One Last Case

It was 7:55 pm.  Alistair walked slowly around the lake, contemplating the weight of his most recent discovery.  He had arrived at Sherwood Park an hour early, to give him time to reflect, and to determine how to move forward.  “Should I push farther,” he wondered, “and attempt to uncover the secret of Operation FAST?  If I do, there is no guarantee that I will come out with my life.  Should I walk away now, when I’m so close?  No, that would not do.”  He involuntarily spoke the last bit aloud.  The soft wind coming off of the water reminded him of his childhood in England.  He could see his mother in his mind now, her perfect face glistening in the sunlight.  “What did they do to her?” Alistair thought with horror.  “What could be worth destroying that perfect package of beauty, caring, and boundless energy?”  Even though he didn’t know what Operation FAST actually did, he would not allow their crimes to go unpunished.  He would infiltrate the operation, and shut it down for good if it was the last thing he did.  He looked at his pocket watch. It was 8:15.  Moore was running late.  Alistair sighed.  He was about to sit on a nearby bench when he saw a man running towards him in the distance.  As he got closer he saw that it was Robin, and he was being chased by a figure in black!  The Detective ran behind a tree and signaled for Robin to run by it.  He ran past the tree, and a second later his assailant followed suit.  Alistair waited for the right moment and stuck out his foot.  The man tumbled a good ten feet, his head smashing into the ground.  Alistair held the man’s hands, while Robin interrogated him.  “Who sent you after me?” he asked.  “The.....Cent..er.. Spe...pecial....Needs,” the man muttered.  Alistair butted in, “What are they doing there?”  “I..don’t..know...top..secret.”  The broken man was now gasping to take in enough air.  “Just tell us how to get there and we will get help for you.”  “The sewers...No! Don’t call anyone!”  The man suddenly yelled.  Robin took out his cell phone and dialed 911.  The man tried to get up and stop him from calling, but Alistair grabbed him.  “You musn’t tell anyone about me...please!”  The man cried.  Suddenly, there was a small zap from the man’s head.  His eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped to the ground.  Robin in shock, dropped his phone, and the screen shattered on the ground.  Operation FAST must have implanted electrodes into their employees brains that could be manually activated if they gave them away.  Alistair looked at Robin.  As their eyes met, they knew where they must go.

The nearest Manhole cover was on the corner of Poplar Ave and the small street leading away from the park.  As Alistair walked by the street sign, he noticed that it was blurred over so it was illegible.  Under normal circumstances, he may have lost some sleep thinking about what could have caused the odd appearance of the street sign, but now he had no time to waste.  “Help me get this up,” Alistair said to Robin, pointing at the manhole cover in front of them.  When they lifted the cover an awful smell wafted over the pair. When the smell reached Robin, he backed away violently, as if the scent itself evoked bad memories.  “Does that smell remind you of the asylum?”  Alistair asked.  “I never thought I would smell that again.”  He said in an disconnected tone of voice.  “That is the smell of the restricted labs, where they sent me for two months.  Those months felt like years.  They poked and prodded me untill I didn’t know what I was and until I’d forgotten what I was before.  I can’t go down there with you.  I couldn’t stand it.  For all I know, I could have one of those electrodes in my brain.”  Alistair looked grimly at Robin, shook his hand and spoke.  He only said, “It was nice working with you Robin.  Good luck.”  Then he took hold of the ladder and descended into the darkness.

Alistair fumbled around in the darkness until he realized that he still had the flashlight from before.  He flicked it on and inspected his surroundings.  The sewer looked almost normal.  The strange scent was stronger down here.  It reminded Alistair of a mix of feces and disinfectant with a tinge of something volatile that he couldn’t identify.   He coughed, covered his nose with his trenchcoat, and began to inspect the wall for any clues on how to proceed.  He suspected that Operation FAST had some sort of secret lab down here, but he had no idea how to find it.  He looked closely at all the walls of the sewer.  Nothing.  He tried to follow the smell with no luck,  eventually ending up at the ladder where he started.  Alistair was on the verge of giving up when he heard a click from inside the wall next to him.  He started to run toward the wall, but before he could take three steps, the entire wall began to shift.  The secret door made a low rumbling sound as it slid open.  Alistair dashed behind a maintenance supply locker as he heard the voices of two men from inside the lab.  “Why did you take so long to tell me this?  Find Egeus’ corpse and bring it back.  We can’t have anyone finding out about us.”  “No sir we can’t, sir,” the man spoke feebly.  “I will find him John.”  “Yes you will, and I’ve already told you, call me Dr. Reid.  Nothing else.”  A man, presumably the second, ran past Alistair and up the ladder without noticing him.  As soon as the conversation ended, the secret door began sliding shut.  Alistair slipped through as the doors were closing and was in pitch darkness.  

