Harry looks real good with a tan, she thought to herself. She also noticed that his eyes seemed to reflect the blue from his shirt.
“Onyx, I don’t have much time. Do you have the data I asked you for yesterday?”
“Hello to you too, Zero,” she replied.
“Onyx, I need that data now.”
She bit her tongue, trying hard not to glance over at Jenna who was drinking in Harry’s every word.
“Sending it now,” she said in the most professional tone she could muster.
Harry’s eyes looked down until the file was received on his end.
“File received. Good job, Onyx,” he said.
She smiled despite herself, her cheeks probably turning all shades of pink. Jenna was going to harass her later, she was sure of it.
“Lionheart knows about the data that we retrieved from the restricted server. She tasked me to find proof that you and Dr. S. breached security.”
He scowled, absorbing the news.“Stick with protocol. Divert the Lion away from us by using this data I’m sending now.”
She waited until the file downloaded on her computer. “Confirming receipt.”
“Also, if Shadow contacts you, flag it with me. Don’t reveal any intel to him. Until I have cleared him, consider him a hostile.”
She could hear Jenna gasp. Joanna kicked her foot under the table.
“Roger that,” Joanna replied.
She knew not to ask questions, but she could feel Jenna growing anxious.
“Zero, anything I need to know about Shadow?” she asked.
Harry shook his head, but his face look pained.
“Your next mission. Find out the correlation between these numbers…” he said, while typing in the text window.
Zero: 11132013, 56609, 14350109, 57740910, 17300304
“Where did you get these numbers from?” she asked, but then bit her tongue, realizing afterwards that she shouldn’t have asked.
Harry’s eyebrows raised slightly. Preparing herself for the lecture, she was surprised when he smiled instead.
“Yes, it would help put things in context if you knew what the source was. We have been gathering reports of people having dreams or visions since the earthquake. These are the numbers that many have reported seeing in their visions,” he said quietly.
She smiled to herself. This was the first time Harry had shared crucial intel with her.
“We will get onto this a.s.a.p.”
Jenna kicked her under the table. Joanna glanced over to her and realized her mistake before whipping her eyes back to the screen.
Luckily, Harry’s eyes were focused on his keyboard as he was typing.
Zero: Evacuate to safe zone ASAP.
Safe zone? In the Truth Seekers’ game, this meant that danger was afoot either from incoming fire or WMDs, or more commonly known as weapons of mass destruction. Harry had shown the team the Safe Zone during orientation training. It was located in a hidden underground bunker, a few blocks from the GN office. Gabriel had made a sarcastic comment saying, “Harry’s really taking the online game beyond Virtual Reality.”
Onyx: What’s going on?
Zero: Follow protocol. Will contact you in 10 hours.
Harry logged off the video chat. She closed the lid of her laptop slowly.
“So, what did he text you?” Jenna asked.
Joanna heard what she said, but she couldn’t move a muscle.
“Joanna, are you going to tell me or what?”
When reality finally sunk in, she turned to her and said, “Pack your stuff. We have to get out of here.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jenna laughed.
Joanna grabbed both her shoulders and shook her hard. “Did you hear what I said? Get your crap, now!”
Jenna’s eyes widened, her tanned skin turning visibly pale. “What’s going on, Joanna? You’re scaring me.”
The confident Jenna Adams looked like she was going to wet her pants.
Joanna said in a low, soft voice, “If you want to live, we have to leave now.”
Chapter 21
This Is Not Right
THE TIMING WAS ALL WRONG. He couldn’t believe Cristal would run off with Kerim, someone she barely knew. He wished he could have told her the truth. The truth about the tests that Dr. Saeed had been secretly performing on her while she was “working” at GN. She didn’t realize that the computer monitor she was using had a special sensor connected to the camera, which monitored her brain activity and breathing. Nor did she know that the mouse had tiny needles that pricked her finger and collected micro-samples of her blood.
Harry slammed his fist on the table.
“I told those guys not to go to the black hole locations with Cristal.”
