Case # 88 by Gary Martinsky (little red riding hood read aloud TXT) 📗

Either they’d been too loud, or the place was under active surveillance. Either way, they had no time to lose.

Finn and Alexa quickly descended the stairs and retreated through the kitchen window before the officers even knocked on the front door. By the time they were shouting warnings, the escapees were well on their way to Finn’s car.

As soon as they were safely out on the highway, Alexa began briefing Finn on the situation, sharing what she’d been able to glean so far.

They drove in awkward silence for almost an hour while Finn digested the shocking information. At this point, he had little doubt in her story. And yet, it was simply too outlandish to believe.

“So…all these years… Are you saying that Mom and Dad… They weren’t even my real parents?”

Alexa was the only one who had any kind of explanation for Finn’s parents’ mysterious disappearance, and he was determined to find out as much as he could from her before dismissing her claims as impossible.

“I know you don’t completely trust me yet. And for good reason! But if you stick with me, I promise, it will all make sense…” Alexa touched Finn’s shoulder reassuringly. “I’m sorry that you had to be a part of this, but it’s all true. And I want you to meet someone who may just be able to prove it to you.”

Chapter Three

“Finn Peterson? Are you sure it was him?”

“Yes, sir, we are positive. And his fingerprints were found inside the house. Along with another set of prints. Presumably, a female accomplice, judging from the fingerprint ridge density.”

“Luckily, we’d thoroughly scrubbed the house of anything on the Orthia Project earlier. They shouldn’t have been able to find anything of value.”

“Okay…” Agent Spencer was agitated, fiddling with the fountain pen in his hands. “But we have to find them ASAP. Get on it. We can’t take any more risks.” He looked at the two police officers before him. “And the house... Such a shame it’ll have to burn down in an unfortunate accident… You know what to do.” He turned away, looking pensively out the window, indicating that the conversation was over.

“Yessir!”

“Right away, sir!”

Still facing the window, Agent Spencer took out his phone and dialed. “Dr. Russo. We have a problem. It’s about Case #88… He’s alive.”

Alexa talked nonstop for the first hour or so of the ride back to Manhattan. Finn had two missed calls from Max, but he didn’t care. At least not for the moment. According to her, Project Orthia was a scientific experiment commissioned by an entity within the Department of Defense. Its main objective was to develop a way to produce the perfect law enforcement agents. She didn’t have all the details, but she’d discovered that there were at least two stages of the project.

Stage One consisted of training a group of carefully selected orphans at a secret facility in a controlled environment. It didn’t go so well and didn’t last long because the mental training methods employed in the project were too intense for even a robust mind, let alone the vulnerable psyche of a parentless child. The subjects would quickly become highly unstable and hard to control.

Stage Two was more complex and consisted of growing the test subjects in a lab and then planting them in a foster family of two undercover scientists, posing as the unsuspecting child’s natural parents. The training was more subtle, and the better refined mental conditioning happened in several phases. The subject’s memory was suppressed and replaced using advanced hypnosis methods and psychoactive substances after each session. This stage showed more promise, and most of the subjects were able to make it to adulthood blissfully unaware of the exceptional circumstances of their upbringing and the constant observation they were subjected to everywhere they went.

It lasted for a few years, with most surviving subjects making it successfully into the police force after graduating from the police academy with flying colors. But then the project had hit another snag. The test subjects were programmed to be sleeper agents. They would live their unsuspecting lives. They would generally excel at their service but nowhere near to the point of being a super-cop—that is until they heard the code phrase. It was designed to trigger a temporary altered state of consciousness where the subjects would remain fully aware but lose control over the decision-making faculty of their mind. They would suppress the survival instinct and several other subconscious processes that could keep them from completing their missions. But this part didn’t go as planned. The majority of the subjects would not respond to the code phrase, their mental defenses too strong, or the invasive programming too profoundly repressed. And, in the few cases where it did work, subjects would act erratically, either having a psychotic episode, incurring permanent damage to their psyche, or developing a mysterious, acute headache and dying shortly afterward. The project had since been scrapped, failing to produce any promising results. Or at least it had seemed that way.

“But finding you alive and well changes the story entirely!” Alexa concluded. “This is why you are key to this investigation. They might already be after you. We have to be very careful.”

Still processing the new information, Finn finally called Max back, hoping for some good news.

“Finn, my friend! You had me worried there for a bit! Not answering your old buddy’s calls? What gives?”

“I was busy.” Finn didn’t feel compelled to waste any time on Max’s empty talk. “Did you find out anything important?”

“Oh, you know me! I’m a professional!” Max paused dramatically. “Now, keep in mind... Sometimes, no news is good news.”

Finn grunted in response, ready to hang up the call.

“Now, now, I know what you’re thinking… But, hey, I did my part! Swing by my place, and I’ll give you everything I’ve gathered so far: previous owners, neighbors, cars registered from that address. And I assigned one of my top people to do some more digging. I gotta admit, though, I’m at