately traced fresh stitching along her side. “And you watched the same security footage that I did, right? You saw what I saw? Answer me this: where the hell does some middle-management paper-pusher learn to fight like that?” His hand briefly left their idle repose over her stomach to gesture at the form below.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She hesitated and added, “There’s too much about him we don’t know.”

“You’re putting yourself between Jeremiah Steele and this guy, Kate. You’re already on thin ice with your own agency. And you’re playing me, of course,” he added, “and the entire Clinic to your own ends.” His heavy hand patted her pussy comfortingly with easy intimacy before resting lightly on her hip.

She chuckled, lightly rubbing her ass into the erection she felt growing behind. “You make me sound like an evil mastermind.”

“Evil?” Jonathon said, and shook his head. “You’re not evil, Katherine. But you’re not so good either, you’re not a nice person. What you have planned for this man? Some might call it cruel.”

“Some might say he deserves it.”

She felt Scooter’s shrug. “Maybe. He certainly won’t like it; if he was conscious he would never have agreed.”

“Yet it’s necessary,” K insisted.

“He’ll hate you.”

Her reply came a little too quickly. “I know.” She took a deep breath. “But I can’t see any other way.”

“That’s why I avoid thinking about the ethics of a situation; I hire professionals for that.” His hand traced a gentle line across her thigh and danced up her spine. “It might all prove academic anyway. Everything depends on Sanders simply surviving.”

Agent K sighed. “What are his chances?”

“Based purely on the physical damage he’s soaked up? Slim. 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. . . ,” he softly tapped out each listed injury against her skin, “multiple lacerations, head trauma and the cocktail of drugs we’ve been pumping into him over the last three weeks?” The doctor shrugged. “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. He’s in peak physical condition and he had the good fortune of getting hurt in one of the best medical facilities in the world. Those people working below are among the top of their field. The bastard’s tough. 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 thrilled with barely suppressed anticipation.

“Now who’s the evil mastermind, Frankenstein?

“It’s my job. And I’m damn good at it.” He gave her a final squeeze before pulling away. “Come back to bed, Kate. Let’s play doctor--I’ll even be the nurse this time. I know you like that kinky stuff.”

She laughed. “I’ll be along in a second. Just give me a moment, okay?”

The doctor stepped away. Katherine continued to stare down at the body below and steeled herself for what was to come. I’m sorry David, she thought. I know you’ll never forgive me for this. Then she remembered the security footage, and the ecstatic look that gleamed in the battered man’s face as he watched the assassin die. But maybe you’ll understand, she thought.

“After all,” she whispered to herself, and her eyes shone bright and cold, “no one rejoices more in revenge than woman.”

***

Sickly yellow light seeped into the far corners of the dirty little backroom, flickering as the bared light 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 tobacco. There was no window 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 it against his thigh, and again, but the pain provided no distraction; the hand stayed clenched at his side and trembled. The creak of hinges; David spun to face the door behind him. The door swung open silently 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 splayed across it now. She was beautiful--far too much so for such a room--but her beauty was tainted. The ivory basque she wore should have gleamed whitely but seemed tarnished and made dim by the same miasma that drenched the room. Her stockings were torn and the skin beneath was red and raw. Dark and heavy makeup, smudged and cracked, did more to conceal her natural 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 and passion.

“Kate?” David said.

(Voices that lurked behind the heavy but far-away thrum of music:

“Hey, did he just say something?”

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

This was where it happened.

There was nothing he could have done about her death. It took David a long time to accept this. A year of grudging therapy began the process, but only once he settled into his new adult life did he come to terms with the loss. The pain never disappeared but did fade to an almost comforting numbness. The guilt was another matter: he used it as he was taught. Following Kate’s death Sakura no longer had any use for him--a tool once it has become brittle can no longer be trusted--but her lessons remained. Guilt fuelled his rapid ascent in the corporate world; it underscored many of his sexual conquests. Like his fears he made it a part of himself and gradually it dwindled until it became nothing more than a comforting numbness, nearly forgotten.