Not one of them understood how dangerous this would be. The rules were clear, just like in the Truth Seekers’ game; no one was allowed to question him about the missions.
But this wasn’t the game anymore, and Harry didn’t know what to do. He had to figure out which location they were heading to. There were three black hole locations—one was in Eilat, the most southern part of Israel; one was in the West Bank near Bethlehem in the central part; and one closest to the GN office in Akko in the northern part.
If only he could pick up the GPS tracking signal from Cristal’s cell phone. He had spent the last five minutes trying to search for it on the computer terminal in the GN’s IT office, with no luck. And where in the hell was Dr. Saeed? He walked out of the room and down the hallway to the medical lab. It was late in the evening and only staff with security clearance could work after hours. Fortunately, Harry happened to be one of them.
Two Israeli security guards armed with rifles walked by him. He looked them straight in the eye and nodded his head. They looked down at his GN staff ID around his neck before walking past him.
Harry began analyzing which location would be the most possible out of the three black hole locations Kerim would be headed to. He hoped that it was the one in Akko, the closest to the GN office. It made the most sense for them to go there, given that he had told Kerim and Rinaldo to stay away from that specific location. But if he were wrong, he would be going in the completely opposite direction of the other black hole locations, which meant losing precious time. He needed time to stop Cristal from reaching the black hole.
He turned down the hallway to the medical labs until he reached the one that GN had assigned to Dr. Saeed. The room looked empty through the glass window in the door. He decided to go inside anyway and check.
He swiped his keycard and opened the door. It was dark inside the room. It took a few minutes before his eyes could adjust to the darkness. No sign of Dr. Saeed. He was about to turn around and leave, concluding that he would have to go find Cristal and Kerim without him.
He paused and listened. He swore he could hear muffled voices. He looked across the room and noticed light streaming from under the closet door on the far wall. Cautiously, he walked towards the light. The sound of two male voices in a deep conversation was becoming louder.
When he reached the door, he noticed it was slightly ajar. He peeked into the crack and saw that the back of the closet was a fake wall with a door half hidden by boxes. He remembered going into the closet many times to get supplies, but he had never noticed the door before. Now it seemed that the hidden door was open, and the light was coming from behind it—a secret room?
He pushed the door open enough so that he could slide into the closet. The voices were audible now. He recognized one as being Dr. Saeed’s.
“You’re going to jeopardize everything. Don’t do this,” Dr. Saeed was saying.
“All the experiments have proven our theories are correct. The girl is the key to unlocking the power that I need.”
That male voice sounded familiar. Harry’s heart started pounding hard against his chest. His hands suddenly felt clammy. He took a step closer to see inside. He was surprised that behind the hidden door was a high-tech medic
al laboratory with expensive medical equipment, machines, and computers. His eyes panned to where Dr. Saeed was standing, close to an examining table, his back facing him.
Harry saw the shape of the man Dr. Saeed was talking to. The color of his pants was tan, and the sleeve of his shirt, beige. Dr. Saeed moved slightly to the left, giving him a full view of the man he was speaking to. Harry sucked in his breath.
“I don’t know what to say. You show up here and want everyone to believe that you just arrived today?” Dr. Saeed shook his head. “We buried you, for crying out loud.”
Part Three
If You Only Knew
The dawn has come
And the morning sun’s rays
Streak the painted sky, warm crimson shades of orchard rose
While the ocean tide caresses the damp dark beach
And a silent tear slides down her cheek.
AR Vasquez
Chapter 22
In The Flesh
“SAEED, I’M TELLING YOU, it worked! I’m living proof.”
Harry watched in shock as Aaron Doub danced around in a circle, shaking his arms like a mad man.
This man is not my father. My father is dead. This stranger has my father’s voice, his face, and even his ridiculous comb-over that hides his bald spot. Aaron Doub looked exactly the same way he did the last time Harry saw him alive.
Dr. Saeed said in a soft voice, “But you were declared dead at the hospital.”
