The Collective Protocol (14 page)

“Can you please tell me what this is about?” he pleaded.

“You’ve been warned, Jimmie.”

Paige collapsed and he rushed towards her to help her. She seemed to be out cold so he lifted her head up into his lap. Rob slowly plodded up behind him and asked, “What was that about?”

“I don’t know. I knew this girl from when we were kids, we were, ah…”

“I heard. Sorry about… things.”

“It’s okay. He was arrested and sent to Rikers. He was killed by prisoners a few months into his sentence.”

“Prison justice,” Rob grunted.

He gently ran his fingers through her hair and tucked a strand behind her ear. “I think the place is empty. Paige said she killed everyone.”

“That girl did this?”

“So she says. After what just happened though, I believe her.”

Paige’s eyes fluttered and he leaned in close. “Paige, its Jimmie. Paige, are you okay?”

Her eyes flew open and her tortured scream made Jimmie wince. She tried to pull away from him, but he held firm. “Rob, she’s going crazy. Well, crazier. We gotta cuff her.”

They expertly flipped her over and handcuffed her hands behind her back. “Please. Please stop. Don’t hurt me anymore,” she pleaded.

“Paige, we haven’t hurt you,” Jimmie soothed.

“I promise I won’t tell anyone. Just let me go!”

Jimmie looked at Rob and he began, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to talk—”

“Wait! You’re a police officer?” she asked.

“Of course, Paige. We just had this conversation.”

“Stop calling me Paige! My name is Rachel. Rachel Bennett. These people kidnapped me and… and did terrible things to me.”

“Are you kidding me? You expect me to believe that you’re not my former foster sister Paige Greene?”

“No! Please let me go. I just want to go home,” Rachel screamed and began sobbing.

Jimmie gave it a moment and then asked, “You didn’t just have a ten-minute conversation with me?”

“No sir. I promise you,” she replied, gasping for air.

He sat her up and she hunched over to hide her breasts from him. There wasn’t anything around to cover her with, so he pulled her up by her arm. When she was standing, Rob finished reading her the Miranda Warning where Jimmie had left off.

“We’ve got to take you down to the station,” the officer said and gently propelled her towards the staircase leading down to the first floor. “I don’t know what you’re playing, but you admitted to me that you murdered all of these people. There are probably fifty bodies in here.”

“I’ve never seen you before. I woke up naked with you stroking my hair.”

“That’s not what happened and you know it… We were talking and you passed out. I thought you hit your head on the flo—”

Jimmy was cut off by her blood-curdling scream. Rachel got her first glimpse of the carnage that Paige had visited upon both the members and the victims of the cult alike. She passed out once more, this time from the shock of seeing what she’d done when she wasn’t in control of her own body.

SIXTEEN

“Did you think we wouldn’t find out that you were using the machine for your own personal vendettas?” Gavin asked with his hands on his hips.

“I don’t care whether you found out or not. I am the Protocol. If it wasn’t for me, none of this would have been possible.”

“This isn’t only about you, Paige,” the commissioner stated. “I’m disappointed to hear you say that. Our shared agenda, this building, the Neuroactuator, the amplifiers… every person involved in this project. All of those things make up the Protocol.”

“Gavin, I’m powerful enough now that I can focus my attention in fifty different places at once. Nothing has fallen off schedule. The U.S. military is crippled and people fear their own shadows. We’ve killed almost four million of them—”

“That’s only about two percent of the population. The prime minister insists that a full twenty-five percent be dispatched before the Canadian Forces will begin our invasion and show our hand. That’s seventy-five
million
people. We’ve had great success so far, but we’re nowhere near where we need to be.”

Paige stood up from the couch that she was lounging on and walked to the window. The Bow River glistened in the morning sun far below her apartment. “I know that, Gavin,” she said. “I have personally been responsible for the death of all those people, probably most of them were innocent souls just trying to go about their lives. Do you think that’s easy on me?”

“I saw the reports of what you did to those people in New York. You’ve become twisted and this is going too far. I’m afraid that you’re losing sight of yourself.”

She whirled on him and sneered. “Don’t talk to me about twisted. I know what I am. Those sick bastards deserved everything that they got. Men, hmpf! Men are such sick, disgusting creatures.”

“Paige, what is happening to you?” he asked in alarm.

Her face visibly softened as she tucked the demons back in their cage. “I’m just talking to you, Gavin. I can’t talk to Lillian about the things I’ve done, she wouldn’t understand and would likely end up being afraid of me.” She started to cry and said, “I can’t be alone again.”

He walked over and placed a hesitant hand on her shoulder. For once, she didn’t shy away from the contact. “I’m sure it must be difficult. But your country needs you to be strong. I’ll talk to Patel, what you did in the Met may actually end up in our favor as people discover what can happen to anyone at any time.”

“Thank you. I will be strong for Canada. I just need a few days to recover before we move into Phase Five.”

“That’s fine. I will talk to the PM also and let him know that we’re taking a few days’ time. He’s a very understanding man.”

“I appreciate your support. You’ve been like a father to me for so long… I just want you to know that I’d never let any harm come to you,” she confided in him.

Gavin jerked his hand back as if he’d been slapped. “Thank you, Paige. I know that you’ve had a difficult life. I treasure our time together.”

“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 Pam 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.