The nightmares stayed. He woke often in a cold sweat at three in the morning, causing him to cry out in the night and if he had company for the night, frighten whatever girl lay next to him. Company 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 of his penthouse condo looking out at the city gleaming below, drinking and trembling steadily until the sun rose

But one nightmare recurred stronger though more infrequently than the rest. Once escaping its grip he never returned to bed. He recognized the room. I’m dreaming, he though to himself. Yet the nightmare had never before haunted him with such clarity. His surroundings and the steady creep of sensations and emotions felt incredibly lucid.

he 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. There he saw Agent Fosters. Blood flowed freely from a thin slit along his throat, a crimson smile as terrible as the man’s grin above. Fosters stood framed in the door, the darkness behind roiling thickly. 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 into the room, eyes locked on Kate’s indolent form.

“Stay away from her!” David yelled, throwing himself towards the man. His footing was unsure, almost as if he were unused to running in heels. His wobbly steps slowed him, draining the strength from his charge. With an almost idle swipe Fosters sent him flying back 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 Fosters’ back as the man approached the girl on the bed. He towered over her; he towered over them both, and his large, meaty hands, fingers curved like hooks, reached down for Katherine.

“Don’t touch her!” he howled, struggling to his feet, reaching for her. “Kate!”

Fosters began to methodically tear the woman apart. Gore flowed freely across the floor.

David’s own hands, stained red, curled around the man’s throat.

“No!” he screamed, tightening his grip, and then Fosters screamed as well, “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.

“Kate,” he whispered, and fell back into darkness.

***

“His blood work is fascinating,” Jonathon said, flipping through the chart.

Hiding a small smile, Agent K asked, “How so?” Taking a sip of coffee she found it too hot and returned it to the table. She curled her long legs up beneath her, unmindful of how her robe drooped open and revealed her naked breasts. She was beginning to feel a little guilty at her own indolence, but knew all too well how precious these rare moments of intimacy and relaxation were. At times like these--if she ignored the gun that lay between the bowl of sugar cubes and the plate of croissants--she could almost imagine what a normal life must feel like.

He didn’t look up from his papers. “When did you start Sanders’ conditioning?”

Katherine grimaced behind her food. “The moment he woke up in the safe-house. I slipped him a pill along with a painkiller.”

“Standard dose of Sadexsin?”

“Double.”

“A bit heavy-handed, don’t you think?”

She shrugged. “He was just waking up and in pain, he was groggy and disoriented. I was unlikely to have his mind as receptive to an implant again, especially without him noticing. I needed his full cooperation to ensure his survival, and his profile suggested he’d be very unlikely to go along with my plan.”

Scooter smiled, glancing over the edge of his chart. “What, dress up as a girl? Go figure. So what did you suggest? That he’d always secretly wanted to wear skirts and makeup?”

She snorted. “Please. I planted the simple suggestion that he trust me. I reinforced the suggestion throughout our travels; I needed his implicit trust and cooperation if I was going to get him to Asklepios alive.”

The doctor nodded. “Interesting. And on the trip here?

“I slipped him mild hypnotics whenever possible, similar to what you continued with here--small doses in his drinks and whenever he began to lose control, to reinforce the trust and learned behaviour.”

“I see,” he said, glancing again at his papers. “Very interesting.”

Agent K sighed. “Will you please stop saying?”

Scooter chuckled. “Sorry. It’s just that I’ve never seen anything quite like this.” He placed the chart down on the table and faced her fully. Unlike her, he was dressed in simple scrubs that again seemed too small for him, though his hair remained as unkempt as ever. Normally an irritable man, he was at his happiest when confronted with a new medical anomaly. Usually Katherine found the energy that infused his every action when puzzling through an enigma charming, but today it was beginning to grate.

“You know how some people react strangely to common drugs? One out of a hundred thousands, say, who gets prescribed Valium and instead of relaxing act as if they’ve just had a double espresso?”

