Trellis Page 18

  A woman from the Daily Northern Cape Reporter piped up and asked an extremely good question, one she herself would like to know, “When was the last time an audit was done here at the depository? And by whom was it completed?”

  Coughlin shot D a look to take control. Is he kidding? Did the government really think that they would be able to hold a viewing of the depository and not answer questions? Seriously, she wondered sometimes about the decisions being made and who was coming up with these harebrained schemes, Mickey Mouse? She shook her head no at him, they were completely aware of the surveillance cameras capturing every glance and movement so the eye contact was brief.

  She wanted to hear this answer as much as the next person did.

  Coughlin coughed and quickly ran through a few answers in his head and settled on one, “We have prepared a power point presentation back at the base they are going to present you with. This really isn’t my department. The Secretary of Treasurer Lisa Bandar will take all your questions at that time.”

  “Coughlin, why isn’t Lisa Bandar here with us now? She also wasn’t at the meet and greet, are you keeping her from us?”

  ‘Yes!’ D screamed on the inside. She had been so focused on Colin, Coughlin, and Trellis that she had overlooked who should really be here. Major oversight on her part, how did she overlook that? What else had she overlooked? Coughlin’s thoughts stunk of deceit and the truth rang out like a siren in everything he was thinking right now.

  ‘The Secretary of Treasurer Lisa Bandar had no idea of the financial treachery that was going on behind these gold walls. Wow…’ D laughed darkly.

  She certainly did not see that disclosure coming being as preoccupied as she had been. Is Coughlin afraid that D would learn too much info from Ms. Bandar, or should it be phrased wrong information? Coughlin certainly wanted D and the Treasury Secretary separated. Was she willingly complacent to what this administration was doing with their financial security? Lisa Bandar may have walked right into an old style DC District boys club. Did Ms. Bandar know anything about the gold dupe? It was odd she was not there and D doubted she would find the underlying cause of it on this trip, nor was she sure she wanted to.

  The more she found out the less she wished she knew. Did the American public deserve to know, or, were they better off lied to? If confidence in their currency plummeted, it could sink the United States into a dark depressive hole that they may not be able to dig out of anytime soon. More chaos could sweep the nation and corkscrew them down into a pit of financial tar. She shuddered at the thought. With the lifestyle that people led, mostly depending on their plastic credit card balance— that could be a rude awakening and shake the American landscape from sea to shining sea.

  If their financial institution failed, who was at fault? The politicians the public were responsible for electing? Alternatively, a few select men/women pulling the strings behind the scenes. The American public, who chose to live bigger than their means, all in a pursuit of The American Dream? D believed all of these reasons blended into one big pot of turmoil soup. Simmering over a low boil until the bottom becomes scorched and burnt, with all financial fluidity gone.

  Chapter Seventeen ~

  Laying in the cold damp of the underground dungeon, soaked and dried in their own blood, lay Jase and Colin. The maniac that roamed around upstairs treated them no better than a stray pet that was a nuisance. The difference being, the man keeping them captive wanted these men alive, but why?

  Colin was still concerned that Jase was close to death. Enough light had peered in from upstairs now he could see Jase’s limp and bloody body in the corner adjacent from him. He would watch as the man upstairs would periodically check on his ‘pets’ and this made Colin think his buddy was alive, at least for now or the man would have not continued to check on them both. Jase must have suffered some sort of head trauma, maybe rest was all he needed? At least this was what Colin had prayed.

  Colin knew he needed to break free. Possibly start a dialog with the man when he came to check again. Talking to their tormentor was something he had avoided till now. He wanted to make sure he couldn’t escape first, check on Jase, and give his captor a surprise he would not see coming. He had tried every which way to break out of the chains. Whoever this crazy man was, he knew how to constrict a prisoner.

  That’s when Colin saw it, his snow pants, hanging from a hook above a wooden workbench. At least that was what he thought he saw. He could be wrong, but they certainly looked like it. This gave him more hope than he had since the plane took its final dive.

