Trellis Read online

  D passed the loneliness of evenings by visiting the fetus room. She would walk around the tiny babies that were kept in the clear glass cylinder vessels. She would stroll through the rows of babies until someone would catch her and make her leave. The massive operation would mesmerize her. The babies were suspended in a clear like substance and they maintained this arrangement for close to nine months. She never witnessed what happened to the babies once they were out of the vessels. All she knew, the taken babies were replaced with new smaller fetuses. After the surgeries on her brain though, she knew the babies were moved to another area on the island.

  She was being kept separated from the thousands of other clones they were raising at Trellis, clones of all ages. Around the age of five they did eventually introduce her to other children, as you could guess, D was beyond puzzled when these new young people came into her life, or rather forced into her life.

  Her hair was so long back then. Looking back now D was surprised they let it grow as long as they did, since they controlled every aspect of her stringently scheduled life. She remembered having a needle stuck in her arm one day and she slowly lost consciousness. When she awoke, her head had been shaved, and no one told her what had happened. Her long hair was gone and in its place were cuts and stitches. There would be three more surgeries after that one. The fourth one was the one that worked. Well, it worked for them. The doctor D credited (or discredited) for doing what he did to her called it a success. He was sort of a mad scientist with someone else’s endless resources. Dr. Salvaggi, at least in his own mind, was the best.

  After the so-called success of her surgeries D was ran through a battery of mental exams. The more exams they gave her the more she started to figure out what was going on, at least with her new abilities. D was like a sponge. She recognized rather quickly she could read peoples thoughts. The visual scars eventually healed and so did the superior and middle temporal gyri section of her brain. The healing brought on an onslaught of headaches and the nausea lasted for weeks. At first when people were around her their thoughts entwined with hers, she didn’t know where her reality started, and psychosis began. The thoughts flurried through her brain like a blizzard of sand particles and she couldn’t grab on to one single thought. No one could come near her without sending her in convulsions and on top of all of that, her brain thoughts would tangle with the nurses. These nurses started to have convulsions that turned in to long excruciating migraines. The more the workers tried to help her the more she felt herself losing control. As time passed this eased a bit. Eventually the side effects subsided and D learned to control the neural activity exploding in her head. She no longer could take, without great strain, anyone in close proximity to her.

  She once saw a graphic image of her brain after the final surgery and what she saw was incredible. The devices Dr. Salvaggi left in D’s brain were an intricate patchwork of minuscule titanium threads of nanotechnologies. The tiny devices work like this: when you read something or think something in your private thoughts, IN YOUR OWN BRAIN, the average person hears their own voice not someone else’s voice. The sensory output a person hears in his or her own voice transmits a small electrical wave, which could be measured. Therefore, the small nanotechnology devices weaved into D’s neural matter act like a transceiver and a transmitter at the same time, therefore giving her an invasive conduit into any thoughts and actions of a victim, except Agent Colin Banks.

  The human brain puts off different frequencies for different moods and behaviors, these frequencies are like a billboard sign for D. Manipulating these different frequencies give her the ability to change moods, control movement, and essentially take away free-will for a period of time. If she could be in close enough proximity to a human, she could grab onto these frequencies and had an intellectual-nerve into a person sensory formation.

  It didn’t take her long to figure out she could start controlling people through processing their sensory output. There are confines of her telepathy, one, she could control their perception of what they were feeling or seeing, it exhausted her. Two, for her to hear their thoughts they had to be in relative proximity to her, although this had grown over the years to around forty feet. Three, she could actually make them do what she wanted but she had to be able to grab their thoughts and some people’s thoughts were easier than other people’s thoughts to grab, Mr. Zhao, whose thoughts were in Chinese were harder to grab. D could control him but it wouldn’t be fluid and natural and would ultimately exhaust her.

  Soon D started to realize the life she was missing anytime she was exposed to people that had a life, a real life outside the Trellis barricades. D would get glimpses of a better reality than she had inside of the metal fence. Slowly she would plan an escape and there would be no one able to stop her, no one.

  ***

  “Darling, this has to be my finest work!” Frankie spun D around in the salon chair and she finally seeing all the work that had taken hours for her to have longer hair.

  “Wow, this is…,” She said touching her hair and turning her head side to side trying to find words to describe how she felt. Her shiny brown hair was at least down to her elbows with a soft wave. She didn’t recognize herself.

  “Be-a-u-ti-ful!” Frankie exclaimed. “You don’t look like the drab little thing that rambled in here this morning! You look like a star, Sienna! Well almost look like a star. Let’s get you dressed in some new clothes!”

  D walked to a large dressing room, watching her reflection as she moved across the room. She didn’t recognize the person staring back at her. She soon would be layered in clothing as people asked her to try this and that on, and treated her like royalty. She stood in front of a full-length mirror and loved what she saw. A camel colored short leather jacket, a cream shirt tucked into well-tailored pants and paired with dark brown riding boots that zipped up the back. To finish off her look a small string of pearls were draped around her neck. She was usually dressed in a t-shirt and jeans unless she was on a mission, this was definitely a new look for her. D looked herself over one more time in the mirror and thought to herself that Banks would never recognize her now.