Katherine nodded slowly. “I think.” She picked up her coffee again and found it ready to drink.

“Well, the blood work on Sanders just came in and it’s pretty damn amazing. Between what you gave him and what the Clinic did, the man should’ve been riding a permanent buzz. We’re talking a potent cocktail of anti-depressants, relaxants, hypnotics--the whole thing; with some carefully balanced painkillers and stimulants since we didn’t want him acting like a zombie or aware that he was being manipulated.” He paused and scratched at his beard. “Obviously we didn’t get that quite right.

“It made anaesthetizing him for surgery a real nightmare. A real nightmare, as you know: the bastard woke up halfway through.” Scooter shook his head admiringly. “It’s a good thing we’d already closed up his side, but he almost killed himself right there.”

“Is he still stable?”

Scooter nodded. “Yes. But this is the thing. Robert’s our anesthesiologist and he’s very, very good at his job: I’ve never seen him fail to put someone under before, and keep him there at just the right level.” Scooter gestured animatedly at his chart. “But not Sanders! We checked him out . . . his blood’s swamped with an absurdly high concentration of naturally occurring antitoxins. The chemicals we expected to find in there were almost entirely missing or otherwise neutralized. Even concentration levels in adipose tissue are far below what we expected.”

“So what are you saying?” Agent K asked. “That’s he’s immune to drugs?”

“Of course not,” Jonathon answered. “No one is. But he’s definitely resistant. Call it strength of will, call it receptor insensitivity in the prefrontal cortex to--”

“Or stubbornness,” she interrupted, smiling.

“Whatever,” he continued, frowning briefly. “The point of all this is simply that I’m not convinced that our efforts had much effect on him over the last three weeks. We tried to shape him into our own Cindy, but what we saw was mostly his own design. We had some influence to be sure, but minimal at best.”

“No,” Agent K insisted, shaking her head. Her cup trembled in her hand and she carefully returned it to the table. “That’s impossible. I’m telling you: he trusted me completely. He even told me so. The suggestion held.”

“And I’m telling you,” the doctor answered. “That if David trusted you, it’s because he chose to of his own free will.”

***

She sat next to the patient in the bed and held his hand. She felt a little sick--of the selfishness of what she was doing and the weakness it displayed to Jonathon; but mostly for the insidious falseness of it. David probably wouldn’t even remember the conversation, she thought. But he might--and she felt sure that was key to what was to come.

The machines clustered around his limp form beeped and breathed quietly, insisting that their charge was alive, in stable albeit serious condition. His heart thumped with a strong and steady beat. She marvelled at the strength of this man; seeing David left so weak she easily imagined Cindy lying there in his stead. If all goes well, Agent K thought, it may very well be Cindy lying there soon.

She nodded once to Jonathon, who made an unseen gesture to the lone young woman standing by the bed. She injected a clear substance into David’s IV before stepping a discrete distance away.

It only took a few moments before David began to stir in the bed.

“You won’t have much time,” Jonathon said, speaking in a low voice. “He’ll be disoriented and in a lot of pain. Keeping him conscious for too long could kill him.”

She nodded absently, barely listening to the doctor. All her attention was focused on the man before her. Her grip around his hand tightened.

His eyes fluttered, opened--drifted shut--and snapped wide open. He stared wildly around, his eyes swirling in their orbs, confused and panicked. A moment later a loud, muffled moan escaped from around the tube down his throat.

“David,” she said, and then again, louder and insistent. “David, listen to me!”

His good arm strained against his restraint. His hand tightened painfully around hers. She pulled her hand free and stood over him. She gripped either side of his head and forced him to look at her. “David!”

His eyes snapped to hers and calmed momentarily with recognition. She saw the agony in every clenched and tense line of his face. He released another loud mewling, his nostrils flared with pain.

“Heart rate’s rising,” said the female doctor.

“Can you hear me?” Agent K asked.

David tried to nod, his head moving weakly.

