No, his mind is not for rent

  To any gover

  Always hopeful, yet distent

  He knows ges aren't perma

  But ge is

  - "Tom Sawyer", Rush (1981)

  ***

  "Doctor Bishop, please head to Director Luna's office at the earliest venience," said the tannoy system overhead.

  Craig, who at that moment was busy gently extrag a cucumber from a curious teenager's bum, cursed the fact that he had just said to himself mere moments before, that this m couldn't get any worse.

  ***

  "Bishop, you're needed," said Luna. "Grab a spare set of scrubs and..."

  Luna stopped suddenly and kled her nose.

  "Yeah, I know. MERFO" said Craig. "I did wash up before ing here, but it... lingers."

  "Merfo?"

  "Manual extra of a rectal fn object," said Craig. "Cucumbers are ba season."

  "Dear lord. Anyack a ge of clothes, a doctor's bag, and a boiler suit. The car leaves as soon as you're ready. You're making a house call."

  ***

  Sure enough, wheime came, a bck SUV came around, and Craig was directed into the passenger seat, where he was handed a cellur phone as soon as he was buckled. A woman's voice he had never heard -- certainly posh, certainly English, immediately started with instrus.

  "Bishop. You are being taken to a safehouse near Cardiff Uy. The patient is a male, age een, and a prisoner. He has a head wound. Treat the head wound. We have field medics who believe he is stable, but you are to check him for cussions, and make a determination if an administration of ahesia would present a dao his life. Make sure he's stable and stitched up. And needless to say, as far as the NHS or Her Majesty's Gover is ed, this never happened. Do you copy?"

  "I copy," he said. "Let me guess, a future guest of the hall? Got a little rowdy, fought back?"

  "No, Bishop. I will not let you guess. You have your orders. ply or die."

  The posh woman immediately hung up.

  Craig found himself missing the good ol' days of "Say you uand and agree."

  ***

  Eventually, they were taken to the safehouse, which was an end-cap on a row of terraced houses. It all looked normal enough, until he got inside, where the uniforms of Peville Security Services were a dead giveaway. Immediately, one of the guards pointed Craig upstairs, to the first bedroom on the left.

  Sure enough, there was a boy in sportswear and untied white trainers, maybe een or twenty, if Craig had to guess. He was holding a bloody washcloth up to his head with his left hand. Notably because the right hand was handcuffed to the post on the bed.

  "So, I take it you're the patient."

  "Fuck off!" the boy said.

  "Yeah, well, I wish I could, but the guys with the guns don't particurly like me either," said Craig. "I'm just as much a prisoner as you are. I get a look at that wound?"

  "Are you some sort of doctor?"

  "Some sort. Usually a different sort but today I'm a mob doctor, it seems. I'm Doctor Bishop. Real doctor and everything. See?"

  Craig took out his hospital ID card.

  "Look, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm pretty sure the guard over there with the pistol will shoot me if I do."

  Slowly, the boy removed the washcloth from the head wound. It was a nasty cut, and bled like the dis, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. Head wounds often do, even the non-serious ones.

  "Okay. Follow my finger with your eyes."

  The boy did so without aation.

  "And take a look at this light."

  The boy's eyes dited normally.

  "What's your name?" Craig asked.

  "Hey!" said one of the Peville Guards, hand ot of his gun. "You don't o fraterh the prisoner, you just o assess and treat him."

  "That's what I am doing," growled Craig. "I'm cheg for a cussion. If he doesn't remember his 's a pretty big fug clue he's got a cussion."

  "Reese. Reese Becker," said the boy.

  "What happeo you?" probed Craig.

  "You don't o know that," said the guard.

  "A name is long-term memory. I want to know about short term memory aion. Plus, how he got the bump on the head is probably vital information. Did he trip and fall? What did he hit? How hard did he hit it?"

  "There was this girl, she tried to stick me with something, but I dodged out of the way and started running. I wasn't looking where I was going, tripped over my ces, and hit a post box on the way down. Then they flipped me over, dragged me into a van and took me here."

