One in Ten Ch. 06

I put my palms on my thighs, my chin on my chest and started to meditate once more. This time he touched me before I was all the way under.

"Israel, you are not helping yourself with this display," Dr. Bryan was getting a little touchy.

"Ezra, what do you call a man who sneaks up on men who do not know him, who have their eyes closed and are either meditating or asleep?" I finally spoke.

"Aren't those some kind of perverts?" I regarded him with the closest imitation of the tone he was using on me.

"Do you see people who touch you as being perverted?" he resumed is babble. I put my palms on my thighs, my chin on my chest and resumed meditating.

On his fourth unwarranted touching, I got up and walked to the door. It wasn't a normal door - it opened out. I guessed that was so someone inside couldn't bar the authorities from entry. It opened which made sense since I was six inches taller and twenty-five years younger than their pet male shrink.

Of course, there were two agents at the door as well. I wasn't planning to sprint for the elevators or closest window anyway. They were across the hallway and unhappy to see me.

"Hi," I greeted them cheerfully as I let the door shut.

"Get back inside," the African-American agent stated firmly.

"Actually, there is this weird old guy in there who keeps touching me every time I close my eyes and try to go to sleep," I pleaded. "Can you please help me?" For a second, they were both confused by my request. They had this misconception they were protectors of the public welfare.

"He's giving you a psychiatric exam," the second agent, this one of East Asian extraction, told me.

"Really?" I doubt I was very convincing in my surprise. "I was raped repeatedly when I was sixteen, so why on God's Green Earth would any healthcare professional touch me without my consent or awareness?" Take that Bitch! There is simply no right answer for that question and everyone listening in on this exchange knew it.

Five doors down, the portal flew open and Capri came bolting out at a dead run with two agents hot on her ass, trying to re-write history.

"This farce is at an end!" Capri O'Hara screamed at the top of her lungs. Sadly, Capri was a small woman and both of her pursuers where superior specimens in all the currently relevant categories.

"Israel, as your legal counsel, I advise you to not answer any further questions without me being present," she got out before they muffled her. The damage was done. I was free - in a very, very limited legal context. This act hadn't played out yet, though, because the next two people out the door were Angel and Seneca.

In retrospect, had I ever actually seen Angel in a fight before she threatened me on Friday, I wouldn't have let her back in my condo, much less my bedroom. I had no fist-fighting experience, but I'd seen a few female fight movies and TV shows - things like the Power Rangers and Black Widow: Agent of SHIELD. I was totally unprepared for the reality of this kind of violence.

Angel drove her fist into the lower back of the rightmost agent holding Capri. That woman screamed, and I mean screamed, in pain before crumpling into a whimpering ball. The agent on the left was really quick. She tried to defend herself and deflected the first blow - later I was told that was Angel's feint, but Angel connected with her chin before the woman could bring the other hand up protectively.

Angel jacked her off the ground. I was stunned the agent was still conscious. Hell's Bells, I was stunned her head was still attached. The federal agent had less than a second to rejoice in that fact before Angel's other fist propelled her over Capri and down in a heap in front of my lawyer. Seneca had no fears about her partner's combat expertise.

She had spun around to the door that seemed to hold everybody, held up her hand, put her other hand on her sidearm and was loudly begging everyone to calm down. Dimples' crowd kept pouring out of the room, their hands falling to their weapons as well. Shelia joined the mob followed by Dimples herself.

The agents beside me were in a quandary. I was a witness, not a suspect, but I wasn't someone they trusted to remain sane. I had to admire their teamwork even though it was working against me. The East Asian put her forearm to my neck and pushed me hard against the wall next to the door. The African-American put her hand on her taser and took up a defensive posture.

The only noise was the first agent's whimpers. Capri was the only one moving, shrugging off the kinks she'd earned from the grapple and stooping beside the second, unconscious, agent. Capri drew forth that woman's taser.

"Put it down," the darker skinned agent warned.

"Put it down or we will put you down, Ms. O'Hara," Dimples spoke in the sweetest voice. I wondered if she was a Care Bear in a previous life. Most likely 'Let the Right One in' Care Bear.

"Stop with the empty threats, you pack of weasels," Capri snapped. "Now listen the fuck up."

"One of three things is going to happen," Capri started.

