Trellis Read online

  Colin finally found his voice and mumbled again for Jase but no reply would be coming. He felt the surface below him and realized he was lying on rough concrete. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could distinguish the shapes in the room where he was, possibly a basement or cellar. But, why?

  He would lay there hours with his thoughts wondering if anyone was looking for them. What day was it? How long had he been unconscious? He assumed, and rightly so, that the man that shot the rifle at the plane was also the man that was holding him captive and would know where Jase Furlough was at that moment. He tried to wriggle free, he could feel that the gun he had holstered to his chest was now gone. No worry, he thought, he did not need a gun to protect himself, he had years of training with his hands. Whoever held him captive better pray that the restraints that were holding his legs and arms from moving did not come lose.

  This was a place he had been before, of course, the physical place was different, but he had been a prisoner against his will before. He was not about to let his thoughts take him captive, too. He knew the mental games the man holding him would play. When he and Jase caught the straggly haired man in the act of dumping body parts by the creek, they knew the evil man was taken aback. Colin had realized that when that man shot their plane down, it was not because it was planned out, but because they surprised him. This fact, meant of course, Banks had the upper hand. It may not look like it now, but it was an advantage. The straggly haired man could not have crossed every T and dotted every i of this kidnapping. There had to be something he missed, and Colin Banks was going to find what that something was and escape, he hoped.

  He heard shuffling above his head, someone was there and moving around in the rooms above. He moved from right to left trying to free himself again, or possibly come across something on the floor that he could use to cut himself free. The sound was getting closer. He heard a screech move across the floor and he assumed it was a chair or table possibly covering the opening to the entrance of the cellar. His captor above removed a section of the floor flooding his holding cell with light. His eyes quickly adjusted and he scanned the small cellar for Jase, there slumped in the corner was Jase, covered in dried brown blood and ripped clothing. He looked around for something he could use to free himself or defend himself with, a workbench stood against the far side of the room near Jase. There would be no reaching it from where he was and how he was tied up.

  A set of wooden steps lowered in to the cellar from the opening, then with a thud, the captor dropped an orange electrical cord in the opening; Banks partially closed his eyes, no harm in letting his captor think he was still unconscious. The captor descended the rickety folding stairs carrying a tray, walking towards Jase and kicked him, “Hey, wake up! You alive!” He sat the tray down, leaning in towards Jase, he gripped a handful of Jase’s hair pulling his head upward towards the light, looked over the wounds on his face then let Jase’s head fall back down. He mumbled something inaudible and left a bottle of water sitting near Jase.

  Colin Banks lay there curiously still watching the man examine Jase. Then he turned his attention towards Colin. There was no way he would be able to fight back with his hands and feet tied and tethered to a metal clip attached to the floor. The man could not grab the short stubble sprouting from Banks’ scalp so he grabbed his face pushing him from side to side inspecting his wounds. Then backing away, leaving an open bottle of water next to him. Before leaving, he plugged in a small nightlight, but why?

  If Colin knew anything, it was someone like this man that had taken them captive didn’t have a plan for the men in his basement. Not yet anyway. That was the only upper-hand Colin had right now, they needed to escape before the captor’s plan developed.

  Chapter Twelve~

  After parking her car in the parking garage, she headed back to the bookstore entrance. Approaching the building, she could see Zan on the other side of the street in front of a little greasy sandwich shop. To her surprise, the redheaded girl that made the neighborhood’s morning cups of coffee was by his side.

  Hmm... D may have put the thought in Zan’s head to go ask her out to lunch, but she never made it to her to assure it went smoothly. He did it on his own, sort of. He waved to her, then points at her for the redheaded girl to see. She couldn’t hear his thoughts from this distance. She can only imagine what he was saying, and knowing Zan, it was extraordinarily nice.

  In the bookstore Mr. Zhao stirred around swooshing a wooden broom side to side sweeping up the weeks dirt.

  “Hi, Mr. Zhao.”

