Trellis: Trellis Trilogy (One) Read online

  “Here, Love-bug. This should help you rest tonight. Are you coming to bed shortly?” she asked while she handed him the steaming beverage.

  “Yes, I have a little business to attend to first. Thank you, Dear.” He said softly as he reached out and carefully took the hot mug from her hand and moved it away from important folders on his desk.

  She floated around the desk and kissed Peter Coughlin on the forehead. To her he was not the Secretary of Defense; he was the man she married, the man she loved.

  “Honey, I’m worried about how bloodshot your eyes have been looking lately. Are you feeling well?” She asked.

  “Yes, Dear, I suppose I am tired,” He explained. He knew it was not fatigue, however he was not about to admit that to her.

  She lovingly touched his arm and turned to leave but not before shutting the solid wooden doors behind her.

  With his wife absent from the room and no doubt medicated as usual for the evening so she could sleep soundly, he could stay up and make the calls he had dreaded since he picked D up. He sipped the hot tea mug and then carefully sat it down and slowly stretched out his sore back, grimacing in pain. His injuries from years of duty were catching up with him fast. He knew back surgery would be inevitable at this point but he had no time for rest right now in his life. Not to mention his back doctor wanted him to lose the weight equal to a husky teenager first.

  He stood up and slowly marched to one of the dark wooden panels along the wall and carefully grabbed the bottom trim of the wainscoting and slid the secret panel upward to reveal a green metal safe with a safety dial. He glided the dial in a complete circle a few times then he began to round the dial to the numbers that would open it- left, right, left. He pulled the handle and the bars inside unlocked, only revealing another door with a round device that needed to read the retina of his eye to allow entrance to its protected content.

  He leaned forward and placed his eye firmly in the resting spot and a green light appeared, it scanned his eye from right to left, and then left to right. A few seconds later, the third door opened exposing a computer screen and small cell phone.

  The screen turned on, in black and white a set of numbers appeared, first the five disappeared, then the four, three, two, and then finally, one. A man appeared although some would use the term ‘man’ loosely; it was Dr. Salvaggi. His shaved head and cold expression made Coughlin wonder what this Doctor was capable of doing. His eyes resembled black holes that held vast secrets he would never divulge under tremendous torture.

  With his Italian accent, he spoke in a soft tone, the kind of tone a person would use when they are at the brink of madness rolled into a genius enigmatic mystery. No one would dare question Dr. Salvaggi’s sanity, at least to his face in fear of what the outcome would be. The top ranking official at Trellis needed to be exceptionally intelligent, brutal, and callous all in the name of science. Dr. Salvaggi fit the roll perfectly.

  “You are not supposed to contact us for another week. What is the meaning of this, Peter?” Dr. Salvaggi was the only person he worked with that called him by his first name. Coughlin knew Dr. Salvaggi did it for intimidation purposes. Coughlin went along with it to appease the powers at be but he wanted to choke the snot out of him, and had dreamed about it many times. He also wondered if Dr. Salvaggi had used brainwashing on him, no one spoke to him like the way Salvaggi spoke to him and got away with it, in his personal or professional life but this mad scientist.

  “We had an incident today with D. She was picked up at the airport and taken in to CCD headquarters here in DC. She could have walked out of there at any time but didn’t. Then she chose to get me involved and I had to go physically get her, do a sweep of the facility, threaten some extremely good agents, and she is refusing to work with anyone else but me. She is a liability. How do we know she is going to follow through on her job next week at Fort Knox?” Coughlin explained in a calm collected matter. He had composed himself since this afternoon when he had the confrontation with D.

  “Why was she in DC?” Dr. Salvaggi asked.

  “She had Intel on some group getting embedded into political parties and blackmailing officials. She wanted to hand the info off herself to one of our agents, which doesn’t make sense. D could have handed information off to me at any time. She isn’t telling us everything but I didn’t push it. When we drove her to the airport, we walked her to the terminal ourselves and watched her get on the plane. She isn’t in DC now but I can’t help but think she is a few steps away from bringing all this down.”

