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

mind, I’d like to see this animal control in action, Crow Sinclair,” Ann said.
    “Well, there’s a nasty dog next door,” Sky said.
    Sinclair shrugged.  “I suppose.”  The Crows, with Ann, trooped outside, leaving me alone with my thoughts, Lori, and a sea of normals and Transforms.
     
    “So, Carol, what’s bothering you?” Lori said, about a half hour later.  The room buzzed with the hum of normal chatter, but quieter now.  The party had wound down, and Inferno was drifting off to bed.
    Many things were bothering me, most none of Lori’s business.  One was, though.  “This Commander bullshit,” I said.  “I even had Keaton call me the Commander earlier tonight.”
    “And?”
    “The damned thing doesn’t make any sense,” I said.  Whenever I thought about ‘the Commander’, I wanted to fight someone.  Or torture someone.  Not urges I wanted cluttering my mind while in a Focus household.  “I mean, when did those Generals you used as examples ever heal .”  She had tried to explain it once, but I hadn’t bought it.  When I talked to Lori about ‘the Commander’, earlier, she had said it was a shared dream, or perhaps shared Dream, based on the exploits of Generals like Washington, Grant and Patton.  When we were mind scraping Focus Biggioni, though, I learned the real parameters of this dreamt-up nonsense: returning from the dead, healing, inspirational military leadership, overthrowing the old order, and refusing the honor of being ‘the Commander’.  I understood the last three, but the first two threw me.  “The more I think about this, the more the whole thing sounds like bullshit.”
    “You can’t nitpick a Dream, Carol.”
    “Sure I can.”
    Lori chuckled.  “Okay, yes, as an Arm you are fully capable of nitpicking anything and everything.”  I glowered.  “But in this case it’s a lost cause.  The healing and coming back from the dead are our additions, as Major Transforms.  It’s shorthand for saying ‘the Commander needs to be a Major Transform’.  Back when the only known Major Transforms were Crows and Focuses, this was the most confusing part of the Dream.  Crows can heal others and Focuses can’t; Focuses can ‘come back from the dead’, as you’ve seen, but Crows can’t.”
    “It’s like everyone but me is giving in to insanity,” I said.  “This can’t be real.”  Too magical, and I didn’t like magic.
    “Carol, don’t look at it as something that binds you, but instead as a springboard you can jump off of,” Lori said.  “What you will do will define what you are.  It can’t be otherwise.”
    “I thought you said you weren’t mystical.”
    “I’m not very mystical,” Lori said.  She did the cute coy blinking and winsome gaze trick.  Her charisma didn’t work this time.  “What’s the Inferno house motto?”
    “‘All that we are is the result of what we have thought’,” I quoted.  Buddhist nonsense.  Crazy Lori subject change.
    Lori waited me out.  It took me three whole minutes to come up with: “That can’t possibly be relevant.”  I suddenly felt like someone had chained me to a Cadillac and tossed me into the Atlantic.
    “Of course it can,” she said.  She took my head in her hands, tenderly.  “Human minds are malleable.  Transform minds are more malleable, Focus minds even more so, and Arms the most.  The higher the juice level, the faster it goes.”  I remembered Sky saying something similar on the long Philadelphia to Indianapolis car ride with Focus Caruthers.  I hadn’t believed him.  “You know this, because you’ve experienced it.”  Dammit!  She was right.  I wasn’t the same person I was before I transformed, or the same Arm I was before my CDC incarceration.
    Lori couldn’t help but use her charisma in a setting like this, but her charisma wasn’t aimed at making me change my mind, but helping me understand her argument.
    “You’re saying I’m being made into the