The Void Protocol

by F. Paul Wilson

  With the four of them pushing, they rolled it over the curb and into the deeper shadows of the lot with ease. As Rick stepped back, brushing off his hands, the truck’s rear doors swung open revealing two surgery-masked men with aerosol cans. The spray caught Rick square in the face. Half-blinded and feeling an immediate buzz, he turned away, bumping into the second man as he shoved his aerosol into Marie’s face. Before he could spray, Rick hammered a fist into the guy’s face, slamming him back into one of the truck’s rear doors.

  Then he shoved Marie toward the street. “Run! Get help!”

  As she ran, screaming for help, the guy they’d foolishly helped started after her. Shaking off the buzz as best he could, Rick reached for him and got a fistful of his T-shirt. It ripped and he caught a glimpse of an intricate scar on his back.

  Rick’s balance had gone wonky and he stumbled, giving the first guy a chance to spray him again. The buzz increased. Again he tried to shake it off but a third faceful turned his knees to putty. Color drained from the world around him as multiple pairs of hands grabbed him and hauled him into the rear of the truck. And then everything became very, very dark.

  11

  When Laura returned she found the warehouse in chaos.

  It took her a while to sort through the hysteria, but it seemed someone—more than one someone, it appeared—had tried to kidnap Marie and Rick. Rick had managed to save Marie but he’d been gassed somehow and dragged into a panel truck. While Marie had been screaming for help and dialing 911, the truck had raced off.

  Suddenly Laura found herself on a chair, breathing hard.

  Rick? Abducted?

  Why would anyone want Rick? Unless it had something to do with meeting that CIA guy? But according to Marie, they’d tried to grab her too.

  Marie had managed to get the license plate number and given it to the police when they finally arrived.

  And then people realized that Ruth, Iggy, Anulka, and Ellis were missing. They’d all gone out for lunch together and never returned. Frantic calls had been placed but not one of the four was answering.

  Marie said she’d been traveling her usual route to work. Was it possible they’d been waiting for her?

  And had Rick blundered into the middle of their plans and wound up being taken instead?

  The air in the warehouse was spiked with tension, edging toward panic.

  She saw Stahlman waving at her from his office door. She hurried over.

  “Any news?”

  He shook his head. “Just got off the phone with the cops. They found the van. It was stolen yesterday. No sign of Rick. And no sign of the other four either.”

  “The fact that they’re not answering their phones can only mean—”

  “I know.” His expression was bleak. “Someone’s grabbing the nadaný.”

  The inescapable conclusion.

  “But who knows about them?”

  “Nobody. At least no one we know of. I’m having Kevin check the servers to see if we’ve been hacked.”

  Laura didn’t get it. “But why would anyone hack us?”

  Stahlman shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe asking questions about the wrong things set off alarms.”

  “Like Modern Motherhood?”

  “Or Maximilian Osterhagen.”

  The office became claustrophobic.

  “What do you think they want with them?”

  Stahlman gave another shrug. “The same thing we do, I guess. Find out what makes them tick. I mean, these could be the same people who made them this way.”

  The people behind Modern Motherhood.

  “But they’ve got Rick.”

  Stahlman showed a wry smile. “Yeah, they’ve got Rick.”

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  “You remember the story of Troy, don’t you? Whoever they are don’t know it, but they’ve wheeled the Trojan horse into their city.”

  Saturday

  1

  LANGE-TÜR BUNKER

  Midnight had come and gone when Greve appeared in the doorway to the conference room, holding an iPad or some similar tablet.

  “Ready to meet our guests?”

  Maureen sighed. “I suppose.”

  “You might try to sound a tad more enthusiastic.”

  “I’m not comfortable with this whole situation.”

  “After what you’ve already done to them, aren’t you being just a wee bit hypocritical, Doctor LaVelle?”

  After what you’ve already done to them …

  Greve had an undeniable point there.

