Doubt (15 page)

HARRY WAS DRIVING FAST
.
Way too fast.

“
Slow down,” said the voice that could pass as Dr. Saeed’s.

Harry
glanced at the rearview mirror. Dr. Saeed lounged in the back seat, on the passenger side. No crazy eyes, no spinning head. He was just normal.

Considering the circumstances,
Harry should have been somewhat relieved. Earlier, he had imagined vampire teeth sinking into the back of his neck. Thank God, that didn’t happen.

He
heard his mother’s voice say,
“Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha’olam, ha’motzi lehem min ha-aretz.”
Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, Who brings forth bread from the earth.

It
was the only prayer his mother taught him in Hebrew. She made him say it before every meal, despite Aaron’s forbidding any forms of religious expression in their home.

Saying the prayer
was meaningless to Harry. Just some words he would mumble before taking a mouthful of his dinner. If it made his mother happy, he wasn’t going to argue with her. Why he could hear his mother saying the prayer now was just another mystery to him.

Focus on
finding out more about the monster in the back of my car.

“
Dr. Saeed, or is that your real name? Are you going to tell me what you are?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

“
You’re talking very strangely, Harry,” Dr. Saeed replied. “Are you okay?” he said, again in that soothing voice of his.

His hands gripped the wheel
.

Okay, play the game.
Buy some time.

“
I don’t know, Dr. Saeed. I guess I’m not quite myself,” he said.

“
Ah, yes. You must have fallen asleep when you were waiting for me in the car.”

Fallen asleep?

“
I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “As far as I recall, I was in my car by myself, ready to drive away from GN. And then you showed up from nowhere in the back seat.”

“
Harry, now it’s my turn to say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Don’t you remember calling me? You said to meet you at your car and that it was urgent. That we had to go find Cristal before she ended up at one of the black hole locations.”

Flashes of memory
exploded into Harry’s head.

He
could see himself leaning his head back on the headrest, the seat slightly reclined. There was a knock on the glass. He opened his eyes and saw Dr. Saeed. He unlocked the door to let Dr. Saeed in.

Harry swerved the car, almost clipping a truck beside him.

The driver waved his hand out the window and yelled, “
Mh ath hvshb shath ‘evshh?
” What do you think you’re doing?

“
Get a hold of yourself,” Dr. Saeed said. “Do you want me to drive?”

Harry felt disoriented, unsure of himself.
Did he, in fact, dream up the whole thing? The secret lab? Seeing his dad? Dr. Saeed’s yellow eyes? He did recall having trouble sleeping the last few nights. Was he suffering from sleep deprivation?

“
I said, do you want me to drive?”

Harry glanced over his shoulder.
Dr. Saeed was looking at him with concern. He had to admit that he did not look like a crazy monster. If it was all a dream, then he didn’t have to be afraid of him.

“
Why?” Harry asked, hoping to sound lighthearted. “You don’t like my Israeli style of driving?”

Dr. Saeed chuckled softly.
“Glad to see you are feeling better. Your choice of words always amuses me.”

Wait a minute
, Harry thought.
Why was Dr. Saeed in the back seat? He never rides in the back seat.

Harry took a deep breath.
“You comfortable back there, Dr. Saeed?” He looked up in the mirror to see a smile curl up on the Doc’s face.

“
Yes, Harry. Thanks for forcing me to sit back here. You know I prefer to ride shot gun.”

Okay, good answer.
Maybe I
am
losing my mind. Play it cool.

“
You know I had a vision today,” Harry said quietly.

“
Oh? We have some time before we get there. Care to tell me what it was?”

Harry
saw the exit sign to Akko coming up on the right. They were about twenty minutes away from the black hole.

“
I saw Aaron. He time travelled here to GN,” Harry said quietly.

He looked over his right shoulder to check the blind spot before changing lanes.
He caught Dr. Saeed’s eye in the mirror.

It twitched, I
’m sure of it.

Harry
’s mind was reeling as he tried to contemplate why Dr. Saeed, or more like Mr. Hyde, was playing ignorant. A thought crossed his mind.

Maybe he didn
’t know that his cover was blown.