“Do you still trust me?” She felt sick to her stomach even saying it.

He nodded again, though this time weaker than before.

“You were hurt, David,” she said, speaking quickly. “When we found you, you were all but dead. Your heart had stopped. The doctors saved you but you are still in very bad shape. We can’t risk moving you.

“But your position has been compromised, David. We have to assume Steele knows where you are.”

She saw the strain of concentration in his eyes, the growing pain and the weakness following closely behind.

“I have a plan,” she said. “One that might just keep you alive.”

“Doctor Bridges,” the female doctor interrupted. “We have to put him back under. He’s becoming critical.”

“Not yet!” Katherine snapped. She looked back at David and saw she was losing him. He didn’t understand. She had to make him understand.

“Revenge, David.”

His eyes immediately refocused on her.

“Yes, David.” Even as she spoke she felt the thrill of anger course through her, and her grip on either side of David’s head tightened. She brought her mouth close and whispered hoarsely into his ear. “Revenge. Revenge on that bastard Steele for doing this to you. For stealing your life.

“Revenge, no matter what the cost--is that what you want, David? I can promise it to you. I just need you to trust me and to do as I say. We need Cindy for a little while longer. Do this, and we’ll all get what we want, what we deserve.”

She pulled away and released his head. She took a deep breath and continued in a loud, insistent voice: “Do I have your permission to do what’s necessary?”

Agent K saw the confusion in David’s eyes, but behind burned the fury and hate she had counted on. He nodded, once.

“Let him sleep,” she said to Jonathon. He nodded to the other doctor, and a moment later David was once again in deep unconsciousness. The machines abandoned their erratic noised and gradually returned to their rhythmic beeping.

“Did you get what you wanted?” Jonathon asked.

“Yes,” she answered, her lips curling in a thin, bitter smile.

***

“Just so we are clear, I am completely opposed to this. I think what you plan to do is morally reprehensible, ethically wrong and almost certainly doomed to failure.”

Crystal Dawn was a tall woman in her late 40s, tastefully if conservatively dressed. A pair of pearl earrings and a loose, retro-90s curly perm, streaked with grey, framed her face. She had a strong chin offset by a thin nose and high cheekbones, minimally made-up with subtle touches of colour. Her long, glossy nails clicked rhythmically against the table top, 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. This David’s a neurotic, screwed-up jerk, but anyone who can get through to Harry Longman deserves a second chance in my book.” 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 slight grin nearly hid within the bushy mass of his beard.

Despite the experiences of the past few weeks, Agent K found it difficult to believe that the Asklepios head psychiatrist sitting opposite her used to be a man. It wasn’t that she was overtly feminine; just the opposite, in fact, as the doctor seemed to avoid the most obvious trappings of female fashion in favour of an almost masculine suit, matched with a pair of stylish but subdued low heels. She was attractive though not exactly pretty. Rather, it was that she exuded such confidence in herself that it seemed impossible that she had ever been anyone other than the poised mature woman she presented. Blistering intelligence lurking behind thin-framed glasses coolly observed both Agent K and Jonathon. Despite her irritation at the psychiatrist’s objections, Katherine found herself warming to the woman.

“I really don’t know why I let you get away with calling me that,” Crystal said, pursing her lips in feigned annoyance. “No one else does.”

“No once else can beat you at chess. I told you I’d stop once you finally win,” Scooted said, shrugging. He turned to Katherine. “Nearly thirty years and she still can’t beat me two out of three.”

“This weekend,” she said, smiling. “I’ve got you on the ropes.”

Agent K had been reluctant to bring anyone else in on her plan, but Scooter had insisted that Crystal would prove invaluable. The problem lay in convincing her to help.

