The Collective Protocol

by Brian Parker

  “I can feel that you’re afraid of me now too. I don’t want that between us.”

  He adopted a hurt look and replied, “I’m frightened of your powers, girl. But I’m not frightened of you. There’s a difference. When I found you in the snow beside that road outside of Ottawa I knew that you were special. That’s why Eileen and I—God rest her soul—decided to take you into our home instead of turning you back over to the American authorities. I love you like my own daughter and I’ll do everything I can to see you succeed.”

  She turned towards him and smiled. “Thank you, Gavin. You don’t know how much that means to me.”

  “Take some rest. Recharge your batteries. We’ll get the amplifiers in position, do some routine maintenance on the Neuroactuator and in a few days, we’ll come back together to begin Phase Five.”

  “Okay. Can I see you again before we start back up?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “I’ve got to fly back to the capital tonight. Will you be alright?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’m going to go work out and take a long bath. Then Lillian is taking me to dinner at Luigi’s Italian Restaurant tonight.”

  “I’m glad that you finally have someone, dear. Take care of yourself.”

  Gavin hugged her and picked up his hat on the way out the door. She watched him go and then changed into her workout clothes. The building’s gym was located one floor below her apartment, but first she wanted to make a stop on the 12th floor before she came back upstairs to work out.

  After the construction on the building was complete she’d made some modifications to the floor plan. She’d decided early on that she wanted to have a place to keep visitors, so she brought in a crew to construct jail-quality holding cells on the empty 12th floor. Right now she only had one visitor, but she planned to correct that soon.

  She chose to jog down the stairs from her 24th floor apartment instead of using the elevator. The stairs would be a warm up for her workout later on. She wondered briefly how her guest was doing and resisted the urge to reach out to invade her mind; she’d see her soon enough.

  Paige had always been an impatient person. Once her powers began to manifest themselves as a teenager, her impatience became less manageable. Gavin and Eileen helped her through those awkward and troublesome teen years, but it was touch and go for a while. Boys learned early on that she shouldn’t be messed with and the girls simply avoided her. Even though she’d been careful to conceal her telepathic abilities, somehow everyone knew that she was different. As a girl she convinced herself that it was because her adoptive father was a rising star in the Mounties and no one wanted to get caught up in that political morass. Now she knew better. People subconsciously shunned that which wasn’t the same as them. It’s why racism was still so rampant worldwide even though everyone talked about how it had been relegated to the past.

  Paige stretched her legs on the 12th floor landing and then placed her palm on the scanner. It recognized her and the lock on the door disengaged. She walked through the door and instantly regretted coming here in her workout clothing. The empty floors of the building were kept at an easily-maintainable sixty degrees in the winter.

  She’d had the cells built in secret using a construction crew that no one knew about because she put everyone to sleep every time the crew was present. Even the crew didn’t know what they’d built because she erased their minds once they were complete. The only people who knew of the cages on the 12th floor were Lillian and Christian, the two lead Neuroactuator technicians. The only reason that Christian knew was because she needed his assistance to help take care of anyone that she held.

  A single light was on about halfway across the floor. She walked across the darkness to the metal cage. “Hello, Pammie. How are you today?”

  “When are you going to let me go, Paige? I’ve been here for months.”

  Paige thought for a moment and replied, “It’s been forty-three days, Pammie. Hardly ‘months.’”

  “Please just let me go. I’m sorry about our childhood. It was a horrible time for all of us.”

  She ignored her former foster sister’s statement. “You know, I talked to another one of my siblings yesterday. A nice one. We had such a fun time catching up.”

  “Paige, I am nice. I’m a police officer. I help people and stop bad people. What happened to us as kids was a long time ago. I couldn’t stop that man from doing those horrible things.”

