Cristal - Novella (6 page)

For the past year, ever since he got her the
job at Global Nation, Harry had been acting strange. Okay, stranger
than usual. Come on, who could blame him for being different? The
guy had the IQ of Einstein for crying out loud. In her books,
Harry’s intense and introverted behavior was what made him
intriguing. And sure, his idea of taking the Truth Seeker game
offline seemed crazy at the time. When he said that the mission was
to help her find her missing father, she was all in. After that,
there was no looking back.

Their first mission together was to track
other gamers who also lost a loved one. Remarkably they found a
dozen of them, more than what she had anticipated. Harry was able
to tie GN with the disappearances of a few of them including her
father. She and the other recruits were working together to gather
intel from the GN databases to uncover their missing loved ones’
locations.

“Gabriel, we all are here to help each
other. Let us in.”

He gave her a glazed look. Great, looks like
he’s going to be a pain about it. She stepped closer, letting her
eyes meet his stare.

With an authoritative tone, she said, “You
know I am the only one who can decode all that encrypted data.
Harry told me specifically to bring Kerim. Do you want to find your
dad or not?”

Gabriel’s pressed his lips together for a
second before shrugging his shoulders.

“Okay, whatever, come in,” he said, stepping
back.

Kerim walked past both of them, headed
straight to the living room, and plopped down on the black leather
couch, placing his helmet beside him. Cristal gave Gabriel a weak
smile. She found a spot at the opposite end of the couch,
physically distancing herself from Kerim.

“Hey, Gabe, do you have any coffee? I’ve got
a terrible migraine,” Kerim said.

Gabriel’s mouth dropped, as if to say
something to Kerim before turning to Cristal.

“Would you like coffee too?” he asked.

“Sure, thanks,” she said.

Gabriel half-smiled at her, then disappeared
into the kitchen, which was really part of the living/dining room,
separated only by a 1970s’ style orange beaded curtain. Gabriel
always said the 70s were the coolest time in human history. She and
Harry used to rag on him when he would bring out his round table
and play his vinyl records of the 70s classic disco hits.

“Okay, so now what?” Kerim asked.

She needed to get set up and entertaining
Kerim wasn’t part of the agenda. The coffee table was cluttered
with gaming magazines, pop cans, chocolate bar wrappers, and a
tissue box. She piled the magazines together and pushed them off to
the side, giving her space to put down her laptop.

When she opened the laptop, the screen
already had the terminal open, ready for her to start working.
Kerim shifted closer to her, his knee a fraction of an inch away
from hers. She glanced down briefly and moved her knee away.
Is
he for real?

“Do you think you can really decode the
encrypted file? Harry seems to think so. But we all know that he
has a crush on you.” He turned toward her with a wry
grin. 

I could smack him right now.
She
tried to focus on the code in front of her, letting her fingers fly
across the keyboard. The characters and numbers that flashed
before her were comforting. No emotional misunderstandings or
tension to deal with—just pure, straightforward code.

Kerim’s hand found its way to her knee.

Cristal leaped up from her seat, and her
arms were flailing up to push Kerim away, which knocked Gabriel
sideways as he was just entering the room. The tray of coffee mugs
slipped from his hands onto the table and sent boiling coffee onto
Kerim’s lap and her computer.

“Hey! Take it easy, man!” Kerim cried
out.

“Is it okay to grab a girl’s knee where
you’re from?” she yelled.

“What the hell are you doing?” Gabriel
added, reaching out and grabbing the box of tissues from the
table.

Kerim stood up, coffee dripping down from
his pants to the carpet.

“You are both insane!” Cristal snapped while
pulling the tissue box from Gabriel’s hand.

“Hey, I need those,” Kerim said.

He reached out for the box.

Cristal pulled the box away, taking a
handful of tissues and wiping the sticky brown mess off her
computer. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Gabriel’s
fists clenched. This is frickin’ crazy. Instead of getting the data
for the video chat meeting with Harry, here she was babysitting the
boys.

“You know, you’re a real jerk,” Gabriel
growled.

