Chapter 8

The sixth weekend we were open, I thought we had a good handle on what we were doing, why, and how. People were comfortable with what had to be done. For a few minutes, I thought it would be a quiet weekend due to the rain.

Laura texted me and asked if I could join her in the training room. Considering the last time I was called there was due to her resisting the training, that didn’t bode well. Sure enough, one of the chairs was still occupied by someone named Bill. Looking at the monitor, it looked kind of like before, in that it wasn’t progressing. I texted Dana, Amy and Jeremy again, and then almost as an afterthought, Beth the psychologist.

A half hour later, Bill was still in the chair and I was painfully aware I didn’t know nearly enough. When I opened the door, I could hear him asking if he could talk to whoever was in charge. He seemed remarkably calm, considering we were trying to indoctrinate him. I closed the door and went back to the team.

“Ok, everyone take a turn to explain what you’ve found.”

Dana went first, “Master, the Device is doing exactly what it should. Diagnostics run clean. I wondered if we’d ever run into someone who the Device does not work on, I think we might have.”

Amy had her laptop open but closed it before speaking, “Master, he’s not closing his eyes, he is reacting to the images, but again, it doesn’t seem to affect him.”

“Jeremy? What do you think about this?”

“Master, I’m sorry, but I don’t have any explanation of this.”

“Anyone else have anything to add? I wonder if we can laugh this off with him. Just pretend it’s to help them relax and then apologize he wasn’t supervised?”

Laura spoke up, “I don’t think that will work, but we can try it if you like. It’s been too long though.”

Beth had been listening to everyone before commenting. “We could do as you suggest, release him and laugh it off. I don’t know if we’d be able to tell if he was convinced until after he left though.”

Kristen had slipped into the room quietly in time to hear that. “No, he doesn’t leave the room until we’re sure.” She then shocked the hell out of me by placing a gun on the table. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. Where did she get a pistol?

“Kristen, I don’t think that’s necessary. Where did you even get it?”

“David, you don’t know if it’s necessary yet, but it’s here if we do.”

“Stop. I will not murder someone because they can’t be trained. I’ll add that to the rules if I have to. What else do we know about him?”

Laura brought up his file on a laptop. “Bill is a local. He was not a recommendation, he somehow found out about us by himself. That’s strange, his birthday ... he’s very young, probably still in high school. How could he even afford to come here? He lives near Stephanie’s yoga studio.”

“Kristen, wake up the family. I want to know a lot more about Bill, who he lives with, is he still in school, etc. I need Rob to discuss ramifications. Have Stephanie come too, maybe she recognizes him. In the meantime, I’m going to go in there and see if we can just laugh this off. He’ll want to leave the training room but I’m going to try to convince him to sit in the lounge and recover. Lock the front door and have Jim outside. Laura, I’m going to yell at you. Beth, I want you to observe. Come in the room when you feel sure. If you believe him, tell me how happy you are he’s ok. If you’re not sure, tell me how worried you are about him.”

As soon as I entered, I tried to make it sound like I was scared. “Oh my gosh! Are you ok?” I rushed over to the chair and released his head and torso.

He stretched back and pulled his arms back. “What happened? Why was I restrained? What was that thing?”

He didn’t look panicked, so I bent over to undo his legs. “There’s a video we like to play for our guests which helps them relax before we counsel them ... Are you feeling ok?”

“I feel a little strange, but mostly just cramped. I was calling out for someone, why didn’t they answer me?”

“Actually, that’s what I want to know too. Someone is supposed to stay with you the whole time. Let’s get you out of that and we can talk more. I’m one of the managers here and I’m really sorry this happened.”

“David, that video was very strange.” His voice hardened, “I can’t believe your staff left me alone like that! What type of place is this?”

I gave him some water and kept talking and answering his questions. I thought maybe we had lucked out and avoided a worse problem. He was stretching and sounding like he was annoyed but not suspicious. I was ecstatic that we had a near miss.

