stant in All Other ThingsBook 2: Workpce SituationsPreviously on stant in All Other Things:David Saunders, misogynistic corporate executive and womanizer, oversees his boss, pharmaceutical magnate Jeremiah Steele, kill the son of a known rival. Against his better judgment, David decides to turn to the authorities aifies in court. A failed assassination attempt forces the woman assigo protect him, Agent Katherine Smith, to relocate to a safe house. There she vinces David that his best ce of survival is to disguise himself as a woman. David relutly does so and adopts the identity of dy Belmy. They flee to the Asklepios ic, a secluded medical facility that promises safety; on the way they shake off their pursuer, Agent Fosters. David and Katherine bond on the road trip, though he wonders at times where her loyalties really lie; and they share details of their past.

  At the ic David settles into the role of dy and several weeks pass. dy helps another patient, Harry Longman, an aging rock star David idolized as a teen, and soon after Agent K returns to relocate David through witness relocation into his promised new male life. Just as he prepares to abandon dy forever, Agent Fosters catches up with him. David reveals his past tains its own violes and the two fight. He kills Fosters but is critically injured.

  Prologue: Radial Lines“He’ll hate you,” Jonathon said.

  Katherine’s reply came a little too quickly. “I know.” She took a deep breath. “But I ot see any other way.”

  “That’s why I avoid thinking about the ethics of a situation. The ic hires professionals for that.” The doctor scratched at his beard. “It might all prove academiyway. Everything depends on Saunders simply surviving.”

  She felt the guilt of her failure keenly. “What are his ces?”

  “Based purely on the physical damage he’s soaked up? Not good. That gaping hole in his side and the blood loss are the worst of it, but coupled with the chemical burn across his chest, the broken limbs—” and he indicated eajury with a tap of a finger, “multiple cerations, head trauma, facial injuries? Then add in the plication of the cocktail s we were pumping him full of st three weeks? All those psychotropics, hypnotid painkillers plicate things.” The doctor shrugged. “Frankly, he should already be dead.

  “But he’s not—and that’s worth a lot. I don’t think I’ve ever had a stronger patient on my operating table. The man woke up while they were prepping him for the Tank—he nearly ripped out Richard’s throat. The ahetics barely worked on him.” Jonathon’s fiwitched with obvious excitement, and he drew them bad buried them deep in his pockets.

  “We’re not even sure the hypnotid everything else we fed him during his stay had much effect. His blood tained an absurdly high tration of naturally produced antitoxins.”

  “What are you saying? He is immus?”

  “Of course not,” Jonathon answered. “No one is. But he’s resistant. All drugs have one-in-a-thousand, huhousand, one-in-a-million unintended effects on rare individuals. David’s that rare individual. Call it strength of will, call it receptor iivity in the prefrontal cortex …”

  “Or stubbornness?”

  He shrugged. “Let’s just say his bloodwork’s fasating.” For a moment he was lost in thought, then tinued. “What matters is that this guy’s in peak physical dition and he had the good fortune of getting himself assassinated in a world-css medical facility. My people are among the top of their field. The bastard’s tough.”

  Katherine lips twitched in a hint of a smile.

  “My gut feeling is that if he survives the night he’ll be in the clear.”

  She nodded. “And then?”

  “Then things get iing.” His voice thrummed with barely suppressed anticipation. “We’ve already fired up the Tanks and ied the test subject. Meanwhile, we’ve given Sauhe preliminary iions, and have him in an induced a. We’ll keep him oil the data es back from the test run. Even quiest, the Juice might be enough to keep him alive. Once we’ve reached the required threshold of cellur diffusion, we’ll make adjustments. And then? It’s Saunders’ turn. He’ll go iank and if all goes well, he’ll emerge—well, he’ll be a ged man.”

  If he survives the night. If he survives the Tank. If he survives waking up—ged. If I don’t fail him again. If Steele doesn’t get him. If David doesn’t go insane. If… if.

