Disclaimer:- I own nothing Rizzoli & Isles

Just an idea that wouldnt leave me alone until I got it out.

Thank you to other RIZZLES writers that inspired me

WARNING:- Contains suggestions of Mind Control Programming. If you believe you have been mind controlled do not read...contains possible triggers.

Chapter 9 - The Lecture

Maura's companion had always been a little strange, controversial, but he was the only person right now that she was sure could help her. Jane was not herself, it was not a side-effect of the physical stress on her body from being exposed to the rain for hours, and the reason she was in the rain in the first place was just as concerning as Jane's behavior now.

It was a miracle Maura even knew where to begin looking for answers that night...

It was 4 years ago that Maura had decided to attend a lecture called 'The Rhythms of the Unconscious Brain under General Anesthesia'.

She hadn't thought she was late but when she arrived the lecture was already in full swing with an audience fully captivated by the lecturer...

"Other methods to create a mind-control victim are astonishingly sadistic and the expected results are horrifying: The creation of a mind-controlled slave who can be triggered at anytime to perform any action required by the handler..."

Maura realised almost immediately she must be in the wrong lecture room, but the lecture intrigued her so she stayed to listen for a bit longer.

"...Trauma is the main method along with drugs and the younger the victim the better the result. The mind creates avoidance patterns to protect itself from thinking about the trauma. Panic symptoms occur when the person undergoes physiological arousal to traumatic cues. A trauma will create a certain "shattered-ness" within the victim. This disassociation is part of creating the 'alter' personality. What doctors in my field like to often label 'Multiple personality disorder...".

He pauses for a moment or two staring around the room. A bomb could go off outside and Maura doubted anyone would have even turned around.

"There are several ways to alter a person's state of consciousness, but the most popular one is to use a combination of drugs and hypnosis. Drugs are used to facilitate hypnosis. Modern drugs do almost all the work for the hypnotist. They place the person in an altered state and make them willing to take any order. These hypnotists have methods to be able to be the only person that can hypnotise them and have full control over the individual. But...the methods are many and the experimenting of these methods took many lives and have destroyed many more. And sadly the victims of mind-control are mislabelled by most psychologists, doctors, councillors, police, teachers, and often these victims are even more traumatized by those they seek help from. The media demonize these people when they come forward, if they ever do. And most likely they are locked up because they appear to us to be insane..."

It was perhaps the most bizarre lecture Maura had attended in her life and she was sure if she told anyone she knew what she had heard that they would have her institutionalized immediately.

"Project MKUltra was launched by the CIA in 1953, the test subjects were mostly nonconsensual citizens who were subjected to all sorts of experimental torture techniques, up to and including extended sensory deprivation, hypnosis, and sexual abuse. Various mind-altering drugs and electrotherapy were also administered. Because most of the classified MKUltra files were destroyed by the CIA in 1973, two years before the program was even made known to the public, many specific details about the experiments remain unclear.

In 1977, at a Senate hearing the then CIA director Admiral Stansfield Turner disclosed that the CIA had been conducting mind control on countless numbers of unsuspecting victims for years and in 2001 most information regarding MKULTRA has been officially declassified. Monarch Programming is believed by most to be a continuation of the project..."

At the end of the lecture Maura sat mulling over how she could accept what this man had said with any authenticity, many of the audience filed to the front to shake the speakers hand. After only a few people remained packing up or chatting in small groups she approached the speaker and introduced herself,

"Dr. Maura Isles, Chief medical examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts"

"Dr. Cisco Fritz Hofstede, Doctor of psychology. Very nice to meet you. Did you enjoy my lecture?"

"It was rather...intriguing" Maura begins trying to be polite, "but I am not yet persuaded."

Hofstede rubbed his chin, "What would it take to persuade you Dr. Isles?"


It was immeasurably the most interesting conversation she had ever had, in the local coffee shop an hour later, seated across from a friendly gentleman in his early 50's who dressed like Humphery Bogart and talked a mile a minute. He was not afraid of what he might be labelled or how people treated him, he spoke his mind. He was a warm caring man who had had given up a prestigious and lucrative career to dedicated his life to helping the victims of mind-control he spoke so passionately about. He had moved several times when he feared for his life and had moved to Boston only a few days earlier.

The parts of conversation Maura remembers vividly were when alice in wonderland and the Wizard of Oz were discussed in relation to programming methods. Maybe it was because these were the stories she loved herself as a young child when her parents weren't around to care for her, she related to Dorothy and Alice.

The two continued to meet once or twice a year at the same coffee house, although their conversations were more varied.

It was Jane's phrase "In each shadowy corner there lurketh a ghost" and the reference to Oz that had brought to her mind all the discussions she had had with Dr. Cisco Hofstede about mind-control...


"In at least 99% of the cases where Mind-controlled victims who have come in for therapy, they still lack safety, which is a higher need than trying to go against their programming..."

It was a conversation Maura never expected to have with Cisco Hofstede, standing over Jane as she slept, four years later. She was still sedated and had undergone deep hypnosis to de-program the original training...it had taken more hours than they wished to count. It was discovered that the trauma caused by Hoyt had been the factor in Jane's broken psyche that had exposed her mind, shattered her. How someone has actually gotten control was still unclear to them.

Cisco continued, "...This is why so few people have really gotten free. To undo the programming, the victim needs safety. The programmers know this, and have set up almost fail safe methods where the victim is not even safe from their own system of alters"

The conversation was to how Jane had broken free on her own...there was so much unknown in this particular field of research

They had taken turns resting and turns watching over Jane, but Maura never slept, she was too anxious, she was exhausted, "What are you trying to say, Cisco?" she frowned rubbed her face.

He thought for a moment while stirring his freshly made tea.

"I am saying that I think it is because of you Maura Isles, you are her safety, you are the reason she went against her programming."

Maura was too tired to understand the gravity of the statement, she was still processing the situation as a whole, and wondering who was to blame. Anger had come and gone during the process, anger and sadness.

She reached down and gently brushed Jane's cheek with the back of her hand, Jane looked completely at peace, Maura couldn't remember ever seeing Jane like this. She had been monitoring Jane's pulse and could tell the sedative had almost worn off, she would wake soon and then it could get interesting, but for now Jane's head rested comfortably in Maura's lap.

Jane had revealed a lot of things over the last day, she had fought too, physically at times, the sedative had helped contain her in moments of outrage. Maura had held Jane tightly in her arms twice while Jane cried her heart out, the sobs shaking them both.

Jane had revealed the name of her target but it was not giving any clues as to who might want that person dead.

At one point after one particular outburst Jane had confessed that if she had her gun on her at the time she fled her house she would have taken her own life to get away from the powerless she felt, from the pain in her head, from the confusion. Maura had fled the room in tears after hearing this, not that Jane would ever know, they hoped.

Between the two doctors, Jane's safety was also a concern, if she knew what had happened there was no doubt she would find breadcrumbs to follow to who was behind what happened to her and it was decided it would definitely put her in danger. But also Jane had not done what she was supposed to, what would they make of this disobedience, and the things Jane knew, if she could remember, could also put her in danger.

They had decided that if Jane didn't remember anything from the last few days when she woke that it was probably best to leave it that way. Chasing the 'they' and the 'them' behind the covert operation was extremely dangerous, enormous. If Jane remembered then that was that. But if it was halfway somewhere in the middle ... they had to avoid causing Jane any further trauma.

So here they are, a week later with Maura preparing to face her fear. Of sounding like a crazy woman to the person she loved the most in the world.