“Listen,” the psychiatrist said, once they turned back to subject at hand. “You can’t just expect to throw a skirt on this guy and have him play the role you want. This David, sure, he’s very good . . . unusually convincing considering it’s all an act, especially considering it’s an unwilling one. But that’s all it is, and all it’ll ever be. An act, and that’s not enough 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. “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 damn omelette, he’s not a bloody Rubik’s Cube! The human mind is an incredibly complex construct; you can’t just change it at a whim! 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? He certainly did a good job these past three weeks. The reports I’ve read, the video footage I’ve watched: he played an almost perfect Cindy!” Even with only a minimal influence from the drugs, she thought.

“Good? Sure,” Crystal admitted. “But don’t fool yourself, he was far from perfect, and he’ll have to pass as a hundred-percent female for what you want. Like I said, it was all an act, a role David expected to soon drop. Now you want something far more long-term, and stuck in this female parody of a construct, this Cindy--something so counter to his natural inclinations--he’ll rebel, he’ll lash out, especially if confronted with something he’d never willingly do.”

“Or he’ll break,” Agent K suggested. “And couldn’t we then. . . .”

“You’re not listening!” Crystal said loudly, slapping her hand against the table. She removed her glasses and pinched her nose, taking a deep calming breath before continuing. “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. The reports I’ve read and the footage I’ve studied has simply reinforced this certainty. If there was a sliding scale for gender, he’d be at the far end of it. It’s precisely because he’s so confident in his masculinity that he’s been capable of pretending he’s the exact opposite.

“But what you want to do to him--what you’ve already begun to do--will directly challenge this core identity of his. You can’t just pound his psyche with drugs, twist his body into a new shape and create a new person. You’ll either kill him or the conditioning will fail and you’ll be left with a very angry, very dangerous and deranged man.”

The psychiatrist shuffled through some papers and withdrew a number of 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; masturbating on the toilet; sprawled in a most un-lady like fashion across his sofa. Agent K was particularly annoyed to find a picture of her entwined with David in the final moments before the assassin’s attack.

“David’s sexuality is at the core of his being,” Crystal continued, one slender finger gesturing at the photos. “Heterosexuality isn’t a choice, and from what I’ve seen the man’s a raving heterosexual. Chasing after women is a natural instinct for him. Those afternoons we spent sitting together he continuously checked out the female patients passing by--when he wasn’t unconsciously hitting on me, that is.” Crystal smiled slightly at the memory. “You’re not going to get this guy to start liking men, not by frying his brain with psychotropic drugs.”

Katherine looked aside at Jonathon, who sat at the table smiling. “I’m glad you find this amusing, Jon. I thought you said she could help us.”

“I can.” Crystal’s nails tapped out a brief rhythm as she thought. “The end result will be the same, but the approach will be different. Difficult and subtle and it will take a very long time. We’re talking months--years!--instead of days and weeks.”

Her fingers stilled their motion. “And it’s very capable of going horribly wrong at any time. Furthermore, the whole thing will prove horribly cruel to this man. For the duration of the program, David would likely be in a state of psychological torment--humiliated and shamed. These are not emotions one easily comes to terms with and he would be forced to live with them constantly. At the same time, the shame would be accentuated by the belief that he’d chosen to this path.

“Because this is absolutely essential: he has to believe at every step of the way that he’s making the choice of his own free will.” Crystal leaned forward, fixing her eyes on Katherine. “No. He can’t believe; the choice has to be his. Given the choice between living as Cindy and returning to a male life, he must freely choose to remain female.”

“But you said that was impossible,” Jonathon said, seeming grudgingly intrigued.

“Not impossible, just very, very difficult. What we have to do is control the preconditions so that choosing to remain Cindy is more in-line with his character than in opposition to it. We have to manipulate the essential character traits of David--his masculinity, his sexuality--to our own end. Once he’s firmly committed to the life of Cindy we use those same traits to subvert themselves and what we’re left with is--this caricature of femininity--this silly girl you’ve created--who remains at a fundamental level the David we know.”

Crystal hesitated, lips drawing tight in a displeased frown. “Or rather, I should say the David we think we know.”

Smiling slightly, K nodded. “In the short time I’ve know him, he’s proven to be a man of many surprises.”