  They handed her fancy bags with her new outfits. Finally, she was promenaded back through the salon theme park of rainbows and castle type décor to the front and past the curious clients watching her. Standing at the counter, waiting for her total bill with all the clothing bags around her feet, a dumpy short blonde-haired woman behind the counter sat unamused at D’s transformation. The monotone woman looked through her red sparkly cat-eyed glasses annoyed D had taken her away from reading her thick paperback romance novel.

  She finally printed a receipt and slid it over to D and murmured, “That will be $15,379.59. You promised Frankie you would pay double, right?”

  D nodded her head yes, as she swallowed the lump in her throat, pulled a wad of hundred dollar bills from her big red overstuffed wallet. D counted out sixteen thousand dollars and told her the rest was the tip for the whole crew that worked on her. The receptionist looked less than impressed and her thoughts told D the same. D picked up all her bags and made her way out the front door. She realized right away she should have driven herself this morning after feeling the heaviness of all the bags, she took a deep breath and haled for a cab.

  D made her way back to Binder Book Store wishing she could play dress up for the rest of the day. No time for that, not today, after all, the day was almost over and she had recon to do.

  Walking through the door of the bookstore, she heard familiar brain thoughts. Mr. Zhao’s nephew Zan was there. D wouldn’t necessarily call Zan a friend but he was always kind to her. She struggled opening the door with all the clothing bags when Zan saw her, he rushed to help her inside the door.

  “Thank you, Zan.”

  “Been shopping, Sienna? You look amazing!” He gawked at her.

  His thoughts were completely in harmony with his actual words. You would be surprised how many false compliments are spewed out daily.
She heard so many fake thoughts and was the main reason D shunned away from people. Most people’s thoughts disgusted her.

  “Yes, I have,” D, answered as she spun around pulling the bags with her, “I need to get these bags put up and then head back out.” He took the bags from her and offered to carry them. ‘Wow,’ D thought, ‘I didn’t even have to manipulate him into helping me’.

  Mr. Zhao looked up at her, spluttered out something in Chinese, and then looked back down at the book he was reading. He had grown use to D’s many character changes, no doubt unimpressed with her new look.

  Zan clearly embarrassed by his uncle tried to smooth it over, “Whatever he said I’m sure it was hurtful. Let’s both be happy we can’t speak Chinese.” They moved towards the stairwell with all the bags in tow.

  Proceeding up the steps, D asked him, “Do you wish you could speak Chinese?”

  “I don’t know, sometimes I wish I could. I mean I only know very little.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Hey, they teach an online class at the college. Maybe I could sign us up and we could get Uncle to help?” he suggested.

  ‘That would be perfect,’ she thought. D hated classrooms so an online computer class could be a great option. Ever since Trellis, she avoided classrooms like a plague.

  “Yes, check in to that!” They reached the top of the stairs and D knew he wanted to see inside of her home but there was no way she was letting him in her sanctuary… unless he wanted to clean it.

  “I got it from here. Thank you, for all the help, Zan.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’ll let you know what I find out on that Chinese language class.”

  “Great,” D said, clearly indicating with her actions that it was time for him to leave.

  ‘Why won’t he leave?’ She screamed on the inside.

  He stared at her like a lost puppy. Finally, she manipulated his thoughts with her mind and he quickly turned and disappeared into the stairwell.

  D opened the door and pressed a few numbers to disarm the alarm. She placed the bags inside and glanced at the briefcase from the day before next to the sofa. D opened it up and pulled out the weapons she took from the gang, gazed around the room trying to find an easy hiding place, and decided to lay them in the oven for now. It wasn’t as if she would be using the oven to cook, ever. She opened the door of the oven, picking each weapon up one by one she laid them on the wire racks with a clinky echo. She may have had a high IQ but her adolescents recklessness always reared up and placing weapons in the oven, however unusual for the average teen would be along the same lines of leaving the bathroom sink faucet on and going to school. Both could cause serious damage, albeit, D’s thoughtlessness could cause death. She would eventually move them to the vault with all the other weapons she had taken from lawless clowns over the years.

  She then focused on lime green flip-flops she had thrown in the briefcase yesterday, they had an unusual meaning to her, and a smile spread wide across her face. D had the best idea and it would help her with her new goal of helping others, at least that is what she told herself. At her desk, she took out a couple of large vanilla envelopes and a black marker. On a separate piece of paper, she wrote: Donated by Sec of Defense Peter Coughlin, she proceeded to fill it with the cash D had in her briefcase. She licked the envelope and pressed it shut, grinning of course.

  She didn’t know if she was grinning ear to ear because she was doing something good or she was grinning because she was sticking it to Coughlin. She left her loft resetting her alarm on her way out with the stuffed envelopes in hand.