  “I don’t believe you. Jimmie helped me,” Paige said in a little girl’s voice. “He stopped the bad man…”

  “You need help, Paige. I know that you’re hurting, I can tell. Maybe you should talk to a psychologi—”

  “I’m not crazy!” she screamed and launched herself into the cage. She crammed her face between the metal bars and said, “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  Pam slapped herself hard and then stretched her arm out to full length. “Please don’t,” she begged.

  Her open palm became a fist and she flexed her arm rapidly, punching herself hard directly across her nose. Blood gushed out and ran freely over her lips. “You’re a monster!” she spat.

  “At least I know who I am, Pammie. You’re the one who denies who you really are.”

  “I’m Pam Hernandez, a Las Vegas Police officer.”

  “No, you’re an accomplice to a child molester. Oh, that reminds me. Guess who else is in here with you!” Paige said excitedly as she danced away from the cell.

  “It’s been two days since anyone came in here. I haven’t even eaten. There’s nobody else in here you crazy bitch.”

  Paige tapped herself on the side of the head. “That’s one of the neat things about my powers. I can trap your mind in any state that I want to. I could have an army march through here and you wouldn’t see anything if I didn’t want you to.”

  “What is wrong with you?” Pam asked.

  “I am what you made me. I believed in the power of good over evil before I came to your house. Jimmie was good and together we helped each other overcome the evil foster family’s power over us. Then I went to your house and you were so relieved that he had a new favorite toy that you just let it happen.”

  “We were kids!” Pam screamed. “I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

  Paige looked towards the shadows and motioned with her chin. “Well now you have the opportunity to do something about it.”

  A bone-thin man stepped out of the shadows. Pam paled visibly as she recognized him. “Come here,” Paige ordered.

  The newcomer obliged and within seconds he stood in front of the cell. “No. No. No. Please, not this,” Pam begged as she backed away towards the far side of the cage.

  When she reached the far side, Paige used her powers to freeze Pam’s body in place and sent the man inside. She pulled the gate closed and then released both of them from her control. He blinked and then looked around in shock. “Where the hell am I?” he asked.

  “Hello, Blake,” the telepath muttered softly.

  He lunged at the bars and shook them frantically. The construction crew had done their job and the enclosure didn’t move. “Let me out of here! How the hell did I get in here? I’m gonna kill you when I get out of here! This is an illegal imprisonment!”

  Paige walked up to stand just out of reach of his outstretched arms. “Don’t talk to me about illegal. Do you know who I am, old man?”

  “How the hell should I know who you are?”

  “My name was Paige Greene when you knew me.”

  “Paige Greene? I don’t know any Paige—” Old memories illuminated his face and the telepath drank deeply of the terror that emanated from him.

  “Marcia’s dead, so the gang’s all here,” Paige said as she referenced Blake’s deceased wife.

  “What do you mean we’re all here?”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Remember Pammie?”

  “Of course I remember my own kid.”

  “She’s behind you in the cell.” He whirled around and saw P
am staring at him with hatred in her eyes.

  “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you something important,” Paige said nonchalantly.

  Blake tore his eyes from Pam and turned to look at Paige. “What else, you bitch?”

  “Pam is a cop now and she’s a 2nd degree Dan in the Israeli martial art Krav Maga, so she can break every bone in your body. Have fun.”

  Paige turned and walked away. She heard the rustle of clothing behind her but didn’t turn. There would be too much temptation to take control of the situation and shape the outcome to her desires. She could go through the victor’s memories and relish the bloodshed later.

  SEVENTEEN

  Christmastime in Washington, D.C. was usually a happy experience, but there was a pervasive feeling that something else was going to happen, another event which would further crush the American soul. The president even cancelled the decoration and lighting of the National Christmas Tree because he didn’t want a lot of people gathered in one location for the event. The large evergreen had been decorated and displayed prominently for the public every year since 1923. The tree shone brightly during the dark days of the Great Depression, illuminated the night throughout the four long years of World War Two and was a beacon of hope during the turbulent 1960’s and 70’s, but it wouldn’t shine this year.