After a moment, industrial lights came on.  They seemed to be in need of repair and flickered constantly.  He was in a gigantic room with metal walls.  At the side opposite from Alistair was an arched entryway with a sign that read “The Center for People with Special Needs - Castle Apartment Labs - restricted access only.”  Wrapping through the sign was a caricature of a three headed dog.  Alistair was so surprised by the massive scale of the room that he had forgotten about the voices he had heard before.  The mysterious John Reid was nowhere to be found.  Alistair began to think.  The first thing he had to do was find out what the purpose of Operation FAST was and what they did to their subjects.  If there were innocent people alive here, he had to try to free them.  Alistair made for the arched doorway.  On the other side of the arch, he found he was in a well lit hallway with a number of doors leading from it.  Past a door marked “lockers” there were, big surprise, rows of lockers as well as some people wearing lab coats.  Moving with purpose so as not to attract unwanted attention, Alistair opened one of the lockers, finding a lab coat inside.  He picked it up and wasted no time putting it on over his trenchcoat.  He looked down at the name tag on the coat.  It read “Quillian Harrison”.  Alistair wandered through the facility until he’d committed its layout to memory.  When Alistair went down to the lower levels he was shocked.  The labs were deserted. Operation FAST must have been shut down years ago.  He found some audio logs that had been left by the scientists who’d worked there.  

Apparently, Operation FAST was originally founded in secret to study the minds of the insane for the sole purpose of increasing scientific knowledge.  The original founders wanted to use potentially unethical methods to increase the efficiency of the experiments, and they were afraid that if the public knew about the project, they would shut it down.  The first patients, like Robin, were selected carefully from many asylums around the world.  The subjects guardians gave permission for them to take part in the studies.  Shortly after its creation, one of the project’s creators, Dr. John Reid slowly took control of the facility.  He began tricking people who he wanted to study into going insane, later forcing them into his lab.  There he would mess with their brains using drugs he developed.  It seems he was trying to create an army of brainwashed henchmen to take over the world.  Many of the scientists who tried to leave were turned into henchmen, and implanted with electrodes, hence Egeus.

There were no innocent people left in the lab.  They had been killed or turned into henchmen in the years previous.  Among those to have lost their lives to this lunatic’s quest was,  most assuredly, his mother.  It was time to get his revenge.  He found the still-active lab controls in a room nearby.  Alistair quickly got to work rigging the lab to self-destruct.  Dr. Reid was, apparently, a paranoid man because he had actually built a self-destruct option into his lab.  Even in this desperate hour, Alistair found his whole situation comical.  He was underground in the secret lab of a madman who had tried and failed to take over the world, and he was in the process of setting a self-destruct sequence.  He finished and the countdown began. Ten minutes to get out.  He ran upstairs as fast as he could.

Alistair headed through the lab and made it back to the huge entry hall where he’d first arrived.  He began working on the door controls when he heard footsteps.  He turned and faced none other than Dr. Reid himself.  The doctor walked slowly towards him speaking softly.  “Don’t worry dear detective, or should I say Quentin?  How long have you been lurking around, trying to ruin my accomplishments?  You’ll never see your antique shop, or any other part of this wretched city again.”  Alistair observed the Doctor’s figure.  There was a bump on his right hip.  A pistol.  Alistair ran as fast as he could toward the Doctor in an attempt to grab the gun.  The Doctor was too quick.  He pulled it out and aimed it at Alistair’s head.  THe detective pushed the gun away from his head as Reid pulled the trigger.  Bang!  The gun went off, and hit the door control panel.  It sizzled and but the door didn’t budge.  They were locked in here together.  The doctor was still distracted by the misfire and Alistair managed to grab the gun.  He pointed it directly at the Doctor’s head and spoke.  “Your experiments are over.  This whole facility is about to go up in flames.  Nothing will be left of either of us or your legacy.”  The Doctor’s eyes opened wide, “No!  You couldn’t have...I...All I’ve worked for...” The Detective continued cooly. “I could end your suffering now,” said Alistair, but I’ve seen what you did to hundreds of innocent people.  I’m going to make you wait to die so you can feel what it’s been like for the families your victims.”  Alistair did not know where the sudden rage had come from.  He’d never felt such focused anger at one person before.  He went on.   “I know because I waited for my mother.  Countless others and I waited for our kidnapped loved ones in vain because of you, you son of a bitch!  Alistair looked at his watch.  One minute left.  This was it.  He stared the evil man down just to pass the time.  thirty seconds.  Alistair felt sweat dripping down his face.  It seems strange, but in a way, he was happy.  The Detective had solved the case of his life.  Ten... Nine...Eight.  The doctor disappeared, and everything turned white.  Alistair heard a gun go off somewhere and he knew that he’d done it.  He had finished the evil man’s reign of terror.