  The transceiver that he had turned on the morning Jase dropped him off was in those pants, a tiny compartment that zipped near the bottom of the right leg. Was it still there? He had never turned it off and now he was hoping that if this lunatic had saved his snow pants, his gun and other belongings would be close.

  Colin heard a breathless moan come from his battered friend, “Jase! Jase can you hear me?” He heard Jase take a deep breath and he went silent once more. The waiting and not knowing if Jase would survive was more torture than Colin wanted to remember. Scenes like a movie reel kept playing through his mind of his time he was a POW and did not know the status of his men. He could do this, he thought; he would get Jase out of here alive.

  The man upstairs must of heard Colin’s call out to Jase and immediately rushed to the door. Colin could hear a series of locks being turned and twisted out of their steel casing. Soon the man descended into the makeshift prison.

  This was the first time that Colin got a good look at the man. He was short with a stocky build but what surprised him was the fact he was in a uniform, a Citizen Control uniform and the man had his badge displayed tightly on his belt. This was not the man that Colin seen in the woods dumping the body parts!

  Was this for real? Was he a Citizen Control Agent? This changed Colin’s tactic, he was no longer planning to deal with a lunatic but a couple of lunatics with a badge AND training.

  Colin didn’t waste any time and quickly asked, “I’m tied up down here, could you please help me get out of this so I can check on that guy over there?” Seemed innocent enough Colin thought.

  “What is your name?” the man gruffed out.

  “I don’t remember. I have a horrible headache.” Colin answered.

  “What were you doing in the forest?”

  “I’m sorry.” Colin replied, trying to sound confused, “am I at a Citizen Control station? Is that man over there getting medical attention?”

  “Look Agent Colin Banks of Washington D.C. I’m not in the mood for your games. What I am in the mood for is you telling what you were doing chasing my buddy through the woods.”

  Buddy! Buddy! Colin screamed in his head!?

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  “Fine, have it your way. You need to know that my buddy is bringing company home in a bit and it may get crowded down here.” With that, the crazy man was gone leaving them alone in the dank dirty darkness.

  Colin poured over the details in his mind that he gained from the two-minute conversation. The man that questioned him couldn’t be a real Citizen Control Agent. A trained cop would have never given as many details away as this imposter did. He knew Colin’s name which could have come off his airplane ticket, he knew he was an agent by his CCD ID in his wallet, he admitted to being ‘buddies’ with the guy in the woods and that they were chasing him. He was also bringing home another victim or victims. The man additionally didn’t want to sound concerned about Jase’s condition but if he wasn’t concerned, he wouldn’t have been checking on them periodically and making sure they had water and were still breathing.

  The silence was broken by a voice that Colin was afraid he would never hear again.

  “Sergeant, where are we?” Jase’s dry mouth choked out.

  “Jase, I’m not sure but it looks like a basement. How are you feeling? What hurts? What is broke?”

  “I feel broke. I’m dizzy and tired.”

  “Try
not to go back to sleep. Broken bones?”

  “My right leg, seems… pretty battered.” He answered with a stretch and moan.

  “I think the man we saw in the woods brought us here. There are two of them for sure. One of the men is either a Citizen Control Agent or a wanna-be agent. The man that brought us here, the one that we saw in the woods, is bringing more company in a bit, either helpers in their sick kidnappings or victims. Not sure what all this means. I know we need to get out of here and quick. Can you maneuver around in your chains and ropes?”

  “Not really. I think I have a gash in my forehead, I don’t think my leg is broke but I could be wrong, and my vision is blurry.” Jase looked around trying to see out of the swollen slits that were now his eyes. “There may be a screwdriver, at least it looks like a screwdriver over here under the bench along the wall. I can’t really make it out.”

  “Try to reach it. Quick Jase, we don’t have a lot of time.”

