Trellis Page 7

  She turned on her computer and tried to find any information on Colin Banks. Again, nothing. D was at a loss. Even if she could find information on him, it wasn’t going to get her close enough to figure him out. What if she did get close and he recognized her from the interrogation yesterday? She typed the name of his apartment building, looked at floor plans, and pricing. Pictures of the leasing staff were also displayed on the company’s web page. This little bit of information will have to do for now.

  D contemplated having one of the people downstairs come and cook her dinner. “That would be highly wrong… probably…,” she thought to herself.

  Walking to the fridge only to see those nasty chocolate shakes sitting there, she grimaced. She opened the freezer to neatly stacked boxes of microwaveable chicken potpies. Her belly growled as she pulled one out and set the microwave time. She filled a glass up with water, grabbed a fork for her potpie, and watched the microwave timer count down until her food was ready. D realized that she was still picking up chatter in her head from the people in the bookstore downstairs.

  The dinger on the microwave chimed and she pulled the steaming food from the microwave trying not to burn her fingers, picking at the yellow gravy and square chicken. She only swallowed a few bites, scraping the rest in the now empty trash. Deciding she should run the dishwasher for the first time in a month, that is if she could even figure out the contraption. She pushed a few buttons then squirted enough for four loads of dishes in the dishwasher, and gently kicked the door up and shut. D wiped the counter off with a wet rag thinking she should probably hire a maid, hating housework; of course, she would never let anyone in her home to clean it unsupervised.

  Scooping up the new bags of clothing, she had left by the front door earlier and scooted the rest with her foot across the wooden floor to her bedroom closet, thinking to herself that she needed to clean the clothing mess up. Digging in, she finally got all her new clothes hung on her velvet hangers. The closet could still use a deep cleaning but for now, D felt accomplished.

  Mentally hearing the discussions going on downstairs she decided to call it a day. Carefully unzipping her new boots she stood them up in the corner of the closet. Taking the new clothes off, she lay them neatly on the large island. D stood in her undergarments looking in the full-length mirror. She hardly recognized herself with the new long hair she now had. She pulled her hair up with a large clip to keep it dry and jumped in the hot shower.

  She dried off, wrestled on her nightshirt over the large hair clip, and tried to silence the voices she was hearing in her head from downstairs. Finally climbing the steps to her bed, which placed her ten feet higher above everyone’s buzzing thoughts. That did it! Silence, finally. She set her alarm on the nightstand and turned on the TV that hung from the ceiling at the foot of her bed.

  Her ears quickly perk up when she heard the bizarrely charismatic voice of Brock Billingsley’s on the evening news say something about Fort Knox and then go to commercial— why do they do that? After a barrage of mindless commercials, Brock Billingsley comes back on and starts out with a story of a possible serial killer in a section of the New England states that had gotten national attention. Men and women were being kidnapped, found days sometimes weeks later, dismembered, missing their organs and oddly their heads. If anyone had any information, they needed to call authorities. Something else was mentioned about the torrential rain that affected the eastern states the day before.

  “In our Smile on Washington Spotlight Story we want to give recognition for a good deed. We were alerted today that Secretary of Defense Peter Coughlin donated over thirty-thousand dollars to the Children’s Home for Orphans here in D.C. His office has refused comment. However, with this great example and level of generosity in a time when not everyone is as generous with their finances, I thought it should be our Spotlight Story. May we all strive to emulate Peter Coughlin.”

  “Oh brother, I hope not everyone takes your advice, Brock.” D sighed while rolling her eyes. Then the story she had been waiting for began.

  Brock continued with the lead story, “Next Tuesday the United States Department of Treasury’s Bullion Depository in Fort Knox will play host to a few select visitors. Recently with the US Debt Ceiling being raised to the highest it has ever been, and borrowing at an all-time high from other countries as well, the US’s gold supply is in question. A few people from the State Department and from the countries we have been borrowing from would be allowed limited access to our country’s Gold Depository Facility in Fort Knox. This is unprecedented. No one on the outside, much less other countries, has been allowed to actually verify the Gold Bullion deposited at Fort Knox since 1974. Even then, the visit was highly controlled and has been subject to discrepancies over the years. Will these countries find enough gold to feel comfortable enough that the US can use it as equity to back up all the money we have been borrowing? Let us hope so, folks. We were told that a few select members of the press will also be allowed in but no electronic devices of any kind will be permitted past the front gate.” The news anchor goes on about speculation of no gold and continues to show outdated pictures from 1974 of small rooms with gold bullion stacked high.

  What were they protecting? Or, not protecting? Why the big production of letting other countries in on our most valued asset? She will find out next week when she was finally given her complete mission. D shook her head watching the screen, studying Brock’s words and replaying them in her mind. It almost seemed too scripted even for a news story, like they were coded. Of course, they weren’t but her mind always tried to place more meaning behind everything she saw or heard, looking for idiosyncrasies that her mind couldn’t read.

  She caught a little bit more of the evening news and at some point; she drifted off and shortly after her nightmare began.

