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shivered in sudden cold, afraid of myself.
    “They didn’t tell you?  Women suffering from Armenigar’s Syndrome need to buy into their treatment as soon as possible, before irrevocable problems begin,” Dr. Zielinski said.
    “What’s,” sniffle, “Armenigar’s,” sniffle, “Syndrome?” I asked.  “You,” sniffle, “said,” sniff, “Arm.”
    “Sorry,” Dr. Zielinski said.  “There are a small number of one of a kind transformations we call Sports.  Armenigar was the first failed Focus found by the medical community.  After Armenigar broke free from her Canadian doctors and juice-sucked four tagged Transforms, the media christened her an Arm, from her name and because of her strength.  A couple years later, Mary Chesterson repeated the exact same form of failed Focus transformation and became the second Arm.  She later died, but if there have been two, it’s not a Sport but a category of Transform, what we call an Armenigar Syndrome Focus.  Her autopsy showed she indeed had a metacampus.”
    “Oh.” Sniffle.  ‘Juice-sucked’, he said, as if it was something that happened every day.  All Transforms needed juice to survive.  Normal women Transforms produced juice, but I already knew I wasn’t a normal woman Transform.  I did know the metacampus was the little organ a Focus grew in her brain, which allowed her to magically keep the Transforms in her household alive, but I hadn’t known that Arms had one.
    The good doctor wasn’t even the least bit rattled by my display.  He continued as if I hadn’t interrupted.  “You’re always going to be a little bit hungry.  I’m not going to authorize as much food as you’ll want, but you’ll be eating a lot more than you have been.  For now, I’m going to give the order for six thousand calories a day, and we’ll see how that works out.”
    “Six thousand? ” I asked.  Calories I knew about.
    “Six thousand,” he said.  “You’re going to want more than that, perhaps much more.  You won’t be able to eat as much as you want, but there’s no reason for you to be totally miserable with hunger, either.  You’ll have to forgive the staff, here.  Few people know anything at all about major transformations, and even fewer people know anything about Armenigar’s Syndrome.”
    “Thank you,” I said.  I rubbed at my wrists again.  They still hurt from the long night in shackles. 
    “I’ll talk to the Detention Center staff and see if I can convince them to back off.  Arms have a bad reputation.  Your escape attempt frightened everyone and they over-reacted.  I’ve worked with Arms before and they’re not all mindless killers.  I should be able to talk the staff down.”
    “Are you going to be staying here?  Are you going to be the doctor caring for me?” I asked.  I took another drink from the empty bottle.  I thought I saw a few drops at the bottom.
    “Yes, I’ll be in charge of your case.  For the moment, you’re going to be confined here.  Agent Bates and I will stay and help you as long as we can.”
    “So what happens now?  What happens to me?”
    He smiled at me.  “First you eat breakfast.  I’m going to look through your chart in more detail and start arranging your care.  I’m also going to start you on an exercise program, as our experience shows that an Arm will be much healthier if she gets a lot of exercise.  There will be some folks coming through to run tests on you.  You can have visitors occasionally and we can get you magazines, books and other things.”
    That sounded permanent.  Fatally permanent.
    “How long do I have to stay here?  Will I be tried as a criminal?” I asked.
    “Agent Bates can answer the latter question better than I can,” Dr. Zielinski said, with a smile.  “In regard to your other question, well, there haven’t been enough Arm transformations to establish good statistics for how they progress.  We’ll just have to take things as they come and hope