Controller: Controller Trilogy, Book 1

by Stephen W Bennett

  All the while, Stiles had been cursing and threatening him, but Grayson had ignored the speakerphone voice until he heard a woman scream. Sounding farther away from the phone now, he heard Stiles angry voice shouting through the phone.

  “If a threat can’t make you talk to him, he’ll damn well hear you scream, bitch.”

  There was another scream, one filled with pain. Stiles had someone with him, and it could be the person the Tool had delivered to the house by the park. Obviously, the bastard thought he could use this person to indirectly control Grayson, by torturing them and letting him listen.

  “Stiles, there are tens of thousands of people that will receive my new recorded message, and it’s playing in a loop. You can’t Control anyone in its range while it plays. I’m sorry for the person you’re hurting, but too many lives are at risk. I saw what happened in Seoul. It won’t happen here.” He reached for his phone to end the connection.

  Just before his finger reached the phone, Stiles shouted.

  “It’s your wife, you fu…” and he was gone as the call was disconnected.

  That left Grayson in shocked disbelief. He’d never heard a scream from Barb like that, but could it have been her painfilled voice? It was diabolically plausible that if she were alive and Stiles held her captive, that without control ability of her mind the man couldn’t force her to speak to her husband. Barb would refuse to let Stiles use her against her family.

  “You son of a bitch! It can’t be her.” He shouted at the dead phone in frustration and indecision. He expected the phone to ring again. For Stiles to call back.

  “What’s wrong?” The question from the phone’s speaker startled him.

  The frightened voice was Stacy’s. He’d disconnected Stiles, but her call had been on hold and was now active again.

  He regained his composure and explained that he’d just spoken with Stiles, and he told her what was said. She already knew he had ended the Trust Me loop transmission and had initiated a short loop for a repeated Immune broadcast. She’d felt Stile’s loop end, and Carl had sensed the new one from her Dad, and he’d told her what he sensed.

  “Do you think it was Mom?” She sounded more hopeful than did her father.

  “Stacy, it could be any woman I heard, even someone he hired to scream on cue, to fool me. He admitted he knew I was the only BII agent that could find his transmitter site so quickly. He even expected me, but not so soon. What if he had a woman present just to scream like that? He knows another woman's speaking voice wouldn’t fool me.”

  “Do you know how improbable that sounds Dad? How long did he have to plan for that? You only found out about the transmission because I sensed it and called you. Then you reached that radio set six hours later, starting from Washington, DC.

  “If he expected just you, it would have been smarter for him to have two dozen armed men guarding that transmitter and to have you killed or captured. He didn’t expect you or the BII right away because there was no violence or robberies related to his otherwise undetectable transmission.”

  “Stacy, he sent a thought directed specifically to me before he called my phone. He had my number, which likely came from your mother’s contact list, or her speed dial. He knew it was me.”

  “Dad, I still think he figured that out after the fact when you homed in on that radio and computer so soon. He might have thought you were coming here eventually when his control messages made people act strangely. If Mom’s alive, he’d want her near him as a means to control you with threats. If he calls back, you can’t answer. No point in his fulfilling a threat against her that you don’t hear. If he has her, it’s his only leverage, but he needs you to be aware of what he threatens.”

  “I’m going after him.”

  “Why not draw him to you? Jeffersonville is his old turf, and he has people that worked for him for pay, and not just when he Controlled them. I’ll bet he wants his transmitter back.”

  “True. All Stiles has now is a portable device, with less power and range. While I’m sending a stronger blocking signal over both cities, he can’t form an army of puppets he can sacrifice. I have three guns, and if he gets close to me, it’ll be over. No hesitation, and no arrest. He’s too dangerous.”

  “I can help you Dad.”

  “If he brings armed thugs, there’ll be a shootout. Stay away. If he comes here, I’ll call it in as an active shooter situation. He can’t Control the police while I’m broadcasting immunity.”