Alistair walked through the white background.  Eventually he found that he was back in the meadow.  He ran towards the familiar sound of water in the hope that he’d find his mother again, as he did the first time he visited this strange realm.  As he walked, the noise from the waterfall got louder.  The same giant trees came around him.  He saw someone in the distance.  It was Robin!  Alistair ran up to him and waved, but his friend took no notice.  Robin looked straight through him as if he wasn’t there and muttered under his breath, “Alistair, how could they kill you before we knew the truth!  The birds are beautiful.  I love it when they EAT ME...the truth, isn’t it wonderful?...Too bad we’ll never know.”  It seemed as if some of the experiments Dr. Reid had done on him had taken their toll.  There was no telling how much of their time together he would remember accurately.  Alistair continued towards waterfall.  Running now, as before, he saw the bullies from his childhood.  They smiled and waved happily to him.  When he reached the waterfall he jumped towards his mother.  Instead of falling through her image, he landed in the meadow with her by his side.  She brought Alistair close, looked into his eyes, and mouthed the same words as before, only this time he could hear her.  “You did it.” She said.  “My son, you did it.”  He leaned in to hug her and everything melted away.

Operation FAST

Alistair sat on the ground in the hidden room just as he had for the past hour.  Shortly after Mr. Moore left, he did a quick search of the room, assumed the position, and began to think back on their conversation.  He was onto something.  Robin Spartacus Moore did not create this room himself.  Something much more sinister was behind this place.  The first clue he uncovered in his inspection of the room was on the wall in the corner.  Rusted over, he found about fifty tally marks.  This room had at one time been used as a holding cell.  He rushed over to the handle of the door that he pushed in to gain entry to the chamber.  It too was rusting, but the shape and not the condition of the handle was what captured the Detective’s eye.  The metal that made up the handle curved to form the mirror image of the letters “CS” when viewed from the front.  Whoever created the room was both clever and full of themselves.  They couldn't bear the thought of creating something without putting their initials on it and yet, didn’t want to be traced in connection with the room.  Before leaving, Moore mentioned that he had spent part of his life in an asylum.  Although the idea that the man’s past might be connected to that of his mother did enter Alistair’s head when Moore mentioned the asylum, he quickly shook it off as nonsense.  Now, still sitting against the wall, Alistair couldn’t help but feel that he may have been right.  He noticed a thin ray of light shooting down from the ceiling in the middle of the room.  He shook his head to make sure that he was not seeing things.  The light was definitely coming from above.  The sun must have been blocked from reaching the hole at the angle it was at an hour ago.  With the passing of time, it had moved and let the light in.  It was strange that there was a hole in the ground deep enough to get into the chamber, but it was probably just a coincidence.  Before leaving the tunnels, Alistair went over to look at the spot where the light hit the ground.  Alistair’s whole body shook.  The light illuminated a list of numbers that appeared to be some sort of code -- preceded by the letters “CS”.  He had stumbled into something great.  Whether it was the good or bad kind of great had yet to be seen.  He made a quick exit from the tunnels, walked back to his shop, and went to sleep.  He would work more on the case tomorrow morning.

Alistair began work unraveling his newfound mystery at six o’clock.  He brewed himself a cup of Tea, and began to inspect the evidence.  He was so captivated by the case that he forgot to open his shop at 8.  “First thing’s first,” he thought.  “What did the series of numbers mean?”  It did not take him long to discover that he needed to divide every two digits by 7 and then multiply the result by 3.  The new number stood for the digit of the alphabet (1-26) and they started over with 27.  The results were stunning.  The code was list of insane asylums with their locations.  The first on on the list, the “Center for People with Special Needs” appeared to be the headquarters for something called, “Operation FAST,”  whatever that stood for.  So the the “CS” probably stood for the C and S in Center With People for Special Needs.  “Why didn’t they just use CPSN?” Alistair wondered.  About halfway down the list he nearly fainted after decoding the words “Bostall House.”  Now he knew that his mother was somehow connected to the plot.  He scrambled to his feet, stopping for a second to look at his watch.  It was 1pm.  He rushed out the door, sprinting towards the bowling alley, and hoping all the way that Robin Spartacus Moore was working today.  Alistair was close to uncovering what had really happened to his mother that day when she left him for good.  Victory seemed just close enough to grasp!