“
And what if that were true?” Dr. Saeed asked, as if luring him in, in his usual reserved way. “How would you feel about that?”

“
Ah, come on. Don’t talk to me like you’re my shrink.”

“
You do realize we both don’t know what will happen when we arrive at the black hole. It could be the end of us all.” Dr. Saeed paused. “So, humor an old friend, Harry.”

As
Harry drove into the city of Akko, he had to slow down as he approached a roundabout. The Israeli Transportation Department installed the roundabouts to control the speed of drivers. However, it only encouraged the locals to speed around them like Indy race car drivers on crack cocaine. His mother always told him to “do as the locals do,” so he slammed his foot on the gas and whipped around the roundabout, hurtling Dr. Saeed against the side door, and then toppling him over to the opposite door as Harry gunned the car into a sharp right.

Dr. Saeed never wore a seatbelt
stating that, “If it is my time to leave this timeline, then so be it. I want to enjoy the ride; not feel strapped in like a prisoner.”

“
Dr. Saeed, you okay back there?” Harry asked, chuckling to himself.

Dr. Saeed grabbed the back of his chair
in an attempt to balance himself. “Harry, that isn’t funny,” he snapped.

In the rearview mirror, Harry
saw that he had pulled himself up. He began fixing his shirt and patting the sides of his hair flat.

What a self-centered prick
.

They sat in
an uncomfortable silence while he drove them through the old city. Harry noticed that there were a lot of cars on the road with mostly guys not much younger than him, out for a joy ride, heading towards the beach—to hang out or kill time.

Speaking of time, Harry realized that he should use this opportunity to squeeze more intel out of Dr. Saeed.

He cleared his throat
before saying, “Aaron is here. I can feel it. Call me crazy, but in my vision, Aaron told me that he travelled through time to get here.”

“
He told you this?” Dr. Saeed leaned his head forward between the front seats, causing Harry to almost jump out of his skin.

“
Freak! Do you want to get us killed?” he cried out, as he swerved inches away from sideswiping a parked car.

“Oh, sorry,” Dr. Saeed said as he leaned back. “It’s just that your vision was not a dream, Harry.”

Harry could hear the excitement in his voice.
Is he for real? So Dr. Saeed really didn’t have a clue that Harry knew his secrets. If the good doctor was attempting to make him doubt himself, it wasn’t working. Deep down in his gut, Harry knew he saw something not from this world.

H
e realized that he must be developing a sixth sense, like Cristal. And why would he be surprised? Aaron and Dr. Saeed admitted they had been experimenting on him, too. Deception had a bitter taste. Aaron admitted having tested on himself, too. And who was to say that Dr. Saeed wasn’t one of Aaron’s volunteer test subjects?

“
Harry, are you listening? Your father is alive.”

“
Yes, I know,” Harry replied calmly. “You and I both know that he time travelled here.” He looked up at the mirror to see his reaction.

Dr. Saeed
’s eyes met his gaze. “No, he didn’t. Although he would want everyone to believe that.”

Harry swerved the ca
r over to the side of the road, putting the stick shift into park. He spun around.

Screw logic.
He wanted answers.

“
What the hell are you talking about? Stop talking in circles!”

Dr. Saeed
stared at him, looking almost contrite. He said, “He didn’t die five years ago.”

Harry
was completely baffled at what he was hearing. He had expected Dr. Saeed to explain how his father went FTL, or faster than light speed, on warp drive while time travelling here from the past to the present.

“
Sorry, I don’t get it. What are you trying to say?”

Dr. Saeed took a deep breath
, getting ready to tell him in his “once upon a time” way.

Harry
groaned. “Skip the long explanations and just tell me the Cliff notes’ version.”

Dr. Saeed
replied, “Yes, of course. The data that the Truth Seekers’ team has been decoding uncovered something that GN has been hiding.”

Harry sighed
. “Cut to the chase, Dr. Saeed. You’re killing me over here.”

Dr. Saeed
cleared his throat and wiped the sweat from his brow.

Man, he
’s either a great actor or he’s got something really good to tell me.