  After her first visit here, after seeing the source of melis, Maureen had fallen under the spell of the project. Though she’d sworn she wouldn’t do human studies, she became a believer and a willing participant in anything related to melis.

  When the prisoners’ children showed no ill effects, the higher-ups decided to go wide—set up free OB clinics to serve the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Increasing the intelligence of these children would allow them not only to pull themselves out of the economic slums, but perhaps give the U.S. an intellectual edge on the international stage. Who knew? Melis might produce the next Einstein.

  They created a legend for Maureen: Emily Jacobi, M.D. In 1991 Project Synapse, under her guidance and behind the front of a bogus charitable foundation, opened ten Modern Motherhood free obstetrical clinics around the country. High-quality prenatal care was rendered along with vitamin injections. The techs administering those injections were not aware they contained melis.

  Greve, with the help of unwitting staff, tracked the school progress of all the kids of melis-treated mothers until 2006. When they proved no brighter than their peers—no evidence of an iota of increased intelligence—Project Synapse was abandoned as a failure.

  Now it had come to light that, although Synapse failed to achieve its intended effect, it had resulted in startling unintended consequences.

  “Bring your equipment and let’s get started,” Greve said.

  Pushing a converted hospital crash cart, Maureen followed him into the hall. She’d stayed in the conference room while the nadaný were wheeled in and set up in different dorm rooms.

  “Who’s first?” she said.

  “I thought we’d start with our invisible girl, unless you have a preference.”

  Maureen didn’t, and said so.

  “As you can imagine,” he said as they walked, “we are dealing with a far less than ideal setup here. Far less than even adequate, I might say.”

  “It’s certainly secure enough.”

  “Yes, I’ll give it that, but I would dearly love CCTV cameras in every room and a monitoring station where we could keep tabs on them. But we had no time.”

  “Even if you had time, this whole place is ferroconcrete. Retrofitting it would be—”

  “Wireless surveillance has been around for quite some time, Doctor,” he said in a testy tone.

  Oh? Well, what did she know about security?

  “A bit tense, are we?”

  “Not in the least. I simply like to do things right. Until today, the only surveillance we’ve needed is at the entrance. And the rear chamber, of course, which is simply a video recorder running twenty-four/seven. But within seventy-two hours we will have a wireless closed-circuit system up and running.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.” She doubted he’d catch the sarcasm, and he didn’t.

  He shook his head. “Every advantage the bunker offers is counterbalanced by a hindrance. But I’m dealing. I’m dealing.”

  Not terribly well, she thought.

  They entered room eighteen, a small drab space. Profoundly drab. Poured concrete floor, walls, and ceiling, all steel reinforced. All exactly like the room Maureen had used during the heyday of melis research, even sleeping here on occasion when the work ran late. She’d always thought of it as living inside the Berlin Wall. But hardly anyone remembered the Berlin Wall these days. She was sure mentioning it to Anulka would earn only a questioning stare.
r />   Furnishings consisted of a bed, a TV, a dresser, and a wardrobe; a door led to a small bathroom with a stall shower. Exactly like the room where she’d grabbed some shut-eye a while ago. Her plans of a beachfront hotel had been put on hold.

  Unlike Maureen’s borrowed room, a gurney had been added to this one. And on that gurney lay a twenty-something African-American girl with very dark skin. Electrodes had been attached to two small shaven areas of her scalp with wires running to a thick metal collar around her neck.

  Maureen pointed to the collar. “What—?”

  “Something Stoney put together—to my specs, of course. An example of my genius, if I may say.”

  “But what does it do?”

  “You’ll see soon enough, I’m sure. Get your samples, then wake her up.”

  Maureen took an oral swab for DNA—they planned to do deep sequencing on all of them. Next she took three vials of blood. She’d become pretty handy with a butterfly needle during the primate and human trials. She left it in the vein and injected a cc of the antidote to the knockout spray. She’d asked about that spray but Greve told her she wasn’t cleared to know anything about it. Same with the antidote. She’d gathered it was some sort of selective neuromuscular blocker.