  D was staggering down a narrow dark corridor at the Trellis compound, her childhood home. The cold germ-free environment was usually quiet, her eyesight blanketed in a foggy haze, — she had been startled awake by screaming minutes before. The only light she could see was coming from under a door at the far end of the hall. There was a shadow of something laying on the ground near that far off doorway. Each uneasy shuffle of her feet moved her closer to the shadowy blob. As the blob came in to view she could see it was the night guard slumped over, lifeless against the dark hallway wall. No thoughts were coming from him and she knew immediately he wasn’t the one she had heard screaming. Blood trailed along the floor to the lit doorway. Wet glistening bloody handprints smeared along the wall every so often lead the way to the screams like a sick breadcrumb fairytale. Fresh. Wet. Blood.

  She knew the screams she heard were coming from behind the next door. Deep painful screams. Nothing could have prepared her for what she would see when the door was pushed open. The thumping in her eardrums was a new sensation and she was acutely aware her body felt like it was going to explode. To this day, she wasn’t sure what made her explore the screams further. A dark pool of blood shown in the dim light. The blood D knew now, belonged to the night nurse. The nurse was heaped on the floor and no longer screaming. Above the now lifeless nurse was a vision D wished she could erase from her memory. A zombie-like boy standing above his victim, his head shaved, blood stained his face, large unblinking eyes, and flesh hanging from his mouth clearly from the bloody victim. She stood there frozen; D had never been introduced to anything frightening before, her brain couldn’t process what was happening. The pounding in her ears stopped, her breathing steadied and she just stared at the zombie as her eyes filled with warm tears. This high level of fear had never been presented to D in her entire life. She couldn’t move a muscle. Was this zombie-boy controlling her? Why couldn’t she move? What was holding her back from running?

  The young zombie beast looked up at her with dark furrowed eyebrows, similar to Salvaggi’s burly brow, his large unblinking eyes watched D with force and began to make his way towards her, stumbling, blood smeared on its face. Her mind control wasn�
��t working on him! D couldn’t stop him! She couldn’t scream! The zombie thing moved closer to her, watching her with weighted concentration. He opened his mouth wide and with his blood-covered body reached up grabbing her throat with his blood soaked hands pulling her towards him easily. D couldn’t even wince. Why couldn’t she move? She stood there void of muscle control. Her body wouldn’t move, her legs couldn’t run but oddly she suddenly bellowed out a scream. Where was this scream coming from? She had never made that kind of emotional outburst before. Yet it sprang from her like a siren call for help. Was he making her yell, or more likely was he allowing her to yell? She still couldn’t run but the screams came over and over again and the evil creature hadn’t even bit her yet. The zombie-boy smiled with each scream, he was enjoying her torture. Was he allowing her to scream? Did he have control over her body and wanted to hear her scream before he killed her?

  D wasn’t aware of what was going on around her when out of nowhere, her saving ironic grace appeared, Dr. Salvaggi stepped from behind her and plunged a syringe into the zombie’s chest, and it dropped to the ground in convulsions.

  D leaned in towards the Doctor now that the hold was gone. Both she and the doctor frozen with fear. That was the first time she ever read such intimate thoughts of Dr. Salvaggi. He was frightened and he knew he was the reason this happened. The same surgery the Doctor had performed on D went extraordinarily wrong with the zombie test subject he just tranquilized. Moreover, from the Doctor’s thoughts D realized she was the only successful operation he had ever had of this nature. All the other ones ended badly. Very badly.

  Dr. Salvaggi in his thick Italian accent turned to her and asked with a slight quake in his voice, “D, you couldn’t control him?”

  D could barely speak, barely breathe but she answered him loud enough he could hear her, “No, or hear his thoughts. I couldn’t move…” D looked down at her smock, now feeling wet and cold; she could see the blood smeared on her and now she felt the wet handprints of blood cool against her neck where he had grabbed. D felt a stabbing pinch in her arm from a needle and collapsed on the zombie, passed out cold.

  ****

  Kicking and screaming she woke up, thankfully she was in her home, in her safe home in D.C., and far from the island. She hated having that same nightmare repeatedly. D was shivering in a cold sweat and had twisted her sheets in a jumbled mess struggling to free herself. It was times like this D wished she had someone there with her. D rose in a panic looking around at the room below her seeing shadows everywhere and realized the TV was still on; she reluctantly reached over to the remote and turned it off. Her reasoning on the why she had the nightmare this time was the fact she was trying to figure out agent Banks. His impenetrable locked mind.

  ‘Has agent Banks ever been a part of something at Trellis? On the other hand, could it be a fluke I couldn’t read his mind?’ D rubbed her face and eyes, pulling her large soft comforter back up to her chin and tried to go back to sleep. Eventually, slumber will find her but it will not last long.