“
Okay, in short, GN faked your father’s death. That was the big secret that GN had encrypted on their secure servers.”

WTF?

“
Are you talking about the data Cristal and Joanna were decoding? We knew that it was a huge secret they were hiding. But you’re telling me the secret was that they had faked Aaron’s death?”

Dr. Saeed
said, “No, no. It’s more than that. But I’m still trying to figure it out. And could you please refer to him as your father? He is your father, after all.”

“
Okay, so you’re saying Aaron was in on it?” Harry said, putting emphasis on the name
Aaron
as he spat out the words.

“
No, definitely not. They kept your father in a drug-induced coma. For what reason, I’m not sure.”

He took a deep breath.
“The decrypted data Joanna provided had been running through your software program before you left to see Cristal. The data revealed that there was a secret room at GN. I went in search for this room and found that it was guarded. Fortunately, I was able to convince the guards that I had clearance. I found your father in the secret lab.”

Harry pounced on this bit of information.
“Secret lab?”

“
Yes, yes! GN has a secret lab.”

“
Where was it?” he asked with a sneer in his voice.

Dr. Saeed
wasn’t admitting he had a secret lab behind the hidden door in the closet of his lab.

“
In the South wing basement,” Dr. Saeed continued. “When I found him in a comatose state, I administered Zolpidem into his IV drip. He woke up an hour later, although he was quite incoherent at first. I managed to get him dressed and walk him out of the secret lab back to my lab.”

What a backstabbing, lying
sack of sh*t! He played me all along for an idiot, a dumb kid moron. And to think I believed him and put Cristal and all the Truth Seekers in freaking danger.

Son of a b*tch.
He’d be damned if Dr. Saeed used him and Cristal as pawns ever again. Harry was about to say something when the car started to shake slightly. His head felt woozy as he turned to face forward—trying to steady himself. Seconds later, a thunderous sound roared in the sky above them.

“
Dear God,” Harry muttered.

Dr. Saeed grabbed his shoulder
. “Drive, Harry. We must get to the black hole before anything happens!”

The earth shook
subtly beneath the car in waves. Harry shifted gears and pressed his foot down on the gas.

WHEN THE FIRST
tremors on the ground started, Kerim and Cristal were standing in front of the walls of the old fortress of Akko, which loomed sixty feet high above them. Seconds later, Raffe appeared out of nowhere. Something about this guy unhinged her nerves. However, now was not the time to pinpoint exactly what it was.

Cristal clung to Kerim as the ground
gently swayed back and forth—the swaying reminded her of when she was standing in her stepfather’s boat while it was docked in the marina. Not that he knew how to drive the thing. He only used it to throw cocktail parties for his wealthy dental clients and show off his perfect family.

As suddenly as the shaking began
, it stopped. Kerim looked down at her, almost the way he looked at Gabriel, right after the earthquake in New York with his “Are you serious?” face.

She released her arms around him and mumbled
, “Sorry, not sure what got into me.”

Walid and two of his friends
were standing off to the side, a few feet from her. Where were the rest of the Truth Seekers?

“
Mizz Cristal,” Walid called out as he ran up to her. “Did you feel the shake of the ground?”

Crist
al glanced over at Kerim who had moved over to the van. He was quietly talking with Raffe, a grim expression on his face. She noticed that he was shaking his head, several times in fact. Cristal didn’t want to even surmise what they were saying to each other.

She turned back to Walid
who was wide-eyed and nervous, obviously aware of the imminent danger, despite appearing to be calm. He smiled at her in a reassuring way.

“
Do not be scared,” he said. “Allah is here and if it is His will, then we must trust Him.”

She knew
“Allah” meant “God,” and she didn’t think this was the time or place to suddenly become religious.

“
You believe in God, yes?” he asked.

“
Of course, I do,” she said. “I’m just not religious. What I mean is, I don’t go to church or anything like that.”

He said,
“You need not go to a place to talk to God. He is here. Everywhere.”

He raised his hands up to the sky to emphasize his point.

“Yes, you’re right,” she said, happy to hear he wasn’t going to try to preach to her.