  “Interesting, she is taking on a responsibility to your country. Feeling the need to protect it above and beyond the projects we give her. This could be extraordinarily good or startlingly harmful… When dealing with her you need to stress the importance of helping her country. That everything rests on her shoulders. The more loyalty she has to you the more she will be willing to help. But, and I cannot stress this enough Peter, she has to feel like she has a choice. If she doesn’t feel she has a choice, a free will, she will become useless and need to be either brought back here or disposed of there… and Peter, she is my best work, my most delicate child. I don’t want her disposed of.”

  Coughlin shook his head in complete agreement, although he would rather had her disposed of and not to mention hearing Dr. Salvaggi call D his child made Coughlin shudder.

  Coughlin inquired, “Can’t we get a tracker on her?”

  “Peter, how would you suggest we do that? She would see it coming from forty feet away.”

  Coughlin in a rare moment of candor, partially joked, “A blow dart should do the trick.”

  Salvaggi remained stone-faced. He believed humor showed weakness and had no tolerance for this behavior. Coughlin immediately regretted quipping that remark out.

  After a long awkward silence the doctor suggested, “I think under the circumstances we are going to be sending a new project participant ready for introduction into the field, to join the mission in Fort Knox next week. He will be there strictly to observe D and hopefully get a read out on her. I will send you the intelligence you need.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We can’t place this mission in danger of failing. It is too important. Can we wait for the next job? If we mess this up the country will suffer.”

  With a clipped sigh Dr. Salvaggi sneered, “Fine. That will give us a few more weeks to get things in order.” Salvaggi conceded through sly-eyes. However, he had no intention of backing away from his original plans; he realized Coughlin didn’t need to know the details, and now he saw Peter Coughlin as a bigger nuisance. Coughlin would regret ever questioning Dr. Salvaggi.

  Coughlin shook his head in understanding. He hated being so vulnerable to such a volatile situation that could backfire at any moment but this was handed to him when he took over the Secretary of Defense position; he had no choice. Looking back now, he would have never taken the job if he knew it could possibly be the crux of ruining him, embarrassing his family, and his great nation.

  “Peter, how was she? Did she look well?” The doctor asked, more for the data he recorded on D than out of genuine concern.

  “She looked like a mess.” Coughlin said tightening his jaw.

  “Explain in detail,” Salvaggi ordered as his eyebrows waggled in confusion at Coughlin’s statement.

  Coughlin’s face hardened and he described her appearance in detail. “Her hair was orange and purple, her nails were bitten down to the nub, her makeup was rather heavy on her eyes and hid her face. She was clearly hiding her identity. I do not think this was a usual look for her. Maybe it was, but I doubt it. She had green flip-flops in the briefcase as well. Cheap flimsy ones. Not sure why.”

  “Lime green? Or just green?” The doctor asked as he scrutinized Coughlin’s words.

  “Lime green I guess. Green, I don’t know.” Coughlin snorted.

  Salvaggi knew why the flip-flops were in the briefcase she was carrying, and he knew they were lime green. This was the same color
of footwear that she wore on the island, lime green cheap flip-flops. All the clones and workers wore them around the sandy island. Her idea to add these on her own little mission must mean that D knew that Coughlin was in communication with the island. If she knew that Salvaggi and Coughlin spoke on a regular basis she was smarter and more premeditated with her motives than the Doctor had ever given her credit for in the past. Her awareness of Trellis’s influence on her life in the USA was a disconcerting one.

  The doctor didn’t see the need to explain any of his assumptions about her behavior. If Dr. Salvaggi had it his way, Coughlin would soon be removed from the picture all together.

  “Place your eye in the reader and I will try to lock in what I can of this information so no one can get to our meeting but you.” Salvaggi ordered him.

  He closed the heavy safe door, positioned his forehead on the rest, looked in the retina scanner once more, and waited for the light to begin its scan. He couldn’t help but wonder every time he did this if he was frying some part of his brain. The light scanned left to right and up and down, pulsed a few times and then a few flashes of colorful lights zapped quickly. He hated this last part, it always made him see stars for hours.