“And that’s a problem,” Crystal said. “For this to work, we need to know precisely what we’re working with.” She pulled several more papers from her file and spread them out before her audience. “I’ve met with David and I’ve watched the security footage. You’ve both shared what you know about him,” she spoke to Jonathon but her eyes flicked aside to K, “and your experiences and impressions. I’ve got reports written up by members of staff concerning Cindy as well, as well as the original agency profile. And I’ll say this: it doesn’t add up. Both the man he is and the woman he’s portrayed are at odd with the history I’ve been given.

“The more we know about the man, about his history, his experiences, about his dreams--the better we can control him.”

She quickly outlined a basic plan and time plan, emphasising the importance of the physical changes already underway. “We’ve created an illusion here,” she said, “and we’re trying to make it a reality. We have to keep him off-balance; his own reflection, his every sense has to disassociate him from the life he’s known.”

When Crystal Dawn left Katherine released a deep sigh of relief, surprised to find how edgy the transgendered psychologist had left her. Used to feeling in control of a situation, Crystal’s inner strength had kept the agent off-balance. She had very little time to wonder why before Jonathon’s referred to his own file.

“The time we have to work with makes things difficult--and interesting, especially considering the shape David’s in.” His eyes gleamed at the prospect. “The man was technically dead when we found him--we’ve already had to dip into some of the experimental stuff we’ve been working on just to keep him alive--and if there’s any hope of seeing the result we want in the time we have, he’ll have to play guinea pig a little longer.”

Agent K took a deep breath, fighting to suppress a growing unease in her stomach. “Are these techniques dangerous?”

“Yes,” Jonathon answered bluntly. “But look at it this way, Katherine: he’s lucky to be alive as it is. And you know how effective some of this new technology can be--you’ve seen the end results before, you’ve brought the means to us, our experts have reverse-engineered what they can . . . and now you’ve brought me an ideal subject. Besides, we’ll be testing some of the riskier techniques on our other test subject before trying them on David.”

She nodded slowly, almost unwillingly. “And do you think . . . is it possible . . . to create a realistic Cindy out of him?”

A wide grin split the doctor’s face. “Oh yes, most certainly. It won’t be easy but that’s what makes it so interesting. The normal route of hormones and cosmetic surgery simply won’t do, especially if you want him ready within the month. Hormones take ages, especially past the teen years--although we’ll work with them, of course. Basic surgery can achieve miracles but isn’t perfect and often requires follow-ups, something we have to avoid.

“Normally we could redistribute body fat to create those curves you want, except that he’s got a body fat percentage of something like eight percent--he’s all muscle. So we tackle that first. Destroy his muscle mass and drop his weight. Then we pump him up again and help the fat go where we want it. A little sculpting of the underlying bone structure and some heavy facial work and he’ll have as angelic a face as any twenty-year old princess you’ve ever seen. He’s already lost a rib on one side; we’ll even things out and give him a waistline a supermodel would envy.”

“And this is all reversible?” Agent K asked. “He has to believe he can go back to being David.”

The doctor shrugged. “More or less. He’ll never look like he used to--but that was pretty much a given after getting his face smashed in by that assassin. But yes, we can change him back. He’ll probably be a bit wimpy-looking but definitely male. After all, that’s the other thing making this so hard: we’re not chopping off any important bits.”

She smiled. “Bits? Feeling a bit squeamish?”

“I’m a doctor,” Jonathon said. “But yes, the thought of a penis and a scalpel in close proximity to each other sends a shiver up my spine. Fortunately for David we’re going to take great care to avoid even chemically castrating him . . . it’ll be tricky finding the balance, but we’ll make sure his girl bits get soft while making it so his boy bits can still get hard.

“Well, there’s no point in delaying any longer. I’ll assemble a team and they’ll start on David tonight.” He took a final look at his chart, checking through his notes and the proposed changes. “A final question, though.”

“Yes?”

Jonathon grinned. “You sure you want to keep him a ‘D’ cup?”

