The Collective Protocol

by Brian Parker

  “I’m not saying that you can’t… yet,” he replied with a veiled threat to limit her access in the future if she didn’t do what he told her to do. “I want to know who that girl is and what happened that caused you to abandon the host so quickly. I have the audio of your side of the conversation, but I’m not sure what’s going on.”

  “You have the what?” she asked with alarm.

  “The audio. Please tell me that you knew about that?” She shook her head and he said, “No? When you’re hooked up to the machine, you speak out loud here in Calgary when you talk through someone else’s mouth out in the field It’s actually quite creepy when you’re controlling multiple people who speak at the same time. We don’t even understand how your larynx can produce all the multiple sounds at once, but it does.”

  “I had no idea. So everything that I’ve ever said has been recorded and… and listened to?”

  “Of course. This is a military project, held in a military facility and the Canadian Forces keep meticulous records,” the general replied matter-of-factly. “Don’t worry though. Your secret is safe with us. No one will ever know about your past… Much like no one will know about the woman you keep locked away on the 12th floor of this building.”

  “You know about Pammie?” she asked incredulously.

  “Of course I know about your former foster sister. That was quite a show that she put on with Mr. Lightfoot. She has such style and grace for as tall of a woman as she is.”

  “Is my apartment videotaped and everything catalogued as well?”

  “Yes, Paige. Nothing you do in this building is a secret. Not your affair with the technician. Not when you go to the bathroom… Nothing.”

  She nodded her head in understanding, perhaps seeing things in their real light for the first time. “Reagan Lockhart is my twin sister…”

  Paige proceeded to tell the inner circle of the Collective Protocol everything that she knew about her past and the girl who shared almost the same DNA as her.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The MD-80 revved its twin engines back up to full power and banked hard to avoid devastating crosswinds on the southern approach to the Great Falls International Airport. The tower had switched it up at the last minute on the pilots and ordered them to reroute and land from the north, causing them to make the adjustments.

  Reagan hated to fly. It wasn’t simply a case of an overused verb, she truly hated flying and that little maneuver that the pilots just pulled did not help to ease her fears. She began to pray to something and continued doing so until the wheels touched down. She was raised in the Catholic Church so she always went back to her roots, but she also had a strong belief that the Church was wrong on a lot of issues. She believed that there was definitely a higher power of some kind, but not necessarily a “god” and the events of the last few months only made her question things more.

  How could a deity with humanity’s best interest in mind have allowed these things to happen? In fact, over the course of human history there has been so much pain, suffering and death, how did that happen? Or was the higher spirit actually the Earth herself? Gaia in Greek mythology—Terra to the ancient Romans—the Goddess of the Earth. Was she responsible for the never-ending suffering caused by humanity as she tried to erase the scourge of our existence from her?

  She knew that she’d never know the answer. But in times like this, when she prayed to a god that she didn’t really believe in, it made her wonder. As the plane slowed and taxied from the runway to the terminal she thanked whomever for the safe landing.

  Through the small windows on the plane she could see the snow piled high on either side of the runway. The bright yellow lights of the runway cast strange shadows across the mounds that reminded her of the three drug addicts emerging from the darkness outside of the restaurant. It was disheartening because she’d always loved snow. Would winter remind me of the death of my father and that I’ve murdered three people for the rest of my life? she wondered.

  “Okay, fun time is over,” Juan Quintana said. “I’ve got a few guys who will meet us at the terminal with gear and transportation.”

  They’d briefly discussed their plan for the mission but there were still a lot of unknowns. The immediate goals were to make it across the border into Canada and then travel on into Calgary. It was about a hundred miles from Canada and then a little over two-hundred more to the city if they used the roads.

  The FBI already had a team inserted across the border that would assist them with the crossing since the Canadian border had been officially closed since the animal attacks became rampant in October. They’d steadily been increasing the numbers of border police and regular Mounties along the U.S. and Canadian border and they’d even employed the Canadian Forces to help close the gaps in coverage and fully secure the border. Juan told Jimmie and Reagan that they had a way to get past the guards, not to worry.