  No specific world government supervised the Trellis project but they all knew it existed and paid heavily to use their services. All customers of Trellis paid a violent blood soaked price. The eye scan system Trellis had been using to block Coughlin’s memories from D, had never been tested or approved by any authorized lab. The effects were slowly killing Peter Coughlin. The island named Trellis was far from anything a civilized people could ever imagined existed and Coughlin was experiencing it effect firsthand. He could have never imagined though, that Dr. Salvaggi would soon make him pay the ultimate price.

  Coughlin still needed to make the phone call to the people that pulled the strings for the projects, a group of government officials that knew the countries deepest secrets and political agendas. These people decided what jobs needed to be done, who was going to be hired for the job, what bills were going to be signed into law, and which bills didn’t stand a chance. People he knew nothing about. These people seemed indifferent to the horrible projects they engaged Trellis to complete. Coughlin was growing exhausted of this job and he wanted out, but that was not going to happen anytime soon. He convinced himself every time doubt crept into his mind that his continued services as Secretary of Defense was pertinent to national security. In reality, it kept the wheel in motion for the people tugging the puppet’s strings.

  A question he really wanted an answer to was, ‘Who was the great wizard behind the curtain that chose him for the go between for USA and Trellis?’ The man that would handle D and orchestrate missions for her that could ruin this great country. How was he roped in to this circus show was a question he asked himself every single day.

  He opened the safe back up, picked up the cell phone, and flipped it open; he dialed the number by memory and waited for the icy voice to answer.

  He explained everything he had told Dr. Salvaggi, his concerns, and what Dr. Salvaggi had suggested to do. When he hung up, he felt like it was more out of control than he first suspected. The fact Dr. Salvaggi wanted to send in Trellis’ new person was something that had never been offered before and seemed unsettling. Did Dr. Salvaggi want D back?

  While Coughlin sat there, flashes of what had happened earlier in the day started to speed through his mind. It was like the eye scan jogged his memory and he replayed the day like a movie reel. He picked up his medicated tea, sat back down in his leather chair, and sunk into it. He sipped his tea and thought about D and why she didn’t stroll out of the CCD’s hands. He wanted to watch the interrogation between Banks, Hinkle, and D. First thing tomorrow morning when he arrived at the office he was going to watch the video and see if the interaction looked a bit off. Something surely would stand out. He felt something warm and familiar run down from his nose, quickly grabbing his handkerchief he dabbed the blood away. Nosebleeds were something that had been happening more and more lately, he knew he could tie the intermittent sporadic bleeding to the eye scans, but for now, he just wiped it away and hoped they would stop. It was just another inconvenience of his job.

  Chapter Five~

  Early the next morning after waking up from a restless night, D laid on her yoga mat contorting her body and stretched her muscles. The stretching burned but it burned in a good way. She needed to attempt to clear her mind and to renew her energy. After she finished her routine, D sat in an overstuffed chair near the kitchen window and observed the street below, drinking a gross chocolate chalky shake she had in the fridge. Agent Banks was a prominent thought she couldn’t shake out of her mind.

  ‘Why do I even care what is going on in his head?’ She asked herself, as if she could convince herself it was insignificant that she couldn’t read his thoughts.

  D ran her fingers through her wavy short hair, realizing if she were to do recon on anyone, she would need a new hairdo, something that would make her unrecognizable. Changing her appearance had become a fun game for her. However, now, this transformation would need to keep her out of Colin Banks strong unyielding hands. She had been released due to Peter Coughlin’s help at the CCD, if she were to be captured again she wasn’t sure she would be willing to get Coughlin involved, much less she wasn’t sure that Banks would let her play the ‘Coughlin card’ again.

  Picking up her phone, she placed a call to her stylist. Not any stylist, the stylist, Frankie Gold. To her stylist Frankie and her crew, D was known as Sienna Smith, a trust fund kid who didn’t work, and with a slight identity crisis. Easy to remember, easy to keep straight.