  “He’ll use Mom as a physical shield or a hostage to make you hesitate. He knows you won’t risk her life.”

  “That’s if he even has her. He could have used her in the last month to draw me out, and he didn’t. Anyway, I can’t give him control of an entire city. That psychopath would create a bloodbath to get what he wants with no one to stop him. The President ordered all BII agents to remain close to Washington, to protect our government leaders from a new hostile Controller threat from Iran. Officially I’m still there, but on a day off, so no agents are coming here to help me. I need to keep this transmitter broadcasting an Immune blocking signal. Ten to twenty minutes after it stops, Stiles will be able to control people.”

  “Dad, you need my help.”

  “If Stiles and some goons show up, I’ll hold them off while I summon the police, and report shots fired. He won’t have helpless puppets under his control today. They won’t give up their lives and freedom for him if he can’t use mind control to force them. I need to prepare some barricades and move his computer in the next thirty minutes. I have to get busy hon. I’ll be OK, and I love you.”

  “But Dad…,” he cut off her protest when he ended the call.

  Stacy made up her mind, “Carl, sorry, but I need to drop you off back at my Uncle’s house. I need to get something there, and you’ll have to call someone for a ride to school.” She was tired of always being protected. She had the same Immune ability as her father, and she made a career decision. Her BII internship was getting an early start.

  Chapter 11: Transformation

  Doc Fallon wasn’t thinking about the Hippocratic Oath he’d often violated, something more basic motivated him today. He’d crossed that ethical line even before Stiles met him. The man had saved his medical license with mind manipulation and had protected him from later infractions. Now, Fallon feared his survival was at risk if he did what the mercurial and temperamental psychopath had just asked of him. He offered an argument that might save him if things went wrong.

  “Sir, the second injection of epinephrine so soon may not revive her, and it could even kill her. If the transmission that makes everyone immune to your control continues, how will you make her obey you anyway? You told me she’s the one that shot you in the buttock. She isn’t going to cooperate willingly.”

  “I was stunned when her damned daughter rammed my car, and the door frame hit my head. I was nearly knocked out. That’s when she was able to shoot me. I need her awake and ambulatory, or I have nothing to bargain with to force concessions from her husband. He’s using my transmitter right now, but he might destroy the whole system if I try to take it back by force alone.”

  “She’s alive, isn’t that enough for you to use her? You swore if I let her die you’d make me slowly remove my toes and then my organs until I died. A single epinephrine injection didn’t work on the day she arrived here when you forced me to try to awaken her. I said then that raising her blood pressure after she’d suffered a severe concussion and a skull fracture was a bad idea. It could have been too stressful for someone with possible brain damage, and you repeatedly tried to use mind control to make her respond to you. I think we were lucky then to have done no damage.

  “What you’re asking me to do now is just as dangerous, and might kill her. If you lose leverage over Grayson, you might kill me. That’s why I’m telling you that this much adrenaline might be fatal, and it won’t be my fault.”

  “I need her conscious Fallon, even if I can’t control her. If she’s comatose, the
bitch won’t scream when I hurt her, and I doubt she’d beg her husband to help me if I put a gun to her head. I had to make another woman scream when I called the bastard, and Grayson refused to believe she was alive and that I had her as my prisoner.

  “She’s been comatose since my bullet grazed her head, after I mentally ordered her to stop moving, and she hasn’t moved since then. That order may still be in effect, or it could be organic from the shock to her system.

  “You know, don’t you, that any nurse can keep her alive with fluid nutrition through that nose tube, and change her diaper and wipe her butt. I won’t need you anymore if you can’t rouse her. If the second injection kills her, I promise I won’t hold you responsible.”

