Mind Games

by Moore, TJ

  “No one’s innocent, honey.”

  “You’re watching all of those people in their own homes...with their families. What proof do you have that they will hurt anyone more thanyou already have?”

  “Proof?” Jen walked across the balcony and flipped a sequence of switches. A generator next to the long bookshelf started to buzz. “Is that what you want? Proof?” She pointed to the writing on the glass panels. “What do you call all of that, Cameron? I can tell you right now which one of those people on the monitors are potentially violent. All I had to do was watch their behavior.”

  “And what exactly are you looking for?” Amy asked.

  “Good question.” Jen flipped another sequence of switches, and the generator vibrated even more. “There’s a whole list of things to watch for. Some people even fold their socks suspiciously.”

  Cameron gestured towards Max as he squirmed in the airborne gurney. “Jen, listen to what you’re saying. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Max is my friend. And...look around you, Jen. You’ve spiraled into madness.”

  “Cameron, you want to know why I didn’t tell you any of this?” Jen snapped on a pair of surgical gloves. “I just knew you wouldn’t understand. You’re too jaded by the blood and the guts that...I think you lost sight of the people who commit these atrocities.” Then, she placed a blue surgical mask over her mouth and nose. The mask muffled her voice as she spoke, so she spoke louder. “I didn’t just make these decisions...these facilities over night, Cameron! Believe it or not, you inspired me. When you first started working in forensics, the pictures you brought home repulsed me. Theft, homicide, and all the remains. It disgusted me. And then, after a while, it just made me angry.”

  “You should have talked with me about this.”

  “Why, Cameron? All you do is take pictures.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  Jen pointed to Amy. “At least she makes an effort. Because unlike you, Cameron, Amy does a hell of a lot more than just take pictures of blood spatter. She understands how these criminals think. So, wake up, Cameron. Listen to the facts. The psychopaths in this city are causing over half of the organized crime. It’s people like Wilson that I’m after.”

  “And you caught him,” Amy said. “I’m glad he’s off the streets. I really am. But this kid...”

  Cameron interrupted. “Max had nothing to do with Wilson. He’s nothing like him. It’s not too late, Jen. You can still let him go.”

  “But I’m not going to do that.”

  Jen flipped a final set of switches. Then she calmly walked across the balcony and put on a heavy, silicon apron. “Max can’t leave until he completes the treatment.”

  “What did you give him?” Cameron asked.

  “There’s no point explaining. Besides, you already saw the formulas on the way in. It’s just basic chemistry and biology.” She tied the silicon apron around her and lowered a joystick on the control panel.

  A circular shaft opened in the ceiling just above Max, and a reflective sphere lowered from the opening held by a braided rope. The sphere emitted a static buzz that joined the noise from the generator.

  Jen continued, “For thousands of years, humans punished criminals based on their past actions, after the blood went cold. But we are entering a new era. And it’s been a long time coming. With this machine, humanity will be able to prevent crime from ever happening.

  “The criminal mind used to be a locked box, sealed from the inside. Through my calculations, through my hours of trial and error, I finally found the key. And once I’m inside, the circuitry that eluded us for so long will be revealed. Following the procedure that I’ve invented, criminal minds will be as open and clear as a glass room. The brain is just like a circuit board. But instead of copper cords and plugs, it uses neurons and synapses. Even these mysteries are now accessible through electricity. My machine just needs a little more tweaking. But once its ready, I’ll be able to rewire the craziest criminals on the planet. With this machine, I will be stronger than even the evolutionary powers of biology. I will not only be able to identify these outliers, but I will cure them, once and for all, of their criminal minds.”

  “Let Max go!” Cameron shouted.

  “Why are you so convinced of his innocence? Max here was kind enough to fill out my little survey. Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Test. And the results seem entirely conclusive to me. Even professional psychiatrists would agree, Max has enough traits to be considered dangerous.”

  “You’re the dangerous one, Jen.”

  “I’m simply preventing this boy from growing into the manifestation of his biological deformity. Society will thank me later.”

  She threw the switch.

  Blue flares snapped up the large coil behind her, causing a droning sound like that of an old organ. The air around the copper coils popped, guiding the current to the top of the coil. When the energy reached its peak, a blinding bolt of lightning shot out from the coil, heading for the reflective sphere above Max’s head.

  Amy watched the current hit the sphere, and she fired five rounds into the braided rope that held it. The current had already soaked into the sphere, but on the fifth shot, the bullet from Amy’s gun sliced the rope, causing the sphere to crash to the ground.

