All That We Are (The Commander Book 7) Read Online Free

nervously at Haggerty, but he managed to gather the nerve to step forward.  He was to Haggerty what Gilgamesh was to me, in that he had fallen in love with Haggerty’s metapresence and style.  Would he be able to stand Haggerty the person?  I had my doubts.  I found her insufferable at best.
    “Ma’am,” he said.
    “Crow,” Haggerty said.  She studied him for a moment and changed , almost as if she had switched from one personality to another.  “I have time for a short conversation, in private,” she said.  “Would you care to join me?”  I had never heard Haggerty speak this way before, almost unguarded.  Not a Crow whisper, but also not threatening.  She had read Midgard, and instantly knew he was someone she would be able to befriend.  Interesting.  She wasn’t totally head-blind.  As always, I was amazed at us Arms; none of the four Arms I had met, including the one who hadn’t lasted two weeks, were anything like any of the others.
    “I would love to,” Midgard said.  The two headed off together toward the cabana, not exactly arm in arm but within each other’s personal space.  As far as I knew, Midgard had never been alone with any other Arm before this.
    I decided to wait until later on the tag.
    “Crow Sinclair,” Keaton said.  She stood quietly, by the door back into the Inferno mansion.  She didn’t do whispers, but she had her ‘tolerant, dealing with Transforms’ persona on.  Sinclair backed up a step, wary.  “We’ve never met, but I’ve heard a great deal about you.  I’ve exchanged several testy messages with a Crow in Detroit named Watchmaker, and I was wondering if you would be interested in talking to me about him.”
    She had tried to buttonhole Gilgamesh on the subject and gotten nowhere.  Well, not ‘nowhere’, but she got nothing more than a growl of disgust and a comment about impossible Crows who were silly enough to think they had to point firearms at other Crows to get them to behave.
    “I would be glad to do that, ma’am,” Sinclair said.  He didn’t appear happy in the slightest, but we were all allies here.  I hoped he wasn’t too flustered to remember to get something out of my boss.  If he did remember, I would probably be stuck having to cough up the payment.  Again.
     
    Henry Zielinski: December 24, 1968
    To his amazement, Inferno had converted the basement television room into a formal meeting-space just for them, with abundant well-used chairs arranged in a loose semi-circle facing a small table.  The Inferno basement was a huge place, and if he had been in charge, he would have held this meeting in the fallout shelter, or perhaps Lori’s morgue laboratory.  Although recently cleaned, the television room still smelled like old pizza and spilled Pepsi, with ratty second-hand furniture and piles of overstuffed pillows in the corners; the place was primarily a hangout for the Inferno teens, often with the door locked for private activities.  The non-Arm attendees included Lori, the Crows Sky, Gilgamesh, Midgard, Sinclair, plus Connie Yerizarian and himself.
    He was extremely happy to get this invitation from Stacy, Arm Keaton.  Arms were his life, and as Haggerty was about to graduate and go off on her own, he valued the opportunity to study her.  She was tall, leggy, basketball-player muscular and Focus beautiful, nothing like any of the other Arms.  She was also intense and extremely intelligent, and faced the world with a social awkwardness common to many a young university student of similar intensity and intellect.
    Haggerty set up an easel to the left of the table and started her talk.  “As my graduation exercise, I was tasked to solve the mystery of an unknown variety of Major Transform who Ma’am Keaton metasensed in late ’64.  They are Focuses, but Focuses without households and household juice buffers.  There are at least five of them.  I find my discoveries to be disquieting at an instinctive level.”
    Hank’s