  He stopped and looked harshly at her, “Nephew tell me you take Chinese language class. That stupid. I teach you both. Why you want to learn Chinese from American teacher? No! I learn American from American. Only way. Next week.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Zhao. That is generous of you. Can we make it the week after next? I will be out of town next week for work.”

  He growled a low grumble then answered, “Yes. Yes, fine.”

  “Thank you, again Mr. Zhao.” Wow, that was nice. She never expected him to offer to teach them. Maybe she didn’t give Mr. Zhao enough credit.

  “Get out of my dirt! You stand right in where I sweep! You going to be stupid to teach.” He snapped at her waving the broom at her feet to move and immediately went back to sweeping.

  She pressed her lips tightly together trying not to roll her eyes and vanquish him to obscurity in an old folk’s home.

  ‘What did I agree to? Well, if Zan was there too, it won’t be so bad, right? And, I won’t have to sign up for any class with books and grades. Yeah, I hear myself and know I’m in for a headache,’ she thought.

  Back in her loft, she unzipped her boots, threw her dress in the dirty clothes bin, and pulled on some black sweatpants, white t-shirt, and a red fleece pullover. Her need to lie down and close her eyes was becoming stronger and the need was pulling her to her soft cushy pillow. This day had exhausted her, so much for taking it easy this weekend. After the Coughlin spying incident, she was drained today.

  She pushed a button on the wall, the blinds automatically close throughout the whole loft, and it instantly became darker, hoping to fool her mind into thinking its evening. Climbing the stairs to her bed predicting how good her blankets and pillow would feel as soon as she crawled in, she was right. Yawning, D stretched out and tried to silence the thoughts lacing around her mind. She really needed to sleep before she started to dissect her day. With how tired she was, that shouldn’t be hard. No T.V. for her.

  She hoped that her dreams about Trellis would not creep up on her. She knew in her heart they were never far behind, especially after hearing the information she found out today. If Trellis was sending someone to check up on her, what strategy was the island trying to accomplish? What was their final objective? Taking her dead… or alive?

  Once asleep, it didn’t take long for her mind to wander back to her adolescents, back when her hair was long. Outside in a courtyard of concrete, drifting sand piles, palm trees high in the air being blown by the sea’s warm wind and not a cloud in sight, stood her, in a plain white smock dress and lime green flip flops. The sign near the gate read, ‘Trellis for the People — Insuring the Growth and Development for Future Generations,’ and under those words were the feathered wings that had become synonymous with Trellis. So much so, they branded the feathered wings on every test subject on the island.

  There were four-wheel vehicles everywhere, driven by uniformed armed men. Around all the buildings in her complex was a high fence that kept them in, and unwanted visitors out. Dotted around the fence were towers that held guards that kept lookout for boats on the horizon and any unauthorized planes that may be getting too close for comfort. Outside the fence sat a long airstrip and past that was a place to dock authorized supply boats.

  The large gate at the entry of the complex made a familiar loud unlocking sound and the armed men waved a jeep in. She stood there wide-eyed, what was she seeing? Are those people like her? They were certaint
y smaller in frame like her opposed to everyone else in the complex she had known her whole life. She stood there in utter dismay.

  The man driving the jeep pulled to a stop in front of her and the others in the vehicle with him were giggling and making noises. What was going on?

  Dr. Salvaggi walked out of the building behind her carrying a clipboard and proceeded to explain and give her directions, “D, these are my children. They are going to be your new friends. They are children like you are, live on the island in another area, and have come for a visit. Why don’t you show them the swing you have behind the cafeteria?”

  The two children climb down out of the jeep and stand in front of her. She still had no words that would form. She had never seen someone that looked like her. Well, they were not exactly like her but they were smaller than the adults she was used to seeing. She had visited the fetus growing room in wonder several times but she had never met someone her size before. D was close to the age of five by this time and it was long before the first brain surgery. The surgeries marked how D gaged the periods in her life. Since the weather never changed, all her time-periods were memories around monumental brain-washing techniques and surgeries. Some people marked a calendar to remember dates; she marked her monumental events with painful memories.