  Residents of the city had erected mock trees all over the capital in protest of the decision, but the effigies usually didn’t make it through the brutal night. Nights in the city were worse than anyone could have imagined. D.C. had always maintained one of the highest crime and murder rates in the nation and the city’s denizens used the dark, powerless nights to their advantage. The police didn’t even travel to some parts of the city until the daytime, which gave the criminals even more leeway to act as they saw fit.

  Just like the rest of the law-abiding citizens had to adjust their schedules to avoid the less-savory crowd, Reagan and her family did as well. Her father had imposed a strict curfew upon the girls that made it clear that they were not to leave the hotel for any reason after 5 p.m. The Lockharts had stayed in the university’s hotel and conference center for almost a month since the surfeit of skunks had attacked their house a few blocks away. Their insurance company was still at a loss as to how to get rid of the odor that lingered on everything.

  Reagan typically enjoyed her Winter Break period by reading books and writing longer-than-normal blog posts, but the hotel room that she shared with her sister wasn’t conducive to her normal routine. Everywhere she turned it was like her sister was just sitting there, reading over her shoulder or talking nonstop. Her sister’s close proximity, the curfew and the D.C. winter weather all conspired against her to drive her crazy.

  She’d finally had enough. “I’m going to the lobby to see if I can get some work done,” she announced to her parents through the open door that passed between their two rooms.

  Her mother sat on the suite’s couch knitting and her father worked tirelessly on a crossword puzzle. A battery powered lantern sat next to him for the next time the power went out in the city. “Okay, honey. Stay away from the front entrance,” Garrett Lockhart said.

  “No problem, Dad. It’s sleeting outside so I wouldn’t want to be near the doors anyways.”

  Reagan scooped up her laptop and a novel. She wasn’t sure which one she’d end up using, so it was better to have both. Their suites were on the hotel’s 5th floor so she took the stairs to the lobby. The management made the call a couple of weeks into the rolling blackouts to permanently shut down the elevator service when several people were trapped for two days in them.

  The lobby wasn’t what Reagan would have preferred as a spot to hang out. It was all bone white marble and light tan walls. Even the seating was strictly functional with a few uncomfortable couches and chairs. She had eclectic tastes, her style and varied music choices didn’t fit into any of the labels that were out there. She considered herself to be “alternative” since she did what she liked and it didn’t matter what others thought. In her opinion, the lobby of a hotel should be warm and inviting with big, comfortable couches and a roaring fireplace, not the almost antiseptic environment that this one offered.

  She sat down on the crappy furniture and began typing her latest blog post in her word processor. If the hotel lost power and the Wi-Fi went down in the middle of a post, she wouldn’t lose everything by using an offline platform to copy and paste from. She’d lost focus on her blog since her project on the dangers of going to a club alone was turned in at the end of the semester. She tended to ramble on about her day in the last several posts, but it was still an integral part of her daily routine and she still had several hundred thousand followers who’d been with her since she’d posted the footage from the first dance club incident.

  Reagan was deep in thought on how to write about her dinner in an interesting way when the couch shifted a little from someone sitting on the other end. That’s annoying, she thought as she glanced across the coffee table at the empty couch where the offender could have sat.

  “I like your hair,” a male voice said from beside her.

  “Thanks,” she muttered without looking up.

  She continued typing and was stuck on a word to describe the taste of the bacon on her sandwich. “Succulent” didn’t seem to fit the description for a greasy, salty meat, but that’s the only word she could come up with when she thought about how she relished every bite.

  The guy invaded her train of thought once more and said, “Is that your book on the table? It’s really good, I just finished it last week.”

  She glanced up in annoyance at him. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to—” Reagan stopped mid-sentence as William’s smiling face turned her blood to ice.

  “Hello, again,” he said cheerily.

  “Uh, hello.” Oh my God, what do I do? her mind screamed.

