Anton Tremain reached high above the stack of old shirts on the top shelf of his closet. A somewhat short man, he rose up on his toes in order to grasp the package he was looking to retrieve. It was brown, weathered by its age and still tied loosely with twine that was frayed and tattered. With his fingertips catching on its edge, he pulled it down after a couple tugs, gazed upon its front once holding it in both hands, and then turned to exit the closet carrying it before him like the fragile item that it was.
Tremain was an older gentleman, deep creases around his cheeks displaying the age of someone who enjoyed a good laugh, his temples fully gray with the remainder of his hair black though peppered. In the quiet of his apartment on this evening, the creases outlining his cheeks were from age alone; no smile painted upon his face. It was a serious night of reflection in a life that had taken a dire turn with the pieces of a secretive puzzle designed years passed fitting neatly into place. Though recent successes should make him a satisfied man, the triumphs pushed him and many colleagues deep into danger.
Tremain slowly lowered himself to sit upon his bed, placing the package upon his lap. With a quick tug, he pulled the string towards him to untie it. As the brown wrapping began to unfold and fall loosely open, the yellowed and stained papers within were revealed. Dr. Tremain drifted into memory.
He was a young man when fate first directed him down a course that would become dark and fearsome in later years. As he prepared for the education that was gifted to a young man from a powerful family who had shown promise throughout his years in school, just eighteen with a favorable future, both parents were the victims of a fatal rail accident. It was a time in his life that he remembered as being awash in great pain. Since his parents respected the single child directive, he had no siblings and was left abruptly and unexpectedly alone without family.
Tremain shed a single tear that softly traced down his cheek as he reminisced over that time in his life. As an old man, he could barely recall the faces of his parents for the images had faded in the passing of years, but he still remembered well the love he felt for them.
His paging through memories continued tracing the course towards the arrival of the brown paper wrapped package. His father had a longtime friendship with a colleague named Randall Montgomery, a stout man that was a highly respected scientist within the government’s science division in San Diego. Anton had met him as a young child and through his teenage years many times, always thinking of the quirky fat man as a unique personality that could break into a discussion of one at any given moment, chatting on and on with himself until he realized no one around him was following the conversation. ‘Apologies, my brain wanders,’ the strange old man would say before rejoining the conversation in the room. But as a dark time fell upon the bright young Tremain, that quirky old man offered a budding teenager a valuable apprenticeship; experience before beginning his days in the University.
Tremain’s time with Dr. Montgomery had been curious. Montgomery worked within one of the highest government divisions, yet had a strong and at times vocal distaste for the government. The doctor was a hefty man, boisterous and always using his arms and hands to animate his brash words. As Tremain remembered his mentor fondly, he knew that what began as an apprenticeship quickly grew into one man without a father and another without a child developing closeness with each other.
Montgomery had a fascination with the dimensional properties of the universe, believing that the key to returning the planet to the lush environment it once was remained locked within the secrets of science yet to be discovered. He was obsessed with that discovery that he believed was close at hand. Infatuated with the past and finding ways to regain the shrubs that had been lost, to return the balance of nature, Montgomery was forever clumsily clinking flasks together while spouting philosophies and quotes of historical figures; driving his fanaticism forward.
Dr. Tremain felt his eyes beginning to well once more with the forming of another tear. He loved Dr. Montgomery in ways few would understand. As the moisture fell upon his cheek, Tremain remembered the final time he would see his mentor. It was a day that began no different than any other, though as the day went on Montgomery grew even more zealous, certain he was on the cusp of discovery. There were so many times that the old man had toiled towards certainty that Tremain had thought nothing more of it than any other day. Montgomery had chosen to continue on his scientific quest into the evening as Tremain took his leave at the end of the day. The last image Tremain had of the old doctor was of the large man cloaked in a flowing white lab coat as he always was, at the back of the laboratory talking loudly to himself. It was as it always had been.
That night was unusual, however, as the entire San Diego complex suffered its longest and most widespread blackout in many years. Times without power within the underworld happened now and then and can be frightening especially to someone young and alone listening to the panic of frightened people outside the door in the pitch black of no light, accepting that no new air was being pumped into the room. Tremain sat upon the floor against his locked door for nearly two hours contemplating the depletion of his air and the sounds of violence erupting outside his door.