  By the time Maureen had put a Band-Aid on the puncture, Anulka’s eyelids were fluttering. She came to quickly.

  “Where—?”

  “You’re safe,” Maureen said. “Really.”

  Anulka looked around and freaked.

  “What?” she cried. “No! Where am I? What’s going on?”

  Knowing she was a cause of the panic in the poor girl’s eyes sickened Maureen.

  “We can’t tell you where,” Greve said, “but I’m sure you know why.”

  Her expression said she did.

  “It’s all right, Anulka,” Maureen said, gently patting her arm. “It’s all right.”

  “Yes,” Greve said. “No one’s going to hurt you. This is a government facility and you’ve been brought here so that we can investigate your powers.”

  “But Mister Stahlman—”

  “—was not sanctioned to investigate anything. I am. This is an operation of the U.S. government and your powers are a matter of national security. We will under no circumstances harm you, but you will cooperate.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, and began to fade from sight.

  BZZZZT!

  The sound burst from her collar. She squealed in pain and came back to full view.

  Another fade, another BZZZZT! followed by another squeal and a return to full visibility.

  She tugged at the collar. “What is this?”

  Maureen said, turning to Greve. “Exactly what I’d like to know.”

  “It’s a modified shock collar—you know, the kind they use to train dogs? Only we’ve swapped the standard equipment with stun-gun contacts and set it to be triggered by a spike in zeta waves, monitored through those scalp electrodes.” He showed Maureen his tablet and pointed to a spiky surge in the pattern on the screen. “Montero discovered the pattern; we’re putting it to good use. Ingenious, no?”

  “I’m thinking more along the lines of sadistic,” Maureen said, appalled. “That’s ghastly.”

  “A matter of perspective, my dear.”

  “Don’t ‘my dear’ me.”

  “Whatever. The fact remains that we can’t have these … nadaný running around using their powers willy-nilly. We need structure. Organization. Discipline.” He turned to Anulka. “We’re going to find out how you vanish from sight.”

  “Doctor Montero says I bend light. Okay? Happy? Can I go now?”

  “I’ve read his notes. We didn’t bring you all the way to Fort Knox to rely on his notes. We’re going to do our own investigations. The question I want answered is how you bend light. As you can imagine, the strategic uses are, well, legion.”

  They’d agreed beforehand to drop hints that would lead the nadaný into believing they were in Kentucky.

  Anulka had been feeling around her scalp and was working her thumbnail under one of the electrodes.

  “You know, maybe I’ll just yank off this little motherfucker and—”

  “I advise against that,” Greve said softly.

  The collar went BZZZZT! as the contact peeled from her scalp and Anulka jumped. It went BZZZZT! repeatedly, shocking her until she’d replaced the electrode.

  Greve said, “Told you not to do that. I was about to say that the collar is also triggered when the flow of brain waves stops. It will keep on zapping you until it starts perceiving brain waves again.” He turned to Maureen. “You see? I’ve thought of everything.”

  Anulka began to sob and the sound tore at Maureen.

  “We’ll leave you for now,” Greve said. “Get some sleep. We’ll be starting early tomorrow.”

  Maureen hated leaving Anulka like this, but Greve was hustling her toward the door. Back in the hallway, he locked the door and showed her an old-fashioned lever-lock key.

  “These doors used to lock from the inside. A simple matter to have the locks reversed.”

  He returned the key to the lock and they moved next door to room seventeen. Greve opened it but didn’t enter. A rather large man lay unconscious within. His feet extended beyond the end of the gurney. One of his wrists was manacled to a side rail.

  “He’s an accident, I gather?” Maureen said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He’s too old to be nadaný.”

  “You’re right about that. His name is Rick Hayden and he works for Stahlman in a security capacity.”