  Using hacked Canadian security footage, Quintana had been able to pinpoint a six-block radius that Paige and another woman, who was seen regularly with her, generally stayed within the east side of the city. This told him that she walked everywhere from where she lived. Reagan had asked how accurate that was since people who worked in downtown D.C. walked everywhere for lunch once they got there from their homes in the suburbs. He’d stared at her and then said that they at least had an area to start where they knew she frequented.

  Inside the small terminal they met up with Janice and Dave from the Bureau and escorted the three of them to a maroon SUV that slowly left the airport, headed towards the city.

  “What happened to the blacked-out government sedan?” Reagan joked in an effort to relieve the tension in the vehicle.

  “Oh, we don’t buy those for the field offices anymore. Kind of conspicuous, especially in northern Montana,” Janice replied good-naturedly.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Reagan said and settled into the heated leather seat to look out the window. There wasn’t much to see in the dark, it was all snow and evergreen trees along the highway. They drove over a bridge and then turned into a residential neighborhood a few miles later.

  Dave parked the SUV on a steeply-sloped driveway and unlocked the doors for everyone to get out. The wind blasted Reagan in the face and went directly down her jacket when she opened the door. It was the first time she’d felt the wind since the SUV had been in the garage at the airport. Even the short jog from the driveway to the front door made her have serious reservations about potentially traveling across the country in this weather.

  The first thing that they did when they went in the house was to sit in a small room and take a photograph with a green screen behind them so Janice could make fake permanent resident Canadian identification cards. She told them that once all the pictures were taken, it would only take a little while for her to print them up. The hardest part would be to hack into the system and make them legitimate Canadian citizens. She’d done it two days prior for her and Dave, so she was confident that they hadn’t changed security protocols since then.

  While she worked on the cards, she had them go to the back bedroom. It took about half an hour for the three of them to sort through racks of cold weather clothing to find outfits and boots that fit them well without restricting movement. Reagan thought the concept of a secret FBI hideout with all this gear in a residential home was neat, but they could have saved a lot of time if they’d sorted the clothes by size. Oh well, she thought as she pulled the suspenders of a nice pair of white ski pants over her shoulders. She decided to follow everyone else’s lead and not put the coat on until it was actually time to leave.

  They ate a meal of grilled steak and noodles that Dave cooked while they were trying on clothes. The meal had been specifically chosen to give them protein and complex, slow-digesting carbohydrates, but Reagan secretly thought there was too much salt on the steak although she would have never said that to their hosts. After everyone was done, they gave Jimmie a pistol and she got an extendable police baton, called an asp, to u
se in case she needed to defend herself.

  “What if we get caught by the border patrol? Won’t it seem suspicious that we have weapons and we’re trying to cross the border?” Jimmie asked.

  Dave chuckled, “They’d think it was more suspicious if we didn’t have weapons. Almost no one goes backpacking out here without a gun for defense against the bears and those damn wolves that they reintroduced to Yellowstone a couple of decades ago. They’ve bred like rabbits and are all over the place out here now.”

  “Besides, we won’t get caught,” Janice continued. Reagan wasn’t sure, but she thought that those two were either dating or had been partners so long that they finished each other’s sentences.

  “We’ve been watching the patrol patterns for about a week since we got word that a mission may come our way,” Dave picked up the conversation again. “We have a spot picked out where there should only be three or four guards. If that still holds true, then we have the perfect weapon against them—”

  “Wait,” Jimmie cut in. “I’m not going to be a part of killing a cop who’s just doing his job.”

