by N. S. Hill
She had never done something on such a large scale to benefit the public before; it was always government motivated for political purposes or something small to benefit the here and now. Even when she decided to donate to the Children’s home, she did it to stick it to Coughlin. Now though, she had the chance to help others. To make a difference, to save lives, to bring peace to the families that had their loved ones taken too soon. She liked this adrenaline sensation of being good. Of being the good guy. Of being the hero and not the rogue villain.
D would soon be connected to Colin in a deeper way than she ever imagined. He would abruptly be the one protecting her when she wouldn’t be able to protect herself.
D and the men drove to an old farmhouse nestled back in a shadowy tree line. There was a struggle going on between males in the home and D was having trouble honing in on one thought. She was exhausted from the last twenty-four hours and even though adrenaline raced through her veins, her brain was a different story. Sloan pushed the fake Phillip Perkert up the stairs to the front door.
No one was speaking but that was because D didn’t want them to speak. She could hear thoughts on the other side of the door, pain, struggling…
‘Could Colin and Jase really be in there?
Could they have broken free? Could it be this easy?’ D resolutely thought to herself, ‘So help it, if Colin Banks was injured these killers were going to pay severely.’
Perkert opened the door slowly, once the door was open completely they saw a struggle between Colin and a large dark headed man who was holding a gun. Sloan bolted first towards the chaos and knocked a table out of the way as he barreled towards the fight, ‘Sloan was definitely a pit-bull’, D thought.
Before D could think one more thought, a bullet had blasted with a loud echo of a crack from the chamber of the gun. It happened so quickly, the bullet, the lone bullet, the life-altering projectile pierced D’s stomach pushing her backwards. Her ears reverberated as a vociferous sound and for a second the thundering noise covered up the pain and force of the bullet wound.
Jase had steadied himself upright against the wall and hit the assailant over the head with a fireplace poker knocking him cold but it was too late for D.
D’s vision started to fade, her last thoughts were of placing thoughts in the men’s heads, protect her brain and body at all cost. Do not leave her side. Protect her mind at all costs. She faded in to a blackness that swallowed her whole.
Chapter Twenty-Two ~
Banks sat on a hard chair in the corner of the room, quietly meditating over the last few days and watching the IV drip by the patient’s bedside. He watched the woman in the hospital bed turn her head left to right as if she were having nightmares off and on the last few days, he seemed attached to her. He wasn’t sure what was drawing them together but he could barely leave her bedside. Something inside of him needed answers and a silent need to protect this female was strong. After all, she did risk her life for him and Jase and he had other questions that only she could answer, but she needed to open those eyes of hers.
When D’s eyes finally opened groggily she found herself in the hospital, at least she hoped that’s where she was. Wires and beeping noises were slowing coming into audible range. How long had she been there? Where are the men? Then a thought terrorized her, was she on the Island again? She turned her head left to right to look for any signs of where she was. She knew she was mentally drained at the time when she had tried to place the thought in the men’s head to watch her at all costs, maybe it didn’t stick, maybe she messed up.
Then a familiar voice, “Miss... Miss, are you awake?”
When D looked up, she saw a large blurry figure walking towards her, Agent Colin Banks. He was bandaged and bruised up, but alive.
D nodded her head yes and tried to lick her lips so she could talk but her mouth and lips were dry. He picked up a cup of water sitting on her nightstand and lifted it to her so she could get a small drink.
“You have been out for a few days,” He tried explaining. ‘You have visitors out in the lobby that won’t leave or go home. They will be happy you are awake. Do you remember anything?”
D shook her head no, she didn’t want to talk about what had happened, however she remembered it all.
“You were wounded by a bullet. It was a clean shot, minimal damage. You will be fine. I am sure the doctor will be coming in soon.”
D mumbled out the words, “Thank you.”
“Can I ask why my men think you are part of our team?”
“Team?” She asked confused. “Who is in the lobby?”
“The men that helped you find me and Jase. Sloan, Harper, and Doc.”
D breathed a sigh of relief and this time with a stronger voice, “Thank you.”
“Thank you for what?”
“For helping save me.” She answered looking at him wondering if he was going to figure out, or if he had already figured out, that she was the suspect he was interviewing a week ago at the CCD headquarters.
“The men that were holding you?” D asked hoping to change the subject.
“Arrested. They will be going away for a long time. The local CCD will now follow the leads they collected at the house on the people that these men were in business with.”
D slightly nodded at him. She felt a great relief that the men were behind bars now.
Colin studied her face and couldn’t get over the feeling he knew this young woman but he couldn’t place her face. He blamed the knot on his head from the plane crash for the fuzzy memory.
“There is a panel of Doctors flying in from all over to look at your brain scans and check out what you have going on up there. The found something this morning that intrigued the doctors at the hospital enough they reached out to other medical agencies.” Colin prodded as he pointed to her head. “Do you know what I am talking about?”