  Chapter Six~

  The island sunshine shone brightly through the tall sterile windows into Dr. Salvaggi’s lab. The back of the large room had been lined with shelving that ran from floor to ceiling holding what could only be described as atrocities that were performed against the clones on Trellis. Some of the jars held a human brain or organs from a clone that at one time went to anesthetic slumber on the doctor’s operating table and never woke up. The Doctor never meant for them to meet their demise this way. However, in his mind this was the side effect of trying to perfect the flawless weapon. The other jars were brain samples he had recently began to acquire from around the globe. He called them his control group, his pool of samples from Trellis that he studied were lacking in new information that he needed. He was hoping to explore new gene pools that were not present on the island’s modified gene heredity compilation. D was the closest he had ever come to reaching that goal. Her brain was his best intricate work and he had been trying ever since to replicate the success of her surgeries. He had small triumphs here and there and he was beginning to think that D’s DNA makeup might have been the determining factor. She wasn’t from the pool of samples that he used for the other clones grown on the island. It was by chance that her control group of DNA even survived his experiments in the Petri dish before fertilization took place. He had been mixing and matching certain human traits like farmers graph seeds, plants, and trees. She was a Salvaggi hybrid and without her on the island to continue testing, all he could do now was to make incredibly educated guesses with the data that he already acquired from her.

  A beep sounded by the door and a woman in a white hazmat suit entered in holding a tray with sorted surgical instruments.

  The woman was startled to see Dr. Salvaggi sitting at the microscope in a white lab coat. She gasped and said, “Oh, Doctor, I didn’t know you would be in here.” She nodded at him and started to back away towards the door quickly.

  He narrowed his eyes at her and then spoke harshly, “Cease. Am I not allowed to be in here? Can you not be in here with the man that runs this program? Do you not want to be in the same room with me?” He knew she didn’t want to be in there, mind games came natural to him, like breathing.

  She swallowed hard and shook her head up and down, then left to right. She was confused on how to answer, yes, and no. No and yes? ‘What did he want!’ She screamed in her head.

  He turned ignoring her bewilderment and placed his eyes back on the microscope lenses. Without looking back up at her, he spoke clearly, more clearly than she last remembered him ever speaking with his think accent, “I appreciate the fear from my employees but not puzzlement. Get your thoughts together Miss. Brand, because I plan on having a detailed conversation about the new brains we are acquiring in the United States.”

  “Co… Conver… Conversation,” She stammered. She knew he wasn’t pleased with how the new brain specimens were being attained and he certainly wasn’t pleased that the two men that were acquiring the brains were selling the other organs to the highest bidder. Trellis had no use for hearts, kidneys, lungs, and other vital organs. Dr. Salvaggi was only interested in the brains, at least for now.

  The secretive organ market for the two men they hired was a rich one. These men sold to the wealthy that needed transplants, albeit this was a more in-depth organ robbing than their average clients needed. The donor had to be a match, which required detailed planning and implementation. Other buyers for their illegal organ shop were back-channel pharmaceutical companies in other countries testing different medical fallouts on tissue samples.

  Another issue Dr. Salvaggi had with the two men that were fulfilling Trellis’ brain orders, he thought at least one of them was enjoying the killings. In his righteousness, he thought what they were doing was heinous and if they had only been attaining the brains and disposing of the bodies properly, he wouldn’t have had a problem with them. He continued to believe that leaving the body parts to be found by the public could lead a trail back to Trellis. He thought the men got a thrill out of publicly exposing the mutilated body parts and dancing too close to a fire they thought they could control.

  “Yes, Miss. Brand. I read another story that a mutilated body was found again, the head missing. I thought we discussed this with the subjects acquiring the specimens for Trellis? What do you say?”

  “We… We addressed the issue with them a few weeks ago and they agreed this was the wrong way to go about things. They agreed to stop.” She walked to the counter placing the tray on the sterile flat surface and took a step towards the doctor, still leaving a wide gap between them.

  “They agreed to stop? So they communicated this to you? That they thought they needed to stop? Clearly you were not effective in your dialogue when communicating our criticism with their attainment of our samples.” He contended with a slow even tone.

  “Have you considered sending a clone to do this work? To retrieve the brain samples? Or using the clone
s to attain your samples?” She said shakily.

  “My children?”

  A shiver ran down her skin at his bilious act of calling the clones his children.

  “Miss. Brand, my clones here on the island have been created with certain,” He paused as he adjusted the position of the microscope, then continued, “specific purposes. Only a handful of them have had a somewhat rounded education for prolonged stays in the field. To teach a clone how to perform brain sample retrievals in a foreign land without supervision would be catastrophic to the future of our program. Furthermore, suggesting my valued children for an ordinary brain matter donation is a miscarriage of the resourcefulness for what they were created. Which consists of surgical weaponing experiments and implementation for military government assignments, delegated accordingly.” He paused to pick up a new sample slide and placed it under the microscope.

  Dr. Salvaggi cleared his throat lightly and continued, “Conceivably, in the future we could begin a program for such an undertaking but that would require immense development. Which I highly doubt you are capable of succeeding in at this segment of your employment. You procured the two men performing this simple task for us even though they were removed from medical school forcefully by the school board for their unethical behavior. That alone is a reason we should not have considered them… You at the time reassured me otherwise, Miss Brand.”