  “You took off so quick the other night; I didn’t get a chance to get your number so we could go on that date.”

  “You slipped me a Roofy and I ended up in the hospital. Leave me alone before I call the cops.”

  “Oh, they’re much too busy to worry about one little girl. Did you know that someone crashed through the gates of the White House with a big van? At this very moment every cop in a five-mile radius is down there trying to get a piece of the action.”

  She closed her laptop, scooped up the book and rushed towards the service desk. They’d be able to help her. As she walked, she glanced over her shoulder and William was walking slowly along behind her, hanging back, taking his time.

  She made it to the desk and no one was there. “Hey! Hey, I need some help!” she shouted and slapped her open hand on the counter.

  No one responded. The security guards, she thought and rushed towards the front entrance where the hotel had two armed guards to keep out the riffraff.

  When she got there, both men were gone. They’d been there less than half an hour ago when she had come downstairs. “Somebody, help me!” she yelled to an empty lobby.

  Her voice echoed back to her along with William’s sinister laugh. “Oh, no one will come to help you. I made sure of that,” he gloated as he continued to saunter at a slow pace, matching her frantic path around the hotel’s first floor.

  Reagan ran towards the stairwell and William angled in to stop her. “No way, sweetie,” he said. “We’re gonna do this right here, no reason to get your parents involved.”

  Parents! Reagan’s mind grasped that thought and she sprinted towards the conference center. When she was sure that she’d sufficiently outdistanced William she ducked into one of the meeting rooms and hid behind a large planter. Her fingers danced frantically over her cell phone as she dialed her father’s number.

  “Hello? Reagan, what’s wrong?” her father’s voice came from the phone’s tiny speaker.

  “Dad! I’m in the lobby… The man from the club is here. Everyone else is gone. Please help me!”

  “I’m coming!” her father yelled into the phone.


  “Reagan! Reagan Lockhart! I can hear you breathing heavy,” William called out. “Don’t be scared of lil’ ol’ me. I just want to spend some time with you.”

  She sucked in her breath and held it when the door to the room opened. “Are you in here my sweet little thing?”

  “No? Okay,” she jumped but stayed silent when the lights went out and her attacker stood silhouetted in the doorway from the light of the hallway.

  He disappeared and she heard him shout down the hallway, “You know, hiding isn’t a nice thing to do, Reagan.”

  William screamed in frustration and his voice elevated a few octaves at the end. When he spoke again, his voice was noticeably more feminine. “How are you doing that? I’ve been able to see you my whole life!”

  Reagan’s mind raced. Had she known William before that night in the club? What the hell did he mean that he’d been able to see her? Was this guy stalking her and she had no clue that he even existed until the failed assault attempt a few weeks ago?

  His shadow reappeared in the doorway and he shouted over his shoulder into the hallway, “I may not be able to find you, Reagan. But I can sure as hell see your father from a mile away. Let’s see how he reacts to the fact that his daughter is a freak!”

  She heard her father’s voice echo down the hallway. “Oh, here he is,” William whispered and disappeared from the doorway again.

  Reagan rushed from her hiding place and burst into the hallway. “Daddy! Look out,” she screamed.”

  “Reagan! Where is he? Are you okay?” Garrett called from the far end of the hallway.

  She jogged towards him and he stopped and then turned the other way. “Dad, what are you doing? I’m right here!”

  He disappeared around the corner, headed back towards the lobby. William disengaged from the wall near the end of the hallway, waved to her and then followed after her father.

  The sense that something bad was about to happen pervaded her thoughts and she increased her speed. She slipped on the shiny marble when she tried to turn the corner and fell hard on her elbow. “Ow!” she yelled. She looked to where she’d slipped and saw an open bottle of water lying against the molding. Where did that come from? She gingerly pushed herself up off the floor and hobbled over to pick up her laptop that had gone flying when she fell. She set it down carefully on a chair and limped towards the lobby.