“Panel of doctors?”
“I overheard they were flying select people in to move you to another facility.”
“For a gun wound?”
“That is what I thought, too. I guess they found something that needs dealt with in your brain. When you fell you hit your head pretty hard.”
‘Panel of doctors? Fly me to another facility?’ D thought frantically, ‘Trellis knows where I am, and they are coming for me.’
“You are going to be fi…”
Colin didn’t get to finish his sentence before D cut him off as she tried pulling the wires off of her wrists and remove the sticky heart monitors placed all over her body.
“Settle down, Miss. Should I get the nurse?” Colin asked trying to restrain her from ripping the IV out of her arm.
“I have to get out of here. Please, you can’t let them take me! Please, I am begging you. I am not going back. You don’t understand.” Large tears started to fall down her cheeks and her words were listless. She had never needed this kind of help from anyone before. She felt completely helpless and fear gripped her. Always relying on her own mind’s control to get the help she needed but she hated that she required his cooperation, at least until she could get someone to restrain Banks so she could run. His face remained stone. ‘He is so hard to read!’
He watched her confusedly trying to read her actions.
“Please, if I stay here they will take me back to the island. They will torture me. I can’t go back. The doctor cannot get to me. Please, you have to believe me. The people coming for me are coming to harm me. They are not good people. They are not good people. They are not… good…” She continued to plead for his help as Colin held her wrists tightly in his grip.
The tears did actually move Colin. Seeing tears had never affected him before, this was new to him. Something in those wet tears and the fearful emotion in her words made him want to protect her even more. He was about to do something that he could not explain.
He loosened his grip around her wrists and wrapped his large hands around her small fists, looking in her tear-filled eyes, “Can I trust you?”
She looked up at him and nodded.
“I need to hear you say it.”
“Yes… you can trust me.”
He quickly started to remove the wires, IV, and lowered the rail to her bed. He grabbed the plastic bag with her clothes hanging on the door and tossed them to her. “Quick, get dressed, I am going to get the guys.” For some strange reason he didn’t want to follow orders, he wanted to help this girl, he was moved beyond his standard reaction.
“These are covered in blood,” he murmured as if talking to himself. He took off the button-up shirt he had on, leaving him in a t-shirt. He asked her to place it over her hospital gown and walk behind him.
“No, when the video camera is reviewed they will think you all helped me. Meet me out front.”
“How do I know I can trust you to meet us?”
“Because I told you that you could trust me.”
“How will you get out without getting stopped?” Colin asked.
“Super powers. Just trust me.”
He took those words in, Just Trust Me, and slowly shook his head, “What am I doing? If you run, I will find you.”
“You won’t have to find me, I will be downstairs right after you.” She softly spoke as she nodded once at him with reassurance.
He left the room and D was hopeful for the first time in her life that she had an advocate for her cause. Someone that she didn’t have to manipulate.
She gave the room one more glance hoping to see her shoes but they were nowhere to be found. She was going to have to get out of the hospital barefoot.
As she headed out the door she began to feel lightheaded but she pushed the feeling aside. She had noticed that she still hadn’t picked up anyone’s brain waves and thoughts and realized that she was extremely exhausted and that must have been the reason. Since she had the ability to read people’s thoughts she had realized when she was exhausted, caught a cold, whenever her body was low on energy, her normally forty-foot range of mind reading turned to about ten feet. She didn’t think leaving the hospital would be a problem, however she was hoping that it didn’t drain all her strength and she would make it out without getting caught.
She slipped past the nurse’s station to the elevator rather easily and as she expected, her range of control had fallen to around ten feet. This was going to be more difficult but she knew she could handle getting out of here on her own. She made the choice, easily, that the elevator would be her right escape path. There was no way she had it in her to take the stairwell. She pushed the elevator button and took a few feet back, she didn’t want to run face to face with Dr. Salvaggi or a clone for the that matter. She knew that the video could be scrutinized for details. She wondered why Coughlin hadn’t been sent here to check on her, set up guards, or restrict movement? Are they giving D enough rope to hang herself? Are they waiting to follow her once she was out? Was Colin Banks a unknowing participant? Or, worse? Was he willingly participating to capture her?
D reached the ground floor and quickly made a dash for the front entrance. There were several people coming and going and the congestion at the doorway with the wheelchairs made D use her mind control to get them out of the way. She parted them like the Red Sea. Once she reached daylight her eyes had to adjust, she looked around for the men and was having a hard time locating them. She felt weak all of a sudden and her bandages started to bleed through. Her adrenaline burst was quickly coming to an abrupt halt.
A city bus moved out of the way and she saw men sitting in a gray four-door coupe. Compacted in like sardines, where was she going to fit? Her vision started to fade. She wasn't going to make it to their car. She was going to pass out before she could cross the street. Colin noticed what was happening and quickly went into action. He opened his door and rushed to her side in time to grab her before she passed out. He looked at the men in the car and gave them a questionable stare. Should he take her back in? Were they endangering her life?