"I said 'put it down'," the African-American agent stated firmly.

"You are going to release my client so that we can talk, I'm going to taser you and then the cunt who is assaulting my client, or you are going to taser me," Capri finished.

"Wish granted," the agent snarled.

"You do realize that once she drops I have a clear shot at you, right?" Angel notified her.

"You don't have your taser drawn," the African-American agent stated.

"No," Angel extended her pistol past Capri. "I have my sidearm."

"Now, as I was saying, you have three options and you lose big time in the last two," Capri grinned like a vindictive leprechaun.

"She won't shoot," Dimples referred to Angel. "The odds of Mr. Jensen being caught in the cross-fire are very high."

"Irrelevant," Capri snorted. "Because I'm about to shoot you," she started raising her taser.

"Last chance, Lady," the agent warned.

"Do you want to know why you are fucked?" Capri scoffed. "See these are all government issued weapons and every time one is discharged you have to write an incident report."

"That isn't your taser. You stole it," the agent pointed out. I saw Shelia Montanyard flinch minutely.

"Hey, FedLawBitch," Capri snorted (she was addressing Shelia, I would learn later). "Just because my law school offered night classes doesn't mean I'm an idiot. Bronson v. Michigan."

Only two people understood that - Shelia and Capri.

"Bronson v. Michigan doesn't apply," Shelia bluffed.

"The Supreme Court disagrees. It has been applied two times in the past seven years and since this is a government building, the dumb bitch on the ground is a government law enforcement agent, and since Mr. Jensen is a person of interest to the court..."

"Put your weapons down," Shelia conceded.

"What?" the African-American agent blanched.

"Holster your weapon," Dimples spoke again. "While Ms. O'Hara is within her rights to shoot you, you are not within your rights to shoot her. Do you want to get tasered?"

"Oh, and the cops are covered by Bronson as well," Capri waved her hand over her shoulder. "I am an officer of the court and your two brigands were assaulting me and keeping me from my legal duties. Go after them and I'll nipple twist you so hard, Ms. Montanyard, your screams will make your law school professors fall over dead in shock."

"Noted," Shelia nodded. She wasn't giving up so much as repositioning for the next offensive. Before my time there was a military term tossed around called 'Shock and Awe'. From the look on the faces of Dimples and Shelia, they had thought they were the French army invading Monaco only to discover they had invaded Switzerland by mistake.

They thought they'd spend half a day rounding up the local constabulary then have dinner on the beach - in this case, the Federation Capital. Oh no, they could still see victory on the horizon but beyond all predictions, they were really going to have to work for it. Right then, the door to my interrogation room opened and the doctor looked out.

"Is everything fine?" he inquired.

"Oh, Dr. Bryan, I'm informing every institution on the planet that pretends to know anything about medicine and reporting your gross negligence. When I'm done with you, even the WHO won't use you to clean their toilets," Carpi glared.

"What did I do?" he looked around, shocked.

"You touched a post-recovery rape patient without their consent - repeatedly, even after he was clearly uncomfortable with it," Capri snapped.

"He is POST-recovery," the man stated.

"Were you incapable of reading his file dating from yesterday morning in which the police report my client having been beaten black and blue by unnamed assailants? He didn't press charges, but it is still an open investigation. The GED frowns on people running around and beating up men, so there actually is a use for those douches after all," Capri snarled.

Dr. Bryan had this wide-eyed, stunned expression. Eventually his gaze settled on Shelia and Dimples.

"He's not what you said he'd be," the man blathered. "His profile is all wrong. The man is totally mad, I tell you. Give me more time and I can prove it."

"Doc," I said calmly. "I suggest you exit this building as soon as possible and hurry home before they cancel your travel voucher."

"Mr. Jensen," he turned on me desperately. "You are psychologically very ill and you need professional help."

I just smiled. He was right. We both knew he was right, but I had trapped him before he trapped me. A week ago, I would have snapped like a branch in a tornado. The women around me, for good and ill, had scraped away all the scabs and scar tissue that I'd let build up over the years until all was left was the raw open wounds.

My blood was on fire and my mind a hurricane of thoughts, wants and desires. I wasn't a man grown to adulthood by continual experience. I was shards of all of those stages of my life, jumbled together into some slipshod construct that staggered forth from encounter to encounter. Dr. Bryan had lost because I could be a seventeen year old survivor one second and the man lying on the floor, laughing while Flame beat on me the next.