  The children may have been a little taller and older in stature but nonetheless, like her. One boy and one girl wearing dark red shirts and pants like the ones she had in her closet but different in color.

  She leaned close to Dr. Salvaggi and whispered to him, “Do they have names. Do they talk? Are they wild? Where did you find them?”

  The only time she had ever heard Dr. Salvaggi laugh was at those questions. She was a joke that he created and it amused him. This must have been what the native Indians felt like looking at the pilgrims. This was her home and what she was looking at in front of her did not belong in her world. She didn’t understand it. Had they been on the island all this time? Were they just discovered? Why hadn’t they been here before? Was Dr. Salvaggi keeping them from her? Is this where he went every other week? Had he been leaving this home to go to theirs?

  “I don’t understand?” she whispered back to him.

  “D, they won’t hurt you. They are here to play. You need to introduce yourself and make friends.”

  ‘What? Is he kidding?’ She didn’t like the situation forced on her and the odd situation was staring back at her blinking.

  The young girl with her angelic face stepped forward and beamed, “Hi! My name is L13, and I would love to see your swing.”

  D stood stonily, gaping at her, unblinking.

  The boy standing next to her raised his left eyebrow as if she were a freak, then sneered, “Are you going to walk us to the swing or should we find it our self?”

  Again, she said nothing.

  Dr. Salvaggi was scribbling in his notepad as fast as the ideas came to him. He then turned and looked at L13 and coughed, no doubt to prompt her into an awkward friendly gesture towards D.

  The girl spoke again trying to reassure her, “This is her brother L12, and we would love to spend some time here with you.” This was when D realized she wouldn’t be able to get out of this introduction. She reluctantly turned and walked slowly in the direction of the cafeteria with the new visitors following her.

  Dr. Salvaggi said, “Good, L12 and L13, that is good. Take them to the swing, D.”

  The rest of the morning was spent with L12 and L13 pushing each other on the swing and D standing there watching in confusion.

  ‘How can there be a whole other place on the island that she had never heard about- with people?’ D wondered to herself. If Dr. Salvaggi had kept this a secret from her, what else was he hiding?

  There would be several more get-togethers set up with L12 and L13 but she never really warmed up. The girl was a year or two older than she was and the male was possibly five or six years older than D. Dr. Salvaggi had a few more playground items placed next to her swing so L12, L13, and she would have more things to keep them busy while he took notes. Every time they met after that initial visit, she would ask her new friends questions about the complex that they called home on the island. They described large barracks with bunkbeds, large cafeterias bigger than the one D had. Sometimes one person or many people would leave on a project from there home and never return and L12 and L13 would act sad about it, but no doubt, something they had gotten used to.

  L12 and L13 would describe their lifestyle and classrooms, they were divided in groups and taught in a large classroom with other people. The only lesson L12 and L13 were ever taught was foreign language, English and Chinese. Each group was taught one foreign language and English. D would be taught multiple languages over the next few years; she assumed for the many projects they had planned for her, not Chinese though like her new superfluous friends. D did not necessarily look forward to these meetings, she found them unnatural and strained, which caused D anxiety on several occasions.

  After the success of her surgeries these get-togethers with L12 and L13 stopped. Dr. Salvaggi gave her artificial friends and then he took them away without another thought. Complete mind games by a complete monster. Looking back now, she’s not sure if Dr. Salvaggi thought she would read their minds and find out more than she needed to know or possibly L12 and L13 were used in a project and never returned, no further use to Dr. Salvaggi.

  She thrashed around in her bed struggling with these childhood memories until she disturbed her sleep and woke. Glancing over at the nightstand and she checked the time on the clock, she had only been asleep for less than an hour. Why was it when she was the most tired she slept the shortest amount of time?

  She reluctantly pulled herself out of bed and headed to the kitchen. She fixed some leftover soggy onion rings, cut the large hamburger from the day before in half, tossed them on a plate and into the microwave.