  Craig nodded.

  "Well, the good news, you don't have a cussion. So it's safe for you to y down. And I'm going to treat that head wound, it's gonna need some stitches."

  Craig turo the guard. "Uncuff his arm so he y down?"

  The guard was incredulous.

  "He's not going anywhere. He's got a head wound, he's outnumbered and you have guns."

  Now the guard was sneering, as he tossed Craig the handcuff keys. "Alright. But if he decides to run, I'm going to shoot you first."

  "Well, that hardly seems fair. Not unless you promise to shoot Reese first if I decide to run," Craig said, unlog Reese.

  Reese froze up, looking terrified.

  "Gallows humour," Craig expined. "But uh, yeah, seriously, don't run, he will shoot me first, then yht, I'm going to give you a local ahetid--"

  "You said he doesn't have a cussion?" said the guard.

  Craig rolled his eyes. This guard was some sort of sadistic fuck who got off on people around.

  "He doesn't have a cussion, no."

  "Then do a general ahetic."

  Reese looked at the guard, then back at Craig with pani his eyes.

  "No, no," he said, fawning. "Local's fine. I'm fih a local."

  Craig sighed, and reached for a longer needle, filling it with sedative. "Sorry, kiddo. The good news is that by the time you wake up, you're head's going to be all stitched up. Wish I could tell you more, but if I did, they'd kill me."

  "I don't want to die," said the kid.

  "Then don't," said Craig. "Live. Survive. Do whatever it takes. One word of advice, though."

  Reese looked up at Craig.

  "Don't hurt the girls. You do, and you're fucked. Trust me on this."

  "What girls?" said Reese, but Craig was already in the process of iing the sedative into Reese's shoulder.

  True to his word, Craig was able to , stitch, and bahe wound. With luck, there wouldn't even be any scarring.

  And that was it. Craig was escorted back to Idris, Reese got sent off, presumably to Dorley. Craig hoped the kid made it through the program more or less intact. Probably less.

  And then hoped that the kid would remember him, and then they'd go and burn down the fug pce together.

  But he khat was never going to happen. A man dream, though. A man dream.

  ***

  "And when you knew what was going to happen to that boy and had to send him off with the guards anyway, how did that make you feel?" asked Casey Whitaker, the psychologist that Luna assigo him.

  Naturally enough, Ms. Whitaker was in on the spiracy. Haed, in fact. And she, like Luna, had a handy-dandy-little app that let her access the Doki-Doki-Deathtrap. ("Only if she had reason to feel physically threatened," she expined.)

  "How did that make me feel?" he replied back. "Isn't that a little cliché?"

  "So is the phrase 'stick out your tongue and say aah', Craig. Or more accurately, it's standard."

  "I don't know what they told you about me, but with my psychological problems, standard isn't going to cut it," Craig harumphed.

  "They told me everything. They told me about your father, emotionally abusive -- occasionally physically so -- when he wasn't beiionally distant. Told me about your childhood, your undergraduate years, your ck ard for ws or morality. They told me what happeo you at Dorley, and what you did, or tried to do, there. They told me about how you betrayed Ms. Rosamond and how you used Ms. Green," she said.

  A lesser-talented psychologist wouldn't have caught it. Mentioning Monid Pippa caused Craig to reasciously. Even he didn't realize that his body nguage betrayed him as his hand tightened around the armrest of the chair.

  "They also told me you were a psychopath." she tinued.

  "No shit," he replied.

  "Actually, I think they may have been wrong about that," said the psychologist. "You're a real piece-of-work, certainly, but psychopaths have hy or remorse."

  "Which I don't," he replied.

  "I think you think you don't," said Whitaker. "I'm starting to see some cracks in the facade, though."

  Craig sneered. "That's just me, showing you what you want to see. It's all an act. A story I've gotten so good at telling that people believe it, you uand."

