Doubt (12 page)

He squeezed her arm
and encouraged her by saying, “We should be there soon.”

She pressed her head
tightly into his back, hoping he was right.

“
Trust no one,”
her dad’s voice said in her head.
“Today will be the beginning of The End. Stay strong and have faith.”

“
No! Stop!” she hollered, shaking her head, and not wanting to hear the voices anymore.

Kerim turned his head towards her
and yelled, over the noise of the road, “Are you all right? Do you want me to stop?”

“
I wasn’t talking to you,” she said.

That
’s when she realized that what she had said sounded crazy.

“
I mean, I thought I was going to be sick. But I think I’m okay. We’re not that far. Are we?”

She felt his hand on her arm.

“We’re almost there. You must be really tired. I can’t hear any of your thoughts,” he said with a soft chuckle.

Well, that
’s good to know
, she thought to herself.

Zero
: video chat in 15 min

Onyx
: see you then

Joanna
looked over at Jenna who was sitting on the couch, busy typing on her laptop. Although, she had agreed for her to move in temporarily, living with Jenna was driving her crazy.

The sound of the
chat tool notification alert interrupted her thoughts. She quickly read the message.

“
Was it Harry? What did he say?” Jenna asked raising one eyebrow.

“Yeah, he wants to video chat soon,”
Joanna said.

“Awesome. Okay, I’m going to set up beside you, so he can’t see me.”

Jenna
stood up, grabbed her laptop, walked over and sat down on the chair beside her.

“
Great,” Joanna mumbled to herself.
What did I get myself into? Not only do I have the boss interrogating me at work, I’ve got Jenna bossing me around at home.

Every day at GN,
senior management was breathing down her neck. Joanna knew that if she revealed Harry’s breach in security, she would only be revealing her own role. She wasn’t ready to be hauled into prison over this.

Jenna turned to her
, and asked, “Joanna, why don’t you introduce me to Harry?”

“
What?” Joanna couldn’t believe her ears. “Are you crazy? If he even suspects that I am talking to a non-Truth Seeker, he’s going to cut me loose. And where would that get you?”

Jenna bit her lip, a sign that she was thinking up
one of her crazy plans.

“
No way, Jenna. You just sit quietly right where you are. Or else, I’m going to call this whole thing off,” she snapped.

Jenna sighed
, and then said, “Okay, okay. Take a pill. I’ll sit over here and behave.”

Joanna threw her a dirty look
but knew that it was pointless. Jenna was so thick-skinned that nothing ever fazed her. She only worried about getting what she was after—no matter what it took.

“
You know, I don’t know if Kerim Ilgaz changed his name, because I can’t find much on him,” Jenna said, reaching for her glass and taking a sip.

“
Oh?” Joanna frowned.

“
He has absolutely no digital tattoo on the internet. No website, no social network. Not even an email account. I asked my contacts in Istanbul to find out more about him. All I could get was that he was in the military for four years. He has no family, no friends, nothing. As far as the database records show, before 2009, he was a ghost.”

Joanna
said, “Well, maybe he did change his name. If he was in the military, maybe he was a secret agent or something. That would explain why he doesn’t have a footprint online. For all we know, he’s still under cover.”

“
You know what, Joanna, I think you are onto something,” Jenna said, grinning like a kid who had just been handed an ice cream cone. “I’m going to see if my CIA contacts can find something on him.”

“
Seriously? You’ve got CIA contacts?”

She gave her a wry smile.

Jenna shrugged.

“
CIA agents are a dime a dozen these days with all the national security measures that President Roshenbaum brought in.”

“
Funny, I voted for Roshenbaum, thinking he’d protect our rights, but it looks like he’s worse than Sanders.”

“
Yeah, who would guess that General Sanders would be more liberal than Roshenbaum,” Jenna replied. “But hey, as long as you instill enough fear in people, they’ll all line up and give away their rights like candy.”

The sound of the video chat alert interrupted their conversation.
Joanna raised her finger to her lips, motioning to Jenna to keep quiet.

Joanna
clicked on Zero’s avatar and the video chat window opened, filling her screen. He was dressed in an ocean blue short-sleeved button shirt, which was opened at the neckline showing off his golden skin.

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 f
ile 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.

Joa
nna 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.”

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 medical 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.”