Had they given Dr. Bryan time to work on me, develop his skills to my condition, he would have cracked me in a few days - a week at the most. He was a psychiatrist, and most likely a good one to be working with the FBI, and I was, in fact, insane. This was my victory. I had forced Dimples to expend a weapon for no gain. I wasn't sure Angel would get it.

Two hours later found us in a much larger room, laid out in a comfortably cluttered manner. It was terrain psychology all over again. Was I to believe a federal agency as big as this didn't have clean conference rooms for us to use? As it was, Capri and I were on one side of the table. Angel and Seneca were on the edge of the table closest to the main door.

That left Dimples and company to spread out over the other half of the room. Their body language was laid back and unaggressive, they had bought this Indian-Italian fusion feast and they were bantering back in a non-gender specific manner.

"What does this tell you?" Capri turned to me as she finished a forkful of garlic pasta.

"Special Agent in Charge Enola Treyvon's (Dimples actual name) team are man-hunters," I said as I gulped down my food. By that I meant people who hunt males professionally. If you thought about it, male criminals had to be rare. We all had bracelets that any woman could ask to see on demand, thus in network, so tracing us wasn't all that hard.

Also, if we broke the law, we had to take drugs which made committing crime inconvenient. If we were violent, they had drugs for that too. A man having an illegal firearm was bad, but being a woman who gave a man a gun was much worse. Since the MRA hadn't been active in over a decade, it didn't make sense that the Federation's chief law enforcement agency would have tons of these kinds of specialists floating around.

I was about to say something else when 'nothing' caught my attention. A man has to watch where he is, how he stands, what he says, who is listening and how the women around him are acting. It is Male Survival 101. The savannah looked safe but the bushes held deep shadows.

"They were tipped off to be here by Detective Angel Kristi," I nodded to Capri.

"You do realize that sticking your dick in a garbage disposal is a crime, right?" Capri laughed.

Angel flinched. She was guilty after all. Seneca was glaring hate Capri's way. The feds were being very polite about the whole thing. I turned on Capri, mouth agape.

"Oh my fucking God!" I exclaimed. "Let me check something out." I stood up.

"I advise you to go with caution," Capri warned me. I walked around the far side of the table (away from Angel and Seneca), over to the Latina who had snared me earlier. She was sitting, but I was hardly intimidating her. I knelt before her which finally got some sort of reaction from the federal agents. They were attentive. The Latina was keeping her eyes level with mine.

"Angel," I looked toward my lover, "she uses the same shampoo as you." You see, I had no doubt that this agent had memorized every visual aspect me myself, Capri, Seneca and Angel...but scent? For a second, she turned her head to look at Angel. I backed away then stood up. "Oh sweet Lord, I wish I wasn't right so damn much. Janice Bourne," I gulped.

See, the shampoo thing had been a total bluff.

Janice Bourne was the protagonist in a series of spy novels where the male characters were somewhat interesting for a change. In one, a guy actually kills a female assassin with pruning shears. That wasn't the relevant issue.

"They've got Cochlear implants," I clarified.

The technology was hardly new, but it was a bit intensive and expensive so only people like the Secret Service's Executive Protection Detail and elite security agencies used it. Oddly appropriate, Cochlear implants and sub vocalization were the calling card of an evil female organization in the Borne stories.

"Wait, you mean they can talk without us hearing them?" Capri gasped.

"Bravo," Dimples applauded in a mocking way. She pushed off the glass wall she'd been leaning against.

"You are an intelligent, gifted individual," Enola nodded to me. She didn't call me an 'intelligent man' because that was an oxymoron in her culture. 'Gifted' meant my cock was over six inches long.

"How about I not lie to you because you eat people like me for breakfast and I not help you because you are opposed to every principle and virtue I hold dear?" I suggested.

"Do you want to discuss the legality of discussing my client's case while he's in the fucking room and withholding that information?" Capri snarled as she stood. Capri lit into Dimples, who treated Capri like she was noisy but irrelevant. My phone rang. It was 'MW'.