  If David doesn’t again surprise them all with hitherto unrevealed talents for violend subterfuge.

  So many ways this could g. She felt weak and tired. Katherine winced in pain.

  “You’ve got to take it easy, Katherihere was a tremor to Jonathon’s voice, easily mistaken for annoyance—he was ed for her, in his way. “Fosters’ sidekick, that ent, she took a good k out of you, too. Your injuries arely negligible. You lost a lot of blood. You o rest.”

  “I will rest,” Agent Katherine Smith answered, “when dy is safe.” She took a deep breath, a painful one, and tried to to suppress the growing unease i of her stomabsp; She indicated for Jonathon to tinue. “And there remains too much to do, and little time in which to do it.”

  For the first time, a note of pleadiered her voice. It was a moment of unusual weakness from a woman he’d rarely if ever seen soften. She o know that her pn wasn’t ihat success could be salvaged from the ruins of her failure. “Is it possible? To make a dy out of him? Will this process of yours work?”

  A wide grin split the doctor’s fabsp; “Oh yes! Almost certainly.” He residered. “Most probably.” He shrugged. “Holy. I don’t know. In theory, yes. It won’t be easy but that’s what makes it so iing. The normal route of hormones and etic surgery simply won’t do, obviously. Not fast enough, and his injuries are too extensive. But in a way, it’s those very injuries that make him the perfect didate for our procedure.

  “We’ve already patched up the essentials, enough to keep him breathing while he’s uhe Tank will take care of the rest. It’ll regee the most extensive damages, and along the way—well, that’s where we’ll the girl in the man.

  “Normally, redistributing body fat would help create those curves you want, except he’s got a body fat pertage of something like eight pert—he’s all muscle. So, we’ll tackle that first. Destroy his muscle mass and drop his weight. Then we pump him up again ahe fat go where we want it. Before he’s done healing, we’ll do a little sculpting of the underlying boructure and some heavy facial work and he’ll have as angelic a face as any twenty-year old princess you’ve ever seen. He won’t look exactly like the real dy, but it'll be something adjat.”

  “And this is all reversible?” Agent K asked. “He has to believe he go back to being David.”

  The doctor shrugged. “More or less. At least, we think so. He’ll never look like he used to—but that retty much a given after getting his face smashed in by that assassin. But yes, we ge him back. Ohe Tank’s deing all that soft tissue, it should be possible to use more ventional methods to return him to manhood. He’ll probably be a bit wimpy-looking but definitely male. After all, that’s the other thing making this so hard: we’re not chopping off any important bits.”

  “Important bits?

  “You know, meat and potatoes? jewels? His fishing tackle.”

  Katherine winced. “Please, Jonathon.”

  He shrugged. “Frankly, it’d be a lot easier if we did. His body chemistry’s going to skew heavily female. Remember, this is all highly experimental. If Saunders survives, his body’s going to be female, essentially—not geically, but hormonally, physically, in the way genes are expressed and probably in other ways we don’t uand. It’s irely clear what effect this’ll have on him, but without intervention he’ll lose his twig and berries. Probably. Fortunately for him, we’re going to take great care to avoid chemically castrating him . . . it’ll be tricky finding the bance, but we’ll make sure his girl bits get soft while making it so his boy bits still get hard.”

  She hey spoke for a little longer before being informed that their third member arrived.

  “Please, call her in,” Katherine asked.

  The doctor nodded and tapped a button. A momehe door opened, and they were joined by a tall, statuesque woman.

  “Just so we’re clear,” Crystal Dawn said as she sat with them. “What you’re doing is morally reprehensible, ethically wrong and almost certainly doomed to failure.”

  She was a tall woman ie forties, tastefully if servatively dressed. A pair of drop pearl earrings and a retro-style perm, tightly coiled and streaked with grey, framed her fabsp; A thin nose offset a strong , and expressive eyes, minimally made-up behind thick-framed gsses, gred at the tposite her.