  She walked to the living room and grabbed her leather bag and pulled out her laptop, set it on her kitchen counter and turned it on. Filling a glass up with water, she pulled a fork from the drawer and a bottle of ketchup from the fridge in time to hear the ding on the microwave.

  Sitting down on the high back swivel stool with her awfully hot plate of food, she lazily squirted ketchup in a heap by the limp onion rings and then a good squirt on her burger. She was hungry and didn’t matter that it was mushy and gooey, she ate it.

  Taking a few bites, she directed her attention to her computer wondering if Banks had found her devise yet, or Agent Drake and Agent Foster’s spying gear they left behind. She nosed around and realized it was still intact and there had been no recent activity. Slowly she stretched out and took a long deep breath and one number at a time she gradually typed the phone number she had written down at Coughlin’s house in the search bar. Nothing. She expected this much, but no hurt in trying. If this number was tied to the person Coughlin communicated with it would be like finding a diamond with a platinum shell. Therefore, she was sure it was protected at all cost. She wondered if the phone number had tracers on it.

  ‘Of course it did’, she mused. She had thought about putting a trace on Coughlin’s phone but believed it was too risky. If she looked like a traitor to the people pulling the strings at Trellis and to the Government (whomever they may be) then she would surely be a bigger threat, and as it stood now, she was high on that list already. Placing a tracer on Coughlin of any sort would surely have her headed on a one-way trip back to the Surgical Mad House of Torture featuring the one and only Dr. Salvaggi, or and if she were lucky, be killed on sight.

  She couldn’t call the number from DC and she didn’t feel like making a flight to anywhere just to use the phone. When she left town Monday to head to Fort Knox she would have to plan a call and see what information she could attain.

  She logged into Agent Drake’s and Agent Foster’s email and social media pages to see what they had been up to, ‘Mexican food and pizza it looks like,’ she laughed to herself. Well, at least she knew t
hey weren’t following Banks today.

  She picked up the phone and called Long Term Storage House. A business she kept a few toys she used on these mission projects. D hated hotels for many reasons but the two biggest reasons were she could hear what everyone around her was thinking when she was trying to sleep, and two, she was a sitting duck for Trellis. Especially since every project they send her on, she always felt like she was being set-up to be captured. To solve this she had a small recreational vehicle with a storage compartment for a bike. Not any bike, a fast little motorcycle that she loved. Nothing like the bike Colin had but it served her purpose.

  A lady cheerfully answered, “Hello, Long Term Storage House, where we make your toys feel at home.”

  Corny, D thought and then assumed her Southern accent before she began speaking. “Yes. Is Paul there, this is Sienna Smith.”

  “Yes, please hold, Ms. Smith.”

  “This is Paul. How can I help you, Sienna?”

  “Hi, Paul, I called last week about my camper, I was going to come and get it Monday. Just wanted to make sure everything’s been checked out.”

  “Yep, everything is good and fueled up. All in good working order.”

  “The bike, you checked everything on it? I haven’t started it in a month, at least?”

  “Yep, all good,” Paul answered.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem, Sienna. Where you headed this time?”

  “Lake Cumberland in Kentucky.”

  “Ah, the largest manmade lake in the world, I think,” He replied.

  “Yes, it is. I will be doing some fishing and taking in the fresh air. Thank you, again, Paul.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  The RV was one less thing checked off her list she had to worry about when she left out Monday. She had better start a load of laundry and start packing. Off her walk-in closet was her laundry room. Not any normal laundry room. Under the floor of this laundry room was a smaller room that led to a fireproof room in the downstairs apartment. The smaller room under the floor had a name, T.S.S. tactical supply survival. Weapons that she could use, but never had to, some bullet proof clothing and vests, night vision scopes, a plethora of devises used for spying and sabotage, and not to mention the mannequin heads with different style wigs. This was also where she stored most of her cash in large and small bills. Today she would take a little of this and that, like fulfilling a grocery store list.