  Without the sphere to absorb energy, the electrical current crackled in all directions. Cameron and Amy dropped to the ground, covering their heads just as the coil frayed the lightning into a million micro-bolts.

  The generator continued to send waves of power to the coil, increasing its electrical output. And with each pulse of power, the coil released another set of jagged bolts.

  The bolts started blue at the top of the coil and became bright white as they spread out like deadly tendrils. After two more crackles, the generator pushed out a huge surge of power, causing the copper wires around the coil to twitch and snap.

  Blaaamm!!

  The next blast sent the wires flying.

  Without a structure to guide the electricity, the coil sprayed bolts in different directions, extending further than before. One of the streaks of white lit up the side of the hanging glass panels covered in writing. First, the bolt danced along the back of the glass, then it curved around, cracking it, then shattering the glass panel into gravity’s hold. The rain of glass fell just next to Cameron.

  The noise from the generator screamed like an eagle, cawing with each surge of power.

  Amy peered through the slits in her fingers and saw Jen clutching the balcony’s railing. The violent static had caused Jen’s hair to spread apart, strand-by-strand. Then, as if possessed by a dark entity, Jen’s body became stiff and defied gravity, rotating up at a steep angle while she desperately held onto the railing. The powerful lightning spread her feet apart. Amy saw Jen’s screaming face; tongue out, eyes bulging from her skull. Convulsing in fits, Jen’s body bent back and forth, thrown about by the live current.

  Cameron lowered his elbow and saw the horrific site as well. Then, he looked up at Max. The glaring bolts of lightning frenetically licked across the back of the medical gurney, reaching around like spindly claws towards Max. But the bed sheets served as insulation. Even as the bolts grew brighter, stronger, and reached further, the split ends of the lightning zapped around the bed, leaving Max unharmed.

  Still raised, Jen’s body fell for a moment, and her feet touched the ground. But the next pulse raised her back up again, whipping her against the railing as if she were a marionette puppet with lightning bolts for strings. Eye rolled back, Jen’s face was paralyzed into a silent scream. Then her eyebrows turned white and pale foam bubbled from her lips like an upside-down smile.

  Amy felt an ever-increasing static charge from the generator building more and more. Keeping her face covered, she crawled away, trying to leave more distance between the generator and her own body.

  Cameron ducked back behind his elbow and rolled across the floor, dodging a shower of glass as the lightning shattered a second panel.

  Like crashing
ocean waves, the sounds from the generator became ear-deafening. Then, in a sudden surge, the lights flickered above.

  The generator shrieked, spraying sparks over Amy and Cameron. It buckled once more, sending one last jolt of power through the Tesla coil. The final bolts of lightning were the brightest yet, reaching further than before. And with a sputtering cry, the generator stopped completely, leaving behind an echoing*Cruuuuaaaaaannk-tink*!

  Jen’s body stayed stiff for a moment longer, then slammed onto the floor of the balcony. But in the fall, she didn’t let out so much as a yelp.

  The lab lights flickered a few more times before going out.

  There in the darkness, Amy and Cameron stayed low.

  When they got up, Cameron called up to Max.

  Amy shined up her flashlight to the medical gurney. Although he suffered from a severe anxiety attack, still trying to catch his breath, Max waved down, lifting the corner of his mouth in a weak grin.

  Then Cameron and Amy climbed up to the balcony.

  Amy pointed her flashlight towards Jen’s body. She was lying face-up. One of her arms was still clutching the railing, fingers tightly clasped. Cameron pried them off one at a time, receiving a sharp zap when he first touched her. Jen’s eyes were open, staring straight up, her face still frozen in a ghastly wince. Veins in her neck and face turned blue under the skin, and a series of purple bruises were scattered under her jawline. Her hair appeared to be crimped, and the white foam dribbled down her mouth, ending just below her ear.

  Her chest was moving. She was unconscious, but still breathing. Amy examined the rest of her with the light. The tips of Jennifer’s fingers had blacked, and the capillaries on the tops of her hands showed green under her skin.

  Cameron slid a lab table underneath the suspended medical gurney and helped loosen the straps from Max’s arms and legs.

  When Max spoke, his voice was weak.

  “Thanks for saving me, Frosty.”

  Amy found a cell phone near the security monitors at the entrance into the lab. While Cameron stayed with Max and Jen, Amy followed the tunnels up and out until she was at ground level.