That was one of her biggest pet peeves.
Born in a Roman Catholic family, her mother always tried to shove her beliefs down her throat. The more she did this, the more she wanted to run away from her.

Her senses picked up something in the air.
The ground under her right foot shifted ever so slightly while her ears were picking up a high-pitched sound, similar to what she had heard before the earthquake in New York.

Oh
, no, not again.

Her heart
began beating faster, her lungs starting to burn.

“
Calm down. You can control this,”
her father’s voice whispered in her ear.

She frantically looked over at Kerim
, but he was still in a deep discussion with Raffe.

“
Mizz Cristal?”

She turned back to Walid whose eyes
were deep with concern.

“
I’m sorry, Walid,” she finally managed to say. “I’m not feeling very well.”

He turned and said something to his friend
who dashed over to the car. Shortly after, he ran back with a bottle of water in his hand, stopping, and holding it out to her.

“
For me?” she asked.

He smiled shyly, his eyes looking down at his feet.

Cristal was overwhelmed with Walid and the boy’s sweet kindness. Her heart filled with warmth and gratitude. She took the water bottle gratefully, and smiled back.

“
Thank you very much. It is very kind of you,” she said.

The young man looked
up at her briefly, his face turning red. Walid patted him on the back, signaling for him to step back.

“
Drink. It is good to drink,” Walid said to her, motioning with his hands.

She smiled,
removed the cap from the bottle, and tilted it to her lips. The cold water spilled into her mouth, quenching her thirst, relaxing her breathing, and decreasing her pulse rate.

When s
he looked up, she gave Walid a warm smile. “You were right. The water has made me feel ten times better already.”

Now i
t was his turn to blush. “Very happy to help you, Mizz Cristal.”

She was about to respond when his
smile quickly left his face, his eyebrows furrowed into a knot; he stared at the bottle in her hand.

She
glanced down, too, wondering what he was looking at. The water was bubbling out of the bottle, like someone opening a bottle of pop after shaking it.

“
Cristal?”

She
looked up and saw Gabriel standing in front of her, a worried look crossing his face. Rinaldo and Serena were behind him, with similar stunned expressions on their faces.

“
Drop the bottle, Cristal! It might have been poisoned!” Serena cried out. She ran up to Walid and twisted his arm behind his back.

Cristal
dropped the bottle to the ground, spilling the water, or whatever it was, onto the street.

“
That is a lie!” Walid yelled. “Let me go!”

She
was certain Walid was not trying to kill her. Although she had no way to prove this, her sixth sense assured her that he had nothing but respect for her.

Her confidence in herself
began to waver, when suddenly everything around her started fading in and out.

Had someone really put poison in the bottle?

She saw Kerim running towards her and Raffe was grabbing his arm, trying to hold him back.

Several flashes of
bright white light streaked across the sky, followed by cracks of thunder. The thunder clapped in back-to-back succession as if someone up there was massively pissed off and lighting gargantuan firecrackers.

T
o celebrate the impending storm?

Did she really think that?
She shook her head wondering why her mind wasn’t making much sense. Another boom from the sky. And another and another. The sounds were so deafening, and they triggered car alarms to go off in the street.

“
Kerim!” she cried out, or tried to.

She couldn
’t hear herself above the thunderous roar.

Out of the corner of her eye,
she saw a small silver car drive up onto the sidewalk. It was gunning towards Kerim before skidding to a stop beside him. A young man jumped out of the car and ran toward her.

Harry?

“Cristal!” Harry screamed, but his voice was covered by the roaring thunder.

When he
opened his mouth, she could only hear the thunder as if it were rumbling out from his lips.

She felt the
ground swaying beneath her feet.

Oh
, God, I think I’m going to be sick,
she thought to herself. She could not stop herself from falling over. Help me, she thought, while trying to form the words to speak, but couldn’t.

A strong
arm grabbed her by the waist, keeping her steady. Then she felt someone else hold onto her other arm. Cristal glanced down and saw Kerim holding onto her waist. Dr. Saeed was on the other side of her, holding her arm.

How did
Dr. Saeed get here? Did he ride here with Harry?