As that night grew desperate, the power returned and evening passed. The next morning when an excited young man was eager to discuss the event with his mentor, he was instead greeted at the laboratory by a team of Enforcers. Montgomery was gone, and a strange black spot had overtaken the wall and the table at the back of the room where hours before Montgomery had been standing. With barely a moment to react to words of the absence of his mentor, he learned that the blackout had been traced to the laboratory and that he was being detained for questioning.
In the dim light of his bedroom, Anton Tremain fingered the pages within the package. It was an enigma to him; no explanation for why he had it. Yet it was also a book of secrets that began an obsessive quest for him, one that started long after the morning that Dr. Montgomery had vanished.
When Tremain had been detained for questioning, he had been taken to a horrific place, a place of mystery itself that many believed existed yet would not speak of. It’s existence was proven to Tremain on that day as a frightened young boy became one of few who experienced it and lived to depart it. The place was the Alkeitan penitentiary. Tremain felt a shiver cross his chest as he remembered once more the surrounding foreboding darkness as a single rickety elevator carried him downwards upon an open steel track. The cylindrical prison wall surrounded the elevator, small fissures lining the expansion that were the cells containing the imprisoned. They were tiny enclosures, and as he had dropped lower into the prison praying that a cell was not his destination, the anguished screams of the souls imprisoned in those tiny chambers had echoed an eerie chorus around him.
Once deep within the walls of the penitentiary, Tremain had been questioned for nearly two hours by angry officials who believed Montgomery to be a revolutionary constructing a weapon. Whatever the old scientist had built, the old man had carefully guarded knowledge of from his young apprentice. Such was a good thing, as Tremain was convincing without a fault of his lack of information. He was released after a most difficult day and allowed the good fortune of travelling back up the elevator and out.
Nearly two years had passed beyond that day as a young man tucked bad memories into the tiny crevices of his mind before he was reminded of his mentor once more. Walking into his University apartment then, a man of good fortune with an education taken care of by his departed parents, he remembered the immediate feeling of something out of place. The package all wrapped up in brown paper was sitting upon his bed. There were no signs of entry other than the package.
Tremain caressed the papers again, paging through the top few and glancing at the words. The handwriting was easily distinguishable as that of Randall Montgomery. Where it had come from, however, was a mystery never to be solved though the vast amount of information contained within surfaced many theoretical possibilities. Tremain had been left breathless throughout that night, reading page upon page as the scientific journal delivered evidence that Montgomery was alive somewhere.
Dr. Tremain pushed the package aside and stood. Much had been done since the arrival of the brown-wrapped papers. He gained unbreakable bonds of friendship while at the University with two others that he shared the history of the package with, the only two to ever know its truths. One of those friends became a governor as the years passed while the other inherited his father’s transportation conglomerate; Andrew Simms and John Hayes. Together in the wisdom of age and the good positions that each held, opportunity had been afforded for the work within the pages inside the package to come to fruition though they lived under a strict government where scientific work was heavily regulated. The work remained hidden behind a web of lies that three important men were able to spin.
It was time for the next phase of the secret project to begin, a successful moment that pricked away at Tremain’s nervousness. Along with that, it was also time for a conversation, the thought of which caused a churning discomfort in his stomach. His assistant in his professional life, Adrienne, was more to him than just a co-worker but was a dear friend. Through years of working closely together, the vivacious woman had grown to be a necessary component in his life. They were in need of someone of her talents to become involved in the secret work and he was in need of her friendship to help guide him through the next phase. He worried greatly, however, of what her reaction to the knowledge of his involvement in a covert operation would be. Tapping his fingertips together, a nervous tick that he often did, he began rehearsing words in his head, straining to construct the correct phrase to begin such a conversation. She was a wonderful woman, but she was also recently widowed. ‘Will this be too much for her?’ He wondered.
Convincing himself that all was well, that she would follow him into a crazy adventure, Tremain selected his words. Stepping back to the bed, he glared at the package once more, ending his deep reminiscence while rehearsing the words in his head that he would speak in the morning. ‘Adrienne, have you thought of where you go from here. What’s next for you?’ He thought, envisioning the swirling red mane that crowned Adrienne’s pale face. ‘I want to fill you in on something that will change your life.'