  The implied threat, if Stiles no longer needed him, motivated Fallon far more than did a promise of forgiveness from this cold man. He picked up the auto-injector containing the epinephrine and pulled the hospital gown up over her abdomen. He’d administered the previous shot several minutes ago to her right thigh. He pressed the device firmly against the muscle of her left thigh and injected the second dose. The heart rate and blood pressure monitor already showed those were highly elevated, and Fallon knew they would rise dangerously now.

  Even comatose her menstrual cycle had continued, a fact that abruptly penetrated Fallon’s awareness now because he’d pulled the gown so high. He’d enjoyed looking at his attractive patient’s nude body on multiple occasions as he washed her, and changed her soiled undergarment. Stiles insisted that no one else could learn of her presence at the clinic, so he’d kept her in a locked examination room. Her body was already flush with the hormone levels naturally present at this phase of her menstrual cycle, and the previous shot had deepened the pink skin tone. Her skin showed a deeper flush now as blood flow increased.

  Fallon realized that her natural hormonal levels were elevated today, and he’d just injected two doses of another potent hormone. He’d have to stay alert for adverse reactions.

  He was unaware of the effects of the injection he’d administered weeks ago, also while she had an elevated hormone level from her cycle and she had just experienced a natural adrenaline rush when she shot at Stiles. Then he’d injected her while Stiles forcefully tried to use mind control to awaken her. That left her on the fragile cusp of instability then, with hormones coursing through her body and her brain badly bruised.

  Fallon watched anxiously for the possible hazards of this double dose of adrenaline today. They appeared quickly, when her heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration surged, and a sheen of perspiration appeared on her face and limbs. There were signs of tremor for the first time since she’d arrived, and her limbs twitched, and her fingers and toes moved slightly. Her eyes under the closed lids constantly moved as if she had entered REM sleep. Her dry lips stretched and formed a frown. Fallon touched her mouth with a moistened cloth, and there appeared to be a slight response as the frown vanished. These were the only reactions Fallon had observed from her in weeks.

  He sounded hopeful. “I think she’s closer to awareness than I’ve seen since she arrived. However, I have no idea if she’s waking up or bleeding into her brain from the damage your bullet graze and bone fracture caused.”

  He included that risk factor, caused by Stiles and not himself, mainly as a defense mechanism in case she died. He explained how hemorrhaging in the brain might cause small involuntary twitches. “Internal bleeding can cause uncontrolled movements. I didn’t study this sort of medicine, and haven’t even seen a patient in a coma since my hospital internship ended twenty-five years ago.”

  Stiles admitted he wasn’t getting results either. “I’ve been trying to force her to wake up or to speak. I’m physically closer to her than the Lousiville transmitter, and I thought my amplified thoughts might be stronger. But the looped signal has been acting on her for a longer time,”

  He had a device a bit larger than a typical cellphone clipped to his belt, to detect his mental signal, and fed it to a built-in amplifier which used that to modulate with his mind control commands and broadcast them out to roughly four to six miles. The range depended on atmospheric conditions and local structures that could block or reflect the signal.

  Stiles felt frustrated. “Either Grayson’s immunity broadcast has me blocked, or she’s still in a coma.” He’d had only a slight hope he could outpower the stronger and more continuous signal. He’d not been able to influence any of the Susceptibles he’d tried to Control, not since Grayson’s repetitive signal began.

  He shook her shoulder. “Wake up damn you.” He used the back of his hand to tap hard on the side of her face, rocking her head to the side.

  “Sir, it may not be advisable to move her head or slap her.” The nearly healed wound above her right temple, partly covered by regrowth hair, no longer had a scab on the pink new tissue.

  “If she stays unconscious, or has had a stroke, she’s practically useless to me anyway. I have to go to Lousiville to end her husband’s interference, and I wanted to take her along as leverage. Six men will meet me here in your parking lot shortly. They’ll go with me to the high rise where I placed the transmitter. I want that laptop and transmitter intact, but I’ll settle for stopping the damned blocking signal any way I can. I’ll send them up the tower to kill Grayson in the process. I hope they can reach him before he can destroy my equipment. I know he wants it to stay active as long as possible, to prevent me from controlling people. I should have waited for my guy to build another backup system.”