*Bravo performance, Israel. We speculate your actions will help our cause greatly. If your needs are immediate, we will know what to look for. Otherwise, we will keep in touch.*

I typed, *Fine* then hit 'Send' The countdown was on. It was not lost on me that the MW used Bravo or that in fifteen seconds this message would vanish into the ether of the internet.

"What did you just do?" Dimples addressed me intensely. I was boned. Outside of the fact that she could kick my ass and/or imprison me, she also was most likely smarter than me.

"Who me?" I squeaked. It was a horrible choice of evasions. I was guilty as hell and everyone knew it.

"Give me the phone," she beckoned urgently. I was the only one not standing all of a sudden. I pushed against the desk so that my chair tumbled backward.

The only ones not stampeding my way were Angel and Seneca - Capri was in the process of being trampled, so I rolled in the other direction. Halfway through the roll, I slid my phone under the table. By some miracle, no one saw that, so I was the recipient of the dog pile. I had to lie still and let them search me. The patchwork quilt of my psyche had other plans.

I exploded. I screamed, cried out, lashed out and was basically consumed by a sorority party flashback. Normal restraining techniques didn't work. I thrashed around so hard that I dislocated my left shoulder, tried to crack my head open on the carpeted floor and did some unhappy things to my right knee.

I was saved by one of Dimples' people. She was a criminal psychologist and figured out what was happening to me. Dimples ran a tight crew. They had me unrestrained and let me curled into a fetal ball inside a minute, or so Angel told me. As I started to match mental commands to movements I heard an unknown feminine voice telling others to 'give him space.'

My mind had been shielding me from the damage I'd received during the wrestling match so when I tried to push up, my left arm instantly gave way and I cried out in pain. There were a flurry of voices.

"What's wrong?"

"He's dislocated his shoulder. I can fix that."

"He needs to see a doctor."

"I can help."

"Don't crowd in, damn it."

"Israel should be taken to an actual doctor, who doesn't work for you." That was Capri.

"He's not going anywhere," Dimples stated matter-of-factly.

"Fine," one of the feds said, "Israel, I'm going to pop your shoulder back to where it should be. This will hurt." At that point I realized I had been screaming the entire time.

She was right - it hurt like hell when she did it but afterwards my shoulders shooting pain subsided to a dull ache.

"He needs to go to a hospital," Capri insisted.

"We have enough to commit him right now," Dimples replied dismissively.

"Do you enjoy vomiting nonsense continually, or do you save it for your demented attempts at romancing handsome young men?" Capri sneered.

"Your case is long on vitriol, but short on substance," Dimples came back.

"You think so, SAC of 'no one gives a crap'?" Capri laughed harshly.

"You attacked my client over a phone - that's going to go over spectacularly. He wasn't trying to evade, or fight back in any manner," she continued. "Yet you beat the crap out of him and he didn't even have the phone on him. It was under the table."

"He failed to obey a lawful order," Dimples sounded bored. "That's resisting."

"He had eight armed women coming at him. He was afraid. Hell, I would have been afraid," Capri countered.

"His resistance meant we were unable to retrieve any relevant data from his mobile device," Dimples stated.

"What did you find out?" Capri grinned.

"We have his keystrokes but not the text he was responding to. There was no evidence he even had a call three minutes ago which implies secretive communications," Dimples said. "That's espionage."

"You are going to take 'nothing' to court? Your wet dreams about what might have been in that text have no legal significance, Agent Treyvon," Capri smirked. "He has confirmed he is talking to the 'Vanishers' and that he wants to go with them, but that's not illegal. He has not stated a desire to avoid the Gender Inequality Act in any way."

"No man who has vanished has complied with the GIA," Dimples challenged.

"How is he to know that?" Capri bit back. "That information is not readily available."

"He can't be bright and sane when it is convenient for you then damaged and delicate the next when it is suddenly inconvenient," Dimples explained.

"Review your mental health statutes," Capri glared. "Israel remains a functioning member of society in that he holds, or held, a job, he maintains a dwelling and he is not a threat to himself or others. Being annoyingly inconsistent isn't his problem, or the courts problem. It is your problem. He is not required to help you do your jobs."

"We can compel testimony," another FBI agent informed us.

"That's nice, Nancy Drew," Capri turned on her. "You are going to both declare the nature of the 'Vanisher' criminal conspiracy in a manner I can review, and grant my client immunity?"