  D decided to take her car this time, normally she didn’t like driving in the city, especially a crowded one but a cab wouldn’t move as fast as she needed it to in tonight’s traffic. There were too many thoughts flying around from every driver out there at rush hour, and just driving by itself was a mental exercise for her like nothing else. All the mental activities and tests that Dr. Salvaggi put D through, none could compare to what she felt when she finally got behind the wheel of a car. Road rage was something she fought against, and she won. Many times, she had wanted to use her skill and run people off the road, and she could have easily. Exhausting, trying to fight road rage all the time! The best mental exercise for her was keeping calm in rush hour traffic but she gave herself an A+ almost every time. Sometimes she got a B-, but she never hurt anyone, or made graphic hand gestures, or yelled, which in D’s mind called for a passing grade.

  D walked to the parking garage, held the keys up and pressed the unlock button and made her little silver sports car beep and the doors unlock. When D opened the door, the new car smell hit her.

  “I love this car,” D said aloud, although, anything smelled better than a cab.

  While D adjusted the radio and clicked her seatbelt, she remembered something Coughlin mentioned yesterday about Hinkle, ‘He is related to the who’s who here in DC.’ Enamored by Banks, D completely forgot about Agent Hinkle. Since she couldn’t get a read on Agent Banks, she would narrow her research down to Hinkle, which would get her intelligence on her actual target, Banks. Hinkle was easy. After a little research on her phone, she quickly came up with a home address, setting her GPS she was soon zipping through the DC streets.

  D whooshed through the busy lanes of traffic, coming up behind a convertible full of young teenage girls. As D approached them, one of the longhaired chicks tossed out what D assumed was a vanilla shake. When it hit her windshield, D was enraged. She knew the girls intentionally aimed at her on purpose so D wouldn't pass them. It splattered as if a prehistoric pterodactyl took a dump on her shiny pristine car. She immediately grabbed the driver's mind and thought long and hard about driving them into oncoming traffic...

  ***

  D sat on a concrete divider next to a carwash vacuum sweeper, eating fries, and slurping a soda, she watched the four girls that had assaulted her car --clean it. They had suds it, rinsed it off, and were drying it when D noticed a red minivan pull in and go to the automatic drive-through lane and get in a long line of cars waiting to be polished.

  Looking at the girls that were just a little younger than she was she couldn’t help but think about how differently her life would have turned out if she had been brought up in a normal home with loving parents. Parents that wouldn’t have had an agenda to control and sell her out to countries with diabolical plans of their own. Parents that wouldn’t have let unnecessary life threatening surgeries be done on her brain that could have killed her. The diary she kept of her island life, the top-secret missions, and the sometimes elimination of ‘people obstacles’ had filled up half a dozen notebooks. These girls she was staring at had no idea how lucky they were to be on the outside with a normal life. D’s heart winced.

  She climbed down off the concrete barrier and tossed her trash in a large brown barrel. As she turned back to the girls washing her car she noticed the red minivan again filled with young children in child-car-seats and an incredibly frantic mother trying to quiet them all down. D grabbed their thoughts, calming them all down immediately with her mind, then knocked on the van window. D glanced in the filthy van, and stained crumb riddled carpet and an even bigger smile spread across her face.

  "Yes, see those girls over there," D, asked minivan mom as she pointed back towards her sports car where the unwilling carwash volunteers were finishing up.

  "Yes," The minivan mom answered, as she handed a baby bottle to one of the toddlers in the back seat.

  "Well, they are doing a community project today. They will wash the outside and clean the inside of your van free. You can go next door here and get burgers for your family with this fifty-dollar bill. One of those girls volunteering over there will come with you to help with the kids while you eat." Taking a large bill out of her wallet she handed it to minivan mom.

  “Wow, thank you. Are you sure?” Minivan mom asked, tucking her frazzled hair behind her ear.

  With a grin, D squinted and looked back towards her shiny clean car, �
��Quite sure.”

  Tears started to form in minivan mom’s eyes, which was more than D could take. She wanted to do something nice, not start an emotional roller-coaster.

  D sighed walking towards the girls thinking, ‘Why is it, when I try to be kind, people ruin it with tears? Maybe tears are normal?’ Then answering herself aloud, “Nah…”

  D had the strong need to make amends of the horrible things she had done in the name of Trellis. The manifestation of paying society back seemed unnatural but she couldn’t except that she had been created for evil. At least not all the time. She knew the elevated high feeling she had when she did something good that benefitted others and she liked that feeling better than when she did something terrible. She thought if she fostered this unnatural act of being kind she would overcome the thoughts she was made for malevolence and hopefully being kind would become natural. So far, all good acts she did were premeditated and were not coming natural. At least this is how she felt.

  After the carwash fiasco, D’s next stop in her newly cleaned car would be the Children’s Home for Orphans. Sauntering up to the front door, D had a pep in her gait, smile on her face, and cash in large over-stuffed envelopes. D rang the black little buzzer and waited. A large round woman answered the door and D without delay asked her who was in charge. She was guided through the office and introduced to a few different people. She left the envelopes with written instructions to spend it on the children this Christmas. Also, and this was important, D left them with the idea a mail carrier dropped it off and leaving behind the signature green flip-flops that were synonymous with the sandy island of Trellis. D had hoped that small bit of information would get back to Dr. Salvaggi.