  Jase turned his body on the cold floor towards the tool bench and stretched out his broken body towards what could be their saving grace- a screwdriver. Wriggling left and right as horizontal as he could extend his thick arm, he tried and tried to reach the screwdriver. After a half an hour or trying and failing, his fingertips finally touched the tool. After gently scooting it towards him, he could finally grip the screwdriver! The pain was starting to subside, the pain he was feeling was now a phantom tingle that was being numbed by adrenaline. He was starting to settle in and he was growing accustom to the throbbing. Pain was something they were taught to deal with, to push through but he somehow had an inkling that whoever first spoke that had never been in as much pain as he was at that moment.

  Once Jase reached it, Colin took a deep breath and it was the first time since he woke up in that basement that his muscles seemed to relax.

  “Sergeant, my wrist is more messed up than I realized. I’m going to try and slide this over to you.”

  “No, Furlough, try and use it first. If you would lose your grip on it before it gets to me we are both screwed- without a screwdriver.”

  As Jase tried to pry the lock opened, Colin suddenly reliving a vivid memory about outpost where he was held captive by the radical extremist. He was no longer in that dank basement. He was in an abandoned cave in a hot dry desert. His unit was being tortured for information and he was reliving the screams of pain he endured. He could smell the blood and sweat, the dry air and the need to save his brothers began to raise his heartrate. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD had nothing in the medical books like this. Those men upstairs had no idea what Tasmanian devil they were about to unleash. Colin could see it happening and he didn’t know whether to contain it or let it play out. It may be their only way out.

  Chapter Eighteen~

  Coughlin nervously looked down at his watch, and then focused his attention to the front door of the depository. He was definitely waiting for something or someone but his mind wasn’t giving up this intel. She meandered to the front door past the guards and asked them to open the door slightly. That was when she saw them. At the opening of the gate, over a hundred yards away, she saw a group of men and women readying themselves with weapons and one man that stood resolute with his arms crossed, a scowl fixed on his face, staring at the door where she was. She could be mistaken but he looked reminiscent of the zombie like child that she had the non-pleasure meeting with back at Trellis in her childhood. His dark hair buzzed short, a kind of shiny metal collar around his neck, tall, skinny, and his cold countenance was certainly like the one of the bloody zombie back on Trellis.

  ‘HE IS HERE FOR ME!’

  She swallowed hard trying to form a plan of escape or attack. Her head was screaming, ‘I hope that Dr. Salvaggi fixed the part of that Zombie guy that liked to eat people’s faces! I become partial to my face!’

  Each of the clones had a shiny metal thing wrapped around their neck. A tracking device? A controlling device? A devise that wouldn’t let her read their brain patterns? She did not have the luxury of time to contemplate what it could be.

  Those Trellis clones had this all planned and knew this was the place to take her, with no escape, and she wouldn’t be expecting it!

  She had to think decisively and logically, and she didn’t have the convenience of a backdoor out of this place. Stupid! How could she have let this happen! Her eyes scanned they rooms, ceilings, and walls.

  She rushed to the reporters and Coughlin, grabbing their thoughts, rushing them in to an open vault, but not before placing one of her clear tape creation tracking devices on Coughlin’s upper forearm quickly— extraordinarily quickly! She commanded that the door be shut but not before wiping their memory. No need for casualties here, they would be safe in there for now.

  She turned to the guards and asked, “Who is the oldest employed person in this depository?”

  “Schell, come over here. This lady has a question for you.” One of the guards commanded the older grey-headed man that had remained in a corner, observing the fuss made by the visitors.

  Schell walked over to them with what looked like a janitors uniform on, “Yes, ma’am.” He answered.

  Ignoring him, she turned to the rest of the guards and commanded them to use their guns to shoot out the surveillance cameras. They each pulled their guns from their holsters and aimed them at the cameras but with every loud bang, nothing happened! Blanks! Each click of their guns, the hammer pulled back but nothing fired out. No ammunition! The guards unquestionably didn’t know what was going on either. Each guard stopping and checking their weapon over with confused looks on their faces. She knew what was happening though. She knew that this was all part of a greater plan, and these guards have already been mind-altered by zombie-man.