  "A story you've gotten so good at telling you believe it, perhaps. Or maybe you are what I've been briefed on. A maniputive psychopath who has an almost supernatural level of gaining and theraying someorust. A true blight on society, who, if left unchecked, could have bee the Jack the Ripper or Zodiac killer. Deterred only by the shortest of leashes. pletely irredeemable," she said, shrugging.

  "Yeah," he said. "That's me. I don't even know why I'm here."

  "You're here because if you don't attend these mandatory sessions, Luna will kill you, painfully and slowly. I'm here because Luna believes that with guidance, you be useful. You already have been, in small ways."

  "I sent a boy to be imprisoortured, and mutited. So useful, that."

  "You bme yourself for what you had no trol over. You know they would have shot you on the spot if you hadn't plied," she said.

  "Well, maybe not on the spot," replied Craig. "They probably would have dragged me into another room and used a silencer, so as not to traumatize the kid any more than he'd already been traumatized. Dorley's weird that way. They use trauma as a scalpel, not a hatchet."

  "Point stands. That boy's fate was already sealed. You could do no more than you did. So, the question stands. How. Did that make. You feel?" she said, a little exasperated.

  "Shitty."

  "Shitty?"

  "Shitty. Like shit. The properties of shit. What do you wao say? That I empathized with him? That I thought about what I went through, and what he's going to gh, and that I got all bleedi gushy for him? No, of course I didn't. If I actually gave a flying fuck about him, I could have found a way he could have gotten out of it. I could have tackled the guard, Reese could have grabbed the gun, and he had a good ce of shooting his way out of there. I'd be toast, of course. No way Luna would let me live after that. But I could have saved him. I didn't. I'm a psychopath. Always out for Number One. I left that kid to his fate because it's what I do. What I've always done. Keep my cards close to my chest until it's time to reveal the winning hand."

  "That's a pretty specific specution of what you could have done for someone who cims they simply don't care what happens to other people," she said, calmly.

  "Oh, fuck you."

  " I tell you something, Craig? As a general rule, meo bottle up their emotions more than women," said Whitaker.

  Craig held up a fio stop her.

  "Doctor Whitaker, do you really, really want to go down the 'mehis and womehat' route with me? That's a really fug sore subject, and I've beeured, a lot, on the differeween the sexes."

  "I'm not going down that route. I was about to say that you go far beyond that. You keeping your cards close to your chest? Always looking out for Number One? You think that's something innate. Maybe something io you, maybe something io yender. A quirk of your brairy. I don't think so. I think it's a learned behavior. A behavior you learned because you to survive your father."

  "Even if you're right, it's who I am now," said Craig.

  "But if I am right, then it doesn't always have to define you," said the psychologist. "If it's not innate -- if it's enviroal and not intrinsic? You ge. If you want."

  "Yeah, that's the rub. I don't want," said Craig.

  Whitaker reached into a nearby tote bag, and brought out a dog's chew toy, tossing it t.

  "What the hell is this?" said Craig.

  "Don't worry about that. Do me a favor. Hold that in your dominant hand. Like this." She illustrated holding it like an egg.

  Craig did so.

  "Okay, but I don't see--"

  "Pippa Green," said Whitaker, cutting Craig off.

  The dog toy gave off an incriminating squeak.

  ***

  "Yeah, Luna," said Craig in a debriefing session. "I've residered. Is 'horrible, slow and agonizing' still oable?"

  "Sorry. That offer expired st week," said Luna. "You're stuck with us now."

  "Well, nuts."

  "And that was one of the easy jobs," said Luna.

  ***

  "You looked upset ever since you came back from the 'house call,'" said Mary Devon, when Craig sat down in the teen for an evening meal, "Strictly speaking, I'm not supposed to be telling you this, but the kid's head wound healed up no problem."

  Craig poked idly at his cottage pie.

  "Yeah, that's not really what was eating me."

  "Then what is?"

  "Well, pid choose. Stressful day job. Stressful night job. Gun to my head. Therapist thinks I be fixed. Would have told her someo her to it," Craig said.

  "You're seeing a therapist? One of us, I take it?"

  "Yeah. Dr. Kgested it, Luna made it mandatory. And I hate it. But again. Mandatory."