The hair on Harry’s arms stood on end. What is going on here?
“Don’t say that word! You know I don’t like that word.”
That was the kind of eccentric talk Harry knew and grew up with—the paranoid scientist. My father is alive. Somehow the shock didn’t register, as it should have. Aaron’s presence made a strange kind of sense in Harry’s mind.
“Sorry, Aaron. I forgot,” Dr. Saeed said quietly. “My only guess is that something must have happened at the hospital. If someone took you from the hospital and then cremated another body, then that could explain how we were made to believe that you died.”
“Saeed! Didn’t I tell you NOT to use that word?” He jumped up and down like an infuriated gorilla.
“Would you like me to give you a sedative? It looks like the trip has made you quite anxious,” Dr. Saeed said, crossing his arms.
“No! No sedative,” Aaron said, his anger suddenly dissipating. He slumped down on the examination bed, and whispered, in a breathy tone, “I don’t feel well.”
“You’ve just travelled through time at superluminal speeds. The human body travelling at warp drive, theoretically speaking, could affect the atomic molecular structure of the person, agitating the body at a cellular level. You need to hydrate and rest. When you are rested, I will do some testing.”
Dr. Saeed helped Aaron step down off the examination table and got him safely situated on a nearby bed. He reached for a folded sheet and covered Aaron’s body.
“Here, drink this,” Dr. Saeed said, as he handed Aaron a plastic cup filled with water.
“Straw, please?” Aaron asked, his eyes looking up at Dr. Saeed. He grasped the sheet, pulled it up to his neck, and waited while Dr. Saeed put a straw into the cup.
“Thank you, Saeed. I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he said, grinning sheepishly.
“Now, now, Aaron. Just relax. I need you to tell me everything you can remember before you arrived here,” Dr. Saeed said in a soothing tone.
Harry could barely contain his desire to burst into the room and demand answers from Dr. Saeed and his father. Fortunately, the Truth Seeker in him knew enough to stay still. He had to watch and listen.
What other information has Dr. Saeed withheld from me?
Tasting the same bitter betrayal Cristal must have felt towards him, he knew this was karma—what goes around does come around.
Dr. Saeed turned away for a moment, his back to Harry. When he turned around, he was holding a needle syringe. He gently pulled up Aaron’s sleeve, wiped his arm with a cotton swab, and injected what Harry assumed was a mild sedative.
Aaron smiled as his body relaxed. “Ah, you always knew how to make me feel better, Saeed.”
Dr. Saeed pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat down. “Okay, are you ready to tell me everything?”
Aaron closed his eyes in affirmation. Harry was baffled. He never remembered seeing his dad like this before—vulnerable and almost childlike.
Harry looked at his watch. Time was ticking by. If he didn’t leave soon, Cristal would reach the black hole, and—the thought of what could happen made his gut wrench. Torn and emotionally sucker-punched, Harry was reluctant to leave. The truth he sought might have been a complete lie. Dr. Saeed and Aaron were both in on something, and now, Harry’s world was turned completely upside down. He knew that whatever secrets those two shared would definitely affect every Truth Seeker, not just himself.
“Do you remember the dinner party at your house?” Dr. Saeed asked in a monotone voice, hypnotically soothing.
Aaron mumbled to himself, his eyes still closed. “Ah, yes. I was telling everyone about our latest findings. About time travel.”
He chuckled quietly, grasping the top of the sheet tightly.
“Go on…” Dr. Saeed prompted him.
“I don’t remember the rest of the dinner. I must have fallen asleep. I woke up and found myself in a lab, just like this. Yes, yes…I remember now. There were people around me wearing hospital masks. I tried to say something, but I couldn’t.”
“Do you remember what they were saying?” Dr. Saeed asked.
“Nothing. No one was talking. I thought that was strange. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move a muscle. Then they all left the room, leaving me alone on the gurney. That’s when I felt the room shaking. My body started convulsing violently. I felt the air being squeezed from my lungs. I wasn’t scared though,” he said, half whispering.