  “Then why is he here?”

  “He interfered with the apprehension of Marie Novotna.”

  Maureen couldn’t help being concerned about Mr. Hayden’s future.

  “Can’t blame him for doing his job.”

  “But we can blame him for other things,” Greve said. “Because of him, Marie Novotna escaped; because she escaped, she was able to raise an alarm; because of her alarm, all the other nadaný are on alert and have gone to ground. I’d hoped to round up six or seven. Instead I have only four, one of which is useless.”

  “What do we do with him?”

  “I’m keeping him heavily sedated. One of the Septimus operatives has EMT training. He’s keeping an eye on him, making sure his sedation doesn’t get too light.”

  “And then what?”

  He gave her a sidelong look with the grimace that passed for a smile. “You’re thinking I might have something terminal in mind?”

  “Well …”

  “Not that I’d lack for volunteers for the deed from our Septimus operatives. He sent one of them to the hospital with a dislocated jaw—and he did that after he’d been sprayed. They tell me it took three sprays of the gas to bring him down.”

  He closed the door and turned the key. She sensed evasion in Greve’s tone … He was hiding something.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” she said as they moved down the hall.

  He hesitated, then shrugged. “Mister Hayden and I have a history.”

  “He knows you?”

  “Not exactly. But he will. We have a matter to discuss.”

  “And after that?”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll sedate him again and drop him somewhere—the hills of West Virginia, maybe. I want him to wake up far from Lakehurst.”

  They entered the room across the hall where a chubby girl snored on a gurney.

  “Allow me to present Ruth Jones,” Greve said. “Our teleporter.”

  Maureen had read all of Montero’s notes on Ruth but still couldn’t accept the ability to disappear from one spot and instantaneously appear in another. It smacked of bad science fiction. Or fantasy. Even Star Trek had fabricated complex machinery to accomplish it. But to have the ability merely to think about going to another place and suddenly be there …

  It bent her mind.

  She took the oral and blood samples, then injected the reversing agent.

  “Is
your collar going to work on her?” Maureen said as Ruth’s eyelids started to flutter.

  “I don’t see why not. As soon as it detects her zeta waves, it will shock her, which will disrupt those zeta waves, just like with Anulka. Where do you see a problem?”

  “The latency between the zeta waves and the shock.”

  “It’s almost instantaneous.”

  “Yes, but the ‘almost’ might prove a problem.”

  Ruth blinked her eyes open, looked around, and said, “What the fuck?”

  “Nothing to be alarmed about—” Greve began.

  Perspiration broke out on Ruth’s dark brown skin as a look of pure terror contorted her features. Then she disappeared with a shoop, leaving her clothes and the collar along with its attached electrodes on the gurney, the empty collar going BZZZZT! … BZZZZT! … BZZZZT! …

  Maureen could only gape at the empty gurney. The girl had done it … really done it … popped out of existence here and wound up … where? Ruth Jones could teleport. The rules of physics, as Maureen knew them, had just been turned inside out and upside down.

  And deep inside she was glad she’d escaped.

  Greve muttered a hoarse “Fuck.”

  Maureen couldn’t resist: “I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking ‘almost instantaneous’ didn’t cut it.”

  2

  QUEENS

  Ruth arrived stark naked in her place in the warehouse. She pulled on a sweatshirt and sweatpants and blasted out the door. As she ran down the stairs to the ground floor, the first person she saw was that woman doctor, Laura, who spotted her at the same time.

  “Ruthie!” she cried. “You got away!”

  She was so glad to see a friendly face. Before she knew what she was doing, she’d wrapped her arms around Laura and begun to sob.

  “Me and Annie! They sprayed us with something and shoved us into this van!”

  “You’re okay now,” Laura said, hugging her and rubbing her back. “You’re safe here.” After a moment, she pushed her back to arm’s length. “Who did this? Who were they?”

  “I don’t know.”