  She clicked glossy nails rhythmically against the table’s surface, clearly expressing her annoya the meeting. “If you hadn’t vinced me that this was the only way of keeping this man alive, Jon, I’d have you before the board of directors,” she said. “This David’s a ic, screwed-up asshole, but anyone who get through to Harry Longman deserves a sed ce.” She shook her head. “I ’t believe you’re even marginally involved in this insane plot.”

  “Yes, yes, Carl, your objes are well noted,” Scooter answered. A grin lurked behind the bushy mass of his beard.

  She pursed her lips in annoyance. “Listen,” she tinued. “You ’t just expect to throw a skirt on this guy and make him into the person you want. Yes, this David is… unusually adept at adapting to a role. He presented as female unusually well, sidering no obvious prior history of experimentation or ination towards that identity. But for him, it clearly remains an act. But that’s all it is, and all it’ll ever be. An act, and that’s insuffit for what you want.”

  Agent K leaned forward. “That’s why we need your help,” she said. “We o . . . vince him. ge his mind.” She thought of her own past, and how her experiences with Steven ged her. “We o break him and put him back together in a nee; same pos, different oute.”

  Crystal’s eyes narrowed. She turo Scooter. “Do you hear this? You’re kidding, right?” She turned back to Katherine. “He’s not a bloody Lego kit. You ’t take him apart and reassemble at leisure. What you’re talking about would destroy this man—probably still wouldn’t achieve what you want—and would most certainly leave him useless to you.”

  Agent K leaned forward. “Why?”

  The therapist leaned bad removed her gsses and pinched her aking a deep calming breath. “My enters with David were few and informal—he didn’t know I worked for Asklepios, after all—but I was immediately struck by his intense masity—and I use the term in the most stereotyped ossible. I’ve looked through the data you’ve given me and its simply reinforced this certainty. If there was a sliding scale fender, he’d be at the far end of it. If gender’s a loop, he’s at that point where it suddenly switches over. If anything, this is what drove him into his adopting the most stereotyped of feminine behaviours: extreme masity meets extreme femininity, and it’s precisely because he’s so fident in the one identity that he's able to venture over the threshold into the other.”

  Crystal drew a circle oable between them. “But what you want to do to him—what you’ve already begun to do—will directly challenge his core identity.” Her finger drew a radial line down to the tre of the circle and she tapped one glossy nail there. “You ’t just pound his psyche with drugs, carve his body into a nee and expect a new person to emerge. You’ll either kill him, or the ditioning will fail. You’ll be left with a very angry, and apparently very dangerous, and possibly deranged man.”

  The psychiatrist shuffled through some papers and withdrew several photos. They wereirely fttering to their subject, revealing dy at moments when the fa?ade had dropped: staring openly at a passing female patient, or sprawled in a most un-dy like fashion across the sofa in his room.

  “David’s sexuality is at the core of his being,” Crystal tinued, gesturing at the photos. “What we know about this man suggests he’s an ie womaniser. He draws great satisfa in pursuing the opposite sex. Chasing after women is a powerful motivator for him.”

  “Overpensating for something?” Jonathon asked.

  “No.” Crystal rolled her eyes. “But seeking validation? Maybe.”

  Katherine leaned a little closer. “What do you mean?”

  “This man has a history with women, correct?” Crystal indicated her folder. “Even a preliminary survey reveals weekend after weekend of one-night stands, reag back for over a decade. Dozens of women—hundred, eveed lohan a month; none for even half a year. He is—I believe—looking for something. Or someone.”

  “Someone?” Katherine gnced down at her own tablet, scrolling back through some notes. “Persephone?”

  Crystal nodded. “Persephone.”

  Jonathon looked betweewo women. “Who?”   “The name he spoke during surgery,” Katherine said.

  “And several times in his sleep,” Crystal said.

  “Who is she?”

  “Find out,” Crystal said, “And maybe you’ll find the real David Saunders, too.”

  Author's Notes:

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