  “Frankie, yes, I need to see you this morning. . . Frankie I will pay double to get in now.” The one thing D hated about her ability to read and change people’s thoughts- they had to actually be near her. Well at least within forty feet. The new leaf she had been trying to turn over the last few months had been hard. Not using the talent Trellis forced on her was harder than anyone would think. Essentially, D had a Super Power and she struggled to be the good guy, because being the bad guy came natural.

  “Frankie, I need the whole team; hair, nails, skin, and clothes- everything, and I need it done yesterday.” Hanging up she threw some clothes on quickly and looked once in the mirror. D knew people had mentioned to her over the years that she was a natural beauty. She didn’t see what they saw. She actually saw a tomboy in the mirror this morning and someone always hiding behind a false persona. D left her home and headed down the flight of stairs to the bookstore.

  D toddled past the counter where Mr. Zhao sat and halfheartedly waved. He grumbled something in Chinese and tried handing her a donut, “You eat.”

  “No, thank you.” D smiled, trying to show gratitude but her smile fell flat. She tried to move past his donut-shove-move.

  “Eat!” he persisted and pushed the donut towards her again.

  D reached out, plucked the donut from his spindly fingers, and nodded at him.

  ‘He is pushy for an old guy that doesn’t seem to like me at all. So why the donut?’ She asked herself.

  D thought he may had meant well, but she didn’t have enough confidence that Mr. Zhao wouldn’t sprinkle the food with rat poison. Since his thoughts were in Chinese and his motives weren’t clear, she wasn’t taking a chance. She could have grabbed his thoughts and made him think thoughts in English but it drained her. She saved that technique for larger problems and a donut given in a moment of kindness didn’t call for mind manipulation. Truth was D trusted no one. She threw the donut in the next dumpster and hailed the first cab she saw.

  The salon sat in the most posh area of DC. She first started going there to get inside information on what was happening in the Capitol Buildings and to grab any intel on Trellis she could. Overhearing any Trellis information had been a bust but you would be surprised what women say and think in a salon and if they were rich enough to come to Frankie’s salon, then they are connected t
o a politician. She knew a lot about the State Departments inner workings because of Frankie’s salon.

  She walked in under a sign reading, ‘Frankie’s Over the Rainbow Salon’. As you could guess, the entrance was a yellow brick road and it was more of an amusement theme park throughout, but the work they did- all business. Frankie herself greeted D at the desk. Frankie had a slim frame, purple one-piece outfit, and large rings on both her hands; she was something of the salon mascot herself. Her white hair stiffly gelled into place with a purple feathered and jeweled pin that sat high on the right side of her head.

  “Sienna, my love you look atrocious. I see now why you needed in today! Girls! Come look, hurry!” She howled at her team.

  D forced a constricted smile, then thought, ‘A paper bag over my head would be less humiliating than coming here.’

  “Sienna Love, what were you thinking? Something punk, school teacher, hippy, urban or Goth perhaps?” She quizzed theatrically as she led D to a blue chair and sat her down, all the while picking at her hair like a monkey picking at bugs. Here at Over the Rainbow you picked a character to be turned in to, not a hairstyle.

  “Nothing like that, Frankie, I was thinking longer hair, keep my color, maybe? A look to make me look older?”

  “Oh, darling,” She laughed, “You really are putting in a tall order. How old are you now?”

  “I am almost eighteen,” I think, she added to her private thoughts…

  Frankie inhaled a long breath as she stepped back placing one finger to her lips overdramatically, and mulled over what D told her. Finally clapping her hands, a team of people swarmed Frankie, some took notes, and others stood ready for dutiful orders. D heard something about waves, creams, colors, dull pinks, and pearls. You would think they were planning war, a fashion war. D hated this part. The touching part. Where strangers pulled, spun, filed, braided, clipped, sprayed, spritzed, wiped, brushed, painted, and touched her. Since D would be getting hair extensions, she would be in that chair for many hours. She closed her eyes trying to escape in her mind.