  ****

  Barb’s head throbbed, her muscles felt stiff, and her heart was racing harder than when she’d completed her first and only half-marathon. She didn’t seem able to move, and it was as if she was in that brief moment between sleep and awake when your body was disconnected from your conscious control, to prevent your acting out your dreams. But she didn’t feel like she was dreaming. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. She felt frightened but couldn’t identify what frightened her. It was as if she was on the verge of flight from some terror she couldn’t see.

  She soon became aware of something that was comforting, not words, but it felt familiar somehow. She had a sense that her mind was free, that Stiles couldn’t control her.

  Stiles! That name reminded her of someone she feared and wanted to escape. But she felt like he’d been in her mind trying to reach her recently. Nevertheless, she didn’t feel threatened by his previous ability to make her harm anyone.

  Such as shooting at Carl or Stacy! It was that thought that reminded her of the last terrifying moments she had of awareness before darkness fell over her mind. That was why she had emptied her gun at that bastard, so she’d have no ammunition for him to force her to use on others.

  She suddenly sensed words in her mind that ordered her to wake up, to move. She knew they were only inside her mind or was that her imagination? They somehow seemed to come from a point to her left, very close to her and slightly elevated. The words felt chillingly familiar. With a sudden stab of fear, she knew it was Stiles standing beside her. He’d had control of her mind before Stacy had briefly broken his control of her actions in the driveway by ramming his car.

  Before that sudden break, it was as if it was her thoughts that were making her do things that seemed right at the time, but as soon as Stacy broke that connection, she knew the thoughts came from outside her mind and belonged to the man in the parked car. She remembered that was where Stiles was waiting for Stacy to arrive home.

  She felt something strike her face, and that outside influence made her aware of sounds that had been present but hadn’t registered. A voice said, “Sir, it may not be advisable to move her head or slap her.”

  Next, she heard another man speak, and it was Stiles, confirming he was less than a couple of feet away on her left. He wanted to take her to Louisville with six men, and he wanted them to “kill Grayson.” She realized Dan must be there, looking for her.

  She had no idea what had happened after she’d emptied her gun or the
time that had passed, but Stacy was in her father’s car and must have escaped. She was an Immune, like Dan, and Stiles couldn’t control her mind.

  Barb believed she could move if she wanted, to open her eyes, perhaps even to speak despite the dry mouth and tongue she had. But she wondered if she should she let on that she had regained awareness? She felt nauseous, sweaty, shaky, her head hurt, and her heart was still pounding. It occurred to her that they had been trying to rouse her, and perhaps had given her a strong stimulant.

  She decided to feign being unconscious unless Stiles appeared ready to leave her behind when he went to Lousiville. She had no idea where Dan was, but if she could help him, she needed to be close. She was unaware that the comforting feeling she had that her mind was free was due to the broadcast of Immunity from her husband.

  ****

  Grayson made his preparations. He started by summoning each of the six elevator cars that serviced the public to the highest floor open to them. As the cars arrived, he used items he found to prop the doors open. He went to each occupied leased property on this floor, which wasn’t many since a single mortgage company occupied the largest space, and displayed his badge to assert his authority, and explained there was an emergency and they needed to evacuate the building. He hurried some of them down on a single elevator, which only slowly returned to the top floor because the other five were not responding to calls. For that reason, he made the last to leave walk down the stairs so he could keep the final elevator on this floor. The alarms must be sounding somewhere below, showing the elevators stuck at floor thirty-eight.

  He knew the evacuated occupants would report his actions to building security, and from there word would reach the police. He went to the service elevator that served even the higher two levels, and when it arrived, he also jammed it open and switched off the service panel. Stiles and his men would need to climb thirty-nine floors to reach the level where the telecommunications room was, which contained the laptop.