  “Don’t worry, neither would we,” Janice said. “A few years ago, the CIA developed a non-lethal method for infiltrating a site. It’s a tranquilizer dart that knocks someone out, but tests of their blood will show that they’re just drunk. All we do is knock ‘em out, set them up inside the guard shack and drop off several recently emptied whisky bottles. Voila! We have successfully infiltrated the country and nobody dies.”

  Juan placed a reassuring hand on Jimmie’s shoulder. “This is an exploratory mission. It would be next to impossible for one woman to have done those things by herself, but we don’t have solid evidence that the Canadian government is behind this. We’re not about to start an international incident.”

  The answer satisfied Jimmie’s protest and he busied himself showing Reagan how to use the asp baton. She took to the training immediately. It helped that she’d begun to like the former cop. He looked to be few years older than she was and had an easygoing demeanor and quick sense of humor that appealed to her. She purposefully pressed closer to him than was required when he stood behind her to show her how to flick the baton open and use it.

  They went back and forth as she moved slowly through the motions that he showed her, while he used a couch pillow to deflect her blows and to throw counterpunches back at her. On one of her attacks, the baton slid effortlessly down the length of the pillow and she lost her balance, falling into him. They both fell backwards and she landed on top. The lighting in the room gave her hair a shimmering light purple hue that framed her face perfectly as she looked down onto his grinning face.

  “Ahem… Ah, we’re ready to go guys,” Agent Quintana said from the doorway. “I’ll give you two a minute.”

  Reagan looked longingly into Jimmie’s eyes. This is it! This is the perfect opportunity for a kiss, she told herself.

  “That was good,” he said. Kiss me you idiot! “You, ah… ready to go?”

  Dammit, if he isn’t going to do it, I am. She leaned down and kissed him. He resisted in shock for a second, but soon began to kiss her back. He slid the hand that wasn’t trapped by the weight of the pillow over her ear, up through her hair and pulled her closer.

  They finally pulled apart and she grinned down at him. She bit her lower lip like she’d seen hundreds of women in movies do without really knowing why until right at this moment. “Can we do that again?” she asked huskily. A thousand thoughts went through her mind at once. God that sounded dumb! Why haven’t I had more practice at this? Oh man, I hope it wasn’t horrible. Did I screw something up? Oh no! What if I have steak breath?

  Jimmie contracted his stomach muscles and leaned up to kiss her once more. It wasn’t nearly as intense as the first kiss, but she understood that it was meant to be more of a promise for later, but they had a job to do now. She slid off of him and used the couch to push herself upright.

  He stood and placed a hand lightly at the base of her neck where it met her shoulder. “We’ve got to go face your sister. I’ve dealt with her power firsthand on a couple of occasions. Promise me that you’ll be careful.”

  “I promise,” she replied truthfully and followed him into the next room.

  *****

  The infiltration into Canada proved to be easier than they’d anticipated. They parked their SUV three miles from the border and hiked northward. As they went north they continually angled farther away from the road and by the time Dave’s GPS told them that they were nearing the border they’d already sufficiently distanced themselves from the guard stations. They walked into Canada without firing a shot.

  Everyone gratefully dumped the empty glass bottles from their packs once they were far enough away from the border area where they wouldn’t be heard. It was only a relief of a couple of pounds, but every little bit helped as their bodies rapidly burned up calories to stay warm.

  From the glass dump site, they followed the GPS northwest to the beginning of the Twin River Heritage Rangeland Natural Area. It was about a six mile trek and Reagan was frozen by the time that Dave finally called a halt. The sun peeked over the eastern horizon and she hung her head heavily. They’d walked all night across rolling, snow-filled terrain and all she wanted to do was fall asleep.

  Janice tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Stay alert. We’re in the middle of nowhere here and bear attacks are fairly frequent.”

  “Wait, don’t they hibernate in the winter?” Reagan asked.

  “The farther north you go, yes,” the agent replied. “It’s not unheard of this far south for them to only hibernate for a month or less, just depends on the food supply. Since this is an area that sees tourists year round, they may not hibernate at all if they can get food from hikers. You can bet your rear end if one of them hears us, it will come and investigate though, so keep an eye out.”