Sloan opened his car door yelling, "Get her over here!"
Colin stopped the hesitation carrying her to his car and laid her in Sloan's arms in the back seat. Later that day when D woke from her exhaustion she looked around the room and was confused at what she was seeing. She was in Colin's bed. She could hear the voices coming from down the hall and she knew she would have lots of explaining to do... she sighed.
Slowly she stood up placing her feet that were no longer bare on the floor. She had oversized men's socks on her feet now. She however, had the same clothes on from the hospital, the men no doubt either didn't have clothes to fit her or they weren't about to undress her. She lifted up her hospital gown and the shirt that Colin had given her, she hadn’t yet seen the wound she had from the bullet that pierced her side. It was covered in a taped up bandage and she didn’t have the stomach to peel the tape back to look at the hole.
She walked down the hall toward the voices and found them standing in the kitchen. She was startled by how bandaged and wrapped up Jase was when she laid eyes on this man for the first time. She knew she was gaining her strength back because she could read his thoughts and the other men’s' thought rather easily now. All But Sloan's thoughts who for some reason was now blocked from her like Colin's were. She assumed it was still exhaustion keeping her out of his thoughts.
"Hello," Jase blurted meeting her gaze as she entered the room. All the men turned to her.
Colin moved across the floor and pulled out a kitchen chair and motioned for her to sit down.
"I guess you all have questions?" D uttered.
"You guessed right," Sloan answered, stone faced and rigid.
"Well, I have never talked about all this before. I suggest you all get comfortable it is going to be awhile."
Everyone took a seat, Colin jumped up on the counter and scooted back to a comfortable position.
“Can we start with your name?" Colin asked. "What I go by in the real world or what my actual given name is?"
"Both..." Colin answered with a steel voice.
“My real world name is Siena Smith. My birth name is D."
"Dee what?" Harper asked as he raised one eyebrow.
D let out a sigh, she knew this was going to be
hard and realized at how stupid she sounded, "Just the letter D."
The men looked at one another incredulously.
D thought to herself, ‘If they didn’t believe my name was D, then the chances of them believing the next sentences out of my mouth will confound them.’
"I am a product of what few have known as the Trellis Project. This project is ran by a doctor named Vincente Salvaggi, and he controls everything on Trellis. Trellis is a privately protected island. They raise people like farmers raise cattle on a ranch. Sooo, it is kind of like a people ranch. Except a ranch of clones. Like farmer’s raise cattle, he raises people," She rambled.
"What? Wait? You aren't making sense." Jase interrupted.
"Please, this is hard to explain..." D stopped him, breathed deeply, and then continued.
"This doctor creates people for political agendas. For different governments all around the world but mostly America. It is a horrible place. Many of the clones die on Trellis. The ones that are sent out for different jobs, well, they all die, too." She continued to explain everything she could, all but the mind reading. She didn't want them to run from the room calling her a liar. The men sat there in dumbfounded belief. She wasn't sure if they believed her or not but what did she have to lose at this point?
There were a few questions from them, a lot of looks of concern, but she was talking to men that had lived in a secret society themselves within the confines of a Special Forces Squad. Nothing surprised them, they were trained to move with the information, and they were getting a lot of it right now.
"So why are you so special that they want you back?" Banks finally asked the one question, the one question that was going to cut to the heart of her explanation.
"Well... you see... I can read... minds... and I can contro
l people. Well, most people."
“Yeah, right,” Harper slurred.
"Can you tell me what I am thinking right now?" Jase chuckled.
Without missing the opportunity she answered him, "Your pain level is an eight, your arm is killing you, your leg pain is enough to bring tears to your eyes, but you are grinning through it because you want to look tough. You are trying hard not shift back and forth to find an area of comfort. A side note, you think I am pretty, and you forgot to pay your phone bill this month…” D paused, pursing her lips together wondering if she should mention the backroom brain thought Jase was having and then decided to share it, “And you are hoping that Banks offers to cook steaks for you all." D answered meticulously while Jase quickly stopped smiling and looked down at the ground embarrassed. She was right on every single thing she mentioned that had floated through his thoughts since she woke up.
She then focused on Harper, "And you, you are thinking that I am crazy. You think I escaped out of a mental hospital. You are wondering if I have any proof... you have to pee and you are hungry and wondering how long all this is going to take."
D looked around the room and focused on Colin, "You however, I have never been able to read your mind." Then she looked at Sloan, "…and I was able to read your mind before the hospital, now I can't."
Doc had remained silent the whole time and finally decided to speak, however D read his thoughts before he could spit the words out cutting him off. She looked abruptly at Sloan and squeaked out, "You gave me your blood! What do you mean? Why? Why would you do that!"