  ‘Think fast, think fast, think fast’… she needed to calm down.

  “You two,” she grabbed on to two of the men’s minds, “go, and dismantle the cameras at all cost, and then lock yourself in the nearest vault.” They hastily move to the offices and start pulling wires out of walls and ripping cords from the computers. As the wires were pulled the alarms started to sound in a piercing nonstop shriek.

  She commanded the rest of the guards to move to the next empty vault and wait; she began to promptly question Mr. Schell over the screeching of the alarm sirens.

  “Do you know of another way out of this place?”

  His thoughts were vast and coming unexpectedly fast however he didn’t want to verbally cooperate with her. She manipulated a little more of his mind and he started chirping like a morning bird. “I do, but it has been out of commission for decades.”

  “When was the last time you were interviewed by anyone from the outside or from the base?”

  “Interviewed? I don’t get interviewed.”

  ‘That’s going to have to do.’ She doesn’t think this man’s mind had been messed with. She’s assuming that he had been registered insignificant by Trellis clones because he doesn’t brand a weapon and his pay scale would be low on the government’s need-to-know list. Who was stupid now?

  She knew the unwelcomed guests were probably getting closer and they were here with one of two agendas. One, either kill her, or two, take her back to Trellis, and she was not going back to Trellis, alive.

  “Quickly, spill everything you know, Schell,” she ordered.

  “Only a few people alive today know about the entrance, and you are looking at one of them. In the eighth vault on the right-hand side, there are columns of bricks that stand off to the left of the room. Here I’ll show you.”

  She closed the vault with the guards in it and wiped their memory. She followed Schell to the vault in question, and he continued to explain.

  “This is an underground passage that is ten stories underground with an old warehouse elevator that descends to the bottom.” He pressed a few of the bricks like a keyboard and the wall of gold behind them opened up. It wasn’t gold at all but were bricks of heavy grade steel, painted to look like gold. She quickly clos
ed the vault door they were standing in; optimistically this could be her escape from Dr. Salvaggi’s minions.

  Janitor Schell continued, “But I wouldn’t trust that elevator because it hasn’t been used in a terribly long time. At the bottom is a series of doors, the third one from the right with the yellow circle painted on the top left corner trimmed in green, it should open right up and take you to a tunnel of small railway cars. DO NOT OPEN THE OTHER DOORS, they were dummy doors rigged with explosive charges. Again, the third door from the right was the tunnel that runs approximately ten miles to the river. Once you open the tunnel door, you will see your first panel of letters and numbers, the code for this door is WhirlElection2108, and the Exit door at the end of the ten miles is CarpetBaggers8012DeadLock. Each first letter of each word is capitalized, nothing else. Do you understand? Once you are through the door, close it, and turn the wheel on the wall until you hear the locks click back into place.” His mind was giving her a perfect picture of what she was to expect once she was beneath in the depository’s dungeon. She also had a good picture of why he knew about the passage. He would in turn pass the knowledge off to the next ‘passage secret keeper’ to take his place.

  “Exit? What is the Entry Code to get back into the tunnel?” She asked while she grabbed a pen out of his shirt pocket and scribbled the combinations on her forearm, no use in chancing remembering the sequence when she would be dealing with explosives…

  “I don’t know,” and he didn’t know the

  Re-entry code.

  “How many people have you ever told about this entry and exit?”

  “You.”

  “I’m it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the people that built this?”

  “We, the few that know about it, think the tunnel was built from an actual cave that already existed, before the depository was here. We’ve had a hunch that during the civil war it was used as a passage to help slaves get safely to the river and on a boat to freedom. Later, it was shelled up with the steel, elevators, and railcars. All presumptions, though. We found an old drawing on one of the old tunnel walls during a repair over thirty years ago, that looked like a slave drawing. There are actually several down there that are faded.”