Harry
was running towards her, his eyes wide with fright, his mouth open, screaming words that she could not understand over the thunderous booming sound above them.

“
Just relax, Cristal,” Dr. Saeed said in his usual reassuring tone, his voice cutting through the noise like a sharp knife slicing a stick of butter. “Let me take you to the car.”

No, no, no!

She pushed
Dr. Saeed away from her, and leaned her full weight on Kerim. The ground churned violently beneath her feet.

“
I’m here, Cristal. Don’t be scared,” Kerim said into her ear. He lifted her into his arms, carrying her away.

She knew he would do whatever it
took to get her to a safe place. She saw a flash of light and then heard more claps of thunder. She noticed the ground was rippling in small waves. Another lurch of the ground sent Kerim forward releasing her from his arms.

In her delirium,
Cristal felt herself flying into the air, in slow motion, in a free-fall upward.

Free-fall
upward?

It sounded ridiculous
, but it was true. Higher and higher she felt herself ascending. Over her shoulder, the fortress wall behind her was whipping down the higher she rose.

She glanced down
and saw Harry, frantic, screaming. He was waving his hands above his head. Gabriel and Rinaldo seemed to be holding onto Kerim for dear life. And little Serena, she seemed so lost standing there by herself, staring up at her.

Cristal blinked her eyes
, still not fully comprehending what was happening. She realized she was floating ten feet, now twenty feet above all of them.

How
is this happening?

Glancing down,
she watched a grey cloud-like shape rise up from the ground, almost like a mini tornado, twisting and growing. It was rising off the ground and forming into a shape. Before she could blink her eyes, the grey cloud transformed into an eagle, and its wings spanned the length of the van. The eagle flapped its glorious wings and flew up into the sky, circling and soaring between the lightning strikes and swirling black clouds. It gracefully ascended higher, until it hovered in front of her.

She
stared in amazement when the eagle transformed once again. Everything, except for the wings, metamorphosed into the shape of a man—his body was like a translucent silvery glow. She squinted at his face, which was taking shape now with a nose, eyes, and mouth.

I
recognize this face,
she thought to herself.

Gasping
, she realized that this being that was levitating in front of her, seemingly oblivious to the demented storm around them, was none other than Kerim’s strange friend, Raffe.

Raffe
’s lips twitched into a smile, as if acknowledging her findings.

“
Who are you?” she tried to ask, but the wind swallowed her words.

No time for that
! Take my hand!
His voice bellowed out in her head, and the pain cut through her like sharp knives.

Her body began
convulsing; her head felt like it was going to explode.

Raffe reached his hand
out and touched her forehead. As soon as she felt his hand on her, the pain was replaced with a sweet relief.

His voice entered her mind again.

Sorry, I haven
’t taken this form for many years. I have forgotten how sensitive you humans are. I will decrease the volume of my thoughts so as not to mutate your brain cells.

“
Are you serious?” she asked, half hoping that she had passed out and this was just some preposterous hallucination. A thought came to her mind.
How come when she first met him, he didn’t speak any English?

He opened his mouth to s
peak, and said, “The English language is so rudimentary. I prefer not to speak it unless necessary. I shall speak to you with my mouth instead of my thoughts, as this requires less energy. Best to conserve my energy for later.”

He
sounded like a foreign exchange student learning English. His words came out in a staccato-like fashion. He spoke with proper grammar, but he lacked the idioms and slang terms that most native speakers use.

He continued
, “As I said earlier, there is no time. Give me your hand, now. You must do this willingly.”

Despite the terrifying situation she was in,
the fact that she was suspended fifty feet up in the air didn’t prevent her natural stubbornness from surfacing.

Glowering at him with defiance in her eyes, she asked
“Or what?”

His nostrils flared slightly before
he said, “Or the demon that is pinning you to the wall will drop you to your death below. But the frightening part will not be the fall. That part is fairly quick and simple. Really, the ghastly part would be the way “it” would manipulate you to release your soul willingly before you crash to the ground.”

Oh
, my God.

The fear that
would wake her up in her sleep, the dreams, visions, voices in her head, all started flooding back to her.