“Why weren’t you scared?”
“It almost felt like the first time when we almost succeeded. I felt myself slipping out of reality. The atoms in my body were pulling apart; the room was spinning around me. And then there was a flash of white light. Then blackness, like I was falling into a deep endless pit.”
Dr. Saeed frowned, nodding his head as if he was picturing what Aaron was saying in his mind.
“It seemed like I would fall forever, horrified and worried that it would never stop. After what seemed an eternity, I felt all my atoms rush together like a magnetic wave pulling all my cells towards the core of my body.”
Harry was puzzled by Aaron’s words. What was he talking about?
“And then I felt as if a bus had hit me. I thought I was going to die. Then I was stumbling in here,” Aaron said, his eyes opening.
He looked around. “Looks like you have upgraded a lot of things, since I’ve been here.”
He’s been here before? What the --?
“Like I said, it has been five years. Harry and I were trying to continue the work that you started. But this lab, I’ve kept secret. I don’t want GN sticking their noses into our work. I also wanted to protect Harry.”
“Ahhh, Harry. How is my boy?” Aaron asked, smiling.
“He’s not a boy, anymore. He’s a man now with a doctorate. A true genius. Just like you said he’d be,” Dr. Saeed replied.
“Yes, we succeeded in proving my theory. Inducing the chemical changes in the cells of a genius—one whose soul is pure of mortal sin. That was the secret to it all.”
I can’t believe you both used me.
Dr. Saeed stood up and leaned over the bed. “But that doesn’t explain how you time travelled here.”
Aaron’s voice melted into a nostalgic lilt.
“You’re right. We did try altering the general chemical composition of my nucleic acids. Nothing seemed to come of it, except for my sudden hair loss.”
Dr. Saeed chuckled. “That wasn’t sudden, Aaron. It’s just that you hadn’t seen the top of your head in a really
long time.”
Aaron scowled and turned away.
Dr. Saeed seemed to ignore him. “In order to time travel, you had to be near the vicinity of a black hole, and there had to be enough power or energy to enable you to transport to here—the future.”
Aaron rolled his eyes, saying, “I told you, the energy was coming from inside that room. It seemed that those masked persons turned on the energy when they left the room.”
“Similar to an X-ray technician going into a booth before powering up the machine on a patient,” Dr. Saeed said.
Despite marveling at the idea that such a machine capable of time travel existed, Harry was seething with anger. He and his mother had trusted Dr. Saeed. But he was just using them both like lab rats. Suddenly, he could hear Cristal’s voice in his head saying those same words to him not too long ago.
His mother’s journal had mentioned how much she trusted Dr. Saeed, because he had helped prescribe the medication she needed to cope with the loss of her husband. He had driven her to the GN psychiatric visits. But now, Harry doubted Dr. Saeed’s intentions. Harry didn’t know what his mother, Bina, had said to her psychiatrist, but he was certain that she never told anyone about her secret journal.
“And Bina? Is she safe? Did you manage to test our theory on her?”
“Bina is fine. She finally got over your death,” he started to say, but he paused and corrected himself. “She finally got over her loss of you. The tests I conducted on her were a success, just as we had hoped for.”
Tests? On my mother? Did he kidnap her?
The phone in his pocket began vibrating, followed by the text notification alert. Crap. He fumbled to turn it off.
He glanced up to see Dr. Saeed frown and tilt his head. He stood up and started walking towards the closet. His face had a deathly calm expression, as if he was about to capture his prey.
I’ve never seen him look like this before.
What was more odd was the fact that his eyes seemed to be glowing a fluorescent shade of yellow. Harry wasn’t sure if the shadows in the closet were playing tricks with his mind, but he wasn’t going to wait to find out.
“Harry? Is that you?”
Harry shook his head in confusion. He acknowledged in his brain that it was the voice of Dr. Saeed, and yet it wasn’t. The tone was much deeper with a reverberation that sounded like nails scratching across a blackboard.
Now, I know I’m not imagining things.