I led him out of the training room into the lounge and found Beth waiting for me. She looked at me with a very concerned face before slamming her hand into Bill’s chest. I heard a crackle and he fell in a heap.

“What? What did you do that for? Did you taser him?”

“He knew your name David, why would he have known that? You are not listed on our webpage, no one said your name in front of him. Something wasn’t right the whole time you talked with him, but that was the most definitive clue.”

“Ok, let’s tie him up in the chair while we think about what to do next. I really don’t want to go to jail over this. Oh, and grab his phone and wallet.”

When Stephanie and Rob arrived, she recognized him right away. “His mom, Marge, owns a store a few doors down from my studio. I’m surprised you never saw him around, he always happened to be nearby when all the ladies left after class. I think he’s a senior, or maybe a freshman in college now.”

“What else do you know about their family?”

“Let’s see, Marge told me once about an ex-husband so I’d guess she’s divorced. I think there’s a daughter too, but I haven’t seen her much, if at all. That’s everything I think.”

Kristen jumped in at this point, “Tina and Linda were free so they’re watching the house now. Someone’s home, but they don’t know who or how many. Tara and Peter looked through his wallet and are digging into public records, luckily the city offices are still open for another hour or two. Steve is going through his phone. Steve just used Bill’s finger to unlock it.”

“Is everyone else at the resort already part of the family? Any other guests to finish with?”

Laura answered, “Yes, Everyone else was handled without a problem. Bill is the only person in question.”

“Let’s see if we can figure out who else he cares about. What makes him tick.”

An hour later, we knew a lot more about Bill, who was now conscious and yelling. His mother Marge had Bill and his older sister Jolene. Jolene was a freshman living on campus at the same university as Tina and the rest. Bill was barely old enough to be a senior in high school. There wasn’t anything particular useful on his phone in terms of blackmail or coercion.

“What’s the chance that his blood relatives will have the same immunity to the Device?”

Amy, Jeremy and Dana discussed for a minute before admitting there was no way to be sure.

This required me to think a bit. I could try to capture his relatives as leverage, but if they were also immune, I’d just bring more people into the problem. But what were my other options? Shoot him? Unthinkable. I wasn’t prepared to do that for the secret, though I’d have to be careful to make sure no one misinterpreted what I might want.

I ran through my options out loud thinking that I wish I had another one and was surprised to find Laura with a thoughtful look on her face.

“Master, I don’t see a huge amount of submissiveness in Bill, but I’m sure I could train him using my techniques. He would be obedient when I was finished, but I don’t know how long it would take.

I had wanted another option, though that wasn’t much of a better one in my opinion.

“Ok everyone, time for me to talk with him again. Kristen, empty that pistol and give it to me.”

Kristen ejected the magazine and pulled the slide back to make sure there wasn’t one in the chamber, “Here you go David.” Even so, she still appropriately treated it as loaded.

I closed the door behind me and walked to the table. He started yelling at me but I calmly looked at him and said, “If you don’t shut up, I’ll gag you. No one will be able to hear you. I want to talk with you and prefer to do it at normal volumes.” To punctuate my statement, I put the gun on the table on its side, pointed near, but not at him.

He immediately quieted down and stared at the pistol.

“Bill, I know quite a bit about you, but I don’t know why you are here. Why aren’t you at the high school dance tonight?”

“I wanted to see what you had done with the resort. I paid my money, why did she taser me?”

“You knew my name, how? Is it something to do with the yoga studio? Maybe we should call your mom.”

“NO! Do not involve her, she’s not part of this.”

“Ok, calm down. You didn’t answer my question about the studio.”

“Yes, I noticed you guys at the yoga studio. So what?”

“You guys? What do you mean? Her students?”

He looked almost embarrassed when he admitted, “Yes and you guys when you came at the end and locked the door.”

What? He had noticed our get togethers? Ahh, it was starting to make sense.

“You tried to figure out what we were doing then Bill?”