“What did you say?” Kerim asked in a
dangerously quiet voice.

“Oh, you heard what I said,” Gabriel said,
his eyes blazing.

He lunged towards Kerim, swinging at him.
Kerim smoothly turned his body avoiding the punch. He grabbed
Gabriel by the wrist and twisted his arm behind his back.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Cristal
mumbled to herself.

Just then, she noticed that her hands had
started to shake.
Oh, not again!
She needed to get out of
there soon. She grabbed her laptop and backpack.

“What are you doing?” Gabriel asked with his
hand still locked behind his back.

“Where are you going?” Kerim added, letting
Gabriel’s arm go.

She stopped and whirled around to face
them.

“I don’t have time for this, whatever this
is. We need to finish the mission. I don’t know about you but I
want to find my dad. Obviously you two only want to arm
wrestle.”

Her hands were still shaking. She walked
past the kitchen towards the dark hallway. To her right, she saw a
room with a desk and an office chair. A disco ball hung from the
ceiling. The few times that she and Harry came to see Gabriel, they
never went beyond the living room area.

In the corner of the room were a twin-sized
bed and a bookshelf full of action figure dolls. The bed was neatly
made; the wall was covered with posters of video games and 70s
music bands.

She went straight to the desk and cleared
the papers off, placing them in the drawer. She put down her laptop
and opened the video chat window.

If those two guys want to waste time, she
was going to video chat with Harry by herself.

Before she could continue with the decoding,
she knew that she needed to calm down. The shaking episodes that
used to overpower her in her teens only came about when she was
extremely stressed. She used her deep breathing exercise to stop
herself from shaking. She knew that if she didn’t stop it,
something terrible could happen.

Stop thinking about it and it will go
away.

She sank down on the chair and closed her
eyes. She took in a deep breath and then let out a long exhale just
as her father had taught her.

“
Be careful, Cristal
,” her father’s voice
hummed in her head.

After a few minutes of deep breathing, the
shaking stopped.

“Are you okay?”

She opened her eyes and saw Gabriel and
Kerim standing in the doorway looking like repentant little boys
begging forgiveness from their mother.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she replied. “Did you guys
make peace?”

Gabriel lips curled into a smile.

He turned to Kerim and said, “Hey, how did
you learn those cool self-defense moves?”

“I was in the Turkish Army for four years
for mandatory service,” Kerim said.

“Could you teach me some of that? I’m really
good at fighting in the game, but man, it would be really cool to
be able to do it for real.”

Gabriel threw him a fake punch to his
stomach.

Kerim doubled over. They began fake
wrestling together, bumping into the doorframe.

“Okay, boys. Are you guys done yet?” Cristal
said, relieved that they were no longer at each other’s
throats.

Suddenly, a high-pitched sound blasted into
the room knocking the action figures off the shelf. The floor began
shaking beneath her feet. She paused for a moment, wondering if she
was causing this. She looked at her hands. They were steady and she
noticed too that her breathing was even.
But I stopped shaking.
This shouldn’t be happening.

She glanced up to see Gabriel’s hand on the
doorframe and the other one holding onto Kerim’s chest, his eyes
closed tight. Kerim’s arms were outstretched, his hands holding
onto the doorframe. His eyes were staring at her, wide open; his
face pale.

Her multiple experiences with the room
shaking, minus the high-pitched sound, made her relatively calm
despite what was happening. As if in a dream, she watched in slow
motion her laptop slide off the desk along with her mouse, the jar
of pens and other miscellaneous office supplies.

Her chair seemed to sway with the waves of
turbulence, almost as if the legs had shock absorbers attached.
Although the shaking seemed to be in slow motion for her, she knew
that it wasn’t the same for Kerim and Gabriel. She could see the
doorframe shaking violently, the wall almost seeming like it was
going to implode. For brief instances, it seemed that Kerim and
Gabriel disappeared into thin air.
Freak, I’m seeing things
now.