  “I’ve got it,” Jimmie stepped in and told Janice. “I’ll keep watch for her. She just came out of a coma this morning. Hell, I’m surprised she didn’t shut down before we even crossed the border.”

  Janice looked at Reagan with what she hoped was a newfound appreciation for her stamina. “I didn’t know that she was injured. Okay, try and stay awake if you can,” she amended.

  Reagan unclipped the asp from her belt and held it in her gloved hand. She successfully stayed awake for several minutes before she rolled backwards into the snowbank and fell fast asleep while Jimmie sat beside her prostrate form.

  She dreamed of fire-breathing dragons who screamed their hatred for mankind and knights in well-worn, battle-scarred armor who tried in vain to save a lilac-haired princess from being flung into a lake of fire.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Patrolman Jason Keith scratched his kneecap where his polyester blend trousers tickled the hair growing there. He’d been sitting in his patrol car all night beside Interstate 35 just north of Austin in Pflugerville, Texas. It was a warm morning for January and in the first few days he’d already met his unofficial quota of speeding tickets for the entire month.

  If he was a lesser man, he’d sit back and allow citizens to go about their lives without stopping them to issue citations when they went faster than the Texas speed limit allowed. But he couldn’t do that. He held himself to a higher standard. He worked at least two accidents a week that were the direct result of speeding, often fatalities. He knew every person that he issued a ticket to would curse the Texas Highway Patrol, but they’d think twice before speeding again—at least on the day they received the citation.

  He knew all the jokes, he’d told them himself as a kid, about the HiPo who simply wrote enough tickets that Texas could continue to be an income tax free state. But after he joined, he realized that there was so much more to it than that. It was about safety and, unfortunately, people didn’t often learn a lesson without losing something in return.

  Jason picked up his coffee and took a sip. The warm liquid slid down his throat and he sighed in contentment at the
caffeine after a long night. He started to set the mug back in the cup holder and his peaceful world shattered as a tractor-trailer truck traveled too close to the shoulder, clipping the back end of his cruiser. The patrol car went spinning into the road and he braced himself against the next impact which was sure to come, along the busy interstate.

  Mercifully, the oncoming drivers had seen the accident and slowed down in time. He shifted the vehicle into reverse and slowly backed it off of the interstate and flipped on his lights. “Dispatch, this is King-24,” he said into his radio using the department’s phonetic letter for his last name.

  “This is Dispatch, go ahead Jason,” his good friend Brent Meaks replied.

  “My patrol car just got hit by a semi heading northbound near Exit 248 on I-35. How copy?”

  “I got the info. Is everyone alright?” the dispatcher asked.

  “I don’t know. It just happened. Looks like… Yeah, the semi is overturned, blocking all lanes of traffic.”

  “Okay, I’ll send an ambulance and try to get a wrecker or two out there ASAP.”

  “Thanks. I’m gonna head over and see what I can do for the trucker,” Jason replied.

  “Alright, you should have assistance there in a couple of minutes.”

  He got out of the car gingerly and twisted his upper body to crack his lower back. Jason muttered a few choice words that would have gotten his kids a bar of soap in their mouths and crammed his cowboy hat onto his head.

  The officer walked as quickly as he could towards the overturned vehicle. “Aww, dammit!” he said when he rounded the trailer. It had been blocking his view of the gruesome sight. His eyes surveyed the scene quickly and he was able to put together what had happened. The driver wasn’t wearing his seatbelt and when the truck hit the patrol car it had started to turn over. The warm weather probably meant that the driver had his window down to take advantage of it before he traveled back north. He must have fallen halfway out the window as the truck turned over and then became trapped under the cab of the truck as it skidded on top of him for twenty feet. Jason looked at the large puddle of dark liquid on the pavement and decided that the man must have been dead almost instantly.