Her smile was only slightly forced. “Definitely.”

Once he left the room her smile quickly faded. She sat alone for several long minutes, lost in thought. She reluctantly pulled a cell phone from within her jacket and stared at it. She thought of David and the brief time they had shared together. ‘Psychological torment’, the psychiatrist had said. ‘Wimpy-looking’, Jonathon had said--assuming David ever returned to a male life in the first place.

Does David deserve this? she wondered. Does Cindy?

She keyed the quick dial on the phone and waited patiently until the other end picked up.

“Yeah?” The man’s voice was, just as last time, brusque and impatient.

“Mr Steele?” Agent K said. “It’s begun, just as promised.”

***

He stood in the middle of the room and felt afraid.

David at first couldn’t place the source of his fear. The room was small and dingy and smelled terrible, but surely he’d seen worse places before? The pale light swaying overhead cast its feeble greenish fingers creeping into the far corners, revealing discarded rubbish and dead insects gathered in small shivering piles. A steel-frame bed with its stained mattress was pushed up against one dirty wall, and next to it a rickety nightstand held an old clock and a dog-eared book. The clock ticked unnaturally loudly, filling the room despite the deep thrumming of a far-away bass line that rose through the wooden floor.

Panic bubbled up and he took a shaky breath that did nothing to calm him. He felt small, somehow, small and vulnerable. David wished he’d worn something heavier than the flimsy sundress that barely cleared his knees. The fabric fluttered despite the stillness of the air and tickled his thigh. He nervously held the skirt down by clasping both hands together and holding them before him as if in supplication.

He heard a creak from behind and spun to face the single door. It yawned wide onto swirling darkness.

“Not again,” he whispered, taking a step away from the portal.

A low moan from behind forced him to turn back towards the bed. Agent K lay sprawled across the dirty mattress. She wore her jogging pants and coffee-stained t-shirt, again resembling a slightly-frazzled soccer mom.

“Such a disappointment,” slurred the voice from behind. David spun back to face Fosters, once again framed in the door. His feet rang a steady and loud rhythm as he approached, each step in counterpoint to the ticking of the clock. “Beg for your life, little sissy.”

“Stay away!” David cried out, backing away. The slender heel of his pump caught in a crack in the floor. Pain flared across his ankle as he twisted it and fell to the floor with a gasp. “No!”

“I’m going to hurt you bad,” he said, muscles bulging from his stained white undershirt. “I’m going to break you and burn you and make you bleed.”

“No,” rang out a loud voice. “You’re not.”

David cried out and tried to crawl away as Agent K blurred past, launching herself towards the assassin. The fight was brief; with an easy swipe of his arm Fosters sent the woman flying into the wall, where she crumpled to the floor and remained unmoving. A moment later he loomed over the terrified man. Fosters fist reared back--punched down. . . .

Everything seemed to slow down as the man rained blow after blow upon his victim. He worked methodically, and David felt pain flare across his body, first here, then there, and once it faded that area was left numb and dead. The physical punishment seemed to last ages. He tried to call out but found he lacked a voice, even when it felt as if his legs were being ripped from his body, even when Fosters’ fist pulped his nose and shattered his jaw. The final pain he felt throbbed for a long time across his chest before finally fading away as well. His eyes swelled shut and everything went dark and he drifted in an almost peaceful dark silence.

Soft, caring hands stroked his arm. His mother’s hands, David thought. “You’ll be okay, David,” she said. She cradled him close and he finally descended into a deep, dreamless sleep.

***

He found himself rising through darkness into consciousness. A hand gently stroked his arm.

“Wake up, Cindy,” a voice called to him. “Cindy, wake up.”

David’s eyes snapped open.

Continues in Constant in All Other Things–Season Two

Author Notes:

Drug name “Sadexsin” courtesy of the Drug Name Generator at www.wordlab.com.
No one rejoices more in revenge than woman,” quote by Decimus Junius Juvenal.