  "Maybe it'll help you cope. You're right. You're under an enormous amount of stress. Might not be a bad idea, talking with someone."

  Craig disgustedly stabbed the pstic fork into the cottage pie.

  "What is screwing me up is knowing what they'll do to that kid," said Craig.

  Mary shrugged. "If it makes you feel better, I've been briefed on what they do. It doesn't seem that bad. Maybe he'll like it."

  "Of course he'll like it. That's what worries me. They're going to crack that boy's psyche open and love bomb him till he... It's... you ever see 'A Clockwork e?'"

  "I have," said Mary. "Kubrick, right?"

  "The whole point of that movie is... you 't be good if you have no choice to be bad. If your only option is to be moral, then it has . And they're going to take that choice away from him. Or they'll try to, he'll wash out like me, and he'll end up worse off, like me. Don't know what they'll make him do with his pacemaker."

  "Probably the first thing would be to learn to tie his shoes properly," said Mary. "But as you said, you did wash out. You took the choice to be bad. You did have that choice. Granted, now that you took the choice to fuck around, you're in the find out stage."

  "It took everything I had to fight it," said Craig. "Everything. It was just... so here. So often, I was thinking to myself: just give in, it'll be so easy, and you'll have friends and a future and a life with purpose and meaning. I get the sense I'm a bit stronger willed than the Becker kid. Probably stronger willed than most people selected by the programme. I didn't just wash out, Mary, I fought tooth and nail to wash out, which it really es down to it."

  "Well, that seems a bit stupid. And you don't seem like a stupid guy. So why'd you do it?"

  "Because the price I'd have to pay to be a Dorley girl was too high," said Craig.

  "Your masity?"

  "My mind. My mind, it's the only thing that matters. My thoughts are my ownmost, as Heidigger would put it. My body has been taken from me, mutited beyond self-repair, ed and cmped down and leashed to the whims of a psychopath and the sociopathic anization she serves. But my mind will be mine. Always mine. I'm not giving that up to anyone, ever, for any reason."

  "Not even for happiness?" she asked.

  "It wouldn't be my happiness. It'd be Dorley's happiness livi-free in my mind. And my mind is not for rent." he replied.

  ***

  That night, the sadistic guard from Reese Becker's intake made sure that no one was following him, or looking around. He headed into his car, a bck Jaguar which he was quite proud of, and took out an old cellphone, dialing a number. It rang, and then someone picked up.

  "Ah, was w when you'd call," said an old woman's voi the other end.

  "We may have a problem," said the guard.

  "What kind of a problem?"

  "We were brought in as backup for a rendition of one of the intake. Becker. Just in case things went sideways. Well, they went sideways, and while we caught the kid, he caught a nasty cut on his head. Secured him and brought him to a safehouse."

  "And?" said the old woman. "That doesn't seem like a problem to me."

  "It's what happened after. I thought we were just going to treat him with a field medic, but the higher ups insisted ing in a doctor. Doctor Bishop. And this doctor... he knows things," said the guard.

  "What kind of things?" asked the old woman.

  "Dorley things. Told the kid not to fuck with the girls, expressed regret about what was going to happen. Clearly he knows exactly what goes on at Dorley. It was alse. He also called himself 'as much as a prisoner' as the kid."

  "That... does make things difficult. A doctor, you say? Not just a medic or a nurse practitioner, but a full doctor?"

  "Looked young, but yeah, full doctor. W for Dorley. Or at least somewhere in the Lambert umbrel."

  "It's good that you called me, then," said the old woman. "ns, but those pns rely on them not having a medical professional they tap on short notice. We had no idea about this Dr. Bishop. I'm worried we'll lose an opportunity in this year or the , that is, if we don't do something about him."

  "You wao clip him?"

  "No. Not yet. But as much as you , keep an eye on him."

  "Will do."

  "Thank you for cheg in. This is important ihis is why you're my favorite, Jake."

  "Thank you, Ms. Turner."

  "Please. Call me Karen."