  Then she called Jones for rescue vehicles, an ambulance, extra fuel for the helicopter, and some hefty rope to fish Wilson from the subterranean well.

  SIDE EFFECTS

  When the busses of workers returned to their regular lives in the city, the story broke across national news.

  Many of the hostages went on TV to describe their experiences living underground. Some of them talked about the fear they experienced under the shadow of “The Leader” while others explained how thankful they were the whole nightmare was over. Several of them visited chiropractors to aid with the injuries they accumulated from the hundreds of hours digging dry dirt. One of the men developed pneumonia from breathing in the underground air. He was sent to the hospital to receive intensive care.

  Melanie Garcia, Cameron’s neighbor who’d been captured four months prior, was interviewed in her home. She spent the entire interview with her arms around her twin boys. She told the reporter she had a whole new appreciation for her life as a teacher and a mother; but after the first few questions, Melanie asked the camera crew to leave. Now that she had her life back, Melanie just wanted her space. She even got phone calls from daytime shows, requesting special appearances where she could “tell all”, but Melanie turned them all down.

  Captain Jones arrangeda special funeral service for Vince Hogan and highlighted his contributions to the case; including his efforts towards tracking down Derek Hansen, Wilson Gentry, and helping locate Max Parsons.

  The San Francisco police force used the documents Amy and Vince collected from Wilson’s garage to find and arrest 169 illegal weapon owners locally. Then, the senior analyst digitized the U.S. map of addresses and sent the valuable information to the cities where Wilson’s other clients lived. (Over the next few years, more than two thousand people were arrested for possession of illegal weapons based on theRed Dot Map.)

  At her trial, Jennifer Frost was charged with forty-one counts of kidnapping, twenty-five counts of grand theft auto, theft charges/embezzlement totaling twelve million dollars, animal cruelty, child abuse, destruction of state forests, and the murder of Vince Hogan.

  Unable to defend herself, Jennifer plead guilty to the charges. For her bizarre and manipulative crimes, she was sentenced to life in prison at The Rock: Alcatraz.

  Her underground lab was highly documented and photographed. Although discarded as obsessive scribblings, Jennifer’s research provided fascinating fodder for criminal psych classes across the country. And the remaining deranged wolves found in her lab were put down since their blood contained traces of toxic cyanide.

  Jennifer was forced to pay settlements of half a million dollars to each person she held hostage, totaling twenty-one million dollars in damages. (More than double the amount she stole from her previous employer: The Empire Bank.)

  Wilson Gentry was also sentenced to life in prison without parole for selling illegal weapons, bombing the Italian restaurant:Hector’s Meatballsand Vince Hogan’s apartment, and killing many of his weapons clients with a string of mail bombs. He was sent to the California State Prison in Sacramento. Regarding his plan to demolish the Golden Gate Bridge, many news networks referred to Wilson as aHomegrown Terrorist.And through their coverage, they explained how he, along with Fred Stefani and Derek Hansen, operated one of the largest illegal weapon businesses in United States history.

  Cameron and Amy set up a public event in Garfield Square along 25th Street for all the people captured along highway 17.

  Following an unspoken forgiveness from the captives, even Sheri was invited.

  And the turnout was incredible.

  The majority of the underground troop brought their families. Captain Jones helped Cameron grill pork chops and hamburgers for everyone. Each family brought a salad or dessert to share as well. Sheri, of course, brought the most desserts.

  Sarah invited a group of friends to organize lawn games including beanbag toss, foursquare, capture the flag, and volleyball.

  Max, thankful to be reunited with his father, brought Dan to the potluck. And even though it was almost a full year until the Fourth of July, the father-son duo handed out fliers advertising their revamped fireworks business.

  As Cameron stood under one of the picnic shelters in the park flipping burgers, he watched the men and women who’d been so confined at the forest cottage finally have a chance to let loose.

  They could run again.

  They could taste the fresh air again.

  They could be with their families again.

  Max and Cameron set up a barrel fire in the park where people could burn their ankle trackers from what now seemed to be a distant past life. Everyone gathered around the barrel to watch the electronic devices crackle in the flames.

  The festivities went until sundown, and as the last golden beams of sunlight reached across the park, each family left one by one, ready to enjoy their freedom.

  AUTHOR INFO.

  TJ Moore has written and directed several feature films including Special Delivery, Slick and Vector. In order to bring realism to his fiction, he studied Forensic Psychology and interviewed local detectives.

  Facebook: TJ Moore Books

  Website: tjmoorebooks.com

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