She opened her mouth to call out to them but
the thunderous roar around them muted her voice. It seemed like
hours but really was only seconds later when the floor stopped
shaking. She noticed that the high-pitched sound had also vanished.
Everything grew eerily still.

Kerim let go of the doorframe, his arms
falling down to his sides. Gabriel was still clutching to him; his
eyes closed.

“Oh!” Gabriel whimpered.

After a few seconds, he opened one eye and
looked around the room. He glanced up at Kerim who was glaring down
at him. He half-smiled, letting go of Kerim.

“I mean, wow that was really friggin’
amazing, huh?” Gabriel said.

Kerim pushed Gabriel aside and rushed
towards Cristal.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She gave him a thumbs up but was still
unsure if she were the cause of what seemed to be a mini
earthquake.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

What just happened here? Was it an
earthquake or was the shaking isolated to the room?
So many
thoughts were filling her mind.

Kerim bent down to pick up her laptop. The
light from the screen was still on—a good sign that all her work
was not lost.

“Looks like your laptop is just as tough as
you,” Kerim said, while placing the computer back on top of the
desk.

On the screen, the video chat window was
open, and Harry and Joanna were watching them.

Joanna’s mouth was wide open, her eyes wide
with shock. Harry was grinning from ear to ear. He was speaking,
but there was no sound. Behind them, people were picking up things
off the ground. From what Cristal could make of it, they were
mostly cups, cutlery, and overturned chairs.

Cristal reached over and pressed the volume
button until Harry’s voice was audible. Gabriel came over and stood
behind her while Kerim moved to the other side.

“…that was spectacular, guys. Dr. Saeed and
I were working on some tests. We believe we are closer to proving
my father’s theory. We want to talk to all of you in person
tonight. I will text you the details.”

CRISTAL STARED AT HER monitor in disbelief.
The video chat window went black.

“Were you in on this?” Gabriel asked,
turning to her.

Cristal said, “No,” and sat back.

Suddenly Kerim leaned towards her, grabbed
the chair’s armrests with both hands and spun her chair towards
him. With his hands still on the armrests, he leaned over and
looked directly into her eyes.

She heard Gabriel ask, “What was that,
guys?”

Kerim’s eyes seemed to be shooting
accusations into hers while she was trying to process what Harry
had told them.

“You were very calm during the whole thing,”
he said to her raising one eyebrow.

She stared back, not one to be easily
intimidated. She could hear Gabriel moving around behind her.

“She didn’t seem calm to me,” Gabriel
said.

Kerim tilted his head towards him.

“Gabriel, you had your eyes closed the whole
time.”

She felt her body relax for a moment.

“Well, not the whole time,” Gabriel replied.
“Okay, most of it.”

Kerim’s eyes met hers causing her body to
tense up again.

“Before you answer, Cristal,” Kerim said, “I
want to know, can we trust him?”

He pointed at Gabriel.

“Hey! Wait a minute!” Gabriel cried out.

She shoved her chair back, releasing Kerim’s
death grip on the chair, forcing him to stand up. She looked from
Gabriel to Kerim.
Question is, can I trust either of
them?

“If you really want to know…” she said
drawing out the words like maple syrup dripping out of a
bottle.

She could see Gabriel pleading with his eyes
for her to continue.
Oh, no, here we go.

“This isn’t the first time this happened to
me.”

Gabriel leaned back on the desk, his mouth
open in astonishment.

“What do you mean?”

Kerim moved towards her, kneeling down on
one knee. He placed his right hand on the armrest. His steel grey
eyes searched hers. It felt like he was digging into her mind for
answers.

“Do you want to know what I saw, Cristal?”
Kerim asked in a low voice.

Her arms felt as if they were paralyzed, her
legs stiff.

Kerim continued, “
You
started the
earthquake and the bright light, right?” he asked in a hypnotic
tone.

Cristal clenched her fists and struggled to get up.
Why can’t I move?

Summoning all her strength and will power, she
managed to push Kerim away. She stood up, causing him to stumble
backwards onto the desk. This time she leaned in towards him,
planting her fists on her hips.